He looks up, surprised. ‘Ah, Blake. I didn’t hear you knock.’
‘Could you explain why my living quarters are being searched?’
Huber breathes in deeply. ‘Have a seat, Mr Blake.’
I shake my head.
He shrugs. ‘As you wish. Blake, Boy 23’s still missing.’
‘I know.’
‘We’ve been through the entire secure facility with a fine-toothed comb, Mr Blake, yet nothing has been found. We’ve been searching within an eighty-kilometre radius of the facility, and as yet there is no sign of him.’
‘So?’
‘So we have to try another tack. All the signs point to the probability that Boy 23 didn’t do this alone. He knows nothing beyond the four walls in which he’s lived his entire life. How could he have known about our security systems? How could he have known to remove his tracking chip? It seems logical that he received help.’
‘Why the search of my quarters? Do I take it you suspect me?’
He shakes his head. ‘We’re throwing the net wide to gather as much information as we can, as quickly as we can. Everybody’s a suspect at the present time, Blake.’
I shake my head and sigh. ‘I don’t like this.’
‘Nobody’s above suspicion, Blake. Everyone’s quarters are being searched, including my own. We’ve started with yours, Mr Blake, as you worked directly with Boy 23.’ The office falls silent as Huber surveys me, eyebrow raised. ‘You were his donor.’
I nod. ‘Even if I wanted to break him out of Huber, what would be the point? He wouldn’t survive a day in the real world. He’s probably lying dead somewhere as we speak.’
‘Possibly so.’
A few awkward moments pass silently.
‘You broke with procedure and taught him in English rather than German, Mr Blake.’
I nod. ‘English is my first language. It comes more naturally. What difference does that make?’
Huber ignores my explanation. ‘You gave him a name.’
‘I couldn’t call him Boy 23. It was demeaning. I’m sorry.’
‘It was against procedure though.’
‘But it doesn’t mean I let him out of the facility . . .’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
Huber stares, watches me. The room’s silent for what seems like an age.
‘So, in your opinion, who might have helped Boy 23 escape?’ he says eventually.
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. It could have been anyone.’
Huber raises an eyebrow.
‘All I know is I’m worried for the boy, but I had nothing to do with his disappearance, as you will discover in your search of my quarters.’
‘I do hope so. The search will be complete soon enough, and you can return to your quarters,’ says Huber. ‘And if what you say is true, you have nothing to worry about.’
Jesper
I stand exactly where I am, gawping, pulse racing, brain struggling to work out what’s going on, wondering whether this is one of the people The Voice said was after me.
The hound strains at the rope it’s attached to, barking ‘Ruff . . . ruff . . .’ and showing its enormous teeth. The man yanks at the piece of rope, shouts something at the hound that I don’t hear properly and the hound shuts up. In the man’s other hand is his gun, still pointing directly at me.
The man is old, with grey straggly hair that looks like it’s never been washed. He has a beard as well, long and tangled. Across one eye he has a patch. His clothes are torn and ragged and dirty. He’s thin too. He looks unwell. Except I don’t spend too long looking at him, do I? Because most of my attention is on what’s in his hands – the rope that’s attached to the hound in one and the gun in the other.
The hound rears up on to its back legs, showing its teeth, making a GRRRRRRRR sound at me, ready to tear at my flesh. I stumble backwards.
‘Wer bist du? Was machst du hier?’ the man says, and his voice sounds like a growl, just like the hound’s.
But I don’t understand any of what he says cos it wasn’t even words, was it? Just sounds. I gawp nervously at him and he gawps back, waiting for an answer I can’t give him.
The hound tries to lunge for me, nearly pulling the old man off his feet. The man yanks the rope forcefully back and the hound makes a funny strangled yelp sound. The old man squizzes angrily at the hound, kicks it in its skinny ribs and says something else I don’t understand.
Only as he’s talking the man starts coughing, and he takes ages before he stops and spits into a dirty rag he takes from his pocket. When he’s done coughing and spitting, he looks at me. ‘Wo kommst du her?’
I still don’t understand. Why can’t he talk properly?
‘Ich habe nichts zum stehlen. Ich bin ein armer, alter Mann,’ he says, before coughing again.
But I say nothing, cos I have no idea what he means.
Neither of us speaks for ages. We just gawp at each other. The wind blows, making me shiver. Slowly the old man lowers his gun and tucks it into the waist of his dirty trousers.
‘Hast du hunger?’
I keep my mouth closed.
‘Komm mit . . .’ he says, turning his back and starting to walk away. He gestures with his free hand like he wants me to follow him. For a few seconds I do nothing but gawp as he disappears towards one of the buildings. I think about The Voice’s letter in my pocket, about staying away from people.
Just before he gets to the building, the man stops, turns and beckons again for me to follow.
And I do.
Carina
There’s an empty bed in our dormitory.
Earlier I tried to find out how Sabine was, but the only priest I could find to ask – Father Trautmann – simply shrugged.
Now it’s night-time and the lights are out. Sleep sounds drift from the other beds around the room. As usual, though, I have things on my mind. I get out of bed, go to my wardrobe and root around inside until I feel the piece of paper in my hand. I hurry back to bed and unfold the leaflet, straining my eyes in the dim light to read.
The Spirit of Resistance
New Dawn isn’t the only way.
They stole power by killing and raping while everyone was busy dealing with Marsh Flu, and at the same time they stole democracy from the people. Some claim evidence exists showing New Dawn engineered and spread the virus.
They control the electricity and the oil. They control the police and the army. They control the food and the money. They control where you go and who you see. They control justice.
They answer to no one.
But you can fight back. Resist their laws and their power.
Together, the people can claim back the power.
A feeling of hope rises in my chest and then in a second it’s gone. The Resistance failed when New Dawn swept into power. What use is their resistance now? How can they help me while I’m in here?
I turn the leaflet over and look at the other side. There are directions for contacting them – convoluted, paranoid instructions.
A sudden noise in the dormitory startles me.
Someone clearing their throat.
I jump, then hurriedly hide the leaflet in my nightie pocket. My heart thuds against my chest as I look up to see Father Liebling staring at me. I say nothing. For what seems like a lifetime, neither does he. Then he beckons for me to follow him out into the corridor, so I do.
‘The Spirit of Resistance,’ he says. ‘Your father was a member, was he not?’
I say nothing. I trust Father Liebling, but you can never be sure.
‘You shouldn’t let anyone catch you with things like that, Carina.’
For a second I think about denying everything, asking what he’s talking about, but instead I say nothing.
‘There are people in St Jerome’s who might inform New Dawn if they knew you had a leaflet such as that.’
I nod. ‘Father Frei, you mean.’
He says nothing. He doesn’t even nod or shake his head. But I can tell from t
he look in his eyes that I’m right.
‘Would you report me?’
He shakes his head ever so slightly. ‘You must be more careful, Carina.’
I nod.
‘Give it to me. I’ll get rid of it for you.’ He holds out his hand.
Reluctantly I pass him the leaflet. He takes it and puts it into a pocket in the side of his robes.
‘Do you know what happened to Sabine?’ I ask.
‘She’s in the medical ward. In quarantine.’
‘Is she OK?’
Father Liebling shifts his feet around. ‘She’s very ill.’
‘Marsh Flu?’
He shakes his head.
‘Then what?’
‘They don’t yet know. She’s had blood tests, but so far they’re inconclusive.’
‘Will you let me know if you hear anything?’
Father Liebling nods. Then he turns and limps off.
Jesper
The old man coughs, gesturing for me to sit on a chair, so I do. He places his gun on the floor with a clunk, saying more words I don’t understand, but I think he’s telling me that he won’t hurt me. He lets his bag drop from his shoulder on to the floor. The dog immediately sniffs the bag, until the man gives him a whack on the top of his head. The hound yelps. Then it turns to gawp at me, ears pricked up, like it doesn’t like the look of me. But soon enough the dog relaxes and lies down on the floor beside the old man.
The man builds a fire, exactly the way I learned from The Screen. Except the old man’s much better at it than me. In no time at all his fire’s roaring, filling the room with warm orange light and smoky smells. All the while the hound sits beside him, every now and then opening its eyes to squizz at me.
And as the fire crackles and hisses and spits, the man gawps at me and I look back at him, nervous, wondering what happens now. Cos I’ve never been this close to another human before. I’ve never even seen another human before this man except on The Screen, have I?
After a while, he speaks again. ‘Lass uns essen.’
More sounds. They’re words, aren’t they? Only they’re ones I don’t know.
He takes the bag from the floor and opens it. The hound stirs once more, sniffing the air. The old man reaches into the bag, and when he takes his hand out again, he’s holding a dead hopper – limp and with eyes as lifeless as those of the fish I ate.
He takes a knife with a huge blade that’s almost like an axe from outta his bag. He gets up from his seat and places the hopper, belly up, on a table. The hound follows him, tail wagging, slobber leaking from its chops, nose still quivering. The old man lifts the blade of the knife and brings it down with a crack on the back feet of the hopper, snapping them clean off.
I flinch. I saw this done on The Screen once. Seeing it in real life is different though. Seeing a real man and a real hopper and a real hound and real blood and bone and fur.
The old man tosses the feet across the room and the hound chases them, traps them between its paws and tears at them with its enormous teeth.
Meanwhile, the man cuts the hopper’s tail off and tosses it away before moving to the other end, using his knife again and this time chopping the head clean off. And even though I’ve seen it on The Screen before, seeing it in real life, seeing the head roll on to the floor, makes me want to vomit. The old man doesn’t even flinch though.
The hound leaves the legs where they are and chases after the hopper’s head. As soon as the dog’s caught it, it starts crunching it between its teeth and the sound is horrible.
The old man gets a smaller knife outta his bag and makes a little slit in the hopper’s belly. Quick and neat, he moves the knife along the belly, cutting right up to the neck. Next he takes hold of the fur and he pulls. It comes away in one piece, like taking off a coat or something. He gives one final yank and then all that’s left is the naked fleshy body of the hopper, legless and headless.
Without wasting any more time, the man slits the fleshy belly, just like I did on the fish. He pulls out the guts – and there’s way more than the fish had. The guts flop down on to the table, stinky and brown and pink and disgusting. The old man squizzes across at me, smiling, says something else that doesn’t make sense to me.
And all the while there are crunching noises coming from where the hound chews the hopper’s head, cracking the skull and scoffing the brains.
Soon the old man has the hopper cut into pieces. He picks a black pot off the ground and puts it over the fire. He takes more things from his bag – leaves and a bottle of water and other stuff that I’m not sure about – and he starts cooking, throwing them all into the pot along with the chopped-up hopper.
And soon delicious smells fill the building.
It’s night-time and the cooking pot’s empty. The old man and the hound lie huddled together on the floor, eyes shut. The old man coughs and mutters as he sleeps.
I can’t sleep though, can I? I’m too nervous. Cos even though the man shared his food, I don’t like being near him. It doesn’t feel right. I’m not doing what The Voice told me.
I get up off the ground and grab my bag. I search inside for the torch. I wind the handle to charge it and then wait a second, making sure I haven’t woken the man or his hound. And when I’m sure they’re still sleeping, I switch on the torch, put my bag on my back and walk out of the building.
The night is cold and the sky is filled with stars. I take a wander, exploring the deserted village, checking I didn’t miss anything useful in the buildings when I looked before. Only there isn’t anything useful, is there? And besides, it’s too dark to really see inside the buildings with just the beam of a torch. So I think, maybe I should just clear out of here, follow the map on the scroll to the north-west, before the man and the hound wake.
But then I spot something ahead, at the end of the village. A tall shadowy tower stands against the night sky. And I know from seeing them on The Screen that this is a church – the house of God. I walk on until all around me there are big stones sticking out of the long grass. Gravestones, aren’t they? Marking where dead people are buried underground. I shiver. I crouch down to look at one of the stones. It’s inscribed in fancy old-looking writing, all written in words that I don’t know. A green fuzzy plant covers most of the stone.
I get to my feet and keep walking. And soon I see that I’m walking amongst new graves with crosses made of branches sticking out of the ground and mounds of earth that must have been dug recently. As I look at them I shiver again, thinking about who might be in the graves and how they died and who buried them. And I think that I need to get out of here.
Only, as I’m thinking, the beam of my torch picks something else out too, something that sets my heart racing faster than ever.
A pile of bones, almost as tall as me.
All I can do is gawp. There are skulls and long leg bones and who knows what else. There must be hundreds of dead bodies piled up. Some of them are animals – I guess hoppers and bushtails and some fish bones. But mostly it’s made up of people’s bones – some big and some tiny.
And I’m wondering who these people were and how they died and who stacked their bones here.
There’s only one logical answer though, isn’t there? The old man. I haven’t seen anyone else. Maybe he killed them all. And maybe I’m next.
I make the sign of the cross, say a silent prayer, cos the truth is I’m scared and I don’t understand what’s happening and I need God to help me.
Except, as I’m saying the prayer, I hear a noise that makes me jump.
‘Ruff. Ruff.’ But it doesn’t sound like a dog making the sound. It sounds like a man coughing.
I turn around and I see him walking towards me, coughing. He spits whatever he coughed up on the ground. By his side, straining at the piece of rope, the hound growls like crazy. The old man has his gun with him. It’s pointed down at the ground, but I wonder whether in a second he’s gonna point it at me. They step closer and closer and all I do is gawp at t
hem, heart thudding.
The man speaks, all in words that aren’t words to me. I catch bits of it ‘. . . Marsh Gripper . . .’ But it doesn’t mean anything to me. Just sounds. I look at the way his face is, trying to work out what he means. Except it’s too dark to see for sure. And so what my eye rests on is the gun in his hand and then the hound by his side. I’m sure he’s saying he’s gonna add my bones to the pile.
Only I have the knife, don’t I? So I hold it up, like I’m threatening him. And right away, he takes a backward step. The hound strains at the rope again, barking, showing those big white teeth.
And I start walking backwards too, stepping slowly and carefully, dodging the mounds and crosses, knife still held up, watching the old man and the hound. And as I walk away from him, the old man keeps the gun by his side, watching me.
And I keep backing away until I’m out in the forest, until I’m out of his sight, and I run.
I run and I run and I run, till I hurt so much it feels like my body’s gonna break. And as I’m running I realise that I’ve left stuff in the village – like the coat I had. And that’s stupid, cos I’m gonna be cold out here.
But I can’t go back, so I carry on running.
And eventually I come out of the forest and into a clearing.
I stop running, cos I’m far away now, aren’t I?
And I hear a sound, like CLIP CLOP CLIP CLOP.
I stop still and listen to work out what the hell’s making that noise.
It sounds like it’s coming from the other side of the clearing. I edge closer and pry through. And what I see, well, it’s gotta be a road, hasn’t it? Hard and grey and straight. Only it doesn’t look exactly like roads I’ve seen on The Screen, cos there’s cracks in it where grass grows through. A way down the road, and moving further away each second, there’s a horse and a cart with a man in it, steering the horse.
I shrink back into the bush a little.
The horse and cart disappear into the distance.
And it dawns on me that I’ve just been running, without any idea of which direction I’m heading. I squizz at the scroll and find which way north-west is and it turns out it’s to the right, along the road. So that’s the way I walk.
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