by Peter Liney
“What the hell happened back there?” I asked Jimmy. “How come it appeared like that?”
“That’s what I intend to find out,” he said, his old turtle-neck wrinkling from side to side as he scoured left and right. “Gotta pretty good idea though.”
“There!” shouted Sheila, pointing to some distant broken tree-tops, and once again we broke into a trot, all of us growing aware that we were heading back in the direction of the Commune. Slowly Jimmy started to fall behind, and by the time we arrived at the crash site, he was the only one missing.
There was a big scar across the forest—broken branches, uprooted small trees where that thing had come down, but eventually its sheer weight had stopped it in its wayward path. Somehow it’d jerked up on its side, maybe in the midst of a somersault, one of its wings crumpled beneath it, and I gotta say, even crashed and disabled, it still gave off an aura of evil, like it’d come from some dark, alien world. Hanna and Gordie’d got there first and were inspecting it from a safe distance. As we emerged from the trees, he picked up a rock and was about to throw it.
“Careful,” I said, thinking that might be asking for trouble.
When Jimmy arrived, he exercised no such caution, marching up and prodding and pulling at it, taking a real interest in what the outer skin was made of. Eventually he worked his way to a hatch (from where, I guessed, poor Gigi had been jettisoned) and took a hold of its handle.
“You sure that’s okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” he replied dismissively, and with that wrenched it open and took a good look in. “That’s what I thought,” he said, and promptly wriggled inside.
“Jimmy!” I called after him, explaining to Lena what he’d done, though I think she already had a pretty good idea.
He wasn’t in there long, and to no one’s surprise reappeared carrying an armful of looted technology.
“I know how it made itself invisible—” he started to say, but didn’t quite get to finish the sentence.
The moment he emerged into the fading daylight with his gathered booty in his arms, there was an old familiar sound—a crackle, a burst of energy and light that almost blinded you—and Jimmy fell to the ground.
On the plus side, I guess we did get to see that the satellite was still functioning, still ready to punish; on the minus side, and particularly at his age, Jimmy could’ve paid for it with his life.
It must’ve decided he was Looting, or Breaking and Entering maybe—whatever it’d assessed Jimmy’s crime to be, that one remaining punishment satellite zapped the little guy so hard he stayed that way for the next ten minutes, his legs and arms shaking, drool sliding out of the corner of his mouth.
It really shook me. I mean, we knew that thing wasn’t a hundred percent. What if it’d got it wrong? Anything could’ve happened.
Yet finally he started to come around, and even though the shock’d affected his bad leg for some reason and we had to carry him, at least the fact that the Shadow-Maker had arced around toward the Commune meant we didn’t have far to go.
“What the hell happened?” Delilah asked as we entered the shelter. Sheila and me dumped Jimmy on the ground.
“He got zapped,” Gordie told her.
“What?” she cried.
“I’m okay,” Jimmy rather slurred, not sounding anything like it.
Nick jumped up, wanting to help, but to my surprise the Doc got there before him, looking that bit grateful to have something to do.
“I often wondered what it felt like,” the little guy said.
“Jeez,” Lile cried despairingly, “is he okay?”
“He will be,” the Doc told her, sounding like a medical professional again.
“What did you do?” Lile asked.
Jimmy hesitated for a moment, still taking in deep breaths. “I brought that thing down.”
“What?”
“Yep,” he said proudly. “Got inside it, too. Found some cool stuff.”
At that, Lile’s sympathy level noticeably slipped a notch or two. “Junk?” she asked.
“I wanted to know how it made itself invisible,” he said defensively.
“God save us,” she croaked.
“How did it?” I asked, deliberately talking over Lile’s continuing groans.
Jimmy propped himself up, determined to share this with us, even if it was the last thing he did, repeatedly slapping his bad leg as if trying to get some feeling back into it. “So cool, Big Guy. So damn cool . . . The outer skin has millions of tiny micro-cameras embedded in it. Everything it films is then transmitted—via the projector I was hoping to bring back—to the skin directly opposite, where it’s shown on the outside. Whatever’s on the other side of that thing, you get to see on this side—hence, invisibility . . . Ya get it?”
I nodded my head. Actually, yeah, that was pretty damn cool.
“I downed the Bitch’s pride and joy!” Jimmy cried, looking like he was expecting an ovation.
But as often, Hanna saw things just a little differently. “So what do you think she’ll do?”
There was a sudden silence as everyone started contemplating the possible consequences—how Nora Jagger might take revenge. Doctor Simon looked up from examining Jimmy. “Where is it?”
I paused for a moment, not really wanting to say.
“Clancy?” Lile asked.
“It kind’ve took a diversion,” I admitted.
“Other side of the hill,” Gordie chipped in.
The Doc gaped at me as if I’d betrayed him somehow. “What . . . ? What am I going to do?”
I paused, not quite knowing how to reply, but Lile did. “Lie to her,” she told him, “like you do everyone else.”
“Say I kidnapped you,” I added, “to look at my child and give my partner back her sight.” I didn’t mean it to come out like that—it just did.
“Oh, Clancy!” Lena sighed, and I turned away.
Sheila had asked Isobel to get some food out for when we returned and we gathered at the front of the shelter to eat cold venison and flatbread, and pretty special it was, too. Mind you, that wasn’t exactly the time for thinking about food. We hadn’t meant to, but having set our trap, we’d put a little sauce on the bait, and now all we could do was to wait for the arrival of the beast.
“The satellite’ll zap her,” Isobel chuckled, but no one seemed inclined to match her mood and I couldn’t help but notice that neither the Doc nor Lile could bring themselves to eat.
Isobel turned from face to face, smiling encouragingly, urging someone to agree with her, but no one did.
“It’s not too late for us to leave,” I told Sheila.
“Actually,” she replied, staring out into the darkness of a heavy, unforgiving night, “I think it probably is.”
“The satellite!” Isobel insisted, as if she didn’t like this game, the way no one would play with her.
I don’t know if he could sense the general mood or what, but Thomas started to cry his little heart out and Lena tugged up her top so she could feed him. Most of the men looked away, but I noticed the Doc getting a real eyeful.
I was about to say something, but he stopped me dead. “She wants him,” he announced, as if making a confession.
Lena turned to him, her face noticeably paling. “What?”
“. . . She wants Thomas.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know . . . maybe for her own?”
“Jesus!” I groaned.
“Over my dead body,” Lena said, hugging Thomas that bit closer.
The Doc paused for a moment, as if he hadn’t quite said all he meant to. “I don’t know—it might be something else.”
“What?” Lena asked.
He gave this long, faltering sigh. “Maybe it’s more what he represents.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“Hope . . . A future.”
There was another pause; everyone stared at him as if they didn’t want to believe what he was telling us.
“Are you saying she wants him dead?” Sheila asked. “The end of the human race?”
This time he couldn’t even bring himself to reply, and once again I was reminded that whatever Doctor Simon was, or had done in the past, he had his boundaries too.
“That’s sick,” Hanna commented.
“She’s a sick bitch,” Gordie agreed.
“And all we can do is sit here and wait for her,” Nick said, with one of the very few complete sentences he’d uttered since Miriam’s death.
There was a long pause, no one wanting to reply. “Looks like it,” Delilah finally croaked.
Nick was right, of course; all we could do was wait. We had just one chance, one vague hope of ridding the world of the Bitch and her acolytes: a rogue satellite she knew nothing about in a tiny area of the country where she wasn’t the greatest force. On the other hand, if that thing failed us, if it proved every bit as unreliable as we knew it could be—and bearing in mind that the overwhelming majority of the villagers had probably never resorted to violence in their lives—there was gonna be one helluva massacre, and probably the easiest victory the Bitch and her Bodyguard had ever had.
Hour by hour we waited, second by second we suffered, as the night teased us with every unfamiliar moment. Sheila hadn’t given the order, but there wasn’t a sound to be heard, the entire Commune held in the grip of a terrified silence. What few words were uttered were only in whispers, just in case they hid the sound of a twig snapping underfoot, the distant approach of marching heavy feet.
A couple of times the alarm went up, the first stirrings of panic, when a group of wandering deer were mistaken for Bodyguards. Sheila calmed everyone down and doubled the lookouts at the edge of the forest, as much to reduce tension as anything, but there wasn’t a lot they could do. We knew we were going to be attacked—that was the whole point.
In the end, I couldn’t take it anymore. After all, there was no safety in numbers, only in the shelter of that watchful eye. Thomas started to cry again and Lena and me used the excuse to take him out into the night, eventually settling over near the wood-chopping area, leaning up against a felled tree-trunk.
For some time I didn’t speak and I guess she began to sense that I was wrestling with something.
“What?” she eventually asked.
I almost laughed; so many times she got there ahead of me. “If we get through this, will you let the Doc operate on you again?”
“Clancy,” she said wearily, “let it go, will you?”
“I just can’t believe that if you had to choose between seeing and not seeing, you’d choose the latter.”
“It’s what I’ve been given,” she said forcefully.
I sighed, knowing she had a point, that it was up to her, but I still couldn’t give it up. “I love you,” I told her.
“Now I’m really worried,” she chuckled.
I smiled, knowing I maybe didn’t say it as much as I used to, but also that when I did, I meant it more. I gave her a hug, accidentally squeezing Thomas as well, almost waking him. Truth was, I was looking for a diversion, something to take our minds off the tension stretching ever tighter around us. Again a branch snapped over in the trees, there was movement across the forest floor, and in response, someone gave a stifled scream.
Lena knew as well as I did why we’d wanted to be alone . . . this was it. This was what we’d been leading up to right from the first day that we’d met down in those tunnels. This was why we’d fought the Wastelords and freed the kids; why we’d escaped from the Island; why we’d gone up against Infinity in that hellhole of a City and somehow survived. Nora Jagger was our last great adversary, and inevitably, the ultimate and most lethal.
“I love you, too,” Lena whispered, and together we stayed there in the night, Thomas lodged between us, waiting for whatever it was that was on its way.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
They came at first light. It hadn’t been our intention, but Lena and me, with the baby in her arms, had fallen asleep where we were, not knowing another thing until we were awakened by the sound of screaming.
I struggled to my feet, told Lena to look after Thomas and stay hidden behind the tree-trunk, and ran over to the shelters.
It was her, of course: the Bitch and all her brutal attendants. I don’t know how many there were—coupla dozen, maybe?—but bearing in mind that each one was equipped with a pair of deadly prosthetics and would do whatever they were ordered even if it meant dying in the process, it seemed like more than enough to deal with a group of the most harmless people you could ever imagine.
The irony was, they might not have known about the satellite, but in the admittedly short time they’d been there, and despite their reputations, not one of them had used sufficient violence to trigger it. They were pushing over shelters, yanking people out (some made a run for it but were easily caught by those with bionic legs and dragged back) but as yet, no one had committed a crime sufficient to get the satellite excited.
In the middle of it all, just as I’d known she’d be, directing events like a conductor overseeing her murderous orchestra, was Nora Jagger, screaming at them to round everyone up into one large group. I couldn’t see any of the gang yet, but for sure they’d be brought over soon enough.
I didn’t have a great deal of choice; I just strode into the middle of it, the Bitch with her back to me not noticing at first, or not until some of the villagers looked expectantly in my direction.
She turned, met my gaze . . . Jeez, I’d forgotten how evil those eyes were; how they reached down and stabbed something you didn’t know you had—the heart of the soul. I could almost believe they were bionic too, that the action of narrowing them would result in a spurt of deadly laser-fire. However, that wasn’t the first thought that went through my head when I faced her. It was something else, the thing I’d pleaded with myself to forget, to banish from my mind forever, but I couldn’t, and the instant she was in front of me I wanted to puke up everything under my skin.
Inside that monster was the heart of little Arturo, innocently beating away, all that evil, all that malice and murderous intent being sustained by one of the most loveable characters I’d ever met. Jeez, no matter how much of a freak I’d thought she was before, now she truly was an offense to all Creation.
“Clancy!” she purred, giving the cruelest of smiles, wet-lipped relish spreading all across that flinty face. “It’s been fun.”
I guess if I’d needed confirmation that the reason why I hadn’t been keyed wasn’t so much down to my survival instincts as she’d wanted to personally pursue and kill me, that I’d been kept in my natural state purely for her sport, that was it.
“What d’you want?” I demanded.
“To see you suffer,” she replied, quite simply.
“Every time I see you I suffer,” I said, instantly trying to provoke her.
She stared at me, a little taken aback by my attitude, a coupla nearby Bodyguards exchanged glances.
“Where’s the little maid and the baby?” she asked.
“I sent them away.”
“Really?” she said, belief not being entertained for one moment.
“Coupla days ago.”
“Where are they?” she repeated impatiently, her voice cold enough to run a glacier through Hell.
“By now? Could be anywhere,” I replied in careless fashion.
All I wanted was to get her to attack me, to do something that’d result in the satellite zapping her, maybe even taking her out altogether. We’d still have the Bodyguard to deal with, but given how interlinked their mental processes seemed to be, I was hoping they wouldn’t be able to function the same way without her. I mean, enraging her, getting those murderous limbs swishing—it was one helluva risk, but I couldn’t see any other option.
“I’m not going to ask you again,” she snarled. “Where is she?”
“Go fuck yourself,” I said. “I guess you’ve had that wired in too?”
There was a b
rief moment when I thought I’d done it, when I saw that wild venomous fury erupt in her eyes and those closest to her backed away, but she visibly checked herself and I realized I was wasting my time; for some reason she wanted me alive a little longer.
“I want you to know,” she said, “when this is over, I’m going to make your death the slowest, most painful, I’ve ever inflicted on anyone . . . Oh, and that the last thing you’ll see on this Earth will be me dismembering your little maid, ripping her apart bit by bit so you experience the pain of her death before suffering your own.”
She was so damn perverted, so evil, you couldn’t believe she was another human being, and once again I shuddered when I thought of my little special guy’s heart that had once beat with such love and laughter now pumping her poison.
“For the last time,” she barked, “where is she?”
“I told ya, she left a coupla days ago.”
I didn’t know if I had any chance at all of convincing her, of sowing even the tiniest of doubts in her mind, but for sure it was gone once that voice cried out from the crowd.
“Leave them alone!” Isobel pleaded, and I instantly knew that though she’d had the very best of intentions, she’d unwittingly confirmed that Lena and Thomas were still in the Commune.
Immediately Nora Jagger turned to her Bodyguard. “Find them,” she ordered.
Admittedly those shelters were on the flimsy side, but they were swept aside like they were no more than old cobwebs, every painstakingly woven branch and leaf ending up scattered to the wind. I saw the gang—Jimmy and Delilah, Hanna and Gordie, Nick, Sheila, and a little ways behind them, doing his best not to be noticed, Doctor Simon—being marched across to join the rest of the villagers.
It didn’t take long for Nora Jagger to spot the Doc, though I gotta say, she barely reacted, almost as if she’d never trusted him any more than we had.
“They kidnapped me!” he blurted out before she could say anything. “I went along with it because I thought you’d want me to keep an eye on the baby—I knew you’d find us in the end.”
