by Chris Ward
Benjamin stared. Definitely a dream. This had to be. It couldn’t have been anything else. He’d never known a dream to smell so putrid, though. As the creature moved toward them, it knocked aside some crumbling sections of the tunnel wall, and only as they fell did Benjamin realise people were down there, moving the rocks away, attempting to clear up the mess as the monster made it.
‘Who are they?’ he asked. ‘Why aren’t they helping us?’
‘They’re cleaners,’ Miranda said, and Benjamin remembered the sweeper in the Great Hall. ‘They won’t harm their own kind.’
Benjamin had no chance to ask what she meant. Mrs. Martin screamed, ‘Fire!’ and suddenly the thing in his hands hummed with motion, stinging his hands with its heat as a vague, mirage-like blur fired from its wide nozzle and slammed into the creature. The beast howled and tried to turn away, knocking down another section of tunnel wall in the process, but there wasn’t enough room for something of its size to escape. Benjamin stared as pieces of junk and litter peeled off of the creature’s body like shed layers of skin.
In barely five minutes, the destructive monster had been reduced to a heap of stinking—but immobile—rubbish. The machine in Benjamin’s hands switched itself off, and Mrs. Martin turned to them with a satisfied look on her face.
‘Thank you kindly. The cleaners will do what they’re supposed to, now that it’s no longer wandering about like a lost kitten. I’ll see to it that you get notes excusing you from class once we’re back up in the office.’
Miranda, at least, looked pleased about this. With her vanishing cannon switched off, she made imaginary grips and handholds with her fingers, as if still hopeful she could make the end of climbing class. As Mrs. Martin led them back upstairs, Benjamin thought it best to hold his questions for a while as he watched Miranda’s hair glowing like flame in the candlelight.
They returned the vanishing cannons to the cupboard with the unusual lock, but not before Mrs. Martin pulled from her pocket a canister of something and sprayed them with a liquid that smelt faintly of chamomile.
‘That should calm them down,’ she said, as if that made any sense.
After the arduous climb back up to the office, Benjamin wanted to rest more than anything, but as Mrs. Martin stamped two pieces of paper and handed them over, Miranda tugged his arm. ‘We have to hurry,’ she said.
‘Can we still make it to climbing class?’
‘Oh, no’—Miranda shook her head—‘we’ve missed that.’
‘So what are we late for now?’
She grinned. ‘Lunch.’
Benjamin nodded. At last, something worth a little urgency. As he let Miranda take his hand and pull him away, Mrs. Martin’s stern demand echoed in his ears:
‘Be sure to come back and complete your enrollment forms!’
He gave her a thumbs-up, but couldn’t bring himself to reply. He was too hungry, and the mystery of what this strange place might consider food was great enough to push, for now, all other questions out of his mind.
7
Captain Roche
‘Eventually you have to start telling me what’s going on,’ Benjamin said as Miranda pulled him along through corridors that alternated between old and new, cycling through stone, wood, and prefab plastic. ‘Isn’t that what prefects are for? Orientation and all that? I’ve been attacked by burrowing cars, chased by flocks of plastic bags, almost thrown off a bridge, and now I’ve helped to kill some giant monster made out of rubbish.’
She gave him an irritated look. ‘So what would you most like to know?’
He grinned. ‘What’s for lunch?’
Miranda squeezed his hand just too tightly for it to be affectionate. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said. ‘You really think I’d spoil the surprise?’
They passed under a couple of skylights that bathed them in two kinds of natural light, leaving them trailing twin shadows. Benjamin was reminded to ask Miranda about that when he got the chance.
‘We should be in time for our sitting,’ Miranda said, glancing down at the empty space on her wrist as if remembering the ghost of an old watch. ‘The third years are in front of us today, which is unfortunate. Most of them are on the rugby team. If there’s anything good, they’ll clean it out.’
They turned a corner to a familiar sound coming from up ahead, and the loneliness Benjamin had pushed aside chose that moment to reacquaint itself. He stopped in his tracks, his arm jerking as Miranda halted a couple of steps in front of him.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t you hungry? Quick, we’re going in, and we have to hurry up. Sometimes there’s broccoli but not always—’
Benjamin squinted to hide the tear in his eye. ‘I can hear voices,’ he said. ‘Kids queuing for lunch. It just takes me back, that’s all. Back to Basingstoke.’
‘It must be a wonderful place, Basingstoke,’ she said. ‘I try not to think about where I came from.’
‘Actually, it’s probably the most boring town on planet Earth,’ he said, forgetting himself as another tear made a run for it down his cheek. ‘But it is on planet Earth. That’s why I miss it.’
‘I bet school dinners here beat school dinners there.’ Miranda reached up and swiped the tear off of his face with an accuracy that was disturbing, yet comforting. ‘Come on, let’s go introduce you to some of the other kids. You’ll find we’re quite a mixed bag.’
She left him standing there, hurrying ahead with an urgency that suggested she was tiring of his company.
When Benjamin caught up with her again, she was pushing her way into the back of a small crowd of about twenty kids—a mixture of boys and girls of roughly the same age. Some looked completely normal, the same types of kids he might have queued with back home, while others possessed distinct traits in the same way Miranda’s crimson hair made her stand out. One wore bright green clothing. Another was completely, shiny bald. One girl had arms that didn’t look to be real arms.
‘Oi, look at the ragamuffin! Hey, bird’s nest! Lost your hairbrush?’
A collective cackle rose from the crowd as faces turned toward him. He saw the flaming peak of Miranda’s head in there, but she had turned away.
‘Someone couldn’t find the costume department!’
‘I guess they’re letting anyone in these days!’
‘I bet he washes his hair with scatlocks!’
Like most kids who were underweight, slightly peculiar, or at the wrong end of the popularity scale, Benjamin had been pushed around from time to time. He had quickly learned the bullying survival guide, though: walk away, ignore them, don’t react, and on most occasions the bully got bored and moved on to a more entertaining target. And if they didn’t, only one option remained. On his first day at Burnton Secondary, Lewis Black, a podgy boy with eyes too small for his face, had snatched a Robert Westall paperback out of Benjamin’s bag and waved it around like a trophy. Benjamin had thrown a wild haymaker, then rugby tackled him, but while Benjamin had received a minor black eye for his bravery and suffered the ignominy of a detention on his first day of school, on his second day, Lewis had nodded at him, aloof but respectful, before running off to terrorise some other poor kid and had bothered him no more after.
Sometimes, in order to establish a line of mutual respect, it was best to get a scrap out of the way.
‘Hey, dishcloth head!’
From the middle of the pack, a kid with curly, jet-black hair framing frighteningly green eyes that really didn’t belong in such a sour, spiteful face pushed his way back toward Benjamin.
‘What happened? Mummy forgot to wash up?’
The mention of his mother flicked an anger switch. As the sour-faced boy laughed, Benjamin launched himself forward, hands closing into fists. The crowd parted in disgusted groans, while scrabbling hands shoved his filthy body away, inadvertently directing him right into the path of his abuser.
His fist clumped into the sour-faced boy’s jaw. The boy yelped, then pushed Benjamin back into the crowd and came forw
ard, raising fists of his own. Startled by the vehemence of Benjamin’s attack and afraid of having whatever authority he enjoyed undermined, he looked ready to settle in for a long battle. Benjamin was wondering if making a run for it wasn’t a better idea, when a sudden hush fell over the crowd.
The kids froze. Hands fell against sides and they all turned in a silent salute. Benjamin, scrabbling on the floor among black socks and white sneakers, found himself on his hands and knees in front of a pair of massive combat-coloured hiking boots, easily a size thirteen or fourteen, with soles as long as his forearms.
‘What is going on here?’ boomed a voice like a grumbling tank engine. ‘You queue in an orderly fashion, or you don’t eat, either now or at dinnertime, and you get fifty cleans into the bargain. Is that quite clear?’ Before a single voice could pipe up, the speaker added, ‘Don’t you dare answer me.’
Benjamin, heart racing, slowly lifted his eyes. They traced their way up tree-trunk legs to a body nearly as wide as he was tall, over an unnaturally wide chest, up to a head that was so square it could have been a giant Lego brick.
The crew cut on the chiseled head that bent to meet his gaze was so flat it could have been used to play pitch-n-putt.
‘Benjamin Forrest, is that you? At long last. Where have you been? We were starting to think you’d rolled right over.’
With the newcomer’s defiant assertion still fresh in his mind, Benjamin just stared up at him, trying not to wilt beneath that unforgiving gaze.
‘You have permission to speak, boy. No one else does. Only you.’
‘I don’t know where I’ve been, sir.’
The man gave a slow nod. His face was so wide, it was impossible to look at both of his undersized black eyes simultaneously, and had he been from some distant planet where gravity was so strong it squeezed people into short, squat lumps, it would have made perfect sense.
‘Well, no need to worry about that now,’ he said, reaching down with a dinner-plate sized hand and lifting Benjamin up. ‘First of all, you need to eat. You can share the Captain’s table today. How lucky for you. And you can call me Roche. Captain Roche.’
Benjamin nodded. He wanted to glance back to see if Miranda was watching, but he was too afraid to look away from the captain’s over-wide face. Stubble shadow rose and fell on cheeks the size of Benjamin’s palms as the captain chewed on something anonymous.
‘The rest of you, snap to it. And Godfrey … you irritating punk, you’ve got the Captain’s Eye on you for the next week.’
Captain Roche jerked, one side of his face cocking, and something small and black fell out of his eye. Benjamin turned to follow its trajectory as it landed with a soft thud on the black-haired boy’s cheek. Godfrey’s eyes widened in terror, as the little black thing sprouted spider-like legs and scuttled up the side of his face, taking up a sentry position in the crutch of Godfrey’s ear. Muted gasps of shock and surprise came from the other boys, but not the outright screaming Benjamin would have expected. They had seen this happen before.
‘Remember, children, the war is not against each other,’ Captain Roche said, squinting on one side of his massive face. ‘Where’s Miranda Butterworth?’
A reluctant hand rose up from out of the group of terrified faces. ‘Here, sir.’
‘You were supposed to bring Master Forrest straight here. You were sidetracked. Did you go off to see your boyfriend again?’
Sniggers came, despite the captain’s seemingly unbreakable disciplinary rules. Forced resolute faces holding back smiles parted to let Miranda come forward.
‘Don’t lie to me, Miss Butterworth. Were you or were you not charged with collecting Master Forrest and bringing him straight here to Endinfinium High?’
The girl gave a short nod.
‘Then why didn’t you?’
‘I got … sidetracked.’
The captain let out a sigh that lasted almost fifteen seconds. Benjamin couldn’t be a hundred percent sure; he had only started counting after eight, but Captain Roche had to have lungs the size of tents.
‘You’ll spend a night in the lockers. Five hundred cleans.’
Misery flooded Miranda’s face. Her shoulders sagged, and she opened her mouth to protest, but Captain Roche shook his head. ‘And you’ll go there immediately. If you do not go by your own free will and confess to the sin keeper your reason for incarceration, I will have you escorted.’
The girl burst into a theatrical flood of tears and, glancing once at Benjamin, she stormed off the way they had come.
Captain Roche watched until she was out of sight, then gave a long shake of his huge head and turned to Benjamin, looking rather pleased with himself.
‘Now, young Master Forrest, welcome, at long last. I think it’s time we used that old teacher privilege of jumping the queue and went to get something to eat.’
8
Lunch
Vegetables.
Some he knew, others he didn’t. One bitter-tasting orange thing looked like a ring doughnut but had the consistency of an onion. Another looked exactly like a green banana but with soft, powdery gunk inside that, despite the appearance of icing sugar, tasted like gourd. In amongst such culinary surprises, though, he found simple potatoes and carrots, turnip and cauliflower, pumpkin and radishes.
After the normality of a dinner queue, Benjamin had expected a normal canteen service where he got to pick the items he wanted, but instead, a rotund woman wearing a mask pulled up over her nose and sunglasses covering her eyes dipped a large wooden bowl into a metal bucket of boiled, chopped vegetables, then dropped it without a word onto the tray Captain Roche had given him. A ladle added a scoop of a yellowy sauce which was sweet and resembled custard. For a drink, he had a tall wooden beaker of water.
The Dining Hall was a cozy, low-ceilinged, wooden room with trestle tables surrounding a central open fire flickering out of a granite cauldron. A vent in the ceiling’s wooden vaults allowed smoke to escape, and every now and then a fresh log would tumble out of a protruding chute to crash down into the flames, sending up a shower of sparks. A series of arched, wooden pillars with candles flickering in alcoves made it difficult to see anyone else in the gloom, while lending the Dining Hall an altogether romantic air that was awkwardly inappropriate. Benjamin, wondering why the place hadn’t burned to the ground years ago, sat opposite Captain Roche, who took up two seats—one hip perched on each chair—at a table in one corner with a RESERVED FOR STAFF sticker on the deeply varnished hardwood surface.
At the opposite end sat a couple of other teachers talking quietly over their food. Over the captain’s jutting headland of a shoulder, Benjamin had a view of both the entrance door from the serving room and the nearest table of pupils, on which two girls and four boys sat. One of them—Godfrey—glared at Benjamin between mouthfuls of food as though his personal space had suffered an invasion.
In some ways it felt good to have made an enemy; it gave the school more normality. In others, it made him a little nervous to have established an opposition before he had built up a circle of friends, particularly considering the only person who had seemed friendship-inclined now languished God-knew-where in some punishment cell.
‘We’re very glad to have you here with us,’ Captain Roche said around mouthfuls of food large enough to have suffocated a smaller man. ‘We’ve been expecting you for some time. You look like you need a chance to settle in, though, so I’ll make sure of it that you are excused from afternoon classes and are shown to your room. That fool girl Butterworth was supposed to have done that.’
Benjamin sensed the only way to get answers was to start small, and gradually build up to the more pressing questions.
‘What’s the Locker Room?’ he asked. ‘I’m worried that I got Miranda in trouble.’
‘That fool girl doesn’t need any help. Rest assured, she’ll be fine. The Locker Room will give her time to think. It’s her own fault; she shouldn’t have dithered about getting you over to the school. It can be peril
ous out there for newcomers. We’re hardly bursting at the seams here, are we?’
Captain Roche’s shirt looked as though it was, quite literally, bursting at the seams, but Benjamin felt it best not to mention it.
‘Miranda told me she had to … go to a class.’
‘Don’t be fooled by the colour of her hair. She’s a sneaky one, that girl. How’s the food?’
Benjamin shrugged. ‘It’s—’
‘Missing a couple of bangers? A decent slice of bacon?’ Captain Roche gave the kind of guffaw Benjamin associated with men in panama hats from old black-and-white movies. ‘Call it as you see it, lad. Don’t feel the need to hold back. Not like we can change anything about it, so you might as well say what you see.’
‘Is it the same every day?’
‘The same.’
‘No meat?’
‘No.’
‘Ever?’
‘Ever.’
‘Why not?’
Captain Roche speared a lump of carrot as if it were a deserter running for enemy lines. The fork clunked, embedding itself into the wooden bowl.
‘Because we don’t trust it. Meat doesn’t like to stay dead here in Endinfinium. Nothing much does. Hence the woodwork.’
‘The wood doesn’t come alive?’
‘Boy, where have you been? It’s already alive. It’s just not all that interested in causing trouble.’ When Benjamin frowned, Captain Roche pointed at the tabletop. ‘Go on, have a feel. It’s warm.’
Benjamin put down his fork and placed the flat of his palm onto the table. Captain Roche was right; it did feel slightly warm, but he assumed that was due to the proximity of the fire. Then, before he lifted his hand to resume eating, he felt a barely perceptible motion—like a tiny pulse.
‘Did it just move?’
The captain shook his head. ‘Not, it’s just breathing. It doesn’t move anywhere. Unlike a lot of things, it’s content to just sit there.’