A virus, a cure. A rock band loved by millions. A society, a movement, a militia. A master manipulator, a saviour. Pound signs, dollar signs, digital currency represented by green smiley faces resembling tabs of ecstasy. Electric metal, bass drums, white lights. His best girl and his best man at his side, at arm’s length, miles away. Infiltrate. Disarm. Show yourself in all your glittering glory, then run and hide. Snort a pill and go to sleep.
Sam went into the kitchen. At the supper table, Bez was talking tech jargon to the twins who listened intently, something about the same as disarming a suitcase bomb and how almost all weaponry nowadays is operated by computers.
There was nowhere to get any peace and quiet. He returned to the front room, intending to save Sailor from Jeeves’ madness and his sleeves. On his way he got roped into Kit and Muzzy’s gear discussion, his latest predilection being for ESP guitars because they were flashy-looking and easy to play. Kit accused him of being partial to form over function and only knowing how to play three-note riffs, which he copped to because it was true enough. Her voice was teasing and light, a whisper on the wind, but the offhanded jibe still struck a chord.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m a sham.”
“You are no such thing,” she admonished. “You’re brilliant, in fact. You just don’t realise it.”
“Oh, mushy mushy kissy kissy,” Muzzy said, standing up from his chair. “Believe it or not, I’m still too sober for a bandmate orgy with you gorgeous, yet irritating lot. I need me another drink.”
“Hey Foxy, come here,” Jeeves gestured him over to where the ringleader was tormenting Sailor with tales from the past.
“Can you not call me that? At least when we ain’t in front of any cameras,” he said. “My name is Sam.”
“I know your name, baby,” Jeeves said, crossing his zigzag print-covered legs. “I know who you are, probably better than you do.”
“Oh, and who’s that? An unwitting pawn in your national game of chess? Another person to use up like some resource you mine, then abandon once they’re empty?”
“I think you’re mixing your metaphors, baby.”
“Shut it,” he ordered. “You use people. I’m not the only one. Look, there’s another one of your victims,” he said as Benson entered the room, a fistful of cleverbands in one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other. “You use Bez to do all your dirty work.” Sam strode over to Benson, placed his hands on his shoulders and shook him. “Don’t you feel used?”
Benson’s eyebrows raised. “Sometimes I feel like the only clever one around here, yeah. But it’s not like I don’t believe in what we’re doing,” Benson said. “Besides, if I wanted to leave, I could.” He eyed Jeeves, who was taking it all in with a mixture of concern and amusement on his narrow face. “Anyone could, even you. What’s gotten into you?” He slid out from beneath Sam’s hands, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I can’t,” Sam said miserably. “Got nowhere to go.” He spoke the last part quietly, almost to himself.
“You’re a free man, Sammy,” Jeeves said from across the room, his voice lacking the usual frequency of his frenzied tenor. “And you set others free. Don’t know why that’s such a burden to you. You’re welcome to stay—or go. It’s up to you.” He maintained a relaxed posture, his arms open in passive invitation.
Sam’s fists were clenched at his sides, his shoulders raised. He suddenly felt nervous and a bit ashamed, all eyes on him—all eyes on him like they always were.
He’d made it worse.
“I’d better get going,” Kit said. She’d been watching from the sidelines as the tension in the room grew, wanting to help, but knowing that any attempt to do so would probably be rebuffed. “It’s getting late.”
“I’m not going anywhere. You’re not going anywhere,” he said to Kit.
“Yes, I am. You get your head on straight. Call me when you’re feeling better.” She pecked him briefly on the lips and gathered her things.
“Maybe you ought to have a bit of a lie-down,” Sailor said, standing up and tentatively approaching his friend.
“I just had a lie-down. Been lying down all day. All week,” Sam said through gritted teeth.
“And that was better than whatever’s happening now,” Sailor answered, hands perched on his hips. “Come on.”
Sam allowed Sailor to lead him back to the bunks, pausing to glare at Jeeves, whose expression was unreadable.
He crawled back into the lower bunk he’d spent practically all day in. It smelled musty and sweaty and was starkly quiet, like nothing ever happened there. He couldn’t stand it.
Sailor sat on the bed beside him, his head tucked low, fluffing and arranging pillows.
Sam placed his hand firmly on Sailor’s hip, then ran it across to sit at the base of his navel, pausing to glance at the other man, who had one eyebrow lifted and his shoulders up in a sort of confused shrug.
“What are you doing?”
“How ‘bout you make me feel better,” Sam said, scratching lightly at Sailor’s stomach under his grey t-shirt.
“Would you be looking for a one-way ticket then, mate?” Sailor asked, pulling his t-shirt back down. “We just sold out of those.”
“Nah, I’ll return the favour. Quid pro quo,” Sam said, dipping his head to kiss him.
The kiss was cut short when Sailor barked out a laugh.
“What?” Sam asked, offended.
“Nothin’ mate, it just sounds like yer currency app. Give N Get? Ain’t that what it’s all about? Equality in the marketplace, equality in the bedroom?”
“Sure, whatever,” said Sam. “Now shut up and drop yer trousers.”
“You’re just looking for a distraction ‘cause you feel like shyte,” Sailor said, running his fingers through Sam’s hair and dancing them across the back of his neck.
“You could do worse. Like that weird old bloke you’ve been living with, Randall or whatever his name is.”
“His name’s Ron, and don’t act like you’re doing me a favour. ‘Oh, poor Sailor is arse over tit for me anyway. I can screw around with him and my sweet twat hotshot guitarist and it don’t matter,’” Sailor exclaimed sarcastically, shuffling back and leaning against the bedpost.
“It’s not like that,” Sam said, leaning forward.
“Ain’t it though, just ain’t it? Ain’t you the darndest thing, Saint Fox, Freedom Fox, Twenty-Second Century Fox. Good ol’ Sammy boy, our own true saviour. Let me bow down to you. Let me kiss your cock.” He punctuated with lewd hand gestures, his voice rising into bite and bile.
“You’ve had too much to drink,” said Sam, starting a clumsy wrestling match. He pinned Sailor easily under his weight, looming over him.
“I have not,” Sailor defended, trying to bat Sam away with uncoordinated slaps.
Sam gave up the fight and sat back on his heels, closing his eyes briefly. “We should go home tomorrow.”
“We can’t, you ninny. Don’t have a home to go to anymore.” Sailor fell back, his head hitting the pillow with a light thud. Dust particles scattered starry patterns in the dim light.
“Fine, then.” Sam lay down beside him in an exaggerated heap. “We’ll just go to sleep, since you’re no fun.” He flopped one leg across Sailor’s, who let it remain there. “Goodnight, weary Sailor.” He closed his eyes, willing sleep to come as soon as possible. It wouldn’t be long, his entire body felt dry and heavy.
“Goodnight, Foxy,” Sailor said, staring up at the ceiling. “G’night, Sam.”
Lucas Norcoford was a longtime patron of the Dorchester Hotel. Room 809, The Terrace Suite, was made available to him whenever he wished it. The Dorchester had last been renovated four years ago with brand new appliances, linens, 17K SO-LED panels, and a sixth five-star restaurant added at ground level.
Norcoford sat stick straight in a maroon-upholstered chair that cost eight hundred quid. Streaks of sunlight filtered through gauzy yellow window coverings and reflected
off the surface of his perfectly smooth, bald head. He drummed short fingers against the overstuffed arm of the chair in time to the synthesised, repetitive calliope tune that drifted in from the park below.
He waited in the sitting room of his suite for Prime Minister Harold Waterman, who would arrive twenty-two minutes late. Norcoford gazed out of the French windows with disdain at the once glorious Hyde Park, now filled with riffraff and tacky flora genetically engineered in a lab somewhere in York. He’d ordered a gourmet fruit and cheese plate that cost sixty-five quid which he had barely touched; the cheeses were all too bitter, the fruit too sweet. He was staring at his cuticles, irritated that he was past due for a manicure when Waterman entered, flanked by two nameless suits who stood quietly by the door through the entire visit.
Norcoford didn’t bother standing up when his guest arrived. “The King’s business keeping you from arriving on time, Harry? Or perhaps something blonde, with killer tits,” he asked evenly.
Prime Minister Waterman crossed the room in three strides. “This is the King’s business,” he said. “And I prefer brunettes.” He seated himself on the left edge of a damask-patterned couch which could easily sleep a small family. He leaned forward, gazing squarely at Norcoford, who stared back skeptically from underneath waxed eyebrows.
“So,” Waterman began, “a ragtag bunch of anarchists fronted by a rock n’ roll band have managed to not only disrupt our financial system, they’ve somehow disarmed our weapons as well. My, my.”
“The fault lies with the gunmen, obviously,” Norcoford gritted out. “Their weapons malfunctioned.”
Waterman shook his head, “Lucas, Lucas. It amazes me how naïve you can be considering all the wicked things you’ve done in your life. Do you think your men were the only ones we sent after them? We sent men out to location centers all across the developed country. Variations on the same scenario played out at each location. We took no hostages.”
Norcoford stood, stepping towards the light and staring out at the remnants of Hyde Park, fingers gripping the windowsill. “Doesn’t it make you angry?” he said. “You seem rather glib for someone with so much at stake.”
“Of course it does,” Waterman answered, running a hand through his thinning brown hair. “I’m completely furious,” he said in a voice that neither rose nor fell.
“We’re running out of time. The threat of the Dot virus is real—I’ve been diagnosed with Phase I. My sex drive is shot. I can barely choke down food. I’ll end up starving to death and firing everyone.”
“How are you even paying for this room, Lucas?” Waterman leaned back against the couch, his hands folded and perched atop his knee.
“The Dorchester isn’t doing much business these days. They let me have the room for free, thought having a big shot CEO photographed on the premises might boost things around here. Everyone’s desperate.”
“I know,” Waterman said. His lips set in a tight line, a flash of anguish sparking in his eyes for a brief moment. “My son is infected.”
“We have to take this cure by force,” Norcoford said, turning to face him. His eyes were black pools with no light in them. “Now that you’ve got a personal stake in it, maybe you’ll finally get off your arse and treat these terrorists like the national disaster they are.”
“We’ve been very much off our arses and more on top of things than you realise,” Waterman countered. “We’ve recovered and analyzed the original CCTV footage from the morning the alteration to the terminals occurred, the recordings they managed to cover up at the time. Do you know who is responsible, Lucas?”
Norcoford merely tilted his head, waiting to be impressed.
“It’s the workers,” he announced, looking inherently pleased with himself. “Just simple folks working at the damn Asda. They’re the ones responsible. They’re the ones who originally flipped the switch. Hacked into the system. Leaked it into the main valves, allowing the disease to spread. We now have faces. And names,” he said, almost smiling.
“So, you finally learned something, did you? Well, congratulations, good on you, old chum. Now, I don’t suppose you have any sort of plan to do something with this information, do you? You’re no action man,” Norcoford accused.
“I, in fact, do have a plan, Lucas. And the plan is simple. The miscreants are using cutting-edge technology to take us down. We’ll simply go the other direction.”
“What are you on about?” asked Norcoford.
“The past, Lucas,” the Prime Minister said. “We’ll go into the past.”
Chapter Thirty
FOX ON THE RUN
Sam was certain he was being followed.
He’d snuck out before dawn while it was still dark, when the air in the city smelled of old smoke and new mist, when people who weren’t quite awake yet and had hours ahead of them to commute were stacked in neat little lines to get their morning tea or coffee, scone or biscuit. He’d been careful not to wake Sailor or anyone else on his way out, not bothering to change and simply pulling his appropriated leather jacket on over a black t-shirt and blue-green plaid pyjama bottoms.
There were a number of unfortunate tasks scheduled for today that Sam did not wish to attend to. The first of which was an interview with The Grassroots Telegraph where he was supposed to play the role of political rock messiah, regurgitating Jeeves’ words. Not that it mattered what he said. Even the independent newspapers—still called papers even though they were available in electronic format only—wrote whatever story they wanted and adjusted the interviewee’s comments accordingly. Anyway, he knew Jeeves had only set this up to give him something to do, make him feel better about himself. Keep him under control in light of the little tirades he’d been having, keep him on a leash. He would play the movement’s song-and-dance marionette again, only this time with decidedly less fire.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in the Arcana. It was more that their success reverberated only in his mind, and not in his heart. At each triumph of theirs, he had expected to feel something. Some sort of elation, a high, a sense of universal wrongs being righted. Instead, he was merely a tagline-touting, hip-swaying, glammed-up prophesying insect. Buzz buzz buzz.
Tonight Jeeves wanted him to join a group of them planning to hide out and spy on a rally scheduled to take place outside of Tesco on Oxford Street, where things had apparently gotten tense—Tesco was now accepting GGcoin, but the government was demanding remittance of their VAT, although word was they weren’t even set up to process it yet. With the financial insecurity night terrors everyone was having, even large businesses no longer wanted to fork over a third of their profit to another entity for doing absolutely nothing.
Excited spokespersons would gather with their signs and their megaphones, their friends and enemies, their hopes and fears. It would turn into a riot, no doubt, one which the coppers would be ill-equipped to handle as per usual. It would be Glastonbury all over again—that teenage girl in the crowd, blood thick and red spilling over her bright, adoring face.
He shuffled along the narrow streets, twisting and turning past shops and cafes, only one out of every five open at this hour to greet the day’s first customers. The sun was now bright overhead, but it might as well have been a ball of cold fire. Sam shivered and shrunk down further into his jacket. He thought about buying a cup of tea at the stand on Garth near the edge of the cemetery, but was afraid he’d be recognised.
Instead he wandered into the cemetery, imagining he could hear the dead whispering to him. That faint new melody that had been running through his head came to him again, played on a haunted, out-of-tune piano by the ghost of a man who’d been falsely accused of murder and had lost everything—his wife and child, his dreams and ambition. In Sam’s mind the man wore a shabby grey coat that looked like it was made of pigeon feathers. He sang in a hollow, broken voice, words that disappeared into the wind the moment they were uttered:
Oh, I’m tired, I’ve been runnin’ so long
Thought I’d
escape, but I was so wrong
My fire left me with the light in her eyes
I’d given her everything
But everything dies
The cemetery had been beautiful once upon a time—dark, lush, and harrowing, but now it was poorly cared for. Sewage-coloured moss grew in mad patches across the headstones. The flowerbeds which once contained sprigs of bright lupine and lush snapdragons were now covered in rough tangles of weeds, and the few proud evergreen trees that remained in the graveyard were dying from the bottom up.
Sam sat down beside a large headstone resembling a Roman pillar. It said ‘BENJAMIN GRAVES – Beloved Father, Husband, and Son. Deus vult.’ He didn’t know what Deus vult meant. Something about God. God is my vault. God will punish vultures. He imagined the gravestone was his grandfather’s. He’d loved his grandfather very much, because he’d died when he was seven, and when Sam was seven he didn’t know how to do anything else but love.
He picked at the moss covering the headstone, tossing it aside. “Let’s get you cleaned up, grandad.”
The moss felt nice between his fingers. Sam wished the pills he’d taken ten minutes ago had kicked in already, then it would have felt even better.
When he’d finished cleaning the headstone, he looked up to find three men in black uniforms standing in front of him, their looming forms blocking the sunlight.
All three had guns trained on him.
“Aww, shit,” he said. “Guess you lads didn’t get the memo. We’re bulletproof now, you know.” He reached into his pocket—where he usually kept his cleverband when he didn’t feel like wearing it—and found nothing, save for Sailor’s cigarette case where he kept his pills.
The Rise of Saint Fox and The Independence Page 19