Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  The wolf was delicious and made a welcome change from the spider meat, which was all they’d had for days. After eating their fill, they sat around in contented silence. But Chester was finding it hard to relax. With every day that passed with no sign of Will, he had become increasingly impatient to go back and search for him. He chose this moment to tackle Martha about it again.

  “So what are we going to do?” he asked her, as she sat propped up against the wall with Bartleby at her side. “We can’t stay here forever.”

  “Now that Elliott’s stronger,” Martha began, as if she had been expecting the question, “we could go back to the shack. We’re low on Aniseed Fire, but if we’re careful how we use it, there should be enough for the journey home.”

  Chester shook his head.

  “Will might be there by now,” Martha added quickly. “I can’t see him surviving for long if he hung around the void.”

  “He survived in total darkness for more than a day with no food or water when he got separated from us in the Deeps. This time he had his kit with him, and his dad. Will’s no pushover,” Chester said.

  “Well then, we could go back to the void and take a proper scout around the area. You never know, if Bartleby picks up his scent we might be able to track him. But it’ll be touch and go whether we do find him, and all the time we’re there we’ll be exposing ourselves to danger. If Will made it through the explosion, then maybe the Styx did, too, and don’t forget about the Brights. I wouldn’t —”

  “I’m going to look for him, even if I have to do it by myself,” Chester interrupted her.

  Elliott had come over to listen to the exchange.

  “What do you say?” Chester asked her.

  “I’m with you. We never leave our own behind,” she said resolutely.

  At that instant, Chester realized how much like Drake she sounded, and it lifted his spirits that she was so intent on finding Will.

  “While there’s even a tiny chance he’s out there and still alive, we keep looking for him,” she added. “He’d do the same for us.”

  “Yes, he would,” Chester agreed. “Good old Will.”

  “Get a move on, or I’ll leave you behind!” Will threatened his father, who yet again had hung back to examine something that had caught his eye. This time it was a mineral formation at the side of the seam.

  “These yellowish-white deposits we keep seeing … I really do believe it’s electrum,” Dr. Burrows said, half-turning to Will. “Know what that is?”

  “A mineral?” Will guessed, not showing an ounce of enthusiasm.

  “Not just any old mineral, my boy. It’s an alloy of gold and silver — and there’s quite a high proportion of gold in it, at that!”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Will snapped. “Come on, will you!”

  Dr. Burrows straightened up. “What’s the big hurry all of a sudden? We’ve been away more than a week. Your friends will be long gone by the time we get down there.”

  It was very clear that Dr. Burrows couldn’t care less about Chester, Elliott, or Martha. Will didn’t respond to this, instead showing his frustration by cocking his Sten gun, which he’d decided to use as his main firearm because it was shorter and much less unwieldy than the rifle strapped across his back. He also thought it looked the part with his military getup.

  “There’s no hurry,” Dr. Burrows said again. As he turned his attention back to the mineral deposit and began to whistle in that annoying way of his, Will was only just able to keep his temper.

  “Have fun with your electrum,” he said through gritted teeth, kicking out his legs as he stormed down the seam. Noticing he was passing the dark mouth of a side tunnel, he checked the aerosol of insect repellent he’d secured to his upper arm with duct tape. What with this, Drake’s headset, and the submachine gun, he felt he was ready for anything, with or without his father at his side.

  “Hey, Will! Wait for me!” Dr. Burrows yelled, running to catch up with his son.

  31

  “I HAVEN’T been here for years and years,” Mrs. Burrows remarked as she and Drake went under the metal arch at the entrance to Highfield Common.

  A recent addition to the park, the arch was achingly modern — a rainbow-shaped span of burnished stainless-steel tubing, over which ivy had been encouraged to grow. The combination of the ivy and steel worked up to a point, although the effect was rather marred by the numerous pairs of worn-out sneakers with their laces tied together that had been lobbed over its vertex. And the occasional stray brassiere displayed next to the sneakers only added to the overall impression of seediness.

  But Mrs. Burrows didn’t notice any of this, her mind somewhere else as distant memories were rekindled. “I used to wheel my kids around here in their strollers when they were small,” she said. Then, as the realization hit her, her head came up suddenly and she stared at Drake. “I used to push a young Styx around. No, worse even than that, I used to push two of them around, AND I HADN’T THE SLIGHTEST IDEA!” she exclaimed.

  “Easy, Celia,” Drake warned her. “We don’t want to attract attention.” He indicated the gravel path that led up the hill before them, and they climbed it at a leisurely rate, passing on the way a couple of young boys trying to untangle a kite. “Not enough wind for that,” Drake commented, and he and Mrs. Burrows instinctively glanced up above, where the clouds appeared to be fixed in the clear blue sky.

  “It’s funny how you only really appreciate things,” Mrs. Burrows said, lowering her eyes from the sky and drinking in the lushness of the grass and the trees, “when you think you’re going to lose them.” She turned her head in the direction of Broadlands Avenue, where the rooftops of the houses were just visible over the curve of the hill and the intervening trees. “Or you’ve already lost them.”

  At the top of the hill, there was a roughly laid area of pavement, in the center of which a Victorian granite drinking fountain stood. Drake went over to it and pressed the tarnished brass button, which once would have produced a jet of sparkling water from the spout in the middle of the recessed bowl. But now nothing happened; no water came into the bowl, where there was just a dark mat of rotting leaves and a crumpled-up Coke can.

  “So, about this time tomorrow, I’ll be up here waiting for the Styx,” Mrs. Burrows said, glancing at her watch. She frowned heavily as she scanned the area at the bottom of the hill. “Are we really safe up here, right now? They might be watching, and decide to grab us or something.”

  “Unlikely,” Drake said. “Too many witnesses.”

  “But still …,” Mrs. Burrows began.

  “Relax. They know we wouldn’t be stupid enough to have the phials on us, so they won’t try anything. Not today, anyway. And it’s important that you get the lay of the land, so you feel ready.” Crossing his arms, he leaned back against the water fountain. “Don’t react to what I’m about to tell you, but Leatherman has already got his men in place. They’re in the clumps of bushes around the base of this hill.”

  “They are?” Mrs. Burrows said dubiously.

  “Yes, ten of them,” Drake confirmed.

  Mrs. Burrows gave the bushes a casual glance. “Men there? Now? How can they be? I can’t see them.”

  “They’re in dugouts, probably with their scopes on us this very moment. And we’ll have more people carefully positioned at strategic points around the perimeter. I want you to know we are doing everything we can to protect you.”

  “Can I ask you an obvious question?” she began.

  “Fire away,” he replied.

  “Have the Styx got tunnels under here? From what you tell me, they have a warren of them everywhere.”

  “We did a geophysics survey and found a few vague shadows. It probably means there were some underground chambers once, but they’ve collapsed, or been filled in.”

  Mrs. Burrows smiled. “How very History Channel,” she said.

  Drake pushed himself off the fountain and they headed back down the hill, still talking as they
went. “Look, even if the Styx do try to play dirty, we’ll be ready for them,” Drake assured her, rubbing his hands together as if he relished the possibility. “No, we’re going to have fun once we turn the tables on them and nab whoever comes to the meeting.”

  “But you don’t actually expect their Mr. Big to come, do you?” Mrs. Burrows asked.

  “I don’t know him well enough to confirm his identity even if he does make a star appearance. But whoever they send, we’ll interrogate him. He’ll add something to our intelligence about their operations. But that’s not the point of all this — the fact that they’ve agreed to a meeting in the first place tells us all we want to know — it tells us they don’t have the virus.”

  Mrs. Burrows shrugged. “Maybe it’s yet another double bluff. Maybe they already have the virus, and they just want to find out how much we know, or silence us.”

  Drake didn’t answer as they reached the bottom of the hill.

  32

  THERE WAS a tightness in Mrs. Burrows’s chest as she strode up the hill a day later. She took a series of deep breaths to try to quell her rising anxiety. You’ll be fine. This will soon be over, she tried to reassure herself. Yeah, one way or another, came the unwelcome response from somewhere else in her head.

  Although she hadn’t said anything to Drake, she was scared stiff. From what she’d heard about the Styx, she knew she was up against an adversary capable of the most savage acts imaginable. An adversary that would think nothing of killing anyone that got in its way. And she felt thoroughly unprepared, as if she’d been dropped between the battle lines of a war in some foreign land and hadn’t the slightest idea where the enemy was lurking.

  She consoled herself that at least she was doing her bit to help Will. He was probably already deep in the bowels of the earth, where he might be facing the megalomaniac twins again. This thought didn’t do much to ease Mrs. Burrows’s state of mind. She should have fought tooth and nail to stop him from going back. But she hadn’t, and her remorse was so strong it was like a physical pain in her gut. It had been criminal to ask so much from someone so young, and she found that hard to live with.

  A small yapping dog drew Mrs. Burrows’s attention and she looked down the slope to the base of the hill. She sought out the animal, then located its owner, who was throwing a ball for it. As she continued to walk briskly up the gravel path, she ran her eyes over the rest of the scene, scrutinizing the other people there that afternoon.

  About a hundred feet away, two teenage girls were sitting next to each other on the side of the hill, a blanket spread beneath them. They didn’t show any interest in Mrs. Burrows, or anyone else for that matter, their noses buried in their books. Then she caught loud voices and located a trio of tramps on a bench down by the east side of the hill, which was just now coming into view as she continued up the slope. They were passing around a half bottle of something and smoking. Drake had told her the Styx sometimes posed as vagrants, so she kept her eyes on them for several seconds. She remembered the images of the thin Styx and stocky Colonists caught on Leatherman’s surveillance films. No, the tramps appeared to be the real thing. Indeed, no one looked out of place, no one looked suspicious.

  She checked the time.

  2:55.

  Five minutes to go.

  Perhaps she was just working herself up over nothing. Maybe the important Styx whom Drake was hoping to grab had rumbled what he and Leatherman were up to and wasn’t going to make an appearance. So be it, she told herself. If this operation was all a waste of time, then she should just try to enjoy a pleasant afternoon in the setting of the Common as best she could. But as she closed her hand around the phials in her pocket, she found it impossible to relax.

  The situation was far too fantastic for that.

  It was as though her life had been ratcheted up into some hyperreality over the last six months. First her quiet existence had been capsized as her husband had taken off on his wild caper. Then, at Humphrey House, just as she felt she’d been waking from a deep slumber and had the chance to regain some measure of control over her destiny, both Will and her fake daughter — or daughters — had gone missing. She’d been cast into a situation as wild and improbable as the films she used to rent on DVD, but usually discarded before she’d watched them all the way through.

  2:58.

  “Everything OK?” Drake’s voice sounded from the tiny transmitter in her ear, as clear as if he was standing right beside her.

  “Yes,” she answered as she reached the rough patch of pavement on the apex of the hill. Strolling casually around the drinking fountain, she rechecked the lower ground from her elevated viewpoint. As she peered down the north side of the hill, a man in a skimpy vest and running shorts jogged past the dilapidated bandstand, next to which an elderly couple were standing. It all looked completely innocent. She raised her hand to her mouth as if she was touching her chin, and spoke into the microphone pinned inside her sleeve. “Looks all clear,” she reported to Drake. “Nothing. Not a sausage.”

  3:00.

  “And it’s the witching hour,” she added.

  “Just keep your eyes peeled,” he said.

  By the entrance to the Common, Drake was in a battered van along with Leatherman and two hired hands — former soldiers from Leatherman’s old regiment. On the floor of the van there were three black-and-white television monitors with wireless feeds from cameras rigged in the trees around the hill. Leatherman and his comrades were watching them carefully. “Missing the racing on the other channel,” one of the soldiers grumbled in phony regret, but his eyes were glued to the grainy picture of Mrs. Burrows on the screen nearest to him.

  Drake consulted his wristwatch. “3:02. Looks like a no-show,” he said disappointedly.

  “Give it a little longer,” Leatherman suggested. “Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey.”

  Drake nodded. “Let the teams know we’re maintaining position,” he said. Leatherman switched his handheld radio to a different frequency and communicated with the other soldiers in the dugouts, as Drake went back to watching through the rear window of the van with his binoculars.

  Mrs. Burrows strolled very slowly around the drinking fountain. She heard a distant droning high above her. A passenger jet was advancing slowly across the sky, leaving a white-crayon trace behind it. I’d give anything to be on that, she thought wistfully.

  3:05.

  A man in a bright red tracksuit shot along one of the lower paths on a racing bike. The elderly couple were on the move, making their way up the hill and toward Mrs. Burrows in shambling steps. She began to pay them more attention. The old woman was pushing a wheeled shopping cart while the man seemed very doddery. He was hanging on to the old woman’s arm and also leaning heavily on a walking stick in his other hand. The couple’s progress was so labored that Mrs. Burrows crinkled up the side of her mouth. Hardly your typical murderous Styx.

  “Got a pair of old age pensioners heading my way. Otherwise as quiet as … as … as a very quiet place,” Mrs. Burrows said into the microphone as she pretended to adjust her hair.

  She heard Drake’s laugh in her earpiece. “Roger that,” he said.

  “Leave my husband out of it,” Mrs. Burrows replied immediately, chuckling outrageously as she got some of the tension out of her system.

  3:08.

  A persistent fly alighted on her forehead, and she automatically swiped at it.

  She went to the opposite side of the fountain and glanced down the south side of the hill. The man and his dog had moved on from the lower path and in their place she could see someone else strolling along, but he was walking away from the hill. Then she sought out Drake’s van. She could just about see the tinted window where she knew he’d be watching. Then she stepped sideways toward the east and looked at the two teenage girls, who were both still immersed in their books. The fly buzzed in her ear, and she wafted it away. She went farther around the fountain. The elderly couple were slowly but surely approaching, the man lo
oking extremely frail, as if he would topple over if it wasn’t for the support his companion was giving him.

  3:10.

  She heard shouting and swearing. She crossed to the east side. Two of the tramps were leaving. The third was still on the bench. All of a sudden he was on his feet and waving his fists threateningly at the others. He followed after them in a reeling walk. She kept her eye on the group as they went past Drake’s van. Not Styx, Mrs. Burrows told herself again.

  She saw a woman on the lower path with two sizeable Afghan hounds — lanky, long-legged dogs that looked as though they were wearing furry pantsuits.

  The fly buzzed close to her eye, making her blink.

  “Stupid thing!” she exclaimed.

  “What was that?” Drake asked, his voice concerned.

  “Only a fly,” she said.

  She heard a squeak, squeak.

  It was coming from the wheels on the old woman’s cart. Mrs. Burrows crossed to the north side of the fountain. The elderly couple was thirty feet away and closing, but at a snail’s pace.

  Mrs. Burrows walked nonchalantly around the fountain, scanning the slopes again.

  3:11.

  “Got company — the wrinklies are up here with me now,” she said to Drake.

  “Yes, we can see them from a tree cam, and two teams have got scopes on them,” Drake said. “They’re the wrong side of the fountain for me to have eyes on them.”

  “Don’t worry — think I can cope with them,” Mrs. Burrows said confidently into the microphone. She lowered her arm as the elderly couple came around the side of the fountain — she didn’t want them to catch her having a conversation with her sleeve.

  Squeak, squeak. The shopping cart wheels. Accompanied by the steady tap of the old man’s walking stick on the pavement.

  Mrs. Burrows pulled her shoulders back and inhaled deeply, trying her utmost to look as if she was up there to enjoy the fresh air. Slowly releasing the breath, she gave the elderly couple a sidelong glance, then looked away hastily. The old woman had been watching her. Through the lenses of her spectacles she had hard little eyes.