Something Coming Through

47. Run

Mangala | 28 July

Chloe and Henry stood back while Cal McBride harangued the drone operator, telling him to get the fucking thing back on line right now. ‘And give me the phone. Let me talk to Sammie.’

Chloe said to Henry, ‘Drury is coming after us, isn’t he?’

‘There’s a good chance of it. Can you run?’

‘I won the four-hundred-metre race in school one time.’

‘When I say run, run. Run for your life.’

McBride said that Sammie wasn’t answering.

‘He’s watching Drury’s crew, like you asked,’ the operator said.

‘Well he’s not fucking picking up. And why haven’t you fixed the fucking drone?’

‘There’s nothing I can fix. It’s all good here. Either the drone is down, or something is blocking the signal.’

‘Play the last minute of footage again,’ McBride said.

The screen blinked, showed the two men in the speedboat.

‘There,’ McBride said. ‘Stop.’

He pointed at the screen. One of the men was turned in his seat, looking straight at the drone’s camera, one hand raised.

‘Waving hello, the cheeky fucker. Oh, and now he’s giving us the finger. Well, fuck you too, Mr Danny Drury.’ McBride was suddenly all business, telling two of his men to move up the track, find what cover they could. ‘Rolls, you stay with me. Tommy, Dean, pack up this shit. Fast as you can, bring what you can carry to the boats, burn the rest. It’s time to go,’ he said, and turned to Chloe and Henry, pulling his ray gun from its loop, telling them they were coming with him.

Then they were outside, hustling towards the jags of the lightning trees. Chloe, breathless and excited and scared, half-ran, half-walked as she tried to keep up with the men. The ground was ploughed but barren, pale ridges studded with reddish stones. She remembered that Hanna had said that the soil had to be steam-cleaned, sterilised, before plants would grow in it. She stumbled when dust whirled up around her, and Rolls, a big man in a denim jacket, its sleeves ripped off to display his muscular arms, caught her and hauled her along.

She protested, tried to shake off his grip, but he was implacable. They were almost at the trees. And then Rolls seemed to trip, his feet tangling together in an awkward pirouette, and he let go of Chloe’s wrist and clapped his hand to his neck. Blood oozed between his fingers. A hard crack echoed out across the field. Chloe realised it was a gunshot, realised that it was the second one she’d heard, as Rolls grunted and collapsed at her feet.

McBride shouted, a raw wordless sound, and turned and aimed his ray gun. For a moment, a thread of intense blue light seared across the ploughed ridges of the field. Then Henry grabbed McBride’s arm and twisted it up and back. Blue light split the air above their heads, bending towards one of the lightning trees and setting its fluttering clouds aflame. The light winked out; McBride had dropped the ray gun. As Chloe darted forward and scooped it up, Henry stepped back, a pistol in his hand. He must have snatched it from McBride, but it seemed like a magic trick.

‘No,’ McBride said, and put up one hand like a traffic cop as Henry swung the pistol and whacked him on the side of his head. McBride staggered, half-raised a hand to fend off Henry’s second blow, and fell in a heap.

‘Run!’ Henry said, and Chloe ran, chasing him towards the tree-things. The one touched by the ray-gun beam was burning fiercely now. An acrid smell like scorched plastic scraped her throat.

She heard shots behind her, quick sustained bursts, and glanced around. One of the RVs was on fire from stem to stern and two men were silhouetted against the flames, firing into them. Other shots sounded far off, an erratic pop pop pop blowing on the wind.

Henry ran into a space between two lightning trees and Chloe followed, dodging around clumps of stuff like stiff string, coming out of the other side of the copse and seeing the river, seeing boats drawn up at the edge of the water, one of them the speedboat that the drone had been watching, seeing two men turning towards them. Henry swung his pistol up and one of the men fired at him, a hard clatter and a flash of yellow flame. Henry fell and Chloe yelled and ran to him, rolled him over. There were bloody rips in his hunting vest and she couldn’t find a pulse when she laid a finger on the angle of his jaw, couldn’t find a pulse in his wrist.

She locked her hands together and pressed on his chest, and something rattled in his throat as if he was trying to breathe and she pressed again and his mouth opened and a smooth glossy bubble of blood rose out of it and spilled over his chin. Then someone grabbed her and lifted her up and pulled her away. Another man stooped and picked up the ray gun and Henry’s pistol. A tall man in a quilted white coat, wearing a face mask and goggles, long black hair in a loose ponytail, turning the ray gun in his hands, saying to Chloe, ‘This is McBride’s secret weapon?’

Chloe nodded dumbly in the iron grip of the man who’d grabbed her.

‘How does it work…? Aha.’ Chloe flinched as the tall man pointed it at her. Then he shrugged inside his coat and said, ‘You can let her go, Billy.’

She almost fell to her knees. Henry lying dead at her feet. Her hand on the sleeve of her camo jacket, feeling the shape in the sheath at her wrist. Her attention on the tall man, who said to the man who’d let her go, Billy, ‘I thought I told you I wanted both of them alive.’

‘It was him or me,’ Billy said.

‘Did I hear you give a warning? Did you fire a warning shot? Did you shoot to wound?’

The tall man’s voice rising to a shout at the last sentence.

Billy stood his ground. ‘He was armed, Mr Drury. He was going to shoot. So I shot him.’

‘Because it was either him or you.’

‘Like I said.’

‘How about him and you,’ the tall man said, and raised the ray gun.