Wasteland

by Terry Tyler

Ginevra shrugs her neat little shoulders. "You can probably answer that better than I can; I know her only in a professional sense. If anyone can throw light on her motivations, it's you."

  Can he, though? Now he thinks about it, which he never really has before, the inside of Rae's head is a total mystery to him.

  Later, he contacts Lori; she invites him round, they drink vodka and spend several hours having vigorous sex. More than actually screwing Lori, Nash gains satisfaction from thinking about what he has taken from Colt.

  Then again, if Colt really has gone, he'll never find out. What's the point of fucking a mate's girlfriend if he never gets to hear about it?

  On the other hand, this is gorgeous 'UMC12 Hottest' Lori. Pity he can't post about it on Heart, really. Surely that would raise his five-point-five Spark score. Or would fuck-and-telling lower it?

  Yeah. Probably.

  Next morning, when he wakes up in Lori and Colt's bed, Nash asks if she would like to go out with him to eat at Gastronomo, sometime next week. Her eyes give her away even as she is saying that yes, she'd love to.

  He won't get in touch. The picture in his head of her sitting in Parasol with her friends, rolling her eyes as she touches the 'deny' icon, is not pretty.

  I only thought of it as a one-nighter, but he's a bit keen, you know?

  Better to be the guy who never called.

  Two days later, he visits Missing Persons and insists that he will not leave until he has seen Quinn Matheson in the flesh. When she appears, her lack of interest in the case plain to see, she tells him that all avenues have been explored and they have been unable to turn up any leads that might indicate the couple's whereabouts. They now believe that Rae and Colt absconded from the wasteland trip and the abduction was a cover; it's likely she doesn't want to be found.

  Because of this, and as Rae has no family, Nash may instruct them to officially call off the search.

  "People do choose to leave the megacities from time to time, if they are not happy here," Quinn says. "I'm afraid to say that Rae's expressed interest in wasteland lifestyle makes her something of a textbook case. But, as her partner, you have the right to insist on a further four weeks' active search."

  Nash knows in his heart that Rae has gone. Well, screw her.

  "Call it off," he says, and walks out of the room, without thanking Quinn or saying goodbye.

  Quinn smiles to herself, then touches the 'Search Terminated' icon on Rae Farrer's file. She opens the Operation Galton folder and moves Rae into the sub-folder marked 'Phase 10/B', slotting her in next to the file for Colt Douglas.

  Chapter 26

  Rae

  Lake Lodge

  I like Kendall immediately; she's so normal. I wonder how she came to own this gorgeous house and all this land; before, I pictured off-grid owners as upper middle-class hippies who read philosophy books while watering herb gardens, and discuss academic stuff I don't understand whilst kneading quinoa bread. Beckett's Farm and Sunrise cured me of that illusion.

  Kendall has long, light brown hair, greying in a way that is cool rather than ageing, and although she has the lines that come with age, hard work and a life lived mostly out of doors, I can tell that she was beautiful when she was younger. She still is, but in a different way.

  "There's no John Farrer here," she tells us. "No Johns at all, but he might have had his name changed; the Hope Village Gestapo used to abduct wasteland kids wandering around without their mums and dads."

  "I know. I'm a wastelander," Ace says. His flat tone implies a boredom and impatience that I hope Kendall doesn't detect. I suppose this does all seem a bit hopeless, and he's anxious to get up to see Vince.

  "I'm sorry, of course you know," says Kendall, going slightly pink. "But, like in the megacities, the Hope Villages have NPU centres―"

  "I know." I smile, so as not to make her feel silly. Once more, I outline the processes by which I have already searched for my brother. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack."

  "But you've got to try, haven't you?" Kendall picks up a pad of paper and a pencil from a table in the 'reception room' of this amazing house, where we've just had coffee. "Let me take down all the details, and I'll ask everyone who lives here if they can shed any light. You never know―the people who live here come from all over."

  I'm immensely grateful, but I'm not even going to raise my hopes this time; we'll just take up her kind offer of a bed for the night, and in the morning we'll hit the road.

  She shows us out of the reception room into the hall, and gestures towards the kitchen; the door is open and I hear pans clattering, people laughing. "We make a couple of huge pans of chilli, curry or stew every night, and you're welcome to join us for dinner."

  "Thank you," I say―

  ―and then the front door opens, and I see him.

  He's there, in front of me.

  My brother.

  It's John. I know it is. A young man dressed in jeans and a hoodie; he's carrying a basket filled with vegetables. He has his hood up, but I can see his face.

  He looks like Lilyn. He has her eyes, her mouth.

  "Oh―"

  He says hi to Kendall and tells her that Clare asked him to take the veg through to the kitchen for tonight's stew―he looks even more like Lilyn when he talks―and then he walks straight past me, through the kitchen door.

  He glances at us, smiles at me, but I see no recognition in his eyes. Doesn't he know? Doesn't he feel it, like I do?

  Ace looks at me, touches my arm. "Rae? What is it?"

  I point, and whisper, "That's him."

  "Hey, come on―don't start imagining stuff, you'll only be disappointed."

  Not this time.

  I walk after him and call out, "John. John Farrer." And he stops, but he doesn't turn around.

  "John!"

  He puts the basket down on the floor; still he doesn't turn round, but he turns his head towards me, just slightly.

  "John? I'm Rae. I'm your sister." I swallow, hard. "I was left by our mother in MC12 when I was two, after our father was killed. You, Mum and our sister escaped into the wasteland."

  And he turns, and our eyes meet, and I'm right. Because he knows me, too. He's looking at me, and he knows me.

  He whispers, "Yes. Baby Rae."

  My head is swirling, my heart is thumping and my legs feel like they're made of cotton wool. I know it's him, I know that in my heart, but I have to ask more, just to be sure.

  "What's our sister's name?"

  Slowly, he pulls down his hood, shutting his eyes, like he's thinking, hard. "Lilyn. Her name's Lilyn."

  "And what happened the night you escaped?"

  He shakes his head, frowns. I clench my fists, waiting, willing him to know.

  Finally, he speaks. "The van―Mum glassed the man's throat―she didn't think I saw, but I did―I was only three." He shuts his eyes. "I'd forgotten, but I remembered it just recently."

  Kendall touches my arm. "This is him? This is John?"

  I can't take my eyes off his face. "It is. He's my brother."

  She looks as totally gobsmacked as I feel. "This is unbelievable―if you'd come here a fortnight before―he and his friend only joined us, what, one and a half weeks ago?" She takes me by the arm and guides me towards him.

  He smiles, and takes my hand, gazing at me like he can't quite believe it, either. "Hello, Baby Rae."

  "We don't know him as John, though, do we?" Kendall beams at him, and then at me. "You'll have to decide which name you like best―we know him as Rocky!"

  Chapter 27

  Killer

  "I suppose you'd say we were brainwashed," my brother says. "It's hard to remember 'cause it's, what, getting on for twenty years ago now, but they kept us medicated―God knows what with―and they'd show me pictures of people and talk to me about stuff until I couldn't work out what was a real memory. No one mentioned Mum and Dad, or you and Lilyn, and if I did they either didn't answer or said I was confused; they plunged me into
this new world, this Hope Village world, and my memories became like a dream. You know when you wake up from a vivid one and for a minute you can't work out if some of it really happened or not? It was like that, and in the end I just sort of brushed it all away."

  "I wonder if that was an experiment," Ace says, quietly, "with you as the guinea pigs."

  "Dunno, mate, probably; I wouldn't put nothing past that lot!" Rocky is cheerful; he has a wide, warm smile. He's very attractive. Confident; he has a lot to say for himself, this brother of mine.

  I look at the other young man, who sits on the floor in the tiny log cabin they share. Dylan. "Was it like that for you, too?"

  He nods. "Yeah. I'm still not sure which ones were my family. It's all mixed up."

  I like Dylan. He has a kind, sweet face; he doesn't speak much, and he seems terribly sad. I wonder what he has been through in his short, hard life; he is not forthcoming, not like my brother.

  Rocky says he doesn't think of himself as John; Mum told him never to give his real name or date of birth to anyone who 'looked official', so he said his name was Rocky Storm because he'd read it in a comic and thought it sounded cool. He ran away from his first Hope Village when he was fifteen, and survived in the wasteland for some time before he was picked up again.

  "By that time I never thought about Mum and Lilyn, and even if I had I wouldn't have had a clue where they might be."

  He admits he was a bit of a 'bad boy'―'You know how it is, I got in with all the wrong people, like y'do when you're a kid'―and got sent to a Hope down in the South West, where they house 'problem' kids.

  "Then some of the guys there took against me, and they sent me to another Hope, in Essex, for my safety. I was there for a long time; it was good, near the coast. They'd take us for trips to the beach. But it was closed down 'cause the governor turned out to be a fucking nonce―'scuse my French!―and I got sent to Hope 9, where I met my bro, here."

  He punches Dylan on the arm, in a matey sort of way, and I notice that Dylan flinches. I don't dwell on why that might be, though, because I have something more important to deal with. I must tell Rocky that our mother is dead. I break it to him as gently as I can, while he stares at me blankly.

  "I'm so sorry," I say. "Lilyn told me that she went to pieces after you were taken; I could sugar-coat it, but I won't, because I'm sure you'll reunite with Lilyn at some point and I don't want you to hear anything you're not prepared for."

  He just shrugs his shoulders. "I can hardly remember Mum, to be honest. Whatever they did to my head in that first Hope, they fucked it up good and proper. I can't remember living in the megacity at all. Just that night in the van." He laughs, which I find odd. "Fucking hell, that takes some doing, don't it? Glassing a guy's throat." He shakes his head, grinning. "Must've been quite a girl!"

  I glance at Ace; he raises his eyebrows at me.

  "She didn't kill him."

  "No?" He looks disappointed. "So, our sis, then. Tell me about Lilyn."

  I start to, but halfway through I feel like he's not that interested. Within a few minutes the subject has been turned back to his own experiences, and why he and Dylan left Hope 9; apparently it was because of a gang there who were making Dylan's life hell, for no reason other than that they'd marked him out as someone to pick on.

  "I had to get my mate out of there―we're a team, ain't we, bro?"

  Later, we troop up to the house, where Rocky introduces us to the folk in the kitchen, and we sit down to eat with them. Bottles of wine are produced, and I notice how Rocky, sitting next to me, takes more than his fair share, though no one says anything. I spend most of my time talking to a chap with a plum in his mouth called Alastair, on my other side, and trying to include Dylan, opposite. Ace hardly speaks at all; he's at one end of the table, opposite Alastair and next to Dylan.

  We're just finishing up when Rocky leans over to me, whispering in my ear. "I reckon we ought to snaffle a couple of bottles of this wine and take 'em back to the cabin, whaddya say? I bet Kendall would let us, it being a special occasion and all. She's a nice lady, that Kendall―and I've already got her wrapped round my little finger, I promise you!" He winks at me. "Might be better just to have them away, though; I made it my business to find out which cupboard they're kept in! Kendall's husband is a bit of a rule book type, you know?"

  I look at the face of my brother, the face I've longed to see for so many months, and I think, I don't like you.

  I thought it would be the same as when I met Lilyn. How naïve I was to assume so; we're bound by blood, that's all. I don't feel any bond with him―I'm lucky that Lilyn and I felt a natural warmth towards each other. We might just as easily not have done. Rocky's not interested in me; he wanted to know what it's like to live in a megacity, but not about my life, or how it was for me growing up thinking I had no family. He's just enjoying the novelty, and the fuss that the others are making over the situation. To be honest, I'll be more than happy to leave tomorrow.

  I say that I'd like to turn in early, as we've got to get going in the morning; Kendall explains that food is a bit tight at the moment, or she'd put us up for a few days.

  "But I can give you bedding so that you can sleep on the camp beds in the reception hut; I'll get you some pillows, and I'll make you a good breakfast before you go on your way in the morning―"

  "Thanks, but we brought food with us, and we've got sleeping bags," says Ace.

  I would have loved a pillow and some proper breakfast, but as we walk back to the holding hut he says, "Same everywhere; just 'cause you're a wastelander people think you're a charity case. I live in the wasteland by choice; I can take care of myself just fine."

  I suspect there is more going on here, but I'm not sure what.

  "She was just being a kind hostess, that's all."

  "Yeah, well, if having breakfast means listening to ten privileged wankers gobbing off about the state of the country, like I've just spent tonight doing, I'd rather go hungry."

  I take his point. Hidden away in lovely Lake Lodge, they seem even more removed from reality than I was. Not sure if that matters, though; I wouldn't mind their life.

  I do suggest that Ace takes up Kendall's offer of a shower in the communal block; he's reluctant until I remind him how close to him I have to sit on the bike. I take one too, revelling in the glorious hot water and having clean hair again. When I return, he's lit candles and laid the sleeping bags out on the camp beds; he's lying back on one, arms behind his head.

  He doesn't look at me as I walk in, but just says, "Your brother's a dick."

  I blow out the candles. "Yeah. He is. I've got no problem leaving him behind."

  "Good." He turns over, his back to me.

  "Ace?"

  "What?"

  "Are you pissed off with me?"

  "No."

  "Well, can you act like you're not, then?"

  He turns over; for a moment he just stares at the ceiling. "I just didn't like being jammed in round that table listening to that Alastair squawking his fancy bollocks at you. But it was either that or listen to your brother's bullshit. Sorry. Social small talk ain't my thing, and I don't feel good round that many people. 'Specially not ones I think are dicks."

  I can't help smiling. "That's the longest speech I've ever heard you make."

  He makes a grunting noise. "Yeah, well, something about being around you makes me talk more in a day than I normally do all week."

  "Why's that?"

  "I dunno. 'Cause you talk a lot, I suppose."

  "I didn't think I did."

  "Y'do."

  "Sorry!" I laugh. "You didn't like Alastair, then?"

  He grunts again. After a moment, he says, "He was all over you, though, wasn't he?"

  "Was he? I thought he was just being friendly."

  "It was more than that. You didn't seem to mind."

  "Well, I actually was just being friendly. But he's a bit full of himself, yeah."

  I hear him sniff. "He's a dick
."

  I'm glad it's dark, so he can't see me smiling.

  We both lie there in silence for a while, but I can sense he's as wide awake as I am. I'm just wondering whether to say something else―not sure what―when he rolls off his camp bed, leans over me and, before I'm aware of what's happening, kisses me hard, on the mouth.

  It feels better than anything I've felt for a long, long time.

  It feels right.

  My every instinct is to put my arms around him, but only our lips touch. His hands are on either side of my head, where the pillow would be if only he hadn't been too proud to accept them.

  I clutch the metal sides of the bed, to stop my hands reaching out and sliding up his bare back.

  What the fuck is happening? I feel like I've never been kissed before. It's amazing. I reach up to put my hand on his shoulder, lightly, and even that sends sparks through me.

  I've spent hours on the back of his bike with my arms tight around his waist, but this is something totally different.

  I don't want it to stop, but it does, and when we draw apart our eyes meet for just a moment, in the darkness, then he pulls away and climbs back onto his camp bed, facing away from me.

  I'm at a loss. I don't know what it meant.

  Perhaps it was just the wine.

  Perhaps in the morning he'll wish he hadn't done it.

  I don't fall asleep for quite a while.

  I don't realise, at first, that someone is knocking on the door. The noise stirs me, but my fuzzy mind is still in my dream, and I think it's the window of my flat back in MC12, banging in the wind.

  I don't register what's happening until I see Ace jump up, and leap over to the door.

  "Who's there?"

  "It's Dylan. Can I come in?"

  "What y'want?"

  I bound out of bed.

  "Please. Let me come in. It's important."

  I open the door. "What's up? Are you okay? Has someone had an accident, or something?"

  "No, nothing like that―I just need to talk to you. About Rocky."

  Even in the dark, I can see that he's in a right state. Ace lights the candles and tells him to sit. "What about Rocky?"