The Dark Wild

by Piers Torday

  There is no sign of Polly. The glass roof outside, covering Dad’s lab, is smooth and steeply angled – you would slide straight off if you tried to walk on it.

  ‘Where she hiding?’ says the girl, thrusting her electric prod under my chin.

  I shake my head fast, frightened.

  ‘Now look here, young … I don’t know your name, but you can’t just, you know …’ says Dad, waving his big hands about.

  ‘My name is Aida True, and you can shush your noise, old man,’ says the girl. In a single movement she swings the prod across, tapping him lightly on the hand. It looks like nothing, but there’s a flash of blue light and Dad cries out, falling back on to the bed clutching his hand.

  *Dad!* I shout in my head.

  Aida True sticks the prod under my chin again. ‘You know where the Iris is?’

  I don’t even know what it is, never mind where it is.

  The girl sighs. When she speaks next, it’s like she isn’t just talking to me, or Dad, but to the whole room. ‘You have to understand, we need the Iris. Why you think Facto come here in that big shiny helicopter? Because right now, the Iris – it the most valuable thing in the world. Course they want it.’ She strokes the stag’s flank with the prod, and he shivers. ‘We all want it. Even this crazy horse with horns wants it.’

  ‘But why though?’ mumbles Dad from the bed, rubbing his hand.

  Aida’s eyes narrow. ‘I told you already. It the most valuable thing in the world. That good enough for you?’ She turns to her gang. ‘So what you waiting for? A magic trick? Find her! Find the Iris! Now!’

  123 and Eric push past me and the stag, brandishing torches and prods, opening drawers and emptying cupboards. Polly isn’t hiding in them or under the bed, and nor do they find anything that they think could be the Iris. Then 123 crouches down, the torch held between his teeth, fiddling with something below the windowsill.

  Something tied to the radiator.

  He jerks a line in through the window, that flays and knocks over more plants with its thick knots.

  A rope – wound together from garden creepers.

  Polly’s gone.

  Then the girl and her gang are too – as quickly as they blew in, they blow out again.

  She pushes past me, Dad and the stag in the bedroom doorway, the others tumbling after her back down the stairs and out through the splintered door frame.

  I look at the empty room for a moment – Polly’s plants. The irises. Aida True seemed to know what the Iris was and want it just as bad as Mr Stone – whatever it is. Whoever her gang were, they also knew Polly was here.

  And now they’ve gone to get her.

  Not waiting for the stag this time, I’m racing after them, yelling, ‘No!’ at the top of my voice.

  But I’m too late.

  Outside, in our Culdee Sack – the street that ends in a curve of smart houses, gates and a small circle of grass in the centre – the girl is already on her bike, alongside the rest of her gang.

  In the neon glow of the street lights, I can see these machines are gleaming silver with a tiny engine on the back wheel. A single, massive headlamp sits between the bars, like a silver eye. As the others rev their engines, waiting, she twists the handlebars towards her. A line of green light shoots round the frame, pulsing, and the machine begins to vibrate.

  Aida turns to look at me. Her eyes burn fierce with light nearly as bright as the bike glowing and shimmering beneath her. Her cheeks glow with anger. But for a moment our eyes lock – and she is just another skinny kid like me. Is that something else I see in her expression? Is that …?

  I hurtle down the drive and lunge for her hand –

  But the engine growls, her wheels are spinning on the cracked tarmac, and just as I reach out, they are gone. Any chance of finding Polly or the Iris disappears up the street in a cloud of silver.

  They have left something behind though – in my hand. A grubby fingerless mitten.

  One of Aida’s gloves. It came off when I lunged for her.

  What use is a glove? I turn it over, peering at it in the orange street light, hoping to find some clue. But there is no Iris to be seen in the pattern, nothing that tells me where Polly or they might have gone.

  I stand like this for who knows how long, staring at the glove in my hand. Only the smallest rustle from behind makes me turn around.

  At first, in the dark, I don’t see them all. Just gleams of eyes and claws in the open door, or a strange-shaped shadow on the roof. They are all there though.

  Dad, with my wild.

  Pine martens leap along the roofline, otters perch on the windowsill and rabbits sit bolt upright on our front steps. Dad stands watching from the doorway next to the stag, whose horns are silhouetted by the hall light, while a mouse dances sadly between his feet. And sitting alone, in the middle of the drive, watching me with that look of his, Polly’s toad.

  They don’t say anything. They just watch.

  I squeeze the glove tight, and close my eyes for a moment. I know what has to happen now.

  For a few special days, I had it all back. The smell of the garden, the feel of my bed, Dad looking over my shoulder – but now everything has gone. The helicopter’s blades have blown everything apart. My best ever friend is a secret rebel, now on the run from Facto and a bike gang, with apparently the most valuable thing in the world.

  Whatever that is.

  I turn to my wild. *I’m sorry …*

  But the stag stops me before I can say any more. *What are you most sorry for? Finding us a cure or saving us from the men who wanted to kill us?*

  Everything. I wanted to save everyone, but just seem to have made things worse.

  *I don’t want to leave you all –*

  *I will keep this wild safe until you return. Have no fear of that.*

  Dad steps forward, a shaggy silhouette. *You don’t, you know, have to go, Kes. I’m sure your friend can look after herself …*

  *In a city she’s never been to? With both Facto and an armed gang after her?*

  He raises his hands. *I’m sorry. You’re doing the right thing. Find your friend. Find this Iris whatchamacallit. Just make sure you do before Mr Stone returns here.*

  *But what if he shouldn’t have the Iris either?*

  He gives me a big hug and I feel safe again for a moment. *Let’s cross that bridge, eh? The stag and I will protect the wild here for now. And I’m sure you’ll be back here in no time – we can make a plan to outwit Facto then.’

  He pats me on both shoulders at once, which is what he always does when he’s expecting me to believe complete rubbish like that. It makes no difference though.

  I guess that Polly ran away because she wanted to keep the Iris safe from Facto, like she promised her parents. But now – she could be anywhere, in a city she doesn’t know.

  She’s my friend. I brought her here. She’s lost her cat, her parents. She didn’t know any of this would happen.

  It’s just – I don’t want to leave everyone again, it’s too soon.

  Then there is a jaw biting on my hand so soft that I barely notice it at first. Wolf-Cub’s amber eyes gaze up at me, his ears laid flat back. *I will come with you, Wildness. You will not be alone. You probably can’t even smell where the strange she-child on her metal horse has gone, but I can follow her track easily!*

  There’s no way I’m going to find Polly and her Iris before a gang on electric bikes do. But perhaps if I can find them … *How?*

  *By her false paw.*

  He sniffs the little mitten eagerly all over. *And I can see in the dark better than anyone.*

  I hang my head. I don’t want this. I want to stay. But … I take a look at my new family one last time. I glance back at our house, the black windows glinting with reflected eyes, and, taking one last gasp of the air floating over from the garden, say goodbye to my wild.

  *Do exactly as Dad says. We have made enough cure to see you through for the next few days at least.* I meet the toad’
s stare. *I will be back as soon as we have found Polly, I promise. And I will find her.*

  Then, flinging my arms around first Dad, and then the stag’s warm neck, squeezing him tight, I turn and head down the drive, where the wolf-cub is waiting.

  *And where exactly do you think you’re going, soldier?* chirps a voice from my shoulder. The General’s shell looks a very angry orange in the streetlight.

  *It might be very dangerous, General –*

  *Exactly what I’m hoping!*

  *But what if the stag needs you?*

  *He is big and wise enough to look after himself.*

  I feel stung. *Are you saying I’m not?*

  There is a long pause.

  *Well –* I sigh – *at least try to keep out of sight.*

  So he crawls into my pocket as I follow the wolf-cub out of the drive and up the deserted street of the Culdee Sack. Ahead, I can hear the angry buzz of a helicopter somewhere in the city.

  As Wolf-Cub sniffs the ground more and more, every paving stone and lamp post and weed, he begins to stride faster and faster. And then, as the street lights grow further and further apart, we find ourselves running into the unlit shadows of the city that I don’t know any more. The cub begins to pick up speed, and I’m following behind with the General, as fast as I can, as we run into the dark.

  Hold on, Polly, I say, clutching the glove tight. We’re coming.

  As I run after the wolf-cub, the night sky slowly turns pale grey over our heads. But the light is still dim, filtered through even more clouds than there were yesterday, like they’re breeding.

  Cameras perch like eagles on the corners of buildings. The wolf-cub and I dart under trees and press ourselves along walls to avoid their scan.

  I have to pause for breath on the bridge over the Ams that leads back into the centre of Premium, as curls of fog drift up off the water, hiding us from view. For a moment I stand and lean on the stone wall, gasping for air. Further up the river, I can just make out four black chimneys poking up above the mist.

  The Four Towers of Facto, where the helicopter went to. Every now and then we can hear the far off whirr of another one, hidden by clouds. I try not to think about Polly and where she might be, but it’s hard. Is she still in these streets, cold and shivering somewhere? Has she gone to some secret hiding place her parents told her about?

  I know if she was here she would tell me to stop worrying, that she’s fine, but somehow … I turn to look behind us instead, where the heavy river flows past our lawn and out to the sea. On the distant horizon, where water meets water, there is a row of nine giant white blurs, low clouds that shimmer into concrete and steel as the sun comes up over them.

  The Amsguard is completed.

  *We must not delay, Wildness!* mutters the wolf-cub, nipping at my hand. *The scent will only hold for so long.*

  I blank towers and Amsguards from my mind, turning away to follow the cub into our city’s Central District. He pays no attention to the glass skyscrapers or huge shop windows, but keeps his snout hovering just above the ground, weaving in and out of the road.

  He is no longer running as fast as he was, but I am dripping with sweat trying to keep up.

  *Barely half a moon away from the battlefield and already the mighty warrior grows soft and fat,* says the General, lounging between his ears.

  *And you will be soft and squashed under my paw if you do not watch it, Cockroach!* snaps the cub. Although he is beginning to look less like a cub by the day. I don’t want to admit it, but he’s changing. He’s grown bigger, even since the injury. He sounds less like a cub too, snapping at us all more than he used to.

  *My father will be avenged,* he said, after he left his pack to follow us from the Ring of Trees. I know one day he will have to leave us again to join his fellow Guardians, his fearsome mother – I shiver and pull my coat in tight.

  Nothing feels like it used to. It feels strange to be with the wolf-cub and the General but not the stag or the rest of my wild. I keep telling myself that they will be safe, and that I will return to them soon, but the more I do, the less I believe it.

  As we follow the trail, Premium comes to life around us. The sunset curfew must have ended. Lorries and cars fill the potholed roads, puffing smoke into the air. The further we head away from home, the more entangled the city seems. The broad streets of the centre narrow into sooty lanes, twisting and crossing over one another, like the roots of a massive weed.

  *I do not like this city of yours,* the wolf-cub moans, his tongue hanging out. *It is too hot and there are no fish-paths anywhere to cool our faces in.*

  If there were ever any fish-paths here, they’ve been covered over with tarmac and now – as we emerge blinking from the shade of an alley – railway tracks. We race above them along the top of an embankment.

  Far down below, a cargo train, the giant yellow F for Facto plastered across every car, thunders along the track towards a huge glass-roofed station up ahead. I know what will be on board. Everyone here lives on formula, but it’s made in the factories of Mons, the northern city, and delivered here by rail.

  We plough straight on to the land beyond the station.

  The land that lies under the swooping white concrete ramp we took to enter Premium just over a week ago. The traffic roars along the road so fast the pillars beneath hum with the vibration. We are both knackered, the cub limping in the shade of the underpass, his bandage beginning to peel off his side. Only a week ago he was lying on Dad’s operating table.

  We stop for moment by an old hoarding fastened to a pillar. I lean against it, flicking sweat off my forehead. The hoarding is covered with curling paper sheets. Pictures of missing cats and dogs beneath phone numbers.

  When the virus first came to the city, followed by the cullers trying to eradicate it, people didn’t know where all their pets had gone. We know now why all the animals disappeared from the city – it wasn’t just the virus. Facto’s own cullers did their job all too well.

  But the wolf-cub is pawing me again. *There is no time to lose, Wildness, if you want to find that she-child. There are many other scents here … I have not hunted like this before.* He hangs his head. *I am losing the trail.*

  Still heaving for breath, I bend over, resting my hands on my thighs. *I thought you were the best ever at hunting?*

  He looks away, his ears standing up straight. *I don’t talk like that any more,* he mutters.

  *Like how?*

  *Like a stupid cub,* he snarls, and perhaps it is my imagination, but it sounds like he is trying to make his voice sound deeper than it is. *I faced death and lived, Wildness. I am a wolf now. Just like my father. One day I will rejoin my pack and then you shall see.*

  He does not lower his back or flatten his ears like he normally does, but stands tall, not looking away.

  I am the one who blinks first. *OK. Lead on, Wolf.*

  He bounds ahead in silence, and I stagger after him, trying not to notice the prickles of crossness across my own neck. I can talk to him how I like. I am his Wildness, aren’t I? I command all creatures; that’s what he said.

  But as we head into the dazzling light beyond, those thoughts fade away into the midday shadows behind us.

  Because spread out ahead of us is a whole new city – on the edge of the other one. Not the city of glass skyscrapers, smart houses and shop windows behind us, but one of shacks, caravans and tents.

  The whole place stinks – a hot, rotten, sweet smell that makes me gag.

  *Something smells very delicious indeed,* says the General, who is now poking out of my shirt pocket and tasting the aroma.

  Half the world flooded. The other half dried up. The rest of the world came to our Island and our four cities. It looks like we ran out of room.

  The campsite city is linked together by overflowing washing lines and kept apart by fences of corrugated iron. There is rubbish everywhere, lining the dusty track ahead in piles of plastic bags as high as hedges. And people. More people than rubbish
, but only just.

  People in flip-flops dragging carts behind them piled high with junk, half-naked children ducking in and out between their legs. Some have green bins strapped to their backs, stopping every now and then to pick something up from the ground.

  The noise is deafening. Yelling at the people from every side are men in fluorescent vests, trying to sell what looks like salvaged trash. Pots and pans, shoes, plastic bottles – who knows what you can buy here?

  The biggest queue is for a man with a giant keg that has only the word ‘PINK’ spray-painted down the side. Staying out of sight in the shadows, I take a closer look at him – bald and unshaven, with a battered clock face dangling round his neck on a chain. Every time someone with a bucket on their head comes up he grins at them, and a gold tooth catches the sun. He checks the clock hanging round his neck, the customer drops the bucket, presses a few notes into his hand and he fills their bucket with the liquid in the keg, something that steams and burns my nostrils even from here.

  But before I can see more, the wolf-cub has just dived straight into the crowd. I plunge in after him, and nobody pays any attention. It’s like they’re sleepwalking as we wind and bump between them.

  For how much longer they won’t notice is a different matter. As I squeeze between two people dragging a cart behind them, piled high with rusting washing machines tied down with ropes, the bright light disappears into shadow.

  I look up.

  In the centre of the camp a mountain rises up from the forest of dusty heads and flimsy roofs surrounding it. A mountain of rubbish.

  One scarred with the empty caves of dead fridges, wires trailing out like creepers. Chair legs stick up like broken trees among barbed-wire bushes. Here and there, white puffs of gas rise up from the mess. The mountain is dotted with climbers, spread all over the slopes with their green bins.

  It’s as we’re staring, lost in wondering where so much rubbish came from, that I hear the voice.

  ‘Wolf.’

  Not an animal voice, a human voice.

  I turn around. The man with the clock round his neck. His sharp eyes, in between checking his clock and counting his money, have spotted us. He points at us with his glinting smile.