Havoc

by Higgins, Jane

  The screen cut back to City News.

  You’re back with Jenny Long on your official news channel. In breaking news: there’s renewed chaos unfolding across Cityside this afternoon as wild rumours circulate that the Moldam quarantine has been breached. Assurances from Security Director Kelleran have had no effect as crowds surround warehouses, hospitals and medical centres demanding the vaccine.

  Lanya hugged her knees and rested her head on them. ‘Here we go at last,’ she said.

  The counterpunch came late that night. An explosion rocked us awake. Then another, and another. The window and door rattled so hard they almost burst from their frames and the building shook as though it was trying to twist itself off its foundations. We raced to the window, saw darkness, smelled smoke. We scrambled into clothes and went out to the landing, unsure whether to run or hide.

  Run, as it turned out: my father came charging up the stairs calling, ‘Out, out, out! Now! The barricades are blown, the army’s here.’

  We clattered down the stairs and out the back door, and Lanya and I both turned towards Brown’s, but my father said, ‘Don’t worry about Corman. He’ll brave it out.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I said.

  ‘Because that’s where I’ve been tonight. It’s what he does. Come this way!’

  We went along the back streets—Sentian is mostly back streets, and I knew them all. So, it transpired, did my father. People were spilling out back doors and climbing down fire escapes, running and yelling to each other, lighting fires in bins and handing out homemade contraptions of fuel and fuse. The air stank of smoke and turpentine and everyone looked like that was fueling them too: they were pumped.

  ‘They’re going to fight,’ said my father, ushering us through the front door of a tiny grocery shop where two people were putting on protective masks. They greeted him by name and he nodded to them, then hurried us out into another lane.

  ‘You have a different fight,’ he said.

  ‘Can they win?’ asked Lanya.

  He looked up and down the lane, and we listened for whether the fighting was close. It wasn’t, and he relaxed a fraction.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not by themselves. We’re outgunned. Sentian will go, but it won’t go quietly and it will take much longer than it might have once, because it’s not alone now. The army and the security forces are stretched. We’ve been organised and waiting for this for years. We just needed the trigger.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, understanding at last why the whole of Cityside had blown apart so fast.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You, God help me, are the trigger. The two of you and this bioweapon of Frieda’s. If we’re going to save Moldam, we need to push hard now. We have to make Frieda declare her hand, and we have to win over the army.’

  ‘Is that all,’ said Lanya.

  He almost smiled. ‘Don’t despair. Come on, this way.’

  It was quieter now, and we seemed to have left the fighting behind.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

  ‘St John’s,’ he said. ‘The church is as good an isolation zone for you two as any.’

  ‘And what’s your plan?’

  ‘It had been to dig in at St John’s, Sentinel and other places around Cityside, hack the city’s electronic systems—media, transport, finance, if possible—and bring the place to a grinding halt. We hadn’t counted on our trigger coming with a deadline, and it’s one hell of a deadline. Now we have to save Moldam any way we can, and that means bringing Frieda out of the shadows, exposing what she’s done and hoping that most of Cityside doesn’t want that much blood on their hands.’

  We came to St John’s, climbed the steps to the darkened porch and looked back across the tent settlement that had sprung up in the square. The lights were the first thing that hit you—every tent glowed golden, and around the perimeter strings of lights swung from poles. Proper camping tents jostled for space with thrown-together tarps on tripods, all with their front covers thrown back to catch the breeze. But now the breeze brought a whiff of smoke from the battles raging elsewhere and people were moving, talking earnestly, starting to form a human barricade around the perimeter behind banners proclaiming One City Is Possible and Speak Up, Stand Up!

  ‘Who are they?’ asked Lanya.

  My father gave a half shrug. ‘They are many things. People who are tired of war. People who want a just peace, elections, a free media, commerce across the river. They don’t all agree with each other about what they want and how to get it, but they do know what they don’t want.’

  We stood there a while, seeing what solidarity and hope for a bright new world looks like when it first kicks off. And I wondered whether it would extend to solidarity with Moldam.

  ‘Sir?’ said Lanya. ‘I have an idea.’

  My father turned to her.

  ‘What if you go to Frieda and ask for a deal? Like the one you talked about: two doses of the vaccine for Nik and me if she’ll look into helping Moldam. She’ll think that will be the end of it and everyone will stop panicking. But tell her to come here with the vaccines. Then you have your stage and your audience to expose what she’s doing.’

  My father looked across the square, thinking it through.

  I said, ‘But would she believe that was a real offer?’

  Lanya drew me aside. ‘Everyone has a breaking point, including your father. That’s how Frieda works, isn’t it. I don’t think she’ll have much trouble believing he’d do this to save you.’

  CHAPTER 38

  We slept in the crypt. Like old times.

  The minister nodded to me saying, ‘I remember you,’ and gave me a pile of blankets and pillows. If he was freaking out because there were sick people in his church he didn’t say so, but he had tried to throw out Frieda’s armed agents a few days before, and he’d offered us safe haven in a news report, so I figured he must be an ally. He beckoned us over behind the slab of granite that was the crypt’s altar and pulled back a wall-hanging to expose a small door.

  ‘If you need to get out in a hurry, this takes you up some stairs and into the sanctuary, that’s the room behind the main altar. You can get outside from there.’

  My father went off to rally the troops or gather intel or make the deal with Frieda, or possibly all three. Lanya and I set up camp in a corner of the crypt. Lanya lit a candle in front of the altar icon and sat down beside me on our makeshift bed. We watched the light flicker on the gold leaf.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Okay. Tired. You?’

  ‘Same.’

  But I didn’t really know. Was this headache just a headache? Were these muscle aches just a result of a few full-on days? For all we knew, the virus was hurtling towards us like a freight train, only we couldn’t see it yet. Maybe we were conscious of the rumbling of its wheels in the distance, but soon, perhaps very soon, it might roar out of the darkness and run us down.

  Lanya put her head on my shoulder and, with the world going insane above us, we fell asleep.

  My father woke us. The candle had burned out and daylight fell through the doorway at the top of the stairs. Hard on the eyes. We surfaced slowly, trying to l
ook bright eyed and ready.

  ‘How are you both?’ he asked. He was studying our faces carefully.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and Lanya nodded.

  He looked unconvinced.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘Frieda’s agreed,’ he said. ‘She’ll be here at noon with vaccine for both of you. We’re getting the Dry-dwellers to verify that it’s authentic.’

  I rubbed sleep out of my eyes. ‘She’s not suspicious about meeting here?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be. There’ll be a crowd in to watch, but she won’t know that it’s our crowd. We’ve put the word out for supporters to come in—we haven’t told them what it’s about, but we’ve set it up as well as we can to expose what she’s doing to Moldam. It could all go wrong, of course—it’s a big risk, to you in particular.’

  ‘We’ve come this far,’ said Lanya. ‘We’re not turning back now.’

  He looked at me.

  ‘It could all go right, too,’ I said and tried to smile.

  It must have looked like a win–win for Frieda, a great two-in-one deal: she could publicly defuse the explosive potential of HV–C6 roving the city unchecked, and she could show the One City crowd that their celebrated leader would sell out Moldam for his son. Accordingly, she turned up with a circus: a full media contingent from Cityside News—a big-name reporter, three cameras, a bunch of tech people and their hangers-on; she also brought six agents, including Dash, Jono and two men who seemed to be medics. There was an army high-up too, with four of his underlings, as well as a thirty-strong division to patrol the outskirts of the square. There weren’t enough of them to clear the square, they were there as a warning to the tent city: this is what’s coming once you’ve had your fun—take note and, if you’re wise, take off.

  Frieda arrived in a bustle of busyness. She talked to the news team, she talked to the minister, she talked to her army chum.

  Lanya and I sat on the altar steps and watched her make her way up the aisle, breezy with confidence. She led them all up past us to the wide space in front of the altar and said to the news team, ‘Set up here.’

  She looked around and noticed that people had started to drift in and occupy seats. She seemed slightly puzzled, as though she wasn’t expecting an on-site audience as well as a city-wide one, but then she decided to capitalise on that.

  She said to the news team, ‘Make sure they’ll be able to hear me too.’

  Then she turned to Lanya and me. ‘Here we are again. I told you the Marsh would stand.’

  ‘It looked like it was burning to me,’ I said.

  She stared down her nose at us and walked away.

  I looked across the crowd. Mr Corman had arrived, looking immaculate and in no way as if he’d just come from the street battle for Sentian. I saw Anna and Samuel, from the house in Bethun where I’d stayed when Lanya was in the Marsh. My father was talking to them. After a while he made his way up to the front. He stopped there, didn’t look at Frieda, just stood with arms folded, watching, looking unhappy.

  A minor commotion at the big front doors announced the arrival of the Dry-dwellers—Nomu and Raffael and the other three members of their team. They’d ditched their Cityside clothes and gone back to their own things: tunics, leggings and soft leather sandals. Nomu’s tunic was a brilliant blue, Raffael’s, almost white. They glided in a group through the crowd towards the front. People were curious and almost deferential towards them.

  Lanya nudged me and nodded towards a side door: Fyffe had just come through it, all but dragging her parents inside. They look as nervous and out of place as she looked excited. Frieda couldn’t hide that she was surprised to see them, and the newsman could barely contain his glee. He scurried down the steps, beckoning a camera operator to follow, and zeroed in on Sarah, who was more likely than her husband to deliver on the audience’s appetite for grief.

  The crowd cleared a space around them and the reporter said, ‘Mrs Hendry, you’ve lost two sons to the hostiles. One of them shot by Moldam militants. Perhaps you’re feeling that what’s happening in Moldam right now is divine justice?’

  He pushed a microphone at her, but she looked at him with cool intensity and said, ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

  The reporter looked surprised and disappointed that he had to abandon a heartfelt beginning to his coverage. He and his cameraman hurried back up the steps to where Frieda and the minister were talking. The minister was asking for a chance to welcome the crowd and the wider city audience to his patch and she said, ‘All right, but keep it short.’

  By now the crowd had fallen quiet and watchful. The minister, wired up with a little lapel microphone, went to the top of the altar steps. He opened his arms wide and welcomed everyone to St John’s, which, he said, was a place of peace and reconciliation, and he hoped that this would be an instance of exactly those things. He turned to Frieda and said, ‘Director Kelleran, over to you,’ and he went down into the crowd.

  The reporter took his place and did his own piece about how we were all here to calm the spreading panic. Then he said to Frieda, ‘Director. We’ve heard some alarming stories about these two young people here. Can you set our minds at rest?’

  ‘Yes, Peter, I can. People seem to be concerned that the illness afflicting Moldam could jump the river. I can assure everyone that it is not an airborne virus. It will not jump the river. And we will be strengthening the quarantine around Moldam. Now, we don’t know if these two individuals are infected or not, but I’m pleased to be able to dispense the vaccine to them here and now to put minds at rest.’

  She beckoned to the medics and to Lanya and me. We stood up and moved front and centre. Frieda made a great show of taking a little black case from the leader of the Dry delegation and opening it. Inside were two syringes and two vials. She held up a vial to show the crowd and the cameras, then held out the box to the medics who took a syringe and vial each.

  I looked at the vials and thought, here it is: rescue. No more speeding freight train. No more staring at a future that was short and full of horror. Both of us safe. Home, free.

  ‘Ready?’ said one of the medics to me. ‘Hold out your arm.’

  I looked at Lanya.

  She was staring at her own vial of vaccine.

  Then she gave a small nod and said, ‘Now!’

  She grabbed a vial. I grabbed a vial.

  We dropped them on the floor and crunched them underfoot.

  CHAPTER 39

  The reporter swore loudly into his microphone. My father closed his eyes and bowed his head. I took the lapel mic the minister had given me earlier in the day out of my pocket and spoke into it.

  My voice boomed through the sound system of the church. ‘Do you want to know how we got infected?’

  Frieda burst out, ‘There’s no evidence that you are infected!’

  I pointed across to Nomu. ‘That room that Nomu talked about at the news conference yesterday. Underground in the Marsh, where they’ve been testing this disease. We’ve been there. And we’re not the only ones here who know about it.’

  I turned towards Dash and held out the microphone.

  Her eyes got wide and she mouthed
, ‘What?’

  ‘There is no such room!’ Frieda cried. ‘There never was!’

  People were starting to yell out. ‘Tell the truth!’ ‘What are you hiding?’

  Dash was staring at me. I kept holding out the mic, kept meeting her eye, willing her to move.

  Frieda turned to the cameras. ‘This is a fabrication! A girl from the Dry who’s too ashamed to admit she’s a runaway, and two Breken youths—Breken, let me remind you—who want to terrorise this city.’

  The crowd was shouting at her, and she was starting to lose her cool and shout back, and the reporter was trying to break in, calling, ‘Calm, everyone! If we can just calm down. Let the director speak—’

  Then Dash moved.

  She marched past her boss to me, took the mic and spoke.

  ‘That room exists,’ she said.

  Everybody stopped and Dash spoke into the hush. ‘I’ve been there. I’ve seen bodies there.’ She pointed to the two medics. ‘So have they.’ She held out the mic to them.

  After a brief, frozen moment one of them gave a little groan, set his mouth in a thin line and walked up to take it from her. He stared at it for a second then put it to his lips and said in a low, broken voice, ‘Yes, God forgive me, I’ve been there too.’

  Lanya prised the mic from the man’s hand. ‘The virus is a bioweapon,’ she said in her careful Anglo. ‘It has been released in Moldam to break us. But do you think it will stop there?’

  ‘This is fantasy!’ snapped Frieda. ‘There is no secret room. There are no bioweapons. Moldam’s problems are of its own making. If they agree to cease hostilities we will negotiate medical assistance for them. We’ve said it time and time again.’

  She gestured to Jono and another of her agents. ‘Take them out of here. All of them.’