In Constant Fear Read online

  “Not properly. Not yet,” he replied. “It seems to be configuring itself in some way, but I reckon it has to be turned on, keyed in some way, before it’s fully operational.”

  Again there was silence, the immensity of it, how quickly things had changed, almost too much to cope with, and finally I asked the question I’d wanted to ask from the moment he first told me.

  “Can it be removed?”

  “I dunno . . . Maybe. I’m no doctor.”

  I don’t think it was exactly his intention, but his words gave me the faintest cause for hope, the thought that there was something I could do.

  I put my arms around both Lena and Thomas and joined her as she went to leave, the others tagging on behind, feeling it was time to go away and digest everything that’d been said.

  But Jimmy hadn’t quite finished. “Sorry, guys . . . Sorry—” he called, before we reached the door. “There’s one other thing.”

  We paused, waiting for his postscript, a summing-up, but he had that squirming uncomfortable look about him again, and this time I knew it was gonna be a whole lot worse.

  “Someone else’s got one, too.”

  For the first time since Thomas was born, Lena cried openly, in fear and concern. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, and without any sign of trespass, our lives had been stolen from us. Bad enough I had an implant in me; but little Thomas as well . . . ?

  I was so sure I’d protected him, that none of those damn things had got through, but sometimes blind faith isn’t enough. Lena and me spent that night tossing and turning on a bed of nails, echoing each other’s words of futile remorse. Meanwhile, the little guy was sleeping unusually peacefully, unaware that he’d been invaded, that he had this parasite going about his tiny body. He wasn’t exactly sick, but I guess we felt that terrible dragging helplessness that every parent does when their child’s in danger and there’s nothing they can do about it. Over and over I kept telling Lena it would be all right, that we’d come up with something, but it was just noise and she knew it as well as I did.

  Jimmy would do everything he could; we knew that, but we also knew that for once maybe even he was out of his depth. If those things kept changing all the time, one moment a tiny capsule lodged in a minor crevice of your brain, the next a liquid oozing its way around the streams and canals of your body, what chance did anyone have?

  “What are we going to do?” Lena asked for the umpteenth time.

  “I dunno,” I told her. “Jimmy wants to scan me and Thomas again tomorrow, maybe get some ideas. You know what he’s like,” I said, trying to sound encouraging.

  “Yeah, and I know what she’s like,” Lena replied.

  I never said anything; after spending some time as Infinity’s prisoner, she was better placed to talk about them—and, in particular, Nora Jagger—than I was.

  “What if you and Thomas can be tracked?”

  “I dunno,” I said, after yet another helpless pause.

  “Are you willing to take the risk?”

  I knew what she was getting at: was I prepared to chance leading the Bitch there, to maybe getting everyone killed—or at the very least, implanted?

  “Let’s see what Jimmy comes up with,” I told her.

  For some time we both lay in stillness and silence, all talked and worried out, ’til finally her breathing became heavier and I realized she’d fallen asleep. It didn’t take me long to appreciate that there was no chance of me following her, not with all the stuff I had pinballing around in my head, and I gently pried myself out of her arms and slid out of the bed.

  I emerged out onto the porch that bit warily, making sure there were no weevils around, but I guessed they’d done their work already. Mind you, only Thomas and me had implants—would they keep coming back ’til they finally got one in everyone? How would it work otherwise, some with, some not? Was there some provision for that?

  I couldn’t stop thinking about what Lena’d said: was I prepared to take the risk of bringing Nora Jagger here? If only Thomas hadn’t got an implant. If it’d been just me, yeah, it would’ve broken my heart, but I could’ve taken off on my own. As it was, knowing Lena as I did, I suspected it would be all three of us or no one at all.

  It’s truly amazing how light Hanna is on her feet. Admittedly I was lost in thought, staring blankly out at the mountains, but the first I knew that she was up and about was when she appeared at my side.

  “Jesus! You frightened the hell outta me,” I complained.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Can’t you sleep?”

  “Not really.”

  I paused for a moment, returning my gaze to the mountains. There was no point, nor need, for any pretense. We both knew how serious the situation was.

  “Clancy?” she whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t leave us, will you?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lena was up before me in the morning and already out on the porch feeding Thomas. To see them there, bathed in fresh sunshine, against a canvas of the forest and the mountains, I tell ya, it was as perfect a scene as you could hope for. The only spoiler was that our baby boy had an implant burrowing away somewhere inside him, and for that matter, so did I.

  I just prayed Jimmy would come up with something, though when I got over there, he didn’t look that confident. He spent forever going over my body with that scan of his, barely saying a word apart from the occasional muttered expletive. Several times he lost the implant altogether, only to find it somewhere else entirely, morphed into a totally different form. He got me to hold onto Thomas while he did the same thing to him. The little guy had one of his wriggly days on, trying to rock himself over and maybe attempt a little crawling or scooting along on his stomach. Whatever, I wouldn’t let him, and copped some pretty heavy-duty protesting while I held him down.

  Eventually Jimmy let him go, shaking his head and giving one of his long sighs. I mean, he ain’t exactly what you’d call a closed book, you always know pretty much what Jimmy’s thinking, and it was obvious he was no further forward.

  We never saw him again that day, not until night began to fall; it wasn’t until the third time of asking that Lile finally persuaded him to come in.

  Over dinner everyone did their best to pretend nothing was wrong, talking away about all manner of unrelated stuff, as if life was going on as normal, though we knew it couldn’t.

  “I been thinking,” I eventually said, knowing I couldn’t put it off any longer, “maybe it’d be best if I wasn’t here.”

  “What—! Why?” Lile cried.

  “Big Guy!” Jimmy chimed in. “Give me time, will ya?”

  I paused for a moment, waiting for Lena to say something, knowing the next move was hers.

  “We’d never forgive ourselves if we led Nora Jagger here,” she said.

  I couldn’t help but momentarily smile to myself: we’d actually skirted around that discussion, and I hadn’t wanted to assume, but like she often said: it’s always gonna be me and her.

  “Don’t you take any responsibility,” I told her. “It’s my fault.”

  “It’s no one’s fault,” Jimmy countered.

  “Clancy, you promised!” Hanna protested.

  The whole table fell to silence, no one knowing what else to say, and I couldn’t help but feel that part of that was down to the fact that they knew we had a point.

  “We could head off, see what happens, come back later,” I suggested.

  Gigi gave this slight shrug, like that made a kinda sense to her but she wasn’t sure how the others would take it.

  “We’re a family,” Delilah reminded us, in case anyone had forgotten. “You’re not going anywhere. Whatever’s coming our way, we face it together . . . Agreed?” she said, asking the others.

  They all nodded, though again Gigi had this look about her, as if she felt the discussion could be that bit more wide-ranging.

  “What if they can track the implants?” Lena persisted.


  “Give me a coupla days,” Jimmy said. “It can’t be that difficult.”

  “Maybe we don’t have a coupla days?” I told him.

  But it didn’t matter what we said, how valid our arguments, they wouldn’t entertain the possibility of us leaving, and Hanna repeatedly reminded me that I’d made a promise.

  “We’ll work it out,” were the last words Lile said as we went to retire. “My little genius,” she added, putting her long, sinewy arms around Jimmy and kissing him on his bald head, “he can do anything.”

  Lena and me filed through to our bedroom but neither of us made any attempt to undress. We lay on the bed, our arms around each other, both silently going over the situation in our heads.

  “What d’you think?” I eventually asked.

  She paused as if she didn’t want to say, but knew there was no other choice. “We have to go.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Me, too.”

  We waited ’til we were sure everyone was asleep before quietly packing what we thought was essential. Lena extracted Thomas from his drawer and tied his blue and white blanket into a papoose. She hadn’t been at all happy about it, but earlier had drunk a bit of hooch, not a lot, just enough that when she fed him she’d hopefully buy a little extra silence. The little guy did stir, but he almost immediately nodded off again. I got everything I could into my backpack, then snuck out into the kitchen and took a little food—just the absolute minimum; I didn’t think it was right to take any more. When I saw I had the tiniest space left in my backpack, I grabbed my copy of The Grapes of Wrath and jammed that in there, too. Like I said, in some ways it reminded me of our situation, and now, with us heading out across country, it felt like there was even more of an affinity.

  We didn’t dare risk going out the front door, not with Gordie sleeping on the sofa, instead, softly, and agonizingly slowly, slid up the sash and climbed outta the side window. I felt so damn guilty—we both did—sneaking away in the middle of the night, leaving them to fend for themselves. What sorta friends were we? Then again, what choice did we have? For all we knew, Nora Jagger could’ve been on her way that very moment, and if she was tracking us, what we were doing might well lead her away from them.

  “Where are we going?” Lena asked as we crossed the farmyard, at the last moment remembering the booby-trapped wire to the barn in front of her and veering around it.

  “I dunno. The Interior, I guess,” I replied. I thought it’d be the safer option.

  “Long way to anything,” she commented.

  I paused for a moment, thinking it through. “On foot,” I agreed.

  “What d’you mean?”

  I urged her to wait where she was and headed over to the barn.

  “Clancy!” she hissed after me, but by the time that I’d returned she’d obviously worked it out, ’cuz she showed not the slightest surprise when I wheeled the tandem toward her. “We can’t go on that,” she told me.

  “Put a lot more distance between us and them, and a damn sight quicker.”

  She didn’t take a great deal of convincing, especially as Thomas was starting to stir again, and within seconds the two of us had mounted up and were pedaling away down the track, fearing a cry of discovery like a pair of common thieves.

  “This feels so wrong,” Lena muttered.

  “I know,” I told her, “but it’s not.”

  Thank God it was a moonlit night and I could see where I was going. I glanced behind me, checking Lena and the baby were okay, despite the situation, smirking to myself. I mean, what kinda getaway was this, for chrissake? Our superheroes, laden down with baby and diaper-filled backpack, pedaling off into the night on the weird and wonderful Typhoon Tandem.

  I don’t know how far we went exactly—a good ten miles, I’d guess—but eventually we had to get off the road, head up into the hills and over to the Interior, and immediately things became that much more difficult.

  Jimmy had always claimed the tandem was an off-road vehicle, but he’d never actually tested it, and though we’d been cross-country a few times, it hadn’t been laden down with lotsa stuff, or pedaled up and down some fairly steep hills. The main problem was that the only gears he’d been able to find were very old, making this a basic four-speed, and with all the bits and pieces he’d used to reinforce the frame, it was such a weight. It really wasn’t up to the job. Particularly as we found ourselves having to get off and push more and more, and by sunrise all we’d managed was to get up one hill, freewheel down the other, and then start on the next one.

  Thomas woke up with the birds, immediately starting to cry, and we decided the time had come to stop and feed him—and maybe have a little something to keep us going, too.

  It was just as we were finishing off and packing our stuff back in the knapsack that I saw him, over to the side, a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty yards away, wandering outta the trees a bit like he wasn’t accustomed to daylight any more. At first I didn’t recognize him, partly ’cuz of the way he was dressed, the state he’d got himself into, but more his general bearing, the way he was holding himself. Before, he’d been this relaxed guy, easy-going, full of energy; now everything about his posture looked tortured.

  “What is it?” asked Lena, immediately sensing my reaction.

  “It’s Nick’s boy . . . George? You know, whose dog got combusted.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know. Looks a bit odd . . . George!” I called out. “George!”

  It was the weirdest thing: he might’ve been some way away but when he turned, even from that distance I saw an expression on his face that damn near stopped me dead. He was so white, so haunted—not so much the face of a ghost but of a corpse. For several achingly long seconds he just stood there, staring at us, then he appeared to panic and ran back into the trees.

  “Jesus!” I muttered.

  “What happened?” Lena asked.

  “I dunno. Maybe he didn’t recognize us.”

  “Has he gone?”

  I thought about jumping on the tandem and chasing after him, but there didn’t seem to be much point; by the time we’d got organized and gone down and up, he could’ve been anywhere. “Yeah,” I eventually replied.

  “Just him?”

  “Didn’t see anyone else. No sign of the family.”

  It was a mystery all right, but also a reminder that we might’ve been in the middle of nowhere but weren’t necessarily alone. A lot of people were out there for a whole variety of different reasons and I’d’ve been willing to bet there were plenty who’d probably been used for implant experiments—or as we used to call them, “crazies.”

  For the rest of the morning we had to make our way through forest that became so dense, not only did it slow our progress, we were repeatedly getting lost. Or maybe it’d be truer to say that, as navigator, I kept getting lost. Trouble was, the tandem really needed a path, and I kept taking these ones that’d presumably been made by animals, only to realize time and again that their priorities were rather different from ours. We weren’t looking for water, just a way out, and were constantly having to double back on ourselves.

  We weren’t giving too much thought to where we going, we just had some vague notion of “inland” and as far away as possible. After all, cruel irony though it might’ve been, the further we got from those we loved, the safer they would be.

  A couple of hours and several more hills later, this wall of daylight began to filter through the trees and we emerged out onto this huge open plain, most of it just scrub with the occasional lone tree, but mercifully flat, and the Typhoon Tandem soon came into its own again.

  For some time neither Lena or me had said a word and it was pretty obvious why: try as we might, we couldn’t shake off that burden of guilt. The gang would’ve discovered we’d gone by now. Jimmy’d be coming back from the barn, asking where I was, and Lile’d be saying that she thought I was with him and where the hell was Lena and Thomas anyway? They’d go into our bedroom and find it empt
y, and it wouldn’t take them long to work out what we’d done. The kids’d be coming in, Hanna shedding a tear or two, setting off Delilah . . . Oh shit!

  In a strange way it kinda helped, reminding us of who we were trying to protect, and our progress became even more determined. I was driving my old legs as hard as I could, ignoring my bitterly complaining muscles. Our only stops were determined by Thomas, and when he started up again midafternoon, throwing in a few tears for good measure, we headed for one of those solitary trees for a little rest and shelter.

  Lena fed and changed him, stowing the dirty diaper for when she had a chance to wash it, and that’d obviously been the problem ’cuz the little guy’s mood immediately changed and he began smiling and chuckling, waving his pudgy little hands and feet in the air, instantly cheering up his mother no end. Mind you, after a few moments it kinda rebounded on her; she caught her breath and turned away and I knew she’d been thinking about his implant.

  “Can you feel it?” she asked me.

  I turned to her, knowing immediately what she was talking about. “Nope.”

  “He’s been crying a lot.”

  “Hey,” I said, “that kid is to crying what a vampire is to blood.”

  “I hope Jimmy’s right,” she said, ignoring my feeble attempt at humor.

  “What?”

  “That it’s got to be keyed.”

  I just shrugged. What the hell did I know, other than what Doctor Simon had told me and what I feared to be true: that the Bitch was gonna use them to take over the world.

  “It’ll be all right,” I told her, damning myself for coming out with the same old weary platitudes, but having no idea what else I could say. “Promise.”

  I put my arm around her, Thomas still cooing and smiling away in her lap, obviously having no idea of the situation, and thank the Lord for that. “Come on.” I said, “let’s go.”

  There was this ribbon of hills in the distance and we decided to make it our target for the night, but the plain, which up to that point had been pretty smooth-going, started to throw up a few obstacles and we rode into areas so wet our tires began to disappear into the mire. We had to turn back and work our way around, rather than risk being swallowed up by the ground. Other times there were these huge areas of brambles, impenetrable fortifications that once again forced our retreat.