The Last Wild

by Piers Torday

  That evening, I have the strangest dream.

  I’m dreaming that I’m asleep in my room at home, when there’s a faint noise at the window.

  A tap tap tapping.

  I try to ignore it, and roll over. But the noise just keeps on getting louder and louder.

  My head is pulsing – half dreaming, half awake, I toss and turn, feeling my pillows, the cold wall behind, confused as to whether I’m at home or in the Hall. The tap tapping grows louder and louder, like a drill inside my brain.

  Then, with a jolt, I wake up. I’m definitely in my room at Spectrum Hall.

  And I’m freezing.

  I’m freezing, because the window wall has a jagged hole smashed right through it, and in the moonlight I can see shards of broken glass all over the floor. Carefully I climb out of bed, trying not to step on the jagged edges, when some feathers hit me on the head.

  Dark and wet feathers, flapping round the room.

  I raise my arm over my eyes, and another thing hits me from the opposite direction. Flying in through the window, flying at me from all sides, is a flock of birds. They flap their wings manically, showering me with freezing water. In the half-light I catch a glimpse of their huge eyes and purple-grey chests.

  Pigeons. My room is full of flying varmints.

  I grab my chair, ready to bat the birds back out again, back to wherever they came from, when they start to speak – all of them talking together in a deep voice, more like singing than talking. Like a choir, direct in my head – just like the crackle from the cockroach in the Yard, or the whistle from the spider in the Doctor’s room, only this time there’s hundreds of voices speaking at once.

  And I really can hear what they’re saying.

  *Kester Jaynes, we have been sent to find you.*

  But it’s a talking choir without perfect timing. Because as most of them finish, I notice a higher-pitched voice join in late, making even less sense than the others –

  *Yes, Kester Jaynes, you have been sent to find us.*

  All their heads turn to look at me: what looks like at least a hundred pairs of eyes and beaks swivelling in my direction as if they’re synchronized. A hundred pigeons at least – in my room.

  *Kester – we know you can hear us.*

  It’s true. I can. But I don’t understand how or why.

  *You can talk to us. Let your mind go free. Let us in, Kester. Let us hear your thoughts.*

  I don’t want to let anything into my head. The pigeons flutter about in the pale blue light. It looks like most of them are dark grey, with white speckles. But there’s one white bird with pink feet and orange eyes. Ninety-nine dark grey pigeons and a single white one, the one with the high-pitched voice. The one who can’t say words properly. Like me.

  *Kester Jaynes, the time has come,* say the ninety-nine grey pigeons.

  *Kester Jaynes, have you got the time?* adds the one white pigeon.

  *You have a special gift. Only you can save us.*

  *Yes. We’ve saved a special gift, only for you.*

  I think spending so long on my own has sent me crazy. And then, without thinking, words start to form in my head.

  Yes, words – actual words.

  After six whole years, six years since I spoke a single one. And now, as if that had been yesterday, as if we were still in the hospital, as if Mum was still lying there, they come again: words.

  The last words I ever spoke were to Mum. The night that she—

  She was lying there, sort of looking at me, more looking past me, holding my hand so lightly, like just to keep hers on top of mine was an effort, her breathing rickety, her skin yellow – so all I said was –

  ‘Will you come back?’

  She shook her head ever so slightly from side to side, gave what was maybe a smile and then said – in fact whispered – so soft, so I had to lean in, smelling her breath, sweet and stale – ‘Tell Dad.’ Another pause, a big breath. ‘Tell Dad he has to tell you.’

  But she never said what.

  The pigeons peck in –

  *Kester! Kester! You must save us!*

  Mum disappears, and instead there are just words – forming, circling in my mind, pulses of sound trying to connect.

  There’s a silence. While I think, and try to speak.

  *Yes, Kester, save yourself from us!* squeaks the white pigeon.

  The other grey pigeons shake their heads and peck at the white one so much he falls off the end of my bed with a squawk.

  But it helps. I realize I can speak. Like in my head before, to the moth in my room, to the cockroach in the Yard – only it’s different this time. Because I know they’re listening, and understanding. So I say the first new words of my new talking.

  *Get out of my face, birds!*

  (No one said the words had to be polite.)

  The pigeons cock their heads. Like they don’t care what I say or think. The white one picks himself up off the floor with a shake of his head and hops back on to the end of my bed, scratching furiously at his wingpit with his beak. Ignoring him, the grey ones fill my head with their sing-song, wailing like ghosts.

  *They are coming, Kester Jaynes, they are coming. They are coming for you! Prepare yourself!*

  I want to clap my hands and clear the craziness from my head. But I don’t have to. My brain crackles once more and my eyes grow heavy, as my thoughts slide back down into the darkness. The last thing I hear is the squeak of the white pigeon.

  *Coming? I thought we were going? Oh –*

  And then flapping, and then – nothing.

  When I wake up again, it’s still night.

  There are no birds. Just the sheets on my bed, the chair in the corner. Everything in the same place it has been for the last six years, apart from the window – which is still smashed, cold air blowing in.

  Immediately everything feels different. The fuzziness in my head has cleared and the moonlight coming through the window seems somehow whiter and sharper than before. The shadows cast by the lines of the frame are crisper than I’ve ever seen.

  I don’t even feel tired. I feel awake and ready for a fight, but I don’t know who with. Which is when I realize that I didn’t just wake up again. Something woke me up, something in the room.

  A crisk-crack noise.

  I pull the duvet up tight under my chin.

  Crisking and cracking noises made by things I can’t see, things that just crawled on to the bed and up my leg. The floor is alive, and crawling all over me – on my stomach, along my legs, across my arms and up my neck. An army of leathery feet marches robotically over my chest. Tiny quivering jaws chewing air only millimetres above my skin.

  Cockroaches.

  A lot of cockroaches.

  One of them crawls right up over my duvet, right on to my bare neck, and its feathery antennae brush my lips.

  *Are you ready?* says a voice. A deep voice.

  I recognize that voice. The voice I last heard only as a metallic rattle, now getting clearer with every letter.

  *Are you ready?* it says again.

  *Am I ready for what?*

  I still can’t believe I’m talking to them. Just like that. He pauses and sighs. I didn’t know cockroaches could sigh. For a moment I wonder if he’s going to bite me. It would be a weird way to thank me for all that formula, I reckon.

  *Kester Jaynes! I thought the fool pigeons warned you we were coming. I’m not going to ask you again. Are you ready to leave?*

  I start to laugh.

  *Leave where – my bed? To sit on a chair covered with cockroaches? No thanks!*

  The cockroach shakes his antennae impatiently.

  *No, to leave this place altogether.*

  He barks some orders to the others. A ripple moves across them, and there’s some scurrying by the door.

  *Who are you? What are you doing?*

  *Silence!* snaps the cockroach. *You will learn soon enough.*

  His head turns to face the doorway, like he’s waiting for something
.

  I follow his gaze to the thin line of light underneath the steel door. There are the outlines of roaches coming and going underneath, and then they are passing an object along, from one to another, an object about the size of each insect: a white plastic rectangle. It comes closer and closer to us over the sea of shells, until I see what it is.

  A keycard – the one normally dangling from the belt of the snoring warden outside.

  Now I sit up, and some of the roaches tumble off the bed.

  But the one I saved in the Yard remains where he is on my chest. They pass the card up the line until it reaches him, and with his jaws he carefully places it down in front of me.

  A keycard covered in roach-spit. I wipe it on my sleeve and pick it up, turning it over in the blue moonlight.

  One swipe and the door is open – but then where?

  The cockroach is just staring at me. Not that he has eyes I can see. But I can feel him scanning me, looking for something.

  *Come with us now, Kester Jaynes. Or rot here forever. The choice is yours.*

  I must sit there for only a few seconds or less, staring at the keycard in my hand, but it feels like hours. The cockroach is bristling mad to get going and taps me with his jaws again.

  Like a switch has gone on inside me, a switch that I didn’t flick, I reach under the bed and pull on my trainers. Then I take them off, shake out the cockroaches and start again. Walking over to the cupboard, trying very hard not to tread on any insects – and it is very hard – I get out my things.

  My only things.

  1) Red Spectrum Hall-issue anorak.

  2) Striped Mum-and-Dad-issue scarf.

  3) Green watch.

  *Come on, come on!* barks the cockroach.

  I slip the watch on and fix the strap tight around my wrist.

  One last look around the room, a deep breath – and I slide the keycard into the slot. The lights change, and with a soft hiss the door slides open.

  I’m going home.

  *

  The cockroaches power into the corridor, filling the floor with a black flood of shells.

  The warden is fast asleep in his chair, his hands flopping in his lap, his fat chin tucked into his neck. The loop which once held the keycard dangles empty from his belt. Those cockroaches must have seriously strong jaws.

  He mutters and stirs in his sleep, making me nervously step back. I begin to realize this could actually be dangerous, but – as Mum would have said – ‘You’ve done it now.’

  There’s a movement on my shoulder. I look down.

  *How did you get there? I didn’t even—*

  *Hurry,* says the cockroach. *Not all the men who guard this place will be as idle as him.*

  In the ceiling above, the black ball begins to swivel towards us slowly.

  *In that case,* I say, *we need to do something about that camera.*

  The animal voice still sounds strange in my head.

  The cockroach barks again and there’s a flurry of noise at the other end of the corridor. The grey curtains covering the window dissolve into fragments and fly quietly towards us. It’s only as they get closer I realize they’re not bits of curtain at all.

  They’re moths – lots of moths. Just like the one from my room.

  I shrink back, but they’re gone in a moment, flying up to the round camera swivelling in the ceiling. Locking their wings together, they swarm all over it till not one bit of shiny lens is left visible.

  *How did you …?* I start, but my arm is empty. The cockroach leader is already scuttling along the floor towards the lift, the others making way for him as he does. Just before he gets to the open doors, he turns around and rears up, snapping at me.

  *What are you waiting for? Quick march!*

  First I feed him, and now he’s giving me orders. Climbing into the lift, I hold out my hand and the cockroach clambers into it. I bring him up to eye level and examine the insect again, looking at the white stripes across his back.

  *I’m going to call you the General,* I say.

  *If you wish,* he replies.

  *Do you not have a name?*

  His antennae flick quickly.

  *Just because you can speak our tongue, it does not mean you understand all our ways. Now, are you going to make this cage move or are we just going to sit here and wait for that oaf to wake up?*

  *What floor?* I ask.

  *The ground!* And he rattles off my hand on to the floor as if that was the most normal thing for a cockroach to say. As if it’s normal for cockroaches to speak anyway. I bang the green button on the side panel and the lift doors slam shut.

  Slowly we begin to clang our way down. Beneath the drone of the lift there’s a really tense silence. I fiddle with my watch. The General eyes it suspiciously.

  *What is that magical device?*

  *I’ll show you.*

  I think I still remember which button activates the camera. Angling my wrist at the cockroach, there’s a soft whirr and a flash, bouncing off the glass walls. The General flicks his head away at the sudden bright light, and all of the roaches sweep into the corner.

  *Was that entirely necessary?* he asks.

  I’m just chuffed the camera still works. I look at the picture. If you can call an out-of-focus shot of a blurred cockroach, turned half white by the flash, a picture.

  Everything is so quiet – no alarms, nothing. Perhaps it’s too quiet. I only realize exactly what I should have asked him, when we hit the ground with a bump and the roaches all swirl crazily around the floor.

  *Open the doors, please,* he commands.

  My hand hovers over the buttons. *Wait – tell me how we’re getting out of here first.*

  *You shall discover in good time.*

  *I’m not going unless you tell me.*

  He stamps several of his feet.

  *It is not permitted. You must have faith in us. We have come to take you from this place.*

  *Not until you tell me how.*

  *You’re behaving like a child!*

  *Maybe that’s because I am one!*

  The General looks like he’s ready to nip me on the ankle.

  *And perhaps it is time you stopped being one. Now. Open. The. Doors!*

  I look at him. And at the rest of his roach army, on the floor, on the walls, all over the doors, their antennae quivering, waiting – one against thousands, I guess. I press the button.

  The doors slide open and I follow the cockroaches out into the main hall.

  A red light flashes on the wall, and a whooping siren echoes in our ears. The warden must have woken up. I can hear shouts and boots thundering towards us.

  *Quickly!* urges the General as we scramble out towards the Yard. I have to run as fast as I can to keep up with the insects scurrying ahead. We hurry through the darkness, trying as best we can to avoid the roaming searchlights. The alarm, much louder out here, shudders in my head. I follow the insects round to my corner, where I first heard the cockroach. They start to disappear, streaming straight into the drain, like it’s swallowing them up.

  *Chop chop!* says the General, suddenly on my arm. I’ve never looked at the drain properly before now. It’s a badly dug hole in the ground – not a me-sized hole: an insect-sized hole.

  *You are joking, right?*

  *It’s our only way out.*

  I kneel down and the cockroach jumps off my arm. I feel the edges. Perhaps if I could make them a bit wider …

  *You have to hurry.*

  I kick at the sides of the hole, and some earth tumbles down on top of the stream of roaches still pouring in.

  *Hey – look out!* calls a roach voice from down below.

  Sitting on the side, I try to get my legs in. It’s a very tight fit, but with a bit of pushing I manage it as far as my waist. I can’t see what lies below, or feel anything except my legs thrashing about in empty air. The stink coming up from the pipe below is something else.

  The General is not being helpful.

  *We thoug
ht you were thinner.*

  I place my hands against the sides and push as hard as I can, my nails digging into the muddy ground around the hole. But I don’t move at all.

  *You have to get in the tunnel. Otherwise our plan will not work.*

  *Do you have a Plan B?*

  He cocks his head and chews for a moment.

  *What’s a Plan B?*

  I shake my head and keep on pushing.

  ‘JAYNES!’

  Five wardens skid to a halt in a circle around me, torches flying. Gloved hands grab me by the wrist, and they grunt buckets of sweat trying to heave me out. I kick my legs one last time, and chunks of earth tumble away into the tunnel below, with me following, slipping out of the wardens’ hands like a bar of soap and through the hole, down into the dark below.

  I land with a massive splash in a puddle.

  There’s a disco display of torch beams going on over my head, but the wardens can’t get down. ‘Come on!’ says one of them, and then I hear their boots running overhead as their lights move away.

  I’m in total darkness, with hundreds of cockroaches clicking and scratching around me. I start crawling after them. I wish I was brave, like a soldier walking through a minefield. Then maybe crawling through this tunnel – full of muddy water, cockroach slime and something that smells really bad – would be easier.

  I say crawling, but actually it’s more like swimming, the water is so deep. I didn’t even know cockroaches could swim, and here they are paddling alongside me. They don’t speak, not even to one another, or stop to rest, just keep on pushing forward. The wardens’ thumping feet have totally faded away now and all I can hear is my own breath echoing off the wet walls and the occasional crisk-crack from a roach.

  This tunnel isn’t a smooth pipe. It’s jagged and uneven, and I keep cutting my hands on the rocks. It might be my imagination, but the further we go, the deeper the water seems to be getting.

  As the water rises, I can feel the floor of rocks fall away from my feet and I start to bump and scratch my head as the roof of the tunnel gets closer and closer. I’m working hard just to stay afloat.

  Slowly and steadily, more and more water, tasting of soil and dishwater, starts to splash into my mouth as my arms grow tired.