The Beneath

by S. C. Ransom

  My phone buzzed again. The news was racing like wildfire. We were already booked for breakfast TV in the morning. Nan hadn’t been sure, but the police public relations person had persuaded her that it would be useful to have our version of events aired, to show that the Community people could be trusted. All the messages on my phone were from my classmates, desperate to be friends again. Jenny had even sent me a Facebook request.

  Nan walked back into the room and sat down on the only remaining seat. For a moment there was silence, and then all of us started talking at once.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “So how did you know that…”

  “Where on earth did you…”

  “I suppose I should start at the beginning.”

  Nan’s voice was so calm that the rest of us stopped talking in surprise. Having got our attention, she paused for a moment as if she was trying to decide how to start.

  “About forty years ago I had a son. He was destined for big things, and at quite a young age he became the leader of our people, the Community. But he was not a good leader. He was too keen on looking after what he wanted and not worrying too much about anyone else.”

  I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Could this be real?

  “His first partner was the prettiest and most talented girl in the Community,” Nan continued, not looking at me, “and she soon became pregnant. But her son died almost as soon as he was born, and other babies got sick and died too. And the more children died, the angrier my son became. Our people had been through it all before, you see.

  “We agreed as Breeders to take the next ill baby Above for help. It happened that my son’s partner – Marit – was next. Luckily her labour came early so we kept the birth secret, but a few days later her little girl did get sick. We knew that we had to take her to get treatment.

  “My partner, the previous Farmer, had told me all about the Crop and the whistle, so I was able to smuggle them out in the dead of night.

  “We had heard stories about the world outside, but weren’t prepared for how different it was. As soon as we arrived and asked for help we were taken to a hospital. The baby was saved very easily, and we realised how much better our lives would be if we were allowed to talk with the Aboves.”

  My world was spinning. Nan had been in the Community? It didn’t make any sense to me.

  “So you were a Breeder too? Is that right?” I asked, leaning forward.

  Nan nodded. “It was a long time ago now. But let me tell you about the baby first.”

  I sat back uneasily, suddenly frightened about what I might learn. Will took one of my hands and held it tightly.

  “Marit wanted to go back and persuade the Farmer that things could be different, but I didn’t think he would listen. Then, before we could decide what to do, the Aboves told us that we couldn’t keep the baby because we couldn’t prove who we were.

  “Marit slipped out of the hospital and ran back to the Community with some medicine. I stayed, unable to leave my grandchild unaccompanied. As I had no papers, no history and nowhere to go, I had to watch as they arranged the adoption. But the couple who were adopting seemed kind, and agreed to allow me to have some part in my grandchild’s life.”

  “Hang on a minute,” I said. “Are you telling me that I’m adopted, and you’re my actual grandmother? I’m that baby?”

  Nan gave me a tiny smile.

  “The authorities couldn’t charge me with anything, so I got an identity and I learned to live in the world of the Aboves. I helped your new mother take care of you, and after a while I got enough education to be able to work at the chemist’s stacking the shelves and secretly learning which drugs would help in the future. I started leaving them outside the warehouse, hoping that one of the Listeners would find them, but it doesn’t sound as if any made it down.

  “My life was happy, you were happy, but then everything changed. Your adoptive mother got pregnant, and it was clear when the twins arrived that things would be different. So when it all went so horribly wrong with your dad’s job and they moved to China, I offered to have you stay with me here.”

  She gave me a rueful smile. “I thought that you wanted to stay, you see, but I’m not sure if I was right.”

  “Do you think that they love me at all?” I asked in a small voice.

  Will squeezed my hand even harder.

  “I know it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, but they do, in their own way,” she said. “They’re on their way back right now, actually. They’ve been worried sick.”

  She stopped for a moment to sip her tea before taking a deep breath and continuing.

  “So, there we were, minding our own business, when one of the Community suddenly appeared in my home.”

  She looked over at Aria, still huddled in her duvet.

  “You can imagine my surprise,” she added drily. “How did you find me?”

  Dane sat up a little straighter.

  “It’s my fault. I found you,” he said. “There were rumours, and I did some investigating when I could. I never thought to ask you about getting the medicines though. That was really stupid of me.” He shook his head and then winced when it hurt.

  “But I knew we had to do something,” he continued. “The Farmer was sending more and more people to feed the Crop so that he could use it to attack London, but he couldn’t be made to see how ridiculous that idea was. If anyone tried, he had them killed. We had to find another way. We needed the Farmer’s descendent to take over. We needed you, Lily.”

  He paused for a second and turned to Aria.

  “I’m sorry for dragging you into all of this too. It was a mad scheme to kidnap Lily. I can see now that we should have just come and talked.”

  “That would have been simpler,” said Nan with a small sigh. “Much simpler.”

  “It would have worked if the Crop hadn’t chased us Above,” said Aria, fighting her way out of the duvet. “But once I got up here and saw how wonderful everything was, I couldn’t bring myself to leave straightaway. I thought Dane would be cross that I had mucked things up and didn’t know what to do.”

  “I got that wrong too,” said Dane, pulling Aria towards him and kissing the top of her head. “If only I’d spoken with you it would have been so different.”

  “No, it’s my fault,” said Aria, her eyes filling with tears. “I can’t believe that the Farmer was ready to sacrifice all of us.”

  “All of us. Even his own baby son,” agreed Dane.

  “So let me get this straight,” said Will, sitting forward. “Lily is the biological daughter of the Farmer, so you and Dane thought that she would be able to control the Crop. But actually, he was only controlling them with a whistle, so anyone could have done it.”

  “If we’d known that,” Dane said, shaking his head, “none of this would have happened.”

  “And I’m the daughter of a mad mass murderer,” I said, still reeling from the news. “Last week I was the daughter of a corrupt banker. I’m not sure this is any improvement.”

  “No, there’s more,” said Aria, picking at the edge of the duvet. “The Farmer told me something strange just before he died.”

  “What did he say, dear?” asked Nan.

  “He told me that it wasn’t Lily, that I was his daughter, but that he had disowned me because of what my mother had done.”

  “What?” exclaimed Dane. “I don’t understand.”

  We all turned to look at Nan.

  “Which of us is it then, Nan?” I asked. “Why would he lie about that?”

  Nan sat back, placing her fingers carefully together in an eerie echo of the Farmer.

  “When Marit left you here,” she said, looking back at me, “she took some drugs with her to help another baby. You are his daughter, Aria.”

  Aria stared at her, an appalled look on her face. “What do you mean? Are you saying that my mother wasn’t really my mother? And that Carita isn’t actually my sister?”

  Nan nodd
ed. “That’s right. But the Farmer is your father.”

  “Oh, that’s a horrible idea,” she said shuddering and shrinking back into the duvet as if to get away from the thought.

  “But you just said that I was—” I stopped, confused.

  Nan smiled. “You are both right. You were raised Above, Lily, and you, Aria, were raised below.”

  She looked over at Aria and then back at me.

  “Lily, Aria is your twin sister.”

  I sat back on the sofa in shock, my mind whirring with all that information. Glancing over I could see that Aria was still looking stunned, her mouth hanging slightly open. Then she turned towards me, and a slow grin spread across her face.

  “We’re sisters – Lily, you’re my sister!”

  I looked around the room at every face – Nan, Will, Dane and Aria – all looking back at me. A few short days ago I was being bullied and was alone with no family and no friends, hiding out on Tube platforms. So much had changed. Now I had friends who would risk their lives for me – including a gorgeous boy who might be my boyfriend – and a sister, plus a whole Community of people I could call my own.

  I started to smile.

  The police had finished clearing the Rat Cavern, as someone had unimaginatively called it, the lights had been mostly dismantled and the wires reeled in. Dozens of specialist officers had swarmed through the tunnels, bagging evidence and making maps.

  The Police Commissioner had asked for the tour before the caves were sealed up.

  “What I don’t understand,” she asked the junior detective who had been assigned to show her around, “is how this much tunnelling had gone unnoticed when it is so close to the Tube network. Don’t TfL have engineers checking these things?”

  “I’m sure they do, ma’am,” said the officer. “But from what I’ve heard, these caves are all pretty old, so they might have been here long before the Tube tunnels were built.”

  “Perhaps,” said Commissioner Vijh, sighing. “It’s not going to stop the Mayor asking awkward questions at the emergency assembly tomorrow though, is it?”

  The two of them continued walking along the narrow string of lights until they came to a section where the floor was littered with small white tags, each with a number. Commissioner Vijh bent down to look more closely at the nearest few, reaching out to touch the ground but pulling back just millimetres before her fingers grazed the rough surface.

  “How many was it?” she asked, her voice so low that Detective Sergeant Rooney barely caught her words.

  “We’ve not had the full forensic report through yet, ma’am, but from the number of teeth we found piled up here it’s hundreds of people, probably over a thousand.”

  “Genocide on an unprecedented scale right here in London.” The Commissioner shook her head as she looked at the tags stretching away towards the far wall. “I can’t imagine why those people put up with him for so long.”

  Detective Sergeant Rooney wasn’t entirely sure what to say to that, so stayed silent apart from a murmured “No, ma’am”. The pair then continued walking until Rooney coughed gently.

  “There really isn’t much more to see, ma’am. We’ve searched every inch of the caves, clearing out all the bodies of the rats. The gas was very effective. I didn’t see a single live one.”

  “I heard a rumour, Rooney. Someone said that they weren’t just ordinary rats but something much bigger. Can you verify that?”

  “We’ve tried very hard to keep those rumours down, as we don’t think it would be helpful for the public to know the truth. Some of the ones I saw were the size of foxes or small Labradors. Huge.” Rooney shuddered just thinking about it again.

  “No, you’re absolutely right – this really mustn’t get out. The Mayor would go ballistic.”

  The Commissioner stopped and touched one of the sturdy supporting columns. “I’ve seen enough, thank you. It’s time I left.”

  “Right you are, ma’am,” said Rooney, turning round gratefully. “Let’s get back above.”

  Much further into the caves, through a tiny crack and beyond the reach of the paralysing gas, something stirred. Beady yellow eyes pierced the dark to watch over the litter of newborn rats, each considerably larger than a man’s hand.

  They could wait.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The Beneath has been a long time coming, and it has only made it this far with the help of some fabulous professionals at Nosy Crow. A great team of editors has helped to knock it into shape – Rachel Moss, Hazel Cotton and chief whip-cracker Kirsty Stansfield. I might not have seemed grateful at the time, but I can see now that you helped to tease out the book which was hiding in the early drafts – so thank you all. Dominic Kingston has also been a key part of the team, driving the publicity machine and introducing me to some brilliant librarians and booksellers.

  While I’ve been writing I’ve been constantly amazed by the blogging community, with their boundless enthusiasm for new books and their continued support of old ones. I’m really looking forward to hearing what you think about this one. My writing friends from Twitter have also been invaluable, keeping me going when the end was nowhere in sight, offering virtual coffee and cake at every opportunity. Twitter has also given me access to experts in a whole range of subjects, and I’d particularly like to thank Jenny Rees for her advice on police procedure.

  One other person whose name I must mention is Lizzie Wakefield. Lizzie gave a whopping donation to Authors for the Philippines after the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan in order to have her name in this book – I hope that you like being Nan, Lizzie! Sorry it’s taken so long.

  I must also thank all the readers of Small Blue Thing I’ve met and spoken with at school events, on the blog, at Queen of Teen and on Twitter. Your enthusiasm and encouragement has been humbling and inspiring – please keep writing!

  And finally I have to thank my family – Pete, Jake and Ellie – for their patience and unstinting support. I couldn’t do any of this without you.

  ALSO BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

  Small Blue Thing

  Perfectly Reflected

  Scattering Like Light

  Copyright

  THE BENEATH

  First published in the UK in 2015 by Nosy Crow Ltd

  The Crow’s Nest, 10a Lant Street

  London SE1 1QR, UK

  This ebook edition first published in 2015

  Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and / or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd

  Text copyright © S. C. Ransom, 2015

  Cover photograph © Brooke Shaden, 2015

  The right of S. C. Ransom to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  All rights reserved.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblence to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978 0 85763 276 0

  www.nosycrow.com

 

 

 
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