Evil Star (7 page)

When Matt opened his eyes again, everything was exactly as it had been before. It was two minutes to one. Morning lessons had ended.

The students were on their way to lunch. He had simply imagined it.

Except that he knew. It wasn't his imagination.

He couldn't just walk out of the school. The fire hadn't happened . . .

but it was about to. That was what he had been sensing from the moment he had arrived that day.

He looked around him. A bell sounded. The lunch bell. It told him what he had to do. He took three steps down the corridor and found a fire alarm, set behind a glass panel and mounted on the wall. He used his elbow to smash the glass, then pressed the alarm button with his thumb.

At once, much louder bells sounded throughout the school. People stopped what they were doing and began to look at each other, half Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star smiling, wondering what was going on. They knew the sound of the fire alarm. There had been fire drills often enough. But it was as if no one wanted to make the first move, afraid of looking foolish.

"There's a fire!" Matt shouted. "Move!"

One or two boys began to make their way past him, walking away from the double doors and back toward the other side of the school.

The main assembly point was a foot-ball field next to the chapel. As soon as the first few had started moving, others followed. Matt heard doors opening and slamming. People were asking questions, but the alarm was so loud that Matt couldn't make out any words.

Then Mr. O'Shaughnessy appeared. The assistant head-master was looking flustered. His face, never cheerful at the best of times, was thunderous. There were pinpricks of red in his normally pallid cheeks. He saw Matt standing next to the fire alarm. His eyes moved and took in the broken glass.

"Freeman!" he exclaimed. He had to shout to make himself heard.

"Did you do that?"

"Yes."

“You set off the alarm?"

“Yes."

"Where's the fire?"

Matt said nothing.

Mr. O'Shaughnessy took his silence as an admission of guilt. "If you've done this as a prank, you will be in serious trouble!" he boomed. And then, an afterthought that was so bizarre it almost made Matt want to laugh, he added, "Why aren't you wearing your tie?"

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

"I think you should get out of the school" was Matt's only reply.

There was nothing to be done. The alarm could be switched off only in the bursar's office, and only with the approval of the fire brigade.

Mr. O'Shaughnessy grabbed Matt by the arm, and the two of them followed the other boys out of the school. In minutes, all the buildings were empty. On the other side of the main road, the dinner ladies had spilled out of the sports center. The few boys who had arrived for lunch early were with them. They crossed the road and joined the rest of the students.

The entire school had congregated on the football field. The teachers were with them, trying to get them into some sort of order. Even the cafeteria workers had come over to see what all the fuss was about.

Everyone was looking for the flames, or at least a little smoke, but already it was being whispered that the alarm had been set off as a joke and that Matthew Freeman was to blame. The headmaster had also arrived. He was a short, solid-looking man, built like a rugby player and known as the Bulldog. He saw his assistant, who was standing next to Matt, and came striding over.

"Do you know what's going on?" he demanded.

"I'm afraid I do, Headmaster," O'Shaughnessy replied. "I'm afraid it's a false alarm."

"Well, I'm glad of that!"

"Of course." O'Shaughnessy nodded. "But this boy set the alarm off on purpose. His name is Freeman and ..."

But the headmaster wasn't listening anymore. He was staring past Mr. O'Shaughnessy. Slowly, Matt turned round to see what was happening. Mr. O'Shaughnessy did the same.

They were just in time to see the tanker come careen-ing down the Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star hill. They knew at once that something was wrong. It was zigzagging across the road, seemingly out of control. But Matt could just make out the figure — a woman with mad eyes and straggling hair — sitting in the driver's seat. He recognized her at the same moment that he realized she knew exactly what she was doing, that she had come especially for him.

Gwenda Davis had her eyes fixed on the sports center where, according to Rex McKenna, the entire school would be having lunch. The petrol tanker was now facing away from the football field. As Matt watched, it left the road, plowed through a bush, and began to roll across the play-ing fields on the other side of the road.

Matt saw the tires cutting up the turf. The tanker had to be doing seventy or eighty miles an hour. Its engine was roaring. Gwenda had her foot clamped down on the accelerator, and the steep slope of the hill was adding to her speed.

Some of the other boys had seen it, too. Faces turned. Hands pointed. There could be no doubt what was about to happen.

The tanker smashed into the wall of the sports center and continued right through it. Its window smashed and Gwenda was killed instantly, thrown into the brickwork even as it shattered all around her. With its engine screaming, the tanker continued, disappearing from sight, swallowed up by the building. There was a moment's pause. Then it exploded. A fireball erupted into the sky, hurling hundreds of tiles in every direction. It rose up, higher and higher, carrying with it a huge fist of black smoke that threatened to punch out the very clouds. Matt put a hand up to protect his face. Even at this distance, he could feel the fantastic heat of the thousands of gallons of petrol as they ignited. Flames splashed out of the wrecked building, falling crazily onto the grass, the trees, the road, Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star the edges of the main school, setting everything alight. It was like a war zone. The entire place seemed to be on fire.

Matt knew that he had cheated death by minutes. And if the whole school had been in the sports center, if they had been queuing up for lunch as they should have been, hundreds of children would have died.

The headmaster was thinking the same thing. "My God!" he croaked. "If we had been in there . . . !"

"He knew!" Mr. O'Shaughnessy let go of Matt and backed away.

"He knew before it happened," he whispered. "Freeman knew."

The headmaster looked at him, his eyes wide.

Matt hesitated. He didn't want to stay here a minute longer. In the distance, he could already hear sirens.

He walked away. Six hundred and fifty boys stepped out of his way, forming a corridor to allow him to pass. Among them, Matt saw Gavin Taylor. For just a brief instant, their eyes met. The other boy was crying. Matt didn't know why.

Nobody said anything as he passed between them. Matt no longer cared what they thought of him.

One thing was certain: He would never see any of them again.

Chapter 5 The Diary

"You don't have to do this," Richard said.

It was the first time he had spoken since the train had pulled out of Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star York on its way to London. Matt was sitting opposite him, his head buried in a book that he had bought at the station. The book was meant to be funny but Matt couldn't even bring himself to smile. For the last hour he had been skipping from paragraph to paragraph but the story simply wouldn't let him in.

"Matt. . . ?" Richard began again.

Matt snapped the book shut. “You saw what happened at Forrest Hill," he said. "It was Gwenda! She'd come to kill me and she'd have killed everyone else in the school if I hadn't warned them."

"But you did warn them. You saved their lives."

“Yes. And they all came running up to thank me for it." Matt stared out the window, taking in the rushing country-side. Raindrops crawled slowly across the glass, moving from left to right. "I can't go back," he said. "They don't want me there. And I've got nowhere else to go. Miss Ash-wood was right. Raven's Gate wasn't the end of it. I don't think it is ever going to end."

Two days had passed since the destruction of the school. The blazing petrol had spread from the gymnasium to the old buildings, and by the time the fire brigade had arrived, there hadn't been very much left. By then, Matt had returned to the flat in York, joining a shocked Richard, who had already heard the first reports on the midday news.

The school did their best to keep Matt out of the newspapers — and fortunately, nobody yet knew the iden-tity of the madwoman who had been driving the petrol tanker. But there had been too many witnesses, too many boys willing to talk. And by the following morning, all the headlines were screaming the same impossible story: Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star
BOY FORESEES

SCHOOL

CATASTROPHE

PRECOGNITION

BOY SAVES

SCHOOL DID

FORREST HILL

BOY SEE

FUTURE?

At least nobody had a photograph of Matt apart from one muddy, almost unrecognizable image that had been taken on a cell phone.

By the time the first editions came out, Richard and Matt were already gone. Richard had spo-ken with Susan Ashwood on the phone and she had arranged a "safe house" for them in Leeds — an empty flat where they had stayed overnight. While they were there, Matt had agreed to travel to London to meet the Nexus, just as they had asked. Looking back, it seemed to him that there had been something inevitable about it.

"It was meant to happen. It was planned. ..."

Susan Ashwood had said that, too. She had been talk-ing about the discovery of the Spanish monk's diary. But she could just as easily have been talking about him. It was beginning to seem to Matt that his every move was being dictated for him. It didn't matter what he wanted. Some-one, somewhere, had other ideas.

"Maybe it'll work out okay," Richard said. "All you've got to do is meet this guy, William Morton. Get him to hand over the diary and then you and I can go back to York or somewhere and start over Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star again."

“You really think it will be as easy as that?" Matt asked.

Richard shrugged. "Nothing's ever easy where you're concerned," he said. "But at the end of the day, Matt, you're still in control.

Whatever they ask, you only have to say no."

• • •

A taxi had been sent to meet them at the station and took them to a hotel in Farringdon. Matt hardly knew London. The first time he had been here, he had been under police escort, whisked in and out of an office with barely enough time to smell the air. Farringdon was an old part of the city which seemed to slip further back in time as the evening drew on. There were dark alleyways and cob-bled streets and even, in places, gas lamps. If an air raid siren had suddenly split the air, Matt wouldn't have been surprised. It was the London he had seen in films that took place during World War II.

The hotel was small and so discreet that it didn't even have a name on the front door. Richard and Matt both had rooms on the third floor — paid for, of course, by the Nexus. After they'd unpacked, they took the tiny, rickety elevator back to the ground floor and had an early supper together in the dining room. They were still eating when Mr. Fabian appeared, this time in a dark suit with black, brightly polished shoes.

"Good evening," he said. "I have been asked to take you to the meeting. But you must finish your meal first. We have plenty of time. Do you mind if I join you?"

He drew up a chair and sat down.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

"Is it far from here?" Richard asked.

"No. A short walk." Fabian was in a good mood. He seemed to have forgotten the way their last meeting had ended.

"Can I ask you something?" Richard asked.

"Please. Go ahead."

"I know nothing about you. I mean, you once told me you lived in Lima. .

"In fact I live in Barranco. It's a suburb of Lima."

"But what do you do? How did you get chosen by the Nexus? Do you have a wife or any children?"

Fabian had raised a finger to his lips at the mention of the Nexus, but there was nobody else in the room and he relaxed. "I will answer your questions," he said. "No, I am not married. Not yet, anyway. As to my work, I'm a writer. I have written many books about my country, its history, its archaeology. That was how I came into contact with the Nexus. I was a good friend of Professor Dravid before he was killed. It was he who recruited me."

Richard and Matt finished eating. A waiter came into the room to clear away the plates.

"If you're ready . . ." Fabian began.

"Lead the way!" Richard said.

They left the hotel and went down the street, walking lor about five minutes until they arrived at a plain, black door set between a real estate agency and a cafe. Fabian had a key and unlocked the door, leading them through a cramped hallway and up a flight of stairs.

The second floor was more modern than the rest of the building, with glass doors and security cameras. Matt had thought they were Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star entering a private house, but the upper level was more like an office.

The carpet was thick. The doors were closed. Everything felt silent and secretive.

"It's through here." Fabian gestured with a hand and, as if by magic, one of the doors slid open. On the other side was a room with an elongated table and eleven people sitting together in silence, waiting for them. Fabian went in and sat down next to Susan Ashwood. That left two empty chairs.

One for Matt. One for Richard.

"Please, come in." Matt wasn't sure who had spoken. All he was aware of was that everyone was looking at him. Matt felt himself beginning to blush. He didn't like being the center of attention at the best of times, but this was definitely weird. They were staring at him as if he were a film star. He felt that at any moment they were going to break into applause.