Defender Read online

  The cat gave a low, plaintive meow. It stared up at him with wide yellow lamps for eyes. They appeared lit from the inside, luminous and unblinking.

  It meowed again.

  Exhaling quietly until his lungs felt strangely deflated, Pilgrim had carefully lowered the hammer back into place and holstered the gun.

  ‘You wouldn’t look so endearing with a hole in your head.’

  The sound of his voice was all the welcome the cat needed. It slunk forward to wind itself around his legs, purring as if a little motor hummed inside its small body.

  You’re gonna be stuck with the mangy shitball now, Voice said.

  ‘Can always choose to shoot it later,’ Pilgrim replied, leaning down to scratch the cat behind one ear.

  The cat had paused to lap at the beer staining the blacktop, its tongue flashing out pink and quick. It gave a delicate sneeze and shook its head and left the rest to dry in the sun. Pilgrim didn’t blame the animal one bit; the beer had already left a bitter coating on his tongue.

  Sometimes things were best left forgotten.

  A smile touched one corner of his mouth when he saw the motorcycle tucked in behind an old, rusted dumpster. The bike was scratched and dented and cracked in places, but she ran sweet and had lasted more than eight months so far. That was three months longer than any other bike he had appropriated. He wheeled her out, one hand swiping a line of dust off the faded gas tank. He slung a leg over the fraying seat, the engine rumbling to life with one crisp twist of the key and a single depression of the starter button.

  Shucking his pack on to both shoulders, he righted the weight of the bag until it was comfortable. It felt heavier than it had in weeks. He had dug up more supplies than he’d expected to here, but there was nothing else of any use. The decayed bodies hiding in back rooms and garages and basements, most marked with self-inflicted wounds, offered little companionship.

  Besides, you’ve got me for company, Voice said.

  ‘I thought you weren’t talking to me.’

  I wasn’t. But I got tired of waiting for you to apologise.

  ‘Apologise for what?’

  Exactly! You don’t even know what you did. I’d have been waiting for ever.

  Pilgrim stopped listening. Maybe he should consider lying low here for a while, conserve his gas, before the need to restock forced him to move on.

  You’ll get itchy feet, Voice said. You know it, and I know it. And who knows where the next meal or cache of gas will come from if you stay here too long?

  As much as Pilgrim didn’t want to admit it, Voice had a point. Besides, Pilgrim preferred to keep moving. He’d rather have the open sky as his roof and the horizons as his borders than the walls of a town stacked up all around. Easier to see what lay ahead that way.

  The locals won’t take kindly to us staying, either. The cat is the only one who’d welcome us.

  Pilgrim’s eyes automatically found the cat. It stalked back and forth next to the bike, searching for a safe way up.

  Bring it along, Voice said. Could serve as a good appetiser at some point. Or a bartering tool.

  Pilgrim grunted.

  Might as well name it while you’re at it.

  ‘Maybe I will,’ Pilgrim said.

  He leaned over and gripped the cat by the scruff of the neck, lifting it high and settling it on the tank in front of him. Its hind quarters slid back until they rested in the V of his thighs, up against the crotch of his jeans.

  ‘If there’s even a hint of claws going anywhere near my balls, you’re getting a one-way ticket off this bike.’

  Pilgrim gave the throttle some gas, watching for the cat’s reactions to the throaty growl of the engine. The animal gave a quick, sharp yowl but settled down almost straight away.

  Grunting quietly, Pilgrim lifted the glacier sunglasses from where they hung around his neck. Like always, the world became a whole lot more tolerable at a lower brightness level. Next, he lifted the dusty neckerchief tied loosely at the nape of his neck and tugged it up over his nose. He took a moment simply to sit with his eyes closed, absorbing the heat of the day like a lizard, allowing himself to be warmed from the outside in. He breathed deep through the cotton at his mouth, the bike vibrating soothingly through his bones. After a slow count of fifteen – because fifteen had always been a good number – he heeled the side-stand up, knocked the bike into gear and aimed its nose towards the sun.

  There wasn’t much to see any more. Pilgrim kept his eyes on the road and on the horizon, on the abandoned cars and on the places where ambushers could be lurking, and on the blacktop ahead for sharp items designed to puncture tyres. He had a set number of things to be alert to (for example, signs for supermarkets or gas stations, pharmacies and hospitals, libraries even), but other than those few places, and the wariness of being jacked for his belongings and maybe even his life (and now the cat, he supposed), he generally felt no interest or curiosity in much of anything.

  Until he spotted the girl.

  She was a distance off yet but immediately she was a splash of colour that drew his eye. And even so, the sighting invoked only a mere flash of curiosity, a reading which barely registered.

  The teenager was sitting on a folding chair at a roadside stand, a handmade sign painted with the words ‘Fresh Lemonade for Sale. Drink Up or Pucker Up’ propped up next to her. It had been beautifully painted with green vines winding through the script and plump yellow lemons adorning each corner.

  Curiosity killed the cat, Voice said in the back of his head. And satisfaction won’t ever bring it back.

  CHAPTER 2

  The sun shone bright and strong outside the netted windows. Inside, the farmhouse was dark and shaded and silent. Lacey sat in her grammy’s armchair, legs tucked up, a heavy knitted blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The chair was an old wingback, fraying and threadbare, each of its wooden legs scarred pale from the countless times Grammy had knocked them with her walking stick. The winged sides where she had rested her head held no material at all, the pale yellow padding showing through.

  Lacey hummed a little under her breath as she turned a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles over in her hands. She used a corner of the blanket to polish the lenses and lifted them to her eyes. She squinted around the dusty room and peered hard at the blurry pictures on the walls.

  ‘God, Grammy. You were blind as a bat.’

  She lowered the glasses and the pictures came into focus. Family photographs of Lacey and her big sister, mostly. One where they were sitting on the floor of Karey’s bedroom, Grammy’s antique vinyl records scattered around them, a six-year-old Lacey beaming up at the camera while carefully holding a black record cupped between her palms by its edges, exactly how Karey had shown her. Karey wasn’t looking at the camera. She gazed at Lacey with a worried expression, as if counting the seconds until her baby sister dropped her prized recording of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Her worries had been unwarranted; Lacey hadn’t dropped it. In fact, she hadn’t dropped it for another five whole days. It had hit the floor edge first, snapping clean in two.

  All the tears and apologies in the world hadn’t saved Lacey from her big sister’s wrath (and Karey knew exactly what punishment would cause the most heartache). For two solid weeks, Karey hadn’t spoken to her. Not a single word. It was the thing Lacey hated most. Silence. Those two weeks had felt like an eternity.

  In the cold, silent sitting room, Lacey sighed and slipped her grammy’s glasses back on, transforming the family pictures into a myopic blur. Sometimes, looking at those familiar faces made the house feel emptier, the silence weighing a thousand times heavier.

  A creak from the hallway made her stomach tighten. She knew it came from under the stairs. It always came from under the stairs. She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, ‘There’s nothing there, Lace. Just ignore it. The house makes stupid noises all the time.’

  The creaking came again, but she wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of looking. She wouldn’t. The f
armhouse was old: it creaked, it moaned, it ticked sometimes as though a spider army was marching to war under the floorboards. It was just her ears playing tricks.

  The creak came a third time and, before she could change her mind, Lacey threw aside the blanket as she jumped up, snatched the glasses off her face and dashed to the cupboard. She yanked it open, but the small space inside was empty. Painfully so. It mocked her with its emptiness because she was the one who’d cleared it out in the first place.

  She slammed the door shut and leaned her forehead against the wood.

  ‘I have to leave this place before I go crazy.’

  She breathed deeply for a time and went back to humming – ‘She’s Leaving Home’, her fifth-favourite Beatles tune – making it to the second verse before she could straighten away from the cupboard and return to the sitting room. She picked up the blanket she’d tossed aside and neatly folded it into halves, then quarters, then laid it on the seat of the armchair. Her boots were already on, but she double-checked they were securely fastened. On her way to the front door, she stopped by the hallway table to pick up the cold metal flask she’d left there. She didn’t look at the small cupboard under the stairs.

  Leaving the house, she made sure the front door was closed behind her, rattling the handle for good measure, then started the long trudge out to the road.

  The idea for a lemonade stand had been a stroke of genius.

  What would a weary traveller want more than anything? Lacey had asked herself, gazing out of the kitchen window, past the plants her grammy had cultivated (the cucumbers weren’t ripening like they were supposed to – Lacey killed everything she touched, no matter how hard she tried; Grammy had delighted in calling her Leper Hands) to the perfectly rectangular heap of overturned earth behind them. The lantana she’d transplanted to the spot had survived nicely, despite her leper hands (she’d studied her grammy’s gardening magazines in detail before even attempting the replanting), and after ten weeks she was both happy and relieved to see the grave blooming with red, orange and yellow flowers. Beside the grave, two potted plants housed stunted little lemon trees.

  When life gives you lemons, squirt lemon juice in the booger’s eye! Grammy often cackled after bestowing such pearls of wisdom. She also showed Lacey how to make lemonade. She knew lots of handy tips like that.

  From the two lemon trees, Lacey had plucked the last ten lemons. In the basement, she found a fold-up table, a chair, an old siding from a crate and a bunch of old paint cans. She’d brought everything upstairs and sat for an hour in the backyard, painting. Then she traipsed out to the road with all her things and plopped down to begin her wait.

  After five days, she almost threw everything back down the basement stairs.

  After seven, she left everything at the roadside, not caring if it was still there in the morning.

  After ten days of waiting, she was worried and resigned in equal measure, but trudged out every morning and afternoon anyway because, as Grams said, giving up was worse than not starting at all.

  What else did Lacey have to do, anyway? It wasn’t like she was missing an invite to her best friend’s birthday party. Courtney Gillon had no doubt celebrated all the birthdays she ever would. The last one Lacey had attended, eight years ago, was probably the best party Courtney could ever have hoped for. There’d been a woman dressed up as Elsa from Frozen and a full-size Iron Man complete with gloved hands that lit up. Lacey could barely remember what her best friend looked like, but she could recall to mind the blue beading on Elsa’s dress and Iron Man’s red gauntlets as perfectly as if they’d been standing in front of her only yesterday. Memories were funny like that.

  She didn’t really feel sad about Courtney Gillon any more. Back then, birthday parties, and Elsa and Anna, and Iron Man had been important things in Lacey’s life, but they all seemed stupid to her now. In the last seven years she had learned what was important: food, fresh water, health, family. And so she continued to man her lemonade stand, and she continued to wait.

  Fifteen days and counting. Yesterday, Lacey had used the last of their sun lotion. Already her hair had bleached two shades lighter from sitting in the sun for so long.

  So far she had seen only one other person; an old coot on a pushbike. He had been in a bad way – his skin red and shiny with raging sunburn, the deep wrinkles of his faced lined with grime. He hadn’t even glanced at her when he rode stiffly by, not even when she called out to him and jogged at his side for three dozen yards, trying to ask where he was going, where he’d come from, what’s happening, man. She’d even offered a drink of lemonade on the house, but he hadn’t heard her, wasn’t even aware she was there, the next push of his foot on the pedal the only thing he lived for. She had stopped jogging and stood, panting, hands on her hips, watching him pedal away.

  In the past, her approaching strangers would have resulted in a swift, severe rebuke from her grandmother, probably followed by a run-through of the kinds of scenarios that could result from such foolishness, none of which was a bedtime story. Sure, there had been that one time Grammy ran off a scrawny man who’d hunkered in the front yard, muttering to himself, and refused to move unless they fed him. Lacey had wanted to give him something – in those days there’d still been plenty – but Grams had vetoed her. It’d be like feeding a stray cat, she’d said. Once they took you for a soft touch, you’ll never get rid.

  The muttering man went hungry.

  Another time, a group came by, two men and two women. They threw things and smashed the front window. Grammy had fired the rifle to encourage them to leave, but when they’d started yelling, ‘Shit!’ and ‘Fuck!’ and even the c-word at them, Grams fired a second and a third time. Lacey was sure she’d shot one of the fellas in the shoulder, but Grams insisted she’d only winged him. They’d left soon after, the smaller, unwounded man dropping his pants and squatting, leaving a gift for them in the dirt.

  They weren’t the norm, the cursing people or the muttering man. When other folk had approached, a waving rifle had been enough to have them retreating pretty quick and without any trouble. On the whole, Lacey didn’t think two altercations merited so much suspicion. Still, whenever traffic appeared, her grammy’s habit of snatching up their rifle and hurrying to take position at the door, where she could spy out the side window, was a long-standing practice in their house. And when Grammy wasn’t there, Lacey was expected to do it in her stead. There wasn’t a whole lot of charity left in the world, Grams told her, and she’d do well not to forget it.

  Sun hot and high in the sky, her shadow casting a second slanted Lacey on the ground next to her, she gazed unseeingly at the tabletop and nibbled on her nails, worries crowding her thoughts. She hummed tunelessly to herself, her third-favourite Beatles song, ‘Blackbird’. She was finding it hard to keep her mind off the last two tomatoes in her pocket. Her echoing chasm of a stomach was insisting she eat them, but her brain told her to abstain for just a little longer.

  The silence broke. Lacey dropped her hand and sat up, a prairie dog on point. All her concerns about food and sun lotion fled when she heard that sweet engine note in the distance.

  The motorcycle wobbled in the heat haze, difficult to make out at first, but it sharpened and solidified the closer it came. She watched it anxiously, all set to fake a faint if the rider didn’t slow down, but the drop in engine tone told her it was losing speed, moving down the gears, readying to pull over. She sat back and tried to appear nonchalant.

  Lacey knew her grandmother would not have been happy about this plan, but Lacey didn’t see as she had any choice. Not if she wanted to keep hold of her sanity. Not if she ever wanted to see her sister again. There was only so much hunger and silence a girl could take.

  CHAPTER 3

  Pilgrim had already made a cursory scan of the area and could find no place for any thieves to be lying in wait. Indeed, the girl had set up the stand on a deserted stretch of highway with nothing but an old farmhouse a half-mile or so up the ways
.

  Mmm, lemons, Voice commented. You like lemons.

  Pilgrim rolled to a stop next to the stand, within arm’s reach of the plastic cups lined on the fold-away tabletop, and cut the engine. Each time Pilgrim’s eyes wandered from the hand-painted sign, they returned a few seconds later. Something about the yellow of the lemons stirred a memory, something deeply buried beneath all that protective dirt. He didn’t dig for it, though. There was little point in disturbing the graves.

  A long beat of silence went by while the girl looked him and his bike over. He returned the favour, using the cover of his sunglasses to study her; she was clean, which was the first surprise, and she appeared healthy. Her eyes were bright and clear and held little of the wary suspicion he’d grown accustomed to. He would put her in her mid-teens, but it was hard to tell with her sitting down – height was a good indicator of such things.

  Sixteen, that’s my bet, Voice said.

  Pilgrim didn’t enter into bets, especially not with disembodied voices.

  ‘Nice cat,’ the girl finally said, finished with her inspection.

  ‘Nice lemonade stand.’

  A ghost of a smile was there and then gone. ‘You want a glass? Squeezed the lemons myself.’

  ‘That would depend.’

  ‘Depend on what?’

  ‘On whether you’ll take a drink with me.’

  She was quiet again while she stared back at him. It was a searching stare, as if she were trying to gather some hidden meaning from his request.

  ‘You want me to have a drink with you? That’s it?’ Her tone clearly conveyed her distrust.

  He gave a nod. ‘That’s all. Scout’s honour.’

  This time when she smiled it hung around for a while longer. ‘You don’t look like no Boy Scout I ever saw.’

  He doubted she had ever seen a Boy Scout in actuality, but didn’t argue the fact. He became aware of how windswept his hair must look but made no attempt to neaten it. ‘Appearances can be deceiving,’ he said.