‘I can’t see anything,’ the girl complains. ‘Anyone got a lighter?’
‘Yeah, Harry has, but he’s too much of a girl to go in,’ calls another boy.
‘Watch out for the Undead, Steph,’ yells the first one.
‘Will you shut it?’ the girl inside the café – Steph – replies. She is moving towards my house, placing one foot carefully after another. I can imagine her hands reaching out to feel for anything solid, tracing across my wall of books, pushing at my flimsy front door. I feel sick and faint. Discovery is inevitable.
‘Oh fag boxes!’ Steph exclaims. There is a thud and the sound of metal hitting against metal. I grimace. The scooters! I left them outside the house, propped up against the wall.
‘You all right, Steph?’ calls the boy.
I can hear snorts of laughter and stones clattering against the top window panes.
‘Something weird here,’ Steph replies. Her breathing is closer now. Her hands have started to explore the wall blocking her way. My finger is on the torch’s switch. My heart is in my mouth.
‘Some sort of den, made of books,’ she says quietly to herself.
‘Hurry up, Steph, Harry needs a dump,’ calls a voice. Loud laughter. ‘Too late! Harry, that’s disgusting.’
‘You can be my trophy,’ Steph says, pulling at a hardback by the side of the front door. Any minute now, the wall will collapse. Any moment now, a teenager with a knife is going to get the surprise of her life.
Alfie has let go of my hand and picked up the pumpkin shell. He is holding it above his head.
‘Steph, come on, it’s time to get out of here,’ yells the first boy.
‘Just getting a trophy,’ Steph shouts back, tugging at the book.
‘Forget it,’ calls the boy, more agitated. ‘This is getting boring.’
‘Don’t waste your time, Steph,’ calls another voice.
‘Got it,’ Steph shouts triumphantly. It’s a miracle, but the wall doesn’t come tumbling down round our ears, and the intruder begins to move away. Alfie lowers the pumpkin and I can hear him start to breathe out, relieved.
Blink blink. His star lights flash. The two of us go rigid. Steph gasps.
Blink blink. Alfie is hitting the battery pack, but it’s no good.
Blink blink. The cardboard door is suddenly flung open. Steph stands in the space, her eyes narrowed in a frown of determination, a long-bladed knife held out in front of her. In the same moment, I click on the torch and shine it directly at her face. We both scream. Alfie launches the pumpkin, which hits her on the head with a thud. She staggers back, dropping the blade.
‘Robbie!’ she screams, making for the window, stumbling over the scooters for a second time. I switch the beam off again.
‘Steph?’ the boy calls.
‘Robbie!’ she whimpers this time. By now she is out of the café and back in the grounds. ‘There’s someone in there. But all I could see was this blinding light.’
‘Don’t matter now. We’ve got to cut. It’s after eight,’ says the boy. ‘Still, no trophy, no prize.’
‘You’re such a skank, Robbie Nuttall.’ Steph’s voice is almost an octave higher than before.
The group is moving away now. I hear feet on gravel, laughter fading. Alfie and I are still rooted to the spot in the dark. Several minutes pass and we don’t speak, just in case it’s a trap. Just in case the teenagers have attracted the attention of the FISTS.
‘I think it’s OK,’ says Alfie at last, removing his mask. I click the torch on again, aiming it at the floor to reduce its brightness.
‘That was close.’ I pick up the knife. Its blade is about twenty centimetres long. In that second, for no reason, I feel a searing pain in my bad leg and my head is filled with flashing images of my mother, screaming and blood. Blood everywhere. Over her. Over me. And she’s yelling at me to run. But I’m throwing myself at her, hugging her, not wanting to let her go and we’re both crying and she is pushing me away.
I’m suddenly on my knees, and it’s hard to breathe.
‘I don’t understand,’ I keep repeating.
‘You will,’ Alfie says gently. He’s sitting on the ground next to me, an arm round my shoulders. His lights are still blinking every few seconds and it’s hard to take his earnest gaze seriously.
‘What do you mean? How do you know?’ I ask him. I know he’s just saying things to make me feel better.
‘Everyone does, in the end,’ he says matter of factly. I’m about to tell him to stop trying to be so smart when a loud bang sends a shudder through the whole frail building. It’s like a drill hitting concrete. It reverberates and echoes. Then it happens again. The noise seems to be coming from the street outside the grounds. Its beat is insistent, slow and menacing.
‘We should check it out,’ says Alfie.
‘You’re still blinking. I’ll go.’
Alfie fumbles under his top and tries to rip the wire out of the battery pack. It sticks. In frustration, he grabs the knife and cuts through it.
‘Sorted.’ He motions for me to turn the torch off before we venture from the café.
Once in the grounds, we run as quietly as possible across the overgrown lawn, through the wild borders to the pillars by the entrance where the griffins roar silently into the night. I’m impressed by how lightly Alfie moves, like a free runner, hardly making a sound. The ground is trembling with each new bang, as if a drummer is sounding a march for an army of giants.
‘Crikey Moses,’ says Alfie, who is the first to take a peek round the pillar. He seems reluctant to move out of the way – in fact he’s actively blocking me – so I do a mini cat leap and claw myself up the wall to get a better view.
‘Caly, get down!’ he whispers. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘It’s OK for you but not for me,’ I mouth at him, waving my arms in frustration. Alfie reads my lips but just glares hard at me, giving out a low, warning growl.
BANG! Just a few metres away now, the noise is almost deafening.
I can’t believe what I’m seeing. There must be fifty figures in full body suits and helmets, like storm troopers, marching in long lines on opposite sides of the pavement. They are holding large silver balls and twice a minute, in complete unison, they are bouncing them. In the centre of the road, another line of troops holds huge canisters, like fire extinguishers. Any minute now, I’m expecting someone to shout, ‘Cut,’ and for a film crew to appear, because surely, honest to God, this is not for real.
BANG! go the balls again.
‘What are they doing?’ I mouth to Alfie. He shrugs.
And then it becomes clear. The noise is flushing out the creatures of the night – the foxes, cats, stray dogs, rabbits, rats and lost guinea pigs. As they run, disorientated, into the path of the troops, they are sprayed with gas from the canisters. Death is swift, but, from the amount of writhing, it isn’t painless. Their bodies lie where they drop and a man jumps out of a white lorry following slowly behind to pick the corpses up and sling them in the back.
I slide down the wall and drop to the ground next to Alfie, who looks as shocked as I am.
‘It’s because of the virus,’ he says.
‘Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.’ I imagine Crease telling me to keep that thought to myself. My fingers find the bottle top in my pocket and turn it over and over. What if the government’s got it wrong and it’s not animals spreading the disease? What if they know that, but they’re killing them anyway? That’s the question you’d ask, isn’t it, Dair?
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Alfie says.
‘There is.’ As soon as the white lorry and the marching morons have disappeared from view, I run into the street and scour the verges, front gardens and hedges for signs of life – for signs of any lucky creature which stayed hidden and saved its skin.
And most of all, for signs of Furball.
Chapter Twenty-four
‘Come on,’ says Alfie, tugging my sleeve. ‘It’ll be fun.’
<
br /> Since Halloween, I haven’t felt like going out, not even to search for Furball. I’ve needed to be quiet, to read and to think.
Alfie says I’m depressed. He might be right. There seems a lot to be sad about. There’s stuff going on outside these walls that is plain wrong and I don’t just mean the killing of animals. People aren’t free to move around. Kids who fight the System are taken away. How many of them have microchips messing up their brains, like Dair?
I’m beginning to realise that I’ve lived with my eyes closed, in one place – the estate – never questioning how much the System controls everything. I didn’t think about what was going on outside our zone at all until I met Crease. I accepted things, did as I was told. Kept quiet about stuff that upset me.
Kids are often born into situations they wouldn’t choose. It happens all over the world, every minute of every day. Why should it have been different for me? The important thing is to figure out a way to change things. Maybe hanging out with the Feathers was my first step.
A step on a path which has brought me here.
I’m feeling sorry for myself too. I’m a kid, living alone, in pain. I can’t go home. My stupid brain won’t let me remember why I ran away. I don’t know what to do.
I’ve been racing through the books in my walls. They’ve been full of revelations, but no answers to my puzzles. I want to understand why things are happening, why animals are being murdered at night, why all of us have to stay indoors after eight o’clock, why children are being sent to the detention centre. I want to know why family rules can be just as restricting, like a rope round your neck, pulling ever tighter.
I don’t want to be silent now. The silence connects all the puzzles out there, allows them to happen.
All I know for certain is that for the last few weeks I’ve had new eyes, which don’t like what they see. And a friendship which feels like home.
‘Sooty, we’ll miss the surprise,’ says Alfie, snapping his fingers about two millimetres away from my face.
‘Sorry.’ I blink. We are holding each other’s gaze deeply. I realise I’m spending more and more time each day thinking about Alfie. When he’s this close, I go all tingly and my throat tightens up. He’s swallowing hard and sniffing, so maybe we’re allergic to each other. But if that were true I don’t think it would feel this nice.
Suddenly, my house fills with bright light. There is a loud, crackling bang overhead and the harsh rat-a-tat of explosions like gunfire.
‘Fireworks,’ Alfie says, breaking the silence between us.
‘Yes.’ My head is nodding slowly. My breathing has become shallow and fast.
‘We’re missing them,’ he persists, eye contact still fixed.
‘Are they the surprise?’ I forgot it’s the Festival of Lights. My voice has gone weirdly husky.
Alfie shakes his head and launches into action. ‘Put on every layer you’ve got,’ he instructs. ‘And an extra one for luck.’
Within minutes, we are scootering down the hill side by side, scarves trailing like the tails of comets. Above and all around, the night sky is exploding. The BOOM of gunpowder is followed by cascades of colour; fountains, spheres and domes, filling the horizon.
We hurtle past the leaning houses, the locked sweet shop, the launderette which still has its lights on and customers waiting for their washing. I catch a glimpse of Maisie, her hands on her hips, probably telling them about the latest thing that has ‘got her goat’.
The coast road is closed for the aerial display and is packed with crowds. There are little kids perched high on adult shoulders and rows of old people sat like sardines on benches or in electric buggies. The fireworks are lighting up their faces, hundreds of them, and all mouths seem to be open.
‘Oooh!’ they are exclaiming. ‘Aaah,’ they are sighing, according to the size of each explosion.
Safety in numbers, I’m thinking. No one is giving us a second glance. I’m looking at them, though, each and every one of them, in case under a woolly hat or a hood or a pair of ear muffs I recognise the long, flowing, perfumed locks and drawn features of Dair.
The more I analyse it, the more I believe I might be the cause of his disappearance. Did he think I had abandoned him, when I had really gone to find help? Did he set fire to the building in anger or desperation? Alfie says it was just to do with his madness. Did it happen because I’d let Dair down? Perhaps I brought the bad luck with me to the hospital. Maybe, like Gran says, it’s a bad penny you can carry in your pocket.
KaBOOM go the rockets, over our heads, raining sparks like confetti. Alfie is enjoying this. His eyes are bright with wonder and excitement. He looks like a kid who has never seen the dark side of life. I feel guilty suddenly. By being friends with me, he is risking so much. He’s lying to his mum, for starters. He’s staying up really late most nights and going home to his bed in the early hours. His schoolwork must be suffering, although he never says. He’s even smuggled out some of his mum’s old clothes.
He’s done all this for me. He looks out for me, but he isn’t pushy. I feel I can tell him anything and he won’t be angry, or make fun of me, or say vicious things. He gets impatient if I talk about Dair, but that’s probably because he’s being protective. Dair is trouble, in his opinion. Maybe I am trouble for Alfie. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to him because of me and my bad penny.
‘How’s your leg?’ Alfie asks, out of the blue.
‘Good,’ I answer. ‘Sore in the mornings and last thing, like someone’s sticking a needle in. But it goes away. Why?’
‘Wondered if you’d like a better view?’ He nods towards a circle of light in the distance. ‘It’ll be quite a push, though,’ he adds.
‘What is it?’
‘A big wheel,’ Alfie answers. ‘The fair always comes for the festival night.’
‘I’ve never been to a fair, or ridden on a big wheel,’ I admit. I’ve never even seen the one that comes to our zone once a year. My dad says it’s the place where lowlives wait to prey on girls like me and he doesn’t want me wasting exit tokens on going somewhere so dangerous.
Little Bird told me not to say that Crease and Slee go there and win stuffed toys and coconuts on the shooting gallery.
From here, the fair doesn’t look dangerous. The wheel is beautiful, an arc of blue, green and pink lights.
‘So, do you feel up to it?’ asks Alfie, concerned.
‘Yabradoodle,’ I reply, with a smile. I’m going to try to be cheerful, for Alfie’s sake.
The ride along the coast road to the fairground takes us about ten minutes. We dodge around groups of kids waving light-sticks and luminous neck haloes. We give a wide berth to the teenagers throwing Chinese fire-crackers on the ground.
Alfie weaves between the tall legs of a stilt walker – he can be such an idiot – and nearly gets us both run over by six unicycles, travelling in pairs, following just behind. They don’t bother to slow down for us so we have to zigzag out of their way.
I’ve got hiccups from laughing so hard. I’m glad we came out. I didn’t realise firework night was so much fun. It’s taking my mind off my aching thigh.
The music from the fair gets louder as we approach. The beats from all the different rides are competing with each other. There are screams of fear coming from the roller coaster and the hammer, which swings a full three hundred and sixty degrees. There are bleeps and sirens blasting from the bumper cars and a thousand other noises, human and electronic, combining to create the loudest discord I’ve ever heard.
Lasers are criss-crossing in the sky like chopsticks. Round, coloured lights outside the stalls flash in sequence.
‘Roll up, roll up!’ shout the men and women with money belts strapped to their waists, eager for the visitors to part with their cash. ‘Win a prize, sir, win a prize, madam. Three goes for a fiver, you can’t say fairer than that.’
This is a world away from curfew and the killing squads. It’s like another country, one which isn’t in
the grip of a deadly disease. The rules about staying in are relaxed tonight and people have spilled from their houses like lab rats uncaged. Young women in short skirts and high heels are letting gravity hurl them round and round and upside down. Kids are stuffing their faces with candyfloss and dancing in front of mirrors that distort your shape. Mums and dads are parting with twenty pound notes as if someone has told them it’s the end of the world.
Scan, Caly. Plan your escape route, just in case.
Outside the ring of neon lights, there is just darkness. The firework display has ended and now the air is heavy with smoke and the acrid smell of explosives. I’m thinking that when the festivities end there won’t be much time to reach the hospital before the curfew.
‘Isn’t it great?’ Alfie asks as we leave the scooters by the trunk of a large tree and make our way into the sea of bodies. He motions for me to follow him and we push against the tide of movement towards the eye in the sky. Now we are up close, it looks colossal. Its passengers are so far away when they are swept to the top of the arc that their faces are indistinct and their screeches like the distant howl of wolves.
There’s a queue for the ride. Alfie counts heads, waits for six more people to join it, and then he and I tag on the end. It is only then I see the sign ahead which says that the cost is three pounds. My excitement drops into my belly like a stone. There’s no way we can pay. Alfie has read it too but isn’t reacting.
‘We haven’t got six quid, dur,’ I say, making a point.
‘We won’t need it.’
‘You think we can get on without being noticed? What about that bald gorilla with huge muscles who’s in charge of taking the money?’
Alfie nods and taps his nose. The big wheel has finished its rotations and passengers are being unloaded carriage by carriage and their places filled by the people in our queue. The couple in front of us are the last ones to be invited on to the platform and then gorilla man puts the chain across the entrance again. Alfie motions for me to slip under it before anyone notices, and we sneak along the wooden walkway, right to the end. There’s an empty carriage between two full ones about half a metre from the ground and we have a split second to clamber on board, lifting the metal bar so that it wedges us into place.
If I Could Fly Page 10