by Piers Torday
A starling.
I lean forward to try and get a closer look. I can’t be sure, but it might be the bossy bird from the Underearth.
Stone turns to Skuldiss, looking down his thin nose at him. ‘Well? There is a bird that lives in the city. Your men still clearly have work to do. You told me on the phone just now –’
‘Everything I said was being the whole truth and nothing but, Mr Stone,’ says Skuldiss, gripping his crutches tight. ‘You must be waiting one moment more, and you will see with your own little eyes.’
The bird weaves and dives so close to the helicopter’s blades that the machine has to swerve a couple of times to avoid it. Each time the helicopter swerves, there is an audible gasp in the control tower. We can see the tail lights shimmering on the water below.
But as it nears the Maydoor Estate, something else appears in the sky. A black shape, like a huge thunder-cloud, rising up from behind the abandoned building. Except that thunderclouds don’t rise up out of nowhere behind blocks of flats. Thunderclouds don’t change shape and chase helicopters.
Hundreds of starlings. A flock of speckled chests, grasping claws and jabbing beaks that seem to envelop the helicopter like a shadowy, glittering glove.
For a moment, nothing seems to happen.
We’re just watching a helicopter, flying through a cloud of starlings.
Then the single bird flying ahead shoots up into the sky, and out of sight. The cloud springs apart, as if the sky has sucked the bird into itself – and seconds later reappears as a black wave of destruction, smashing into the helicopter head on.
Birds bombing into the windscreen, the top and rear blades, like bullets of feather and claw. Sacrificing many of themselves in the process, but the helicopter begins to shake about in the sky, before suddenly dropping – clipping the side of a formula warehouse before spiralling down in a plume of smoke, flame and feathers, into the water.
The windows of the tower shake gently as the machine explodes.
The hundreds still left in the starling flock circle above the smouldering ripples, then spread up and out across the sky before they are lost from view.
There is silence in the room. I hold the stuffed animal close to my chest. I have seen squirrels stop a train, and now starlings bring down a helicopter.
There were people on that helicopter. Actual human beings.
‘This has happened before?’ asks Stone, kneading his brow.
Skuldiss nods.
‘When did it start?’
‘We called you as soon as we were seeing it ourselves,’ say s Skuldiss. ‘But I am afraid that is very far from being all. Very far indeed.’
He points to the screens on the dashboard, and the pictures change to a building I don’t recognize. A square block covered with industrial cables and pipes, like massive old-fashioned radiators.
‘One of our power stations,’ says Skuldiss. ‘A little old power box doing nothing but minding its own jolly business, out by the railway line, serving lots of delicious electricity to all our good citizens, when this happens.’
As we watch the recording, the deserted power station becomes less deserted. At first there are just one or two furry bodies hurrying along the ground, going so fast they almost seem to rise off it. Then one or two turn into twenty, then hundreds, and then too many to count. It is like the power station is growing fur, every inch covered with a seething mass of whiskers and ears and tails.
I try in vain to see if I can pick out the one rat I am looking for, the one I can’t get out my mind – but there are too many.
Sparks and smoke explode through the wriggling fur, and when eventually they pull back, disappearing into the shadows, the cables are gnawed to ribbons; the power station is as dead and useless as a lump of rock.
‘And now all the peoples on the other side of this here river are in the deepest darkness,’ says Skuldiss, almost like he’s enjoying the chaos.
‘How do we still have power?’ says Stone, sounding tired.
‘Emergency generator, sir,’ says an official. ‘The same one keeping the Amsguard going.’
‘Anything else?’
Voices fire at him from all sides of the room, freshly printed sheets of coloured paper thrust in his face –
‘A wasp swarm attacked a school playground, sir, we’ve got dozens in hospital, so many that one child said they turned the sky black and yellow …’
‘The city lost power when the station got taken out, now we’re getting reports of whole tower blocks infested with snakes, crawling through the ventilation shafts …’
‘Foxes running wild in the streets, attacking anyone they see …’
‘Crows dive-bombing cars, smashing windscreens, widespread traffic disruption in the centre –’
Stone flings the pile of paper reports in the air, and they flutter softly to the ground, like leaves. A circle of officials hover as he kneads his brow with his fingers.
‘Are you seriously telling me that the greatest corporation in the world, in the greatest city of the world, cannot get rid of a few pests?’ he asks quietly. ‘Where are our cullers?’
‘Oh, we are just raring to go, Mr Stone, sir,’ says Skuldiss, hunched over his crutches. ‘Raring to go and out we pop.’
‘Then what,’ says Stone, grabbing one of his crutches and twisting it up between them so it faces the ceiling, ‘are you doing still STANDING HERE?’
I have never seen Captain Skuldiss hobble so quickly. He crouches over one of the desks, screeching orders into a microphone.
The circle of nervous watchers disappear back to their screens. The room hums with activity. The screens return to a live feed. I see glimpses of blacked-out towers, fires and columns of smoke, crashed and burnt-out cars, people running and screaming –
The old moon is about to disappear. And tonight, according to the dream, Dagger’s wild will cover the earth with darkness. The storm of storms will come, the great wet will spill over us all –
I’ve failed. I haven’t stopped it. I haven’t stopped any of it.
I realize that Stone is standing in the middle of the room, looking at me. There is a look in his eyes I haven’t seen before. A look that roots me to the spot. ‘You,’ he says. ‘This is all your fault, isn’t it?’
I shake my head.
‘Don’t lie to me, child. You orchestrated this. While we were having our nice little chat upstairs, rearranging your friend –’ he notices for the first time the squirrel in my arms – ‘you knew what was going to happen. And you didn’t say a word to warn me.’
He steps closer, sticking his face in mine –
I step back –
‘You set your precious animals to destroy your own city. You lying, filthy little snake!’
The snakes I know aren’t lying or filthy. I’m shaking my head –
‘No!’
‘So what I want to know is –’ he yells, spitting as he picks me up by my lapels, lifting me clean off the ground – ‘what are you going to do to stop it?’
He’s much stronger than he looks.
I glance down at the mounted squirrel in my arms, clutched tight, stuffed and dead in my arms. And a big smile begins to creep across my face.
‘This isn’t a laughing matter,’ he says, dropping me on the ground.
It’s not. But that isn’t why I’m smiling.
I’m smiling because, finally, I have a plan.
I look down one last time at the red squirrel.
*It’s your turn to be brave now,* I say to him inside my head. *I hope you’re ready.*
The lifeless black eyes stare back at me. I stiffen my grip on his little body.
Then I swing the squirrel up fast, clocking Stone squarely under his chin with the heavy wooden base of my stuffed dead friend.
I’m pretty sure it’s what he would have wanted.
Stone reels back towards the control desks, hands held over his face.
Then, holding the squirrel tight, I run for my life.
I am shaking so much that this time I hardly notice the gravitational pull of the nuclear lift as it rockets me back down towards the bottom of the tower.
I just hit Selwyn Stone in the face in his own control room.
But when I saw what was happening outside, in the real world, it seemed the only thing to do. I have to get out there. I have to stop Dagger’s wild before they destroy us, or Stone destroys them.
Somewhere, the mouse still has the Iris. We can start this world again. If I can make the dark wild believe in that –
The lift shudders to a halt, and as the doors spring apart I carefully place the red squirrel in between, jamming them open. A whooping klaxon blares throughout the building, and red warning lights blink angrily up and down the corridor. The stuffed animal, cocked at a strange angle, stares at me blankly.
Crouching down, I stroke his head one last time. *Goodbye, friend,* I whisper. *You have been braver and helped your wild more than you will ever know.*
As I run off, I hear the doors grind and squeal as they try to shut. I don’t know how much time I’ve bought by trapping Stone and his cronies at the top of the tower. I just have to run as fast as I can – and listen.
To the whispers and cries that only I can hear, beneath the sirens and distant human shouts.
Skidding and slipping along the smooth passages –
Almost falling down flights of stairs –
Hiding in empty rooms, pressing myself into shadowy doorways when I hear culler patrols tramping towards me –
But the cries in my head only grow louder, pulling me on.
Until, deep in the basement of the Four Towers, I find myself outside the huge ridged iron door. Sweating, not thinking straight, it takes me one, two, three, four goes to remember the code Skuldiss punched in, then on the fifth, the red light goes to green and the door groans open.
For a moment everyone just looks at me, like they can’t believe what they’re seeing. The alarm sounds in the background. Polly’s eyes are wide. Aida steps forward.
Then they step forward together. I don’t know how to explain to them what I need them to do, there’s so little time, perhaps I could get Dad to translate or …
Then Polly puts a hand on my arm. ‘Your dad has told us all about the dark wild. We’ll come with you if you want, but—’
‘But we need to get everyone out alive,’ says Aida. ‘Me and your friend – we been talking about you since you gone. A lot.’
That doesn’t sound good.
‘About the way you try to do everything on your own all the time.’ She gives me a look that says I shouldn’t even begin to disagree. ‘So you lucky that we get on so well.’
I don’t believe this. Polly takes my hands. ‘Aida and I will help everyone escape from here. You go after the dog.’
No, I just found them again. I just found her!
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ says Aida. ‘We can’t talk to animals. But I do have a gang waiting on the other side who can help us. So go on – get out of here!’
Polly smiles. ‘She’s right. And I’ve got my toad to look after me.’ He sits happily in her arms, back where he belongs, smiling in the way only a toad can.
Then they turn and run, barking orders to the others. There isn’t time for any more. I shout at the wild. *Go! Run! This is your chance!*
They need no further encouragement. Otters, rabbits, birds – they run through my legs, fly past my face, scattering into the corridor. I’m shouting at Dad too, of course. He’s one of the last to leave, and he stops, placing his hands on my shoulders. *Do you know what you’re doing, Kes?*
*I think so …*
He looks at me, deep into me, and nods. Like he knew I would say that.
*I believe in you, Kes,* he says, and gives me one last hug before following the others.
Aida is the last to leave. Just before she follows everyone else, she jabs me in the chest. ‘I’ll get them out of here, but you better not mess this up, boy.’
And then she’s gone.
*
Following the stairs on and down, I find myself pushing at a basement fire escape door which springs open, and I step out into the concrete yard of the Four Towers. It says it’s alarmed, but what difference is one more alarm going to make?
I feel wetness on my face, and look up, holding out a hand.
Rain. The tears the sky sheds when any animal dies.
The sky is black with clouds and flocks of screeching birds. The city on the other bank, that once hummed with a chatter of cars and sirens and radios, now shrieks with explosions, screams and crashes. Its glass towers stand tall and dark, lit only here and there by the glow of fire, columns of smoke rising up into the sky like tornadoes in between the silhouettes of buildings.
I can smell burning rubber and fuel from where the helicopter came down. More helicopters rise into the air behind me from within the Four Towers, whirring off to different areas of the city to try and contain the dark wild.
But all these sights and sounds pass around me like a dream.
Because my head is full of voices. From every corner of the crowded city, every hole in the ground, every patch of smoke-filled sky, I hear animals. The dark wild. I hear them shouting for revenge, crying attack and cackling with victory. I shake my head, ringing with confusing calls, feeling dizzy.
And try to focus on one voice in particular, that I can just make out rising above the babble.
I run past the formula delivery vans, bright lights and rain-drops bouncing off them. I run till the parking lot gives way to some rough ground, circled by bristly shrubs strewn with rubbish. In the rain, the blobs of crumpled-up trash almost look like flowers.
I’m not interested in the bushes though, I’m interested in the fence behind them – which, out of sight from Facto’s spying cameras, has a large hole torn in it.
Hidden by the undergrowth and ripped by horns – a gap big enough for a stag to squeeze through, never mind a boy.
I duck down and dive through the strands of wire to the muddy riverbank below. On the shore I slide about in the brownish-red clay, in the shadow of the huge crane that Aida and I saw from the river path.
The rain is falling harder, so everything is seen through curtains of drizzle. The crane sits on a massive barge, surrounded by sacks of cement and oil drums, huge rolls of steel wire, girders piled high. A lamp hanging from the crane lurches from side to side in the wind, casting crazy shadows.
It looks more like a building site than a barge. A floating building site. ‘The Amsguard is completed,’ said Coby Cott.
Still following the voice, I march up the plank leaning against the hull and on to the deck. The crane creaks above me. *Hello? Are you there? Can you hear me?*
The voice gets louder, coming from beneath me. Looking down at the deck splattered with grey mud, it is covered in a grid of winch lines and pipes, a single square in the middle, with a ring attached.
Scrabbling over the wires and pipes, I crouch down and pull on the hatch. It is rusted, stiff and heavy. The driving rain loosens my grip. I heave and heave until I think it will pull my arms out of their sockets – when it creaks open, revealing a ramp down into shadows.
From which a pair of horns emerges.
*We are here, Wildness,* the stag says, stalking forward into the flickering light from the crane lamp, his horns scratched and chipped from butting the hatch. The General sits on the stag’s head, his antennae limp and exhausted. *Only just, but we are here. We fled from the children as soon as the cockroach found us. Their master has disappeared.*
*Don’t worry, I know all about him,* I say.
*The insect brought us to the stone tall-home where you were captured. Then the dark wild you told us of began to rise, so we took cover in here. But the wind blew that slab shut and closed us in.*
*And the mouse?*
*She went her own way,* says the cockroach.
Another kind of alarm bell begins to sound in my head. *You
don’t know where she went?*
*Only that she said it would be safe,* he says. *That she would go where it was safe.*
I have to hope all is not lost. That she found somewhere safe. That even without the Iris actually in my hand I can persuade Dagger to change his mind.
The others nose into the light alongside the stag.
Wolf-Cub, flecked with mud and spots of dark red. There is a new light in his eyes, a deepness to his voice. Everyone, everything, changing all around me – I take a deep breath, steady myself.
*Wolf, what can you tell me?*
*It has been hard, Wildness. I was attacked by birds. A starling! No bird has ever attacked a wolf before.’
*I know this. We watched from the towers. What of the white dog? Of your pack?*
If Wolf still feels sad, he doesn’t let it show.
*The white dog and my mother have left the destruction of the city to their legions. I followed their scent further along this fish-road before returning here …* He hangs his head and tail. *It was too dangerous to follow any further. There were humans everywhere with firesticks. Perhaps my mother was right. Perhaps I am a coward.*
*Of course not. You were very brave to follow them that far.*
He grunts. *But what do we do now? We are outnumbered by humans and other beasts. This is the end of days, Wildness. The storm of storms has come, the earth has risen.*
*I know,* I say. *And we’re going to stop it rising any further.*
Except everything depends on me finding Dagger, and his wolf Guardians. Only they can stop this.
The Ams runs on for miles. They could be anywhere.
*And those waters spilled out over the earth,* said the dream.
I try to think for a moment – but it is so hard to concentrate. The rain drumming on the boat and water. The helicopters whirring above our heads, now swerving and anticipating bird strikes. The starlings, still swooping in flocks, trying to bring another one down.
One bird in particular cuts through the noise in my head. The one screeching orders. I turn my head up to the rain, to the glittering creature I can just see doing loops ahead of the others.