9781629270050-Text-for-ePub-rev (5 page)

The other half of the locket contained a curled lock of fair hair. It was her hair,
snipped when she was a teenager, held safely beneath the glass ever since. Peter had
often felt the urge to remove the glass and stroke the lock of hair, but had resisted,
afraid that it might disintegrate to dust under his caress.

“Sleep well, Megan,” Peter whispered, then clicked the locket shut. He concealed it
once more beneath his shirt in the thick mat of curly black hair that lay within.

He turned his thoughts back to the present; to what he should do next. They would
know that he had not fulfilled his part in the operation. At some point, he would
have to face consequences. He did not think those consequences would be severe; at
least, not fatal. All he was guilty of so far was a failure to act as he should. An
omission. He did not think they would even bother coming after him. Not yet, anyway.
They would be far too busy over the coming weeks and months to worry about one rotten
apple. Maybe he could use that to his advantage. . . .

Looking deeper within himself, he began to wonder: how far was he prepared to go?
He recognised that he was completely powerless to affect what was going on. The non-use
of that one shiny canister nestling in the suitcase under his bed would make not a
scrap of difference in the overall scheme. But later, when it was over, there might
be things he could do that would influence the eventual outcome. Yes, certainly things
he could do. The question was, what did he want the final outcome to be?

Despite being possessed of those alien emotions of empathy, of compassion, this was
a question that Peter was not yet capable of answering.

* * * * *

The buzzer next to the front door sounded, announcing visitors. Milandra stood by
it, already aware of the approach of the Deputies. She pressed the button that would
release the magnetic catch on the front door to the brownstone apartment building.

She waited for them to cross the lobby, call the elevator and ride up to the sixth
floor. As she sensed them approach, she unlocked the door and threw it wide.

Jason Grant strode in, grinned briefly in greeting and made for the kitchen. In his
brawny arms he clutched four brown, bulging bags, bearing them effortlessly as though
they contained popcorn.

Close behind Grant came the other Deputies: George Wallace, slighter than Grant, carrying
a grocery bag under each arm and a flight bag over his shoulder; Lavinia Cram, the
beauty of the group with her olive complexion, raven hair and smouldering eyes, also
carrying a grocery bag and flight bag; Simone Furlong—the Chosen—burdened with two
brown bags.

All three nodded at Milandra and headed wordlessly for the kitchen. Milandra closed
and locked the door, and followed them.

Nobody spoke as they unpacked the brown bags and loaded the refrigerators with fresh
produce: vegetables, fruit, dairy.

Grant broke the silence: “Wallace and I will head down to the markets at dawn and
load up with meat and fish.”

Milandra nodded. “Get what you can carry, but don’t sweat it. We’ve plenty of canned
stuff. Enough to last us months. We should only need it for weeks.”

Simone uttered a short, high-pitched titter. “Then there’ll be plenty of stuff just
. . . lying about the place.”

Milandra glanced at the Chosen. “Indeed.” Milandra pushed aside the slight unease
that Simone’s brief hilarity had stirred within her. “Anyway, to business. We must
Commune. Then we’ll eat.”

“One moment,” said Wallace.

He reached for the flight bag he’d brought, hefted it onto a granite work surface
and unzipped it. Lavinia did the same with the one she had carried in. An acrid smell
of oil filled the air.

Wallace reached into the bag and withdrew an object, wrapped in a greasy cloth. He
unwrapped the cloth to reveal a black, stubby weapon. He reached back into the bag
and withdrew a magazine that he clipped smoothly into the barrel of the weapon.

“Uzi,” he said. “There’s one each. Er, except for you, Milandra.”

Milandra grimaced and held her hands up to her chest, palms outward. “I don’t even
want to touch one. They make me nervous as hell.”

Lavinia reached into her bag and withdrew an automatic pistol. “One of these each,
too,” she said. “Walther PPK. Like that James Bond guy.”

This drew another titter from Simone. Milandra glanced sharply at Grant, who raised
his eyebrows as if to say, ‘Search me’.

“Good,” said Milandra, addressing Wallace and Lavinia. “But let us hope that we never
need to use them. Now, please, put them away.”

“But,” added Grant, “keep them close to hand.”

Wallace did not remove the clip from the gun, but checked that the safety was on before
stashing it back in the flight bag. Lavinia did the same with the pistol. They hefted
the bags once more and carried them to the front door, leaving them on the long, narrow
table that stood next to it. They left the bags unzipped.

Milandra’s apartment was much larger than her needs. She tended to occupy only a small
part of the living space. She had her armchair and television and computer desk all
in one corner where the best of the afternoon and evening sunlight could be enjoyed
through the picture window that overlooked the Park.

The larger, seldom-used portion of the living space was taken up by a six-seater oak
dining table and chairs; nearby two low-slung, Oxford-green leather sofas faced each
other over a smoked-glass coffee table. An armchair in the same leather was placed
at the head of the table, between the two sofas.

Milandra sat in the armchair, making the leather creak under her weight. On the sofa
to her right sat Grant and Lavinia; to her left, Wallace and Simone.

Lavinia glanced to the furthest side of the room where Milandra’s laptop still emitted
the occasional ping.

“Replies still coming?” she asked.

“Yep,” said Milandra. “They’ve slowed somewhat, but are still pretty steady as you
can hear.”

“So,” said Wallace. “It’s really happening.”

“Yes,” said Milandra. “But we still have to reach the others. The ones without internet
access.”

“How many?” This came from Grant.

“Two hundred and forty-three,” Milandra replied, without having to think about it.

Simone sighed. “Who doesn’t have access to the internet these days?”

Milandra looked at her closely. Simone wasn’t looking back at her; she didn’t appear
to be looking anywhere in particular, but gazed vacantly at a point somewhere above
Grant’s head, chewing on a strand of her shoulder-length, not-quite-ginger hair. To
Milandra, she resembled a slightly bored, slightly ditzy teenager. Again that sense
of unease that this time she found harder to ignore. She resisted the impulse to probe:
she needed all her mental energy for the task they were about to perform.

Grant answered the Chosen’s question. “Well, Simone, as I thought you knew, we have
people in countries whose governments block, or make difficult, access to the outside
world. Television, radio, the internet are state-controlled or disabled or made inaccessible.
Countries like North Korea and Venezuela to name but two. And many areas of the world
are too remote. We have people in the frozen wastes of Alaska, Canada, Siberia, both
Poles. In deserts in Africa, Asia, Australia. In the Himalayas, the Urals, the Amazonian
rainforest—”

“Why, Grant?” Simone interrupted.

“Huh?”

“Why do we have people in these far-out places?” Simone now regarded Grant, and Milandra,
despite the unnerving naivety of Simone’s question, was relieved to see that the Chosen’s
expression had lost some of its vacuity, had regained some vitality.

“Well. . . .” Grant kept his tone level, but Milandra sensed that he was struggling
to keep his patience. “It’s obvious why we need insiders in places like Korea. It’s
so isolationist that there would be no guarantee that our, um, little surprise would
ever reach it. And as for the remote regions, well, again, they are too out of the
way for us to reach them indirectly—the winds may not be strong enough or blowing
in the right direction; the
surprise
may prove too effective so that no carriers ever make it to those regions. And many
humans populate them, albeit sparsely. In aggregate, there may be too many to risk
them coming together and forming some sort of rebellion. So, our people will make
sure that can’t happen.”

“Provided they are told to act,” Milandra said. She leaned forward, making the leather
creak again, and rubbed her hands briskly together. “Enough talk. It is time to Commune.”
She glanced at each of them in turn. “Ready?”

They all nodded and closed their eyes. Milandra did the same . . . and probed.

Immediately she felt the power of the other four intellects and absorbed them into
her own, melding them, forming one whole considerably more potent than the sum of
its parts.

It was not necessary that she and the Deputies join hands or form a circle or recite
incantations or chalk symbols on the floor. All that was required was the joining
and the reaching out to two hundred and forty-three receptive minds dotted about the
world.

Milandra
reached
. . . then sagged back into the armchair, her ample bosom heaving beneath the housecoat
as she sucked in air.

The four Deputies leaned back in the sofas, also breathing hard. They remained that
way for a few minutes, considerably longer than the thirty seconds or so that the
Commune had lasted.

“Okay,” said Milandra when her breathing had grown more regular. “It is done. Now. . . .”
She smiled at her Deputies. “I’m ravenous. Let’s eat.”

Chapter Five

T
wo hundred and forty-three people, in some of the most isolated or desolate or inhospitable
regions of the world, abruptly stopped whatever it was they happened to be doing and
their faces became blank as if their minds had, without warning, momentarily left
them. Within seconds, though, awareness reappeared and they shook themselves like
men and women awaking from a peculiar dream. Those who happened to be in company met
the concerned or alarmed or curious looks of their companions with disarming smiles,
forced in some cases, and comments such as, “Sorry, just drifted off there for a moment.”

Two hundred and forty-three silvery metallic canisters were retrieved, either immediately
or at the first opportunity to do so unobserved, and opened.

The creamy powder, which had already been distributed through much of the densely-populated
areas of the planet, now began to be smeared on banisters, door knobs and so on and
so forth in cities like Pyongyang and Caracas, and in scientific and military outposts
in far-flung regions. The powder appeared, though barely discernibly, in the thin
air of mountainside villages and on oil rigs and in military island bases and other
remote communities.

Many of the two hundred and forty-three people in possession of the canisters also
held positions as research and field scientists or high-ranking military advisors
and personnel—army, air and navy—or civil servants or personal assistants. Background
positions that kept them out of the limelight, but that allowed them relative freedom
to move about in areas where such movements are closely monitored or restricted.

Some had become traders between or, if possessed of the necessary racial characteristics,
members of remote rainforest tribes or nomadic desert dwellers or the Inuit. Others
had infiltrated cults or religious communities that preferred to live in out-of-the-way
places with no modern conveniences.

No sizeable human settlements escaped the contents of the canisters. No humans that
came into contact with the powder, or with someone already infected, were unaffected
by it.

* * * * *

The gun-metal grey Mazda MX-5 Roadster eased in and out of the Saturday morning traffic
as it made its way around the suburbs of Sydney, describing an ever-widening semi-circle
centred on the harbour. Bishop had the soft top down, enjoying the sun on his face
and the breeze in his hair.

He stopped frequently, dipping his hand into the bag within the holdall on the passenger
seat next to him, getting out and wandering around as though to stretch his legs,
touching things.

Occasionally, as he drove through built-up areas, he’d dip his hand into the bag and
then raise his hand above the level of the windscreen, rubbing his fingers to dislodge
the Moondust and allow the wind to whip it away to settle he knew not where, but settle
it would. He laughed as he did this.

If he noticed pedestrians looking at his car, and it drew many admiring or envious
glances, he waved and grinned at them. One youth, slouching along in vest and cut-off
jeans, gave Bishop the finger. Bishop waved to him and laughed harder. On another
day, Bishop would have been tempted to screech to a halt and have a little ‘chat’
with the youth, but not today. Today nothing could shake his agreeable mood.

As the morning stretched on, he made for Palm Beach and stopped for lunch at the golf
club for what would probably be his last visit. He doubted he would receive an invitation
to renew his membership in January. He ate heartily of freshly-caught red snapper
and left an extremely generous tip, the dollar bills glistening slightly under their
thin coating of Moondust.

This was the furthest point north of his journey and now he headed south, driving
past the harbour and opera house for one last time, sprinkling a little more Moondust
as he went for luck. He took a quick detour to Bondi Beach where he smeared a little
powder to be collected by the fingers of the bodies-beautiful.

By late afternoon, he was satisfied that he had deposited sufficient Moondust to ensure
that nobody in the metropolitan area was likely to avoid encountering it, directly
or indirectly. He had stopped in half a dozen golf clubs—he was a member of many golf
and sailing clubs—for a brief drink, tipping well and leaving near-invisible, powdery
calling cards.

He left Sydney by the coastal road, driving south to Wollongong. There he took dinner
and a late evening stroll. A stroll that took in some of the town’s residential areas
and was accompanied by much touching of handrails and pedestrian buttons and benches
in parks and bus stops.

On his way back to the car, he approached three youths who were standing together
beneath a street lamp, smoking cigarettes. As he drew nearer, he noticed one of them
glance at him and nudge his companions. All three of them turned to face him, spread
across the pavement, blocking his way.

Bishop had changed from shorts to chinos to have dinner and wore a short-sleeved shirt
that he hadn’t tucked into the trousers. Thrust into the waistband of the chinos,
in the small of his back and hidden by the shirt tails, was the smooth-handled pistol.

His hand moved towards the pistol, then back to his side as he changed his mind. He
was walking through a residential area—he could hear people talking and laughing in
their gardens, enjoying the summer night air—and the sound of gunfire would bring
people running, he had no doubt. He did not want to risk being delayed.

He reached the youths and stopped a few yards away from them. The one standing in
the centre was shorter than his companions, less gangly, and sneered at Bishop, who
sensed immediately that this was the leader. Cow this one and the others would give
no trouble.

“Good evening, fellas,” said Bishop.

The leader took a step closer. “Got any spare cash, mate?” His tone was confident,
cocky. Bishop almost laughed.

“Yeah, plenty,” he said.

The leader’s eyes widened and he glanced at his companions, who seemed a little nonplussed.
He looked back at Bishop, narrowing his eyes like some gunfighter in a western film
trying to face down the sheriff.

Now Bishop did laugh. He doubted that this would improve the situation, but he couldn’t
help himself.

The youth took another step closer. Bishop could sense adrenaline coursing through
the boy. Bishop knew that he was backing the boy into a corner, forcing him to act
to save face in front of his friends.

He looked at the youth and probed. He sensed the barrier: an angry, scared barrier.
The boy was about to do something rash; his hands had curled into tight fists.

Bishop’s left hand had been in his pocket, fingers dipped in Moondust. Now he withdrew
it. He raised his hand to his mouth and blew. A puff of Moondust flew into the boy’s
face.

“What the– Oh man, what is that?” The youth flapped one hand in front of his face.
His other hand was no longer balled into a fist.

Bishop pushed with his mind, pressing against the barrier. The boy blinked. Bishop
pushed again, harder. The boy took half a step back, his gunfighter expression dissolving
in confusion.

It was Bishop’s turn to take a step forward. The leader stepped back again, rejoining
his friends who shared his look of bewilderment. Wordlessly, they retreated to the
hedge that bordered the pavement, leaving room for Bishop to continue on his way.

As he walked past them, Bishop grinned at the youths; the leader cringed.

“Evening, fellas.”

Bishop grinned all the way back to the Mazda. He gunned the engine, enjoying the feeling
of power.

He glanced down at the smooth-handled pistol, now settled once more within the open
holdall on the passenger seat. He was glad he had brought it with him—it was a comfort
to have by his side—though doubted that he would need to put it to its former use.
For many years, Bishop had been responsible for a trail of unexplained killings throughout
New South Wales and southern Queensland. The pistol had been the tool he employed
to carry out the killings—he considered them to be executions—in the majority of cases.
Now and again, for variety or if he needed to be quiet, he used his bare hands. He
knew how to break a man’s neck from behind, but preferred to strangle his victims.
That way, he could watch their expressions as they struggled vainly for breath.

The police must have connected the murders—the simplest of ballistic tests would confirm
that each shooting was carried out with the same weapon—but had never launched a public
man-hunt. The papers weren’t full of articles damning the police for failing to catch
a serial killer or lurid headlines making the killer out to be some sort of celebrity
with a suitably macabre nick-name. Maybe a team of detectives
was
working on the case, but Bishop doubted they were working too hard. Apart from the
ballistics, they would have very little else to go on. Bishop made sure he left no
DNA calling cards. If he employed strangulation as his extermination method, he would
first disable the victim’s hands so no fingernails could gouge his skin. Besides,
no DNA test on his tissue would give results that any human scientists would find
reliable.

And he was careful in his choice of victims: usually lone vagrants, druggies or alcoholics,
inhabiting the underbelly of Australia that the more affluent pretended didn’t exist.
And if nobody cared about the victims, they wouldn’t try too hard to catch the perpetrator.
Or so Bishop hoped and, so far, it had proved, at least judging from the lack of publicity
of the killings.

Now Bishop had discovered a new method of execution, one that wasn’t messy, posed
no risk to him and which the victims weren’t aware was happening, even as they breathed
in the deadly powder. Maybe not quite the thrill of watching the victims’ faces turning
blue or their brains spraying from their heads, but a different sort of satisfaction.
Yes, Bishop was satisfied. For now.

He grinned and gunned the engine again. He would now continue south along the coast
before heading inland for the capital. He meant to reach Canberra by the morning.

* * * * *

In Los Angeles, a young boy by the name of Jarod, who had spent a happy morning playing
with his mother in a local park, had developed a hacking cough and complained of a
sore throat. Mom, while sympathetic, was herself feeling a little under the weather.
Her throat felt as though it had been rubbed with powdered glass and her nose had
begun to drip. She was forced to constantly wipe it, and it had become red and swollen
like the nose of an alcoholic.

That afternoon, she and Jarod had unwittingly infected the waitress in the coffee
shop where they’d had lunch (who in turn that afternoon infected the short-order cook,
seven customers and her boyfriend), nineteen mothers and children in the Mothers and
Toddlers Club, Jarod’s grandparents who they called in to see on their way home and
three fellow bus passengers.

Meanwhile, Diane Heidler had left Beverly Hills and made her way through Century City
to Santa Monica. She was by now footsore and heartily fed up of walking. As she sat
in a beachfront coffee house, gratefully sipping a large latte with an extra shot
of espresso, she decided that it was time to mobilise.

Diane did not enjoy driving. It scared her. Particularly in the traffic-choked roads
of the city. But she still had a lot of ground to cover before she could leave L.A.
and driving herself would be quicker than using public transport. Besides, she would
need a car to reach Las Vegas. Although she had days and days before the contents
of the canister lost their potency, she had the feeling that staying in L.A. for longer
than necessary might turn out to be a bad move.

As she had worked her way through Hollywood and Beverly Hills, Diane had been aware
of the multitude of CCTV cameras mounted on nearly every street corner and civic building;
on many privately-owned buildings, too. Although she imagined it would be many days
before the authorities suspected that the disease had been spread deliberately, if
they suspected at all, it was inconceivable that nobody would think to check CCTV
footage or that she had not been captured on at least one camera reaching into her
bag then trailing her fingers along things, leaving powdery smears. Even though her
actions would not look suspicious to anybody watching her now, they would tell a very
different story if viewed in the wake of a deliberately-started plague. All the more
reason not to use public transport to travel to Vegas.

Diane finished her coffee. She touched the sugar bowl and ran her fingers along the
edge of the table before leaving.

The Pacific Ocean twinkled and sparkled in the late afternoon sun. Soon the sun would
dip into the ocean and Diane doubted that she’d easily find a vehicle rental store
that would still be open. But find one she would, even if it meant having to travel
out to the airport. Car hire was available there almost twenty-four hours a day.

Her mind made up, she walked off in search of a cab.

* * * * *

Tom slept badly Friday night. He dreamed of his mother. She was walking away from
him, towards a dark tunnel. No matter how his dream-self tried to catch up with her,
to pull her back from the darkness, he could not gain on her. At the last, before
she disappeared into blackness, before he awoke panting and perspiring, she looked
back at him. Tears rolled down her face and her eyes filled with reproach.

He lay in bed, feeling his skin prickle as the sweat dried. His duvet had been kicked
to the floor. He reached down to grab it and glanced at his bedside clock: 7:42.

Pulling the duvet over his cooling body, he turned to his side and closed his eyes,
but it was no good. He could not shake the image of his mother stepping into that
dark tunnel and he knew that he and sleep were done with each other for the night.

With a grumbling sigh, he got up.