The Fearless (33 page)

The hill is even steeper than I remember, littered with rocks and twisted heather stems that catch at my boots. When I reach the top of the ridge I lie down again, scanning the moors around me. There’s no sign of Sol. My scalp prickles as I wonder if he’s nearby, watching me.

About a quarter of a mile away are the two slabs of rock that lead to the bunker entrance that’s set into the hillside. I scramble down there. When I reach the stable under the overhang, Flicka and Apollo are snorting and nickering to one another inside; something’s disturbed them.

Then I hear footsteps. Instinctively, I draw back, pressing myself into a niche between the stable wall and the rocks behind it. Moments later, Sol walks past, heading back towards the hill. He’s wearing his pack and a gun.

I wait until he’s gone, then hurry up the path to the bunker entrance. There’s a pile of rocks at the bottom of the door. Sol must have hidden the explosives amongst them.

As I knock on the door – five long taps and seven short ones – my breath catches in my throat at the thought of seeing Myo again. But I have to warn them. Sol won’t have reached the other entrance yet; there might still be time for them to get out. It feels like hours before the porthole in the top of the door opens. ‘Who’s there?’ a girl’s voice says. My stomach lurches.
Gina
.

I push my goggles up onto my forehead so she can see my face. ‘It’s Cass.’

She’s silent for a moment. Then she says, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Please listen to me,’ I say. ‘I’m here with a group of Magpies. We were sent to—’ I pause. ‘We were sent to round you and the others up. But one of our group has gone crazy. He’s planning to trap all of you inside the bunker and destroy your food supplies. He’s already rigged this door up. You have to get everyone out through the other exit
now
.’

Gina doesn’t answer me. Without the night vision goggles, I can hardly see; I wonder if she has a gun, and if she’s pointing it at me.

‘You have to believe me,’ I say. ‘He has maps with both the bunker entrances on them. He could be laying explosives in the tunnels right now.’

She begins to laugh. ‘Oh my God. That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Seriously. You break Myo’s heart, you join the Magpies, and then you turn up here with some insane story, expecting me to bring everyone out of the bunker so – what? You can shoot us all?’ She laughs again. ‘Nice try, Cass. Whoever’s trained you did a
brilliant
job.’

She slams the porthole closed.

I hammer frantically on the door. ‘Gina!’ I shout. ‘
Gina!
’

She doesn’t come back.

I snap my goggles back down, and with her words ringing in my ears I run back along the path and scramble back up the hill, trying to remember where the entrance under the rock face was on the map. Then, several hundred yards along the ridge in front of me, I see a bright green shape.
Sol
.

He’s standing still, looking at the map. He hasn’t seen me. I lie down in the heather, and when he starts walking again, I belly-crawl after him, being careful to keep my distance. He heads down the other side of the ridge. I follow as close as I dare, keeping low.

He stops again on a slope covered in loose rock. Sticking out of it is a concrete plinth with a hatch in the top. I drop into a crouch again and watch as he opens it and climbs inside. When it’s clanged shut after him, I run down there, my boots skidding on the scree.

I count to ten, then quietly, carefully, open the hatch. On the other side, a ladder plunges down into a darkness so intense, even my goggles can’t penetrate it. I climb in after Sol, and as I reach the bottom, a familiar damp smell steals into my nostrils. The tunnel branches left and right. I think about the map again.
Which way?

To my right, I hear a faint scraping. I creep towards it.

But there’s nothing there. Did I imagine it?

‘
You
,’ Sol says.

I whirl. He’s standing right behind me, still wearing his pack, and a pair of night-vision goggles like mine. ‘Come to save your boyfriend, did you?’

‘Don’t do this, Sol,’ I say.

He pushes the gun into the small of my back. ‘Start walking.’

‘
No!
’

‘
No
,’ he mimics in a sing-song voice. He jabs the gun into my back again, hard enough to make me stagger. ‘Get moving, or I’ll shoot you in the legs and drag you.’

Shaking, I start walking. This part of the bunker is in total disrepair; the walls are streaked with slime, and we have to dodge around piles of rubble and past dangling wires. We get further and further into the bunker until, up ahead, I see a faint glow. I pull my goggles up onto my forehead. The glow is the lights in the Comms Hall, spilling out round the edge of a door.

Sol pushes past me and, keeping the gun trained on me, kicks the door open.

Everyone except Mara is in there, holding guns, which they appear to be in the middle of loading. Like Myo, each one of them has one silver eye, and distantly, I think,
I was right, they
are
all half-Fearless
.

When Myo sees us, his mouth drops open. Lochie, standing beside him, whines, then starts wagging his tail.

Ben points his gun at me and Sol. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asks Sol.

Sol smiles. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. See this backpack? It’s got explosives in it. If you shoot me, or even try to shoot me, I’ll detonate them, and you’ll all be dead.’

Ben lowers his gun, his face draining of colour.

I look at Myo again. He’s still staring at me. He looks exactly the same, his hair falling in a thick black curtain across his right eye. I feel a tug of longing inside my chest, and I realize that the whole time I was telling myself I hated him – that I never wanted to see him again – I was missing him so badly it hurt.

And now it’s too late to do anything about it. I’ve as good as sentenced him to death.

When Cass stumbles into the Comms Hall, I think I’m dreaming. I have to look again to make sure it’s really her.

‘I’ve rigged up the entrances to the bunker so that if you try to leave, they’ll blow up,’ Blondie says after he tells us about the explosives in his pack. ‘I’m also going to blow up your food supplies. Any questions?’

Behind me, I hear people gasp. I reckon they’re all thinking the same as me.
Is this guy for real?

But I don’t want to be the one who shoots him and finds out he is.

‘Cass?’ I say. ‘Is he serious?’

She nods.

Blondie drags her across to where I’m standing and pushes her towards me, hard. I grab her hand to stop her falling. ‘That’s right. That’s where you belong. With
him
,’ Blondie hisses.

Cass stares at him. ‘Sol—’

‘I mean it,’ Sol says. ‘If anyone tries to stop me, I’ll trigger the explosives in my pack.’

‘What, and kill yourself?’ Ben says.

Sol shrugs. ‘It’ll be worth it.’

‘Sol, please!’ Cass says.

‘Too late,’ he snaps. ‘You had your chance.’

I glance at Cass. What’s he on about? She shakes her head. ‘I tried to warn Gina. That’s why I came.’

Gina shoots us an agonized glance. I remember how scornful she was after she came running in to tell us Cass had turned up, and we hastily collected our weapons and got ready to face the Magpies.
Christ
, I think.
Why didn’t you listen to her?

Sol begins to walk across to the kitchen. I remember what Gina said Cass had told her.
She reckons this guy is going to come in here and destroy our food supplies
.

‘You’re a lunatic,’ Ben says, raising his gun.

‘
NO!
’ Cass screams as he pulls the trigger.

The bullet smacks into Sol as he’s opening the door. His body twists and he cries out and falls to his knees.

Nothing else happens. He was lying. Thank God. And then he reaches round and does something to the side of his pack, tugging on a strap or a wire. There’s a flash of light so bright it blinds me, a roar big enough to fill the whole world, and something slams into me, throwing me to the ground. I hear screams and a rumbling sound that goes on and on. The stench of smoke and dust fills my nostrils. When I try to sit up, I realize I can’t move my legs. There’s something pinning them down. In panic, I try to yank them free, and pain bolts up them, white hot and enormous. Gasping, I close my eyes, and everything drifts away for a while.

The force of the explosion knocks me off my feet. My ears ringing with screams and the rumble of falling masonry, I land hard on my left hand and feel something snap in my wrist, sending a sickening jolt of pain up my arm.

Too stunned even to cry out, I roll onto my side, clutching at my wrist, coughing as I draw in lungfuls of smoke and dust. It stings my eyes, making them stream with tears. For a moment, I think I’ve gone blind. Then I realize the lights have gone out.

With my good hand, I reach up and pull my night vision goggles back down. The dust and smoke make it impossible to see anything except swirling clouds of white and green.

‘Myo!’ I say, but my throat is so full of grit that I can barely even raise my voice above a whisper. ‘Are you there?’

No response. The rumbling has stopped now. I can hear coughing and sobbing.

Then I hear a soft whine.

‘Lochie!’ I say. ‘Lochie, come here, boy!’ For a moment, nothing happens, and I start to imagine the dog trapped under a pile of rubble, his back broken, his legs crushed. Then he sticks his cold, wet nose in my ear and licks my face. I put my good hand up and rub his wiry fur. ‘Good boy.
Good
boy.’

‘Gina? Is that you?’ a hoarse voice says somewhere in the darkness. Ben.

I cough again. ‘It’s Cass,’ I say. I try to get up, and knock my injured wrist against my leg. The pain is sickening. I grind my teeth, breathing fast.

‘Is Gina there with you?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t see.’

‘
Shit
. I didn’t think he meant it. I didn’t think he really had explosives in there.’

‘Are you hurt?’ I need to distract him. If he panics, I’m going to panic too, and then we’ll never make it out of here.

‘No. Where are you?’

‘Over here.’

‘Keep talking. I can’t see anything either – there’s too much dust.’

As Ben’s feet crunch towards me through the rubble, I clamber awkwardly to my feet, trying to avoid putting any weight on my injured arm.

‘Gina! Myo!’ Ben calls when he reaches me. No answer. He shouts some other names. People answer him in weak-sounding voices. The dust is making my chest burn. I pull my T-shirt up over my mouth to use as a filter.

Then, a few feet away, someone moans. Lochie shoves past me. ‘Myo?’ I say. I shuffle after the dog, feeling in front of me with my right hand. ‘Myo, where are you?’

That’s when I remember the torch in my jacket pocket. Praying it isn’t broken, I fumble it from my pocket and press the switch. A fuzzy beam of light cuts through the smoke and dust.

‘Can you see him?’ Ben says. ‘I think he’s down here somewhere,’ I say, shining the torch around me. Then the beam hits Lochie. He’s standing over Myo, who’s lying on his back, his face and hair coated in whitish dust, his eyes closed. I drop to my knees beside him, saying his name.

The lights stutter back on.

I push my goggles up. The dust hangs over the Comms Hall like fog. I can just make out where Sol was standing when Ben shot him; there’s a waterfall of bricks and rubble in front of the kitchen door. In the middle of the mess lie dark, still shapes. People.

I look at Myo again and my heart skips a beat. A huge chunk of concrete lies across his legs. ‘Oh, God,’ I say.

Ben turns. ‘What is it?’ One side of his face is streaked with blood. When he sees Myo, he swears. ‘We need to get that thing off him.’

‘I can’t, I think my wrist’s broken.’ I hold it up; it’s puffy and turning purple-black. Ben swears again. ‘Can I get some help over here?’ he yells. Tana and a man I don’t recognize appear out of the dust from the far end of the hall. As they lift the concrete off Myo’s legs, he screams, the sound punching right through me. But he still doesn’t open his eyes.

While Ben goes to look for Gina, I sit beside Myo, trying to ignore the pain pulsing up my arm from my wrist. ‘Ben, over here!’ Tana calls.

They bring Gina over and lie her down on the floor beside Myo. She doesn’t look injured, but she doesn’t respond when Ben calls her name.

One by one, the other residents of the bunker are found. A few are walking wounded, like me and Ben, dazed and in shock. Two more are unconscious like Gina and Myo, although they’re starting to come round. And the rest . . .

‘I’m so sorry,’ Ben keeps saying, his voice raw and filled with pain. ‘I thought he was just some stupid kid playing soldiers. I had no idea—’

‘Ben, stop,’ Tana says. ‘You can feel guilty later. Right now, we need to work out how we’re going to get out of here.’

‘Sol hadn’t laid any explosives around the entrance he brought me in through,’ I say. ‘I think he was going to do it on his way out.’

‘You mean the entrance under the rock face?’ Tana says.

Gina groans.

Ben helps her to sit up. ‘Can you walk?’ he asks her. She nods, and winces. ‘How about you?’ he asks me. I nod too.

‘OK. You and Gina go with Tana and the others.’ He turns to the man who was with Tana. ‘Neil, can you find Mara? I’ll bring Myo.’

At the mention of Mara’s name, my stomach twists. I still can’t quite get my head round the fact that she’s Myo’s sister. As I follow Tana and Gina, the lights go out again. I pull my goggles down, wishing for a moment that I was half-Fearless too so I didn’t need them. Everything feels nightmarish and surreal. I keep seeing Sol’s face as he told Myo, Ben and the others about the bunker entrances being booby-trapped, and then his body twisting as the bullet from Ben’s gun slammed into him. I can’t believe he’s gone. What went so wrong? I knew he liked me, and I knew he wanted us to be together, but it’s as if he viewed me as . . . as his
property
, or something. I shudder.