WebWorld (5.2)

“He has a name,” Tristan was saying.

At the same time as I was saying, “What do you mean, me?”

“Nate, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“We have a lot to talk about.”

I was on edge. My pulse was a caged, wild animal. “Go on,” I said with a sliver of a voice, an almost cat-like hiss. My distrust seemed to bearing fruit.

“Okay,” Seth said, “so we went looking for the army base on                                                                                                                                                                                                                purpose. We figured there’d be some sort of organisation and protection there. I guess some of you were there at one point too, you know that all we found was decomposing bodies. Their faces were crusted with blood, like they’d bled from the inside. You’re right, it was nasty.

“But we also found some interesting files, showing what they’d done, the poison they’d used. Results. Some of the last entries were impressive. And speculation. There was a theory that the gum was sentient, or that the creatures that lived in it had a kind of psychic ability. That they were reaching into people’s dreams, that sort of thing.”

I kept up what I hoped as a convincing poker face.

Seth was focused on me, so maybe he was aware. He continued, “but some people are more susceptible than others. And it’s the same people that develop a skin condition. You’ve had the dreams, haven’t you?”

“I’ve had some bad dreams.”

“Maybe visions too, in the middle of the day.”

I held my tongue. I let that ride over me as a statement.

Tristan spoke up before I could catch his eye, “he’s not the only one. There’s a girl in this hippy community who’s got it worse than Nate.”

I thought about those people. All those pregnant women. I wasn’t sure I wanted either of these groups to touch the other.

Seth just said, “that’s good to know. The more resources we have the better.”

“Resources?” I asked.

“Weapons.”

“Oh?”

“If they can reach you telepathically, you should be able to reach back. And if you can, you can stop them launching the psychic attack.”

“That’s a big leap.”

“The army were starting to do some experiments.”

“But of course,” Tristan sighed.

“Those experiments indicated that the human subjects could reach the embryos inside the gum, they could suppress the fight-back response in the creatures when they were attacked.”

George said, “It didn’t work though, did it?”

“The experiments were just beginning, and they didn’t understand then about the strength of the psychic defence. The bastards hadn’t used it then, had they? They didn’t know what sort of a wave of death they could hit back with. Well, we do. We’re ready to use our weapons to counter it.”

“The weapon has a name,” Zara interjected.

I wished I could tell her to keep silent. I didn’t want her to draw attention to herself. I was trying to size Seth up, decide how much we could trust him.

He turned to me, “You could make all the difference,” he said.

“Maybe,” I allowed.

“You want to end this, don’t you?”

“Sure. But. I know there’s a catch.”

For the first time he hesitated, he looked half away.

Zara got to her feet. She was looking hard at Seth. “What is it?”

I already knew. “It kills us, doesn’t it?”

Seth met my eyes, answering with silence.

“Brilliant.”

“Look. It’s not certain. None of this is certain. But you’d essentially be intercepting their attack.”

“Bringing it on myself.”

“Something like that.”

“And it melts my brain.”

“You’ll die a hero.”

“Fuck that.” The words came out before I’d formed them in my mind.

And I saw the change in Seth’s face, a tight, thoughtful disapproval. A reassessing of what he had with us. “Or if there’s two of you…”

“Leave Karen out of it.”

“Karen.”

“She’s not even right in the head.”

“Karen. Okay. Between the two of you…”

Tristan was standing now too. “Nate’s not your soldier. You don’t just get to come in here and tell him he’s off on a suicide mission. That’s not your decision to make.”

A woman behind Seth said, “it’s for the greater good.”

A man, “If the gum fights back, we don’t know the range, how many people could die. If your friend can stop that…”

And all I could think was: this sucks, this is the most goddam unfair proposal ever to throw at a guy’s feet. And I knew too, that I was supposed to do what I might have in a movie, sitting quietly, letting the arguments wash over me and then in the lull, say quietly, “it’s all right, I’ll do it.” Well, that’s about the last thing in the world I wanted to say. But Seth was starting to look right at me, and other eyes were being tugged along with his.

I said, “It’s not a good plan.”

“It is.”

Tristan said, “He’s not interested.”

All I could say was, “I’m sorry,” not even brave enough to say bluntly that I wasn’t going to sacrifice my life for this madness that just possibly might not be madness.

I learnt in that moment that this conversation had been strategic, that people weren’t just sitting in random places, that there was a little clot of their group near each of the doors. And Seth, especially, he’d positioned himself carefully. Now it was only a second’s work for him to step forward, drawing his gun, grabbing Zara by one arm and pressing the barrel into her face.

“You dirty little…” I realised I was charging this asshole only when a couple of his guys – who’d been standing behind me – grabbed me and stopped me.

More firearms had come out.

Tristan was saying, “All right, I think it’s time for you all to leave.”

Seth tapped his gun against Zara’s cheek. “I hoped you were going to go along with this willingly. But it has to be done. So if you haven’t the courage to do your duty by this country and maybe this planet, then we’ll have to do it the hard way.”

Tristan said, “What? You can’t shoot him, can you?”

He tapped Zara’s cheek, “Not him.”

“You son of bitch…”

“Steady on.”

I met his eyes, “I will kill you.”

“I don’t think you can count.”

“I don’t think you can stay awake your whole life.”

“Nobody has to get hurt.”

Zara twisted her neck so she could face him. I was afraid that she was about to do something stupid. Her eyes were wet, but they had that dangerous fire in them that told me she was just as angry as she was afraid. I willed her to say and do nothing. But she said to Seth: “Nobody except Nate.”

“One man for hundreds or thousands, maybe millions.”

“You do it then,” Tamsin spat from the sidelines.

Seth surveyed us, weighing us up as assets and obstacles, the way – the only way – he’d been seeing us all along. “This isn’t up for discussion. We’re doing this. So you can either co-operate or some people can die. Those are your choices.” He was directing that clearly at me.

Is that your girl?

This had been the way he’d expected this to go all along. This was planned and orchestrated, and he’d blindsided us with some good food, some gestures we’d wanted to believe in. He’d found my Achilles heel as quickly as possible and made himself ready to use it. That’s how this had gone down.

“Any questions?” Seth asked.

Tristan shook his head, “Does it matter?”

Seth was looking at me. “Any questions?”

“No,” I said through clenched, aching teeth, “no questions. You’ve made your position perfectly fucking clear.”

#

“We have to get out,” Zara said.

But this was impossible. These neighbours and fellow travellers were now our gaolers, and they were taking their position seriously. It didn’t seem as if we were allowed to leave the main building. Men and women with guns enforced that. And though they might be reluctant to shoot me – at least fatally – it didn’t mean they wouldn’t make an example of somebody else. Maybe not Zara first, because she was Seth’s best leverage, but there were plenty of other options. And there was something about the way his eyes had briefly settled on Tamsin that made me think she’d be the test case. Basically, we were fucked.

I told Zara as much, “they hold all the cards,” or rather, all the guns, “they’re not going to let us walk away, and we don’t have the skills or the numbers to take them. We’re pretty much stuck with this.”

“So, what, you’re just going to go along with this insane plan?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, you can’t.”

But don’t you look at me a bit differently? Seeing me offered the chance to be a hero and turning it down flat-ish? Doesn’t anybody think that I’m meant to do this? That any decent person would do the maths and say ‘of course, you can count on me’ The guy in the movie who goes into the radiation chamber to stop the nuclear explosion. Don’t you even a little bit wish that was me?

Trouble was, I got it. If it really could work, then it stood to reason that I had this duty. It was pretty simple really. I was scared and outraged, and also ashamed.

Zara was looking at me. “You can’t, Nate.”

“I don’t know if I’m going to get a choice.”

My Achilles heel. Her. Seth knew it. He knew what he needed to do to pull my strings. And it might be a bluff of sorts – once he played the card, the card was played – but he knew I couldn’t risk it, knew I knew the same thing.

“There’s this other one, this Karen girl…” her face burned, ashamed of what she was saying.

I shook my head.

“We’re not going down like this.” She had stubborn look. “We’re getting out of this, and that’s that.”

#

Tamsin had the same idea. “You can’t let him do this to you.”

“We don’t have a better plan.”

“Then we’ll think of one.”

“I don’t know if we will,” I felt tired. I couldn’t see a way out.

“What’s he going to do if we all just walk out? What if we just say no, and we all just start walking?”

“And they start shooting?”

“What if they don’t?”

“Let’s say they do.”

“They can’t all be the same. Some of them must think this is wrong.”

Is it though? That was the crux. Is it wrong? And wasn’t it more wrong to run away? Driving from town to town, farmhouse to farmhouse, always being that guy? The one who’d chosen to save himself instead of saving everyone. I didn’t want to be that guy, but I was, and I hated Seth for showing me that.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work