3 of a Kind

by Rohan Gavin

  Darkus glanced at the rear-view camera. ‘We’ve got company.’

  Tilly’s eyes went wide, seeing the wounded Humvee tumbling like a log towards them, its windows smashing and blowing out with each impact, the headlights rolling wildly, its body panels contorting further with each rotation.

  ‘It appears to be gaining on us,’ warned Knightley.

  Darkus nudged the joystick, pulling a ninety-degree turn and veering out of the way, just as the remains of the Humvee hurtled past like an asteroid, coming to rest as a smoking junkyard wreck.

  Tilly cross-referenced the screens and pointed through the glass at a fast approaching razor-wire fence. ‘I suggest we test the grappling arms.’

  ‘The what?’ asked Knightley.

  Tilly stabbed the screen and two robotic metal arms extended ahead of the cockpit. She traced her finger over a highlighted menu showing a selection of tools. The pincers on the end of the arms retracted and pivoted to allow two circular buzz saws to unfold in their place. The blades spun to life, their serrated teeth whirring at several thousand revs per minute.

  The robotic arms waved around wildly as the vehicle smashed into the wire fence and the saws severed the chain links, punching a perfect-size hole in the perimeter. The six sets of off-road tyres flattened the fence as the SEV trundled off into the desert.

  From the compound, the sound of helicopter blades droned to life, slicing through the air as two choppers ascended, dipped their noses and set off in pursuit.

  ‘Kill the lights,’ said Tilly.

  Darkus switched to an infrared view, then heard a warning sound accompanied by a flashing red battery symbol on the touchscreen. ‘We’re running out of power.’

  ‘Already?’ demanded Knightley. ‘It wouldn’t last long on Mars or Jupiter.’

  ‘It relies on a solar panel,’ Darkus pointed out. ‘But on Earth at 3 a.m., that’s not much help.’

  ‘It’s time to ditch anyway,’ said Tilly. ‘They’ll be using thermal imagery.’

  Darkus swerved down a sharp mountain pass that would be impossible for any other vehicle to negotiate. The SEV descended the slope steadily, its treads digging into the soil, churning up dust and bits of vegetation as it went.

  He put the buggy into low gear, slowing its progress. ‘So long, Rover …’

  Darkus and Tilly released the hatch and it hissed open, letting in the warm desert breeze. One by one, the trio hopped from the slow-moving vehicle, recovering their balance on the slope. They watched as the lonely SEV continued its descent; its robotic arms flailing in the darkness, as if it were investigating a foreign planet.

  Darkus turned and saw a row of dim caves set in the hillside. ‘We could shelter there for a few hours.’

  They scampered across the rough face of the hill and ducked into an opening. Tilly took out her smartphone and, unsurprisingly, discovered the signal bars were empty. Darkus raised his penlight and examined their new quarters. The caves tunnelled deep into the hill with a dusty track leading into the darkness. It was cool and well protected from the unforgiving desert climate. Darkus panned the light over the walls and found a line of handprints that appeared to be painted in red dye, or perhaps blood.

  ‘Native American artwork,’ he deduced, finding more and more of them, almost like wallpaper, extending into the unknown.

  Tilly and Knightley Senior looked around, slightly creeped out.

  ‘Judging by the position of the thumbs, and the angle and direction of the handprints,’ Darkus went on, ‘the artists began their piece at the other end of this tunnel. Which would suggest that there is another exit … somewhere in there.’ He aimed his weakening torch beam into the cavernous passageway.

  ‘Your reasoning is sound,’ said his father.

  They followed the handprints, the penlight picking up primitive patterns and occasional pictures emblazoned on the walls: a dazzling sun, an army of warriors on horseback and a man falling into space.

  Tilly returned to her sullen silence, following behind Darkus and his dad.

  After what he estimated to be two miles, Darkus spotted a chink of blue-grey light at the end of the tunnel. It was the pale light of the waning moon. The cave passage opened into a clearing on the other side of the hill from Area 51. The blackened circle of an old bonfire was the only remnant of life, but the ashes had long been scattered by the wind. They looked out over a vista of flat, featureless desert, dotted with cacti and tumbleweeds.

  Darkus looked up into the predawn sky and narrowed his eyes, locating a constellation of stars forming a lazy question mark hanging in space. ‘That’s the Big Dipper, also known as Ursa Major,’ he explained.

  ‘Which makes that the Little Dipper,’ added Knightley Senior, pointing to a smaller constellation with a similar shape. ‘Ursa Minor.’

  Darkus took his penlight and held it aloft like a ruler, forming an imaginary line between the top two stars of the Big Dipper and the top star of the Little Dipper – which appeared to shine a little brighter than the rest. ‘Which makes that the North Star. Due north,’ Darkus concluded.

  ‘Which means Las Vegas is thatta way,’ confirmed his father, pointing southwards into the gloom. The geography appeared to unfold, revealing the full scope of the task ahead. ‘We must cover as much ground as possible before the sun comes up. The heat will slow our progress considerably, and we don’t have the benefit of fresh drinking water.’

  ‘Before we go any further … I have a question,’ Tilly interjected, causing the Knightleys to snap out of their steel-trap minds for a moment. ‘It’s for you, Alan.’

  ‘Fire away,’ he responded calmly.

  Darkus watched, sensing this was the question that had hung over Tilly ever since they left Los Angeles: the megaton bomb that had been hurtling towards them, ready to set off a chain reaction and detonate the fragile alliance of this holy detective trinity. Darkus felt his catastrophiser clatter to life, reacting to the tension in the air.

  Knightley did his best to disguise his own anxiety, but it was a losing battle.

  ‘Why was my mother communicating with Underwood before her death …?’ Tilly demanded.

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Knightley countered.

  ‘Why?’ she repeated.

  ‘Your mother was my assistant. She worked for me. We were trying to locate Underwood –’

  ‘Stop lying to me!!!!’ she screamed, and her yell echoed across the canyons. Her face flushed red with rage. ‘My mother communicated with Underwood, even after he was a wanted man … even after he was on the run for the murder of that boy.’

  Darkus recalled the case history. Underwood: the renowned child psychologist; wanted in connection with the death of one of his young patients.

  ‘She communicated with Underwood right up until her death,’ Tilly insisted. ‘Arranging meetings, exchanging coded messages. You know how I know? Because I read the emails. They were on Underwood’s hard drive.’ Tilly shook the smartphone at him, even though at this point it was a useless brick. ‘What power did he have over her? Why did she talk to Underwood, only for him to turn around and have her killed?’

  Knightley shook his head, massaging his temples. ‘I can’t tell you,’ he pleaded, though it wasn’t clear if he didn’t know, or he couldn’t say.

  ‘I don’t know everything. Yet,’ Tilly accused him. ‘I’ll have to wait for a few more hours and a decent wireless signal. But I do know you’ve been lying to me. All along – !’ She lunged at Knightley Senior, who held her off with one hand. She managed to push him back a few steps. ‘The truth this time. No more lies. I deserve that.’ She grabbed him by the lapels, breathless.

  ‘I – I …’ Knightley’s eyes rolled back.

  ‘No!’ she ordered. ‘Don’t check out on me. Don’t even think about it – !’ she begged, shaking Knightley violently as the man’s knees buckled and he began to descend into one of his episodes.

  ‘Dad!!’ Darkus ran to catch him as he fell.

  Knightley collap
sed into the dust, his head narrowly missing a rock. Darkus slumped next to him, brushing the sand from his father’s face and hair, then carefully raising his closed lids. The pupils were fixed and dilated. Knightley’s nostrils continued to flare as his chest heaved and sank at regular intervals.

  ‘That no-good sonofa–’ Tilly aimed a kick at Knightley’s ribs, with the hope of bringing him back to life, but Darkus blocked her foot with the blade of his forearm, as he’d learned from his father’s preferred martial art, Wing Chun – deflecting her energy away. Tilly rebounded and withdrew, looking quietly impressed by her stepbrother’s reaction. Then she continued her verbal assault, regardless. ‘He doesn’t care about anybody except himself. He doesn’t care about you. He definitely doesn’t care about me. He probably couldn’t care less about what happened to your dog either.’

  Darkus let the accusation hang in the air, not wishing to give it any power – or to contemplate the fact that it might actually contain a grain of truth.

  Tilly collected herself. ‘I’m sorry. That was a low blow.’

  ‘Your personal vendetta against my dad doesn’t help our current predicament,’ said Darkus, then checked his father’s pulse and looked around the wasteland, crestfallen. ‘He’s having one of his episodes, and we could die out here. Without Bogna. Without any answers. Without anything but heat, dust and death.’

  The edge of the rising sun began to bleed across the horizon, grotesquely enlarged, like an object of beauty and an agent of destruction all at once. Soaring over it was the foreboding shape of a vulture, its feathers ragged: a bad omen; a harbinger of doom. ‘We’ll be lucky if they even find our bones. Then who wins?’ Darkus asked her. ‘The Combination, that’s who. Game, set and match.’

  Tilly stared at her feet remorsefully, then dug in her rucksack and pulled out three silver packets. ‘Well, I did borrow these. From the Rover.’ She handed one to Darkus. It had a NASA logo on it. ‘They’re called MREs,’ she explained. ‘Meals Ready to Eat. Astronaut food. One for each of us. And we don’t need a microwave to heat them up.’

  ‘Good work. We’ll save them for the journey.’

  ‘To Las Vegas?’ she protested.

  ‘Dad was right. It’s time to complete the game.’

  ‘OK, Einstein,’ she piped up. ‘How do we travel a hundred miles in over one-hundred-degree heat?’ She pointed to Knightley Senior. ‘My vote is to leave him here.’

  ‘I’m not leaving him,’ insisted Darkus, casting his eye over the plains.

  They sat in defeated silence for close to an hour, watching the vulture circle ever closer, revealing its giant, prehistoric wingspan, intermittently blocking out the sun, until it flew directly over them.

  Darkus scanned the horizon hopelessly, feeling the roof of his mouth already parched and hollow, like the cracked surface under his shoes.

  Then something caught his eye.

  A glint. In fact, there were two glints, side by side. Darkus reached in his pocket and unfolded a pair of mini binoculars, racking the focus wheel until he arrived at a blobby shape. Two blobs, one behind the other. Darkus rubbed his eyes for a moment.

  ‘I must be seeing things. A mirage or something …’ he muttered.

  ‘What is it?’ Tilly demanded.

  Darkus pressed his face to the eyecups, seeing something out of a Wild West movie: two burly men in cowboy hats and ponchos, riding two ageing stallions in a very amateurish fashion. The lead rider also held a pair of binoculars to his face, which appeared to be trained directly on Darkus. Darkus and the rider’s binoculars met, observing each other, then a pudgy hand was raised and waved enthusiastically.

  ‘I have to be seeing things …’ murmured Darkus, then looked again.

  The rider removed his cowboy hat and pointed at his heavily perspiring face, mouthing something that appeared to be … ‘It’s mae.’

  ‘Uncle Bill!’ Darkus could hardly believe his eyes. ‘It’s Uncle Bill!’

  Tilly snatched the binoculars and confirmed it, breaking into a wide smile. Through the lenses, Bill awkwardly swivelled in his saddle, nearly losing balance, then grabbed on to the reins and pointed to his partner on the horse behind. It was none other than Dougal Billoch, Bill’s brother. (Dougal was allegedly the younger brother, although the two looked like identical twins.) Both were sweating buckets, waving their arms and legs as they coaxed their horses through the desert. The stallions appeared indifferent to the riders’ demands, but within an hour – and after Bill briefly lost the saddle entirely and found himself riding underneath the horse – the two Scotsmen came to the rescue.

  CHAPTER 16

  RIDERS ON THE STORM

  Untangling themselves from their reins, stirrups and cinches, the two brothers unceremoniously dismounted, clumping to the ground. Their stallions whinnied, then relieved themselves on the remnants of the bonfire. Darkus realised the Scotsmen had taken their mission seriously, outfitting themselves in authentic Western attire, complete with cowboy boots and spurs. Darkus even caught a glimpse of a Colt .45 revolver tucked in a leather holster strapped round Bill’s generous hip.

  ‘Aye, Doc, ye weren’t easy tae find … I see Alan’s had a bottle o’ vino collapso.’ Bill peeled off his hat and swigged from a hefty hip flask fashioned out of animal skin. The liquid caused him to crank his neck, waggle both his chins, then splutter violently. ‘Ay, caramba! Sorry, ye must be spittin’ feathers yerselves.’ He went to offer it around, before coming to his senses. ‘Awn second thoughts, have one o’ these instead.’ He offered the teens a plastic sport bottle of Highland Spring each, which they gulped in short draughts.

  Darkus knelt by his dad, who was currently propped unconscious in the shade at the entrance to the caves. He gently drip-fed water into his father’s mouth. Knightley’s swallow reflex activated, his eyelids fluttered and he appeared to smile gratefully for a moment, before returning to his trance-like state.

  ‘How did you find us?’ Darkus asked the Scotsmen.

  Bill removed a cigar from the corner of his mouth and pointed it at the chain around Knightley’s neck. ‘Miss Khan took the liberty o’ concealing a homing device inside that there Saint Christopher medal.’

  Darkus read the inscription again: Saint Christopher Protect Us. More like Miss Khan Protect Us, for it was his faithful science teacher who had saved them from certain death in the desert. Darkus made a silent promise to hand his coursework in on time, every time, from now on.

  ‘We also brought some of these,’ announced Dougal, digging in his poncho and pulling out a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. ‘A taste o’ home. They’re a wee bit melted, ah’m afraid,’ he admitted. ‘And the other packet went missin’.’ He shot an accusing glance at his big brother, who looked away, ashamed.

  ‘Did you find out anything more before you left?’ enquired Darkus.

  ‘Not a Scooby,’ replied Bill. ‘Clorr Entertainment is sewn up tight as a fankle. We cannae work out who they are or where tae find ’em. It’s all smoke and mirrors, farts ’n deception.’ Bill’s horse whinnied accusingly from the mouth of the cave. ‘Haud yer wheesht!’ the Scotsman shouted back.

  ‘What about Underwood?’ said Tilly.

  ‘Still clammed up, sleepin’ like a bubby,’ Bill responded. ‘Under roond the clock supervision. He’s not goin’ anywhere, I can guarantee ye that. Hou ’bout ye?’

  ‘Time is short,’ said Darkus. ‘I’ll fill you in on the way.’ He packed the MRE rations into Bill’s saddlebags, then glanced at the sun which was rising steadily and gaining in intensity.

  ‘Awn the way where?’ asked Bill.

  ‘Las Vegas,’ said Tilly.

  ‘We believe that’s where Bogna is being held,’ explained Darkus.

  Bill’s clammy face broke into a cigar-chomping grin. ‘Belter!’

  After a lot of heaving and struggling, and the horse bolting more than once, Knightley Senior was loaded face-down, doubled over the back of Dougal’s steed. His unconscious body was secured wi
th a thick leather belt and a blanket to protect him from the sun, causing Knightley to resemble a captured outlaw from the Old West, being transported to the Sheriff’s office, ‘dead or alive’ – it was hard to tell which.

  Darkus and Tilly climbed aboard Uncle Bill’s horse, sitting one behind the other, as if it were a three-seat tandem bicycle: Tilly holding on to Darkus, who spread his arms wide to hold on to Bill.

  Following several minutes of adjusting, readjusting, cinching, cajoling, and one final adjustment, Bill shouted, ‘Yah!!’ But the horse didn’t budge an inch. Bill shifted in his saddle, as if he was trying to kickstart a motorbike. ‘Boo-yaaah!’ Bill deliberated for a moment. ‘Giddy up, ye stinky hogbeast!’

  The horse took off at a gallop with Bill, Darkus and Tilly holding on for dear life, leaving a trail of billowing dust in their wake.

  ‘Yah!! Yah!!’

  A full five minutes later, Dougal was still coaxing his stallion into action, until he dropped the reins and collapsed forward with exhaustion – at which point the animal unexpectedly took off after the others, with Dougal clinging to its neck, and Knightley’s limp body flopping and waving from behind the saddle.

  The unlikely posse of riders made surprisingly good progress through the desert flats, navigating deep red canyons and dry river beds, progressing into the ‘badlands’: dense, arid mountain ranges so gnarled and eroded by wind and rain that they were near impossible to traverse. Still the horses pressed on, carrying their motley cargo under the granite blue skies – Tilly wearing a creased sun hat and Darkus uncrumpling a straw trilby that he’d bought at Heathrow. After spending the best part of the day on horseback with only the occasional rest stop, the shadows grew longer as the sun sank in the western sky. The badlands became more ominous than ever, their jagged gouge marks darkening as dusk threatened to fall.

  ‘Are we there yet?’ demanded Tilly.