by Piers Torday
*Slow down!* I call out into the blackness. *I can’t keep up.*
There’s no reply, just quiet splashing. Then, very faintly, some distance up ahead, I hear a deep voice, like the beat of a drum.
*We must keep going. There is no time to lose.*
But the ceiling of the tunnel has dropped down right in front of me. Tracing the outline of rock with my hands, I try to search for the narrow layer of air between it and the water that they expect me to swim through.
Except there isn’t one. The tunnel from here is completely underwater.
I take the deepest breath I’ve ever taken and, holding my nose, plunge under the surface. I struggle to squeeze through the gap, my legs kick and I feel the weed-covered walls of the tunnel draw closer and closer in.
Water goes up my nose, burning – the last drops of oxygen leaking out of my lungs – my chest wants to explode.
Panicking, I think I should go back, but it’s too late.
I give one last feeble kick with my legs.
The tunnel of water breaks into a torrent, turning and tumbling me like I’m in a washing machine before finally spitting me out, bouncing and scraping against the edges of a filthy pipe, down some slippery rocks and on to a wet patch of grass.
I can see stars.
I mean, not cartoon stars around my head, but actual stars in the sky. My chest heaving, I fight to catch my breath, turn on to my belly and cough up some water. As I raise myself on to my elbows, a light shines straight in my eyes, and beneath that I can just make out a pair of feet.
A grimy pair of feet, in sandals.
Doctor Fredericks stands in front of a line of wardens. Behind them, the curved glass of the Hall, lit up with searchlights. We’re outside, in the Quarantine Zone. But no one’s wearing a suit or a mask. There’s no air-con, no special glass roof, no electric doors sealing us in. We’re just out here, in the wet and the wild, where the red-eye rules.
I turn around to see what lies behind, although I already know.
The small patch of grass slopes down towards the edge of the cliff, beyond which is nothing but rocks, sea and big, big trouble.
His glasses speckled with rain, Doctor Fredericks takes a step towards me, holding a syringe in his hand.
‘One little prick!’ he shouts, to be heard above the gale blowing around our heads. ‘One little p-p-prick and we’ll, ah, put this unfortunate episode behind us!’
This is it, I say to myself. There’s only one way out. And it looks a very long way down.
The General trots up my arm, out of nowhere, and into my anorak pocket.
*You think we haven’t planned this down to the last detail?* he barks in my ear. *No time to explain. Just jump whenever you’re ready.*
Doctor Fredericks takes another step towards me.
I take a step back, towards the edge of the cliff, carefully balancing with my arms outstretched.
‘Careful there, young lad, we don’t want an, um, unfortunate accident now, do we?’
I look up at Spectrum Hall, the lights criss-crossing through the tinted upside-down glass boat. A breeze of wet spray flicks the back of my neck from the sea below.
*Whenever you’re ready,* says the General. *You have to trust us.*
I close my eyes and take one step back. Then two steps.
‘K-k-kester,’ says the Doctor. ‘Look – I’ll even put this down. Let’s talk. I’ll explain everything.’ He places the syringe on the ground between us. ‘P-p-please.’
I smile.
I got the Doctor to say please. It was worth it for that, if nothing else.
I take a last step back, and as he lunges for my legs, crying out …
I fall back into the air.
But I don’t fall on to rocks and sea.
Hooks in the air catch me – moving, flying hooks – the beaks and claws of a hundred pigeons. The ones from my room, grey and one white. They really hurt, grabbing not just at my clothes, my soaking anorak and scarf, but my hair, the skin on my hands, even my ears.
At first we sink down, the pigeons straining with my weight, the icy spray of the waves flicking at my ankles, but then slowly, surely, they begin to flap up into the sky, pulling us further and further away from the rocks, the sea and Spectrum Hall.
Wind and rain whip around us, lashing at my face – weather. Seeing it out of my window was one thing, feeling and tasting it is very different – I try to twist away, but it’s coming from all sides – impossible to avoid.
There’s a scrabbling inside my jacket, and the General sticks his head out.
*Look,* he says proudly.
I glance back at the cliff-top and see the other cockroaches swarming over Doctor Fredericks and the wardens, pouring out of the ground and up their trousers, making them jump and wriggle and yell – but I don’t see any more, as the pigeons wheel sharply round and begin to fly north from the Hall.
*Hey!* I shout up. *That’s not the way home!*
The birds don’t say anything, but just flap their wings even harder.
*I thought you were taking me home!*
There’s no reply, not even a squeak from the white pigeon.
I twist my head to see the lights of Spectrum Hall dwindling to a faint glow on the horizon behind us. But we’re going further north, not south. We’re flying away from Premium. I jerk my arms, trying to turn the birds around. *You said you were getting me out of this place. I want you to take me home, right now!*
*Take my advice, soldier,* says the General firmly from my pocket. *Stop struggling and get some sleep while you can. We have a long journey ahead.*
Despite myself, I feel my eyes grow heavy, and part of me wants to sleep, but I don’t dare. Every time I start to drift off, a gust of freezing wind stings me awake.
And besides, there’s so much to see, looking down between my feet.
We’re flying right over the countryside, over places I have never seen before. Places no one is allowed in – the Quarantine Zone. Miles and miles of deserted open country shut down by Facto, to contain the red-eye and stop it spreading to the cities – nine years ago now.
At Spectrum Hall, there were rumours of outsiders. People who didn’t believe the warnings, people who took their own chances with the red-eye and tried to forage what food was left behind after the animals went.
But if such people exist, there is no sign of them from up here.
Everything is so dark. No lights from houses, villages or towns – just the faint outlines of empty buildings here and there in the moonlight, like scattered boulders. Miles and miles of rocky shores and cliff-tops, their jagged edges only just visible. Directly beneath us, the only signs of life are buoys tossing about on the dark waves below, their orange lights blinking.
Once, far off in the distance, we see the white glow of a city. Factorium-run, disease- and animal-free, beaming rays of light into the night from their glass skyscrapers. From here the towers look like glowing white crystals reaching up into the stars.
Four great cities, built to contain the world’s refugees. Our home – Premium, the city of the south and the largest, divided in half by the River Ams. A coastal city of the west, Portus, and the industrial city of the east, Carbo. This must be the city of the north, the city built among cold peaks and steep valleys – Mons.
The four cities that grew and spread and spread until, on the satellite maps, all that was left of the countryside was just a narrow strip of green enclosed by big blotches of thermal reds and yellows.
I try and swing my legs towards the distant city glow to see if I can steer the birds – but it only seems to make them fly faster and harder in the opposite direction. Further and further we fly, till it feels like I will never touch solid land again, as we head –
Straight into a cloud.
Like someone turned out the lights, I can’t see a thing any more. Droplets and dust clog my eyes and nose, making it hard to breathe, and my clothes – which had begun to dry out after the tunnel – are ins
tantly drenched again.
Looking up, even the birds are hard to see through the fog –
On and on the cloud goes, leaving me gasping for air –
The dust choking and filling my throat, as everything grows thicker and greyer –
And then black.
I snap my eyes open, shuddering and staring wildly around.
I have no idea where we are, or how long we have been flying for. I must have been asleep.
Any clouds are long behind us. There’s a pink light on the horizon, which woke me up, filling and warming the sky, showing the masses of green weed that cover the cliff-tops below. The sea beneath us sounds louder in the light somehow, roaring and crashing against the rocks.
It feels like we’re in a different land altogether, but I don’t think we are. We’re just right at the end of the country. Right on the edge of the Quarantine Zone, on the tip of the Island, surrounded by the world’s ocean, the huge sea that now covers most of the planet.
Finally we begin to turn back towards this deserted land, dropping lower in the sky as we do.
The air rushes faster and faster past my face. Now we’re flying over moors –
Over an old house, with half its roof missing –
A bridge with chunks blown clean out of it, like bites. I grab a glimpse of more ruined buildings with no back wall, yellow flowers sprouting out of the empty windows –
The countryside. Deserted and no longer open to humans.
And I’m heading straight for it.
PART 2: WHAT IS THIS PLACE?
Flying lower and lower all the time now, my feet scrape an old wire fence, covered with red and white signs, which we pass too quickly to read. And then we’re over a circle of trees, flying very quickly now, the treetops catching the soles of my shoes, and I can see water –
And then we’re falling, falling out of the sky.
We crash on to the ground.
Imagine landing with a parachute that collapses all over you, your insides jumping up into your head as you hit the wet earth, while you can’t see anything because of the giant tent you’re under – a giant tent of oily feathers and claws that yanks itself free and flaps back off into the sky.
Every bit of me is aching. They pulled my hair, they tore my clothes, they pinched my skin, but they got me here. Brushing feathers off my face, and grit out of my streaming eyes, and untangling myself from my scarf, I look around.
Until I went to Spectrum Hall, I’d never even left Premium. And I never left the Hall till now.
I have never seen anywhere like this before.
It certainly isn’t anything like home. There’s a massive pond, more like a lake, with only tiny spots of sun able to squeeze through the leaves above, making the water glitter. Silvery trees line the edge, with ferns and reeds clustered around their base. Not trees I’ve ever seen before. Everything looks all … old. Proper old, in fact. And – I don’t want to say the word, but there’s no one here to tease me for saying it – it looks beautiful.
There are no beeping doors, no shouts in the Yard and no spluttering Doctor. I can hear my own thoughts bouncing off the logs and the still surface of the water. They aren’t all good ones. I look at the pigeons quietly resting in the treetops above my head, their heads tucked into their wings.
*Where are we? What are we doing here?*
They don’t answer. Instead the General clambers out of my jacket pocket and down my leg on to the ground.
*The first part of our plan is successfully achieved,* he announces, and then, as he darts under the nearest rock – *With flying colours, I might add. By the Order of Cockroach Merit, I am now awarding myself a long afternoon nap.*
Fine, I think to myself – suit yourself. I’ve got other things to worry about.
Firstly, I stink. That tunnel was not good. There are dirty splodges all over my red anorak, making me look like a ladybird, my trackie bottoms are soaking and my striped scarf is stiff with encrusted yuck.
The sun is out though. I look at the lake.
I can’t help but wonder what else might be in there, and remember the pictures we all watched on the news of dead fish floating in the water, piling up in rotten heaps on the banks of rivers. I don’t want to get the red-eye. But this isn’t a river. This is a lake, hidden behind trees, far from anywhere. The animals went years ago. It must be safe by now, whatever Facto say.
Yanking my jacket and trousers off, I step along the boggy shore, splashing down into the shallows with my clothes bundled in my arms, trying not to slip or step on a sharp rock.
The water looks dark. I start to wade in quickly, taking deep breaths to fight off the cold.
The further I go in, the darker and deeper it gets.
I look down at my bare feet, only just visible through the murk, and start to imagine dead fish rising suddenly to the top in an explosion of bubbles, their lifeless red eyes rolling at me. Glancing over my shoulder, I see that the pigeons are watching intently. I’ve probably never washed myself so quick, scooping up handfuls of water as fast as I can over my head, relieved there aren’t dozens of diseased fish in each one, before giving my clothes a quick soak and wading noisily back to the shore.
The birds are curious. *What made you hurry?*
Clutching my dripping clothes in front of me, I say, *I thought … I thought there might be infected fish in there.*
*But there are no fish left. Not in this lake, not anywhere.*
They sound so sad. Then the white pigeon hops down from his tree, strutting about on pink claws, his little head bobbing up and down. In daylight I can now see that the feathers on his scalp are skew-whiff, like he just got out of pigeon-bed.
*Yeah,* he sneers, *no fish in this cake, stupid.*
The others coo, hiding him from me with their wings, like he embarrasses them – but he’s right. I do feel stupid. Naked and stupid.
*Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, instead of laughing at me? You brought me all the way out here. Why don’t you do something useful? Like take me home!*
But before I even reach the end of my sentence, I discover I’m talking to nobody. They’ve all clapped off into the air. There’s a distant flapping, and then nothing.
*General?* I say, but the only reply I get is some loud snores coming from under a rock.
As the birds all disappear I notice how knackered I am. I badly want to lie down. Anywhere would do right now.
Just by the edge of the water there’s a large rock with a flat top. Its size is ideal for drying wet clothes on, and a shaft of sunlight makes it look as white as a sheet. Sunlight like I never saw at the Hall.
I’ve never slept outside before. I just tell myself that there are no animals left, so it will be fine. Varmints can’t give you the virus yet, and besides – it’s almost comfortable. It’s definitely very warm and very quiet.
I can feel my eyes slowly closing, and I’m just drifting off to sleep when something makes me sit bolt upright. Wide-eyed, I look around, but the water is as calm and steady as it was before. There are no floating swollen fish. There are only the pigeons, who have returned and are sitting on the tufts of grass around the big white boulder, pecking about beneath it. They make me feel safe for a moment, before I remember that they brought me here rather than taking me home.
*You snore more than your guard did, soldier,* says a snarky voice in my lap.
*Like you can talk!* I want to say back, but I don’t. Instead I brush the General away without even replying, and am about to lie down again when a rock tumbles and crashes out of the trees into the bog.
Not a big rock.
But a rock just big enough to get knocked by something moving through the silver trees. A rock followed by a little avalanche of pebbles hissing down through the ferns in between.
There’s someone in the forest. Someone – or something – heading our way.
The pigeons flurry up into the branches and the General scurries under my boulder while I roll off it, grabbing m
y clothes. Crouching down, I peer over the top.
The intruder suddenly breaks through the undergrowth and emerges into the light. It’s not a person. It’s not meant to exist. It’s meant to be dead. Only it’s here, close enough for me to see its blinking eyes and four tall unsteady legs. The fur on its back, the soft ears – it can’t be, except it is.
An animal. A living, breathing one.
Whatever he is, he’s certainly not a very big one. In fact, he seems more nervous than we are, looking warily about before trotting further down the slope towards the water’s edge. He stumbles in the swamp and topples over on to his side with a soft splash. Then he hauls himself up and continues before coming to a jerky stop about a hundred metres away from us. He sniffs the air and twitches his ears, like he’s waiting.
The first other living creature I have ever seen for real that doesn’t live under a rock or feed off our rubbish. The General emerges from under his rock and perches on top of it.
*Look at him, General!* I whisper, pointing at the animal by the lake. *A baby horse!*
*Not quite, soldier,* he hisses. *It’s a deer, and it’s a she.*
Soon another one joins the lonely limping she-deer, edging its way around the water’s edge. Before long the shores of the lake are alive with deer, a shuffling, manky line of furry red-brown backs. I can’t see any red eyes, there is no wind and they are quite far away, but I put my hand over my mouth just in case they are infected. As if they can tell, they stiffen as one, looking up – and I dive back down behind the rock. They’re not looking at me though, they’re looking at the other creatures crashing towards us through the trees. My first impulse is to run, but I can’t take my eyes off the new arrivals. A whole family, it looks like, with black and white striped heads and pale pink snouts, blinking in the bright light.
*Weasels!*
*No, badgers.* The General is beginning to sound genuinely cross with me. Like I’m meant to be an encyclopedia.
The badgers join the red-brown line, and at first some of the deer skid and stumble away, as if they’re scared of them – but the badgers don’t attack, they just snuffle along the shore, perhaps looking for food that isn’t there.
