No Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  “This is good work. It’s good to see you taking charge of this situation.” She gives my arm a squeeze and finally lets go.

  I nod numbly. Taking charge. This is what I needed to finally take the lead? This? I’d rather I wasn’t leading at all.

  43

  One of Oxford’s curiosities—something that goes unadvertised to tourists—is that late at nights its streets are ploughed by a strange fleet of grease-stained vans. The sun drops below the horizon and they roll out from unnamed, and presumably equally greasy garages. They track the city’s streets in search of their prey. Finally they will encounter a pack of drunken students and will proceed to ply these uninhibited, unsuspecting youths with spicy meat of dubious quality and origin. It’s the stuff horror movies are made of.

  Halal House is the sedentary version of Oxford’s infamous kebab vans—an establishment where the owners have the pluck to attempt to sell the same wares to sober people. Only the hardcore falafel fanatics can be found there during daylight hours.

  Kayla is among them, at the back of the place, wedged into the furthest corner of a booth, legs tucked up in the almost impossibly narrow space between table and seat. A plastic container lies untouched before her. Her face is hidden behind her long bangs and all I can really see of her are her fine hands turning an ornate pocket watch over and over.

  Slowly, feeling like an animal trainer approaching a circus tiger without his chair and whip, I slip into the booth opposite her. She says nothing. Silence. Not one of those comfortable ones I’ve heard about. I open my mouth a couple of times. But how do I start? Any sort of apology seems paltry in the face of everything that’s happened.

  Eventually I just decide to talk.

  “K—” is about as far as I get.

  “Feck off.”

  I blow the rest of the word out in a long tremulous breath. Close my eyes. But I have to do this. I have to get this conversation working. She needs to talk. People always needs to talk. My palms sweat. A spot between two of my ribs begins to ache.

  “Kay—” I say.

  “I said feck off.” Still she doesn’t look at me, just works the pocket watch over and over. I’m not even sure if she’s paying attention to me. It’s as if the curse is just an automatic reflex, some vocal tic that I keep triggering.

  “Kayla—”

  A knife smashes down into the tabletop. A simple, stainless steel table knife. Not even an edge on it. Buried up to the handle in the peeling linoleum. Quivering slightly. I don’t even see her hand move.

  I am so very, very scared. I have accused Kayla of the worst imaginable bloody things. Of course she wants to kill me. I’m the worst possible person to be starting this conversation with her. I sit and stare at the linoleum’s fresh scar.

  Kayla starts up with the pocket watch again. We sit in silence.

  “It was my da’s,” she says, letting the watch briefly pause upon her knuckles. She begins talking so abruptly and so quietly that I almost miss it, almost ask her to repeat herself before common sense kicks in and shuts my mouth for me.

  “I took it off him after I killed him.” She looks up from behind the shield of her bangs, not at me, but at some spot over my shoulder, not at the now, but at the past.

  “They were in me, you know,” she says. “The Progeny. They were feckin’ in here.” She taps the side of her head. “I was twelve years old. But they couldn’t get a grip, couldn’t keep hold. They kept trying to fix me. Kept trying to stitch me up in some new way so they could keep me, hold me, have me as a puppet. They feckin’... feckin’ changed me. Made me different. They feckin’ raped the inside of my skull. They’re always getting in there. Every time I take one of those bastards down. I can feckin’ feel them, worming in. Trying to stay there. I don’t even know what’s left of who I was. I don’t know who I am. If there’s anything of the original, or if it’s just all... all stuff they feckin’ made.”

  “I’m...” I start, but what is there to say? I don’t know. I stay there, mouth slightly open, like some slack-jawed idiot. Which is maybe all I am. “I’m sorry,” I say. It feels insignificant.

  She lets out a grunt or a snort. I can’t tell if it’s derision or acceptance. She twirls the pocket watch once more, spinning it across her fingertips.

  “Epilepsy,” she says. “Seizures. Bad ones too. Something when I was born. Not right.” She taps the side of her head. “So they went and did some surgery. Went in there and cut some things out. Scar tissue. Still get headaches sometimes.” She shakes her head. The movement of the watch doesn’t falter.

  “Wasn’t my Da they took first. Was my ma. Then him. Then me. Then Izzie. Except, like I say, it didn’t stick. What the doctors had done. Couldn’t stick.”

  I catch a gleam in her eyes at that, a slight, grim smile. “I’m their feckin’ mistake. And I make them pay for it.” Then the smile is gone.

  “They’d been in the sheep. We had a farm, see. Up in the highlands. And the Progeny, they’d been at the sheep. Trying them on for size, I suppose. Breeding up maybe. Izzie told me. I called her a fool and told Ma on her. Then Izzie wasn’t a little girl anymore. Nobody was who they’d been before. Not even me. Changed. A little more than human. A little feckin’ less.”

  She stares ahead, jaw working, working, working.

  “They were already dead. You know that, right? You understand that. That’s feckin’ important to realize. It’s very, very, very feckin’ important.” One of her fingers is tapping the table, harder and harder. I can hear a creaking sound every time it strikes. Fresh cracks spread in the linoleum. “Dead. Just hadn’t stopped moving. Progeny don’t come out. Once they’re in. Only me.” She hangs her head.

  “Slaughtering sick sheep we were. Up on the farm. Da, and Ma, and me, and Izzie. And the knife went in one and the eggs came out. Went into us. And the Progeny don’t come out. Only out of me.”

  Her hand stops its tapping, hanging suspended above the table. “Didn’t even know what I was doing at first, what they’d made me capable of doing. Not until Da was dead. Only hit him twice. Once in the stomach. Once in the neck. Then down and he was done. Didn’t even understand it. Ma was attacking me then. The thing that had been my ma. They knew it hadn’t worked. They didn’t know why, I don’t think, but they’d seen what they’d done.

  “We were in the kitchen. Ma came at me. Izzie grabbed my hands. Feck she were but nine years old. She was strong as feckin’ iron right then, though. Might have been the thing in her. Might’ve been the fear in me.”

  Tears are slipping down Kayla’s face now, rolling one after the other in an ever-increasing stream. She speaks in a deadpan.

  “Kicked Ma. Sent her halfway across the room. She still came at me, but I was free of Izzie. Grabbed the rolling pin off the counter. Swung it round. Cracked Ma’s head. Down she went. Turned. And there’s Izzie. Hands held out to me. And there was something in her head. In her brain. One of them. The Progeny. It was in her. Grubbing in her brains. And I brought the pin down. And I caved in her skull. Whole thing collapsed in upon itself.

  “Don’t know why she had her hands out. Sometimes I think maybe she’d had it beat, was just asking me for one more second, two more. Just so she could get it out. Just asking to be like me. Sometimes I think she was about to throttle me.”

  She buries her tear-stained face in her hands. “Feck,” she says. Repeats it over and over. “Feck, feck, feck.”

  I sit in silence. The lump’s in my throat too. I can’t imagine something like it. I can’t even picture it. A child. She was just a child. The age of Ephie and Ophelia. And, Jesus, what she must be going through right now.

  I want to reach out and touch her, to show some kind of compassion, but Kayla’s not that kind of girl, and I can still see the knife buried in the table. So all I have is words.

  “We’ll fix it,” I say. “We’ll fix this.”

  “I found them in a bath,” Kayla says.

  I shut my mouth immediately. Just let her talk.r />
  “I was eighteen. Had been killing the Progeny fuckers for six years by then.” She stares at her hands. “I was living on the streets. First I’d been down to Edinburgh. Sponge off the tourists. My head was still fecked with it all. Then I found them there. Two Progeny. Was easy Maybe I knew a little about how they thought. After they’d been in here.” She taps her head again. “Taken over a couple in their fifties. It was easy to kill them. So I started working my way south. Going to the big cities, finding the Progeny. Taking them out. Because if it was me they couldn’t breed. Couldn’t infect. They worked at me still, but I didn’t get weaker, didn’t get stronger, didn’t stop what I was doing, just found them and killed them. Up and down the country. Feckin’ scourge on the bastards.

  “And then the girls. Tracked a bunch of Progeny to a warehouse in Sheffield. Five, I think. All women. And I went there, and I killed them all, and then, as I was leaving, I saw the bath. And I went over. Almost like something called me over. No reason to go over. I was done there. But the two of them were lying right in it. My girls. Weren’t even eighteen months old. Could tell even then though they were twins. Ephemera in the arms of a squid; Ophelia cushioned by an octopus. Water swimming with eggs. The girls screamed when I lifted them out of the water. Went into convulsions.” A smile peers through the veil of Kayla’s melancholy. “I was so feckin’ scared. Carried the whole bath back to where I could boost a flatbed truck.

  “Slowed me down they did. Cramped my style. Got sloppy. Got found. Shaw found me. Thought she was one at first. Progeny. Almost killed her. But she lost a sister to them, same as me.” She looks away. “Not quite the same.”

  Shaw lost a sister? To the Progeny? How did I not know that? I am such a bad team leader.

  I picture again the scene Kayla described. Her twelve-year-old self crushing the skull of her little sister. And there is something in that image that rings a bell. And I realize my vision of that scene is so vivid because I have seen some of it played out. The head of the student on Cowley Road. The original painted man as he was transformed. His head changing from male to female, then abruptly collapsing in on itself. As if struck. Crushed by a blow from the past. And then Kayla froze. It was then that she froze. After seeing that.

  The Progeny know. They have her Achilles heel.

  That’s not good. Not good at all.

  Still, now doesn’t seem like the moment to maybe remind her how out of luck she is. In fact she seems to know quite well herself, because she leans across the table and grabs my arms. She stares at me with enough intensity that it’s like she’s stabbing me all over again.

  “I can’t save her, Wallace,” she says. “I can’t do it. I don’t know why, but it can’t play out like that. And so all I’ve got is you. Do you understand me? You, and Tabitha, and Shaw. That’s it.”

  “I understand,” I say. And I do. God help me, I do. I feel crushed by it. “I’ll fix it. I’m going to fix it. We’re all going to fix it.”

  “You better, Wallace. You better fix it or I’ll feckin’ kill you.”

  44

  THE NEXT MORNING

  Tabitha sits in the lab and pokes things. Bits of metal. A soldering iron. The book. Occasionally she turns the pages of the book, handling it as if it’s going to burn her.

  “You can do this,” I say. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said it.

  “What if I build it wrong?” I’ve lost count of the number of times that’s been Tabitha’s reply.

  I want to point out it’s not like she can do a worse job than Clyde did, but I’m not sure that would really motivate at this point. I feel frustrated and useless. There aren’t leads to chase. Ephie hasn’t made any prophetic statements. The Progeny haven’t thrown down the gauntlet. I’d be worse than useless at building magical devices to disrupt aliens. All I can do is try and motivate Tabitha, and she is very reluctant about the whole thing.

  “Look,” I say. “This is our chance to save Clyde. To rescue him. To bring him back.”

  She turns and looks at me with complete hatred. Well... not complete, I think she’s mixed in a little bit of contempt too. A 90/10 mix, let’s say

  “You think I don’t know that? Overly fucking aware. Thank you.” She gives me the finger, which rather undermines the sentiment.

  “Sorry. Sorry.” I shake my head. “It’s just... We have to get him back. Don’t we? And I can’t help. Shaw can’t. Kayla can’t. That’s not what we do. But you—”

  “Pressure,” Tabitha says. “Totally helps. Cheers.” Another outing for her middle finger.

  I sit and stare at the back of Tabitha’s head. She turns a page of the book. She even seems to read it. But as the anger runs out of her, her shoulders slump. She goes back to poking things.

  Her anger, I think, is the key. That is, as Clyde told me, her way. If I can trust him. If he was who I think he was back then. But... Shit, I have to trust my memory. My hope. I have to. It’s all any of us have.

  So—anger. Tabitha runs on it. And she’s lost it. And I can get a bit of it back. Just by talking, apparently. But that’s misdirected anger. I need her to be angry at the book. At herself maybe. At Clyde even. I need her to be so pissed at this she fixes it.

  Oh God, I can’t believe I’m thinking this again. This is always such a bad idea... But, God help me, I need to do what Kurt Russell would do.

  “This is so fucked up,” I say. And it even sounds like cheesy movie dialog. Except even the guys playing second fiddle to Kurt Russell usually deliver their lines with the vague semblance of conviction.

  “Know that.”

  “Clyde, wow,” I say. I wish I had a scriptwriter. “The chap who actually got stuff done around here.” I’m glad her back is to me, because I’m wincing as I say that.

  “What?” Tabitha’s voice is low, her shoulders are back up.

  “I mean,” I say, attempting nonchalance, “the one who could blast magic, could do the book work, could build stuff, and he’s the one we lose. It’s just...” I can’t finish the sentence; the temperature of the room is dropping too fast. Even though I can’t see Tabitha’s face I can still feel the death stare. I’m worried I’ve gone too far.

  Tabitha stands up.

  “Don’t walk out on this, Tabitha.” I totally overstepped the mark. “You can—”

  Tabitha crosses the room and punches me right in the balls.

  I stop, drop, and squeal.

  “Fuck you,” she says. “Fuck you and your reverse psychology bullshit. Plenty bloody good at what I do. This is not what I do. Why I’m no damn good at it, you prick.”

  All of which is pretty much deserved I think. But, she doesn’t storm out of the room. She goes back to the lab table and starts turning pages. She actually seems to examine stuff.

  I try to tell my testicles it was worth it.

  Goddamn you, Kurt Russell. You and your terrible bloody life lessons.

  Shaw finds me still on the floor when she comes in five minutes later. Tabitha is writing something down on a notepad and ignores us both in a studied way. Shaw arches an eyebrow as she offers a hand to help me up. I shake my head, as I crouch there, knock-kneed.

  “Can see you in the bloody glass,” Tabitha says. She’s pointing at a large fish tank that is currently home to two white rats.

  “Shouldn’t you be concentrating?” Shaw’s voice holds only minimal disapproval but there’s still a muttered curse word and Tabitha lowers her head.

  “How are we doing?” Shaw asks me.

  “Kayla’s trawling the city for any Progeny she can find,” I say. “A long shot, but worth doing anyway. Tabitha here is building our secret weapon.” Without looking up, Tabitha flips me off over her shoulder.

  “And you?”

  “Thinking.”

  “About?”

  “The Dreamers.”

  There’s a pause. She looks at me. “Do you want me to beg for something of actual substance, Arthur?” But she’s smiling. Something has loosened inside
her, I think.

  “I saw them again,” I say. “After Peru. Before Ophelia disappeared.” I tell her about the skull-faced man, about his demand to keep the Twins safe.

  “It’s related,” I say. “It has to be. All of this. The Peru thing. The summoning. It can’t all be random. The Progeny had Olsted plant that book in the Bodleian. They led us to Olsted. They led us to his book. And it was his book that led us to Peru. So they led us to Peru. And it was Clyde who pushed for us to perform the summoning. And Clyde has to have been infected when he did that. He was infected in the fight perhaps. That’s the last point at which it could have happened. That’s probably when it was.” I want to believe it was then, so that’s what I stake my hopes on.

  “You think the Progeny had us summon the Dreamers?”

  “Yes.” I nod. “I don’t know why they had us do it, but they did.”

  “But the Progeny can’t touch the Dreamers,” Shaw says. “If they do they’re bounced from reality. It’s the end of their game.”

  And that begs the question of why the Dreamers haven’t bounced them already. If the Feeders get here then the Dreamers go too.

  “I think the Dreamers are scared,” I say. I remember how they stared while the skull-faced man looked at me. I remember how silent and still they were. “It’s something to do with the Twins, with Ophelia. They want her safe. Why? Why do they care?”

  “A prophetic twelve-year-old somehow gives the Progeny leverage on them?”

  “It’s all I can think of,” I say.

  “You need to talk to the Dreamers,” Shaw says.

  I should really think about the natural endpoint of conversations before I start having them.

  “Are you going to knock me out again?” I ask Shaw.

  “I think Ephie’s pool is probably more humane,” she says.

  It makes me sad that she’s right.

  45

  My finger touches the pool. Ephie cowers. The squid and octopus convulse. The water darkens. Everything goes black—