Stormwalker

by Mike Revell

  “Very likely, yes,” the Marshal said, the ghost of a grin playing on his thin lips. “Only a madman would have left the City on one of these Icarus projects in the first place.”

  I chanced a glance at the others. All this time they’d been thinking they were saving their families, but they were all gone. It had all been for nothing. I knew how much they wanted to forget it. Until today that was what I’d have done too. But I had to stop them. I had to do something . . .

  The Marshal stood up and stalked back and forth behind the table. “Now, enough talking. The time has come for you to choose your fate. It will be a shame to get rid of such good Stormwalkers, but everyone is disposable if they are a threat to my camp.”

  He advanced on us, eyes flashing.

  “Do it. Take the drink, or join your friend Quinn. One little sip is all it takes . . .”

  I glanced nervously at Iris. Her eyes were wet. She’d watched her parents become Dreamless, and now she knew her brother and auntie were both dead too. Dillon, Seth—they both had family in the City as well. One little slurp, and it would all be gone.

  “I’ve got the black box,” I said quickly.

  I knew it was a lie. The cylinder was floating somewhere in the river. But maybe the shock of it would buy us more time.

  The Marshal’s mouth opened in surprise, but he quickly covered it up. “No matter,” he said. “The radio transmitter is useless in the Darkness. The only way it could work is if—”

  He stopped, mouth working silently.

  “Is if—” he said again, but still the words didn’t come out.

  And then I realized why.

  Because somewhere high above us, there came a deep rumbling sound.

  The thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum of airship propellers.

  38

  I rushed outside, Iris and Seth and Dillon on my heels.

  I hardly dared believe it. The location device . . . it must have clicked on when it hit the water. It worked! It actually worked! High above us, blinding lights blasted their way through the storm, then merged with the light from camp.

  “Clear the landing zone,” a strong female voice boomed, echoing through loudspeakers.

  I staggered back as dust whipped up in the swirling wind. Up close, the propellers were so loud you couldn’t even hear the Darkness.

  The top of the airship looked like a helicopter with rotor blades whirring round and round, but the bottom was a kind of balloon boat, with two great legs on either side to land securely. Across the side, stenciled letters read: ICARUS 1—NEW LONDON.

  “No!” cried the Marshal, behind us. “No—what are you doing?”

  “Marshal Davenport,” crackled the voice through the speaker, “you are under arrest. Remain where you are and do not resist.”

  A ramp lowered, thudding at our feet. A squad of LRP officers hustled down to detain the Marshal before he could run away. He cried out, punching and flailing, trying to fight his way free.

  “I insist you let me go,” he spat. “Let me go this instant!”

  They dragged him onto the ship. A woman appeared on the ramp, a leather jacket over her dress, and a pair of dusty-looking aviator goggles strapped to her forehead. Another group of LRP officers followed her down and started speaking to the rest of our camp, explaining what was happening and helping them on board the ship.

  “We’ve been looking for you for a long time. I’m Vanessa,” she said. “Mayor of New London. How would you like to see the City?”

  “The C-City?” I stammered. “I . . . I thought the City was destroyed?”

  Had the Marshal been lying to us again?

  “Oh, it was,” Vanessa said. Her smile faltered. “We only managed three rescue trips before the eastern lights failed. The people rioted, trying to get on board. As soon as one light smashed, the Darkness found a way in. By the time we got back for the fourth group of evacuees, it was a wasteland. But we’re building a new one,” she said, tapping the hull of the ship proudly. “New London. We found out your camp was alive when we saw the security footage of Marshal Davenport discovering the City ruins. He was never supposed to be on board Icarus 3, so we knew he had to be up to something sinister.”

  Suddenly I stopped walking along the deck of the ship. I squinted into the distance, something flickering in the back of my mind. Jack’s thoughts exploded and danced.

  “Vanessa,” I said. “The people you rescued—the ones from the City . . .”

  “Families of the Icarus crews had priority boarding,” she said, the smile returning to her face now. “Follow me. There are some people who have been dying to see you. It was impossible to turn them away when we saw the sonar.”

  Footsteps thudded on the wooden decking. An explosion of voices rang out.

  “Iris!” someone called. “Iris, over here!”

  “Seth, buddy!”

  A crowd of people ran toward us. I knew they were the mums and dads, the brothers and sisters of everyone in our camp. I watched Dillon work his way tentatively across the railing, looking for his family. When they saw him, his parents rushed over and dragged him into a giant bear hug. I laughed, an odd mixture of feelings wrapping round each other inside me. We’d done it. We’d beaten the Darkness. We’d beaten the Marshal.

  “Jack!” a voice called, and I recognized it at once.

  It was the same one I’d heard days earlier, on the radio.

  “Jack, my son!”

  Jack’s dad skidded on the wooden planks in his haste to make it over to me. His brother, Ayden, was right behind him. I ran toward them, happiness soaring inside me. I let my thoughts, the ones belonging to plain old Owen Smith, retreat back into the fog. This was Jack’s moment.

  We collided, all three of us, hugging each other tight.

  “You’re alive,” they said. “Oh, I can’t believe it. You’re alive!”

  As the airship wobbled up and up and up into the air, I pulled myself away from Jack’s family and saw Iris. I held my little fingers to the corners of my lips and let out a long whistle. She looked up, her cheeks shining, and ran over to me, hugging me just as tightly as Jack’s dad had.

  “We did it,” I said.

  “You did it,” she said. “If it wasn’t for you, we’d still be back there.” She pulled away, her eyes still wet with tears. “Seriously, thanks . . . Owen,” she added, so only I could hear.

  I looked around at Seth, Iris, and Dillon, and the family Jack would be living with as they built New London together. I couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have them all here.

  Any second now I’d feel the tug, and there wouldn’t be any more story. It would just be me and Dad. But he needed me. And, I realized, as we flew higher and higher and the story started to break apart at the edges, I needed him too.

  39

  My heart refused to calm down. It felt like it was trying to break out of my chest. I didn’t dare to move, and waited, holding my breath. What if it hadn’t worked? What if I was just in a dreamed-up version of home? What if there was no way back?

  I let my eyes open.

  Curtains. They looked like my curtains.

  And the bed . . . that was mine too. There was the chip from when I practiced free kicks. Footballers stared down at me from the walls.

  There was a glass of water on the windowsill. I didn’t know how long it had been there—it must have been days at least—but I grabbed it and gulped it down.

  My stomach cramped with hunger and my T-shirt was drenched in sweat.

  How long had I been away? I fumbled for my phone, and slid it open. December 13. I couldn’t remember the last time I was here. It was all blending together. No beginning or end, just one long stream of jumps.

  I sent a quick text to Danny:

  Are you there, mate?

  Yeah. What’s up?

  I fell back onto the bed, beaming. Laughter erupted out of me and I couldn’t stop it. I did it. I finished the story.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the silence.
I wanted to just be. To melt into the bed and not think about anything. But I needed to see Dad.

  I had to know for sure that I’d helped him.

  Feeling like a zombie, I finally rolled out of bed. I put on some sweatpants and a sweater and headed out onto the landing.

  His bedroom door was ajar. The light was on. But when I peeked through the crack, the room was empty.

  Taking a deep breath, I walked downstairs, using the banister for support. Treading carefully, I made my way toward the study.

  Dad was sitting at his desk.

  I took one deep, slow breath to calm myself down. In through my nose and out through my mouth, just like Mr. Matthews taught us when we were running sprints at training.

  “Dad?” I said, standing in the doorway, not daring to go in.

  Paper was strewn all over the floor. Torn and scrunched-up pages, scattered files and folders.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  He turned, and his face was lined and gray. There were bags under his eyes. It looked like he hadn’t shaved for days.

  “I think I’ve done it,” he said. “I think I’ve finished the book.” A smile crept across his face. His eyes shone, and color returned to his cheeks. He looked happy, for the first time in such a long time.

  “Nice one,” I said, grinning right back.

  Dad waved his hand, beckoning me to come in. He shifted up so I could sit next to him.

  “Here,” he said. “Look.”

  The book was on the desk in front of him. Jack, the storm, the Darkness: it was all there on the first page, and I didn’t need to see the rest to know what happened.

  “It felt so good, Owen,” Dad said. “It felt so good to write. Everything just sort of . . . clicked.”

  I pictured all the jumps—all the things I went through. All those people. Iris and Quinn and the others. They all felt real. They were real, for as long as I was there.

  I wondered what they were doing now. Would they go to the place where Mum was? Or would they be making a new life in New London?

  Happiness drifted off Dad in waves. He smiled a proper smile again and it felt like balloons were swelling up inside my stomach because, Look at him! His face crinkled in places I’d forgotten it crinkled. He shook his head. He beamed, and even though we were sitting in silence I could have sat there for hours and never got bored.

  The next day, we both went out to Mum’s art shed.

  We were surrounded by her paintings. What was left of them, anyway.

  Before, when I asked Dad what he most loved about Mum, he couldn’t answer. He just got angry. But now the words rushed out. I learned things about her that I never knew. He told me all about how she got offered a job in New York but turned it down because it was just before I was born and she wanted me to live in England.

  That was the thing about parents, wasn’t it?

  They did mum and dad things and you got on with doing your own thing, like playing football or playing on the PlayStation. You didn’t ask them questions. Not real questions. Like when had you had your first boyfriend or girlfriend, or when had you been more scared than you’d ever been in your life, or what was the most disgusting thing you’d ever eaten?

  So there was all this stuff that was there, and you just didn’t know it.

  “What’s the first memory you have of her?” I asked Dad.

  “Ah,” he said. He looked up at the ceiling, as if it was all playing out again from a TV above him. “It was the summer ball, at university. She was wearing a red dress, and she . . . she was so beautiful. It was the first time I’d ever seen her. I knew then I had to be with her. My turn,” he said, clearing his throat. “What was the funniest thing she ever did?”

  “That’s easy,” I said. “We’d just come back from school, and I ran on ahead. But Mum had the house keys. She tried to chuck them to me across the drive. She wound her arm up, swinging it round and round like a cartoon character. But when she let go, the keys flew backward. They landed right in the middle of the road and got run over by a car.”

  “So that’s why the key’s wonky,” Dad said, chuckling to himself.

  The more we talked, the more real Mum felt. She wasn’t distant and faded anymore. She was back in full color.

  After a while, we walked out to the car, and sat in silence while the windows demisted. I held the urn in my hands, just thinking about Mum. All the old memories, but the new ones too.

  Dad reversed out of the drive, and we set off for Brighton. After all the failed attempts at making the trip, I thought it would feel odd when we finally left the house.

  But there was nothing strange about it.

  It took almost three hours to get there, but it passed so fast because all we were doing was talking about Mum. When we arrived, Dad parked near the promenade and led the way to the pier.

  “This is where we had our first date,” he said.

  I’d always imagined what it might look like. I’d pictured a few wooden planks, with not much around it. But it wasn’t like that at all. There were bright lights everywhere, and the sound of music and laughter carrying on the air. It wasn’t just a pier—it was a fairground on the sea.

  I passed the urn to Dad, and together we walked along the pier. As soon as we set foot on it, the wind picked up. Seagulls soared overhead, screeching and crying out.

  We weaved between the crowds, dodging people’s photos and overexcited kids. The smell of fish and chips mingled with popcorn and doughnuts and cotton candy, making my stomach rumble.

  It took ages to get to the end. There were more rides there, but if you stood right by the fence and looked out over the sea, there was finally a bit of quiet.

  From up here, the water looked like it stretched on forever—choppy waves and streaks of white slicing across the gray and blue.

  “Well,” Dad said. “Here we are.”

  He looked down at the urn. Mum’s ashes had been in our house for so long, sitting on the mantelpiece. But they wouldn’t sit there anymore. They’d drift out in the water, with the fish and the crabs and all the odd-looking creatures that lived on the sand.

  Dad sighed, and turned to look back. “This is where we first kissed,” he said. “With the sea behind us, and the fairy lights overhead.”

  I moved closer to Dad and put my arm around him. He took a deep breath, and I squeezed him to let him know that I was here with him, that I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Are you ready?” he said.

  “Yeah. I’m ready.”

  The wind picked up again, whistling around us. Dad took one last look at the golden urn, then he flung the ashes over the railing. They hung in the air for a moment, picked out in the red and green lights and the last of the afternoon sun, and then they dropped silently into the cold, gray water.

  40

  When the academy trials came round, Dad was there in the crowd.

  We were at the team training ground, which was a park a million times better than any I’d ever played on before. Dad’s voice rang out every time I made a tackle, and when I scored my first goal the ref had to give him a warning for running onto the pitch.

  “Nice one, Owen!” he yelled. “Get in!”

  After the game, as the parents walked back to the car park and the players filtered into the changing rooms, I stayed out on the pitch, taking it all in. The grass had been perfect at the start of the game, but it was ripped and torn now, with deep slashes where studs had shredded the mud.

  “Are you all right?” said Danny, jogging over.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll catch up with you in a sec.”

  “Okay,” he said. He lingered for a second more, then turned and followed the guys away.

  I listened to the low rustle of the wind in the trees, and the quiet tweeting of the birds. I looked up at the sky, clear and blue, dotted with low white clouds. I imagined what it would look like with a storm of Darkness raging above it.

  Wherever Iris was now, I hoped she was safe.
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br />   I hoped she was happy. I hoped all of them were.

  Taking a deep breath, I raised my little fingers to my mouth, and let out a long whistle.

  The birds went quiet. For a moment, the trees stopped rustling. Then a lone bird chirped up, and the others joined in, and all the sounds of the day came flooding back.

  I picked up my bag and threw it over my shoulder, heading toward the changing rooms.

  MEET MIKE REVELL!

  I’ve always enjoyed writing stories, but it wasn’t until I read Harry Potter that I knew I wanted to be an author.

  I was one of those kids who just didn’t like reading. There were some books I liked, like The Hobbit and anything by Roald Dahl, but I would much rather run home and play on my PlayStation than dive into a book. They just seemed so boring. They took too much time to get into.

  Then Harry Potter came along, and it changed everything.

  I devoured the first, second, and third books in quick succession. It wasn’t just enjoyable reading them—it was thrilling. I grew up with Harry and will always remember the painstaking wait for the postman to come to the door with the newest book, and the sheer joy at diving in and losing myself in the story for the rest of the day.

  Reading those stories made me realize just how wonderful books could be. That’s why I wanted to be a writer—to try and give people the feeling that I had all those years ago, when I suddenly thought . . . wow.

  Now, I love telling stories about old things, like myths or fables, in new ways. My first book, Stonebird, is based around the idea of gargoyles coming alive in the silver glow of the moon. It’s also quite heavily influenced by real life. After seeing my grandma suffer from dementia for a number of years, I wanted to write about the importance of memories and the magic of stories.

  Want to know more about Mike?

  Visit www.mikerevell.com