Man vs. Beast

by Robert Muchamore

  James watched as his sister artfully cut a single strand of wire. It left a gap of about half a metre at one corner of the ditch, right next to the embankment.

  ‘We’ll get a bit muddy, but we can squeeze through,’ Lauren said.

  She snipped off the loose strand of wire, before bending it up and hurling it into the trees. ‘Nobody comes out here unless one of the ditches dams up, they won’t miss one strand of wire.’

  James agreed with his sister’s logic, but wasn’t in any mood to go around throwing compliments at her.

  Squeezing under the wire was a palaver that involved going through one at a time and feeding their packs through afterwards. James was broader than the two girls and ended up with mud streaked across the back of his tracksuit.

  Once they were through, it would have been quicker to climb out of the ditch and run along the embankment, but they didn’t want to risk being caught on video so they carried on wading, keeping as low as possible with the white of their faces shielded by baseball caps.

  Seventy metres beyond the wire, Lauren leaned against the embankment and quickly flashed the powerful beam of her head lamp. It caught one side of a concrete shed before she ducked down again.

  ‘Party time,’ Lauren grinned.

  The ditch here was shallower than where they’d dropped in. The three youngsters stepped out and set off at a run towards the shed, with globs of mud sliding down the outside of their waders. When they reached the shed wall, Lauren and Bethany pushed the straps holding the waders up off their shoulders.

  ‘Get them off and put your trainers back on, James,’ Lauren ordered.

  ‘What’s the point?’ James asked. ‘We’ve got to go back the way we came.’

  ‘No we don’t,’ Lauren explained. ‘There’s only ever one training instructor on duty at night. As soon as they see that the cameras have stopped working, they’ll come down here. We’ll run in the other direction to the main training building. We can hand the packages across to the trainees, then we’ll sprint out via the front gate.’

  ‘What about the alarm?’ James asked.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Bethany said. ‘They’ll find out that it went off eventually, but the instructor won’t be anywhere near the control room to hear it.’

  ‘Doesn’t it sound anywhere else, like the security console on the main gate?’

  Lauren shrugged. ‘Not as far as we know.’

  James shook his head as he kicked the waders away and went into the pack for his trainers. ‘You mean you don’t know for sure?’

  ‘It’s pretty unlikely, James. I mean, why would anyone on the main gate need to know if an alarm went off at the training compound?’

  ‘But you’re not sure,’ James hissed furiously. ‘You guaranteed that we wouldn’t get caught!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lauren shrugged, ‘but I always knew there was some risk. I mean, I only said about the guarantee to make sure you came.’

  The realisation that Lauren had lied on top of the blackmail made James furious. He had his trainers on now and he stood up and faced his sister off. ‘I’ll get you back for this. You’re out of order.’

  ‘If you do I’ll tell Kerry,’ Lauren grinned back.

  ‘You swore on our mum’s grave.’

  ‘Tell Kerry what?’ Bethany asked.

  James and Lauren both snapped at her, ‘Mind your own.’

  Bethany knew James didn’t like her, but she was annoyed with Lauren. ‘We’re in the middle of the training compound here,’ she said acidly. ‘Can’t you leave the family feud till we’re back in our rooms?’

  She had a point.

  ‘OK,’ Lauren said, looking at Bethany, ‘you put all the waders in the big pack. James, there’s a plastic box with electrical tools in the front compartment of your pack. Grab that and come with me.’

  James walked around to the front of the shed, happy at least that he hadn’t landed the filthy task of cramming three slippery sets of waders into the pack. The shed door was aluminium with a yellow and black warning sign riveted to it.

  ELECTRICAL HAZARD

  640 VOLTS

  QUALIFIED PERSONNEL ONLY

  DANGER OF DEATH

  ‘You said this was just a fuse box,’ James gasped.

  Lauren shrugged. ‘There must be some other stuff in there, but I can handle it.’

  James grinned with relief when he spotted the heavy duty padlock on the door. ‘We haven’t got our lock guns,’ he said. ‘And there’s no way we’ll manage to crack that monster off.’

  ‘Don’t need to,’ Lauren said, as she slid a key out of her jeans and pushed it into the padlock. ‘Good old Martin. It was in the same filing cabinet as the plans for the electrical system.’

  They stepped into the shed, which hummed with the sound from a washing-machine-sized transformer. A panel mounted on the wall opposite had a dozen rows of switches with fuses lined up underneath.

  ‘Open the box – I need an electrical screwdriver.’

  James’ fingers were numb from the water in the ditch and he fumbled as he peeled back the plastic lid.

  ‘Which one’s the electrical screwdriver?’

  Lauren shot him a contemptuous look as she snatched it. ‘The one that looks like a screwdriver, maybe? Point your light at me and keep your head still while I work.’

  She looked along the rows of switches. Each one controlled a different system inside the training compound and they were labelled with strips of faded Dymo tape: SHOWERS, LIGHTS (INT), LIGHTS (EXT FLOOD), LIGHTS (ASSAULT COURSE), WATER HEATER, GOLF BUGGY (RECHARGING). The circuit labelled CCTV was halfway along the third row.

  ‘Here we go,’ Lauren grinned. ‘I’ll replace the fuse with one that’s blown. When the instructor comes in here, it’ll look like the circuit fused because of a power surge or something.’ She leaned in close and read the writing on the fuse casing. ‘Fifteen amp, size C.’

  Lauren reached into the box of electrical stuff and grabbed a chunky fuse with a green label. She flipped the main switch for the CCTV circuit to the off position before using the screwdriver to pop out the working fuse. After replacing it with the pre-blown fuse, she turned the circuit back on. A red warning light came to life, confirming that the fuse was a dud.

  ‘OK,’ Lauren said, grinning confidently. ‘So far so good.’

  They both flipped off their head lamps as they stepped outside. Bethany’s hands and arms were covered in mud, a result of her struggle to get the waders back into James’ pack.

  ‘All done?’ she asked.

  Lauren nodded as she looked at her watch. ‘Two thirty-one a.m.,’ she said. ‘I reckon we’ve got about ten minutes before the instructor gets here to replace that fuse.’

  4. FEAST

  Basic training is hell. A trainee can quit at any time, but if you want to become a CHERUB agent you have to get through it. Your brain and body are pushed to breaking point by instructors who don’t care if you’re crying, injured, hungry or sick. All they care about is toughening kids up so they can cope with all the bad stuff that might happen on an undercover mission. And if you make it through the one-hundred-day course, you’ll be able to cope with just about anything.

  James had an emotional flashback as he peeked between branches at the windowless concrete building where CHERUB trainees slept. He remembered himself two years earlier, huddled inside after an exhausting day of training, with the springs from the dank mattress jarring his back and rain plinking off the corrugated metal roof.

  ‘I didn’t see any instructor come out,’ Lauren whispered.

  Bethany shrugged. ‘They must have noticed all the cameras going off.’

  The threesome crept around behind the bushes until they came to the building’s double-doored entrance. Lauren flicked her head lamp on and off, startling a bony-legged ten-year-old, who was being made to spend the night standing on one leg, back to the wall and hands on head. Trainees received punishments like this for the tiniest breach of the rules, sometimes even for no
reason at all.

  ‘Who’s out there?’ the girl asked, in a plummy voice that hinted at a rich background.

  ‘Natasha?’ Lauren asked, stepping out of cover.

  ‘Get back,’ Natasha squealed desperately. ‘Mr Large will be out here at any second, there’s a video camera pointing right at us.’

  ‘No there isn’t,’ Lauren grinned, as James and Bethany followed her out of the bushes. ‘We fused the circuit. He’s probably out trying to fix it.’

  As soon as Natasha heard that the cameras were off, she took her hands off her head, put her foot down and began to massage her aching calf.

  ‘Owww,’ she moaned. ‘It’s so painful standing on one leg like that. But I’m telling you, Large is still in there. I would have seen if he’d gone out.’

  ‘Dammit,’ Lauren said.

  ‘How can he just be sitting there if we’ve blown up the cameras?’ Bethany asked.

  ‘Unless he’s nodded off,’ James said.

  ‘What are you lot doing here?’ Natasha asked.

  ‘Rescue mission,’ Lauren smiled. ‘At least, we can’t rescue you, but we brought you all extra food and dry underwear to cheer you up.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ Natasha said, bouncing cheerfully on the balls of her bare feet. ‘You guys are so brave!’

  Bethany went into her pack and pulled out a package wrapped in a cellophane freezer bag.

  ‘Three Snickers bars, a flapjack, two cartons of orange juice and two fresh sets of underwear,’ she explained. ‘We’ve stripped as much packaging off the food as we can, but make sure the instructors don’t catch you with anything you shouldn’t have or you’ll get punished.’

  Natasha almost burst into tears as she broke the package open and bit a massive chunk off the end of a Snickers bar.

  ‘Mmmmm,’ she said. ‘I am so starving. We spent three hours running around the assault course yesterday and all we got for dinner was that watery green soup.’

  ‘Oh god,’ James grimaced. ‘I’d forgotten all about training soup. That stuff always made me gag, no matter how hungry I was.’

  James, Lauren and Bethany looked at each other as Natasha started on her flapjack.

  ‘What can we do if Large is still in there?’ James asked.

  ‘Well, he has to be asleep,’ Lauren said.

  ‘But we were planning for him to be on the other side of the compound,’ Bethany said. ‘He could burst out here any second.’

  Half a minute earlier, James would have been arguing to quit and run, but the emotive sight of the training building and Natasha’s ecstatic reaction to her package had changed his mind. ‘We’ve come this far,’ he said. ‘I’m up for sneaking inside if you two are.’

  Lauren and Bethany exchanged surprised looks before nodding in agreement. James opened the door of the accommodation building and crept into a gloomy corridor. The smell was straight out of his training nightmares: sweat, antiseptic and damp concrete.

  Three steps in, he came to the open door of the instructor’s lounge and craned his neck inside. Sure enough, the monstrous figure of Norman Large lay slumped across a battered sofa, with static fizzing on the six black and white monitors stacked on a desk opposite him.

  CHERUB’s nastiest employee had let himself go since the humiliation of being demoted from head training instructor the year before. He now sported a ragged beard and a dozen kilos of fat around his midriff.

  Then suddenly – ‘Not fishfingers,’ Mr Large begged, as James nervously edged backwards.

  But it was just sleeptalking and Lauren grinned as if to say, Who has nightmares about fishfingers?

  ‘Right,’ James whispered to the girls. ‘You two get in there and hand those packages out fast. If Large wakes up we’re dead.’

  The nine kids in the dormitory were aged between ten and twelve and they all slept solid, like you’d expect after sixty-three days of brutal training. James kept watch in the doorway as Lauren woke Rat, and Bethany rushed to her brother, Jake.

  The only light came from the green EXIT signs over the emergency doors. James wasn’t an especially sensitive soul, but he felt a lump in his throat as Bethany woke her little brother and pulled him into a massive hug.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Jake gasped, as Bethany pulled another ration pack out of her backpack. ‘Oh my god, is that a Snickers bar?’

  While Jake alternated between grinning at his sister, sobbing and cramming chocolate down his neck, Lauren gave Rat a shorter embrace before going around waking the other trainees and handing out the provisions.

  Within a minute, all nine trainees sat up on their beds, excitedly eating chocolate and sucking orange juice out of cartons. They seemed happier than their bruised and weary bodies gave them any right to be.

  A couple of lads who James had given maths tuition to came up and asked him for an update on all the latest campus gossip, while Lauren gathered up the cartons and wrappers so that no signs of their visit got picked up by the instructors who would inspect the room at sun-up.

  A snore came from the lounge a couple of metres from where James was standing. As he glanced around, he forgot the jubilant atmosphere and remembered how dodgy their situation was.

  ‘Come on,’ he whispered. ‘It’s not a tea party.’

  As Bethany and Jake exchanged a final hug, Lauren zipped up the pack full of litter and headed towards James. But when she turned back for a final glance at Rat, Lauren paused for a second then ran to his bed to give him a kiss.

  It was meant to be on the cheek, but Rat turned his head at the wrong moment and they ended up face to face. After a millisecond’s hesitation, staring into Rat’s sleepy brown eyes, she thought what the hell and kissed him on the lips. It didn’t last long enough to be a proper snog, but it was a lot more than kissing your auntie on the cheek.

  In fact, Lauren didn’t know exactly what it was, only that her mind was doing somersaults as she backed out of the room.

  ‘You’re gonna make a fantastic CHERUB agent, Rat,’ Lauren choked, struggling to keep the tears back. She looked at the rest of the room, trying to hide her emotional state from James as she reached the doorway. ‘And all of you are gonna make it through training,’ she added.

  James raised his hand in a wave as all the trainees thanked them for putting their necks out.

  ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down,’ James grinned. ‘Good luck.’

  After a glance into the lounge to make sure Mr Large was still asleep, James, Lauren and Bethany headed outside, exchanging a quick goodbye with Natasha before setting off at a run towards the main gate.

  ‘That was so cool,’ James grinned. ‘Large won’t get the CCTV working any time soon. How often do you get a chance to make people happy like that?’

  Bethany sounded really sad. ‘I hope Jake gets through training.’

  ‘He’ll be OK, Bethany,’ James said, sympathising with her for the first time ever.

  ‘He’s still so little, James.’

  ‘Tough as old boots though,’ James said.

  The emotional scene in the dormitory had caused a weird role reversal. James was now in charge, while Bethany was in a state and Lauren had apparently taken leave of planet earth.

  ‘I just kissed a boy – on the mouth,’ Lauren gawped, as if she could hardly believe it herself.

  James beamed at her. ‘It had to happen sooner or later.’

  Lauren tipped her head back and looked up at the stars. ‘A boy,’ she repeated, not sure whether to grin or screw up her face in disgust.

  It was only a short walk down a concrete path from the accommodation block to the front gate. James hesitated before pushing it open.

  ‘Earth to Lauren,’ he said, waving a hand in front of her face. ‘Get it together, girl. When I push this gate, the alarm goes off. Mr Large will wake up from the land of fishfingers and we’d better be well out of it.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Lauren said airily.

  The instant James rattled the gate, a klaxon sounded an
d floodlights lit up the perimeter of the compound. Deciding to put speed before stealth, he led the trio into the middle of the football fields, instead of the winding route through the trees they’d taken on the way out.

  It was a six-minute run back to the main building, flat out and more or less in a straight line. They cut around to the fire door at the rear, which Lauren had propped open with a wedge to stop it from closing on itself.

  Their trainers were sodden and they pulled them off in the stairwell before hurrying upstairs in their damp socks, with trainers hooked over their fingers. James said goodnight to the girls on the sixth-floor landing, leaving them four more flights to reach their rooms on the eighth.

  James had a weird mixture of feelings as he walked into his room. He was really annoyed about Lauren blackmailing him, even though he now realised it had all been for a good cause.

  He flung off his outer layer of clothing and crashed on to the beanbag in front of his TV, totally knackered. It was 3:06 a.m., he hadn’t slept a wink and his legs killed from all the running and wading. He had a fitness training session in less than four hours and still had to shower and put his muddy clothes in soak before he could get into bed.

  But before any of that, James needed a drink. As he crouched in front of his miniature fridge, trying to decide between Pepsi and Sprite, the phone beside his bed rang.

  Phones don’t ring at 3:06. James picked up gingerly, guessing it was Lauren or Bethany with a query about something that had happened, but the voice was much older. Soft and with a slight Scottish accent.

  ‘Hello there.’

  James’ heart warped to a million beats per minute. It was Mac, the chairman of CHERUB and most senior staff member on campus.

  ‘Oh,’ James said, faking a yawn. ‘You woke me up.’

  ‘Did I indeed?’ Dr McAfferty laughed. ‘I take it you sleepwalked the entire journey through the trees, across the training compound, into the trainees’ dormitory and back up the stairs to your room.’

  ‘You …’ James said, pounding his fist against the carpet as he realised that the shit had hit the fan.

  ‘… sat here watching the whole thing on our backup CCTV system,’ Mac said, finishing James’ sentence. ‘So I’ll be seeing you, your sister Lauren and Bethany Parker in my office at nine-thirty tomorrow morning. Is that clear?’