Underdogs

by Chris Bonnello

  Raj gritted his teeth.

  Shannon secured her grip on the knife. Up to that moment, she had begun to relax her fingers and concentrate on the exit. She made eye contact with Thomas – penetrative, frightening eye contact – and waited.

  ‘Just give us a little more time,’ said Thomas. ‘If you stay and don’t like it, you can always leave later. But if you leave now you’ll never know what you missed out on!’

  Shannon froze in place, her hand fixed around the door handle. The knife remained next to Thomas’ throat, but at least it wasn’t moving.

  ‘Shannon…’ the boy asked, ‘what are you afraid of?’

  There was a flash of anger in her eyes, and she moved her face to within an inch of Thomas’s nose. Then she spoke.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’m afraid of, sunshine,’ she snarled. ‘Nicholas bloody Grant. A million cloned soldiers, grown in factories by Nathaniel Pearce, trained for battle by Iain Marshall. And a fourteen-year-old psychopath creeping through the walls and slaughtering your friends.’

  Raj could feel Mark’s angered breath on the back of his neck. The hatred in Mark’s heart seemed to beat in time with Shannon’s, but hers was even more powerful.

  ‘And then last night… being marched by Keith to the last place on Earth I’d volunteer to go… killing his clones before they could fire a shot. Killing him in that garden. Even the countryside isn’t safe…’

  Shannon’s words ended, although Raj couldn’t tell whether she had finished her sentence or just run out of words.

  ‘…And you want to leave anyway?’ asked Thomas.

  Shannon paused. Her grip on the door lost its tightness.

  ‘Look at this,’ finished Thomas, tapping the stone slab behind him. ‘That’s our Memorial Wall. Most of our friends died outside.’

  Nice work, thought Raj, saying the word ‘most’ as quietly as possible. She doesn’t need to know about Roy’s cancer, or Mike’s suicide. Or thirteen-year-old Callum, running out of insulin a week after we got here.

  Shannon paused again. Raj was unsure how long the pause was, but if his heartbeats were anything to go by it must have been half a minute. Then she took a step backwards, and stabbed the hunting knife into the door.

  She threw a fist at one of the shelves, toppling it over and spilling handguns across the floor. She marched across the cellar, her evacuation plan cancelled, and burst through the tunnel towards the farm. When she had vanished from sight, Thomas looked straight towards Raj and gave him a toothy grin.

  Bright eyes. Nice words. Best intentions. Succeeding anyway. Thomas Foster might have been the most incredible child Raj had ever met.

  ‘That settles it,’ said Mark. ‘We’re going.’

  ‘Huh?’ asked Raj, as Mark pushed past him into the armoury and reached for the shotgun. ‘Going where?’

  ‘Lambourne’s health centre. Right now. Simon, unlock the ammo cupboard, bring a load of bullets and wake up Gracie. Then give your little note to Lorraine and meet us back here.’

  Raj had not even noticed Simon standing behind him. On Mark’s command, he turned and ran.

  ‘Mark, I don’t think–’

  ‘Thomas,’ Mark continued as if Raj hadn’t spoken, ‘run to comms. Tell McCormick we’re raiding Lieutenant Lambourne’s headquarters. The place Tylor was taking Shannon.’

  Thomas’ smile dropped, and he looked to the floor, puzzled. Raj recognised the boy’s expression: it came from the panic that all children felt when a teacher told them to do one thing, but the school bully told them to do another.

  ‘But I’m not allowed to go outside…’

  ‘You can in emergencies. And this is one. You’re a big lad now, and McCormick needs to know we’re heading out. Besides, he’s got big news to tell you about the strike team. Go.’

  The boy vanished through the makeshift door, and began a journey he had never made before. He knew the route to the Boys’ Brigade hall in case of emergencies, but had never followed the directions himself. And certainly not alone.

  McCormick’s going to have Mark’s head.

  ‘You alright, Raj?’ Mark asked, with a voice that dared him to complain.

  ‘Why the health centre?’

  ‘Because you just heard Shannon calling it “the last place on Earth she’d volunteer to go”. I want to know what’s there.’

  Simon returned down the stairs with a big sack of ammunition, with Gracie three steps behind.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked with a yawn, approximately dressed. Raj found it weird, seeing her tired enough to not yet be in chameleon mode. She hadn’t been awake long enough to put the mask of her additional personalities on.

  In the corner of Raj’s eye, he saw Simon making his way through the door to the farm, note in hand.

  ‘I’ll explain on the way,’ said Mark. ‘But we’re raiding that health centre. Now.’

  This is wrong, thought Raj as he reached for his weapons. Not without McCormick’s blessing. Not without Ewan…

  I guess Mark’s the closest person we have left to a leader now.

  Wait – is Mark already staking a claim to leadership, now Ewan’s out of his way?

  Raj shuddered. He didn’t know for sure that his friends were dead, but he had already begun to accept it. After years of having faith in the unseen, his instincts drifted towards bitter life experience: that all too often, people simply walked out that door and never came home. To his left, Gracie vanished into the generator room with a set of combat clothes to change into.

  ‘But why now?’ asked Raj. ‘Why not wait and do it properly later?’

  ‘The war’s lost, Raj,’ Mark said, stuffing his pockets with shotgun shells.

  Raj could not find an answer. Mark continued.

  ‘You didn’t think it’d happen someday? This war was only ever about waiting. But I’m going to slit Lambourne’s throat before it ends. Whoever he is, whatever he’s done, he caused this. Him and Tylor. If it weren’t for them, Shannon wouldn’t have sweet-talked the guys into heading to their deaths.’

  Raj bent to the floor and picked up two of the handguns, then rummaged through the ammo sack for the right kind of bullets.

  ‘What about Shannon?’ he whispered.

  ‘Why do you care? She knocked you out for perving through her clothes.’

  ‘…Is she safe?’

  ‘What, from me? If she needs a bullet, I’ll do it when we get back. For now, she might still be a good guy.’

  Gracie reappeared, dressed for combat and adjusting her helmet to keep her hair neat. Even chameleons cared about their appearance.

  ‘You’ve got lots of weapons, Mark,’ she said, her voice still in just-got-out-of-bed mode.

  ‘I’m carrying Simon’s too. I get the feeling he won’t have much prep time.’

  Sure enough, when Simon walked back into the cellar he was followed by Lorraine. She was about as unhinged as Raj had expected, having just read the note for herself.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she barked.

  ‘Going to the health centre,’ answered Mark. ‘Thomas has gone to tell McCormick.’

  ‘You sent Thomas to comms by himself?’

  ‘Simon, come.’

  ‘Mark, you will bloody well answer me!’

  ‘Be grateful,’ Mark said. ‘It was either that or leave him alone with you and Shannon. She threatened him with a knife, you know. While you left her unsupervised.’

  Lorraine Shepherd, the matriarch of Spitfire’s Rise, had no words.

  He knows she’s feeling weak, so he’s kicking her while she’s down. The more helpless she feels, the less she can object to us leaving.

  Eleven months earlier, Mark had used his brutal but natural authority to command the Oakenfold students to abandon their most vulnerable schoolmates. He was performing the same trick again: making a decision on everyone’s behalf, and making them feel they weren’t allowed to disagree.

  Mark opened the door. Gracie went throug
h without question, and Raj followed with as much reluctance in his face as he could manage. The tunnel to the outside world was darker and damper than he remembered. It had been a while since he had left Spitfire’s Rise.

  ‘Simon, now.’

  This isn’t right. We should stand in front of the Memorial Wall before we go. We have to say ‘united by our differences’ and everything else.

  Simon ran into the tunnel, and Mark closed the exit before Lorraine could regain her composure and protest.

  It’s not right to abandon Lorraine with Shannon. Or send Thomas to comms by himself. It’s not right that Kate and the others are probably dead…

  None of this is right.

  Chapter 15

  Helplessness. It was the emotion Ewan resented above all others. Not anger, or despair, or bereavement. The inability to control situations, or the people in them, was the one feeling that made him feel subhuman.

  He had felt it a lot throughout the war, especially when people died. He had not been able to save Rachael Watts from that car crash two months earlier, when fleeing by vehicle had been their only option. Or Daniel Amopoulos three weeks ago, when he went missing partway through that raid.

  Or Alex.

  Now he was in New London’s Inner City, and he had never felt so helpless in his whole life.

  I’m going to spend a lot of time in here fighting against my own brain.

  He flinched as Charlie’s hand landed on his shoulder.

  ‘Mate,’ Charlie said, ‘it’s been half an hour. If they were going to send something else they’d have done it by now. Come and sit down.’

  Ewan tore his eyes from the shelter’s entrance. He had avoided human contact by pretending he was afraid of another podcopter strike, and had ignored Kate’s every word as she had dressed his wound with a bandage from the rucksack.

  He couldn’t think of a worse moment to socialise with new people, and had no idea how Kate, Jack and Charlie had managed to hold a conversation behind him. Just like Ewan, they had all grown up being told they weren’t good with people.

  ‘Mate–’

  ‘Yeah, Charlie. Fine.’

  Ewan took a deep breath, and left his post. As he turned, he was surprised at how much floorspace a short gentleman in his fifties had managed to claim for himself. The concrete ground within the shack must have stretched four metres long and six metres wide, hosting separate piles of clothes that must have represented beds, and a raised wooden beam that served as a table. The other Underdogs were sat around it, next to three extra faces which explained why the house was so large.

  ‘Sorry…’ Ewan said to the family with his face to the floor. ‘I must have looked really rude–’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ the gentleman interrupted, stretching out a wrinkled hand. ‘Patrick Rowland.’

  Handshakes were another part of life that Ewan had forgotten. His last handshake must have been with his dad, at the end of his first day at Oakenfold. He approached slowly, like a wild animal tempted to eat from a human’s fingers.

  ‘Ewan. Ewan West.’

  He decided to trust Patrick with physical contact, and unclenched his fist. The two shook hands and made their way to the wooden beam, where the home’s occupants were sat across the concrete floor. Among the strangers were a grey-haired lady, and two adult sons with matching physiques and bold dark hair.

  ‘My wife Ruth,’ said Patrick, ‘and my lads, Aidan and Benjamin.’

  ‘Hi guys… er, Jack Hopper, Kate Arrowsmith–’

  ‘We’ve done that bit already,’ said Jack with a smile.

  ‘Oh…’

  Ewan’s friends must have reached the same conclusion: that Nicholas Grant already knew their names and details, so there was little point keeping secrets from their protectors.

  ‘So… who are you?’ Ewan began. ‘Other than your names, I mean? What did you do back in…?’

  Bloody hell, talking to regular people is difficult. Must be out of practice.

  ‘Us? We ran a bed and breakfast in Croydon,’ began Patrick with a nostalgic smile, ‘and Benjamin became a lawyer in Twickenham. Aidan, our eldest here, got his architecture degree in Bristol and stayed there.’

  Aidan cracked a conflicted smile.

  ‘I was visiting for Dad’s birthday when the soldiers came,’ he said. ‘Maybe I was fortunate. Grant had one of these places near Bristol – used to drive past it on the way to work, wondering what it was. I guess I would’ve been kept in there.’

  Ewan was surprised to see the Rowlands smiling. Despite their endless chances to be split up, both outside and inside New London, they had remained a surviving close-knit family. Patrick, Ruth, Aidan and Benjamin. Perfect examples of bold British resilience.

  ‘But the dream was to move up north,’ said Ruth, ‘to Yorkshire somewhere. The weather’s awful but the people are so friendly. I wanted to open a fish and chip shop in Whitby.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Aidan with a laugh, ‘somewhere between the other hundred!’

  ‘The other hundred did just fine, and we would have done as well. But either way, it looks like the boys did better than us. An architect and a lawyer… just fancy that.’

  She glanced across at each of her sons with a warm smile. Ewan hated boasters, but was willing to tolerate Ruth’s pride. There couldn’t have been much to show off about inside the Inner City.

  ‘In retrospect, though,’ said Benjamin, ‘I wish I’d done something that involved practical skills. Fat lot of good lawyers are to anyone now! Anyway… I think we’ve been polite long enough.’

  Benjamin rested both of his elbows on the wooden beam and leaned forwards, perhaps trying to look imposing.

  Ha, good luck with that, you overeducated smart-arse. I’m the one with kills to my name.

  ‘If you’re staying here,’ Benjamin continued, ‘we need to know where you’ve come from, and what kind of risk you pose to us.’

  The youngest son received disapproving looks from his family, but Ewan understood. He was actually surprised that the Rowlands had gone for so long without asking.

  ‘Alright Benjamin, let’s not be rude.’

  ‘I’m twenty-six, Mum. You can call me Ben. They come here armed to the teeth, a load of people die along the way, and Charlie says they’ve fought a guerrilla-style war against Grant. From outside. There’s a story here, and I want to know it.’

  His command made Ewan uncomfortable, as all commands did, but he hid it well. And he could empathise with Benjamin’s wariness. The man was just protecting his own family, like Ewan had once tried to do.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘It started on Takeover Day, obviously. More than thirty of us ended up in the same building, and now it’s the last place on Earth we can call home. A load of us came from the same school – us four and a bunch of others.’

  ‘Which school was that?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘Oakenfold. Over in Harpenden.’

  ‘Ah, that’s rather far from Croydon. Private school or comprehensive?’

  A short silence.

  Who’s going to say it first?

  ‘A special school,’ said Charlie. ‘And it was awesome.’

  ‘Oh. That’s interesting.’

  Ewan watched the Rowlands’ faces. Even in New London the reactions were identical to the old days, and Ewan had not missed them one bit. Expressions of silent concern. Attempts to look at each other, for ideas on the most apologetic way to respond. Sympathetic smiles of pity.

  Ewan had a hundred sarcastic answers to choose from, but kept silent. This family had let them into their home, after all.

  ‘You were telling us your story?’ asked Benjamin.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ewan continued, ‘we’re the Underdogs. The Underdogs of Spitfire’s Rise.’

  Ewan detailed the history of Dr McCormick and his band of countryside rebels, to an audience who had not imagined a resistance one hour earlier. He had to leave out everything Nicholas Grant didn’t already know: the location of Spitfire’s Ris
e, any details about their route to New London, how much his father had stolen from the barracks – not least the thermal blackout technology that had kept their location hidden for so long. But he surprised himself with the mood and atmosphere he could produce with so many missing pieces.

  With harsh detail but warm affection, he told the story of the thirty-two free men, women and children (thirty-three including Shannon, but he kept her secret too), who survived the macabre horror of Takeover Day, sheltered under one roof and decided to become more than survivors.

  He told the Rowlands how the original plan was to strike a couple of blows at Grant, and give the world’s most invulnerable dictator a nice middle finger before they were found and slaughtered. But they had evolved from runaways to survivors, from survivors to Underdogs, and vowed one day to become liberators.

  The more Ewan told the story, the more he enjoyed it. He realised how much he loved the idea of a load of special ed teens forming a miniature army that might one day set a nation free. Before the end he found Charlie and Jack hanging on his every word. Kate, however, had stood herself in the doorway, visibly upset and fiddling her nerves away with the rucksack straps.

  It surprised him how little the Rowlands knew about their own captivity. They told him the rumours that had been rampant in the weeks after Takeover Day. That Britain’s own armed forces had got tired of both wars and taken the public hostage. Or there was a disease sprouting in the countryside and the population had to be quarantined. Or the Americans had marched in and taken control before Grant made the country too powerful. And so on.

  They had never heard of Oliver Roth, and gave no reaction when Ewan told them Keith Tylor was dead. They hadn’t even known the uniformed soldiers weren’t human. Clone technology was still nothing more than science-fiction to them.

  When he finished, Ewan gave the family a moment to collect themselves. It must have been a hell of a lot to learn all at once.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said after the silence had lingered long enough, ‘I’m guessing your architect’s looked at the walls?’

  ‘It was the first thing I did,’ said Aidan with a sigh. ‘Well, after the first week was over and the crowds had stopped flooding against them. They seemed to think if they pushed hard enough they’d fall over or something. But it’s concrete. I’m guessing reinforced. Which begs the other obvious question…’