The Company of the Dead (90 page)

The wind rattled the panes. Flashes of lightning seared the night in blazing forks, but still no sound heralded their fire. Morgan longed for his reading room and the low crackle of his fire. Patricia topped up her glass. Josephine brought the decanter around to him.

Patricia continued, “In all of Doctor Wells’ protracted ramblings, one consideration had never been voiced. I suppose he had never paused to give it wonder, but that last night opened all our eyes. So I put it to you now, dear friend. Why was the carapace programmed to arrive in the Nevada desert in 1911?”

Morgan recoiled at the machine’s naming.

Josephine’s eyes glittered with anticipation.

“Because that’s when he’d arrived.” He stated the observation carefully, as if he might still skirt the issue.

“I’m talking about the original journey that Wells made. The
first
one.”

Morgan was confused. He said, “The machine had no fixed destination. He was on the run. It was a random event.”

Patricia asked, “Has anything in our lives been truly random?”

Morgan drained his glass. The alcohol fuzzed his wild thoughts.

“Wells always believed that the machine he’d escaped in had been cobbled from some other device,” she continued. “A device that had been flung—backward or forward—from some distant time. A device that had been tested with disastrous flights into the future. And perhaps that is where the masters of the carapace first travelled, curious to its origins. Can you imagine how Jenkins must have felt when he realised that the machine had actually arrived from his own past? From 1911, to be precise.”

“That’s not possible,” Morgan said.

“They called it a carapace, Darren. They called the device a shell because they’d come to understand it for what it was. One device, constantly changing its husk as it cycled through the aeons.”

“Wells saw two of them,” Morgan offered, his voice small in the quiet room.

“Wells saw the machine and its old, shed crust,” she replied. “The heart of it remained elsewhere, shifted to another casing. But there has only ever been one conduit. One machine. Jenkins was planning an expedition that was bound for failure. The machine he hunted was the one that we arrived in.”

“Impossible.”

“Surely your experiences have taught you the emptiness of that word.”

“Then where did it come from in the first place?”

“I don’t know. How can we ever know. Some tear in the cloth of our reality. Some Promethean fire never meant for us. Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

Patricia sighed.

“You’ve known this all this time?”

“Yes.”

“Never sharing it.”

“You were left with enough on your plate.”

“Then why share it now?” There was a hint of indignation to his tone. The hour was getting late.

“I’ve been judicious with the money Joseph left me, making careful investments over the years, putting everything in place. In three months we get to finish what Joseph started thirty-five years ago.”

“Three months?”

“Josephine has organised everything,” Patricia said. “I just thought you might appreciate coming along for the ride.”

Kennedy’s daughter smiled at him with all of her father’s cunning.

Morgan straightened in his chair. He said, “I’m an old man, damn it. What do you want from me?”

She rose from her seat and approached him with supple grace. “I don’t want anything from you. I just thought that this might ease your nights and give new promise to your days.”

Morgan nodded slowly, his eyes moistening. “Where are we going?”

There was a rumble in the distance now, but it was low and gentle.
Datta, dayadhvam, damyata
: give, sympathise, control. The thunder was nothing but a warning of the storm to come.

“We’re going back to the desert, Darren. We’re going to Roswell.”

In the pre-dawn hours the great trucks grumbled along the interstate. Some contained dairy products and some contained munitions. Some contained livestock and some cigarettes. Some were empty, returning along familiar stretches to familiar storehouses, there to restock.

And some were not.

Their convoy was made up of five trucks. Morgan rode in the first one, between Josephine and the driver, Alan.

Seeing her dressed in a black shirt and trousers of a military cut under her heavy coat, it was still difficult to imagine her among that rough band. Over the last few weeks Morgan had pressed her for her story. Her responses had been guarded. Recruited by the Strategic Services, she had cut her teeth in some delicate activities prior to the Allied landings in Normandy. She’d supervised the destruction of vital German rail lines and raided supply depots. She spoke perfect French, Italian, Russian and German.

Two nights ago, seated around the coals of a dying fire, he’d watched her field strip and reassemble an Enfield rifle, blindfolded. The men had cheered her on. Patricia’s disapproving stare had been unconvincing. Daddy’s little girl.

Morgan glanced at Josephine’s hand on the armrest. No ring had ever girded those deft fingers. She would be thirty-five this December, but the term spinster seemed at odds with her form. She was more like a nun. The bride of her father’s dark vision.

The turn-off wound past the barbed mesh of cattle fences. The occasional farmhouse peered through stretches of long, thin grass in the moonlight. There were no telegraph lines here, no ostensible connections with the outside world.

Their own temporary residence was a ranch on the outskirts of Six-Mile Hill, just outside Roswell. Patricia had obtained a two-year lease on the farm. She was taking no chances. Some of Josephine’s men had been out here for months already, mixing with the locals and setting up surveillance posts.

Wells hadn’t been specific in his details. Sometime in the next thirty-one days the carapace would complete its sinister rendezvous. The authorities would arrive the following morning. That gave them less than twenty-four hours to act.

None of the men had been given any more information than was necessary. Their particular brand of fanaticism was a far cry from the major’s ghost dancers. They required no causes. Their allegiance had been bankrolled on the interest of Kennedy’s gold, and their previous experience with Strategic Services ensured they would be quite comfortable with the arrangement.

They reached the farm at sunrise.

Morgan sat beside Patricia as the trucks were unloaded. The men worked briskly, untroubled by inquisitive eyes. He was daunted by them. Age and infirmity made him feel like prey. He feared that a prolonged glance might earn him a confrontation. Hardas wouldn’t have blinked twice, but Hardas was long gone. Morgan rubbed his eyes and wheezed in the cool morning air.

Patricia had never remarried. There’d been no shortage of suitors, of course. She was wealthy and single. The lines that had engraved her face thirty-five years ago had left a melancholy splendour that could still be seen now, beyond the opaque wall of her proud exterior. She simply had never found his equal.

Over the last few nights she had willingly shared the narrative of her life with Morgan, yet she remained closed to him. Each chronicle had been related with distance, as if she was interpreting another’s tale. The ghost writer of her own memoirs.

She had borne him no ill will. He realised that now. She’d simply thought it better to spare him her own designs; designs she could never have concealed from him. Constrained by the hand she’d been dealt, raising a daughter and building an empire, she could never have understood his lonely years.

Joseph Patrick Kennedy, the man who would have been Josephine’s great-grandfather, had died childless over enemy skies. His sibling, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was a hero of the South Pacific, and already taking a few small steps towards his destiny. Sundered from her family by a wild shift of paradigm and fate, Josephine struck Morgan as the final casualty of the major’s crusade. Patricia had forged her into a weapon, her skills honed in secret schools and dark deeds abroad. Her willingness in this scheme hardly justified her involvement.

We made no provisions
, Patricia had said.
No consideration to what might follow
. Morgan hoped that she’d at least given her daughter’s future due consideration.

It was morning. Josephine’s men, distributed throughout the town, were returning in shifts. She remained in the field surveying the watchposts.

Morgan was frying up some bacon and eggs. Alan and another veteran had joined them in the kitchen for breakfast. Patricia served up some coffee. She seemed to enjoy the company of her daughter’s crew. She fussed over them, buttering the toasts that Morgan brought to the table. They, in turn, seemed moderated by her presence—returned to some earlier, pre-martial state. It felt like the commissary at Red Rock.

The radio crackled quietly in the background. Morgan had grown used to its low drone. The occasional short transmission, detailing an alteration of shifts or the request for more supplies, had become ubiquitous. The sudden burst of static now didn’t jar him. He was reaching for a slice of bread when the others pitched out of their seats, scattering their plates.

He gave Patricia an enquiring look.

She removed her apron with slow, precise movements and arranged it over one of the chairs.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s here,” Patricia said softly. “It’s time.”

After all the toil he’d endured, after every turbulent step he’d taken—first from New York to Savannah, and then across that lost America to Red Rock, each stride blunted by blood and violence—he was astonished by the ease of it all.

The ranch owner and his wife stood before the remains of their stable. The carapace projected from its side at an odd angle. Two of the struts had been sheared off, the rest were lost from view within the wreckage. The black and silver sheen of its carriage was obscured by a coating of dust and ash. Coils of smoke drifted from damp wood where a fire had been extinguished.

Josephine wore a black suit without insignia. She stood with one of her men, who was similarly clothed, deep in conversation with the distraught couple. She had a clipboard in her hand. She appeared to be making copious notes as they spoke. All the while, her squad moved around the machine. They worked in teams of three, dismantling the remaining supports. They seemed untroubled by the machine’s distorting aura.

Morgan stood a short distance from the debris. Patricia was watching from afar.

A vehicle pulled up beyond the rise. Morgan assumed it was another of Josephine’s retinue. He called Patricia over. She approached with hesitant steps. Of all of them, she’d fared worst in the carapace’s proximity.

Arriving at his side, she offered Morgan a curious look.

“This is new,” she said. “I’m not getting any resonance.”

“Me neither,” Morgan ventured. “I’m fine.”

They neared the ruins. Josephine had interrupted her discourse to cast a watchful eye over her mother. They kept walking until they stood scant feet away from the machine.

“Nothing,” Patricia said. “I don’t feel a thing.”

The carapace was lifeless. There was a glaze to the sand by the imprint of its struts, but Morgan could sense no energy lurking beneath the darkened canopy.

“What do you think it means?” he asked.

“I think it means that we haven’t been here before. That we’re finally making fresh tracks.” She gave his arm a brittle squeeze. “I think we’ve finally got it
right
.” She leaned against his shoulder, momentarily overcome by the revelation.

There was a movement from beneath the carriage.

One of Josephine’s men emerged from the stable and rushed straight past them towards her. He spoke loudly, disrupting her exchange with the ranchers. “Josephine, you got to see this.”

She seemed unsurprised by the outburst. She signalled to one of her operatives, who stood on a low hill beyond the ranch house, and he waved back. She offered an apology to the couple, excusing herself, and broke away from them. Her offsider was beckoning them away from the scene.

Some men Morgan hadn’t encountered before were racing over the hill towards the carapace. They wore white coats over their uniforms.

Josephine disappeared beneath the curve of the machine. Morgan took tentative steps in her trail. Other men converged. They wore hard hats and dark coveralls. Josephine began handing out orders, getting the men to clear a path beneath the wreckage.

Three of the white coats arrived, bearing a crate between them. A fourth hovered behind, his face concealed behind a filter mask designed to protect against the fumes. They opened the box and began to dole out the equipment: bandages, tourniquets and a long arrangement of poles and canvas that opened up into a stretcher.

The masked man reached down to retrieve a worn satchel. He turned to the others and said, “Bring him out slow. We’ll get IV access as soon as he’s clear. The opiates will still be working so I want a full fluid resus. He’ll be as dry as the desert.” Seemingly satisfied with the instructions, he pulled down the mask and turned to Morgan. “Long time no see.”

Morgan felt a thrill of exhilaration. He said, “Hey, Doc.”

Gershon pulled on some gloves. He moved with a litheness that suggested a much younger man. He said, “Be with you in a moment. Had a hell of a time getting down here,” and advanced in the wake of the other medics.

They emerged a few moments later with Lightholler. He lay still on the stretcher, pale, his arms crossed over his chest. They placed the stretcher on the ground and began working on him. One placed an oxygen mask over his face while the others cut away at his clothing.

“I’ve got a pulse,” one of them muttered.

Another inserted a metal cannula and began pumping blood from a hand-set.

Gershon bent over Lightholler’s abdomen, inspecting the wound, Josephine by his side.

The medics communicated in low murmurs as long moments passed.