The Last Wild

by Piers Torday

  Satisfied, he invites us over, and hardly daring to look we creep nearer.

  Underneath the mask, the wolf-cub is still breathing. My father pats him once and then marches over to the sink, ripping off the bloody gloves and tossing them on to the floor.

  ‘Hmm,’ says Dad. ‘Bit of rest and he should be …’

  Six years and Dad still hasn’t learnt how to finish a sentence.

  He dries his hands thoroughly with a paper towel, and chucks it – missing – at an overflowing bin in the corner.

  We’re still just watching him. For a moment, no one says anything. There are so many questions bubbling inside me – questions I can’t ask. I stamp my foot on the floor with frustration. Polly jumps, and then, like that was her signal, she asks it. Like it’s the easiest thing in the world to say.

  The question burning in both our minds.

  ‘Is it true, Professor Jaynes?’

  Dad looks puzzled.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘What everyone said. Skuldiss, outsiders, Facto – they all said that you started the virus. That it was your fault.’

  And he smiles. He actually smiles. A kind of sad smile, as he shakes his head.

  ‘Is that what they … ? Right. I see.’ He scratches at his beard. ‘Well.’ Dad gestures to the chaos of the lab. ‘Whatever you’re thinking, whatever you’ve been told, whatever she thinks, it’s …’

  His voice trails away.

  ‘Wrong?’ suggests Polly.

  I hope so – I really hope so.

  But Dad just nods in a vague way, like she’d just reminded him where his slippers were, and places his hands on my shoulders.

  ‘Kes,’ he says. ‘None of this is how it … you know …’

  For some reason I can’t meet his eye. My own dad.

  He sighs, and looks me up and down.

  ‘You’ve grown,’ he says and grips my shoulders tight. ‘You’ve grown so much.’

  Then he turns abruptly away like he doesn’t want me to see his face. ‘Let me try and … explain,’ he says to the window, and starts to pace up and down, looking at the floor as he speaks.

  ‘Science!’ he announces to the mess all around him, the scribbled pages, the rows of test tubes – as if he’s just revealing to them only now what they’re actually here for. ‘That’s what I believe in, Kes. In thinking things through, using the knowledge we’ve discovered to … what’s the word?’ He stops pacing, picks up a rubber band from the dust on the floor, and peers at it suspiciously before shoving it into his pocket. ‘Where was I? Oh yes! Science.’ He turns to us, his face lit up. ‘Miracles! That’s what we can achieve with science. Real, living, breathing miracles.’

  He points to the wolf-cub, sleeping peacefully with his oxygen mask on, a large bandage around his middle.

  ‘We just saved your friend here. No other animal can do that, you know – help and save another one in that way.’ I think of the stag, lying just outside. ‘But we can’t always. First came the red-eye. Now that was … savage. Total …’ He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, as if to clear the memory. ‘Unfortunately in that case, science was absolutely powerless. Even I couldn’t … We lost so many, so quickly –’ Dad stops in front of the operating table in the middle of the room, covered in piles of books on top of a dust sheet, and taps it. ‘Right in front of me on this very …’ He sighs. ‘And then of course, your mother got … well, she got very sick indeed.’

  I can feel Polly glance at me anxiously. But I can’t take my eyes off Dad.

  ‘We couldn’t save her either. The one person I would have …’ he stops. Shakes his head. ‘I would have given anything, anything – but the fact is, we lost her. She was gone forever and I just couldn’t … You see?’ He clenches his hands together tightly, making the knuckles white. ‘So I thought … do something good in her memory. Everlasting … that was what I wanted.’

  He must see the puzzlement on our faces.

  ‘A cure! I vowed to find a cure for the red-eye. A cure in your mum’s name.’

  The lab seems to have grown quieter than before, no machines humming, and even the noise of the city from outside has faded.

  ‘That,’ Dad says, ‘is when my troubles really started.’

  Dad sits down with a thump on a deckchair covered in shirts, which nearly collapses under his weight. A cloud of dust billows into the air.

  ‘I worked harder than I’d ever … down here night and day. Equations and experiments, tests and models, calculations and trials. I tried everything, but every road seemed like a dead end, every breakthrough an illusion – until!’ He jabs his finger in the air. ‘One night, I was tired and … perhaps just a bit absent-minded, so Factorium might have a small point …’ He looks embarrassed. ‘I made a mistake. A very big one.’

  ‘Something big, Kes,’ he’d said that night. ‘Something big –’ his fingers moving quickly over the keyboard.

  Click click.

  My heart catapults into my mouth, and Polly clutches my hand –

  ‘But it wasn’t the beginning of the red-eye!’ He stamps his foot, and more dust billows up. ‘On the contrary – it was the beginning of a cure.’

  Polly clutches my hand even tighter.

  ‘Except,’ continues Dad, ‘all I had was a theory. It needed … research, proper testing – never mind making the thing.’ Dad rubs his hand over his face. ‘As a vet, I’d worked a lot with Factorium. They had big laboratories, processing plants … the capability! And I thought, the world’s biggest food company might just want to help me save the, you know, animals? So I went straight to the top, and had a meeting with –’

  He doesn’t need to say. Polly and I swap glances. We both know who runs Factorium.

  ‘Best intentions and all that.’ Dad rubs his hands together. ‘So I met Selwyn Stone. Gave him my paperwork, my samples, the lot. He was very pleased. More than pleased. They offered me a huge amount of money.’

  He smiles grimly to himself at the memory.

  ‘But I never saw a penny. Because that very evening he sent round that goon Skuldiss to threaten me. You see, Stone had been bluffing. They didn’t want a cure at all! Even worse, they wanted me to destroy all my work. Everything. Every last sum. And if I didn’t, they would –’

  I stand stock still, not daring to move a single muscle.

  Dad points at me.

  ‘You. They said they would take you away. I didn’t believe it. But that didn’t stop them. A week later. They took you away, ransacked my …’ he gestures around at the lab. ‘Said if I so much as thought about an equation relating to a cure, that your life would be …’ He looks down at his large feet as if he’s never seen them before. ‘That your life would be in danger,’ Dad says quietly. ‘And then – they locked me up too. In, you know –’

  We look around at the bed, the clothes and the lonely toothbrush. This isn’t what I expected. This isn’t what I expected at all.

  But it’s my turn to ask a question now, the question I’ve been wanting to ask for six years. I find a pen, grab a sheet of paper off one of the tottering piles and scrawl over it one simple question:

  WHY?

  He grabs the note from my hand, scans it quickly, and snorts.

  ‘Why did they do it? I’ll tell you. Formula! I had invented a cure that could save the last few animals in the world, but what I didn’t know was that Selwyn had just invented formula. The magic chemical that replaces food. Stone’s success now depended on there being no more animals. Nothing else to eat at all. And that’s exactly what happened. Factorium killed all the remaining creatures left alive and became very rich. Very rich and very powerful.’

  The sky is black outside, rain clouds gathering once more above the towers.

  Polly and I are looking at my dad with new eyes. Maybe, just maybe –

  Polly’s face lights up. ‘But can you still help them, Professor Jaynes? Do you still have a cure for the virus?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Dad looks out of the w
indow at the clouds. ‘I’m afraid … the short answer is … no, not after what Facto destroyed. No, I don’t.’

  No.

  He can’t –

  I feel like I’ve just been thumped in the chest –

  After everything –

  I take a step back in shock.

  Dad comes round the other side of the worktop and makes as if to hug me again, but I back away. I don’t know how to feel. I –

  ‘Kes.’ He stands there, hands in his grubby jacket pockets. ‘Wait. Let me explain.’

  I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to explain away –

  Everything I believed in!

  And then –

  ‘NO!’

  Just a single word, that’s all it is. I say ‘No’ to my dad.

  He and Polly look at me in amazement.

  So I say it again.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Kes, did you … ?’ and then – ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘No.’ It gets easier every time.

  ‘No’ – because that’s not good enough. And not that I can say all this, but that’s not what I came hundreds of miles for. That’s not what I brought the animals for.

  ‘You spoke, Kes! Oh my, that’s fantastic, that’s …’

  ‘No!’ I thump my fist on the table, and another mountain of paper slides on to the floor.

  ‘Listen to me,’ says Dad, ‘I haven’t finished –’

  ‘No!’ I say.

  It’s only one word. I can’t say ‘You’ or ‘Can’t’. You’ve no idea how badly I want to, but it doesn’t matter. He knows, he knows what I’m trying to say.

  Everything that I’ve been telling myself. Telling the wild.

  And now –

  ‘Listen to me,’ Dad says, trying to calm me down, waving his hands. ‘You’re right, Kester, you’re right. That wouldn’t be … acceptable.’

  Then he points at me. ‘Your watch, please, Kes.’

  My watch? I don’t believe this.

  ‘Yes, Kester,’ says Dad, holding his hand out. ‘Give me your watch, and I can show you what happened next.’

  Too surprised to argue any more, I take the watch off. The screen is smeary and cracked, the plastic strap covered in mud and blood. I pass it to him, Polly and I both watching his every move.

  Dad sits down at the worktop and roots around in a jar of pens and pencils, until he finds a screwdriver. Turning the watch flat over on his knee, he unscrews the metal back. I can see the innards of the watch for the very first time, a dark green circuit board with a straggle of multicoloured wires, and a tiny black ball buried in between them.

  He pulls a pair of pliers out of his jacket pocket and clips off the black ball, holding it up to us in the light from the lamp between finger and thumb.

  ‘A small, er, precaution.’ He sees my expression and smiles. ‘A precaution any good father with a basic understanding of micro-radio transmitters would take, perhaps.’

  A memory is beginning to stir in my brain again; Dad borrowing my watch, my last present from Mum. I thought it was because it was ‘nifty’.

  He leans over to the worktop again, yanking one of the computer monitors over. Then he’s tapping on the crumb-covered keyboard, entering a password, and up it pops, clear as anything despite the fuzz of dust covering the screen: the photo of Mum in the garden – the photo from my watch.

  Dad stares at it for a moment too. ‘Hmm,’ he says. Then he nods, moving on.

  ‘Nothing for six years,’ he says, finger poised over the keyboard. ‘Until …’

  Click.

  The picture of Mum changes to a satellite map of the country. There’s a single bright red dot, pulsing away in Premium, right where we are. Dad twists round to face us.

  ‘As long as I saw that – pulsing away at Spectrum Hall. I knew you were safe. I thought maybe you might escape, but for six years you didn’t move one inch.’

  I didn’t know, I couldn’t –

  Dad bats away my thoughts with a flick of his hand.

  ‘Of course, how could you? You were just as much a prisoner as me. And then, a few days ago, the dot started to …’

  He leans in and presses the keyboard, click! The map disappears, and then there is the photo of the General in the lift at Spectrum Hall, the first ever one I took. Out of focus, blurred, surprised – how did he – Click! There are the wild at the Ring of Trees. Click! The empty First Fold. Click! Sidney! Click! The animals from the Forest of the Dead.

  ‘I discovered that it wasn’t just sending me the location of the watch, it was copying all the data as well.’ Dad turns round from the screen. ‘I know about the animals, Kes, the ones you’ve brought here. I tried to send you messages, but the reception here is so weak, I don’t know if …’

  HELP DON’T GIVE UP

  Typical Dad. Four words where ten would have been more useful.

  ‘Do you know why, though? I’d begun to … give up, I’m afraid. Your mum’s memory, fading away – until you started to take all those photos. I didn’t know exactly what you were doing – but you showed me that there were animals still alive. Who needed a cure. A cure that I had once invented – but no longer had.’

  I begin to realize –

  ‘At least,’ says Dad, ‘I no longer have a fully finished and working cure. But I do have something. And it’s all down to you. Because once I started seeing you move, seeing your pictures, following you on the map – I saw it wasn’t too late to …’

  Dad suddenly looks tired. He looks so much older. His skin paler and more lined, his face thinner. I realize that all this time I’ve been wanting Dad to help me. And now, perhaps – but Dad doesn’t notice my expression, and he carries on.

  ‘In secret, I dug out what scraps of my early research I could piece together and … I’ve been working ever since. Day and night, using encryption, using every trick up my sleeve to hide it from Facto. Using your photos, studying the symptoms, making notes, working right up until the moment that … wretch came back. Last night.’

  Now Polly and I are looking at him with new eyes. Maybe, just maybe …

  Breaking off, Dad suddenly bends down, right down to his feet, as if he was tying up his laces –

  Pulling off his shoe –

  Grabbing the screwdriver, tearing at the sole of the shoe, ripping the stitching, till it hangs off like an old leaf –

  And sticking his hand into the exposed belly of the shoe, he brings out a glass vial. A vial which he holds up to the light, just so we can see a ray of sun pass and bend through the clear liquid inside.

  We look again at all the papers, the flickering computer screens. Suddenly they don’t seem like piles of rubbish any more.

  ‘So what have you got?’ says Polly, looking warily at the vial in Dad’s hands.

  ‘One sample. A trial drug. But it’s completely untested.’ My father examines the clear, pure liquid in the vial. ‘And to test it I need some living animals, with the latest mutation of the …’ Polly and I look at each other. ‘Which I think you might be able to help me with –’

  Polly is already racing up the stairs and out of the lab, screaming to the animals she can’t talk to –

  ‘He’s got a cure! He’s got a cure!’

  And for a moment it’s just Dad and me. In the lab. Wolf-Cub breathing softly.

  We both look at him, together, and Dad holds out his hand to me.

  I take it.

  Firmly, like I never want to let go. Ever again.

  Still looking at the cub, his bandages, the syringe sticking out –

  ‘It won’t be easy, Kester, you can’t rush these things.’

  ‘No,’ I say again. But softer this time.

  And Dad turns and smiles at me, his eyes crinkling up at the corners like they used to. A bright speck in each one.

  ‘Your mother,’ he says. ‘She really would have been … you know … proud.’

  I want to say another word – but I can’t. Even if I could speak, right thi
s second, I wouldn’t be able to.

  Instead, realizing that perhaps the time for talking, of all kinds, is over, I lead Dad out of the lab, up into the damp, smoke-filled air of the green Culdee Sack – to show him my wild.

  It’s a week later. A sunny afternoon and I’m standing in Dad’s lab again, only this time it’s tidy and clean. I’m looking out at our garden, stretching all the way down to the edge of the river, which sparkles in the light. The house looks just like it always did – except for the animals.

  Some of the butterflies we saved flitter around the rose bushes, while above in the apple tree an occasional flutter of leaves gives the pigeons’ hiding place away. Beneath them all, the stag lies quietly in the shade on the lawn, polecats bouncing around him, doing their best to destroy what’s left of Dad’s flower beds. He barely seems to notice, and is still weak, still tired, and still sick with the berry-eye. But he is also alive, and every day he takes a bit more of Dad’s drug.

  The trial drug Polly and I helped Dad make in the lab behind me. A trial drug which, as he keeps reminding us, might not fully work. The drug which we have named Laura II. But it has stopped the fever in most of the animals, and turned the red eyes a lighter shade of pink. Polly and I help Dad keep a precise note of what effect certain doses have. The otters, for example, when they’re not turning the lawn into a mud bath, have responded better to the cure than the polecats.

  Yet all of them, hour by hour, day by day, grow stronger.

  None of us will forget those who died in the Culdee Sack. Polly and I buried them at the bottom of the garden, in the shadow of the high brick wall, because Polly said that was the proper thing to do. I hope that in some way it made up for never being able to do the same for Sidney.

  ‘Come on, Kidnapper,’ says a voice behind me. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  I turn around to see Polly standing at the entrance to the lab in her clean clothes, with Wolf-Cub, his bandage wrapped tight around his middle. He is still limping, but some of the old glow has returned to his green eyes. He has grown too. He is beginning to change from a wolf-cub – but not in all ways.