by Sarah Govett
‘But why do the Raiders want them?’ I asked.
Maggie looked at me as if she didn’t really want to answer and was clearly weighing up whether to make up something nice and reassuring or just tell me the truth. Like a parent when asked by a young kid about death.
She chose the truth. ‘For breeding.’
Raf and I offered to delay our departure, said we’d wait until the Peak was on its feet again, but Annie insisted we left as planned. She said that we had to stick to our earlier decisions and not let our path be determined by THEM. She wouldn’t say the word Raider. It hadn’t left her lips once in the aftermath. Like she wasn’t acknowledging them as people.
Annie presented us with a bundle and we both teared up a bit at her generosity. Inside were two flasks of water, some dried meat, salted cod and seaweed, a bottle of mosquito repellent oil and a tinderbox. We hugged her tightly, thanked her over and over and then turned to leave.
‘One last thing, Noa,’ Annie’s voice followed me to the door.
‘Yes?’
‘Keep your humanity. It’s your most precious gift. If you lose it, there is nothing left to fight for.’
I nodded and Raf gave my hand a little squeeze. We went round the settlement saying our goodbyes. I choked up a little as I hugged Maggie and we tried to talk to Ben but his fever was so high I’m not sure he even knew who we were. It was so hard leaving him, not knowing if he would make it. Knowing that the world would be a far poorer place if he didn’t.
After pulling the strip of corrugated iron that served as the Peak’s gate to, Raf took the compass from his backpack and we set off south east. The streams and pools were starting to get pretty deep so we often had to wind our way round, following the areas of higher land. Our legs were hurting by the afternoon but we kept on going, knowing the pain we were enduring was nothing compared to that of those we’d left behind.
We didn’t talk much today. I think everything’s just been a bit too much and silence can be cleansing. I mean, super religious monks and people just sit in silence all day and look twenty years younger than they actually are. I guess for us it was also that we didn’t want to dwell on what had been and yet also it seemed wrong to get all happy and excited about seeing Jack again as if my happiness was the only thing that mattered. But maybe, I kept thinking anyway, if we could just get to Jack and get him back to the Territory we would have righted one wrong, one injustice and if everyone managed to do the same then we’d be some way towards making a mark. Making a dent in what was wrong with the world.
When it was too dark to continue safely, we made camp under some shrub bushes on a raised grassy mound. We decided against a fire as it wasn’t that cold and we’d seen what flames could attract. I lay, wrapped up in Raf’s arms. I was exhausted but I thought my brain and still-whirling thoughts would stop me sleeping. They did, but not for long. Soon the regular beat of Raf’s heart and the warmth of his body soothed me into oblivion.
The day started so well. We reached the Fort before the sun was at the top of its daily arc. It was obvious, even from a distance, how the settlement had got its name. The hill it was on was of the high and pointy variety and the wet ground below surrounded it a bit like a moat. What’s more, the fence that had been erected around the bottom was tall and spiky and topped with barbed wire.
Maybe they were on high alert for Raiders or something but a bell started clanging before we’d even had a chance to shout our hello.
We were met outside the fence by three of their guards/scouts – two guys and a girl, all not much older than us. One of the guys might even have been younger and he had that semi-feral look of the kids I’d taught back at the Peak, the ones who’d been born out here. I thought they might be going to turn us away, which would have made a real sick joke of our whole ordeal, everything we’d been through, but they didn’t. They listened to what we had to say. At first one of the guys seemed to be saying they didn’t know any Jack Munro and my heart plummeted straight through my chest into the ground below, sodden and salty. But then the girl piped up, ‘Ryan, you know Jack – J – the big ginger guy, Megan’s guy. The one who’s ace at hunting.’
Raf snorted as if being ‘ace at hunting’ was the lamest thing ever, but that’s just because he still hasn’t managed to snare anything himself. But all I could hear were the words ‘Megan’s guy’, and my heart shot back up into my chest and tore a new hole there. Jealousy was a new emotion to me. One that I hadn’t anticipated. Not to do with Jack. At least not this way round. And it was the shock of it as much as anything that left my head reeling and my knees weak.
The three agreed to take us up into the Fort so we could see ‘J’ – (his name is Jack goddammit!) and talk to the Committee. Apparently everything in the Fort is decided by the Committee, elected once a year – they’ve rebelled against the Ministry by going into democracy overload.
I said that probably wasn’t necessary as we were just going to take Jack and leave, but they laughed and said that we didn’t really look like kidnappers so wasn’t that up to J?
The girl scout/guard ran ahead so by the time we got to the main building, another converted barn – they called it ‘The Meeting Room’ ’cos they’re up themselves – the Committee were already there looking pretty smug and self-important. There were ten of them, aged from about 15 to 25, all perched on a random assortment of salvaged metal chairs. They introduced themselves but I can’t remember all their names. I heard ‘Matt’ and ‘Frankie’, but then I stopped listening because at that moment Jack walked in.
Jack.
I wasn’t aware of any sort of thought process happening, but the next thing I knew, I was tearing across the floor and flinging myself up and around him. He held me there, off the floor, like I weighed no more than a bunch of sea-lavender. He’d healed. There were slight scars on his lower legs that emerged, freckled and triumphantly white – is he totally immune to tanning? – from a pair of dodgy brown shorts. His nose had this tiny kink in it, and he’s lost some weight, but somehow in a good ‘before’ and ‘after’ photo shoot way as his muscles seem all the more prominent. But ultimately, there was little trace of the broken creature I’d last seen dragged into a cage by the Guards. This Jack was strong again. Tall again. Mine again.
‘Jack!’ was all I could manage to say. Just, ‘Jack!’ like a doll you press that makes one sound over and over.
He caught me up in a massive, bone-crushing bear hug and murmured, ‘Noa!’ into my hair.
Finally I got enough of a grip on myself to lean back and look him straight in the face.
‘I told you I’d come and get you, didn’t I?’ I squeak-croaked, emotion turning my voice into that of a prepubescent boy.
‘You could have gotten yourself killed, you denser,’ he smiled back and I swear I saw his eyes begin to tear up.
He stroked my arms and looked startled as his fingers traced the scar of the ‘J’ I’d carved there all those days ago. Jack’s expression then changed to concerned with a little bit of pleased thrown in.
This is when it all went wrong.
One of the Committee members, this girl, Megan, pretty if you’re into lithe girls with really thick brown hair and a beauty spot a.k.a. dirty face mole, stalked over, wrapped herself proprietorially round Jack’s arm and stroked his more-obvious-than-before biceps.
I had no choice. I stepped back, nearly tripping over my feet as I withdrew. It was like a nature programme I once saw – Recently Extinct Mammals – where this lesser lioness had gone to all this trouble to catch an antelope and then had to surrender her prey to a more dominant cat.
Megan looked at me – up and down – taking in every flaw, every mark. Her eyes narrowed as she registered my arm.
‘So…’ her voice was barbed, ‘you’re the girl who ruined J’s life.’
At that exact same moment, Jack clocked Raf standing in the middle of the room. I followed his gaze and Raf had that closed look on his face again. The one when he switches his eyes onto screensaver
mode and I can’t read him at all. Jack and I moved still further away from one another, our bodies stiffening. I thought we were both just embarrassed. Awkward. But with Jack it was more than that.
‘What’s the freakoid doing here?’ His voice was ice.
Freakoid. The whole room fell silent and all eyes landed on Raf with the intensity of the search beams flanking the Fence.
Another Committee member, Adnan, stood up. ‘You brought a freakoid here?!’ Like it was the worse crime imaginable.
Two other girls from the Committee jumped forward, lifted up Raf’s now shaggy mop of hair to reveal his Node. There was a collective sharp intake of breath. The air crackled.
‘It’s not like that.’ I had to control the situation, could feel it about to turn nasty. ‘He doesn’t upload. He’s one of us.’ But they weren’t listening.
‘A freakoid could never be one of us,’ another voice from the Committee, a girl’s, Claire.
Have you forgotten how he treated you, Noa?’ Jack’s voice was now distilled anger.
‘It was an act. It was to protect me.’
‘What if it’s just an act now?’
‘We came to rescue you, you moron, quite why I’m not so sure now,’ Raf spoke, his voice calm, too calm.
‘I don’t need your help. Do I look like I need your help?’ Jack started to advance. Attack mode.
‘He’s here to spy on us,’ Megan decreed. ‘Somehow the Ministry knows. Maybe…’ her voice fell to a whisper, ‘Maybe they’ve got Simon.’ Whoever Simon was, he was clearly massively important as this comment caused loads of scurrying and fearful whispering.
‘Lock him up in Ward Three. That’s empty,’ Adnan ordered. So much for all decisions by committee.
‘Her too,’ from Megan.
Another bell rang and four big guys sprung forward and started to bundle us away. I was being pushed this way and that and my chest was hammering so hard in my chest it hurt to breathe.
‘No, stop!’ shouted Jack. ‘Not Noa, she’s not involved in this.’
‘Quiet, babe,’ replied Megan. ‘You’re not thinking clearly ’cos it’s her. They’re Ministry spies. No other reason for a freakoid to be out here. We should just stick a knife up his Node and be done with it.’
‘No!’ the scream tore from my throat.
‘There’ll be a trial.’ Adnan seemed to have more authority than Megan. ‘This is a place of democracy and fair trials. We’re not going to sink to their level.’
We’re now locked in a tiny room, our hands and feet bound. Our supplies gone.
Our trial is tomorrow.
This is not how it was supposed to go down.
I hate Megan and it appears that the feeling is mutual.
The trial was first thing after breakfast. Well, after everyone else’s breakfast. We’d been given some dried meat last night but nothing since. Even that had stuck in my throat.
I didn’t sleep at all last night. No, that’s not quite right – I must have nodded off at one point as I can remember this terrible dream in which I was sinking slowly, ever so slowly, into this salt marsh and Jack was standing at the edge. He had longer arms than normal, ape-like arms that hung all the way to the ground but he wouldn’t put them out, wouldn’t even extend one the tiny bit needed to rescue me. Instead, he was explaining to me sadly that this was the only way to see if I was a spy. If I sank I was innocent. And I was all, ‘But I’ll drown,’ but he just stood there nodding his head sadly. And then he somehow morphed into Megan and his right arm was now a long stick and was pushing me down, holding me under the water as the salt filled my lungs.
I must have called out and woken Raf as he was there as I came too, staring down blue and green comfort. I guess blue and green are the colours of the sea and Dad’s got these old books about the power of the sea to de-stress. Before. Before it became associated with death and destruction that is. Raf curled his body round mine for the rest of the night, murmuring reassuring nothings into my ear. Telling me that we’d get through this. Telling me that the worst that could happen is that we’d be chucked out of the Fort, but then we’d make our way back to the Peak, stock up on supplies and get home. No one would even know we’d left. Jack was clearly fine and not some starving, damaged wreck, so in a way we’d achieved our mission. As a team we were invincible.
He didn’t mention getting back through the Fence.
The Meeting Room had been cleared out and we were sat at a table facing the Committee. The rope round our feet had been cut so that we could walk there, but our hands were still bound and the skin round my wrists was red and sore where the rope cut into the flesh.
‘Is this really necessary?’ Raf had asked, but it just made them pull the rope tighter. ‘For Simon,’ the guard, this kid, had muttered as he pulled.
The trial was public so the space behind us was packed with the other settlers. I guess this was a more exciting than usual morning at The Fort. What’s it to be – water purification or watch two kids get lynched? Oh, the lynching please. I craned my neck to try and see Jack but I couldn’t make him out.
Adnan was Committee chair and sat in the middle. He called order and explained that we were here to be tried as Ministry spies attempting to infiltrate the Fort.
I wanted to stare at the floor, to block everything out, but I forced myself to look up, to stare the Committee members in the eye and challenge them to come to their senses.
‘The penalty, if found guilty,’ Adnan continued, ‘is death.’
I froze, numb. Even the Ministry doesn’t directly kill people. Raf was on his feet.
‘This is crazy!’
‘Be seated before the court.’
I hissed at Raf to sit down, knowing that pissing these guys off was not going to help us, and reluctantly he lowered himself down again, a muscle twitching in his jaw as he did so.
The ‘prosecution’ got to go first.
Megan moved from her seat to stand before the Committee. It was my turn to leap up too.
‘If it please the court…’ I was going for brave and TV show lawyery but my voice wavered in time with my shaking knees. ‘It can’t be fair for a member of the judging panel to also act as prosecutor.’
Megan opened her mouth but Adnan got in there first.
‘Agreed.’
Megan opened her mouth again but Adnan silenced her with his hand.
‘Megan will not participate in the judgement.’
Megan shot daggers at me then cleared her throat and started to speak. The picture she painted was horrific.
As everyone knew (apart from me and Raf clearly), Simon, her brother, (voice hushed at the mention of the golden one) was orchestrating a new wave of Opposition – the mobilisation of the Wetlands. A few carefully selected future leaders (she positively radiated smugness at this point so she must have been referring to herself) had been chosen to deliberately fail the TAA to be shipped out to the Wetlands. Here, they were to establish a settlement far from the prying eyes of the Ministry and collect all the people with the right skills, ultimately uniting the Wetlanders as an army.
Raf and I looked at each other. What?!!! We hadn’t seen any evidence of this, heard no mention of it. Their plan clearly wasn’t going massively well.
Now we turn up out of the blue – a freakoid and the daughter of a Laboratory employee (thanks for sharing Jack, after all – sharing is caring) under the transparent cover of a ‘rescue’ mission. Two kids. (She spat the word but she must be max three years older than us, and as Jack’s my age, if we’re such kids, that makes her a complete paedo.) ‘Are we to believe that two amateurs with no training, no assistance somehow broke through the Fence undetected, somehow survived unharmed as they trekked across the Wetlands and are somehow in possession of mosquito repellent and tinderboxes that you can’t just walk into a shop in the Territory to buy? Is it not more likely that the Ministry has somehow caught Simon, extracted a confession from him and is now using these … these (contemptuous wave in our di
rection, like we didn’t even deserve a noun) to locate our centre of operations and destroy us?
After all, it was easy to see why we’d been selected as spies by the Ministry. Raf, being a freakoid, was a natural choice, his loyalty to the Territory would be absolute. I’d been coerced or bribed another way – maybe my services were in exchange for being allowed to ‘pass’ the TAA. (I wanted to punch her at this, punch the smug confidence off her moley face, but I forced myself to sit and chewed the inside of my cheek instead until I tasted blood.)
The Ministry knew that Jack, the son of a key old Opposition figure with his own violent streak – was likely to gravitate towards any settlement that might be planning an attack on the Territory. We would have been dropped deep into the Wetlands and left to figure the last bit out by ourselves.
We were Ministry stooges, with Ministry supplies, acting on information extracted by Ministry torture. As such we deserved to die.
By the time she finished the air was filled with boos and hisses and I thought we were going to be lynched then and there.
Now it was our turn.
I got to my feet and had to wait a few seconds for the room to stop spinning.
‘You’ve got this all wrong. I, we, would never work for the Ministry.’ My voice was quavering and no one was listening. The air was still buzzing with hate and no one was listening. This anger bubbled up inside and overflowed, drowning any residual fear.
‘This is supposed to be a democracy. A fair trial. It’s my time to speak now and you WILL listen!’
The room fell silent.
I explained that Jack’s failing had been my fault and that I’d sworn to come after him. I detailed how we’d got here. How we’d clung to the underneath of a lorry, how we’d nearly died of dehydration, how we’d stayed at The Peak, all the things we’d witnessed there. I started flagging so Raf took over. He spoke about how he’d watched his sister change, how he’d sworn right from the start to never upload, how he hated the Ministry, how he’d thought of himself as strong but had never really known strength until he’d seen the resilience of the people at The Peak and how they not only survived, but fought for a good life, a better life, every single day.