The Fearless (23 page)

‘The Torturehouse, the Torturehouse, they’re not taking me to the Torturehouse, oh no,’ the ragged man says. ‘No, no, n—’

‘Hey!’ Myo snaps his fingers. The man blinks, his gaze focusing again briefly. ‘Have you seen a Fearless girl about my age? With long black hair? And a wee lad with red hair?’

The ragged man gazes at him for a moment, then turns and begins sifting through the rubbish, muttering to himself.

Ben lowers his gun and, never taking his gaze off the ragged man or Dad, removes his pack and pulls out a meal pack.

‘Want something to eat, buddy?’ Ben’s voice is friendlier than it was a few moments ago. He opens the meal pack and takes out a pouch of chilli con carne. The ragged man’s eyes widen. So do Dad’s. From behind his wire-stitched lips, he moans, and I feel another sob try to rip its way out of me.
Dad, it’s me, Cass!
I want to yell at him, to see if there’s a spark of recognition in those dead, silvery eyes.

But I can’t. Because I know it won’t work, and that will hurt even more than seeing him as a Fearless.

‘Food, food, oh yes, food.’ The ragged man wades through the rubbish towards us, smacking his lips, a thread of drool hanging from one corner of his mouth. The smell coming off him is awful: a rank combination of urine and rotten breath and dirt and oily hair and fermenting armpits. I take shallow breaths through my mouth, trying not to gag. He makes a grab for the pouch.

‘Not until you tell us if you’ve seen the girl,’ Ben says, pressing the muzzle of his gun against the side of the ragged man’s head. The ragged man’s eyes widen, showing veiny, yellowish whites.

‘The Torturehouse, the Torturehouse!’ His voice rises to a reedy shriek. ‘Please don’t kill me, please, please don’t!’

‘Tell me if you’ve seen the girl.’ Ben’s gripping the gun so tightly his knuckles have turned white.

‘Ben,’ Gina whispers. He gives no indication he’s heard.

‘
DID YOU SEE HER?
’ he roars at the ragged man, so loudly the rest of us – except for Dad – jump.

‘She was here! She was here!’ The ragged man’s gleeful air has gone, and I think how much like a child he seems, despite the deep creases in his face and his grizzled hair and beard. ‘The blue dress, the blue dress, pleasepleaseplease don’t shoot me
please
!’

Ben scowls. ‘I know what she was wearing, you crazy old bastard. When was she here?’

The ragged man gives him a blank look.

‘One day ago?’ Ben says, holding up a finger.

The ragged man shakes his head.

‘Two days?’

Another head-shake.

‘Three?’

The ragged man nods.

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Y-y-yes,’ the ragged man squeaks. ‘She was walking up the tracks, up the tracks, oh yes.’

‘And did she have a boy with her?’

I hold my breath while I wait for him to answer.

The ragged man nods. ‘She was carrying him on her back, she was. And a baby. She had a baby, oh yes.’

Slowly, Ben lowers his gun. A tear escapes the corner of one of the ragged man’s eyes, cutting a track through the dust and grime on his face. Ben snorts. ‘Right,’ he says, glancing up the tracks. ‘Let’s get going.’

The ragged man reaches a trembling hand out towards the chilli. Just as his fingers brush against it, Ben lifts his gun again and aims it at his head.

‘No!’ Gina grabs his wrist as he fires. The shot goes wide, the bullet smacking into the tunnel wall. The sound leaves my ears ringing.

‘What the hell, Ben?’ Cy says as the ragged man shrieks and runs away down the tunnel, while Dad pulls frantically at his chain.

‘He deserves everything he gets,’ Ben snarls. ‘Keeping a Fearless as a guard dog – it’s disgusting.’

He raises the gun again, and this time it’s Cy who steps forward, snatching it out of his hand.

‘God
dammit
, Cy,’ Ben says.

‘Come on,’ Cy says. ‘Let’s go.’

Ben lets out his breath in a frustrated hiss.

We edge past Dad, pushing through the rubbish, and hurry to the end of the tunnel. Once we’re outside, my knees give way, and I collapse in the snow.

‘Cass? Cass!’ It’s Myo, somewhere above me. ‘Are you OK?’

‘That was my dad,’ I jerk out, my teeth rattling together, shudders wracking through me. ‘That Fearless was my dad.’

There’s a moment of shocked silence. Then Myo says, ‘Jesus . . .’

‘
Seriously?
’ Cy says. ‘Shit. What are the chances, eh?’

Suddenly, Gina’s beside me too. She and Myo help me to my feet and we head up the tracks until we’re a safe distance away from the tunnel. I sit down on my pack, hugging my arms around my knees as fresh shudders wrench through me.

Myo crouches down beside me. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. He touches my hand, but there’s no buzz as his fingertips connect this time; no tingle of electricity or spark of heat. I’m too devastated, too raw. I bury my head in my arms and let the tears flow, year upon year of them spilling out of me until I feel exhausted and empty.

No one speaks for a long time. Then Ben says, his voice gentler than usual, ‘We’d better get moving.’ And he startles me by adding, ‘Cass, can you manage?’

I nod, and get shakily to my feet.

As we walk on, we huddle together, keeping close to the tangle of trees and scrub at the edges of the tracks. Everyone looks sombre and sad. A couple of times, I see Myo looking at me, but when I try to catch his eye, he quickly glances away again. I can’t get the image of the ragged man or Dad out of my head. Part of me wants to run back there and rescue him, but I know that’s crazy. You can’t save a Fearless, not even if they’re your family. They’re
Fearless
. It’s too dangerous. The man I knew as my father is gone.

But, oh, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to accept it.

Please be OK, Jori
, I plead inside my head as I trudge through the snow after the others, my pack heavy on my back, my heart heavy in my chest.
You’re all I have left. I can’t lose you too
.

Warehouses loom either side of the tracks. Already, the light is failing, shadows gathering around us, the temperature dropping. ‘Bloody hell, I’m cold,’ Cy mutters. ‘I’d give anything to light a fire right now.’

‘No fires,’ Ben says sharply. ‘We’re nearly there. We mustn’t give ourselves away.’

Not long after that, we reach another station – two narrow platforms overgrown with dead weeds and leafless shrubs, a bridge arching overhead. Even in the near-dark, the signs along the platforms are still readable:
Meadowhall Interchange
.

Ben stops.

‘We need to go up there.’ He points at the bridge. ‘It’s best we do it now, while it’s dark, so we’re less likely to be seen. Then we can figure what we’re up against.’

When we get up there, I see a vast sprawl of buildings along the horizon less than a quarter of a mile away, silhouetted against the darkening sky. At first glance, the buildings look derelict, but when I look again I notice pinpoints of flickering light here and there – lanterns, or fires. A high-pitched whoop drifts through the still, cold air towards us. It sounds like a war cry.

‘It hasn’t changed,’ Gina murmurs. I wonder what she means. Then I remember the exchange between Myo and Ben at the station. Ben hasn’t looked at a map all day. They must have been here before. But when? When it was still a shopping centre? Or did they get caught during the Invasion, and manage to escape, somehow?

‘How are we gonna get in there?’ Cy says.

‘We need to get closer,’ Ben says. ‘Find out if there’s anyone guarding the place, or if they’re all inside.’

At the end of the bridge, a footpath leads down to another glassed-in walkway, like the one at Sheffield Station. We run across, our feet skidding on the filthy, snow-wet tiles, and into a building with a deep stairwell in the middle. The signs here read
Meadowhall Interchange
too. We hide our packs behind a fall of rubble that’s come down from the roof. ‘No point in taking them over there,’ Ben says. ‘If we have to run, they’ll get in the way. Everyone check your weapons and make sure you’ve got plenty of ammo.’

We do as he asks.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘All we’re going to do tonight is work out where the Fearless are, and where they’re keeping the people they’ve taken. They mustn’t know we’re here. And I don’t want anyone launching any crazy rescue missions tonight.’ Although it’s so dark now I can’t really make out his face, I know he’s looking at me.

I think of Jori – how I’ll feel if I see him – and swallow hard. ‘I won’t,’ I say.

‘That’s the walkway that leads directly inside,’ Ben continues. ‘I think it’s better if we find a way round to one of the old car parks.’

I wonder how any of us will be able to see where we’re going. Outside, even at night, it’s never completely dark. But here, the darkness will soon be absolute, and it will be the same in the Torturehouse. We can’t light a lantern, not if we don’t want to give ourselves away.

As we get to our feet again, I realize I’ve never wanted to see the inside of my apartment on Hope again as badly as I do right now.

The others are already walking off. ‘Wait!’ I call. ‘I can’t see where I’m going!’

‘For God’s sake,’ I hear Ben mutter.

‘Hold out your hand,’ Myo says somewhere to my left.

I stretch out my hand, and he takes hold of it. My heart starts thumping. I tell myself it’s just nerves at the thought of negotiating the stairs when I can’t see properly – nothing to do with his fingers wound tightly through mine.

‘The first step’s just here,’ he says as I wonder again how on earth he can see anything. A tiny, nagging suspicion starts up in the back of my mind, but I’m too busy trying not to fall and break my neck to pay it any attention. ‘Shuffle your feet forward and you’ll find it.’

‘Keep your voice down, can you?’ Ben hisses below us.

‘Sorry,’ Myo mutters.

He guides me carefully down the stairs, so close I can feel his hair tickling my cheek as he whispers, ‘Next step. Be careful, it’s slippery. We’re halfway down now.’

Then Ben says ‘Stop,’ his voice quiet but sharp.

‘What was that?’ Gina whispers.

‘I don’t know.’

We wait, listening. I squeeze Myo’s hand, and am ridiculously grateful when he squeezes it back.

‘It must have been one of us,’ Ben mutters. ‘Come on.’

‘You stay right where you are,’ a voice says in the darkness above us. I hear the scratch and hiss of matches being struck, and suddenly, the stairwell is filled with light.

They’re everywhere: up at the top of the stairs, standing around the railing, and down at the bottom.

A ring of Fearless men and women, staring at us with their strange silver eyes.

Some have lanterns, others have guns. We don’t have time to go for our own weapons – we’re outnumbered three to one.

‘Hands where we can see them,’ barks the Fearless who spoke before – a gigantic woman with short hair and one eye, her arms marked with scars and tattoos, a filthy dressing taped across her elbow.

Ben lets his hands drop to his sides. I remember, just in time, that I flipped my eyepatch up so I could see where I was going, and pull it back down before Cass sees.

‘Get up here,’ the woman says.

We trudge back to the top of the stairs.

Every muscle in my body is screaming at me to run, and Cass is clutching my hand so hard it feels like she’s gonna break my fingers. But I’m not scared. I’m
furious
. I can’t believe we let ourselves get caught like this.

Ben looks angry too. ‘You—’ he says.

‘Shut up,’ the Fearless woman says. She smacks him across the face with the butt of her gun, rocking his head back. The other Fearless laugh, which makes several of them start coughing – a nasty, wet sound.

‘Give me your weapons,’ the Fearless woman says. We put our guns on the ground in front of us.

‘And that.’ The woman points at the pistol on Ben’s waist. Scowling, blood leaking out of one nostril and a bruise already rising on his left cheekbone, he takes it out of its holster and puts it with the rest of our guns.

Then I remember my knife – it’s hidden under my jumper. And I think Cass still has hers in her boot.

‘That way,’ the Fearless woman says as a man beside her picks up the guns. She points at a doorway to our left. Most of the Fearless move ahead of us, leaving the woman and four others to escort us. They’re all limping, but they still move fast.

The doorway leads onto another bridge like the one we came over before. The stench is overpowering; everywhere I look I see skeletons and bundles of rags. One body still has mottled, purple flesh on it, and angry-looking marks at the base of its neck – a child.

I hope that’s not Cass’s brother
, I think as the Fearless hustle us past it. Cass is trembling. I know she’s thinking the same thing. I squeeze her hand again.
Be strong
.

The Fearless march us to the top of some escalators. I know exactly where we are now. To our left are the double doors that lead outside – that’s where Ben got us out, running across the car park with me in his arms, and Cy right behind him with Mara in his. To our right is the entrance to a huge store, the doors gaping open. They still have a white M and a yellow & above them. I remember there being an S, too, but it must have fallen off.

Ben, Cy and Gina stop suddenly. Two of the Fearless in front have got into an argument, swearing at each other. One of the lanterns goes flying. The Fearless woman barges past us to break it up.

I give Cass’s hand a quick double squeeze. She looks round, and I glance at Marks and Spencer.

She gives her head a tiny shake.

I raise an eyebrow, looking at the doors to the car park. Between them and us are three Fearless. Between us and the store, there’s no one.

On the escalator, the woman is shouting at the two Fearless who were arguing. She’ll come up here again soon.

Cass squeezes my hand back.

I shuffle forward and bump my foot against Gina’s, making it look accidental. She glances round and I look at the store again.