by Emma Clayton
Mika knew she was far away because he felt the bond between them stretched like an invisible cord until it hurt. He felt angry with his parents for giving up on her, and distrustful of everyone who told them she was dead. The police, the coroner, his teachers, he hated them all, and he was existing in no man’s land, in the place he had chosen to wait for her, and nobody else was allowed in.
As Ellie was fighting for her life around the Golden Turrets of London, Mika awoke, instantly alert with his heart banging in his chest. He sat up in the darkness wondering if he’d been dreaming about her, but he couldn’t remember.
‘Ellie?’ he whispered, but he knew she wasn’t close to him. He sensed something else though, something strange happening around him. He held his breath so he could listen to the quiet, night-time noises and heard his father turn in bed and mutter something in dream speak, but there were other sounds too which he knew were unusual for the time of night and he strained to hear them. Yes, muffled voices were coming through the wall. There were people in the hallway outside their apartment. He pressed his ear against the wall and listened for a while. He was unable to make out words, only that they were trying to talk quietly, and there were lots of them, mostly men. He felt anxious and swung round on the bed so his feet were on the floor and wondered if he should wake his parents and tell them.
No, he decided.
He looked at the clock blinking at the head of the bed. It was four in the morning. What was going on out there? There was a lot of traffic noise for the time of night, too. He stood up and walked quietly to the window, pulled up the blind and froze with shock. Hovering only an arm’s length away was a police pod. The policemen inside were eating hot dogs and dribbling ketchup on their legs, and it was a few seconds before they noticed the naked boy staring at them with bold black eyes. For a moment, they too were frozen with shock, then their faces flooded with guilt and the pod zipped to the right, out of view. Mika pulled down the blind in a panic and groped around on the floor for his jeans with his heart pounding. Finding them, he yanked them on, cursing as he trod on something sharp, then he rushed into the living area where his parents were sleeping on a fold-down bed. ‘Mum! Dad! Wake up!’ he whispered, frantically. ‘There’s something weird going on!’
They stirred. His father leaned up on one elbow and rubbed his face with his hand.
‘What?’ he mumbled sleepily, his features crumpled as if he’d been lying face down in the pillows.
‘There are men outside our apartment,’ Mika whispered, fearfully. ‘And policemen eating hot dogs outside my bedroom window.’
‘Why do you think that?’ his mother asked, pushing herself up on the pillows. ‘Are you sure you haven’t had one of those bad dreams again, Mika?’
‘No!’ he insisted. ‘I saw them. I heard noises and I opened the blind. When they realized I was there, they disappeared. They looked guilty, as if they were up to something!’
His parents climbed reluctantly out of bed and pulled on their dressing gowns.
‘Look out of the window, David,’ his mother said, her eyes glittering in the darkness.
His father huffed impatiently as if he thought he was wasting his time. He opened the curtains and peered through a gap in the blind. He was quiet for a few moments and Mika stood beside him breathing hard and wondering why he felt so afraid.
‘There’s nothing out there, Mika,’ he said, at last. ‘Look for yourself.’
He raised the blind so Mika could see out. His mother put a comforting hand on his shoulder as they looked out at nothing but blackened concrete, rolling clouds and rain.
‘Yeah, but I told you,’ Mika insisted. ‘When they saw me, they flew off. Look outside the door, I could hear them talking.’ He shrugged off his mother’s hand and felt a familiar wave of frustration and anger because his parents didn’t believe him.
‘OK,’ his father said calmly, shooting his wife a meaningful look. He walked around the side of the bed towards the door.
‘No, don’t,’ Mika said, changing his mind as he felt a surge of foreboding.
His father paused. ‘Why are you so afraid?’ he said. ‘Even if there are people out there, I’m sure there’s a perfectly normal explanation for it.’
‘I don’t know,’ Mika replied, feeling confused. ‘I just do.’
‘Come on,’ Asha said, comfortingly. ‘Let’s look and then you can go back to bed without worrying about it.’
The door slid open, flooding the tiny apartment with dim yellow light and cold air. His father shrugged and stepped out into the empty hallway. ‘Come and see for yourself,’ he said, and the three of them stood in the hallway, their bare feet cold on the dirty concrete floor, seeing nothing but a line of silent doors and mildew-stained walls. But only metres away from them, hiding in the stairwell and the lift, were the men Mal Gorman had sent to watch their apartment; thirty men with their fingers twitching on the triggers of their guns, waiting for the order to kill.
‘Let’s go back in,’ Asha said, looking down the empty hallway with her teeth chattering. ‘It’s freezing out here and you’ve got to be up for school in three hours.’
Mika lay rigid in his bed as his mother attempted to tuck him in. He wished she’d stop fussing over him as if he was a child and he felt angry too; they’d made him feel like a fool because there was nobody in the hallway.
‘Have you been eating noodles in bed?’ his mother asked, eyeing the red splodges on Ellie’s cover with distaste.
‘Yes,’ he replied hotly, turning his back on her and hugging the filthy cover.
‘It’s going to have to be washed, Mika.’
‘No,’ he said, adamantly.
‘But it doesn’t smell of her any more,’ she replied, impatient with fatigue. ‘It just smells of your feet and noodle juice.’
‘Yes it does smell of Ellie,’ he said, turning over again to glare at her. ‘And I don’t want it washed until she comes home.’
Asha was a beautiful woman for fifty. Her Indian blood had given her the fine bones and dark hair and eyes her children had inherited. But as she looked into Mika’s face and felt the heat of his anger and pain, she felt herself wither like a tree receiving the first kiss of a forest fire.
‘Stop it!’ she said, sharply. ‘Ellie has been dead for a year and the sooner you accept it, the sooner we can all move on! It’s not fair, Mika!’
‘No,’ Mika said quietly, tears pressing in his eyes. ‘It’s you that’s wrong. She’s not dead. I can feel her.’
He felt her more than he knew. As Ellie’s Pod Fighter was shot down and fell into the dark water of The Shadows, he felt as if he’d received a crushing blow to his chest. He tried to cry out but there was nothing to cry with, there was no air in his lungs and he couldn’t breathe in. Blind with panic he managed to turn himself over in the bed, desperate for his mother’s help, but although he wanted to move and to speak, he felt pressure pushing on him from above, a weight of cold darkness pressing him down. He lay paralysed listening to a terrible noise, unaware he was making it, a rasping as if his windpipe had been cut. He was falling into darkness, freezing cold.
‘Mika!’ Asha cried, leaning forward to grab his shoulders. ‘What’s wrong?’ But he was unable to reply, only his black eyes pleaded with her to save him.
‘David!’ Asha screamed. ‘Call an ambulance!’
3
YOU BELONG TO US NOW
Mal Gorman went down to The Shadows to see the proof that Ellie and Puck were dead with his own eyes. He wanted to watch as their bodies were pulled out of the river and sealed in coffins so he could be sure nobody would find out that he’d kidnapped a child or that an animal had crossed The Wall. He knew it was his fault; he’d given Ellie the monkey as a pet and underestimated her ability, and although he was confident he wouldn’t lose his job, he didn’t want to admit he’d made such bad mistakes. Mal Gorman wasn’t used to making mistakes and they felt like bee stings on his brain. But how could he have known that a twelve-year-
old child would be able to escape from a space station? Ellie was amazing; so powerful and strange, and although he was relieved the monkey was dead, he was annoyed the girl was. Now he would never know why she was so special and he wouldn’t be able to use her. He felt as if he’d dropped a Ming vase and was looking at the pieces on the floor around his feet.
But there are more where she came from, he reminded himself, not many, but enough.
The hours before dawn in The Shadows were the same as midnight, sunset and early afternoon, the artificial darkness hardly touched by the yellow tinge of economy lighting. Only the temperature and the wind changed; in summer it was as hot and humid as a tin can of stagnant water and in winter it was bitterly cold. In all seasons damp crept up the buildings, covering everything in a mould that caused deadly lung disease.
Mal Gorman hated The Shadows, particularly at a quarter to five in the morning when he was supposed to be on holiday. He stood on the deck of a police boat, chugging up the old path of the River Thames, looking over the dismal landscape of damp buildings half-submerged in filthy water. The river had burst its banks long ago and spread across the low-lying areas of the city. He spotted the mouldy remains of the Tate Modern gallery and the Tower of London, but it wasn’t the kind of sightseeing he enjoyed; these landmarks were lifeless and stripped of treasures.
Below him in the boat, the cabin staff were preparing breakfast and a small team of policemen were eating Fab egg and tank meat and drinking tea with their guns on the floor. Gorman felt too tired and stressed to eat.
But at least the worst is over, he thought. Soon I’ll be able to forget about work and enjoy my holiday.
He shivered and pulled up the collar on his long coat to protect his neck from the bitter wind. His companion on deck was the Chief of River Police. An unsavoury character, Gorman thought, who spent his days hooking corpses out of the floodwater and his nights gorging himself in expensive restaurants in the Golden Turrets. His eyes were mean, his face was puffy, and his skin was spotty and sallow.
‘I don’t know how you can work down here,’ Gorman said.
‘Ah, you get used to it,’ the Chief replied dismissively, his chins wobbling like a pile of undercooked pancakes. ‘We shouldn’t be here long. They know where she went down, and they’ve got plenty of experience – she’ll be the twentieth corpse they’ve fished out tonight. Have to get them out otherwise they stink. Mmm, I can smell sausages.’
‘Do you trust your men?’ Gorman asked.
‘Yes,’ the Chief said, after a brief pause. ‘They’ve brought plague suits and breathing equipment. They’re so scared, they’ve been drawing lots to decide who has to deal with it. They won’t tell anyone. Not even their wives and children will touch them if it gets out they’ve been near an animal.’
‘Good,’ Gorman replied. ‘Because if they talk about what comes up in that Pod Fighter, I have the authority of the Northern Government to ruin your life. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the Chief replied, his chins wobbling pensively. He was quiet for a moment and picked the dirt from beneath his fingernails. There was something about Mal Gorman that chilled him more than the horrors in the dark water below.
Gorman looked over the side of the boat. Bobbing on the surface of the river was a carpet of rotting rubbish. He saw a child’s doll float past, sightless and gruesome and covered in slime, fast food wrappers and a mouldy sneaker.
What a mess, he thought. Forty-three years of living behind The Wall had created hell on Earth. The entire population of the planet was now squashed into a third of the space to escape from the animals, and every acre of land had been built on. There were no fields any more, no woods or parks or gardens. There was no space for anything but concrete and people. Gorman had had a nice log cabin in Canada before the Animal Plague. He used to go there for his holidays, not London. But now his pretty cabin had a block of apartments built on top of it, and hundreds of people lived in the area that used to be his garden.
‘Ah,’ said the Chief of River Police, breaking Gorman’s bitter reverie. He looked towards the dark silhouette of a boat in the distance near the old Houses of Parliament. ‘We should be there just in time to watch the men bring them up. Then a hearty breakfast eh? To chase off the cold. In fact, I think I might have a couple of those sausages while I’m waiting.’
Gorman watched the Chief squeeze his huge body through the small door into the cabin, like a cushion into a mouse hole.
Disgusting man, he thought.
He was cold and tired and he wanted to sit down and rest his old knees. He cursed Ellie and paced across the deck of the boat, wishing it would hurry up so he could get back to his warm hotel on level two.
Good job her parents already think she’s dead, he thought, imagining the uproar if they found out what had really happened to their daughter.
Gorman had lost his log cabin because of the Animal Plague, but in other ways what had ruined most people’s lives had improved his dramatically; because of the plague, there were loads of good jobs available, so he’d been able to work his way up in the new Northern Government to become the Minister for Youth Development. He was part of the Cabinet. He had a fancy office in the new Houses of Parliament, and the Queen of the North, a whole space station, was under his command. He was now one of the richest and most powerful people in the north. So he was glad the Animal Plague had happened. He never would have done so well without it. And the other great thing about the disaster, as far as he was concerned, was that having babies had been banned for thirty years afterwards because there wasn’t enough space for them. So not only did he have a much better job, he’d been able to spend his new money in restaurants without a child on the next table screaming its head off or rubbing chocolate pudding in its hair. He hated children and he didn’t understand them. He remembered how rude Ellie had been. So ungrateful. In fact, all of them were; the three children he’d taken all came from poor refugee homes and they should have thanked him for the attention. He’d given them presents and sweets and kept them busy with activities, yet all they’d done was cry and complain about missing their families, and now they were all dead. He realized he would need to try a different tactic next time. Soon he would need thousands of children, not just three, and he had to be able to control them. It just wouldn’t do if they were crying all the time and trying to run away. But before he could think about starting again, he had to clean up the mess his early mistakes had made.
The boat’s engine cut as it approached the salvage boat and it drifted the last ten metres in silence. The salvage boat was much bigger than the police boat, low in the water with a wide deck. At the stern was a huge black crane, designed to haul heavy weights out of the water. Men threw ropes to bind the two crafts together and placed a wide plank to bridge the gap between them. Gorman watched the Chief of River Police shuffle across the plank, making it bow under his enormous bulk. Then he followed him on to the wide deck of the salvage boat. Afterwards, men dressed in plague suits and gloves carried two white coffins across – a large one for Ellie and a smaller one for Puck.
The boat was crewed by river police in black waterproofs and caps. The arm of the crane towered over the water and Gorman watched as a man operated the machine that reeled in the metal rope like a fishing line, creaking with the weight of Ellie’s Pod Fighter below the surface.
‘Nearly up,’ the Chief said, taking a tank meat sausage out of his pocket and cramming it sideways into his mouth.
The divers were just coming out of the water. They seemed in a hurry and wrestled their masks off as they flopped like seals on to the deck.
‘They’re still alive!’ one shouted, panic-stricken. ‘What shall we do?’
Gorman and the Chief rushed to the bow of the boat and leaned over to look down into the murky water. The Pod Fighter was just below the surface and they could see Ellie thrashing around in the pocket of air inside it, her dark hair whipping around her pale face as she frantically banged around th
e edges of the windshield trying to force it open.
‘Well I’ll be blowed,’ the Chief said. ‘She’s a little firecracker.’
‘Stop the crank!’ Gorman yelled. ‘Get guns! I want six armed men here, now!’
The Chief of River Police stared, mesmerized, into the dark water, his heart racing as he caught a glimpse of the capuchin monkey in the submerged Pod Fighter. He hadn’t seen a real animal since he was a child during the plague. He saw a blink of gold fur, a flash of sharp white teeth and a tiny black hand pressed against the inside of the windshield.
‘Chrise,’ he said, welling up with fear. ‘I haven’t got a plague suit. I think I’d better wait on the other boat.’ He took a step back, and another, creeping towards the plank, but the men rushing the other way blocked his path and he was pushed forward again.
The policemen gazed in horror over the side of the boat into the submerged Pod Fighter and caught a brief glimpse of their worst nightmare.
‘Kill them!’ Mal Gorman ordered. ‘Shoot them through the windshield!’
They hesitated. Puck disappeared for a moment and Ellie was looking up at them with her face wet with tears. She was just a child.
* * *
Ellie and Puck had been at the bottom of the river for over an hour. The weight of the dark water pressing on the windshield made it creak and groan and as Ellie’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw terrible shapes around her: wafting black weeds like evil spirits wanting to drag her and Puck out of their bubble of air and drown them. It was so cold and dark on the riverbed and what she felt was beyond terror, she was drowning in fear. She couldn’t breathe for it. It tightened around her chest like iron bands and she choked. She undid Puck’s harness, pulled him close and they clung to each other in the darkness waiting for the water to come in. They could hear it gushing into the engine, but by some miracle, the cockpit remained dry. Gorman would come for them. Ellie knew that the evil old man would take no chances and would make sure that they were dead, and she wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or terrified. If he didn’t come they would die of suffocation when the oxygen in the cockpit ran out; if he did, they would be shot. So she waited and tried to figure out how they could still survive and reach home. As the divers’ lamps shone down through the water she saw the fear in Puck’s eyes and this gave her strength. She would swim home through this filthy black water if necessary, with Puck clinging to her back.