Defender

by G X Todd

  With the chair-leg cross, she’d hesitated, not sure what to write. Neither Boy Scout nor Pilgrim was his real name. Finally, she had decided on a single word, one which she whittled in slow, careful lines.

  DEFENDER.

  It had been Red’s dying message, a cryptic word that Lacey hadn’t understood. At first, she had believed it to be a warning, to stay away from the truck bearing that same word, to steer clear of its occupants. In itself, the warning had been sound, and it was only later that Lacey had realised the full scope of its meaning. It was as clear to her now as the dawning sun indifferently shining over the graves: she, Alex and Pilgrim were the defenders. Defenders of each other. They may have started out as strangers, but together they were stronger than they could ever hope to be on their own. She was sure ‘defender’ was the right word to use on his grave. After all, he had been the strongest defender of them all.

  Maybe that was what he’d been saying at the end, with his talk of defending her. He was bequeathing the role to her: her new responsibility was to defend her niece and Alex in his absence, to be the one now to keep them safe. She was ready for the task, and the fact that Pilgrim had trusted her enough to give it to her only strengthened her resolve. This may not be the family she had envisaged, but she loved it fiercely all the same.

  Lacey?

  Voice didn’t have to say anything more. Lacey left her post at the back door and made her way upstairs. She found Alex and Addison in the master bedroom, Alex sitting cross-legged on top of the bed’s comforter, Addison directly opposite, mimicking her pose. Although Lacey’s niece didn’t speak much – her vocabulary was mainly restricted to basic sentences and nouns, her favourites being about food, her teddy bear and all the places she could hide – she had quickly picked up their names and was adding words to her lexicon daily. She was a fast learner.

  A few days after finishing the engraving on the cross, Lacey had been sitting on the backyard’s porch steps, listening, as she did every day, for any vehicles or search parties roaming the streets around the house. It was getting cooler, the sun on its way to setting, and she’d been thinking about moving back indoors. She hadn’t heard Addison approach until the girl sat down beside her. She had a keen way of sneaking up on you. Lacey figured it had been a survival skill quickly learned. The same as hiding. Addison was a whizz at that, too.

  Lacey smiled gently at her. ‘Hi.’

  The girl didn’t meet her eyes. She folded her arms tightly around herself and rocked a little in place, perched on the very edge of her step.

  ‘Cold?’ Lacey asked. She raised an arm so Addison could see her intentions and carefully slipped it around her niece’s shoulders. The girl stiffened, but she didn’t move away, so Lacey left it where it was.

  They sat quietly like that for a time, watching the sun touch the last parts of the yard, gilding the grass in gold, and then Lacey began to talk. She spoke about how Karey had helped raise her, looked after and protected her, that Karey had loved Lacey almost as much as Lacey loved her back – because no one could love anyone as much as Lacey loved her big sister – the same way she was going to love Addison now. And maybe, one day, when Addison thought she was able, she could tell her what had happened here and where her mommy had gone. Tell Lacey all the things Karey had ever told her, because that way Addison would feel close to her mom again, and it would be as though Lacey had been here the whole time with her and Addison had never been alone.

  Lacey was still in awe of her niece and, if she were totally honest with herself, a little wary. To survive alone in a city for so long, without any adults to care for her, was extraordinary. Lacey wasn’t sure how she’d done it: she and Alex had spent many nights puzzling over it, but all they could agree on was that the girl must have barely left the house during the previous three years. Although Lacey also stuck to the argument that Addison came from brave, hardy stock, particularly on Lacey’s side of the family, so, if anyone could do it, she could. Alex had smiled and conceded that it was certainly a valid point.

  As they sat on the porch steps together, Lacey continued to talk to Addison, and with each star that twinkled into being the girl softened, imperceptibly leaning closer and closer until she was fully wedged against Lacey’s side, tucked under her arm. Lacey talked until her throat was dry, and then talked some more, about Grammy, about her life at the farm with Karey when she was only Addison’s age and finally, when the girl was completely slumped against her, Lacey began to hum. Her number-one favourite Beatles song of all time.

  Addison smiled at her when Lacey entered the bedroom. Three rucksacks were leaning up against the wall under the window, packed and ready to go.

  ‘Lecks and me playing pat-the-cake.’ The girl held up her hands, palms open, showing them to her. Her nails were long, tapering almost to talons, but it had proven difficult to corner Addison long enough to trim them. Ever since Lacey had been forced to crop the kid’s hair short after being unable to untangle her mass of matted curls, Addison ran and hid at the sight of scissors.

  ‘Pat-a-cake,’ Alex corrected from her place opposite Addison.

  Lacey nodded, but didn’t speak. Her niece hadn’t shown any reaction to having shot and killed a man. Possibly, she didn’t understand what she had done, or maybe she wasn’t a stranger to such things. Lacey had lived out in the middle of nowhere, with a grandmother who’d done everything in her power to shelter her from the outside world and the horrible things happening in it. Who knew what Addison had seen in her seven short years, as much as Lacey was sure Karey would have tried to protect her. Age meant nothing any more. You lived and survived by doing what needed to be done, and a survivor could be a seven-year-old girl left to fend for herself in a hostile world or a sixteen-year-old who’d been in it for less than twenty days.

  It could simply be that Addison felt no guilt. This tall stranger had invaded her home, her safe place, and she had defended herself. Who was Lacey to judge her for that? Hadn’t she herself taken the life of a man who was sadistic and merciless and was mutilating her friend? She didn’t feel remorse for that, either. Or, at least, that was what she told herself in the bright light of day; her sleep brought nightmares that argued otherwise.

  On the bed, Alex had lowered her hands and was regarding Lacey quietly. ‘Everything ready?’ she asked.

  Lacey nodded again, moving nearer so she could run a gentle hand down the back of Addison’s closely shorn head. It was soft and warm and a bit bristly. ‘We’re all set. How’s your back?’

  ‘It’s better. Just a little stiff. If I keep my movements slow, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Good. We should go. We can’t stay here for ever.’

  ‘Did the voice say that?’ Alex asked, frowning.

  Lacey nodded a third time. Alex hadn’t asked for details about Voice, and Lacey hadn’t provided any. It was obvious Alex was uncomfortable with the subject; she’d never hidden her mistrust of the voices, and Lacey didn’t want their friendship to be damaged by the secret she had promised to keep. So the matter remained unspoken. It pained her to hold back such a big part of herself. More than anything, she wanted to talk to Alex, be honest, explain everything that had happened and have her understand and accept that Voice wasn’t bad, that he could be trusted (it was Voice who had advised her on how to care for Alex’s wounds, after all; without that, Lacey wasn’t sure Alex would have improved as quickly as she had), but she didn’t think her friend would take kindly to knowing he had directly helped in looking after her.

  So Lacey ignored the occasional guarded look Alex sent her way when she thought she wasn’t looking. Maybe she thought Lacey was crazy, and you can’t argue with crazy (although she never belittled or outright refuted any of Lacey’s claims whenever Voice was brought up). Lacey found she didn’t mind being thought of as nuts, if that’s the way it had to be. There were worse things in the world. Besides, she was kind of getting used to having Voice around.

  As far as Alex’s memories went, she remembered onl
y snatches of what had happened to her inside the freezer. She did, however, recall some of the questions Doc had asked.

  ‘He wanted to know where you were from,’ Alex told her. They were lying face to face in Karey’s bed, close enough so Lacey could feel Alex’s warm breath on her cold nose. Addison was asleep nearby, curled up in a duvet on the floor. Lacey and Alex whispered to each other in the dark, lying on their sides with hands cupped beneath their cheeks for warmth, eyes shining with flecks of moonlight from the curtainless window. ‘He wanted to know where we’d met, where we were going. And, God help me, I think I told him. I told him everything.’

  Not wanting to disturb Addison, they kept their voices so low Lacey had to watch the movement of Alex’s lips as she spoke.

  ‘I overheard talk of this Flitting Man while I was there,’ Alex murmured, ‘but I didn’t know who it was. Didn’t realise it was the same nameless man from all those stories my sister and I heard. That he was real.’

  The mysterious man from Alex’s campfire story had a name, and they had come within spitting distance of him. Some nights, Lacey felt like she’d stepped outside of the safe if lonely existence at her grammy’s farmhouse and into a nightmare world inhabited by monsters and murderous henchmen where there were no safe places left to hide.

  ‘They talked about him in whispers, Lacey.’ Alex’s voice had dropped to the merest breath of sound. ‘There was fear, but there was respect, too. And that’s what feels so dangerous about all this. They’re not doing what they’re doing because it’s a job to them, they’re doing it because they believe in it.’

  She let Lacey digest what she’d told her, and then said, ‘They loaded a truck just before we got to Vicksburg. Sent it off with maybe twelve people, including three they’d kept tied the whole time. I heard it was going to a place up north. Some camp. No one argued about going. They just climbed aboard and left. Everyone toed the line.’

  Everyone except Doc, apparently. He hadn’t seemed to like or trust the Flitting Man much, Alex told her. But then Lacey didn’t think Doc liked anyone much, other than Dumont.

  ‘He didn’t want to hand all their power over.’ They’d pulled their covers up higher, almost to their ears. Their muffled whispers and murmurs breathed heat into the material at their mouths, but no matter how much Lacey snuggled closer to Alex, she couldn’t banish the chill from her bones. ‘He resented Dumont for that, I think,’ Alex said. ‘But all Dumont wanted was to be on the winning side. His motivation was survival. He must’ve believed that his best chance of that was to throw his lot in with this . . . this Flitting Man.’

  Dumont may have been cruel and self-serving, but he wasn’t a fool.

  Hearing all this had only deepened Lacey’s fear. In her nightmarish version of the world, the Flitting Man had become a winged creature with the black eyes of an insect, and he flew the skies, hunting the Earth for her.

  Posy had told her that Red had been scared of the Flitting Man, too. He wanted people with voices, like Lacey, and had little need for anyone else. There wasn’t only herself to worry about any more, she had Addison and Alex to look after. Her family. She had plenty of reasons to be afraid. And, from what Dumont had said, it wasn’t only Lacey who should be.

  Everyone should be afraid of what was coming.

  CHAPTER 2

  Posy scratched at the sore lump in his armpit, his dirty fingernails picking at the coarse hair stuck to the weeping boil. As he fingered his pit, his eyes followed the rabbit sniffing around the run. He knew the scruffling of his scratches were well hidden by the leaves of the bush he was squatting behind. He was downwind of the animal, too, his bodily stench fetid and rank, a mix of unwashed body, piss, shit and wildness.

  He didn’t understand what downwind was, or know how to make a rabbit snare, but it had all been explained to him and one thing he did understand was how to follow orders.

  As he watched the rabbit hop a step closer to his trap he had to cram his dirty hand against his mouth to smother his giggles. The animal froze, its head coming up, glass-button eyes watching, searching, little twitching nose smelling the wind.

  Posy did his own freezing, his shoulders hunching up around his ears when he was admonished sharply to be quiet, to stay still. He bit at his fingers so hard they turned white in his mouth.

  The rabbit darted away so fast Posy’s eyes were a second delayed in going after it. As if snatched by an invisible hand, the animal was yanked to a stop, its legs flinging past its pinned head and shoulders. The rabbit flipped on to its feet and shook its head back and forth, fighting the invisible hold, but the more it pulled, the tighter the noose cinched around its neck.

  Posy giggled and stood, his feet shuffling excitedly in place as he watched, gnawing on his hand, saliva sliding down his wrist. Hungry moans whined out of his throat. When he was told to, he hurried forward and knelt next to the struggling rabbit. And again when he was told to, he deftly avoided the rabbit’s sharp teeth and snatched hold of its head, wrenching it in a vicious twist, the snap of its spine sending a tingle of pleasure down to his groin.

  He extricated the rabbit’s body from the trap and set it aside, even though he was desperate to rip into the still-warm body and start feeding on its steaming insides. With shaking hands he reset the snare, patting down the ground around it. He was getting good at setting traps. He had a good teacher. But they had bigger traps to set, yes sir, and larger prey to catch, and a much wider field to cover. They had a lot of work to do.

  Posy shook his head and smacked his palm off his temple. ‘Yes, yes,’ he muttered, ‘I’ll cook it prop’ly this time. I know.’ Tears welled in his eyes. ‘I was hungry. Not stupid, not worthless. Jus’ hungry. No, don’t say that. Don’t say that.’ He clutched two fistfuls of his hair and yanked savagely. He hit his temple again, harder than before.

  Sometimes, when the other was being especially mean and asking him to do things he didn’t want to do, Posy wished the man with death in his eyes had done away with him, too.

  CHAPTER 3

  Lacey had spent most of the previous two nights carting their supplies two streets over to where they’d parked the RV. Her sister – who had been married to a retail manager at the local Walmart – had stockpiled an impressive inventory of foodstuffs and provisions in the pantry, but Addison had exhausted a lot of it during the past three years and it was now down to the last shelf of powdered goods and two cardboard boxes filled with four dozen cans.

  At the time, Lacey had been unhappy that the only vehicle she could steal from the parking garage had been the unwieldy RV. It was hard to drive, slow-moving and difficult to hide. But now, with all their supplies loaded into it and it effectively being a home on wheels, her attitude had changed. It stank, the carpeting and cushions were all stained, but she had swapped the bedsheets with clean ones from her sister’s closet and flipped the mattress and cushions where she could, and it wasn’t so bad any more.

  Carrying the last few things in packs on their backs, the three of them trudged downstairs. Lacey asked the other two to wait and went to the sitting room alone. She approached the wall-lined bookcases and walked along them, running her fingers over the leather-bound spines, pulling the odd one out and hefting it in her hand, trying to feel if it were the right one.

  ‘Which one do you think he’d like? she asked Voice, sliding a copy of Moby-Dick back into place.

  All of them.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t carry all of them. Help me out a little here.’

  She had pulled out another slim hardback novel and was in the process of sliding it back when Voice said, That one. He’d like that one.

  She pulled it back out and read the gold lettering embossed on the brown leather spine. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

  ‘It’s good?’ she asked, as she fanned through the pages.

  No clue. I haven’t read it.

  ‘Then how—’

  I just do. Take it.

  She did, and was about
to turn away from the shelves when Voice spoke again.

  Take that one, too. Same shelf, on the right.

  She reached forward.

  Your other right.

  Her fingers drifted back to the decorative silver scrollwork on a pitch-black woven spine. She traced the delicate filigree design with a fingertip.

  Yes. That one.

  Her eyes travelled over the title. The Princess Bride.

  He’s read that one before. You’ll like it. So will Addison.

  She slid the book out of its place and packed the two hardbacks into her pack.

  She passed back through the house to the kitchen, where Alex and Addison were waiting for her, and told them she was ready to leave. They all filed out of the back door, locking the house up tight behind them. Crossing the backyard, feet whispering through the overgrown grass, their steps faltered and slowed as they passed by the graves, but they didn’t stop. They went through the gate into an alleyway and walked its length until they came out the other end. There, facing the deserted street, they stood side by side.

  Addison’s hand sought hers – it was small, a thin membrane of skin covering all the slight bones beneath – and Lacey gripped it gently. Addison reached for Alex on her other side and took hold of her hand, too.

  Alex looked over the girl’s head and met Lacey’s eyes. ‘You ready for this?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really,’ Lacey admitted.

  The girl beside her, whose head barely reached her shoulder, gave her hand a squeeze. ‘Time to go,’ she murmured.

  Alex smiled. ‘Addison is ready.’

  ‘Well, I guess if Addison is ready—’

  Alex laughed quietly and stepped off the kerb, the ancient pistol held ready at her side. Her arm stretched back, hand linked to Addison’s, and pulled her along after her. In turn, Addison – the middle link in their concatenated line – tugged at Lacey’s hand to follow. But Lacey didn’t move, and the line came to a standstill.