In Constant Fear

by Peter Liney

  The mood hadn’t been that great in the shelter when we’d left, but it was a damn sight worse when we returned and told them our news.

  “You saw it?” Lena cried.

  “Kinda,” I replied. “Just a shadow. You couldn’t really make out a shape.”

  “But it was there,” Jimmy said thoughtfully. “In theory it should’ve been harder to spot on a day like today.”

  “Rain bouncing off it maybe?” I suggested.

  “That was the drumming sound,” Sheila agreed.

  “Jesus,” Jimmy sighed, like he didn’t even know where to begin thinking about what he had to come up with. “Not cool. Not one tiny bit cool.”

  Gordie stared at us, then made this face at Hanna. “We’re screwed,” he whispered, but she pushed him away.

  “If it has a shadow, it’s not invisible,” Jimmy stated, as if he was lecturing himself.

  “Maybe it’s got holes in it?” Delilah suggested. “Like that Swiss cheese.”

  Jimmy didn’t so much as acknowledge her existence, let alone what she said. “Could be something new, I guess—something I don’t know about.”

  “We can’t shoot it down,” Gordie said, for those who’d missed the obvious, “even if we had something to shoot it down with,”

  “Not to mention the fact that we can’t see it,” Sheila told him, plainly a little irritated by his attitude.

  “Gordie,” Hanna muttered.

  “Don’t you know anything?” I asked the Doc, turning to find him white-faced with worry, the evidence of Nora Jagger’s growing proximity plainly frightening the hell outta him.

  “No, I told you: no one knows the full story of anything anymore.”

  I picked up Jimmy’s flashlight and sat there shining it down from my outstretched hand, placing my fist between it and the ground, wondering what the hell could it possibly be made of that we couldn’t see it, but it created a shadow?

  “Maybe it’s glass,” I suggested.

  Jimmy gave me an impatient look. “A plane or drone made of glass?”

  “A kinda glass. I dunno—mirrors maybe?” I added, trying to save my position.

  “Yeah. Thanks, Big Guy. I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “Told ya,” Gordie whispered to Hanna, this time being ignored.

  “I have to go,” the Doc said, suddenly leaping up, still clutching his case to his chest.

  “You reckon?” Lile said, grabbing his arm.

  There was a momentary stand-off, all his old survival instincts against Lile’s insistence that he was going nowhere, then Nick, who up to that point hadn’t said a word or participated in any way, plainly decided he’d had enough. He jumped up and grabbed the Doc by the shoulders, forcing him back down, giving him a glare that told him that was where he was gonna stay.

  “Maybe . . .” Jimmy said, still lost his thoughts, “maybe we don’t have to shoot it down.”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  “Maybe I can hack into it, bring it down that way. The satellite’s not gonna punish me for that . . .”

  “You hope,” Lile commented.

  Jimmy thought about it for a while, then suddenly stopped. “Only problem is, I don’t have a big enough battery . . . Maybe enough to get me through their security and into the onboard, but I’d have to know exactly where it was in the first place.”

  “Must be some way,” I said.

  “Not without using power.”

  I grunted, trying to think of a solution, and everyone else was too.

  “I could do it,” Lena suddenly announced.

  I turned to her: Jesus, she was right. If anyone could pinpoint precisely where that thing was, she could.

  I looked at Jimmy, wondering what he’d say, but he was already dragging out his stuff and laying it out around him, working out what he was gonna do. “Okay, everyone leave,” he said.

  “It’s raining!” Gordie protested.

  “Tough. I got work to do,” he told us.

  There was a general chorus of disapproval that was only quieted by Sheila offering everyone shelter at her place, though she warned us it’d be a squeeze.

  “It’s okay, I’ll stay here,” I volunteered, thinking I could help.

  Jimmy turned to me like I was being presumptuous beyond belief. “No. Not cool, Big Guy.”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  But ya know what, damned if he didn’t grab me by the arm and steer me toward the exit. “Out,” he ordered, and I knew that it might not be much more than a few branches and a layer of leaves, but it’d been commandeered as Jimmy’s latest workshop and there was only one boss there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The bad weather continued for the rest of that day and well into the night, and in a way we were all grateful for it. We had no idea if the Bodyguard had any special problems with heavy rain but assumed they were no more inclined to venture out in it than we were, which hopefully meant they’d been unable to make any more progress in our direction. Nevertheless, I was up at dawn to a day as clear as crystal, concerned enough to make my way up the hill and check.

  I kinda half-circled the Commune one way, then doubled back and did the same in the other direction. There was no sign of anyone but it still didn’t put my mind at rest. I started to look that bit further out, going over a valley or two, half-wishing (at least when I was on the flat) I’d brought the tandem with me. I wanted to know exactly where they were, how close to us, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. Mind you, several armies could’ve easily gone missing in that forest.

  A little after midday I headed back, relieved there was no immediate sign of Nora Jagger but still laden down with any number of concerns. My major one—or certainly well up on the list—was exactly how well that satellite was functioning. I knew it wasn’t a hundred percent, but was it eighty, sixty, twenty percent efficient, maybe? Did it have a full working program of offenses and appropriate punishments, or was it gonna fry someone for picking a flower? Give a mass-murderer a quick laser internal massage?

  If only I could’ve tested it, found some way of provoking it into action and seen how well it responded. It even went through my head to commit a minor indiscretion—give Jimmy a whack or run off with the Doc’s case or something—but just as it might prove wanting, it might also prove terminally heavy-handed.

  When I got back to the Commune I was amazed to find Jimmy preparing to head up the hill with Lena, that he’d already made up something to use against the Shadow-Maker. Turned out he’d brought some things with him for communicating with the satellite, that he’d used when he brought them all down—well, all bar one—which’d given him a bit of a flying start.

  I found him talking to Sheila, getting her opinion on the best place to bring that thing down so it was clear of the Commune and wouldn’t give away our position.

  I could tell by the way he was going over it with her that he was pretty confident about what he’d come up with. He did start to explain it to me, but try as I might, my eyes glazed over and he gave up. In any case, we didn’t have the time. If that thing really was the Bitch’s eyes and key, the sooner we got rid of it, the better.

  Jimmy, Lena, Gordie and Hanna, Sheila and me made our way through the Commune, ignoring the looks of the other villagers, acting all casual, though several of them took more than a passing interest in the signal-booster I was carrying. A couple did ask what was going on, if Nora Jagger was coming, but we just brushed them aside, as if we didn’t know any more than they did.

  Isobel chased after us, shouting at the top of her voice if she could come along, and when we said no, offered to take care of the baby instead. I told her Lile, Nick and the Doc had it covered, but she wasn’t gonna put off so easily.

  “Can’t I go and see him?” she begged, her face filled with all its usual earnest emotion.

  “Sure,” I said, knowing Lile wouldn’t thank me for it, “but don’t stay too long.”

  She turned and ran back in the direction of the shelter
as fast as she could go, laughing and shrieking, in every way an oversized child.

  Sheila led us up over the hill, along this gully and then started to climb what appeared to be one of the highest points in the area. It took us half an hour or more and most of us older ones were really puffing as we neared the top. Jimmy stopped, staring up at the sky, a few clouds beginning to return with the cooling afternoon.

  “Let’s hope it’s around,” he said, looking from horizon to horizon as if he still thought he should be able to see it.

  “Let’s hope you know what you’re doing,” I heard Gordie mutter. His new habit of trying to impress Hanna with smartass asides was something I was gonna have a quiet word with him about.

  Mind you, on this occasion, he did have a point: it wasn’t gonna be so much a shot in the dark as a shot in the dark with your eyes closed after being spun around a dozen times. Jimmy was gonna attempt to hack into the computer of something he couldn’t see or hear and knew nothing about apart from the briefest glimpse of its shadow. Maybe it had antihacking protection and the moment it felt his intrusion it would blast him to kingdom come? Super-resourceful he might be, but like I said, with this thing, he just might’ve been out of his depth.

  The little guy started to lead Lena and me up to some exposed rocks at the very top of the hill, waving the others away. “Principals only,” he told them.

  “You’re gonna leave me with these two?” Sheila protested, plainly concerned she was gonna end up being a fifth wheel.

  Jimmy ignored her; he was in his element, setting up, what was for him, a slightly more professional-looking piece of equipment than usual: no wires hanging off, no insulating tape holding it all together. What I could make of it, mostly it was just a standard computer, signal-booster and battery, and again I had this feeling of being part of a group of Stone Age people about to throw rocks at the Modern World.

  He turned it on, spent a few moments fiddling with it—I guessed setting it up and linking in the signal-booster—then put both in sleep mode, obviously still anxious about how much battery he had.

  “It’s up to you now, Lena,” he told her.

  “There’s nothing,” she replied immediately.

  “Oh . . . okay.”

  We crouched down behind some rocks, making ourselves as comfortable as we could, knowing we might be in for a long wait, but it wasn’t long before Gordie ventured up from below to complain that he didn’t know why he’d bothered to come along if this was all we had in mind for him. Hanna soon followed, grabbing him and leading him away, I suspected ’cuz Sheila had said something.

  It’s funny how people often adopt roles in relationships that are completely at odds to their normal ones. The longer those two were together, the more he was inclined to show off, the more she was inclined—not to mother him, as such, but to maybe give him a sense of balance. Worse still, at least as far as I was concerned, their relationship had become all-encompassing, the way love, particularly young love, often does: they were spending all their free time with each other and no longer attending to other friendships as much as they should’ve. I know it’s the way of the world, ’course it is, but I really missed them both as individuals.

  The night started to slowly mass in the far distance, as if someone had dropped a little concentrated color just over the horizon. Down below I could see the others getting that bit restless, I guessed wondering how long were we going to stay.

  “Nothing?” I asked Lena for maybe the seventh or eighth time.

  “Thought there was something earlier, but . . .” She shook her head.

  “D’you wanna call it a day?”

  Jimmy glanced across, maybe hoping she’d say yes, but she didn’t. “Clancy, what if I go back to the camp to sleep now and this thing keys you in the night?”

  “It won’t, not from what the Doc said.”

  “You can’t be sure. Not a hundred percent.”

  She was right, of course—she usually was. I just wished we could get it over with, that whatever was gonna happen finally would.

  “In that case, I might slip behind a bush,” Jimmy told us, working his way around to the other side of the rocks. “Damned weak bladder . . .”

  “This is crazy,” I muttered to Lena the moment he’d gone. “We don’t know anything about this thing—it might be days before it comes this way again.”

  “We’ve got to try,” she told me. “That’s what we’ve always done.”

  She was right about that too: that was what we always did—we tried—and that was how we’d managed to prevail in spite of impossible odds so many times.

  I was about to put my arms around her and steal a kiss, when I saw the expression on her face suddenly change. “Jimmy!” she cried out. “Jimmy!”

  He came stumbling back, doing up his pants as he ran, grabbing his gear, getting in a bit of a tangle. “Where?” he said, powering up.

  She pointed back down the valley in the direction we’d come, looking far more scared than I’d expected.

  Jimmy directed the booster to where she was indicating, trying to pick something up but plainly without success. “Nothing,” he told her.

  “It’s there.”

  He started punching keys and swiping the screen, a look of desperation stamped on his face.

  “You sure?” I asked Lena.

  “Yes!”

  “How far?” he asked, now sweeping his booster from side to side.

  “I don’t know. A quarter of a mile or so—no, less. Moving really slowly, coming up the valley.”

  “Shit! Shit! Not cool,” Jimmy whined.

  “Don’t forget we want to bring it down on the plain,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, thanks, Big Guy,” he snapped. “Just what I need.”

  I knew better than to say any more, that it was best to stand back and let him do his job, but he was as flustered as I’d ever seen him. “Where the hell is it?” he cried.

  I couldn’t see or hear a thing, but it was obvious from Lena’s reaction she could, that she’d conjured up something in her mind.

  “Jimmy!” she pleaded, whatever it was obviously now closing in on us.

  “Okay . . . okay,” he finally announced. “I got something.”

  My senses still weren’t giving me anything, but they didn’t need to, not with the expressions on Lena’s face—the growing sense of fear, the way her color was fading to nothing, was as good as any screen. Yet at that moment I did see something moving across the tree-tops below us: a big black shadow sucking up everything before it.

  “Jimmy!” Lena cried again, but the little guy obviously wasn’t finding it as easy to break into as he’d expected.

  “I don’t get it,” he wailed. “I just don’t get it!”

  All I could do was to stay where I was, studying Lena’s terrified expression, occasionally looking in the direction she was facing, feeling that huge shadow getting ever closer—but in the sky above us there was still nothing.

  “Got it!” Jimmy cried, his program finally locking on and hopefully doing what it was supposed to.

  There were several silent seconds that weighed on us like eternity as we all stared up into an empty sky, not knowing what to expect, then I got biggest shock of my life. I just stood there, my mouth falling ever wider, the hairs on the back of my neck vibrating like the strikers on alarm bells. Suddenly I could see something: the smallest piece of fuselage floating across the sky toward us like a blown piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Then another piece appeared, a part of a wing maybe, moving in tandem with the piece of fuselage. Then another, and another, as this image slowly took shape as if pixels were coming to life in the sky.

  I had no idea what was going on, but could only guess that somehow Jimmy’s program was shutting the thing’s camouflage system down, and as it did so it was materializing before us bit by bit. A piece of the tail appeared, then this large tube—maybe part of the engine, for diverting the thrust, hence how maneuverable it was—or p’raps some kinda sile
ncer? If it was a drone, it wasn’t like any I’d ever seen—it was much bigger than I’d expected, the size of a small plane, and looking like a cross between a huge black egg-box and a giant flying insect, all strange angles and bulging eyes.

  “Jesus!” I gasped. I mean, that thing was evil. Thank the Lord we hadn’t been able to see it passing over us.

  Jimmy was utterly absorbed, not working his computer anymore but watching this big black specter slowly coming to life before us. It was almost overhead, still moving incredibly slowly, yet suddenly it shook like it’d had a convulsion, as if it was trying to keep going but knew it couldn’t. Then the nose dipped and it started to head in the general direction of the plain, going down with every second.

  “Die, you fucker!” Jimmy screamed, jumping up and down, his ponytail bobbing with him, while I explained to Lena what was going on. “Die!”

  However, at that precise moment the craft suddenly tilted and rolled, veering to the right, and then went into this long sweep heading back toward us.

  “Oh, shit!” I groaned.

  “What’s happening?” Lena asked.

  “It’s coming this way.”

  “What?”

  It went through my head that it had some kinda failsafe system—its way of destroying those who tried to destroy it—so precise was its course. As it arrowed toward us, Jimmy threw himself behind the rocks and I grabbed Lena and did the same.

  It was so low it actually scraped something as it went over—a tree, I think. The others came running up the hill to check we were all right, but even before they’d reached us it’d disappeared over the next ridge.

  We all stood there in silence but there was no explosion, no sudden spout of black smoke or fire, just a distant crunch, and then a loud impact.

  Jimmy never said a word, just took off down the slope as fast as he could, the rest of us following along behind, me taking Lena’s hand.

  We went down to the bottom, then up the other side, climbing up to the ridgeline then making our way along, all the time scanning the forest, trying to see where the drone had gone down, though the fading light was making it much more difficult.