by Peter Liney
I’ve never seen a man so devoted to his wife. He kept talking to her all the time—for sure he had longer conversations with her than he did me. All he said in my direction was to be careful not to upset her by going too fast or over bumps. I mean, what I could see of her, the top of her greasy gray head, the fact that she never spoke, I couldn’t help but wonder how he’d know if she was getting upset. The only time she’d apparently roused herself since coming to the farm had been when she’d attempted to kill him.
Slowly we headed off toward the Interior, once we reached the steeper hills having to occasionally drag Gordie away from Hanna and the tandem to help with the bed, him predictably grumbling to me outta the side of his mouth.
“If he knew he was gonna have to drag her, you’d think he’d’ve put her on a diet,” he muttered.
What with Miriam, and Lena having to stop every now and then to take care of Thomas, we weren’t exactly making rapid progress—at the rate we were going I reckoned it’d take us a couple of days just to reach the plain. The Doc started to complain about his suede shoes, that he hadn’t expected the ground to be so wet, and poor old Lile was getting slower and slower; instead of being an asset to Lena she was actually turning into something of a liability. There wasn’t much point in hassling them, we were probably going as fast as we could, but the fact that I was bringing up the rear meant I was forever looking over my shoulder, expecting to see the Bitch and her Bodyguard coming after us at any moment.
We stopped for the night at the top of this low hill, with a pretty good view all around, a bit of a drop on one side so it had only two approaches. The meal was eaten more or less in silence, everyone keen to turn in, to make up for what had been lost that day and to build up for what we’d need for the next.
For Lena and me, of course, it was something of an occasion. We hadn’t slept together for several nights and it felt a bit like a free pass to heaven—and that despite the fact that Thomas was in with us and pretty fractious about all the changes he could feel about him. He cried and grizzled a lot more than he slept, meaning that we had to pack in everything we could whenever he gave us the odd moment of opportunity.
“I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered.
“Me, too . . . not sure about him though,” I joked, the little guy already thinking about restarting his motor.
Lena stuck him to her breast like an organi-plaster, doing her best not to allow him to spoil our mood, reattaching her lips to mine in seconds.
Later, when the little guy finally succumbed to sleep and she’d followed along after him, I was left lying there listening to the breeze climbing the hill, rippling the long grass, the occasional distant echoey hoot of an owl. I was so tired, but every time my eyes closed, every time I felt myself falling, I’d panic and wake with a start. I couldn’t rid myself of the fear that the Bitch’d be waiting for me in there, that she might order me to do something truly terrible.
No matter our good intentions, it took us a while to get going in the morning. For some reason Miriam was off her food and had to be coaxed into eating anything at all. Eventually, with the sun just a short bounce into the sky, we set off in our usual laborious fashion.
The first hill of the day was a real thigh-breaker, and the Doc had to join Gordie and me in pushing the bed. All the way up we were hoping that was it; that the top would reward us with a view of the plain, but when we got there, there was another hill or two to go.
The downward slope on the other side might not have been such hard work, but for sure it was more traumatic: at one point we lost it completely. The bed suddenly swerved to one side, knocked Nick and Gordie off-balance, and the Doc and me, completely caught by surprise, couldn’t hold on. Everyone except Lena and Lile scrambled after it, Hanna jumping off the tandem, Jimmy dropping his junk, and eventually, thanks partly to it getting held up by some bushes, we managed to get it back under control. Nick was so upset, scrambling down to the bed and fussing over Miriam something terrible.
“Hey! It’s okay, darling! I’m sorry, I’m sorry—!”
The Doc and me exchanged looks, Gordie shook his head like the whole thing was madness, and eventually we resumed our slow and strained descent. It really was starting to be something of a problem. As much as I respected Nick’s feelings for his wife, it didn’t make any sense for all of us to be caught by Nora Jagger ’cuz of them.
We got to the bottom and started up the other side and once again the summit taunted us, pretending it was close, only to slip away as we got nearer. We had to keep stopping to get our breath back, and the Doc upset Nick by sitting on the bed.
“D’you mind?” he said.
“Sorry,” the Doc replied, glancing at Miriam as if to say that he was sure she didn’t care one way or the other.
Doc Simon and me resumed our places at the back of the bed, and once again he gave me a look, but this time it was different. When we’d got going, the bed creaking and groaning, he muttered to me outta the corner of his mouth, “You know she’s dead, don’t you?”
I looked at him, continuing to push, not quite taking in his words. “Really?”
“I had an idea she might be earlier.”
“Shit,” I hissed, the pair of us keeping going, neither wanting to be the one to stop and be asked why.
I can’t tell ya how difficult that situation became. We were no longer pushing a sick woman, but a corpse—this was a funeral procession now, and it shouldn’t be allowed to hold us up. But how the hell could we tell Nick?
We battled slowly on, Miriam now feeling somehow different: dull, absent—lifeless, I guess. And the odd thing was, one by one the others started to pick up on it. Gordie pretended he had to stop for a moment to retie one of his boots. He took the opportunity to look in at her, and somehow managed to pass on the news to Hanna. But still we kept pushing, still we pretended nothing was wrong, cowering before the thought of breaking this man’s big heart.
When we reached the top we paused, finally able to gaze out at the wide expanse of the plain, my heart thumping—I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Nick . . . I gotta tell you something,” I said, and the others were bowing their heads, partly out of respect, partly out of embarrassment.
Funny how we’re all animals at heart, how we so often revert to instinct at times of stress. He took one look at my face, another at those around him, then leaned forward and pulled back the covers, staring at Miriam’s lifeless face.
The odd thing was, he didn’t react at all, almost as if he’d been through it so many times he couldn’t do it again.
“I did wonder when she wouldn’t eat,” he said eventually.
I told him how sorry I was, and everyone echoed my words. Jimmy patted him on the shoulder, while Nick just stood there as if he couldn’t bear to be the center of this particular attention.
“That thing killed her,” he said grimly, “it made her try to do things she wasn’t capable of.”
For a while we all stood in silence, looking out from the top of that hill almost as if some kinda ceremony had already begun.
“Thing is, Nick . . .” I started to say.
“I know,” he told me. “I’ll bury her.”
We all helped. Jimmy didn’t have any proper digging tools, but we managed to batter and scrape a bit of a dip with hammers and screwdrivers and cover Miriam’s body with a shallow layer of soil, then piled on as many rocks we could find. For some reason we press-ganged the Doc into saying a few cultured words: a bit of a poem, something less of a prayer. As for the bed, well, bearing in mind we were being followed and not wanting to risk leaving any kinda clue, we dragged it to the steep side of the hill and pushed it over.
I had to almost pull Nick away. I don’t think it was so much grief—there’d be plenty of time for that later; it was more that he felt lost. He’d been at Miriam’s side for so long. Not a minute had gone by without him being aware of her presence, her needs, and suddenly all that was gone—he was finally fre
e, but it looked like it was the very last thing he wanted to be.
We descended the hill and made our way out onto the plain, moving a whole lot quicker, though ironically, with so few trees around, Lena had no points of sound reference and started to struggle. Lile offered to take Thomas, but the old girl looked so weary, Doc Simon said he would. There was a bit of a pregnant pause, Lena looking that bit unsure, but I stepped in before it became too obvious. The look of disappointment on the Doc’s face was there for everyone to see except the one person it might’ve influenced.
I had to warn Gordie and Hanna to be careful where they rode the tandem, pointing out the clumps of grass they needed to avoid in case they ended up going into a bog.
There was still a slightly subdued, almost guilty, atmosphere between them, presumably from the continuing hangover from Gigi’s disappearance and death, though maybe Miriam’s passing had put that into some kinda morbid context. For sure Hanna blamed herself; if she hadn’t started a relationship with Gordie, maybe Gigi wouldn’t have got so upset and done what she did? I had to talk to her, dismiss that as nonsense—I mean, you start playing that game, you can pretty much trace every single death since the beginning of Time back to yourself one way or another.
For the rest of the day we plodded steadily on, the fact that we could now see for some distance prompting all of us to take the occasional look back, keeping it discreet, no one wanting to alarm the others. She had to be following, she had to be back there somewhere, and maybe that Shadow-Maker was overhead letting her know exactly where we were?
The others made the same mistake we had the first time we made that journey: seeing the hills in the distance and assuming they were a lot closer than they were. Yet finally, as their spirits started to fade with the light, they accepted the fact that we wouldn’t reach them ’til morning, and the next of those lone trees we came to, we stopped for the night.
Jimmy’s stack of techno junk had shrunk a little during the day. A couple of times he’d had to bite the bullet, decide what really wasn’t essential and throw it away, though I’d insisted on him burying or hiding it. On both occasions Lile had given him a real hard time, telling him to get rid of it all, that nothing good had ever come of it, which, though unfair, was pretty much her standard response. Hanna and Gordie had leaned the tandem up against the tree and draped a blanket over it, creating a shelter; the Doc was the first to take advantage. Meanwhile, Nick just sat where he was, apparently oblivious of whether he was under cover or not.
I took one last, long look behind us through the thickening light, and seeing no one following, settled down with Lena, the two of us making a kinda oyster in which Thomas was the pearl. I was real grateful the little guy was in one of his good moods, chuckling away when I tickled him, complaining only the once, which was to be fed.
I noticed the Doc was using his case as a pillow, not, I’m sure, ’cuz it was that comfortable, more ’cuz of how much value he attached to it, that he couldn’t bear to lose physical contact even for a moment. Nick was still sitting on his own, staring into nothingness, and I gestured for him to join us, that he’d be more comfortable. He never replied but did shuffle across. I felt for the guy, I really did. No matter how his and Miriam’s relationship had worked, you knew that it had, that they’d been happy together. To think that the last real act he’d seen her perform was to try to kill him . . . mind you, hadn’t I been on the brink of doing the same to Lena and Thomas?
I’ve no idea when I finally fell asleep, only that I woke up ’cuz something had disturbed me. I lay there for a while, listening intently, terrified it might be the approach of the Bodyguard. I couldn’t hear a thing apart from all the sawing and wheezing going on around me, but something had definitely jolted me awake. There was a sudden slight breeze, stronger than earlier, the leaves on the branches above us starting to shake . . . Oh shit!
I nudged Jimmy awake, putting my hand on his mouth, not wanting him to alarm the others, but he came from such a deep place, I damn near frightened him to death. Eventually I helped him up and over to a spot a few yards away where the other couldn’t hear us.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“It’s up there,” I whispered.
“What is?” he asked, plainly grumpy at being woken up.
“Shhh! It’s coming back!”
We both stood there, the leaves of the tree trembling, almost as if they were also afraid.
“Feel it?” I asked.
“The wind?”
“No!”
“I didn’t feel anything.”
Gradually the leaves calmed and stilled and we were left standing in the night. Jimmy sighed and turned to go back to bed, but I hadn’t finished. “The day Gigi’s body dropped out of the sky—”
“Yeah?” he said, a little impatiently.
“—it came outta nowhere.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“It just suddenly appeared in midair.”
A waning moon and slight cloud cover was more than enough light to see the deep frown form on his face. “I don’t get you,” he finally admitted.
I took a deep breath, knowing what this was gonna sound like. “I think she was thrown outta something invisible.”
At that his frown turned to more a look of astonishment. “Invisible?”
“Yep,” I replied, with real certainty.
“Come on, Big Guy,” he said. “There’s been a lot of new things invented since I was sent over to the Island, but invisible planes? I don’t think so.”
“I was looking up when it happened. The body was just suddenly there.”
“It was dropped from high altitude—it took you a while to spot it.”
I stood there, firmly shaking my head. “That’s what keys us.”
For a while he just stood there, like he was being polite, but it was clear from the yawning his tiredness was getting the better of him. “Sorry, Big Guy,” he said at last, “not cool, I know, but I really need to sleep. I got all that stuff to carry, and Lile’s gonna need my help to get up those hills.”
He left me where I was and returned to his spot next to Delilah. For a few moments I stayed put, waiting for whatever was up there to return, concerned that, despite what the Doc’d said, it was searching for me to apply that final touch. At last, with no further sense of it, I headed back to Lena and Thomas.
I hadn’t been paying much attention to the land—far too busy looking up at the sky—but just before I sat down I took one last along the horizon, the line of distant hills that we’d descended that morning.
Ah, shit . . . Shit! Halfway down, I could just make out this square smudge of light. It was her, of course—the Bitch. Obviously she had a fair idea where we were, and now was slowly but surely catching up.
CHAPTER NNETEEN
The following morning I got everyone up and fed real early so we could set out as it was getting light, hoping to steal a march on Nora Jagger, to put a bit of extra distance between us. I took Thomas, leaving Lena to move that bit more freely on her own, though once we started to climb the hills and there were trees for her to bounce sound off, she was fine again. Delilah, on the other hand, was slowing us right down, that long gray stick really starting to puff, withering like a tree that couldn’t get enough water to its extremities. I had no choice but to hand Thomas back and reluctantly carry Jimmy’s techno so he could give her an arm to hang onto.
The other advantage of being back amongst trees, of course, was cover, so we couldn’t be seen—but it worked both ways: the Bitch and her Bodyguard could be closing on us and we wouldn’t know ’til the last moment, which was, I guess, why all of us couldn’t stop glancing over our shoulders every few seconds.
I was just starting to field a few complaints about how far it was, how hard I was pushing them, when we crested yet another hill and I saw the smoke of the Commune in the next valley.
“Is that it?” Hanna asked, like the others, noticeably hanging on my answer.
&nbs
p; “I reckon.”
There was a general sigh of relief and Gordie leapt on the tandem, waiting for Hanna to get on the back.
“Whoa! Whoa!” I cried, remembering how some of the villagers were on the highly-strung side. “They’re not gonna be expecting us. See that thing come hurtling down the hill with you two on it, you’ll frighten them to death.”
Gordie grunted and got off, resuming pushing the tandem, not noticing that Hanna was still on the back, quietly giggling to herself.
At the top of the next hill we all paused as we caught our first sight of the Commune. Even from what little I could see, it was obvious it’d grown since we were last there.
“Don’t look much,” Delilah grumbled, plainly of a mood to do little else.
“Maybe,” I commented, “but just at the moment, it’s the safest place we can possibly be.”
Delilah took the point, taking yet another glance behind us; the gesture infectious and copied by everyone except Lena.
Believe it or not, it was Lena who led us down—I guess once she commits something to memory, that’s it. I followed along behind, feeling a little ridiculous with all that junk I was carrying, every few steps tempted to just toss the stuff away.
“How’s it looking?” she asked.
“A lot more people than before,” I told her, “but, yeah, still pretty relaxed.”
We’d only emerged a few yards out of the tree line before the cry went up, the shouts of welcome, calls of “They’re back!” Though I didn’t think it was so much for us as the little guy Lena was carrying.
Isobel was the first to come running across at speed and with an accompanying screech of excitement, like a jet engine, over and over beginning the sentence, “Could I . . . Could I, please . . .” ’til Lena gave in and let her hold Thomas for a few moments.
