The Rise of Saint Fox and The Independence

by Corin Reyburn

  There’s gotta be a way,” Sam said, standing abruptly and rubbing his fingers together like he wanted a cigarette. “Commercial flights might be on hold for the time being, but someone’s operating somewhere. Hell, I’ll bet Montreal knows a guy.”

  Kit sighed, wishing they could go back to three minutes ago. “We’ve just set into motion a plan to solve the problem of economic disparity right here, on our home soil, and you want to leave?” Her voice was a sing-song, a lyrical breath against the skin that hardly sounded like admonishment.

  She wanted to be angrier at him, the righteous indignation she displayed primarily for show. Mostly she just felt a horrible mixture of turned on and sorry for him, that foolish, inescapable sexual-maternal paradox that men inevitably evoked. Damn his girlish face and gaunt cheekbones, his big watery eyes that could never decide which colour they were. Damn him.

  “Come with me, darlin’,” he insisted, breaking out his sideways smile and placing his hands atop hers on her knees, letting his fingers play with hers. “We don’t have to take responsibility for none of this. Let Jeeves and them deal with whatever comes next. It’s his revolution anyway, not mine. Hell, if he didn’t have a tendency to rub people the wrong way he wouldn’t need me at all, could have done it all himself, could have been Saint Fox. He is Saint Fox.”

  Kit considered his proposition while simultaneously chastising herself for doing so. “You’re crazy. Everything’s fine, it’s all fine. You’re overstimulated. You just need to rest for a week or so. I’d tell you to wait until this feeling blows over, but I’m afraid that meanwhile you’d just ingest whatever mind-altering substances you can get your hands on.”

  “That’s an excellent point,” he said, taking a step back. “Where’s the booze?”

  “Fuck’s sake,” she said, handing him a fifth of whiskey from the myriad of half-empty bottles littering the vanity she was sitting on. She pulled up her skirt and stockings. “I’m an enabler is what I am. Look at me.”

  “I’m lookin’,” he said, letting half the bottle’s contents pour down his throat.

  “Yeah, well don’t,” said Kit, scrubbing over her face with both hands.

  “This is Glastonbury all over again. What’s a guy gotta do to get into you, huh?” His eyes were dancing firelights and that stupid smirk was still on his face.

  “Not think he’s entitled to, for one thing.” She tried her best to look stern, channeling her sixth form maths teacher, crossing her legs and straightening her spine.

  Sam continued to grin wickedly, smiling around the bottle as he downed the rest of the whiskey. “Come to Fiji with me.” He walked towards her again, bracketing his arms around her against the countertop. He stared over her shoulder at himself in the mirror, admiring their reflections. “We’re such a fucked up, beautiful rock star cliché right now.”

  “Why do you want me to go to Fiji with you?”

  “‘Cause I like ya.”

  Kit shook her head. “That’s not good enough.”

  “What would make it good enough?”

  “I don’t know. Just…stay. See this thing through. The fans are counting on you, everyone is. I know it’s rough with everything up in the air right now, but if you take off out of the blue, it’ll just make things worse.”

  Sam leaned his forehead against hers, shutting his eyes. “You’re always right, aren’t you?” he said, touching her cheek. “Yeah yeah, I know. I know, I know, I know.” He punctuated each ‘I know’ with a slap of his palm against the countertop.

  “Good, saves me the breath,” she said, leaning back against the mirror. The bright bulbs cast her in a yellow-white, incandescent glow.

  Sam pressed up against her. Kit thought he was going to kiss her again. Instead, he traded his empty whiskey bottle for a shyte brand of vodka two-thirds full. “Well, if you’re not interested, I’m out of here,” he said, swigging from his new bottle. “Cheers, little Miss rock n’ roll.”

  Her pretty lips parted, then closed again as a retort failed to surface. The door to the dressing room clanged shut behind Saint Fox. She unscrewed the top from another of the bottles beside her. Silver tequila.

  She took a long drink. The acrid liquor only made the blood in her veins burn hotter.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  THE DRUGS DON’T WORK

  Charlotte Piebald was running a fever of 37.7 degrees. She’d been checking her temperature regularly on the hour—it hadn’t changed much in the past three days.

  Doctor Wender would be by any moment now—the Piebalds were one of the very few who could afford a family doctor that made house calls. Charlotte propped herself up in bed, her shoulder-length, chestnut-coloured hair fanned out against a small mountain of damask-patterned pillows. She wore a set of peach-coloured Nancy Miller silk pajamas, a lavender and rosemary-filled sachet pillow resting gently against her forehead. A lightweight crystal glass of electrolyte-enhanced water and a bottle of paracetamol were within arm’s reach atop her antique solid oak nightstand.

  Dear god, I’m dying, thought Charlotte. Never in a thousand years would I have guessed I’d become a victim of terrorism. How naïve of me.

  Besides the fever, numerous symptoms had begun to manifest over the past few days. All-over body aches, particularly in the shoulders and lower back. Her stomach refused anything other than consommé and cabbage. Her skin was dry, her hair and nails brittle. She’d spent a small fortune on hydro-synthesised essential oils and Nuvo-Botanica intensive therapy products before coming to the grim realization that they simply weren’t having any effect.

  The confusion was the worst for Charlotte. I’m nothing if I don’t have my mind, she thought. My business will be ruined. It’ll end up in the hands of my cousin Reagan, that little Scottish bitch. She’ll take my lovely designs and turn them into something tacky and dreadful, all metal studs and garish, bright colours. And rhinestones, god forbid. It seemed Charlotte couldn’t hold onto a thought for longer than a few seconds. I haven’t had anxiety this bad since university, Charlotte realised, as a cold tremor ran down her spine.

  A knock at her bedroom door broke her out of contemplation.

  “Ms. Piebald?” The doctor’s soft voice sounded muffled from outside the door.

  “Yes, doctor?” Charlotte managed in a thin voice. “Please come in.”

  The doctor entered quietly, removing his coat and hat and placing them on a seat near the bedroom door. Doctor Wender was thin-haired and forgettable-looking, and spoke in an even voice that never housed alarm no matter how grave the situation. He picked up a floral-upholstered chair, bringing it over to sit by Charlotte’s bedside.

  “How are we feeling today?” he asked.

  “We…are feeling absolutely dreadful,” Charlotte said, coughing a bit for good measure. “You’ve got to get online right away doctor, and use your connections to get in touch with whoever’s developed a cure.”

  “A cure...I’m afraid it’s too soon to talk cures, Ms. Piebald.”

  “Charlotte,” she said.

  “Charlotte. I’m afraid it’s too soon to talk cures. All we can do for now is treat the symptoms, which we discussed previously over the phone. Have you noticed any changes since then?” The doctor activated his cleverband, switching its recorder to ‘ON’.

  “Well, the headaches have gotten worse, for one. Paracetamol simply isn’t cutting it anymore; you’ll have to prescribe me something stronger. And I’ve been having terrible insomnia.”

  “I have a couple scripts for you that should help—my staff has already forwarded them to your account. Just open up our office’s app at any chemist’s and they’ll be able to fill the order for you,” the doctor said, without so much as taking his patient’s temperature.

  “Thank you, doctor,” said Charlotte weakly.

  “Remember to get lots of bed rest,” Doctor Wender said, rising to leave. “And drink lots of water. One of the scripts I gave you is for Vitalica, something I’ve been prescribing to all my patients
who’ve shown symptoms of the Dot virus. It should give you enough energy to perform your day-to-day activities, buy us some time while we search for a cure.”

  “That’ll have to do, I suppose,” said Charlotte. “Is there any way of knowing how advanced the disease is? Aren’t there some tests you should be running?”

  “Unnecessary,” the doctor answered, scratching his chin. “I can tell just by looking at you, and from the symptoms you’ve reported. You’re likely in Phase II of the Dot virus. This isn’t cause for alarm. Our projections are that patients ought to be able to lead normal lives for years in Phase II, with no guarantee that they will ever progress to Phase III. Of course, no one knows yet what happens in Phase III—all we can do is speculate. It’s simply too soon to tell.” The doctor put his arms through his long grey overcoat, then reached for his hat.

  “I’ve heard the disease progresses slowly,” Charlotte said. “Have there been any fatalities?”

  “That information isn’t available at the moment,” said Doctor Wender. “It’s hard to obtain accurate data, you know, special interest groups wanting to set the death count artificially low. My guess would be that there are far more fatalities than reported. The elderly, for instance, anyone with a compromised immune system would deteriorate rapidly, as opposed to the disease’s typically slow progress rate. But, Ms. Piebald, as I said before, we simply don’t have enough information. Take the medicine prescribed as instructed by your chemist, and get lots of sleep. Best of luck to you.” He tipped his hat, exiting the room.

  Charlotte lay back against her mound of pillows, quickly sending a message via her cleverband to tell her assistant to head to the chemist’s right away. It seemed all her staff were now using that new currency, avoiding infection. Streetwise survival skills of the working class. As for her, it didn’t matter if she kept using the Dot to make purchases—she’d already been infected—what difference did it make now? Charlotte knew how diseases work. Once you catch a virus, you can’t catch it again. It was like chickenpox, which had sent her home from year two at the academy for almost a month and caused her to fall behind.

  She wasn’t sure how payroll and reimbursements were currently being handled, trusting that her accountant was capably managing the upheaval in her absence. She was simply too ill to attend to business matters right now.

  Doctor Wender was looking a bit poorly himself, thought Charlotte. Poor man. I wonder if he knows.

  

  Sam sat up in a hard bed that wasn’t his, tangled in green plaid sheets that smelled like daisies and cheap perfume, in one of several bunk beds where Jeeves housed any Arcana who needed a roof over his or her head. The noise from outside, where Jeeves ring-led the circus’s hustle and bustle, was no match for the pounding in his head.

  He’d been in the middle of packing a bag for Fiji, then Benson had burst in sounding urgent and paranoid, telling him that under no circumstances was he to leave Jeeves’ flat, and he’d been too high and too apathetic to protest. It seemed he’d been in this miserable bed ever since. A sad A-minor melody wove through his head, something about dying young. He tried to think of something else to rhyme it with besides ‘son of a gun’. He couldn’t think of anything.

  It was like being an insect at the bottom of a vacuum cleaner, he thought. More dirt and dust and debris keeps getting sucked in, and you choke. You don’t see the light. You think of just a few seconds ago when you were on the outside, but it’s pointless to think of that now, because you are trapped, and all you can do is wait to be thrown out with the rest of the trash.

  Sam buried his head under a bright red pillow with too much stuffing. Despite his best efforts to drown out the clang of pots and pans, the bee-boop swish! of electronic devices, and half-heard conversations, a voice sounding like a panicked train conductor announcing that no one would be getting off at the next stop broke through the din.

  “...and then they just came in and demolished the flat,” he was saying. “Those berks barely had time to throw a few unimaginative insults at me in between smashing things up like gorillas.”

  “Did you ever think...that they might have followed you here?” Jeeves’ shrill trill was unmistakable. Sam visualised glitter and feathers flying through the air in a spastic rage.

  “I waited a while,” said the messenger, who was obviously Sailor, Sam realised as some of the noise in his head cleared. “No one followed me here. Besides, I changed before I left, made sure I blended in. Look how I’m dressed, ugh!”

  “It is rather bland, baby,” Jeeves admitted.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to warn you all, let you know they’re after ‘im,” Sailor finished. “He here?” he asked, looking around.

  “Nappy napping,” said Jeeves, “but I bet he’s wakey woken now. He’s in one of the cellar bunks.”

  “I’ll just...pop down and make sure he’s not dead, shall I?”

  “Suit yerself, baby. An’ tell him nap time is over, we need to rally.”

  Sailor tiptoed down to the cellar quiet as a new bride, thinking maybe Sam would be passed out cold and he’d just stare at him for a bit, then leave.

  No such luck.

  “I can smell you and hear your twinkle toes from ‘ere,” Sam mumbled. “You smell like burnt sugar and that godawful aftershave.”

  “Nice to know you still recognise me by scent alone,” Sailor said, stepping into the streaks of light filtering through the blinds, casting his face in shadowed stripes. “But you probably heard me upstairs, too.”

  “Yeah, I heard you and Jeeves clucking. What’s this about coppers at our flat?”

  “They want you bad,” Sailor said, staring at his fingernails. “Must be super fans or something. And it ain’t our flat anymore.”

  “I thought I only had one super fan,” Sam said, sitting up in the bunk and hunching over so he wouldn’t hit his head. He scratched at his stomach, having fallen asleep with no shirt on in a pair of ill-fitting jeans.

  “Not anymore. The spit and polish have come right off you. Just blow on it a little and all the sparkle fades away.” Sailor stood with his hands on his hips, looking uncharacteristically menacing in a black zip hoodie and dark grey jeans, no makeup decorating his angular face. His big, dark eyes blinked steadily and his hair was coloured straw blonde today.

  “Why am I always apologizing to you,” Sam moaned, placing the heel of his hand against his forehead. “I swear, you get put off more than anyone I know. You’re good at making other people feel like things are their fault.”

  “It is your fault,” Sailor said with a jut of his chin. He walked over to stand by the bunk, leaning an arm against one of the wooden posts. “So, you want my tips for how to survive in prison?”

  Sam groaned again, dropping his elbows to his knees and burying his face in his hands. “My head hurts.”

  “If you’re angling for a backrub, you’re knocking at the wrong door,” said Sailor, drumming his fingertips against the bed frame. “You gonna hole up here for a while?”

  “Ain’t got much choice. Where’re you staying at?”

  “Was staying at Ron’s. You remember him...that creeper from Lancaster with the big muscles and wonky eyes.”

  “God, I knew it,” said Sam. “Don’t go back there. He’ll murder you in your sleep.”

  “I might die at his hand by erotic asphyxiation. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  “Just stay here, you loon, and don’t cause any trouble. There’s plenty of room.”

  “Why, you miss me or something?” Sailor cocked his head, looking smug.

  “I told you, I’m just trying to keep you from getting murdered.”

  “You do care!” Sailor exclaimed, throwing his arms out in an exaggerated display. He sat down next to Sam in the bunk, tentatively reaching a hand out to rub slow circles against his back. “Come on now, I’ll give you that backrub. Just don’t tell anyone I’ve forgiven you already.”

  “Secret’s safe with me,” Sam said, breathing out
and relaxing into the massage.

  “You’ve got to lay off the party goodies a bit, mate,” Sailor said.

  “I must really have a problem if you’re the one telling me that.” Sam yawned, feeling the need for yet more sleep wash over him.

  “Uh uh,” Sailor said when he saw that he was drifting. “Jeeves said nap time’s over. He wants to go over phase twenty-seven or whatever of his master plan.”

  “It’s not like he actually needs my input,” Sam said. “Why don’t you go? You be Saint Fox.”

  “How about you be Saint Fox...” Sailor’s right hand drifted down to squeeze his bum, “and I stick my hand up your arse and work you like a puppet! Then you won’t have to do anything.”

  Sam squirmed around, laughing. “That sounds brilliant, and also terrible.”

  “Just trying to help.”

  “You already have,” he turned around, kissing Sailor on the nose.

  “Glad I could contribute to the cause.” Sailor hesitated momentarily before placing his hands at Sam’s waist, dancing fingers along the waistband of his jeans. Sam hung his head low, catching Sailor’s lips before pulling back and looking at him with a cheeky grin, one eyebrow raised. Needing no further invitation, Sailor crawled into his lap, licking at Sam’s neck and deftly undoing the button on his trousers.

  Someone in the doorway cleared their throat. Alarmed, the two men quickly shuffled away from each other, Sam hitting his head on the bunk above.

  “Ow, fuck!”

  “I see you two have kissed and made up.” Kit stood in the doorway, drumming her fingertips against the frame.

  Sam quickly buttoned his trousers, smoothing his hair back with his palms and resting them behind his neck. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough to notice you’re not wearing underwear,” she said, glancing down and fiddling with the strings on her bracelet.