‘It seems the situation has changed, dear Hector. Dear old Frosty. You want your sister safe, then I need you to turn around and put your rifle up. Can you do that?’
Hector looked to Callie and then up to Silence, incomprehension written across his face. ‘What?’
Silence slowly stroked the knife blade up Callie’s neck to her chin, angled the blade the other way and then gently brought it back again. ‘I swear Hector, if you question me again, blood will run down your sister’s neck a second later. Now turn around and hold your rifle up. Now!’
Hector did as he was told, turning around as if he was being manipulated from inside a dream, and then trudging forward as if he were sleepwalking. He pulled the rifle back up, rested the butt into his shoulder and then stepped back out onto the walkway.
Sam and Mia were still shouting to each other. Raizbeck was at the end of Mia’s rifle and Blarney was at her feet. The wide-open space between Hector and Sam suddenly seemed to grow and become a cavernous hole that had no base. Vertigo came at Hector in a great, all consuming surge and he started to teeter backwards, holding a hand out behind him, searching for something to grab onto. He found Callie. Silence and his sister were now right at his back.
‘The girl. Mia. Shoot her,’ Silence whispered. ‘The girl and the boy up there on the walkway, shoot them both. Now.’
‘What? I…I don’t…what?’
‘You say that to me again and your sister’s lifeless corpse is getting kicked over this railing. Shoot them. Both of them. Now!’
‘I can’t. I can’t do that.’
‘You’ve got ten seconds, Hector and then someone in this library is going to die. You have the power to decide who that is. One…’
‘No…’
‘Hector, please…’ Callie’s breathless words were cut off as Silence pulled down on her hair, and the hand holding the knife tensed again.
‘Two…three.’
‘Please…’
‘Four.’
Hector let out a scream and then fired off three wild shots down towards Mia. As he swung up and turned the rifle across the library, up to where Sam was, Hector’s weapon clicked empty.
As soon as Silence had come out onto the walkway and begun whispering the deadly instructions into Hector’s ear, his eyes had lifted upwards to Sam across the library and never left.
Sam…
Who are you?
Now, across the library, Sam was turning his attention down to them, the machine gun moving around in his hand, and as Silence and Sam met each other’s gaze, another fork of lightning suddenly seemed to explode inside Silence’s mind and through the radio static he heard his own scream and nothing else. Silence dropped the knife and staggered backwards, back down through the archway that gave onto the long line of books on English history. A second later, as Callie was starting to drag her brother back down the walkway, and on the ground floor Mia and Blarney were already making their escape, Silence fell to his knees and held his head, cradling it as if it were made of the most fragile glass.
The radio in his head had arrived at its station and now the truth that Silence had been searching for was shouting through his own distorted screaming.
Sam is the person who is going to kill you.
9
There was a single large cloud moving at a snail’s pace across the baby blue sky. It was all Raizbeck could see as he lay on the pavement outside the library. The Party Plod attending to the wound at his shoulder had treated it as best he could from their paltry supplies and was now trying to make small talk with his boss.
‘Need to get some more bandages and gauze for the next trip out. I will speak with Mann if you like and see what he can do. More water too if this damn heat is going to stay around. Though they say it might rain…’
‘Your voice is giving me a headache.’
The Party Plod looked away and mumbled something under his breath.
‘What’s that?’ Raizbeck snapped.
‘I was just saying…Aspirin, we’re going to need Aspirin too.’
‘Seriously…shut your trap, or I will have you shot.’ Raizbeck batted the man away and then shouted across to what was left of the patrol. ‘If he says anything to me again, someone shoot him.’
A few moments later and Raizbeck was hauling himself up, waving off offers of help from the patrol, and surveying the scene in front of the library. Only one truck remained from the pick-up, and only three members of the patrol. Technically five, if you counted the handless Davis, now lying spark out across the open tailgate of the truck, or if you included the young man now on his knees, staring up at the business end of Everett’s rifle. Raizbeck didn’t. Neither meant much to him any more – Davis couldn’t hold a rifle now and as for Tommy Bergan, he had ceased to mean anything to Raizbeck from the moment he let Mia Hennessey get the better of him. No one need know that Jack Raizbeck himself hadn’t fared any better. What the eye doesn’t see The Party get away with. That was pretty much his motto these days.
‘What do you want to do with him, boss?’ Everett asked. ‘You want to do it?’
‘Where the hell were you?’
‘Sorry, by the time I got to the library…’
‘Yeah, shut up.’
‘What do you want to do with him?’
Raizbeck chewed his bottom lip, thinking it over, and then found himself gazing up at several sets of gawping eyes looking at him from the back of the truck.
‘You see what happens when you betray The Party?’ Raizbeck barked at them. ‘We only ask loyalty. Loyalty and doing what is asked of you. Is that so grand a request? Are we being unreasonable?’
‘Please, Mr Raizbeck. I am loyal, you know I am,’ Tommy pleaded. ‘My father was and so am I.’
‘I never liked your father.’
‘He taught me about loyalty. Whatever you think of him. You must know that, Mr Raizbeck?’
‘You let her disarm you. A girl. You let her take your gun. A gun that was then used to shoot at our own people.’
‘You don’t understand. She’s…’
‘A girl? Yes, I think I do understand that.’
‘There’s something about her…something…’
‘Unnatural?’ It was Silence’s voice. He had exited the library as quietly as he had snuck in and now he stood at Raizbeck’s shoulder, hood up, his pale face hidden from sight. ‘Is that what you mean, Tommy?’
‘Yes. Yes!’
Raizbeck turned and spoke towards the shadowy features under the hood. ‘You’re sure? What you saw in the florist’s shop, you’re sure about it all?’
The hood moved up and down slowly but Silence said nothing. Raizbeck leaned closer, sure for the briefest of moments that Silence’s face wasn’t there at all. ‘And don’t think you and I aren’t having words either,’ Raizbeck said pointing a finger at the hood. ‘Don’t think you aren’t going to explain to me why you ordered that kid to shoot at her.’
‘I can tell you now…I can tell you all now.’
‘I want her alive!’
‘Want…need…that difference is everything.’
‘What is that cryptic mumbo-jumbo supposed to mean?’
‘It means you don’t know what you’re dealing with. You want her alive. But you need her dead, believe me.’
‘Am I supposed to be scared of her, is that what you are saying to me? I’m supposed to be frightened of an eighteen-year old girl?’
‘Yes.’
Silence crossed to where the patrol were gathered around Tommy, and the three men instantly moved apart for him and backed up to the truck, one by one, as if given a silent command. Silence took position behind Tommy as two pale hands slid out from deep within his coat. Tommy bowed his head and closed his eyes.
The thoughts were there even before he rested his hands on Tommy’s skull. They had been working slowly through Silence’s mind, back to their usual clear definition since the terrible truth about Sam had presented itself to him and those lightning blasts
had moved on. But now, moving his skeletal fingers through Tommy’s dark hair and then down to his cheeks, the images and thoughts, snatched words and colourful pictures, rolled effortlessly through his mind as if he were replaying a beloved home video. He heard it all. Saw it all. All but the one question that remained –
Why are you frightened of her?
He pushed it aside for the moment, and turned his attention to Sam, wanting to know more about this would-be assassin. Needing to know more. But before he could, a new thought suddenly came to him, something that was there before in the florist’s shop but hadn’t caught, and now, as it did, Silence smiled to himself and released his grip on Tommy.
‘I need this boy, let him be,’ Silence said into the air, not bothering to look to Raizbeck, knowing he didn’t need to. Everyone was staring. He knew it. Enjoyed it. ‘Find me some transport. Now.’
There were voices coming to him from far away but Silence chose not to listen.
‘I can’t believe I forgot it, Tommy.’ Silence leaned so far into Tommy’s face that the hood was almost covering them both. He let the words breathe into the young man’s ear as if they were a whole lot of sweet nothings. ‘You knew there was something dangerous about her. But you didn’t see the look in her eyes, did you? I did. I saw the look of lust. I saw that dreary, unaccountable, illogical crush that she carried against her better judgement. She denies it to herself, of course, but I know she desires you. It’s a beautiful thing, Tommy. If we can allow ourselves such beauty these days. Get up. You’ve suddenly become useful.’
THE GETAWAY
1
Getting out of the library was easy. Mia was expecting a Party stooge to leap out at them from around every corner. She imagined Raizbeck chasing them down or maybe that tall, weird looking man that Hector had charged after when he saw him with Callie. At the very least she expected their bolt from the back of the library to be met with gunshots from somewhere. None of that happened. The two Party shooters that she had slugged with her rifle butt were lying together in the middle of the road now, a neat bullet hole in each man’s forehead. The one who nosedived off the library roof was carelessly dumped on top of them.
‘The Party loves you,’ Sam muttered under his breath and chased the words with a laugh. He was walking across the road towards the truck, leading the rag-tag group on, Hector and Callie just behind him. Mia hadn’t expected any formal introductions, but even so she couldn’t help but marvel at how quickly Hector and Sam had found each other’s groove – not five minutes since each of them had been staring down the wrong end of a gun held in the other’s hands. Sure, Sam had missed and Hector had shot his last through her arm, but even so, finding trust, or compliance, or whatever the heck it was that was holding these two together now, it was something surely worth holding on to in this crazy country. Mia looked down at her arm and the new wound, neatly placed above the old. She was pretty sure the bullet had gone straight through, but even so she would need to tend to it soon. She would also need to tend to Hector. He was unnerved enough by her without fear of what she might do to him now he had wounded her.
The logo on the side of the truck read WADEMAN’S CARPETS (walk barefoot on little pieces of carpet heaven, they claimed somewhat grandly) and yanking open the back of the truck and climbing in, Hector and Callie collapsed onto a ready made bed of five undelivered rolls.
Mia and Blarney shoved themselves into the cab next to Sam, who was already sat in the driver’s seat and holding out a hand for the keys. Mia had told herself it wouldn’t start; that the battery would be flat or the truck would be out of petrol, that it was stupid of her to even consider the vehicle as a suitable way of making their getaway. There would be something wrong with the truck. Did she check for flat tyres? Sure, that would be it. The tyres would be flat.
The engine coughed and gurgled once and then roared into life. Sam checked the fuel gauge and nodded to himself and then to Mia, and then slowly fed the truck into gear and began to pull away. Blarney, his tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth, slumped down against Mia’s right leg with an old man sigh and a few minutes later was snoring loudly.
It was all too easy and that worried Mia. The hardest thing had been looking across at the young boy now expertly manoeuvring this carpet delivery truck through the deserted city streets, his feet barely reaching the pedals, his eyes only just cresting the steering wheel, and then trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
2
Sam seemed to know the streets, certainly more than Mia did, this stranger here in City 17 because of some impulsive instinct that hadn’t yet bothered to explain itself to her. Mia watched Sam from the other side of the cab. He had told her he was twelve and a half, but there was a definite strength to him, an adult strength that showed itself not just in the flexing muscles under his shirt but also in the slightly detached, emotionally cold ambivalence he seemed to carry on his face like a badge of warning. His mop of straw-coloured hair was still the hair of a child, but the face underneath it was something altogether different. Children grew up more quickly in this country nowadays, Mia guessed. Was she much different? Not so long ago she was flunking out of school, and pissing about with her mates during a summer that never seemed to end; those halcyon days where you wanted for nothing and nothing, yet, was wanted from you.
‘How many people have you killed, Sam?’
The young boy shrugged lightly and pursed his lips. ‘Nine, ten. Something like that. Why?’
And there was everything Mia feared and despised about this country wrapped up in one small three-letter word. It wasn’t how many Sam had had to kill – nine, ninety, or nine hundred – it was that little bit about him that couldn’t understand why it would matter to her. Why it would matter to anyone, least of all himself. He said his aunt called him a product of his time. Never had that sounded more true.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘What about you, Mia?’
There was no way she was ready for that conversation, that memory, and she regretted being stupid enough to broach the issue with him. What else was he going to ask her back? It was probably what all kids asked each other these days she thought. During that never ending summer of irresponsibility, all she and her friends had wanted to know was how many of them had got to first base with their latest crush.
Sam took the hint as soon as Mia looked away and started gazing dreamily from the window like a paid up coach trip tourist.
‘Why haven’t you asked me the obvious question, Sam?’ Mia asked, after several silent minutes.
‘What would that be?’
‘Why haven’t you asked why The Party are after me?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘Good point.’
‘More importantly, where are you people going?’
‘No idea.’
‘What were you doing in the city in the first place?’
‘No idea about that either.’ Mia stuck a thumb over her shoulder towards the back of the truck. ‘Those two were holed up in the library when I landed in their lives. Brother and sister. I guess they were just looking for somewhere safe to pitch their tent long enough to feel human again.’
Sam moved the truck out around a burnt out car and then took a wide turn down a side street, mounted the pavement briefly and then clipped the bumper of a van as he swung the truck back and straightened it sharply. There was a light thud from behind them, followed by muffled swearing from Hector.
They were now moving along the edge of a large park and both Mia and Sam found their attention being distracted by the huge and empty expanse of land. Browned and threadbare grass stretched as far back as either could see and the trees that still stood looked old and ugly, their gnarled, naked arms reaching beyond their withering bases as if they were asking for a comforting hug. There was an empty pond in the middle of one of the wider stretches of grass and to its side a ramshackle, children’s playground – swings, slides and roundabouts, most now falle
n to disrepair and waiting silently to break apart. A small girl in a pink coat and matching pink wellies was sat on one of the swings, idly rocking herself back as she rifled through a wallet in her hands. The girl plucked out a few notes and tossed them to the ground, a few photos and a driver’s licence followed. Finally, she found a small key and pocketed it, pulled up the hood on her coat and pushed back on the swing, holding tight to the rusting metal chain and kicking her legs up before her.
Mia and Sam both looked away, turning their attention to the road ahead.
‘Where do you want to go?’ Sam asked.
‘I don’t know. Where do you recommend?’
Sam laughed and moved the truck up a gear. ‘Well if it’s okay with you I’d like to get back to my car. It’s a heap of junk, but, y’know, we’ve got an understanding.’
‘Your aunt teach you how to drive?’
‘Yeah. We’ve got a lot of empty roads near us to practice on, she doesn’t like coming into the cities so much, so made sense to get me driving.’
‘Empty roads?’
‘Yeah. Very quiet. No one for miles.’
‘Sounds wonderful.’
Sam was aware of where the conversation was going. Mia could see him thinking of the right words to use, working out how best to say no to her without sounding like the bastard he knew it would make him.
‘I can’t, Mia…really…my aunt…’
‘She wouldn’t like us?’
‘No, no it’s not that at all. If you’re not paid up Party nutjobs then she pretty much likes anyone, it’s just…well, we really don’t have a lot of room, you see?’
‘Okay.’
‘Or food…’
‘Okay, Sam.’
‘I mean we are just about getting by, just me and her…if there were more of us, well we just don’t have the resources…’
‘Sam, it’s okay, really. You haven’t any need to explain.’
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