UK2

by Terry Tyler

  They talk about the curfews, the microchipping, and then Paul reveals what happens to the people like him, who dare to complain.

  "Them microchips, it ain't about safety, it's so they can keep an eye on you. And how they treated Avery—"

  "Dad." Avery is shaking her head. "Dad, don't. I don't want to talk about it."

  "Okay." He puts his arm around her. "Basically, my girl, she got into a spot of bother, she weren't treated fairly, and me and Davina, we weren't going to take it lying down. But not accepting your piss-poor lot is a bigger sin in Central than breaking bloody curfew."

  "What happened?" I ask.

  Paul's mouth is set in a line. "UK-bloody-Mercia. That's what happened. It's where they put you if you won't toe the line. It's a bloody work camp for food production. Bloody armed guards everywhere, longer working hours and less credits. Then I objected to my daughter having to serve drinks to a load of bloody gorillas who thought it was their God-given right to paw her—"

  Avery starts crying. I feel so sorry for her. "Dad, stop it."

  He kisses her head. "Sorry, love. Look, long story short, we weren't going to stand for it, so we got punished. Put in solitary. The hole, they call it, like in one of them American TV shows. Five bloody days, with only cheap soup and stale bread."

  "This is unbelievable," Mum whispers.

  "And Dex?" Rowan says. "Dex knows about this?"

  "He don't just know about it, love. He sanctions it. It was him who told us we was going there. He's well in with the management, that one."

  "So how'd you escape?" I ask, and Paul tells us a seriously sad tale about them living on lentils for a couple of months so they could buy booze to bribe the guards and some dodgy struck-off doctor who takes out microchips. When he's finished, he looks exhausted.

  "D'you think they'll come looking for you?" Kara asks.

  "I thought so, yeah, but the guard we paid off, he said anyone who escapes from Mercia is considered more trouble than they're worth. You go on the 'shoot on sight' list, that's all."

  "Shit. We need to keep you well off their radar, then."

  Paul drags his hands down his hollow, tired face. "I don't think I can talk any more. Is our old house still empty?"

  "Yes, yes." Kara turns to Rowan. "Can you make sure they have clean bed linen, towels, water, food, logs, everything?"

  "I'll help." Mum gets up. "We'll get the fire going, make you something to eat."

  Audrey goes over to Davina and gives her a big hug. "You're home, now. You're safe, and you're back among friends. It's all over."

  "I hope so," Davina whispers. She doesn't look too sure.

  Doyle gets up and joins Phil and Travis; they're in a huddle, muttering, and I see Phil shake his head. I bet I know what they're saying. The Lincolns don't need to hear about the new bat fever just yet; they've been through enough.

  I'm dying to know what Avery didn't want her dad to tell us about.

  Must be pretty bad, for even Avery to be ashamed. I remember how cocky they all looked when they were heading off, last summer—and that makes me think of Flora. I wonder how Little Miss Perfect has fared in the new world; is what Barney told us about her being a 'success story' true?

  "What about Flora?" I said. "Is she okay?"

  Davina and Avery look at each other.

  "Oh, Flora's fine," Davina says, and laughs, sort of harshly. "Swans around like Lady Muck, and she's having a kid, too, by some fancy American lad. Lives in one of the swanky apartments like that pig Dex." Then she shuts her eyes, and her shoulders slump. "I'll tell you about it tomorrow, Lottie; I'm too tired now. But yeah, she sits in her bloody ivory tower, doesn't give a monkey's about we common folk. She can go to hell."

  "Hope she does," mutters Avery.

  It's agreed that we'll give them a night's breathing space before we hit them with the news about the virus and Baldur Island, and then we're off. We're really leaving Lindisfarne. I haven't got my head round it yet. Seren says we have to go the day after tomorrow.

  "We can't risk anyone turning up here looking for Doyle or Paul, however unlikely that is. And we all need to get away from that virus, now."

  I'm gagging to grill Avery, but Mum has given me strict instructions not to. "She'll tell you if she wants to, when she's ready."

  Spoilsport!

  While the Lincolns are getting used to boiling rainwater and going to the lavvy in buckets again, the rest of us have only one topic of conversation: who's going, and who's staying.

  The next day the sun comes out, and there's a weird atmosphere here; it's like the run up to Christmas, the end of a school term, or the few days before you go on holiday. Sort of carefree, like you can leave stuff undone and none of it matters.

  I'm round at Nicole and Janek's when Ruby appears, with her backpack.

  She dumps it on the floor, flops into a chair, lights a cigarette and says, "Count me in. For definite."

  Not for the first time, I contemplate taking up smoking; Ruby makes it look so totally cool. "Has Parks changed his mind, then?"

  She dips her hat forward and slings one leg over the side of the chair. "Nope. Nic, can I stay here till it's time to go?"

  "Sure, but why?"

  "'Cause Parks is a twat. For not coming."

  "Does he know you're going?" I ask.

  "Uh-huh. He's gutted. Begging me not to."

  Janek opens a can of lager and hands it to her. "Would you not consider staying, then?"

  "Yeah," says Nicole. "I mean, you and him, you're great together."

  "Yep." She blows a smoke ring. "We are. But we can only carry on being great together if I stay. The fact that he won't even consider going means he's putting his mates and his club that doesn't even exist any more, before me. Er-fucking-go, he doesn't love me as much as he says he does." And she flicks her hat again; back, this time.

  "Wow." Janek looks at her with admiration.

  "But won't you really miss him?" I ask.

  "Sure. I've walked away from longer relationships, though." Her bottom lip shakes, just a tiny little bit. "I'll tell you about it one day. But I got over it, and I'll get over this, too."

  I wonder if I will ever, ever be as cool as Ruby.

  I wander out of Nicole's house—we're all wandering in and out of each other's houses today—and it strikes me that I haven't seen Jax since early in the morning, which makes me totally panic, because I'm scared he still might sneak off down to UK Central and get himself killed. But I ask around, and Bev says she saw him go into the house where Steve and Rachael used to live.

  I hare round, and find him sitting on the floor in the hall, in front of Rachael's mural about the history of the North East.

  He's surrounded by brushes, tubes and pots, presumably the ones she used.

  "Whatcha doing?"

  He doesn't turn round. "Take a look."

  I look. Jax is no artist, but it's clear he's updating it. Rachael was killed during the invasion of December 2025, after which Steve added to it. He was not that great an artist, either, but he'd included the events of July 2024 when bat fever first appeared, and painted pictures of the community under Marcus, then the invasion, with him standing by Rachael's grave. Then he'd drawn happy smiling people setting off for UK Central.

  Right.

  "He missed some bits out, so I've put them in," Jax says.

  After Steve's work is a picture of Heath, then his grave, and two figures I can tell are supposed to be Wedge and Dex. They've both got devil's horns; I am not sure whether it's okay to laugh or not, but I want to, because the mural starts off with Rachael's dead good artwork of stuff like Viking invasions and the Jarrow marchers, then degenerates into kiddish pictures of a big bald man and a tall one with longish dark hair, with the word 'cunts' painted in bright red, above their heads.

  After this, there is a picture of a lad in a Slayer t-shirt stabbing the bald one, with lots of blood everywhere.

  I notice Jax has given himself really great hair, and broade
r shoulders.

  The main story carries on.

  A barn on fire. A man tied to a post with lots of water around him.

  A big, square looking man in army coloured clothes, who I assume is Barney because he also has the word 'cunt' over his head.

  And then I see a childish yellow sun, and a picture of a boat, taking lots of smiling matchstick men to an island a long, long way away.

  Jax has conveyed the fact that it's a long, long way away by painting the words 'miles away' above the long stretch of blue sea.

  I sit down next to him, and I laugh my head off.

  "I didn't want to name the island, or it'll be easy for people to find us." He laughs, too, and we put our arms around each other.

  "You realise that picture of you and Wedge is an admission of murder?"

  "Couldn't give a toss. Who's going to arrest me?"

  "I suppose you could burn your Slayer t-shirt and nobody would be any the wiser." I put my head on his shoulder. "I love you, Jax. You know, as mates."

  He kisses my forehead. "Love you too. I stopped fancying you ages ago, by the way."

  I laugh some more, and then I point to the sun and the smiling faces. "Does that mean you're okay about this? Leaving everything behind, I mean?"

  "Yeah. I guess. Ozzy was right. And Hawk told me they grow a crop of weed on the island, so I intend to spend the summer lying on the beach and chilling the fuck out."

  "We might never come back. To England, I mean."

  "Works for me. Nothing to come back to. Home's where your mates are, that's all."

  He's right.

  March 21st, 2027

  In the morning it's bright and sunny again, and we think it's a great omen.

  "It's the first day of spring," Mum says to me. "Officially, I mean."

  Hawk's already been down to King Edward Bay to check that the boat is in working order; supplies are gathered, bags are packed. Because it's a beautiful day we all meet in the coach park instead of the Hudson, which carries with it the memory of too many meetings about bad shit.

  We still haven't persuaded Kara and Phil to come with us, and Mum, in particular, is dead upset about this, but we do understand.

  "Maybe you'll come back to visit us one day," Phil says. "But give it a couple of years; we want to make sure the new bat fever has burned itself out first!"

  Ozzy laughs. "Dude, no worries, you got my email. Or we can Skype."

  "Don't let anyone in," Mum says, for the ninety-sixth time. "Specially not if they look ill."

  "We won't," says Jez. "You don't need to worry 'bout that. This is our island, and it's staying that way."

  Ruby and Parks are saying a big soggy farewell, and Rowan gets a bit teary at the sight of we Elmfield Five with our bags, ready to go: me, Mum, Jax, Scott and Ozzy. It's been a long road, and I can't believe we're parting company with the others.

  In the end, there are nineteen of us going with Seren and Hawk. The Elmfield five, and Mac, Martin, Travis, Doyle, Luke, John, Myra, Nicole, Janek, Ruby and the Lincolns.

  Sixteen stay. Just sixteen. Fuck, I hope they're going to be okay. We're leaving them most of our guns and ammo, anyway. And the food should last months, with twenty-one of us gone.

  We've all been round the island and said our goodbyes to our favourite places, and to the graveyard, of course.

  "I feel so excited," I say to Jax, after he's said some private words to Heath. "It's like we're going off to summer camp, but a really good one that we won't ever have to come back from."

  He half-laughs. "Hope not."

  "It's the right thing," I say. "I've got a good feeling about it. And all those new people we're going to meet."

  "I hope they're not wankers."

  "Some of them will be. But we can just hang with the cool crew, can't we?"

  Walking home, I look across to the castle, quiet and lonely out there by itself, and I wonder how many people it's seen coming and going from the island, how many deaths and births and movements of whole communities. I think about the Book of Lindisfarne, waiting for people to read it who don't know us and will wonder what we were like, like when we read history books. Our friends will survive, on the island that will isolate itself from the second wave of bat fever, like that village where Heath and Jax lived. I wonder if Lindisfarne will remember us, if some part of the thing that is us will remain here.

  I really must be growing up, at last.

  That's the sort of dumb shit my mum would say.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Flora

  The journey to Lindisfarne is much like when Adam and I went from house to house searching for vehicles, but this time it's slower going because my body is cumbersome, and tires so easily.

  Finding cars is not too big a problem because there are whole villages that haven't been destroyed yet; often we can just walk straight into the houses, and look for keys. We find skeletons in the beds, and I imagine the poor people being at work and feeling ill, then going home, too weak to care about stuff like locking their front doors, just getting into bed and dying.

  We see graves in the gardens, with little crosses.

  When I was with Adam we didn't see skeletons but rotting corpses. And there was rotten food; we soon learned not to open fridges. Adam used to deal with it, mostly. He took care of me. I should have had my baby with him, not Chester.

  Now, we have to send Nish in, because he is the only one who is not pregnant. He pukes up and cries if it's too horrible in the houses. We understand, but I find myself wishing he was a bit more like Adam.

  I have to stop myself thinking about Adam quite a few times on the journey up.

  When we find a car, Nish and I sit in the back while Bronte tries to drive it. She lurches and goes too fast; once or twice she careers off onto grass verges, especially when she turns corners, and it's pretty scary, but Nish and I learn not to say anything because it makes her panic and drive even worse. One car she couldn't work out how to drive, and another one 'went wrong', she said, after nearly killing us a couple of times, so we had to get out and start looking all over again.

  But we get here. At last. Our petrol runs out just as we turn off past the Lindisfarne Inn, and we have to walk for ages, until my feet and back hurt so much that I keep having to stop and sit on the grass verge to rest.

  At least I've got proper clothes on. I got a huge man's cagoule (to cover my bump) and some walking boots from a hiking shop, and left my cape and smart boots there. I didn't want them any more; that was my silly Juno poster-girl get-up.

  We pass the farm, and it's all burned down, which makes me very, very frightened. I wonder if anyone will still be on the island. But then I see the barricade in the distance, with two men standing on the lookout posts, and I want to cry with relief.

  I'm so overjoyed to see them that for a moment I start waving, stupidly thinking they'll be overjoyed to see us, too, but I soon get that knocked out of me.

  There are four men; three of them had not been here very long when I left, and I can't remember their names. The only one I do know is Parks.

  I try waving again and smiling, but he just stares at me as if I'm a lunatic.

  At first he says that they're not letting anyone in, and we'll just have to turn round and go back the way we came, and I feel my face start to crumple up with tears, but I force them back; I'm done with being a spoilt child.

  I nudge Bronte; we pull up our cagoules to show them our stomachs, and Parks says, "Howay, that's all we need."

  We tell him about the virus being in UK Central, but he already knows.

  "Aye, that bloke Doyle turned up. You stay put, and I'll go and get Kara."

  Doyle's here! That cheers me up so much, but we stand and wait, and even five minutes seems like ages because we're so cold and tired, and hungry. Bronte starts to cry.

  "Can't we sit in a car?" Nish shouts up.

  One of the men, Kyle, who is really good-looking and seems nice, has a word with his mate and says, "Yeah, fu
ck it, you can't treat pregnant women like this." He comes down and opens up a car for us, and puts a Tupperware box containing fresh bread rolls and tinned ham on the seat, but tells us to keep our distance.

  Eventually Kara arrives and she is not very friendly at all, and shouts at us from yards away in case we have the virus, but she says we can take the car up to a quarantine house. Bronte drives. It's strange to be going back over the causeway again. I feel sort of flat, and sad, because I had such high hopes and it all went so wrong, but I suppose part of that is because I'm so tired.

  When we get to the house, Kara throws us the keys and says someone will leave supplies outside; we have to stay there for five days.

  "It's been two days since we left UK Central," Nish says, "so can you knock those two off it?"

  She agrees, but she doesn't look happy about it.

  Bronte says, "I thought you said everyone here was really nice."

  I say, "They are, but they don't want to get bat fever."

  We're in and all I can see is a bed, a glorious bed, with pillows and a duvet. I shove off the cagoule and lie down, fully clothed; I'm vaguely aware of Bronte or Nish untying my boots, but I'm already half asleep.

  They bring us masses of supplies, even vitamins for pregnant women, and a huge pot of casserole with beans and tinned vegetables, and bread, rice, tuna, water, tea bags, some oatcakes and jam. It's as nice as it can be, and I'm grateful. There are books and games here, and the sun is shining; it's not too cold. I wouldn't care if it was. I just want to sit by the fire, read and rest, and that's all I do for three whole days.

  I'm glad to have these three days of quiet. I need them.

  I'm so scared for little Bobby. Every time he kicks, even if it wakes me up, I cry with relief, talk to him and promise everything will be okay. Even though I don't know if it will.

  When I sleep, I dream about UK Central, Alex and Chester, and not being able to get away.