Fighting Back (Battle Ground YA UK Dystopia Series Book 4)

by Rachel Churcher

  Short clips. Something to show off her bruises.

  I’m looking for another soundbite. Something to incriminate Bex – but the segments from yesterday are too long, and I’ve already aired her declaration that her daughter is doing the right thing. That’s what got me into trouble, and what cost us Jake.

  I’m struggling to find a question, and an answer, that I can use.

  And then I realise that I don’t need the answer. On a day with a major headline, I don’t need to broadcast Elizabeth’s comments – that’s not what people will be watching. All I need to do is show them the question. Plant the idea of violence in their minds.

  “… my daughter and her violent tendencies.”

  That’s it. That’s all I need.

  I move the clip to a memory stick, ready to send to PIN.

  *****

  I’ve handed the memory stick to a courier, and I’m walking back up the stairs when the entire building shakes. The glass rattles in the windows, and there’s a sound like a crack of thunder – muffled, but extremely loud – then another, and another. The evacuation alarm screams, bright red and white lights flashing on the ceiling. When I reach the hallway, it’s filling with people. Office doors are opening, and staff in uniform are shouting over the sound of the alarm.

  My heart is thudding in my chest. This doesn’t make sense.

  They’re attacking us. We’re the target.

  I look around. I know I’m supposed to evacuate with everyone else, but I’m not leaving without Bracken.

  I sprint up the stairs, past the crowds of people heading down. I’m pushing them out of the way, and the alarm is loud enough to drown out their angry shouts.

  Get out of my way.

  On the top floor I run to the meeting room. Franks’ assistant grabs my elbow as I push past, but I shake off his grip and throw the door open, already shouting for Bracken.

  And I freeze.

  Franks and Bracken are standing, the meeting table between them and the windows, staring across the river.

  The far riverbank is on fire.

  Rolling clouds of flame and smoke are bursting out of the buildings opposite. For a moment, I can’t take it in. The view – Franks’ view – is gone. Replaced by orange fire and black smoke and falling buildings, the bright flames shining on the choppy water.

  Most of the far embankment is missing, and the river flows in angry waves past piles of rubble, reflecting the orange light of the flames. The distinctive curve of the County Hall Building is gone, and the trees in the Jubilee Gardens are pillars of fire.

  It’s an impossible scene. The sound of the alarm drowns out the noises from outside, and it looks like a TV screen with the mute button pressed. Between the screaming of the alarm and the pounding of my pulse in my ears, it doesn’t seem real. It’s too much to take in. Too much to understand.

  We’re standing there, all three of us, staring at the collapsing riverbank, the flames lighting our faces. It’s as if we can’t process what we’re seeing.

  As we stand, watching through the cracked panes of the windows, the giant wheel of the London Eye begins to shake, toppling towards us as its foundations pull themselves free from the collapsing ground.

  There are overturned boats in the river, and people, swimming towards us. The giant Ferris Wheel halts its fall, support cables pulling tight behind it. The pods seem to hang, half way to the water, silhouetted against the flames. The building shakes and the glass rattles in the windows as the cables snap, and the wheel crashes into the Thames, pushing a wave of water onto the road in front of us.

  It’s as if a spell has been broken. Bracken turns to me and shouts, but the alarm is too loud to hear him. In a heartbeat, we’re running for the door.

  The hallway outside is empty as we run to the stairs, following the staircase down to the lobby and sprinting through the entrance hall. The guards are lined up on the pavement outside, guns out to defend the building. They shout at us to get to safety, pointing along the road to Whitehall, sending us away from the flames.

  The sound of the alarm fades as we leave the building, and we can hear the roaring of the fires across the river. Franks stops to talk to the guards, but waves to us to keep walking. I can hear shouts and screams behind us as we walk away.

  There are fire marshals on Whitehall, stopping the traffic and sending us through the passage into Horse Guards Parade. We cross the road as the sound of emergency sirens starts to mingle with the sound of the flames.

  On the parade ground, we’re counted and assembled in departments. I stand with Bracken, looking around for Lee and Conrad, but I don’t find them.

  For the first time, it’s quiet enough to talk. My ears are still ringing from the alarm, but the building behind us cuts off some of the noise from the river.

  “Did you see what happened?”

  Bracken nods. His face is white. “Explosions. All the way along the river bank.”

  I lower my voice to a whisper and take a step closer. “Was this it? Was this what PIN was expecting?”

  He glares at me. “Of course not!”

  I watch him for a moment. He seems genuinely shocked.

  Maybe this wasn’t what they had planned. Maybe this is something else. A genuine act of terrorism.

  “Corporal Smith!”

  A fire marshal holds a fluorescent jacket out to me, and I take it without thinking.

  “Your Emergency Response training is up to date?” I nod. “Put this on, and follow the others. They need help out there.” I look at Bracken, but he’s looking around the parade ground, patting the pocket where he keeps his hip flask.

  I leave him to it.

  I pull on the jacket as I walk over to the group of emergency responders. Someone in a Captain’s uniform sorts us into teams, and sends us out to help the emergency services.

  Casualties

  BEX

  We’re still watching. We can’t switch it off.

  The hand-held camera feed has been replaced with helicopter footage, and we can see the full extent of the damage.

  The London Eye is lying, flat across the river. The path along the bank is gone, and bricks and broken concrete are piled in the water.

  They’re pulling people from the rubble.

  Fire engines are fighting the flames, but they can’t save the buildings.

  “That’s the Home Forces building,” Charlie says, pointing at the screen. She stands with one arm round her friend’s waist.

  “Is it damaged?” He asks, and part of me registers his Scottish accent.

  “Looks it.” Dan squints at the screen. “The windows are broken. I think they got hit.”

  “Good.”

  Charlie turns to him. “What do you care?”

  “Your government are bastards,” he says. “Good riddance.”

  She smiles, and hugs him more tightly.

  ‘Can you see the good people?’ Mum used to ask. ‘When something like this happens, look for the people who stop to help’. It was supposed to make me feel better – about the bombings, about people. About the world I was growing up in.

  And there are people helping. People in fluorescent jackets give first aid, and carry stretchers. They pull people from the water, and they fight the flames. Medics treat the injured, and ambulances take people away. It should be inspiring, watching people coming together. Watching people running into danger to help strangers.

  But I know who planned this attack. I know who planted the bombs. I know their names, and I encouraged them.

  “Wait.” Dan doesn’t take his eyes off the screen. “If the bombings are false flags – if the government is managing the attacks – why would they attack themselves?”

  I push myself a little further into the corner of the sofa. I want to disappear.

  I don’t want my friends to know what I’ve done.

  “Right,” says Amy. “It doesn’t make any sense, damaging their own building.”

  Charlie’s nodding. “Maybe this
is the real thing. Maybe someone else planned this attack.”

  “Someone’s had enough. Someone’s fighting back.” Dan’s nodding.

  “Good for them.” Charlie’s friend puts his arm round her shoulder.

  “But there are people in the rubble.” Amy’s voice is quiet. “People in the water. They might have been trying to hurt the government, but they’ve hurt ordinary people as well.”

  “So did the false flag attacks.” Dan glances across at Amy. “Remember Leominster? The government killed all those people.” He points at the screen. “Whoever’s doing this is no worse than they are.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Sometimes you can’t do something good without doing something bad. You lot should know that by now.”

  Dan rubs his hands over his face. “You’re right, Charlie. Sometimes there are casualties, even if you’re fighting for the good guys.”

  And I know he’s thinking about the bunker, and the two guards he shot outside the gatehouse. The people he killed so we could get out alive.

  Is that any different to what we’re watching?

  I look, hard, at the images on the screen, but I can’t see how many people have been hurt. How many have been killed.

  We killed three people on the night we escaped from the bunker. Three people fighting us died, and sixteen of us walked away.

  Was that fair? Was that good, on balance?

  And what about the people in London? How many have we killed, and how many will we save?

  I try not to think about Mum and Margie. To me, it’s worth all this to get them out. But to the people under the rubble? To their families?

  They’re going to have a different answer.

  Helping

  KETTY

  This is real. This is real, and unexpected. They’ve killed people, and they’ve injured people, and they’ve torn a hole in the city.

  In my city.

  They’re setting up an incident control centre in Trafalgar Square, but my team is sent over Hungerford Bridge, towards the flames. Towards the Jubilee Gardens and the rubble of City Hall.

  I look around, at the places I run past every day. Long splinters of glass lie on the ground outside the Festival Hall, and people in smart clothes are stepping over piles of rubble as they evacuate the building. Some of them have cuts and bruises, and there are medics waiting to take them to safer buildings, further along the river.

  We wait as the bomb disposal team checks for additional devices, and then I’m carrying stretchers and helping medics and lifting people into ambulances. There are teams pulling people from the rubble of buildings, and boats dragging people from the water. I see blood and broken bones and bodies, but I can’t take it in. There are sirens and shouts and screaming as we run between medics and casualties, bringing supplies and carrying people away. I’m here, and I’m helping. I can feel the heat from the fires on my skin, and the smoke catches in my throat. It feels like chaos, but the people around me are calmly taking control. We’re rescuing people. We’re doing our jobs, and we’re saving people.

  I run from the ambulances, under Hungerford Bridge, back towards the bombs, and I realise there are tears in my eyes. This is where I run every evening. Along the river, under the bridge, past the Jubilee Gardens.

  But the Jubilee Gardens are on fire, and there’s no path for me to run on. At the far side of the bridge, the pavement drops away into the river. I have to stop myself from running on, from falling into the wound in my city. From smashing myself to pieces in the rubble and the flames.

  Someone grabs my shoulder and pulls me back from the edge. I nod, and thank them, and turn away. There’s a medic station in front of me – ambulance staff piling stretchers and supplies for the first responders.

  I pick up a stretcher, and run to the next casualty.

  *****

  The Captain in charge calls my team to the bridge and tells us to take a break. There’s water and ration bars, and the people I’ve been working with start to gather, sitting down and passing bottles to each other.

  I stand at the edge of the bridge, looking down.

  The fires are still burning, but there’s a row of fire service boats on the river, pumping water onto the flames. There are rescue boats, dragging people and bodies from the water. All the windows on the river side of the Home Forces building are cracked or broken, and the London Eye lies across the Thames like an unfinished bridge.

  And it starts to sink in.

  They were aiming for us.

  We were the target. The Home Forces building. The only functioning government this country has.

  The bombs were meant for me, for Bracken, for Franks. For Conrad and Lee. For the Privates in the document drop and the firing range. For people doing their jobs and running the country and keeping people safe.

  The bombs were meant for us.

  This is real. This isn’t a false flag attack. This is the resistance, hitting us where it hurts.

  And now they know they can touch us. Now they know they can damage us.

  This is dangerous. This is what Franks was trying to prevent. Large-scale attacks. Damage to the city.

  I look down. There’s nothing left of the path along the embankment – the path I run every day. The buildings have slumped into the water, and the river flows around the rubble. There’s no wall, dividing the Thames from the bank. There’s no path between the water and the wreckage.

  The bombs have taken everything.

  Someone wraps a blanket round my shoulders and hands me a bottle of water, and I realise I’m shivering.

  This is too close to home, and we didn’t see it coming.

  Confession

  BEX

  It’s half past one when I knock on Dan’s door.

  Part of me is hoping he’s asleep, but the door opens, and there’s my friend. His hair is messed up, and he’s rubbing his eyes.

  “Hey, Bex.” He stretches. “Coming in?”

  “Is that OK?”

  He steps back and turns the light on. “Be my guest.”

  I step past him. His room’s the same as mine. The same furniture, the same layout. Some of the same books on the shelves. He has firing range silhouettes pinned up on his noticeboard, too. I sit down on the floor in front of his desk, and he sits against the bed, handing me a pillow so I can lean back against the drawers, my knees up in front of me.

  “What’s up?”

  I shake my head. I’m not sure what to say. “Something Charlie said earlier. About having to do bad things, to do good.”

  Dan leans his head back and looks at the ceiling. “Yeah. She knows too much. Do you want to take her out, or shall I?” He mimes aiming a rifle.

  “Dan! I’m serious.”

  “I know.”

  “That wasn’t funny.”

  He sighs. “I know. I just … it’s been that sort of day. Not knowing whether to laugh or cry.”

  “Yeah.”

  We sit for a moment, not looking at each other.

  “Dan,” I say eventually. “I want to tell you something. But you have to promise, absolutely promise, not to tell anyone else.”

  “OK,” he says, a question in his voice.

  “I’m serious. I’m not allowed to tell anyone this. I need you to swear that you’re not going to pass this on.”

  He gives me an accusing look.

  “Really, Bex?”

  I nod. “Really.”

  “Is this committee stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “OK.”

  “So you’ll swear?”

  “Good grief, Bex, yes. I’ll swear. I’ll swear on … peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Good enough?”

  I can’t help smiling. “Good enough.”

  “So what’s this terrible secret?”

  I take a deep breath.

  “I know what you’ve done. I know what you did at the bunker, to get us out alive. I know what you did at the coach, and I know it saved my life.”

&nb
sp; “Bex, we’ve all done …”

  “No. Listen. I know you’ve killed people. I know you’ve done bad things in order to do good things. And I can judge you on that, if I want to.”

  He looks at me in surprise. “You don’t judge me, do you?”

  “No. Of course not. That’s not what I meant.” I stop, and breathe again. “I mean that if I know what you’ve done, you should know what I’ve done.”

  He shrugs. “You don’t have to tell me, Bex. I know you’ll do the right thing.” He thinks for a moment. “Unless you count threatening Gail. Then you need someone to step in and stop you.”

  “That’s when you step in? That’s the worst I can do?”

  “So far. Why? What are you telling me? What have I missed?”

  I rest my head on my knees.

  “The attack, today.”

  “What about it?” There’s a note of suspicion in his voice.

  “That was us.”

  “That was … what? What do you mean?”

  I look up at him, and try to keep my voice steady.

  “That was the committee. We made that happen.”

  He rubs his eyes, and pushes his fingers through his hair.

  “What … How …?”

  “A resistance cell. They got the call from someone, offering them weapons and a target. So they called us.”

  “You knew in advance?”

  “They asked us for help.”

  “And what happened?”

  “We decided they should take the weapons, but change the target.”

  “So that was the committee’s idea?”

  I take a breath, and look at him.

  “It was my idea.”

  He stares at me, his eyes wide.

  “You told them to bomb the London Eye?”

  I hold his gaze. I want him to know what I’ve done.

  “I told them to bomb London. The final location was their idea, but Fiona told them to go for maximum damage near a government target.” I shrug. “I suggested London. That’s what they chose.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t understand, Bex. There are – what – twelve of you on the committee?”