The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (48 page)

A light blush had soaked into Osbourne’s cheeks; his cold-blooded circulation had evidently begun to heat up. He licked his lips. ‘I need you to bring that sample to me, Doctor Marco,’ he said. The statement was matter-of-fact–a foregone conclusion.

Marco set the phial on his desk, beyond camera range; Osbourne’s eyes twitched, narrowing as the container disappeared. Marco sat forward again; absently he pinched his earlobe and studied the man on the cross side of the transmission, two thousand miles away in Benjamin’s Pennsylvania studio. Osbourne countered his gaze. The piranha. The predator.

How much of this is your fault?
Marco wondered.
The Resurrection, the outbreak? How much did you know
before
it happened? How much did you initiate…?

He recalled Roger’s warning.
Osbourne is not to be trusted.

Unsettled, he probed the black space of Osbourne’s pupils. Nothing there to connect with as a fellow man. Nothing but a vacuum. It was the same look he’d seen in Wu’s eyes–right near the end as Wu had aimed the gun, prepared to pull the trigger…

Osbourne will kill me
, Marco thought.
The moment I hand over the vaccine, he’ll kill me. Can’t have me running around the Safe States, telling stories.

‘I won’t bring it,’ Marco said.

Osbourne darkened.

‘I’ll leave it here, and you can come get it,’ Marco continued. ‘Send someone. Another RRU team, the entire US army, I don’t care. People need this–the Safe States need vaccinations–so I
do
want you to have it. But I’m not bringing it.’

‘I’d rather you did, Doctor,’ Osbourne admonished. ‘It would be a great service.’

‘No, thank you,’ Marco insisted. ‘You’ll get what you want–but not from me. I’ll be staying here in the Evacuated States. That was our agreement, right? I can stay and finish.’

The director stewed, glowering, emitting waves of discontent. A burst of noise–
tap tap tap
–peppered the microphone, and Marco realised it was Osbourne drumming his fingers on the desk. Uncomfortable seconds passed. At last Osbourne cleared his throat with a growl and sighed. ‘I see. You wish to stay and locate your dead wife.’

The summation roiled like acid in Marco’s gut. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You’re a faithful husband, Doctor. You love her that much?’

‘Yes.’ He forced his voice to sound strong.

‘Very well, then.’ Osbourne settled back again in his chair and clasped his hands together. A malicious humour crept onto his face, and he leered at Marco; the tips of his eye-teeth protruded from his curled upper lip.

‘In that case,’ Osbourne said, ‘allow me to say–and I’ll repeat your own words back to you, Doctor…’

He smiled broadly now. ‘There’s one more thing to show you.’

He waved a spidery finger, and a blue-uniformed soldier appeared from the depths of the room. The soldier reached and took control of the computer mouse, and Marco heard a barrage of terse clicks like a ratchet tightening a clamp on his heart.

Some nasty surprise was coming his way, no doubt. He remembered the video of the prison riot–Roger’s apparent death–that Osbourne had sprung on their first call.

Osbourne seemed to read his mind. ‘I warned you once, Doctor Marco. I always come to class prepared. In this case, another video that might interest you. Of particular interest is the fact that it was
taken just last week
.’

His emphasis made Marco shudder without knowing why.

The screen blackened, erasing Osbourne in mid-chuckle, and an instant later an image exploded onto the screen, like a new universe created in a millionth of a second. At first Marco didn’t understand–and then suddenly he did, and the air superheated, and the oxygen caught fire in his lungs, and he choked. His breath stopped. His heart stopped. His nerves short-circuited. Beneath him the leather chair squawked and pitched…

Bright sunlight, a living room with a giant picture window

Oh god

vibrant green leaves in the yard

God

and a blue sofa below the window, and a woman sitting

God oh god

with soft, auburn, lavender-scented hair tucked behind her ears, each delicate lobe with three jade piercings too small for the camera to see.

Marco reeled–confounded, unable to make sense of himself–sucked into a mad wormhole stretching across space and time. He was aware of his hands, white-knuckled and creased with dry blood, clenched tight upon the chair arms and yet utterly beyond his control. His head had detached, a thousand miles away.

‘Delle,’ he croaked.

She smiled sadly at him. ‘Henry.’

He jumped as she spoke his name, and he almost responded–the word ‘
How
’ balanced on his lips before he pulled it back, remembering that the video was pre-recorded and uncertain what he would have asked anyway. Danielle, sitting
there on the sofa, was nothing but the echo of Danielle at 7.48 a.m. 23/09/18, according to white digits ticking in the corner of the screen. His breath came in short gulps, his pulse bounding. Under the desk his feet trembled, a patter upon the hardwood as though his boots were begging him to run.

‘Henry,’ she said again. She swallowed and grimaced, his name hurting her throat, and then hesitated, seeming reluctant to continue. Her eyes darted off camera. A mumbled unseen voice encouraged her, and with a rush of hatred Marco recognised the patronising inflections.

Osbourne.

You fucking bastard. You found her. You went to her, and didn’t tell me until now.

His stomach boiling, he refocused on Danielle. She’d begun to speak.

‘Oh god, Henry, I… I don’t even know what to say,’ she stuttered. Her voice was throttled high like a whine, and her cheeks were ruddy and damp, the look she had whenever she was on the verge of crying. She appeared exhausted, beaten emotionally, aged ten years in the span of four. Her pixie dust had worn off, the magic gone. This wasn’t the Danielle he’d met in Tech Town, not even the Danielle who’d struggled so hard to love him here in Arizona. The spell had been broken. This was Danielle
now
–real, not some idealised memory; just a sad, frightened woman banished from the fairy glen, her dreams shattered.

His heart plummeted.

‘I thought you were dead,’ she said, battling to stay composed. ‘I swear, Henry, I thought that–or I would have told you to… to get out of there, to come here, the Safe States. I didn’t know until this morning, I swear. These… men, these soldiers came, they wanted me to make this message for you. They told me about you, what you’re doing,
you and Ben. I thought you were both… Why weren’t you on the Survivor Register? I had you declared dead…’

Her words dissolved into tears. Marco sickened. Ben had never bothered to register them. What was the point? Everyone they knew was dead. Trish was dead. Danielle was…

Shit
, Danielle was
alive.

Another quiet encouragement sounded from Osbourne off camera. Danielle steadied herself, breathing deep from her belly, and then resumed.

‘They told me… what you thought, about me, I mean. Oh, Henry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry you thought that. I never meant…’

More deep yoga-breaths, the way she’d once taught him.

‘I know you found the Honda, empty,’ she said. ‘Oh god, that day. Henry, it wasn’t me. I got away. Janis, you remember her,
she
was driving me to Trish’s. I was too upset about leav—about going to Trish’s. I was a mess, I couldn’t think, and Janis said she would come take me. And then everything was crazy… there were monsters chasing us, and she crashed, and these dead people opened her door and grabbed her, and I got out my door and ran…’

Her face crumpled, and she again broke into sobs.
Delle.
He wanted to reach through the screen and comfort her, tuck her hair back behind her ear where it had fallen loose. He had to restrain his hand. Instead he wiped his own face with his sleeve.

A soldier in tinted sunglasses stepped into the video frame, a black HK416 slung on his back. He presented Danielle with a box of tissues and disappeared once more. The gesture was absurd, unreal, like some ridiculous comedy skit. Danielle dried her face, her nose. Ten or twenty seconds passed, occupied by her quiet huffing.

‘I hid,’ she finally said, ‘in the bushes. I was too scared to move, even though Trish’s house was just a few miles, but
there were dead people everywhere, killing other people. It was so, so
awful
… but the funny part is, I almost thought, “This isn’t happening.” Like I was in a movie, that’s all–some bad horror movie, the kind I always swore I’d never do, except now I was acting in one and somehow I’d forgotten this was all pretend.’

She laughed once, mirthlessly, and rubbed her nose. ‘A few hours later I saw an army truck, an evacuation team. They picked me up. I told them to find you, Henry. I promise I told them. They looked, they went to the house, but you weren’t there, or I guess you were and you didn’t answer. You thought I was… one of those dead people? This man says you stayed to find me. Oh, god, I wish you hadn’t done that, Henry.’

She stared into her lap. Reflecting.

I wish you hadn’t done that.

He slumped in his chair, miserable, wishing the same–wishing for
everything
to be different. He pressed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again, his gaze met hers. She was intent, imploring. ‘Henry,
please
listen now. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left–but you understand, don’t you? I had to. I promise I had to. I had to move on. And I think there’s
meaning
that it happened when it did, on that day. I’ve thought about it so many times… how I was dead in my life, dead and buried with Hannah. And then the Resurrection came, and it was like all the death and sorrow I’d been holding onto was unleashed into the universe–not just me,
my
sorrow, but people’s everywhere–and nobody knows why, and it was horrible, horrible. But the Resurrection brought me here, to the Safe States. And I know it sounds selfish, but I’m glad. I’m glad, because after all that, I’m not dead like I was before. I’m
alive
here…’

She cupped her hands to her mouth, perhaps surprised at her own candour.

And for the first time he noticed the ring on her left hand. A wedding band. Gold with small crisp diamonds laid horizontally across the cusp–not platinum, not Cartier, not the ring he’d slid onto her slender finger eight years ago.

A pit opened in his stomach, and he felt himself slide to the bottom.

Gradually he became aware that she was again speaking. ‘… remarried, Henry. You don’t know him. I met him here, after it all calmed down…’

Married. Delle married someone else.

So soon.

He grimaced, scouring the depths of himself for outrage–for anger, for the gut-busting pain inflicted by betrayal. It should have been there, all of it. But it wasn’t.

He found nothing.

Four years
, he thought.
That’s not so soon.

Shit, you know better than anybody how long four years can be.

When you can barely survive a single day at a time.

‘Henry,’ she said, and his attention drifted back to her. ‘This is my life now. Here. It had to be this way–couldn’t you feel it, the universe telling us? It told me to move on. It’s telling you, too. Move on, babe—’ she slipped, wincing at the old pet name, then caught herself and continued. ‘Move on. You can’t stay there. You don’t need to. Get out and come to the Safe States. Find your happiness.’

I’ll never be happy.
Her words that day by Hannah’s grave.

Perhaps the same memory stirred within her now. ‘You were right, Henry. It’s what Hannah’s spirit wanted for us. To start our lives again.’

Start again
, he thought.
Start again, just like Joan Roark.

Start over without Danielle. Go east, take Osbourne at his word, bring the vaccine. Join civilisation. Cash in that big bank
account Ben’s been saving for you, and buy a wonderful fucking house and live there, happy but not real happy…

And wait for this whole fucking mess to happen again.

‘And please, Henry, please please, forgive yourself. It wasn’t our fault…’

‘Are you happy, Delle?’ he wondered aloud, not caring if Osbourne heard him on the microphone. He rubbed his knuckles across his chin and studied her.

Yes
, he answered himself.
She’s happy enough.

Her mouth opened, but she seemed empty, all the words released. She shook her head, a tender gesture. ‘Take care of yourself, Henry—’

And then blackness crashed down on her in mid-sentence. The video stopped, and she vanished, jerked abruptly from him for the second and final time in his life, and in that flash of nothingness he could almost see her departing him like a cloud of breath on a freezing day–as if he were a boy again, watching his own essence twist and dissolve into the atmosphere, irretrievable, gone forever–and then, just as suddenly, time returned to collect him, and he was once again a forty-two-year-old man hunched over his desk in his lonesome home in death-ridden, dirt-coated Arizona.

‘Bye, Delle,’ he said.

The universe answered him with silence.

Back again on the screen was Osbourne’s ugly, smirking complexion.

‘No need to see more, Doctor. You understand,’ he said. ‘Your wife–beg pardon, your
ex-
wife–is here, alive. Meaning your personal mission in the Evacuated States is no longer relevant. Quite pointless, in fact.’

The director propped his elbows on the desk and laced his fingers together.

‘I’m happy for you, of course,’ he purred, lousy with insincerity. ‘Such a horrible burden removed. Which brings us back to the subject at hand. In light of these revelations… seeing you have no reason to hold your current location… you
will
bring me that vaccine, won’t you, Doctor? Our original deal still stands. Amnesty.’

‘You knew about her,’ Marco said, and in his tired voice he heard neither surprise nor indignation. It was just a statement. ‘That she was alive. You knew all along. I’d bet a damn dollar you had that video in your back pocket on the first call, in case you needed it then. Except you didn’t need it. I took the fucking job–stupid me.’