Survival

by Joe Craig

Jimmy couldn’t answer at first. He was still finding it hard to breathe and he knew there was a higher priority. He pulled himself back into his seat and planted his hands firmly on the control panel, just as the helicopter threatened to dive. He snatched the flightstick and hauled them back under control.

  “You don’t understand,” Jimmy wheezed. He wiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth, spreading strings of yellow saliva. His words came in lurches, his sentences chopped up between huge gulps of air. “I needed Stovorsky to think… I’d hidden it in the desert… so he would get Mum… and Georgie to safety.”

  Marla couldn’t take her eyes off the actinium. She pressed herself back in her seat, trying to avoid touching it, even though she knew it was already too late for her.

  “This was the only way…” Jimmy went on, gradually getting his voice back. “So I didn’t poison everybody around me… my body would insulate it… like the lead suitcase…” He leaned all of his weight on the flightstick, plunging them forwards, accelerating rapidly.

  “You idiot!” Marla screamed. “You protect everybody else, but poison yourself!”

  “I thought I couldn’t be affected!” Jimmy tried to shout, but didn’t have the strength.

  “You forgot you were human.”

  “I’m not human!”

  “Yes you are!” Marla shoved him in the shoulder, tears streaming down her face. “You might be different from the rest of us, but… but… look at you! You act and think and feel like every human I have ever met. No – that is not right. You are only like the best humans.” Jimmy couldn’t help glancing across at her, but she looked away. “You are human. If you forget that, you destroy yourself.”

  Jimmy didn’t know what to say. Her words washed through his mind. Outside the darkness closed in around them. They were over the water now, leaving the lights of the French towns behind them. Fog rushed past them like ghosts escaping from hell. Jimmy gritted his teeth and punched a few buttons on the control panel, employing the Saphir-M chaff and flare dispenser – the Tiger’s missile countermeasures.

  “But my DNA…” he whispered, almost to himself.

  “Who cares about your DNA?” Marla screamed.

  “I DO!”

  His cry was lost in the roar of an explosion. A French missile tore through the debris trailing the chopper and detonated barely two metres from them. The helicopter banked wildly to the side and Jimmy lost control.

  From behind the pub stand at St Pancras Station emerged a tall man dressed in a shabby brown coat and big trainers with a cap pulled down low.

  “Viggsy!” Felix whispered.

  Christopher Viggo couldn’t stop his harsh expression melting into a smile. He held up a hand and Felix gave him an athletic high five.

  “I knew I couldn’t keep you lot away forever,” said Viggo.

  “Why keep us away at all?” Helen wasn’t smiling. “Do you know what we’ve been going through trying to find you?” She gave him a shove in the chest. He stumbled backwards and held up his hands in self-defence.

  “I was protecting you,” he protested quietly, all the time checking the station concourse to make sure they weren’t being observed. “You should be getting on with your—”

  “Protecting us?” Helen shoved him again, harder.

  “He’s in so much trouble,” said Felix softly, shaking his head.

  “You don’t have a clue, do you?” Helen went on, only keeping her voice down with difficulty. “You think you can change the world on your own? Do you even realise that Felix’s parents have been taken?”

  “Taken?” Viggo was shocked. “By who? Where?”

  “Exactly!” Helen shoved him again, even harder. Viggo caught her wrists and pulled her round the back of the pub stand. Felix and Georgie followed. “We need you, Chris,” whispered Helen. She stared into his eyes. Her voice softened. “And you need us.”

  “What good do you think you being here could possibly do?” Viggo seethed. “Even if Felix’s parents have been taken. The only way to put that right is to get rid of this Government. And I can’t do that with kids around.”

  “Hey!” Felix protested.

  “He’s right,” said Georgie. “We’re just going to get in the way.”

  “But it’s not as if we can go anywhere else, is it?” Felix ranted. “Somebody tried to blow me up tonight.”

  Before Viggo could react, Helen cut him off. “Is it the kids?” she asked bitterly. “Or is it me?”

  Viggo was stunned into silence. They looked at each other, Viggo still holding Helen by the wrists. His grip melted. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “How’s…”

  “Jimmy?” Helen shook her head. “I don’t know.” She dropped her eyes to the floor. “He did some amazing things so that we could come back here and live without Miss Bennett trying to kill us.”

  “Doesn’t sound like that lasted too long.” They looked intently into each other’s faces, barely centimetres apart, as if they were having a whole conversation without speaking.

  “So,” Felix chirped, “when you’re not single-handedly fighting evil, you like to lurk about behind fake pubs, right?”

  Viggo tried to laugh, but it came out as if he was about to choke.

  “How’s Saffron?” asked Georgie, directing the question to Viggo, but staring at her mum.

  “She’s—” Viggo froze. He’d heard something. He peered round the side of the stand and his eyes widened. “Were you followed?”

  “No,” said Helen, the tension in her throat forcing her voice out too loud. “I—”

  Suddenly one of the small metal tables came flying towards them. Viggo shielded his head just in time, but the table crashed into him and knocked him to the ground.

  “Get out of the station,” he shouted. “Now!” He pushed himself up and sprinted away towards the centre of the concourse. Felix peered after him and was stunned at what he saw. The customers in front of the pub backed away in shock. In their centre was a burly thirteen-year-old boy, brandishing a metal chair.

  “Mitchell!” Felix gasped.

  Viggo powered towards the assassin, who stood firm, waiting for the perfect moment to swing, like a baseball player poised to smash a fast-ball out of the park. Mitchell whipped the chair towards Viggo’s head. At the last instant, Viggo bent his knees and leaned backwards, but carried on gliding across the floor. He was at such an extreme angle that his body was almost horizontal. He slid through underneath the chair, leaving a look of shock and confusion on Mitchell’s face.

  It was a second before Felix realised that Viggo’s trainers were heelies, with wheels in their soles. “That is so cool,” he whispered.

  “Come on,” said Helen. “Let’s go.”

  34 TERMINAL CLIMB

  Jimmy felt like the whole world was fighting to break into his skull, while his brain was bursting to get out. He’d been thrown out of his seat, but he wasn’t sure where he was – somewhere sprawled on the floor of the cockpit. At last he regained focus and found himself face to face with a pile of actinium. The dread charged through him again.

  “Jimmy!” he heard. “Help me!”

  He looked up. Marla was wrestling with the flightstick and flicking switches in panic. But Jimmy’s mind was sluggish. Something was holding him back – slowing his thoughts and draining the energy from his muscles. It’s the radiation poisoning, he told himself. It’s killing me and I can’t stop it.

  But at the same time he knew that couldn’t be true. Not yet. He could feel his body fighting with itself. His assassin’s instinct kicked and writhed in his chest. It would never give up. The only thing stopping him was this feeling of utter hopelessness that swamped his heart.

  “Come on!” yelled Marla.

  Jimmy heard it as a distant cry. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t stop seeing the faces of his sister, his mum and Felix. What was happening to them? Then he saw another face – his father’s.

  “Jimmy!” Marla screamed. “You’ve got to get to Bri
tain!”

  Jimmy jumped back to the controls. Out of the front of the chopper he watched the waves, coiling like thousands of huge black serpents jumping up to bite them.

  He threw the flightstick up and to the side, suddenly reversing the direction of the lift in the rotors. The bank of air rolled the helicopter over on to its side then, just at the right split-second, Jimmy jammed the heel of his hand into the flightstick and the whole machine flipped back the right way up.

  “You OK?” Jimmy shouted.

  Marla was clinging to her seat, but she was smiling.

  “I’m going to get them off our tail,” Jimmy called out, sending the chopper swooping low to the water. He didn’t need to check the systems to know that the two planes were close above them and ready to fire again. Jimmy flicked the cover off one of the rocket launch switches and before Marla could respond, he clicked the switch.

  A rocket burst out from the left side of the chopper. In less than a second it dived into the water. Three seconds later it detonated on the sea bed. A wall of water erupted in front of them, but they carried on straight into it. The upsurge lifted them higher. Jimmy never lost control.

  “What are you doing?” Marla cried out.

  “I’m going to get as close to the planes as I can,” Jimmy replied. “I want them to see me.”

  Mitchell spun round and hurtled across the station concourse towards Viggo. He powered through onlookers like a giant bowling ball.

  Then he came face to face with a policeman.

  “Clear the area!” the man shouted. Mitchell stopped and looked around. The police were closing in on the centre of the concourse like a net, hurrying bystanders out of the way. Viggo was trapped in the middle, but already he had seen his escape route. Hardly slowing his pace, he climbed the huge Ares Hollingdale statue towards the wall of steel and glass above.

  “What’s on the other side of that glass?” Mitchell yelled.

  “You have to clear the area!” the policeman repeated.

  Mitchell gritted his teeth and pulled up the sleeve of his coat. On the underside of his wrist was a small tattoo, still raw where the skin was healing: a green stripe.

  “I said, what’s on the other side of that glass?” he shouted again.

  The policeman’s demeanour was transformed. “It’s just the roof of the next building and the ladder for the clock,” he said quickly.

  “So shoot him down!” Mitchell ordered. “If he reaches the clock he’ll jump out of the service door and get away.”

  “Shoot him?” the policeman huffed. “In front of all these people? People with camera phones? We’ll make him a martyr. He’ll be more popular than ever.”

  “Just do it!”

  “Sorry, but—”

  “But what?” Mitchell looked past the policeman to see Viggo nearing the statue’s head.

  “I’ll need clearance from the top,” said the officer.

  “I am the top!” Mitchell roared, but the policeman was already dipping his mouth to his walkie-talkie.

  “It will take less than two minutes,” he said to Mitchell. “We’ll shoot as soon as—”

  “We don’t have two minutes.”

  Mitchell raced to the statue and clambered up the pedestal. In no time he reached Hollingdale’s waist, but Viggo had already made the leap higher to the glass underneath the clock. Then, in the corner of his eye, Mitchell saw Helen, Felix and Georgie leaving the station, unnoticed by the police.

  Mitchell realised how clever Viggo was. By creating a scene in the centre of the concourse he had pulled the focus of the security cordon, allowing his friends to slip away. They can wait, Mitchell reminded himself.

  Viggo is the target. Now finish the job. The desire felt like an overwhelming thirst.

  Mitchell’s fingers dug into every fold of bronze, his limbs clambering up with a regular and rapid beat. At the top he stood on Hollingdale’s head. He could hear the shouts and gasps from the crowd below, but didn’t hesitate. He leapt up and caught the first steel strut in his fingers, then pulled himself on to it.

  Viggo was directly above him, climbing up the glass panes towards the clock. Each pane was about thirty centimetres high in a thin wooden frame. Mitchell could climb this as easily as if it was a ladder.

  Within seconds he could reach Viggo’s ankle, but the man knew he was there. Viggo kicked out at Mitchell’s grasp. Mitchell responded with a burst of speed. Viggo was only centimetres from the bottom of the clock, but Mitchell clambered up to be level with him and slammed the base of his palm into Viggo’s face.

  Viggo’s head rocked back. His cap tumbled down to the crowd below and blood spurted from his nose, spattering red on to the white and gold of the bottom half of the clock face. He lost his footing and only held on to the wooden frame with his fingertips. The back of his head was exposed and easily within Mitchell’s reach. It may as well have had a target sign painted on it. A single blow, Mitchell told himself. Complete the mission. Finish him.

  He lifted his arm for the kill, but Viggo wasn’t giving up. He kicked both legs up to the side, crunching his knee into Mitchell’s solar plexus. Mitchell crumpled in two. His fingers slipped. But his body responded with a jump and he was able to grab hold of the decoration round the bottom edge of the clock itself.

  He was above his target now. And Viggo had swung round with the impetus of his kick. He was only holding on with one hand, his back to the glass, the front of his body totally vulnerable. Mitchell hauled in a deep breath and raised his right arm above his head.

  “Right here, isn’t it?” said Viggo suddenly, pointing to the base of his throat. His words seemed to echo around the whole terminal hall. “That’s how we were trained, isn’t it?”

  Mitchell could feel the blood fizzing through his fingertips. He clenched his hand, ready to chop, and fixed his eyes on that square centimetre of flesh just above Viggo’s collarbone. One strike and he could cut off the oxygen to the brain.

  “Come on,” Viggo taunted, pulling his shirt collar down and thrusting out his chest to bring the target closer to Mitchell. “Right here. End it.”

  Mitchell’s eyes flickered up to Viggo’s face. What was this man doing? Didn’t he want to survive?

  “Without me the Government will go on forever, won’t it?” Viggo hissed. “Long live Neo-democracy and war whenever you feel like it.”

  Mitchell stared into the man’s eyes. There was no fear there. Mitchell had never seen such contained passion – such calm fury.

  “It won’t happen, Mitchell,” Viggo went on. “Not once you’ve shown everybody down there what this Government can do.”

  Stop this, Mitchell ordered himself. Time to finish it. He could hear his brain telling him he may never have a better opportunity. And yet it felt like there was concrete running through his veins, slowing his movements, fossilising his thoughts.

  “Look down there,” Viggo whispered. “I fight for what I believe and I’ll die for what I believe. But Britain doesn’t need me to fight for them. After this, people will know without me telling them. They’ll see for themselves. They’ll fight for themselves.”

  Mitchell tried to shut out the words. He didn’t care about the politics. This was his job, his mission. NJ7 was his life. Without it, there was nothing for him. This was what he believed in.

  At last he forced a burst of heat into his muscles. A spark flew up his arm then exploded into pure strength.

  “People know nothing,” Mitchell grunted. His arm whipped downwards. Viggo closed his eyes.

  But in that hundredth of a second, the crack of a rifle echoed through the terminal. A bullet flew past Mitchell’s ear. His hand veered off target. Miss Bennett sent clearance to shoot! he thought.

  CRASH!

  The glass shattered. Mitchell saw Viggo fall backwards through a shower of glass, wooden splinters and blood. The man’s eyes were still closed. After a split-second he disappeared into the darkness.

  Mitchell’s footholds in the wooden frame h
ad collapsed. He dangled from the clock with one arm and looked below him. On one side, the station concourse was in chaos. People were bleeding from the dropping glass, others were screaming, running, or just gaping up at Mitchell, while the police tried to control them all.

  On the other side, Mitchell could see the roof of the next building.

  “Where are you?” he whispered.

  But there was no movement. All he could make out were shadows.

  “You want them to see you?” Marla was shocked at what Jimmy had said.

  They soared higher, darting through the clouds until they were level with the cockpits of the two fighter jets.

  “Take the flightstick,” Jimmy ordered.

  “What?” Marla gasped.

  “Just hold it steady. That’s all you need to do.” He took off his helmet and scooped the actinium into it.

  “What are you doing?” Marla shouted, grabbing the flightstick in panic. “I think they are going to shoot again. The lights are—”

  Jimmy was already climbing out on to the arm that held the missile launch mechanism. There was one on either side of the chopper, sticking out like stubby wings. He had to force himself to hold the strap of his helmet in his teeth so his arms were free to grip the chopper. He could feel the strain in his shoulders, the muscles gripping the bones in their sockets. He mentally counted off every injury he’d suffered, each one weakening his system a little more, making it more likely he’d lose his grip and plunge to his death.

  His helmet dangled against his chest. In the dim light, with the spray and the fog, the actinium stones glowed like beacons. He thought he could feel them burning through the metal, through his shirt and into his skin. Forget that, he told himself. It couldn’t harm him any more than it already had. But it could help him get to Britain.

  When he reached the rocket, he cracked open the casing, working with one hand while he gripped the chopper with the other. Inside, the rocket was a jumble of wires and metal slots, but Jimmy’s mind highlighted certain parts, picking out the routes of the circuits and the details of its workings. The wires were reduced to the simplicity of a fast-food menu.