Badder

by Robert J. Crane

  And while I’d done a reasonable job of coming up with an alternate escape plan, I was kinda shit out of luck when it came to what to do next. This part of the plan that I was currently implementing was still all about the evasion, about getting the hell away. Unfortunately, once I had gotten the hell away—as far as I could, in this case—I was still going to be in Scotland.

  Which was not nearly far enough from Rose for my taste. Not when my bag of goodies had gotten torched in the Cessna.

  I put one arm in front of the other, churning my legs like a shark. I was cruising along at a good clip, probably looking a little like a jet ski as I buzzed through the water. I didn’t make an actual buzzing noise; it was probably more like a gurgling, from my efforts and the sound of me throwing my head to the sides to breathe as I sucked in hungry, greedy breaths on each stroke. Paddling like a junior wheelboat wasn’t exactly light on the oxygen consumption.

  Plan. I needed one. Getting to the bank of the river was a start, but that didn’t get me out of Scotland.

  So, what could I do?

  Well, in order:

  a) Evade on land. If I made it to the south bank, I would have increased the search radius so broadly that Rose’s helicopters would have a hard time tracking me. If I could avoid creating any other John Clifford-like entanglements—which was to say little bombs of info to shout out, “She was here!” in my wake once I landed—Rose would have no idea I’d reached the southern shore, or even that I’d gone for a swim at all. She’d just be sitting at a map table somewhere in her evil lair, wherever that was, and every hour that she didn’t have a bead on me, the circle that indicated her search radius would get wider and wider.

  She’d have to assume I got my hands on a car too, or hitched a ride on the back of an unknowing truck. Boom. That’d carry me farther away. Not as far as if I could still fly, but far enough that she and her minions—I assumed Police Scotland was co-opted based on the amount of overhead helicopters I’d seen after me post-airfield—would struggle to cover all the ground as the radius got wider and wider.

  b) My second option, which I dismissed almost out of hand, was to evade by going out to sea. Assuming I could maintain a bearing of due east without any reference point but perhaps the sun and stars, and could survive the freezing cold of the North Sea, in about five hundred miles I’d make landfall in Denmark. Optimistically, I could maybe make that in two or three days. With no sleep. In the freezing water. (Not actually freezing, it just felt like it.) So I’d wash up on the shores of Denmark half dead and probably collapse right there, assuming I didn’t drown on the way.

  As a side plan, call it “b2,” maybe I could latch onto a commercial ship of some sort like a barnacle and hitch a ride to elsewhere in the world, lying low in a lifeboat or something. This felt like more of a long-odds plan, and I dismissed it, too.

  c) Land, lay low. That was less evasion, which I considered to include movement, and more sheltering in place. Break into a house like with John, take a hostage and keep them for a few days. Downside: taking hostages meant exposing yourself to the risk that the people you took would be missed. Over the course of several days, this became more and more likely, and produced the offshoot result that even if you imprisoned them as I had with John, unless I killed them and hid the body (which I was unwilling to do) they’d eventually rat me out.

  The other alternative to this plan, let’s call it “c2,” was the idea that I should find a cave or other natural formation, a spider-hole kind of thing, and pull the earth in over me. No movement, no food, nothing, just stay there until some of the heat subsided. Major downside: a few days without food and water and I’d get weak. Especially water. If I could find a place that had water it was slightly more feasible, but when I did come out, I wouldn’t be in peak fighting condition.

  Not that fighting had been much of an option thus far, but…still. I wouldn’t be in peak running condition either.

  I turned my head and took another gasping breath. The shore was drawing nearer and nearer, sand and sea meeting in a glorious symphony of salvation. I couldn’t quite hear the crashing of the waves yet, because my own splashing was heavy in my ears, but I dreamed of a moment when my feet would touch dry land again, and I could stop swinging my arms like I was a motorboat, maybe spit the saltwater out of my mouth and not have it seep back in again.

  Modest goals.

  I didn’t like plan c at all, nor plan b. Staying still or evading by sea seemed like non-starters to me. Even the idea of trying to catch a commercial ship relied heavily on the idea that I wouldn’t get caught, or that I could somehow bribe the crew. It seemed unlikely I could survive without water in a lifeboat, so I gave up on that idea.

  It was going to be plan a all the way. Which begged the next question:

  Where should I go once I made landfall?

  I needed to get the hell out of Scotland, that much was sure. Here, Rose was on her home ground, and however she had done it—I was doubting the Siren explanation, but I had no reasonable alternative—she seemed to exercise a certain control over portions of the populace. Or at least the cops in Edinburgh.

  Which meant if I could avoid it, I should stay the hell out of Edinburgh.

  That left me with a few avenues. I could try for the Channel Tunnel. That was really the only convenient ground route out of the UK. I could potentially get on a ferry at Dover. Maybe there were others, I didn’t know.

  Or I could try and get a plane. Though we’d seen how that worked out the first time around.

  Which brought me to another question: How had Rose found my rendezvous point at the airfield? Just simple luck seemed right out, especially since a US government team had shown up at the same place, same rough time.

  That suggested my fears of some sort of NSA cell phone hacking might be well founded. Shit. When I called my banker again, I’d need to use a landline, for his safety and mine. Less chance of interception that way. I’d have him make arrangements this time, leaving it to him to make contact with and to get money to someone who could.

  I didn’t want to rely on Fritz again for transport, given what had happened last time I’d put my future location out there. Which meant exfiltrating the country was on me. A commercial flight was pretty much out, because even if I could procure fake ID—which seemed difficult, again, owing to the trouble that came from having to rendezvous with people and giving away my location in the bargain—I doubted if I’d be able to pass the scrutiny of a security checkpoint given that I was the most wanted fugitive in the UK right now. They’d be on high alert, and watching for me.

  The tunnels and ferries? Maybe I could sneak through there, though that was kind of suspect too. I would have laughed in the face of the EU meta embargo now, at the thought of crossing into France only to be arrested there for being a powered person, but…it wasn’t that funny.

  Either way, if I wanted to get into position to do that, I needed to get the hell out from under Rose’s nose.

  I needed to get the hell out of Scotland.

  Car, rail, or on foot. Those were my main options for getting back into the south of the country. Once there, maybe I could exfiltrate myself. Hell, I could swim the English Channel. Though, maybe I’d be better off making contact with Wexford—in person, or via landline somehow, or even better, dreamwalk—and letting him sort out my escape, given he probably didn’t want me caught here.

  Hopefully, anyway. If Wexford was off my side…

  Well, then I was really alone.

  The shore was in sight now, my excessive thinking roiling in my brain like my arms were doing to the water around me. Only a few hundred yards to go and I’d be out, out of this frigid wash, out of immediate danger, out of…

  Well, not out of the soup, because I was still in deep shit, but…closer to a break, at least.

  And I needed a break.

  I couldn’t see anyone on the beach, and suddenly I was thankful for the utter lack of sun overhead. Hell, if it wanted to break loose and s
tart pouring, that would only aid me, really. So long as the choppers weren’t flying with IR sensors, I was safe as houses in a downpour, though I’d look suspicious if anyone peeked out their window and saw me hotfooting it across the hills in a tempest at metaspeed.

  Dragging myself through the rough surf near shore, I fought against the breakers that threatened to knock me over. Apparently the tide was high. Who would have guessed, given how late it was probably getting in the afternoon?

  The exhaustion was sweeping; it had me from toe to head. My brain swirled in a slow eddy of worry, looking up and over my shoulder for helos. Still none in sight. There were ships out in the Firth, but none that had gotten terribly close to me. As long as none of their crew picked up their microphones and called in the sight of a crazy person swimming like mad through the water…

  I couldn’t rely on that. Up on shore now, I was dripping across the clumped, tan sands and occasional rock like I was the sky letting loose. My clothes were clinging to me like weighted chains, threatening to drag me down. They weren’t actually that heavy, especially to a meta, but to a meta who was battling exhaustion?

  Yeah. They felt heavy, soaked and cold and clutching at my skin like an industrial-strength full-body suction cup that had been licked by someone who’d just taken a drink of ice water.

  I dragged myself up on the beach and forced myself to go on, kicking up the sand as I went, my feet barely lifting with each step. I needed to keep going, just a little farther inland, somewhere that I could find a safe spot to take a break…

  And maybe pass out for a few hours, before I ran myself to death, maybe literally.

  18.

  I was pretty damned sick of running through the Scottish countryside by now, but at least it gave me the ability to dodge the hell out of the Scottish people, for the most part. Being this far out from most of the cities and towns meant fewer people, which was good.

  Because right now, there was a deep uncertainty factor with people. They weren’t all Rose’s servants, but the fact that she seemed so annoyingly ever-present was…concerning, to say the least.

  Out here in the middle of nowhere, I felt strangely safer. Avoid people, avoid Rose, because, obviously, she was a people. A person, I guess, if you want to get all grammatical about it.

  I hooked the long way west, avoiding a pretty good-sized town that I spied from a hilltop. Skirting my way around the edges of fields, running low over fences and hedgerows, I knew my luck had to be running short. Sooner or later, someone was going to see me bolting through the fields, and that’d spell disaster.

  Finding a place to lay low until nightfall? That was my new plan.

  Farms were good in that regard. If I found a farm that had a few outbuildings, odds were I could slip into one and find a hiding place, maybe in a barn, buried under some hay, and spend a good portion of the afternoon and night all sacked out there, unconscious, and wake up around midnight. Under cover of darkness, I could start moving again, less worried about getting spotted out in the countryside because almost everybody would be asleep at that hour. I could cruise through the fields in the (hopefully lack of) moonlight, and get my ass heading on toward the next destination.

  Which I had yet to pick out. Because I needed to try and make plans again.

  Cresting the next hill, I found another of the seemingly endless farms out here in the countryside. This one didn’t seem to be in production, the fields filled with hay—which, I suppose, was a kind of production, but not the kind you had to assiduously watch and care for, necessarily—and otherwise a little overgrown.

  The barn was old and rickety, and next to it was another squarish building, what we in the midwest would have called a pole shed. This one had a wide bay door that was open, and inside I could see it was set up like an auto shop, with a car inside. There was a mechanic standing outside, smoking a cigarette and facing the other way. He was just standing there, minding his own business, about a hundred and fifty yards away. And playing on his phone.

  I came creeping down out of the hills, taking a dogleg path around so I could approach from behind the building. It was getting late in the day, my run and swim having burned most of it. I estimated the sun wouldn’t set for hours yet, but here I’d found a nice little set of buildings, and an automotive shop would be an ideal place to hide for the night, especially if this guy were to knock off soon and call it a day.

  As though someone was sensing my thoughts, I heard someone call, “Angus!” from the farmhouse, and I reached the cover of the back of the automotive shop just as he started to head in. I couldn’t see him, hunkering down in the shadow of the building, long grass tickling at me where I crouched, but I could hear his footsteps as he headed toward the house.

  “What is it?” he asked as he opened the door and let it slam behind him.

  “Did ye hear from Mactaggart?” a female voice asked him, muffled by the fact that there were now house walls and an automotive shop between us.

  “Nae,” he said. “Did he call?”

  “Aye. Said he’d been trying to reach ye for hours.”

  “Did he call the shop?”

  “I don’t know. Just he’s been trying to reach you.”

  “I bet he called my mobile, the daft prick. He should know I can’t hear it when I’m working.”

  “Aye, he’s a bit thick. But you should call him back.”

  A bit more disgruntled: “Aye. Tomorrow, though.”

  She seemed to perk up, this unseen woman. “Oh? Are you done for the night, then?”

  A pause, then he answered. “Aye. I want to see what happens next on Stranger Things.”

  “If we hurry—” she sounded hopeful “—we could squeeze in an episode before Great British Bakeoff.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, too.” He seemed enthusiastic. “Let me lock up the shop.” I heard something else, and it took me a second to realize it was kissing. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  More kissing. Yeesh. Get a farm, you two.

  This seemed like my chance. I darted around the building and into the automotive shop. There was a big under bay beneath the car that was parked within. The car wasn’t lifted up at all, no jack or hydraulic lift, so it seemed like maybe Angus just did all his work underneath. I spied stairs going down in the corner, and I headed for them, darting down quickly, pausing a couple steps beneath the start and just sitting there, waiting.

  It actually took a few minutes before the guy came in. He was humming, and I got a feeling he was a pretty happy fellow. I listened to his hum morph effortlessly into a whistle, and couldn’t help breaking into a smile myself. He had a fun night ahead of him, watching a TV show he liked next to a woman he loved.

  Must be nice.

  The door of the shop clanged shut a second after the lights went out, throwing me into darkness. A few high windows cast a little grey light over me. The smell of oil was thick in the air, stronger beneath the car where I suspect an oil change had actually been in progress before he’d decided to call it a day for some Netflix and chill time. I waited a few seconds before moving, until I could no longer hear him whistling, and until I heard the door to the farmhouse slam.

  Finally, I was alone in the dark.

  I scouted the pit beneath the car first. It was dark, but I could see well enough to notice the vat of oil. I’d need to avoid that, but otherwise the pit seemed like the place to settle down for a nap when the time came. It was nice and dark, even compared to the rest of the shadowy shop, and it was under enough cover that an IR scope would have a hell of a time picking up one human body heat signature under all that concrete and the chassis of the fairly large farm truck that was on the rack above.

  I crept up the stairs, figuring there was no point in being loud. There was a fridge in the corner, and I immediately headed toward it as though it contained the secret of life. Which it sorta did, because I found a few beers, something called Irn Bru, which came in a can and looked like a beer also,
or maybe an energy drink.

  No food, though.

  I checked a cabinet just to the side of the fridge, and jackpot. Terrible-for-you snacks were stockpiled here like some brilliant ant had seriously readied himself for winter, a wise precaution in Scotland given the length of those suckers. I busted into them like they were food and I was a starving person—both true things, because I hadn’t really eaten since John’s house earlier today, and not very well.

  Cracking open an Irn Bru, I took a sniff and decided, yeah, this was probably an energy drink of some sort. I mentally flipped a coin and decided to pass on it for now, figuring the potential caffeine wasn’t worth the risk. I was going to have enough trouble sleeping as it was; no need to compound the problem.

  Instead I chugged a different soda to rehydrate, then found a sink and drank straight from the tap. I didn’t want to make enough of a mess to get the mechanic thinking someone had been in here, so I carefully cleaned up after myself, leaving the Irn Bru out, fizzling quietly on the bench; I’d chug it before I headed out later tonight. Everything else I put in the trash can, taking care to try and bury the food wrappers under other stuff so it wouldn’t be blatantly obvious someone had pigged out in this guy’s stash.

  Cleanup done, I started looking around the quiet, hazy shop for the phone the mechanic had mentioned earlier. I found it on the wall, and dialed that number I’d memorized for Mr. Nils. I waited a few seconds, hoping that I hadn’t messed up the dial as I always seemed to here in the UK, but within a few seconds, it started to ring.

  “Hello?” a voice answered on the other side. No familiarity now, which would have been irksome under normal conditions.

  “It’s me,” I said, still avoiding saying my name, just in case the wired UK telecom system was set up for easy listening. Hopefully the NSA or whoever had tipped off the military types that showed up at the airfield weren’t tapped into it. That left open the possibility that Rose was, but I had no time to worry about that right now.