The Wilderness

by C. J. Harper

  ‘Shoot them,’ someone behind the boy says.

  And the rest of the faces call out in agreement.

  A wave of terror crashes through me. Why do they want to shoot us?

  ‘But we’re on your side.’ My voice cracks.

  ‘The hell you are,’ the young man says and he lunges towards me. Before I know what’s happening he’s got my arms twisted up behind my back. They don’t get Kay so easily. It takes three of the crowd to pin her to the filthy floor. Even then she’s spitting and cursing.

  I’m too astounded to do anything. Why do they want to kill us? Are they really the bloodthirsty savages the Leadership always said they were?

  My hands are bound and the boy shoves me roughly into someone else’s grasp. I can feel his hefty presence behind me.

  ‘Shoot them,’ someone says again.

  ‘No!’ I say. ‘There’s been some sort of misunderstanding, let me talk to whoever is in charge.’

  ‘A misunderstanding?’ the young man says. ‘Is that what you call the brutal oppression of a nation, a misunderstanding? Because around here there are what you might call consequences for that sort of thing. You might call them consequences. I call it a bullet to the brain.’

  ‘We haven’t oppressed anyone!’ I say. ‘We’ve been fighting the oppression. We want to join the Resistance.’

  ‘If you want fighting, let me up and do fair fighting,’ Kay says from the ground.

  ‘I don’t want to fight you, tiny girl,’ the young man says. ‘I just want you dead. But first I have a few questions. Take them to the lock-up,’ he says to the people holding me and Kay.

  And we’re dragged away.

  Being pulled through the dark, derelict hospital doesn’t help my terror. Most of the windows are boarded up, but the solar lanterns give the flaking paint a ghostly glow. We pass a reception desk stacked with files covered in decades of dust. A sign for Radiology hangs crookedly from the ceiling, swaying in the draft.

  We’re hauled up another flight of stairs and pushed through an old waiting room with padded chairs and an empty fish tank. A low table is covered by ancient magazines with curled edges.

  At the end of another corridor we’re shoved into a room. The door is locked behind us and we’re left in the darkness.

  ‘What the hell happened there?’ I ask.

  I lift my bound hands and try the door. It’s solid and the handle holds firm.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Kay says. ‘Ty said the Resistance would help us kill The Leader. But they want to kill us.’

  ‘It’s a mistake. They seem to think we’re connected with the Leadership.’

  ‘But we’re not.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But they don’t . . . what-do-you-say?’

  ‘They don’t believe us.’

  There’s enough moonlight coming through the one unboarded window to make out that the room is empty except for several chairs and a piece of medical equipment that is attached to the wall with a giant jointed metal arm. I walk under it to look out of the window.

  ‘We’re too high to escape,’ I say. ‘It’s a sheer drop.’

  ‘They can’t keep thinking we’re Leadership,’ Kay says. ‘They’ll have to know it soon, won’t they?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure they’ll work it out eventually.’

  I only hope they do it before they shoot us.

  ‘When they come back, when the door opens, let’s punch them,’ Kay says.

  ‘It won’t be much of an attack with our hands tied,’ I say.

  ‘I can do attack with my feet better than lots of people can do with all things.’

  Despite the situation, I laugh. ‘I know. But I can’t. And there are more of them than us. Anyway, surely they’ll send someone in charge to talk to us and then we can just explain things.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  I ought to make her understand that not all adults are like the enforcers at the Academy, but a wave of tiredness washes over me. ‘I wish I was at home, in my bed,’ I say.

  ‘Come here,’ Kay says.

  I push a chair next to hers and sit down. Kay shifts a little closer to me. Our upper arms are touching.

  ‘Blake,’ she says.

  Something in the tone of her voice catches on to something inside me and I feel it pulling up through me like a zipper. I find myself turning towards her in the same moment that Kay twists to face me. I want to catch her up in my arms, but of course my stupid hands are tied. Her face brushes mine and then our mouths meet.

  Eventually, Kay pulls away. ‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘We can explain and it will all be okay.’

  After a while she falls asleep on my shoulder and I sit very still, trying to believe her.

  I doze fitfully for several hours. When I wake and my eyes adjust to the darkness, the first thing I see is the metal arm reaching towards me and I almost shrink away before I remind myself it’s not going to move by itself. I’m trying to gather a mouthful of saliva to swallow to ease my dry throat when a horrible thought occurs to me. I need to pee. I try to think about something else, but now that the thought has crept in it’s like an alarm that I can’t switch off. How is this even possible? My throat aches with dryness. I’ve barely drunk a thing in the last couple of days and yet . . . I definitely need to go.

  Kay stirs. I feel shy.

  She sits up bolt upright. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s okay. Nothing’s happened. No one has come yet.’

  ‘I need water,’ Kay says.

  I stand up and press my ear to the door. I can’t hear anything.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Kay asks. ‘Why are you all moving?’

  I realise that I’m fidgeting. ‘I’m fine.’ I could do without having to discuss this with Kay. ‘I’m just frustrated. When are they going to give us a chance to sort this out? When are we going to get to talk to an adult?’ I don’t add that I’m angry with myself that we came here in the first place.

  Hell, I really need to pee. I can’t believe that there’s some idiot threatening to kill us and all I can think about is my bladder. This is not how I want to spend my last moments on earth. I should just go. But where? Efwurding efwurd. If I wet myself in front of Kay then they may as well shoot me.

  Kay moves towards me. ‘What is it Blake? You can tell me.’

  She touches my arm with her bound hands and I remember the kissing last night and I want to kiss her again, but I am bursting. I shift away from her. ‘I just . . . need to go.’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘You know, to the bathroom.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I bang on the door. ‘Hello! Can anyone hear me? I want to speak to someone in charge.’

  I think I hear someone moving about out there, but there’s no reply.

  Kay hammers on the door. ‘We need water! Blake needs—’

  ‘You don’t need to tell them that,’ I interrupt. I assume that either everyone is asleep in another part of the hospital or that they’re ignoring us, but a few moments later the door opens and a boy in his late teens walks in carrying a solar lantern. We can’t be much of a priority if this is who they’re sending to talk to us.

  ‘I am Alrye,’ he says, closing the door behind him. ‘I need to ask you some questions.’

  ‘Can I speak to whoever is in charge?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Well, can I use your toilet?’

  His forehead puckers. He wasn’t expecting that and now he thinks I’m trying to pull a fast one. He shakes his head again. Damn it, I can’t hold on much longer.

  ‘I really am quite desperate.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I can see that cleanliness isn’t your first priority here and I guess if you’re really going to blow our heads off then someone is going to be clearing up some mess pretty soon anyway . . .’

  Alrye frowns. He opens the door and gestures for someone to come in. It’s another boy about his age, but much larger, with the broadest
shoulders I’ve ever seen. He’s obviously one of the heavy squad.

  ‘Take him to the toilets,’ Aryle says to him, pointing at me. ‘Quickly.’

  I don’t have to be told to move fast. I’m down the corridor like a shot. Our footsteps echo around the tiles as we walk into the toilets. Shoulders holds up his lantern and I see rust stains from the ancient pipes creeping across the walls. I move towards the urinals, but Shoulders says, ‘They don’t work. We don’t have water for it. Here.’ He points to a bucket.

  I struggle to get my trousers undone with my tightly bound wrists and then I enjoy what is probably the greatest sense of relief in my life. Until I remember that we’re about to be shot.

  Now that I’m not about to wet myself I can think clearly. As I fumble about with my buttons I consider kneeing Shoulders in the groin. I don’t think there’s much point. Even if I managed to floor him, I’m not leaving without Kay.

  On our way back to the room I scan the gloomy corridor looking for something, anything, that might be of use to us. Every door we pass has a faded sign about using hand sanitizer before entering. We walk under a section of buckled ceiling with wires dangling down like tangled hair. The whole place is falling apart. As we approach the lock-up room Shoulders swings his lantern from one hand to the other and illuminates a noticeboard on the wall. A newspaper article pinned there catches my eye. Unlike everything else in this hospital, the colours are still bright.

  ‘Wait,’ I say with such force that Shoulders actually stops.

  ‘What?’

  But I don’t answer because I’m staring open-mouthed at the newspaper. There’s an aerial photo of a large red brick building with a clock tower that I recognise straight away, even though it’s half obscured by smoke and flames.

  The headline reads: HUNDREDS DEAD IN ACADEMY ATTACK BY TERRORISTS.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ I say.

  ‘You should know,’ Shoulders says with venom. ‘You’re the ones that did it. And then you blame it all on us. You make me sick.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ I say. ‘I mean I was in that Academy but—’

  ‘I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. How can you kill people and just not care?’

  ‘I’ve never killed anyone!’ A plunging sensation in my stomach reminds me that this isn’t true any more. There was that cannibal boy in the woods behind the Academy.

  ‘You’re Leadership. You’ve all got blood on your hands.’

  ‘I am not—’

  ‘Shut it.’ He knocks on the lock-up room door and Alrye lets us in.

  Kay is shaking her head. ‘We’re Leader-hating too, we’re the same,’ she’s saying to Alrye.

  ‘I’m not so sure that we are on the same side any more,’ I say. ‘I’ve just seen a newspaper . . .’ King hell, Kay doesn’t know what a newspaper is. ‘Like the Info but on paper,’ I say quickly. ‘Not like your Info, not lies. Well, fewer lies. Maybe.’ Efwurd, I don’t know what is true any more.

  ‘What’s your point?’ Alrye asks.

  ‘It says you set fire to the Academy.’

  ‘Me?’ Alrye says.

  ‘They wrote “Terrorists”, but that means the Resistance.’

  ‘That’s completely untrue and you know it,’ Alrye says.

  I don’t know it. I don’t know anything any more. ‘You’ve got it pinned up for all to see. You’re proud of it.’

  ‘We’ve got it pinned up so everyone can see the lies that are told by your lot.’

  ‘My lot? I am not from the Leadership.’

  Shoulders sneers in disgust. ‘We know you are. We got tipped off you were coming. A boy and a girl pretending to be refugees from the burnt-down Academy and–’

  Alrye shoots him a look that shuts him up, but finally I see why they don’t trust us; they think we’re Leadership spies disguised as Academy kids.

  ‘We really are from the Academy,’ I say.

  ‘We’re not saying we’re people that we’re not,’ Kay says. ‘We came to help you.’

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ Shoulders says.

  Kay is angry. ‘Don’t you bad-word me.’ She squares up to him. ‘Do you want a fight? Stop your bad talking and fight then.’

  ‘Whoa,’ I say.

  Alrye cuts between them, gently pushing Shoulders away. ‘Let’s all keep calm. Sit down, you two.’

  I pull Kay down on to a chair.

  ‘I’m going to ask you some questions and if you answer them then we won’t need any unpleasantness,’ Alrye says.

  There’s a look in his eye that gives me a horrible feeling about the unpleasantness that will follow once we get to the end of the questions anyway.

  ‘Tell me how you found the hospital,’ Alrye says.

  ‘We saw a light.’

  Alrye tuts and shakes his head. I don’t think that light was supposed to be on.

  ‘So the Leadership don’t know the location of this hospital?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not from the Leadership, so I can’t tell you,’ I say.

  Alrye sighs.

  ‘Let me make them talk,’ Shoulders says.

  Alrye shakes his head. ‘I’d rather do this without you getting hurt,’ he says to Kay.

  ‘If you were fair people and I had my hands then I would get you hurt,’ she says to him. ‘I would get all the lot of you hurt because you’re stupid. We are from the Academy. Ty sent us. Don’t you know Ty?’

  Alrye looks at Shoulders. He’s obviously considering taking him up on his offer.

  ‘I want to talk to whoever is in charge,’ I say.

  He opens his mouth to say no.

  ‘If I see the person in charge I will tell them everything. The truth. Everything that they want to know.’

  Alrye stares hard at me. I hold his gaze.

  ‘I can’t just go waking important people up,’ Alrye says, ‘but I’ll speak to someone.’ He walks out and Shoulders follows, leaving his lantern behind him, but not before he has shot me and a Kay a look of disgust. The door closes behind them.

  ‘They’re not believing us,’ Kay says.

  ‘I know.’

  She gets up and walks around the room. In the light of the lantern I can see the floor is speckled with paint flakes and some kind of droppings. The Resistance have let the hospital fall into a state of decay. I wonder if the roof is stable. I stare up at the metal arm. I think it’s some kind of imaging equipment.

  ‘We should go,’ Kay says after a while.

  ‘I wish we could, but I have no idea how to get out.’

  Kay thinks. ‘Maybe we have to talk to them more,’ she says.

  ‘We’ve tried talking to them. It’s obvious that everything we heard about them is true. They’re ignorant, violent thugs.’

  She gives me a long look. ‘That’s what you thought about me, isn’t it? You thought I was a stupid Special who was all fighting and nasty.’

  ‘No! I mean . . . well, I guess it took me a while to get to know you. But this is totally different.’

  ‘Just because you’ve spoken to a person it doesn’t mean you know them.’

  If someone threatens to shoot me then I think I know enough about them, but I don’t say this because the door opens and the bossy young man who shouted at Paulo earlier walks in.

  My heart sinks. ‘You’re joking,’ I say. ‘I asked for the person in charge. What are you in charge of – the department of sarcasm?’

  ‘That’s right, sunshine, and if you weren’t about to die I’d want you on my team.’

  I give Kay a look. I know everything I need to know about this idiot. He’s an arrogant bastard. And we’ll be lucky if we can convince him not to hurt us.

  ‘My name is Ven,’ he says.

  ‘You’re not an adult,’ Kay says.

  ‘I see you’re the brains of this shambling duo. Well my genius friend, in a spirit of frankness I feel I should let you know that the best you can hope for now is a painless death. And the way to achieve that is to
be completely cooperative.’

  I think the only word of that Kay understands is ‘death’. She clenches her fists, but she can’t do what she’d like to with them; her hands are still bound.

  ‘Do you know what?’ I say. ‘I heard a lot of stories about how stupidly brutal the Resistance was. I was hoping that was one of the Leadership’s lies, but it turns out to be true.’

  ‘True, except the stupidly part.’

  ‘How can you call yourself a resistance?’ I snap. ‘Shouldn’t you be helping people?’

  ‘Although our acquaintance is going to be brief, I think it may still be useful for you to know that the only people I’m interested in helping are the Resistance. You know what would be in the interests of the Resistance?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Killing you.’

  ‘I want to speak to your boss,’ I say.

  ‘Your options are death now, or you can tell me everything you know before you die. I reckon that will buy you an extra three minutes or so. Three and a quarter, if you list your life’s achievements.’

  I open my mouth, but Ven won’t let me get a word in.

  ‘Do the Leadership know the location of this hospital?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are the Leadership planning an attack on the Resistance?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Kay says. ‘We don’t know the Leadership.’

  He takes a gun from his belt.

  King hell. He’s not really going to kill us, is he? ‘This is ridiculous. We’re not the enemy.’

  ‘I’ve found it’s safest to make my own decisions about who’s on my side.’

  ‘We haven’t done anything wrong!’

  ‘You people have beaten, abused and manipulated everyone from babies to pensioners. And I’m not the merciful type.’

  He lifts his gun and presses it to my temple.

  Efwurding hell, he’s going to kill me.

  ‘Stop!’ Kay says.

  Ven makes an exaggerated gesture of tiredness and turns to face her without taking the gun from my head.

  ‘I know a thing,’ she says.

  ‘We should all take pride in even the smallest of achievements, but hush a bit while I kill your little friend, will you?’