The Company of the Dead (77 page)

Malcolm said, “Think about it.”

“Jesus
Christ
.”

“What?” Morgan swept the group with his eyes. “Oh, crap—the tunnel.”

“Why would he want to go back there?” Shine asked.

“To find the shooter,” Morgan said. “To see who intervened.”

“Don’t you get it?” Kennedy spun on him. “He
is
the shooter.”

“I think I’ve heard enough.”

Someone was crashing through the bushes.

“John?” Kennedy turned, trying to form the words of consolation. He stepped towards the trees.

“No, not John.” The figure gripped two Dillingers in his gloved hands. He tilted his head back to reveal narrowed eyes beneath the brim of his rain-soaked fedora. His delicate features, otherwise composed, might have brought to mind a painter or a musician. He stepped into the sward.

“Fancy meeting you here, Agent Malcolm.”

She hissed her reply.

He looked to Kennedy and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

Kennedy’s Mauser lay on the streets of Osakatown. He let his hands fall to his sides.

“All of you. I want you over there.” He indicated a clearing to one side of the carapace.

They moved like the dead. He eyed the carapace and said, “Cute. What does it do?” He stepped closer and said, “Oh, sweet Jesus.” His eyes flicked from Kennedy to the carapace and back. “You sneaky little shit.”

Kennedy couldn’t muster a reply.

“Webster wanted it dry, but what you just pulled in Osakatown wrote me a blank cheque, Major Kennedy.”

Kennedy edged towards Malcolm.

“Any way you like it, lovebirds.”

The Dillingers barked twice.

Shine toppled to the ground.

“So much for the scariest man in New York.” He turned back to Kennedy. “That was the best you had to offer?”

“Yes.” Kennedy was smiling now.

“What’s so fucking funny?”

“You have a knife blade sticking out of your chest.”

Cooper glanced down at the sliver of metal embedded between his ribs. “Fuck.”

He glanced across the clearing. An empty handle sat in Shine’s lifeless hand. “Fuck.”

He coughed up blood, staggered forwards and said to Kennedy, “You’re coming with me.”

Kennedy was hurled to the ground by the blast, his chest a searing explosion of agony. He raised his head from the muck to eye his killer.

“You’re coming with me.” The assassin dropped to his knees as if relishing this final exchange. There was another blast and he pitched forwards into the mud.

Lightholler stood behind him.

“You took a shot to the chest, Joseph. I’m hoping that blue shirt of yours lived up to its name.”

Kennedy clutched at his chest. The armour had held. He felt the puckered gap where the material had torn. The skin below was a raised, mottled area of darkest blue.

He turned to look at Shine. He looked away.

Lightholler rolled the Confederate’s body over with his toe. It made sucking movements as the mud relinquished its hold. “Who’s this?” he asked. He’d pocketed the Mauser and stood with his arms folded over his stomach, as if suddenly cold.

“That,” Patricia spat hatefully, “was Agent Cooper.”

“Strange. I had an appointment with him tonight in Queens.”

Kennedy gaped at him with wonder.

“I’ve put Lightholler in a cab. He should be catching up with you at the Lone Star any time now.” Lightholler coughed. Blood spilled between his lips. “I told him he’s a marked man.”

Kennedy’s wonder turned to horror. He stumbled towards Lightholler.

“Never occurred to me,” Lightholler rasped, “that one of those agents might have got off a lucky shot.” His hands parted, revealing a darker stain on his shirt. “The prairie might be big and wild, but that tunnel didn’t leave me much room to manoeuvre.” He reached for Kennedy. His hands groped at the torn blue armour. “Wish to hell I was still wearing mine.”

He went slack in Kennedy’s arms.

The screen was a patina of burnished green and bronze.

Shine was dead. Lightholler was fading fast. Kennedy turned to face Malcolm with empty eyes. She placed her hand on Lightholler’s wrist. She looked back at him, shaking her head.

“Doc?”

Gershon was making some adjustments on his keyboard. His reply was laced with grief. “Give me a minute. If I don’t stabilise our insertion, no one is going anywhere.” He typed rapidly as he spoke. “Get him out of the chair. Lay him flat. Darren, get my medi-pack out.”

They all scurried about the cabin, as if haste might serve as a cure.

Malcolm eased Lightholler out of the chair. He slid to the floor heavily. A sticky pool of blood had formed beneath his seat. Morgan had the pack open. They emptied it hurriedly, littering the floor with rolls of bandages and syringe sets. Kennedy, out of his seat, cradled Lightholler’s head.

Doc, at his console, grunted his frustration.

Lightholler’s eyes opened. He said, “Are we in the desert?”

Morgan, bleak, replied, “Almost, John. Why?”

“’Cause I’m fucking freezing.” Lightholler let out a blood-flecked chuckle. He looked up at Kennedy’s eyes, which were dark beneath quivering lids. “Whole time I was running around with you I was dying.”

“You’re not dying,” Kennedy said.

Lightholler winced. “I’m so fucking cold.”

“
Doc
.”

He was at their side. “Major,” he spoke through gritted teeth, “we have to get out of here right now. I can’t get a decent fix. The carapace is going to slingshot out of here, and I can’t stop it.”

“Slingshot where?” Kennedy’s gaze was fixed on Lightholler.

“Nowhere we’ll find.” His voice dropped. “And not in any condition we’ll recognise.”

“Are we here?” Morgan asked.

“Briefly.” Doc’s eyes flitted from Lightholler to Kennedy, then he was up. “We have to move
now
.” He had the hatch open and was already flinging their bags onto the sand below.

Kennedy said, “Doc, take his feet. Morgan and I can support his shoulders.”

“No.” Lightholler struggled weakly in their grip.

Kennedy repositioned himself, grabbing his armpits.

“No,” Lightholler protested weakly. “You’re not burying me in the desert with Martin.” He looked up, pleading with Kennedy. His eyes searched for Doc. “Please.”

Doc eyed the readout. The screen beyond showed rolling dunes, crowned by the now terrible aspect of Red Rock itself. He said, “Ninety seconds.”

Lightholler reached out to touch Malcolm’s arm. His fluttering fingers were ice. “It’s okay,” he told her. “It doesn’t hurt.”

Kennedy lurched with Lightholler in his arms, making for the hatch.

Lightholler’s hand fell away from her. His voice was a sigh. “It’s 1911. No one can help me here.
Go
.”

“Sixty seconds.”

Kennedy’s face was a contorted knot.

“Get my ship to safe harbour, Joseph.”

“He doesn’t want to be here,” Doc said. “He doesn’t want to rest here.”

Kennedy turned to Morgan. “You heard the man. Help Doc with Martin.”

Morgan reached out, touching Lightholler’s arm.

Lightholler’s face rippled a weak smile.

Doc mumbled something under his breath. Lightholler nodded back feebly. Then Doc helped Morgan shift Shine’s body out of the hatch.

Kennedy leaned close now. “I can carry you. Across the fucking desert if needs be.”

“There’s a cigarette in my pocket. Pop it in my mouth and get the fuck out of here.”

Kennedy fumbled with the flap before retrieving the cigarette. He slipped it between Lightholler’s pale lips and lit the tip.

Lightholler drew a shallow breath. He smiled and looked up at Kennedy. “You still here?”

Kennedy ran a hand over the stubble of Lightholler’s head. “God speed you, John.”

Lightholler nodded, still smiling.

Kennedy drew Patricia to the hatch’s mouth. Hands reached up from below, guiding her down to the soft sand. They all stood up, staring at the murky underbelly of the carapace. Kennedy landed on the ground beside them. Soft plates of fused sand cracked beneath his feet.

The hatch closed. Doc was leading them away, back from the machine’s struts.

Something gathered beneath the carapace. The struts became translucent. It floated on a cushion of swirling sand as all around them a sudden wind rose. Licks of ruby-tinged flame danced beneath the machine. Vapours, twining where the struts had stood, were tangible moments of time laid bare. He was sure of it. Kennedy took a step towards the machine.

The roaring gust climaxed in a great implosion, as if nature itself sought recompense for this outrageous intrusion. Then the carapace was gone.

Her hand reached out and found his. He returned her gentle squeeze. No one said a word.

They buried Shine beside Gershon’s fresh grave.

They made camp on the far side of the rock, well away from the burial site. Wells’ footprints, at least three days old by Kennedy’s reckoning, were a faint trace that died two miles out of the camp, where they’d struck stone.

The sun was waning beyond distant purple-topped hills.

Morgan laid out the meal. There were slices of cold meat, crumbling rolls of bread and a container of vegetables. He reached for the container, removed the tomatoes and started to slice them. He cored out the stem and applied the blade to the centre, dividing the tomato first before working from the edges. He bit his lower lip. A cool breeze swept the sands.

“I keep thinking I’m going to wake up.”

“I keep
wishing
I would,” Doc replied.

“Hell of a thing.” Morgan grabbed another tomato. He fashioned a windbreak, using the container, to keep the sand off the slices.

Doc said, “I couldn’t hold the carapace in place.”

“You got us here.”

“We missed Wells.”

“We’ll take him on the boat.”

“Without Lightholler?”

“We might find him before then,” Morgan offered. “She doesn’t sail for a year.”

“Without Shine? Needle in a fucking haystack.”

“We have the journal. We know where he goes.”

“He hasn’t written yet. What if things play out differently?” Doc was staring beyond the rock.

“That’s not you buried out there,” Morgan said softly.

“I know.”

“And maybe Martin gets another chance in this world.”

“Or maybe he ain’t born at all.” Doc caught Morgan’s expression. “Who knows?”

“Hell of a thing.”

“Do you prefer sunrise or sunset?”

Kennedy held the middle distance in his vacant eyes. He mightn’t have heard her.

They sat closer now, almost touching. A chill had taken the air, seeming to issue from the desert floor below them rather than the darkening skies above.

After a while he said, “You’ve asked me that before, Patricia.”

“I know. I remember. Things change.”

“What did Tecumseh say to you? Why did you decide to come?”

She recalled the medicine man’s pronouncement.
Your sense of being here before will fade.

“Everyone saw something different in that thing,” she replied. “You knew that, didn’t you.”

Kennedy nodded.

“Tecumseh told me that for some reason, I’d shared the same experience as some of the ghost dancers.”

“Does that bother you?” His question was distant but not indifferent.

“Not for the reasons you might have suspected.”

His smile flitted across his face, like it had business elsewhere.

“This is your last chance,” she said. She realised she might have been talking about any number of things.

“I know that.” His reply suggested a similar understanding, but she was pretty sure he was missing the point.

“Joseph, you’ve done this before. You’ve ... been here before.”

“Down this road? I’m tired, Patricia, so very tired.”

“You’ve sat here before.”

He turned to her now, his face wounded beyond any physical injury.

“Sometimes Lightholler is with you, sometimes it’s Hardas. Once, I think, Tecumseh. That’s what he told me anyway.”

He was staring.

“This is my first time. You always left me back there.”

“How many times?” His words were breathed rather than uttered. “How many times have I done this?”

“You can’t measure something like this. It’s too big.” She grappled with the concepts. “Our world, our reality, has swung round and round in this loop, back and forth, bouncing between you and Wells. He sends it skewing off kilter, you make it right again, and then he bounces on back. Over and over and over. He’s not the problem, Joseph, you
both
are, and Tecumseh believes that reality won’t tolerate another joyride.”

“But you’re here now,” he said. He spoke like a child.

“I’m the messenger.” She reached out to touch his cold face.

He kept still, letting her hand complete the caress.

“Is it because I forget everything?” he asked. “Like Wells? Is that why I get it wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll keep a journal myself. I won’t forget any of them. Martin, John, David.” His look was intense. A fire had returned to those damaged eyes.

She said nothing.

“I like this part of the day,” he said after a time. “The sky changing colour with each passing moment. It’s all just fluid. Look up, look away, look up again and it’s a whole new world.”

She brought her lips to his and imparted a soft kiss. He looked confused. She ran a hand through the thick knots of his hair and said, “That’s a sunset, Joseph.”

“Patricia will be alright, Joseph. It’ll only be a couple of weeks.”

“I know,” Kennedy replied. “I’ve booked return passage from New York. We plan on staying in London for a while when this is over.”

London was grey, cold and dirty. More like the squalid descendant of the city Morgan had known, rather than its ancestor. He nodded in what he hoped was a heartening manner.

Kennedy was no longer paying attention anyway. He was already out of his chair and pacing. Passing the porthole, he tossed an appraising glance at the white froth of the Channel’s waters. Three hours would bring them to Cherbourg. They’d make Queenstown by tomorrow morning. After that, it was all open seas and it looked like he was already counting the hours.