Out of Time (36 page)

‘What will be happening to us while this is going on?’ Susie asks.

‘You, Ian, will keep watch in the attic and the minute you see smoke on the horizon you run downstairs where Susie will be ready to leave. You’ll take the quickest route to the nearest dungeon entrance in Lower Lennox Road. You, Rob, will wait ten minutes and if you think there is sufficient chaos outside for children not to be captured you’ll go directly with John and Issie to Cat Walk and hide in the woods next to the waste ground. That is our meeting place. If outside is too dangerous you wait here.’

‘I’ll be back to fetch you,’ Meredith says, giving the small figure next to him a squeeze.

‘We’ll gather in the wood,’ William says. ‘If anything goes wrong you’ll have to use your initiative as I can’t predict what’s going to happen. But one thing I want to make clear - anyone reaching the wood is to leave for Meredith’s community by dawn next day. You don’t wait beyond that, not for a minute, not even if there are only one, two or three of you, though Issie is not to be left alone. OK John? Meredith or Joe will give you exact instructions how to get there. Is that understood?’

They nod, tired, cold, anxious but elated. Issie has fallen asleep. Meredith carries her upstairs.

A day later William gives Susie, Ian and Rob a cosh each and a sharp pointed knife. After that, there is nothing to do but practise with the weapons and wait.

A sense of expectation and the prospect of action after a long and frustrating wait altered the atmosphere within the house. The children were subdued, the adults huddled together over last minute plans. Amid natural fears over the outcome, there was a sense of defying the odds; but waiting was difficult and tensions high, nerves stretched like trapeze wires.

The day of the attack dawned clear. Joe and Meredith had long been ready in their guards’ uniforms, transformed into figures from which the children recoiled. Issie cried but there was no help for it.

William and Joe left first, their faces drawn into the vapid stare common to guards, as though they had no thoughts, like zombies carrying out orders. They waited until no one was about to see them emerge, then purposefully followed their planned route. People gave them a wide berth, crossed the street and looked the other way. It made them understand the fury with which guards attacked, the feeling of anger and resentment at rejection.

Once in the Square, they were met by a busy scene. People had congregated outside the Meeting House in expectation of they knew not what and large numbers of guards were on duty, far more than they had expected. Joe’s heart sank. How could so few overcome so many? But he nodded briefly at William who went over to the main door while Joe stood at a discreet distance, pretending to be on duty and hoping that no one would notice him.

Meredith meanwhile was on his way. Afraid of showing an emotion that he dared not feel he left the house swiftly, only giving a quick hug to Issie before putting her down. He was haunted by the look in her eyes but thought only of victory as he strode through the streets as though he owned them, looking neither to right nor left. He found, as had Joe before him, that he created a vacuum around himself. No one wanted to be near.

‘Well and good,’ he thought, relieved at reaching Weymouth Square without being accosted. He arrived in time to see William in urgent conversation with two officers in charge outside the entrance. Others stood around nonchalantly. As Susie had so wisely pointed out, they were unused to being challenged and gave no indication of expecting an attack. Joe noted that most were unfit and overweight. They took no notice of Meredith. New guards were not unusual and were often placed among them as spies.

William was gesticulating wildly, pointing round the corner of the building. Joe stood nearby, a blanketing calm replacing the nervous restlessness of the waiting period. He risked a glance at Meredith, looking with an air of menace at people passing, mutely challenging them to come near.

William was having some success. One officer ran to the next corner and disappeared, another scurried into the building. William followed. Meredith waited and, as no one seemed perturbed by his presence, entered the building. He had timed it well. The corridor was empty except for William hurriedly pulling the body of the officer into a side-room. Meredith ran past him and laid the line of fuses. William lit them.

The officer from the street corner, suspecting that something was not right, came in and, sizing up the situation, went for Meredith with knife and axe. Joe, hard on his heels, rushed to Meredith’s defence at the same moment as a new guard came into the corridor on his duty round. All four were plunged into fierce hand to hand fighting, knives flashing, cutting into flailing bodies. Joe fell, blood seeping from a wound in his back but, surprised at feeling no pain, sprang up again. Meredith had pinned his opponent to the wall but the second guard was at his side, knife raised. Joe put all his force into an uppercut and sent him flying. Joe was on him, his axe plunged into the man’s chest.

William meanwhile, was lighting more fuses and throwing burning torches into side-rooms.

More men ran in from outside. They formed a phalanx that filled the corridor and advanced on Meredith and Joe, pushing them further and further back. They fought side by side, but they were heavily outnumbered. Each time they killed a guard, another took his place. They were almost in the corner of the corridor when they heard guards running from behind. They were boxed in, no escape possible.

*

Nothing is amiss in the central meeting room. Helmuth, as always, sits at the top of the long table, his head raised in the usual commanding manner. He is speaking slowly and deliberately to the ten men around him.

This is a special meeting Helmuth has called because of the failure of the last expedition to wipe out the community of dissidents. A larger, bolder one will be sent.

Helmuth has motives other than the one he is stating. Reports have come back to him that, despite the reign of terror which for so long has subdued the populace, there are signs of unrest, small and insignificant to be sure, but Helmuth is taking no chances. The knowledge of a major attack and victory will suffocate any movement against him. He gives orders for a new attack. Prisoners are to be brought back alive so that they can be paraded in a cage round the streets. No one need have doubts as to who is in charge.

Helmuth is elaborating his plan when he senses that something is not as it should be. He is not quite certain what it is but he notices that the men round the table are looking alarmed. They dare not rise while he is sitting but clearly want to do so. It is then that Helmuth recognises a familiar smell. Fire. The building is on fire. He orders immediate evacuation. The meeting breaks up in panic and the men, Helmuth at their head, fight to get into the tunnel.

*

As an acrid black cloud billowed towards them, the combatants dropped their weapons and, trampling over their wounded trying in vain to rise, turned and ran towards the main entrance. Joe and Meredith, caught between the fire and the enemy, followed but William, coming out of a side-room, pushed them through a door concealed in the outer wall at the same moment as Helmuth and ten junta officers emerged from the central tunnel, struggling to reach the open air.

The junta crowded round Helmuth, ready for further orders but Helmuth, transfixed, was too shocked to move. His erstwhile protegé, his long lost comrade, his bitterest enemy, Meredith. The two men stared at one another as painful memories came flooding back. Their old friendship, bathed in blood, was difficult to believe in now. But it had been real enough then, when the world was a different place, when they had hopes and ambitions to change it, to make it better. They had not known that it was already as good as it was going to get, that power corrupts, that the miracle drug that promised so much would be their undoing. For one wild moment Meredith wished they could roll back the years, return to where they had begun, map out a different course. Instead, they were facing one another, the bitterest of enemies, both knowing that this was to be a fight to the death. Did Helmuth, in that defining moment, remember the man he had once been, did he regret the man he had become?

He was the first to move. He attacked Meredith like one possessed, as though wiping him out was to kill the shadow of his former self; and Meredith fought back with a ferocity born of disillusionment and despair. They fought body to body, naked in their hatred.

Helmuth’s proximity, even in this tense moment, repulsed Meredith. The man smelled of decay.

The junta turned on the dissidents, eleven against three. Joe saw and knew that the end had come. The strength had gone out of his thrusts, only determination kept him upright, fighting off three guards. It was only a mattter of time. He briefly saw Meredith battling with a figure there was no mistaking. Meredith was beating him back, inch by painful inch. Joe cried out to him to beware, guards were coming at him from the back. At that moment he fell. Meredith saw and tried to position himself to protect him but he lost precious seconds, allowing Helmuth to gain ground, a look of savage triumph on his face.

Reinforcements appeared from the square.

‘Kill! Kill!’ Helmuth screamed in a demented voice.

Joe pulled himself up and using the building, now radiating heat, for support, parried attackers coming at him from every side. The crackle of fire grew stronger and flames leapt out of the roof. William lay in a pool of blood. It was a race between the collapsing building and the guards going in for the kill.

*

In Fairfax Road the children were gathered in the attic, Ian perched on a high stool, anxiously watching for signs of smoke on the horizon. The minutes passed but nothing happened. The sun shone in an unblemished sky. Susie and Ian conferred. Dared they go out? Both were wracked with uncertainty, terrified of making the wrong decision and giving them all away. But suddenly Ian gave a cry. Telltale wisps of black smoke were curling gently over the rooftops and they heard fire bells ringing in the streets. The children embraced one another and Susie and Ian tentatively opened the front door. They set foot on the garden path. It was a historic moment, the two children daring to show themselves in the open.

The townspeople in Bantage were used to silence; silence from their relatives, silence in their workplace, silence in the streets, silence above all from their government whose only communication was increasingly repressive laws. Few people had friends, for in this tightly controlled community it was dangerous to put one’s trust even in those one had known since the beginning. Informing was the quickest way to curry favour and improve a precarious hold on one’s position; and informing was what they did. They had, indeed, little alternative. The slightest whiff of betrayal, and this could include not reporting the least suspicious trivial incident, meant imprisonment and death. And it had been noted by the original township citizens that, as more and more people brought up by the state joined the community, the situation grew more perilous. Heads down, mouths sealed was the only way to survive.

But information flows on invisible currents. Even before the uproar from the battle, even before they smelled the fire or saw black smoke billowing into the sky, a silent line of communication informed the townspeople that something unprecedented was happening, that there was alteration in the air. They looked, hesitant at first, out of windows, they nervously opened their doors. And then, like champagne corks bursting from bottles, they erupted into the streets, men, women, the young, the old, the crippled, the fit, and boys and girls dazed by the light. They banged pots and pans, they brandished home-made weapons, they shouted and sang and, in one body, made towards the square, a river of chaotic but triumphant human beings.

‘There’s people in the street! They’re going to kill us!’ Susie cried in alarm, clutching at Ian’s arm.

They stared open-mouthed.

‘Come on,’ Ian shouted and pulled her towards the gate. ‘They’re going the other way, to Weymouth Square. It’s the uprising, it’s begun!’

They held hands and pushed into the crowd. They had worked out their route and now followed it at a running walk, keeping low, stopping at corners to prospect the next stage. There were people everywhere but they took no notice of these two children as they ran down Stonebridge Drive, Rose Avenue and through the park to Lower Lennox Road. Unmolested amid the confusion, they plunged into the dungeon.

*

Joe fought with the last ebbing of his strength. He felt crushed by their defeat, by the ignominy of death. There would be no gift of victory for Kathryn, nothing to justify their sacrifice. He felt anger, shock, surprise.

Meredith too was being beaten back. He could no longer prevail against the number of attacking guards and the demonic Helmuth screaming orders to slay the dissidents. They had lost the battle, were doomed to die. His thoughts were with Issie, with the children and with the community who were waiting for news of victory. In vain. Everything was going to be as it had always been. Kathryn’s vision had led them into a trap.