Boy 23

by Jim Carrington

  And then it’s on us. The beam of light wavers briefly as the man jumps when he spots us. It’s the one Jesper said is The Voice. He keeps the light shining on us, and for what feels like forever he stares right at Jesper. We stare back, cornered. I think of the gun in my pocket, unloaded and useless.

  As I watch his face, I see a smile flicker there in the dim light. He brings his free hand to his lips, puts a finger there, as though he’s shushing us. Then he turns and the beam of light moves away with him. His footsteps clack towards the stairs and then out of the cellar.

  ‘The boy’s right,’ he says, when he’s back in the room above us. ‘No one down there.’

  In another second the trapdoor crashes closed with a thud and we’re plunged into darkness.

  Jesper

  The Voice saved us, didn’t he?

  He saw us but pretended we weren’t there.

  He looked after me, like he always has done. Like I knew he would.

  We stand silent and motionless in the darkness after he’s gone and I grip the knife tightly in my hand.

  Cos although they’re not in the cellar, they’re still directly above us, walking about. They all speak over the top of each other’s words. But I can hear The Voice saying they should move on, that they’re wasting time.

  And the door above the cellar stays closed. After a minute the voices and the footsteps fade away until we’re left in silence.

  A silence that goes on and on and on.

  Cos Carina and I are both too scared to break it.

  I don’t know how much time passes like that, but it feels like hours. Eventually though, I figure we have to do something, cos we haven’t heard anyone for ages, so I whisper to Carina, ‘Do you think they’ve gone?’

  She takes a while before she whispers back, ‘I think so.’

  And then I relax. Just a little though.

  I close the blade of the knife, take the torch and wind the handle as quietly as I can and switch it on. When I squizz over at Carina, she still has a look of fear, big dark circles under her eyes. I squizz at her arm as well, at the stain on her shirt where the bullet hit her, still not healing.

  ‘What should we do?’

  She thinks for a moment. ‘Stay here till morning.’

  I nod. ‘You look like you need some sleep.’ I open the toggle of the bag and search through, take out the blanket and hand it to her. ‘I’ll keep watch in case they come back.’

  She nods, then bends down and brushes the dust aside on the floor with her hand before lying down and covering herself with the blanket. Within seconds I hear her breathing change and I know she’s asleep.

  I take the scroll from my pocket and drag my finger across the screen, waking it. To my surprise, there’s a message waiting; I didn’t feel it vibrate this time.

  You’re safe for now. I’ll lead them away.

  And then, as Carina starts to whimper in her dreams, I squizz through the scroll to see whether I can learn anything that might help us.

  Carina

  ‘Carina, wake up,’ Greta says, panic in her voice.

  My eyes open right away. It’s still night-time. The room is dark, lit only by the flickering candle Greta holds.

  She leans over me, her face etched with fear.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask.

  ‘New Dawn – they’re coming. You have to get up now.’

  A moment passes, frozen in fear, before I throw back my covers and jump out of bed. I scrabble around, pulling on shoes and a coat over my nightdress. Greta puts her arm round my shoulders and hurries me out of my room, grabs the bag that’s been packed for days, guides me towards the front room, where Dad stands to one side of the front window, holding his gun to his chest, peering anxiously at what’s happening outside. As we enter the room, he indicates with his hands that we should stay down, out of the way of the window. We do as we’re told. As we get to him, he brings us close, wraps us in his arms.

  ‘We need to leave,’ he says. ‘There are too many of them. They’ll take the village tonight.’

  From outside I hear screams and thuds and bangs and horses whinnying. The sky has an orange glow to it. The air smells of burning.

  ‘We’ll leave through the back,’ Dad says. ‘Head straight for the wagon.’

  As we reach the kitchen, something crashes against the back door. We stop in our tracks. Before we have time to think, there’s another crash and the door shakes. Dad looks around. He grabs me by the shoulders and pushes me to the floor, shoves me under the table. I’m too shocked and scared to struggle.

  ‘Stay there. Don’t speak,’ he mouths to me.

  I do as he says, peeking out as he pushes Greta behind the kitchen door, hiding her, before turning to the back door. He holds his gun up and takes aim.

  Cowering under the table, all I can think is that I want Dad to hide too. But he doesn’t.

  For a second, everything’s quiet and still.

  Then suddenly the peace is shattered as something slams against the door again and this time the frame comes away from the wall. A second later the back door crashes to the floor in a cloud of dust. From my hiding place, I see black boots stomp into the kitchen.

  Then I hear a BANG.

  I want to scream in terror, but I hold it inside. I watch as one of the New Dawn militiamen in black boots falls to the floor. A puddle of blood pools out from him.

  BANG.

  My heart jumps.

  There’s a thump as another body falls. I almost don’t want to look. But I force myself, and what I see is another New Dawn soldier slumped on the ground, his eyes lifeless.

  Hope raises in my chest. Maybe Dad can shoot them all. Maybe he’ll save us.

  But there isn’t time to think, because there are more black boots at the back door and right away there’s another BANG.

  Another body falls. Once again I force myself to look, hoping that it’s another militiaman.

  But what I see is Dad lying still and silent. Blood leaks from him, making a pool of its own, joining with the ones around the militiamen. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. This can’t be real. I must still be dreaming.

  ‘No. Dad!’ Greta shouts.

  I want to scream too. I want to cry. I want to go and hold Dad, to hug him and make him better.

  But I don’t. I stay where I am, silent, watching the boots trample over the bodies and towards Greta’s hiding place. I turn silently on the kitchen floor so I can see. I watch as they pull the door and grab Greta. She screams and I want to scream too.

  I watch as one of the men – a man I now know is Commander Brune – points his gun at her, and I say a prayer in my head, praying this is a dream, that this will be over soon.

  ‘No!’ says a voice. ‘Don’t do that.’

  Commander Brune lowers his gun as another man steps forward – a short round man, with a bald patch on the back of his head.

  ‘She’s young,’ says the man with the bald patch. Father Frei. Although he isn’t Father Frei – he’s Officer Frei. ‘Isn’t there another way?’

  Brune thinks for a second. He nods. ‘Hold this,’ he says, and he hands Officer Frei his gun. I say a silent, desperate prayer. Then he grabs Greta, and she screams again. He pulls at her nightdress, almost rips it from her body, and then he throws her to the ground. And from my hiding place under the table, I watch Greta sob as the man undoes his belt and then drops to the floor.

  Jesper

  I wind the torch twenty turns before switching it on and shining it at her. What I see is what she’s been doing for the last couple of hours – twitching, flinching, writhing, squirming. I can’t watch her suffer any longer.

  ‘Wake up, Carina,’ I say.

  Except she doesn’t wake up, does she? She carries on sobbing and moaning. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if she’s all right or if it’s something to do with the bullet wound that won’t heal. ‘Wake up.’

  With a gasp, she opens her eyes and gawps right at me, her face filled
with fear and confusion. ‘Greta,’ she says.

  Only I don’t understand what she means, do I?

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Carina says nothing. She continues gawping at me and then around at the darkness of the cellar, looking like she doesn’t understand what’s happening. She breathes deeply, rubbing her eyes. ‘I was dreaming,’ she says. ‘A nightmare I have sometimes.’

  ‘I get those. What was it about?’

  ‘Something that happened a long time ago.’ She squizzes into the darkness. ‘The day New Dawn came to the village.’

  ‘Did you see your family?’

  She sighs. ‘Sort of.’

  Neither of us says anything more for a while. Carina touches the place where the bullet grazed her arm. She winces. ‘How long was I asleep for?’ she says eventually, yawning.

  I take the scroll from my pocket and slide my finger across the screen to check the time. ‘Three hours.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Four in the morning.’

  ‘Did you hear anything in the night?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘You think they’ve gone?’

  I nod. ‘The Voice led them away from us.’ I wind the torch again.

  Carina nods. She thinks for a second. ‘You ought to get some rest too, Jesper.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m OK. We should get going before it gets light. I’ll find somewhere to rest later.’

  She doesn’t argue. We grab everything and pack it all back in my bag. We climb the cellar stairs, trying to creep up without making a noise. And when we get towards the top, I gently push the trapdoor open. A little light leaks into the cellar. We wait for a second, half expecting someone to jump out, to aim a gun at us. But nothing happens, does it? So I push the door right open and we climb out of the cellar and into the house.

  And a minute later we’re in the forest, all alone, heading north-west.

  We’ve walked non-stop for hours through the forest without seeing another person or a building. Tiredness and hunger are starting to overwhelm us, when we stumble across a road and a scattering of tumbledown buildings and we stop.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look,’ Carina says. The first words she’s said for ages. ‘We might be able to rest there for a while. You could get some sleep.’

  And I’m so tired that I don’t disagree.

  We creep cautiously up the road towards the buildings. And as we get closer, it’s obvious it’s another village – just as abandoned and wrecked as the last one. The same sign stands in front of the village.

  ‘What does this mean?’ I ask Carina.

  ‘Do not enter. Contaminated area.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Marsh Flu,’ she says. ‘When the disease hit and they cleared the towns and villages, New Dawn put these signs up. It was to stop Marsh Flu spreading. That’s what they said anyway.’

  I think of all the buildings I’ve been in and I feel uneasy. ‘Doesn’t that mean we could catch Marsh Flu if we go in there?’

  Carina shakes her head. ‘People carry the virus, not houses. Besides, you must have been given the vaccine when you arrived at St Jerome’s – everyone is.’

  We get to the doorway of a house and both squizz nervously around us. All we see are squawks in the trees and bushes. And in the building there’s just dirt and leaves and nothing much.

  So we walk inside, going from room to room. A kitchen and a bathroom and two bedrooms and a front room. No stairs. Some broken furniture. No Huber Corporation. No pile of bones. No mad old man with a gun.

  But in the front room there’s a sofa that’s damp and covered in dirt and leaves, which I brush off and sit down on, and a chair, where Carina sits. It seems like a good place to rest – easy to keep watch through the front windows to see if anyone’s coming.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ Carina says.

  ‘Just a few hours,’ I say, taking the scroll out of my pocket to check the time and the arrow on the map. ‘Then we should get moving again.’

  She nods.

  I take the bag off my back, pull out the blanket and then the knife. I hold it out for Carina. ‘Just in case,’ I say.

  She takes it and smiles. ‘Of course.’

  Carina

  I have so many questions about him and no real answers. So while Jesper sleeps, I play detective and look through his bag, hoping it contains answers.

  What I find doesn’t exactly help to clear things up though. Like the official papers he carries – a Personalausweis and health card, all stamped in Baden. The name on both of them isn’t his, but says ‘Kasper Hauser’; no mention of Jesper Hausmann anywhere. In the spaces for ‘Father’s name’ and ‘Mother’s name’ is the word ‘unknown’.

  No answers. Just more questions.

  I wonder about the documents I was promised, the new life. When will I get them?

  And then I think of the little black machine The Voice gave him. Maybe that holds the answers. Awkwardly I take the machine from his pocket, hoping he doesn’t wake while I’m doing it.

  The black machine feels sleek and light in my hands. It looks alien. The screen remains dark as I handle the machine and a thought crosses my mind that maybe it only obeys his touch. But then I think of the way he handles it, the things he does to make it light up and show different information. I swipe my finger across it, and sure enough the screen glows and fills with little pictures, each with English words under them: messages, map, settings, phone, contacts. In the background is the time – 2.13 p.m. I place my finger on the little picture of an envelope above the word ‘messages’. Instantly the screen changes and the messages appear.

  I read every last word, searching to find whatever he’s keeping from me. But I find nothing. Either he’s not hiding anything, or he can hide things much better than I can find them.

  So I put his machine back. And then I sit on the sofa and keep guard, taking the gun from my pocket and checking the chamber even though I know it’s empty.

  Jesper

  I wake to the smell of smoke. And when I open my eyes and sit up on the sofa something’s missing, isn’t it?

  Carina.

  A thought flashes through my mind: maybe they came while I slept and took her.

  Except straight away I realise that wouldn’t make sense. I’m the one they want, aren’t I? Why leave me?

  I get up to investigate. I decide to follow the smoke, creep over to the window and peek outside. And what I see is Carina, crouched in front of a fire, gawping into it. I join her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

  ‘I was bored and hungry. I caught us some food. You hungry?’

  I nod and sit down beside her and soon enough I’m gawping at the fire too. I see that she’s placed a big stone in it. She slaps some pieces of meat on the stone. The meat hisses as it cooks.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ I ask, as the air fills with delicious smells.

  ‘I caught it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Rabbit.’ She carefully turns one of the pieces of meat with the knife.

  ‘A hopper?’

  Carina raises an eyebrow before nodding. She turns over the other piece of meat.

  ‘How did you catch it?’

  ‘A bit of luck,’ she says, ‘and a trap.’

  ‘A trap?’

  She nods. ‘My dad taught me. You dig a hole in the ground in the middle of a rabbit trail, cover it with sticks and then with leaves, so the rabbit doesn’t realise there’s a hole there. Then you wait for a rabbit to run across and fall in. Doesn’t always work, but this time I was lucky.’

  She leans towards the fire, lifts one piece of meat off the stone and passes it over to me. It’s hot, burning my hands, so I rest it in my lap, waiting for it to cool a little before I pick it up again and bite into it. The taste is amazing – hot and smoky and juicy.

  ‘There are easier ways to catch a rabbit,’ she says, taking the other piece of meat from the stone, ‘but
I didn’t have all the equipment to do them. I used to catch them this way when I lived alone in the forest. Sometimes I’d be lucky – like today – and other times I’d go for days without catching a thing.’

  I nod. For a while we eat, both silent. ‘How’s your arm?’ I ask her.

  Carina stops eating to look at her arm for a second. And I see that it still hasn’t healed. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘It stings a bit, but it’s nothing serious.’

  I nod and then scoff the rest of my meat hungrily.

  Carina

  As soon as we’re finished eating we put out the fire and gather our things. Jesper checks his little machine and we’re off again, following the direction of the arrow on the map, heading for the Low Countries.

  It isn’t long before the sun’s going down and the sky darkens, but we keep going. And although we talk a little and Jesper asks more questions about my family and what happened when the militia came, we walk most of the time in silence.

  The full moon climbs in the night sky and then turns red. The forest starts to fill with the sounds of night-time – hooting and howling and the beating of bats’ wings – and I’m thinking again about somewhere to rest.

  After a while I spot light up through the trees.

  ‘Jesper, look,’ I hiss.

  We stop, bend down low and we look ahead.

  ‘A house,’ Jesper says.

  He’s right. There’s a house with lights blazing inside it. And beside that is a collection of buildings that look like barns and stores and farm buildings.

  I’m just thinking about what we should do – whether we should take another path to stay away from the house or whether we should sneak over there and see if there’s anything we could take – when Jesper stands up and beckons for me to follow him as he walks towards the building.

  We step warily, eyes fixed ahead. Neither of us makes a sound.

  We pass the barns and the fields, which seem to be empty except for a horse and a wagon. As we approach the house, Jesper turns to me and points at something beyond it. It’s an empty blue car.