Boy 23

by Jim Carrington

  Whatever the answer, I decide right away that I’m taking a bed as far away from her as I can.

  I choose the one nearest the door – furthest from the mad lady – and sit, trying to ignore her. Fortunately she ignores me too. The words of the guard rattle around my brain: ‘Do as you like with the girl . . .’ It doesn’t need a genius to work out what that means. It means what Commander Brune and Officer Frei did to Greta before they shot her. It’s what they’ll do to me.

  And there’s nothing I can do to stop them, is there? I mean, I have a gun – they didn’t search me thoroughly and didn’t find it in my boot. But what use is a gun without any bullets?

  I try thinking about Jesper instead, about what they’re doing to him right now. Maybe they’ve already handed him over to the Huber Corporation. Maybe they already have their bounty. He could already be dead.

  Maybe I’ll never even find out what happens to him.

  Unless I do something about this situation.

  Blake

  The faded sign for the village of Schweilszeldorf comes into view as I bump along the road. I steer the car on to the roadside and leave it hidden amongst the trees and bushes, taking everything that might be of use.

  I run to the spot where I left the van a few days ago and get in. I start the engine, check my scroll for directions to Dunkelstadt and drive.

  Jesper

  They leave me alone in a small room with a locked door and a bed. And although it’s night-time and I’m tired, I don’t go to sleep, do I? There are too many things going through my mind. I’m scared. And I hear noises coming from somewhere. Shouting. Screaming. Crying.

  I try as hard as I can to block the sounds out, to sit on the bed trying to deal with the millions of thoughts and questions flying through my mind. But it doesn’t work, and every time someone shouts or screams I flinch.

  And it’s a while after the sun’s come up when I hear a different sound that makes me think something’s about to happen – movement outside the room – footsteps and keys.

  The door opens and in walk two guards dressed in the black uniform of New Dawn.

  They say something to me in German, and before I can even try to think what it means, they grab me by the arms and take me from the room, locking it behind us.

  We travel along a corridor, past rows of identical doors. And from behind the doors I hear the screams and cries and shouts and I wonder what’s going on in those rooms and whether that’ll be me in a minute.

  We stop by a door. One of the guards lets go of me to unlock it. And my guts knot themselves up.

  The door swings open and I’m pushed inside . . .

  . . . into a room where a man sits alone behind a table. It’s the third man from Huber, isn’t it?

  The Voice.

  ‘Du hast fünf minuten,’ one of the guards says. And then he slams the door closed and locks it.

  For a moment I gawp at the man in front of me and he gawps back. And even though I’m relieved, there’s still a knot in my stomach.

  ‘Jesper, it’s so good to see you,’ he says.

  And it’s his voice.

  He is The Voice. There’s no doubt in my mind. And he’s here. He’s an actual person. A real thing. Not just a voice. All that time I lived in My Place and he was just a voice, I never even imagined what he looked like.

  My mind fills with all the thoughts and feelings and questions I’ve been carrying around since he left me in the forest, all the things I’ve been wanting to ask him.

  Only when I go to open my mouth and speak, nothing comes out.

  He smiles at me. ‘How are you? You look well.’

  I nod. I open my mouth to speak again, and this time I manage to croak out a question. ‘What’s happening? Why did you take me from My Place?’

  And before he replies he takes a deep breath and then slowly blows it out. ‘I had no choice, Jesper. You were in danger. They were going to kill you. I had to get you out of there for your own safety.’

  ‘Who? Who was going to kill me?’

  ‘The Huber Corporation. Let me explain. They run what you call My Place, Jesper. You’d reached the end of your usefulness to them, so they were going to end your life. They were going to kill you. I couldn’t stand by and watch that happen, so I set you free.’

  ‘But you left me in the woods. I could have died.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I didn’t just leave you in the woods though. I’d been preparing you for months. I showed you clips on The Screen which I knew would help you survive in the forest.’

  I nod. Cos that’s true, isn’t it?

  ‘And I tracked your movement as you walked through the forest, until you lost your tracking chip.’

  ‘But I still don’t understand why they want to kill me.’

  ‘It’s too complicated to go into here and now, Jesper. We don’t have time. But you’re related to the original carriers of Marsh Flu. You were held in the Huber facility – My Place – for research purposes. Huber developed a vaccine against Marsh Flu. But recently a new form of the disease has been spreading. Huber fear that it will be traced back to them, so they decided to destroy any evidence that could incriminate them. And that includes you.’

  I say nothing. I let the information sink in, try to make sense of it. But I think of the boy in the bed beside mine at St Jerome’s, how he died not long after I arrived there. ‘Do I carry the disease?’

  The Voice shakes his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do they want to kill me?’

  He sighs.

  I hear keys rattle outside the room.

  The Voice squizzes over at the door and then back at me. ‘We don’t have time to discuss this right now, Jesper. It’s complicated.’

  And before he says any more, the door opens and the guards step into the room.

  Carina

  A militiaman collects me from the room and I can’t help but feel dread about what might happen next.

  He walks me through the corridors – dark green paint peeling from the walls, pictures mouldering in their frames, the windows high up on one wall casting dim light and shadows around. We pass armed officers at every door. They look me up and down as I shuffle past, making me nervous about who wants me and what their intentions are. I put my hand in my pocket and feel the gun, for reassurance.

  Eventually we stop in front of a door – identical to all the others. My hands go clammy as the guard puts the key in the lock. When the door’s open, he jabs me in the back with his gun to make me move.

  What I’m expecting on the other side of the door isn’t what I see at all. Because sitting around a big wooden table are Jesper, the red-faced militiaman from the front desk and the man Jesper calls The Voice.

  ‘Sit,’ the guard orders.

  So I do.

  Jesper looks across the table at me. He looks confused. I’m confused too, but I smile at him.

  ‘You say you know this young man and this young lady,’ the militiaman says in German to The Voice.

  ‘Yes,’ The Voice answers in German. ‘Kasper Hauser is my son.’

  The militiaman looks at the identity card, the one I found in Jesper’s bag. He raises an eyebrow as he looks back at The Voice. ‘This says “father unknown”.’

  The Voice nods. ‘I realise that. There was a time of great turmoil when he was born and he was taken from me. He ended up in a home. We need to get his papers corrected. But as you know, that isn’t easy . . .’

  The militiaman looks anything but convinced. ‘And the girl?’

  ‘My niece. Stefanie Hauser.’

  The militiaman takes another long deep breath. He knows this isn’t true. He caresses his red flabby cheeks with his right hand as he thinks. ‘Why doesn’t she have any papers?’

  ‘I have her papers here.’ The Voice lifts a black leather briefcase on to the table and clicks it open. He reaches inside and brings out a pile of papers, which he places on the table.

  The militiaman leafs through them, then
pauses to give me a searching look. When he’s done, he pushes the papers back into the centre of the table. He looks at The Voice with a raised eyebrow and the room is silent.

  ‘I’d be grateful if I could take my relatives home now,’ The Voice says.

  The militiaman doesn’t say anything in response. Instead he lays a newspaper down on the table. A different newspaper from the one Jesper and I found, but the same pictures stare out from its cover along with a similar made-up headline. ‘Mr Blake, the young lady looks a lot like the girl in the newspaper, would you not agree?’

  The Voice glances at the paper. He shakes his head. ‘This is a different girl.’

  The militiaman frowns. ‘Really? The similarities are remarkable, don’t you think? Her appearance. The fact that we stopped her in the same car reported here. The fact that she is with a male accomplice.’

  I glance at Jesper. His eyes dart from person to person, confused and nervous.

  ‘I’ve given you official documents proving these children are who I say they are,’ The Voice says. ‘I’m their father and uncle respectively. Let them come with me. They haven’t committed any crime.’

  ‘They were in a stolen car.’

  ‘True. But I’m more than willing to pay any fines they might have incurred . . .’ The Voice says, reaching for his briefcase again.

  ‘It isn’t that simple. There’s a bounty out for the return of these children. Twenty thousand crowns. I’ve already called the number to report them.’

  The Voice stares back at him. ‘Have you?’

  The red-faced man nods.

  ‘I can pay. How much is the reward?’

  The militiaman takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes. ‘Mr Blake, you must understand that this isn’t possible. These young people are wanted in relation to very serious crimes. Murder. Theft. I can’t simply hand them to you.’

  The Voice – Mr Blake – squirms a little in his seat. ‘You and I both know there’s every likelihood the crimes these children are accused of are purely fictional.’

  I try not to catch anyone’s eye.

  ‘There are people from the Huber Corporation on their way here at this very second –’ the red-faced man says.

  ‘They can’t be handed over to those men. They’ll be killed.’

  The militiaman puts his glasses back on his face, shrugging. ‘This changes nothing. As I have said, I can’t simply hand them over to you.’

  The Voice sighs. ‘Maybe you can be persuaded.’

  ‘Perhaps. You can try to convince me at least.’

  ‘I can offer you twenty thousand.’

  The militiaman sighs. ‘Huber are offering me twenty thousand . . . If I hand them to you, there’ll be complications for me. I’ll have to lie about what happened. Either I’ll have to say you broke them out of here or that we were mistaken about their identity in the first place. I’ll need compensating for the inconvenience and for the loss of my reputation.’

  The Voice raises his eyebrows, thinking. Then, slowly, he nods. ‘OK. I’m willing to pay twenty-five thousand.’

  ‘Thirty and we’re closer to a deal . . .’ says the militiaman, face set hard, unmoving.

  The Voice thinks for a second. ‘OK, thirty it is.’

  The militiaman’s face is split by a smile as he gets to his feet and leans across the table to shake hands. ‘You shouldn’t delay your departure,’ he says. ‘The Huber Corporation will be here soon.’

  Jesper

  One second they’re all talking German and I don’t know what’s happening and the next they’re getting out of their chairs and I still don’t know what’s going on.

  As everyone heads towards the door, Carina comes over and stands by my side. ‘We’re free,’ she whispers in English. ‘He’s paying them thirty thousand crowns to let us go.’

  Before I get a chance to reply, we’re moving out of the room, through the corridors, back to the desk where they took my bag last night. And The Voice stands there, smiles at me, before checking his watch. He takes some thick envelopes out of his bag and hands them to the red-faced officer.

  The officer takes them, stuffs them in his pockets and nods. They speak to each other in German as the officer hands back my bag.

  ‘We have to leave immediately,’ The Voice says.

  Right away we’re rushing across the hallway, The Voice’s feet clacking and mine and Carina’s shuffling on the stone floor as we run for the doors.

  Outside, the wind’s cold and biting. The Voice leads us down the steps and then along the pavement, dodging in and out of people going about their business. And I notice that all the time he has a gun held in his right hand and I wonder whether I should get my knife out of the bag. We stop in front of a black van.

  ‘Get in. It’s best if you two ride in the back,’ The Voice says. ‘There’s a sheet you can cover yourselves with so no one’ll see you. Be careful of the freezer.’

  As soon as we’re in, the door slides closed behind us. The same sliding metal sound I heard when I was left in the forest. A second later and the engine starts with a splutter, the van RRRRRRRRRRRRs into action and we start moving.

  Carina and I are thrown around as we zoom along. I hold on to a handle on the side of the van and look out of the back window, cos it turns out that when you’re inside, you can see out through it even though it doesn’t look like a window from the outside.

  Carina nudges me. ‘There’s a car.’

  And she’s right. It’s behind the van, following. We both know what this means. We travelled for days and didn’t see another person or a car. Not until we were stopped. And this one that’s behind us looks just like the one we saw before, when we first escaped from St Jerome’s – same shape, same sign on the front, same blacked-out windows so we can’t see who’s inside.

  ‘It’s them, isn’t it? Huber?’

  I nod and then I bang on the metal where it separates the front of the van from the back. ‘They’re following us,’ I shout to The Voice. ‘Huber.’

  He doesn’t reply, but immediately the engine RRRRRRRRRRRRs louder. The van picks up speed, turning this way and that, throwing Carina and me around.

  I grip the handle tightly, crouching so I can squizz out of the back window. Buildings and trees flash past, faster and faster, until they’re nothing but a blur. We take sharp turns – left and right and left and right – zooming along small side streets. And all the time the other car is right behind us – sometimes closer, sometimes further back, but always following.

  We speed past the edge of the town and out into countryside. Trees and grass and fields flash past. And the black car stays directly behind us, watching us, just waiting for us to stop.

  And then a hand holding a gun appears out of the car’s side window.

  BANG.

  Carina and I duck down, exchanging a glance. And I know she’s thinking the same thing as me: there’s no way we’re gonna get away from them.

  Carina

  Jesper and I are rolled around the back of the van as The Voice drives faster and faster, taking turns at the last minute, trying to throw the black car off the trail.

  We’re not the only things being thrown around, because on the floor of the van I spot something. Two small metallic cylinders. Bullets. I pick them up from the floor and put them in my pocket.

  And when I look out of the back window again, I see the black car easily matches our every burst of speed and sharp turn. All the time they’re shooting at us, hitting the road and the body of the van. As I’m thinking that I should load the bullets into the gun and shoot back, something happens that I’m not expecting. The van turns so suddenly and violently that Jesper and I are thrown against the metal sides. The ground beneath us suddenly feels bumpy instead of smooth. And out of the back window I see why: we’ve steered off the road, across grass and mud towards the forest. The van bumps along, throwing us up and down and from side to side.

  Above the bumping and the engine noise, The Voice shouts in En
glish from the front of the van, ‘I’ll stop in thirty seconds. As soon as I do, run for the cover of the trees and don’t stop.’

  I look out of the window, see that the black car’s struggling to get across the mud and past the trees, and I start to think maybe we can do this. On roads the car might be better, but out here in the forest, it’s slowing.

  Jesper and I look at each other. He’s gripping that knife for dear life.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he says.

  I nod. ‘Stick together.’

  There’s another shout from the front of the van – ‘NOW!’ – and then the van skids round and stops.

  Jesper gets his hand on the door handle first, turns and pulls it to the side and the door slides open. In less than a second we’re out and we’re running.

  Jesper

  We don’t take a moment even to look around. The three of us run as fast as we can.

  As I head for the trees, I hear the door of the black car open and people running, shouting in German. A gunshot splits the air and a bullet whistles past, thudding into a tree, making all the squawks in the trees flap their wings as they take to the sky.

  But we don’t stop. We dodge around trees, using them as cover so we’re not easy targets. And even though running comes easier to me than to The Voice or Carina, we’re managing to get away from them.

  Within a couple of minutes there’s a gap between us and the men from the car. The Voice dodges behind a tree, taking shelter. Carina and I do the same. He squizzes back at the men running through the woods – the two men from Huber, Father Frei and Markus – and he takes aim and shoots.

  CRACK.

  The bullet whizzes through the air, missing everyone. And right away he shoots again.

  CRACK.

  This time the bullet hits a tree and bits of bark and wood fly off.