by Louise Cole
“No, Miss, no problem.”
“Good,” she said, taking in Mr. Portman with a cool glance. “Then can you please keep your voices down in the library?”
We muttered apologies at her back, and then I continued in a hiss. “Take it all and go away. Leave me alone. Is that clear enough for you?”
He pursed his lips. “Sure. I can leave you alone.”
“Good.”
“There’s only one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“They won’t. Ever.” And he left.
I slumped against the shelves, my knees and arms loose as a dropped puppet. My head filled with images and noise, and I couldn’t see straight. I sank down to the floor. Shards of glass and running and flames and the sound of my heart and my mother’s face—and none of it mattered. The only thing I saw with clarity, the one thing with meaning, was what Mr. Portman had said. They wouldn’t stop until I was dead.
***
Jace stepped into an empty classroom. He kept the door ajar so he could still see the library. He tapped the screen on his cell phone.
“Ella? It’s all happening faster than we thought. Richie and Miles need a clean-up crew.”
“It’s already taken care of.”
“And the safe house?”
“Sorted. I’ll send you the location.”
“Is it secure?”
“Miles has set a perimeter. I have to assume he knows what he’s doing.”
“He does.” Jace leaned his forehead against the doorjamb, still watching the library. “I’m going to need you later.”
“I thought you were bringing her in.”
“I screwed up. They tried to take her last night. She really doesn’t like me much at all.”
Ella laughed. “Hasn’t fallen for the Portman charm, huh? Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. I’m still at Heathrow, though. See you this evening?”
“Sure. I’ll stick close to her until then.” Jace slid the phone back in his pocket and saw Callie emerge from the library, headed for class. He prayed he could keep her alive until the evening.
***
The local butcher was a big man, broad in the shoulders and good with knives. He wasn’t used to fear, but now, as he dumped a five-kilo load of fresh mince into the chill trays at the front of his shop, he felt it. It crept up his legs, loosening his knees and numbing his skin. He listened but couldn’t hear anything. He dropped the tray and picked up his boning knife, edging toward the prep room and freezer. As he neared the door, he dropped the boning knife and swapped it for a cleaver. The cold pressed on his skin like a wet cloth. In the back he heard the slow thud of the freezer door, and his feet rooted to the tile. A small burst of urine shocked his thigh with heat, and he saw the cleaver tremble in his hand, the square blade sending shimmers of light across the wall.
Bastards were stealing his meat, but he couldn’t move. He could see them trooping through the prep room. They made no attempt to hide. Tatty clothes and weird white eyes. And him too scared to move.
The dry burn of his throat and the hollow thud of the door brought back a memory he had long since banished of his father accidentally slamming the freezer shut behind him, leaving his young son trapped amid the half-frozen carcasses, their severed necks grinning at him, while his fingers went blue, and his breath sawed through his chest like one of dad’s knives. It had only been minutes before they pulled him out, but he had been so sure he would die alone, his screams muffled by the greedy dead air.
So he stood there now, paralyzed by memory, until the door thudded again and the back entrance slammed. When his heart once again slowed and feeling came back to his toes, he dropped the cleaver onto the tiled floor and sank down next to it, weeping for the first time since he was a boy.
***
Biology was a bust again, so we were herded back into the library for an independent study period. Like anyone was going to get any work done.
“I mean, what’s the point in learning about the human body now?” asked Jason Shackley. He was one of those tall boys who’d looked eighteen as soon as he’d hit puberty. He had strong blunt features and perpetually narrowed eyes. “All we need to know is how to put someone down fast and for good.”
“I hear that,” crowed Marcus. They high-fived across the desk.
“How can you be so flippant about it?” snapped Amy. She was a mousey girl usually. As she flashed them a look of pure disgust, lip curled, I realized there were lots of people I didn’t know well. Not well enough to know who they really were, deep down. “You’re talking about killing people like it’s one of your stupid X-Box games,” she continued.
“Oh, lighten up,” said Jason. “Every generation of men needs to go to war, my dad said. He missed out, but his dad went and his granddad. Forget all your political correctness crap—this is what men are born for. Honor, glory, and the protection of pretty little girls too weak to hold a rifle.”
Gavin rolled his eyes. “Give it a rest, Shackley.”
Jason loomed over the table, right into Gavin’s face. “What’s your problem, Davis? Oh right, I forgot. Cowardice.” He spat the last word like a curse.
Gavin pushed his chair back and looked at Jason mildly. “I’m not a coward. I’m a conscientious objector.”
“You are a worm, man, a frickin’ worm. Leaving other people to fight for your freedom for you.” Jason shoved the table hard, and it hit Gavin across the thighs. I winced in sympathy and not only because I had plenty of bruises of my own from the past two days. Jason Shackley would never understand a mind like Gavin’s. Gavin thought about stuff—I mean really thought about it. Asked questions and tried to find the answers.
“Leave him alone. He has the right to say he won’t fight. We all do!” Amy yelled.
“What would happen if we all did that, eh?” Marcus snarled. “Hid like girls in some office and let the nutters overrun us?”
I heard Alec and his girlfriend Jessica laughing from a nearby table. Tossers.
I bit my lip. My heart bled for Gavin, but I knew the last thing he wanted right now was to be defended by a girl, even as I was grateful to Amy for trying.
Gavin packed up his bag and started for the door. Jason skidded over the table in pursuit. The table legs screeched against the tiles like a wounded animal.
“I’m talking to you, asshole. This is one fight you can’t run away from.” He shoved Gavin, slamming him into the stacks. A hail of books pounded into the floor.
He was going to get hurt.
“Stop it,” I said, putting myself between them. “Have you any idea how much courage it takes to do what he’s doing?” I asked Jason. “You have to answer to endless committees and convince them you really have a moral objection to fighting. If you can’t convince them, you go to prison.”
“You should be in prison,” he said to Gavin. “Or in front of a firing squad.” He mimed taking aim with a rifle and blowing Gavin away. “Selfish bastard.” Jason pushed me out of the way, but I caught hold of his jacket.
“Jason, stop!” I knotted my hand in the fabric. “None of us wants this, all right? I couldn’t be a conscientious objector because I don’t know if I honestly think killing people who are trying to kill you is wrong. And you couldn’t be one because you’re a thug, and no one would believe that violence doesn’t come naturally to you. Gavin’s different. OK? He’s not better or worse, he’s just different.”
That was a damned lie. Gavin was ten times the man Jason Shackley would ever be. Or Alec, for that matter, I thought furiously.
Jason shook me off like a dog shaking a rat. “Stay out of my way, Davis. You won’t always have your posse of girlfriends to protect you, faggot.”
He stormed out of the library, Marcus barging into Gavin as he followed.
“You all right?” Gavin gave me a weak smile.
“Fine,” I said, brushing down my jacket to hide the fact that my hands were shaking.
“Chavs,” said Amy. “An original thought woul
d make their brains explode.”
Gavin sat back down but made no move to get out his books. I perched on a chair nearby and toyed with a clasp on my rucksack.
“He’s right. I am scared,” Gavin said into the heavy silence.
“We all are,” I whispered.
“Yeah but . . . I’m not scared of fighting. I’m scared of prison. I can’t . . .” He broke off, a catch in his throat.
“You can’t join up?” Amy asked.
He shook his head. “It’s not just my beliefs. It’s my Mum. I’m all she has, and I know I’ll have to go away, but . . . but if I let them change me into someone I’m not . . .”
“She’ll have lost you forever,” I murmured. I sighed. “I think we’re all going to change, Gavin. It’s coming for us, whether we like it or not.”
***
Amber and I didn’t get a chance to talk privately until the end of the day as we waited in the car park for her mother.
“Did you tell him?”
“Who, Mr. Portman? Yes.”
“And? How did it go?”
“Not well.”
Amber shook her head. “This is all way too Twilight Zone for my liking. You need out.”
“Hey, Amb, can I get a lift?” Gavin sauntered over. “The fields are like knee-deep in water again.”
Gavin’s arrival spared me from answering Amber, which was lucky, as I had no clue what the Twilight Zone was. I loved Amber but her obsession with ancient cult TV was wasted on me. I couldn’t keep up with current TV.
I suspected Gavin really didn’t want to risk meeting Jason on the way home, and I didn’t blame him. Jason scared me, too. I smiled at him and held my tongue. Amber nodded vaguely.
“Did you guys hear about the Marchbanks’ barn?” Gavin asked.
“We heard,” Amber and I said together.
“Did you see it? It must have gone up pretty much as you were walking home.”
Amber flushed like a May rose.
I made some vague, noncommittal noise. Lies turned to admissions of guilt in my mouth.
Amber caught my eye and turned her back on us, one bent leg jiggling impatiently. She clearly did not want to be talking about this.
I gave Gavin a brief smile. “Sally Wilks and her brother have gone to their grandmother in Sweden. They don’t have conscription there,” I said, changing the subject.
He shrugged. “Nice to have the option, I guess. I have no handy foreign relatives to run to.”
Amber scanned the traffic like she was about to hitchhike. “My mother was listening to a radio show about how young people are dealing with stress,” she said without turning around. “She asked me straight out, ‘Amber, tell me, are you binge drinking and having casual sex?’”
I snickered. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Every chance I get.’”
Gavin and I laughed until my stomach cramped. The tension had ratcheted up so high recently that it felt good to let it go for a moment. So good I hugged the feeling to me.
“What did you really say?” I asked, when I could speak.
“I told her we were all very sensible.” She slid a sideways look at me. “And that I spent all my free time with Callie, and she would never get involved with anything irresponsible or dangerous.”
It had just enough of an edge to feel like a dig, but she couldn’t be blaming me for last night. Could she? My smile died.
“Anyway, she seemed very relieved and went back to polishing off her bottle of Chardonnay.”
I tried for levity. “So you only love me ’cause I’m so boring your parents feel safe with me?”
“It is a major attraction, yes,” she quipped, but this time there was definitely something in the directness of her gaze. Concern. A warning.
The wind picked up and sent flurries down our collars, and we all huddled in silence for a moment, fiddling with zips and fasteners. When Gavin spoke, it was so quiet I almost missed it.
“I never thought it would happen to us. I mean I know it has before. To other people. But I always thought life would just be starting now. You know, college and jobs and love and . . . just life, you know. I always thought I’d get to do that stuff.”
Amber spun around. “You will,” she said fiercely. “All right? We all will.”
He smirked at her fierceness. “Well, if I can avoid dying and prison, I’ll drink to that, Amber.” He affected a silly posh accent, more Monty Python than Churchill but good enough. “We shall drink on the beaches. We shall drink on the landing grounds. We shall drink in the fields and the streets . . . and, in the meantime,” he said, sliding a brotherly arm around me and returning to his own voice, “we’re going to take every damn chance for happiness we can get. No taking life for granted.”
Mrs. Wentworth pulled up through the puddles, spraying us all lightly with mud.
“I second that,” I said. “No taking anything for granted.”
Chapter 4
The Seer rocked and crooned by the fire. Cyrus didn’t bother listening to the words. They would be the normal half-digested slurry, spewed from the Seer’s broken mind. He stared at the goose-pimpled skin, filthy and crusted. Cyrus had given up trying to clothe the old fool. As long as the cold doesn’t kill him, let him caper in his wisps of rag.
Most of the others clustered around the small fire they’d built in an oil drum. Wulf as ever sat alone, too far away to be useful and too close to be ignored. Cyrus propped his heavy frame against the wall of the warehouse, his ivory gaze concealed behind dark glasses. Once he would have enjoyed the brightness of the spring sun, but it meant nothing to him now. It held no warmth. He tapped his fingers, drumming them against his thigh, faster and harder until his rage exploded. He punched the cement wall again and again.
“Tell me where she is!” he roared.
Two Cadaveri roused from the Seer’s side. “We are looking, Cyrus, we are looking. We have found her twice. We will find her again.”
“You are sure she is the Reader?”
“We found her at the club by chance. We were following the agent. He was carrying the book.”
“He protected her, got her away,” said the other. “It’s possible he has given her the book already.”
“Then she’ll be guarded.” Cyrus suppressed a surge of frustration. They were always two steps behind.
“We had three watching the school. They were killed last night. We think they must have pursued the Reader across the fields.”
“How do you know she was there?”
“We felt it. A brief burst of the music.”
“Powerful?”
The creature grimaced, his face like overworked clay. “It cut like a knife.”
Cyrus let out his breath heavily, like it was a physical weight he could put down. “What about the Seer?” He gestured toward the sole creature still squatting by the fire. “If you could feel it, surely he could.”
One of the creatures grimaced. “This constant listening has ruined his mind. Half of what he says is gibberish. Until she begins to read again, we are blind.”
“A blind Seer. Whatever shall we do?” Wulf gave a mirthless laugh. “Why do we call him a Seer anyway? He doesn’t see—he listens. This is what comes of mixing metaphors.”
Cyrus’s lip curled. He despised Wulf’s sardonic nihilism. Something had to matter.
“Would you like to lead now, Wulf?” he snarled. “Do you actually have anything to contribute?”
Wulf shrugged. “Only that we are wasting time with this crap. We know her school. Let’s walk in, find where she lives from their records, and kill her.” He lay back on the dirt as though sunbathing. “And no, I have no desire to lead anyone. I’m just along for the ride, old man.”
“If we stormed the school, we’d be exposed. We’d cause chaos there. Then every policeman would be out in force hunting us down,” said Cyrus.
“Yes, we’d cause chaos. They’d kill more of their own than they would us,” said Wulf.
&
nbsp; Cyrus hesitated. They could use their influence. If they were close enough to people or in sufficient numbers, they could send the whole population spiraling into a vortex of their greatest fears. For half a breath he was tempted, and then he dismissed it. The Cadaveri were no warriors, and he had fewer than thirty in his camp. He did not know how many were left in the world, but he doubted they numbered more than a few hundred. Not after all this time.
Nasty, brutal, and usually short: that was the Cadaveri life. Only the strongest survived what had been done to them and the lives they must endure. Cyrus closed his eyes. This was their one chance for vengeance. For protection. Maybe, if such a thing existed, for forgiveness. For more than ten years they had all survived as best they could, staying out of sight, scavenging from trash. No Cadaveri who spent too much time in the open survived long. Most people who encountered them would flee, thinking themselves disgusted by the dirt or embarrassed that their instinct was not to help. In fact they fled the emotional waste that seeped from the Cadaveri like sweat on a hot day. But sooner or later there would be one who reacted differently. Who enjoyed kicking the beggar. Who would end it all with a well-aimed brick or a boot to the head.
Hiding in the margins of life may be slow and boring but Cyrus knew it was the only way for them to stay safe. If the Cadaveri attracted the attention of the police or the Army, Cyrus didn’t think his little group would live long enough to achieve anything.
Besides, Cyrus would not be a monster. Something has to matter.
Wulf’s voice pulled him back. “Go to the school at night.”
“Oh, so you can hack into computers, can you?” said Cyrus. “Get real. They’d blow up as soon as you touched them. We would have to attack during the day, and it would be folly.”
“It would be funny. We could watch all those bright young things dash their own brains out rather than face the coming dark.” Wulf smirked. “And it would be a quicker way of finding the girl.”
Cyrus curled his fingers into fists. “The other students are innocents. We have no need to hurt those who do not deserve it.” Something has to matter.