9781629270050-Text-for-ePub-rev (22 page)

Bishop’s grin grew wider. “It really takes it out of you, does it? My, the burden
of leadership.”

“Why do you want to do it?” asked Grant.

“Well, let me first commend you on making that decision, though it was a non-brainer
if you ask me. He’s a traitor.”

A growl of assent came from Wallace.

“So why you?” said Grant.

“For a start, I didn’t see a queue forming of people offering their services. Second,
I’ve served in the military—”

“As have many of our number,” interjected Milandra. She could barely remember Bishop,
had not known him well before and had not seen him for many long years, years that
had wrought changes in them all, but felt a strong dislike for the man seated before
her.

“Very true,” said Bishop. “But I have special forces training. I’ve been involved
in many ‘In, kill and out’ missions, acting solo and as part of small hit squads.
I can fly—planes and choppers—and I can handle modern firearms.” He shrugged. “Also,
I’d enjoy taking down a traitor.”

“And that,” said Milandra, “is precisely what makes you unsuited for this task. The
reason there’s no queue outside that door is that most decent people would find no
pleasure in killing one of our own. A necessary evil, at best. You enjoyed watching
humans die, didn’t you?”

“Absolutely. And I make no apology either. They’re drones, don’t forget.” His eyes
narrowed and his smile faded a little. “Can I sense an unhealthy degree of sympathy
towards our fellow planet-dwellers?”

“There’s no sympathy here,” said Grant. “Though you won’t find much gloating either.”

“I think he’s perfect for the job.” This came from Simone and Bishop beamed at her.

“Why, thank you, Chosen,” he said. “You’re spot on. I am perfect.”

“I agree,” said Wallace.

“Me, too,” said Lavinia. She turned towards Milandra. “You can find others to do it.
You only need ask and most wouldn’t refuse. But why send someone whose heart isn’t
in it when we have a willing volunteer sitting right here?”

That was quite a speech for Lavinia and it took Milandra a moment to gather her thoughts.
She glanced at Grant who merely shrugged.

“It seems you have the backing of my Deputies,” she said. “I disagree with them, but
I won’t try to overturn the majority.” She sat forward so she could fix Bishop with
her most piercing glare. “But hear me now, Troy. Don’t take too much pleasure from
this. If you find him, make it quick. Make it painless. We are not savages.”

Bishop raised one eyebrow, making his expression even more sardonic. “
If
I find him? Were you not able to pinpoint his position during the Commune, Milandra?”

“Of course. He was in Cardiff in South Wales but had already reached Bristol when
we found him. From there, he intends heading south, to Plymouth. He’s going to commandeer
a boat and sail to France.”

From the corner of her eye, Milandra was aware that Grant was watching her and she
wondered if he knew that she was lying. But she quickly dismissed the thought. Even
in her weakened state, no-one could probe her without her knowledge. And there was
only one who might have shared, without her knowing, what had passed between her and
Ronstadt during the Commune—she glanced quickly at Simone, but the Chosen was staring
off into space having apparently made her only contribution to the discussion and
lost interest.

Bishop nodded. “Okay. I’ll need someone to direct me to the nearest RAF base. And
can I take someone with me on the mission?”

“Yes,” said Milandra. “No more than one. Do you have someone in mind?”

“Not yet.”

Wallace stood. “I’ll go with him.”

“Absolutely not,” said Milandra. “This is one task for which the Deputies are not
eligible.”

“Agreed,” said Grant and she shot him a glance of gratitude.

Wallace’s shoulders slumped in dejection.

“Though any of you may assist him in finding the airbase,” she added.

Bishop stood and gave a mock bow. “Thank you, Milandra. I’m going to hunt me some
traitor!”

She couldn’t help it. She felt her face crinkle as though she had bitten into a lemon.

Bishop only grinned all the more.

Chapter Seventeen

T
hey soon picked up a main road and headed east along it before turning north once
more. They travelled through rolling countryside—farming country—making for the English
border.

They didn’t speak for the first few miles. Ceri sat staring out of the passenger window
as though lost in her own thoughts. Tom did not like to interrupt; he had enough thoughts
of his own to keep him occupied: dark, swirling thoughts.

They passed a large signpost and it was Ceri who broke the silence.

“We’re heading towards Hay-on-Wye,” she said. “They hold a big literary festival there.
Always wanted to go.”

“I’ve been,” said Tom. “To the town, not the festival. Never seen so many second-hand
book shops.” He shrugged. “I do occasionally, but I’m not really one for reading books.”

He sensed Ceri consider him for a moment. “A teacher who doesn’t read books?”

Tom felt his colour rise. “I teach four- and five-year-olds. Don’t need to read books
to do that.” He heard the defensive tone in his voice and disliked himself a little
bit more. “But never mind books. We need to talk about what happened back there.”

“I guess we do.” She gave a deep sigh. “Did you see a big black spaceship?”

“Yep.”

“A huge sun. Red and . . . er. . . .”

“Dying?”

“Yes. Dying.”

“I was on the ship,” said Tom. “Looking out. It was travelling fast. Impossibly fast.”

“Did you see the people? Hairy people in glass caskets?”

Tom nodded. “They looked Neanderthal.”

“Then the planet. The creatures—did you see the creatures?”

“Yes. And the tsunami. I think it wiped them out.”

“But did you
see
the creatures? What they were?”

Tom glanced across at her. She was staring at him as though her sanity depended on
his answer. “Dinosaurs,” he said.

She expelled her breath in another deep sigh. “Thank God. I thought I must be going
crazy.”

“The last thing I saw. . . .”

“Peter.”

“Yes.”

“So what does it mean?”

Tom uttered a short humourless laugh. “I guess he was trying to tell us something.
But it’s utter nonsense. Dinosaurs were wiped out millions of years ago by an asteroid
that hit somewhere near Mexico.”

“Millions of years ago? Or thousands?”

“Millions. A lot of millions. Every year my class did a project on dinosaurs. But
thousands, millions, what’s the difference? Even if he was trying to tell us that
the extinction was caused through some spaceship crash landing, he couldn’t have been
there.” He laughed again. “It really is complete bullshit. He must be off his rocker.”

“But the image, vision, whatever it was—it was so real. I was there, seeing it happen
before my eyes.”

“Yes. It’s a neat trick, I’ll give him that. But that’s all it is. Some sort of mental
conjuring trick.”

“Well, it’s a very realistic one.” She didn’t sound convinced.

“Look, we’ll tackle him about it when we stop for the night, okay?”

“Okay. After all that’s happened, I don’t think anything would surprise me any more. . . .”
She tailed off and Tom realised that she was close to tears.

Ceri resumed staring out of the window. Tom didn’t disturb her. He had no idea what
to say.

* * * * *

A black Audi wound its way down the M1 towards London, weaving from side to side.
A dent in the front wing attested to a close encounter with the crash barrier. Behind
the wheel sat Joe Lowden, grinning as he peered blearily through the windscreen.

A stalled car loomed large in his vision and he twisted the steering wheel, scraping
the car with the Audi’s bumper as he went past.

“Oops,” he said, chuckling.

Sitting in the front seat of the car he’d scraped was a rotting corpse that seemed
to grin at him. Joe waved and beeped the horn.

He slowed the car to a crawl and reached into the open polythene bag on the passenger
seat. Using his knees to keep the vehicle’s course in more or less a straight line,
he rolled himself another joint.

When he reached the M25, he turned onto the anti-clockwise carriageways and headed
south-west. He had never been to this neck of the woods before and didn’t really know
why he had turned off the M1, but he knew it was the right thing to do.

“Hinningdon Hospital,” he muttered. “No, that’s not right. Hillingdon Hospital. Yeah. . . .”
He chuckled again.

Quite why he was making for a hospital he had no idea, but it seemed as good a place
as any to start. Hospitals had drugs by the bucketful, just waiting for someone to
come along and pick them up. Well, that someone would be one Joe Lowden, a northern
lad. He would collect everything he could find, even if he never had any use for it
himself. If there were other survivors, he may be able to trade what he didn’t want.
Start an empire. He’d soon become far more important than either of his parents had
ever dreamed of being. Ha! He’d show them.

Visions of the new order with Joe Lowden as the Godfather-type head of the organisation
playing happily in his mind, Joe eventually eased the Audi through the congested roads
of Hillingdon. There was always a gap he could squeeze through as though blocking
vehicles had been moved out of the way and he was able to drive into the hospital’s
car park.

As he brought the car to a halt, he could see walking towards him the first living
person he had encountered in, well, he had no clue how long, but it was probably a
week at least.

Joe opened the car door and stumbled out into the fresh air. It made him cough. A
woman had nearly reached him. She was slim and tanned. Jean-clad, firm-looking thighs;
perky breasts straining against the material of her jumper. Hanging by a shoulder
strap, a machine gun bumped against her hip. When she spoke, it was in a strange accent:
Australian maybe.

“G’day, mate. I’m Tess Granville. Hope you had a good journey.” Although her face
wore a friendly expression, her tone suggested that she didn’t really care whether
he’d had a good journey or not. “If you could make your way to the Accident and Emergency
Department.” She motioned with one hand towards the hospital building. “It’s signposted.”

Joe eyed the gun, then moved his gaze up to her chest. The grin had not left his face.

“Nice gun, nice tits. Hey, baby, do you want to join my gang?”

“Mate, if you could just make your way to—”

Joe lurched towards her, holding out both hands to that luscious chest. The indulgence
of the past few days had made him incredibly horny.

The woman took a smart step back and raised the gun in one movement, pointing it in
Joe’s face. He juddered to a halt.

“Hey! Hey! No need for that, baby. I’m just being friendly, you know.”

The affable expression had left the woman’s face. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth
set in a firm line.

“Then take this as a friendly warning,” she said. “Don’t make any attempt to touch
me again. Make your way inside the hospital. Go to the Accident and Emergency Department.
Do it now.”

“Okay, okay. Hey, baby, fancy a smoke?”

The gun didn’t waver. “Go. Now.”

The first alarm bells were managing to pierce the fog that shrouded Joe’s mind, but
he was barely aware of them yet. He stumbled past the woman—she took a couple more
paces backwards to remain out of his reach—and made for the hospital entrance. A man
stood by the door, also holding a gun.

“Hey, brother!” said Joe. “How you doing?”

The man didn’t smile. “Inside please, sir,” he said in an American accent. “Follow
the corridor to the E.R.”

“Huh?” said Joe. “That’s a TV programme, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, right,” said the man, but his face remained expressionless. “Accident and Emergency
Department. That’s where you need to go.”

“I don’t need to go there, brother. I’m not injured.”

The man’s voice grew lower, almost a whisper. “Call me brother again and you will
be.” The knuckles on the hand gripping the butt of the gun whitened.

Joe edged past him. “What is it with people round here?” he said. “Where’s all the
love?”

The alarm bells in Joe’s mind had set up a clanging, jangling racket and at last he
began to pay attention. Uneasiness helped clear away more of the befuddlement and
Joe became almost clear-headed for the first time in many months. He stopped in the
corridor. A sharp smell of antiseptic and something else filled the air, clearing
his mind further. That something else was familiar: an acrid smell that he could almost
taste, metallic against the back of his throat, like an electrical discharge.

“Keep moving, please,” said a voice. Another gun-toting man stood against the corridor
wall. Further down, Joe could see another. “Down the corridor to your right, please.”

Joe stumbled on, passing two more men and one woman holding guns, motioning him onwards.

He turned into a wide room, laid out with cubicles formed by drawn blue-patterned,
plastic curtains. A line of bedraggled people, maybe twenty long, men and women, stretched
from the doorway to a wooden desk on wheels—more like a lectern—behind which stood
a stern-faced woman. Two or three armed people wandered up and down the line. A group
of unarmed people, four or five strong, watched the line intently. The sharp smell
of ozone grew stronger.

An armed woman stood inside the doorway. “Join the queue, please,” she said to Joe.
Her voice contained no hint of emotion. Robotic almost.

Joe hesitated. “Um, I’d like to talk to someone about this,” he said.

The woman flicked the gun, a submachine gun, towards him.

“Join the queue,” she repeated. Joe noticed that she had dropped the "please."

Joe opened his face into what he hoped was his warmest smile and took half a step
towards the woman.

“Hey, is that a Thompson?” he said in a buddy-buddy voice, pointing to the gun.

The woman’s finger moved to the trigger.

“Last chance,” she said. “Join the queue.”

“Jeez, okay, okay,” said Joe, backing away. He turned to the queue and shuffled to
the end.

He nudged the man in front of him. “Hey, man, what’s going on here?”

A drawn, pale face turned to him. The man’s breath was sour, like spoiled milk, and
Joe felt his stomach lurch.

“Everyone has to go behind one of those curtains and—”

He broke off and turned away as a shrill scream rent the air. It cut off almost immediately.
Joe watched the curtains. One of them quivered and a woman shuffled out. The hair
at her temples had been gelled down and her jaw hung slackly. A line of spittle hung
from her lower lip. She looked neither to the right nor left, but half-walked, half-stumbled
to the other end of the room and disappeared through an open doorway.

Another waft of sour milk hit Joe as the man in front turned back to him.

“That’s how everyone leaves,” he said. “Go behind the curtain normal. Come out like
that.”

The line moved forwards as the woman in the front of the queue walked slowly towards
the cubicle just vacated by the slack-jawed woman. From her bearing, she appeared
to be terrified, an impression confirmed when she cast a wide-eyed glance behind her
at the people standing in line. She reached the curtain and paused. Although she was
many yards away, Joe clearly heard her gasp and saw her clutch at her head. She stepped
forward and the curtain twitched closed behind her.

As more people shuffled from the cubicles, the line moved forwards.

Joe nudged the man in front again.

“Hey, man, why don’t we make a break for it?”

The man’s haunted eyes turned his way again.

“They’ve got guns,” he said. “Anyway, someone tried that just before you got here.
See them?” He nodded towards the unarmed group that continued to scrutinise the queue
like customs men looking for drug-smugglers. Joe had an idea that they had started
to focus on him. “A woman made a break for that back door. All they did was stare
at her and she stopped in her tracks like she’d run into an invisible wall. They carried
on staring at her and she turned round and walked into the cubicle. But she didn’t
walk normally. She jerked about like a puppet.”

“But that was just one woman, right? If we all make a run for it at the same time. . . .”

The man shook his head. “Then they’d use the guns. Besides, you’re assuming that we
don’t all want whatever lies behind those curtains. I for one welcome it.”

Joe stared at the man. “It could be oblivion, man.”

“I sincerely hope so,” said the man and turned away.

Joe glanced at the unarmed group again. They had definitely turned their attention
to him.

“Fuck this for a game of soldiers,” Joe muttered.

He stepped to one side, trying to look casual, and took off towards the nearest armed
person. If he could grab the gun, he might stand a chance.

He had only taken two paces when something slammed into his mind and he skidded to
a halt three yards from his intended target. The armed man in question glanced in
his direction, his mouth turning up in a sneer, before resuming his pacing.

Joe tried to get his legs moving again, but they refused to obey. Then they did start
to move, but towards the curtains. Struggle as he might, he had no control over them.
He tried to move his arms but they swung uselessly at his sides. He tried to cry out,
but his mouth and throat had stopped working, too. The only things he could move of
his own volition were his eyes. They swivelled towards the unarmed group of people.
Each member of the group was staring at him intently.

The man he had been talking to glanced at him as he passed. A told-you-so grimace
was his only reaction.

Joe walked, or was walked, to the curtains. The man’s description had been accurate.
Joe’s legs moved in quick jerks; he must resemble a puppet in the hands of an inexperienced
puppeteer.

He was halted for a moment in front of a curtain. A slack-jawed man appeared and shuffled
away. Joe was marched inside and onto the plastic-covered bed that dominated the cubicle.
His nose was still his own as it was filled with the ammonic smell of urine. A yellow
puddle had formed on the plastic sheet. Joe lay down on it.