What choice does he have?
For the first time in Anto’s life, he gets to travel by car. The journey takes them up the old M1 before they turn on to narrower roads, barely fit for purpose any more, with the sea on their right.
One of the policewomen is sitting beside him in the back seat.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it? Wales used to be out there somewhere.’
Now the horizon just fades to mist. He doesn’t like to look at it. He’s heard stories of boats heading out to sea, only to drift back to shore empty of human life.
The policewoman must be thinking the same thing. ‘Where do the passengers disappear to?’ she muses. But she has to know the answer is hell. The Grey Land. At least that’s what everybody says. A trip in a boat would be worse even than the Call, because there is no coming home again, alive or dead.
‘That’s where we send them all these days,’ she says. ‘We put them in rafts or dinghies and let the current take them into the mist.’
‘Who?’ Anto asks.
‘Oh, you know.’ She shrugs, as if the answer doesn’t matter. ‘Criminals. Traitors.’
Prison
The cell door is open, but Nessa stays where she is, lying on a mattress made of hard lumps. Damp stains splotch the ceiling and a thousand names and dates crowd each other on the walls, layer upon layer of them. ‘Effie took the boat.’ ‘Remember Cathy – not one bit sorry.’ ‘This here picture is the warden and a sheep.’
Outside, a woman screams. That’s how I feel, Nessa thinks. That’s it exactly.
Yet she’s not dead, is she? Not waking to the horror of the Grey Land either. Instead they have brought her to the women’s wing of what appears to be a prison. She never knew such a place existed. The Nation has no resources for criminals, does it?
She growls. ‘I didn’t do anything.’ But nobody’s listening. Nobody cares that she should be celebrated as a survivor, that she should be burying her face in Anto’s neck and teaching him to laugh again. No. Beyond the cell it’s all just shouting and jeers while somebody weeps.
‘Doughnut!’ a woman cries, winning applause. ‘Doughnut!’ The sobbing that follows is breathless, desperate, full of whispered pleading that Nessa can’t quite hear.
She throws off a thin blanket and walks gingerly to the doorway. The scene is like something out of a movie – an old one, from the time before prisons had automated doors. Two storeys of cells form a square around a central area containing what might be a table-tennis table. It’s hard to tell with such a thick crowd of women surrounding it, jostling, angry, laughing, while others hang back.
‘What’s going on?’ Nessa asks a pudgy grey-haired woman. ‘Aren’t there guards? Isn’t this a prison?’ But then the crowd parts to reveal Melanie, the only familiar face here, lying weeping on the table. She is naked from the waist up, the denim shirt everyone else wears has been ripped away to reveal a hole in her torso the size of two fists. She tries to lie down, but two burly women force her shoulders up while others take turns to put their hands right through her chest. They wave and make faces. Someone tries to stick her entire head through and Melanie screams with the pain of it.
‘My heart!’ she cries. ‘The doctors! Call me a doctor!’
Sturdy wooden chairs line the walls between the cells. Nessa helps herself to one, raises it above her head and smashes it across the wall, leaving her with a splintered leg. The crack brings sudden silence.
‘By the cauldron,’ she cries, ‘you’ll kill her!’
A pair of large women who were holding Melanie drop her and push their way through the crowd. The girl flops back like a doll, and what worries Nessa is that she makes no effort to cover her deformity.
But Nessa should be more worried about herself.
Almost everybody here has at some point been trained to kill. They have survived horrors beyond human imagination and, for some, the experience has taught them the worthlessness of life. Two of the strongest are facing Nessa now. A red-haired brute of a woman with a scar right across her nose, and a younger pale-skinned girl, her hair bleached and spiked, her bare left forearm deformed by the handprint of a Sídhe.
‘By Lugh, Mary.’ The spiky-haired woman is speaking the language of the enemy. ‘It’s strange the cripple should defend that little twist, isn’t it? Considering it was Doughnut who got her locked up here.’
‘What do you mean?’ Nessa asks.
‘That’s right, Ciara,’ says the red-headed Mary, grinning at Nessa’s confusion. ‘Doughnut made a deal with the Sídhe to cure her, and only when that fell through, she confessed. Says there are a lot more like her. Traitors. People who claimed to survive the Call.’
‘Only they didn’t survive, did they, Mary?’
‘Not really, Ciara, not really at all.’ She looks pointedly at Nessa’s legs. ‘Some of them couldn’t have made it through. Not without doing a deal with the enemy. There’s no other explanation, is there?’
And now they’re both looking at Nessa, grinning. Their shoulders tense, and this is a mistake, because how stupid of them! To signal their intention to fight like that. Nessa has never needed to wind up before delivering a punch; never needed to think it through. She simply acts.
Ciara goes down right away, with a chair leg in the side of her spiky-haired head. It’s enough to upset Nessa’s balance, but she saves herself by grabbing Mary’s shoulders and head-butting her hard on her scarred nose. Both of them fall together and when Ciara tries to rise, Nessa reaches over and uses every ounce of her considerable strength to squeeze the girl’s Sídhe-marked arm. The sound she makes shows just how much that hurts.
Finally there are guards everywhere, sharing out kicks and spraying jets of something that has women screaming and grabbing for their eyes.
Two men drag Nessa to her feet and hurry her down to the end of the hall and out through a security gate. She is breathing hard and not really paying attention to where they’re taking her. Instead she’s thinking about what those two bullies told her. How Melanie made a deal with the Sídhe. Nessa can’t believe it! That anybody would do such a thing. But Conor did, didn’t he? How many others can there be?
It’s a terrifying thought that the country could be brimful of people ready to betray their friends and families to the pitiless enemy. And then Nessa, normally so controlled, cries out loud enough that her two guards skid to a halt.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ one asks.
What’s wrong is that it’s only now coming home to her how suspicious her own survival must look. She gasps, her legs going suddenly loose and it’s all she can do not to heave up bile from her empty stomach.
‘There, missy,’ one of them says. For all the gentleness of his tone, he never relaxes his grip on her arm. ‘Come on now. We’ll be there in a minute, all right?’
Her throat constricts as though squeezed by a fist. It’s not just that everybody expected her to die. It’s far, far worse than that. Because the enemy, the Sídhe, actually helped her. They helped her! You could count on one hand the number of people altered in a positive way over the past twenty-five years.
Nessa will never be able to prove that they made her fireproof only to keep their promise to their ally, Conor. They saved her from the flames so that he alone would have the joy of killing her. Of course people think she’s a traitor! Everybody must be thinking it.
The guards drag her along like an empty sack, until Nessa, with every drop of willpower she has left, forces the fear from her face. She’ll figure it out. First though, she needs her self-control back. ‘I’m all right,’ she says. ‘I’ll stand.’
‘Good on ya, missy, but we’re here anyway.’
A door opens and Nessa finds herself in an office with a haggard old man behind a desk. He waves her to a halt. Then he smiles, but he has a phone pressed to his ear and whatever he’s hearing gets him frowning again.
‘Try to restart her heart,’ he says. Every word rises and falls in the sing-song accent of Cork. White tufts o
f hair grow from the ear she can see, and there’s more peeping out of each nostril. ‘I don’t care what it costs! For the love of God, boy, she’s fourteen! Just a girl … What? … I’m not accusing anyone of anything. But you think of it this way: she’s the only witness we have, and the minister will put both of us on boats if she dies.’
He replaces the receiver, but covers his eyes for a moment with the other hand. The hair in his nose rises and falls, rises and falls. Then he forces a smile onto his face and looks up.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘quite a splash you’ve made, girl.’ He coughs into a tissue, and the younger men who are still holding Nessa’s arms tighten their grip, forcing her to hide a wince. ‘Not so hard, lads, please!’
‘With respect, sir,’ one of the men replies, ‘you don’t know the training they’ve had. They’re always dangerous …’
‘I know, I know. But don’t hurt her. I mean, it’s not like …’ His eyes stray to Nessa’s legs, but to his credit he says nothing except, ‘Wait outside, lads. Please.
‘Well,’ the old man continues when they’re alone, ‘I know who you are, so let me introduce myself. I’m the warden. Mr Barry. As you can see, I’m in charge here. Running the last prison in the Nation.’ He waits, and Nessa waits too, but she’s better at this than he is and after no more than a few heartbeats he adds, ‘Normally they ask.’
‘Ask what, sir?’
‘Why this is the last prison.’
‘I didn’t think there were supposed to be any prisons at all, sir. They’re … uh, I heard rumours.’ She swallows. ‘Criminals are sent away in boats.’ And traitors too.
He nods slowly. ‘It doesn’t have to happen to you, you know.’
She stares, her mouth dry, not daring to reply.
‘You’re so young,’ he continues. ‘Of course you wanted to live! And in a gentler age, that’s exactly what you’d have been allowed to do. Nobody can blame you for … for any compromises you had to make.’
‘I didn’t betray the Nation, sir.’
But it’s her useless legs he’s looking at rather than her eyes, and when next he speaks, she has to lean forward to hear him.
‘You’re somebody’s daughter,’ he says, ‘and I can tell you, sure as God is in heaven, I miss my own and I wouldn’t have cared what she did if only she had come back alive. I would like to keep you alive too, Ms Doherty.’
‘You … you can do that?’
‘Our country has changed so much since my youth, girl. But there’s no point in looking back, is there? Because we live in a hard, hard place now. The Nation is desperate to live. Just like you were during your Call. And like you, it will cut any deal or any throat, just to get out of this intact. The sick? Useless mouths! Family pets? A source of food. Every beautiful tree cut down for fuel and every statue used as rubble for the roads.
‘And then there’s this prison, where thieves and wastrels are sent to … to …’ He wipes his brow. ‘Well, you know where they’re sent.’ At last he looks up and forces the smile back onto his face. ‘But there’s more to this prison than that, girl. We’re a second chance too. If anyone who comes through our doors can prove her worth, she’ll get to stay. Anybody! Why, the worst murderer in Irish history lives within these walls – a scientist. Unfortunately, she’s a … a …’ Nessa can see him biting his own tongue to stop what he’s about to say next. ‘It doesn’t matter what she is. That’s the point. What matters is her genius, that she’s the country’s leading expert on the Sídhe. She’s killed, and God forgive me, I’m sure she’ll kill again. But because we need her … Well, if we allow the likes of her to live, then, why not a child who had no choice in the crime she committed?’
‘Do I have to be a genius too, sir? To … to live?’
‘No, girl.’ He smiles. ‘For you, it will be much easier than that. All we need is information about the enemy. Tell us about the deal you made with them and I swear to you, for every nugget of information you give us, the ministry will allow you to stay here an extra week. I’ll fight them for more too! I don’t want to see you hurt.’
‘Sir …’ Nessa draws a deep breath. Her whole life is in the balance, but surely here she has found a reasonable and compassionate man. ‘There’s … there’s just one problem with that. I … I have no secrets to share with you because I am not a traitor. I would have died before, only—’
‘Please don’t do this,’ he says, visibly distressed. ‘Please … Look. Look, you have a few days grace to think about it. I’ll … I’ll do my best for you, Ms Doherty, that’s a promise.’
‘But, sir,’ her voice cracks, ‘it’s the truth, sir!’
‘But it’s not!’ he cries. ‘If only you could be honest. Don’t you want to live?’
She stumbles forward, stretching out to him, because he cares, she can see that, the distress clear in every line of his ageing face.
‘Get back!’ he says. ‘Guards! I’ve heard enough lying for one day. Guards!’
The two men arrive to drag her out the door.
Infestation
Anto doesn’t know what he’s doing in the country-side. Only a few hours before, he was waiting at the bus station for his girlfriend. But the guards who drove him out of the city have just pushed him through the door of a long low building. It’s warm inside and damp with the exhalations of two dozen … soldiers. That’s what they are. Men and women hurriedly checking weapons and stuffing kitbags.
Once, before the age of ten, the whole scene would have excited him. But he’s past that. All that matters now is that Nessa isn’t here. His arms, made to fight for her, to hold her, hang uselessly.
The draught of his entrance hits the soldiers. As one, they look up. The noise of their preparations, the hum of their chatter, comes to a sudden stop. His cheeks grow hot under their scrutiny.
Anto has seen soldiers before. They’re not supposed to wear their hair long like this lot, or to stuff their belts with so many wicked-looking knives. In his experience, they’re pudgy old men going to seed guarding warehouses; trudging alongside convoys of food making their way into the fading cities. But while many in the room have long seen the back of their thirtieth birthday – sporting scars, missing fingers or even ears – they look as trim as any teenager. They seem both frightening and frightened. How strange. The Call did its worst to them long ago. What could possibly worry them now?
They wear tattered uniforms of mottled green, and every one of them has a Stag’s Head on the shoulder. At least it resembles a stag, although Anto has never heard of deer with blazing red eyes and long, sharp teeth.
A woman at the nearest table looks up and sighs dramatically. ‘Oh, my poor sweetheart, were you looking for the playground?’
She stalks over to him. Her middle-aged frame has more than its share of muscle, and her dark-skinned face is hard too, totally at odds with the way she speaks, for her voice, her accent, belong surely to a white woman in petticoats, playing cards and sipping tea while her husband administers an empire.
She makes as if to shoo him towards the door, but then her eyes reach his left arm and widen.
‘Well, well,’ she whispers. ‘You are an odd little gentleman. Corless!’ The last word is a bark that makes Anto jump. It summons a hulking, scary-looking man with a charcoal cross drawn or maybe carved on to his forehead.
‘Sergeant?’ he rumbles.
‘Do let the good captain know that we have received a … a boy. By mistake.’
He lumbers off, utterly obedient to her ridiculously genteel demand. When she turns back to Anto, he spots three words tattooed in a column under her left eye. He’s heard of this custom, but never seen it. They’ll be the names of her children. The ones who didn’t come home. He forces himself to look away; he doesn’t want to read what’s written there.
Her dark eyes bore into him. ‘You dear little thing,’ she mutters. ‘You can’t be more than fifteen.’
‘Sixteen,’ he lies, and has no idea why he did that. Maybe because she’s so
beautiful and scary at the same time. Like the Sídhe are, but the opposite of them too, for she is clearly ageing.
‘You’ve been trained to run, little boy,’ she continues, ‘and how delightful for you! Yet here …’ she has been speaking English up to this point, but switches now to Sídhe, ‘here we hunt a different type of boar. Here we—’
‘Leave him alone, Karim!’
A new man, tall enough for his head to scrape the low roof, has arrived. Old enough that sagging eyebrows threaten to blind him. Everybody moves out of his way though. Everybody except Sergeant Karim. He doesn’t seem to notice and steps around her as he would a particularly jagged piece of furniture.
‘The new recruit,’ he says.
‘A recruit, Captain? Surely not. He claims he’s sixteen. The infestation squad is no place for tiny children, however delightful they may be.’
‘What’s that to you, Sergeant?’ She grates on him, Anto can see that. ‘What’s that to any of us? Orders say he’s coming along tonight.’
‘But he’s staying in the truck, Captain.’
‘Of course. The boy can be the new mascot for all I care.’
The captain points Anto to an empty bench. ‘You sit there, son, until we’re ready to leave.’
‘I … I was told I had a mission.’
‘Were you, by God? A mission? Fair play to you, son. Stay the feck out of the way and do exactly what you’re told. That can be your mission. Understand?’
No. Anto doesn’t understand, but he does obey. He can’t make head nor tail of anything here. Not the gleaming weapons or the nerves. Not his presence either, because what Karim said is true. He doesn’t belong here, not for many years yet. His youth is an incredibly valuable resource in a dying country that can’t afford to waste anything.
He should be learning mechanics or farming. He should be getting married and having as many children as possible – or so the State would like. That’s what it normally demands, and the pressure it brings to bear to ensure such behaviour can be considerable. Not that anybody would have to pressure Anto! Now that he has found Nessa, he wants to do all those things.
The Invasion Page 2