by Nick Gifford
He heard the tinny roar of a motorbike, and then he saw it approaching along the bridleway. A single figure, wearing dark leathers and helmet, on a black bike. It looked like Jake, and he appeared to be alone.
Liam felt another attack of dizziness.
When he looked again, Jake was sitting on his bike, the engine cut out, balancing with his feet on the ground. He had taken his helmet off and he was looking around.
Liam tried to get to his feet, but instead, stumbled forward onto his hands and knees.
He waited for the world to stop spinning, and then suddenly there were boots in the corner of his vision, a hand on his back.
“You okay, kid? Here, sit back, back against this tree.”
Liam allowed himself to be guided into a sitting position.
Jake was squatting beside him, staring at him. “Looks like it’s taken you bad, doesn’t it? Can you hear me, kid?”
“What...?” gasped Liam. What had taken him bad?
Jake had reached into his jacket pocket, and now he held his hand out flat before Liam. There was a small white pill on it.
“Hnnh?”
“Take it. Go on,” said Jake.
Liam looked at the pill, and then at Jake.
“I nicked it,” said Jake. “Thought you might need it. It’s what you Talents take, isn’t it? It’s what’s good for your kind.”
8 In too deep
It’s true, as they say, that the customer is always right. But it’s even truer that the supplier is always in control...
~
Liam took the pill between thumb and forefinger. It seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.
“Go on,” said Jake.
Liam opened his mouth and placed the pill on his tongue. It started to dissolve in his saliva immediately. He knew that taste, that sensation. His stomach groaned violently.
Jake nodded. “That’s right, mate. Normally, they put ’em in your food.”
Liam swallowed, and immediately his head began to clear. After only a few seconds, the dizziness had receded and the pounding ache in his head had eased. “What is that?” he gasped.
He knew why the pill was familiar now. It was what Kath had taken that night to calm herself, that night when she couldn’t bear to be with him.
“Control,” said Jake. “They use ’em to control you. Ain’t you ever noticed how freaky that place is? How perfect everything is? How smooth everything runs? No, I don’t suppose you would. They use this stuff to control you. But you’re hooked. You can’t go without it, kid. That’s why you got like that. You can’t just come off it.”
“How... how long do they last?”
“Oh, a day or two,” said Jake. “I could only nick one tonight, but don’t worry. I’ll get be able to get hold of some more tomorrow.”
Liam looked at him. His thoughts were starting to come more clearly now, and he realised that he was totally dependent on Jake.
“You’re hungry, right?” Jake reached up to remove a small backpack he had been wearing. He reached in, found a bread roll and tossed it to Liam.
Liam tore into it immediately. While he did so, Jake produced a big lump of cheddar and a chicken drumstick from his bag and handed them over.
Eventually, Liam sat back. “Thank you,” he said.
“No problem,” said Jake. “Someone helped me once, when I was in the same kind of bother. You should always pass favours on.” He took more bread and cheese from his bag and passed them to Liam. “So,” he said conversationally, “what’s your talent, then?”
Liam looked at him blankly.
“What is it that you can do that none of the rest can?”
Liam shrugged.
“I expect you’ll find out soon enough,” said Jake. “I expect we all will. They seem to think you’re important enough...”
“What–”
Jake cut him off with a hand gesture. “Not now, okay? I’ve got to get on. Don’t want to make ’em suspicious, do we? You never know when they’re watching. You got somewhere to hide out? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know where. I’ll be back here tomorrow, same time, okay?”
Liam nodded. He didn’t know what Jake was up to. Should he trust him?
Jake turned, then hesitated. He took a notebook and pen from his jacket and scribbled something. He handed the note to Liam.
“That’s my mobile, okay? Don’t call it unless you have to. And that’s a friend of mine. He can help with the medication thing. He’s cool. You can trust him.”
Liam looked at the note. Below Jake’s mobile number there was a name, Alastair, and an address: 3, The Coastguards, Wolsey. When he looked up, Jake was most of the way back to his bike. A short time later, he was off along the bridleway, heading north up past the Mere.
~
Liam rowed back across the creek to the Point. Now that he had his head straight, he realised that this could not go on for much longer. Eventually someone would spot him, or notice that their boat was missing. He couldn’t hide out here indefinitely, living off Jake’s handouts.
But the pill changed everything. How could he leave if he was hooked on whatever magic ingredient the pill contained?
Kath... She had them. He could go there.
And that was when he made the connection. Not only did Kath have the pills, she must have been feeding them to Liam. He remembered the takeaway, the “extras” she had fried up to accompany it. And the hearty breakfasts that she prepared for him while she only had toast.
Did this mean that she was a part of whatever was going on? Kath had been all that he had left, but had he ever really had her as an ally at all?
The punt ran aground against the shingle bank of Wolsey Point.
He climbed out and hauled it up above the line of seaweed and driftwood that marked high tide.
He had thought some of Kath’s behaviour might have been caused by guilt at her relationship with their parents. Maybe it was guilt of a different order. Guilt about how she was deceiving Liam...
~
He found the concrete road again. It had been cast in square slabs, about three metres to each side, and over time they had settled in the shingle so that there were gaps between them, and some blocks were higher than others. Plants grew from the gaps, although there were none where the tyres of the Trust’s vehicles must pass.
He came to the single wire strand and ducked under it.
Back in the building where he had spent the night, he stashed the food in a corner, making sure that the bread was covered in its bag in case an enterprising gull might come down through the gap in the roof, scavenging.
He had a whole evening ahead. He was tempted to explore. The “Danger” signs were probably only there for show, a measure to keep local kids out. But the sign warning about unexploded ordnance was worrying. He didn’t want to step on a land mine, or an unexploded wartime shell.
But if he stuck to the road...
He walked. Slowly, he came to understand how deceptive this landscape of shingle and sand and clay was. He had thought it was pretty much flat, but instead, the wind and sea had carved it into a series of banks and valleys, some quite deep and with precipitous slopes. Nestled in some of these hollows were more ruined buildings. The Camp must have been an enormous operation when it had still been in use. There was a complete, deserted town here.
He didn’t walk far. Another chainlink fence cut across the Point, with a high gate across the road. A battered old sign read: “This is a prohibited place. Unauthorised persons entering this area may be arrested and prosecuted.” Another repeated the warning about unexploded ordnance.
He looked through the fence, but couldn’t see beyond the next shingle bank, lined with gorse and tamarisk.
There were all kinds of rumours about what kind of research had taken place here at Wolsey Camp before it had been closed down. Maybe they had been working on chemical bombs or something, and now all that was left was an area of contaminated ground...
Liam t
urned back.
~
The gull woke him again the next morning, after another unsettled night. This time it wasn’t the fevers and pains of withdrawal from the NATS pills that disturbed his sleep, but the sheer cold. He had curled up in the ruined building, with only his fleece to warm him. He lay on the heaped sand at one end of the main room, and it cut out some of the chill of the building’s concrete floor. But still, it was cold.
In the morning, the gull screeched, and he looked up at the blue sky through the gaps in the roof, bleary-eyed and with pains and stiffness in every joint in his body.
He struggled to his feet and made himself do a few awkward stretching exercises.
He took what was left of the food and water down to the mossy shelf by the creek and sat in the shelter of a tamarisk bush. He had caught the sun yesterday, and now his forehead and nose were raw with sun-burn.
The tide was high again, and he saw that the water was lapping at the rear of the punt, where he had dragged it up the bank.
Out in the channel he spotted a small clump of dark seaweed, swirling in the current.
He broke the remaining bread in half, and started to chew on one piece. It was hard, and had that dry sweetness of old bread. The cheese had dried out, too, and he decided to eat all of it now, rather than keeping any for later in the day. He washed it down with what was left of the drinking water.
He felt a sense of calm this morning. It was the first time in days he had felt like this.
He knew a large part of that must be down to the pill he had taken yesterday afternoon. But a part of it was a sense of control that had come to him this morning.
He took a pebble and lobbed it towards the bobbing clump of seaweed out in the creek.
He had decided to confront Jake this afternoon. Jake knew about the pills, and he had talked about “freakish” things at NATS. He must see a lot of what went on there. He clearly knew a lot more than he had let slip yet.
And after that? He only had a couple of pounds, not enough for a rail ticket. But he would head for Norwich somehow and confront Kath.
Between his sister and Jake, Liam was bound to learn something about what had been happening.
The distant sound of the school bell brought him back to the present. Morning call. Time to get up and shower. Back in their room, Anders would be dragging it out for as long as he could, skipping the showers and throwing his clothes on at the last possible minute before breakfast bell. He hoped Anders was looking after Skiver.
Liam remembered grumbling sessions with Anders and Hayley about how NATS took control of everything you did, how everything was timetabled, from dawn till night. All they had wanted was a bit of freedom.
He looked around, thinking of the others tumbling into the showers. Now, he wasn’t bound by the rules and timetable but was he any more free than his friends?
The clump of weed caught Liam’s eye again, and he looked more closely.
The strands were very fine and dark, maybe ten centimetres long. He had thought at first that they must be growing from the top of a post, or something similar, but now he saw that couldn’t be the case. They bobbed about too much, swinging from side to side in the current as the tide fell.
He spotted two black and white ducks, then, with red beaks and chestnut bands on their sides. Geese, maybe, rather than ducks. They drifted down the creek, hugging the far bank and eyeing him cautiously. He realised he didn’t know much about the natural history of this area. He knew a few of the trees and bushes, but only because Anders had told him their names. He was a city boy, at heart. He was out of his depth here.
Now that he had decided to head back to Norwich, he could hardly wait to get moving.
The seaweed ... it wasn’t seaweed.
Now that the tide had edged a little lower, Liam saw that the weed was attached to something pale, something not quite white. Something that swung lazily in the flow of water.
Liam was transfixed.
Time seemed to stretch out around him.
He watched the thing, drifting left, then right, then left again, the dark “weed” trailing out downstream.
It was a head.
A body. Its feet anchored – weighed down? – in the mud in the centre of the creek.
The dark mass he had taken for fine seaweed was hair.
Liam couldn’t take his eyes off the head. It moved with the current in a limp, lifeless way, like a kite in the wind, like a flag on a pole. Like a body with its feet weighed down in a tidal creek.
Just then, the current caught the body, swinging it around towards Liam. The head lolled, turned, as if to greet him, and he saw the eyes, the nose, part of the mouth, all set in bloated pale features.
It was Jake.
Liam dragged his gaze away with an enormous effort. He turned and threw up on the shingle and parched moss.
He wiped his mouth on his cuff and looked again.
Jake’s head had turned away, but Liam could have sworn the dead face had been smiling at him.
9 The Families
If Liam were truly paranoid, he would think that this was some kind of message. But who would write their messages in blood? Who would allow a human life to be wasted in such a way, simply to get a point across?
Liam did, of course, have every reason to be feeling paranoid by now.
~
Jake’s head lolled sideways again. It was as if he were looking at Liam. Accusing him.
For all that had happened so far, Liam finally had a sense of how serious all this was. Lives were at stake.
At least one life had been lost.
Why? Just for helping Liam?
He thought of his parents, then. Their disappearance. Their “erasure” as that Scottish investigator had put it. Just how complete a thing was erasure?
And Kath... She was wrapped up in all this, more deeply than he had first realised. Was she okay? Reflexively, he reached for his phone, then stopped himself, remembering that there was no signal out here.
Drifting over on the breeze, he heard the NATS breakfast bell ringing out.
He looked around, then studied the far bank of the creek closely, looking for people among the trees, cameras even. Did they know he was here? Had they known he was here all along, and had they simply been toying with him?
He saw nothing, but that meant little. There was only ever one clear answer in this line of thinking: if you find evidence that the world is against you, then you know you’re right; if you find none, then that simply leaves your fears unconfirmed...
Out in the channel, Jake drifted. His arms weren’t floating. Liam guessed they must be tied together, probably behind his body. That would stop them rising to the surface.
Liam moved towards the boat. He pushed it back into the creek, stepping in as it floated free of the shingle. He was getting quite good at this now. He located the oars in the rowlocks and rowed right-handed until the boat had turned to head up-creek. Putting his body into the effort, he started to row against the tide.
The punt edged out into the channel, where the current grew stronger. He wasn’t making headway, struggling even to stand still and not float out towards the sea.
Liam had his back to the current, and was looking down the punt towards the curve of the creek where it would eventually join the sea. To his horror, he realised that not only was he failing to hold the punt against the current, he was drifting down-creek.
Towards Jake...
He rowed hard, and managed to slow the boat a little.
If it kept on like this, he would go right over his one-time ally’s body. He squeezed his eyes shut. Involuntarily, in his head, he heard the soft clunk that Jake’s head would make as it bounced off the flat bottom of the boat.
He opened his eyes, and Jake stared back at him, only a couple of metres from the stern of the punt.
Stop smiling.
Why did he have that smile on his face? The skin had bloated in the sea-water. Maybe that was what had pulled his face
into that sickly grin.
Liam leaned back and hauled on the oars, over and over again. Eyes closed, at any moment he expected the first soft thunk of bone on wood.
When he opened his eyes again, Jake’s head was a distant, dark blob on the water.
He didn’t dare ease up.
Eventually, the rowing started to come more easily, as the creek opened out into a wider, shallower channel. It was just as well that it was easier, as Liam’s body protested with every stroke.
He didn’t realise he was clear until he saw the fence to his left, extending down into the water. He had passed the fence. He had reached the Mere. He allowed his left arm to rest, and rowed with his right, turning the punt towards the inner shore of the top part of Wolsey Point.
When he could, he stepped out onto a springy mat of salt-marsh vegetation. He turned to face the punt, and pushed it away with one foot. He would need it no more. He watched it drift into the channel, and then, moments later, come to a rest against the fence.
He staggered across a narrow strip of salt-marsh, the springy mat of plants soon giving way to grass, and a mixture of sand and shingle. He dropped to his knees, and then twisted to sit. He needed to get his breath back. Needed to get his head together. Needed to work out what came next.
~
He stared at the scrap of paper. Below Jake’s mobile number, it read, “3, The Coastguards, Wolsey.” That was the address of Jake’s friend, Alastair. “He can help with the medication thing,” Jake had said. “You can trust him.”
Liam would never trust anybody again. But he had judged it worth taking a chance on Jake. Maybe he could take a chance on this Alastair, too.
He stood, and went across to the concrete road that ran along from the Point to Wolsey. He saw the high gate in the fence, this time from the northward side. There were several notices on the gate, all battered and worn by exposure to the sea winds.
“Wolsey Camp. Conservation Area. Please respect the wildlife. Keep out. Wolsey Point Preservation Trust.”
