Havoc

by Higgins, Jane

  ‘I’m being hacked off, all right? They’ve just built a wall round us! A wall! We’re trapped. Doesn’t that freak you out? We’re trapped and they can do anything they like to us now.’

  ‘Like they couldn’t before?’ She looked around. The people who’d been standing in the intersection had gone. The place was suddenly empty. ‘Let’s go to Levkova’s,’ she said.

  I shook my head. ‘I’m going to check the other boundary intersections first. See if they’re the same as here.’

  ‘So you can get yourself shot properly next time? Not with my help, you’re not.’ She set off east, walked a few paces, then looked back at me. ‘Coming?’

  She had a point. But I didn’t want to go and sit at Levkova’s kitchen table and talk sensibly about strategy and tactics. I wanted to throw stones and take to the fences with an iron bar and wire cutters.

  ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘I’m going to check Battleby and Cafford. Maybe Enders too. They might not all be like this.’

  ‘They will all be like this. You know they will.’ She walked back to me. Her face was shining with sweat, and tight round her mouth and eyes. She gave me a little shake.

  ‘Nik, we don’t win these fights. People really do get shot. I’m going to Levkova’s. Come with me.’

  She turned and walked away.

  I called after her, ‘But you need to get home!’

  ‘I can wait,’ she called over her shoulder.

  ‘And we need medics from Curswall. What about them?’

  She turned round but kept walking slowly away. ‘You think you’re going to get them here by throwing stones and getting shot at?’

  She didn’t wait for me to answer.

  I watched her go, told myself I needed to know more about what was going on, and jogged away towards the Battleby intersection. I didn’t see much as I ran, except Frieda. I kept seeing her in my mind’s eye, planning at her desk, smiling to herself as she signed off on…what? Once, when I was four, she’d held my hand and taken me to school. I used to be able to escape school though: climb the wall and slip away into the city for a wander, breathe the night air, find some space to think.

  I looked up at the sky: blue-white, washed out in the heat. The cordon they’d built might as well reach that high; our chances of getting through it were nil. Something was on its way here—something that needed soldiers and barbed wire to make sure we got it full in the face. We don’t win these fights, Lanya had said. Wait it out, she meant; we’ll get another chance.

  Maybe we would. But maybe not. What if this was new, a whole new wargame, and only Freida knew how it would play out?

  I heard the blare and whistling feedback of a crap sound system ahead, and when I swung round the corner into Battleby Road I plunged into a crowd. Hundreds of people were surging around a guy standing on some steps. He was yelling into a battered megaphone about rights and freedom of movement. Everyone was shouting, angry, throwing stuff at the fence that was locking them in. I couldn’t see the soldiers on the other side through the crush of bodies pushing forward, arms raised, fists pumping. Battleby Road is narrow and overshadowed on both sides by five-storey tenement blocks. The noise was huge, ringing off those buildings so I barely heard the guy next to me yell, but I saw him point to the roof at the end of the row, above the barbed wire. There was movement up there.

  ‘Sniper!’ he yelled.

  ‘Whose?’ I yelled back.

  ‘Theirs!’

  Snipers. Barbed wire. No one was going to get through.

  What if you know you can’t win so you just want to run at your enemy in a rage and hurl yourself at them and do as much damage as you can before they do damage to you? That’s what that crowd felt like. That’s what I felt like in that crowd.

  A single shot ahead of us shut everyone up for a second. Then came an explosion in mid air and billowing clouds of pale smoke. The guy with the megaphone yelled, ‘Move back! Keep calm!’ There was no room to scatter. The crowd surged back towards where I was standing, and I turned with them, but the smoke got to us before we could get out and suddenly I was inhaling fire and my brain was dissolving in acid and streaming out of my eyes and nose.

  It wasn’t smoke, it was gas. Skin-flaying, lung-scorching, eye-scalding gas. We were running—trying to run, not seeing properly, trying to escape and not fall over people, dragging up those who fell and stumbling on, retching, crying, coughing, gasping. I slung my coat over my head as a shield from the gas and ran with the rest of them. Then we were out of Battleby, and jostling, hunting for clean air.

  I kept moving. I couldn’t see where I was going but I stumbled along on feet that seemed miles from my head, with my hands grabbing at whatever would hold me upright: buildings, fences, bollards, walls.

  After a few minutes the air stopped burning. I found a street lamp to lean against and coughed my lungs out. Realised I’d lost my coat. I wasn’t going back for it.

  CHAPTER 08

  Lanya was sitting on the steps of Levkova’s house. She watched me walk up the street towards her, and when I got near she stood up.

  ‘Gods, look at you. What happened?’

  ‘Some kind of gas,’ I croaked. ‘At Battleby.’

  ‘Do you know what to do?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Come with me. Quick.’

  We went round the back to the washhouse.

  ‘Go in there, put your clothes in the washtub and pour a lot of water over yourself. Water and soap. Lots of it. It’ll hurt even more for a while, but you’ve got to wash it all off. And watch out for your eyes. Don’t take your T-shirt off over your head.’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Cut it off? I’ve only got three.’

  ‘And you’ve only got two eyes. Come in here, I’ll help.’ She went in and hunted through a pile of clean washing, found a pillowcase and held it out. ‘Stick this over your head. I’ll get the shirt off.’

  She was all business getting my T-shirt off, lifting off the pillowcase, holding them both at arm’s length and dropping them into the big washtub. When she’d done scrubbing her hands with soap and water she turned back to me, arms folded, face unreadable.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  My skin still burned and my eyes were watering like crazy. I didn’t ask her how she knew what to do—I guess it came with growing up on Southside. ‘Do this often?’ I asked.

  Her mouth was a thin line. ‘Once or twice. That’s often enough. Put all your clothes in the washtub. You’ll have to wash them all really well, but do that later. Wash yourself first. Will I get you some clean clothes?’

  I shook my head. ‘There’s some in that pile there.’

  ‘Right. I’ll go then.’

  ‘I didn’t get shot,’ I said as she reached the door.

  She turned back and gave me a glare. ‘I’ll be out on the steps.’

  Lanya was right about the water—it made it burn worse than ever at first. But I managed to slosh enough over myself to get rid of most of whatever chemicals were clinging to me. By the time I went back round the front and sat down beside her, I was starting to feel human again.
‘How are you now?’ she asked.

  ‘Better,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  She handed me a piece of flatbread folded round some mini spiced sausages called merguez.

  ‘Sorry it got squashed,’ she said. ‘I’ve been holding it a long time.’

  ‘Levkova made merguez?’ I said with my mouth full. She looked at me sideways and snorted a laugh. ‘Somebody came in with a pile of them, but I don’t think they made it as far as the kitchen.’

  ‘Full house, then?’

  She nodded. Levkova kept an open door for CFM, the Campaign for Free Movement, which meant that the place was on the go all hours with people having impromptu meetings in every available room as well as in the hallway and on the stairs, and when they were done with those, they worked or napped on the couches in her study and living room.

  Lanya said, ‘How far did you get?

  ‘Battleby. The gas sent us running. I didn’t look any further.’

  She grimaced. ‘You sound terrible.’

  ‘Coughed a lot, I guess.’

  ‘Levkova’s in the kitchen with some CFM leaders. You should tell her you’re here.’

  I shook my head. ‘She’s busy. I just want to crash.’

  ‘She asked where you were.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That you were off fighting battles you couldn’t win and getting pointlessly shot.’

  I fired her a look. ‘Did you?’

  She smiled. ‘No, of course not. I said you were on your way.’

  I finished the merguez and stared up the street, wondering what was happening at other intersections.

  Lanya watched me. ‘You’re not going back.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘You’re not!’ she said.

  ‘I’m not staying where they put me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I don’t tell you what you should be doing, do I?’

  She put a hand on my forearm. ‘You need sleep. You’re wound right up.’

  I looked at her hand. Her skin was cool and dry and made the hairs on my arm stand on end.

  I said, ‘And, to be honest, that’s not helping.’

  She let go abruptly and stood up. ‘I’m going in.’

  And she was gone.

  I pushed my fingers through my hair and stared down at my boots. I was going nowhere. In every sense. I got up and went inside.

  I worked my way through the people in the hallway, put my head into the kitchen to say hello to Levkova and motioned that I was going upstairs, but she called me in. Lanya sat in one of the big armchairs beside the fireplace, hugging her knees, head down. I slumped into the chair opposite her. She didn’t look up. I closed my eyes, thought about being an idiot, and then about Frieda and being trapped and gassed and about protests you can’t win, and then, at last, about my bed upstairs and being in it.

  There were six people round the table and no sign of Vega or Jeitan—I hoped someone had found painkillers for them. Levkova, presiding, looked as alert as a bird of prey. I wondered if she ever slept. They were talking about how they were going to drum up medical supplies, but Levkova called a halt and asked Lanya and me where we’d been and what we’d seen. What we had to say wasn’t exactly news. Turns out it was the same story everywhere. Moldam was locked down—but only Moldam. There had been no rockets for the rest of Southside, and no barricades either.

  Levkova said, ‘Who heard Kelleran’s broadcast up on the hill?’

  People around the table shook their heads, so I said, ‘I did. She’s playing games. She says she has plans for Moldam, but she won’t tell us what they are. She says she has enough intel on One City to move against them, but she won’t tell us what it is.’

  One of the older guys, grumpy looking and restless, tapped his fingers on the table and muttered, ‘Plans for Moldam. What does that mean?’ He glanced at Levkova. ‘Could be this Operation Havoc?’

  My ears pricked up. Levkova was shaking her head. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘We don’t know what Operation Havoc is. Right now it’s just a name fed to us by One City. And they don’t know what it is either.’

  The girl under the bridge had said something that sounded like Havoc. Before I could say anything, the grumpy-looking guy turned on me.

  ‘How has Kelleran got intel on One City?’ He was scowling fiercely, pulling bushy grey eyebrows together. ‘She must have an agent in there. Eh, kid?’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You heard me. Has she got an agent in there?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  He turned his scowl on the rest of the table. ‘Look, no one’s prepared to say it, so I will. Anyone wonder why our comms are so easily compromised these days?’

  ‘These days?’ Levkova gave a short laugh. ‘We’ve always been leaky, you know that.’

  He pressed on. ‘And who’s been going back and forth between here and One City with nobody even raising an eyebrow? Hell, isn’t he over there right now? Commander Stais?’ He made scare quotes with his fingers around ‘Commander’. ‘It’s obvious where the leaks are coming from. Obvious to me, anyway.’

  I rubbed a hand over my eyes, remembering too late what a bad idea that was—they felt like they’d been blitzed with sand.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Levkova was saying. ‘But we do need to take this to One City. They need to know they’ve been compromised. And we need to know about Operation Havoc—what it is and whether it’s Kelleran’s plan for Moldam.’

  ‘How are you going to do that?’ asked grumpy guy.

  ‘Nik will go. He has the language and he knows the city.’

  I opened my eyes. I should have seen that coming, but yes, as things stood, I’d go. You bet I would.

  The man got to his feet. ‘We’ll see about that,’ he said and marched out.

  One of the women said to Levkova, ‘That won’t work, Tasia. We haven’t got a dog’s show of getting anyone out of Moldam alive right now.’

  And away they went again, round and round the table.

  I looked for an excuse not to listen and found one in the distant growl of thunder as a summer storm came rolling in from the borderlands. The wind howled in the chimney and rattled the windows in their frames and big drops of rain lashed the glass. I hoped the army guys at the wire fences were getting soaked. I hoped Battleby Road was being washed clean. I wanted to get back there, to be in a crowd that was yelling and pushing forward, shouting at Cityside that we weren’t going to sit around and wait for Frieda’s plans to unfold.

  I got up and lit the kero lamps hanging from hooks on the walls. Their oily tang stung my nose and eyes and made my head pound. I hung one at the fireplace next to Lanya, but she waved it away. She’d hardly moved since I’d come in. Head on knees, she could have been asleep or angry or anxious or, most likely, fed up with the lot of us. I sat back down, closed my eyes and thought about sleep.

  Listening to the talk at the table I realised that I missed Vega’s hard-nosed intelligent risk taking. He pushed things forward, carried you along, even if it
was you that ended up taking the risk.

  They left at last, not much further forward than when they’d arrived. Levkova turned to me. ‘Well?’

  I stared at the ceiling. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It makes sense. But how?’

  ‘That’s for you to work out.’

  ‘Oh, good.’ I looked at the rain on the windows and tried to think, but my brain had shut down.

  ‘Later,’ said Levkova, taking pity for once.

  Lanya disappeared without a word into the little sunroom off the kitchen where she slept when she stayed over, and I hauled myself up the stairs to my own bed and crashed, fully clothed, face down on top of it.

  CHAPTER 09

  Options, options. Like Lou used to say, when considering an escape from school, try something so obvious they won’t expect it. Try walking out the gate.

  ‘Okay,’ I said to Levkova at the kitchen table next morning. ‘Let’s forget about trying to go through the wire and across Curswall Bridge.’

  I glanced at Lanya. She was concentrating far more than was necessary on spreading jam on a piece of bread. She’d been extra polite to me all morning.

  Levkova said, ‘As long as it’s soon. Kelleran won’t be wasting time and we can’t either. What are you thinking?’

  ‘The Mol.’

  Lanya looked up. ‘What?’

  I said, ‘What’s the only bridge gate on Cityside that won’t be guarded anymore? And what’s the only strip of river where there are no mines because they’ve all been detonated and not replaced yet?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lanya. ‘Are you going to swim?’

  ‘The girl under the bridge,’ I said. ‘How did she get there? What if she had a boat?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘What girl?’ asked Levkova, and listened while we explained.

  Lanya said, ‘Suppose this girl did have a boat, and suppose you found it, and it was undamaged, you’re talking about sneaking out right under the eye of their army.’