Volume Ten

by Volume 10 (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  —

  When I saw Casie had vanished I felt such a lurch in my chest. I thought I’d be sick. Straightaway I knew something awful had happened.

  I hurled myself at that starkly empty bed. The sheets had been stripped off, leaving a bare mattress. The ball of sick punched up through my throat when I pictured gloomy figures coming in here in the dead of night, carrying a coffin, putting Casey inside, then shuffling out again.

  That was the moment that Mott breezed in. “Oh my God!” He stared at me. I didn’t know what to say to him. His best friend had gone. I knew that could mean only one thing. I expected Mott to be beaten up by grief.

  Instead, he laughed. “I wondered when you were going to wake up. I’ve got something planned for you.”

  I shook my head. Those were words I hadn’t expected.

  I took a deep breath and fought back that sick feeling. “Where’s Casie?”

  He blinked. “Who’s Casie?”

  “Your friend.”

  Mott shrugged.

  “Your friend Casie. The kid with the blond hair. He was stung by the Bog Hornet. You carried him in here yesterday. At least, I think it was yesterday.” My head was spinning. “You brought us cheesecake and ice cream.”

  He smiled like I was pulling his leg.

  “Come on, Mott! Casie’s your best friend. Surely you haven’t forgotten…” That’s when my voice died. He had forgotten.

  The red-haired teen smiled at me, waiting for what should be the rest of the joke. Then his gaze seemed to turn inward, as if he was searching inside for some recollection.

  The smile faded. “Wait a minute…sure…Casie.” He struggled to remember. “Casie…uhm…”

  “Casie Fitton. He got stung right here on the side of his face.”

  “That’s right—Casie Fitton.” He wrinkled his nose. “That happened months ago.”

  “No, it didn’t. Casie was stung yesterday. I’ve been looking after him.”

  He looked at the bare mattress. “No way, Soldier. You’re getting muddled.”

  “So what happened to Casie?” I was shouting now. “Where did he go?”

  He shrugged as if his friend’s fate didn’t matter. “I don’t know. He just left. He must have been redeployed.”

  “Casie was in that bed last night!”

  “Don’t blow a wire, Soldier.”

  “Mott, picture Casie’s face. Blond hair. Remember how he used to talk. This is important!”

  “Casie got a posting to another sector. That’s nothing to go crazy over.” He gave another shrug. “Besides, Casie left ages ago.”

  “He was here. Someone took him away in the night.”

  Mott slapped his hands to either side of his mouth. “Oh my God. I know where he is.” He dropped to his knees. “He’s hiding under the bed. Come out, Casie, come out…” He pretended to search under the bedframe, then climbed to his feet with a massive grin on his face.

  I stared at him in shock. “We were both talking to him just a few hours ago.”

  “Stop being such a drama-monkey.” He clicked his fingers. “Okay, Soldier. I told you I’d got a surprise. Pull on your boots. I’m giving you a deluxe tour of the Bastion Boys kingdom.”

  From Bastion Wars:

  A major problem for the boy soldiers was the botanical infestation. “Plants grew all over the factory floor,” recollected one combatant. “Viper ivy was the worst. It got into the machines and stopped them working. The stuff would also creep its way into the mechanisms that revolved artillery cupola. This meant that you couldn’t turn the gun to fire at attackers. So what’s the point of a gun you can’t aim? Because of viper ivy, especially, we had to send out detachments to cut away that damn weed from both the factory machines and the gun emplacements. That was the most dangerous time of all. We called it ‘Factory Floor time.’ The Factory Floor was full of hazards. Get too near the marsh and you got Bog Hornets coming after you. People drowned in the lake. Kids fell into spinning prop shafts. I don’t know how the factory machines worked when they were half submerged by water, but they did. So you just had to swim out and cut viper ivy from the vents, moving parts, and feeder cables. If all that wasn’t bad enough, then you had Flukes to contend with. They were the worst. Flukes could screw with your mind. That was before they attacked you.

  “But they still went out onto the factory floor—brave boys with an average age of thirteen—that was their mission. They never ducked a mission.”

  * * *

  —

  Mott, the commander of C Division, sixteen years old, red hair, took me on what he called the “deluxe tour of Bastion Boys kingdom.”

  “Our motto is Give us glory, give ’em hell,” he explained as he led the way out of the hospital room.

  As I left, I cast a troubled glance at the empty bed that Casie Fitton had occupied. The kid had vanished last night. Now Mott didn’t appear to even fully remember someone who’d been a close friend.

  Amnesia. That’s the word that came to mind. An even more worrying word followed it. Dementia. I’d heard my parents discuss an elderly neighbor who’d begun to wander the streets in the middle of the night. “They’re saying it’s dementia. She can’t even remember her own husband’s name. Last night she tried to visit her mother even though the woman’s been dead for over twenty years.”

  Dementia. The word vibrates with such worrying connotations. Forgetfulness. Evaporation of intellect. Loss of independence. Abandonment of mind. I shivered as I walked down the corridor. I stared at the back of Mott’s red head as if I expected to see his brain turning all black and shrunken inside as dementia destroyed his mind.

  Mott, however, kept up the happy chatter. “John. We’re going to have to get you a combat uniform and proper army boots.” He grinned back at me as he patted the camouflage pants he wore. “We need to get you trained up, Soldier. You don’t want any more blowouts in your face…” (So he remembered that.) “You’ll need to get full kit as well, stuff like toothbrush, comb, ’jamas for nightwear, pay book, dog tags. Watch out…When we leave the sick bay there’ll be a blast of air.”

  He pushed open a heavy steel door with rubber trim around the edges. There was a sound like a huge intake of breath and air blew into my face from outside. I smelt frying bacon, boy sweat, and those oil scents that you get when you put your face under the hood of a car once the engine’s been warmed through.

  There was noise, bright lights, movement. I figured I’d left the hospital complex. Now I seemed to be on a roadway, although it was a subterranean one. A concrete roof entirely covered the road.

  Kids. Hundreds of kids. I say kids—being more specific, they were boys of between eleven and sixteen years old, I guessed. I’m in an underground city filled with boy soldiers, I told myself as I stared at the crowds—this was astonishing. None carried weapons, but they all wore camouflage jackets and pants—a busy pattern of yellows, greens, and browns.

  The kids were cheerful. There was lots of joking and laughing. In fact, it could have been the hallway of a school on Friday afternoon as everyone poured out of the building to start the joys of the weekend.

  “Hi, Ripley. Hi, Todd. This is John Karroon.” Mott introduced me to two teenagers with shaved heads. “Best Nitro Lance operators we’ve got,” he told me.

  We walked on. Faces were a whirling blur. There were so many. Mott introduced me to people by the dozen. I shook hands. Got back-slapped. Without exception, those guys were friendly. They were pleased I’d joined their army.

  But, Jesus Christ, what army? Where was I? How did I get here? What enemy was this legion of children fighting?

  Questions, questions, questions.

  I burned to ask Mott searching questions about location, purpose, intent, where, what, why, whe
n.

  Only not yet. My father’s a TV journalist. I asked myself what he’d do in a situation like this. I could hear my dad’s voice inside my head: “Absorb what you see, smell, hear, taste, touch, first of all.” That’s what his advice would be; I’d heard him say that before. “And most important: Use your sixth sense. What does the situation FEEL like? What vibes are you picking up from the people? Digest the information. That information will equip you to ask precisely targeted questions.”

  I continued to follow Mott along the underground road.

  So lips sealed, Soldier. Despite what had happened, especially to Casie, I found myself smiling. Lips sealed, Soldier? Heck, I was even picking up Mott’s way of talking.

  “We head this way.” Mott pointed to a stairwell that rose up from the center of the road and through an opening in the concrete roof. “I’ll take you to the front-line forts. That’s where you’ll be spending most of your time.”

  Wait just there. Has anyone asked me if I even want to be a soldier? I decided that was an important question. Although it would be wisest to ask it later when I’d found out more facts about this place they called Bastion.

  At the top of the steps we followed a concrete-lined tunnel. There were fewer boys here. They seemed more businesslike. Jobs to be done, places to go, information to impart—that kind of riff.

  “I’ll show you the big guns,” Mott told me. “That’s just for fun, because you’re assigned to C Division. So you’ll be using Nitro Muskets.”

  “And you’re my boss?”

  “Division leader is my designation. Everyone still calls me Mott.” He smiled, “So you call me Mott…and if you find yourself with worries come and find me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. We all look out for one another.”

  A kid in glasses approached Mott. “You wanted to know if there was a rogue Fluke out on the Factory Floor.”

  “That’s right, Soldier.”

  “We’ve got one. It’s hanging around in sector 3A.”

  “That’s close enough.”

  “This is John, by the way.”

  “Pleased to meet you, John. I’m Tippi.”

  I shook hands with him.

  “Okay, no time to lose.” Mott spoke briskly. “John. We’ll go see the howitzers. You’ll love those. They are amaay-zing! Then we’ll hit the bunkers. Come on, Soldier, you’re in for an exciting day.”

  * * *

  —

  The big guns were breathtaking. The barrels were fatter than telegraph poles; they shone like they’d been coated in chrome. You could see your reflection in them.

  Mott explained, “This is one of the artillery places. There’s one in each cupola. And there are three cupolas. They sit on top of a concrete installation known as the casemate. In front of the casemate is a row of three concrete bunkers. These house the musket men. You will be one of those musket men, John Karroon. Understand?”

  I nodded. So far, I had an entire army of questions that urgently wanted to march out onto my tongue and deploy. Not yet, I told myself. Look, listen, stay silent. For now.

  “Good man.” Mott smiled. “You’re going to like it here. You’ll make good friends. The food’s brilliant, too. There’s a game of Takk Ball later. You’ll love that.”

  “How many people are there in Bastion?” That seemed an inoffensive question.

  “Three hundred and sixty.”

  “They’re all boys?”

  “That’s right, Soldier.”

  “Aged between eleven and sixteen?”

  “There’s only a dozen sixteen-year-olds. Everyone else is younger.”

  “And no adults at all?”

  “You like asking questions, don’t you? I’ll have to change your name from John to Question Hound.” He laughed as he slapped the breech of the howitzer. “You haven’t said anything about these yet.”

  “They’re awesome,” I said, and I truly meant it. Those guns radiated a silent strength (silent for now, that is). “When do you fire them?”

  “When there’s an attack.” He smiled again. “Don’t worry, you’ll get to see them working soon.”

  I gazed up at the high roof of the cupola. The inner walls curved. It was like standing beneath (and inside) a huge ball that had been cut in half. The muzzle of the gun protruded through a huge slot in the dome.

  “The entire structure rotates,” Mott told me. “We use these levers to elevate and depress the barrel. Gunners aim using that screen.” He pointed to a boxy, old-style TV that was bolted to a table by the door. “Shells are fed by the tube that comes up through the cupola floor. Below us are ammo stores.”

  “Why is the gun unmanned now?”

  “We have spotters in a nest on the casemate roof. There’s no need to be in here unless there’s shooting to be done, or we’re playing Takk Ball. Pow! You should see the ball ricochet off those curving walls. Anyway, I’ll show you the main control room, then we’ll go to the forward bunkers.”

  He led the way.

  The control room surprised me. “I’ve seen something like this in a war museum.”

  A couple guys sat before a bank of screens and telephones. They laughed at what I said, but looked at Mott for a lead. After all, he was in charge.

  “Yeah, in your science-fiction dreams, Soldier.” Mott slapped me on the back. “You have to watch out for John, guys, he’s a real joker.”

  “But this stuff looks so…so ancient.” I pointed at the clunky cube-shaped televisions piled on top of one another. They showed black-and-white images of rooms, including the interior of the cupola I’d just been in. “And those phones? Shit. Antique.”

  “Hey.” One of the kids sounded annoyed. He didn’t like me verbally trashing the electronic equipment that he was so proud of. “This is good kit. I’d like you to find better.”

  The phones were all bright colors—red, blue, green, yellow. They had the artificial hues of old-fashioned candy. Each phone had a numeric pad with big square buttons. In this room there was only one piece of hardware that even approached being anything like a computer terminal. In one corner, a table. On that table sat a monitor with green text on the screen. I noticed a QWERTY keyboard attached to it by a thick, curly cable.

  Mott gave me a hard stare, wondering if I wanted to make trouble. “This is good hardware,” he said. “We’re given the best.”

  “Where are your cellphones? Your laptops? Your tablets?”

  “Tablets?” echoed one of the control-room guys. “Hey, Mott, he must have a headache, he wants tablets.” The pair laughed. Mott, however, looked uneasy.

  “Tablets: as in electronic tablets.” I could feel my face turning hot. “You know, like fucking computers.”

  “Electronic tablets.” Mott frowned. “You mean like electronic pills and electronic medicine? There’s no such thing.”

  “No. Tablets are an electronic device. A computer that you can hold in your hand.”

  One of the kids laughed. “Try holding a computer in your hand and you’d rip your arm out of its socket.” He nodded at the screen in the corner. “That’s hooked up to a computer that weighs a half a ton.”

  I clenched my fist. My heart pounded in my chest. “Where are your cellphones, then?”

  “We don’t have phones to sell.” Mott pointed at the multicolored handsets. “We need all these telephones: We can’t go selling them.”

  “No! Cell with a C, not an S!”

  “Nutjob.” One of the guys gave a dismissive shake of the head, as though I wasn’t worth talking to, and returned to writing on a clipboard.

  “Who are you people?” I yelled. “What hell is this place? You’re the crazy ones living here, pretending to fight a war! Playing soldiers! And—and surrounding yoursel
f with shit out of a museum and pretending it’s brand-new.”

  Mott barked at the guy at the table, “Give John a break, Tyler! He only got here yesterday. You know new conscripts are mixed up when they arrive.”

  Tyler pouted. “Sorry. Didn’t mean it.” But he looked as if he meant it.

  After that, we headed for the bunkers. These I remembered from before I picked up the gun and suffered what I’d been told was a blowout. The accident that gave me the microwaved Frankenstein face.

  There were those Nitro Muskets again. Each one neatly racked. From every one of those rifle-type weapons a red hose snaked down to a brass dome on the floor.

  “Before you pick one of these up”—Mott pointed at a Nitro Musket—“you’ve got to check that there’s no buildup of excess vapor in the tube, so kick the stud next to the link collar. See it there on the dome? Right where the pipe enters the collar? The stud releases excess vapor. If you do that, you won’t get zapped.”

  Those questions marched across my tongue again. Before I could ask one, though, the guy I’d seen earlier in the corridor raced in. He looked excited.

  “Mott! The Fluke’s moved into grid A4.”

  “That’s close enough for us.”

  “Fluke.” Cold shivers ran down my back. “That’s something bad, isn’t it?”

  “The baddest, Soldier.” Mott kicked the stud on the dome. There was a hiss of escaping gas. A frost appeared on the red hose. “Now we’re safe to pick up our weapon.” He eased the Nitro Musket from its rack.

  “You’re going to shoot it?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What, then?” My heart stated to accelerate.

  “We’re going to wait.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can get a good close look at what we’re fighting here.”

  My heart began to pound. I felt scared. I was wired, too. Mott’s eyes were gleaming, just as if we were going on some exciting adventure.

  I pointed at the slit in the concrete wall. “It’s out there?”