Into the Fire Read online

  Now more and more mounds were rising up, their exits spitting out further silver monsters, all running at her with their pneumatic slurp-slurp. As she neared the fence, there was a whole pack waiting for her and I had no idea what she was gonna do, but she just ran at them full speed and leaped into the air, using their backs as springboards, bouncing from one to another, eluding their snapping jaws until she was finally able to jump onto the fence, scramble up it and slide through the gap, leaving them growling and snarling down below.

  She ran over and threw her arms around me, giving me a grateful hug.

  “You okay?” I asked, hugging her back.

  “Yeah,” she said, forcing a slightly nervous smile. “It was fun.”

  Just at that moment we heard these kinda howls of preprogrammed victory and celebration: the rabbit had been chased and caught and was being systematically torn to shreds, piece by piece, like they’d keep going ’til there was nothing left.

  Hanna looked a little sick, maybe ’cuz of what happened to the rabbit, maybe ’cuz it was a graphic demonstration of what might’ve happened to her.

  “That’s horrible,” she moaned.

  Jimmy’s voice suddenly crackled into life. “Big Guy, get out of there,” he said. “Somebody’s coming.”

  We didn’t worry about the cameras any more—I reckon they were computer-monitored anyway. We just ran, disappearing into the smoke and gathering darkness, ignoring the sirens coming from the direction of the main building, the sound of a Dragonfly’s engine starting up on the roof.

  When we got back to the crypt everyone was sitting around looking a little worried, even Gordie, though I reckon we’d’ve had to’ve dragged it out of him by his back teeth. Hanna made light of what had happened, answering almost every question simply, like it was an everyday thing to be chased by a pack of mechanical jaws on legs.

  “What the hell are those things?” I asked Jimmy, knowing he’d be the only one who might have a clue.

  “Growlers.”

  “What?”

  “Dogs of war, or a version of them. Thought they were only allowed on the battlefield. Officially they’ve never been used, but there were rumors. They were supposed to be a more humane, more convenient way to fight,” Jimmy said, with some irony. “Tearing your enemies apart, incurring no domestic casualties, made them politically popular. They’ll attack anything they’re told to; they’ll plant bombs, blow themselves up—they can even rebuild each other if they get damaged, work out how to divide their parts to keep the maximum number functioning, so instead of three four-legged growlers and a heap of nothing, you got four three-legged ones coming at you.”

  “Jeez,” I gasped.

  “Never thought I’d see them in civilian use.”

  Delilah gave this long, weary sigh, the kind she often gave out with since she’d lost Arturo, as if everything that had subsequently happened was merely confirmation of how bad this world had become. If the Infinity complex hadn’t looked unbreachable before, it sure did then. I’d been no use at all to Hanna earlier—by the time I’d’ve got my arthritic old bones over that fence she’d have been torn into bits no bigger than postage stamps. I thanked God she was young and strong and full of spirit . . . but me . . . I was a dinosaur, a washed-up old big guy. I didn’t even know what I was up against anymore. Dogs of war! What the hell next? In my day you fought people: you saw the whites of their eyes, even heard what they had to say; a lot of the time there was even a sort of respect. Now we got jaws on legs: Growlers. And yet I knew that if I was ever gonna see my Lena again, somehow I had to find a way of dealing with them.

  I don’t know if I got up in the morning or just didn’t go to sleep at night, but shortly after dawn I made my way up the steps as quietly as I could. I didn’t want the others to see me in the mood I was in. I’d been churning all sorts of stuff over all night and it hadn’t done me a helluva lot of good.

  There was a little bit of an early-morning mist mingling with the smoke and the light of the day was slowly seeping through both of them, creating this rather eerie and unreal world, like a no-man’s-land between this existence and the next. Maybe that was why I started to meander around the churchyard, reading the occasional gravestone, tributes to those on the other side.

  I don’t know when she did it—for sure she never said anything to me—but I came to this very plain, simple stone cross with no carved inscription, but someone had recently scratched something on it.

  Farewell the Mickey Mouse Kid

  —of where and when, I don’t know,

  but you’ll always live in my thoughts

  It was Delilah, of course, and I have to say, not only did it bring a tear to my eye, it also shamed me. This was no time for feeling sorry for myself: I had to get on with it, contribute in some way. Maybe I could go out and find some decent leftovers at an all-night diner, have breakfast ready for the others when they got up? I turned and started to make my way over to the street, filled with a sudden purpose, but then I stopped in my tracks.

  It was the graffiti. There was no new message, nothing cryptic for me to try to work my way through, but it was all perfectly clear now. Someone had added a word. One single word, but it changed everything.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LOVE IS BLIND, CLANCY

  Finally, I understood: all that time I’d been dismissing the messages, saying they couldn’t have anything to do with Lena’s blindness, and I was right. They didn’t. It had been blindness they were talking about.

  They’d been trying to tell me that I was missing something! That somewhere there was a two and a two that needed putting together, and I hadn’t identified them.

  Maybe it had something to do with the Island? The fact that—though I hated to say it—Lena’d had a “relationship” with the head Wastelord? He’d trusted her with a lot of his secrets, and everyone always reckoned there was Mainland involvement in what went on with them, shipping organs, all that, so maybe she knew something that could prove embarrassing to Infinity? Though what that might be I couldn’t begin to imagine. Or maybe it was what I said about Jimmy: they knew there was a connection and were determined to exploit it.

  I went back down to the crypt and got the little guy, dragging him over to take a look almost before he was awake, but he just confused me even more. “It’s an Islander, Big Guy,” he said dismissively, looking like he wanted to go back to his sleeping bag. “Gotta grudge. They’re messing with you.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Love is blind! You love a blind woman. They don’t know she can see now.”

  I stopped for a moment, staring at it, trying to see it from his point of view. “Nah . . .”

  “Come on! Who else would it be?”

  “Jimmy! It’s someone who knows where I am—they’re following me!”

  “Probably just walking by and happened to see you, or maybe they seen you around and know you live in the general area. It’s a coincidence.”

  I just stared at him, disappointed by his reaction.

  “Big Guy!” he groaned. “You know what some Islanders were like, they didn’t call that place the Village for nothing—it was full of idiots.”

  I got a little annoyed with him, without another word spinning around and heading off, going up to check out the Square. The message had been altered up there too, just as I’d expected, though this time they didn’t put my whole name, just my initial.

  LOVE IS BLIND, C

  Somebody knew something; it wasn’t just gossip, some Villager from the Island taking an unhealthy interest in my relationship. There was something they thought I should know—the only trouble was, they were hopelessly overestimating my intelligence.

  I hung around for a while, hoping to see someone I recognized, someone who might do such a thing, and came across another sprayed message. I must’ve missed it before, ’cuz again it looked like the “C” had been added later—so maybe Jimmy was right, they weren’t sure where I was? They just had a vague i
dea and putting the message opposite the church was a coincidence?

  The more I drifted around, the fewer ideas I got on who I was looking for. I mean, even after all these years, I still had a finely tuned survival instinct and I was sure I was followed at some point—though they were pretty good at it. It did briefly occur to me that maybe Ray was involved, that he was planning something, but if he’d found me, I reckoned he would’ve let me know.

  I moseyed around for the rest of the morning, never going too far from the Square, doing my best to make myself visible but actually using all the old tricks when you think you’re being followed: ducking into doorways and waiting, doubling back, all that stuff. I never saw a soul, and actually, began to worry I was letting my imagination run away with me. That kinda thing can drive you completely crazy. I remember several guys in the old days, promising young ones who might’ve been able to make something of themselves, but they blew it all ’cuz they became obsessed with the idea of being plotted against—they developed class one paranoia. They were forever looking over their shoulders, checking underneath their cars, accusing all kinds of people of all manner of things—and what made it worse: there was no chance of any kind of respite, they couldn’t possibly have a relationship ’cuz they didn’t trust anyone. One guy I knew, Donnie Davis, got so fixated on the notion that everyone was spying on him, he stopped going out altogether. In the end they found him backed up against the wall in a cupboard in his apartment. The place was wrecked and everything that might possibly have been used for spying on him—even his two cats—had been pulverized to nothing. He blew out the back of his own head, as if worried someone behind him was still watching.

  When I finally got back to the crypt, I was greeted by Jimmy with that look about him; the one where’s he’s about to astonish me with how clever he is, and, by implication, how stupid I am.

  “I know what happened to Lena,” he said. The others immediately turned from what they were doing.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I know how that doctor was able to get her through the gate scan.” Again he produced a homemade contraption that incorporated the screen, but this time as something even more elaborate. He’d been using that thing as a basis for all manner of stuff; taking it apart, rebuilding it, a bit like Lego, that old kids’ toy.

  “Know what this is?” he asked, well aware I didn’t.

  “Nope,” I replied.

  “It’s a kind of poor man’s spectroscope. It measures the properties of light emitted or absorbed by chemical elements.” He looked at me and saw my eyes had already started to glaze over but he was determined to have his moment of glory. “It worried me that even if the people on the gate lied to you, that doctor would still risk the limo being scanned in a spot-check. I thought he must’ve left Lena behind. Even that she might be . . .” He grunted and picked up the syringe I’d brought back. “There was just enough for me to analyze.”

  “You don’t say,” I muttered, though actually, shit to admit, I was pretty impressed yet again. Mind you, I wasn’t ready for what came next.

  “He poisoned her.”

  I just gaped and Delilah let out a gasp. “She’s dead?”

  “I never said that,” he said with a smirk.

  “Screw you, Jimmy,” I growled, not caring for the way he was going about this.

  “She might’ve died . . . but she’s not dead,” he told me. “Leastways, I don’t think so.”

  He paused for a moment, savoring the looks on our faces.

  “Okay. So what?” I asked impatiently.

  Again he held up the syringe. “It was developed for space travel. Very loosely based on a drug called tetrodotoxin—an emergency alternative to freezing, if you were really low on juice or something. With the right equipment, it can be surprisingly accurate. On a six-month journey, they reckon they can get you to wake up within a few hours of your allotted time.”

  “That’s what he gave her?”

  “It shuts everything down: there’d be no life signs to monitor.”

  I collected my thoughts. I mean, apart from the relief of having confirmed what I knew all along—that Lena was alive—I was slightly disappointed: it was another piece of the puzzle, but not, as far as I could see, one that advanced us in any way.

  “So she’s alive?” Gordie said.

  “If they went to those lengths,” Jimmy said, “yeah, I’d say so.”

  Gordie gave a loud sigh, almost a cry of relief, and I realized that he, like the others, had had his doubts.

  “’course she is!” I told him, touched by just how pleased he was. “Have you seen the graffiti?”

  “Big Guy!” Jimmy protested, plainly thinking we hadn’t spent anywhere enough time appreciating his discovery, but I was already on my way up the steps.

  “I want his opinion.”

  Despite still being deadly enemies, I took both Gordie and Hanna, the pair of them getting these expressions on their faces when they first saw the graffiti, the new additions, like they were more impressed than they thought they were gonna be.

  Part of the reason I took Hanna was ’cuz of that individual way she has of looking at things—but she applied herself in a much more practical fashion, stepping up to the graffiti and going along the letters one by one.

  “I’ve seen this ‘s’ before,” she said.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “People often have a signature letter. With this person it’s the ‘s.’ I seen it over on the Island. In the Camp.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes!”

  “Bullshit,” Gordie sneered. “It’s everywhere.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “All over! It’s real common.”

  “Not like that,” Hanna said, indicating the bottom curve.

  Gordie gave this highly contemptuous snort, as if he would laugh at her but she wasn’t worth the effort.

  I paused, not knowing who to believe, and eventually, without another word, Hanna just turned and walked back to the church as if she’d given her verdict and now it was up to me to decide who to believe.

  Gordie and me followed on behind. I glanced back at the graffiti a couple of times, still a long way from understanding. But if I really wanted to find out who was doing this, and what it was all about, there was only one way.

  I hid myself behind a bush not far from the churchyard gate so I could be across the street in a matter of moments. The fire, what little remained of it, was giving off just about enough light for me to see by. It was more or less the same wherever I went now: the fires had wreaked pretty much all the damage they could, and though there were still new ones erupting, I felt the end might well be in sight—not that that was any cause for celebration or optimism; more just the understanding that there was nothing left to burn.

  A little later Delilah came out to see me. She was seeking me out more and more; as if she felt there was an affinity, that we were both in the same boat, grieving for those we dearly loved and missed.

  “You’ll find her, Clancy. Don’t worry,” she told me, talking rather louder than I cared for, nor making any attempt to hide herself.

  “I know,” I replied, keeping my voice to not much more than a whisper, hoping she’d take the hint.

  “Thing is,” she continued, not dropping her volume one bit, “we so rarely savor life . . . spend a whole lifetime mourning its loss . . . I keep thinking about all those times I scolded Arturo, or was too tired for him—”

  “Delilah,” I interrupted, “I’m hoping to surprise someone here.”

  For a moment she did go quiet, but I knew it wouldn’t last for long. “How often do we take the time to think, ‘Today I’m happy, I appreciate this for what it is’? Instead we just cry when it’s gone.”

  “You got that right,” I agreed.

  “When you get her back, Clancy . . . savor the moments.”

  “Oh, I will,” I told her, absurdly grateful for the “when” as opposed to “if.”

/>   She started to cough, a real full-blooded hack that echoed all around the churchyard, the smoke getting to her single lung again.

  “Delilah! If anyone does come, you’re gonna frighten them off.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, punctuating almost every word with breathless splutters, “I know when I’m not wanted.”

  “Go and savor your man,” I joked.

  “Now there’s someone who does appreciate every minute—not with me, but with his goddamn junk. One day he’s gonna invent himself a beautiful robot lady and I’ll be shown the door.”

  “He wouldn’t dare.”

  “A real male fantasy; programmed never to complain, stand up for herself or need foreplay.”

  “Delilah!” I protested. Way too much information for my liking!

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re different, Clancy.”

  No way was I going to add to that discussion, and finally taking the hint, she shuffled off, sniggering away to herself, leaving me slightly puzzled as to what the real subject of the conversation had been.

  I sighed and settled back down. I’d brought my sleeping bag up, ready to stay there all night if had to—but as it turned out, it wasn’t necessary.

  Maybe an hour or so later the occasional individual or group were still passing but by and large, most people had found somewhere safe and battened down hatches for the night. I was just starting to think I should do the same, that our graffiti artist wasn’t coming, when suddenly a figure slipped out of the smoke on the opposite side of the street.

  What with my old eyes and the poor visibility I couldn’t make out if they were male or female. They were quite small, and it occurred to me that maybe it was a kid, which would’ve explained why they didn’t want any contact with an old person. They were dressed in a slightly bizarre fashion that gave them a kinda shapeless look. One thing was certain; I could forget any wild notions Hanna had put in my head. It wasn’t Lena.