by John Barlow
There were forty of fifty of them. Big, muscular ones, and smaller, scrawny ones, with long pinched faces and little black noses that sniffed the air constantly.
They came to a stop, forming a semi-circle. The only sound was the fast little hiss of their noses as they sniffed the delicious aroma of young humans. Then: a delicate pitter-patter sound, as rodent dribble dripped from their panting mouths and landed on the road, glistening in the orange light.
“Stay exactly...” Terra began.
In a flash three rats leapt towards Silver. Everyone screamed, jumping backwards. Silver suddenly found herself on her own, a little way up the road, where she had sprinted out of fright.
One by one, the rats turned in her direction.
She was trembling so violently that when she tried to say help me, it came out as a pathetic wince. The rats’ hissing got louder, and their whiskers twitched faster and faster as their excitement grew.
Slowly, with tiny steps, they inched towards Silver, their long, leathery tails lashing out behind them like whips, as if to warn the others not to move.
Worse reached slowly down and nudged Ugly Pig forwards. But the pig resisted. Bullet pigs are immensely strong, but a pack of fifty rats has an awful lot of teeth in it, teeth sharp enough to sink straight through a pig’s skin. Even a bullet pig needs to know when to be cautious.
“All right,” Worse said, disgusted at his cowardly pet.
With that, Worse sprang forwards, landing on his hands and knees to one side of the pack of rats. He arched his back, as proud as a lion, and began to roar so fiercely that it looked as if he was undergoing a metamorphosis. As if on cue, Ugly Pig ran around to the other side of the rats and began to growl, his head low, ready to charge.
The rats turned one way then the other, spittle flying from their razor-sharp teeth like sparks in the air. Worse shuffled closer still and roared louder, spit fizzing from his mouth, which was contorted into a horrible, agonizing grimace, enough to frighten anybody, or anything.
The rats huddled closer together, backing into one another, the hair on their backs sticking up. Silver, her face drained of color, was now shaking uncontrollably, her whole body in spasms of pure fear.
Worse and Ugly edged closer still, and the rats reacted immediately, drawing themselves up on their back legs, tensing, ultra-alert, ready for a fight. They threw their heads about, bearing those grim, brown teeth. Worse roared ferociously, screaming like... like a Worse.
Then, he suddenly reached out and grabbed two rats by the tails. He swung them around, knocking their heads together, and then, before they knew where they were, tied their tails together. They began to shriek, fighting and clawing at one another in a wild frenzy, trying to run in two different directions.
Another deafening roar from Worse, and the rats began to turn, hissing with fright as they scampered off. Within a matter of seconds, the whole pack had gone, dissolving into a swirling blur as each rat twisted around on its tail and sped away.
For a long time no one moved.
Then Worse, still on his hands and knees, turned towards Silver.
“Was that foolhardy enough for you?”
She took a step towards him, held out her hands, and pulled him up. She gave him a sly look. But it was enough. He knew what it meant.
After the encounter with the rats, they stayed close together as they walked. Occasionally a beetle the size of a boot scuttled across the road, minding it own business. Several long lines of ants marched by, paying no attention to the humans going the other way. The ants may have been bigger than Island ants, but, who knows? It’s hard to judge the size of ants from a distance, and anyway, who’s to say what’s normal, Island ants or the mainland variety? What with one thing and another, large beetles and ants of indeterminate size didn’t seem like much to worry about now. The chunk-hens had not reappeared, and Bad kept looking up into the sky to see where they’d gone.
Then, as they walked along in silence, they heard a drumming sound from behind them. Turning around together, they saw another dark blur approaching.
“Run!” Terra shouted as she darted off the road, pulling Coby after her by the collar. The others didn’t need telling twice. They threw themselves off the road in time to see an emu sprint by at about a hundred miles an hour.
“Wow!” Silver said.
“Strange,” Terra said. “Must have lost its rider. Once an emu-lator is parted from its emu, the two of them just run about. They go mad.”
“They’re already mad,” said Silver.
“Perhaps,” said Terra, “but they’re your friends here, remember.” She walked back to the road. “The emus are harmless enough, but if one of those things hits you at full speed, it’s goodbye ballet dancing. You get me?”
“Hey, look!” Coby said, peering down at something not far away on the tarmac. “It’s a crab!”
“Yeah!” Bad added, getting closer to it.
“No, it’s not,” Silver said, peering hard.” It’s not a crab.”
“Yes it is!” said Bad.
“It’s walking forwards, dummy!” said Silver.
“And your point?”
“Crabs do not walk forwards,” she said. “They walk sideways.”
“Well known fact,” added Coby, amused at the little creature’s head-first scamper across the ground.
Terra poked it with her foot. “You can eat these you know. Delicious white flesh in those thick legs. And the meat in the shell! Mmm, that’s good eating.”
“But they’re going forwards,” Silver insisted. “Why?”
“Must be from the sea-rivers, lost its way,” Terra said. “Don’t get many straight-walking crabs now. All died out. Apart from in the sea rivers. Mutants, of course. Neat, don’t you think?”
“What else do they do?” asked Silver.
“Do? They’re crabs! They scuttle about. They nips things with their pincers. What do you want them to do? Break dance?”
“But...” Silver said, a look of disappointment on her face. “Giant sticker-slugs, piranha-stars, chunk-hens, rats...”
“And bullet pigs!” Worse added.
“Whoa, whoa!” Terra said. “This place isn’t that bad, you know. I mean, not everything is dangerous or horrible. It’s not all gruesome. Mutations happen in nature all the time. It’s just, well, here they happened all of a sudden. And as for the rats, we had pretty big ones before the war.”
“Shall we eat it,” Worse said, sizing up those fat pincers on the end of the crab’s arms.
“I’ve got this to cook it in,” Coby added, patting his square billy can, which hung from his belt as usual.
“Yeah, we can make a fire,” Bad said, as the drool began to collect in his mouth, making his words sloppy and wet as he spoke. He fumbled for the penknife in his pocket.
“Excuse me!” Silver said, hands on hips, staring them down with a no-nonsense expression. “Ben? You remember our friend Ben? Ben Brewer? Rescue him? The Complex? Hello! Do these words mean anything to you?”
Bad huffed with disappointment and put the penknife away. “I’ll get you on the way back, nipper!” he said to the crab, which crawled off, forwards, as if nothing had happened.
“By the way,” Silver asked Terra as they began walking again, “what are the sea-rivers?”
“West of the Complex,” Terra said. “Contamination got into the water there. Not a nice place, but plenty of seafood, if you like your oysters as big as water melons, and prawns as long as your arm...”
“Ugh!” Silver said.
“Best advice is, don’t go there. Although it does have one advantage: it’s a good escape route. Sullivan’s men don’t like going there. Nobody does. It’s... unpleasant.”
Terra didn’t look as if she wanted to say any more about the land of the sea-rivers. But the others were getting nervous.
“Well!” she said, exasperated. “Did I say it was going to be easy? Did I?”
They kept quite, hoping that they wouldn’t ne
ed to go west, to the land of the sea rivers.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It was still early when Ben got up. He looked out of the window, down at the rows of tents in the fun-fair below. The flashing colors of the helter-skelter were pallid and sickening in the flat gray morning light, and the deserted carousel spun around unremittingly, heavy music pumping out of its speakers, as usual. Even now, so early in the day, the tents would be full of workers waiting to start their shift in the power plant, or drinking Complex Spirit after a night of hard labor.
“This is a dump!” he said, and pulled on his jeans.
In the main room, all the plasma screens were on, just as Jason had left them the night before, the games on hold. It was incredibly hot, like it always was, and through the floor came the steady vibration of the power plant.
From behind a closed door he could hear Sullivan snoring, the sound of deep, satisfied slumber.
“Sleep now, scumbag,” Ben said to himself. “Sleep now, because...”
But he didn’t know what. He wished he did.
There was another door. He pressed an ear to it. No sound, so he opened it quietly and looked inside. It was an office. Several large maps were pinned to the walls. There was one of the four roads that led to the Complex. Others looked like older maps, from before the war, perhaps. On a large desk was a computer, its screen idling. Then he saw her: his mum.
He fumbled to catch hold of the door before he fell, his body numb, a horrible buzzing in his ears. He stumbled into the room and stood in front of the photo. It was in a frame, right next to the computer, a polished wood frame, and inside it a picture of his mother.
She was young, laughing into the camera, her head held up high, her hair shiny and long, and her eyes wonderfully full of life. She was incredibly beautiful, so healthy and vibrant, wearing army fatigues and... and resting on her shoulder was an arm. Ben took the frame and stared at the photo. The arm on her shoulders was a man’s arm. Without thinking, he removed the back of the frame and took the photo out. It had been torn in two; whoever the man next to his mum was, Sullivan had got rid of him.
Mum! he whispered, as he slumped into the chair in front of the desk, holding the photo close to his chest. He longed to see her, right now, to feel her holding him tight, that extra-strong hug she used to give him when it seemed that she would never let him go. Mum! he whispered again and again, rocking backwards and forwards. He looked at the picture once more, at the mysterious arm around her. Mum! And dad!
Then he saw something else. On the other side of the computer was another picture frame, exactly the same. It was a picture of Sullivan, sitting astride a massive, purple motorbike, young and proud in his army fatigues. And behind him on the bike was a young woman, her expression fresh and youthful, almost arrogant, her black hair cropped short. Terra.
There was a sound. Sullivan was awake. Without thinking, Ben stuffed the photo of his mum inside his shirt and crept over to the door. He peeped though the gap, and saw Sullivan walk sleepily across the room into the kitchen. As soon as it was safe, he slipped out of the office and darted back into the guestroom, where he lay on the bed and waited. He didn’t take the photo of his mum out from his shirt. He couldn’t bear to see her face again. From now on there was no time for tears. It was time to get out.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Right,” Terra whispered. “Ready?”
No one spoke. They were all huddled down against the chill morning air, not far from the fence on the south-east side of the Complex. The sky was now slowly turning to a fiendish gray, and the fence looked bleak and impenetrable.
“Bad,” Terra said. “You first. Keep the penknife ready, just in case. Worse, you wait ’til last. The rest of us in between, agreed?”
She looked around, scanning the fence left and right. There were no guards coming.
“Go!” she said.
Bad scurried across to the fence, bent low, the penknife held out in front of him. The hole under the fence was smaller than he had thought. After trying to crawl under head first, he gave up and slid through on his bottom, legs first, pushing himself through with his hands.
“Silver!” Terra said.
“I... I...” said Silver, “I...”
Terra pushed her forwards. She stumbled across to the fence before she knew what she was doing. Sitting down and poking her legs into the hole, she was about to wiggle underneath. But Bad grabbed her ankles and yanked her straight through, as if he was hauling in a fish. Up she came, on the other side, where Bad dumped her unceremoniously on the ground.
Coby was so nervous he actually crawled over to the fence on his hands and knees, going as fast as he could, knowing that if he stopped, even for a second, he would turn right round and run away. Luckily, he made it in one go, and before he knew what was happening Bad had pulled him through.
Terra was next. She sprinted across to the fence.
“I don’t need your...” she started to say.
Bad wasn’t listening. He was having a great time. Seizing her by the ankles, he dragged her unceremoniously into the Complex, then threw her on top of Silver and Coby, who lay there, dazed and very apprehensive.
Worse was next. He refused to go feet-first, and decided to try it on his back, head-first. He got halfway through, but then he couldn’t move any more. He was stuck. Whatever he did to pull himself through, and however much the others helped, yanking his big awkward body as hard as they could like a big piece of rolled-up carpet, he wouldn’t budge.
Then, when they were all breathless with the effort, and panic had set in, Worse started to giggle.
“No!” he said, as quietly as he could, but he was laughing so much that his whole body began to judder about. “No, stop it Ugly!”
Beneath him, Ugly Pig had begun to burrow down into the ground. He was head-butting the soil loose and kicking it out behind him with those four powerful trotters, and Worse was being jiggled about mercilessly.
“No, don’t!” Worse gasped, as the animal got right underneath his shoulder blades, a shower of earth flying up.
Within a minute, Worse’s body became unstuck, and he quickly clambered through into the Complex, followed by the snuffling snout of Ugly Pig, who emerged proudly from the hole he had dug, his tail a-wiggle.
“Come on,” Terra said, quickly finding her bearings and getting ready to set off. She made sure that Bad was in front of them, and Worse at the back, just in case.
“What now?” Silver whispered.
“To see some friends of mine. If there’s any more news about Ben, they’ll know.” She looked up to the sky. A fine drizzle had begun to fall. “Oh, great. That’s all we need. Come on. And cover up!”
They went into the south-east sector, towards Moon’s vegetable shop, their coats pulled over their heads against the fine acid rain.
*
Lights were already on in Moon and Davy’s vegetable shop. Terra stole silently up to the door and whispered through the letterbox.
“Let us in! It’s raining!”
A moment later a woman with long auburn hair poked her nose out. She let them in and shut the door quickly behind them. Inside was a tall, lanky man with little round glasses, a pony tail, and what looked like a leather waistcoat.
Moon looked worried sick. But Davy, the man in the waistcoat, was slumped in a chair at the kitchen table, his head in his hands, an empty bottle of Complex Spirit in front of him. It looked like they hadn’t been to bed all night.
“They’ve got him,” he said, his words slurred, his voice craggy and split. “He’s a playslave.”
“Oh, God! No!” Terra cried, slamming her fist down onto the table.
“He’s got a scar on his cheek, right?” Moon added.
They all nodded.
“Pol saw him again yesterday evening. The Commandos took him up to the Control Tower.”
“You know who he is, don’t you?” Terra mumbled.
Moon and Davy nodded, without looking up. Brew
er’s son. They didn’t need to say it.
“Do these kids know what’ll happen...?” said Moon, glancing at Silver and the others. “If Sullivan finds out who he is, if he finds out where the... the Survivors are...?”
“Nobody else knows who Ben is,” Terra said, putting an arm around Moon’s shoulders. “Not yet. Only us. We’ve got a bit of time.”
Coby was looking intense, as if he was thinking a lot harder than normal. Nervously, he opened his mouth:
“Terra, Sawyer, Tah, you two...” he nodded at Moon and Davy. “Those are the only people who know who Ben is. No one else knows.”
Terra laughed. “The old brigade! The Underground. The last ones.”
Moon wasn’t laughing. “You don’t understand how hard Sullivan will try,” she said tearfully to Coby. “Just to know that you’re from the Survivors puts you in terrible danger. He’ll...” and she shuddered with the thought, “he’ll do anything to find out where the last Survivors went. Especially Val.”
“Val Brewer?” Coby said, surprised. “You mean Ben’s mum? Why, is she...”
“Shut up!” Terra snapped. “Don’t ever say that name. From now on you lot have to remember one thing: whatever happens, the lives of everyone you left behind...” she looked at Coby and Silver, “your parents and all the other Survivors, every single person in the Settlement... their lives are in your hands. If Sullivan even hears that name, if he finds out who Ben is, that he’s John Brewer’s son, he will force you to take him there. And he’ll destroy everything.”
“Never!” Coby said.
“You have no idea,” said Davy, his head sunk into his hands. “He’ll take every single survivor, until they are all slaves or... or...”
“He’s right,” Terra said. “From now on, you’ve got a choice: keep the Settlement a secret, and Ben’s name as well, or let Sullivan destroy the last bit of hope in this god-forsaken place.”
The twins had been listening to all this.
“So,” said Bad, shrugging, “why don’t we rescue him? What’s the point in all this moaning and bleating? Let’s just do it!”
