“Indeed. But now the apparatchiks at the county council are no longer with us, I will rebuild it. One more winter, perhaps.” He pointed up to the sky. “Patience, William Moton, have patience.” He grinned at me and pushed off toward the path that led to Moton Hall.
Horatio came gamboling out of the wood and stood alert on the grass. I followed his gaze into the trees, but everything was listless and undisturbed. Then I picked out a high drone.
“Farewell, Marlene,” the hermit’s voice floated over the strangled squeak of the wheelbarrow wheel.
“Can you hear that?”
“I can barely hear a thing at my age.”
“Helicopter.”
He let the wheelbarrow thunk to the ground and dashed back to the shed, scrambling underneath the bottom bunk and pulling out a silver heat blanket, which he wrapped around himself as he folded his limbs down onto the floor.
“Get inside! Otherwise they’ll see you; the cameras will pick up your heat signature,” he yelled.
I stepped backward under the green canopy, watching the circle of sky. It was hard to place from which direction the sound was approaching until the tops of the trees bent in submission, and the upsurge of noise told me the helicopter was close and low. It must have skirted the clearing on the side of Moton Hall. The thrumming receded as quickly as it had appeared.
William Moton shot out of the shed, trailing the blanket as though he’d just finished a marathon.
“They’ll be back! Get away from here.” In his panic, he let the silver blanket go, and it floated for a moment in the air behind him, still bent to his form, and then crumpled to the ground. He snatched up the wheelbarrow and jostled off down the path.
“Good-bye, William Moton,” I called after him, “and good luck.”
“Get away from here,” he yelled. “And don’t go south.”
As the hermit fled into the trees, I hauled Horatio inside the shed and pulled the door closed. Of course the outside world would do anything to prevent the spread of the virus—wouldn’t we do anything to protect our own? Hadn’t I done exactly that? But if I was going to rally my troops, I needed a plan—a better one than “hide in a cave.” Part of me wanted to run like William Moton, but I also had to hear for myself the outside world that had turned against us. A tremor of fear made me fumble and drop the headset that was attached to the radio equipment. I’d expected a transistor handset, like the Roberts I had stupidly left behind in my house along with all the other lifesaving items. But this was more complicated. He must have built it out of scraps: coils and diodes brought to life by red-wire veins. I flicked a switch, and the shed filled with a crazy oscillating wail. I changed the channel to heavy interference, changed again to a mournful foghorn. I needed a hint of where to go next. Anything. The Bakelite dial clunked between electrical howls and sniveling static. The sound of mayhem.
I switched it off and let the quiet settle back into place. The lilt of birds bickering over the life or death of a worm. Reception was best at night; we needed to get away, but if we packed up the camp now, I could come back and get some sort of steer before we set off. I exited the shed and scooped up the silver heat blanket. Horatio froze on the grass, facing the trees with his head tipped to one side.
“What is it, von Drool?” I called to him, walking toward the stone steps. He tipped his head to the other side. “Let’s go—”
Then I heard a noise like whooshing radio static. But it wasn’t coming from the shed: it was the slap of rotor blades spanking the air. Out of sight, the engine whined as the helicopter came in to land, and then steadied to a violent buzz. The sound had such physicality it seemed to crane over the trees to grasp at me. I could imagine it hunkering on the grassy lawn, its brutality crashing the elegant facade of Moton Hall.
Horatio gave a gruff and scuttled past me, jumped down the Lonely Steps in one bound and onto the path through the trees in the direction of our camp. A rapid clattering made me turn back to face the clearing. William Moton appeared, still pushing the wheelbarrow, its cargo of porcelain bucking over the bumps. He pushed it right up to the door of the shed before he noticed me standing on the steps and hissed, “Run, you idiot woman!” As he turned to look behind him, the wheelbarrow tipped and the contents slid across the grass. He bent to try to lever the stack of plates back upright, but gave a cry of anguish as footsteps crashed through the woodland, the heavy tread audible over the distant buffeting of the helicopter. He left the plates and scooted behind the shed, where he leaned up against his home, peeping round the corner once before sliding to the ground. His despair startled me into action, and I leapt down the stone steps and slipped into the trees just as the first figure emerged from the path into the clearing.
It strode forward on stiff legs, rendered into gigantic proportions by the bulk of a biohazard suit. The impact of every footfall juddered aftershocks through the rigid uniform, starchy-white in the sunlight. It stopped, and the wasp eye mesh of its helmet whipped from side to side, the jerky movements belying the menace of its intense focus. It raised its legs and descended on the shed, as two more suits appeared from the dark hole of the wood.
“He’s here.”
The deep voice was so human it jolted me. I couldn’t tell which one had said it, but it must have been the one who was pointing an arm at the stricken wheelbarrow. The first figure moved toward the shed, toward the hermit who was slumped behind it, toward the steps, toward me. My legs wanted to run, as though they possessed instincts superior to my own, but the route to the farm track was too open, too exposed. I shrank into the undergrowth. My hands weren’t even shaking anymore. My body was thick and numb and helpless, disabled by a fear as powerful as an epidural.
The white figure ate up the ground. He slapped the door open and glanced inside, then rounded the shed and stopped when he saw William Moton, turning his wasp face back to the others.
“Target.”
“Go ahead.”
The white figure reached into a deep pocket in his trouser leg—as coolly fastidious as the man prone before him had once been—and withdrew the dark shape of a weapon. His arm scissored up, and he fired a single shot into William Moton’s forehead. The hermit flopped with his head lolling to one side, like a child playing dead.
“Clean?”