Ways of the Doomed

by McPartlin, Moira;

  Kenneth popped opened the jar, picked out a slithery red tongue of sweet pepper and sucked it down whole. The memory of the taste and the texture made my stomach lurch. I had forgotten how much I hated Ishbel’s preserves.

  ‘Mm.’ He pushed the jar towards me. ‘Here, try some.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I’m not hungry.’

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I turned towards the cave entrance and imagined the north Pa had pointed to that day on the way to the beach. To freedom.

  Kenneth wiped the air in a majestic gesture. ‘Welcome to Black Rock,’ he said in ad-speak. ‘Sunlight hours marginal, all the better to preserve your liver-spotted skin. Fresh sea breezes to scour clean your rotting lungs. Miles from the mainland – no need for pesky high security. Oh, and so you won’t be lonely, here are a thousand prisoners to experiment on. Lovely isn’t it? Run your empire from here – the ideal spot for an up-and-coming despot. Some reward, eh?’

  Kenneth’s hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. He consulted the communicator and dropped my arm as if it burned. ‘It’ll be dark soon, I wonder when they’ll come.’

  He smoothed the forehead and hair of Ridgeway. His bedside manner was touching, but his glower was murderous. He stared at the floor forever. The charged air stuck to me, a bad boak smell choked me. I swallowed a breath to break the hex but he beat me to it when he said, ‘When I think of the Purists at that time, of their ideology, their stupidity, it’s mind-blowing. Vanora wasted no time in such idle musings. From her island base she recruited natives, trained them covertly, then sent them to ground.’ Kenneth picked up a walking stick that was propped against the cave wall and in the gravel drew a circle with tentacles spreading all airts. ‘Her network, managed with the help of a few disciples.’

  ‘It sounds like a religion.’

  ‘Don’t mock, Somhairle. This incredibly complex network began as a flea bite on the balls of the government, first turned to a rash and now a large infestation.’ He tapped the circle with his stick. ‘She and her network are highly effective. There’s no mumbo jumbo about the results. She has developed a sophisticated comms encryption enabling her operation to function, making it impossible for the State to shut her down.’

  Jupe sake, it was like loading your favourite sports season, settling down to watch and finding banned terror-zone material projected on the Games Wall. I looked at the pickle jars.

  ‘I remember all the canning. Ishbel, always canning and pickling.’

  ‘Yes that’s part of it. How do you feed a massive secret army in a controlled continent without anyone noticing?’ He didn’t wait for my answer. ‘You install an equally large army to feed and provide for them.’ He held up the jar again. ‘Ishbel did a good job.’

  ‘What is it all for? The network, the army? If she has an army, why are we here?’

  He chucked a look of joyous disappointment my way.

  ‘Look, I’m not psychic,’ I said. His mirth was tedious. ‘Until a few months ago I lived a nice cushy life on the Base. Both my parents respected in the military, my schooling under control, my future mapped out, friends to wrestle with and my native always there for me.’

  It was hard to ignore the chuckle Kenneth gurgled under his breath like a loon, but I continued just the same.

  ‘The present reality is my native is my aunt, my parents are dead, my grandfather is a maniac and my grandmother is some loony international rebel, and you wonder why I don’t understand?’ I stood. ‘I’ve heard enough. If I hear anymore my brain will implode. Come on, we’ve got to get moving. We’ve got to get off this island before the searchers come.’ I paced the gravel, kicking it up and smoothing it out. Kenneth sighed, and that benevolent mask I suddenly wanted to punch returned to his hairy face.

  ‘Vanora’s army is to fight back, Somhairle. It is impossible to fight back through politics. It is not permitted for a native to vote.’

  ‘Well say that, then. Stop playing games with me.’ I thumped my head with my fist. ‘In the last half hour you have told me enough family history to fill Academy Archive. “It is not permitted for a native to vote.” I snafin’ know that! Tell me where we go from here.’

  ‘Calm down.’

  ‘And stop telling me to calm down. I’ll calm down when I am out of this shit.’

  ‘OK. But we need to wait a while longer.’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  He flapped his arm, wafting his own particular scent round the cave. ‘Sit down, Somhairle.’

  ‘No, I need to move.’

  If I thought he was done, I was wrong. If I ever imagined cavemen in social isolation could lose the power to communicate, I was wrong.

  ‘What a mess the Purists have made of things. They must be stopped. This DNA dilution is the last disaster Esperaneo can handle before the East wade in, and the Western States know that too. No, there can only ever be one winner in this game and that would be the Eastern Zone with their unique gene pool and wily systems.’

  This guy wouldn’t shut up. I looked around the cave, at the ochre and tempera primative paintings Kenneth had doodled in his years here. How would future historians classify this period along with the Ice Age, Bronze Age, Apple Age? How about Mashed-up Age?

  ‘Where is Vanora now?’ I asked. ‘This secret island…’ Jupe, even as I said it I realised how ludicrous this story was.

  He pointed north, of course. ‘In the Arctic Archipelago. A group of islands inhabited for centuries by an indigenous people. You won’t have heard of it because the Purists stripped it of its oil and left it fallow. It no longer has economic or strategic value and they believe there will be another tsunami there sometime soon – they can’t be bothered with it, to be honest. The small population were immune from the native purge because their DNA is so different from ours and the establishment of a penitentiary there was uneconomical. These islanders took Vanora into their wilderness bosom twenty-odd years ago and she has run her operation from there ever since. She is revered and treated like royalty by the islanders and her disciples, as she is by all her covert cells around Esperaneo.’

  ‘Can you please shut up your doors about Saint Vanora and her army?’

  Kenneth blinked then stared at the floor for more beats than I could be bothered counting. A small moan teased from the unconscious lips of Ridgeway, like the murmur of a sleeping baby.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I said. ‘We can’t go back.’ The earlier hysteria had left my voice and my thoughts were as brisk as the keen breeze that rattled outside the cave.

  ‘We have to stop the experiments,’ Kenneth said.

  More than twenty years he had lived in this cave. My eyes strayed to the heater rigged to a nuclear battery, the lights, the hide bedding, delicately stitched and fashioned. He had tried to make a home but it was miserable.

  ‘We have to!’ I said, struggling to contain my anger. ‘Why haven’t you done something? You’ve been here long enough. Why did you have to wait until I came on the scene?’

  He speared me with a look that could slice carbon.

  ‘I have done lots of things while I’ve been here. I’ve cleared the coastline of mines for when boats need to land. I sent messages to Scud using the beacon.’

  The lighthouse, of course, that intermittent beam. Scud reciting the alphabet backwards.

  ‘The flashing buoy?’

  He nodded. ‘I have caused power surges when an attack was due.’

  Maybe he wanted me to hold my head in shame at my earlier accusation, but the truth remained that this creature had lived in these conditions yet achieved so little. Instead I slumped on the skins. ‘Why don’t you send a power surge now, then – send a message to Vanora? Tell her I’ve succeeded in escaping. Tell her to attack.’

  ‘Tell her?’ His eyes widened. ‘We don’t tell her anything.’

  Ridge
way moved his head, his eyelids fluttered. Kenneth poured water into a cup and shifted Ridgeway’s position so he could sup. His gentle touch reminded me of Ishbel as she’d tended to me when I was ill with fever. And now here was this man who claimed to be a scientist being as gentle with a guard as a physician would have been.

  ‘I know what we could do,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we take Ridgeway hostage and demand the experiments stop or we kill him. Pirates do it, why can’t we?’ Even as I said this I knew the cold and hunger of my escape was starting to nibble at my reason. I deserved to be laughed at.

  Ridgeway opened his eyes and looked at me with the hazy pupils of a newborn cub, blind but not deaf.

  ‘Grow up Somhairle,’ Kenneth snapped. ‘This is not some schoolboy prank. We can’t stay here much longer. Davie will have someone out looking for you. He might even have alerted the mainland, but I doubt it. He probably wants to keep the problem of his troublesome and tainted grandson to himself. And unless I’m mistaken, Ridgeway’s last known whereabouts were outside this cave. Your chips will also give away your location.’

  ‘They won’t find us,’ Ridgeway rasped as he held out his hand to Kenneth, who clasped it in both his. ‘I switched my communicator to random before we left the compound.’ He nodded towards me. ‘Our chips won’t be picked up in this cave.’

  He struggled to get up and Kenneth hooked Ridgeway’s arm to ease him from the makeshift bed. ‘It’s good to see you again, Ken.’

  They embraced in a way I’d never seen men do before: hugged then kissed each cheek, left then right.

  Kenneth patted him on the shoulders as if he didn’t want to let him go, before eventually resting Ridgeway’s back against the cave wall. ‘My good friend, I am sorry your young charge took such drastic steps to bring you to me.’ Kenneth gurgled with delight and hugged Ridgeway again. I felt my face blush with the embarrassment of it all.

  ‘He’s not another long-lost family member is he?’

  They looked at each other and grinned. Grinned! Not just a ‘happy to see you’ grin, but a big toothy, dimple buster.

  ‘Almost,’ Kenneth managed to say through his mashers.

  Sakes! I’d seen traces of change in Ridgeway in our time together, but this transformation was more dramatic than the Scud metamorphosis. I almost began to wonder whether Kenneth had spiked the drip he had just fed him. Kenneth’s change was just as startling; where had the rugged cave dweller gone? They were like two lovers in a soppy comfort-caster reunited after many years.

  My brain was clanking like Beastie on a bad day.

  ‘Oh yes, we know each other well,’ Kenneth coughed, back to normal. ‘We’ve known each other since university days.’

  ‘What university days?’ I pointed to Ridgeway. ‘He’s a Bas, he didn’t go to university.’

  ‘Yes he did, and so did Scud.’

  ‘I knew you were on this island somewhere Ken, I just didn’t know where. I couldn’t believe my luck when I was transferred here.’

  ‘Your luck? You don’t think Vanora had a hand in that?’

  Ridgeway shrugged. ‘Maybe, I didn’t think she could do that. And then when Sorlie arrived, well I guessed it was all going to kick off quite soon. I bided my time. Scud did well manoeuvring Sorlie into the corncrake project. It was easy enough to put the rest of the guards off the idea of escorting Davie’s snivel-nosed brat out on a bogging windswept island. Those fat lazy slobs want as easy a life as they can get.’ He patted his belly. ‘I was just as bad but I think Davie secretly wanted me to have a heart attack.’ He nodded towards me. ‘I very nearly did that first day.’ He shifted his weight and groaned, then rested his head back on the cool wall.

  ‘Who do you think you are calling a snivel-nosed brat?’

  They both ignored me. ‘I didn’t think I would find you so quickly. I had to be careful of the boy. When he disappeared that day I took my time looking for signs of you.’ He opened his eyes and squinted at Kenneth. ‘You could have left more clues.’

  Kenneth chuckled. ‘Some managed to find me.’

  I was aware that my mouth was gaping at their sickly sugariness and I clamped it shut with an audible snap.

  ‘Are you just going to ignore me? What’s going on? Is he a spy or something, Kenneth?’

  ‘No, he’s not a spy. Maybe it is just a coincidence he landed here, or maybe Vanora planned it because she knew she could trust him.’ Kenneth stroked his beard and did that staring at the floor thing again. I needed another drink to wipe the muddle from my head but Kenneth batted my hand away as I stretched it out to lift the bottle of Mash.

  ‘Leave it, we’ve all had enough,’ he said before turning back to the guard. ‘It’s crazy you being here. I mean, what happened to the safe civil servant with choices? Maybe now you need to choose again.’

  ‘Choose what?’ Ridgeway asked.

  ‘Choose between going back to a job or helping us.’

  A shadow passed over Ridgeway’s face, fleeting yet deadly. ‘Why do you think I’m here?’ He pulled back his sleeve to show his immigration tattoo and slapped the skin on his forearm. ‘Look at this – Bas yes, but still tainted. They get rid of the native and how long before they get rid of us?’

  ‘That won’t happen,’ Kenneth said. ‘They’ll need you.’

  ‘That’s what you said about Davie harming me,’ I quipped.

  He visibly started at that and I caught a glimpse of his pleated brow.

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, we’ll be needed.’ Colour was flooding back to Ridgeway’s waxy face, mottling its unhealthy pallor. ‘We’ll be needed to drone the army, do the native jobs. Maybe life won’t be so cushy for a Bas after all, hey?’

  Kenneth started to laugh.

  ‘Are you mad? How can you laugh at this?’ I snapped hard enough to wither his face into sobriety.

  ‘This is our world Somhairle. A broken world we have been living in for twenty-odd years and whether you like it or not you are now part of it. Your soft Military Base life has gone.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Just like that.’ The complicity in his voice was acid, like this was some exclusive club I had to pass a test to join.

  ‘My parents are dead,’ I said grinding my teeth to stop the spit forming. Kenneth laid his hand on mine.

  ‘I know and I am sorry, but you have to move on.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The two elders sat in silence allowing me a few beats to digest the information overload. I scratched at the gravel with Kenneth’s stick and watched them. Sometimes they stared at the floor. Then, as if on instinct, they found that stupid grin and looked to each other. One or the other would catch me watching and then return his gaze to the floor. Every now and then Ridgeway would close his eyes and lean back against the wall and Kenneth would strain forward and peer at him with concern. The hypnotic slosh of the waves outside and the build-up of warmth from the heater made my mind droop, but I refused to sleep.

  ‘Listen,’ Kenneth hissed.

  Both Ridgeway and I started at the break in silence.

  ‘Flying seekers.’

  At first only waves sounded, then a high-pitched buzz hurtled through the cave and bounced from wall to wall.

  ‘They’re heat-seeking and audio-seeking,’ Ridgeway whispered.

  ‘They would have been better with dogs – their heat seekers won’t penetrate these walls.’

  ‘Dogs? What are dogs?’ I asked. Kenneth and Ridgeway glanced at each other and shrugged.

  ‘Aw yeah, dogs, I remember.’ Though my memory was pretty vague.

  ‘It’s unimportant. Quick, climb up here.’ Kenneth clambered onto the skin beside Ridgeway and signalled for me to join them. He groaned as he pulled his knees in to his chest. I copied his pose until all three of us sat like relief sculptures, backs against the cold wall and our knees hugged tight. ‘It might be uncomfortable but it w
ill give you extra stability.’

  He handed me a tongue of hide and passed one to Ridgeway, keeping one for himself. ‘Whatever happens, don’t move and don’t make a sound.’

  The whirrying of the seekers increased until a high intensity skirl ricocheted around the walls. The cold solid rock at my back began to vibrate, which set my teeth and bones rattling. Kenneth mimed with his mouth that I bite the hide. He and Ridgeway did the same. Nasal breathing made my eyes water so I leaned forward and swiped them on my cuff. I wasn’t crying.

  A clatter of stones crashed close to the cave mouth. S’truth, someone was scrambling down that steep face. What would they do to us if they found us? I felt my bladder start to nip and complain and tried to force the thought from my rattling head. People piss themselves in times of terror. I bit harder on the strap; it was not going to happen to me. I shifted in my pants, but the whites of Kenneth’s eyes told me to be still. Ridgeway’s eyes burned with enough fear to force my body into a state of paralysis.

  • • •

  They didn’t find us. I don’t know how long we sat in that petrified state. It could have been an hour, it could have been longer. At last Kenneth spat the hide from his teeth and the noise of the seekers was replaced by loud groans from my two cave companions. When I tried to move I found my feet and hands had solidified to brick and mortar and the simple act of splaying my fingers wrapped them with barbed wire. My toes stabbed with hot wiggling thorns.

  ‘They’ve gone for the time being but they’ll be back once they’re recharged. With no evidence of us leaving the island he’ll assume we’re still here.’ Kenneth’s shaky voice didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I whispered.

  His crinkling eyes held a trick when he asked, ‘What do you think we should do?’

  He probably expected me to mention pirates but all I said was, ‘I’m not going back.’