“—A dead man!” Garth muttered it again. But:
“No,” said Zach. “There’s another word, or description, for what Ned Singer might be now. Not dead but—”
“Undead!” said Garth. “Like…like that scav you told me about? Oh…what was his name? Jack Foster, yes?”
“Ah!” Zach released the other. “So you remember our conversation about that old business, do you? About Jack Foster, and how he was taken—and how he came back?”
“Yes,” said Garth, frowning as at last he began to see the light, or thought he did. “That’s been on my mind quite a bit. But…do you think perhaps that’s what my problem is? That I can’t get that story out of my head: how Foster came back with a swarm and tried to break into the refuge, and now I’m obsessed with the idea that something similar is happening with Ned Singer?”
“You think you may have dwelled upon it for too long?” his father replied, without truly accepting that was all there was to it. “Well it’s possible, I suppose.” And then—remembering what Layla had told him about Garth’s nightmares: how he would suddenly start awake with Singer’s name on his lips—he said: “But Garth, there’s something more to what happened that time; something I never mentioned before because I thought it wasn’t important—until now.”
“Then tell me!” said Garth.
“Well—” Zach scratched his chin, and cast his mind back to when Garth had been a mere infant “—Jack Foster was a very odd sort of fellow: too quiet, not at all pleasant, something of a loner. He had no close friends that I remember, not even among the rest of the scavs. His father had suffered for a long time from radiation poisoning, and Jack’s face and head had come out badly misshapen; which probably accounts for his being a loner. On the other hand perhaps he was too…I don’t know, too much an outsider to ever have been a scav! For as you’ll appreciate, it took a certain type of man—a team player—to venture out from the refuge after sunset, searching for useful materials in the ruins while risking his life in lethal confrontations with fly-by-nights! But in addition, Jack didn’t seem quite as hard as the rest of us. I mean, he was something of a daydreamer—no, not someone who would fall asleep on the job, which is not intended as any kind of reflection on you and what you’ve told me, you understand—but someone who dwelled in his own world and mind: a very ‘introspective’ type of fellow. Now, that’s a hell of a big word, which I might have misused because I never took to schooling and reading the way you did. But it means—”
“That Jack Foster was a deep thinker,” said Garth. “Someone who was maybe too interested in what went on in his own head?”
“Yes!” said Zach. “Put simply he did too much thinking, had too much of an imagination. And sometimes, in fact quite often, he would tell us that when he was on his own—which he actually preferred to be—picking over some supposedly ‘safe’ place deep in the rubble, he’d often seen fly-by-nights just standing off and watching him, and for some reason they’d never tried to attack him!
“Now, while Jack had been a scav with me and Big Jon Lamon for, oh, maybe four years, he had only ever been seen to shoot and kill fly-by-nights on occasions when we were together as a team, and when we—the rest of the crew, that is—were under attack. And he would say some pretty weird things from time to time; for instance: ‘Oh, they’re not so bad not once you get to know them…’ Which would make us laugh, of course, because it had to be his idea of some kind of joke…didn’t it?
“Well, we used to say that Jack Foster led a charmed life; and indeed he seemed to…at least until the night they took him! But charmed or not Jack’s life was never a very happy one. That was because of his bad dreams about the fly-by-nights, or so we assumed. Himself, he never said too much about it, but it was said by folk who bunked close to him, that he rarely got more than an hour or two’s sleep before waking in a sweat, shaking head to toe, and making a hell of a fuss about something in his head!”
At that Garth’s jaw had dropped; but now, since it appeared Zach had finished speaking, he said: “Maybe they’d been getting into his dreams! And maybe—I mean just maybe—they’ve been getting into mine, too!”
“Oh?” said his father, remembered his promise to Layla, and reacting as if all this was news to him. “Have you been suffering in the same fashion, then?”
“Oh yes!” Garth shivered. “I’ve been nightmaring, and it’s Singer who’s in my mind. Always telling me…telling me…”
“Yes?
“That he’s coming!”
And once again: “Ahhh!” said Zach, struggling to get to his feet, then backing off a pace. And with his expression changing, becoming stern, and his tone of voice hardening: “So then, with all that you’ve experienced and all you think is happening, you never saw fit to report or even mention any of this to anyone?”
“Of course I wanted to! You must know I did!” Garth shot to his feet and faced the other. “But how could I? What, I should frighten the life out of Layla? Or talk to Big Jon and explain how I, er, perhaps nod off out there on the perimeter every so often? Or get myself laughed at, ridiculed, by raving on about ghosts in the mist, not to mention that really nasty one in my dreams? I mean, who would take me seriously? And tell me something if you wilclass="underline" is there anyone among us who hasn’t had bad dreams about fly-by-nights from time to time? God, surely it’s enough that I’ve doubted my own sanity without inviting anyone else in to judge me?”
His father nodded and said, “Take it easy. I only wanted to be sure you weren’t falling apart like Peder Halbstein, is all. And I can well understand how you thought you might be!”
“But I’m not?” Garth desperately needed to be sure.
“Hell no! And don’t worry about it, for when I speak to Big Jon—which of course I must—I won’t mention your sleeping on duty. Fact is you mightn’t have nodded off at all, not if those creatures really can get into a man’s mind. Hey, Ned Singer was a bad bastard even in life! So who knows what he may be capable of in death, eh?”
“Or undeath?” said Garth.
And his father nodded again. “Or undeath, yes.”
“So, you’ll speak to Big Jon…and then what?”
“I’ll let you know,” said Zach. “But until then say nothing to anyone else. Layla isn’t the only girl you might frighten to death. And not only the girls, either…”
X
From that moment on a small handful of changes had been guaranteed to take place in Big Jon Lamon’s security procedures; in fact they were in place for the first time that very night, but had been kept so low-profile that only the men involved would ever have noticed them. Garth and the other night-watch bosses were aware of them, of course, and every squad member had been cautioned to silence; likewise the hastily recruited—or “volunteered”—inner cordons of shift workers: three eight-man teams working four-hour shifts from eight at night till eight in the morning, within the area occupied by the convoy’s vehicles and temporary habitations as opposed to the outer perimeters. Such teams were in addition to the mobile standby squads with their motorized, often customized two-wheelers, and their tasks were specific: in the event of all alerts to rouse the standbys up, and should any attack by fly-by-nights ensue to assist in sending these armed riders off to wherever their fire-power seemed most in demand; then to occupy prearranged defensive positions of their own right there in the central area of the encampment.
Moreover, the manpower of the night-watch squads had been doubled; from now on no man would ever be on his own out there on the perimeters but would have a partner to keep him company and learn from him through the long nights. Thus as of now, if or when there were sinister things to be seen out in the mist, there would be at least two sets of eyes to confirm such sightings. Only the three night-watch bosses—whose duty with immediate effect would be to stay alert and constantly on the move, patrolling from post to post without undue pause—would be unaccompanied, for any excessive movement or unusual activity out on the perimeters might easily set Garry Maxwell’s “sniffers”—not to mention the rest of the watchdogs—barking their heads off all night long!