Survival

by Joe Craig

  Jimmy unclipped the explosive charge – a red and blue cylinder that resembled a large battery – and dropped it into the fog. Then, still with one hand, he carefully poured the stones into the empty space in the rocket.

  When he had finished, he swung back to the side of the chopper. Even at this altitude he could taste the sea salt in the air. He pulled himself into the cockpit, dropping the helmet at his feet, and took back the controls of the helicopter.

  “Do you think he saw me?” he panted, peering through the fog towards one of the fighter jets.

  “I think you are crazy,” Marla shouted back. “I think we are trapped, we have no defence and they will shoot us.”

  Jimmy looked from Marla to the plane and back again. The warning lights from the control panel flashed against Marla’s skin, red on black. The chopper was locked in as a target.

  “So why haven’t they fired yet?” Jimmy asked quietly. “What are they waiting for?”

  High up in the control tower of Sauvage Military Airbase, Uno Stovorsky clutched a mug of coffee. His hands were still shaking. In front of him a team of three flight controllers monitored the progress of events over the Channel.

  But Stovorsky’s thoughts were far away. He stared blankly at the wall above the computers in front of him and simply nodded when the engineers updated him. A portrait of an elderly man looked down at him – Dr Memnon Sauvage. The man this airbase was named after. A Secret Service hero who had died protecting French secrets. The man who had designed Zafi.

  Stovorsky’s head throbbed and his eyes were heavy with tiredness. All he could hear was his own voice buzzing round his head. Jimmy’s mother, sister and best friend… He’d given the order to kill.

  Two children, he told himself. He took a sip of coffee, but couldn’t wash away the bitterness rising in his throat. He made me do it, he thought, but it didn’t alleviate the stabbing pain in his skull. He couldn’t take his eyes off Dr Sauvage’s stern expression bearing down on him. “It was the only way!” he shouted in English.

  The other men in the control tower spun round to look at him. “Sir?” one of them muttered, using English even though he hardly spoke a word. Whatever language his boss addressed them in, that’s what he would use, if he could.

  Stovorsky shook his head, embarrassed at his outburst. Then came a crackle through the radio.

  “This is Hawk 7,” came the voice of one of the pilots in French. “We have a clear shot on the target and are ready to deploy again.”

  Stovorsky jumped to his feet. It could end now. But the pilot knew his orders – why didn’t he just fire? At the same time, Stovorsky could hear words pounding through his head – two more children.

  The pilot continued his transmission: “Target is implanting something into his second rocket. It appears to be a number of glowing rocks. Possibly a radioactive substance. Please advise.”

  The radio crackle stopped and left silence in the control tower. The three controllers looked to Stovorsky for a response. Stovorsky was motionless.

  “How did he…” he muttered. “He must have… somehow…”

  “What is it, sir?” asked one of the engineers. “Should they shoot him down?”

  Stovorsky was shocked out of his thoughts. “Non! ” he shouted. “Non!” He pushed the engineers aside and bellowed into a microphone in French: “Pull back! Do not fire!” Sweat dribbled down his neck. “Repeat: abort operation! Return immediately and DO NOT FIRE!”

  “Understood,” came the response.

  Stovorsky slumped back into his seat.

  “But he’ll make it to England,” protested one of the flight controllers.

  “The boy is loading radioactive material into a rocket,” Stovorsky explained.

  There was a slight pause, but then the controller pressed his point. “It might still be safer to shoot him down. It takes very precise equipment and delicate engineering to cause any kind of nuclear reaction. Even with highly unstable materials…”

  Stovorsky cut him off. “This boy isn’t… normal!” He clutched his head in his hands. “Who knows what he can or can’t do?”

  “But what about Zafi? The Brits will work out she’s still alive. She’ll—”

  “So be it.” Stovorsky stormed to the door. “I’m not NJ7,” he announced, his head hanging low. “I’m done killing for today.” He was about to leave, but paused in the doorway. He glanced back over his shoulder at the portrait above the computers. “Better tell Zafi to get herself into hiding.”

  He left without waiting for a response.

  35 MESSAGE FROM A GHOST

  Helen, Felix and Georgie hurried up St Pancras Road. The street was packed with people, some rushing towards the commotion to see what was going on, others running away.

  That’s when they heard the shot.

  Georgie and Felix stopped dead.

  “What was that?” Georgie gasped.

  “Come on,” Helen urged them. “We’ve got to move.”

  “Was that a gun?” asked Felix.

  The three of them looked at each other, the fear bouncing between them. Then they heard shouts from the station. At first they were hard to make out, but a woman rushed past them and her scream was clear: “They shot him!”

  “NO!” Felix yelled.

  His senses swirled and seemed to swallow each other. He was hardly aware of anything happening around him, except Georgie crying, his feet running on the pavement and Helen pulling him up the street.

  At last they ducked into the shadows of the railway bridge behind the terminal building. Through his tears, Felix saw Georgie slump against the wall. Helen knelt down and held her, reaching out for Felix to join them.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, barely holding back her own tears. “We don’t know for sure.”

  “But what if he’s…” Felix was stunned into silence. A woman’s silhouette appeared in the arch of the bridge. Felix crept towards it, unable to believe his eyes.

  “Saffron!” he gasped.

  Helen and Georgie’s heads snapped round to look and Saffron Walden stepped forward into the light. Her arm was still in a sling, but otherwise she looked strong and stood tall, in a long black coat.

  “Saffron!” Helen exclaimed. “Are you OK?”

  Felix rushed towards Saffron, but froze half a metre away. Her coat flapped open in the breeze and Felix caught a glimpse of metal: the long metal neck of a rifle.

  “You…” he said, barely able to get the words out. “You shot Chris?”

  Saffron beamed at him. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “He might recover.”

  “What?” snapped Helen, jumping up to stand with Felix. “Saffron? It was you?” Before she could even ask why, there was a footstep behind them. They spun round and Felix thought his head was going to explode with confusion.

  Standing there, rubbing his neck and slightly out of breath, was Christopher Viggo. When he saw Felix’s expression, Viggo let out a raw laugh. Felix did too, but with shock as well as happiness.

  “You cut that pretty fine, didn’t you?” Viggo called out to Saffron, “If I’d climbed any higher I could have broken my neck in the fall.”

  “Sorry.” Saffron replied. “A little warning about what you were going to do would have been nice. I’m a little out of shape.” She lifted her sling slightly.

  “You don’t look it,” muttered Helen, wiping her cheeks. “You both look wonderful.” She didn’t know who to hug first, and in the end Felix got squashed in the middle of a clinging huddle.

  “So good to see you,” Helen whispered.

  “Good to see you too,” Saffron and Viggo replied at the same time.

  “You don’t have to shoot so close to me next time,” Viggo added, pointing a finger at Saffron.

  “Next time?” Saffron let out a derisive laugh. “If you even think about doing anything like that again I’ll aim right between your eyes.”

  “So what happens when they look for your body?” Georgie asked, brushing the mud
from the back of her trousers.

  “I expect they’ve already searched the roof where I landed,” replied Viggo, wiping a slow trickle of blood from his nose. “And they’ll know it wasn’t a police rifleman that shot me.”

  “That shot near you,” Felix corrected him.

  “Come on,” Viggo declared, with a reluctant chuckle. “It means we can’t stay here.” He led them all up the street.

  “Where are we going?” asked Felix

  “Don’t worry,” replied Viggo. “I know a place. Now, what’s all this about you getting blown up?”

  “Oh, it was so cool, right. I was sitting there and I felt a bit hungry…”

  Felix’s reply lasted, uninterrupted, until they were well away from King’s Cross, fading into the London night.

  The two French fighter jets seemed to drop out of the sky. In reality, they dipped and turned, disappearing into a bank of thick fog, then wheeled round to return to Paris. Marla and Jimmy exchanged a smile, but Jimmy didn’t feel any triumph.

  “What are you going to do?” Marla asked quietly.

  Jimmy couldn’t hear her because he hadn’t put his helmet back on, but he knew what she was asking.

  “We have to deal with it,” she went on, shouting this time. “We cannot go near any other people until we have. We have to destroy it or bury it or something… What are you going to do?”

  Jimmy’s breath caught in his throat. He felt like the black fog outside the chopper was invading his body, creeping through him and spreading darkness. Destroy – the word fuelled Jimmy’s anger. He knew the actinium couldn’t be destroyed and at the same time he pictured the obliteration it could cause. He could still feel the heat of the stones… the burning of the explosion at the oil rig… the thundering annihilation of Mutam-ul-it…

  Destroy.

  His arm reached out suddenly for the rocket switches.

  “No!” Marla gasped. She caught his hand in hers.

  The touch seemed to shimmer through Jimmy’s body. It felt soft – too soft for the situation. Jimmy could feel a frost in his chest melting. “It won’t detonate,” he rasped. “I removed the charge. If we get low enough we can fire it into the seabed. The rocket will bury itself.”

  He heard the words and knew they made sense, but at the same time he realised that’s not why his fingers had darted to the rocket switch a second before.

  “I will not let you,” Marla insisted. She reached for the parachute fastened to the back of her seat and strapped it over her shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” Jimmy asked in wonder.

  “Go to England, Jimmy. Find your family. I am going to take those rocks away. Far away.”

  “But where? What will you do with them?”

  “I do not know.” Marla clambered over Jimmy, to the side of the chopper which still held the remaining rocket. The hair that hung below her helmet brushed against Jimmy’s face. Her closeness took Jimmy by surprise. He wished it could last longer. Then he caught sight of raw, red burns on the back of her neck.

  “Perhaps I bury it,” she went on, “like you should have.” She held herself on the edge of the cockpit, then carefully climbed out, along the missile arm, just as Jimmy had done. Her legs swung beneath her, floundering in the wind.

  But before she could go very far, Jimmy reached out and grabbed her shoulder. “They’ve killed you,” he shouted. “Don’t you want to—”

  Marla shook her head. “Not yet, Jimmy,” she smiled. “They have not killed me yet.”

  “But we’re both poisoned. We’re going to…” Fear hurtled through Jimmy’s bones. He felt the back of his neck, searching for burns. His body was shaking and his lip trembled.

  “If I die,” said Marla, “I will die for a cause. You did that for me, Jimmy.” Her huge brown eyes glimmered in the lights of the helicopter. They seemed to expand to swallow Jimmy up. He wished he could stare into them forever. “You made sure that I will not die for nothing,” Marla went on. “You destroyed Mutam-ul-it and now my people can rebuild for themselves. France and Britain will not control us any more.”

  Jimmy opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out. The cold air blasting into the chopper seemed to cut through to his heart. Don’t go, he wanted to scream. Save me.

  Marla pulled herself further out, hand over hand, then looked back one more time to see the panic in Jimmy’s eyes. “Do not waste what you have,” she shouted, her words almost smothered by the constant storm of noise. “Live or die for a cause, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy dropped to the floor of the cockpit. He searched for some kind of emotion inside him, but there was nothing. He felt completely hollow and it was terrifying. He couldn’t even cry.

  After a few seconds, Marla was hanging not from the chopper, but from the missile itself. Jimmy let his hands move about the controls, hardly aware of what he was doing. His movements were detached from his brain. Then, without firing it, the claws of the helicopter let go of its remaining rocket.

  Jimmy looked across in time to see Marla fall with the missile. She plummeted from the helicopter, embracing the rocket with her arms crossed over her chest. Just as the canopy of the parachute burst open, she disappeared into the fog.

  “Good luck, Marla,” Jimmy whispered.

  The beach at Hastings was dark and deserted. The wind ripped across the sand leaving scars that became rivulets when the sea rushed in up the slope. A hundred metres away from the water, the beach front parade of restaurants was also quiet. Only a few elderly couples braved the evening drizzle, stabbing at soggy fish and chips with pointed wooden spatulas.

  But then a rumble cut through the wail of the wind. One couple stopped and huddled at a bus stop, scanning the sky.

  “It’s nothing,” grumbled the man, stuffing another chip into his mouth.

  “No,” replied his wife. “Look.”

  The husband held his cap down on top of his head and craned his neck… listening… watching. There was a steady chop-chop-chop and it was growing louder. Then out of the black clouds came a dot of light. The noise increased to become an insistent drone. Another couple joined the first at the bus stop. Then a gaggle of teenagers appeared and stood nearby, in the rain.

  Gradually the light emerged from the fog and took on a shape. The rotors of a helicopter blasted away the cloud, sinking closer and closer.

  “Let’s go,” growled one of the old men to his wife. “It’s just a footballer.”

  His wife grabbed his arm. Her fish and chips fell to the pavement with a greasy splat. Everybody clung to their coats and hats. They squinted against the shower of sand being blown up by the rotors. The chopper touched down delicately on the beach.

  By now there was a larger crowd – perhaps fifty people. Certainly more than the restaurant owners had seen on the street any evening for several months, so they too came out to see what was going on.

  “That’s not a footballer,” gasped the old lady.

  A ripple of confusion went through the crowd. They spilled out from under the shelter now, not caring about the rain, too absorbed in the sight in front of them. Marching up the beach, in a ripped tracksuit, his face partly obscured by grime, was a boy who didn’t look much older than twelve.

  As he approached, a murmur began. His eyes were fixed on the people in the crowd and his jaw was held high. Still several metres away, he wiped some of the grease from his cheeks with the back of his sleeve. The determination in his eyes seemed to light up the beach.

  There was a gasp in the crowd. “It’s that boy off the news!” shouted the first old lady. “The one who killed the Prime Minister!”

  The people edged back, but the boy kept advancing up the beach. The murmur of the crowd grew.

  “She’s right, it’s him,” said one man.

  “That face – I saw it on the TV too,” cried another. “A killer, they said.”

  “But… they said he was dead.”

  Suddenly the boy’s face seemed to darken and he stopped. “Do I look dea
d to you?” he shouted.

  “No, but… but…”

  The crowd edged back, terrified but mesmerised at the same time. The boy took a deep breath and the people fell silent. “Look at my face,” he ordered. “Phone everybody you know and tell them you’ve seen me.” His voice trembled with fire. “Tell everybody you meet. Tell them I’m alive. And tell them that before I die, there are going to be changes.”

  Now he turned and sprinted back to the helicopter. The crowd was so stunned they couldn’t move before the boy was back in the cockpit. The rotors zoomed into action. The Tiger skimmed across the sand, straight towards the crowd. It lifted at the last instant, almost knocking the cap from the old man’s head.

  As it sailed past the tops of the people’s heads, Jimmy Coates leaned out of the cockpit and roared, “Tell them I’m back.”

  JUMMY COATES POWER

  Jimmy’s world is about to go BOOM!

  SNEAK PREVIEW…

  The metal shutter slammed down on to the concrete, cutting off the last sliver of daylight and sealing Jimmy in the car park. Strip lights cast soft shadows around the rows of cars, lined up between huge supporting pillars. Jimmy stood up and dusted himself off, but the first thing he saw made him feel like his knees were going to give way.

  Next to the entrance was the booth for a security attendant. A cup of tea was perched on the ledge inside, still steaming. But the only thing left of the attendant’s head was an explosion of bone and brains on the back wall. Jimmy lurched to the side. He looked away and tried to breathe, but every lungful of air was thick with the stench of fresh blood. He tried to cry out, but the noise he made was only a desperate gasp.

  He staggered back from the booth, clutching at his mouth and nose, as if he could pull out the taste of what he’d seen. After a second that seemed like a lifetime, his insides swirled with the force of his programming. It gushed up through his body, blasting away the shock, but it was too late to stop Jimmy retching up the measly contents of his stomach.

  A part of him wanted to curl up in a corner and catch his breath, but he knew that wasn’t an option. He pulled himself up to his full height and rushed back to the booth. This time when he looked his eyes ignored the blood, even though it was still pumping from the security attendant’s neck in a thick dark fountain. He scanned the area, searching for a phone or walkie-talkie. Both were there. Both had been smashed beyond usability – presumably by the same man who had blasted the attendant’s head off.