Survival

by Joe Craig

  He bolted out of the kitchen. He tumbled over the coffee table in the living room, but kept going through a shower of tiny green houses and fake money. He raced for the front door, counting off the seconds in his head, but still with no idea how long he had, or even what was going to happen when his time ran out.

  He scrambled to open the front door, but the catch kept slipping through his fingers. On his fourth attempt, he finally burst out into the open. He ran to the pavement, relishing the cool air against the sweat on his forehead. Then:

  BOOM!

  Felix was blasted off his feet. Heat roasted his back. All he could see was an intense orange flash and he felt like his eardrums would burst. He crashed to the pavement on the other side of the street. It knocked all the air from his lungs and for a second he couldn’t breathe. Then he rolled over and looked back towards the flat.

  The explosion was small, but devastating with its precision. Through the smoke he could see the jagged outline of where their flat had fitted into the building. It was a ripped black hole. Felix staggered to his feet. He couldn’t stand properly and nearly fell three times, finally leaning back against the wall of the Gregor’s Elbow pub. His eyes took in the scene piece by piece, as if together it was too much for his mind to cope with. The heat… the flames dancing inside… the glass that was still falling around him, along with black confetti.

  After a few seconds, Felix became aware of the sirens, then the clusters of people gathering to watch. A couple of kids started throwing stones into the burning shell.

  “Felix!”

  He heard his own name, but didn’t respond.

  “Felix!” It was a woman’s shout. The next thing he knew somebody was clutching him to her chest. Still he couldn’t take his eyes off the devastation. Then his thoughts changed. Who was hugging him? It felt good – almost like his mum.

  Slowly he came to his senses.

  “Felix, thank God you’re OK.” It was Helen Coates. Felix’s brain wasn’t processing any of the words, but he loved the soothing sound of her voice and the reassuring smell of her clothes. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”

  She took him by the hand and dragged him up the street. By this time there was a different kind of chaos in the street: fire engines, police cars, people evacuating from the neighbouring flats. Felix stared as long as he could, craning to peer over his shoulder. He hardly blinked. Finally he managed to mouth a single word: “Boom.”

  Zafi felt her shirt clinging to the sweat on her back. What was happening to her? She sprinted through the back streets with as much speed and grace as ever, but it felt like she was carrying a weighted pack on her shoulders.

  The explosion rumbled through the air only a few hundred metres away, but she didn’t look back to see the smoke rising above the buildings. Instead she pressed on, harder and faster.

  What have I done? she heard herself thinking. Her imagination played out two scenes simultaneously – in one, Felix made it out of the flat alive. In the other, he stumbled at the door and was lost in the flames.

  There were sirens piercing the air now, but to Zafi they may as well have been in her head. She reached Camden and climbed over the railing of the canal bridge. She stared into the water, crouching in the wrought-iron curls of the bridge like a gargoyle at Notre Dame.

  How long would it be before Stovorsky found out that Jimmy’s mother, sister and friend had survived? That Zafi had failed. Would he ever find out that she’d failed deliberately? No, Zafi told herself. It wasn’t deliberate. I tried to blow them up. I failed. That’s all.

  But she could feel her left index finger trembling. She tried to look away, but it seemed to catch the light, almost flashing. There was still ketchup on the tip. I didn’t write the messages, she pleaded with herself. I didn’t. She shivered and closed her hand into a fist to hide her fingertip. If I did, I went against orders… If I did, I disobeyed my nature…

  “If I did,” she whispered, “I’m not a killer.”

  A spark ran through her blood. It flared into her brain. In the murky water beneath her she saw Felix’s smile. Then it melted into the shapes of her targets’ bodies. Were they alive or dead?

  If I’m not a killer, what am I?

  Finally she closed her eyes and sprang into a powerful dive. A tramp was woken by the splash, but in the darkness there was no way he could have seen the shadow beneath the surface. It cut through the water with the power of a shark.

  She didn’t surface for miles.

  31 LAST ORDERS AT THE GREGOR’S ELBOW

  Helen Coates and Felix stopped half a mile from the flat, just outside a greasy spoon café. The light from inside was enough for Helen to give Felix a quick examination. She studied him up and down, staring into his eyes and his ears, rolling each of his limbs, asking what hurt.

  “I’m fine,” Felix insisted, pulling away. “I promise. I’m just bruised.”

  “You were nearly blown up,” Helen said sternly. “And I’m not taking you to a doctor, so at least let me check you over.”

  Felix narrowed his eyes and let her carry on. “No doctor?” he asked softly. They exchanged a glance. Both of them knew the Royal Free Hospital was just round the corner. “You think the explosion means they’ve lost us on the surveillance?”

  “It means either NJ7 is trying to kill us, or somebody else is trying to kill us and managed to get round NJ7 surveillance – possibly even shut it down temporarily, like Zafi did. Either way, we need to get into hiding as quickly as possible.”

  “It was Zafi,” Felix blurted. Helen gave him a puzzled look. “In the flat,” he went on, excited.

  “Did you see her? Was she…?”

  “No, no, but there was a message from her: that the flat wasn’t safe and I had to get out.”

  “What’s she doing?” Helen said, almost to herself. “Why blow up the flat, but warn you about it so you don’t get hurt?”

  “Hey,” Felix protested. “I am hurt a little bit.” He put on his saddest face and rubbed his shoulder.

  “Get over it, sunshine.”

  Felix shrugged. He didn’t mind the lack of sympathy. Really he was just relieved to be in one piece – he knew how lucky he was not to have been hurt more seriously.

  “Where’s Georgie?” he asked.

  Helen pointed through the window of the café and tapped on the glass to her daughter. “We were lucky,” she explained. “I bumped into her on the way home at the top of the road, We both saw the explosion. I told her to come straight here and wait for us.”

  Georgie rushed from the café and wrapped her arms round Felix. “You OK?” she asked, squeezing him hard. “We saw what happened. How did you get out in time?”

  “Zafi left me a warning. You didn’t know I could fly, did you?” he joked, squirming out of Georgie’s bear hug.

  “And such a graceful landing too,” Georgie quipped back.

  “So are we grabbing a bite before we go into hiding?”

  Helen rolled her eyes.

  “Actually, Mum,” Georgie cut in, “I just ordered some toast”

  Before Helen could reply, Felix reached into his pocket.

  “Great plan, Georgie. Get some for me too.” He pulled out a few coins and was about to count them, but something else came out of his pocket too – a small card. Georgie picked it up off the pavement where it had fluttered down and brought it close to her face to study it in the light.

  “So you’re sitting at home,” she began, “you get a warning from some weird French assassin girl that you’re about to get blown up and the only thing you grab on your way out is a property card from the Monopoly set?”

  “What?” Felix screwed up his face. “Let me see that.” He snatched the card from her. “I have no idea how this got…” He stopped himself mid-sentence and his mouth fell open because when he saw what was written on the front of the card, he suddenly knew who had put it in his pocket. “How did she…?” he gasped.

  “What’s going on, Felix,” Helen asked s
eriously. “Is it another message from Zafi?”

  “What’s it mean?” said Georgie. “How do you know it’s from her?”

  At first Felix couldn’t take his eyes off the card. “The warning in the flat was written on the kitchen floor in ketchup,” he explained. “Smell this.” He shoved the card up to Georgie’s nose, then to Helen’s. “So either there’s suddenly a whole community of people who’ve given up emailing and decided to send tomato-sauce messages instead, or this is from Zafi.”

  “Slow down, Felix,” Helen told him. She knelt down and rested a hand on his shoulders. “Are you sure you didn’t have it in your pocket already.”

  “Maybe you took it with you to school this morning,” suggested Georgie.

  “Oh yeah, maybe trading Monopoly cards is suddenly a massive new craze – especially the stations.” He pulled a face of maximum disbelief. “And maybe when I hit the pavement you lost some of your brain.” Before Georgie could react, he rattled on. “Why would I write myself a heart in ketchup? Did I die and come back as a freakoid?”

  Now it was Georgie’s turn to pull a face. “Wait,” she said, “that’s not a heart.”

  “Of course it is,” said Felix, waving the card in front of her nose. “I think me and Zafi, we’ve got, like, a little thing going on.” He gave a cheesy wink. “Don’t be jealous.”

  “Felix,” Georgie cut in. “That’s a V.”

  She took the card from Felix’s fingers and flicked it round to show the face to the others.

  “King’s Cross Station,” gasped Helen. “V for…”

  “Victory?” Felix suggested, looking more puzzled by the second. “Vertical? Vomit?”

  “Felix,” Helen announced, “this message isn’t just for you. It’s for all of us. Especially me.” She stood tall and glanced around, checking whether anybody might have been watching them. “Sorry about your toast, Georgie,” she said. “We’d better get going.”

  She took Georgie and Felix round the shoulders and marched them off towards Camden.

  “Er, vaccination?” Felix muttered. Helen and Georgie ignored him.

  “But how did she find Chris?” Georgie asked her mum.

  “Chris?” said Felix. “But Chris doesn’t begin with…” Suddenly the realisation struck him. “Oh, Viggo!” he exclaimed.

  “Smart work, freakoid,” laughed Georgie.

  “This has to be Christopher Viggo,” Miss Bennett muttered under her breath as they sped through Camden. She glanced across the back seat to Eva, but seemed to look right through her. Eva recognised the expression on her boss’s face. It usually meant she was plotting something.

  Eva shifted uncomfortably, wishing she could move out of Miss Bennett’s glare. But she had no room to move and her knees were scrunched right up by her chest because William Lee was in the passenger seat directly in front of her. People that tall shouldn’t be allowed in cars, Eva thought to herself. He’d pushed himself right back for a superhuman amount of legroom.

  When they reached the incident scene, a line of police tape marked a blockade, but an officer saw the long, black car with its distinctive but subtle markings and lifted the tape in good time for them to sail straight through. The driver slowed to a crawl.

  Eva stared at the flashing blue lights that bounced off the old walls and lit up the faces of the onlookers. It made the whole place look like a scene from a bad TV drama, but this was real. She peeked between two of the huge fire engines to see the gaping black hole where an hour before there had been a flat. Once again she felt the wild lurch of emotion she’d experienced when she’d first heard the news: One burnt-out Government flat. No bodies.

  The intensity of the relief and excitement made her want to throw up. She couldn’t allow herself to reveal any hint of how she felt – the terror that her friends might have been hurt, the sheer joy that they’d survived and the exhilaration at the thought of them being on the run again. Bottling it all up made her guts boil, but she had no choice.

  “Doesn’t look like an accident, does it?” announced William Lee, dipping his head so that he could examine the disorder in the street. “Look – none of the other flats has been touched. It takes skilled manipulation of the flow of gas and the temperature of the ignition to control an explosion as accurately as that.” He didn’t wait for any response. “How do you think he sabotaged our surveillance operation this time? More cheese? Or coffee and chocolate perhaps?”

  Eva saw him snatch a glance in the rear-view mirror to check Miss Bennett’s reaction. The woman didn’t move a muscle. Then all she said was, “We’ll know.”

  “When?” Lee barked. “When will you know?”

  Miss Bennett gritted her teeth and narrowed her eyes. The car pulled up in the middle of the junction opposite the estate and the driver jumped out to open Miss Bennett’s door.

  “All the evidence is in there,” Miss Bennett insisted, jerking her head towards the Gregor’s Elbow pub.

  The three of them marched past a line of fire fighters, policemen and Secret Service agents who were scurrying in and out, fetching all of the surviving contents of the flat. Eva was nearly knocked over by two burly men with a charred sofa.

  Inside the pub, everything had been neatly set out on the bar and along the tables. New material was coming in all the time and there was a team sorting through it all. Everything was given a little white label, photographed, prodded and discussed by a forensic team. At first Eva didn’t see any faces. All she saw were the dozens of hands going about their work, all of them a lifeless beige because of the way the pub lighting struck the latex gloves.

  Eva scampered after Miss Bennett and William Lee, ignoring the questioning glances from the police and Secret Service teams. When Miss Bennett and Lee took latex gloves from a box, Eva took a pair for herself as well, instinctively trying to fit in.

  “And does it matter how he did it?” Miss Bennett whispered to William Lee as they surveyed the rows of evidence. “The fact is he’s done it – he made contact with the family, he extracted them from the flat and now he’s probably taken them into hiding with him. The question is: why?”

  “No,” Lee snapped back. “The question is, where have they gone. It doesn’t matter why – if you find them and kill them.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job, Lee.” Miss Bennett turned on him and her fist closed around the blackened remains of a cuddly stuffed cow. A pool of foam oozed out as she squeezed. “I’ve already called Mitchell. He’s on his way.”

  “You think he’ll find something in all of this that the rest of us can’t see?” Lee snatched one of the charred objects from the bar and gestured with it. Eva thought it might be the remains of a games console. “There’s nothing in here that tells us a thing about where they’ve gone,” he said. “The fire service was here in under two minutes. The forensic team wasn’t far behind. They’ve saved or reconstructed every piece of data storage equipment that was found in the flat.”

  “Calm down,” said Miss Bennett. “They’ll find something.”

  “They’ve found nothing!” Lee declared bitterly. “No message. No signal. Nothing. They’ve even rescued every fragment of card or paper in case there were hand-written notes. Look! They saved the stupid board games, for crying out loud.” He pointed to the end of the bar. “But still nothing!”

  “Then they’ll keep looking,” Miss Bennett countered. “There has to be something.”

  “And nobody saw them leave!” Lee exclaimed.

  Miss Bennett spun round and addressed everybody in the pub.

  “Is there no surveillance information?” she demanded. She was met by blank stares and glances of concern. “Nobody saw a thing?!” she yelled. When nobody responded she turned back to Lee. “He must still be nearby,” she hissed. “There’s a ring of agents round the whole area. Viggo can’t possibly get past them.”

  She ran her hands through her hair in exasperation. When she realised she was still wearing latex gloves and she was spreading small bits of
ash all over her hair, she tore them off in frustration and stormed towards the exit. “Eva!” she bellowed. “Stay here and take notes.”

  Before she could leave, the door burst open and there was Mitchell, in a heavy duffel coat with the collar turned up around his ears.

  “Where’ve you been?” Miss Bennett barked.

  Mitchell shrugged and nervously looked around. “Looking for my target,” he said meekly.

  “Well your target’s been busy blowing up Government property,” Miss Bennett replied. “Find out where he is and deal with him.” With that she stomped out, and Eva heard her shrill voice splitting the quiet of the night. “Who’s in charge here?”

  32 THERE IS NO EUSTON

  Eva and Mitchell exchanged a glance of sympathy. The tension in the room seemed to dissolve now that Miss Bennett was gone and everybody carried on with their jobs.

  “I was so close to him,” Mitchell grumbled to Eva. “I’d tracked him to somewhere round King’s Cross. I thought I had anyway. Then I was called in about all of this.”

  “She’s been nuts since that guy turned up,” said Eva, nodding towards William Lee. The man was stooped over a table, scrutinising a melted lump of red plastic. The white tag on the table read ‘ketchup bottle’. “She wants me to watch him. Find out about him.”

  Mitchell shrugged. “You can do that,” he said. “You’re good at all this secret stuff. It’s perfect for you.”

  Eva’s heart jolted.

  “You’ve gone red,” Mitchell chuckled.

  Eva couldn’t answer. She was burning with a violent mix of pride and horror. Was working at NJ7 really the perfect job for her? She couldn’t even work out how she’d feel about that if it was true.

  After an awkward moment of silence, Mitchell became embarrassed himself and shuffled across the room to find a seat. Eva fought to block out her thoughts. Act normal, she scolded herself. Eventually she followed Mitchell and they sat together in the darkest corner, behind one of the evidence tables.

  “It’s so weird,” Eva said, almost to herself, fiddling with some of the items on the table.