Defender

by G X Todd

  He sat there for too long, the world too quiet around him. Finally, he stood painfully and went outside.

  ‘Did you find anything?’ The boy was sitting on the wall beside the doorway, his feet dangling a full ten inches above the ground.

  ‘Yes,’ Pilgrim said. ‘But dead men tell no tales.’

  Hari frowned gravely at that.

  Pilgrim became aware of a strange humming beneath his feet, a faint buzzing in his soles and ankle bones. ‘You feel that?’ he asked.

  ‘The vibration? Yes. There are generators running beneath the town. They must have electricity down there.’

  ‘“They”?’ Pilgrim studied the boy, from his dark hair right down to his battered, dangling tennis shoes.

  ‘Yes. The people here are not welcoming to strangers, though. Not even to a lone boy.’

  With a cupped hand, Pilgrim shaded his sensitive eyes and examined the surrounding buildings, but there was nothing to see that hadn’t already been seen. Perhaps his eyesight hadn’t failed him earlier, after all, when that darting figure had vanished so quickly from sight.

  ‘They’re very good at hiding,’ Pilgrim commented, impressed by their ingenuity. No wonder he hadn’t spotted any signs of life above ground. If you wanted the amenities of a town but didn’t want to be discovered by passers-by, then going underground made perfect sense.

  ‘Yes. But then, so are many people. They must have heard the tales. It has made them extra wary.’

  ‘Tales?’

  ‘Of a man. Who takes people from their homes. He comes for those who hear beyond what you or I can hear. And he ties them up into sacks and carries them away in the night. You have not heard this tale?’ Hari asked, his head tipped to one side.

  ‘I . . . No, I don’t think so.’ But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? Hari’s tale touched on something familiar, like a bedtime story once told to him long time ago by his mother.

  ‘It is said he is travelling the world to find his people. And when he is finished, the red skies will come.’

  The nearest sewer grate, thirty yards away across the parking lot, was set flush to the street, the kerb cut out to accommodate a cast-iron storm drain. Hidden in the darkness, anyone could be staring straight back at him, even a man who stalked the night looking for his people.

  ‘Where did you hear these tales?’ he murmured.

  The boy shrugged unhelpfully. ‘All over.’ He hopped down from the wall. ‘Where must we go now?’ he asked.

  It took some effort for Pilgrim to drag his eyes away from the inky depths of that storm drain and all the things it might hide: real and imaginary men alike. There was one more item on his shopping list before they could leave, and it didn’t involve crawling down into the sewers to find it.

  He found it on his way out of town. Between the twinges in his side and the feebleness of his left hand (and his wary monitoring of the nearby sewer grates), it took him thirty minutes to change the ruined wheel rim on the car and replace it with a half-deflated wheel he took from an abandoned Datsun. He lost count of the times the tyre iron clanged to the ground. Each time, Hari wordlessly picked it up and handed it back to him.

  When Pilgrim finished, he celebrated by lighting one of the dead man’s rolled-up cigarettes, slowly sucking on it until the stub singed his fingers. He offered one to the boy, but Hari only smiled shyly and shook his head.

  On his way to the driver’s door, Pilgrim gave the new wheel a kick. It wouldn’t hold up for long, but it would do for a while. A direction was set in his head. East. In the absence of having anywhere else to go, he knew he must head east. The same direction as the sea and the boy’s secret place.

  Another word rang in his head. ‘Ruby’. This one he didn’t understand. However, it felt significant somehow, so he said it a few times to himself while he drove, interspersing it with the names Lacey and Alex until it began to sound like a mantra. Lacey, Alex, Ruby. Lacey, Alex, Ruby. Sometimes he would mix it up and say Alex, Ruby, Lacey, or Ruby, Lacey, Alex. His tongue tangled over the names many times.

  Suddenly, he said, ‘Defend her.’ He didn’t know what that meant, either.

  He received a few odd looks from Hari while he talked aloud to himself, but the boy remained silent, maybe understanding that Pilgrim was working through his churned-up thoughts and memories and that asking any questions might distract him from them.

  As Pilgrim hit the highway, he glanced west, maybe out of habit – checking both lanes for traffic – or maybe it was something more. Whatever the reason, in the distance, and rapidly growing smaller, he spotted a vehicle driving away from him. It was too far to see what kind of car it was, or anything else in detail.

  ‘Another car,’ Hari whispered. The boy turned to look at him questioningly.

  Pilgrim frowned and momentarily wondered about the vehicle, but he knew it wasn’t the direction they wanted, that he’d been that way before and that there was nothing back there waiting for him. He took the turn eastward.

  Stop.

  It was his own voice he heard in his head. It was strangely flat, as if the sound had been deadened by padded walls. Still, it had an authority to it.

  Stop the car.

  Pilgrim pulled up. After a moment, he swivelled in his seat and looked back through the rear window. He frowned into the distance, but there was nothing there, only a long, open road. Whatever vehicle had been back there was long gone.

  ‘Ruby,’ he said. Then: ‘Lacey.’

  ‘Which is the girl you are looking for?’ Hari asked, eyeing him curiously.

  ‘Lacey,’ he replied.

  Pilgrim lit another cigarette and left it hanging at the corner of his mouth, the smoke trickling up into his bad eye. Still, he continued to stare.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, and sighed through his nose, two plumes of smoke jetting out.

  He spun the wheel and turned the car around, facing back the way he had come. He looked at Hari.

  ‘This is the end of the road?’ the boy said.

  Pilgrim sucked on the cigarette and blew out another long, smoke-filled sigh. Through his missing window, he flicked ash on to the road. ‘I’m sorry. It’s much sooner than I expected.’

  ‘That’s all right. Sometimes we must trust ourselves, yes? Sometimes we must go back so that we may go forward.’ The boy held out his right hand, and Pilgrim half smiled, clamped the cigarette between his lips again and reached out to grip it. It felt slight in his hold, but Hari gave his hand a firm up–down pump.

  ‘You’ll be OK?’ Pilgrim asked.

  ‘Of course! I wish you the very of best luck,’ the boy said, in his lilting, musical accent.

  ‘You, too, Hari. Maybe I’ll see you down the road a ways.’

  The boy smiled down at his hemp satchel. ‘Maybe,’ he said shyly. He climbed out and shut the door with a gentle, considerate clunk. Then he stood back to give the car plenty of room to pull away.

  Pilgrim watched in the rear-view mirror as the thin figure of the boy shrank smaller and smaller. It took six full seconds for the clouds of dust to obscure Hari and turn him ghostly and insubstantial. As if he’d never been there at all.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lacey was in pain. A constant ache in her back and hips and the outsides of her arms that fused her muscles together in an acid-drenched mass. She’d spent so much time holding her limbs against her body, away from the men to either side of her, that the strain had taken its toll. All she wanted to do was relax in her seat. But she wouldn’t. Not while she could withstand the pain.

  Occasionally, the truck’s wheels ran over something in the road that caused the vehicle to sway, rocking Lacey from side to side, nudging her up against either Lou or Rink. She’d jerk away as if burned, holding herself stiff and separate from them.

  You’re stubborn as a mule.

  The pain made it hard to focus her thoughts, but talking to Voice was a distraction, ineffective though it was.

  – I don’t care. I’m not touching them.

/>   You won’t catch cooties and die.

  – I’m. Not. Touching. Them.

  Fine, but you’re not the only one who has to live with the discomfort, you know.

  – Tell me again about the Boy Scout.

  Voice sighed, a whistling that tickled the inside of her ear. I told you three times already. The last time I saw him, he was still alive. Which was the last time you saw him, back at the roadside.

  – But that was then. We left him bleeding with a gunshot wound to the head. Anything could have happened since then.

  The awful twangy music on the truck’s stereo ended, and Rink leaned forward to fiddle with the controls. Lacey shifted away from him when his arm brushed her shoulder. The music had been another thing she had been trying to drown out. All they seemed to sing about was love, loneliness and homesickness. It reminded her that, with every song played, the distance she had covered on her way to Vicksburg was slowly being cancelled out. Her sister and niece were like stars in the night sky, shining strongly above the horizon, but no matter how hard or fast she ran towards them, they stayed agonisingly out of reach.

  Rink removed the ejected CD. ‘What should I put on now, Lou?’

  ‘Don’t care. Just don’t crank it up too loud.’

  Rink opened the glove compartment and went fishing in the crap in there, coming out with another disc. He slid it in, and after a few seconds of ticking silence, the opening of some guitar-heavy rock song came on. She wished it was a Beatles CD.

  Lacey glanced out of the windows, but nothing had changed; it was the same old deserty expanse of land, broken up by random scenic turn-offs which seemed only to want to draw tourists’ attention to even more unchanging desert scenery.

  ‘You better be right about this, girl,’ Lou mumbled through his beard.

  ‘I am,’ she said shortly.

  ‘You fooled the Boss, but you don’t fool me any. You’re a wily one.’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘Better watch your step.’

  A minimum of words had passed between the three of them since they had started out, but now he wanted to chat? Fine. She’d chat. ‘Where was everyone headed to when we left?’ The walkie-talkie had fallen silent after leaving the city, and no useful information had been relayed before Lou had clipped it to his belt, where it had been ever since.

  Rink began to answer, but Lou spoke over him. ‘That’s on a need-to-know basis. And you don’t need to know.’

  Rink laughed. ‘It’s class-y-fied.’ He began tapping his fingers on the dash, using it like a drum kit. His tempo was all off.

  Another annoyance.

  ‘Is Red classified, too?’ Lacey asked. ‘I mean, Dumont sure is expending a lot of manpower getting her back.’ The way Lou looked at her made her think that maybe chatting wasn’t one of her brighter ideas. ‘It’s inconveniencing you guys, though, right? Wouldn’t you rather be back with everyone else than stuck out here with me?’

  ‘Keep talking, missy,’ Lou told her quietly, ‘and you’ll wish you weren’t stuck out here with us neither.’

  ‘It’s ’cause Red’s different,’ Rink said. ‘She’s worth any ten of us. And that’s not just Dumont talking. If we don’t find her, we’re all up shit creek. We want her back just as much as he does.’

  ‘Enough!’ Lou snapped gruffly. ‘Listen to your damn music and keep your yaps shut. Both of you.’

  Chat time hadn’t lasted very long. Lacey sighed and folded her arms across her chest, attempting to ease some of the ache in them. It helped. For maybe a minute. She decided to try meditation and closed her eyes. That lasted for maybe two.

  – I wish Red hadn’t, you know, crashed and stuff. I would’ve liked to talk to her properly.

  Me, too. She sounds very intriguing.

  – I wonder what they mean by all this ‘she’s different’ stuff.

  I wonder, too. I doubt these boys will tell us.

  Lacey unfolded her arms and reached under her collar. The St Christopher was warm, like it always was. She rubbed the design, picturing it in her mind: the child, the staff, the curving waves of the water St Christopher waded through. There must be a Bible story behind it, but she didn’t know what it was. Maybe the child was Jesus, and St Christopher had only one leg – hence the staff – and he was hobbling his way through the water because baby Jesus couldn’t swim and he wanted to get back to his donkey on the other side.

  There’s no donkey in the original Bible story. Sorry to disappoint.

  She refolded her arms and crossed her legs at the ankle. Much better.

  – How long have you been around for, Voice?

  What do you mean?

  – How long have you been here? As in existed?

  Memories are funny things. They’re not entirely reliable. I think I’ve been around a while, but I’m not sure I perceive time the same as you do.

  Lacey felt a shiver of apprehension. Had he been hiding in her all that time and she’d never known?

  No. Not with you.

  – With who?

  Doesn’t really matter. I’m here now.

  – It matters to me. What if you were in someone horrible? That’s gotta rub off at some point. Transference, and all that.

  It wasn’t anyone horrible. Cantankerous, maybe, but not horrible. You have to understand: this shouldn’t have happened. Voices don’t leap from person to person. It’s not possible.

  – It must be. You did it.

  Yes, but I don’t know how. And it’s important you don’t tell anyone it’s happened, either.

  – Why not?

  She could feel Voice’s frustration percolating, close to boiling over.

  Because I said so. Please, just take my word for it. Right now, we have more pressing matters to discuss.

  – What’s to discuss? I’m blocked in on both sides. I guess I could try and grab the wheel and yank it, but I’m not wearing a safety belt. If we crash, I’ll get flung out through the windshield. Are you even really a he? I think of you as a he now, but you never actually said.

  He ignored her question. So you’ve been looking for ways out. That’s good. What else have you noticed?

  – I’ll tell you what I’ve noticed if you answer me one question.

  Voice’s frustration bubbled for a few seconds longer, but then it simmered down. Fine. Deal.

  – Why are you here? In me, I mean. And why now?

  Technically, that’s two questions. But fine, I’ll answer. I’m in you because I had a split second to make a choice, and it was between you or someone who was stupid. It wasn’t a hard decision. And it’s happened now for the same reason you’re stuck in this truck heading back the way you’ve come and away from your sister. Circumstances and events don’t always play out like we expect them to. We can’t always control what happens.

  He had answered and yet not answered. Not really. She formed more questions in her mind but, before she could direct them inward, he said, We had a deal, Lacey. You’ve obviously been taught the importance of keeping your word. Now honour our agreement.

  She huffed a long sigh and answered.

  – Lou’s got his gun down the side of the door nearest him. Way out of my reach. And Rink has his tucked in the side of his belt. I could make a grab for it but, chances are, I won’t get very far. And if I did somehow get it, knowing my luck, it’ll go off and punch a hole clean through me.

  OK. So we wait.

  – Yeah, guess so.

  On the stereo, the rock song crescendoed in a barrage of manic drumming and wailing guitars. Rink attempted to keep up on the dash with his finger-drumsticks. Lacey’s concentration wavered until the song ended and a new one with a quieter melody came on.

  – Going back to the whole ‘why the hell are you here?’ thing. Does that mean you know where you came from? Like, originally?

  It was Voice’s turn to sigh. She had to rub the tickle of it away from the back of her ear. Why are you so interested in this?

  – Why? Because
you’re taking up space in my head, that’s why. Why wouldn’t I be interested?

  You don’t even know what happened seven years ago.

  – You’re right, I don’t. My grammy either didn’t understand what happened or lied to me about it. And no one seems to want to talk about it much.

  Because most people are still scared. They talk around the subject because they don’t understand it. They think, if they ignore us, we’ll go away.

  – Us? You mean you? The voices?

  Yes. Voices helped kill a lot of people.

  – But how?

  How would you kill someone if you were in their head?

  Lacey thought about it and then shrugged.

  – I’d just tell them to, I guess.

  Exactly. They got told to do it, although not in the way you’re thinking. It was much more insidious than that. Think about it: we know so many of your weaknesses. They’re all right here inside your heads. You hide them from the world, even from yourselves, but you can’t hide them from us. It probably took nothing at all to pull up those thoughts of inadequacy and failure and worthlessness and power them into self-destructive acts.

  – How, though? Like, give me an example or something.

  Of course, you want an example. Fine. OK. So there’s a guy called Ted, right? Ted’s married with three kids. He works for a big law firm in LA, and was put in charge of this high-profile case between some A-list actor and a male escort who claimed he had – well, it doesn’t matter what he claimed. Ted lost the case over some stupid bit of evidence he’d overlooked. Cost the company bundles of money, damaged their reputation; it was a sorry situation all round. Ted got spectacularly canned for it. But still, every morning, he kisses his wife goodbye, leaves for work and comes home ten hours later to eat dinner with his family. Except Ted isn’t going to work, he’s going to a casino, playing craps and poker and blackjack, trying to win enough money so he won’t have to tell his wife he’s lost his job. Worse still, while researching the A-lister vs Escort Boy case he found out a dark little secret about himself, one that’s been whispering to him from the shadows ever since, and he finds himself on the same streets the male escort worked on, handing over what little cash he has left to some sixteen-year-old boy who’ll get on his knees in front of Ted’s zipper in some seedy alleyway, because Ted can’t afford a motel room and can’t bring himself to do it in the family car.