Fourth Day (22 page)

Maria led me through the building without speaking. When we reached Bane’s study she knocked, waiting dutifully until invited to enter.

Randall Bane came out from behind his desk to greet us. He was wearing a cream linen shirt hanging loose over pale trousers, and his feet were bare. They were tanned and long, almost slender.

Bane put his hands on Maria’s upper arms, turning her into the light to stare down into her face, his own eyes hooded.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked gently.

Her answering smile was shy, almost tremulous. ‘I think so.’

She had an eagerness to please that tightened all the muscles across my stomach. I let my gaze flit around the room, identified a dozen items I could use to kill him if he made a move on either of us. When I glanced back, Bane was watching me with something close to amusement.

‘Tell me, Charlie, do you ever tire of always expecting the worst of people?’

‘Frequently,’ I bit out, ‘but it has the advantage that I’m rarely disappointed by them.’

He regarded me for a moment. Once again, I had the unnerving impression that he could see straight into the back of my mind. ‘It means you are also often disappointed by yourself.’

He let go of Maria and stepped back, spread an arm. ‘Come.’ An invitation with the hint of an order beneath it.

He moved across to another doorway in the far corner of the room. Without hesitation, Maria followed and, more warily, I did, too. I found myself in another corridor, windowed on one side, doorways on the other. We passed a tiled bathroom, a small kitchen area – Bane’s private quarters.

And I realised that Bane was right. I was thoroughly disappointed for trusting him, for believing he was different, when all the time he was leading up to this. Cursing inwardly, I told myself it was just fear and adrenaline that had pumped up my heart rate and evaporated every drop of saliva on my tongue.

Bane reached the far end of the corridor. He paused, looked back at me with a smile that made the roots of my hair prickle, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, feeling. Then he opened the door and went through.

On the other side, I found myself back in the ripening heat of the day, standing next to a low open-fronted building that had once been intended for horses. Now it housed vehicles, keeping them out of direct sunlight. One was an ugly four-door Chevrolet with the bonnet open. Two men I vaguely recognised from breakfast were leaning into the dusty engine bay.

They looked up as we approached, nodded to Bane and Maria, stared at me. I glanced at what they were doing, recognised polished engine cam covers and the open impeller housing of a turbocharger. I’m no expert on cars, but that motor did not look factory in such an old, sedate body. So, either this was another example of Fourth Day’s make-do-and-mend ethos, or they were deliberately creating a street sleeper. For a quick getaway, perhaps?

Sensing my interest, one of the men wiped his hands on a rag sticking out of his back pocket and casually reached up to pull the Chevrolet’s bonnet closed. I offered him my best clueless girlie smile. If his answering scowl was anything to go by, he wasn’t convinced.

Next to the Chevy, along with four dust-filmed Kawasaki quad bikes, was an open Jeep. The Jeep’s weathered seats clearly showed that the soft top was never raised – if one was fitted in the first place.

Bane rested a hand on the rollover bar. ‘You’re all set.’

‘Set for what, exactly?’ I asked as Maria climbed into the driver’s seat.

‘For your journey.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, uneasy now. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘And that is part of your problem.’

‘I—’

It was Maria who cut across me, her voice unexpectedly strong. ‘The greatest journey anyone can make,’ she said, fastening her seat belt, ‘is inside their own head.’

Bane smiled at her, the first full-blown smile I’d seen him crack. It transported his features back to a time when he might have been carefree. There was something strong
between them, I realised. Just for a second I wondered if
he
was the father of Maria’s child. I tried not to think about the age gap between them.

The back of the Jeep, I saw, was loaded with containers of water, food, camping equipment. ‘So why does this inner journey need so much outer gear?’

Bane took pity on me. ‘Everyone who comes here is required to spend time in the wilderness,’ he said. ‘Time away from the distractions of the community, to listen to their own thoughts and discover what’s important to them. To think about where they want to focus their life.’ He nodded towards the Jeep. ‘Maria is simply there to keep you out of trouble for the first night, to be your guide.’

‘But I’ve only been here a few days,’ I said blankly.
Most of them in splendid isolation
. ‘What makes you think I’m ready for this?’ Besides, whatever was happening inside Fourth Day was happening
here
, not in the middle of nowhere. This felt suspiciously like Bane was shunting me off into the sidelines.

He stared at me for a moment longer. ‘You’ve always been ready.’ When still I hesitated, he added, ‘And what’s a few more days, if it helps you to understand where your life has been, and where it’s going?’

Reluctantly, I swung myself up into the passenger seat. Maria smiled at me for the first time, as if grateful for my acquiescence. She cranked the engine. Bane stepped back with a little dip of his head. The last glimpse I caught of him was reflected motionless in the door mirror, framed by swirling eddies of dust.

We drove for what seemed like a long time. Far enough that it would have taken half a day to hike back on foot. Further out, the terrain became more ragged. Maria drove with an easy competence I hadn’t been expecting, not clinging to the steering wheel as the vehicle scrambled over the rough ground. She crouched forwards, animated by the challenge. The frightened girl Sean and I had seen running from the compound might have never existed.

‘You’re good at this,’ I said after a while.

‘I grew up on the Baja peninsula,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the way ahead. ‘We did a lot of four-wheeling down there.’

I wedged myself sideways in my seat, one hand braced on the dashboard. I still had a lot of bruises, and the ride quality did little for them. ‘How long have you been with Fourth Day?’

‘A while.’ She flicked me a quick sideways look from behind her fringe. ‘I came and went again,’ she said then, something wistful in her voice. ‘It took me too long to realise I belonged here.’

‘Is that why you joined – to find somewhere you felt you belonged?’

She shook her head. ‘My mother died when I was seventeen,’ she said. ‘Without her it all seemed…pointless.’ The corner of her mouth curved upwards. ‘I found family here – for me and for Billy.’

Ah!

‘What about Billy’s father?’

The smile blinked out. ‘He’s gone,’ she said. It seemed to be the company line on the subject.

‘It must have been hard, raising Billy alone,’ I said carefully. ‘What happened?’

‘It hasn’t been easy,’ Maria said stiffly. ‘Billy can be awkward, moody. After he was born I…did not always love him as I should.’ Her voice trailed off and she shrugged. It didn’t take a genius to work out she had suffered from post-natal depression. Had that developed into other disorders? ‘But here, with Randall’s people, we are not alone.’

‘Ann told me Thomas was very good with the children,’ I said, trying another approach to break through the distance in her voice, but that only increased her agitation.

‘He left,’ she muttered. ‘He promised me he wouldn’t go, but he never even said goodbye.’

‘He didn’t have a choice, Maria,’ I said quietly, trying to keep the self-recrimination out of my voice.

But she didn’t hear me. ‘They all leave,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘They say they won’t, but they do. As soon as you allow yourself to love someone, they go. They leave you and they don’t come back.’

I winced as the Jeep bounced over another rock, graunching the front chassis cross member as it hit, and almost jerking the wheel right out of Maria’s hands. Maybe this was one conversation I should have saved for later.

But I knew I didn’t have much time and might not get another chance like this. I took a breath.

‘Did Billy’s father abandon you, or didn’t he have a choice, either?’

She took so long to respond that I didn’t think she was going to. We battered on, but her flair, her enjoyment was gone, turning it into a gritted-teeth endurance ride.

‘I never wanted him to go,’ she said at last, her voice brimming with pain and anger.

Even then, I couldn’t leave it. ‘Go where?’ I demanded. ‘With Debacle?’

Maria’s foot lurched off the throttle and the Jeep rolled slowly to a halt. Soundlessly, her shoulders began to shake until great sobs wracked her body.

I put my hand on her arm. It took a moment before she even realised it was there.

She sat up, tried to scrub away the tears with the heel of her hand. ‘We need to keep going. Randall’s relying on me.’

‘Maria,’ I said gently. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere. Can’t you stop here? Won’t this do?’

She looked around as if seeing the landscape for the first time, dazed. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘This place is as good as any.’

We set up camp in a sheltered area behind a rocky outcrop, working quickly to unload the Jeep and put up our tents. Or rather, Maria put up the tents, which seemed to involve emptying them out of their bags and letting go of them, whereupon they sprang to full-size shape like a magician’s stage prop. I, meanwhile, gathered a dozen large stones into a rough circle to make a fire pit.

My attempts to re-engage Maria in conversation were largely unsuccessful.

‘You are supposed to be listening to yourself,’ she told me stiffly. ‘I am not here.’

I shrugged, climbing onto the nearest rock, which stood about four metres high, its surface abraded smooth by wind and time. The compound had disappeared from view, with nothing but scrub and distant mountains, as far as the eye could see.

‘How far does the cult land stretch?’ I called down to Maria.

She stared up, shading her eyes with one hand. ‘We are not a cult,’ she said, sounding defensive.

‘O…K,’ I agreed. ‘How far does
Fourth Day’s
land stretch?’

‘I don’t know – many miles,’ she said. ‘Thousands of acres. Randall’s been buying it up for years, I think.’ Her voice was steady now. When I slithered down the rock, though, she was still frowning. ‘It’s important, Charlie,’ she said. ‘We’re not some bunch of religious wackos. We’re a community, one that is strong because we stay together and we learn from one another. Haven’t you realised that by now?’

I touched a finger to the lingering bruise around my eye. ‘Oh, I don’t think you’re a bunch of religious wackos, Maria,’ I said. ‘As for learning from each other, I’ve been wondering about that. I’ve been wondering where a schoolteacher like Thomas Witney learnt all about martial arts and the uses of psychoactive drugs. Did Bane teach him that?’

‘Randall?’ Maria repeated, her voice catching. ‘Of course not! Whatever Thomas learned was to protect us. He—’ She broke off abruptly, aware she’d said more than she’d been intending to. More than she should.

‘Protect you from what?’ I persisted, but she backed away, both hands up as if to warn me off. I took a step after her. ‘Maria—’

‘From trouble. From outsiders!’ She glared at me, eyes very bright. ‘From people like you!’

It was dark. I lay on top of the rock that sheltered our little camp, staring up at the stars again. The rock was curved on top, and I was just over the crown of it, so the campfire didn’t interfere with my night vision. All I could see of it was a reflected orange glow and the occasional dying ember floating upwards on the rising air. It was pleasant enough not to need a jacket, and mine was rolled, pillowing my head.

Idly, I picked out the curve of the Plough above me, the bright W of Cassiopeia overlaying the misty swirl of the Milky Way. And between them, as if signposted, the Pole Star.

I’d climbed up there after Maria had zipped herself pointedly into her tent for the night, and I’d lain long enough to see the star map rotate slightly in the heavens, as it would do regardless of my existence or anyone else’s. Lying on my back on a still-warm rock in the middle of nowhere, I was overwhelmed by my own insignificance.

Perhaps that was what Bane had in mind.

My thoughts returned to Maria, apparently asleep in her tent. She had not spoken much after her outburst. I’d tried to draw her out again, but we’d moved warily around each other within the confines of the camp, cooking and eating and squaring away with minimal communication.

Afterwards, she’d walked out into the golden sunset with just a brusque order to stay put. I ignored her, of course, following at a careful distance. Eventually, Maria halted, looked around guiltily, and pulled a small cellphone from her pocket. I’d edged close enough to hear her opening words.

‘Ann? It’s Maria. Yes, I know I’m not supposed to… Look, I just wanted to check Billy went to bed OK… You know how he can be sometimes…’ Her voice trailed off, as if all out of excuses.

Slowly, carefully, I’d backed away. By the time she’d returned, I was sitting near the fire, staring into the flames. So, Maria had brought a cellphone with her, which sounded like it was against the rules, just so she could check on her son. She’d learnt to love him. Would I have done the same?

And then, in the darkness, I heard a quiet crackle of noise below me. I lifted my head, trying to focus on the sound. There were all kinds of large wild animals out here, I knew, from coyotes to bobcats to black bears. I didn’t know much about their habits, but I didn’t fancy becoming light supper for any of them.

But when I looked down, the predator who crept towards our campsite was far more dangerous – human.

The figure of a man passed so close below me, I could have reached down and touched the top of his head. In the
weak moonlight, I made out night vision goggles covering his eyes, covert clothing.

I flattened against the warm stone until he’d passed, then rolled silently onto my stomach and low-crawled to the crown of the rock on my elbows and toes, moving one limb at a time, body suspended to reduce any possible scrape of sound.

As he neared our damped-down campfire, the intruder lifted the NV goggles up onto his forehead. He turned a slow circle, checking, keeping his awareness open, and I got my first look at his face.

It wasn’t really a surprise to recognise John Nu. I’d already subconsciously placed the size and the shape of him. And you don’t forget the way a man moves. Still, I waited. Had Bane sent him to check on us?

I waited longer than I should have to find out, letting him advance, soft-footed, into the camp, careful not to silhouette himself between the tents and the fire. He stopped again, cocked his head to listen for sign of occupation.

From inside Maria’s tent, I heard a faint rustle as she shifted in her sleep. Nu heard it, too. He paused as if to confirm it, or to steel himself. I wasn’t sure which.

Then he reached for something at his side and started to bring his right arm up. In the dancing flames’ reflection, the outline of the gun was starkly familiar.

Scrabbling for compression, I launched myself off the top of the rock and landed heavy on his back, just as he took up the tension on the trigger. Reacting rather than acting, I was a fraction slow.

His arm lurched, hand tightening reflexively. The brutal sound of the gun discharging catapulted away into the
distant darkness, hard and hot and bright. The shot went high, punching a small, seemingly trivial hole through the fabric of the tent above where Maria lay sleeping.

The momentum of my attack took Nu down to his knees. I wedged my right forearm into the nape of his neck and looped my left around his throat, felt his muscles bunch to counter.

If I’d hoped to win myself a second or so to complete the lock, Nu disappointed me. He instantly whipped the gun back and pulled the trigger twice more in quick succession, no panic, no hesitation. I jerked my head sideways instinctively, the hearing in one ear exploding into numbness by the proximity of the blasts. The pressure wave flattened my hair, particles from the cordite stinging the side of my head, vision buzzing.
Shit!

Dazed, I fell backwards, landing with a whump in the sandy soil. Nu spun, crouched, swinging the gun round as he came. I pivoted onto my hip and kicked his left knee out from under him, aiming low under the patella and driving the kneecap up and back with the sole of my foot.

Nu grunted, but kept the gun up as he went down. I shifted and sprang, landing sprawled along the length of him, driving my own knee into his solar plexus, bringing the other up hard into his groin. Air gushed out of him in a fast hiss as he curled around the blows. And as his head came into range, I slammed my elbow round into his temple, knew it was a solid connection by the way his head snapped to the side.

Still Nu hadn’t let go of the gun. I asked myself, afterwards, if it would have made a difference if he had. He was more or less out of it, certainly groggy, but a
dogged survival instinct had him still struggling to aim.

I lurched to my feet and lashed out towards his head, my booted foot cracking hard against his jaw. He splayed backwards, the gun finally spilling from nerveless fingers. His skull bounced off the ground with a dull, wet thump.

Balance gone, I staggered over and snatched up the gun, recognising it as a SIG that was almost undoubtedly my own. I shoved the gun into the leg pocket of my trousers, almost falling.

The ringing in my ears wouldn’t clear. It had become high-pitched, erratic, and I realised that Maria was out of her tent, in a skinny top and shorts, eyes wild, and she was screaming on and on, eyes fixed on Nu’s body.

The rise and fall of his ribcage told me he was still breathing, if shallowly. But the earth around his head was turning slowly dark, and that was very bad news.

‘Maria!’ She jerked, and I realised I was shouting. ‘We need a medic. Where’s your phone?’

She was starting to shiver now and didn’t respond, didn’t take her eyes off him. I tottered across and grabbed her arms, gave her a shake.

‘Is he dead?’ Her face was white, eyes huge. ‘Is he dead?’

‘No,’ I said, ignoring the voice in my head that told me I’d fractured his skull. ‘But he will be if we don’t get him to a hospital. Listen to me, Maria! Where’s your phone?’

I took the flicker of her eyes as permission to scramble into her tent, quickly locating last night’s clothes. I dug in the pockets until my hand closed over the shape of the phone in the gloom. Above me, there were two holes in the canvas walls, on opposite sides, where the round had
penetrated and continued on, harmlessly, into the night.

I backed out of the tent again, stabbed my thumb on the power button for the phone and cursed its seemingly interminable start-up routine.

‘He’s shot,’ Maria murmured. When I glanced across, she still hadn’t taken her eyes away from Nu.

‘Nobody’s been shot. He missed,’ I snapped. Aware of a tickle at the side of my neck, I dabbed a hand to it. My fingers came away greasy with blood, muttered, ‘Not by much, but he missed.’

‘He’s shot,’ Maria repeated, mumbling. ‘I saw the blood. I saw him fall. I saw…’

Her voice drifted off and I realised from the
shock-bound
stare that whatever she was seeing, it wasn’t here and now.

‘Who, Maria?’ I asked, more gently now, although part of me already knew the answer. ‘Who did you see?’

Her head turned in my direction, but her streaming eyes were a long way from me. ‘Liam,’ she said.