Unworthy: Marked to die. Raised to survive.

by Joanne Armstrong

  Chapter Fifteen

  We continue riding for the rest of the afternoon. Hayes passes me a small foil packet with biscuits in it, and it’s clear he doesn’t want to stop. They are dry and salty, but fill the hole in my stomach.

  “The trap was the tracker’s, wasn’t it?” I ask him as we ride side by side.

  “Most likely. It was fairly recent, and expertly laid.”

  “Does he have a device like yours?” I motion the thermal imager in his hands.

  He nods in answer. “I had been confident in keeping ahead of his range, but the trap means that he’s been through here recently. He could have left triggers out.”

  Alarm bells ring in my head. There is so little out here that it would be difficult to miss us.

  “Arcadia,” he says. I think it may the first time I have heard him use my name, and I glance across at him warily. He continues riding, staring straight ahead, and I keep pace with him. “I know that you’re coping with a lot right now. You’ve just lost your Grandfather, and you’re finding out some unpleasant things about your world. I need to apologise to you for the scuffle yesterday. I didn’t - I don’t - want to hurt you. This assignment, to bring you to the Polis, is very unusual and, I think, very important.” His fingers nervously flit over the monitor controls and his eyes are looking anywhere but at me. “I have no excuse except that I’m on edge. I’ve made mistakes and for those I apologise too. I’ll step up my game from now on. Be more vigilant.”

  I nod slowly. “Thank you,” I say. I hardly know how to take this. His apology makes me feel uncomfortable. Plus, the tracker aside, the last thing I want him to be is more vigilant.

  “I need something from you in return though. I need you to do as I say, even though you despise me. My job is to keep you safe, and it’s in your best interests to let me do it well. You’re going to make it a lot harder if you don’t listen to me.”

  I can’t think how to respond. My anger has evaporated and all I feel is exhausted. It’s difficult to take offence, because as much as I dislike the guy, I can’t find fault in what he’s said. Plus, despise is a very strong word.

  The silence between us grows until I say quietly, “I’ll listen.” There are probably other things I should say, but his awkwardness is apparent when he urges his horse ahead of mine and I let him go without another word. The truth is that I feel chastened, as though he’s just told me off for misbehaving, but guilty because I know I deserved it.

  We follow the course of the water downstream until we come to a point where another, larger tributary meets it. To my surprise my guide turns up this new branch, towards the west, in the opposite direction of the Polis. He leaves a trigger at the place where the streams meet, so that when we move on, it is left behind us sending messages to his receiver.

  As the afternoon shadows lengthen, Hayes is more and more obsessed with checking the monitor, and I know that something is up. The forest becomes more dense, the horses having to pick their own paths, and this slows us down. I can feel his frustration ahead of me. When there’s a break in the trees and I can draw alongside him for a time, I ask him to tell me what’s going on.

  “We’re being followed. Turning to the mountains might convince him that we’re heading for the northern pass. Then we can cross the stream and double back on the other side.”

  “It’s the tracker, isn’t it?” Goosebumps sprinkle my skin, and I try to shake them away.

  “I’m sure of it. At first I hoped it might just be chance, someone trailing the horses. But he’s too decisive, and too quick. In this terrain, he’s keeping pace with us. When it becomes rockier or steeper he’ll start catching easily.”

  A killer on my heels, intent on murdering me.

  “Will you kill him?”

  Hayes shrugs. “If need be. But I want to avoid that. I’ve been told to keep the body count to zero.”

  I nod. I feel conflicted. I want to cause no-one’s death, but the thought of the predator behind me continuing his unrelenting search makes me uneasy. Will I always be looking behind me? Perhaps if he were dead I would feel more comfortable.

  He reads my thoughts and says, “We just have to keep ahead of him until we reach the Polis. You’ll be safe there.”

  This doesn’t help of course. Being safe in the Polis is one thing, but I have no intention of ending up there. Will the tracker follow me north? No, much as the thought is abhorrent to me, I would prefer him dead.

  The realisation that Hayes’s trick depends on the tracker believing I am heading through the northern pass sinks in. That’s where I am heading. Inadvertently Hayes may well be setting the tracker along my true path. The irony is not lost on me.

  Instead I say, “Alright, let’s just get to the Polis then. How do we give him the slip?”

  He almost smiles. “We do the unexpected. I have a plan, although I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  We start moving in single file again, as the ground slopes steadily upwards. I can still hear the stream on my right, and it becomes louder as we climb. The horses are finding the going harder and are slowing down, picking their way carefully up the incline. It doesn’t surprise me when he says we need to lose them.

  We dismount and rearrange our gear, putting what we need in our backpacks. Hayes keeps a close eye on the monitor. The tracker is still in pursuit, and we have about fifteen minutes before he will be within the five-hundred metre range.

  “Your boots too,” Hayes tells me. He has taken his off and tied them to the top of his pack. I do the same.

  The horses are happy near us, and start quietly foraging while we pack. Hayes gives them a sharp sting with the dazer to send them moving away. I’m sorry to see them go, but I know that there is a chance their prints will lead the tracker away from us. There’s no time to get caught up in saying goodbye to them, we have to keep moving.

  I follow him in pushing my way through the brush, towards the sound of the water, only stopping when the land suddenly falls away at my feet. We’re standing at the top of the gorge, on the outside of a bend in the narrow river. The water is about eight metres below us, swirling and eddying in a deep green pool.

  “There’s no way the tracker will believe we went in. He’ll think we’re trying to fake him, our prints here misleading him, and that we’ve continued on up into the forest,” he explains. “We have to jump,” he tells me apologetically.

  “Okay,” I nod. It sounds like as good a plan as any.

  He seems relieved that I’m willing to do it. “I’ll go in first and when you jump I’ll tow you to the shallows. You just need to relax and not panic - “

  “I can swim,” I say. Obviously he can too. That makes things easier.

  His eyes widen in surprise. I’m guessing he’s not met a hubbite who swims. Well, truth be told, neither have I.

  “Alright. Give me your backpack.” I take it off and stuff my blowpipe and pouch into it before handing it to him. He backs up a bit then gives a heave to fling it out across the gap. The bag lands with a soft crunch on the shingle bar of the inside bend, just clear of the water. His bag is heavier and lands in the shallows. He lets out a grunt of annoyance.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  “Wait, is it deep enough?”

  “I think so. We’ll find out, won’t we?”

  With that he’s gone, stepped off the overhang and plunged down into the water. I lean out to watch him surface and strike out for the opposite shore. I take a breath and leap in, opening my feet forward and back to make sure I don’t go down too deep. Even then I feel rocks beneath my feet; the pool is deceptively shallow. The water is immediately a shock to my system, drenching my clothes and weighing me down, but in two strong kicks I’m breaking the surface and moving towards the other side.

  Hayes has watched me from the shallows but turns when I reach him. On the shingle fan of the inside bend, he drags the bags further from the water and hunts out the triggers. I put on my boots then start to look through my bag for so
me dry clothing but he stops me.

  “Not here,” he says. “We need to keep moving, further into the trees.”

  He slides a trigger, needle-thin, into the leaf of a tree near the water’s edge, and we start off into the cover of the forest.

  “The triggers… won’t they leave a trail?” I ask, as we tramp.

  He looks over his shoulder at me, but keeps moving when he answers. “They’re tiny, and hard to spot, even when you know what you’re looking for. Here,” he passes one back to me. I hold it between my index finger and thumb.

  “It looks like a pine needle,” I comment.

  “Bend it.” I do, and the needle snaps just as a pine needle would. “They disappear over time.”

  Clever. It means they’d never have to go back and retrieve them.

  We make our way through the trees until the stream is far behind us. Hayes had started out at a pace which betrayed his anxiety about the tracker, and I’d found it hard keeping up, but after a few kilometres he’s slowed to such a manageable walk that I’m starting to wonder what he’s looking for. He’s breaking the trail ahead of me and I can’t see his face, but the monitor is slung from his backpack, unchecked for the moment.

  “Captain Hayes,” I call.

  He doesn’t answer me, instead putting out a hand and leaning heavily on a tree trunk. He sways alarmingly then tries to straighten up. “I’m alright,” he mumbles, but his words come out faintly, “just dizzy.”

  Looking at his face, I’m startled by how pale he is. Evening is coming on and on the forest floor the light is beginning to fail, but it’s clear he’s not alright. I offer him my canteen, which he takes, but after drinking his hands are shaking when he hands it back.

  “You need to sit down,” I tell him.

  “No,” he shakes his head. “We’ve got to keep going. Get as far from our crossing as possible.”

  He looks exhausted, and I can see sweat standing out on his pale face. It’s obvious to me that he won’t make it another kilometre. However, he straightens up and continues plodding up the trail. I follow in silence, realising that he’s in absolutely no condition to follow me right now, and that I have found the moment that I’ve been waiting for for three days.

  Chapter Sixteen

  We only manage another hundred metres or so before his steps have become so haphazard that I know he must be ready to stop, or keel over. He drops heavily into the ferns, supporting his forehead in his hands.

  “You need to keep going,” he mumbles. “Stream is just through the trees. Follow it.”

  I’m taken aback. Did he read my mind? Suddenly, as soon as he says it out loud, I know how callous it would be to just leave him here sitting by the trail. I feel guilty that I would even consider it. I feel torn.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I ask. How did he get so sick so fast? Or has he been sickening all day and I simply haven’t noticed?

  “Bite… infected,” he manages. He tries to indicate his leg. “Hoped to get further.”

  “Don’t be stupid!” I’m appalled that he would choose to continue on, knowing that he needed medical attention and rest. Why didn’t he say something? “We can camp here, there’s enough space for the tent.”

  “Keep moving,” he mutters, but I ignore him.

  Dump him in the bushes and run, part of me is saying. The other part, my conscience, is appalled that I could be thinking so coldly. I’ve settled on a happy medium, which is to make him comfortable and give him a chance to recover from the wound, and I’ll move on with his monitor.

  The first thing I do after trying to settle him on a dry fern under the trees, is rummage around in his pack for the monitor and triggers. I know I’ll feel much safer with them out. Taking the monitor with me, I can see no activity. I backtrack along our route and leave one down the trail. I set another further into the bush, and a third at the stream ahead of us. Only three - not ideal, but I don’t want to waste too much time. Glancing at the sky, I estimate that I might have about an hour of daylight left. I’d like to use it to put as much distance as possible between myself and my Polis guard. Even with his suggestion that I keep moving, I don’t trust him. He intends me to keep going in the direction he has planned. I don’t. I want to be well away from him by the time he has recovered enough to follow. Putting him between the tracker and me is just a bonus.

  With the triggers activated, I watch the zone captured on the monitor immediately widen. I can see five hundred metres from each trigger point. I spot my chosen campsite easily, with Hayes’s motionless form as an indication. My breath freezes in my lungs when I notice a presence on the screen to my south. I continue my return to the campsite, but keep my eyes on the monitor screen. My tracker is moving away from the riverbed shown on the monitor, making his way further upstream on the southern bank. As I arrive at the place where I left the gear and Hayes, the form moves out of range completely and is lost from view.

  I pull the tent out of his bag and set it up. It pops into its dome shape and I spread the tarp out on the bottom. I look at Hayes, lying down in the ferns. I’m going to have to get him into it, but if he’s unconscious I haven’t a chance. There’s no way I can lift him.

  I crouch down next to him and can hear his laboured breathing. His arms are wrapped round his stomach and a fit of shaking takes him.

  “Hey, wake up,” I urge him, tapping him on the cheek. His eyes crack open. “Into the tent, come on.”

  I help him onto his side and then, on all fours, he crawls the two metres into the corner of the tent where I’ve laid a blanket. He curls up again.

  “… me alone…” he mutters.

  “Nothing would please me more,” I tell him, thoughts of my departure already giving me jitters of anticipation. My inner voice is knocking on the door to my thoughts. I sigh. I’ve been trying not to listen, but I know it’s not going to stop until I do something about the damp clothes. What good is a tent when he’s cold and wet? Right now, hypothermia is as big a threat as the tracker, and just leaving him here, even with shelter, is as good as leaving him to die.

  I sort through his bag, shaking out items on the floor of the tent as I find them. I’ll look more closely at them later, although I do notice that none of them are wet - the bag must have a waterproof lining. I pull out some dry clothes. They comprise the Polis uniform he was wearing when he first turned up at our pod. The sight of them brings back the memory of sitting with Grandad, holding his hand as he died. I stifle the feelings of sorrow and loss that I experience at the touch of the uniform. It’s all he’s got.

  Getting the wet ones off are a challenge. At first he fights my ministering, trying to stay in a ball and my cajoling does nothing. I simply can’t move him; I can’t even get to his shirt buttons. Eventually, in my frustration, I bark at him.

  “Sit up, Soldier!” To my surprise he attempts to obey immediately, his eyes blinking and his body still trembling uncontrollably. My fingers are cold and fumble as they undo the buttons, but we manage to get the wet shirt and singlet off. I’m threading his arm into the soft cotton of a black T-shirt when I feel the rough texture of his damp, exposed skin under my fingers. In the dim light of the tent it’s hard to see clearly, and I squint at his back as I pause in pulling the shirt down.

  Wiry as his build is, after seeing him shirtless I could never doubt his strength. Well-defined shoulders draw down to narrow hips. I brush my fingers over taut muscles from shoulder blade to waist as I guide the shirt on. The skin is cold and covered with goosebumps, but that’s not what drew my attention. His back is criss-crossed with bleak, raised lines. Healed scars from biting lashes. These were not caused by a stinging whip wielded to teach small hubbite youths a lesson. These lashes were given to leave an impression. A woollen shirt goes on top and as I button this, I wonder what he could have done to deserve such savagely repeated discipline.

  He immediately lies down again and groans. I look at his damp pants and decide they will have to do. I have no idea how I’d get
him out of them and I already feel as though I’ve invaded his privacy far too intimately. I feel a faint flush in my cheeks at the thought. Instead, I take my knife and cut away part of the pants leg under which I can feel the bulk of his bandage.

  In his bag, I find a first aid kit which contains a few basics such as a needle, dressings and creams. A small tube of antiseptic cream is almost gone, and a few painkiller tablets rattle loosely in their bottle. It’s finally clear how he was able to cope with the “small scratch” and keep moving. Maybe he should have listened to the warning the pain was trying to tell him. It occurs to me that he’s taking his task very seriously, if he would choose to ignore it in favour of moving on. How important is it that I reach the Polis?

  I cut away the dressing and find that Hayes was absolutely right - the wound has festered. I make an involuntary grunt of disgust at the sweet smell and the small tear in his flesh that is visibly yellow. The skin around is red and swollen. This must have been uncomfortable for some time. It has pulled open, weeping into the dressing.

  After cleaning it as best I can, I apply some antiseptic to the wound. It’s clear that the tube in the Polis kit hasn’t been completely successful in fighting the bacteria, so I apply some of my own, then wrap a fresh bandage around his leg. I put dry woollen socks on his feet, then unfold the square, silver blanket I found in his backpack and cover him as best I can.

  “Sleep,” he mumbles.

  I check the monitor again before seeing to my own garments. It remains clear, apart from the blob in the centre which is us. I quickly strip off my damp clothing and put on some dry leggings, fresh underclothes and a long woollen shirt. My chilled skin thanks me straight away. I rub my arms and legs to get the circulation going. By the time I’m done, Hayes’s breathing has settled into a rhythm and the shivering stopped. I turn to the items in his bag.

  As well as the Polis uniform and silver blanket, I find the heavy lenses we used yesterday to see at a distance. Could be useful… I put these to one side. I pull out a long length of heavy cord tied neatly in a figure of eight, a coil of wire and a small igloo of plastic which sits easily in the palm of my hand. I look at it from all angles but I can’t fathom its purpose until I press it in the centre. It ignites immediately, and a cool white light illuminates the tent. A lamp… fantastic. I leave it switched on for the moment, but I’ll definitely be taking it with me. In a side pocket are his matches and the triggers for the thermal imager.