‘How we got in?’ asked Jack.
‘Yeah. How on Earth did you manage that?’
‘It wasn’t a bloody achievement,’ said Charlie.
‘A laser cannon,’ Ewan answered. ‘One of Grant’s big ugly weapons. But even if you had one down here, you’d still have to climb. We were on the lowest floor when we got in here and we still dropped down. This place is like a basement without stairs.’
Aidan hit his fist against their floor, and Benjamin snarled in frustration. Their older and more pragmatic parents nodded their heads in acceptance.
‘But trust me,’ said Ewan, ‘we didn’t break in here just to grow old and die.’
‘I like your optimism,’ answered Patrick, ‘but I wouldn’t waste too much energy on hope. We’ve had about two years to search for an exit and found nothing. If–’
‘Eleven months,’ interrupted Charlie. ‘Not two years.’
Patrick’s eyes widened, as did his wife and children’s, as if their guests had just granted them an extra year of life. But their expressions were confused rather than happy.
‘Are you serious?’ asked Ruth. ‘Only eleven months?’
‘Yeah, it’s April twenty-fifth,’ said Charlie. ‘Three days from my birthday if anyone cares. And I like our optimism too, especially since it’s backed up with weapons. So don’t write us off just yet.’
‘Speaking of which,’ said Benjamin, ‘I should warn you. A lot of people will be interested in that big gun. Either keep it close or keep it hidden. I mean it.’
Ewan’s eyes shot towards the far corner of the house. The minigun they had wrenched from the podcopter would be the most powerful authority tool in the Inner City. It lay in plain sight in an unsecured building, and Ewan’s experience with unreasonable people told him that anyone who really, really wanted something could find a way to get it.
He glanced at the entrance, expecting to see Kate on guard. When his eyesight landed at the empty doorway, he let out a gasp.
Just like that, Kate was missing.
Chapter 16
McCormick had lost soldiers before. Over twenty of them. But the pain never dulled. He wouldn’t let it dull, because each of their lives was worth mourning. It would be a huge betrayal of the deceased if he ever acclimatised to the pain of losing someone.
That made it all the more painful to lose five at once.
The Boys’ Brigade attic felt isolating at the best of times, even when he had company. The hall may have had a long history of hosting joyful children – not least Simon Young – but that history was far away.
Simon had not returned from Spitfire’s Rise. The logical McCormick knew the lad hadn’t had time to get there and back, but the human McCormick – the McCormick who had just lost people he loved – was afraid that something awful had happened to Simon too.
The phone rang.
It had been all McCormick had wanted, but the last thing he had expected. At least one of the strike team was still alive.
Wait, that’s the number ending in 202. The same phone that called me right after they broke in.
Is that really…
McCormick answered the phone. After a few moments of brief, flicking images, the video focused. It showed a man’s feet, staggering around on a carpeted floor.
‘Hello?’ McCormick asked, to no response.
The phone was dumped onto a kitchen worktop, fixing the camera’s view to the ceiling. The light fixtures revealed that Alex was in somebody’s house, far away from the Citadel.
‘Bandages,’ came his deep, distinct groan. ‘Come on, come on!’
‘Alex!’ McCormick barked.
Clatters sounded across the kitchen floor, from objects thrown around in frustration.
They won’t have bandages, McCormick thought. They’ll have two-inch plasters and a cute pair of miniature scissors. Good for a five-year-old’s grazed knees, but not for gunshot wounds.
‘Alex, are you OK? Kate said you were shot in the shoul–’
‘Not beaten yet,’ Alex yelled to his surroundings. ‘You must have had clothes…’
The image went blurry again as Alex grabbed the phone and dashed up the stairs. It stabilised again moments later, as he took a moment to balance it vertically on a bedside table.
McCormick finally saw his friend onscreen, staggering to a wardrobe at the back of the room. There was a hole in the back of his combat gear and a large pool of blood coagulating around his back. The force of his arm almost ripped the cupboard door from its hinges, but only on the third time he reached for it. His coordination must have dripped away with his blood.
McCormick was overcome with a sense of powerlessness. Alex was visible, audible, but unreachable. He could die onscreen with McCormick miles away in a dark attic.
Alex sat down on the bed with an armful of clothes, finally facing the phone, and removed his shirt. He winced in obvious pain as it slid over both sides of the bullet wound, and started to wrap a long-sleeved shirt around his neck and armpit.
‘Hi sir,’ his voice gasped through the phone speakers.
‘Are you OK?’ McCormick asked, his voice wobbling. ‘Talk to me.’
‘I’m alive,’ said Alex. ‘Somehow. Got out and hiding in the next village. I’ve lost some bl… quite a lot…’
‘Slow down, Alex. Nice, relaxed breaths. Now–’
‘You take nice relaxed breaths, you old fart. I’m the one who needs blood… it’s the one thing you can’t scavenge in the countryside…’
Even through a phone screen, McCormick could tell the knot in the makeshift bandage was an ugly one. But it held. Alex reached for shirt number two and repeated the process, clenching his teeth as he compacted his wound tighter. McCormick felt a weight in his stomach, feeling the pain of his friend from miles away.
‘You sound surprised to hear from me…’ Alex moaned.
‘Yes. Kate told me you were cornered and unarmed.’
‘I was trapped in the clone factory control room. Thankfully I’d already killed three clones on my way in. Their leftover weapons held more than enough bullets. I killed a few guards at the Floor Z exit, a few more at the water… argh…’
He seemed to struggle with the second knot far more than the first.
‘Alex?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Alex,’ McCormick boomed, loud enough to worry about being heard outside the comms unit. ‘I need you to be honest. No comic exaggeration now. How are you really holding out?’
‘Weaker than strawberry wine… but I’ll be OK if I stay awake. I’ve got water… these guys have some bottled stuff left in the fridge. So what happened to the others?’
McCormick couldn’t find the words. His silence was enough of an answer.
‘Ah, crap.’
‘I haven’t heard from them in an hour,’ McCormick said with a sigh. ‘They were trying to reach the exit.’
‘So they could be alive, right?’
‘Let’s talk about getting you home.’
‘Well that’s a pretty bloody clear answer. And that must be more than three minutes already. Call you back.’
The screen went blank, and McCormick was alone in the world again.
Silence took over.
Simon had still not returned, and all the worst possibilities were creeping into McCormick’s mind.
Keep the tears away. Alex says he’s calling back.
It took several lonely minutes, but Alex did call again. When he did, he was lying down on the bed.
‘Get up, Alex,’ said McCormick. ‘If you fall asleep you’re not waking up again.’
‘By all rights I should be dead already,’ the figure on the bed mumbled. ‘I only got out because the others were pinned down. Five bullets left now… what’s the point in a telescopic handgun if you’ve only got five bullets?’
Alex, for once in your life just bloody listen to me. Get up.
‘I think there are arteries in our shoulders,’ Alex continued slowly, as if drun
k. ‘But the bullet must have missed them. Ewan says there’s no such thing as luck… Raj says the Big Guy answers his prayers… and I’ve gone through my life thinking that sometimes crap just happens. I don’t know which one of us is right anymore.’
‘We’ll talk about it at home,’ said McCormick. ‘Don’t give up. You made it this far.’
Alex laughed his way into a cough.
‘Me give up? You never met my dad. Well, my trainer… I was never allowed to call him Dad in the dojang. I can hear his bloody voice now, barking the same stuff about fighting through the pain. I was raised on a diet of martial arts and shouting. There’s a massive black guy probably ruling the roost in New Brighton right now, but in a way he’s still here with me. Wherever I go, the moral of every story is still “don’t lose”. Dean Ginelli… my father, but mainly my taekwondo coach.’
Are you talking about him to keep yourself awake, or is this your vulnerability finally coming out?
The vulnerability in Alex had always been there, and McCormick had always recognised it. The man had disguised it well: he had talked about his childhood years as ‘the only black kid my side of Brighton’ like it was a badge of honour rather than a source of isolation, and claimed that his lone wolf approach to missions was due to his own skill rather than any difficulty with teamwork. He expressed pride in being one of the last surviving ‘normal’ Underdogs – knowing how much it irritated the Oakenfold teens – but McCormick knew it was just to disguise how isolated he felt. It must have been a taste of what the students had felt in the old days, but in reverse.
But even without them, Alex would have disguised his vulnerabilities all the same. McCormick could see their root cause clear as daylight: an upbringing of not being allowed to show weakness.
‘Dad used to tell me that people who give up don’t have souls,’ Alex finished. ‘So I’ve never given up. Do you believe in souls?’
‘I believe in people,’ answered McCormick, evasively. ‘Especially you. Now let’s get you home.’
‘Stuff that,’ said Alex, dragging himself up from the bed and out of view of the phone’s camera. He seemed to be heading for a window. ‘If they get within half a mile of the exit I’ll be in radio range. I’m staying put, and keeping an ear out.’
McCormick saw no reason to argue. Alex’s strategy was unlikely to work, but there was no point trying to convince him.
‘Well, either way,’ McCormick answered, ‘make yourself secure there. I’ll send Simon and Gracie with food and medical supplies. You’ll be home in two days.’
‘Silent Simon and Lazy Gracie? Oh, my two bestest friends? Have you run out of cool kids back home?’
Wrong joke, wrong moment. Going by Alex’s sudden silence, McCormick knew he instantly regretted his words. Alex walked back into camera shot and returned to the bed, patting a hand against the sticky, dampening clothes around his shoulder.
‘You don’t need to send anyone,’ he finished. ‘There’s enough here to keep me going. Just don’t expect me to come home.’
‘You’ll live, Alex. Make yourself believe it.’
‘Oh, you got that bit right,’ said Alex with his hand approaching the phone, his second set of three minutes almost over. ‘I’m definitely going to live. But I’m not coming home. Not without the kids.’
*
Tears from Kate were rare, but plentiful when they came. As far back as she could remember, she had internalised her frustration rather than let it show and be bullied for it. Most of the time it had worked, at a cost to herself.
That day, it was different. Kate Arrowsmith, who had gunned down innumerable clone soldiers and slaughtered a podcopter pilot with a fork, wandered through the concrete shanty town crying her eyes out.
McCormick had no idea they were alive. The survivors at home would go for days before giving up on missing friends, just as they had for Daniel, but hope in the impossible did not last forever. Kate and her friends were alone in New London: alone in a million-strong sea of other prisoners.
Kate had seen at least twenty faces she thought she recognised, but every last one belonged to a stranger. She noticed that none of the women were pregnant. This was neither a place to raise a baby, nor a world to bring one into. Her faint wish to find her grannies withered, when she noticed there were no elderly people either.
On top of the horrifying sights, the Inner City was a sensory nightmare. The sound of crowds, shouts and crying children. The scrape of concrete beneath her boots. The smell of decay, urine and body odour. The taste of them all in the back of her throat. None of her senses were left unscathed.
She was marching alongside a mass toilet. Grant’s architects had installed unisex trenches – cubed concrete buildings – at one mile intervals. Kate tried to imagine a world where she’d have to walk a mile every time she needed the loo. But even with that world surrounding her, it was still unimaginable.
‘Kate!’ came a scream from close by.
Oh no, not now…
There was no point in running. She could not afford the attention it would draw to her. Ewan’s hand gripped her shoulder as if she were a naughty child running around in a supermarket.
‘Don’t make yourself a target,’ he whispered. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not popular with the locals.’
The locals. The people they had fought for since the beginning. The faceless crowds in Kate’s imagination every night before she slept, who now hated her. With good reason too.
‘Kate, we need to get back–’
‘Get the hell off my shoulder!’ she yelled, spinning around and batting Ewan’s arm to one side. Ewan staggered and clenched his teeth: she had hit his wounded arm. She made her face visible, allowed him to see the state she was in, and awaited his stunned reaction.
She knew he had never seen her cry before. Dumbfounded, he took a tiny step forward and then back again, as if he wanted to offer a hug but didn’t know how. Kate pretended not to notice.
‘I’m looking for him,’ she muttered.
‘Who? Alex?’
‘James! Remember him?!’
‘James? Your brother from Block One?’
A nod.
‘He’s my favourite person…’ she gasped. ‘…And I owe him.’
‘I’m sorry Kate,’ Ewan continued, ‘but going after him’s a stupid idea. Needle in a haystack doesn’t even cover it.’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she cried. ‘You’ve got nobody in here! Everyone I ever loved is in New London. So are Charlie and Jack’s families. And Raj’s, Simon’s, Gracie’s, everyone’s except yours! You’ve said it before, Ewan. There’s no one you love in here, so don’t pretend you get it.’
It must have hurt him. He didn’t say anything for a few moments. Kate was caught between her desperation to apologise and her need to stand firm.
‘No,’ said Ewan, ‘but there’s three people I like. I don’t want you running off and making it two.’
‘Since when did you have a problem with running off?’ she yelled, ignorant of the prisoners now paying close attention. ‘You abandoned the Block One group on Takeover Day just like the others! Mark screamed, “Get bloody running, they’re not worth it” and you left James along with everyone else!’
‘And you stayed with him for… how long? Another two minutes, maybe?’
Kate slapped him. It was an enormous slap, filled with a year’s supply of repressed rage and delivered with strength that only a gymnast could manage. Ewan almost tumbled off his feet, and both hands clutched his reddening face.
‘I guess I deserved that,’ he gasped.
‘Normal people apologise around now.’
‘I’m not normal, Kate. You may have gathered. I’m sorry I said that, but I’m not sorry we left the Block One guys. If we hadn’t, the Underdogs wouldn’t exist. Sometimes you have to run so you can fight another day.’
‘Yeah,’ Kate finished, ‘and this is another day.’
Ewan let out a huge sigh – a delibera
tely loud one – but said nothing.
‘He’s really, really at the disabled end,’ Kate continued. ‘His whole world is different from ours. Everything new or unplanned is automatically scary. Everything bright is too bright, everything loud is too loud. And I’ve heard loads of people say, “Oh, that must be great to see the world differently!”, but you and I both know that’s a load of crap.’
‘Sometimes it is, Kate. But sometimes it’s awesome.’
Kate didn’t want to give any sign that Ewan had influenced her, but after hearing his words she found herself wondering how James would answer her last sentence if he could talk.
He had never been able to respond to her verbally, but she had always talked to him, always believed him to have understood her, and never talked about him like he wasn’t in the room. It didn’t stop him from being disabled, but he had more dignity that way.
Kate looked back on her childhood – a type of childhood not shared by anyone else she knew – and remembered her co-dependence with James. The roles they played in each other’s lives, the routines, challenges and triumphs of growing up together, the crying and the laughter shared between two people who saw the universe so differently. They’d had a sibling bond that couldn’t be severed, however profound the learning difficulties, however aggressive the meltdowns, however terrifying the epileptic seizures…
Her life was better because her brother was in it. The world was better because James was in it.
But this world…
‘For James,’ she continued, ‘autism means he’ll never show any independence. He’s the best person on Earth, but he’s not cut out for a place like this. He deserves so much more than what he gets… he’s always deserved more… I’ve spent every day and night for the last year wondering if he’s even still alive, and you’re telling me to just not bother with him!’
Kate stopped yelling, but only to catch her breath. Ewan seized his chance.
Underdogs Page 15
