Extinction Game (34 page)

‘We are,’ I said.

She nodded and I settled back in my chair, fatigue numbing my senses. I figured it wouldn’t hurt if I closed my eyes, just for one . . .

‘Hey.’

I came to with a start. Chloe stood over me, her coat still wrapped around her shoulders like a blanket.

I blinked and looked around, realizing I must have fallen asleep without being aware of it. Early morning light seeped in through the window, and I saw the storm had passed.

I sat forward, feeling stiff and tired and sore. ‘Rozalia?’ I asked, looking around. ‘Where . . . ?’

‘She just left to go fishing.’ I gave her a look and she laughed. ‘Seriously. There’s hooks and tackle and everything here.’

I glanced at the stove. ‘Maybe we should get that fired back up.’

‘Already done,’ said Chloe. ‘Can’t you feel the heat?’

She took hold of my hand and pulled me upright, leading me over towards the stove. I passed my hands over the top of the stove, feeling the delicious warmth soak into my skin. I heard the
pop
of wood burning.

‘Now come on,’ she said, pulling me back in the direction of the cot. ‘I don’t know how long we have before Rozalia gets back.’

‘What are you . . . ?’

‘The thing we’ve both been thinking about from the first moment we saw each other,’ she said, her voice low. She looked suddenly uncertain. ‘Unless I’ve been
reading you wrong . . . ?’

‘No,’ I said, my voice thick. ‘No, you haven’t.’ First that inexplicable kiss, then the photograph in her home, of the other Jerry with his arm around her. Chloe
had never been far from my thoughts, and I realized I had been fooling myself by thinking this moment was anything other than inevitable.

I glanced towards the door. ‘But what if Rozalia walks in?’

Chloe shook her head. ‘She won’t.’

Something in the way she said this made me certain that Rozalia’s sudden absence had been arranged, and that she would be careful not to return from her fishing trip too quickly. It was
strange: I had known Chloe for only a short while, but she had known me – the
other
me – for years.

I moved in close to her and pressed my lips to hers, filled with a sudden and urgent hunger. I could feel my erection straining hard against my jeans even as she reached for my belt buckle. I
slid my hands around the curve of her breasts beneath her thin T-shirt, then down to her hips, which pressed into me. She let out a small gasp, then ground her hips against mine.

Less than a minute later we fell, still struggling out of our clothes, onto the cot. She was right: I’d been thinking about such a moment for a long time. I finally wriggled free of my
jeans, but Chloe pressed both hands against my chest, holding me back, even as I reached down to slide my fingers between her thighs. I felt her shudder in response.

Then, finally, she relented, her hands sliding around my back. Rozalia could have walked in at that moment and I wouldn’t have given a damn. But we were alone, and would be for some time,
and I soon slid deep inside her warmth, her fingers kneading at my flesh as I pushed deeper and deeper inside her.

It’s hardly surprising I came as quickly as I did, given how very long it had been. I felt a surge of emotion that threatened to overwhelm me, but she kept stroking and massaging my back,
kissing my neck and chest, whispering something to me I couldn’t make out. Then she held me tight, her hips still moving against mine, her body rigid in the moment before she gave out a
single small cry. Then she relaxed beneath me, her chest rising and falling from her exertions.

‘Jerry,’ she said, and I saw her cheeks were damp again.

‘Well, lookee here,’ said Rozalia with a grin, when she came stamping back into the hut more than an hour later.

We had both got dressed again, and I had stoked up the flames and was already onto my second pot of coffee. Rozalia was carrying a line and rod, a couple of fat bream hanging from hooks. Her
expression told me she was under no illusions about what had taken place during her absence.

‘Say,’ she said, holding her catch up high, ‘either of you gutted a fish before?’

I took the wheel of the jeep an hour later, my belly full of fish and coffee. The morning light was thin, and the day’s warmth had not yet arrived, and so I kept my
jacket buttoned up to the neck. As we made our way back along the coast road, I caught sight of the beached trawler I’d seen on my first trip to the statues.

‘Christ,’ said Chloe, sitting beside me in the front passenger seat. She was staring off in the direction of the trawler herself. I glanced to the side and saw she was pressing the
heels of both hands against her eyes. ‘I think I’m hallucinating from sheer fatigue.’

‘You need to get some proper rest,’ I said, squeezing her hand as I drove.

‘I was thinking,’ said Rozalia from behind us, ‘about what must have happened after Casey chased your predecessor out of Wallace’s place. Casey must have put the fear of
God into Wallace.’

‘I was thinking that too,’ I said. ‘Wallace, according to my predecessor, was terrified of Casey.’

‘God damn,’ said Rozalia. ‘They must have killed Nadia. I’m sure of it. They must have known she had suspicions about the other Jerry’s death. They
must
have.’

‘What about the Patriots themselves?’ I suggested. ‘One of their own agents could have sabotaged the SUV that I was in with her and Oskar . . .’

Rozalia shot me an angry look. ‘You really believe that after what you’ve just read? Who the hell else would Greenbrooke have got to do his dirty work but Wallace and Casey? Who else
but those two would have known enough about how the bee-brains work to sabotage the SUV the way they did?’ She started to weep. ‘And when I think of all the times I saw them in the
Hotel du Mauna Loa, acting like nothing was wrong, taking me for a fool because I didn’t know what they’d done . . .’

‘I guess you ought to know,’ I said to Chloe. ‘Rozalia and I took a trip back to the alternate where Nadia died. We no longer have any doubt that her death was anything but an
accident.’ I filled her in on the details, her hand to her mouth the whole time.

‘We need to find Casey’s transfer stage,’ Chloe said quietly, once I had finished. ‘He can’t have taken it far. The island’s only so big, and there are only
so many places to hide something like that.’

‘Hey,’ said Rozalia from behind us, a touch of alarm in her voice. ‘Look.’

The black bulk of Rano Kau rose up ahead on the island’s southernmost tip, the road curving to the west as it followed the coast towards town. I had been so deep in my own thoughts that I
had failed to notice the thick pall of smoke rising above the rooftops and carried seawards by the wind.

‘It looks like it’s coming from somewhere near Wallace’s place,’ said Chloe, her voice tight.

She was right. I gripped the wheel hard and again remembered the look on Casey’s face when we had stood together in Wallace’s bedroom, his eyes on the half-coin in my open hand. In
that moment I felt sure he had acted decisively in order to keep us from interfering with the plans Wallace had tried to warn my predecessor about.

There wasn’t much left of Wallace’s house. It must have been a hell of a blaze, I thought, breathing shallowly to avoid taking in too much smoke.

I pulled the jeep up across the street from where Wallace’s place had been. The air was thick with ash, and I had the feeling that the rain had probably done most of the work of putting
out the flames.

On the way through town, we had narrowly avoided crashing into a jeep full of Patriot agents speeding down a narrow road, and had seen other agents wandering in and out of vacant houses.
Fortunately, in the chaos none had thought to stop us and ask where we’d been all night.

I saw most of the other Pathfinders gathered in a loose knot farther down the street. They were watching as two of Major Howes’ troops half-heartedly poked through the still-smouldering
remains. A few of them glanced our way and muttered among themselves. I also noted the presence of three Patriot agents standing by another jeep parked next to Wallace’s front gate, caught up
in what looked like an intense conversation. That was fine by me, because it meant they weren’t paying us much attention.

It didn’t look to me as if Wallace could possibly have got out alive, particularly given how very inebriated he had been the last time I saw him. I could see how the palm trees lining the
street nearest were themselves blackened from the blaze. Faint wisps of smoke still rose from their singed leaves.

I looked around at the houses next to Wallace’s – all of them built from wood and brick. It struck me that, if not for the late-night storm, half the town could easily have gone up
in flames. I wondered whether that might in fact have been Casey’s intention, and realized any remaining doubts regarding whether he was responsible for the fire had fled.

As I watched, one of the soldiers stepped out through the gate and went to confer with the Patriot agents. Where was Mayer, I wondered? Or any other of the Authority’s civilian staff?
Shouldn’t they be here?

Or were the Patriots now in charge?

‘We were away for just one night,’ said Chloe, ‘and now . . .’

‘Casey did this,’ snarled Rozalia from the back seat. ‘I guess he got tired of waiting for Wallace to find someone else to confess to. Well, fuck it. He got what he
deserved.’

‘Nobody deserves that,’ I said, staring at the smouldering walls and the collapsed roof.

She leaned forward, putting her mouth close to my ear. ‘I have no doubt now that Wallace had a hand in murdering Nadia. There’s every reason to believe he also helped to murder the
first Jerry. That’s almost like he murdered
you
. Or did you forget?’

‘We should try and find Mayer,’ I said, trying to change the subject. ‘We can show him what we found. He can help protect us from the Patriots once we’ve explained
everything.’

‘Maybe we should find out just what happened here before we do anything at all,’ said Chloe. She nodded towards the other Pathfinders. ‘One of the others might have seen Casey
around.’

‘Yeah,’ said Rozalia, her voice full of venom. ‘The more of us out looking for that son of a bitch, the sooner we can kill him.’

From the sound of her voice, I had little doubt that Rozalia would try and kill Casey at the first opportunity.

Winifred Quaker stepped away from the other Pathfinders and came towards us. ‘Oh, thank God you’re here,’ she said, her thin arms wrapped around her chest as if to ward off
cold, even though it was showing every sign of being a warm day. ‘Yuichi and Selwyn went around to your houses to see if you were there, and when they couldn’t find you we started to
get worried that something might have happened to you.’

‘What exactly
did
happen?’ I asked.

She looked over at the charred ruins of the house and shook her head. ‘I guess it’s not hard to figure out, really. I woke up when I smelled the smoke. It’s everywhere, you
know? It’ll be weeks before the stink is gone. You should have seen the flames.’

‘Hell of a way to die,’ I muttered, thinking of the lava licking its way towards me, down in the deep vaults of a dead world.

She darted a look at me. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t explain properly. Wallace is still alive.’

‘He is?’ I exclaimed, getting out of the jeep and stepping closer to her. I still had my satchel slung over one shoulder, my oilskin-wrapped treasure within. ‘Where is
he?’

‘They took him to the base compound, to the hospital there,’ she said. Chloe and Rozalia had joined me beside the jeep. ‘Selwyn and Randall were the first on the scene, and
they managed to fight their way inside to him. They’ve both got a couple of minor burns, but nothing serious. Wallace, though . . .’ She shook her head.

‘Go on,’ Chloe prompted.

‘He’s alive,’ said Winifred. ‘But I don’t know if he’s going to stay that way for long. I think he inhaled too much smoke.’

Selwyn was next to join us, his face dirty with ash. I saw that he had heavy bandages wrapped around one arm. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I figured I’d better warn you now
you’re here. Kip Mayer’s been arrested.’ He inclined his head towards the Patriot agents. ‘By
them
.’

Rozalia grabbed his arm. ‘
What?
’

‘I heard about it from Yuichi just now. He saw Mayer being bundled into a jeep by a couple of Patriot types, back in town, outside the Authority’s offices there. They drove off
towards the base, so they’ve probably got him locked up there, unless they’ve already taken him back to the Authority’s own alternate.’

‘What do you mean “bundled”, exactly?’ I asked.

‘I mean that Mayer was in handcuffs, so Yuichi said.’

‘But why?’ I asked. ‘What possible reason could they—’

‘They don’t need a reason,’ Rozalia said, her voice full of a terrible finality. ‘They’ll just make up some damn excuse. And with us stuck here, and no way to talk
to anyone else in the Authority except through them, they’ll be free to take control of the transfer stages and consolidate their power over the island and all the alternates it gives access
to.’

Selwyn stared at Rozalia with his mouth open.

‘Anything else we need to know?’ I asked him, to forestall the inevitable flood of questions.

‘I-I heard that they interrogated Wallace, up at the base hospital.’ He thought for a moment. ‘It seems kind of weird they’d put Kip in chains like that, right after they
finished talking to Wallace.’

‘So Wallace can still talk?’ asked Chloe.

Selwyn made a face. ‘Just about. Right after me and Randall got him out of that inferno he was babbling something, but nothing that made any sense. We got him in a jeep and drove him up to
the hospital and raised seven shades of bloody hell until they all woke up and helped get him inside. We stuck around long enough to see him get wired up with tubes and monitors and all kinds of
stuff, but then the Patriots turned up and threw us out on our arses.’ He shuddered. ‘I don’t even want to imagine how much pain Wallace must be in, the state he was in when we
got him there. I really thought we’d carried a corpse out of there at first, he was so badly burned.’