The man’s name was Horner, and he’d set up in a back room in Walter’s. The bartender, Flynn, sent word to Simon by one of the boys who hung around outside the bar to run messages no one wanted to use the phone for.
Horner was a big man. Tanned and gaunt, he was sixty years old if he was a day, and had a drinker’s road map of burst veins across his nose and sallow cheeks. He wore an old Grateful Dead t-shirt with the sleeves hacked off and a bandolier of rounds crossed his chest. Amber-tinted aviator’s glasses covered his eyes beneath an Australian Outback hat with one flap pinned up.
Two armed men sat on either side of the pilot. They held shotguns at the ready.
Horner looked up at Simon. “You Cross?” he asked in a voice scarred by cigarette smoke and booze.
“I am.”
Nodding at Saundra, Horner asked, “Who’s the woman?”
“My friend.”
“I heard you only wanted passage for one.”
“I do.”
“So who’s going?”
“Me.” Simon felt sad about that. He’d miss Saundra, and as yet they didn’t know if she had a way to Australia. He promised he’d keep in touch to find out. If he could.
“If I’d have known how big you were before we set a price on this, I’d have charged by the pound.” Horner grinned.
Simon didn’t feel good enough to exchange witticisms. There’d still been no shortwave contact with London. “When do we leave?”
“First light in the morning. Do you have the money?”
Simon took out a packet of bills and passed them over. The price had wiped out nearly everything he’d managed to save while in Cape Town. He’d even had to sell his gear and his weapons.
Horner thumbed the bills. “Looks like it’s all here.” He tucked the packet into a pocket and gazed at Simon speculatively. “You plan on going all the way to London?”
“Yes.”
Nodding, Horner took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. “I know a man in France. You can get a ride with him on his boat.” He waved away smoke from his cigarette and dropped the spent match into one of the empty glasses in front of him. “They’re still trying to ferry people out of there. The French ain’t too happy about it, but that’s how it is.”
Simon shook his head. “That’s all the money I’ve got.”
Horner sighed and sucked air through his teeth. “Money would have made it easier, but I can still work it out for you. Those boat trips across the Channel aren’t safe. Those alien beasts are pursuing survivors all the way to the shore.”
“They’re not crossing the Channel?”
“Not yet. But the French army is massed up there. Got a skirmish line. I don’t think it’s going to do them any more good than it did the British. But this man I know, he isn’t selling seats to get into England; he’s selling seats to get out. I’ll tell him you’ll help work as security on the way over. But you can bet he’ll put a boot in your arse if you try to come back.”
Simon nodded. “All right.”
Horner offered his hand. “Then we got a deal. Kiss your friend good-bye tonight and come see me in the morning. Six o’clock. If you’re late, me and your money are on our way north.”
Horner’s plane was an old military cargo transport that looked like it had seen better days, but the props spun smoothly and the engines sounded strong. A blonde in sunglasses and a bikini was spray-painted beneath the pilot’s window.
Saundra held Simon’s hand as they stopped a few feet short of the gangway leading up to the cargo hold. He turned to face her.
“I guess this is good-bye,” he said, feeling terribly awkward. He suddenly didn’t know what to say. When they’d first met, it had been like that. Not sure of what to say or not to say. But in the last year and a half, they’d come to know each other well. She was the best friend he’d had, even counting his shield mates—the boys he’d grown up with—back in the Underground. She’d understood him in ways that he’d never thought anyone would.
And he was about to lose all that. Maybe forever.
It was hard to deal with, something that he truly hadn’t understood until just this moment. He wavered, thinking that it was already too late in London and that his presence there wouldn’t matter. That made the most sense. What could one man do? He’d be better served staying with Saundra and trying to keep his own skin intact.
Except he couldn’t do that. His father’s constant brainwashing from the time he’d been born wouldn’t allow him to do that. He had to go, to see if anything could be done and to find out what had become of his father.
But I don’t have to die there. It felt good deciding that.
Saundra smiled at Simon, but the effort looked a little frayed around the edges.
“Not good-bye,” Saundra said. “Just ‘See you later.’ When you get a chance, let me know how you are.”
“I will.” She’d already given him her father’s call signs on the shortwave radio.
“Maybe I’ll come see you,” Saundra said. “After the military sends the aliens packing. I’ve always wanted to see London.”
Simon thought of all the crumbled buildings he’d seen in the news footage. There doesn’t seem to be much of it left. But he nodded. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her good-bye.
It was hard letting go, but he made himself. Squaring his shoulders, redistributing his backpack, he squeezed her hand a final time and headed up the gangway.
The cargo hold was jammed with supplies and people. Horner’s grizzled payload master took one look
