The Pack (14 page)

The road wound its way up the hill to the main entrance; bluish lights at the edges marked the way.

“Now?” Bradley said.

“We need to cross the road, climb that bank on the other side. We're heading to that part that almost overhangs the road. OK?”

“OK.”

“Keep low, don't stop. Now.”

They got onto their haunches, then to their feet and climbed up the embankment. They glanced up and down the road before they crossed it. Bradley caught Martha in the full blue light, her face as it turned momentarily to him, her body low and perfectly balanced. At the edge of the road they leaped onto the opposite bank then scrambled through the dead leaves, watching for cracking branches, before they came to the overhang. Lying side by side, they looked out.

“We need to find out roughly the time the rubbish truck comes,” said Martha. “Can you tell time?”

“Roughly. From the sun. The Old Woman taught me.”

“Who?”

“The Old Woman. She's got a name too, but we knew her as the Old Woman—”

“Tell me sometime.”

“Sure. I will.”

They lay side by side, shivering on the cold ground, as the sun came up. Mention of her had brought the Old Woman back to Bradley. He thought of all her stories. Of how Thomas was forbidden to take food, of how there was a world the fairies took you to, from which you could never get release. He had thought that kingdom was Red Dog's. Now it appeared that it was The Mount. Even in sunlight, it was dark red sandstone, with the feeling of a prison. Yet there was a story with a different ending—one the Old Woman had hinted at, but never told. In it, the fairy kingdom would be equally daunting; but armed with wit, courage and luck, you might escape. Had they not already proved that it could be so?

When the sun was high and Martha and Bradley had been lost to their thoughts for hours, they heard the splutter of an engine. The truck came up the hill, six black bins in its trailer.

“Empties,” said Martha.

It stopped as the front gates were opened, then it chugged through. The gates shut behind it.

“Now,” said Martha, “start thinking time. When the lorry arrived and how long before it leaves.”

Slowly, Bradley plucked dead grasses. He had a pile of grasses and a bald piece of earth the size of a pillow when the gates finally opened again and the lorry drove out.

“Good,” said Martha, “that should be long enough. Now we must wait for nightfall before we return to the park. Keep your eyes open for anything to eat when we do. There'll be lots of festive leftovers.”

*   *   *

Bradley pulled the door open and peered in. The hut was empty. He felt a chill seize him. Victor and Hunger had been taken; he and Martha were about to be captured. Bradley felt Martha's fear too before they both glanced about to assure themselves that whatever had befallen Victor and Hunger, the danger had passed them by.

Bradley raised his head and gave two high-pitched howls. Martha seized his arm as they waited in the silence.

Then, a crack of twigs, the sound of rustling in the undergrowth, and Bradley could make out two shapes coming up the banking—one low to the ground, the other hunched and loping.

Hunger ran to Bradley, his eyes piercing, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. Bradley stroked him and Martha went down on her knees to hug him. The black bush of his tail slapped against the open door of the hut.

“Victor,” Bradley said, “what happened?”

“Men—loud, loud like Red Dog. Frightened us. We hid in bushes.”

“It's OK, Victor. It's OK.” But Bradley wondered how long Victor's nerves were going to last.

“Tomorrow, Victor,” Bradley told him, “we will have Floris.”

“Floris,” said Victor. “Floris.”

In the reclaimed darkness of the hut, between bites of old turkey pizza, Bradley outlined the plan Martha had formed as they lay side by side, the cold earth seeping through their clothing. It involved, simply, one of them going into The Mount and bringing Floris out. What Bradley did not tell Victor was the argument Martha and he had had about who that should be.

“I know the place,” Martha said simply.

“Yes and they know you,” Bradley replied.

“Some of them do, but they'd never think I'd come back—simply reappear.”

“Look,” said Bradley, “not so long ago you didn't even want to leave the Forbidden Territories and now you want to go into the place that scares you the most. I don't understand.”

“
Because
it scares me the most. That's why. I'll tell you what I liked about being Skreech. I had to imagine strengths where I felt I didn't have any. I had to be brave, I had to take chances, I had to be independent. I don't want to stop being these things. Martha is maybe too scared to do this, but Skreech isn't.”

“No,” said Bradley, “it's too much of a risk. If it goes wrong, you're in the cold room and Floris has lost her chance to escape.”

“But there's so little time. If you take the wrong corridor, if you look as if you don't know what you're doing…”

“So tell me all you know, and that won't happen.”

Martha sighed a couple of times, pursed her lips, and looked at Bradley as if she were measuring him up for the job, then carefully, insistently, she instructed him.

When the truck passed the next day, Bradley would be on the rise, as close to the edge as possible. There was a sharp incline there, and when the driver changed gear, the truck paused momentarily. That's when Bradley would jump, then pull the bins around him. There shouldn't be many checks on the way in—what would save Bradley was the fact that no one expected anyone to break
into
The Mount.

*   *   *

Bradley slipped over the side of the truck and crouched behind one of the large wheels. When the driver was inside the building, Bradley went through the door and passed the kitchen. As Martha had thought, the driver and the cook were sitting at the table, before a pot of tea.

Along the same corridor, Bradley found the laundry, as Martha had said he would. It was unlocked. A pile of old grey uniforms lay on the floor. Bradley found one roughly his size, as torn and patched as the others. He crumpled it and rubbed it against the crumbling plaster wall. He didn't want to look anything like the new boy. He put it on and checked none of his clothing was visible. He stood behind the laundry door and took a few deep breaths.

“You've got to move with confidence,” Martha had told him, “as if you're used to the place, but also to show you have power there. Many inmates come and go. No one knows everyone, but they'll tell if you falter.”

They'll tell if you falter,
Bradley told himself. The corridors were long and lit with bare hanging bulbs.

Second on the right, go to the end, there's a big room there, where many of the young ones are—they work on basic technology—that's your best chance.

Bradley swallowed as he approached his “best chance.” Passing one room, he heard a shout, a slap, a cry.

He peered through the window of the room, at the rows of trestle tables, the bowed heads. Around each table two supervisors prowled. Bradley saw one of them push a child's face towards the machine she was working on, another bend and whisper something, his lip curling as he did so.

Bradley saw Floris three tables from the door. She had her back to him, but he knew it was Floris: her blonde hair, her shoulders shaking with her racking cough. Bradley set his own shoulders back and, with the swagger of a supervisor, he entered the room.

He moved so swiftly, so confidently, neither supervisors nor inmates thought to question his intention.

“Ah, that's the one,” he said, striding up to Floris. She was one of the last ones to turn, her eyes widening as she opened her mouth. Bradley took a clump of her hair in his fist and pulled savagely. Floris screamed with the pain and, as he had seen the supervisor do, Bradley bent his face to her ear, his face a twisted mask of contempt.

“Floris—whatever, you don't know me.”

Bradley loosened his grip but, holding her hair still, he addressed the supervisors.

“Yeah, this is the one Matron wants to see. Complaining about the rations again. Poor little flower.” Bradley forced a laugh and the supervisors joined in. As he pulled Floris up and towards the door, the supervisors aimed halfhearted slaps at her head. She cowered, and Bradley understood it was not the first time they had hit her.

In the corridor Floris began to make tiny involuntary mews of nerves.

“It's all right, Floris, we're getting out of here. I've got to hold you like this, though, in case we're seen.”

But the door was in sight. Bradley could see the truck there, the bins lined up, still to be loaded. Bradley let Floris go and gave her a small smile of encouragement, when out of the kitchen stepped the cook.

She was small and slightly stooped with pinned-back gray hair. She looked at Bradley and Floris and frowned. Bradley knew there was nowhere they could run to.

The cook gave the briefest nod, her hands the smallest calming motion, before she turned back into the kitchen.

“What's the rush?” Bradley heard her say. “Here, have another biscuit—they're best when they're fresh.”

Quickly, they passed the kitchen door. The second bin lid Bradley lifted showed a bin half-f.

“In here, Floris,” said Bradley and helped her in. “Keep still and quiet—for however long it takes.”

Bradley found another bin that was not full and climbed into it, hunkering down amid the smell of rotting vegetables.

“Yes, that's fine now,” Bradley heard the cook say. “Good luck, then,” she added.

“Ah, a trickster of a thing luck is,” said the driver. “What do I need of luck?”

“Well, good luck to whoever, anyway,” said the cook.

Thanks,
said Bradley in the blackness.

The machine ratcheted the bins up onto the trailer, and the driver manhandled them into place. The engine kicked into life, and the truck jerked on its way. Bradley heard the gates shut behind him.

The bins shoogled against each other as the lorry drove through the streets to the dump. Bradley could hear the engine sound echo as the truck entered the narrow streets which led there. It would not be long now.

There was a sudden braking, and the bins crashed against each other. Bradley heard the driver's door open and slam, as he got down to remove the broken old park bench from the road.

Bradley pushed the lid from his bin and climbed out, then helped Floris out of hers. It was as Floris was climbing out that he saw them.

“What the—?”

He came round the truck, his face crimson with fury, and it was as he was hemmed in between his lorry and the building wall that he came face to face with Hunger.

How he would tell it later, Bradley could not imagine, but he knew the driver's listeners would think he was exaggerating the fierceness of the dog, the black wolf before him, its mad eyes, the glare of its arrow-sharp teeth.

As Hunger held the man at bay—terrified to advance, but equally too scared to turn his back on the monster—Martha and Victor helped Floris down the other side of the truck. She was coughing violently, after her confinement and the enforced silence.

“Floris,” breathed Victor, as they hugged each other. It seemed to Bradley that Victor was standing straighter than he had been since that night when the Weasel kidnapped Floris.

Martha frowned at them both. “Come on, quickly. We need to get away from here. As far away as we can.”

“Right,” said Bradley. “No going back. We're heading north.”

PART FOUR

NORTH

13

THE STORM

Bradley smoothed the last of the earth from the turnip and nipped off its trailing root. He held the broad leaves in his fist and snapped them off. He took up the rusted bread knife and half sawed, half pushed his weight down on its blade. One last pressing and the turnip fell open on the earth floor. In the dim light of the barn, it seemed both halves emitted light like twin moons.

“Truck-fall” was what they called it. Martha had found its green flag at the roadside bobbing in a pool of snowmelt and rainwater.

Bradley began to cut slices from it, laying each down on its dark rind: preparation, anticipation he knew were part of the pleasure. Already eyes were burrowing into the white flesh, gorging on it.

Bradley laid the knife down and picked up the first slice and handed it to Floris, then another to Victor. Neither had lost their habit of turning away with their food, glancing over their shoulders as they ate.

“Now to the finder.” Martha took hers and ran it backwards and forwards under her nose. Food had been getting scarce lately and she would feed all her senses with this turnip, closing her eyes as finally she crunched into it. Already, Hunger had finished his and was looking for the peel they would soon throw his way.

Last of all, Bradley held out a piece to a large figure which sat slightly beyond the others. The figure inched forward and the light caught the bright scar of a wound over one of his eyes. The brow was still clearly swollen. He took the turnip in his hands, dousing all its light.

“Oh, thank you, my brave boy … to be so generous to such a beaten old dog, such a craven mutt as Red Dog has become.”

“Just take it,” said Bradley.

“Oh, indeed yes. But take it with joy in my heart that Red Dog has learned the hard lessons he has and has had the chance to prove what a good and trusted friend he can be.”

There was little stopping Red Dog once he had begun his True Confessions of the Soul—of which this was not the first—so they ate on, concentrating instead on the crunch of the turnip flesh, the sweet juices that filled their mouths, till a low, insistent growl came from Hunger. After Red Dog's weeks of taciturnity, there was something fresh in his wheedling, almost joyful voice this morning that disturbed him. Eventually he turned and snapped in Red Dog's direction. The clack of his teeth briefly put a stop to Red Dog's word play. He lifted the turnip in both hands, as if acknowledging an offering, and bit out a horseshoe from it.