The Fearless (19 page)

Then, just as we’re nearing the summit, Apollo catches his hoof, stumbles, and with a terrible, screaming whinny, crashes down onto his side. Myo manages to jump clear just in time, the soft snow breaking his fall.

He swears and leaps to his feet. Flicka snorts and stamps, her eyes rolling, the whites showing all the way round the edge. ‘Shit,’ Myo says as he tries to calm Apollo, who’s struggling to get up.

Looking round, I see an old fencepost sticking up out of the snow. I manoeuvre Flicka close enough to it to dismount and tie her up. ‘Where’s he hurt?’ I say, running across to Myo.

‘He’s done something to his front right foot.’ Myo’s voice is sharp with panic. He starts pulling the packs and saddlebags off Apollo. ‘We need to get him up if we can.’

I help him unstrap the rest of our gear. ‘Give me some of those ropes,’ Myo says. ‘We’ll try and roll him over so he can push up on his good side.’

I hand them to him, and he ties one around Apollo’s back leg and one around his chest. Gently, we pull on the ropes, bringing Apollo over onto his chest, and he scrabbles to his feet. He stands with his sides heaving, holding his front right hoof up off the ground.

‘Is it broken?’ I ask as Myo, making soothing noises, feels Apollo’s leg.

‘I don’t know.’ The panic in his voice has subsided, but only a little. ‘If we can get him to the bunker, we can get Ben to take a look at it. He was training to be a vet before the Invasion.’

‘How far is it now?’

‘Less than a mile.’

‘Let’s load the gear onto Flicka so Apollo isn’t carrying any extra weight,’ I say. ‘If it’s less than a mile, we can walk, and lead them.’

Our journey up to the ridge is slow and painstaking. At last, we reach the top, and make our way equally slowly down the other side, Apollo hopping on three legs.

‘There,’ Myo says.

Through the curtains of snow, I see two upright slabs of rock. The gap between them is big enough to lead the horses straight through. The path turns a corner and then, under an overhang of rock, I see a little stable with a corrugated iron roof, icicles bristling along the edge.

‘It’s for the barterers,’ Myo says as we lead the horses into the stalls. I know he’s thinking of Danny. The sadness in his voice is so raw that for a crazy second I want to hug him.

But I don’t. I turn away from him and busy myself unloading our gear from Flicka. Once she and Apollo are in the stalls, Myo clicks his fingers at Lochie and we carry on along the path, carrying our packs in our arms. It’s like a cave down here, claustrophobic and chilly. Our boots slip and slide on the frozen ground.

We reach a heavily reinforced metal door set into the hillside with no visible handle on the outside. Lochie barks. Shushing him, Myo taps the handle of his knife against the door, a series of knocks that remind me of the Morse code Sol and I learned years ago at school and used to send secret messages to each other. The sound echoes hollowly around us.

Several minutes pass. Then a little porthole opens at the top. Lochie whines, his tail starting to wave slowly from side to side.

‘Who’s there?’ a male voice calls through the porthole.

Myo stands on tiptoe and waves. ‘Hey, Cy. It’s me.’

‘Myo! Shit, hang on, mate.’ The porthole slams shut, and with a rusty squeal, the door opens.

On the other side is a guy with a gun. He has metal studs through his ears, nose and bottom lip, his shaved scalp is tattooed with a spider-web pattern and his eyes, which are watering slightly – from the cold, perhaps – are a startling shade of blue. He steps through the door and wraps Myo in a hug, pounding him on the back.

Then Cy catches sight of me. His gaze becomes colder, harder. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Cass,’ Myo says.

I lift a hand in greeting. ‘Hi,’ I say. My voice is too high, and I clench my other hand into a fist, cursing myself for sounding so nervous.

‘You’re gonna have to wait here for a moment,’ Cy tells Myo, rubbing his eyes and blinking to clear them.

Myo nods. ‘No worries.’

‘What’s going on?’ I say as Cy goes back inside, slamming the door behind him.

Myo shakes his head. ‘Nothing.’

At last, Cy returns. ‘OK, you can come in,’ he says, glancing at me. He holds the door open and Myo and I duck under his arm, Lochie shoving past us. I just have time to see that we’re in a tunnel lined with mould-speckled tiles, thick cables running along the walls near the ceiling and lights, dark and dead, hanging down at intervals, before Cy slams the door shut again.

The darkness presses against me like a blanket. Just as I’m starting to wonder if the next thing I’ll feel is the muzzle of Cy’s gun against my head, I hear a click and the tunnel is flooded with light. Cy’s got a torch, a boxy-looking thing with a little winding handle sticking out of the side.

‘Did you find Ma—’ he begins to ask Myo as we start walking.

Myo cuts him short with a shake of his head. ‘No. I’ll talk to you later.’

I remember him saying almost the exact same thing at Danny’s. I frown at the backs of their heads.

We make our way along a downwards-sloping corridor. The deeper underground we go, the higher the temperature rises until it’s almost comfortable. Then I see a door propped half-open with a cracked plastic crate. On the other side, lights – real lights – shine weakly; I wonder how on earth they power them. I can hear voices, too. A sign above the door says
COMMUNICATIONS HALL. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
.

The hall is high-ceilinged, more signs fixed to the walls saying things like
NO SMOKING
and
IN EVENT OF SIREN SOUNDING PLEASE DON THE PROTECTIVE SUITS STOWED UNDER YOUR DESKS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION
, and in the middle of the room is a square of desks with flat-screen computers on them and chairs in front of each monitor. Everything is coated in dust.

The far end of the room looks more homely. Someone’s painted a mural on one of the walls – trees and flowers and animals. There are tables, rickety bookshelves stacked with books and magazines and a battered acoustic guitar leaning up against them, and some couches and armchairs covered with brightly coloured blankets and sheets.

And standing round the couches is a group of people, about twenty of them, all staring at me.

As we walk across, I’m struck by something: the oldest person here looks as if they’re in their thirties, and there are no kids. Maybe they’re somewhere else in the bunker?

Cy is standing between a skinny woman with her hair in little plaits, and an Asian girl with short, curly hair. Next to her is a tall guy with green eyes the colour of sea glass.

‘Before you ask, I didn’t find her,’ Myo tells him.

The man raises an eyebrow. ‘Who’s this?’ he says, as I wonder for the third time who Myo hasn’t found, and what he’s not telling me.

‘My name’s Cass,’ I say.

The man acts like he hasn’t heard me. ‘Myo?’

‘I got into some pretty bad trouble,’ Myo says. ‘Cass helped me get out of it.’

The man narrows his eyes. I wait for Myo to tell him about Jori. Instead, he tells the man, ‘I need to talk to you.’ He doesn’t say
without Cass listening
, but I know from his tone that’s what he means. ‘And one of the horses we brought with us is injured. It fell on the hill. Can you take a look at it?’

I realize this must be Ben. ‘Horses?’ he says.

‘They were Danny’s.’

‘Were?’

Myo gazes levelly at him. ‘Like I said, I need to talk to you.’

Ben rubs a hand across his face. ‘OK, OK. Let’s go and look at this horse. You can tell me what’s going on while we’re there.’

And without even so much as a glance in my direction, the two of them walk out of the hall, leaving me alone with a large group of glaring strangers.

As Ben and I head back to the bunker entrance, I tell him everything: how I managed to track Mara and the other Fearless she was with all the way to Hope – God knows how she managed to hook up with him, or where – and how I got trapped when the building collapsed and was arrested by those guards; how Mara and the Fearless man took Cass’s brother, and how I struck a bargain with Cass to get me off the island.

‘So she knows about Mara?’ Ben says sharply.

I know what he’s thinking:
How much did you tell her? How much does she know about us?
I shake my head. ‘Don’t be daft. If I told her one of the Fearless that kidnapped her brother is my twin sister, she’d stick a knife in my guts.’

‘I should never have let you go after Mara,’ Ben says, shaking his head. ‘I knew it would bring trouble.’ His expression is as grim as I feel.

‘You didn’t let me,’ I remind him.

He scowls. ‘I didn’t want you to go until the weather improved a little. But you went haring off anyway, and now you turn up again with this girl. We agreed years ago that no outsiders could come here. It’s too risky! If this Carrie or whatever she’s called finds out what we are—’

‘Mara’s the only family I’ve got!’ I say. ‘Waiting wasn’t an option! And I tried to ditch Cass, OK? Anyway, if it wasn’t for her, I’d be at the bottom of the sea, or back at the Torturehouse.’

As we go out to the stable, I tell him about the attack at Danny and April’s, and how Cass helped me fight off the Fearless man and kill him. He listens in silence. ‘If I turn round now and tell her I can’t help her, what sort of person does that make me?’ I finish.

‘Your trouble is, Myo, that you want to save everybody,’ Ben says as he goes into Apollo’s stall to take a look at his leg.

‘Aye, and you know what, if that means I’m not like them, then I’ll keep on doing it.’

‘And I keep
telling
you—’ Ben gently runs his hands up and down Apollo’s injured leg, ‘You’re not like them. You’re not going to end up like them. It is not. Going. To. Happen.’

That’s easy for you to say!
I want to yell at him, and if it wasn’t for the horses, I would. For some reason Ben’s never seemed bothered about – well, I guess you could call it our inheritance. He’s never struggled with it. He’s never been worried about this thing inside us changing or growing. But me, I’m aware of it every single minute of every single day. Can you imagine, every time you lose your temper or you do something that makes you feel selfish or mean, worrying that it’s starting to take over?

That’s why I cut when I was younger. I wanted it
out
. But of course, you can’t get rid of it. Once it’s in you, it’s there to stay – I’ve just had to learn to live with it.

‘Her brother’s only a bairn,’ I say. ‘And no one on that island could’ve cared less about trying to get him back.’

‘
Shit
, Myo.’ Ben clenches his teeth, carefully flexing Apollo’s fetlock. ‘Don’t you even remember what happened to me after we got out of the Torturehouse?’

He’s talking about after he found the bunker, and set it up as a community for people like us. Before he was caught, he was living with another community – him and his partner, Rajesh. He went back to try and find him, but by then Rajesh had been taken by the Fearless too, and when the people who were left found out what had happened to Ben, he was lucky to escape with his life.

‘Aye, but she’s not going to find out,’ I say. ‘And I’m not asking for anyone else to come with us.’

Ben snorts. ‘What, so you two are going to go haring off to the Torturehouse by yourselves?’

I pretend not to hear the sarcasm in his voice. ‘All we need is some decent weapons and a few more supplies. Surely you can spare us those?’

‘Myo, how are you going to stop her finding out the Fearless responsible for taking her brother is your sister?’ Ben says, turning to face me. ‘How are you going to stop yourself getting
killed
? For Christ’s
sake
!’

I take a deep breath. ‘Once we get her brother back, it doesn’t matter, does it? She can take him back to that island of hers and get on with her life, and I can bring Mara back here and get on with mine. End of.’

Of course, I know it’s not that simple. The memory of Cass saying I hate them, and
The Fearless, who do you think?
rises inside my head. I push it away.

‘Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.’ Ben lets go of Apollo’s foot. ‘He’s damaged the ligament, I think. I’m not sure how badly, and I’m not sure what I can do except bandage it and let him rest. I’ll go and look in the medical supplies and see what we’ve got. You planning on riding the other horse to Sheffield, then?’

‘It’ll be quicker than walking.’

‘She’ll need to rest for a few days. Horses aren’t machines, you know. And I know you won’t listen to me about this, but you’d be better waiting for the weather to improve, too. Or at least wait until it’s stopped snowing.’

‘So you’re not throwing Cass out?’

‘No, but she’ll have to sleep away from the others.’

‘She can have Mara’s room.’

‘And she isn’t to go wandering off anywhere by herself. You keep an eye on her at all times.’

I nod.

As we walk back to the bunker, Ben fixes me with a grave stare. ‘Seriously, Myo. It’s up to you to make sure she doesn’t find out about us. Don’t screw up.’

I resist the temptation to salute. Ben’s not known for his sense of humour at the best of times, and right now, he’d probably deck me if he thought I was messing with him.

When we get back to the Comms Hall, Cass is standing near the door, arms wrapped around herself. I don’t need to be a mind-reader to figure out the look she gives me:
Thanks for leaving me on my own, you bastard
. No one’s talking to her. Only Lochie, who’s been getting a fuss from Cy and Gina, is pleased to see us, trotting over and wagging his tail.

Ben strides into the middle of the room and claps his hands. ‘Listen up!’ Everyone stops speaking and turns to look at him.

‘Cass here helped Myo out of a couple of very bad situations. In return, he’s promised to help her get her brother back, who’s been taken by a Fearless. I’m calling a community meeting immediately.’

Everyone starts muttering among themselves.

‘Myo, why don’t you show Cass to her room before we start?’ Ben adds. ‘You can fetch her back once we’re done.’