by John Barlow
He grasped the doorframe with shock, already trembling. “It is,” he whispered. “It’s him. Brewer’s son.”
He took a deep breath.
“He’s got your eyes, Val! You’re eyes! And he’s got your courage, John. Oh, yes! He’s got all that Brewer courage, tons of it! But now,” and he spun around as he spoke, “I’ve got him! Thirteen years, and now I’ve got everything I need.”
He ran back to the window. Below, the boys were walking towards a new, white tent on the far side of the fair.
Then, something else caught his attention. From the very back of the fairground a man was running towards the boys. A melted man. Sullivan was confused. A melted-man, running? He stared down, squinting to make it out. It was Sawyer, running madly, waving his arms, looking ready to drop.
“Keep walking,” Ben said to Jason as they saw Sawyer running towards them. “Just keep walking.”
“What’s that fat slob doing?” Jason said.
“I don’t know! Shut up and walk!”
Sawyer was getting close, puffing and panting, his hair soaked with sweat.
“Run!” he shouted, his exhausted mouth gaping open, terrified. “Run, Ben! Go on...”
He came towards them, straining for air with each word.
“They know who you are! Get out of here, Ben!”
His face was screwed up in agony as he forced himself to run and run, his arms flying out as if they were half dead, his legs heavy and painful. “Go on!”
Then Sawyer ran straight past Ben and Jason, still yelling at them as he went.
Ben turned and watched as the melted man raced towards Harman, who was a few paces behind. At first the commando couldn’t quite believe it. He was baffled, his head flashing in little jerks one way then the other. He fumbled with his helmet, trying to put it on. But it was too late. Sawyer’s great body ploughed into him, sending them both crashing to the ground. Sawyer used what little strength he still had to pin the commando there.
“Get out of here, Ben!” he bellowed, struggling to hold Harman down.
Ben looked at Jason. He looked at the tent. Then, instinctively, he raised his head to the Control Tower. Sullivan was at the window, his mouth opening and closing, silently. As he shouted, Sullivan was punching and kicking at the glass with all his force, going mad. A crack appeared, then another. Then he raised a clenched fist and smashed it clean through the glass.
The entire pane dropped in massive, spiraling fragments down the front of the building, shattering noisily five stories beneath. Sullivan stood there, his large frame illuminated by the apartment lights behind him, a great, screaming silhouette at the top of the Control Tower:
“Get him!” he screamed, hysterical, his hand dripping with blood. “Get...! Him...! Get...! Him...! Or... You’re... DEAD!” he cried, his voice drowning out the noise of the music in the fair. “DEAD!”
Ben grabbed Jason. They ran straight for the tent. As they arrived, the white sheet parted for them, then closed again.
Inside the tent, Silver, Coby and Terra (unrecognizable in an improvised gypsy outfit) were waiting. Ben stood there panting. He had never been so pleased to see anybody in his life.
“Did you hear Sawyer?” he said as fast as he could, between breaths. “Sullivan knows who we are. What are we going to do?”
“Out the back,” Coby said. “Come on, quick. It’s all ready.”
“Him as well,” Ben said, pointing at Jason.
“We don’t have room!” Silver shouted. “And... we can’t! Not him!”
Jason stood there, shaking with fear and on the verge of blubbering. Terra stared at Jason, then at Ben, her eyes peeping out from beneath her big, floppy towel-turban. But she couldn’t speak.
“He’s coming!” Ben said.
Suddenly, the back of the tent was torn open. Two stun commandos stood there.
Oh, no, Ben thought, his stomach sinking. But Coby and the others didn’t even move. They weren’t scared. What was going on?
The commandos pushed past and took up positions at the front of the tent, one of them at each side. Terra, meanwhile, peeped outside.
“Here he comes,” she said.
Ben wondered if he was going mad. Or dreaming again. Was Lara Croft going to walk through the back of the tent as well? Then, as if all this wasn’t enough, Ugly Pig appeared from somewhere or other.
“Now!” Terra shouted, and stood back as the white sheets were ripped down.
There stood Harman, his head held high in the air, a sarcastic sneer on his scared face. Terra stepped towards him, right up to him.
“You piece of...” she began.
He slapped her aside with the back of his hand. She fell to the floor. But as she fell she grabbed one of his boots and tugged it sideways so hard that he began to topple over. He snatched at the canvas side of the tent. Then, as he steadied himself, he noticed the two other commandos in the tent, one on each side of him. Smiling with relief, he kicked Terra away with a shiny black boot, and, pointing at Ben, said:
“You two, get that boy!”
The two commandos didn’t move a muscle.
“I said get the boy!” he shouted, not used to being disobeyed.
“Get him yourself!” one of the commandos said, lifting his visor to reveal a young, grinning face...
At that moment a bullet pig sprang forward.
“Wh... what? What’s this?” Harman said, almost child-like with disbelief. “And who are you two? I don’t recognize you.” He barked at the twins, as though he was still in control.
“I’m Bad,” said the first commando.
“And I’m Worse,” said the second, flipping up his visor. “And this is where you find out just how much worse...”
“No,” Harman said, beginning to shake his head. “No, no...” he repeated, again and again, feeling behind him along the canvas wall of the tent. “This isn’t...”
A wave of noise drowned out his voice: sirens were sounding, signaling a change of shift. Immediately, people began to spill from the tents. They poured out in droves, looking dazed and miserable, their bodies sagging and dull as if the monotonous routine of work was an invisible weight on their shoulders.
However, the sight of Harman and the twins and Ugly Pig in the tent attracted their attention. People stopped to look. A little further off some of the workers discovered Sawyer on the ground, bruised and exhausted; they helped him to his feet, because everyone knew Sawyer, and although he was a policeman he was universally respected.
“Right, both of you are under arrest!” Harman said, ignoring the crowd that had gathered. He began to get out the handcuffs, which all commandos keep attached to their belts.
“You reckon!” Worse said, as if this was a joke.
With a neat kick of a commando boot (the twins were dressed in complete commando uniforms) the handcuffs flew from Harman’s hands, spun high into the air, and landed amongst a pack of young men who were now staring with undisguised amazement at what they were witnessing.
“Come on, you lot,” Bad said, slipping off his helmet to show that he was not one of Sullivan’s men, “it’s kick-a-commando day!”
The workers muttered to each other, not sure what to do. They looked up at the Control Tower, where Sullivan was now screeching orders at people through the smashed window on the top floor, and waving a blood stained fist in the air.
Then Harman made a run for it. He ran straight at the group of workers. In normal circumstances they would have jumped out of his way. But now they stood firm.
“Move!” he yelled. “Get out of my way, you scum!”
He tried to push his way through. The men jostled him, and then one of them seized his stun gun and started smashing it to pieces, years of anger and desperation erupting from inside him as he stamped the gun into the ground. Worse ripped off his helmet, and together the twins rushed forwards. They got hold of Harman and decided that handcuffing him would be fun.
“No,” one of the workers shouted. �
��Let me do it!”
“Right you are!” said Bad.
Harman found himself struggling with several workers, and before long a large crowd had gathered to watch and cheer.
“Commandos!” Ben shouted.
A line of dark blue figures was making its way through the fair: twenty commandos were on their way, helmets on, visors down. They arrived in seconds, and attacked indiscriminately, throwing bodies aside, trampling on arms and legs as they pushed through to try and get to their chief, Harman.
The noise of the fight drew even more workers into the action. They came from tent after tent, big, eager groups of men and women, all astonished to see commandos being pushed around, being clobbered over the head and pulled to the ground. Many of them joined in. Stun guns were useless, because as soon as one was taken from its holster, it was grabbed and smashed to pieces, the hated symbol of Sullivan and his vile, unrelenting repression.
Meanwhile, the sirens continued to screech and wail, and from up above came the crazed voice of Sullivan.
Little by little the commandos advanced towards Ben and the others. Meanwhile, Sawyer staggered off, trying to escape the fighting. A stun commando was right behind Sawyer, and decided to take a swipe at him.
“Right, that’s it!” Terra said, tearing off her turban and leaping forwards.
She ran across and threw herself onto the huge commando before he could hit Sawyer. She hung around his neck from behind, half choking him to death before he knew what had happened. But then the commando slammed her clean over his shoulders and onto the ground in front of him, where she squirmed with pain, crawled to her knees, and just managed to duck as he took a kick at her with his boot.
“Go!” she yelled at Ben. “All of you, go now!”
Ben looked at Jason, who was staring with incomprehension at Terra.
The twins, meanwhile, were in the thick of the action, with Ugly Pig head-butting anything dressed in dark blue. More commandos were on the way, running though the fair as fast as they could. But workers were swarming in, hundreds of them, from all over the Complex. There were fists flying everywhere you looked, and at the edges of the action those with injuries to nurse (mostly stun commandos, who were vastly outnumbered) retreated like whipped dogs.
“Go!” Terra shrieked again. “Go now!”
The twins knew she was right. After taking a final swipe at the nearest commando, Bad pulled his brother away (Worse would have stayed there all day, he was enjoying it so much).
“What about Terra?” Ben shouted above the racket, as the twins led them all through to the back of the tent, with Jason having to be forcibly dragged away, still staring at Terra.
“Terra can look after herself,” Silver said. “Come on.”
“Where?” Ben shouted. Then he saw it: a dark blue Jeep, parked right behind the tent. A commando Jeep. And the twins were getting in.
“Come on!” they said.
“Have you...” Ben said. “Have you stolen this?”
“Yeah,” said Bad as he sat at the wheel. “Quick!”
They all climbed in. Only Bad ’n Worse were allowed on the seat, which stretched right across the cabin, from door to door. The other three of them (plus Ugly Pig) had to squash down on the floor. And the cabin was very small. There was no back seat, just a low-loader out back with a tarpaulin stretched over it.
With the deafening chaos of a full-blown riot in their ears, and the great walled city descending into chaos, they drove off.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
They screeched around corner after corner, Worse at the wheel, comparing notes with his brother on how many stun commandos they’d battered. Ben, shocked and relieved, listened to them as they boasted about the fight. Strange, he thought, but after all that fighting Bad ’n Worse had come out of it completely unhurt. Just how strong were these boys? he asked himself, as the Jeep swung about, rumbling down side streets, away from the fun-fair.
“Where are we going, Ben?” Jason said, so meek and mild that he sounded like a little lamb bleating for its mother. His bottom lip had begun to quiver.
“I...” Ben said. “I, ehm... Look, these are my friends. They came to get me because, well, because...” he sighed. There was nothing he could tell Jason. “We’ll look after you,” he promised.
Silver was huddled up in the corner of the cabin, trying to keep out of the way of Bad’s big commando boots, which he kept kicking out as he talked enthusiastically about the fight.
“Excuse me,” she said to Jason. “Sorry to be rude, but why on earth are you here?”
Jason buried his face in his hands. It was too much for him. And another thing: it was cold. He wasn’t used to being outside the Control Tower for long. He began to sob.
The twins now stopped talking. They looked down, confused.
“Hold on a minute, who’s that?” Bad said, pointing at Jason, who was curled up so tight and small than he was hardly noticeable.
“He’s...” Ben said, and sighed. “He’s Sullivan’s son.”
“What!”
“What!”
Worse slammed on the breaks. For a moment the twins’ faces registered a kind of blank bewilderment. But then, thinking exactly the same thing, they smiled.
“Kidnappers!” they said, with wonder in their eyes. “We’ve got Sullivan’s son!” and they chuckled and gurgled with dark, dangerous pleasure.
That’s not all, Ben said to himself. Wait ’til you find out who his mother is...
Off they drove.
*
Meanwhile, things at the fun-fair were escalating. All of Sullivan’s troops had been summonsed. But that only encouraged more and more workers from the tents and factories to join the fight. Men and women rushed in from all parts of the Complex as word spread: Sullivan’s losing control.
From high up in the Control Tower Sullivan was now a solitary figure, his arm still bleeding savagely. He pointed and yelled until his throat was like sand paper. But with each new outbreak of violence he saw that his troops were ridiculously outnumbered. Melted men had arrived in large numbers, but they were on the side of the workers. Tents began to topple under the strain of the crush of bodies, one after the other, until whole sections of the fair were flattened.
But most of all, Sullivan was looking for the boy. Not Jason. Ben. Ben Brewer.
“He can’t have got far,” he told himself. “And once I’ve got little Ben, all this will be irrelevant. When I’ve got Ben,” he said, wincing with pain as his arm ached agonizingly, “I’ll find the Survivors, wherever they are. And the Complex can go to Hell. The Complex... and everyone in it.”
With that he disappeared into the Control Room to make sure that was exactly what would happen.
Terra found her way down an empty side street, eager for a rest. She sat on the curb and hung her tired head between her knees.
“Jason!” she said to herself. “Haven’t seen you for a while! You’ve grown, kid!”
She laughed, though her heart was breaking. For almost thirteen years she had not been allowed to see Jason, ever since Sullivan had seized control.
It had happened when Jason was a baby. Sullivan had split from the Underground and taken control. But Sullivan was Jason’s father. It was an impossible situation.
So, Terra had set up a meeting with Sullivan to try and make peace. For the sake of her new-born son.
“Choose your place!” Sullivan had said, all those years ago. “No soldiers. Just you, me and the baby.”
Terra honored the agreement. She waited for hours in a secluded part of the eastern forest, just her and Jason, her infant son. When Sullivan turned up, he was holding a gun.
“The boy comes with me,” he said. “You behave yourself, Terra, and you live. Deal?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. A second later he was gone. And so was Jason.
Since then she had only seen her son in rare glimpses, sneaking to the fun-fair whenever she could, hanging about there, hour after hour, hoping to catc
h sight of him. But even that was risky.
Now, thirteen years later, she smiled at the thought of him with Ben and the others. “Hope you’re getting on with the twins, Jason!” she said, her head still between her knees.
She felt a sudden pressure on her head. It intensified. She looked up. Harman was standing right in front of her.
“Harman!” she said. “Someone took your handcuffs off, did they?”
He lowered himself slowly down to her level, crouching in front of her until their eyes met.
“Tell me where the Brewer boy’s gone,” he said, his hot breath in her face.
“Tell Jack there’s no point looking. They...”
He grasped a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back sharply.
“No more games, Terra. Tell me now.”
He brought his face even closer to hers.
“Now,” he whispered, until she could smell his hot, sour breath in his nostrils.
She kept her face right where it was, and stared into his eyes.
“You’ll kill me before I tell you anything, Harman.”
“You’re not so tough,” he said. “We can make people squeal.”
“Not a chance, Harman. I’d rather die than help you.”
Harman nodded. He leant forwards and whispered right into her ear: “What about your son? Want him to die as well?”
Tears streamed instantly down her face. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t.
“You see,” Harman said, “I know a little secret about you. A very well-guarded secret. But I know. I know all about Jason, Terra. I’ve always known that you were his mother. And now, if I find him first, well...”
Her eyes seemed to beg Harman, to implore him. But they also defied him, they hated and despised him with an unspeakable loathing.
“Terra,” he said, wiping a tear from her cheek with an enormous, leather-clad fist. “I don’t want to do it, I promise you.” He stood up, ruffling her hair with his hand. “Tell us where all the Survivors are, where Brewer took his wife, and you can keep your son.”
