False Flag (Battle Ground YA UK Dystopia Series Book 2)

by Rachel Churcher

“What is it?” I shout, banging the table with both fists.

  Brown whispers something into her hands, too quietly for me to hear it.

  “Speak up!”

  She drops her hands to the table and lifts her head to look at me. She meets my gaze.

  “She’s kind, and she’s good, and she cares about us. She’s my friend.”

  I stare at her. I feel as if she’s winded me. She watches me, waiting for a response.

  All this power, all this authority, and all this respect, and I can’t even begin to compete with ‘kind’ and ‘good’ and ‘caring’.

  This shouldn’t be possible.

  I realise I’m staring back at her, and I don’t know what to say.

  Yes I do.

  “If she’s so kind and good and caring, then how come she left you at the gate?”

  Now it’s her turn to look winded.

  “Where is she now?” I shout, waving my hands at the room we’re sitting in, enjoying the weapon that Ellman has handed me. Good, kind, Ellman, who left her friends to face the consequences of her plan in her place.

  “She left you here! She used you, and she left you here. She doesn’t care about you at all!”

  “Saunders does”, she says, still meeting my gaze.

  “Saunders? What’s Saunders got to do with this?” I’m trying to understand what she means. What the connection might be.

  “Wait – was Saunders in the truck?”

  She nods, still watching me.

  “Amy, who was in the truck?”

  “Bex, Dan, Saunders, the prisoner, and the lady from the kitchen.”

  Of course they were. Ellman and her gang, busting out through the gates in a truck full of supplies.

  She’s looking defiant, now. As if she’s realised that I’m not allowed to touch her. As if she’s happy that her friends got away.

  And I can’t help laughing. It all seems so funny, suddenly. Our Mother Complex, our Whipping Boy, Mr Posh, and the prisoner, all smuggled out by the woman who runs the kitchen. All our problem recruits, vanished at once, stolen by the person who does our washing up. And two of her devoted followers left behind to learn what it means to be abandoned by their mother.

  I laugh so hard that I have tears running down my cheeks when I finally stand up and leave the room.

  Brown is still sitting behind the table, hands handcuffed in front of her, staring at me. But she’s not crying any more.

  She’s angry.

  Good.

  *****

  Taylor is next.

  I’ve calmed down, splashed cold water on my face, and been shown into his room. We’re sitting across the table from each other, but it’s clear that he’s not going to cooperate.

  “Recruit Taylor!”

  He stares at his handcuffed wrists on the table in front of him.

  “Recruit Taylor!”

  This time I punch the tabletop, but he doesn’t respond.

  There’s an unpleasant smell in the room, and I realise that he’s been throwing up. Someone has brought him a bucket, and it sits next to his chair, within reach.

  “Final chance, recruit”, I say, quietly. “Are you going to talk to me?”

  Slowly, he shakes his head. I lean forward, and rest my elbows on the table. He doesn’t look up.

  Let’s see how upset you really are.

  “In that case, you can listen.

  “Earlier today, Bex Ellman told you that she was breaking out of camp with her friend, the prisoner. She asked for your help. She gave you the job of opening the gates, while Amy Brown distracted the guards.

  “For reasons that I am struggling to understand, given how this little adventure ended for you, you said yes.”

  He sits, motionless.

  “Based on what Recruit Brown has already told me, you didn’t know anything else about this plan. And you didn’t ask. Ellman said ‘jump’, and you said ‘how high?’”

  He lowers his head. His black hair falls forward over his face. He doesn’t make a sound.

  “You conspired with Ellman, Pearce, Saunders, and Brown to smuggle a member of a terrorist group out of this camp. You broke … I can’t even count how many regulations. You broke the trust of the commander, and of your fellow recruits. You let a terrorist go free.”

  I keep my voice calm and even.

  “And here’s the part I don’t understand. You opened the gate. You let them get away. You waited for them to stop, so you could climb into the truck and go with them. And what did they do, your so-called friends? Did they stop? Did they risk life and limb to take you with them? Did they come back for you?

  “Or did they drive away as fast as they could, even though they knew the commander had a gun to your head?”

  I thump the table again. Taylor makes a small groaning sound.

  “Bex Ellman, your friend, left you to die today. You’d played your part. She had no further use for you. She and her loyal gang drove away and left you to the commander’s mercy.

  “Do you know how angry he is? Do you know how close you came to ending your life today with a bullet in your head?”

  In one fluid movement, he pushes his chair back, leans over the bucket, and vomits again.

  You do know. I can use that. Keep pushing, Ketty.

  He sits still, doubled over; his head over the bucket, and one elbow still resting on the table.

  “Jake,” I start again, more gently. “I’m here because the commander needs to know what happened. Whose idea this break-out was. Who was in charge. What, exactly, happened this morning.

  “I think you can tell me.”

  He coughs, and shakes his head, still leaning over.

  “There’s no point protecting Ellman. She’s gone. She left you behind, and she’s gone. Pearce and Saunders, too.

  “Who is left to protect? Other than yourself?”

  Maybe you’ll learn that that’s the person you should always be protecting. No more Mummy Ellman to make everything better. Learn to stand up for yourself.

  “Things are never going to be the same here for you. You screwed up. Might as well give the commander a reason to keep you alive.”

  No response.

  “I think you understand what I’m saying. I think you can see how much trouble you’re in here. So, is there anything else you can tell me?”

  He sits up a little straighter in his chair, head still bowed.

  “You can tell the commander …” he says, his voice rasping, “you can tell him that I don’t care.”

  I sit back in my chair.

  “Oh?”

  He turns his head to look at me.

  “You can tell him I want to see Bex and Dan burn in hell. Tell him that all of you can go to hell. The terrorists can take this place and shake it to the ground.

  “I. Don’t. Care.”

  He spits his words at me. His voice is quiet, but the hatred he projects is real.

  I can’t help smiling. Mummy Ellman has lost one of her faithful followers.

  Lost

  The commander looks relieved when I walk into his office. He waves me to the seat in front of his desk. I can’t help noticing that the bottles have gone from the shelf behind him. Part of me wonders where he’s hiding them now.

  “HQ is waiting for a full report. What have you got for me?”

  “I’ve got names. We’ve lost Ellman, Pearce, Saunders, and the prisoner. Plus the kitchen woman.”

  He shakes his head. “Anything else?”

  “I’ve got two upset recruits who had no idea what Ellman was planning, but somehow they were expecting to be miles away in a promised land of rebellion by now.”

  I can’t keep the smug tone out of my voice as I lean back in my chair.

  “They were planning to jump into the truck at the gates?”

  “That’s what they were told. Beyond that, they seem to know nothing.”

  “And the prisoner?”

  “Brown thinks the prisoner was a school friend of Ellman an
d Pearce. I’m guessing she left to join the terrorists before the recruiters turned up on their posh boarding-school doorstep.”

  “Do we have a name?”

  I shake my head.

  “Nothing so useful. These two really have no clue. They took the whole plan on trust from Ellman. They did what they were told, and now they’re both struggling to get their heads round the fact that they’re still here.”

  “Any idea how they made contact with the prisoner?”

  “That’s the interesting part. Ellman seems to have made friends with the kitchen supervisor. She used her contact in the kitchen to get into the dorm and talk to her friend. I haven’t worked out the timeline yet, but the kitchen woman was definitely involved.”

  The commander swears.

  “How did this happen? How did we let this happen? How did we not notice what they were doing?”

  I shrug. “We were busy. We were looking at the stuff going on in town, at the patrol in Birmingham. We weren’t looking at our own staff.”

  He nods.

  I think about HQ’s base in the field. About the drones and the cameras. Could they have tracked the truck, and used it to find the terrorists? I sit up in my seat.

  “Does HQ know where they are?”

  “Not that they’ve told me.”

  “But you reported it?”

  He sees what I’m hoping for. “Too late for them to track the vehicle. We lost them.”

  “But the drones …”

  He shakes his head. “We were too late. Too busy with the kids at the gate. We didn’t get the report to them in time.”

  “There must be a way …”

  “We screwed this one up, Ketty. They’ve gone. Our recruits and our prisoner.”

  “We must be able to find them.” I can’t let this go so easily.

  He waves his hand, dismissively.

  “It’s all up to HQ, now. I’ll report what we know, and I’ll wait for their instructions. For now, we’re on lockdown. We’ve got no one in charge in the kitchen. We’ve lost three recruits, and there are two more we can’t trust. No one goes in or out of the gates until HQ gives permission. We can’t send any recruits to the army, and we can’t take in anyone new.”

  He’s given up. He’s letting HQ decide how to handle this, while we get to sit around looking weak.

  “What happened to showing them we can handle the tough situations? What happened to exceeding their expectations? Making ourselves indispensable?”

  He sighs. “Let me talk to HQ. Let’s see what they decide to do with us first.”

  I clench my fists and force myself to say nothing, but I’m struggling to keep my frustration under control.

  This could be our chance to show what we’re capable of. This could be our way out.

  *****

  “What are we going to do without them?”

  Jackson and I have our feet up, facing each other across a table in the senior dorm. We’ve just finished planning the lockdown training schedule, now that we can’t leave camp.

  “Mummy Ellman and the Whipping Boy?”

  “And the kitchen supervisor! Who’s going to cook for me now?” Jackson pats his stomach. “We could starve!”

  I laugh. “We could. This could be it for all of us. HQ might just lock the gates and turn the lights off.”

  They could certainly keep us working here forever.

  “So what’s the story? What’s HQ going to do?”

  I shrug. “Don’t know yet. We’re waiting for them to get back to Bracken with a plan.”

  I’m hoping the plan involves letting us handle the chase. Lets me get my hands on Ellman again.

  “I can’t believe they just drove out of the gates! Did they plan that in advance, or did they just steal a truck and run?”

  “I think they planned it, but they must have planned it in a hurry. Brown and Taylor weren’t in on the details, and they can’t have had more than an hour or so to pull an escape together. I think the news this morning is what pushed them to make a move.”

  “Blaming the terrorists for the weapons test?”

  I nod, thinking this through. “I think so. I think they realised what might happen to the prisoner if she stayed. They’ll be executing even more of them now that they’ve gone to Martial Law.”

  “Couldn’t face seeing their friend on the evening news?”

  “I guess.”

  Jackson frowns. “Why did the prisoner turn up just when the weapons test was scheduled? Do you think she knew something?”

  “Bracken said there were terrorists in town. That’s why we got chosen for the test. Maybe she was trying to find out what we knew.”

  “She might have found out if she hadn’t chosen the wrong day to play recruit.”

  He’s right. A spy in the camp during the weapons test – that has to be more than a coincidence.

  This has all happened so fast. The test, emptying the camp, the prisoner, the reporting, Martial Law – and Ellman’s escape committee. There has to be something more going on here. Doesn’t there?

  I kick my heels against the table in frustration. “There’s something we’re not seeing. Something about this that we haven’t worked out yet. There’s a link, somewhere, between the test and the prisoner. The test and the breakout. But I can’t see it.”

  “Maybe it’s random. Maybe the terrorists were in town, so they sent someone into camp while they were here. Coming to town made the town a target, so the weapons test happened.” He shrugs. “Nothing more than that.”

  “Maybe. But the prisoner knew Ellman and Pearce. That can’t be a coincidence. Can it?”

  He shrugs again. “You’re obsessing. There’s no conspiracy. The kids just got lucky this morning.”

  I need to think about this. I need to figure out how everything fits together.

  I grin at him across the table. “You know the most important part of this?”

  “What’s that?”

  I drop my feet to the floor and lean over the table towards him.

  “Jackson’s lost his puppy!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Jackson’s lost his favourite puppy.” He scowls at me. “Your sleepy puppy ran away! Who will you find to look after now?”

  He holds up the training schedule we’ve put together. “Don’t you have work to do? I think you need to take this to your favourite commander.”

  I stand up, take the papers from his hand, and walk out, ruffling his hair as I go.

  Answers

  Bracken has heard from HQ. I can tell as soon as I walk into the building. Woods is busy in the outer office, talking to someone on the phone and looking through personnel files. He waves me through to the commander’s office.

  “Ketty. Take a seat.”

  I put the schedule plans on Bracken’s desk and sit down.

  “You’ve heard from HQ?”

  “I have.”

  “So what’s the plan? How much trouble are we in?”

  Bracken puts his elbows on the desk and steeples his fingers.

  “I’m not entirely sure”, he says, looking me in the eye.

  I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.

  “So … what does that mean?”

  He looks down, and pulls a sheet of paper from a file in front of him.

  “We’ve been told to continue with business as usual.”

  “What …?”

  He waves a hand to stop me.

  “We’ve been told to continue training the recruits, as if nothing has happened.”

  “But we’re under Martial Law! They’re taking the recruits!”

  “Not our recruits. Our recruits are staying here. Any of our recruits could be part of a terrorist conspiracy, or a terrorist cell, or just part of Ellman’s secret gang, so the army doesn’t want them. We’re stuck with them.”

  Of course we are. Here, Bracken – keep your broken camp. Just keep your head down and stay out of our way.

  “And what about the breako
ut? Are we still locked down?”

  He shakes his head.

  “We can come and go as usual. The recruits can go out on their daily runs. We can take deliveries. The kids can leave their dorms.”

  There’s a note of wonder in his voice, and I realise that he doesn’t understand this, any more than I do.

  “It would be useful if you could plan a new route for the morning run, though. One that doesn’t go into town.”

  I nod. “Absolutely. I’ll get that sorted.”

  He looks at his watch.

  “I think we should get the recruits back into their routine, as quickly as possible.” He looks at me. “Assemble them in the dining room. The kitchen staff will be bringing lunch over in a few minutes. I’ll come and explain things to them.”

  “What about Brown and Taylor?”

  He thinks for a moment. “Let them sit tight in the empty dorm for now. See if they decide to tell us anything else. Send them back to their dorms tomorrow.”

  I sit up straight in my chair, unable to hide my anger.

  “No consequences? They nearly absconded from camp, and they helped the others get away!”

  Bracken shrugs. “HQ says to leave them alone.”

  “So that’s it? Nothing changes, even after what happened in town? We just sit here and pretend that everything is normal?”

  “Woods is arranging a new kitchen supervisor. We’re keeping the recruits. Life goes on – until HQ decides to tell me what they’re planning to do with us, long term.”

  So there’s more to this than they’re letting on.

  “You think there’s a plan?”

  He nods. “I think this is too good an opportunity to waste. I think they’re going to use these kids. I think they’re going to use us. And when they do, we need to be ready. We need to exceed their expectations, and we need to prove to them that we can handle what they’ve got planned.” He looks at me, watching my face. “Do you think we can do that?”

  It’s the opportunity we’ve been waiting for.

  I can’t hide my smile.

  “Yes, Sir. I think we can.”

  AUGUST

  Problem

  The commander and I meet every day to discuss the recruits and their training, and keep track of our instructions from HQ. For a week, nothing changes. We’re expected to keep to our normal schedule. Keep the kids fit, keep building their skills, keep them busy. HQ wants reports on any suspicious behaviour, and any troublesome recruits.