Darkness Follows

by L. A. Weatherly

  Maybe Sephy was right not to want to marry him.

  The thoughts flashed past. Mac studied the clipboard of names in his hand. Collis stood beside him, facing his former colleagues without looking any of them in the eye.

  When he and Collis had first entered, there’d been an audible intake of breath. Mac heard Collis’s name being murmured; could feel that the animosity level in the hangar had ratcheted up by several notches. Every gaze was locked on Collis, who stood motionless, his cheeks tinged with red.

  “Collie, you betraying bastard—” A burly brown-haired pilot lunged forward, only stopped when several of his friends held him back.

  Mac inwardly begged the muscular pilot not to do anything that he, Mac, couldn’t turn a blind eye to. The World for Peace security guard gave Mac a quick look. “Sir, would you like me to—”

  Mac broke in smoothly with, “These are all the names?”

  “Yes, sir.” She nodded at the assembled pilots. “They’re all here.”

  Mac went through the business of strolling through the lines, barking names now and then, questioning the pilots at random. He saw their fear of him, and understood in a sickened way how easy it would be to let this power go to your head.

  “Harris?”

  The pilot standing at attention didn’t blink. “Yes, sir.”

  “Were you one of the pilots who engaged in an illegal attack on the former Central States on the morning of March 18th?”

  The pilot’s chin tightened; his gaze flicked disdainfully over Mac. Levi Harris, his full name on the clipboard read. “I was one of the pilots who defended my country, yes, sir.”

  Good for you, thought Mac, meaning both the action and the comeback. He raised an eyebrow and made a mark on his notes before moving on. In fact, he planned to make his selection almost at random, apart from a few “dangerous” birth charts that had been flagged. There was no other way he could choose, when they were all innocent.

  No matter what, I’m only taking three dozen in, he told himself. The rest – a good seventy or so – could go free, officially adjudged by Mac as being of no danger to Can-Amer.

  Finally Mac returned to the front of the room. Collis had been silent through all this, though he was here to help Mac with the process. Mac liked him better for staying quiet; these were Collis’s former colleagues, after all. But now Mac made a show of angling his clipboard towards Collis and saying, “All right, make yourself useful. What do you think?”

  “Do we have to do this here?” Collis muttered tightly.

  Mac knew how he felt, but yes, they did, with those World for Peace security guards watching. “What better place?” he said mildly. “I hope you’re not implying that this should be a secret process.”

  Collis stared down at the names…glanced through the parcel of birth charts with notes from Kay Pierce. The hangar full of pilots stood watching him, their faces stone.

  Collis’s throat moved. “Not Taylor or Kelly,” he said, softly.

  Mac looked at the names Collis was indicating. Harlan Taylor and Vera Kelly. “They…weren’t there during the attack,” said Collis. He gave Mac a quick, pleading look. “They’re no danger. They didn’t even take part in it.”

  Harlan Taylor turned out to be the burly pilot who’d lunged for Collis earlier. He’d clearly overheard; he seemed to swell to twice his height and his broad face reddened. At first Mac thought he’d roar in indignation – then Harlan glanced at a female pilot with strawberry blonde hair beside him and kept quiet, fists clenched.

  The female pilot – Vera, Mac assumed – was pale.

  She looked ready to protest Collis’s claim. Mac cut her off with a glare and said loudly to Collis, “Thanks for the information.” To the armed guards, he said, “All right, I’ve heard enough. Take the following pilots into custody.”

  The hangar went deathly silent as Mac read thirty-six names at random. Though he read quickly, each name seemed to hang in the air. Mac kept his voice firm and tried not to think too hard about what he was doing – tried to think only of the seventy-two names that he wasn’t reading. He was already taking in far fewer than would be expected. To save more could mean his own death.

  Collis stood without moving as Mac read, his face very pale, and Mac wondered how many of the names Collis knew…and whether Collis was aware that Mac was putting his own neck on the line to protect so many of them.

  Incongruously, Mac noticed that the sleek lines of the Gun uniform made Collis look older, more finished – less a boy and more of a man. Funny, thought Mac, how he always thought of Collis as a boy, even though he stood almost a head taller than Mac and was only three years younger.

  Even funnier was how an outfit that meant only horror could make someone look a man.

  After the thirty-six pilots had been cuffed and taken away, Mac addressed the rest. “You’re officially cleared of any wrongdoing and are no longer being held. You have twenty-four hours to leave the complex. Thank you for your cooperation.” I’ll call Sephy tonight, he thought. The fleeting promise to himself felt like sanity.

  Harlan’s name hadn’t been called. Nor had Vera’s. Harlan looked grim; he put a muscular arm around Vera’s slender shoulders. They approached, heading for the exit. Collis turned away from them, but not before Harlan met his eyes.

  “Thanks, bud,” he said in a low voice. “We always knew Amity didn’t do what they said – now I guess we know what happened to her. Did you work for them when they took our pal Clem away too?”

  And he spat at Collis’s feet.

  Collis seemed in brittle high spirits as the auto took them back to the Heat. Mac half-suspected that he’d taken a swig or two from some hidden flask. He told raucous stories of his Peacefighting days and of his clever exploits, all the while with his odd, changeable eyes locked on Mac’s, as if begging some response from him. What? Mac didn’t know and didn’t care.

  The lobby staff at the hotel seemed to freeze when he and Collis walked in. The uniform always had that effect: mincing smiles, too-prompt service.

  “Thank you, sir. Will there be anything else?” asked the front-desk clerk as Mac took their keys.

  “No, that’s all,” said Mac. He handed one of the keys over to Collis, who gave him an ironic salute.

  “Thanks,” Collis said. “Any objection if I take a look around my old stomping grounds?”

  “Feel free,” said Mac, glad to be rid of him. Though the absent Cain might have seen things differently, Mac had no desire to babysit Collis and had his own pressing business to attend to.

  “You might want to take that off, though,” he added in an undertone, nodding at Collis’s uniform as they headed for the elevator. “Your former teammates could still be around and I don’t think you’re very popular right now.”

  If anyone laid a finger on Collis while he wore that uniform, they’d be dead: that was what Mac really hoped to prevent. Collis winced a little at Mac’s estimation of his popularity, but gave another fervent-looking grin.

  “Oh, sure, good idea,” he said heartily. “I don’t like showing off in it anyway.”

  Alone in his room, Mac changed out of his own uniform. It was a relief to get back into his real clothes: tan trousers, a white shirt and brown sports jacket. Looking in the mirror, he tried unsuccessfully to tame his unruly hair, and glanced longingly at the phone. Sephy wouldn’t be home yet. Mac craved the sound of her voice, to know that she still loved him no matter what he’d had to do that day.

  He grabbed up his hat and went out.

  Despite everything, the Heat was still going strong – this city where he’d once accomplished so much for the Resistance. Covertly, he’d spread leaflets exposing what was really happening in the Central States; gotten papers for people who’d escaped; made vital contacts – all under the cover of conducting business for Gunnison’s regime.

  Now he knew just where he was heading.

  He walked with his hands jammed in his trouser pockets, fedora pulled low, casting a
shadow over his face. The city seemed to throb around him. Flashing neon lights advertised bars and astrology shops. A couple stood necking in the same shadowy alleyway where Russ Avery, Amity Vancour’s team leader, had been shot. Mac grimaced, recalling that night.

  Nearby was a dance hall built over ruins from the long-ago Cataclysm, with stark grey rubble left in place for effect. Mac found himself wondering briefly about the ancients, whose destruction had given those in his own time a blueprint for how to live. Peacefighting: no more wars. No fear of another Cataclysm.

  The new world’s idealism sure hadn’t lasted long, he thought wryly. Less than a hundred years.

  He came to a run-down bar. Harrigan’s, read the dully flashing green sign out front. Inside, an ancient telio set showed a boxing match. A large fan spun lazily near the ceiling.

  Mac propped his forearms on the bar’s worn, sticky surface as he ordered a beer. When he paid for it he gave the bartender a too-large tip and said, “Hey, is Frankie here?”

  The bartender glanced down at the bill; his fingers closed over it. “I’ll check. It’s Vince Griffin, right?”

  “That’s right,” said Mac easily. “Good memory, buddy.”

  A wall of ruins had been left in place here, too. Mac took a seat at the bar and contemplated them. Crumbling, reddish brick, with faint scraps of paint and a swirl with lettering on it: Coca-

  Just then, the thought of a people who’d destroyed themselves felt ominous. Mac found himself wishing that someone had slapped some whitewash up over it.

  The bartender had gone into a back room after giving Mac his drink. He returned quickly, but didn’t come over. Mac didn’t make eye contact. He drank his beer and watched the boxing. After a while the programme ended – Jimmy Darcy won; he always did. The Harmony symbol appeared and music started playing.

  That new song by Van Wheeler again: “For Ever and a Day”. Mac kind of hated Van Wheeler, but the tune was catchy and to his annoyance he knew the words.

  If we had for ever, just we two,

  Why, it still wouldn’t be worth more

  Than a single day with you…

  The bartender appeared, drying a glass. “Want another one?”

  “Sure, thanks,” said Mac, and pushed more money at him.

  The bartender palmed it. “Frankie’s not here any more,” he muttered as he pulled the new beer.

  “Oh yeah?” Mac pushed his hat back a little and leaned forward on his elbows, keeping his voice casual. “Any idea where I can find him?”

  The bartender shook his head and slid the new beer across to him. “No. Charlie said to tell you to give it up. Frankie’s not in the game any more. No one knows where he is.”

  Mac had no better luck at the other places he tried, though he didn’t dare hit too many in one night. But he went to the most important, and found that his abrupt absence last month had done exactly what he’d feared. His few remaining contacts had gone to ground.

  Mac walked slowly back to the hotel. He’d been pinning more hopes on this brief visit than he liked to admit. He had no idea now how they might infiltrate the plans of Madeline Bark, who was somewhere in Appalachia coordinating its takeover.

  If the Harmony Treaty still went ahead on the Day of Three Suns – if they lost Appalachia and its ports – they were done for.

  It was the same with all of their Resistance contacts now. The once-thriving, far-reaching network remained deeply compromised. Appalachia was only part of it. These last few months Mac had spent frustrating hours on a ham wireless set, trying to re-establish contact with operatives who monitored the airwaves up in the far north. He knew Gunnison was working on something big up in the Yukon area. He’d felt on the verge of figuring it out when the spate of arrests happened – shutting down the contacts who’d known the operatives’ check-in times and wireless frequencies.

  The far north was now adrift like so much of the Resistance. In hundreds of static-y transmissions so far, Mac had never heard the code words. His own use of them was ignored.

  Meanwhile Gunnison had been keeping an uncharacteristically low profile, hardly appearing on the telio. Once he’d prowled the Zodiac’s corridors incessantly, throwing his ready grin in every direction. Now when Mac occasionally saw him in passing, he was always talking intently with Kay Pierce, so that Mac could only nod and keep going.

  Despite Gunnison’s hearty persona, the man was close to very few people. Mac, lower down the chain than Pierce, wasn’t one of them.

  He wondered tensely what was going on…and if it could help the Resistance.

  When Mac had encountered Gunnison on his own a week ago, his pulse had spiked. Finally. “Morning, Johnny,” he said, pausing in the corridor.

  At first Gunnison had frowned as if he didn’t recognize him. “Mac. Hello. How’s it going?”

  “Fine.” Mac had been hyper-aware of the bodyguard nearby. He hesitated and drew his eyebrows together. “Listen, I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but…is everything all right, sir? You seem tired.”

  “Of course,” Gunnison said shortly. He rubbed his temples. More gently, he said, “It’s just the ups and downs, Mac. We have to make sure that certain elements stay down, for everyone’s good.”

  He headed off along the hallway, leaving Mac bewildered and unenlightened. Ups and downs?

  Mac’s office was close to Kay Pierce’s. He’d gotten into the habit of dropping in on her, offering coffee, joking around and getting her to smile.

  It wasn’t just so that he could report back to Cain on her movements. Mac’s instinct was that Kay – close to him in age and suddenly propelled into one of the most powerful roles in the country – was lonely, a bit frightened. And he’d bet money that she knew where the Day of Three Suns was being held, and what was going on with Johnny Gun and his “ups and downs”.

  Maybe. But though she was as friendly as ever, she’d become much more closed-off of late. The Zodiac air felt thick with secrets.

  “Hi,” Mac said softly on the phone to Sephy later. As he sank onto his hotel bed and heard her warm voice in his ear, something in him eased.

  “Hey, stranger,” she said. “What have you been up to?”

  “Not much,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

  “No. Oh good, we’ve gotten number eighteen out of the way already. Now, what’s new over there?”

  Mac laughed, though he’d rarely felt less like it. “Let me think,” he said after a pause. “Hey, do you remember that little place we used to go to, the Italian with the great linguini? It’s closed down. The owner died or something.”

  That was the completely banal combination of words that they’d decided would be the code for Mac not being able to get in touch with any contacts. He could almost feel Sephy’s bitter disappointment through the phone line.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” she said finally. “Giuseppe, was that his name? Nice old guy.”

  He grimaced. “Yeah. Too bad.”

  “But you know what, Mac, there’s a new place I’ve found around here that I think is almost as nice.”

  Mac straightened, his heart suddenly pounding. This wasn’t part of the script. “There is?” he said.

  “Yeah, we’ll go there when you get home. I think you’ll really like it; it’s almost as good as the old one. Great bread rolls. Maybe we can take Walter along.”

  Walter, their fellow Resistance member. Sephy seemed to be saying that their hopes to destroy Gunnison’s regime weren’t completely gone. Almost as good as the old one. Not ideal, then. But something.

  “Hey, that sounds great. I’ll look forward to it,” Mac said, and wished desperately that they could talk freely. But if Gunnison hadn’t arranged for someone to listen in on his calls, Cain probably had – trust no one was both men’s creed.

  Thoughts whirring, Mac had to let it go for now. He lay down on the bed and stretched out, feeling the tiredness of his muscles.

  “Help me take my mind off things, gorgeous,” he said.

&nb
sp; “Long day?”

  “The longest,” he said, and saw again the vast hangar and the thirty-six pilots he’d arrested.

  “You’re doing a good job, Mac,” said Sephy’s voice softly in his ear. “Don’t you ever doubt it.” Mac exhaled. She knew what kind of choices he had to make. If she were here, she’d tell him to think of the seventy-two, not the thirty-six.

  “Where are you now?” he asked after a pause. “I want to picture you.”

  “Bedroom.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  Sephy’s voice turned sultry, rich with humour. “Ooh, is this turning into one of those dirty phone calls I’ve heard tell about?”

  Mac grinned and twined the phone cord around his hand. “Want it to be?”

  “Well, I—”

  A volley of knocks came at Mac’s door. He jerked up, irritation prickling over him. “Hold on, sorry,” he said, and scrambled off the bed. He swung open the door.

  The man who stood there had the hotel emblem on his tie pin and looked deeply uncomfortable. “Mr Jones? I’m the hotel manager; I’m very sorry to disturb you. There’s a…situation with your colleague in the downstairs bar.”

  Collis. With an inward curse, Mac said a hurried goodbye to Sephy and threw on his sports jacket and shoes. As he accompanied the manager down the corridor and then into an elevator which whirred them downwards, the man kept up an apologetic chatter.

  “Most irregular…if he were just a customer off the street, we’d call the police, but of course with one of our valued guests…and, well, especially in your case…” The manager cleared his throat and gave Mac a sideways look.

  Translation: your fellow Gun is roaring drunk. The elevator had mirrors with golden-black streaks. Mac gazed at his reflection and marvelled at how calm he looked, when all he wanted to do was throttle Collis Reed.

  The elevator door slid open and they stepped out into the lobby. Mac’s skin tingled with sudden apprehension. He could hear someone bellowing obscenities, and then a crash – the sharp tinkle of breaking glass. A knot of anxious-looking people stood outside the bar, peering inside and murmuring.