The Vanished

by Sarah Dalton

  “You don’t know that for sure,” Hiro warned.

  What if this was all my body playing tricks on me and I wasn’t falling for him? Our relationship hadn’t even started and now I had more doubts, more worries, and more insecurities.

  Hiro nudged me and gestured towards Mike and Kitty. They were huddling over a small campfire waiting for the kettle to boil. Mike wrapped his arms around Kitty and squeezed her tight. “Whatever it is it works for them.”

  I had to see Daniel.

  *

  Cam let me through with a smile, telling me I didn’t look quite so “peeky”. I barged my way through groups of soldiers, not really caring about the looks they gave me. I just had to see him. I had to tell him about the others and about what Hiro told me.

  “Daniel,” I called out from the end of the ward. I don’t know why, it wasn’t as though he could get up and come to me. “I need to talk to you.”

  Angela was sat next to him with a mug in her hand. Ali must have sorted out clothes for her because she looked clean and changed. She wore a purple scarf wrapped around her hair, blue jeans and a white cotton top, long-sleeved like mine. I made my way past a few women panting and sweating in their labour, trying not to look. I was glad Daniel wasn’t in the delivery room.

  “He’s tired,” Angela said, standing up as I approached.

  “He can speak for himself.” I folded my arms and she copied me.

  “Angela, I can talk to Mina if I want to. I’m fine.” He looked better. He was propped up with cushions, wearing clean pyjamas, and there was more colour in his cheeks.

  “She doesn’t deserve to speak to you after running out like that,” Angela said with gritted teeth. “You don’t think of anyone but yourself,” she said to me.

  “That’s not true and you know it.” I tried to keep my voice gentle. She’d been through so much, watching her mum deteriorate into dementia and harbouring secret feelings for Daniel only then to watch him fall for me. I felt sorry for her.

  “Do I?” There were tears in her eyes.

  “Angela, don’t. I don’t want things to be like this.” I held out a hand to put on her shoulder, but she swatted it away.

  “You knew how I felt…” She began, but the tears took over and she ran out of the ward. The rotund nurse looked across and raised a disapproving eyebrow.

  “I should go after her.” I turned to leave, but Daniel reached across and grabbed my arm.

  “No,” he said, “I know it’s selfish but Angela can wait. I want to know what you came here to say first.” He flinched from the strain of holding my arm and I relented, moving closer to the hospital bed. My shoes squeaked with every step on the linoleum floor.

  “I’ve had the weirdest morning,” I started. “I found my dad and he wasn’t alone.”

  Daniel shuffled up in the bed so he could be closer to me. His hair seemed cleaner than a few hours ago. “What do you mean?”

  I relayed the story and Daniel listened with thoughtful eyes as I told him about the Freaks. I had to take a deep breath before I told him what Hiro worked out. “That feeling we’ve had since we came here, the one which makes us feel a home. That warm sensation in your stomach, like the one I feel when I’m with you.” My cheeks flushed with heat. “It’s not just you and me. It’s all of us. We all feel it about each other.”

  “Oh,” Daniel said. He stared straight ahead at the wall.

  “Do you realise that this means?”

  “We’re all connected?”

  I swallowed. “Yes. But also…” I struggled for words, the heat spreading down my neck. “The way we feel about each other… what if that isn’t? What if it’s because…?”

  “…of our genes,” he finished for me. “We’ve either evolved or mutated or been modified to be connected.”

  “What you said this morning,” I continued, not looking at him. “Maybe it’s because of who we are and what we can do. Maybe it isn’t… love.” I whispered the last word, somehow afraid of its power.

  Daniel exhaled in one long breath as though releasing all of his worries at the same time. Afterwards, he was more collected and turned to smile at me. “Does it matter?”

  “Well, yeah. I guess,” I said. “I want you to feel like that because of me, not because you have to. Don’t you?”

  “I still don’t know how you feel,” Daniel replied.

  I was silent.

  Daniel took my hand. “We’ll figure it out, Mina. We’re here now; we’ve found your dad and even found other people like us. We’ve got all the time in the world to sort this out. I promise.” He squeezed, and I was more reassured than ever.

  “You’re right,” I said, smiling. “And you need to concentrate on getting better. That’s the most important thing. When you’re better I’ll take you to see them, and we’ll talk about it then.” It was a relief to have at least some sort of a plan.

  “Wait a minute,” Daniel said. “What did you say the other powers were?”

  “Well, Hiro reads minds, he’s a telepath. Mike smells emotions – I don’t know what you call that.” I shuddered, thinking about the horrible things you can smell on people. “And Kitty tastes people.”

  Daniel looked thoughtful. “Mike is smell. Kitty is taste. Hiro is hearing. That makes me sight and you––”

  “––touch.” I finished. “Our powers are based on the five senses.”

  9

  I found Angela a few feet away from the gateway to the castle. She had a dirty tissue in her hand, and Cam was stood next to her rambling in his thick accent, trying to make her laugh. I noticed she cracked one smile before she saw me and then frowned.

  “I have nothing to say to you.” She narrowed her eyes.

  “We need to talk.” I grabbed her by the arm and led her away from Cam who shook his head in either exasperation or confusion. “We’re going to sort this out. We have to… for Daniel’s sake.”

  Angela pulled her arm away, but she didn’t run off. “Fine.”

  We found a spot under a large Chestnut tree on the way to the farm. It had taken us about ten minutes to walk there which we’d spent in silence. I adjusted myself under the tree, moving a stone from under my thigh. Angela sat with her arms hugging her knees, staring into the distance. She didn’t look at me.

  “I never meant to hurt you,” I said at last. “When we moved to Area 14 I didn’t know what to expect. My best friend in Area 10 wanted to turn me in, to tell everyone about my gift. I didn’t think I’d ever trust anyone again. And then I met you.” Angela twitched her head towards me. I carried on with a choke in my throat. “Despite everything I… trusted you. There’s this special… thing about you, Angela. I don’t know how to explain it but––”

  “There’s nothing special about me,” she snapped. “You’re the one with the stupid power.” She spoke the works with a mocking sneer. “You and Daniel. You bonded straight away because of your stupid powers.” She sniffed and wiped away a tear. “I’m just boring and normal. You don’t want me around anymore.”

  “You’re not boring or normal.” I sighed. “Do you know how much I would love to be more like you? To be able to make friends and not have to worry about secrets?”

  “Don’t you dare do that,” Angela said, her nostrils flaring. “Don’t you pretend that you’d rather be me because it isn’t true. You’d trade it all in to be with Daniel and you know it.” She dabbed her eyes with the tissue. “You know how I feel about him.”

  “I’m sorry.” I pulled stalks of grass out of the ground, crushing them between finger and thumb. “I don’t want us to fight. We’ve started a new life and I want us to be best friends like always.”

  “Do you love him back?” she asked.

  I floundered. “I… I don’t know how I feel. Not yet.”

  Angela’s back straightened and she thumped the ground with her fist. “You know what you are? You’re nothing but a little slut. You want everything and everyone on your terms. You meet Sebastian in the middle of
the night, and then, when you were bored of him, you wanted Daniel at your feet. I hate you. I hate you… you bitch.” She jumped to her feet and stormed away with her arms folded around her chest leaving me alone on the grass with my mouth hanging open.

  *

  It was funny how things could go from feeling so good to so miserable in such a short space of time. I had my dad back, and yes it was going to be a long road to forgiving him, but at least I had him back. I’d found people like me, people I was connected to, who could be my friends. I had Daniel. He was well and alive. I had Sebastian, someone who could be another good friend. I had Ali and Mary and the rest of the Scavengers, people I wanted to keep in my life. But I’d lost Angela; the girl who helped me and convinced me to be myself. Angela was my best friend in the entire world. She was the girl I wanted to take under my wing and treat like the little sister I’d always wanted. Would she ever forgive me?

  Before she met me, she had a mother who loved her and a huge crush on Daniel. Then I moved to town and took Daniel away from her, helped take her mum away and then forced her out of her home because of a mistake I made. If it wasn’t for me breaking into Mrs Murgatroyd’s home, she wouldn’t have needed to leave Area 14. No wonder she hated me. I sighed and leaned back under the tree with closed eyes, feeling the cool grass under my head and the soft breeze tickle at my nose. There was a pleasant floral smell in the air and I spread my fingers out in the grass, trying to block all of the worries out of my mind. No Enforcers. No Ministry. No Angela. Just the smell of wild flowers and the rustle of leaves above my head.

  As I began to relax, I noticed an eerie sound, something which was so ethereal that at first I thought I imagined it. It was the sound of voices and it drifted on the breeze as though it was the wind itself singing to me. I opened my eyes and sat up, realising that the voices I heard were not coming from the wind or my mind. They were people on the Compound.

  I stood and followed the direction of the singing. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Most of the music I’d heard was bubble-gum pop played on our screens, from London of course, or the soulful jazz my Father listened to in the basement. This was closer to the jazz, but while my dad’s music had an eerie melancholy to it this music gleamed with positivity.

  With each footstep the music soared in crescendo until my body began to respond. My chest constricted as the notes reached their highs. My fingers and toes tingled as I followed the sweet sound. It was coming from a paddock close to the farm, and I realised that it was the same place where I had noticed trailers parked in a curious circle a few hours ago. Inside the circle of the trailers people stood and swayed. They wore white robes with flowers in their hair. The early midday sun cast them in a halo of bright yellow as the sweet melody drew me nearer.

  “I wouldn’t get too close if I were ye.”

  I turned around to see Ali approaching. He strode towards me.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “The Children of the People,” Ali said, turning his head into the direction of the noise. “Ye don’t want te get mixed up wi’them. They’re… strange… te say the least. They live here, but they don’t really partake in anything – if you know what I mean. We leave them be and they leave us alone.”

  They smiled with pure happiness. The trailer doors opened and out ran dozens of children, tiny babies in the arms of teenagers, smiling young girls with their hair in braids holding the hands of small toddlers. They laughed and giggled in their floating white cotton tunics. They ran to the centre of the circle and joined in the singing, all except one girl, a little younger than Angela, perhaps about thirteen. She stood in the centre of the circle while the others sang towards her.

  Ali stopped and watched with me. The Children of the People threw flower garlands towards the girl.

  “What are they doing?” I said.

  “They’re celebrating her change to womanhood,” Ali said.

  My eyes opened in surprise. “You mean…?”

  “Yep,” Ali answered.

  My cheeks warmed, and I was certain my face had turned bright red.

  “That is so creepy,” I whispered.

  “Not te them,” Ali said. “They believe that pregnancy is sacred. They think that women are sacred.”

  We moved away from the Children of the People. I didn’t quite know what to make of them or their ideas, but their singing was beautiful.

  “What did you mean when you said they don’t partake in anything?” I asked Ali.

  “Everyone on the Compound gets given a job, or sometimes more than one, depending on where yer talents lie.”

  “What’s your job?”

  “I run a market stall for the things we bring back from the outside when I’m with the Scavengers,” he said. He stood with one leg jutted out and a hand on his hip, confidence overflowing. He wore tight jeans and a black shirt open at the neck. His boots were pointed and there were coloured beads wrapped around his wrists. I’d not noticed it in the morning but now I realised that he dressed unlike anyone I’d ever seen before. “I’m on my way to the farm if you want to come, might give you a feel of what goes on around here. I have some negotiating to do with the supplier there.”

  “Sure,” I said with a shrug. I should have gone back to my dad but I didn’t feel like seeing the people I’d run away from. I seemed to be doing a lot of running away in the Compound.

  “Did ye find yer dad?” Ali said to me, his voice softening.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “I thought so.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s written all over yer face, kid,” he said with a laugh. “Ye’d may as well have ‘troubled thoughts’ scrawled across yer forehead.”

  He ruffled my hair like I was a pet and then laughed at my frown. I folded my arms and scowled.

  “So, not over-the-moon te see the old man, eh?” he said.

  I shrugged. “I guess not.”

  “Not ready te talk about it either by the looks of things.” He stopped and put his hand on my arm, turning me to face him. I was going to have to get used to members of the opposite sex touching me like that. “Look, kid. I know ye’ve been through the mill over the last few weeks. I owe it te Matthew to keep ye safe while he’s not around, and I’m gonna do that fer him. Now, I’m not stupid. Ye dunnae want te let yeself trust another person who might leave ye or get taken away or whatever, so I know it’d take some time, but just so ye know… ma door is always open. I’m here for ye, kid.”

  He slapped me on the arm and with that we were back to walking towards the farm. The only strange thing was the tears in my eyes.

  10

  The weeks passed and I learned more about the Compound. Ali was my guide. He showed me where the vegetables are grown and the fields are ploughed. I found out how disgusting a pig pen smells and what it feels like to stand in a cow pat. A goat tried to eat the sleeve of my jumper and chickens chased me away from their eggs. He told me more about General Lloyd and Dr Woods, two men he didn’t care for, and how they monopolised the Council, leaving Mary out of decisions, despite her often being the voice of reason. I discovered that births, deaths and new arrivals were documented even though the Children of the People hated it.

  I spent time with my dad and the group of people that the rest of the Compound called the “Freaks”. I was one of them and I trained with them. I got to know that Mike had a wicked sense of humour, Kitty was the most hyperactive person I’ve ever met and Hiro was the wisest person I would ever know. We painted the barn together, set up punch bags and targets. We spent the days meditating on our powers, learning martial arts and drinking pots of tea. Like the Children of the People we were a group of people that were generally left alone which meant that we weren’t allocated jobs. Dad said that it was just as well because we had more important things to spend time on – developing our powers.

  Angela ignored me. She was given a job on the farm, milking cows and tending to vegetables. She lived with the re
st of the farmers – in trailers positioned near to the fields, barns and make-shift outbuildings. At my request, Daniel told her about his feelings towards her as a sister, but it didn’t seem to help matters. Some nights I would see her hanging around the castle gates, wringing her hands and walking back and forth. I guessed she wanted to see Daniel but didn’t know what to say or do or whether she was welcome. I tried not to care after the horrible things she’d said but deep down I just missed her and wanted my friend back. At least Cam enjoyed her company, I saw him cracking jokes to try and cheer her up, leaning in a little closer each time. His face lit up when she smiled.

  Sebastian was given a tent to himself with some basic equipment. There weren’t many in the Compound who would give him a chance, but Ali gave him a job helping out on his market stall with Ginge. If he did well, there was a chance he would get a place in the Scavengers. I wondered what it was like working with Ginge. I’d never known anyone so laconic. But whenever I saw Sebastian he had the biggest smile I’d ever seen. Whatever happened on the stall, he seemed to be enjoying it.

  I split my time between tours of the Compound with Ali, training with the Freaks, talking to Sebastian on the stall and visiting Daniel. I loved every minute with him. I loved our long talks and our little routine where I would eat dinner sat on the chair next to his hospital bed, telling him every detail about my day; who I’d talked to, what I’d learned about the Compound and where I visited. I’d never really enjoyed talking about myself before, but with Daniel I found that I could tell him anything. Along with our chats I relished in the fact that each day he looked better and after two weeks we could go for walks around the Compound.

  “How many girls have had babies since you’ve been on the ward?” I asked him as we walked towards the farm. I wanted to show him the Children of the People. I’d heard them singing and knew that another ceremony was about to begin.

  “I lost count. Maybe half a dozen.”

  “Does that seem like a lot to you? How many people live here?”