The Fearless (17 page)

‘Yes, Patroller.’ With an effort, I resist the urge to inject sarcasm into my tone, and jump down off the wall. Who the hell do those people on that boat think they are, coming here and threatening us like this? How do they know my father? And where on earth did they get a Stinger from? Are they ex-army?

As always, the door to my father’s office is closed. I barge in without knocking.

‘Sol!’ he says, jumping. ‘Why didn’t you—’

‘Because there’s a crazy guy with a missile launcher sitting in a boat out in the channel, asking to speak to you.’

‘What?’ My father reaches for his stick. ‘Sol, if this is your idea of a joke . . .’

‘He’s asking for you
personally
. He says his name’s David Brett.’

I’m expecting my father to say he’s never heard of him. Instead, his eyes widen. ‘What?’

‘So you know him?’

‘I – yes.’

‘You’d better hurry up before he decides to fire a rocket at the Meeting Hall or the apartments, then,’ I say, turning on my heel and walking out.

I return to the sea wall, where Patroller Yuen is waiting. ‘He’s on his way,’ I tell her.

Patroller Yuen relays the message to David Brett, who nods and folds his arms. The woman behind him keeps the Stinger trained on the island. When my father arrives, Patroller Yuen helps him up onto the wall. He squints out at the boat.

‘Ahoy, Brightman!’ David Brett calls, waving.

I hear my father swear under his breath. He doesn’t wave back.

‘What do you want?’ he calls.

‘To talk to you!’

‘Why?’

‘We have a proposition to make to you!’

‘Who’s that in the blanket?’

‘Don’t worry, he isn’t sick,’ David Brett says. ‘I think you might be interested to meet him, though.’

My father’s frown deepens. ‘Let them onto the island,’ he tells Patroller Yuen. ‘Bring them to my office. And tell someone at the Refectory to bring us coffee. Cake, too, if we have any.’

‘What?’ Patroller Yuen says.

‘Do it.’ My father climbs awkwardly down off the wall again and limps back in the direction of the Meeting Hall.

Patroller Yuen stares after him for a moment. Then she calls to David Brett, ‘Bring your boat in!’

David Brett grins. Gunning the boat’s engine, he brings it alongside the jetty and ties it up, and he and the other occupants disembark, the woman carrying the Stinger. That’s when I notice the second man has a chain snaking out from under his blanket. Brett has the other end wrapped tightly round one hand. He tugs on it as he marches up the jetty, and the man stumbles. His gait is awkward and shambling.

‘Patroller Brightman, show these people the way to the Meeting Hall, and go to the Refectory,’ Patroller Yuen tells me. Brett looks up at me, his eyes narrowed. ‘You Brightman’s son?’

I narrow my eyes too. Brett smiles. ‘Thought so. You look just like him.’

‘Patroller!’ Patroller Yuen snaps.

Curling my hands into fists, I nod, bristling inside at being used as an errand boy. If my father wants to give these people coffee and cake, why can’t he go and ask for it his damn self?

As I lead them across the island, I notice the stench. It’s coming off the man wrapped in the blanket, thick and rotten. I have to swallow to keep from gagging. What
is
that? They said he wasn’t sick, but he smells like death.

Instead of heading to the Refectory, I stay with them, clutching my gun. Inside my father’s office, the smell is overpowering. My father coughs and covers his mouth and nose with his hand.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I demand before anyone else can speak. ‘Why is he covered up like that? He
stinks
.’

‘Oh, that.’ Brett shrugs. ‘Yes, he does, I’m afraid. He hasn’t been looking after himself. But he’s getting the care he needs now.’

‘
Who
is, David?’ my father says as I wonder again how on earth he knows this man and what Brett wants with him.

Brett looks at the woman, who hefts the Stinger into a more comfortable position on her shoulder and raises her eyebrows briefly.

Gripping the chain tightly, Brett pulls the blanket off the second man.

My father and I gasp simultaneously. He’s pale, hollow-cheeked, his thinning hair lying lank against his scalp. Around his neck is a metal cuff with a bandage underneath it, yellowish fluid leaking from beneath the gauze and soaking into the collar of his threadbare shirt.

But it’s his eyes that have caught my attention. They’re silver, with enormous pupils.

He’s a Fearless.

My father scrabbles under his desk, pulling out a pistol, and I jerk my shotgun up, finger ready on the trigger.

Brett laughs and puts a hand on the barrel of my gun, pushing it back down. ‘Calm down, both of you. This one wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

I look again at the Fearless and see its expression is dull and vacant. It’s just standing there with its arms hanging by its sides and its mouth slightly open, like someone got inside its head and turned off all the lights.

Slowly, my father lowers his gun too. ‘How—’

‘I’ll explain once we get that coffee,’ Brett says, glancing at me, but I stay where I am.

‘Why have you brought him here?’ my father demands.

Brett gives another one of those smiles. ‘You helped create them, Simon. Now’s your chance to help us make things right.’

After we leave Danny and April’s, Myo estimates we have nearly two hundred more miles to travel. The first day passes like a strange dream: we don’t see anyone, and we don’t talk much, either. I’m not angry with Myo any more – how can I be after he stopped the Fearless from killing me? – but he’s wrapped up in his thoughts, and I’m wrapped up in mine. That night, we shelter in the remains of a collapsed house, Apollo and Flicka tethered close by outside while Myo and I take turns to sleep and keep watch.

The next morning, the landscape starts to look familiar, but it’s not until I see the hill in front of us that I realize why.

My heart and stomach jolt, as if I’m walking down a flight of stairs and I’ve missed the last one.

Myo, who’s leading, looks over his shoulder at me. ‘The road goes straight through the middle of the village here. But it should be safe. There wasn’t anyone here when I came through before.’

I nod, not trusting myself to speak. Five minutes later I see the sign, leaning to one side and rusted, but still readable:
Welcome to Blythefield
.

In my head, Blythefield is the same as when Mum, Sol, his parents and I left: a row of pretty cottages along the road, the shop and the post office opposite the little green with the duck pond in the middle, the primary school, church and village hall clustered near the lane which led up to my family’s and the Brightmans’ houses.

But now the road is cracked and potholed and weedy, and the cottages are empty and ruined – windows smashed, doors hanging off, gardens overgrown, roofs sagging from years of bad weather and no maintenance, a tree felled by a storm lying across the wreckage of what was once a beautiful barn conversion belonging to a friend of Mum and Dad’s. Cars, some burned out and crumpled, are parked haphazardly across the road. The post office is a shell, the whole front of the building reduced to soot-stained rubble, and there’s a van in the pond, which is sludgy and coated with a thin rime of ice.

Everything looks cold and grey and dead.

As we get closer to the turning for my lane, I grip my reins so hard my knuckles turn white. The trees are bigger, their bare branches denser and leaning closer to the ground, but otherwise, it looks exactly as I remember it.

I gently squeeze Flicka’s reins, nudging my leg against her side to make her turn, and steer her up the lane.

‘Hey, where are you going?’ Myo says. ‘Cass!’

I ignore him, pressing my legs against Flicka’s sides again to make her go faster. We reach my house just as Myo catches up with me.

Or rather, what used to be my house.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Myo says. ‘This isn’t the right way.’

‘This was where I used to live,’ I snap. I get down off Flicka and tether her to a tree.

The front door is open. I take a deep breath, then step through. A sour odour of damp and rot slaps me in the face.

The hall looks like a tornado has ripped through it. The wallpaper is hanging down in shreds, the plaster is bulging and crumbling where water has seeped into the walls and the carpet squelches under my boots. The antique plant stand Mum bought at a car boot sale and lovingly restored is on its side at the bottom of the stairs, its porcelain top in pieces, and the photos and pictures we had on the walls lie face-down on the floor. I pick one up, but the photo inside is a pulpy, rotted mass, sticking to the inside of the glass.

I head upstairs. In what used to be my bedroom, part of the ceiling has given way, the window is broken and obscene graffiti has been daubed across the walls. Most of the furniture has gone, but my bed is still there, collapsed in the middle, as if someone’s jumped onto it with great force.

Then I see the tattered remains of a small, stuffed toy dog sitting in the middle of the floor. Hound. I remember that evening we left, Mum helping me to pack my bag and me stuffing him into the side pocket. Now, his plush brown and white fur is black, mouldy stuffing leaking from a hole in his side. It looks like someone found him with the stuff we left downstairs and brought him back up here.
Why?

‘The Fearless must have come back and wrecked everything after they realized Mum and I had escaped,’ I murmur.

‘Aye, and there’ll have been people passing through on salvage missions, too, taking whatever they thought was useful and trashing whatever they didn’t. Everywhere’s the same,’ Myo says behind me.

I jump. I didn’t even realize he was there. ‘Never mind. I don’t know what else I expected, really,’ I say, my voice cracking on the last word. I gaze round me, looking for something I could take away with me – something that might remind me of the life I once had. But everything is ruined. This could be any post-Invasion house anywhere in the country. Anywhere in the
world
, for all I know.

That’s when it really, truly hits me that my old life is over. The past seven years haven’t been a pause while we wait for things to go back to normal. I’ll never live in this house again. I’ll never see my parents again. And unless we catch up the Fearless girl, I’ll never see my brother again either.

‘Let’s go.’ I turn and march back out of the house, and we ride away without looking back.

How could the government have let this happen?
I think.
Why didn’t they try harder to fight the Fearless? Why didn’t everyone try harder to fight the Fearless?
It’s as if, as soon as the Invasion hit, people just . . . gave up.

‘What do you miss?’ I ask Myo, desperate to distract myself from the dark thoughts swirling around inside my head. ‘From before the Invasion, I mean?’

For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to answer me, but then he says, ‘Sometimes I’d give anything for a Burger King or a McDonald’s, you know? One of those burgers that had cheese and bacon in it.’

‘Mmm. And don’t forget a huge side order of fries drowning in ketchup . . .’

‘And Coke with loads of ice . . .’

I laugh – the first time I’ve laughed since I left Hope. ‘Maybe not today. I’d rather have hot chocolate.’

He smiles too. ‘OK, hot chocolate, then. But I’d definitely have one of those ice cream things with bits of chocolate and biscuit mashed up in them to go with it. What were they called?’

‘I can’t remember. They were nice, though.’

Myo sighs. ‘I don’t miss a lot of things from before, but I miss the food.’

It’s the most light-hearted conversation we’ve had, and for a moment, it seems as if it might break the ice between us, but afterwards, Myo seems to withdraw again, and we spend another day riding more or less in silence. The further north we go, the colder it gets, meaning we have to make several detours to find streams big enough not to have frozen over. We take turns carrying the gun, looking out for the Fearless girl or Magpies, but the whole time, we see just one person, a lone figure on horseback like us, riding along a ridge at the top of a hill. ‘A barterer, probably,’ Myo says, squinting through his binoculars from where we’ve stopped to hide in a stand of trees. ‘I don’t recognize him, though.’

Two days later it starts to snow. Soon there’s an inch of it on the ground, then two, then three. The horses slow to a plod, balls of compacted snow forming in their hooves and on the shaggy fur on their legs, which we have to stop to remove. We finally solve the problem when Lochie catches a pigeon; we stop to cook it for our lunch, sheltering in a ruined barn, and use the leftover fat to grease Apollo and Flicka’s hooves.

The effect created by the curtains of falling snow is utterly disorientating. If it wasn’t for Myo’s compass, we’d be turning in circles by now. ‘How much further have we got to go?’ I ask Myo, who’s hunched in his jacket, the collar turned up and the hood of his jumper pulled down over his face.

‘We should reach the bunker tomorrow evening as long as this doesn’t slow us down too much,’ he says.

Great
.

It snows steadily all day, finally stopping just as we reach the old farm Myo discovered on his trip down to Hope. By now, it’s starting to get dark, and our clothes are wet through.

‘We should sort the horses out first,’ Myo says, his teeth chattering. ‘They need to eat.’

I need to eat too, and I’m desperate to get warm, but he’s right; Apollo and Flicka have already finished all the hay we brought with us, and are going through the grain much faster than either of us had anticipated. We dismount and lead them through the farmyard, Lochie at our heels. As Myo said, there’s a barn still piled with hay, and when we’ve dug our way through the snow and mouldy bales on the outside, some of the stuff in the middle is still OK, although it’s dusty and smells of mice. We rub handfuls of snow over it to clean it a little, then tether the horses inside another outbuilding, leaving them the hay to pick at, and go to look at the house.