In Constant Fear (8 page)

Again I found myself just staring at him. I mean, I'm the original dumb old big guy, it's not exactly an unfamiliar situation for me to find myself out of verbal ammunition—but I couldn't imagine there'd be too many people able to handle what he'd just told me. Like so many before her, Nora Jagger was out to take over the world—only in her case, it sounded like she was well on her way.

“How's Lena?” the Doc asked, as if, amongst all the gathering darkness, he still saw her as a pinpoint of light.

I'd been so caught up in what he was telling me I'd forgotten for a moment why I was there. “She's fine,” I said, but he continued to stare at me, eagerly waiting for more. “It's a boy,” I eventually informed him.

“Clancy!” he cried, his excitement irrepressible. “That's fantastic!”

“Yeah. For
us
,” I said firmly, just in case he was getting any ideas.

“I'm so pleased.” For some time he sat there silently, plainly rolling the news over and over in his head. “I'd love to see him.”

I was shaking my head even before he'd finished the sentence.

“She'd never know,” he added. “I give you my word.”

“Last I heard, a thousand of your words couldn't buy bird-shit,” I said, reminding him of how he'd double-crossed us.

Again he went quiet, I guessed appreciating how he was sitting smack-dab on the most delicate of fault lines, and I glanced over to check Gigi was all right.

“People are starting to get that bit healthier. There are certainly fewer zombie-sick around,” he told me, obviously electing to try reason. “Jimmy did everyone a big favor destroying the satellites and stopping the pollution, but”—again he hesitated, and I had a pretty good idea where he was going with this—“despite the occasional pregnancy, to my knowledge, no one's actually had a healthy baby. The terms have got longer, one or two premature ones we had hopes for, but as yet it's just you two.”

I sighed: he might've had his priorities but I had mine, too. “Lena's gone blind again,” I announced.

“Oh . . . I'm sorry.”

“That day we escaped—probably 'cuz of the Bitch throwing her up against the wall,” I said, feeling a certain pleasure at taking up Gigi's nickname for Nora Jagger.

“I did warn you,” he said. “It's rare, but it does happen. Mind you, it was a heavy impact.”

For a while we sat in silence, both of us, I think, beginning to appreciate the cards we were laying out on the table. I didn't have to say it, but I did anyway. “Can you operate on her again?”

He hesitated, the expression on his face slowly changing. “Well. I don't know,” he said, and for the first time in the conversation he was sounding his smooth old confident self. “I'd have to take a look, do some tests.”

“I thought you might,” I replied sarcastically.

“It would be better if I came to you,” he said.

“For who?”

“Everyone.”

Again I went quiet, feeling slightly apprehensive that I hadn't thought this through properly; just like when I used to play chess
with Jimmy on the Island my attention was so firmly fixed on the main prize, I was always in danger of wandering into a trap.

“I won't harm them, Clancy. I promise you,” the Doc reassured me. “You can be there all the time.”

“It's up to Lena,” I eventually replied, realizing I needed more time to think, that I couldn't make such an important decision for both of us.

I glanced across at Gigi again; she'd powered a window down and was looking distinctly bored. “Gotta go,” I said.

Despite my fear of doing something unforgivably stupid, and the deeply disturbing things he'd just told me, I gotta say, it was still one helluvan amusing moment. The doc caught sight of Gigi, immediately recognized her, then finally realized what that battered old piece of shit disintegrating away in the corner was.

“Is that my
limo?
” he cried.

“Yep. That's it.”

His mouth dropped open so violently he might've had a small charge of dynamite between his teeth. “
Oh, my God! . . .
What have you done to it?” he cried, tumbling out of the Bentley.

“Just a little wear and tear.”

“Wear and tear!”

I gotta say, I hadn't really given it that much thought, but I could see it was a bit of a mess, what with all kinds of fungus growing all over it from the cave, several panels that'd been ripped off by growlers the night we escaped from Infinity, the paintwork down one side melted and pockmarked from the fire in the barn—yeah, “a bit of a mess” is what I'd call it.

“I don't believe this!” he cried, walking around the limo, each angle apparently worse than the last.

“We'll fix it up,” I told him.

“Where's the lid to the trunk?” he wailed, his eyes now gaping almost as wide as his mouth.

Gigi gave a pointed sigh, obviously getting a little bored with the whole thing. “Can we go?” she asked.

“When are you next here?” I asked the Doc.

“What?” he asked, too preoccupied to really pay me any mind.

“When are you next here?”

“Thursday,” he eventually managed to reply, still staring at the limo as if someone had spat on the Mona Lisa or held a dirty protest in the Sistine Chapel.

“I'll think on about Thomas,” I said, climbing in beside Gigi.

I hated myself for doing it, I really did; using access to my baby son as a means of bribing someone felt wrong, but I didn't see any other option. Worse still, I didn't even know if Lena
wanted
the operation—we'd not discussed her sight in ages. I was just going on how she'd behaved before the first time, making out it wasn't that important—but maybe this time it was genuine, maybe she really didn't feel it was something she had to do.

I made a point of shaking Doctor Simon's hand through the limo window before I pulled away, I guess trying to cement our new understanding that we were both starting all over again, as if, if I treated him like a gentleman, he'd behave like one, instead of merely
looking
the part. The last view I had of him was in the rearview mirror, still gaping after what was left of his former pride and joy.

“What did he say?” Gigi asked, as we emerged up onto street level.

I hesitated. “A lotta stuff.”

“Is everything okay?”

“More or less,” I replied, not wanting to discuss Nora Jagger or her new powers or ambitions, especially bearing in mind that both of us had attempted to kill her.

What the hell she'd do if she knew the pair of us were back in the City, I couldn't imagine. Rip the whole damn place apart to find us, I'd have guessed—her and her new Bodyguards.

“Turn left here,” Gigi indicated, jolting me out of my thoughts, and I hit the brakes and eased my way over.

The fact that there were more vehicles around and still the occasional street closed off meant we got caught in a kinda low-key rush hour, and by the time we arrived in this old residential street down by the river, the light was starting to fade and Gigi struggled for a
few moments to pick out the right place. Mind you, with each and every building daubed with some form of graffiti or urban art, they did look kinda similar.

A good few years back you'd have had to have paid a pretty penny to live in a place that backed onto the river, but after the Crash you couldn't give them away. People who never really had the money to purchase in the first place—even having to borrow their deposits—were forced to put their properties up for sale. The only trouble being there weren't any buyers, and one by one they were repossessed, boarded up, taken over by squatters and now, prompted by what looked like a couple of major fires—maybe accidental, maybe not—there'd plainly been something of an exodus. There were still a few people around, but they didn't look that comfortable about it: keeping their heads low, scurrying away rather than risk being approached, as if a direct question might damage them in some way.

The “safe house” turned out to be a basement apartment; it might've been more intact than most but it didn't look any more lived-in. We parked the limo in an alleyway leading down to the river and walked back. Gigi approaching with understandable caution.

“D'you think they're still there?” I asked, having my doubts.

“I dunno,” Gigi replied, suddenly acting surprisingly nervous.

“Don't look like it to me,” I commented as we stopped in a doorway opposite and a little ways down the street.

For a moment she didn't say anything and I realized she was getting irritated with me. “You don't have to be here,” she told me, and I nodded and promptly shut up—I really didn't understand what was going on, what this was all about.

We must've waited for a good half-hour, watching out for any movement—for anyone coming or going—not sure what to do. At one point she went over and peered down over the railings, trying to look through the dirty windows, then turned and headed back.

“See anyone?” I asked, though it was obvious she hadn't.

“Nope.”

“So what d'ya wanna do?”

She hesitated for a moment, took in the way the night was starting to gather, then came to a decision. “It probably doesn't work,” she said, digging deep into her pocket and bringing out a key.

I was a little taken aback—why hadn't she said something before?—though at least it proved she was telling the truth, that she really had lived there. “Only one way to find out,” she told me.

We slipped over as unobtrusively as we could: just two more people minding their own business on Mind-Your-Own-Business Street. Gigi briefly hesitated, as if gathering her strength, then went down the steps with me following closely on behind.

To both her and my surprise, the key still worked, and after a couple of shouts of “Hi!” and getting no reply, we entered. Thankfully, I'd remembered to bring a flashlight with me from the limo, though I hadn't remembered to check the battery, which, going on its light, was pretty close to expiring.

Slowly we advanced down the hallway, our footsteps deadened by a thick layer of dust, Gigi again calling out, “David! . . . Isla—?” but still there was no reply.

We looked in the first bedroom but there was nothing apart from an old mattress, some dirty clothes on the floor and a knapsack with a broken strap. The next one was a similar story: a few stacked boxes and for some reason, the mattress sprawled out across the room at a forty-five-degree angle.

“Been gone some time, by the looks of it,” I muttered, stating the all-too-damn obvious.

Next we tried the kitchen, Gigi giving this little cry at the disturbing number of giant roaches there were around, flashlight and shadow doubling their size as they scurried across the floor. They must've found something to eat to stay there, which maybe indicated Gigi's former companions had left in a hurry.

Impatient to explore elsewhere, Gigi took the flashlight and went through to the main room with me reluctantly following on behind. As far as I could see, we'd got the picture—they were long gone—and I didn't really see the point of staying. And anyways, there was
something about that place I didn't like, but she obviously needed to check it out to her satisfaction.

She reached the doorway, went to enter the room, then suddenly stopped, giving out this low moan and backing out so quickly, she collided with me.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

She slapped the flashlight back in my hand so I could see what she'd seen, then turned away, panting like a nervous dog.

There was a big old imitation leather sofa and several easy chairs, and sitting in them, almost as if it'd been some kind of social gathering, were the long-dead corpses of six people. They weren't much more than skeletons, with little bits of withered, nibbled flesh clinging on here and there to the bones. I don't know—rats maybe, or even those big fat roaches? But that wasn't the worst part of it, nor even the remnants of the foul odor that lingered; it was the fact that all of them had had their heads torn from their bodies.

I shone the dull light of the flashlight around the room, knowing they had to be somewhere, and sure enough, piled in the corner, like a mound of rotted cabbages, were the skulls of all six victims.

“
Jesus
.”

“It's
her
,” Gigi moaned.

I didn't reply, just turned her gently toward the front door. She was right, of course she was: it was the Bitch and her trademark way of killing.

I don't know what made me do it exactly—instinct maybe? The knowledge that that woman had been there?—but when I reached the front door, I flicked the flashlight's beam around it . . .

Shit!
It was really small but I still should've spotted it when we came in. There in the corner, low down so it'd catch everyone who entered, someone had planted a security beam.

I paused for a second or two, wondering whether to risk going outside or not. The control-box had as much dust on it as everything else, so maybe it was no longer functioning? No one had reacted so far, and we must've been there a good five minutes . . . however, at
that precise moment, I heard something large and powerful rapidly approaching up the street.

“Is there a back way?” I asked Gigi as the vehicle—or what now sounded like several—came screeching to a halt outside.

She just stood there, frantically thinking, but it was way too late: heavy—
terrifyingly
heavy—footsteps were running across the sidewalk and noisily descending the steps to the front door.
The Bitch's Bodyguard!

Gigi snapped out of her paralysis, giving me a tug, running through to the kitchen with me following close behind. As I shut the door she started scrambling at the floor, lifting up the old plastic covering—I didn't have a clue what she was up to. It was a basement, for chrissake. What was she going to do: tunnel her way out?