Resistance (13 page)

‘I didn’t say you drugged them, although you did, even though you weren’t aware of it.’ She made an effort to sound conciliatory. ‘Dave, from the moment I met you, and I suspect from the moment you killed the BattleMaster out on the rig, you have been
. . .’

He watched her struggle for the words, and her struggle seemed so genuine that he kept his anger in check. He had no fucking idea what she was talking about, but it was costing her to do it.

‘You have been
. . .
Exuding something. A pheromone, perhaps. Some sort of subliminal mating signal, below the level of hearing, unseen
. . .’
She reached into thin air with her hands as if trying to wrestle the idea out of nothing. ‘I don’t know what,’ she said at last. ‘But there is something coming off you, Dave. Something very strong, and for those who are unprepared, it is
. . .’

The professor’s inability to express herself was almost painful to watch.

‘Are you saying it’s like I’m wearing some kind of monster cologne?’ Dave asked. ‘Like Old Spice from Hell, or something? And the ladies just can’t resist?’

She nodded, looking relieved, almost as though he had lifted the great weight from her.

And then her nodding turned into a shake of the head.

‘No, or
. . .
almost. I can resist. I’m sure even you, Dave, have had the experience of being attracted to someone but deciding not to follow through. Perhaps someone who was so drunk that even you could not bring yourself to take advantage of her, no matter how much you liked her boobies.’

He snorted laughter at that.

‘I think I should be insulted, but I’m gonna take it as one of your strange English compliments, all back-assward and up-fucked.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Emmeline said. ‘This is very difficult. I think I’ll take that drink now, actually. Do you think you could order it? I believe that if I have to speak to that hostess it will be the end of me.’

‘Sure,’ Dave said, surprised by the tenderness in his voice. ‘Just gimme a second while I do my Speedy Gonzales thing.’

He popped down the back of the aircraft – quite literally. The hole in the cabin’s atmosphere where he had been sitting made a small popping noise when he exited the chair at warp speed and flashed down to the galley where the flight attendant was busying herself preparing meals to distribute. She jumped a little when he appeared out of nowhere, and then smiled.

‘Hello Mr Hooper,’ she said, leaning back against the bulkhead in a way which let her breasts say hello too.

‘Just call me Dave,’ he said pleasantly, examining her to see whether or not she looked like she’d just taken a big hit off Dave’s patented sex bong. Her cheeks were a little flushed, and her eyes very sparkly, but what the hell did that mean? She might have just taken a really good dump.

‘Do you think I could get another martini now, and a gin and tonic for my friend? That’s what English chicks drink, isn’t it?’

‘I make a lovely gin and tonic, Dave. Everyone drinks it.’

‘Outstanding,’ he said and winked before returning to his seat at a normal walking pace.

Emmeline raised one eyebrow at him. ‘And?’

‘Maybe,’ he shrugged. ‘But maybe I’m just awesome. Or maybe this is my fifteen minutes. D’you ever watch
Batman
, you know, the old TV show?’

‘Sure. But why?’

‘Well I read Robin’s autobiography once.’ When Dave saw the sceptical look on her face he protested. ‘Hey, I read books.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh I do not doubt you read the autobiography of Batman’s little friend. Go on.’

‘Okay, I read it in Macy’s, while Annie was shopping for shoes. I was desperate. You wouldn’t think a woman could spend so many fucking hours confused about what to put on her feet.’

He saw The Look on her face, again.

‘Or maybe you could. Anyway, I picked this thing off the shelf and read most of it standing there in the store. Let me tell you, Professor, Robin might’ve been a little guy, but he was a giant of the game when it came to chasing pussy. Whole damn book was about how much pussy he got. Except for the last chapter, which was this weird thing about how he found God or something. But anyway, a little bit of celebrity was all it took. You don’t think that’s what’s happening here?’

She shook her head and smiled, almost sadly.

‘I almost admire you for thinking that, Dave. But no. I am immune to celebrity. I don’t even own a television these days.’

She paused when the flight attendant reappeared with their drinks. Two martinis for Dave, one dirty and one with a twist. And a sparkling cut-crystal tumbler, clinking with ice and fizzing with gin and tonic for Emmeline.

‘Thought maybe you’d go for a twist, too,’ she said to Dave.

‘It’s like you can read my mind.’ He smiled.

This time, Professor Ashbury didn’t react, or at least she didn’t scold him. She just took half of the drink in one long gulp.

‘Thank God for the British Raj,’ she said.

‘The what?’

She held up her drink and tinkled the ice cubes from side to side, a dainty movement, lest any of the contents slosh over the side.

‘An artifact of Britain’s colonial expansion,’ she explained. ‘Serving G and T’s in the mess was the most effective and efficient way of administering quinine to Her Majesty’s Indian regiments. To protect them from malaria.’

That was the sort of factoid that could win you an easy bar bet, Dave thought, filing it away. But before he could speak, Emmeline went on.

‘No, Dave. It’s not celebrity. I can tell you from unsettling personal experience that you have some kind of aura, I suppose, which affects me, affects all women, when they get to within about a cricket pitch’s length of you. Twenty yards or so. It turns on like a light. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what function it serves. Maybe it’s some evolutionary trick, to ensure the bloody Chosen One’s DNA gets handed on or some such rot. I have no idea. But I do know it’s real and you need to be aware of it. You need to stop acting like a complete tosser.’

‘A what?’

Dave sounded unsure, not because he didn’t understand what she meant by the weird English expression, but because he was suddenly seeing the last few days through a radically different lens. Never shy about pursuing sex, he was also experienced in absorbing rejection, disinterest and even the occasional incident of physical revulsion at the very suggestion a woman might want to take a ride on the Dave Train. All of the interest in him since New Orleans, he’d put down to his new status. He was not just a hero, but a superhero, no matter what Compton said. He was buff. He was on TV. Everywhere they’d been in the last few days, every airport lounge, every bar, every fast food joint and hotel lobby. There he was, again and again, saving the world.

Who, besides the hardest of hard-core lesbians and his ex-wife, wouldn’t want a piece of that? And what man wouldn’t take advantage of it?

‘A tosser, Dave. You’ve been a bit of a tosser. A wanker. I believe the delightful American colloquialism appropriate to your circumstances is douche bag.’

The sharp, serrated edge was gone from her voice, even as the words became crueller and more accusatory.

‘So, on the rig. When we were alone and talking
. . .’
He trailed off. He had quite pleasant memories of that night, or at least those few minutes he spent talking with Emmeline. He’d thought she liked him.

‘I wanted to climb you like a StairMaster. It was very confusing. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that
. . .’

She shrugged.

‘That you wanted to climb me like a StairMaster?’ Dave asked and she nodded.

‘Yes. Sorry. I was undone, unbalanced. I had no idea where the sudden, quite unhinged erotic feelings I had for you had come from. But I’m an intelligent woman, Dave. Quite a bit smarter than you, and you’re an intelligent man. In spite of your best efforts to pretend otherwise. I knew that whatever was happening had to be related to whatever had happened to you and so I put it aside. I’ve been doing that ever since.’

It was his turn to apologise but she brushed off his attempt before the word ‘sorry’ was fully out of his mouth.

‘Don’t be silly. We’re grown-ups. And grown-ups put aside ridiculous infatuations all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Because they’re inappropriate. Because they’re impossible. Because they are dangerous. The question for you, Dave, is whether you will be able to put aside the effect you now seem to have on any woman who wanders within a stone’s throw of you.’

It was as though the plane had dropped out from underneath him and he was free falling. It hadn’t bothered him at all when he thought Georgia Knox had gone to bed with him because she wanted to get an exclusive TV interview out of him. And it had bothered him even less when that Saudi princess, who spoke about half a dozen words of English, used those half-dozen words to talk her way into his bedroom as well. Why the fuck would that bother any man? But he wasn’t so sure he felt as good about the deal if it turned out they had been knocked sideways by some weird-ass mojo from the UnderRealms.

Or, maybe he was cool with it. What’s the difference between some chick grabbing his joint because he’d been on TV, or doing the same thing because he was – what? Just more magnetic?

‘Well I can see you’re at least thinking about it,’ Emmeline said before finishing off the last of her drink. Dave leaned forward again, keeping his voice down. He didn’t need to look around the aircraft to know where everybody was, or that they had their heads down in whatever business they could find. Boylan working on his court documents. Heath and even Compton picking over binders full of documents, checking them against laptop and iPad screens. Igor and Chief Allen pestering the attendant for beers. Joy was her name, he knew, having noted her name badge without even being aware he’d done so. Was that more monster magic, or just him being a bit of an asshole again? The rest of the SEAL team were spread throughout the rear of the plane, checking gear, enjoying the comforts or catching some z’s.

‘So what, you got deputised to talk to me about this?’ he asked in a low voice.

Emmeline leaned forward and whispered, ‘You’d prefer to talk to Compton about it? He’s really pissed off, by the way. I don’t think he’s been laid since his freshman year.’

Dave resisted the urge to look across at the academic.

‘Figured,’ he said conspiratorially, before leaning back. ‘So, you know, what do I do about all the ladies wanting a taste of Super Dave’s Special Sauce?’

Emmeline shrugged.

‘Maybe you could ask Brad Pitt about it.’

10

Dave held Lucille in his hands as they passed over the Rocky Mountains. It was a clear day, affording a grand view of the western part of the continent’s dark, broken spine, capped here and there on the highest peaks with thin dustings of ice and snow. Emmeline was asleep, knocked out by her gin and tonic on top of an exhausting week. He reached over and pulled down the shade on her window to spare her the late afternoon sun. None of them had enjoyed a full night’s sleep since the Horde had emerged, and being on the road didn’t help. It was less of a problem for Dave. When he did sleep, he slept heavily, almost too heavily, but any sort of rest, even a nap, seemed to recharge his batteries.

He left the softly snoring lady professor in her seat and carried Lucille down to hang out with Zach and Igor. He felt more comfortable with them, perhaps because they were the working stiffs of this outfit, not the bosses like Heath and Compton.

‘You lay that thing down, it’s not gonna punch a hole through the floor is it?’ asked Igor as he approached.

‘It’s a
she
, and no. Just because she weighs a ton to a small boy like you, doesn’t mean she weighs an actual ton to a real man.’

Igor snorted and gave him the finger.

‘Ol’ Luce here sat real happy on the display case those Bellagio guys knocked up in Vegas,’ Dave said. ‘And underneath all the silk and cushions, that was just plywood. Probably would’ve collapsed if Compton dropped his fat ass on it.’

He took a seat across the aisle from them, placing the weapon with its heavy steel head on the carpeted floor, the handle leaned up against his armrest. And there it would stay, as though welded in place. Heath insisted Dave carry Lucille with him whenever they were in transit because, not knowing anything about the physical properties of an enchanted splitting maul, they couldn’t be certain that if it fell out of an overhead luggage bin it wouldn’t crush or even messily cut in half anyone it landed on. The fact Lucille never moved an inch unless Dave laid hands on her meant nothing to the cautious officer.

‘It’s your responsibility,’ said Heath. ‘You carry it and you treat it like a suitcase nuke.’

Warm to the touch, Lucille reminded him of a dog he’d once had, way back during those long childhood summers when he liked to get in trouble with brother Andy and their cousin Darryl. Dave suspected she would not care at all for the comparison were she aware of it.

And he couldn’t be entirely sure that she wasn’t aware. The living weapon – that’s how he thought of her, she was no longer a dumb tool – could sense his moods. He was sure of that, but she could not read his mind. Just like most women he knew.

‘You hear any of that thing with Emmeline before?’ he asked them, quietly.

‘Some,’ said Zach, suppressing a grin. ‘She give you a schoolin’ in modern gender etiquette, did she?’

‘Yeah, some of that. So Heath or Compton didn’t say anything to you guys?’

Zach Allen snorted this time.

‘In the food chain of this operation, they’re beef bourguignon and we’re chicken-in-a-can.’

There was some relief in that for Dave. He didn’t give a shit what Compton thought of him, and he was still sorting through how he felt about Heath and Emmeline. But the young chief petty officer with the weirdly Christian surfer dude charm, and even Igor, the grim-faced giant, their good opinion he found he did care about.

He peered out of a window where one of their escort planes, an ugly grey thing with a big honkin’ cannon in the nose, kept station with a much sleeker, deadlier-looking jet fighter a few hundred yards away. He assumed he’d find a matching pair on the other side if he could be bothered to wander across the aisle and take a look. He didn’t bother. He was just glad to have them along, riding shotgun.

Dar Drakon
, he knew, were drawn to strange sounds. Intelligent and curious, but cruel as cats, they could not resist investigating anything that might prove to be a tasty treat, or provide a few moments of distraction by screaming or burning or coming apart in their claws in some new and exciting fashion. Dave suspected
dar Drakon
would find the sound of modern jet engines plenty strange, and way too fascinating a distraction to ignore.

Zach raised a cup of coffee and took a bite out of what looked like a freshly made Reuben sandwich. When he was done chewing and swallowing he said, ‘This is pretty sweet, dude. We don’t normally fly like this. Usually we’re on C-130s. Prop jobs, noisy and cold. Mondo uncomfortable.’

‘Like riding in the back of a pick-up?’ Dave offered.

‘Yeah, but without the complimentary keg or a mattress.’

Igor stared off out of his window, an empty plate smeared with gravy trails on the tray table in front of him.

‘Cold down there in winter,’ he said to no one in particular, already on the way to growing back his beard a day after he had clipped it all off. ‘Worse than the Hindu Kush I reckon.’ He rearranged himself, getting more comfortable, throwing one booted foot over his leg like a man settling in to watch a long football match, or a streaming binge on Netflix. Gone were the polo shirts and cargo pants of Las Vegas, replaced by green
camo fatigues for both men. Compared to some of the other military types Dave had now met, the SEALs were more apt to look like they’d climbed out of bed in an Army Surplus store and thrown on whatever they picked up off the floor. He supposed they had to do the spit and polish thing at some time, but he had yet to see it. Another thing that endeared them to him.

‘So you know what we’re flying into?’ Dave asked. ‘You know, besides the shit?’

Zach took another sip of coffee and shrugged.

‘Chicken-in-a-can here, Dave. When they want me to know, they’ll update my Facebook page.’

Igor turned from the window. ‘I read online that 0600 this morning, some fucking emissary of the Horde presented himself to the local notables at a Cracker Barrel outside of Omaha. Before one of the customers put five shells from a Remington autoloader into his ugly face, those patrons who didn’t shit their pants and pass out straight away swore it was grunting something like “Pay tribute and respect to us and your village will be spared”.’

‘Really?’ Dave said. ‘So, what’d the folks in Cracker Barrel say about that?’

‘They paid ’em some tribute.’ Igor laughed. ‘Five rounds of solid slug. Right in the fuckin’ kisser.’

‘That’s a money shot,’ Zach nodded. ‘May the Lord forgive me.’

‘It’s gotta be bullshit,’ said Dave. ‘You read this online?’

‘Strange Thingies dot com,’ Igor said, without the hint of a smile.

‘Seriously?’

A pause.

‘Nah, io9. Why bullshit?’

‘Because how could anyone but me understand what they were saying? Google Translate?’

‘Ah, Dave, what’s-a matter? You not feeling so special now?’ Igor teased.

‘No, he’s right,’ said Zach. ‘Probably just a cool story. Net’s full of them. News too. Even
New York Times
is running something about a bunch of rednecks fighting off a pack of Hunn last night, some place where cousins get married and play banjo with their toes. Heard it on the radio riding over to the airport.’

‘Whatever,’ Igor said. ‘Cap’n tells me there’s a concentration of ’em southwest of Omaha. Ten thousand or more. Says we don’t have much time.’

‘Outside?’ Dave asked. ‘Like in a field or something?’

‘Yeah, near the SAC museum.’

‘Wait? What?’ Dave said. ‘Nebraska has a sack museum? Like?’ He grabbed his crotch and gave it squeeze.

‘Missiles,’ Zach said, rolling his eyes. ‘Strategic Air Command.’

‘Oh, right, okay. Because they shouldn’t be outside in the day. These things hate sunburn like a Baptist hates disco. It’s like their kryptonite.’

Zach’s patience faded just a notch. ‘Dude, this Baptist happens to like disco.’

‘It’s true.’ Igor grinned. ‘Sad but true. You should see his iPod.’

‘It’s sadder that he still has an iPod,’ Dave said.

He consulted his monsterpedia but couldn’t dig up anything. As far as Urgon was concerned a walk in the sun was just an ugly, painful death, and not a quick one either. When Dave closed his eyes and let the BattleMaster imagine a day at the beach he saw blistering tumours boiling up on the surface of his hide, suppurating lesions and ulcers exploding into fiery, pustulant life on every exposed inch of skin. It wasn’t like a vampire in the movies or on
True Blood
. They didn’t just burn up or disappear in a puff of dust. They sort of boiled down, over a couple of hours, as though consumed by a cancer even more hideous than they were.

‘Dude, you okay?’

It was Zach, shaking his arm. The CPO had unstrapped himself and leaned across the aisle to pull Dave out of the movie running inside his head.

‘I’m cool,’ he said, although he sounded like he was a long way from it. He had no idea, really, what killing Urgon and stealing his strength or his magic, his mojo or whatever, had really done to him. Would there come a day when he’d have to stay in the shadows, never show his face in daylight again, for fear of melting into a puddle of toxic offal?

‘You should eat,’ said Igor. ‘Fuel up.’

‘Yeah,’ Dave grunted. ‘Might have another drink first.’

He ordered a triple bourbon from Joy, who was pleased to serve him with a tumbler of 25-year-old Pappy Van Winkle. Pappy helped some, and Dave asked her if he could also get a couple of steaks.

‘Sure sweetie.’ She beamed.

‘Dave, you got any idea what your basal metabolic rate is?’ Chief Allen asked when Joy left them to fill Dave’s order.

‘My what?’

‘How much energy you burn, every day, without even trying,’ he explained. ‘We’ve been watching you put away a trailer park full of trailer trash food for the better part of a week, and you’ve lost weight. Packed on muscle mass. But you haven’t completely broken the laws of physics. If you don’t fuel up, you power down. We’ve seen that too.’

Dave nodded absently, and his gaze drifted through the window again. He’d never been one for listening to lectures by the company medics, or the gym rats on the rig. He’d always believed in the basic math. Energy in versus energy out. If you ate too much and you didn’t exercise you got fat. That was why he’d been a little porky until recently. Just a little, you understand. He was a big guy. He could carry some extra weight on him without anyone noticing.

‘Yeah, Zach said you were a bit of fat fuck first time he saw you,’ Igor said.

Dave gave Allen an offended look. ‘Hey.’

‘Come on, Dave,’ Zach said. ‘You know it’s true.’

‘I been working out,’ Dave protested.

‘Just sayin’,’ Igor replied, unrepentant. ‘If I ate like you, I’d look like Jabba the fucking Hutt too.’

The plane banked to the left, and silvery light streamed in through the windows on that side. Far below them Dave could see thick green forests covering the lower slopes of the mountains, thinning out at the tree line where they gave way to hard granite.

‘So, Dave? You have any idea?’ Chief Allen said. ‘You look to me like you can get down all the calories for eight or nine men every day. But then I’m not with you all the time. You might be snacking.’

‘Might be you’re right,’ he conceded as Joy returned with a couple of porterhouse steaks smothered in mushroom sauce. He supposed they’d been mostly cooked pre-flight, then snap frozen or chilled to be nuked as they were needed. Still looked pretty damn good, though.

‘Do you want a glass of wine with that, honey? Or a beer. Got plenty of both.’

‘A beer thanks, Joy. You can choose. Make me happy.’

‘Always.’ She smiled, holding his gaze.

As she returned to the galley he turned back to the SEALs to find them lost in the first moments of a quiet argument.

‘Zach, tell me you are not even a little bothered by the fact that she doesn’t notice you,’ Igor said.

Zach shrugged. ‘When the time is right, the Lord will provide.’

‘You always were a sanctimonious prick,’ Igor muttered.

‘Dude, that’s a lot of syllables for you to pack so tight into one sentence,’ Zach said.

‘Uh, guys?’ Dave waved at the two SEALs. ‘What’s it matter about the food? As long as I keep topped up, and I got a supply of energy bars for emergencies, I don’t see the problem. Figure my calorie counting days are behind me.’

Not that his calorie math had ever been particularly good, or his study of it especially diligent.

In reply, Zach took a knife from the scabbard he wore on his hip. The Boeing’s recliners were ample enough to let him do so without having to contort himself. He held it up for Dave to see.

‘This is a weapon, Dave. A pretty simple one, probably as old as mankind itself. And yet, not simple at all. Thousands of years of metallurgy, hundreds of years of materials science and developments in mass production, all of them led to this.’ He held the knife up. ‘It’s a simple weapon, especially compared to any of my firearms. And next to one of those Super Hornets or Warthogs out there, it’s like a Zen koan.’

A shaft of sunlight caught the blade’s sharp edge and flashed around the interior of the cabin. Joy was coming back at that moment and gave a little gasp of alarm when she saw the naked blade.

‘Sorry, ma’am, just making a point, if you’ll excuse me,’ said Zach. ‘Thing is, Dave. As simple as this knife is,’ he put it back in its protective sheath, ‘it still requires attention, care and maintenance. I have to oil it, sharpen it. I had to be trained to use it, and I have to keep up that training if I want to maintain the skill set.’

The flight attendant carefully placed Dave’s beer, a bottle of Barley John’s strong porter, and hurried off to see if anybody else needed anything. Anybody who wasn’t waving an edged weapon around. Dave had no idea where Zach was going with the metaphor, so he tucked into his steak, which was delicious, microwaved or not, and let the chief get on with going there.

‘You are a weapon, Dave. And we know nothing about you. You know nothing about you.’

‘You know nothing, Dave Hooper!’ Igor chortled.

Zach pointedly ignored him.

‘Sometimes, it’s like you are no more self-aware than a knife or a bullet. Knives can break and bullets can misfire and I’m pretty sure you can be killed. Chances are the 10,000 orcs camped outside Omaha came here to do just that.’