The dishwasher was ajar, full of foul-smelling plates that had been dirty when the clones came. The radio was switched on, but the National Grid was long dead. The breadbin lay open but Kate avoided its contents, and the unopened mail on the sideboard lay in yellowed envelopes addressed to Mr and Mrs Hunter.
Kate held her breath and opened the cupboards. Dried pasta, tinned foods and sauces. It was enough.
‘Looks like two of us are sleeping on the floor,’ Jack said as Kate re-entered the living room.
‘Have it yourself,’ answered Alex. ‘I’ve got Matthew’s bed.’
‘Who?’
‘Nice big room upstairs. Says “Matthew’s room” on the door.’
‘You’re stealing a little boy’s bedroom?’ asked Charlie.
‘If I have to kip under dinosaur sheets, nobody’s going to care. Little Matthew won’t even know, unless I leave him a thank you card for after we’ve rescued him.’
Kate kept an eye on Ewan, concerned that he might get worried and try to stamp his authority. Perhaps Alex wanted him to. Any excuse for a power struggle.
Alex may look confident, but I wonder how he truly feels. He must know how bad it looks when a twenty-two-year-old man needs a power struggle against a special school teenager.
The expression on Ewan’s face was difficult to look at. It wasn’t anger at Alex for disobeying him, but agitation. Like how Kate felt when more important people changed her plans without asking, and forced her to pick up the pieces inside her head.
Despite his obvious feelings, Ewan had not survived eleven months as lead soldier without knowing how to pick his battles.
‘Whatever,’ he replied, setting out his blanket across the carpet. ‘Alex can sleep with the cuddly toys if he wants. Let’s grab some rest.’
Alex shrugged and marched his way up the stairs, leaving the teenagers to tuck themselves under their cobwebbed blankets.
‘So who lives here?’ asked Charlie. ‘Besides little Matthew?’
‘A mum and dad, going by the mail,’ Kate answered. ‘Michael and Dawn Hunter.’
Jack let out a humoured snort.
‘Was that her name or her job?’
Confused, Kate turned her head in Jack’s direction.
‘Huh?’
‘She sounds like a vampire assassin or something… dawn hunter!’
The group looked amongst themselves to check whether anybody else found it funny.
‘Jack,’ started Ewan, ‘has anyone ever told you you’re really weird?’
‘Only my psychiatrist.’
‘Give him a break, guys,’ said Charlie. ‘We’ve known for a long time that Jack’s not normal.’
‘Normal’… careful with that word, Charlie. I’m not even sure Jack’s at peace with his Asperger’s yet.
‘Well at least my name’s normal,’ Jack said. ‘Dawn Hunter clearly loved her husband if she married into that name!’
Without her permission, Kate’s thoughts turned to Raj back home.
‘Wait, wait,’ interrupted Charlie. ‘Was that Jack claiming to know about love? The last time he kissed a woman he still called her “Mummy”!’
Unable to stop themselves, the house exploded into laughter. It lasted far longer than it should have done, given the risk of patrolling clones.
‘Charlie,’ said Ewan with a laugh, ‘you’re such a numpty.’
‘Yeah, well I’m still your friend. You told me in the bedroom before we left!’
‘Wait, what?’ asked Kate.
‘You’re everyone’s friend,’ answered Ewan, ‘but you’re still a numpty.’
Kate glanced across towards Jack, and found him in silence. He was far from shy, but something in Charlie’s words had upset him.
‘You OK, Jack?’ asked Charlie. ‘Really, I don’t mean it. You’ve still got Gracie back at home, if you ever get off your backside and actually–’
‘Guys,’ interrupted Kate, ‘it’s late, and we’ve done way too much walking. Let’s get some sleep now, yeah?’
‘I’ll take first watch,’ said Ewan. ‘And I’ll wake Alex in an hour.’
As if the teenage soldier had put a spell on them all, the room fell silent. Kate breathed a sigh of relief. She had no idea what had hurt Jack, and Charlie would not know either, but there was no use dwelling on it.
After enough minutes for Jack and Charlie to fall asleep, Kate crept out from under her sheets. She tiptoed upstairs and found Ewan, stood on the landing with a wide view of the street below the window. He heard her approach, but waited for her to speak first.
‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘About tomorrow, I mean.’
‘I could do with a second opinion.’
‘The tool might be there, it might not be. Depends how lucky you feel.’
Ewan huffed.
‘It’s never luck, Kate. Luck doesn’t exist.’
Kate paused. She had heard Ewan make that point before, but had never understood it. Her confusion must have been obvious, as he gave an explanation.
‘Just because something’s beyond your control doesn’t mean it’s luck,’ he continued. ‘Even when you roll a dice, the result depends on how hard you rolled it, what surface it lands on, and a bunch of other things. Luck doesn’t exist, but people blame it all the time. I’ve seen a ton of people make crap choices then blame “luck” or “fate” or whatever. It’s their way of holding something else responsible when they make bad judgements and the universe answers them.’
Kate nodded. It was, as one of her uncles used to phrase it, a ‘very autistic’ explanation, loaded with uncompromising logic and disconnected from how most people thought. That uncle had never recognised that not all autistic people shared the same super-logical mindset. There were huge differences between Ewan’s and Kate’s autism, with Kate more impacted by sensory issues, struggling with society’s social ‘rules’, and spending her life masking her true personality.
Unsurprisingly, that side of her family had never believed in Kate’s autism. As if her neurology cared what they had believed.
‘So,’ Ewan finished, ‘leaving luck and fate out of it, should we go to New London or go home?’
Kate held her breath for a moment, wondering whether she would one day regret her words.
‘I think we should go to New London. I think Shannon’s tool is waiting there.’
‘You don’t think they’ll have destroyed it?’
‘They don’t even know what it is. Shannon said so herself. They’ll have found it in Tylor’s backpack, and put it in an evidence locker or something for investigation.’
Ewan took another glance over the distant fields, and took a deep breath.
‘And you believe her? You don’t think she’s some kind of spy like Charlie said?’
‘I know trauma, Ewan. I know how it changes people’s judgements. Shannon’s not evil. She’s scared.’
‘She’s hiding something.’
‘Of course she is. But would you spill your secrets after one night?’
Ewan didn’t answer.
‘And if it makes this conversation easier,’ she continued, ‘I know you’ve already made up your mind.’
Ewan took his eyes away from the window, and looked vaguely in Kate’s direction. Still no words.
‘You’re not the kind of person to sleep on any decision,’ she finished. ‘You decided to go all the way before we even got here. You just needed time to think of an excuse. So, is my second opinion good enough?’
Ewan smiled.
‘I’ll phone McCormick in the morning,’ he said, ‘and ask him to check our maps for an evidence locker. Hopefully he’ll get something out of Shannon.’
He turned to face the window again, and let out a sigh.
‘Whoever she is.’
Chapter 6
Raj could sense that his bedroom door had opened, but his tired brain tried to ignore it. It wasn’t until he heard the flick of the light switch – and the disappointed huff when no light eme
rged – that he realised he needed to wake up.
‘No lights,’ he muttered towards the figure at the door. ‘It’s the night of dead, remember? … Dead of night, I mean.’
Raj opened his eyes so he could roll them. His word retrieval issue was a dyslexia trait that almost never appeared these days, after years of him fighting against it. Still, it resurfaced when he was exhausted.
Thankfully, the only witness had been the least judgemental person in Spitfire’s Rise.
‘Raj?’ came a voice that must have belonged to Thomas.
‘Wh… T. Rex? Is that you?’
As if he had been given permission to enter, the child walked right over to Raj’s bed, and sat himself down on the covers.
‘Er, you alright, kid?’ Raj asked, little more than halfway back to his senses.
‘Why aren’t the lights working?’
‘The generator goes off at ten, remember?’
Well, eight tonight. Lazy Gracie abandoned the generator room the first moment she could. Jack only left her in charge because he likes her.
Raj could not see the boy’s face, but he prided himself on his ability to read others through any one of his senses. It was just one advantage of being an extreme visual-spatial learner. And he detected worry in Thomas’s voice.
‘What is it, Thomas? What’s wrong?’
‘I told you! Bad dream.’
‘You didn’t… well, OK. Want to talk about it?’
Thomas’ head hit the pillow inches from Raj’s nose. Raj pretended not to mind.
It didn’t take him long to work out why Thomas had chosen him. With most of the Underdogs out in the countryside, the boy’s list of shoulders to cry on was reduced to four. And the other three were unsuitable.
Lorraine would have been perfect, if she weren’t in the clinic with her patient.
Gracie wouldn’t have much to offer in terms of advice. She had grown up as something of a chameleon, taking other people’s instructions on what kind of person she was supposed to be. Raj had never worked out whether it was due to peer pressure, the struggles of growing up as a girl with learning difficulties, or the voluntary laziness she had been famous for at Oakenfold. She didn’t have enough of an independent personality for even that to be decipherable, and hid her real self – whoever it was – behind an attractive physical appearance and habits adopted from other people.
And Mark…
Thomas probably didn’t know what Mark’s ‘year of hard time’ actually meant, but his mother had warned him sternly enough to be careful around Mark Gunnarsson.
Besides, Raj and Thomas were spending more time together these days. Mainly because the boy never left Kate alone.
‘You know,’ Raj said, ‘I’ve had bad dreams too. But the human brain’s a weird and special thing. It comes up with some strange–’
‘I thought you guys hated the word “special”?’
‘Well–’
‘But you hate the word “normal” too. None of you like it when people want you to be normal, but you don’t like being called special either. It’s like you don’t know what you want.’
‘We want respect, basically.’
Raj did his best to yawn himself awake. Being the only fifteen-year-old on Earth to lead weekly worship services, he could normally wield words like an edged weapon. But it wasn’t so easy in the dead of night – two in the morning, according to Thomas’ glow-in-the-dark watch. The hour digit was either a two or a five, anyway.
‘Tell me about it, kid. Might feel better when you get it out.’
‘Um, OK… it was about Mum.’
Raj gritted his teeth. Beth was safely in Heaven with The Big Guy looking after her, but that wouldn’t bring much comfort to her orphaned son.
‘You don’t have to–’
‘We were being hunted again, like the day it happened… but this time she got shot in the forest, and we staggered on but she was screaming all the way, and I wanted to tell her to be quiet but I didn’t want to be rude, so she kept shouting and the clones found us…’
Raj felt a tight grip on his shirt.
‘…and she died when they shot her in the s-stomach. I blamed myself because I kept quiet when I should have spoken up…’
Raj shook his head. Thomas was by far the most charming member of the group. But on days when he cried in front of others, Raj could always sense the plummeting mood across Spitfire’s Rise. It was like the very spirit of the Underdogs depended on Thomas’ self-esteem.
‘I think I’m more afraid now than before,’ the boy muttered into the bedsheets.
‘Thomas,’ Raj began, drawing together his tired verbal skills, ‘I could go on all night about the things in that dream that are wrong. Your mum lived through Takeover Day, remember?’
‘Only to get shot three weeks after Christmas.’
Raj sighed, and all words left him. Talking about Beth would do nothing to calm her grieving son.
‘Raj?’
‘Yep?’
‘Some of the clones were women.’
‘In your dream?’
‘Yeah. They’ve never been women before.’
You’re trying to say something without saying it. Good lad, that’s what adults do.
Raj paused. Kate always said she hated that about other people, how they dropped hints and expected her to magically interpret them the way they wanted. It was part of the autistic experience: being blamed for not interpreting other people correctly, instead of the other person being blamed for not saying what they meant.
Apparently, the hint-dropping started at an early age. Even the nine-year-old next to Raj had learned it.
‘Raj?’
‘Shannon’s human, Thomas. No question of it.’
‘I know, and I really don’t want to sound mean, but…’
‘But you’re wondering who she really is.’
‘Mm-hm. I… I know she’s not a clone and I’m trying to be friendly, and I want her to feel safe and everything, but it’s weird having a new person here. I didn’t think there were any new people left.’
Raj raised his eyes to the ceiling. Thomas was far from alone in his nerves. McCormick seemed to be the only one in the house who was comfortable around Shannon. Even her primary carer, the great Lorraine Shepherd, spoke about her with a cautious voice. There was love in that voice of course, but it was a careful kind of love.
We’ve spent so long with no one to talk to but each other, and when we finally get a new friend we barely know how to cope. How are we going to manage if we ever bring down Grant and share the country with millions of strangers again?
‘We’ll find out about her,’ Raj whispered. ‘But when she’s ready.’
‘How long will that be?’
That’s entirely up to her, Raj wanted to say, but he knew it wasn’t the answer Thomas wanted.
Then again, did they really have to wait that long? There would surely be other ways to find out.
Despite his academic learning difficulties, Raj had always been clever. In a previous world, his mother had called him ‘my little detective’ nearly as much as she had used his actual name. Raj’s proudest moment in primary school, as the one illiterate boy among a class of regular children, had been when his teacher had asked his class a riddle. ‘A hairdresser says she would rather cut the hair of ten Welsh men than one English woman. Why?’ The rest of his class had given very childlike answers, asking whether Welsh people had longer hair, or whether the hairdresser was sexist or even racist. Raj had wowed the whole room, by raising his hand and telling the class that the hairdresser would simply make ten times as much money. He got Star of the Week for that, but the answer was blatantly obvious when you removed the distractions and saw the problem in black and white.
That was dyslexia to Raj. Not being clever enough at the ‘correct’ topics, but being brilliant when things were on his terms. And his deductive skills could come in useful when learning about Shannon.
‘You know what, T. Rex?
’ he said. ‘You’ve inspired me. I’m going to investigate.’
‘How?’
‘However I can. Give me the rest of the night and I’ll come up with some ideas. You OK to go back to bed now?’
‘I think so.’
‘Great,’ said Raj, rolling out from the covers and heading for the bedroom door. In the darkness he heard Thomas’ sleepy footsteps close behind, following him into the hallway.
Somewhere between the two bedroom doors, Raj was hit by a thought. It wasn’t one of those lightning-strike ideas which he saw as answers to prayers, but more like a rolling cloud of ideas that mixed together in his head.
‘Thomas, could you do something for me tomorrow?’
‘Sure?’
‘Tomorrow at breakfast, you, me, Lorraine and Shannon will all be together. Ask Lorraine how Nicholas Grant took over. I think it’s about time you knew.’
‘Mum kept telling you guys not to–’
‘Well you’re nine now. That must be old enough. Just make sure that Shannon’s in the room, OK? Trust me.’
‘Got it. Night, Raj.’
‘Night.’
Raj listened to the door of Thomas’ room as it swung open and shut. Before he could turn and walk away, a second voice sounded from the foot of the stairs.
‘Why does Shannon have to be there?’ asked Mark in the darkness.
Mark was intimidating enough with his face visible. But in the dark, his voice felt twice as menacing. Perhaps he’d learned a few tricks back in the Youth Offenders’ Institution.
Everything about Mark Gunnarsson reminded Raj of a block of ice. Not just because he was cold and unpleasant, but also because of his solidity and resilience. He had the translucence of an ice cube, not exactly clear but hardly complicated. It would take a pick-axe or something to cause him any real damage, but he avoided other people’s warmth as if it would slowly kill him.
Raj didn’t want to get any closer to Mark, but had to descend the stairs to avoid being heard in the clinic.
‘It’s just an idea I’ve got,’ he said. ‘We need to find out who Shannon is. And I’d rather not wait.’
Underdogs Page 6
