The Fearless (25 page)

‘We should get back,’ Myo says when I’ve finished. I rub my fingers to get the circulation going again, thinking about Jori. He’s somewhere underneath us. So is Cy.

When I look at Myo, I know he’s thinking the same thing.

He sets the gloves down on the heap of snow-covered rubble. ‘You want to find your brother?’

I nod.

‘OK. I know where he’ll be, if he’s here.’

I take my knife out of my boot again, and crawl after him through the roof space.

I should tell her that us kissing was a mistake, a heat of the moment thing. But how can I? She’s bewitched me. And worst of all, I’m glad of it.

We steal through the roof space, freezing whenever we hear voices underneath us. I wish we had our guns. Our knives aren’t gonna be worth shit if those bastards realize we’re here and send a gang up after us.

Suddenly, the roof space opens out. I hear more voices – not Fearless, but ordinary people, moaning and crying. I remember my body cramped and folded, my face pressed against cold metal bars.

I stop, squeezing my eyes shut.

‘Are you OK?’ Cass whispers.

I hold a finger to my lips. We mustn’t make a sound. We’re in more danger than she can possibly imagine.

She nods, and I wish fiercely that our lives were not like this, and the Invasion had never happened; that I’d met her at school or college or something.

That I was as normal as she thinks I am.

But instead, we’re stuck here in the roof space of the Torturehouse, surrounded by Fearless. And I’m . . .

Enough. Don’t think about that now.

We crawl over to another hole in the ceiling. The cage room is the place I remember the least about, but as we peer down at it, those memories start to return too. The smoky half-light from the lamps; the stink of blood and piss and vomit and shit, so strong it makes my eyes water; the rubble-strewn floor and rows of cages, crammed with bodies – cages thrown together out of whatever scraps of wood and metal the Fearless could find. It looks exactly the same.

In a cage directly below us, a bairn who can’t be older than eight or nine throws himself against the bars of his cage, making guttural noises deep in his throat. Then he looks up. Cass and I both draw back, but not before I’ve seen the cuts on the kid’s forehead where he’s smashed them against the bars. Blood streams down his face.

I look round at Cass. Her eyes are completely round.

Is that your brother?
I mouth.

She shakes her head. Relieved, I crawl back to the hole.

That’s when I see her.

She’s moving between the cages, carrying a heavy wooden stick. As she passes the cage with the bairn in it, she swings it against the bars. He screams and she smashes the stick against the cage again, her hair swinging across her face. The Fearless woman with one eye hobbles up to her and pulls her away. She cuffs Mara’s face and Mara tries to hit her with the stick. The woman snatches it and cracks her across the head, sending her to her knees. Then she stalks away, leaving Mara kneeling on the ground.

I want to call out her name. I want to jump down there and see if she’s OK. But I can’t.

Suddenly, Cass is beside me again. ‘What’s going on down there?’ she whispers in my ear.

‘What does your brother look like?’ I whisper back.

‘Curly hair like mine, but it’s red.’

I don’t see anyone fitting that description. I can’t see Cy, either. ‘Let’s try over there,’ I murmur. ‘Keep an eye out for Tessie and Cy, too.’

We belly-crawl to another hole in the ceiling. Suddenly, Cass punches me on the arm.
Cy
, she mouths.

Where?
I mouth back.

She points. He’s in a cage almost directly underneath us. His eyes are closed, his face bruised, his wrists and legs bound with strips of plastic.

I glance at Cass.
Do you see your brother?
I mouth when she looks round at me again.

She shakes her head.

I back away from the hole and pull her close.

‘He’s not here, is he?’ she says in a tiny whisper. ‘He’s dead.’

‘You don’t know that,’ I whisper back. ‘There are loads of people here.’ I rest my chin on the top of her head. I feel so helpless.

‘Let’s go back,’ she mutters. ‘I’ve seen enough.’

We crawl away from the cage room and head back to the snow pile to collect our gloves. My head’s aching, a hundred thoughts crowding into my mind all at once.
What if Cass’s brother is dead? What’s going to happen to Ben and Cy? Where’s Tessie? How am I going to get Mara out of here? And what am I going to do about Cass?

I have no idea.

When we get back, Ben seems to be asleep, leaning against the wall, but as we approach, he opens his eyes. ‘Where the
hell
have you been?’ he snaps at Myo. ‘We thought you’d got caught.’

In reply, Myo tosses him one of the snow-filled gloves. ‘Here,’ he says.

‘Did you run into any Fearless?’ Gina asks as, grimacing, Ben pulls up his trouser leg and begins applying the snow to the wound.

‘We went to find out where they were keeping Cy,’ Myo says.

‘And?’

‘Same place as before. In the old restaurant complex.’

‘And . . . ?’ She gives Myo a meaningful look.

He nods.

‘We need to figure out how to get down there,’ Gina says, as I wonder what that look meant.

‘We need food and water first,’ Ben cuts in. ‘None of us are going to be able to do a damn thing if we’re dehydrated and starving.’

‘We have to go back for the packs,’ Myo says.

‘But those Fearless are guarding the entrance,’ Gina says.

‘I’m gonna see if they’re still there.’ Before any of us can stop him, he crawls away through the roof space.

As the minutes stretch out and he doesn’t return, my stomach churns with dread. When he finally reappears, I’m so relieved I could kiss him, and never mind what Ben thinks.

‘They’ve gone,’ he says. ‘They must think we escaped somehow.’

Ben and Gina look at each other. ‘Right then,’ Ben says, bending his knees and trying to get to his feet. ‘We need to—’

The rest of his words are lost as his injured leg buckles underneath him and he collapses back against the wall, biting back a cry of pain.

‘Oh, for—’ he hisses, leaning back and closing his eyes again, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead.

‘You two stay here,’ Myo says. ‘Me and Cass will go.’

He looks at me and raises his eyebrows –
OK?
– and I nod. ‘We only need one of the packs, anyhow,’ I say.

‘Be careful,’ Ben says. He’s looking at Myo and me with his eyes narrowed. I’m sure he’s guessed something’s happened between us, but right now, what Ben thinks is the least of my worries.

When we reach the hole in the ceiling, Myo drops through first, landing catlike on the floor below. Then he reaches up, making a step with his hands so I can lower myself down too. We take out our knives and zigzag through the store in a series of almost-silent dashes, stopping every few moments to listen for Fearless.

The atrium at the top of the escalators is empty, bathed in spooky, whitish light. We sprint along the walkway, swerving round the bodies. Outside are huge car parks, piled with the snow-covered wrecks of cars. The horror of what must have happened here when the Invasion hit is almost too big to comprehend.

Then, as we run into the hallway, we see a Fearless man bent over our packs, which he’s dragged into the middle of the floor. Despite the cold, he’s only wearing a short-sleeved shirt, ragged and filthy. His left arm, hanging uselessly by his side, is puffy and greenish, two of his fingers no more than bones sticking out of dead-looking stubs of flesh. The new Fearless serum has literally rotted them away. He whirls, reaching for the gun by his feet. We don’t have time to escape. We launch ourselves at him, and before he can shoot, Myo jams his knife into the man’s stomach and I plunge mine into his solar plexus, yanking the blade upward towards his throat. The Fearless drops the gun and staggers back, blood fountaining from the top of the wound. I must have hit an artery.

But even with the blood draining from his body, he stays on his feet, trying to get the gun. Myo grabs it and smashes the butt into his face, while I kick out, both of us driving him backwards to the top of the stairs. He staggers, loses his footing and falls, howling with rage until he hits the floor at the bottom with a sickening crump.

Myo and I dive behind the rubble pile where we hid our packs and huddle, side by side, waiting.

At the bottom of the stairs, the Fearless starts making choking sounds. He still isn’t dead. I close my eyes, sure that more Fearless will come running, drawn by the noise he made as he fell.

Eventually, the choking stops.

Myo straightens up. ‘We have to get rid of him. If any more of them turn up—’

Wiping my knife blade on my trousers, I follow him down the stairs. The Fearless is lying on his back at the bottom, his silver eyes glaring at nothing. We struggle back up the stairs with him and take him onto the bridge that leads back to the station. Underneath it is a river. Heaving the body through one of the empty panes, we watch as it hits the surface with a splash and sinks, bubbles spiralling up in its wake. Then we run back, reorganize the contents of the packs, transferring as many supplies into the biggest one as we can, and make our way back to Marks & Spencer. I feel as if I’m in some sort of simulation, a test set up by the Patrol.

‘You go first,’ Myo whispers when we reach the hole in the ceiling. ‘I’ll pass the pack up to you.’

I give him the gun and my knife, and he removes the pack and makes a step for me with his hands again. Clambering into the roof space, I lie on my belly to reach down for the pack and the weapons.

But he doesn’t pass them up to me. He’s staring at me.

‘What are you waiting for?’ I hiss, at the same time as he starts to say, ‘Cass, look ou—’

A hand grabs the back of my jacket, yanking me upright. Twisting round, I find myself staring straight into the face of the one-eyed Fearless woman. ‘Well,’ she says, her tone as matter-of-fact as if she was just discussing the weather. ‘Looks like I caught myself a rat.’

‘
Hey!
’ Myo hauls up through the hole with my knife gripped between his teeth and leaps at the woman. ‘Get off her!’

The woman swings me round in front of her so I’m directly in the path of the knife, and when Myo falters, she lashes out, her meaty fist smashing into his jaw. Myo drops the knife and goes flying backwards, cracking his head against a metal pipe.

‘
Myo!
’ I yell, as he collapses in a heap.

‘Let’s have a look at you,’ the woman says, clamping her arm tighter around my neck. She lunges forward and rips off his eyepatch. Myo groans, his eyelids fluttering open for a moment.

I stare.

Not only does he have a right eye, but it’s silver.

Fearless
silver.

He closes his eyes again. My last sight of him, before the woman pushes herself through the hole in the ceiling with me hanging from her choking grip, is his slumped form lying beneath the pipe.

As she drags me through the store, I scream and kick, struggling to get free. ‘Shut up,’ she growls, smacking me round the head so hard it leaves my ears ringing. I sag against her, all the fight leaving me in a rush. We’re not going towards the exit, but deeper into the store. The Fearless loosens her grip. ‘Walk,’ she says, twisting her fingers into my hair so viciously that tears of pain spring into my eyes. ‘And don’t even think about trying to get away. I’ll rip your scalp off.’

She marches me along a parade of derelict shops, until we reach a huge archway. ‘In!’ she barks.

On the other side, it’s dark, and the foul smell that lingers everywhere, as thick as soup, gets stronger. I stumble, putting my hands out blindly in front of me, and the woman gives my hair another eye-watering tug.

Then I see the flicker of lanterns, and the cages. They’re arranged in rows across what was once the floor of a restaurant. The room is circular, with a high ceiling, the wreckage of tables and chairs piled up round the edges.

The woman drags me towards the cages. From somewhere I find the energy to fight her again. ‘You want me to snap your neck?’ she spits at me, grabbing both my wrists in a meaty fist and twisting my arms up towards my face. She takes me to the cage right next to Cy. I scream his name, but he doesn’t even open his eyes.

‘You!’ the woman barks, turning her head. A girl shuffles out of the shadows. The girl with the black hair who took Jori and was at Danny and April’s. She has a heavy-looking bunch of keys round her neck on a frayed, stained piece of ribbon. ‘Get that cage open,’ the woman says. The girl starts fiddling with the padlock, and through my terror, I realize she reminds me of someone. Who?

But now the door is undone and the Fearless woman is shoving me towards the cage, and I forget about anything except trying to get away from her again.

‘I warned you.’ The woman punches me in the side of the head. The pain is red-black, explosive. I see sparks, and hear a roaring sound, growing louder and louder.

Then everything goes dark.

I’ve been at the Magpies’ camp for four days now. Four days of mud and rain and cold and barely enough sleep to function. The training is brutal: all-weather cross-country runs, flanked by armed Magpies on horseback as we stumble through woods and fields and icy rivers; hours on the camp’s gigantic assault course, scaling wooden walls, swinging from ropes and wriggling through sticky, freezing mud; rifle drills; fieldcraft. We also have to join the Magpies on patrol around the camp’s perimeter, which is protected by a huge electric fence powered by diesel generators. They get to ride horses – the jeeps are only for long-distance travel – but the rest of us have to walk.

And it’s not just the training that’s tough. Everything here is about pushing you to your absolute limits. We’re in the middle of goddamn nowhere – a valley with a river running through the middle and steep hills either side, covered in trees, which are permanently cloaked in fog. The camp itself consists of row upon row of large, rectangular canvas tents with stoves inside them, which do nothing to keep us warm or the damp or the cold out. The food is terrible, and I’m beginning to think coming here was a huge mistake. I’m already fit; I already know how to shoot, and defend myself, and climb and run. I want action. It’s a total waste of time. And meanwhile, a huge group of Magpies is getting ready to leave for the Fearless lair near Sheffield. Everywhere you look, people are loading up trucks, hurrying between tents with maps and supplies and weapons.