9781629270050-Text-for-ePub-rev

by Unknown

  “Now we wait,” Milandra answered. “Let them see that we’re not aggressive.”

  They didn’t have to wait long. A man appeared from behind the RV, squeezing through the gap between it and the maintenance truck. He wore a dark green military cape and looked to be in his late fifties. Drops of water clung to the faint wisps of grey hair that criss-crossed his head like a spider’s web. In the crook of one arm, the butt and workings wrapped in clear plastic, only the black muzzle open to the elements, the man held a sawn-off shotgun.

  He stopped in front of the RV and regarded them.

  Milandra was about to probe the man, surreptitiously, to see if she could ascertain his intentions without alarming him, but Simone beat her to it. The Chosen had sat so far forward, her butt was at the edge of the benchseat and her nose almost touched the windscreen.

  The man frowned and his posture stiffened. He raised the shotgun to chest height, aiming at the cabin of the flatbed.

  Help me sent Simone. He’s too strong. Can’t do it on my own

  She flung open the passenger door and stepped out into the rain.

  Reacting instinctively, Milandra lent her intellect to Simone and felt Grant, Wallace and Lavinia follow suit.

  Simone approached the man. His features contorted into a grimace of surprise and fear. He still held the shotgun pointed at the truck, but it looked as though he was trying to bring it to bear on Simone. His mouth twisted with effort as he willed his arms to obey his instructions. The shotgun didn’t move.

  Milandra made as though to follow Simone, but Grant laid his arm on hers.

  “Let her handle it,” he muttered. “Not much you can do with her taking the lead. . . .”

  Milandra sagged back into the seat, knowing he was right. With Simone controlling their combined intellects, there was only a limited amount any of them could do until she released them.

  Simone reached the man and walked slowly around him, inspecting him with a look of frank curiosity. The drizzle had started to flatten her hair and she brushed it away from her eyes absentmindedly. Having completed the circle, she stopped in front of the man.

  Even with the combined force of five psyches, it didn’t appear as though Simone’s control was complete. The man’s body and limbs had frozen, but his face still worked, expressing at turns fear and loathing and anger and bewilderment.

  With the part of her mind that remained her own, Milandra sensed what Simone intended to do. She wanted to stop her, to persuade her down another path, but would need the others to all be in accord to override Simone’s wishes. That clearly wasn’t the case. All she could sense from Grant was indifference; Wallace and Lavinia were in agreement with Simone and were performing the mental equivalent of a cheer lead.

  Milandra was powerless to do anything except sit and watch.

  Summoning the power of all five intellects, Simone pushed. . . .

  The man’s eyes blazed with hatred and he tried to spit at Simone. The spittle barely left his mouth. He lowered his arms and turned the shotgun around and upwards, placing the muzzle under his chin. His movements were jittery as though he resisted with every last ounce of strength he possessed.

  Simone took a step backwards. The man pulled both triggers and the reports reverberated around the confined space created by the vehicles.

  The white side of the RV was sprayed with blood and thick globules of skull and brain matter that slid down its rain-slickened surface.

  Simone watched the man’s body fold up and crumple to the road. She turned and smiled. Only then did she release them.

  Milandra breathed out deeply, feeling a little sick. She clambered out of the truck. Grant switched off the engine and followed her. Wallace and Lavinia jumped down from the back and they all approached the RV.

  “How cool was that?” said Simone.

  “Yeah, baby,” said Lavinia.

  Wallace nodded and grinned.

  Milandra said nothing. Her reaction to what had happened disturbed her. She must quell these emotions of compassion and mercy. With what lay ahead, she could not afford to give them any room. She had grown weak and she needed to be strong.

  She glanced sideways at Grant. He was considering her with a thoughtful expression that she didn’t much like, but she resisted the urge to probe him.

  Grant looked away and walked to the other side of the RV.

  “All clear,” he called. “The keys are in the ignition. I’ll move it out of the way.”

  Milandra’s nausea had passed, washed away by the rain like the man’s blood.

  “Come on,” she said to Simone, “let’s get out of this drizzle.”

  She and Simone resumed their seats in the cabin of the truck. Wallace and Lavinia waited while Grant reversed the RV towards the central barrier, leaving it parked in front of the car and maintenance truck, clearing the inside lane for them to pass.

  They resumed their places on the bed of the truck and Grant sat back in the driver’s seat, wiping water from his face.

  “Right,” he said as he started the engine. “Hopefully, next stop JFK.”

  * * * * *

  It took Tom the best part of forty-eight hours to feel that he had built up his strength sufficiently to consider venturing outside.

  He slept and ate and tried to keep despair at bay.

  The terrors that came as he slept were borne not of delirium but of the hazy memory of burying his mother and the fear that he was the only person alive. In his dreams, he feverishly dug holes and ran from a faceless stalker, and tried over and over to breathe life into his dead mother, but her face crumbled under his touch. . . .

  When the electricity failed, he had filled saucepans from the cold tap, then had gone upstairs and run the cold tap into the plugged bath until, with a clanking of pipes, the flow spluttered to nothing. The bath was nearly half full. He reckoned he also had a hot-water tank full of water if he needed it.

  He would not die of thirst, but his food was already running low—he had been eating as though food was going out of fashion, which he supposed in a manner of speaking it was.

  The sense of isolation was complete. The phone lines were dead. Without electricity, his computer was useless and he had left his laptop in school. His mobile phone, though the battery held some charge, had no signal. The internet connection didn’t work.

  Last year, Mark had lent Tom a novel by a German author about a man who wakes up to discover he is the only person left alive on the planet. Tom had enjoyed the book, but had scoffed at the notion. Now he felt as though he was that man. The story had not ended well—the man had stepped off a very tall building.

  The idea of ending his life had occurred to Tom, especially in the black hours when he awoke thrashing and shouting, cold sweat covering his body. Lying in the silent, frozen darkness, clutching his duvet tighter as his breath plumed around his head, he considered methods.

  Plunging from a great height like the man in the novel was impracticable: there were no buildings within a ten-mile radius tall enough to ensure that he wouldn’t end up dying in immobilised agony of starvation or exposure with broken legs or back. And he was terrified of heights; he couldn’t climb a ladder past his own height without his knees locking and refusing to go any higher. Even if he were to find a building tall enough, his body would betray him, refusing to let him approach the edge, let alone cast himself over.

  Overdosing on sleeping tablets seemed a painless way to go, though he didn’t have any and would have to root around in neighbours’ medicine cabinets. A possibility.

  He already had the means to slit his wrists or hang himself, but neither option appealed much: he seriously doubted he possessed the courage to go through with either.

  No, sleeping tablets it would have to be if he reached that level of despair. Maybe he ought to secure a good supply just in case.

  With that purpose at the back of his mind, Tom wrapped himself up in thick clothes and unlocked his front door. He stepped outside into a biting winte
r wind that took his breath away and he was immediately glad of his thermal beanie that he pulled lower to protect his ears.

  He locked the door behind him, then stood for a moment, listening. Nothing, except the occasional rattle of a street lamp casing as the wind shook it and the howl of the wind itself.

  Tom’s house stood in a small development of identical box-like structures that opened onto a shared path. Wooden side gates led to tiny back gardens, surrounded by high wooden fences that discouraged neighbourly interaction. Tom, therefore, barely knew his neighbours. An elderly couple lived next door, but he wasn’t even sure of their names.

  He walked to their property and rang the doorbell. No chimes sounded. Not surprising given that the door bells ran off mains electricity. He knocked, the sound dull and muffled beneath his gloves. He knocked harder, making the door rattle in its frame. The Christmas wreath that had been tied to the door knocker jumped a little. Tom lifted it and let it drop, the door knocker making a noise like a pistol shot. Finally, he stooped and pushed open the letter box.

  “Hello?” he called through the gap, feeling a little foolish. “Is anyone home?”

  He pressed his ear to the opening. Nothing. He put his nose there and sniffed. The smell was faint, but unmistakeable. The same sweet, cloying odour that had filled his mother’s house.

  He stood and tried the door handle. Locked.

  It was the same at the next three houses: a young couple expecting their first child; a single mother with two young children, the younger of which had been in Tom’s class two years previously; a middle-aged bachelor with a fondness for brewing his own beer. No sight or sound of life from any of them, just the faint odour of decay.

  At the fourth, the front door swung open at his touch. Tom hesitated, glancing around, afraid of being observed, but there was nobody to observe him. He stepped inside.

  “Hello?” he called. “The door was open. . . .”

  He tailed off as the now-familiar waft of death assailed his nostrils. It was much fainter here and Tom thought he could detect the reason why: a constant draft blew through the house as though every window had been left wide open. The odour that he could smell was coming from upstairs. He went up and glanced into the main bedroom. The curtains were closed—taped closed judging by the almost total darkness in the room—and the stench was much stronger. He closed the bedroom door firmly without going in.

  Before going back downstairs, he looked in the bathroom cabinet. Painkillers, anti-inflammatories, indigestion tablets, anti-histamines and cream for piles. He pocketed the painkillers.

  He went downstairs to the back of the house. The back door that led from the kitchen had been wedged wide open, allowing the wintry wind open access. A large part of the garden was taken up by a wooden shed, the door to which was also open, held in position by a rusting iron hook. Tom walked over, avoiding the piles of excrement that dotted the lawn, guessing what he would find inside.

  Sure enough, lying on its side in a basket in a corner of the shed, was a dog. It looked up at Tom and tried to wag its tail, but it seemed too much effort. It lowered its head and uttered a faint whine. Tom recognised the animal: the border collie-Labrador cross that he had passed when walking home from school what seemed a lifetime ago. He guessed that the body of the person lying in the bed upstairs had belonged to a middle-aged man who walked with a limp.

  Tom stepped over to the dog and bent down. He removed a glove and placed a hand on the animal’s side. The dog lifted its head again and tried to lick Tom’s hand, but again gave up as if it was too much effort. Tom stroked the animal’s side and could feel every rib. The dog was starving.

  He glanced around the shed. Two food bowls and a water bowl stood on an old newspaper against the shed wall. All three were empty; licked clean by the looks of them. On a shelf he found half a dozen tins of dog food and a tin opener, alongside four empty tins. He quickly opened one and emptied its contents into one of the food bowls. Using the sharp edge of the top of the tin like a knife, he chopped the food into a gelatinous mess.

  Tom bent by the dog’s head and lowered the bowl towards it.

  “Here, boy,” he murmured. “Get on the outside of this.”

  The dog’s nostrils flared and its tongue came out to lick at the food, but it seemed to lack the energy to stand to eat. Tom dug his fingers into the meaty mess and smeared a little on the dog’s lip. Its tongue came out and licked at Tom’s fingers until they were clean. He repeated the process and again the dog licked his fingers clean. He kept doing this until the bowl was nearly empty.

  “Good boy,” Tom said and this time the dog made a more concerted effort to wag its tail.

  When Tom stood up, the dog whined.

  “Won’t be a minute, boy. Gonna find you something to drink.”

  Tom picked up the bowl marked ‘Water’ and went back into the house. He turned on the cold water tap in the kitchen. The thin stream that issued was brown and quickly petered out. He tried the hot water tap, but nothing came out.

  He opened the fridge and recoiled a little at the smell, but he was growing accustomed to foul odours. He was in luck. An unopened litre bottle of spring water stood in the door, alongside a carton of milk that had congealed to cottage cheese.

  He returned to the shed and sloshed water into the bowl. The dog sniffed at it and lurched unsteadily to its feet. As it lapped at the water, Tom stroked its fur, sleek in spite of its owner’s deprivations.

  “A coat as black as coal dust, eh boy? Hmm . . . coal dust. How about Dusty as a name?”

  The dog lifted its head from the bowl and gave Tom’s cheek a cold, wet lick.

  “That’s settled then. Dusty it is.”

  Tom returned once more to the kitchen and rummaged around until he found some carrier bags. Into them he placed cans of food that he found in a cupboard, a packet of chocolate digestives, three more litre-bottles of spring water, a dozen more cans of dog food to go with the five remaining in the shed and a box of dog biscuits. He also found the dog’s collar and lead. Turning over the collar, he found an inscription: ‘Chester’.

  “Chester?” Tom shrugged. “Oh well, you’re Dusty now.” He left the lead and collar where he’d found them.

  Back into the shed and Dusty had drained the bowl. He looked up at Tom, one ear cocked expectantly.

  “Still hungry, eh?” Tom bent and ruffled the dog’s head. “Well, I’ll sort you out with some more food in a moment or two. First, we need to get you to your new home. From now on, that’s going to be wherever I am. Okay?”

  Dusty wagged his tail and Tom took that as agreement.

  * * * * *

  The private Airbus jet was owned by a corporation of which Troy Bishop was the Managing Director. The corporation chartered the plane to oil and gemstone companies, or to whoever else could afford it, on a frequent basis so that the craft was regularly used and maintained. On occasion, Bishop himself took the controls to keep himself familiar with the way she handled.

  The Melbourne Airport staff had followed his instructions to the letter—they were well paid to—and the plane was good to go. With the extra fuel tanks fitted and filled, it had a range of 12,000 kilometres and would reach London with one stop for refuelling in Hong Kong. A groundcrew of five should be awaiting them there—until recently, they had been spreading Moondust throughout eastern China—and would come aboard for the second stage after they had refuelled the craft.

  Of the thirty-five people catching the flight from Melbourne, ten had already arrived from New Zealand in a sleek Lear jet that Bishop eyed a little enviously. I’m gonna get me one of those he thought. The Lear pilot, a sandy-haired woman by the name of Tess Granville, would serve as co-pilot of the Airbus. Eighteen more, including Bishop, had arrived from various places in Australia. The final seven were en route, having the most arduous journeys across the vast desert interior.

  Bishop only half-listened to the chit-chat about the operation to spread the Millennium Bug. He paced the
corridors of the airport or the baking tarmac of the runways, anxious to be away. The transformers that still provided power to the airport wouldn’t do so indefinitely and he wanted to leave while he could take advantage of the airport’s navigation systems. Not that it would be a disaster if the power went before they left; they wouldn’t have to worry about missing a flight slot.

  The stragglers at last started to arrive, pulling into the airport in dusty four-by-fours and camper vans.

  “It’s gone well,” said a voice behind Bishop. “Don’t you think?”

  He turned to the smiling face of Tess Granville.

  Bishop shrugged. “Long way to go yet.”

  “Ye-es,” agreed Tess. “But it’s gone well so far.”

  “Won’t mean jack-shit if something goes wrong during the flight . . . or if any of the others should have a mishap.”

  Tess frowned. “Yes, it will. We’ll have still done our bit. The whole is greater—”

  “—than the sum of the parts,” finished Bishop. “Yes, I know how it goes.”

  “Hmm . . . maybe it wouldn’t hurt to keep reminding yourself now and again. You know, for the greater good.” She raised her eyebrows.

  Bishop didn’t respond. He looked away to where a dust-streaked jeep was pulling in.

  “There’s the last one,” he said. “The weather’s perfect. Light tailwind. Let’s go.”

  Without waiting to see if she’d follow, he started to stride towards the Airbus, barking orders at people to embark.

  * * * * *

  A similar scene was taking place thousands of miles away in JFK Airport, only on a larger scale and without the dazzling sunlight.

  Diane sat in a corner of a concourse in the terminal designated as the gathering point and watched people arriving in dribs and drabs. Most were bedraggled from the rain that still swept down from grey skies. A few were joyful, thumping the air and whooping, greeting people with hugs. Many more seemed a little tired and listless, like Diane.

  She sat straighter, though did not rush forward like the others, when Milandra and the Deputies arrived. She didn’t join in the clapping and cheering and back-slapping that accompanied their entrance into the concourse. She didn’t stand with a rapt expression on her face while Milandra spoke a few congratulatory words. She didn’t add to the triumphal pandemonium that greeted her words.