The Fearless (21 page)

I’ve been at the bunker for four days, and I’m getting desperate to leave. Myo’s being pretty civil to me again now, but there’s still that distance between us – the moment on Danny’s porch feels like something that happened in a dream. And although Cy and the Asian girl, who’s called Gina, seem friendlier now, Ben is just plain rude most of the time, and it’s pretty clear the others don’t want me here either. Wanting to keep out of the way, I spend most of my time in that depressing little room, ploughing through a pile of books I’ve borrowed from the Comms Hall to stop me thinking about Jori. It doesn’t work. We’re waiting for the weather to improve – or for it to at least stop snowing long enough for us to leave – and every moment I’m stuck here is agony. What if it takes less than two weeks for Jori to Alter? What if he never even made it to the Torturehouse and is lying dead in a snowdrift somewhere?

I decide to go and ask Myo if there’s anything I can do to help prepare for our journey to Sheffield. It seems so
wrong
to be sitting here, reading books, when my brother is in so much danger. And even though Ben is being so rude, I’m grateful that he and Gina and Cy are coming with Myo and me to Sheffield. I feel as if I should be making myself useful. I grab the little wind-up torch Myo’s given me and crank the handle to power it up. The lights – powered by a generator made out of a bicycle, which someone has to pedal like mad on every few hours to top up the current – don’t work this deep inside the bunker. I head up to the Comms Hall, but it’s empty. I can hear someone in the kitchen, but when I peek around the door, it’s not Myo. I retreat before they see me, thinking about going deeper into the bunker to look for him, but then I remember his warning about not wandering off in case I get lost.

I give a frustrated sigh. Where is everyone? Elsewhere in the bunker, I guess – sleeping or cleaning or mending stuff or doing whatever else it is they do here. The routine at the bunker isn’t as strict as on Hope; stuff gets done, but everyone’s much more casual about it. It feels odd to me. But then this place
is
odd. There are so many things that puzzle me, like how there aren’t any kids, or how Ben is the oldest person here. I asked Myo about that, but he just shrugged and said, ‘Dunno. That’s how it’s always been.’

Looks like I’ll have to wait here. Needing a distraction, I wander over to the bookshelves.

There are hundreds of books, crammed onto the shelves two deep – everything from kids’ books to battered paperbacks, Stephen Kings, dictionaries and fat volumes of Shakespeare and Dickens. Some of the books I’ve already borrowed have names in them, or library labels with dates stamped on them; it gives me a pang to see them because I’m reminded that before the Invasion, these books were in people’s homes, on bookshop shelves and in libraries – things that simply don’t exist any more.

There’s magazines, too, yellowed and crinkled – page after page of celebrities and recipes and interviews and fashion. Back in my room, I’ve got an issue of Vogue with an article titled
Post ApocalypChic
: glossy photos of models posing inside derelict buildings, snarling into the camera. They’re wearing combat gear, backcombed hair and make-up that’s supposed to make them look like zombies. The date on the magazine’s cover was six months before the Invasion.
If only you knew
, I thought as I stared at the pictures, a shudder going up my spine.

I pull books out at random, glancing at the covers before putting them back. Then, at the back of one of the shelves, I find a large scrapbook with
Afterwards
scrawled across the cover in thick black ink. It’s full of newspaper articles and pieces of paper. Curious, I take it over to the couch and sit down to look through it properly. To start with, the articles are dated from before the Invasion, and are the sort of thing I saw in that newspaper I found in the kitchen the day before that terrible night – stories about the first encounters with the Fearless, and about other countries being overrun.

Then I see a headline that says
CITIES ALMOST EMPTY AFTER FEARLESS INVASION
. I assume it’s about the invasions in Europe too until I read on. Familiar place names leap out at me: Manchester, London, Birmingham, Glasgow.

I look at the date. Five days after the Invasion.

I flick through the rest of the scrapbook, my mouth dry.
Everything
after those first few articles is dated after the Invasion. The headlines jump out at me:
CALL FOR CIVILIANS TO SIGN UP TO PROTECT NEIGH-BOURHOODS; FIRES IN POWER STATIONS LEAD TO BLACKOUTS; ROYAL FAMILY AMBUSHED DURING EVACUATION; GAS, ELECTRICITY AND WATER RESTRICTIONS TO BE BROUGHT INTO FORCE TOMORROW; FEARLESS NUMBERS ON THE INCREASE
.

And there’s leaflets, too –
leaflets from the government
– about food and water rationing, and shelters for people who’ve been made homeless by the Invasion, and where to go for medical care in an emergency. There’s even a leaflet about a drug called Neurophyxil, which I realize is the original drug that was given to the military before people found out what it was doing to them. It and many of the articles are stained and burned, and the Neurophyxil leaflet has what looks like a bloody hand-print across it. I turn the page quickly.

The newspaper articles seem to stop about six months after the Invasion. After that the scrapbook is filled with hand-printed leaflets asking people to sign up to fight the Fearless; posters about meetings, with dates and times on them; and lists of names, most of which have been crossed out with large ‘A’s or ‘D’s scrawled beside them. I realize, with a lump in my throat, that this is someone’s record of people who have been Altered or are dead.

And then those end too. The rest of the scrapbook is empty.

Suddenly, it’s snatched out of my hands. ‘What are you doing with that?’ someone snaps.

I look up, startled, to see the woman with her hair in little plaits standing over me. Her name’s Tana; she’s Cy’s girlfriend, I think.

‘I—’ I begin, getting to my feet.

‘It’s not yours! It’s none of your business! Who do you think you—’

‘Tana, leave her alone!’

Myo is striding across the Comms Hall.

‘She was looking through Ben’s scrapbook,’ Tana says.

‘It was right there on the shelves,’ I say.

‘Aye.’ Myo narrows his eyes at Tana. ‘That stuff’s no secret. What’s the problem?’

Tana scowls at me for a moment. ‘The sooner you’re out of here, the better,’ she snarls at me, before thrusting the scrapbook under her arm and storming out of the hall.

Myo looks at me. ‘Are you OK?’

I nod, although I feel embarrassed and shaken.

‘Don’t let her get to you,’ he says. ‘She’s pissed off because Cy’s coming with us to Sheffield.’

‘I’m fine.’ I push a loose strand of hair out of my face, my heart beating faster again. ‘Myo, what
was
that stuff?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Those articles and posters and things – they were dated
after
the Invasion. I thought everything stopped when the Fearless came here.’

Myo’s frown changes to a puzzled look. ‘Who told you that?’

‘We – everyone on Hope – thought that’s what happened.’

‘Why?’

‘Because – because that’s what we were
told
happened. The Invasion came, the government fled, society ended.’

‘In
one night
?’

‘There was that announcement on the TV—’

Myo shakes his head. ‘Aye, someone panicking, I reckon. The TV and internet came back on – for a little while, anyway.’

I stare at him. ‘But Mr Brightman said—’

Mr Brightman.

Realization hits me with a thud, and I sit back down on the couch.

‘He – he told us there was nothing left,’ I say. ‘He said everyone got killed or Altered straight away and that the government abandoned us. But it wasn’t like that, was it? Why did he say it was?’

Myo sits down too. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he thought it was like that, if he never left the island. I mean, yeah, things were bad. And the government
did
disappear eventually. But people didn’t just give up. Ben and Cy and the older ones here – they were part of groups that tried to fight the Fearless and take the country back.’

‘But they didn’t succeed.’

Myo shakes his head. ‘There were too many of them, and not enough of us.’

‘Did you fight too?’

He laughs humourlessly. ‘No. I was only a kid. But I managed to survive. Me and my sister—’

‘You have a sister?’

He swallows. ‘I – I did.’

So you’ve lost someone too
, I think. What about the rest of his family? What happened to his parents?

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘Thanks.’ He gives me a small, sad smile. We look at each other for a second too long, and I feel a jolt like the one I got on Danny’s porch. Myo must sense it too because his face closes up. ‘I’d better get on with . . . stuff,’ he says, that stiff politeness returning to his voice.

‘OK.’ I turn back to the bookshelves so he won’t see the way my face has heated up. It’s only after he’s gone that I remember I was going to ask him when we were going to leave.

As it turns out, I don’t need to. That evening, Ben tells me, Myo, Cy and Gina that we’ll be on our way the next morning. We spend hours getting ready – preparing weapons and packing food and supplies. My eyes widen when I see the guns Ben’s fetched from the bunker’s weapons store. I don’t know what sort they are, but they’re sleek and high-tech with night-vision sights, making the Patrol’s Brownings and Lee Enfields look like kids’ toys.

‘I don’t suppose you know how to shoot?’ Ben asks when he sees me staring at them.

I nod. ‘I was part of the Patrol on Hope. They were the island’s guards. I trained for five years.’

His expression is sceptical, but he hands me one of the guns and an ammo belt.

Once everything is ready, we return to the Comms Hall, where Ben spreads out some maps on one of the tables, tracing out our route with the stub of an old pencil. ‘We’ve got to go north-east across the Peak District up to the city, and through part of Sheffield itself to the station,’ he says. ‘Then we’ll follow the railway line up to the Torturehouse. It goes all the way there – it used to have its own station before the Invasion, when it was still a shopping centre.’

‘Is that a good idea?’ Gina says.

‘It’s the most straightforward route. Otherwise we have to do a big loop round, which will take another day, maybe more.’

Gina nods, although she looks as pensive as I feel. Even after what Danny told me about most of the Fearless staying at their hideouts these days, the idea of going into the middle of a city makes me go cold all over.

But this is my only chance to get Jori back. I have no choice.

I don’t get a lot of sleep that night.

Crossing the moors is hellish. We have to plunge through waist-high snowdrifts, trying to follow what’s left of the roads, and by the time we make it to our first stopping point, an old factory, it’s dark. All of us are wet and pissed off and chilled to the bone. I wish we could have taken the horses, but Apollo needs time to heal, and even though Flicka’s healthy, one horse between five of us isn’t much use. Anyway what would we do with her once we got to the Torturehouse? Abandon her?

The next day, we make it as far as a farmhouse that reminds me of the one Cass and I stayed in on our way back to the bunker. As I lie there, wide awake, I wonder what might’ve happened if Cass hadn’t said she hated the Fearless.

How else do you expect her to feel, you idiot?
I tell myself fiercely. But now I’m thinking about the other day in the bunker, when she looked at me, then turned away, and I had to walk off so she wouldn’t see the disappointment on my face, even though there wasn’t actually anything I needed to do.

Stop
.

At last, I doze off, managing a few hours of crappy, broken sleep before Cy shakes me awake for my turn on watch.

The third day is the longest: fifteen miles to cover before we reach the village marked on Ben’s map, where we shelter in an old hotel that looks like a castle. We can’t go upstairs ’cos the roof has given way in several places, so we bunk down in the bar on some mouldy leather sofas. No one sleeps well. Mice and rats keep us awake with their squeaking and scuffling. I wish Lochie was here. He’d see ’em off. I don’t know why Ben insisted we leave him behind.

The next morning, Cass looks done in, dragging her feet. On the journey to the bunker, we could go at her pace, but now we’re moving at Ben, Gina’s, Cy’s and mine, and I think she’s finding it hard.

Then, as we come round a bend, Ben says, ‘There it is.’ I tear my gaze away from Cass and see houses and bungalows instead of snow-covered fields. The city. The houses are big and fancy looking, even though their windows are broken and their doors are caved in. It must have been a posh area once.

The road, which has been empty for days, is choked up with abandoned vehicles. We pass a double-decker bus, leaning to one side on deflated tyres. The headlights and most of the windows are smashed, and there’s a skeleton slumped over the steering wheel, wearing the shredded remains of a bus driver’s uniform. Snow has drifted in through the broken windscreen, burying it up to its waist. ‘You’ll be waiting a long time for that bus,’ Cy says, and he, Gina and I share a wry smile.