In Constant Fear (28 page)

It sure was an odd situation. Normally you'd
prepare
for the arrival of an invading force—fortify your position, check your weapons—but with the satellite supposedly ready to punish any acts of violence, there was nothing to do but wait.

I was still feeling guilty that it was me who'd brought this upon everyone, me who was being hunted by Nora Jagger, but Sheila just shrugged it off like it was bound to have happened one day and we might as well get it over with. The one guy who
had
complained had moved into the forest somewhere and set up home with his partner, but in all honesty, that didn't make a lotta sense, not when no one knew how big an area the satellite covered, how much leeway you had before you were no longer afforded its protection.

Just to make life that bit more difficult, it started to rain heavily, and turned out, branches and broad leaves weren't much better than being out in the open. Everything was dripping, and most of it ended up going down your neck. Thomas started to get distinctly grizzly, crying for something but not knowing what, noisily rejecting everything that was offered. His mood soon infected Lena.

All of us were sitting in a long line with a damp grass bank at our backs, branches propped over us, peering out through the gaps, the
leaves getting more and more weighed down by rainwater. Hanna and Gordie were at one end, not cuddling or anything but in a tight huddle, occasionally giggling and whispering, not helping matters at all. Lile was draped across Jimmy, snoring away, though he was so engrossed in his thoughts she could've been a hibernating bear in his lap. At the other end, Doctor Simon was looking about as miserable as a human being can be, again inspecting his soft suede shoes, obviously appalled by their sad condition—though, actually, I had an idea it might've been more down to the turn of events. Bad enough he'd run away from Nora Jagger, but to be found with
us
? I couldn't help but wonder how he was gonna play it when she did arrive, what excuse he'd come up with. The others seemed to think he'd be damned by association, that by throwing in with us he'd lost all hope with her, but I wasn't so sure.

The final one of us, of course, was Nick—really, there are no words, not for a situation like that. We open our mouths and all those familiar old clichés and platitudes spill out like someone emptying the garbage. I'd tried talking with him a couple of times, taking a more—I dunno—
philosophical
approach, but no matter what I said, not one word of it felt right. The only woman he'd ever loved, the only woman he'd ever made love to, who'd been his closest companion even after losing the ability to maintain a conversation was no more. How can you look at
that
philosophically? That's a gut thing, deep down inside, where you know you only exist to fuel a haunted lonely pain and everything else has gone.

In the end I got so fed up sitting there getting that wet it didn't matter if we were inside or out, that I went out for a walk. Everywhere was sodden and running, with not a sound apart from the muffled, continuous drumming of the rain. All the animals had apparently taken shelter in the forest, while the occasional bird was hunched up in a tree, waterlogged and forlorn, as if they'd never ever fly again.

Oddly enough, it was that that started me thinking: how would this weather affect the Shadow-Maker? Could it still fly? 'Cuz if it
was
going about its usual business spying on people, then with visibility reduced, surely it would need to fly at a much lower altitude?

I thought it over for a while and then headed back to the shelter. Gordie and Hanna had also gone out somewhere, the Doc was making polite conversation with Lena about Thomas's crying and Delilah was stretched out on her own 'cuz her old man was busy sorting through his junk.

“I was just thinking—” I started to say, but he held his hand up.

“Busy, Big Guy,” he told me.

“Maybe we should go up the hill?” I persisted.

“You wanna catch your death, that's up to you,” he said.

“With this weather, if that thing's flying, wouldn't it have to get lower?” I asked. “Maybe we could see it.”

He stared at me for a moment as if I was being real irritating and he was a saint for not mentioning it, then a frown suddenly opened up on his face. “Yeah, well . . . guess we could take a look,” he said, the hurried way he got up and put on his old plastic poncho at odds with his casual voice.

As we made our way through the Commune, Sheila called out to us from her shelter, asking where we were going, and when we told her, invited herself along.

Little rivulets of water were dancing down the hill, turning everything muddy and slippery, but we still made it up there surprisingly quickly. Mind you, when we reached the top and got out in the open, the rain bombarding the ground with such force it was bouncing back up again, I wondered if it'd been such a good idea. There was no shelter at all; we had to stand there getting wetter and wetter, our conversation slowly becoming waterlogged and wasted.

“Maybe it's too wet for it,” Sheila eventually suggested, but neither Jimmy or me felt the urge to comment.

We must've stayed there for an hour or more, behaving a bit like animals in a field, knowing there was nothing to do but wait for the rain to stop and the wind to dry us. It was probably the fact that I was feeling so soaked and miserable that at first I didn't notice Shelia go on alert, that she was standing absolutely still, gazing up into the leaden sky. “What's that?” she muttered.

I kinda inclined my head in the same direction as hers, wishing my old ears worked better, but yeah, now that I was concentrating, I could hear something—I couldn't tell you exactly what, just a kinda slight
disturbance
.

Jimmy lowered the hood of his poncho so he could hear better. “It's coming this way,” he said, glancing at me.

It approached so slowly, with such a sense of stealth, of creeping up on us, a coupla times I thought it had stopped. It was more like a hum than a hiss, a soft drumming, getting closer and closer until it was almost right overhead.

“Where the hell is it?” Jimmy cried, staring up, his mouth wide open.

“I told ya!” I said. “It's
invisible!
”

He just stood there shaking his head, his soaked old ponytail looking a bit like a slug crawling up the back of his neck. All three of us were holding our hands to our brows, shielding our eyes from the ceaseless rain. You could
hear
it, you could
feel
it—dammit, it was
right over us
—but there was nothing there.

“It's invisible!” I repeated, but suddenly Sheila pointed at something.

“
There!
” she cried.

At first I thought her imagination was just trying to please, that it was no more than a thickening of low cloud, but finally I did see something: a dark outline moving slowly along the line of the hill, a ghost ship piloting the mists of the River Styx. It was the underneath you could make out, the bit that was darkest, as if there was shadow even if there wasn't light.

“Get down!” Sheila called as it seemed on the point of stopping, and all three of us threw ourselves to the ground, sliding on our stomachs over to some long grass, surprised we could get any wetter than we already were.

For some time it just hovered there, a dull, overbearing shadow, as if stretching out its technological tentacles and exploring all its suspicions, probing and prying, then slowly it began to move on and that soft humming noise faded into the general sound of rain.

The three of us tentatively got to our feet. “What the hell was that?” I asked, still staring after it.

“The thing that's been spying on us,” Sheila said, all too obviously.

“But was it a drone, or what?”

No one answered, all of us still listening intently, mindful that it might return. There was no doubt in my mind now: whatever that thing was, it would eventually take away my identity, my free thought and will; it was what had keyed Miriam and disposed of Gigi.

“We gotta bring it down,” Jimmy said, as if we had no other choice.

I turned to him, wondering if rainwater had seeped into his head somehow. That was the one and only occasion we'd caught the slightest glimpse of it, and even if we did have a weapon that could do it harm, the satellite would punish us for using it.

“It's only a matter of time if we don't,” he said.

We all fell silent, overwhelmed not only by what we'd seen, but also by what he'd just said. I mean, he was right: we had to bring it down, or at least try, but how could
we
—an unarmed band of rag-tag nomads—bring down something like that?

The mood hadn't been that great in the shelter when we'd left, but it was a damn sight worse when we returned and told them our news.

“You
saw
it?” Lena cried.

“Kinda,” I replied. “Just a shadow. You couldn't really make out a shape.”

“But it was there,” Jimmy said thoughtfully. “In theory it should've been harder to spot on a day like today.”

“Rain bouncing off it maybe?” I suggested.

“That was the drumming sound,” Sheila agreed.

“Jesus,” Jimmy sighed, like he didn't even know where to begin thinking about what he had to come up with. “Not cool. Not one tiny bit cool.”

Gordie stared at us, then made this face at Hanna. “We're screwed,” he whispered, but she pushed him away.

“If it has a shadow, it's
not
invisible,” Jimmy stated, as if he was lecturing himself.

“Maybe it's got holes in it?” Delilah suggested. “Like that Swiss cheese.”

Jimmy didn't so much as acknowledge her existence, let alone what she said. “Could be something new, I guess—something I don't know about.”

“We can't shoot it down,” Gordie said, for those who'd missed the obvious, “even if we had something to shoot it down with,”

“Not to mention the fact that we can't see it,” Sheila told him, plainly a little irritated by his attitude.

“Gordie,” Hanna muttered.

“Don't you know anything?” I asked the Doc, turning to find him white-faced with worry, the evidence of Nora Jagger's growing proximity plainly frightening the hell outta him.

“No, I told you: no one knows the full story of
anything
anymore.”

I picked up Jimmy's flashlight and sat there shining it down from my outstretched hand, placing my fist between it and the ground, wondering what the hell could it possibly be made of that we couldn't see it, but it created a shadow?

“Maybe it's glass,” I suggested.

Jimmy gave me an impatient look. “A plane or drone made of
glass
?”

“A kinda glass. I dunno—mirrors maybe?” I added, trying to save my position.

“Yeah. Thanks, Big Guy. I'll bear that in mind.”

“Told ya,” Gordie whispered to Hanna, this time being ignored.

“I have to go,” the Doc said, suddenly leaping up, still clutching his case to his chest.

“You reckon?” Lile said, grabbing his arm.

There was a momentary stand-off, all his old survival instincts against Lile's insistence that he was going nowhere, then Nick, who up to that point hadn't said a word or participated in any way, plainly decided he'd had enough. He jumped up and grabbed the Doc by the shoulders, forcing him back down, giving him a glare that told him that was where he was gonna stay.

“Maybe . . .” Jimmy said, still lost his thoughts, “maybe we don't have to shoot it down.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Maybe I can hack into it, bring it down that way. The satellite's not gonna punish me for that . . .”

“You hope,” Lile commented.

Jimmy thought about it for a while, then suddenly stopped. “Only problem is, I don't have a big enough battery . . . Maybe enough to get me through their security and into the onboard, but I'd have to know exactly where it was in the first place.”

“Must be some way,” I said.

“Not without using power.”

I grunted, trying to think of a solution, and everyone else was too.

“I could do it,” Lena suddenly announced.

I turned to her: Jesus, she was right. If anyone could pinpoint precisely where that thing was, she could.

I looked at Jimmy, wondering what he'd say, but he was already dragging out his stuff and laying it out around him, working out what he was gonna do. “Okay, everyone leave,” he said.

“It's raining!” Gordie protested.

“Tough. I got work to do,” he told us.

There was a general chorus of disapproval that was only quieted by Sheila offering everyone shelter at her place, though she warned us it'd be a squeeze.

“It's okay, I'll stay here,” I volunteered, thinking I could help.

Jimmy turned to me like I was being presumptuous beyond belief. “No. Not cool, Big Guy.”

“I won't say anything.”

But ya know what, damned if he didn't grab me by the arm and steer me toward the exit. “Out,” he ordered, and I knew that it might not be much more than a few branches and a layer of leaves, but it'd been commandeered as Jimmy's latest workshop and there was only one boss there.

The bad weather continued for the rest of that day and well into the night, and in a way we were all grateful for it. We had no idea if the Bodyguard had any special problems with heavy rain but assumed they were no more inclined to venture out in it than we were, which hopefully meant they'd been unable to make any more progress in our direction. Nevertheless, I was up at dawn to a day as clear as crystal, concerned enough to make my way up the hill and check.

I kinda half-circled the Commune one way, then doubled back and did the same in the other direction. There was no sign of anyone but it still didn't put my mind at rest. I started to look that bit further out, going over a valley or two, half-wishing (at least when I was on the flat) I'd brought the tandem with me. I wanted to know exactly where they were, how close to us, but I couldn't find them anywhere. Mind you, several armies could've easily gone missing in that forest.

A little after midday I headed back, relieved there was no immediate sign of Nora Jagger but still laden down with any number of concerns. My major one—or certainly well up on the list—was exactly how well that satellite was functioning. I knew it wasn't a
hundred percent, but was it eighty, sixty, twenty percent efficient, maybe? Did it have a full working program of offenses and appropriate punishments, or was it gonna fry someone for picking a flower? Give a mass-murderer a quick laser internal massage?

If only I could've tested it, found some way of provoking it into action and seen how well it responded. It even went through my head to commit a minor indiscretion—give Jimmy a whack or run off with the Doc's case or something—but just as it might prove wanting, it might also prove terminally heavy-handed.

When I got back to the Commune I was amazed to find Jimmy preparing to head up the hill with Lena, that he'd already made up something to use against the Shadow-Maker. Turned out he'd brought some things with him for communicating with the satellite, that he'd used when he brought them all down—well, all bar
one
—which'd given him a bit of a flying start.

I found him talking to Sheila, getting her opinion on the best place to bring that thing down so it was clear of the Commune and wouldn't give away our position.

I could tell by the way he was going over it with her that he was pretty confident about what he'd come up with. He did start to explain it to me, but try as I might, my eyes glazed over and he gave up. In any case, we didn't have the time. If that thing really was the Bitch's eyes and key, the sooner we got rid of it, the better.

Jimmy, Lena, Gordie and Hanna, Sheila and me made our way through the Commune, ignoring the looks of the other villagers, acting all casual, though several of them took more than a passing interest in the signal-booster I was carrying. A couple did ask what was going on, if Nora Jagger was coming, but we just brushed them aside, as if we didn't know any more than they did.

Isobel chased after us, shouting at the top of her voice if she could come along, and when we said no, offered to take care of the baby instead. I told her Lile, Nick and the Doc had it covered, but she wasn't gonna put off so easily.

“Can't I go and see him?” she begged, her face filled with all its usual earnest emotion.

“Sure,” I said, knowing Lile wouldn't thank me for it, “but don't stay too long.”

She turned and ran back in the direction of the shelter as fast as she could go, laughing and shrieking, in every way an oversized child.

Sheila led us up over the hill, along this gully and then started to climb what appeared to be one of the highest points in the area. It took us half an hour or more and most of us older ones were really puffing as we neared the top. Jimmy stopped, staring up at the sky, a few clouds beginning to return with the cooling afternoon.

“Let's hope it's around,” he said, looking from horizon to horizon as if he still thought he should be able to see it.

“Let's hope you know what you're doing,” I heard Gordie mutter. His new habit of trying to impress Hanna with smartass asides was something I was gonna have a quiet word with him about.

Mind you, on this occasion, he did have a point: it wasn't gonna be so much a shot in the dark as a shot in the dark with your eyes closed after being spun around a dozen times. Jimmy was gonna attempt to hack into the computer of something he couldn't see or hear and knew nothing about apart from the briefest glimpse of its shadow. Maybe it had antihacking protection and the moment it felt his intrusion it would blast him to kingdom come? Super-resourceful he might be, but like I said, with this thing, he just might've been out of his depth.

The little guy started to lead Lena and me up to some exposed rocks at the very top of the hill, waving the others away. “Principals only,” he told them.

“You're gonna leave me with these two?” Sheila protested, plainly concerned she was gonna end up being a fifth wheel.

Jimmy ignored her; he was in his element, setting up, what was for him, a slightly more professional-looking piece of equipment than usual: no wires hanging off, no insulating tape holding it all together. What I could make of it, mostly it was just a standard computer, signal-booster and battery, and again I had this feeling of being part of a group of Stone Age people about to throw rocks at the Modern World.

He turned it on, spent a few moments fiddling with it—I guessed setting it up and linking in the signal-booster—then put both in sleep mode, obviously still anxious about how much battery he had.

“It's up to you now, Lena,” he told her.

“There's nothing,” she replied immediately.

“Oh . . . okay.”

We crouched down behind some rocks, making ourselves as comfortable as we could, knowing we might be in for a long wait, but it wasn't long before Gordie ventured up from below to complain that he didn't know why he'd bothered to come along if this was all we had in mind for him. Hanna soon followed, grabbing him and leading him away, I suspected 'cuz Sheila had said something.

It's funny how people often adopt roles in relationships that are completely at odds to their normal ones. The longer those two were together, the more he was inclined to show off, the more she was inclined—not to mother him, as such, but to maybe give him a sense of balance. Worse still, at least as far as I was concerned, their relationship had become all-encompassing, the way love, particularly
young
love, often does: they were spending all their free time with each other and no longer attending to other friendships as much as they should've. I know it's the way of the world, 'course it is, but I really missed them both as individuals.

The night started to slowly mass in the far distance, as if someone had dropped a little concentrated color just over the horizon. Down below I could see the others getting that bit restless, I guessed wondering how long were we going to stay.

“Nothing?” I asked Lena for maybe the seventh or eighth time.

“Thought there was something earlier, but . . .” She shook her head.

“D'you wanna call it a day?”

Jimmy glanced across, maybe hoping she'd say yes, but she didn't. “Clancy, what if I go back to the camp to sleep now and this thing keys you in the night?”

“It won't, not from what the Doc said.”

“You can't be sure. Not a hundred percent.”

She was right, of course—she usually was. I just wished we could get it over with, that whatever
was
gonna happen finally would.

“In that case, I might slip behind a bush,” Jimmy told us, working his way around to the other side of the rocks. “Damned weak bladder . . .”

“This is crazy,” I muttered to Lena the moment he'd gone. “We don't know anything about this thing—it might be days before it comes this way again.”

“We've got to try,” she told me. “That's what we've always done.”

She was right about that too: that
was
what we always did—we
tried
—and that was how we'd managed to prevail in spite of impossible odds so many times.

I was about to put my arms around her and steal a kiss, when I saw the expression on her face suddenly change. “Jimmy!” she cried out. “
Jimmy!
”

He came stumbling back, doing up his pants as he ran, grabbing his gear, getting in a bit of a tangle. “Where?” he said, powering up.

She pointed back down the valley in the direction we'd come, looking far more scared than I'd expected.

Jimmy directed the booster to where she was indicating, trying to pick something up but plainly without success. “Nothing,” he told her.

“It's there.”

He started punching keys and swiping the screen, a look of desperation stamped on his face.

“You sure?” I asked Lena.

“Yes!”

“How far?” he asked, now sweeping his booster from side to side.

“I don't know. A quarter of a mile or so—no, less. Moving really slowly, coming up the valley.”

“Shit!
Shit!
Not cool,” Jimmy whined.

“Don't forget we want to bring it down on the plain,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, thanks, Big Guy,” he snapped. “Just what I need.”

I knew better than to say any more, that it was best to stand back and let him do his job, but he was as flustered as I'd ever seen him. “Where the hell is it?” he cried.

I couldn't see or hear a thing, but it was obvious from Lena's reaction she could, that she'd conjured up something in her mind.

“Jimmy!” she pleaded, whatever it was obviously now closing in on us.

“Okay . . . okay,” he finally announced. “I got something.”

My senses still weren't giving me anything, but they didn't need to, not with the expressions on Lena's face—the growing sense of fear, the way her color was fading to nothing, was as good as any screen. Yet at that moment I did see something moving across the tree-tops below us: a big black shadow sucking up everything before it.

“
Jimmy!
” Lena cried again, but the little guy obviously wasn't finding it as easy to break into as he'd expected.

“I don't get it,” he wailed. “I just don't get it!”

All I could do was to stay where I was, studying Lena's terrified expression, occasionally looking in the direction she was facing, feeling that huge shadow getting ever closer—but in the sky above us there was still nothing.

“Got it!” Jimmy cried, his program finally locking on and hopefully doing what it was supposed to.

There were several silent seconds that weighed on us like eternity as we all stared up into an empty sky, not knowing what to expect, then I got biggest shock of my life. I just stood there, my mouth falling ever wider, the hairs on the back of my neck vibrating like the strikers on alarm bells. Suddenly I
could
see something: the smallest piece of fuselage floating across the sky toward us like a blown piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Then another piece appeared, a part of a wing maybe, moving in tandem with the piece of fuselage. Then another, and another, as this image slowly took shape as if pixels were coming to life in the sky.

I had no idea what was going on, but could only guess that somehow Jimmy's program was shutting the thing's camouflage system
down, and as it did so it was materializing before us bit by bit. A piece of the tail appeared, then this large tube—maybe part of the engine, for diverting the thrust, hence how maneuverable it was—or p'raps some kinda silencer? If it was a drone, it wasn't like any I'd ever seen—it was much bigger than I'd expected, the size of a small plane, and looking like a cross between a huge black egg-box and a giant flying insect, all strange angles and bulging eyes.

“Jesus!” I gasped. I mean, that thing was
evil
. Thank the Lord we
hadn't
been able to see it passing over us.

Jimmy was utterly absorbed, not working his computer anymore but watching this big black specter slowly coming to life before us. It was almost overhead, still moving incredibly slowly, yet suddenly it shook like it'd had a convulsion, as if it was trying to keep going but knew it couldn't. Then the nose dipped and it started to head in the general direction of the plain, going down with every second.

“
Die, you fucker!
” Jimmy screamed, jumping up and down, his ponytail bobbing with him, while I explained to Lena what was going on. “
Die!
”

However, at that precise moment the craft suddenly tilted and rolled, veering to the right, and then went into this long sweep heading back toward us.

“Oh, shit!” I groaned.

“What's happening?” Lena asked.

“It's coming this way.”

“
What?
”

It went through my head that it had some kinda failsafe system—its way of destroying those who tried to destroy it—so precise was its course. As it arrowed toward us, Jimmy threw himself behind the rocks and I grabbed Lena and did the same.

It was so low it actually scraped something as it went over—a tree, I think. The others came running up the hill to check we were all right, but even before they'd reached us it'd disappeared over the next ridge.

We all stood there in silence but there was no explosion, no sudden spout of black smoke or fire, just a distant crunch, and then a loud impact.

Jimmy never said a word, just took off down the slope as fast as he could, the rest of us following along behind, me taking Lena's hand.

We went down to the bottom, then up the other side, climbing up to the ridgeline then making our way along, all the time scanning the forest, trying to see where the drone had gone down, though the fading light was making it much more difficult.

“What the hell happened back there?” I asked Jimmy. “How come it appeared like that?”

“That's what I intend to find out,” he said, his old turtle-neck wrinkling from side to side as he scoured left and right. “Gotta pretty good idea though.”