The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (17 page)

Grudgingly Marco returned his attention to the tracks. Far ahead, the heated desert seemed to warp the rails and melt them into shimmering air. Beyond the window to his left lay miles of rippled sand dunes; saguaro cactus towered taller than telephone poles, ending where the horizon erupted into the Gila Mountains, a row of rough summits.

They’d passed through the Gila Bend station about an hour ago. Marco had eyed the concrete platform with distrust, but to his relief nothing crawled from the overhang
to intercept them, and the Jeep rolled through without incident.

‘Probably close to Yuma,’ he guessed now.

He’d already reviewed the intended route with Wu, popping open the glove compartment a few miles past Maricopa to tug out a collection of railway maps. He’d handed Wu the thick rubber-banded stack and tapped a creased yellow brochure on top.

SUNSET LIMITED
, it read. This was the Amtrak line running westward into Yuma, then across the Arizona border and up through California. Marco had shown Wu where they’d ditch the tracks just past San Bernardino, then back-road the remaining miles to Sarsgard.

Wu had given the map a cursory scan. ‘Agreed,’ was his only comment, spoken in a tone that suggested he would have chosen differently if he’d been consulted sooner. He returned the stack to the glove compartment and snapped the latch shut.

They drove on, mostly in silence. Marco wasn’t yet sure what to make of Wu. The sergeant hadn’t said much since leaving Maricopa, busying himself instead with returning Marco’s spilled gear to its proper storage. ‘Your weapon,’ he’d observed once chidingly, then reached down between the seats to retrieve the lost Glock; he’d hung the gun in its holster on the neckrest behind Marco. For miles afterwards he’d stared forward through the windshield, as if in a trance–back straight, hands on his knees, inhaling deeply through rounded nostrils. On the backseat rested his Army daypack, beaten and brown with a single shoulder sling. Strapped to the side were two scary-looking knives, curled like half-circles with the handle in the centre.

‘Cool knives,’ Marco offered. ‘I’m guessing those aren’t standard Army issue.’

‘I brought my own,’ the sergeant said without looking.
‘Out here, we’re allowed to embellish.’ His lips pressed tight together, signalling lack of interest in the conversation.

‘Well, I like ’em. Maybe for my birthday I’ll get me a pair.’ Marco stole a sideways glance. On Wu’s left cheek a shiny bruise had blossomed, glazing the skin from his jawbone to his ear. Evident in the middle were white knucklemarks.

He’d been punched recently. Hard.

Marco frowned.
Punched by who?
Wu hadn’t mentioned it. Only his struggle with the dead man, Baines.
Guess Baines gave him a good whack?

Again a thought stirred in Marco’s head that Wu wasn’t telling him everything.

Crap.
He hated to admit it, but Wu made him uneasy, a discomfort that went beyond the natural awkwardness between a soldier and a civilian. Sitting there in silence, Wu gave the eerie impression of a jack-in-the-box, placid and uneventful, baiting you to turn the handle–nothing happens, except you feel a little more tension, and then you keep turning and turning, until…

Marco sighed, loosened his grip on the steering wheel.

Fine, fuck him then
, Marco thought.

And fuck Osbourne, too, that New Republican asshole. Whatever was on the secret agenda of these two dickheads, all that mattered to Marco was returning Roger, then getting the hell home. Alive. With all his body parts still attached.
So let Wu think I’m incompetent, or a jerk, or a hindrance to the mission. Or all of the above. Don’t matter to me.

Marco knew better.
Give it a day, and I’ll be the one saving his ass.

He noticed Wu watching him with interest. Quickly he erased the scowl that had crept onto his lips.
Poker face, Henry
, he thought. ‘Definitely close to Yuma now,’ he said, conscious of the flush in his throat, and pointed off to the
right, eager to draw Wu’s green eyes off him. ‘Those mountains there are the Harcuvars. Fortuna Foothills is right under. Nice place to live.’

‘Not at present,’ Wu observed.

Marco ignored him, contemplating the dry brown peaks instead. A memory popped into his head, surprising him. ‘First time I ever saw Arizona,’ he said, ‘these mountains made me think of that old Hemingway story. The title. ‘Hills Like White Elephants’. Except here the hills are like big golden cats. See what I mean? Cats, crouched down with giant muscular shoulders, like they’re ready to pounce. And we’re just squeaky little rodents.’

Nostalgia tugged at him, and he remembered more. ‘We nearly bought a house here. In Fortuna.’ For a moment he actually lost track of himself, forgot why he was here now, forgot that it was Wu sitting next to him. He felt good, just talking–not about corpses, not about contracts–just shootin’ the shit. He almost laughed when he realised he was making small talk.

‘So where are you from?’ he asked Wu. ‘Before all this, I mean.’

Wu’s gaze seemed to scale the Harcuvars, disappear into the mountains. The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘Far,’ he said with a hint of regret. He paused. ‘Boston.’

‘Miss it?’

The sergeant’s expression went cold again. ‘No.’

Marco sniffed. ‘Jeez, sorry. Didn’t mean to get personal.’ He let a few awkward seconds pass, then tried again, not ready to let go of his remembrance. ‘Anyway, Arizona takes some getting used to, but it’s beautiful in its own brown, rocky way. I guess out here you really feel like you’re someplace… different, I don’t know, than wherever you came from. Which can be a good thing. We ended up picking a house over in the Gold Canyon. Man, what a view, not like LA at
all. The Superstition Mountains were practically our backyard.’

Ironic
, Danielle had said.
You living here–the least superstitious man I’ve ever met.

Wu answered only with a dismissive nod. His focus had settled again on Marco.

‘Tell me,’ he said, his voice serious, all business, ‘about Roger Ballard.’

Marco’s neck knotted tighter. Small talk was officially over.

The question about Roger had slapped Marco out of his reverie, kicked him back to the present. Danielle was gone again. The Jeep crunched through a patch of spiny ocotillo plants, and he tugged the wheel back onto the tracks. Wu eyed him expectantly.

‘Roger?’ Marco said, clearing his head. ‘Oh.’

The resentment he’d felt minutes earlier returned in force. He didn’t feel like discussing Roger.
Screw it
, he thought.
Wu and Osbourne are keeping secrets. Why can’t I?

‘Go ask your boss,’ he answered. ‘Osbourne knows everything.’

Wu considered this. ‘I see you’re reluctant to share. But the answer could be useful.’

Useful.
Osbourne had chosen the same word yesterday to describe Marco. Again Marco rankled at the idea–himself a tool in another person’s hands. Doing their work.

Wu seemed to read his thoughts. ‘I hope you realise I’m in the same position as you, Doctor. I’m NCO–non-commissioned officer, meaning I have no top-level intelligence. If you think I know all the tricks of this mission, I don’t. I’m just a bullet fired from a gun, same as you.
We don’t decide the direction or the target, or know why the trigger was pulled. We just go and hit something. Personally, I’d prefer to know more about what we’re hitting. About Ballard.’

Wu stopped. Bumps of sweat dappled his forehead. He wiped them away with the back of his hand, then fanned his fingers before the air-conditioning vent. ‘From what I can tell, Doctor, we both feel saddled with an unnecessary partner. But I think we underestimate each other. I do know that Uncle Owen considered you a highly skilled individual.’

Marco blinked. ‘Uncle…?’

‘Director Osbourne,’ Wu clarified. ‘No relation to me. “Uncle Owen” is simply Osbourne’s nickname in the media. You don’t follow the news?’

‘I’ve been a little out of touch lately. So why “Uncle?” ’

‘A reference to Uncle Sam, I suppose. The face of American bravado. A patriotic icon protecting the nation’s interests.’

Marco laughed, a sharp bark. The Jeep rattled over a gap where four or five rail ties had torn loose from the tracks. ‘Yeah, perfect. That ugly piranha on a poster.
I want you
.’

He grinned but was surprised to find Wu stone-faced next to him. He’d sensed a bit of fun in the banter, as if perhaps the sergeant were finally warming up–but clearly not. The sergeant’s frosty green eyes regarded him, unblinking.

‘Right,’ Marco said, uncertain. He coughed and cleared his throat. ‘But I still don’t understand. Why is Osbourne an icon?’

‘Osbourne was head of Homeland Security at the time of the Resurrection. More or less, he founded the New Republican movement the year afterwards–deflected all the blame onto
President Garrett. Got Hoff elected with all his bluster and finger-pointing. And on top of all that, the Evacuation was Osbourne’s idea. The Safe States are his brainchild.’

In his head Marco heard echoes of New Republican speeches, hot with vitriol and threats, pushing laws through a weakened Congress.
Without a vaccine for the Resurrection
, they railed,
the West is lost. Poisoned beyond hope. The Evacuated States will remain closed.

The Safe States are America’s future
.

Let us protect you. Give us power.

Stay afraid…

Just then, the sergeant cut off Marco’s thoughts.

‘So,’ Wu said, ‘Roger Ballard.’

Marco scowled. ‘Jesus, you don’t give up, do you? I’d rather talk politics.’

Wu fixed Marco with a grim look. ‘Doctor Marco. Any mission can succeed or fail on the basis of a single detail. As a doctor, I think you’d agree. Would you operate without first demanding to know each symptom? No matter how small it might seem?’

Marco grimaced. ‘All right. I get where you’re going.’

‘You value details as much as I do. So tell me about Ballard, and I’ll tell you what I
do
know about our mission. Is that fair?’

‘Depends who goes first. Are we using the honour system?’

‘Honour is everything to me.’

‘Right. “Death before dishonour”, all that. Careful what you wish for.’ Marco ran his tongue along his teeth. The talking had dried his gums. He reached between his feet for his canteen and guzzled a swig. He badly wanted to pour the water over his scalp, rub it through his grungy hair, but instead he offered the canteen to Wu. The sergeant declined with a slight shake of his head. Marco recapped the water and returned it to the shade below the seat.

‘All right,’ he declared. ‘Fair deal. Honour system. I go, then you go. And nobody leaves out any of the interesting details.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Good. Now, the truth is, you might be getting the worse end of the bargain. I don’t really have a lot to tell about Roger.’

‘But you did know him.’

‘Yeah,’ Marco conceded. ‘I knew him. We were both on staff at Cedars-Sinai. The hospital in Los Angeles. I was in the Neurology department–you probably knew that already–and Roger was in Encephalopathy. You probably knew that, too.’

‘He was a brain doctor,’ Wu said.

‘Brain disorders. Diseases.’

‘How long did you work together?’

‘Um, let’s see. Roger began at Cedars-Sinai…’ Marco squinted, as if he could see through time. It had been the year he’d married Danielle, and the year his mother had died.

‘… In 2010,’ he finished. ‘Then I left for Arizona in 2013. So three years.’

Wu’s lips pressed together. He appeared focused. Marco imagined this new data being logged somewhere in the man’s mind for later analysis.

‘And you were friends?’ Wu asked.

Marco stiffened. He shifted in his seat and checked the rear-view mirror; old driving habits were hard to break. Nothing to see behind the Jeep but endless scrub and train tracks.

He sighed. ‘Friends. Yeah, in a way, I guess. Back at the start.’

‘The start?’

‘The start of his residency, yeah. We were both from the
East, me Cornell and him Yale. People said he was kind of a prick–I don’t know, we got along. He was actually a lot like me, but a more extreme version. He was me in a funhouse mirror. You know, distorted, everything more out-of-whack. I’ve never been that great with people, but Roger, he was practically a hermit. He had no family, kept to himself. He was smarter than me, too. Smart as hell, and in a way, that was maybe his problem. The human brain absolutely mesmerised him–what made it go, or what made it stop–but never the human. If you asked him about a diagnosis, he’d talk you under the table. But ask how his weekend went, and you’d get nothing. One or two words. Three, if it was a long weekend. He wasn’t being a dick. He just didn’t think it mattered.’

‘But he considered you a friend?’

Marco shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Respected me, I guess. Judged me as competent. In Roger’s mind that qualified as friendship. And I’m no chatterbox, either, so probably he was more comfortable around me than other people. Like I said, we got along.’

‘Yes, at the start, you said,’ Wu observed. ‘But not the end?’

The Jeep had crossed another four miles of the Sonoran, and on the north edge of the desert a miniature display of buildings and homes and a trailer park now dotted the landscape. Yuma, far ahead. To either side of the tracks, the desert tilted at steep angles; Marco centred the Jeep and eased off the gas. The vehicle slowed and bounced with greater deliberation. Marco felt his head lighten. He remembered his last day at Cedars-Sinai.

Goodbye, Henry
, Roger had said. And Marco had ignored him, kept walking.

Dizzy, Marco gripped the wheel tighter. His hands hurt, the burns still raw, but at least the pain anchored him. Jesus,
the ride was making him nuts. He waited another few moments, allowing the weight of his body to return before answering Wu.

‘No, not at the end,’ he admitted. ‘By the time I left, not at all.’

‘And why was that?’

‘Because…’ Marco began. He stopped; his tongue seemed to slide backwards into his throat. ‘Things got different,’ he continued self-consciously, feeling his ears burn. ‘
Roger
got different–moodier all the time, more withdrawn. Like he’d gone deeper into his own dark cave. You’d see him in the hall, or the cafeteria, looking very preoccupied, and his eyes would just glance off you like you didn’t even register. Even me. He’d walk by and not say hello.’