The Wilderness

by C. J. Harper

  I put my head in my hands.

  ‘It’s them,’ Ven says. ‘It’s the pair of kids they told us would be sent, but they weren’t pretending to be from the Academy – they were pretending to be from the Wilderness. I assumed that they would approach me. I didn’t even consider that they would target one of the kids.’

  ‘It can’t be them.’ Paulo’s voice breaks. ‘It was just a boy. Just a little boy.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Did she tell you he was a little kid?’

  There’s a pause.

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘What’s she told them? Never mind. Where is she? Which team is she in?’

  ‘She’s with Patrick.’

  That’s Ilex’s team.

  Ven cuts the connection and hits buttons on the communicator again.

  ‘Whoa,’ Kurt says, sounding more awake than he has all morning. ‘You mean that that little Robin girl has been hanging out with some Leadership kids? Ones that were sent to . . . What were they sent to do?’

  Nobody answers him.

  ‘Patrick, let me speak to Robin,’ Ven says into the communicator.

  ‘What’s go—’

  ‘Now,’ Ven says.

  There’s a pause while Patrick finds Robin, and I wonder if she has told the Leadership spies all our plans. It can’t all be over before we’ve even started.

  ‘What?’ Robin’s sulky voice comes over the communicator.

  ‘Robin, it’s Ven.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me off for kicking you? Because—’

  ‘Listen to me. That boy, Jed, how old is he?’

  ‘He’s a big boy. As big as you, he could beat you up if I wanted him to.’

  ‘What did you tell him about us? Did you tell him where the hospital is? Did you show him the hospital?’

  Halfway through this sentence I know that Robin will kick off.

  ‘Why does everybody hate my friend? You just don’t want me to be happy!’

  This isn’t the best way to get information out of her.

  ‘Robin! Did you show him the hospital?’ Ven repeats.

  ‘No! I know the stupid rules about keeping where we are a stupid secret.’

  ‘Did he ask you to tell him where we were? Did he ask you anything about the Resistance?’

  ‘So what if he asked me things? He’s my friend and I can tell him about what we do if I want to!’

  Ven’s jaw tightens and I know that he is about to explode right back at her. If he keeps making her angry she will clam up all together and we don’t have time for that.

  I snatch the communicator out of his hand, but then I recall that the last time I saw Robin I shouted at her. She’s not going to want to talk to me either. I look around desperately. I hand the communicator to Tanisha.

  She opens her mouth to talk, but hesitates. She’s thinking. That’s good. Robin needs careful handling.

  ‘Robin, it’s Tanisha. I’d like to meet Jed.’

  ‘He wouldn’t like to meet you,’ Robin answers. ‘He only likes me.’

  Ven is gesticulating angrily. ‘Do they know? Do they know about today?’ he says in a whisper so harsh that it must hurt his throat.

  Tanisha turns away from Ven. ‘I bet he does like you. I bet you talk to him a lot. Did you tell him about today?’

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ Robin says. I can picture the scowl on her face. ‘You’re trying to be nice.’

  ‘We need to know, Robin. We need to know that everybody is still safe. Did you tell him?’

  ‘Stop asking me. Stop asking me things!’

  ‘Did he ask you questions about the Resistance?’

  ‘You think he’s only my friend because he wants to know about the Resistance. I don’t care if I told him things; he’s nice, but you can’t believe that he’s nice and he gave me this bracelet and—’

  ‘What bracelet?’ I say.

  No answer.

  I yank the communicator out of Tanisha’s hand. ‘Robin, what bracelet?’

  But the connection is dead.

  ‘Well, it’s a good job that we asked her all the important stuff before we got cut off, and didn’t waste time trying to butter the brat up,’ Ven says. ‘Oh, no, wait, I’ve got that the wrong way round. Oh, no, wait; it wasn’t me who got it the wrong way round.’ He glares at Tanisha.

  ‘Efwurd off, Ven! Screaming at someone isn’t always the way to get what you want.’

  Ven blinks as if blown backwards by her volume. ‘As you’re demonstrating right now.’

  ‘Shut up!’ I say. I stab every button on the communicator, but the screen is dead. I shake it and smack it against the steering wheel. It’s gone. The connection must have been switched off. This is the problem with using dead people’s communicators. ‘We’ve got to get hold of Robin again. We need another communicator.’

  ‘Ven’s got a spare, haven’t you, Ven?’ Tanisha says.

  ‘Yes, Tanisha, I’ve got a spare. I would have mentioned it earlier, only I was too shy and polite to speak up. No, I don’t have an efwurding spare.’

  ‘Why not? You’re always telling us—’

  ‘Well, I haven’t!’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Kurt says in genuine surprise. ‘You always have everything we need. You’re the captain.’

  ‘Yes I am, so less abusing me and more obeying me.’ He starts the car up and pulls back on to the road. ‘Can you see anyone using a communicator?’

  We all obediently crane our necks, looking up and down the street, even though I’ve got a nasty idea about what will happen if we do see someone.

  ‘Can’t see anyone at all,’ Kurt says.

  ‘Everybody is at The Leader’s birthday celebrations,’ I say.

  ‘We could break into a house,’ Kurt says.

  ‘What about Nard’s cache?’ Tanisha asks. ‘That’s near here, isn’t it?’

  Ven swings the car straight into a turn. ‘Good idea.’

  Nobody speaks for a moment.

  ‘Are we . . . are we maybe panicking too much?’ Kurt asks. ‘I mean, what exactly do you guys think is the problem?’

  ‘We’re not panicking,’ Ven says. ‘We’re reacting to a life-threatening situation. I don’t know about you guys, but when people are about to die, I don’t think you can react too much.’

  The fact that Ven is being even more of a sniping bastard than usual makes me think that he must be worried.

  ‘It seems pretty likely that because of Robin the Leadership know at least some of our plans,’ I say to Kurt.

  ‘You really think some random guy she met in the Wilderness is a Leadership agent?’

  Ven takes a corner at such speed that I’m thrown up against him. ‘Would you talk to Robin unless someone was paying you?’ he says.

  ‘She said he was as old as Ven, why else would he be interested in Robin?’ Tanisha says.

  ‘And he’d been asking her questions about the Resistance,’ I add.

  ‘I just thought that it could all be a coincidence,’ Kurt says.

  ‘I used to be surprised that you’re good with a gun, Kurt,’ Ven says, ‘but I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that it’s because tuning everything else out really isn’t a task for you because you’re never really tuned in, are you? Which alternate plane of reality were you on when our insider told us that they were sending a couple of teenagers posing as someone else to cause trouble?’

  ‘Okay, okay, man, you are tetchy.’

  ‘I’m trying to save hundreds of lives. It makes me a little tense.’

  ‘It’s the bracelet I’m worried about,’ I say to Kurt. ‘If she’s wearing a bracelet this Jed gave her, she could be bugged. At the very least, I bet you there’s a tracking device in it. If the Leadership know where she is, they’ll see that she’s crossed over to this side and they’ll realise that something is up. The guards will be on that team any second now.’

  ‘How do you know she’s wearing it
?’ Tanisha asks. ‘Maybe she left it behind.’

  This idea doesn’t seem to have occurred to Ven and a look of horror soaks across his face. He’s worried about the babies that have been left behind with the C.C. team in the hospital.

  ‘No,’ I say, putting a hand on his arm because I’m afraid he’s going to crash the car. ‘I’m sure she was wearing it. She said “this bracelet” like she was looking right at it.’

  This seems to calm Ven, or at least he goes back to looking furious instead of horrified. I don’t know what would have happened if he’d thought that the bracelet was back at the hospital with the babies.

  Ven drives at top speed for a few minutes.

  ‘Here we go,’ he says and shrieks to a halt.

  We get out of the car and Ven leads us down an alley-way. He looks behind us before he stops at a heavy metal door and presses his fingertip to the reader on the frame. It clicks and the door swings open. I take one look inside and what I see freezes my heart.

  I thought things were bad before.

  They’re a hundred times worse now.

  ‘What is it?’ Tanisha says.

  Ven pushes past me and looks into the storage room himself. Sitting next to a pile of boxes, with her hands tied and a gag in her mouth is a small girl in her underwear. Her eyes blaze with fear.

  ‘Who the hell is that?’ Tanisha asks.

  ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea,’ I say.

  I bend down to the little girl. She flinches away.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. Just answer a question for me. Are you in the Girl Guards?’

  Her eyes widen even further. Slowly she nods.

  ‘How did you know that?’ Kurt asks.

  Ven is rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘Nard.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say.

  ‘Nard what?’ Tanisha clutches her hands in frustration. ‘Will someone tell me what the efwurd is going on?’

  ‘Remember the tickets for the celebration in the central square that we got hold of?’ I say to Tanisha. ‘We swapped the old woman’s one for yours. The only one we didn’t use was for a Girl Guard. Nard obviously decided that he was going to use it. And he needed a Girl Guard uniform. This is where he got it.’

  Kurt approaches the girl slowly and reaches to untie her hands.

  ‘Don’t,’ Ven says. ‘And don’t take her gag off.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  ‘She’ll scream. We’ll have to leave her for now. She’s a security risk.’

  Kurt shakes his head at Ven, but he lets go of the cord, sits down and pats the girl’s arm instead. At first she stiffens, but Kurt keeps smiling and patting.

  ‘Isn’t Nard a bit old to pass as a Girl Guard?’ Kurt asks, still smiling at the girl. ‘And, er, the wrong sex.’

  ‘I don’t think he was planning to wear it himself,’ I say.

  Tanisha draws in a breath. ‘You mean he’s taken this girl’s uniform and put one of our little ones in it? Why?’

  Ven and I exchange looks. Ven walks to the back of the store and starts tapping at the electronic lock on a reinforced door.

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ I say, ‘but at the planning meeting Nard was very keen on using explosives to take out The Leader.’

  The lock beeps. Ven walks into the cupboard and starts searching for something.

  ‘I don’t get it.’ Tanisha shakes her head. ‘He’s got a ticket to the celebrations for a Girl Guard, so he’s going to send a little kid dressed in the uniform into the square, and then what does he think he’s going to get them to do? ’

  ‘Well, Tanisha,’ Ven says, ‘there’s a bloody great gap on the shelf where a whole load of explosives used to be. Do you think that could be a clue?’

  ‘C’mon,’ says Tanisha. ‘Does he really reckon he can get a kid to hide a bomb?’

  ‘I think it’s worse than that,’ I say. ‘I think the kid is the bomb.’

  Tanisha and Kurt stare at me in horror.

  ‘Do you mean he’s sent one of our tinies on a suicide mission? I don’t believe it. None of our kids would agree to do that,’ Tanisha says.

  ‘I doubt he’s asked them,’ Ven says.

  ‘Ven’s right,’ I say. ‘He’s not going to tell the kid his plan, they might blab or screw it up. He’s just going to use them as a carrier.’

  ‘That guy is seriously wrong.’ Kurt’s forehead crumples. ‘Why would he turn a little kid into a bomb?’

  ‘Because it was the only idea his feeble brain could come up with that seemed to guarantee success.’ Ven rifles through a shelf of equipment and locates a bashed-up communicator. ‘It’s almost as if the universe thinks that solving one life-threatening situation would be too easy for me,’ he says. ‘So now we’ve got two major problems.’ He passes the communicator to me. ‘You’re the technology expert. Can you fix that?’

  I take a look. ‘I can try.’

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ Kurt persists. ‘We were planning to get The Leader and the Leadership anyway, why is Nard trying to do a new plan?’

  ‘Because he wants to be the one to kill The Leader. And he wants to do it his way.’ Ven rubs a hand across his face. ‘We need to split up.’

  I nod.

  ‘Blake, you come with me to sort out the huge mess that Robin has caused and you two can deal with Nard’s explosives obsession.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Tanisha asks.

  Kurt is slack-jawed, looking between us and the girl.

  ‘Maybe I should go with Tanisha,’ I say.

  ‘Because you’d be great at spotting the girl with the secret bomb? How many of the Resistance girls aged seven to eleven do you think you would recognise, Blake? Can I suggest for not the first time in our acquaintance that you remember that all of my decision-making is based on reason, and that if you feel the need to reverse one of those decisions you should assume that you are wrong and shut the efwurd up.’

  ‘I just . . .’ I look at Kurt.

  ‘Kurt is going to be fine, aren’t you, Kurt? Kurt has had years of training, all of which is going to inform what he does next. Kurt and Tanisha are going to the square now. One of them is going to watch the gate and the other one is going to patrol the square until they find the Resistance girl. Remember that, Kurt, you’re looking for one of our girls around this high.’ He gestures with his hand. ‘When you find her you take her to the nearest quiet space – off the top of my head I’m going to suggest a toilet stall – and you deactivate that bomb.’

  ‘I can deactivate a bomb,’ I say. ‘At least, I think I can. We learnt about it in our Future Leaders sessions.’

  ‘Tanisha can do it. She’s practised on the real thing.’

  Tanisha makes to speak but Ven cuts her off. ‘If you really can’t do it, then get it well away from the crowds of people.’ He looks at his watch. ‘The Leader isn’t scheduled to speak until twelve, so I think we can assume that if Nard has made a bomb it won’t be programmed to go off until around that time. You’ve got less than two hours.’

  ‘We need a car,’ Tanisha says.

  ‘The entire district is busy celebrating. If you can’t steal a car in these conditions then you’re not the girl I thought you were.’ Ven dismisses her with a nod.

  ‘Let’s go, Blake.’

  ‘But what about the girl?’ Kurt asks. ‘Can we let her go?’

  ‘I told you, she’s a risk.’ Ven moves to the door.

  I follow him. I’m sorry for the little girl, but no harm is going to come to her in the lock-up.

  ‘Then I’ll stay here with her,’ Kurt says.

  Ven spins back round. ‘The hell you will. Listen to me, Kurt, there’s another sweet little girl out there and, unlike this one who is safe in a storage unit, she’s got a ton of explosives strapped to her. I’m not losing you to babysitting duty.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Kurt takes the girl’s hand and starts whispering to her rapidly, telling her not to worry and
that he’ll come back and set her free. Then he follows Tanisha down the street and Ven and I go back to the car.

  He accelerates away so fast that I’m thrown back in my seat. I prise open the back of the communicator and take a look.

  ‘The failsafe fuse has blown,’ I say. ‘I need something metallic to bypass it.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed,’ Ven says, ‘but my hands are pretty full with keeping us on the road while we travel at high speeds. You’re going to have to find your own something metallic.’

  I poke about in the storage section of my door. Nothing useful there. In the glove compartment the first thing I notice is a gun, but since that’s no use to me at the moment I keep looking. I find a ballpoint pen, which I take apart and, using the little metal spring inside, I manage to get the communicator working again.

  I try to call Patrick over and over, but either something has happened to prevent him from answering, or their communicator has now been cut off too. I have to hope it’s the latter.

  Robin’s team were heading for the media sector of the central district. We have no choice but to chase after them.

  ‘What the hell was Nard thinking?’ Ven snarls.

  ‘It’s just like you said, he wants to be the one to kill The Leader.’

  ‘We’re going to kill The Leader and we’re going to do it in the most effective way. We’re not going to murder innocent children at the same time. Do you know how powerful the stuff Nard took is? Powerful enough to take out far more than that square. Does he think anyone will have any sympathy with the Resistance if we kill a load of families on their day out? And what about our message? What about the uprising? The celebrations will be called off and we’ll have lost the chance to make our point.’

  It’s all true and I haven’t got anything helpful to add.

  Ven is curled over the steering wheel, radiating anger and tension. I can almost hear his mind whirring through possibilities. In the middle of my swirling despair I try to hold on to Ven’s brilliance. His and mine. Between us there must be a solution.

  ‘We can fix this,’ I say.

  And for the first time I’m glad that we’re on the same side.

  It doesn’t take us long before we reach the main road into the central district, which Robin’s team must have taken to get to their destination. When we hit it, Ven really puts his foot down and we burn along. There’s very little traffic. Everyone will be at home or at parties. We’re travelling much faster than the bus carrying Robin’s team could; we should be able to catch them up. And then what will happen? Are the guards already on the tail of the bus? Have they caught them?