Apocalypse Now Now (25 page)

I begin to rise and see Ronin and Klipspringer looking at my stationary form. OK, good. It all seems to be going OK. I look around but there’s no girl to guide me. I try to focus my attention on Pat. I picture her old, kindly face framed by her jangling earrings. My forehead begins to throb harder. I hold the image in my mind and let the rest of my attention drift. There’s a quick flash, an image of something, but I’m not sure what.

I refocus my attention. There’s another flash. It’s the attic in the Haven. I see Pat talking to Tomas. She touches his shoulder and then bends down to affix a bracelet around his ankle. She lifts a small GPS unit from the bed and turns it on and then smiles at Tomas. The vision fractures and light pours in from all directions. I try to open my eyes but they’re stuck together. I scream and clutch at my forehead as something begins to gnaw hungrily through my brain.

The magistrate and I are going to have a baby. He is a kind man, not handsome, but kind to me. I understand that we can’t be married. In this world I’m a servant and he is the master. I hope that my father would understand. It has been two years since I’ve come here and the magistrate’s affections have been difficult to ignore. He gives me presents and makes sure I’m treated well.

‘You are a pretty girl,’ he says to me. He runs a scarred hand through his grey hair. ‘Have you had any more dreams?’ he says with a smile. I shake my head. ‘Ah, what a pity,’ he says touching my face. ‘I’m something of a student of dreams and yours seem so interesting.’ I’ve never told him any of my dreams but he seems insistent that I have them.

‘You’re going to have my child,’ he says with a smile and touches my growing belly. ‘A child that will have the blood of a Siener in it. I hoped to learn more about your people and their gifts.’

I smile and try to look dumb. ‘I can’t do what my uncle and father could do,’ I say.

‘Oh, come, child,’ he says. ‘You’re being modest. Perhaps if I tell you my secret, you’ll tell me yours? Come.’

He turns to walk down the long corridor that runs down the middle of the house. I follow him. We enter his study and he turns to lock the door behind us. The room is sparse and simple. I have never been in here but I expected it to be more impressive; something that befits an important man like the magistrate. It doesn’t look like he spends much time here.

He doesn’t sit down but rather bends over to pull open a cellar door that is set into the floor. He smiles at me. ‘After you,’ he says, gesturing toward the stone steps that descend into the darkness.

‘Where are we going?’ I say.

‘To my secret,’ he says.

I step forward and he hands me a candle – the flame sputtering and flickering like my heart. I step down into the darkness, holding the candle in front of me like a charm against evil. I can feel the magistrate close behind me.

We reach the bottom of the stairs where another corridor extends into the darkness.

‘Continue,’ he whispers into my neck. I continue walking, feeling the coldness of the walls around me and their dank, mildew smell. I force my breath to remain steady and even.

The corridor eventually opens up into a large room. The magistrate takes the candle from my hands and lights several torches that have been set into the walls. The room erupts with light and I scream as a large shape seems to rear up in front of me. It is the creature from my dreams; many arms reaching out to grab me. It is a thing of evil. I scrabble backwards on the floor away from it.

‘Be still, child,’ the magistrate says in a soothing voice. ‘You are witnessing a thing of great power, the prison of one of our Creators.’ I press my back against the wall. My breathing is too fast and I feel like I am going to faint at any second.

The magistrate walks over to the thing and strokes it. Again I force my breathing to return to normal. I look up and see that the many-armed thing is actually like a statue. It is made from metal; bronze, copper and gold. Its large octopus head is like a carriage and it has a chair inside where a man can sit. The eyes are made from thick panes of dark glass and the tentacles are made from scaled metal.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ the magistrate says, running his fingers over its shiny surface. I don’t say anything. It is many things but it is not beautiful. A deep sense of unease and illness runs through me when I look at it. It is an occult thing, a thing of corrupt power. I can feel it tingling in my body like a disease.

The magistrate walks over to me and puts his hand on my belly. ‘In your body you carry one who is part Siener and part Feared One. A creature destined for greatness.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I say, pulling back from him.

‘You don’t need to, my dear,’ he says. ‘You just need to make sure it survives.’

‘Sparky!’ a voice calls from far away. I groan and open my eyes. My cheek is pressed into the cold floor. Ronin is kneeling at my side and shaking me gently. ‘Are you OK?’ he says.

‘Boyboy,’ Klipspringer says, trotting up and down. His face is screwed up with worry. ‘Don’t die!’

‘I won’t, bok-boy,’ I say, pushing myself up onto my elbows.

‘Anything?’ Ronin says, helping me up.

‘There’s a tracking device. Pat put it on Tomas when we left.’

Ronin chuckles. ‘That old gal is a lot craftier than I give her credit for.’

We search the house and find the GPS unit in a drawer in the kitchen. Ronin switches it on and a small dot blinks on in the middle of the screen. ‘That’s on the mountain,’ he says with a frown.

‘Why would the Crows take them there?’ I say.

‘There’s an old military base there that our unit used. Mirth might have resurrected it.’

‘So you’re letting me come?’ I say.

He shrugs. ‘Your call, sparky.’

I turn to Klipspringer. ‘You going to be OK?’

‘Course,’ he says. ‘Just bring back the lady PatPat.’

‘I will,’ I say and give him a quick hug.

‘Gross,’ he whispers, but doesn’t pull away.

We fill the Cortina’s trunk with as many cans of petrol, solvents and flammable agents as we can find at the Haven. As I slide into the passenger seat Ronin reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out a long-barrelled revolver. ‘Well, if you’re coming, at least make yourself useful,’ he says, giving me the gun. I take the heavy revolver in my hand. Yes, it’s true I am a terrible person. Yes, my girlfriend has dumped me for a life of trailer-park inbreeding. Yes, I am voluntarily attacking a nest of giant Crows. Without Esmé I’m not going to be getting lucky, punk. But on the bright side hopefully I’ll get to shoot something in the face.

THE ORANGE DIRT
track curls up through the pine forest and past the ranger station with its helipad and fat red helicopter that’s used to fight forest fires. We strap heavy bags, filled with all the flammable liquids we could find at Pat’s house, to our backs.

Trekking in silence through the cool forest, past a couple of dreadlocked hippies with drums and several intense-looking joggers, we ascend through the foliage and onto a steep mountain track. I start to sweat, the sunlight like thick warm liquid that I’m swimming though. My heart is aching like a fresh bruise, but at least I have something other than my existential crisis to focus on. Like the little red dot on the GPS screen.

‘We’ve got to get up above the blockhouse,’ Ronin says, pointing to the squat building we can see on the hill above us. There’s a series of caves a couple of hundred metres above it. They lead deeper into the mountain to the lab.’

‘Sounds easy enough,’ I say.

He wipes sweat from his face. ‘Easy in theory but it’s going to be tough to get into them without being seen.’

‘You can’t do any …’ I say and then wave my hands around in the air a bit. ‘You know …’

‘Is that hand-waving you’re doing meant to mean magic? I might be able to work a few charms to get us past the guards, but Mirth is going to have other measures in place. He’s no slouch.’

‘So what are we going to do?’

He shrugs. ‘Improvise.’

‘Yeah, because that turned out so well the last time.’

‘Ye of little faith,’ he says.

‘And little common fucking sense too, apparently,’ I say.

We slog up the path for at least an hour. By the time we stop at a fork in the dusty orange track my T-shirt is soaked with sweat and my breath is coming in small, whooping gasps. I stop to take a long sip of water.

‘You OK?’ Ronin calls back to me, ‘I don’t want you to die of a heart attack.’

‘And I don’t want to be the first of your clients to shoot you for being an asshole,’ I say, pulling up my shirt to reveal the revolver that Ronin gave me at Pat’s. I’ve shoved it into my waistband like a total gangster, although it’s not very comfortable and it keeps threatening to fall out.

He pulls down the neck of his vest, revealing a large angry mess of scar on his chest. ‘You wouldn’t be.’

The path stops climbing and levels out to form a large rocky plateau that stretches like a ledge along the side of the mountain. Ronin steps out onto the ledge and edges his way around.

‘Are you sure this is safe?’ I say.

‘Just get on the ledge.’

I step onto it and follow him, flattening myself against the rock face and trying not to look down at the city stretched out below. We shuffle around until we come to a cave.

‘OK,’ Ronin says, squinting his eyes to peer into the darkness. ‘This will take us toward the compound. I’m pretty sure that Mirth will have these tunnels warded so I’m going to try something.’

‘Try what?’ I say suspiciously.

‘Well, I haven’t exactly done this before so I might need to practise it a few times first.’

‘Great,’ I say.

Ronin pulls out his mojo bag and begins rummaging through it. I take the heavy bag off my shoulders and sit down against the cool rock. I’m sweating like I’ve been running a marathon but thankfully it’s cooler here. I look up to see Ronin staring at me like I’m some kind of oddity on display in a museum.

‘What’s your problem?’ I say.

‘Around your neck,’ he says, pointing to me. ‘Where did you get it?’

I look down at the little pendant. ‘The goat-boy gave it to me,’ I say.

He walks over and picks up the little mantis and holds it in his palm.

‘What?!’ I say.

‘That’s a talisman,’ he says.

‘Cool,’ I say. ‘Maybe I can sell it.’

‘The hell you will,’ he says. ‘That’s some potent
muti
you’ve got around your neck.’

I look down at it. ‘What does it do?’ I say suspiciously. ‘It’s not dangerous, is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘But I can do a simple charm to find out.’ I pull it quickly from around my neck and hand it to him.

He places it on the cave’s sandy floor. Pulling his knife from his boot, he positions the pendant and then draws a circle with the point of the knife. He produces a small bundle of herbs from his mojo bag and proceeds to light one end of it with his lighter. The aromatic smoke wafts through the cave and he begins to trace shapes in the air above the pendant with his hand, while mumbling in a harsh guttural language. Eventually he takes a deep breath and then stubs out the burning bundle of herbs in the
sand. ‘That, my young friend,’ he says with a satisfied smile, ‘is a shape-shifter’s charm.’