Itch Rocks

by Simon Mayo

  Itch and his captor were crawling across the rocks toward them. Itch kept slipping over barnacles and into rock pools and felt the barrel of the gun in his back, urging him to hurry toward the water. Then, just beyond the boat’s stern, Itch saw Moz surface, let off three rounds at the boat, then sink again. The two men aimed their guns down into the water.

  Now Danny started firing from behind the largest boulder he could find. The kidnapper loosened his grip just a little to correct his aim, and Itch realized he had to act swiftly. He twisted out from under the arm, and threw himself down on the granite.

  “Itch on the ground! Clear shot! Now! Now! Now!”

  Ten rounds came from Kirsten’s Glock, followed by five from Fairnie. The kidnapper’s head and chest exploded with blood, and he was thrown off the rocks and splashed into the sea.

  “Itch, run!” yelled Fairnie. “Straight to me!”

  Itch picked himself up, but his right foot caught in a gap between two boulders and his ankle twisted painfully. Crying out, he crashed back down onto the rocks. As the firefight continued, Nicholas launched himself forward. Fairnie provided the covering fire as Nicholas ran to his son; in one easy movement, Nicholas scooped up Itch and carried him off the rocks.

  “Keep low!” called the colonel. “Get him to a beach hut and stay there! Go! We’ll clear this up as quickly as we can!”

  Nicholas, with Itch in his arms, ran for the steps. The agents intensified their fire to keep the kidnappers pinned down, and as Nicholas jumped up onto the promenade, he put his boot to the door of the nearest beach hut.

  He gently laid Itch down on the wooden bench, then turned and pushed the door shut. The lock had buckled, so he propped it shut with a couple of deck chairs. They provided no security, but he and Itch simply needed to disappear; if the attackers came back this way, there would be no indication of where they had hidden. Nicholas knelt on the sandy concrete floor and peered through the curtained window. He couldn’t see what was happening on the rocks—the darkness and his limited field of vision made that impossible. The shooting continued, however, so it was clear the agents still had work to do.

  “Thought of just taking you home, but Fairnie said to stay here,” he whispered. “I suppose we don’t know who else is out there. Who are those guys, anyway?”

  Itch sat up slowly and swung his legs down, wincing as his right foot touched the floor.

  “Rest it,” said his father. “You might need it very soon. Hopefully it’s just a sprain.”

  Itch felt gingerly around his ankle. “It’ll be fine. What’s happening out there?”

  Nicholas peered through the window. “Can’t see much. Can’t see anything actually. But they’re still shooting.” He slid to the floor with the buckets and crabbing lines and rested one boot against the door. “What happened to Chloe?” he said. “Is she all right, do you think?”

  “The kidnapper punched her in the face,” said Itch, “but she was conscious—Fairnie said Chris was picking her up, didn’t he?”

  Nicholas nodded and they sat in silence.

  “Thanks,” said Itch in the darkness.

  “It’s what dads do,” Nicholas replied.

  “No, it isn’t.” Itch managed a laugh. “It really isn’t.”

  “Well, it seems to be what I do.”

  There was silence in the hut, and Itch’s mind started to whirl. He shifted his weight on the bench. If there had been any light, Nicholas would have seen his son’s eyes widening. “What do you mean?”

  Nicholas didn’t reply.

  “Have … have you … done that before?” asked Itch, his voice strained and his throat tightening.

  There was a long pause. In the distance, two more shots.

  Nicholas coughed nervously. “Well, there was that time when we were camping in France and you—”

  “Not then,” said Itch. Another pause. “I don’t mean then.”

  “Yes,” said his father in a whisper. “I have done this before.”

  “Carried me to safety?”

  “Yes, carried you to safety.”

  “Where from?” said Itch. “Where have you carried me from?” He barely registered that he was shaking from top to toe.

  “I carried you out of the well, Itch,” said his father. “I was the one who rescued you from the well.”

  In the dampness and darkness of the beach hut, Itch slid off the wooden bench, ignored the shooting pain in his ankle, and embraced his father. With both arms tightly around his neck, he sobbed quietly into Nicholas’s jacket. A thousand questions were crowding into his brain, but for now the sheer relief of finding out who had saved him from certain death down the Woodingdean Well was all that mattered.

  It hadn’t been Flowerdew, and it hadn’t been anyone from Greencorps. It had been his dad!

  For some time, neither of them moved, briefly oblivious to the fighting a few hundred yards away. Eventually Itch pulled away and, sitting down on the damp floor, grinned broadly at his father. Nicholas smiled back, but his look was haunted, Itch thought. Both father and son wiped their eyes.

  “I can’t believe it was you!” cried Itch. “How did you know where I was? How come—?”

  “I guess there are a thousand things you need answers to,” interrupted his father, “but this is not the best time or place really … I never intended to tell you like this.” He sighed. Itch thought it was the longest, weariest sigh he had ever heard.

  Nicholas suddenly realized that the shooting had stopped. He looked out the small window but he still couldn’t see any movement. The pale streetlight at the parking lot end of the promenade didn’t help.

  “Look, Itch, we are in a lot of danger still, and until Fairnie comes to get us we need to be alert. Those criminals, or whoever they are, could come back any time. Who’s to say there aren’t more of them out there?”

  “Sure, Dad—but you need to tell me something! I’ve been worrying about who got me out of the well ever since I woke up in hospital! Don’t you realize what a difference this makes—the fact that it was you? Wait ’til Fairnie hears this!”

  “No way, Itch! Sorry, but absolutely no,” said Nicholas firmly. “This is just for you. Really. No one else.”

  “Mum knows …?”

  “Er, no, she doesn’t, actually.”

  Itch gasped. “What? Well, what does she—?”

  “OK, listen.” His father peered out the window again. “In brief …” He sighed again. “Remember, just for you, OK?”

  Itch nodded.

  “I haven’t worked on the rigs for quite a while now, Itch. The reason we moved here is because I was offered a job by Jacob Alexander at the—”

  “You work at the mining school?” said Itch, incredulous.

  “No, no—not usually, no. I’m mostly in London. Listen, son, this will take ages if you don’t let me talk, and who knows how long we have? I’ve been desperate to tell you this stuff, so … here goes. I started to hate the rig and pretty much the whole oil industry. Corners were being cut, safety compromised—there were injuries that could have been avoided. Greencorps was the worst, so I left them years ago. I thought the smaller companies would be better, and some are, but mostly they seemed just as grubby, just as corrupt. So when Jacob offered me a job, I jumped at the chance.”

  Itch was bursting to cut in—he remembered Dr. Alexander well: his enthusiasm for the Gaia Theory—viewing Earth as a living planet that looked after itself; his dream of clean, green nuclear energy—but his father didn’t stop.

  “I realized I couldn’t tell your mother. Things … well … you might have noticed that things are a bit tense at home. Between your mum and me. It sort of suited both of us that I wasn’t there very much.”

  Itch bit his lip.

  “Also,” his father continued, “she thinks Jacob is a bit of a crackpot. She would have hated me leaving the rigs for him. So I decided just to … not tell anyone.”

  “And move us all to Cornwall?”

  “That was
always the plan anyway, and with my new job being in London, I thought it would be easier to keep the secret. It’s fascinating work Jacob does, Itch. You’d really—”

  “Dad, Dad, there’ll be time for that, but tell me how you found me, please. Fill me in on all this other stuff, sure, but I need to know how you got to the well.”

  Three distant shots—then footsteps running on concrete. Itch and Nicholas froze.

  “Lie down! There!” Nicholas pointed under the wooden bench and Itch eased himself into his hiding place. His father flattened himself against the door. They could hear each hut door being rattled and kicked. Whoever it was, they were working their way down the row. They would be outside in a matter of seconds.

  “Dad! We can’t just wait here! Let’s make a run for it!”

  “You can’t run on that ankle, Itch, remember?” The voices were closer now.

  “I don’t want to be kidnapped, Dad. Not again! Please!”

  “It’s too late to run. Wait …”

  Suddenly they heard a woman’s voice: “Itch! It’s Kirsten. Moz, too. Are you there?”

  Nicholas sprang up and peered through the window into the darkness. Itch heard him sigh again, but this time with relief. He opened the door. “Here!” he called, and suddenly the hut was full of drenched and bloody agents cradling their guns and talking at the same time. The hut filled with the smells of sulfur, smoke, and saltwater.

  Itch and Nicholas sat down while Kirsten and Moz radioed Fairnie.

  “Found them, sir! Hut 26, both good.” Kirsten and Moz listened to Fairnie’s reply through their earpieces. “Yes, sir,” they said together.

  “Fairnie says we’re to head straight back,” Kirsten reported.

  Nicholas stood up. “What about Chloe? … Where’s my daughter?”

  “Chris took her home. That’s all I know.”

  Nicholas thought for a moment. “Are we OK now?”

  “Think so, yes,” said Moz. “They put up quite a fight—they wanted you badly, Itch, that’s for certain.” A thin stream of blood ran down his face from a cut in his scalp, and he was still dripping wet. “You ready to go?”

  “How’re Tina and Sam?” asked Itch.

  “Not great,” replied Moz. “Sam seems OK, but Tina took the full force of that bonfire explosion.”

  “Will she … will she be OK?”

  Moz shrugged. “I don’t know. But they’re on their way to the hospital now. She’s in good hands. Come on, let’s go.”

  That night, the three Lofte cousins were gathered together in the unfamiliar surroundings of the house next door. Fairnie had insisted that, with fewer agents to guard them, Jack should join the others in the Coles’ house until the situation had been assessed. It was a squeeze, but with the agents sharing rooms, everyone was accommodated.

  Itch hadn’t realized how much he’d been looking forward to being just with Jack and Chloe again. The three of them would now be sleeping, more like camping, really, in the guest room that Sam had been using. The steel blinds had been lowered; no light from the streetlamps seeped in.

  Although their sleeping bags were on the floor, Jack and Itch had joined Chloe on the bed, sitting with their backs against the wall; Jack had her arm around Chloe. The lights had been switched off earlier, but when it became clear that no one could sleep, they had put the bedside light back on. The clock radio now showed 12:09.

  Jack and her parents had been brought over in the van and had asked a million questions. Itch and Chloe had answered as many as they could, but Fairnie still hadn’t returned, and he was the one with the answers. He was still checking on Sam and Tina in the hospital. Tina was in intensive care, but stable.

  “They said you’d be a target, Itch, but I never really believed them, you know,” said Jack. “I mean, not here! Not on the way back from school!”

  “Same here,” Chloe agreed. “But I’ve definitely changed my mind.” She was holding an ice pack to her face. Her left eye had swollen shut. A purple bruise was spread out over most of her nose and left cheek.

  “Has your head stopped throbbing?” Itch asked her. “That was some punch you took.”

  “Painkillers helped a bit. But not really, no.” There was silence, then she added, “Does today change anything?”

  “Do you mean, am I about to tell Fairnie where the 126 is? Answer: no. Will they stop us going to school? Don’t know. There’s a chance, I suppose.”

  “Will the school want us?” said Jack, handing around some cheese crackers she had brought. “Now that men with guns have been shooting up the beach, will anyone want us?”

  “Maybe not. Guess all those party invitations will be drying up, then,” said Itch, smiling. The others laughed.

  “You seem pretty happy for someone who’s just been kidnapped and shot at,” commented Jack.

  “Do I? Oh. Well, it must be relief, I suppose.” And he grinned again.

  “You’re so weird,” said Chloe through a mouthful of cheese cracker, and closed her eyes.

  Itch was feeling better than either Jack or Chloe knew. The knowledge that it was his father who had rescued him from the well was still sinking in. He could feel himself relaxing more with each passing minute. He had tried in vain to get Nicholas on his own once they were all back in the Coles’ house, but his father had been constantly in meetings with the agents, on the phone, or talking to Itch’s mother. Jude had arrived home, horrified, shortly after Itch and Nicholas. Itch wanted more details of his rescue from the well in the Fitzherbert School, but it could wait. He felt a strange lightness now. He knew he was still in danger, and that this evening had proved how deadly matters had become, but in spite of that, he found himself smiling.

  When Chloe had finally drifted off to sleep, the ice pack still against her face, Itch and Jack got back into their sleeping bags.

  “How long …? Wait,” said Jack. “Are we OK to talk here? Will it be bugged?”

  “No, it’s Sam’s room,” Itch told her. “Why would they? It wouldn’t make sense. Keep it quiet, though.”

  “OK … How long were you hiding in the hut with your dad?” whispered Jack. “You must have been terrified.”

  Itch thought about it. All he remembered was his dad telling him about the well, so he had to guess. “Dunno, really. Ten minutes? Something like that. And it wasn’t so bad.”

  “Excuse me?” Jack propped herself up and stared at her cousin. “Did you really just say, It wasn’t so bad? Really? Weren’t you wondering if the guys with guns would come back and find you?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose we were,” said Itch, “but it wasn’t really like that.”

  Jack waited for Itch to continue, but when he stayed silent, she tried again. “Well, what was it like then?”

  “Er … I …”

  Itch remembered that his father had sworn him to secrecy, but he would have to tell Jack. They had gone through so much and had become so ill getting rid of the radioactive 126, she deserved the truth. Or as much of it as he knew, anyway.

  He glanced at his sister—she was sound asleep. His whispered voice was tense with excitement. “Jack! Dad said he was the one who rescued me!”

  “What?”

  Itch sat up and leaned toward his cousin. “You know, after I’d gotten rid of the 126, I was in a bad way … and then I turned up in Crawley Hospital with a radioactive sticker on me. It was Dad who pulled me out! It was Dad all along! I don’t know how he knew where I was, but somehow he did. I haven’t been able to get the details yet, but I’ll talk to him in the morning.”

  Now it was Jack’s turn to be silent.

  “Well, what do you think?” asked Itch. “Jack? Don’t you think that’s amazing?”

  Jack stared at her cousin, and Itch suddenly thought he saw the gleam of tears.

  “Jack, what’s the matter?”

  “Look, Itch, this is difficult, OK?” Jack paused, searching for the right words. “It sounds like you’ll find this out tomorrow anyway, and I’d rather you
heard it from me.”

  “Heard what from you? Jack, what’s going on?”

  She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “OK. Well, remember when we were in the restroom at Victoria Station? And I wanted to give up?”

  Itch nodded. “You were very sick, Jack.”

  “Then you told me to leave you. And that you needed to do the next part on your own.”

  “Yes, of course I remember. You ended up being followed by that Greencorps guy with the burned hair.”

  “But before that …” Jack swallowed. “Itch, don’t be mad, please…. Before that, I hid around the corner from the restroom and waited for you. I saw you leave, buy the train ticket, then throw up under those stairs. I watched you get on the train to Brighton.”

  Itch was flabbergasted. “Jack! The whole point was that no one would know where I was going. Even you!”

  “I know what the point was, Itch, but I couldn’t just leave you on your own! So once I knew you were on the Brighton train, I called Mr. Watkins.”

  Itch gaped. “You called Watkins?”

  “You were watching the platform for ages. I checked the board: Platform Ten was the Brighton train, and I knew there was a reason you’d picked it. It took me a while to get it, but then I remembered that Watkins had taught there once. And that story about the Woodingdean Well is a favorite of his, isn’t it? I realized that was where you must be heading. Anyway, he said he’d do his best. Which I guess must have meant calling your dad.” Her eyes were pleading. “Say something, Itch! I know you wanted it to be a secret, but I thought … I was helping. I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “So … you called Watkins, he called my dad, and my dad rescued me. He must have been in London to be able to reach me so soon.” Itch shook his head. “This is too much! I’ve been living with this secret since the summer—every minute of every day wondering who came for me—and all along my dad knew, Watkins knew, and you knew! Everyone knew! Anyone else I haven’t thought of yet?”