Tooth and Nail

by Chris Bonnello

  ‘How are you doing?’ Ewan asked.

  ‘Me? I’m an expert at conquering my demons. I’m fine. I was wondering how you were.’

  There was a clear waviness in her voice. Kate was nervous, but rushing in headlong. Life experience had taught her that the only way of destroying her fears was to do the things she was scared of, so the mission was right up her street. She’d be fine.

  ‘Ewan?’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Kind of conflicted, to be honest,’ he answered. ‘Back at home, it was obvious why Grant took Oakenfold. He wanted to make us feel pressured into taking the school back, but also scared of doing it. Logically we just need to tell ourselves to not be sentimental, and use our knowledge of the school to our advantage. But… it’s different now we’re this close.’

  ‘Oakenfold meant something to us,’ said Kate. ‘There’s no shame in feeling emotional about going back.’

  ‘Yes there is. Emotional distractions could mean death.’

  Ewan looked behind him. Raj was deep in conversation with either Alex or Shannon, and Mark held up two fingers to represent two minutes left.

  ‘I’ll be fine once we’ve stopped hiding,’ he said. ‘It’s just this particular hiding place. It—’

  ‘Was this where you hid the day you escaped school?’

  ‘…Yeah. And wow, that backfired. Still can’t shake Mum’s reaction from my head. When we got home…’

  He shook his head, unwilling to continue. Kate seemed surprised.

  ‘You lived with your mum?’

  ‘Um, yeah. Don’t most people?’

  ‘I just assumed it was you and your dad. I mean, you talk about your dad all the time, but… I’ve never heard you mention her.’

  Ewan shuddered. Bloody hell, that hurt! As if the pressure of approaching an occupied Oakenfold wasn’t enough, a girl he had lived with for almost a year had opened his eyes to something awful: one of the worst results of his avoidance habit.

  Please tell me I haven’t gone a whole year without mentioning my mother . I must have at least thought of her.

  ‘Dad got us our weapons. That’s the main reason I’ve talked about him, I guess.’

  ‘What were they like?’

  Kate, you’re my friend and everything , but please just shut up.

  ‘Complete opposites of each other. You couldn’t imagine two people being so different. They say opposites attract, but maybe their opposite genes mixed so badly they gave birth to the ultimate screw-up.’

  Kate opened her mouth, but Raj cut in before she could protest.

  ‘I told them we’re striking at three,’ said Raj. ‘That’s still true, right?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks.’

  Raj fell to the back of the group, and Kate went with him. Ewan had just enough time to breathe half a sigh of relief before someone else picked up the conversation.

  ‘You want some advice?’ asked Jack. ‘From someone else with a dead mum?’

  Ewan hadn’t even known Jack was listening. In most conversations, it was difficult to tell the difference between when he was concentrating and when he was daydreaming. In both cases, he looked away from people and flicked his fingers. As a child, it had led to adults talking about Jack as if he weren’t in the room. Apparently, non-autistic people thought his ears only ever worked in conjunction with his eyes.

  Ewan’s mouth opened, but he reigned in his impulses and stopped himself before telling Jack to mind his own damned business. In all fairness, his thoughts were always worth a listen.

  ‘I was twelve when Mum died,’ said Jack. ‘I didn’t talk about it for a long time. Surprised I even told you when I did, to be honest.’

  ‘A cancer death’s different to being sprayed with bullets, Jack. You didn’t see the moment she turned into a corpse.’

  ‘I’m not competing with you, Ewan. If I were, I’d tell you how long and drawn out my mum’s pain was compared to yours. I’m talking about the aftermath. Maybe you don’t mention her because the memory of her death is too painful. But I’ve heard you mention everyone else who died that day, including little Alfie. So I’m going to guess your relationship with your mum was a little complicated.’

  ‘You mentioned advice, Jack?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t let things rot.’

  Ewan threw a glance at Jack, looking as confused as his face would let him, although he suspected Jack wouldn’t see his confusion in the dark.

  ‘When I was about fifteen,’ Jack continued, ‘I realised I couldn’t remember her voice. You know my memory, Ewan, it’s spectacular – every fact about dinosaurs I learned as a child I can still regurgitate now – but I can’t remember stuff when I spend years shutting it out.’

  Ewan took a moment to see if he could remember his own mother’s voice. He was afraid Jack might be right.

  ‘I didn’t want to deal with the hurt,’ Jack continued. ‘But when I realised what I was forgetting, I changed. I decided the hurt was worthwhile. Bring on the pain, if it keeps her alive in my head.’

  Ewan nodded, and gave an answer that didn’t reference his mother.

  ‘McCormick says something similar,’ he said. ‘One of his little catchphrases. The pain of missing someone is always worth it—’

  ‘For the joy of having known them,’ finished Jack. ‘And he’s right. I don’t know what kind of relationship you had with her, but keep it alive. Even if it means—’

  ‘Have to stop you, Jack. We’ve arrived.’

  The hiding spot was still in the distance, but it was a convenient excuse to withdraw from the conversation. Their vantage point was a crater next to the hill’s peak, surrounded by trees. An elevated view with excellent cover. Ewan approached, knowing what sight would await them once they reached the brow of the hill.

  And there it was. Oakenfold Special School.

  Oakenfold, where the world had made just a little more sense. Where people either knew how to accommodate students with special needs, or at least gave a crap about trying.

  Oakenfold, where the problems were not the person.

  In order to cope with his own reaction, Ewan looked at his friends’ faces for theirs. But each of them echoed his own feelings: complete and utter confusion.

  He had expected Oakenfold to look like a military compound, lit up with floodlights, with armed checkpoints and vehicle barriers and so on. What they found was just their old school, with no extra construction work and the lights turned out. It was like Grant’s employees had gone home for the night.

  ‘This place can’t possibly be unguarded,’ said Mark.

  ‘Maybe they want us to think it is,’ answered Gracie. It was a clever comment, coming from her.

  ‘There’ll be a least a minimal guard somewhere,’ Ewan said. ‘Maybe even inside. So let’s be stealthy. Go as long as you can without firing a shot.’

  ‘Do we even have to wait until three?’ asked Raj. ‘Doesn’t look like it’s getting any quieter, and we’re giving them three hours to spot us up here.’

  ‘We stick to the plan. In New London the watches start and end every six hours – three and nine in the morning, three and nine at night. They’ll do the same here too. Consistency and all that.’

  ‘Bit of a leap of faith, isn’t it? I didn’t think you liked those.’

  ‘We stick to the plan,’ Ewan repeated impatiently. ‘We wait till three, sneak in while the guard changes, and we grab all the information on AME we can get our hands on. After we learn what we’ll be up against in New London, we wipe out every physical trace of the technology from Oakenfold…’

  He hesitated before finishing his sentence.

  ‘…Even if it means burning our school to the ground.’

  *

  Bloody hell, comms is boring. Especially when your partner’s silent.

  When it came to missions, Alex preferred being on the comms end of the phone. He was less likely to die that way. And Mark had been right: the Oakenfold mission belonged to the students and them alone
.

  Still, a little action would have been appreciated. Or at least something happening, even if were just a conversation with Shannon.

  It was the early hours of the morning and she was sitting upright in her chair, dutiful and focused. As if she had restructured her sleeping pattern specifically for that night. It made Alex feel ashamed of his own tiredness.

  I wonder if McCormick’s still alive? He thought. If the operation were going to go wrong, it would have happened by now.

  Alex shook his head, and tried to think optimistic thoughts. In all probability, Lorraine had already sealed him up with that soldering iron and cried herself to sleep.

  He needed something to distract himself. With nothing to do, his mind would start to mull over all the worst possibilities. He had once heard someone say that’s how it worked for Kate, except it seemed more painful for her.

  There was only one distraction available, and she didn’t seem in the mood for talking. Especially not about the subject Alex had in mind. But it was worth a try.

  ‘So Shannon…’

  ‘Hm?’

  Already Alex was wondering whether it was a good idea. It struck him how little he and Shannon had in common. In fact, he knew so little about her that he didn’t even know whether they had anything in common. He wasn’t sociable in the getting-to-know-you sense – more in the take-the-mick sense – and Shannon hardly spoke to him unless the conversation was necessary.

  Better ask, then.

  ‘I’ve been wondering for a while. Hope you don’t mind me asking, but… what was he like?’

  Shannon looked piercingly into his eyes.

  Ouch, no wonder the autistic lot find that painful.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your father. The great Nicholas Grant.’

  She didn’t answer at first. She just let the question hang in the air like the smell of a carcass.

  ‘Does it matter?’ she eventually asked.

  In a rare display of shyness, Alex backed down.

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t.’

  ‘He was a monster,’ she said. ‘I never heard him talk, because he only shouted. He smashed up my room whenever he got drunk. He only fed me when I obeyed him. He once had a barbecue with all my childhood toys, and performed a ritual to our overlord Satan while rocking out to death metal and stealing candy from puppies. Is that what you want to hear?’

  Alex was ashamed to admit that for the first few sentences, he had actually believed her.

  ‘I didn’t see that much of him,’ Shannon said, ‘that’s the truth. Around the time I left primary school he got into Marshall–Pearce, and spent his days building up his takeover project.’

  ‘So he didn’t… abuse you or—’

  ‘Bloody hell Alex, you’re crap with social boundaries.’

  Alex looked away, pretending to have heard something. Shannon didn’t fall for it.

  ‘It was neglect, I guess. Which is a type of abuse. There was a big empty hole where my father should have been. And everything he did after Takeover Day, all the luxuries he showered me with to get me back… it made no difference. Gifts mean nothing if they come from an invisible man.’

  She rested back in her chair, and let out an enormous huff.

  ‘If it makes you feel better,’ said Alex, ‘my dad was an arse. He was more my taekwondo coach than my dad. I think I’d rather have had a guy who wasn’t there, instead of a guy who thought comfort zones were something I wasn’t allowed to have.’

  Shannon didn’t answer.

  ‘Then again, I’m kind of glad he pushed me. Without the drive he gave me, I wouldn’t have lasted long in this war. He’s probably the reason I prefer doing things alone, but maybe he’s also the reason I’m still alive.’

  ‘Maybe my dad’s the reason…’

  She trailed off, and Alex decided not to chase the other half of the sentence. He had poked around enough for one night.

  The phone rang, and Shannon’s hand shot to it first. Perhaps she wanted to leave the conversation more urgently than Alex did. Ewan’s face appeared on the smartphone screen, but he spoke so quietly that Alex couldn’t decipher his words.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Shannon. ‘OK, good luck.’

  They’re going in. Must be three o’clock already.

  Ewan said something else.

  ‘Fine, Ewan, I know it’s never luck. Just keep yourselves safe.’

  Chapter 6

  Kate had gone silent, but her brain was loud with anxiety. Ewan’s orders were received by her ears but the meaning of his words washed over her.

  ‘Kate,’ he said, ‘you and Mark go for the staff areas. Simon and I will go from classroom to classroom.’

  ‘Which leaves the function rooms like soft play and the speech therapy place for me and Gracie,’ said Raj. ‘You want us in the least likely places to see action, since we’re the least effective soldiers.’

  ‘Shut up, Raj.’

  ‘It’s true though, isn’t it? I can read you like a book.’

  ‘Raj, you can’t even read an actual book.’

  Kate took a deep breath. Her wits were returning. Maybe it was the casual insults thrown at her boyfriend that woke her up. She looked around the group, back on their feet at the brow of the hill and sheltered behind the tree line.

  ‘So… what about me?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Keep guard here.’

  ‘What, so I have to miss out?’

  ‘You get to protect us. Alert us if you see—’

  ‘Is this because I talked to you about—’

  ‘—alert us if you see anything approaching. Or any activity that’s not us.’

  Kate did not understand why Ewan was so irritated with Jack, or what they had talked about that could have caused the tension between them. Jack shook his head, the hair beneath his helmet waving across his face in messy protest.

  ‘Just do yourself a favour, yeah?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ said Ewan.

  ‘If this place is abandoned, they’ve probably finished the testing already. When you’re close to the entrance, throw a bullet first and see if it blows up. Don’t walk gun-first into a shield that detonates metal.’

  Ewan nodded, and Kate heard him whisper something to himself under his breath. Then, with no words of encouragement for his team, without even repeating the mission criteria, he started his walk down the hill, followed by Kate and the rest of the students.

  This has got to him . A lready.

  The emotional impact of the night was probably compounded by the fact that there had been no changing of the guard at three o’clock. Ewan had relied on the enemies’ routine for his strategy, and the rug had been pulled from underneath his plans. More than that, it suggested that the building had not been guarded in the first place, and they had wasted three hours of their time outside an empty building.

  Kate understood his frustration. When one thing bothered her, it bothered her. When several things bothered her at once, she lost her capacity to think. Both she and Ewan reaped the benefits and suffered the consequences of autistic single-mindedness, and were unable to focus on two different sources of anxiety. Ewan could have coped with the emotional strain of seeing Oakenfold, or the sudden change of circumstances, but not both.

  Ewan left the bottom of the hill, and led the march across the car park towards the school entrance. As Kate followed, she noticed how neatly the abandoned cars were parked alongside each other. When the clones had come, nobody had been given a chance to escape in their own vehicles. She even recognised a couple of the cars as belonging to specific staff members.

  Part way across the car park, Ewan removed a bullet from his pistol and lobbed it towards the school. The bullet glided through the air and smacked against the wall without complaint. Oakenfold was unshielded.

  By the time they reached the front entrance, Kate was first in line. She lay a hand on the door to her old school, took a deep breath, then paused as Simon started frantically jumping up and down, pointing to
wards something inside.

  ‘Simon?’ she asked.

  Then they all saw it. In the corner of the entrance hall, a door-shaped shadow fell on the wall opposite the toilets. And where there was shadow, there was light.

  ‘Well spotted,’ said Raj. ‘Someone’s left the light on in the loos.’

  ‘So?’ asked Gracie.

  ‘Well if Jack were here,’ said Raj, in an obvious protest against Ewan’s team selection, ‘he’d tell you that’s proof that the clones have been here. Because all the other lights have been switched off since… since we last saw this place.’

  Since Takeover Day, Raj. You can say it.

  ‘You know what else I’d say?’ came a voice from the radio that made Kate jump. ‘I’d say it’s proof that this place has electricity. By the way, watch the controls on your radios. Make sure you know whether they’re transmitting or not. And only use them if it’s absolutely urgent, or you’re sure there’s nobody around to hear. While I’m at it, don’t use your torches inside until you know you’re alone. Not even lighters. You can’t afford to give yourselves away, even from a distance.’

  There was annoyance in Jack’s voice, which he was trying but failing to hide. Kate understood why. He must have wanted to see the inside of the school that had saved him from suicide in his worst years. But Jack of all people knew the importance of duty and following commands, even if it hurt him.

  ‘Right,’ muttered Ewan, ‘thanks Jack.’

  ‘Oh, and if they’ve got electricity, they might have set the alarms. Be careful, and remember the code’s 1989.’

  ‘How the hell do you kn—’

  ‘Because I spent years looking at the faded one, eight and nine digits every time I walked past the alarm. And the school was founded in 1989, so it doesn’t take a genius.’

  Kate looked back at Ewan’s hands. Even in the dark, she could see their tightening, determined grip.

  ‘I hope the alarm is set,’ he said. ‘It’d mean there’s no clones inside. Kate, open the door.’

  It was harder than Kate had thought. The inside of Oakenfold would be where her ugly past met her ugly present. It had been the place where she’d tried to recover from her years of bullying – and only partially succeeded. Now, the best school on Earth would showcase the horrors of a post-Takeover Britain.