Outwalkers

by Fiona Shaw

  It was close, the siren. Too close.

  –We got to get out of here. Now, he said. He tried to picture things. Where was the junkyard? On the edge of town, but which edge?

  There was the siren again. He hadn’t got much time. Minutes, maybe. He got to his feet and his legs nearly went from under him.

  –It’s no good, he said to Jet, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. A finger snagged on something sharp. A plastic edge. He tugged it out, and there in his hand was his school bus pass. Stuck useless in his pocket these past months. There he was in the photo, six months younger, or more, and grinning.

  Grinning. That was weird. But it gave him an idea, and next thing he was walking, head up, dog by his side, round the edge of the car park. Like he had every right to, like he didn’t have a care, like there was no hub van hunting him.

  The bus stop was one of those semi-Perspex, see-through shelters, and he could see a couple of people stood waiting, staying out of the rain.

  –Best behaviour, he said to Jet, and they went and stood there too. Jake tried not to look behind, back at the supermarket; tried not to see if they’d spotted him. His heart was thumping in his chest and he tried to calm his breathing. He shuffled up closer to read the bus stop news screen:

  Virus inoculations held ready at secret location … Chief scientific adviser calls for volunteers … Deal brokered …

  Jake tried to be less conspicuous. Not that it would matter if they’d got him on their hub screen. Couldn’t hide then.

  A man looked round at him. –You not at school? He didn’t sound hostile, just curious.

  Jake thought quickly. It must look odd, a boy his age, and with a dog. –My dog’s sick, he said. –Taking him to the vet.

  Jet looked scraggy enough for this to be true. The man shrugged.

  And then Jake had a brainwave. –She said it’s out by the junkyard, but I forgot to ask which bus. Do you know, by any chance, sir?

  He didn’t know if it was the ‘sir’ that did it, but the man got nicer then, and looked down the stop lists and told him he thought it was the number 37. The digital readout said the next number 37 was three minutes away.

  The man went back to reading the news on the screen: ‘Three arrested for virus violation’ … ‘PM hosts Allied Security Talks’, Jake read.

  His dad always used to tell Jake why the screens were wrong, but Jake didn’t care any more. It didn’t matter what his dad thought. His heart thumped hard as he and Jet waited on.

  He nearly shouted with relief when the bus came. Three minutes on the dot, but it felt like hours. The doors opened and he climbed on, pulled out his pass. He recognized the driver. He was a real stickler. He often drove the school bus, but he didn’t like kids.

  Jake held out his pass and the driver looked at it, then back at Jake.

  –Expired, the driver said. –A week ago.

  From behind came the sound of a booming, tannoy voice: Hub violation. Hub violation.

  Jake looked down at Jet, standing patiently by his side. He put a hand to his head, stroked his soft ears and the dog looked up at him and gave a single thump with his tail. Jake felt hollow. It was no good. The driver would have heard the tannoy too, and it wouldn’t be hard for him to guess who it was shouting about. He couldn’t escape. He could feel the tears at the back of his eyes. He didn’t want the driver to see him cry.

  He turned to get off.

  –Where you headed? The driver spoke quietly.

  –The junkyard, Jake said, turning back. –My dog’s ill and my mum said—

  The driver waved a hand at him. –I don’t want to know. Less I know, the better. Just get off when I say. There’s a field, some horses. Cross the field and you’ll see the junkyard.

  –Thank you, Jake said.

  –I’m not scanning your pass. And I’m sorry for your loss, lad, the driver said.

  Jake stared at him. He didn’t know how the man could know. But the words gave him a pain in his chest that was nearly sharp.

  The driver gestured. –Go on then, he said. –Sit upstairs. Somewhere in the middle.

  Passengers got on, got off, but none of them looked twice at the boy seated halfway along with his head down, pretending to doze; none of them even saw his dog, curled up on the floor by the window.

  No talking, eyes forward, sit up straight, the teachers told them. The teachers sat on chairs at each end of each row, like a lot of vultures. He wasn’t the only one crying. He could hear others around him. They were cross-legged on the floor in rows, maybe thirty children, in the middle of a huge hall. It was late, past his bedtime, and he could see one of the littler ones rubbing her eyes. She looked ready to fall asleep right where she was, there on the floor with the dustballs.

  On a stage at the front was a lady in a black gown. She had long black hair and thin, sharp eyebrows. He found out later that she was the Headteacher. She was watching them all; he could see her eyes moving from child to child, and when she got to him, Jake saw that she looked at him for a long time.

  –Welcome to your Home Academy, she said. –This is where you live now. Your only home. If you honour us and our rules, and if you honour your loan, and if you honour your country, then we will honour you. She pointed to the big wooden boards on the walls. Jake had seen these when he came in, with their golden lists of names and dates. –Then one day perhaps you will be one of these students, our Heroes.

  Jake watched her talk. She paced across the stage to make her gown billow out behind her.

  –You will feel homesick for a while, she said. –That’s only natural. But the feeling will pass if you do as we say, and then you will understand that you belong here. Remember: We watch you from the cradle to the grave.

  Jake listened to the murmur round the hall: everyone knew that one. You learned it before anything else. Before nursery rhymes, even. Witch lady, he thought. My mum would’ve knocked you down, just like that. He smiled because he’d never seen his mum hit anything. But he knew she would have, if she’d needed to.

  Wish you could’ve clobbered something, he thought. Maybe you wouldn’t have died, then. Wish you could’ve, Mum. And while the Headteacher went on with her speech, he cried inside for his mother and he cried inside for his father, his heart burning in his chest, and he didn’t move a muscle and he didn’t look away.

  How long she talked for, Jake didn’t know: they’d taken away his mobile, and his watch was in his trunk for safety. By the time she stopped, half the children were asleep where they sat. Loads of them would be too young to understand, anyway.

  Jake didn’t know if everybody had had their tribunal that day, like him. He didn’t know which of them had a mum still, or a dad. Maybe some of them had brothers and sisters right here. There couldn’t be many like him that had nobody. But when the Headteacher clapped her hands, as they all filed out, every single child looked alone.

  When the bus driver shouted for him, he was drifting, half dreaming, and he sat up with a start to find that they were right out of the town now and the bus had emptied. Outside were warehouses and stretches of empty ground, fenced with barbed wire, full of weeds. No people here, leastways not that Jake could see. Him and Jet, they’d stand out like a sore thumb. Good thing the Coalition had people scared of the countryside, he thought, cos at least it kept them away from places like this.

  –Over there, the driver said, pointing. There were the horses, heads down, grazing, and somewhere over the hill was the junkyard.

  The bus door shushed shut, the bus was gone, and boy and dog stood alone.

  It didn’t take long to skirt the edge of the field, running between the trees, crouching low through the bracken. Then up the slope, and there ahead of them was the junkyard. A chain fence ran round the edge, topped with barbed wire, and there were signs: NO ENTRY. CAUTION: ELECTRIFIED.

  –We ain’t the first. JoJo must be right, Jake said to his dog, and he felt a faint hope somewhere inside him. Inside the fence he could see cars piled high.
They looked like the cars in his old toy box, stacked in a heap like that.

  –Get in there and we’re safe.

  But there was no way to get over the fence, so they had to get in at the front somehow, and fast. The hub police hadn’t found him yet, but they would. He knew they would.

  They hid behind a stack of rusted metal girders piled to one side of the gates, watching.

  The entrance had high metal gates with jagged iron points. The gates were clamped shut across with a sign attached saying REPORT TO OFFICE, and underneath it an entry phone. There was a shed inside with a wonky chimney and a thin line of smoke rising.

  –Don’t think they’d let in a boy and a dog, Jake said. –Gonna have to be clever, Jet.

  A lorry approached, and inside the shed a man pressed a button. Less than a minute for the lorry to be in and the gates closed again behind.

  –Next lorry, we’re in, Jake whispered to Jet. –Gotta be ready. Gotta move fast.

  It wasn’t long before the next lorry came, and he braced himself.

  –Good lad, he whispered. Like a runner off the blocks. That’s what his dad would’ve said if he’d seen him, hands flat to the ground, balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to run. His cut hand was throbbing, but he was listening so hard, waiting for the lorry to pull up at the gates, that he barely noticed the pain.

  The lorry pulled up at the barrier, and the driver idled the engine while he got out to press the entry phone button.

  Jake and Jet crouched by the lorry’s rear wheels, then Jake heard the gears crunch and the lorry was moving.

  –Keep in, boy, Jake whispered, –keep in. Because the lorry ran quite tight between the fence posts. Shielded by the lorry’s flank, boy and dog were past the barrier, past the hut, and in.

  Five

  Busy with counterfoils and winches, busy shifting tonnes of clattering, clanking steel, none of the men noticed Jake and Jet slipping into the junkyard’s shadows. They clambered in deep, over rusted bonnets and round heaps of twisted metal; and when Jake thought it was deep enough that no one would find them this far in tonight, he found a car with a roof still, and some seats left, and they climbed through the empty windscreen.

  A Citroën Picasso, it was, and he took that for a good sign. His grandparents used to drive one of these; he’d seen it in his dad’s photo album. Might’ve been theirs, he thought. Might’ve been Dad sat here once, when he was my age, and he let himself pretend for a moment.

  Fishing out the biscuits, he divided them up with Jet. There were two tins of dog food left in his rucksack, but he was saving those. In case.

  –Beggars can’t, he said. –But I’ll find you something proper soon. And some water, promise.

  They curled up on the back seat and Jake slept, motionless, exhausted, one arm across his dog. When he woke, he’d make a plan. For now, they’d sleep safe. Safe as they could be in a junkyard with the rain pitter-pattering on the roof of an old, rusty car from a time he’d never known.

  His dad used to say the hubbing wasn’t as clever as they made out, and his mum would roll her eyes.

  –A Coalition pumped full of its own power, his dad would say. –Thinking it can control us all. But the facts don’t match the speeches.

  –What facts? Jake used to ask. And he’d see his mum try and catch his dad’s eye, to stop him saying more. But his dad would be pacing up and down now, and they both knew that only an earthquake could stop him.

  –Number one. They tell you they can locate us at any time, anybody anywhere, from that little chip under the skin. But half the time they haven’t got the manpower, and the other half, their tinpot hubbing technology doesn’t work.

  His mum shook her head. –Not true. That girl in Jake’s class who got lost at the seaside. You remember, Jake? They found her because of her hub chip.

  His dad waved his mum’s words away. –Number two. If we had to, we could cross the border.

  –But the border’s closed, Jake said. –There’s the New Wall across. We saw the photos. They told us about it in Citizenship. About the Faith Bombings, and the Scots attacking, and so we had to build it to keep ourselves safe, and how the Coalition put all the tech in it to keep it secure.

  His dad shook his head, and Jake tried again: –What keeps us in keeps them out. Miss McCarthy said so. So we can’t just cross it. Like we can’t cross the Channel. Same thing.

  –We can, his dad said.

  –Jonathan, his mum said in her warning voice, but his dad shook his head.

  –He needs to know. He’s old enough.

  –What do I need to know? Jake said, but his mum was fiddling with her rings, wouldn’t meet his eye. –What? he said again.

  His mum put her hands flat to the table, as if she’d decided something. –All right. But you mustn’t ever speak of this to anyone, not even your friends. Not even Josh or Liam.

  –OK, Jake said. This felt serious. He could hear the clock ticking and his mum was looking at him with a dead serious face.

  –Promise us, his mum said. –Say it.

  –I promise, he said, and he felt daft, but his mum and dad weren’t smiling. –Not even Liam or Josh, he added.

  Then his dad took a deep breath. –The border’s closed, right enough, he said. –Armed guards, all the rest. And yes, one of the men found guilty of the Faith Bombings was Scottish. But Scotland never attacked England. Several of the terrorists were English, for god’s sake, but they don’t tell you that at school.

  His mum took over. –The point is, Jakey, the Coalition was looking for an excuse to build that wall. And the Faith Bombings gave it to them on a plate. They want us to think Scotland is full of terrorists. They want us to think the virus is really bad up there. Europe too. They want us to think that we can’t get across the border, and it’s true; the guards on this side will shoot if they see you try.

  –But what you need to know is that you can, his dad said. –It might be dangerous, but you can. If you have to.

  –And you could live with your grandparents in Scotland, his mum said. –They’ll always look after you, Jacob. You and Jet. She’d used his whole name. Dead serious. –Because if you do go, it has to be both of you. You and Jet, always.

  –Sure, Jake said, because why not? He wasn’t going to leave Jet behind ever, was he? Besides which, it wasn’t like he was going anywhere further than the rec to play football, not any time soon. –But I wouldn’t know them, he said. –I know they live in … Appletown, is it?

  His mum shook her head. –Applecross, she said. –On the west coast. And your granny’ll know you, even if you don’t know her. You’ve never met your grandad, but your granny got a pass down here when you were five. D’you remember? And we had to visit the scan hub after school every day so she could report in as a visiting alien. Visiting alien, for god’s sake, she said. –This was her country. Visiting alien!

  –You’d recognize your granny, Jake, his dad said. –She looks like your mum, only not as pretty and much older.

  His mum rolled her eyes. –She knitted you a sweater. You might remember that. You wouldn’t take it off for weeks.

  –Zigzags, Jake said, and his mum nodded.

  –And my green cardigan. She knitted that too.

  –So how come you’re not worried about them getting the virus? Jake said, and his dad leaned forward, his face dead serious again. He was close as breathing to Jake, as if someone might try to listen in and he whispered:

  –The truth is …

  –Jonathan, his mum said again in her scary stop-whatever-it-is-you-think-you’re-doing voice. But his dad went on.

  –The truth is, you don’t need to worry about the virus. Not here, not across the border. Not anywhere.

  Jake laughed, because his dad had just gone weird now. –But you’re working on the vaccine, he said. –Both of you. He looked across at his mum. –Mum? Tell him.

  But she shook her head. –It’s the truth, she said. –We are working on a vaccine, an antidote for somethin
g, but it’s not for the virus. You don’t need to worry about it. And it’s best if you tell nobody about it, like you just promised. Nobody. Do you understand me, Jake?

  He nodded, swallowing, because suddenly he felt scared.

  –And if you do try to get to Scotland, it’s got to be you and Jet, both. That’s the second promise you’ve got to make.

  –And you, Mum, Jake said. –We’d all go. Wouldn’t we?

  But they didn’t answer him, which, when he thought about it later, was strange, because they had a thing about giving him answers.

  –You and Jet, both, his dad said, looking hard at him, and Jake repeated it.

  –Me and Jet, both, he said. He was properly scared now, and he looked at his mum for reassurance.

  –Remember your promises, was all she said, and she stared at him until he nodded.

  –Last thing, his dad said in a gentler voice. –You are everything to us. But you are nothing to the Coalition. They teach you ‘cradle to grave’, all that rubbish about how they’re always watching out for you. Those pictures they get you drawing in Reception. Universal Credit so no one slips through any crack. Personal well-being budget. Don’t believe it. When it comes down to it, we don’t matter. Only good thing is: how much time are they prepared to spend hunting for any one of us?

  That’s when his mum put her hand down on the table. –Enough said, she said in her no-messing voice, and although Jake didn’t know what his dad was talking about, after that both his mum and his dad seemed to pretend that it was all a bit of nothing.

  –Go and walk your dog, his mum said, and when Jake looked back through the kitchen window, he could see them still talking.

  The smell of food woke him. He checked his watch. He’d slept for four hours and he was weak with hunger, desperate with thirst. The smell was tantalizing.