by Seth Patrick
If they ran.
It felt unreal, like some kind of training exercise. The events of the days before already had the quality of a bad dream, and he kept catching himself doubting the sense of Annabel’s plan either way. Running seemed crazy. Waiting seemed equally insane.
He heard from Never mid-morning, a matter-of-fact phone call about the gradual flow of information reaching the FRS about Baseline. Stacy and Jason both had rest days, so Never hadn’t been able to talk to them yet, something he wanted to do in person. Jonah felt his gut twist at the thought of Stacy, and even at the thought of Jason, being co-opted for Andreas’s research plans. He hoped that it was all part of some kind of front or distraction; or even, as Annabel had suggested, an effort from Andreas to tie up the best revivers around. To simply keep them out of the way, in case they could see the shadows just as Jonah could.
Yet even if Never could talk Stacy and Jason out of joining the research, there would be many others who would go eagerly. Hell, Jonah thought, I would have been one of them, if I didn’t know any better.
Late afternoon, Jonah took his backpack, got into his car, and headed out to get that new cell phone. Before he went, he spoke with his neighbour, making sure she still had a spare key and would check in on his cat if . . .
If something came up.
He took the fifteen-minute drive from his apartment to the mall near Huguenot Park. He’d been there with Annabel when she’d visited the previous spring – she’d dragged him there and made him buy more clothes in one day than he’d bought in the last five years. With the shopping done they’d settled down for a long, leisurely coffee upstairs in a small cafe that Jonah had appreciated, because even though they were beside a large window, he’d felt himself able to people-watch without feeling visible. It had been one of those simple, perfect afternoons, Annabel feeling so close to him and a whole new world opening up.
He’d been back on his own a few times since then, taking comfort from the memory as things between the two of them changed and drifted. It was something to warm himself by.
After buying his new phone, he went to the same cafe and found that the table by the window was empty. He sat and began to configure the phone with all the bells and whistles Annabel and Never insisted on.
He looked down to the mall below, finding himself tensing.
Because, apart from the memory of that afternoon, there was another reason he’d come here: to people-watch again, this time with a very specific purpose in mind.
The thought had come to him the night before. The darkness he had seen on Blake Torrance’s shoulder had been invisible at first; by the end, it was irrefutable. Being able to see it had felt like a new skill, a new ability forged.
Since the appearance of Andreas at the press conference, his mind had gone back again and again to the words the creature within Andreas had used at Reese-Farthing: we are Legion. We are all we have ever consumed.
How many shadows were out there?
He had come here to watch the crowds, in the hope that he would see nothing.
He watched the people walk past down below. His stomach clenched any time a hand reached up to a shoulder; to rub it, or scratch it. Jonah watched, his eyes moving from person to person, seeing every motion as a sign, every gesture as a clear tell. There: a tall man, holding the hand of a child, reaching with the other to itch at his neck. There: a woman, suddenly clutching at her shoulder. He wondered how it was done. Recruitment, he thought. How did it happen? Was it something Andreas had to do in person, or was it like a virus, like a plague?
A plague, he thought. Dear God, how many might there be?
Jonah closed his eyes. In his mind he saw darkness on the shoulders of every man and woman down there. Dense glistening shadows, nuzzling to their hosts, pulsating in a terrible synchronicity, their dead fingers loosening, gradually freeing, pulling clear just so that they could lift up towards where Jonah sat, lift up and point.
He opened his eyes again, feeling cold. It had been a mistake coming here, tainting a treasured memory with this fear, this paranoia.
The shoulders of the people below him carried no shadows he could see. All he could do was hope that it meant nothing was there.
His old cell phone rang, making him jump. He laughed uneasily at his own state of mind then took his phone out, answering it before he’d even checked who the call was from.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Jonah Miller?’ said a voice. A man’s voice. Familiar somehow, but he couldn’t place it.
‘Who is this?’
‘This is the FBI, Jonah. My name is Special Agent Heggarty.’
Jonah paused, feeling his heart rate shoot up. ‘How can I help you, Agent?’
‘I’d like to talk to you. Today, if possible. I’m in the area.’
‘What about?’
‘The current whereabouts of Tess Neil.’
The last thing he needed right now was to be on the radar of the FBI, not if he hoped to quietly disappear. ‘Tess?’
‘It’s important, Jonah.’
He felt himself smart at the informality. ‘I haven’t seen Tess Neil. Not since the fire at Reese-Farthing Medical. Anything you need to know is covered by the statements I gave then. So please, don’t waste your time. Or mine.’
‘I was under the impression that you had plenty of time on your hands, Jonah.’
There was a tone of sarcasm, of arrogance, in the man’s voice. The lack of professionalism took Jonah by surprise, and for a moment he didn’t know how to respond. ‘Excuse me?’ he managed.
The man laughed. ‘I’ve been asking after you today, I heard you were taking, uh, a sabbatical.’
‘So you thought you’d call and mock me? Special Agent Heggarty, was it? What office do you work out of, sir?’
‘Forgive me, Mr Miller. I only wanted to discuss the Tess Neil situation with you. Entirely at your discretion. If it would be convenient, just say where you’d like to meet.’
‘Nowhere. You can read whatever statements I’ve already made. I have nothing to add.’
‘So you haven’t seen her recently?’
Jonah felt his cool slipping. ‘I told you. I haven’t seen her since the fire.’
‘And you haven’t had any form of communication from her? No emails? Letters? Phone calls?’
‘Are you even listening to what I’m saying? No.’ Jonah was about to hang up on the man, but there was something he wanted to ask. ‘Why now? It’s been a year and a half, why the sudden interest?’
There was no reply for a few seconds. ‘You want to know why?’
‘Yes.’
Again, there was a delay. When Heggarty spoke at last, his voice was dismissive. ‘I think we’re done here, sir. Sorry to have bothered you.’
There was a click as Heggarty hung up on him. Jonah stared at the phone, bemused and angry. Dredging up Tess, and then acting as if it had been Jonah wasting his time? He shook his head. Then he wondered again why the voice had sounded familiar.
He took his new phone and composed a message for Never and Annabel, telling them that the FBI were asking questions about Tess. He finished his coffee, deciding it was time to set off home and call a halt to his experiment. An experiment in just how paranoid he could make himself.
Idiot, he thought. Seeing shadows everywhere he looked, then reading nothing but peril into the call he’d just received. Hell, the reappearance of Andreas would have been enough of a prompt for the authorities to look again into the circumstances of Reese-Farthing, and that naturally led to curiosity about Tess Neil. That was all the timing meant.
Nothing more.
*
He returned to his car and started to drive home. A little way along he spotted a police cruiser behind him and remembered a faulty brake light he’d not got around to getting fixed. He’d already been given a warning about it, three months back. He cringed inside as the cruiser put on its lights, the driver signalling for him to pull over.
Jonah c
ursed quietly as he stopped at the roadside. He was supposed to be all about low-key behaviour, silent and unnoticed, ready to vanish if Annabel gave the word. He smiled grimly and shook his head.
There were two officers in the cruiser. They got out and approached, taking position at both driver and passenger windows. Jonah opened his, ready to apologize about the brake light.
The cop leaned down. ‘Little erratic there, sir,’ he said.
Something made Jonah grip the steering wheel just that bit tighter. What the hell was he talking about? ‘Officer?’
‘I observed you veering some, out of your lane. Licence and registration, please.’
Jonah reached over to his glove compartment and hunted around, his face pricking with heat when he couldn’t immediately see it. Then he had it and passed it over. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t think I was—’
‘Get out of the car please, sir.’ The officer’s voice was suddenly hostile.
‘What?’ Jonah could feel the heat on his face return, but now it was accompanied by a sick feeling deep in his gut. What the hell is this?
‘You heard me. Out. Put your hands on the roof.’
Jonah complied. The cop frisked him, removing his wallet and his old cell phone from his back pocket. The other officer opened the passenger door and dipped down out of sight. It was a matter of a few seconds before he emerged waving a small sealed plastic bag, a white powder within. ‘Look what I found,’ he said.
Jonah felt reality drain away, replaced by cold dread. ‘That’s not mine.’ It was all he could say and it sounded like bullshit. Then Jonah noticed something, and it made him think about Heggarty’s phone call, and the way it had seemed like the agent had been stalling him, keeping him on the line just long enough and no more.
He thought of what Never had said the day before: we’d have to ditch our old phones anyway, they’d be able to track us on them.
Both officers were wearing gloves. Unusual, perhaps; but not if they knew they were going to meet a reviver.
The first cop got him to turn and hold out his hands, wrists up. The officer put a pair of handcuffs on him and bundled him into their vehicle, while the other locked up Jonah’s car and returned with the keys.
At that moment Jonah placed the voice of the FBI agent and felt the blood drain from his face. It was the man who had shown up outside the building on the night Blake Torrance attacked them. The man who had carried a strong shadow.
The back of the cruiser smelled a little of vomit. The cops said things to him, but whenever Jonah replied he kept his eyes to the floor, not wanting to look at them.
Not wanting to see their shoulders, in case anything was there.
They drove, the police radio barking unintelligible noise every dozen seconds or so. Jonah stole glimpses of their shoulders as they went, flashing his eyes up then back to the floor. Each time his gazed stayed a little longer. Each time there was nothing.
The officers had taken his old phone, but he was keenly aware that they’d missed the new one in the front pocket of his jeans. He used the motion of the car to cover his movement, getting the phone out, holding it as low as he could. He opened the messaging app.
Arrested, he wrote. Planted drugs. Never, get me out of here. His thumb hovered, ready to send it. He wasn’t in any doubt that he was in trouble, but sending the message meant admitting to himself just how serious this was.
‘You got a problem there, son?’ said the officer in the passenger seat, looking in a secondary rear-view mirror.
Jonah’s blood froze. He let the phone slide to the floor and brought his cuffed hands to his face, then rubbed at his eyes. ‘Travel sick, officer,’ he said.
The cop’s eyes narrowed. Jonah couldn’t see the smile on the man’s face, but he could tell how cold it was. ‘Wouldn’t be the first.’
Jonah leaned forward as far as he could and let out enough of a moan to sell it. The vehicle slowed for some lights and as they halted he grabbed the phone. He moaned again.
‘Don’t you throw up back there,’ said the cop. ‘You hear me, fucker?’
‘I won’t,’ said Jonah.
He sent the message.
As they crossed the James River he wondered which police station they were headed for. Plenty of people knew him, for Christ’s sake. All he needed was a friendly face, and then, surely . . .
The car turned left when he’d been expecting a right. They weren’t heading for the city.
‘Where are you taking me, officer?’ he asked, trying to make it sound neutral. But it had come out cold and scared.
The officer in the passenger seat gave him another predatory smile. ‘You just hold tight, son. We’ll get there.’
Jonah knew where they were headed soon enough. It made a kind of sense, he guessed. They entered the car lot of the Richmond FBI building, passing the artificial lake. It was still a beautiful day, thought Jonah. Strange how it seemed that nothing bad could happen with the sun in the sky.
He leaned forward again, feigning illness to cover another message on his phone. He needed to let Never and Annabel know this was it: they had to vanish, and they had to do it now. At FBI office, he wrote. It’s them. Run.
The car went around the rear of the building and parked. The two officers guided him in silence to a closed door. It opened. A man in a suit took Jonah by the arm with a grip that felt like it would leave one hell of a bruise. The man dismissed the cops with a nod and led Jonah inside.
‘Where’s Heggarty?’ asked Jonah. The man smiled but said nothing. He took Jonah down an empty corridor, around a corner and through a second door, handling him too roughly for Jonah to be able to get a good look at him. Another man in a suit was sitting behind a table in what looked like a meeting room. Jonah heard the door click shut behind him.
‘Let’s get those cuffs off him,’ said the seated man. ‘No need to be uncivilized.’
‘Heggarty?’ said Jonah. The man nodded. Jonah looked at Heggarty’s shoulder. There was a vague darkness there, as there had been at first with Torrance, nothing like as clear as it had been when he’d seen Heggarty before. His skill at seeing the shadows was an inconsistent one, it seemed.
‘Indeed. This is my colleague, Special Agent Piras. Say hello, Jake.’
‘Hello,’ said the first man without a hint of sincerity, as he removed Jonah’s cuffs.
‘I had hoped,’ said Heggarty, ‘that we could maybe talk a little more. Our previous discussion seemed rather curt.’
‘Look,’ said Jonah. ‘I don’t know what you think you—’
He stopped. Suddenly, he saw.
It had felt like something clicking into place in his mind; Jonah tried to pull his eyes away, but it was impossible. The shape on Heggarty’s shoulder was dark, with long fingers burrowed deep into its host. It was tangible, undeniably real, with a hint of moisture to it that made it glisten in the overhead lighting. For a moment, Jonah could smell rotten meat.
He managed to tear his gaze away, but only as far as Heggarty’s face. There was a knowing smile on the man’s lips, and an expression that, strangely, didn’t seem at all hostile. Just amused.
‘I see we understand each other, Jonah,’ said Heggarty.
27
Piras drew up a chair and directed Jonah to sit, then moved near the door and stood guard.
In case I tried to make a run for it, Jonah thought. As if there would be any point. He was starting to understand that it was all far too late. Too late to run. Too late to hope: for Piras had a shadow crouching on his shoulder, too – not as clear as the one Heggarty carried, but impossible to miss now, the ebb and flow of Jonah’s ability to see these creatures still beyond his control.
He wondered how far this had spread. If he’d not abandoned his attempt at people-watching, would he have started to see them after all?
‘We’ll let you go,’ said Heggarty, ‘if you cooperate. If you tell us where Tess Neil is.’
‘You think I would trust you to keep y
our word?’ said Jonah. ‘You’re the one with a fucking leech watching your every move.’
‘Don’t be disrespectful,’ said Heggarty. ‘What you see is not a parasite. It takes some sustenance and provides a service – symbiotic; I think that’s the word.’
‘It comes from Andreas?’ said Jonah, and Heggarty smiled. Confirmation, if he really needed it, that Andreas was at the root of this. ‘I saw what it did, Heggarty. I saw a vision of what the creature in Andreas did to other worlds. How can you want that? How can you want everything to be destroyed?’
Heggarty frowned, shaking his head. ‘You think you know what Andreas is? You think you know what’s to come? You don’t know anything. I was one of the first, approached by Andreas himself. He can look at someone and know what’s in their hearts. People who know what their country needs. People who know how to make it great again. And when we stop bickering amongst ourselves, think of what we can achieve. Working together. As one.’
‘Working to bring everything to an end,’ said Jonah. ‘Nice plan.’
‘Andreas is the vessel of the Lord,’ said Heggarty. ‘And the Lord doesn’t want to destroy. Unless His people are defiant enough to incur His wrath. But we’ll make sure it won’t come to that. You see, Jonah, the only thing wrong with our world is that freedom is wasted on the weak.’
‘Were the cops who brought me here infected too?’
‘Please.’ Heggarty scowled. ‘Calling it infection is just bigotry. And no, the officers who brought you are not so blessed. Money is still a perfectly good incentive for corruption. There’s no need for everyone to be granted the gift. Every shepherd needs sheep, yes? We are here to usher in a new era.’ Heggarty’s expression was one of utter sincerity.
‘The only thing Andreas wants to do is devour,’ said Jonah. ‘To wipe out everyone, whether they join you or not. Whatever bullshit he’s spinning you.’
‘It must be so frustrating for you, Jonah. To not be believed. Nobody out there in the real world would take one bit of interest in your ramblings. You think we’re devils, when really we’re here to help.’ Heggarty smiled inanely, as though he was serving fast food. ‘Now, Tess Neil. If you please.’
