by Mike Revell
The writing was still helping. He was almost back to his old self. I mean, his face was still lined and tired looking, and his back never used to be that hunched, and he wasn’t exactly dancing. But he looked better.
When Dad finished cooking, he plated up the food. It was salmon with this crispy spicy coating and noodles with veg. I grabbed two empty plates and we took the meal through to the living room. I sat down, trying not to look at the urn on the mantelpiece. Dad flicked on the TV. There was nothing on, just chat shows and repeats. He cycled through the channels, then settled for an old detective drama from the seventies.
I didn’t normally watch old TV, because it looked rubbish compared to modern stuff. Dad always used to go on about classic films like Spartacus. But when he put it on, I couldn’t take it seriously. The fights looked like the ones you had with your friends when you were younger, using plastic swords and shields from the toy shop.
I didn’t mind watching this, though. It was nice just to be spending time with Dad. I took a bite of food, hesitant after the market food in the story. But it tasted amazing. I tried to remember the taste of the burgers we made, but I couldn’t. Everything was so muddled after all the jumps.
Six whole days. That was what I’d missed, living Dad’s story.
Part of me wanted to shout, “It’s not fair!” because they were hours and minutes I’d never get back. They were gone, snipped out of my life.
But an even bigger part of me wanted to keep jumping back into the story until I finished it. Because even though this situation wasn’t fair on me, it wasn’t fair on Dad either.
I might have lost days and hours and minutes, but he’d lost a year of his life like this. It was like he’d dug inside himself and only part of him was looking out at the world.
If I could help him, then everything would be worth it.
When the show ended, we stacked the plates on the coffee table and sat back, staring at the commercials. I wasn’t really listening, but it didn’t matter. It was nice just sitting there.
“We’ll do it, you know,” Dad said, out of nowhere.
I glanced across at him. He was looking up at the urn again. The afternoon sun dipped down behind the hedges outside, and where it hit the gold, it turned it a burning orange color.
“We’ll set her free. Like she wanted. Scatter her ashes over the sea.”
“I know,” I said. “I know we will, Dad.”
He attempted a smile but stopped halfway. I smiled back, but my mind was elsewhere now. I was thinking about the Darkness, thinking about the Marshal. Something still wasn’t clicking. I was sure the City was dead, and I knew Jack’s dad was still alive. But how could I contact him, without the radio tower?
I had to find a way. Maybe then, Dad would stay better. Maybe then, we could scatter Mum’s ashes over the sea and put her back into the world again, instead of just talking about it. Otherwise we’d just be going round in these circles forever.
24
That night, Dad must have decided to write again, and I jumped. I pressed my fingers into my eyes against the swirling dizziness that wouldn’t go away.
I was soaking wet, which meant I’d just come out of Cleansing. Iris and Dillon were with me too. We were squelching our way back to the main hall to get changed.
“Are you okay?” Iris asked.
“Yeah—just give me a second,” I panted, blinking as everything came into focus.
We walked down the steps to the hall. The heart of the camp, carved into the belly of the King’s College ruins. The TVs on the walls flickered with their commercials, talking about how great it was to be a Stormwalker, how important and heroic.
“Do you want to get some more lemon balm?”
“No, I’m all right . . .”
There was something I had to ask her . . .
“I’ve been thinking about what the Marshal said,” I began, choosing the words carefully.
“What do you mean?” Iris said.
I lowered my voice, so Dillon wouldn’t hear. “You know, in the church, after we heard that . . . that radio call . . .” But something about the look on her face made me falter.
Everything I’d been meaning to ask her crumbled away. There was no recognition there. A robot trundled closer, its camera whirring as it focused on us. Suddenly unnerved, I told Dillon I’d catch up with him in a bit, grabbed Iris and led her away, up the stairs to the market.
“Jack, what’s going on? What radio call?”
“You were right there with me,” I said. “After the Dreamless attacked, we ran back to camp and that call from Icarus 1—they said the City was—”
“What are you talking about? If we’d heard from Icarus 1, the whole camp would know about it,” she said. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
My mouth hung open uselessly. Had she forgotten everything?
I couldn’t stop thinking about it all through class the next morning. I barely listened when Mrs. Cloud showed off her latest finds—another set of objects scavenged by Iris. How could she have forgotten something so big? It didn’t make sense.
“Jack?” someone said, startling me out of my thoughts.
“S-sorry?”
“Do you have any ideas on the topic?”
On the board at the back of the room were the words CD—Cylindrical Disk.
Below it, Mrs. Cloud had written: RECENT HISTORY.
I blinked, shaking my head. “Er . . . what, sorry?”
“We’re listing the possible uses for this particular antique,” she said, holding up a blank CD, which flashed silver in the light. “But if history and heritage don’t concern you, then—”
“No,” I said quickly, “I’m listening.”
I scanned the board for some of the answers:
“Decoration”
“Sport”
“Place mats”
I’d only ever really used MP3s for my music, but we had loads of CDs in the house. I should have been surprised that they didn’t know what they were used for, but after the Slinky and the tiddlywinks it didn’t come as much of a shock.
“Er, music?” I suggested.
A few people burst out laughing, but Mrs. Cloud held up her hand for quiet. “That’s actually not such a silly suggestion,” she said, turning back to the board and writing Music down underneath the other ideas. “We have evidence, after all, that the pre-Darks had hard-copy technology for stories. Why not for music as well?”
After the lesson, I was walking up to the market square with Iris when it hit me.
She’d forgotten the radio call right after Cleansing. What was it they’d said? The pre-Darks used lemon balm to help alleviate the effects of Alzheimer’s. Maybe they’d found a way to use it differently—to alter the mind in a different way.
What if the Darkness didn’t affect your memory at all? What if the lemon balm—the thing that was supposed to be a cure—was making people forget? Making them think we’d only been here in camp for six months, making them forget the City was dead.
But then . . . how did I remember? I’d been through Cleansing too, hadn’t I? There must be a reason for it. Maybe it was because I had two minds—Owen and Jack. When I plunged into Jack’s thoughts, it was like I was watching them on TV, but once I’d seen his memories, they were my memories too. The lemon balm might have been enough to trick one of us, but not the other.
“Iris, what happens if you don’t go to Cleansing?” I asked. I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed her with me, but that couldn’t happen if she forgot everything we learned.
“You can’t not go to Cleansing,” she said. “The LRP officers will find out. They’ll take you to the Chamber.”
“And what happens there again?”
“No one knows,” Iris said, shuddering. “But I’ve seen two people go there, and neither of them came back.”
We exchanged some caps for breakfast: some kind of cereal bar made from the millet we’d been Farming in the dry fields. It didn’t tas
te too bad, but as soon as I ate it I needed a drink to wet my throat. Just as I was taking my plate back to the table, Quinn tapped me on the shoulder. James, the other officer from the hut, stood beside him, already piling food onto his plate.
“How are you holding up?” Quinn said.
“I’m all right.” We hadn’t spoken since the radio call. I’d barely seen him around at all. My first thought was that the Marshal was keeping him busier than ever after their argument. Or maybe Quinn just didn’t want to give him an excuse to hurt me. But part of me was glad for it.
I’d trusted Quinn. But whatever the Marshal was covering up, he must have been in on it too. I wondered what he’d done to James, to make him forget about the radio call. I was sure he’d forgotten, just like Iris had forgotten—otherwise the whole camp would have known that Icarus 1 had made contact. Had he forced him through Cleansing too?
Quinn followed me back to where Iris was, and was just about to sit down when a female voice spurted from the radio on his belt.
“Quinn, you there?”
He took the radio and held it to his lips. “Talk to me.”
“The Darkness,” said the voice. “It’s early again.”
Quinn whispered something to James, who rushed off. Before long, a deep hum reverberated around us as the lights flickered back on.
I could see it now, in the distance. It spread across the horizon, oozing and bubbling in the sky. The sirens wailed as it got closer, low at first, then high and loud—a rolling wave of sound. It moved so fast. How could anyone get back in time if they were out now?
But even as I watched, other Stormwalkers who’d been out Hunting dashed through the barrier. The storm smashed into the protective bubble of light, faces gleaming, hissing and snarling with jet-black teeth.
“Quinn?” said the voice on the radio.
The sound cracked up. Quinn shook the radio, but the voice just stopped and started.
“I can’t hear you. Sarah? Sarah, are you there?” Quinn tapped the radio with his free hand, held it as high as he could, but nothing happened.
Then there was a squeak and a whistling sound, and a new voice sputtered through.
“Flag is green,” it said.
“Roger,” said another voice, much quieter. More distant.
I glanced at Iris. Her eyes were wide. I didn’t know what the man on the radio was talking about, but something about it sounded familiar . . .
Quinn frowned. He held the radio to his mouth, but stayed quiet. Then the radio fizzed again and Sarah came back.
“Quinn?” she said.
“I’m here.”
“I thought I’d lost you.”
“Did you hear that?” Quinn whispered urgently into the radio.
“Hear what?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Don’t worry.” He noticed me listening and he started, as if he’d forgotten I was there. He moved away and lowered his voice. I strained to hear what he was saying, but it was no good. I looked at Iris, but she just shrugged.
All around us people darted through the square or down into the cellar. The storm raged and howled. I thought about the Dreamless, and wondered what happened to them when the Darkness was as thick as this.
Flag is green . . . Why did that seem so familiar? It sounded like some kind of code. And not just any code. It was the sort of thing you got on Call of Duty. But—
No, surely not.
On COD, it meant an air strike was going ahead.
It meant they were going to drop bombs.
I’ve got to be wrong, I thought. Please let me be wrong. Why would anyone want to bomb us? Unless . . . they’d sent three Icarus ships, hadn’t they? Three camps, all trying to save the City. Maybe it was possible that one of them had been compromised, like Quinn said.
When we overheard that first radio call, the one from Icarus 1, they’d said they had an old airfield. They asked for our coordinates. Could they have found us from the snippet James gave?
It’s not real, I told myself.
It’s just a story. It’s all in Dad’s head. He’s making it up.
But somehow I was here, really here. I’d been hurt when the Dreamless grabbed me, and if I could get hurt by that, then bombs would have no trouble ripping through me.
Quinn turned round, clipping the radio to his belt.
“Who were those voices?” I asked.
He hesitated. “I . . . er . . . I think we might have just intercepted a message from the City,” he whispered, holding a hand up to cut short the excited squeals of the other Stormwalkers gathering nearby. “But don’t get excited. I want to run it by the Marshal, to—”
He stopped.
Somewhere above us came a low whine, like an angry wasp, getting higher and faster.
“That’s not the Darkness,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Iris said, staring up into the impenetrable clouds.
“It sounds like a plane,” I said. “I think it’s . . . I think it’s crashing.”
“Crashing? How can you tell?”
“I’ve heard it before, on—” I was about to say “on the History Channel,” but I stopped because if they didn’t have that here then Quinn would definitely get suspicious. I closed my eyes, trying to pinpoint the noise. It sounded like it was over the park, heading toward Regent Street . . .
“No,” I gasped.
It sounded like it was coming right for us.
A sharp screech split the sky above us, and the Darkness peeled away. In the gap where the clouds had been was a plummeting ball of fire. Adrenaline surged through me and cleared my head, letting a flood of memories rush free . . .
Once, before Mum died, she ran over a rabbit. She didn’t mean to, it just darted out so quick that she couldn’t stop. But the thing that stuck with me was that it froze just before we hit it, its eyes big and bright in the headlights. Why didn’t it move? I’d never got it before.
But now I did, because this fireball was speeding straight toward us and I knew I needed to run, but I couldn’t. My legs were rooted to the spot.
I blinked, and the spell broke.
An electric surge shot through me. “Come on,” I said, grabbing Iris by the arm. My heart pumped a million miles an hour as I sprinted into the heart of the packed marketplace.
“Get out of the square!” I yelled.
She took up the cry with me. “Come on, everyone! Move!” But no one reacted. They were frozen by the sudden blaze in the night sky.
Iris dragged two kids back to the safety of a nearby shop. Following her lead, I grabbed the shirts of the nearest people to me and hauled them out of the way. Doing that finally snapped them out of whatever trance they were in, because all of a sudden everyone in the square shot out of the way as fast as they could. Glancing frantically around, I spotted another alleyway leading off the square. I darted down it, stealing a look back just in time to see others racing away in every direction, running as fast as they could—
CRASH.
The plane smashed through the chapel tower in an explosion of stone and dust. There was another bang, louder than a firework. The explosion shot up, up, up into the dark sky and the screeching of the storm joined in with the deafening boom and the never-ending wail of the sirens.
I crouched down, covering my ears, trying to shut out the noise.
A shockwave washed over us, a cloud of dust and grime, stinging my eyes and clogging my throat. Coughing and spluttering, I stood up and looked toward the wreckage, the explosion still ringing in my ears.
Iris.
I rushed inside to where she was kneeling with those other Stormwalkers. “Are you okay?” she asked, clambering to her feet and brushing dust off her rags.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”
I turned around, covering my eyes against the searing flames. The thing in the market square didn’t look like a plane. Not anymore. Tendrils of smoke rose from the engine. Halfway along, the body was crushed. It looked as if someone had snapped it
in half. One of the wings was torn off, and the other was charred and blackened. Bits of propeller were bent out of shape, and the cockpit was smashed.
You could only tell what it was because of the tail, with its back wing still intact. But even through all that damage, I recognized it straightaway.
“It’s a Spitfire,” I whispered.
Just like the ones I’d seen at the air museum with Dad. Back when he used to take me. Before the drinking and the late nights, before the Longest Day.
People crept out of their hiding places now, mouths hanging open. Flames snapped and flickered around the wreckage, stopping anyone getting too close.
High in the sky, the Darkness gathered again, as if it’d never parted.
“Where’s the pilot?” Iris whispered.
People took up the question, calling it out.
“Where’s he gone? Where’s the pilot?”
Maybe they’d parachuted out. But if they had, they’d have to have dropped through the Darkness. They’d have to have dropped through the raging storm.
I stepped back from the broken plane, staring up into the sky. Where the light grayed and dimmed above the rooftops, the dark clouds boiled and bubbled.
They kept asking that question—where’s the pilot? But that wasn’t the biggest question. I knew they didn’t know what tiddlywinks was and they thought Slinkies were weapons, which probably meant they had no idea what a Spitfire was either.
But I did. And in this world, with everything so dead, with all the buildings broken and us just trying to survive every day in camp . . . where on earth had anyone got hold of a working Second World War plane?
25
The sky.
That was how I knew I was back in my world.
I was lying on my back, staring up at the sky, and it wasn’t filled with screechy black clouds—it was blue and purple and orange where the sun started to dip down on the horizon. In the distance, streetlights painted the road in a misty orange glow.
I was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. The cold made the hairs on my arms stand on end. I tried to think back to what had happened before the jump, but the burned-out version of Cambridge rose up: the dusty murk of the cellar and the piercing glow of the electric lights.