No Hero (30 page)

She stares ahead, jaw working, working, working.

“They were already dead. You know that, right? You understand that. That’s feckin’ important to realize. It’s very, very, very feckin’ important.” One of her fingers is tapping the table, harder and harder. I can hear a creaking sound every time it strikes. Fresh cracks spread in the linoleum. “Dead. Just hadn’t stopped moving. Progeny don’t come out. Once they’re in. Only me.” She hangs her head.

“Slaughtering sick sheep we were. Up on the farm. Da, and Ma, and me, and Izzie. And the knife went in one and the eggs came out. Went into us. And the Progeny don’t come out. Only out of me.”

Her hand stops its tapping, hanging suspended above the table. “Didn’t even know what I was doing at first, what they’d made me capable of doing. Not until Da was dead. Only hit him twice. Once in the stomach. Once in the neck. Then down and he was done. Didn’t even understand it. Ma was attacking me then. The thing that had been my ma. They knew it hadn’t worked. They didn’t know why, I don’t think, but they’d seen what they’d done.

“We were in the kitchen. Ma came at me. Izzie grabbed my hands. Feck she were but nine years old. She was strong as feckin’ iron right then, though. Might have been the thing in her. Might’ve been the fear in me.”

Tears are slipping down Kayla’s face now, rolling one after the other in an ever-increasing stream. She speaks in a deadpan.

“Kicked Ma. Sent her halfway across the room. She still came at me, but I was free of Izzie. Grabbed the rolling pin off the counter. Swung it round. Cracked Ma’s head. Down she went. Turned. And there’s Izzie. Hands held out to me. And there was something in her head. In her brain. One of them. The Progeny. It was in her. Grubbing in her brains. And I brought the pin down. And I caved in her skull. Whole thing collapsed in upon itself.

“Don’t know why she had her hands out. Sometimes I think maybe she’d had it beat, was just asking me for one more second, two more. Just so she could get it out. Just asking to be like me. Sometimes I think she was about to throttle me.”

She buries her tear-stained face in her hands. “Feck,” she says. Repeats it over and over. “Feck, feck, feck.”

I sit in silence. The lump’s in my throat too. I can’t imagine something like it. I can’t even picture it. A child. She was just a child. The age of Ephie and Ophelia. And, Jesus, what she must be going through right now.

I want to reach out and touch her, to show some kind of compassion, but Kayla’s not that kind of girl, and I can still see the knife buried in the table. So all I have is words.

“We’ll fix it,” I say. “We’ll fix this.”

“I found them in a bath,” Kayla says.

I shut my mouth immediately. Just let her talk.

“I was eighteen. Had been killing the Progeny fuckers for six years by then.” She stares at her hands. “I was living on the streets. First I’d been down to Edinburgh. Sponge off the tourists. My head was still fecked with it all. Then I found them there. Two Progeny. Was easy Maybe I knew a little about how they thought. After they’d been in here.” She taps her head again. “Taken over a couple in their fifties. It was easy to kill them. So I started working my way south. Going to the big cities, finding the Progeny. Taking them out. Because if it was me they couldn’t breed. Couldn’t infect. They worked at me still, but I didn’t get weaker, didn’t get stronger, didn’t stop what I was doing, just found them and killed them. Up and down the country. Feckin’ scourge on the bastards.

“And then the girls. Tracked a bunch of Progeny to a warehouse in Sheffield. Five, I think. All women. And I went there, and I killed them all, and then, as I was leaving, I saw the bath. And I went over. Almost like something called me over. No reason to go over. I was done there. But the two of them were lying right in it. My girls. Weren’t even eighteen months old. Could tell even then though they were twins. Ephemera in the arms of a squid; Ophelia cushioned by an octopus. Water swimming with eggs. The girls screamed when I lifted them out of the water. Went into convulsions.” A smile peers through the veil of Kayla’s melancholy. “I was so feckin’ scared. Carried the whole bath back to where I could boost a flatbed truck.

“Slowed me down they did. Cramped my style. Got sloppy. Got found. Shaw found me. Thought she was one at first. Progeny. Almost killed her. But she lost a sister to them, same as me.” She looks away. “Not quite the same.”

Shaw lost a sister? To the Progeny? How did I not know that? I am such a bad team leader.

I picture again the scene Kayla described. Her twelve-year-old self crushing the skull of her little sister. And there is something in that image that rings a bell. And I realize my vision of that scene is so vivid because I have seen some of it played out. The head of the student on Cowley Road. The original painted man as he was transformed. His head changing from male to female, then abruptly collapsing in on itself. As if struck. Crushed by a blow from the past. And then Kayla froze. It was then that she froze. After seeing that.

The Progeny know. They have her Achilles heel.

That’s not good. Not good at all.

Still, now doesn’t seem like the moment to maybe remind her how out of luck she is. In fact she seems to know quite well herself, because she leans across the table and grabs my arms. She stares at me with enough intensity that it’s like she’s stabbing me all over again.

“I can’t save her, Wallace,” she says. “I can’t do it. I don’t know why, but it can’t play out like that. And so all I’ve got is you. Do you understand me? You, and Tabitha, and Shaw. That’s it.”

“I understand,” I say. And I do. God help me, I do. I feel crushed by it. “I’ll fix it. I’m going to fix it. We’re all going to fix it.”

“You better, Wallace. You better fix it or I’ll feckin’ kill you.”

Tabitha sits in the lab and pokes things. Bits of metal. A soldering iron. The book. Occasionally she turns the pages of the book, handling it as if it’s going to burn her.

“You can do this,” I say. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said it.

“What if I build it wrong?” I’ve lost count of the number of times that’s been Tabitha’s reply.

I want to point out it’s not like she can do a worse job than Clyde did, but I’m not sure that would really motivate at this point. I feel frustrated and useless. There aren’t leads to chase. Ephie hasn’t made any prophetic statements. The Progeny haven’t thrown down the gauntlet. I’d be worse than useless at building magical devices to disrupt aliens. All I can do is try and motivate Tabitha, and she is very reluctant about the whole thing.

“Look,” I say. “This is our chance to save Clyde. To rescue him. To bring him back.”

She turns and looks at me with complete hatred. Well... not complete, I think she’s mixed in a little bit of contempt too. A 90/10 mix, let’s say

“You think I don’t know that? Overly fucking aware. Thank you.” She gives me the finger, which rather undermines the sentiment.

“Sorry. Sorry.” I shake my head. “It’s just... We have to get him back. Don’t we? And I can’t help. Shaw can’t. Kayla can’t. That’s not what we do. But you—”

“Pressure,” Tabitha says. “Totally helps. Cheers.” Another outing for her middle finger.

I sit and stare at the back of Tabitha’s head. She turns a page of the book. She even seems to read it. But as the anger runs out of her, her shoulders slump. She goes back to poking things.

Her anger, I think, is the key. That is, as Clyde told me, her way. If I can trust him. If he was who I think he was back then. But... Shit, I have to trust my memory. My hope. I have to. It’s all any of us have.

So—anger. Tabitha runs on it. And she’s lost it. And I can get a bit of it back. Just by talking, apparently. But that’s misdirected anger. I need her to be angry at the book. At herself maybe. At Clyde even. I need her to be so pissed at this she fixes it.

Oh God, I can’t believe I’m thinking this again. This is always such a bad idea... But, God help me, I need to do what Kurt Russell would do.

“This is so fucked up,” I say. And it even sounds like cheesy movie dialog. Except even the guys playing second fiddle to Kurt Russell usually deliver their lines with the vague semblance of conviction.

“Know that.”

“Clyde, wow,” I say. I wish I had a scriptwriter. “The chap who actually got stuff done around here.” I’m glad her back is to me, because I’m wincing as I say that.

“What?” Tabitha’s voice is low, her shoulders are back up.

“I mean,” I say, attempting nonchalance, “the one who could blast magic, could do the book work, could build stuff, and he’s the one we lose. It’s just...” I can’t finish the sentence; the temperature of the room is dropping too fast. Even though I can’t see Tabitha’s face I can still feel the death stare. I’m worried I’ve gone too far.

Tabitha stands up.

“Don’t walk out on this, Tabitha.” I totally overstepped the mark. “You can—”

Tabitha crosses the room and punches me right in the balls.

I stop, drop, and squeal.

“Fuck you,” she says. “Fuck you and your reverse psychology bullshit. Plenty bloody good at what I do. This is not what I do. Why I’m no damn good at it, you prick.”

All of which is pretty much deserved I think. But, she doesn’t storm out of the room. She goes back to the lab table and starts turning pages. She actually seems to examine stuff.

I try to tell my testicles it was worth it.

Goddamn you, Kurt Russell. You and your terrible bloody life lessons.

Shaw finds me still on the floor when she comes in five minutes later. Tabitha is writing something down on a notepad and ignores us both in a studied way. Shaw arches an eyebrow as she offers a hand to help me up. I shake my head, as I crouch there, knock-kneed.

“Can see you in the bloody glass,” Tabitha says. She’s pointing at a large fish tank that is currently home to two white rats.

“Shouldn’t you be concentrating?” Shaw’s voice holds only minimal disapproval but there’s still a muttered curse word and Tabitha lowers her head.

“How are we doing?” Shaw asks me.

“Kayla’s trawling the city for any Progeny she can find,” I say. “A long shot, but worth doing anyway. Tabitha here is building our secret weapon.” Without looking up, Tabitha flips me off over her shoulder.

“And you?”

“Thinking.”

“About?”

“The Dreamers.”

There’s a pause. She looks at me. “Do you want me to beg for something of actual substance, Arthur?” But she’s smiling. Something has loosened inside her, I think.

“I saw them again,” I say. “After Peru. Before Ophelia disappeared.” I tell her about the skull-faced man, about his demand to keep the Twins safe.

“It’s related,” I say. “It has to be. All of this. The Peru thing. The summoning. It can’t all be random. The Progeny had Olsted plant that book in the Bodleian. They led us to Olsted. They led us to his book. And it was his book that led us to Peru. So they led us to Peru. And it was Clyde who pushed for us to perform the summoning. And Clyde has to have been infected when he did that. He was infected in the fight perhaps. That’s the last point at which it could have happened. That’s probably when it was.” I want to believe it was then, so that’s what I stake my hopes on.

“You think the Progeny had us summon the Dreamers?”

“Yes.” I nod. “I don’t know why they had us do it, but they did.”

“But the Progeny can’t touch the Dreamers,” Shaw says. “If they do they’re bounced from reality. It’s the end of their game.”

And that begs the question of why the Dreamers haven’t bounced them already. If the Feeders get here then the Dreamers go too.

“I think the Dreamers are scared,” I say. I remember how they stared while the skull-faced man looked at me. I remember how silent and still they were. “It’s something to do with the Twins, with Ophelia. They want her safe. Why? Why do they care?”

“A prophetic twelve-year-old somehow gives the Progeny leverage on them?”

“It’s all I can think of,” I say.

“You need to talk to the Dreamers,” Shaw says.

I should really think about the natural endpoint of conversations before I start having them.

“Are you going to knock me out again?” I ask Shaw.

“I think Ephie’s pool is probably more humane,” she says.

It makes me sad that she’s right.

My finger touches the pool. Ephie cowers. The squid and octopus convulse. The water darkens. Everything goes black—

The alleyway is empty this time. No princess, no swirling dresses, no distracting curves. I go to the door she opened. There’s no handle, but I do have a credit card and there’s enough of a gap between the door and the floor to get some leverage once I’ve jimmied the lock.

The corridor is hard to negotiate without the candles. I put one hand against a wall and proceed to trip over an enormous amount of junk before I find the second door. It swings open as soon as I get the lock open. Still, looks like quick trips to the ATM are going to be absent from my future until I work out how to explain the damaged card to my bank manager.

As the door swings wide I see the Dreamers milling about in their two superimposed rooms, pulling wine glasses out of one reality and into another.

They all stop, turn, look at me.

I smile—a tightening of the lips that never makes it to my eyes. “Hello, everybody,” I say. “Hope you don’t mind the imposition.”

They pull back to the walls of the room. It’s not quite cowering, but it’s far from confident. What has them so spooked? I watch them as they walk, mark out the princess and the skull-faced fellow. The two who seem willing to talk to me.

“Look,” I say as quietly as I’m able. I try to sound reasonable. “I understand—you want something from me. I’m more than happy to provide it. I think our goals are in alignment. Neither of us wants the Feeders here. But, and I’m sorry I got a bit noisy about this last time... But a little more help, a few more specifics, would be dreadfully nice to have.”

Skull-face turns to the princess. He shakes his head.

“Please?” I say.

But no one says a word.