by Robin Jarvis
What had all that struggle and death been for? Martin searched deep within his soul for an answer and the one that kept rearing up horrified him to the core. Were the things that Lee had accused him of true? Had he become addicted to the fame of being the Ismus’s nemesis? Had he selfishly revelled in his own celebrity? Was his ego really that out of control? Did so many good people die because he refused to abdicate a position that only existed inside his own deluded head? The Jockey had guffawed at Martin’s belief he was in any way significant or unique. He had been just as carried away and out of control as every other Jaxer, except that his madness was of his own making. The realisation caused him to shrivel inside. He wished Mauger had torn him apart that night outside Fellows End over a year ago.
“Mr Martin…” A shy voice broke through his bleak thoughts. “Don’t be sad.”
Martin raised his eyes slowly. One of the younger children was standing before him. He recognised her as Ingrid, another of Charm’s little group. She was eleven years old and in her hands she held a toy rabbit that Maggie had made for her out of a North Korean uniform.
“When I’m sad, I give him a hug,” she said, holding the rabbit up for him to see. “You can have a lend if you want.”
Martin stared at her for a while. She and the others were too old for soft toys, but DJ had changed that. In the mountain base, the home-made dolls had become important security objects, like Spencer’s Stetson.
“You can talk to it,” the girl continued, filling the awkward silence. “I do. Sometimes I pretend it’s my mum, as she was before, and I tell her how much I miss her. Sometimes it’s my dad or sister or nan. Mostly though it’s Charm.”
Martin’s eyebrows twitched.
“Why did you all like her so much?” he asked curiously.
Ingrid smiled. She was doubly pleased: not only had she got him to speak, but he’d asked about her lovely friend.
“She made it better,” she answered with honest simplicity. “She wasn’t just kind or nice, she was… special. She would have made this place miles better. When I think of her, I don’t stay sad. Her heart was big enough for everyone, even them as didn’t like her back.”
Martin lowered his eyes again. He felt ashamed. Here he was being comforted by a child, one who was handling this situation with far more grace and maturity than him. He bitterly regretted saying those vile things to Gerald about this mysterious Charm. He felt contaminated by the world and his self-pride and wasn’t fit to be among these amazing youngsters. Each one had been through just as much pain and anguish as himself and here, at the end of that harrowing road, they weren’t wallowing in self-pity.
The girl pushed the rabbit into his hands.
“Who… who do you suggest I pretend it is?” he asked.
“Whoever you like most,” she replied with a shrug. “He’s a good listener with them ears.”
Martin nodded vaguely.
“Thank you, Ingrid,” he murmured.
The girl shook her head. “We’re using the flavour names she gave us now,” she told him. “I’m Dandelion and Burdock; over there is Chocolate Mousse and Lemon Cheesecake. We talked about it and decided that’s how we want to go.”
“Go?”
“Die. When the Jaxers kill us, we’re going to go with her names.”
She said it so matter-of-factly it startled him.
The girl turned to go back to her friends. Martin saw them giggling and urging her to say something more.
“You have a flavour name too,” she said a little bashfully. “We gave it you.”
Martin leaned back against the cold stone wall.
“Go on,” he said. “Cat Sick? Rat Dropping? Cough Medicine?”
“Marmite!” she blurted, before running back to the others who laughed as if they hadn’t a care in the world – like children.
For the first time in too long, Martin Baxter broke into a smile and the unexpected chuckles that followed lifted some of the crushing weight off his spirit. Letting out a deep breath, he turned his attention to the toy rabbit in his hands and stroked its ears. He was almost tempted. Should he give it a try? He gazed at the button eyes for some minutes then thought, Ah, what the hell?
“Carol,” he muttered, feeling more than a little self-conscious. “Umm… how are you? Just wanted… I’ve… Listen, I just wanted to say hello…”
He stopped and set the rabbit down, annoyed with himself. This was stupid. He felt like a total cretin. If he really did have one final chance to speak to Carol, he knew exactly what he’d say to her. He wouldn’t be mumbling and fumbling for clumsy words like this. So why couldn’t he say them now?
Grabbing the toy again, he stared at it angrily.
“OK, I’ve been an absolute arse,” he stated bluntly. “I’d say I’ve been juvenile, but having been around these kids so long, that’d be the biggest lie yet and an insult they really don’t deserve. These kids make me ashamed of the way I used to think about the ones I used to teach.”
He paused and squeezed his eyes shut. “What I really hate myself for though,” he said, “is what I’ve been thinking about you, and the downright nasty feelings I’ve had. Real appalling stuff: resentment, jealousy – all those dark colours. I got it so wrong. I made this about me, what I was going through, what I had to deal with. What a selfish, arrogant tosser. You did what you had to, for Paul’s sake. I knew that, course I did! But I put my hurt pride first, cos that’s what failures do.”
Bringing the rabbit nearer, he put it against his cheek and whispered into one floppy ear.
“I know I won’t get the chance to tell you this in person and, as the High Priestess Labella, you won’t want to hear it anyway. But this is for the real you, the determined nurse from Felixstowe, who I drove mad with my nerdy obsessions, but who put up with me anyway. I loved and love you so much, Carol Thornbury. Not a day went by without me being over the moon you were in my life. This past year, I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve miss—”
The sobs rising in his throat clogged the words and, for a while, he could only hold the rabbit desperately, clinging to it the way he would never be able to cling to his fiancée.
Eventually he said, “Maybe that’s why I wanted to be the famous Martin Baxter, in the hope you’d see me on the news, or hear the Ismus talking about me. I just wanted you to know I was still out there. It’s warped and twisted, but – I think I did all of this for you.”
Hugging the rabbit tightly, he bowed his head.
‘Rockin’ around the Christmas tree,’ another song began. Raucous laughter came echoing from the dungeon down the passage, where the Punchinellos were drinking and telling depraved jokes.
Several hours passed. The festive songs broadcast over the speakers were interspersed with overenthusiastic chatter from excitable radio hosts about the next day’s promised incredible events. Fighting Pax was going to be unbelievable and, before that, Flee the Beast would be the best entertainment this lousy place had ever provided.
Hungry, and wondering uneasily what the dawn would bring, the refugees waited for the night to drag by. Esther had commandeered the only cot in her cell for herself and Nicholas crouched on the floor beside her, nursing his bruised and swollen face. The others clutched their home-made dolls and tried to sleep.
Maggie remained by the bars, listening to the foul and violent-tempered jabbering of the guards. She almost imagined she was back in the camp. When she rested her eyes, she could practically hear Marcus’s voice talking to her enthusiastically about his home city of Manchester. Somehow Maggie slept.
At some point, she was awakened by a loud commotion. The Punchinellos were snarling and yelling and their heavy boots were clumping over the flagstones. But different, new voices were crying out in fear.
Maggie sat up and peered through the bars. Behind her, the others came to investigate.
“Who are they?” a girl asked in amazement.
Maggie’s mouth fell open. The Punchinellos were herding a group o
f at least twenty children into the three cells opposite their own. They were a pitiable sight, being just skin and bone, and their clothes were threadbare rags. Some were very young, perhaps seven or eight years old, and the eldest was no more than fifteen. Their bare and blistered feet dragged as they were shoved into the cells, where they collapsed exhausted.
“Oh… my… God…” she breathed. “They’re aberrants, like us.”
“Where from?”
“Another camp somewhere.”
Esther roused herself from the cot and came to peer through the bars. She cast a disdainful look at the newcomers.
“They look half dead,” she observed with a sniff.
As they watched in fascination, Yikker came waddling along, bearing a plastic bucket containing peelings and leftovers. Grabbing great fistfuls, he threw them into the cells and the starving children pounced on the scraps like wild dogs.
“Poor sods,” Maggie whispered. “That would’ve been us if we hadn’t escaped.”
Captain Swazzle locked the three cells with large iron keys, then twisted about and came swaggering across.
“You!” he barked, jabbing a dirty finger into the cell next door. “Baxter! On feet! You, me, we go.”
Rattling his keys once more, he opened Martin’s cell and sent Bezuel and the guard dressed as a Mexican bandit inside to fetch him.
Martin was dragged out. When he resisted, they thumped him in the stomach and the bandit bit his arm. Then they pulled his hands behind his back and put them in manacles.
“What’s going on?” Maggie protested as they hauled him towards the dungeon. “Where are you taking him? What are you going to do?”
They didn’t answer, but Yikker came over and pushed his great hooked nose and chin through the bars as he leered up at her.
“You fat friend of Stinkboy,” he drawled, undressing her with his beady eyes. “You not pig-wide now. Yikker like.” Licking his lips, he gave her a lusty wink and followed the others from the gaol.
Maggie shuddered. Yikker was the guard who had hated Marcus and called him ‘Stinkboy’ because of his deodorants and aftershave. He had made the boy’s life a misery in the camp and Maggie despised him most of all. Pushing her hands deep into her pockets, she cursed him and tightened her jaw.
“Hey!” a voice called.
Maggie was too intent on listening out for sounds of Martin getting tortured to respond straight away.
“Hey!” the voice repeated.
Maggie gazed across at the opposite cell. A dark-haired, skeletal boy, roughly the same age as Spencer, was staring right at her. He was chewing half of a blackened raw potato. The rest of the scraps had been devoured in minutes.
“Hello,” one of Charm’s girls responded. “My name’s Blueberry Muffin, what’s yours?”
“Lukas,” he answered. “You are called funny name.”
“It’s a delicious name. Where you from?”
“We are from Germany. From prison camp. We are… I do not know how you say in English, Abtrünnlinge – we do not read book or believe fairy tale.”
“Aberrant, that’s what we are too.”
“You too? Is really? Your camp cannot be as cruel as ours. You look well. We do not eat every day.”
His remark made Maggie rear her head. “We got away from ours,” she told him. “And believe me, it wasn’t a jolly picnic. Some of us died in there.”
Lukas looked round at his fellow Germans.
“At the start,” he said, “our camp had one hundred and seventy children. We are all is left. Yesterday we had twenty-nine more, but they were too sick to travel to England. Before we leave, the devil guards killed them. We thought we too were to die.”
Maggie’s grip loosened round the bars. She had never suspected just how lucky she and the others had been.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could say, but she felt her words were stupidly insufficient.
Lukas waved it aside. By now other pinched faces were staring across at the English children. Horrors Maggie couldn’t bear to guess at were graven on their faces and yet they were curious and soon were daring to smile. Charm’s girls smiled and waved right back at them and they threw over the bread that was left.
“So tell me, please!” Lukas continued. “That man they took just now. Was he… Martin Baxter, for real?”
“You’ve heard of him?” Maggie asked.
The boy stared back, astounded, and translated what she had said for the others who didn’t speak English. They drew their breaths in shock.
“Martin Baxter is legend!” Lukas told Maggie. “He is world hero. He dares to fight the Ismus. We heard stories of him, we saw his blog, some of us tried to find him before we were caught. In the camp, we get news from German resistance, before they were killed. The idea of him out there, it keeps us alive. He gives hope to all.”
It was Maggie’s turn to draw a surprised breath. They had never considered how Martin might be viewed by the other aberrants in the world. He really was a big deal. She didn’t even hear Esther’s snarky comment, or the subsequent squeal when Blueberry Muffin pinched her.
“Yes,” Maggie answered, feeling an unexpected swelling of pride. “That was – is – Martin Baxter, the Martin Baxter.”
The German children made reverent, marvelling noises. One of them even cheered.
“He is a man incredible, we think,” Lukas said. “Tell me, where did the devil guards take him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then we will pray for him to return safe.”
To the astonishment of the English, the Germans knelt down and clasped their hands together.
“You do not join us?” Lukas asked when he saw they were still standing.
“We’ve been through too much to believe in that,” Maggie said flatly.
Lukas did not understand.
“Not believe?” he said. “But do you not see demons all around? How do you not believe when the evil is in front of you always? That is… that is like doubting water is real when you are drowning.”
Shaking his head, perplexed, he led the Germans in a prayer, asking the Almighty to watch over the wonderful Martin Baxter and keep him free from harm.
Maggie and the others were so taken aback that not even Esther made a sarcastic remark. Charm’s girls nudged one another and then dropped to their knees to join in.
“It’ll take more than prayers to save Martin and the rest of us,” Maggie muttered under her breath. “A lot more. If there is a god up there, he pulled his earphones out a long time ago.”
Over the speakers, Bing Crosby started dreaming of a white Christmas.
Captain Swazzle’s large hand clamped Martin’s arm like a vice. He had dragged him through the dungeon, then wrenched him up the winding stairs. When the man stumbled, Bezuel was right behind to shove him on.
At the top of the stairs, the Jockey was waiting.
“Gently, gently, my fine, stumpy warders!” he exclaimed. “We don’t want to bruise him, not yet – haw haw haw.”
“Thought you and me’d said everything already,” Martin spat.
“Ho ho!” the Jockey laughed. “’Tis not I who desires converse with you. But first…”
He reached into the sleeve of his caramel-coloured jerkin and, with a flourish, pulled out a large silk handkerchief.
“What?” Martin shouted when the Jockey tied it tightly across his eyes in a blindfold.
“My command was clear,” the Jockey explained. “You’re not to see even a glimpse till you get there.”
“Where?”
“Haw haw haw.”
“This is ridiculous. Get this thing off me!”
Martin felt a Punchinello’s fist thump him in the back and he staggered forward.
“That’s right,” the Jockey said as he danced ahead. “This way, Martin Baxter. Follow my voice. I shall lead you, I shall guide you, over stone and under gap, round the towers and into his lap. Ho ho ho.”
Martin blundered in the dire
ction of the mocking voice. He couldn’t see a thing. All he experienced of the journey was what his other senses told him. When the cold night air blew across his face, he knew they’d reached the courtyard where the lorry had brought them. That was soon left behind. The reverberating echoes of his People’s Army boots on the flags and cobbles described when he passed beneath an archway or colonnade. Then they were in a much wider open space where no walls bounced the sounds back. He could smell freshly cut grass, then felt springy turf beneath his feet. There was the noise of trickling water and he guessed he was in a large garden with a fountain. There wasn’t time to stop and listen for any further clues: the Jockey was continually chivvying him along.
“This way – be nimble, trot along, quick – quick.”
Martin soon lost track of how long this blind journey was taking. It seemed to go on for hours, but he knew that was merely because his every step was uncertain and cautious. Finally he felt the Jockey’s hands catch his shoulders and he was manoeuvred up a series of shallow steps, a metallic-sounding ramp and then bundled into what felt like a small alcove. He heard the Jockey chortling to himself and then Martin was surprised to hear the drone of winching machinery. The floor shifted under him and his knees bent. He was in an ascending lift, but it was open to the elements for the winter wind cut across his face.
After several minutes, the ride was over. The lift gave a judder and the Jockey drew Martin out. He felt boards beneath his feet, then he was turned a sharp ninety degrees and found himself standing on stone.
High winds moved through his hair. The Jockey reached out and untied the knots in the handkerchief.
Martin blinked and his eyes widened as he took in his surroundings and recognised the man standing before him.
“Welcome to Mooncaster, Martin Baxter,” the Ismus greeted him. “Is that a rabbit in your pocket or does this place put a strain on your gusset stitching the same way it does mine? Isn’t it amazing how much you can achieve on an unlimited budget, with thousands of devoted workers who’ll happily break their backs night and day for you and none of that health-and-safety nonsense getting in the way?”