The Wilderness

by C. J. Harper

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s hope your reactions are a little quicker when you’re trying to shoot The Leader’s head off, shall we?’

  ‘I’m not on the team. You told me I wasn’t on the team.’ What the hell is he playing at?

  ‘If I can tax your feeble brain just for a moment and ask you to access your memory – I appreciate that it’s not something you do often and that it may cause you some pain – now think; did I actually ever say you couldn’t be on the team?’

  ‘Yes, I mean . . . well, you said that I didn’t have all the necessary skills.’

  ‘Come on, Blake, if I only allowed you to do things you were fully qualified for you’d never do an efwurding thing. You’re on the team. Make sure you’re at the meeting.’

  I should be happy, but I’m not. ‘Why have you always got to play mind games, Ven?’

  Ven smirks. ‘Why do people normally play games?’

  He thinks he’s so clever. ‘In psychological terms,’ I say, ‘play serves a purpose in preparing immature minds for real-life situations. I hope you’ve learnt something from messing with my head, Ven.’

  Just for once it’s nice to walk away having had the last word.

  As I reach the landing of the next floor down I see the glow of a solar lantern and hear voices. I give into my curiosity and take a closer look. Paulo, Robin and a dark-haired girl are sorting through piles of clothes. I stop in the doorway.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

  ‘Something very important,’ Robin says smugly.

  ‘Clothes for the Big Day,’ Paulo explains.

  Robin holds up a frilly dress against herself. ‘I would look good in this, wouldn’t I?’ Without waiting for an answer she puts down the dress and tries on a smart jacket instead. It’s much too big for her, but she twirls around anyway.

  ‘Robin . . .’ Paulo warns.

  I take a look at the heaps of clothes. Someone has done an excellent job. There are a number of uniforms, some for guards, others for delivery people or event stewards. They’ve also got some smart outfits for children. The sort of thing that kids from a Learning Community might wear on The Leader’s birthday.

  ‘This is good stuff,’ I say. There must be clothes for every member of the Resistance here. ‘Where did it all come from?’ I ask.

  ‘Not telling,’ Robin says.

  ‘The Aqua team,’ the dark-haired girl says.

  ‘Nard,’ I say.

  She laughs at my tone. ‘Are you not a fan? He is a bit . . . you know, but he certainly gets his job done.’

  ‘Here,’ Paulo says, ‘take the labels off these.’ He pushes a bundle of clothes across a table towards me. I start pulling tags off jumpers. My eyes widen when I see the prices. I wonder if Nard actually steals things from shops or if someone else does it for him.

  I turn back to the girl. ‘If by “a bit you know” you mean he’s an utter jerk, then I agree.’

  Paulo just blinks, but Robin throws down the hanger she is holding. ‘Why are you being mean about Nard? Don’t be horrible. He’s nice. He gave me Bear. That’s not horrible, is it?’

  I’m surprised to hear that Nard has done anything for anyone.

  ‘She’s his little pet,’ the dark-haired girl explains to me. ‘Calm down, Robin, you can’t deny that your Nard is a bit intense. And he loves his guns, doesn’t he?’

  He loved them too much to let me borrow one, anyway.

  ‘So? I like guns, too,’ Robin says.

  ‘Everyone in the Resistance spends time with guns.’ Paulo is playing the peacemaker as usual.

  ‘Not as much as Nard,’ the girl insists. ‘And it’s not just guns, is it? I got stuck on guard duty with him once and I had to hear all about his knife collection.’

  ‘You’re all just jealous,’ Robin snaps.

  ‘Robin, have you got a pair of size four boots over there?’ Paulo is trying to change the subject.

  ‘You lot never like anyone I like. Nobody likes Nard. Nobody likes my friend Jed. You think the people I like are stupid.’

  ‘That’s enough, Robin.’ He leans over to take the boots and speaks into her ear. ‘Stop making a fuss or I won’t let you out to play with Jed.’

  I don’t think the dark-haired girl hears, but I do. I feel perversely pleased that Paulo is going against Ven and letting Robin play with her little friend.

  Robin looks thunderous, but says nothing and we all sort the clothes in silence for a few minutes.

  ‘Are you on the Assassination team, Paulo?’ I ask.

  ‘Blake, you know we’re not supposed to discuss our individual roles for the Big Day.’

  Another one of Ven’s stupid rules.

  ‘All right, I won’t discuss that. I’ve just been wondering whether you’ve ever tried it before, the Resistance I mean – surely you could have killed The Leader before now?’

  ‘Nard says that. Nard says shoot him quick.’ Robin looks thrilled that she’s found something that Nard and I agree on.

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ Paulo says.

  ‘You’d only need one volunteer,’ I say.

  ‘One volunteer to get around The Leader’s bulletproof car or to take out the pack of bodyguards he travels around with?’

  ‘There must be times when a sniper could get a single headshot. That’s all it would take.’

  ‘That’s all it would take to kill The Leader. It’s not all that it would take to kill the Leadership. If we’d killed him before now, we’d have been the bad guys. We have to get people to understand that he’s the enemy before we kill him. Then they’ll know that we’ve done the right thing.’

  ‘We could have done Nard’s Plan Scarlett,’ Robin says.

  ‘You’re not supposed to know about that,’ Paulo says.

  ‘Everybody knows about it,’ the dark-haired girl says. ‘It just blowing the Leadership up, isn’t it?’

  Paulo pushes more clothes at the girl. ‘We really shouldn’t be discussing any of this. Let’s concentrate on getting this done so I can get half an hour’s sleep before I’m expected to organise something else, shall we?’

  All through the night I can’t stop imagining that single shot to The Leader’s head. Which makes me wonder about what Kay said. What do I care about destroying more – the whole oppressive government or just my father?

  Kay never comes to bed.

  Even though I get very little sleep, I make sure I get to Ven’s office early; I’m not giving him any excuses to take back what he said about me being on the team.

  By the time Ven waves us into the room, there are more than twenty of us waiting. That means I’m not the only one here who isn’t a captain or a vice. I only recognise a few people.

  We sit on plastic chairs gathered around several tables pushed together. I’m next to Tanisha.

  She leans over and says, ‘I hear you’re on the assassination team.’

  I nod.

  ‘So’s he.’ She nods towards a boy with long blond hair. ‘And me and Ven.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Right,’ says Ven. He looks shattered; I wonder if he’s slept at all since I saw him last night. ‘Let’s establish something now before I waste the limited moisture in my mouth. This meeting is not about taking requests or hearing stories about the cabbage you almost ate last Thursday. It’s about the uprising.’

  ‘I think you ought to listen to what the other captains have got to say,’ Nard interrupts.

  Ven closes his eyes and makes a growling noise. ‘I’m already running dry, Nard, so I’m going to resort to gestures.’ He shakes his head vigorously. ‘Now, no more interruptions or I may be reduced to another kind of gesture altogether.’ He sits down heavily and nods towards his deputy. ‘Paulo.’

  Paulo stands up and leans over the table to unroll a map.

  ‘This shows the focal points of our attack. As you can see we’re going to hit the central district hard. The media centre, the Leadership bu
ilding, the communications tower – but we’ve also got targets in outlying districts like the power company and the guards’ barracks.

  ‘What about weapons? What about the assassination?’ Nard asks.

  That girl last night was right – he is obsessed.

  ‘You know I can’t bring myself to give a compliment,’ Ven says to Nard, ‘but I will say this; despite rumours to the contrary, you have ensured that we are in possession of adequate numbers of firearms. They will be distributed to teams as they leave the hospital. As for the assassination, I will discuss that with the assassination team.’ Ven leans towards Nard and whispers, ‘The clue is in the name.’

  Nard sniffs. ‘Just because I don’t spend my time shooting plastic dolls, it doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to contribute to the plans.’

  I give him an incredulous look because Eame said he spent plenty of time shooting. He’s just trying to be patronising because he’s not very good at it.

  ‘We’re going to shoot The Leader,’ Ven says. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘Shoot him? How do you know you’ll get a chance? Why don’t you use a bomb?’

  ‘We’ve considered explosives. Too many innocent people would die.’

  ‘So? If that really bothers you then don’t do it in the middle of an efwurding picnic! You should think about using Plan Scarlett.’

  ‘We’ve considered an alternative location and dismissed it, Nard. We’ve also previously considered your suggestion that we use Plan Scarlett.’

  ‘Many times,’ Tanisha whispers to me.

  ‘It’s crazy to rely on a few idiots with guns,’ Nard says, looking at me. ‘Let’s just blow The Leader up.’

  ‘Let’s just shut up,’ the captain of the Provisions team says, and Tanisha and I burst out laughing.

  ‘Let’s grow up,’ Ven says, eyeing me coldly. ‘Diverting as your endless questioning and joking may be to people with reduced mental capacity; it’s not an efficient use of our time. We have our plans, Nard, and we will not be altering them at this point.’

  Nard looks ready to throw a tantrum.

  ‘How are the ticket purchases?’ Tanisha asks.

  ‘What ticket purchases?’ a girl with freckles asks.

  ‘If you remember,’ Ven says with a face that suggests he doesn’t expect anyone around the table to be capable of remembering anything useful, ‘previous versions of the Birthday Plan relied on us highjacking one of the official snack vans in order to gain entrance to the central square. This time we’ve decided instead to procure legitimate tickets to get in. One of our contacts on the other side has been paying good money for unwanted tickets. He’s passed five to us so far.’

  ‘Five isn’t very many,’ Nard says.

  ‘Five is plenty when you only need four,’ Paulo points out.

  Nard doesn’t even acknowledge that she’s spoken. ‘So it’s just the Assassination team that get to go into the square, is it?’ he says to Ven.

  ‘It’s an extremely dangerous mission, Nard, not a special treat.’

  ‘So we’ve definitely got tickets for the Assassination team?’ Tanisha asks.

  ‘Not quite,’ Paulo says. ‘There are three tickets in the names of Learning Community boys which are perfect for Ven, Blake and Kurt.’ He nods towards the blond boy Tanisha pointed out.

  ‘What about a ticket for me?’ Tanisha says.

  ‘We’re working on it,’ Paulo says. ‘The fourth ticket is for a woman in her sixties – I don’t think anyone here can pull off looking that old – and the fifth is for a Girl Guard.’

  ‘What’s a Girl Guard?’ Toren asks.

  ‘It’s like a club,’ I say, ‘for little girls. They do sports and raise money and take a pledge to serve The Leader. I guess it’s another way for the Leadership to get children thinking their way.’

  ‘How young are the girls?’ Nard asks, looking at Tanisha in an appraising way.

  ‘The ticket is for an eleven-year-old,’ Paulo says.

  Kurt bursts out laughing. Tanisha would never pass for eleven.

  ‘I’m sure Paulo will ensure Tanisha has the correct ticket,’ Ven says. ‘Moving on, we need a lot of team captains for this. Vices will all have to lead their own teams and I’ll be discussing with captains other suitable candidates to lead a group. We’ve got people arriving from the cells from now on and also a number of Wilderness people who want in. It’s up to you lot to make sure they know what they’re doing. Are you all clear on which area your teams are attacking? I’m going to speak to each team in private later.’

  Nard rolls his eyes. ‘Do we really need all this secrecy?’

  ‘Yes, we do, Nard. You won’t know what other teams are doing and they won’t know what you’re doing. And that is so that when your inability to follow commands gets you caught and the Leadership start pulling your nails out and you start squealing and tell them everything that you know, you won’t know much. Understand?’

  Nard glowers.

  ‘I’ll brief the assassination team first. I’ll see the rest of you later.’

  Ven waits for the others to go till only he, Paulo, me, Tanisha and the boy called Kurt are left.

  Paulo pulls out a plan of the central square and points at it with a pencil. ‘We’ve chosen this building as most suitable for the assassination team to work from, as we’ve discovered that the entrance will be obscured by a display of children’s artwork.’

  Actually, I discovered that by accessing the planning committee’s records, but I’ve given up ever expecting my efforts to be acknowledged.

  ‘Weapons went into the building yesterday,’ Ven says. ‘When we arrive we’ll post someone on the main entrance and we’ll take up position. As soon as our special film has run, we shoot The Leader. Actually, the film may not run all the way through and even if it does, The Leader may not stick around for all of it, so let me put this another way, as soon as The Leader runs, we shoot him.’

  We stare at each other. He makes it sound so simple.

  ‘That’s all you need to know.’ He dismisses us with a nod of the head.

  As the others are moving out I say to Ven, ‘Nard seems keen on using a bomb.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Ven says, still looking at his papers.

  ‘Have you even got that kind of thing?’

  Ven’s head jerks up. ‘We’re a Resistance movement; of course we’ve got explosives.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Most of it is in a store just the other side of the fence. Nard keeps a lot of stuff we wouldn’t want anyone to find here, over there. You know, he might be annoying, but he’s pretty good at his job. He’s the one that acquires explosives.’

  I really don’t want to hear how great Nard is. ‘He doesn’t seem to be bothered by the idea of casualties,’ I point out.

  ‘He wants this revolution to happen. I can understand that.’

  But I’m not so sure. Does Nard want revolution or just death and destruction? There’s no denying that Nard is passionate, but I’m not sure that his fervour is really connected to the idea of changing the government. It strikes me that Nard would be just as determined to wreak havoc if he belonged to the guards instead of the Resistance.

  Maybe some people are looking for a cause and it’s just a matter of which one they find first.

  I see Kay across the cafeteria at lunch and I’m glad that she keeps her distance. I’m still upset. Even if it is true that I’ve got a personal grudge against my father, I don’t think it’s fair of her to suggest that I don’t care about what this uprising could mean for everyone. She’s supposed to be on my side. It hurts that she thinks so badly of me.

  In the afternoon a steady stream of people from the cells and a few from the caverns arrive. I’m in Ven’s office when Ilex walks by, but I barely have time to greet him before he’s taken off for briefing. The next opportunity I have to speak to him is at dinner. When the Wilderness people come in, I wave him over to my table.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I
ask.

  He nods. ‘Yes, things okay. I’m a watcher. I’m on the . . . team of this Patrick boy.’ He points across the cafeteria to a boy that I recognise as the vice-captain of Catering. I’ve got no idea whether he’s qualified to lead a team into a revolution. I run a hand through my hair. If I’m realistic, surely none of us are qualified. We’re all just kids. What can kids do to change the way things are?

  ‘What is it, Blake?’ Ilex asks.

  ‘Nothing. That’s a good team. Be careful tomorrow, won’t you?’

  ‘Careful?’

  ‘Don’t get shot.’

  Ilex looks at his hands. ‘Blake, I am scared.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’m scared too. You know, you don’t have to do this.’

  ‘I want to. But I don’t want to be the person who is getting it wrong and making it all efwurded up. I’m not a brainer.’ He leans towards me. ‘Some of the things that Patrick is saying; I don’t know what they are. I’m scared I’m big stupid for this.’

  ‘Ilex, you’re not stupid. You’ve never had anyone to teach you things and show you stuff. I think it’s amazing how much you do know. You want to do this, don’t you?’

  He nods.

  ‘That’s the most important thing. It doesn’t take geniuses to tell a government that they’re wrong. It just needs ordinary decent people to stand up and be seen.’

  ‘Yes.’ He lets out a breath and looks around the room. ‘Where’s Kay?’ he asks.

  I feel my face tighten. ‘I don’t know.’

  He looks at me for a moment. ‘I have to go to Patrick, but I want to say it that you are a good friend, Blake.’ He smacks me across the back affectionately. His eyes meet mine again. ‘And tomorrow is going to be a bad hard time. You have to talk to Kay.’ He squeezes my arm and heads over to the table where Patrick is sat.

  I sit down and try to think about anything other than Kay.

  When Ven arrives in the cafeteria, people turn around to get a look at him. Paulo walks behind him with a face like he’s in a funeral parade. The talking dies away as Ven climbs on to a table. He looks terrible; he seems to have aged in the last few days.