As the tired lads stripped off and crashed on to their mattresses, two of the oldest – Sam and Ed – switched on a large but decrepit TV and put on a DVD. James was expecting worthy Christian entertainment and was pleasantly surprised when the title music of The Exorcist came on. He’d seen the movie during a horror marathon at the CHERUB summer hostel and realised why it was being shown as soon as he remembered the plot: what better way to influence the minds of young Survivors than by sending them off to sleep on a movie about a girl possessed by the devil?
James’ mattress was next to Paul’s, almost touching. Twenty minutes into the movie a younger boy crept into the space between them and Paul slid an arm around his back.
‘This is my brother, Rick,’ Paul explained in a whisper.
James gave the youngster a smile. Within a few minutes Rick’s eyes were sagging and he’d started drifting off to sleep. Paul gently flicked his ear to wake him up.
‘Keep your eyes open,’ Paul said firmly. ‘Do you want to get the test?’
James didn’t ask, but he could tell from the look on Rick’s face that the test was something worth being woken up to avoid.
By the end of the movie, even the older boys were struggling to stay awake. When the closing titles began scrolling, Sam and Ed flicked on the lights. They were the biggest dudes in the room and they looked full of themselves as they glanced around at the kids lying on the mattresses. Staying awake had been too much for a couple of the younger boys.
‘I think we’ll take Martin,’ Sam said.
The pair closed on a scrawny nine-year-old a few mattresses along from James. He was curled up on his pillow, wearing nothing but red underpants.
‘Test time,’ the lads shouted as they shook him awake.
Martin woke with a start and scrambled up his bed, away from grabbing hands. ‘Noooooo, please.’
‘Why did you fall asleep?’ Ed asked, as he dragged the unfortunate kid off his bed. ‘You know you have to watch the movie.’
Sam smiled wickedly. ‘Now you’ve got to go out on your own and face the Devil.’
‘Are you really an angel? Only an angel can survive the night out there alone.’
‘If the Devil sniffs weakness he’ll get you, you’ll spend the whole night in agony.’
‘Don’t make me,’ Martin bawled desperately.
Sam slid open a glass door, while his partner dragged the gangly youngster across the floor and shoved him outside on to the roof terrace. Martin screamed as he clambered to his feet and banged on the glass door, begging to get back inside.
‘Sleep tight,’ the lads said in unison as they laughed.
As Martin gave up banging on the glass and slumped into the gravel with his bare back pressed against the glass, Sam noticed a glistening streak across the floor.
‘Oh man,’ Sam giggled, before kicking the glass behind his sobbing victim. ‘You pissed your pants, you dirty boy.’
Ed grabbed the pillow off Martin’s bed and used it as a foot rag. ‘Don’t worry, mate, we’ve found something to wipe up with.’
Most of the older lads in the room were smiling, but the little guys looked scared. Sam and Ed were nothing special and James reckoned he could easily have battered them, but getting in a fight now might ruin his chances of being accepted into the Survivor boarding school.
James felt bad as he looked at Rick’s tense fingers digging into Paul’s shoulder. The Survivors closely controlled everyone’s lives and James didn’t see how this bullying ritual could have become established without people in high places turning a blind eye.
Once the lights went out, Rick scrambled back to his own mattress. James pulled his duvet over his head and tried to block out the muffled sobs of the petrified boy sitting out on the balcony.
*
Martin was allowed inside at sun-up. His skin was puckered from a night curled up on gravel, but the Devil seemed to have left him alone.
James’ Sunday started with five brisk laps around the mall parking lot and a cool shower. Breakfast was honey puff cereal and orange juice, which set up a little sugar rush for the twenty minutes of chanting and singing that followed. At the end of this carefully designed emotional tune-up, James found that he’d shaken off his tiredness and was feeling alert and fairly happy.
But he didn’t need any of Miriam’s thought-control techniques to douse his spirits. The prospect of another four-hour shift as a picker was enough. He smiled at Paul as they crossed the road between the mall and the warehouse.
‘Each book is a brick for the Ark.’
Paul smiled half heartedly. ‘Elliot would be proud of you.’
As soon as they entered the warehouse, the foreman looked at James. ‘Are you Prince?’
James nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘I just got a call. You’re due over at administration for an induction test.’
James smiled at Paul, well pleased to get out of the warehouse. He headed back to the mall and an open-plan office inside a shop unit on the ground floor. There were a dozen paper-strewn desks, but nobody was working at them.
James spent a couple of seconds thinking he’d come to the wrong place, until a head bobbed up behind one of the cloth-covered partitions. It was Judith, a fit-looking woman in her early twenties who worked as Elliot’s assistant. As he walked to the back of the room James passed by Lauren and Dana, who both sat at desks scribbling away on a photocopied question paper.
‘I didn’t realise there were three of you,’ Judith explained, as she handed James a paper: Survivor Aptitude Test – Ages 13–15. ‘I should have called you at breakfast. You’ve got two hours, starting as soon as you sit down.’
Judith pointed him to a desk near the front of the room, a good ten metres from Lauren and Dana. The space was already set up with a couple of sharpened pencils and an eraser. James sat in an office chair and flicked through the pages. It looked like a reassuringly straightforward mixture of maths, spelling, a short creative story and an IQ test.
21. PASSION
James Prince was supposed to be withdrawn and decently behaved, but James Adams hadn’t found any time for homework during his hectic weekend and got ratty when his Geography teacher demanded it on Monday morning. He earned a thirty-minute detention for his trouble.
After detention he headed to the deserted bike shed and rode to the North Park care home at breakneck speed, nearly getting on the wrong end of a Mazda when he charged an amber light.
Slightly shaken, James moodily wheeled his bike through the care home’s reception, exchanging nods with the cute-looking nurse at the counter, before pushing the bike into a storage cupboard. He was surprised to see two bikes beside Eve’s. He changed his sweaty school top for a fresh T-shirt and hurried back to reception.
‘Have you seen Eve, or noticed where Elliot left my trolley?’ he asked.
The nurse pointed down a corridor into the section of the home where the residents Eve visited lived. ‘I didn’t think you were coming when I saw the other two lads.’
‘What other two?’ James asked.
The receptionist shrugged. ‘I don’t know who they are, but they’re all down there.’
James jogged along a hundred metres of corridor, passing by his trolley on the way. He could have just grabbed it and got on with visiting his residents, but he wanted to ask Eve why she’d been blanking him all weekend and find out who the others were.
Part of the answer came when Paul stepped out of a room. Eve followed him with her trolley and last came Terry – the boy in James’ class whom he’d seen sitting reluctantly in the corner of the Survivor gymnasium a couple of times.
‘Ah, you made it,’ Eve said brightly. ‘You know Terry, don’t you? He’s volunteered to help out with our charitable work.’
‘Cool,’ James said. ‘So what’s the score with these two being here?’
Eve smiled. ‘I’m introducing Paul to my patients. He’ll be taking over my job here from tomorrow. Terry and I will be going off to start do
ing rounds at another care facility. The Survivors have never worked there before and we’re all terrifically excited about the opportunity.’
‘Oh,’ James said, unable to cover his disappointment.
‘Is there a problem?’ Eve asked.
‘S’pose not,’ he shrugged.
Eve smiled sweetly at Paul and Terry. ‘You boys have seen me go through the patter a few times. Why don’t the two of you take the trolley into the next room, while I have a word with James?’
Paul nodded, as Terry turned around and knocked on a door.
Eve’s expression stiffened as Paul and Terry stepped into the adjacent room. ‘What’s the matter, James?’
James rested his palm against the wall and shrugged. ‘I dunno, I just expected you to be there when I arrived on Saturday. Then when you spoke to me in the afternoon you made me feel like I was the shit on your shoe. Now you’re not gonna be coming here any more. What did I do that’s made you mad?’
‘You haven’t made me mad,’ Eve smiled. ‘I wanted to help make you an angel, James. Now Terry has been through some difficult one-to-one counselling sessions and I’m trying to help him.’
‘But you can still say hello to me can’t you? We can still speak to each other?’
‘James, now you’re an angel it’s not really appropriate for us to be close.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we’re old enough to be attracted to one another, but we’re not old enough to be married. It’s a combination that only leads to trouble.’
James shook his head. ‘I’m not asking to marry you, Eve. I’d just like the odd conversation.’
‘The Survivors keep teenagers separate until they’re old enough to marry.’
‘But we spent hours playing volleyball and stuff.’
Eve smiled. ‘You weren’t an angel then, James. I was helping you, the same as I’m now helping Terry.’
James was hurt. He knew Eve had been stringing him along to get him to join the cult, but at the same time he’d imagined that there was a bedrock of real friendship between them. James couldn’t make a move himself because of the mission, but he’d harboured hopes that they’d end up snogging or something.
‘Maybe I should speak to Elliot about this,’ Eve said. ‘Perhaps you should talk to one of our counsellors about our beliefs on the sanctity of marriage.’
‘No,’ James gasped, letting his anger show. ‘Can’t we have a normal conversation without you reporting every detail to Elliot?’
‘Ruth and I saw you and Lauren eating ice-cream in the park on Saturday and your collection tins were very light,’ Eve said acidly. ‘We didn’t report that. You would have been in serious trouble with Elliot if we had.’
James couldn’t believe that Eve had spied on them. He felt used; he was jealous of Terry and would have loved to wipe the grin off Eve’s manipulative little face. But Terry and Paul were coming out of the room. Eve started smiling again and James remembered that the important thing was the mission, not his crumpled ego.
‘Try and be extra nice to Terry,’ Eve said quietly, to James. ‘He really needs our love and support right now.’
James smothered his emotions and nodded curtly. ‘I’m sorry, Eve, I was confused. I’ve still got so much to learn.’
‘So,’ Eve beamed, raising her voice and looking at Terry, ‘how did it go?’
‘Great,’ Terry smiled. ‘She only bought peppermints, but she was really friendly.’
Eve hooked her arms around Terry and rubbed his back as she hugged him. ‘You’re going to be so great at this, Terry. I can always tell.’
‘Yeah,’ Paul added. ‘Congratulations on your first sale.’
It looked daft from James’ detached viewpoint, but the once reticent Terry smiled and gobbled up the compliments.
As Eve knocked on the door of the next room, James headed off to get his trolley and start his round. He began at the far end of the corridor, which made Emily his second call. James held up a large bottle of vodka as he entered her room.
‘Hi there. This comes as a freebie, compliments of Elliot.’
‘Cheers, handsome,’ Emily said. She was in bed and didn’t have her usual colour. ‘Could you prop up my pillows please?’
‘What’s the matter?’ James asked, as he stepped up to the bed. Emily leaned forwards and James plumped her pillows before setting them straight behind her back.
‘Just my usual tummy trouble,’ Emily smiled. ‘Back and forth to the loo all day. I know it sounds daft, but when you get to my age that’s enough to sap your strength.’
James put the vodka on Emily’s bedside table, where he noticed another bunch of Survivor leaflets and tapes.
‘Is there anything you’d like me to do? I can have a word with the nurse if you want something for your stomach.’
Emily smiled. ‘No point, nothing ever works. Can you mix the vodka for me? My hands are shaking.’
James grabbed the bottle and twisted off the metal cap, then grabbed a tall plastic jug that held a litre of fluid.
‘Say when,’ James said, as the vodka glugged into the jug.
Emily usually spoke when it was about a third full, but James was nearly at the halfway mark when he stopped.
‘Did I say when?’ Emily asked. Her voice was sharp, but James didn’t take offence because that was just her way.
‘Are you sure you want it mixed this strong when your stomach is playing up?’
Emily smiled. ‘Don’t be lily-livered, handsome. Vodka’s good for the stomach.’
‘Is that a fact?’ James grinned, as he reluctantly splashed a drop more into the jug.
Emily had a tiny fridge in her room. James grabbed a rack of ice cubes and cracked them into the jug before topping it off with milk and brown sugar. He stirred the mixture with a long plastic spoon before pouring the first glass into a tumbler.
‘You make them so good,’ Emily said, as she downed two thirds of the tumbler in one smooth gulp. ‘Top me up.’
The ice in the jug rattled as James refilled the tumbler. He stepped back to his trolley. ‘I’d better be going, Emily. I copped a detention and I’m running so late.’
‘I know you’re busy,’ the old lady said, ‘but can I please ask you one thing?’
James glanced at his watch. ‘I guess.’
‘Elliot was here today.’
‘He’s here a lot,’ James said.
Emily smiled. ‘He’s after my money.’
James acted surprised, though he’d already guessed that this was the motive behind Elliot’s interest in the elderly residents.
‘No offence, handsome. I know you’re a Survivor, but I’ve listened to some of the CDs and I’m not buying Mr Regan and his angels and devils.’
James wanted to say good for you, but there’d be trouble if it got back to Elliot, so he kept his trap shut.
‘I’m not as wealthy as I was, but there’s still going to be a few bucks sloshing around when I go toes up. All I’ve got is my son and money only brings out the worst in him. I’d really like everything to go to a good cause when I die.’
‘Haven’t you got grandkids?’ James asked.
Emily shook her head sadly. ‘Though to be honest, I don’t reckon my Ronnie would have made much of a father. He’s got a ferocious temper on him.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘So I was thinking about the Survivor charities,’ Emily said. ‘I don’t want them wasting it building that daft Ark in the outback, but Elliot was talking about the Survivor Development Foundation. He says it helps the people in third-world countries. I could change my will and leave my money to them. Do you think that’s a good idea?’
James would have liked to tell Emily that there were far more worthy and efficient charities that helped out the world’s poor, but he had to think about the mission.
‘The Survivor charities do really great work,’ James smiled. ‘I’m sure hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people would benefit from your money �
�� not that you’ll be dying anytime soon, of course.’
‘Oh, I don’t think I’ll be hanging around much longer.’ Emily smiled as she reached out to touch James’ hand. ‘He’s a smooth talker that Elliot, but there’s a bit of a con-man beneath that corduroy jacket. That’s why I wanted to ask you, James. I reckon I can trust you.’
James managed a guilty smile. ‘How do you figure that?’
‘Because you’re a nice boy. You’ve got an honest face.’
‘Right …’ James said as he backed his trolley out into the corridor. ‘I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. Hopefully you’ll feel better, provided you don’t go too mad with the booze.’
James felt like absolute slime. As her door clunked shut, he slumped backwards against the wall and bunched his fists tight with frustration. James knew he wasn’t a perfect human being. He was impulsive, usually in some kind of trouble and prone to lashing out, but he didn’t think he’d ever be able to sit in a room and rip off a fragile old woman the way Elliot had done.
22. RONNIE
Four weeks later
From: John Jones [[email protected]]
Sent: 23 Mar 2006 08:51
To: Dr Terence McAfferty
Copy: Zara Asker, Dennis King
Subject: Survivors Mission
Dear all,
With regard to your recent e-mails, I’m afraid there continues to be little progress in our mission to infiltrate the Survivors’ Ark. It has now been nearly a month since James, Dana and Lauren moved into the commune and took the aptitude test.
The extremely strict rules on personal property inside the commune make it difficult to contact Abigail and the three cherubs on a regular basis. Mobile phones would easily be spotted, though ASIS technical support teams are looking into providing small radio transmitters that can be hidden under the inner sole of a training shoe when not in use. We hope to have these devices in place within days.
CHERUB: Divine Madness Page 12