‘No,’ said Pan. ‘Under it.’
The sky was dark and there was no moon. The deep shadow of the wall would have made seeing difficult anyway, even in the moonlight. Pan stopped and crept closer to the wall. She could see the movement of the water as it boiled and bubbled through the sluice gate, but she couldn’t see the gate itself.
‘So what now?’ said Jen.
‘There’s a gate,’ replied Pan. ‘I was here with Nate once and he showed me. The water goes through into the town and eventually, I suppose, down to the sea. A part of the gate is corroded. It may be a way through.’
‘Oh yeah? And what about the other side of the wall? There’s going to be another gate there, you’d think.’
‘Maybe and maybe not. I think this wall and that gate is to keep us in. It’s possible there’s nothing on the other side. Even if there is, it’s reasonable to assume it has similar corrosion. It’s our best chance of getting through.’
‘It’s our best chance of getting drowned, more like,’ said Jen. ‘It’d make more sense to go over.’
‘Done that,’ said Pan. ‘I think they’ll be monitoring the top more closely.’
‘You’ve been on the other side?’ said Jen. ‘Pandora Jones, you are a surprise packet. I didn’t think you had it in you.’
Pan thought for a moment. ‘When Nate and I went over the wall, we were picked up in a matter of seconds. Seriously. We’d just got onto the other side and then there were men, armed men surrounding us. The next thing we knew, we were back in The School in some kind of cell. They’d injected me with something. Knocked me out.’
‘Jesus,’ said Jen. ‘You guys kept quiet about that.’
‘Yeah,’ said Pan. ‘I figured someone betrayed us. Maybe someone followed and let The School know. So it made sense not to say anything to anyone. But I’ve got a different theory now.’
‘Yes?’
‘How would you explain that The School knew where we were, that they had people waiting for us on the other side of this wall?’
Jen considered for a second or two. ‘Maybe they spotted you climbing over, set off some kind of alarm. I mean, those watchtowers must be there for a reason.’
‘It still doesn’t make sense. They knew exactly where we were. As soon as my feet touched the ground there was a light in my face and a gun at my head. It was like a military operation, Jen. And another thing. Why go to such lengths for a couple of kids climbing over a wall? They treated us like terrorists.’
‘The story is, to stop us becoming exposed to other viruses.’
‘Yeah. They’re good at stories.’
‘So what’s your theory?’
‘I think we are being constantly monitored. I believe the watches they issued us with are also tracking devices. That’s the reason they knew exactly where we were. Someone, somewhere, was following a signal. Two blips on a screen and when we crossed the wall, all hell broke loose.’ Pan thought back to Cara’s journal entry. My watch is wrong. She decided not to let Jen know about that, at least not yet. ‘And if that’s the case, what’s on the other side of this wall that they are so determined to hide?’
Jen chuckled. ‘I’ll give you this, Pandora. You’re even more suspicious than me and that takes some doing. Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out.’
‘Right,’ said Pan. ‘Tie that rope around my waist and attach the other end to something strong. I’ll go into the water, see if I can find that corroded section.’
‘The current’s really strong,’ said Jen. ‘And you are not a good swimmer. Let me go.’
Pan shook her head. ‘This is my idea and I’m going. If I find a way through, you can follow. But I’m trying first.’
‘You could die in there.’
‘You can die anywhere. I’ll be okay.’
Jen shook her head but grabbed the end of the rope. She hitched it around Pan’s waist and secured it firmly with a complicated knot. Then she took the other end and tied it around a tree close to the river’s edge. She tugged on it, and appeared satisfied. ‘All set,’ she said. ‘If you get into trouble, yell and I’ll yank you out.’
Yeah, thought Pan. If you can hear me above the roar of the stream. ‘The crowbar,’ she said.
Jen held it out and Pan gripped the cold metal. It was heavier than she had imagined. ‘If I make it through,’ she said, ‘I’ll untie the rope and tug on it. Pull it in and follow me, okay?’
She waded into the water. It was icy cold and she shivered uncontrollably. The current was strong, pushing her, trying to lift her off her feet. The river bed was composed of small, slick stones that shifted constantly and Pan had to inch forward. Even then, her feet slipped and she nearly fell. There was no way she could walk to the gate. Gathering her courage, she pushed off, letting the flow take her. Even though it was only a few metres away, she thumped into the gate at speed. A sharp pain flared in her left side, but she ignored it. The river surged and splashed and Pan had difficulty keeping her head above the waterline. The current was dragging her under. She gripped one of the bars and felt for a foothold. Her hand hurt where she was gripping the gate, but there was no time to think about pain. She edged towards the far bank, to where Nate had pointed out the gap. It was almost completely dark and the rushing water disorientated her. She thought briefly about giving up, yelling out to be hauled back. But she couldn’t back down now. Not even if it was going to kill her.
Pan pried the crowbar into the gaps of the gate’s lattice and pushed. She felt a small amount of give, but not enough. She loosened the bar and tried another position. Same result. What if the area Nate had pointed out was now under water? The river was higher because of the snow melt. Maybe the damaged section was a metre or so below the surface and she would have to dive, find the gap, use the crowbar and swim through. It was almost impossible even for a strong swimmer. She would drown.
Pan locked the crowbar under her armpit and felt along the gate with her left hand. She tried to be methodical, exploring each section of the gate one after the other. And then she found it. One area that gave perceptibly when she put weight against it. She kept her hand there and tried to extricate the crowbar. It slipped and for a moment she thought she’d lost it. There would be no way of retrieving something as heavy as that from the bottom of the river. But her hand locked on it and she placed it into the weak section. Pan leaned on the crowbar and felt, rather than heard, the sharp crack as the gate gave way. She relaxed and felt for the gap. A whole section of the latticework had broken but, even so, the hole was not large enough to squeeze through. She took the crowbar and prised open the section next to the gap. It wasn’t as easy this time, but she felt the bars bend. Pan groped underwater and checked the gap. It still wasn’t very wide but she thought it would be enough. She slid the crowbar into her belt, making sure the end with the V was hooked firmly against her waist. The cold had infiltrated her bones. Don’t give up, she thought. Fight the cold. Find the truth.
She took a deep breath and plunged her head beneath the water, felt for the gap and squeezed through. A jagged edge of one of the bars caught on her shirt and snagged there. She felt the sharp edge of panic as she was hooked beneath the water. Drowning. She almost took a desperate breath. She wrenched to the side and felt her shirt rip. And then she was free. The current took her again and she thrashed towards the surface, though in the rushing torrent it was difficult to know where the surface was. Her head broke into a pocket of air and she took a deep breath before plunging under again. Then she slammed into something. She felt a sharp pain in the side of her head and almost passed out, but she reached out instinctively and locked her fingers around a hard slippery object. A rock. The current tried to carry her away, but she clung on, lifted her head above the surface. Far above, she saw a sky freckled with stars and then the water drowned it. Pan pulled against the rock, hauled herself until she was behind it; instantly the current diminished, her body shielded from most of its power. Her feet scrabbled for purchase and found i
t. She lay, exhausted, and then looked up. The dark bulk of the wall loomed behind her. She had made it through. She was in the village.
It was five minutes before the trembling in her arms and the numbness of her fingers allowed Pan to slip out of the rope. She gave it a sharp tug and then let go. For a moment nothing happened. But then she saw the rope retract into the darkness, like a startled snake. Pan waited and took in her surroundings while she tried to still the hammering in her heart. The crowbar, she realised, was no longer attached to her belt. She wouldn’t miss the extra weight.
The stream was broad on this side of the wall, but she had come to rest close to the bank. Even in the darkness she was aware of the water foaming around the rocks to which she clung. Off to her right, a few metres away, the water sped past, the surface dark and oily in the pale light. To her left was the outskirts of the village, looming shadows of buildings. Further off, a few lights were visible. People up late? Pan thought about her two trips through the village – once on the way to the boat and once back. It was as if the place had been deserted. Why was that? What was so important about the villagers that they couldn’t reveal their presence to the students of The School? It was one of the reasons she was there. To find out.
It was a few minutes before the rope returned, this time with Jen attached. She swept past at alarming speed and Pan reached out and grabbed her sleeve, though the current threatened to loosen her grip. She gritted her teeth and pulled until Jen could latch onto one of the rocks.
‘Jesus,’ Jen said, gasping for air. ‘I didn’t think anything could be that cold.’
‘Yeah,’ replied Pan. ‘Not sure why I worried about drowning. The hypothermia will get us first.’
‘What now?’
‘We explore,’ said Pan. ‘I want to find out who lives in this place. And why they are scared of us.’
‘What makes you think they are scared?’ asked Jen.
‘I can feel it,’ said Pan. ‘I can feel it on my skin.’
‘You’re lucky,’ said Jen. ‘My skin can no longer feel anything.’
Chapter 3
Pan felt no better when they were on dry land. Her teeth chattered as the biting wind buffeted her. There was no prospect of getting warm. They had no change of clothes and no shelter. Pan resolved that they would spend a maximum of half an hour on this side of the wall. Any longer and there would be a very real possibility of hypothermia. Jen made her run on the spot for a few minutes and, although it helped slightly, as soon as she stopped the cold seeped through her once again and her skin tingled with goosebumps. Pan thought about her bed in the dormitory. It had never seemed warm to her before, but now she thought it must be the cosiest place in the world. She pushed the thought aside.
‘We keep to the shadows,’ she whispered. ‘If we hear anything, we stop and wait for the coast to clear before moving on.’
‘Any particular destination?’
‘One of the houses with lights on.’
‘We’ve come to spy through someone’s curtains?’
Pan ignored her. ‘If we have to run, go back to the river, pull yourself back under the wall. Do not wait for me. But leave the rope, okay?’
‘Duh. Good job you reminded me, Pandora.’
Pan led the way. The houses were close together and as they threaded their way through the buildings she was aware of people sleeping behind the walls. She worried that their steps, even the chattering of their teeth, would give them away. At any moment she expected a door to open and someone to challenge them.
Pan found a narrow path, a road of some kind, possibly leading towards the docks. The silence was oppressive and she stopped suddenly. Jen brushed up against her and they stood silently, listening. There was nothing. Pan stepped out onto the path and glanced to her left. A light was on in one of the cottages, maybe fifty metres down the path. But although it cast a pale pool onto the front of the cottage it did not illuminate the space between. Anything could be hiding in that broad patch of darkness.
What was she looking for? Until now she had simply indulged her instinct to come here, hoping that a plan would materialise. What did she expect to find? There could be no straightforward answers to the questions that burned in her head, no simple solutions. Jen’s remark about spying through curtains made her feel somehow squalid, but she couldn’t think what else to do.
She headed towards the light. They had covered half the distance when a loud rattle off to their left caused them both to freeze and press further back into the darkness. Pan waited. Water still dripped from her hair and down the back of her shirt and she shivered. She felt Jen’s hand on her forearm and that too was icy.
They waited for five minutes, but the sound wasn’t repeated. A cat or a dog, maybe, rummaging in a garbage bin. Pan took a few more steps towards the light. She was aware of Jen at her shoulder. They circled the patch of light and approached the window from the side. Jen got down on her hands and knees and crawled under the window. She stood carefully and nodded at Pan. They edged closer and peered in.
The scene was so familiar. It hit Pan like a physical blow. A man sat in an armchair, watching TV. He had a bottle of beer in one hand, feet up on a ledge that ran along the bottom of the chair. A recliner. As she watched, the man lifted the beer to his lips and took a long draught. Pan’s eyes shifted to the TV. There was a game of soccer being played. One team in red, the other in white. A player in red was running with the ball and a player in white tackled him. The ball went out into the crowd and there was a pause in the action. The man in the armchair scratched his nose, took another drink and crossed his legs at the ankles. Pan’s eyes roamed the room. There were pictures on the walls, mainly generic artworks, and behind the man’s left shoulder was a chrome standard lamp with two lights – one that spread a cone of white onto the ceiling and another smaller one that spilled brightness at head height. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the scene and that was the very reason Pan found it so disturbing. This was a snapshot of a world she had once been a part of, a world that supposedly had disappeared.
A memory fluttered into her head. Danny, her brother, watching a game of soccer on TV, his eyes glued to the screen. He supported a team in red. What were they called? Manchester something. She hadn’t paid attention, though he’d been a fanatic. He’d had a mate at school – someone originally from England – who’d turned him on to soccer. They’d spent hours in front of the TV watching DVDs of game after game. There’d been a falling out, Pan remembered. Some argument, probably trivial, and then his friend didn’t come around anymore. But Danny had caught the bug and there’d been no falling out with . . . what was the team’s nickname? – the Red Devils. That was it. He even owned a shirt in the team’s colours. Their mother had bought it for him one Christmas. Pan remembered how he’d worn it for days and days, refusing to change until his mother took it away one night when he was sleeping and washed it. Pan felt tears well behind her eyes and the room blurred for a while, as if seen underwater.
She probably would have remained standing there, drinking in the sheer abnormal normality of it, but Jen tugged at her arm and jerked her thumb to one side. Time to go. Pan nodded and they slipped out of the pool of light and back into shadow. Only when they had put some distance between themselves and the house, did they stop to whisper.
‘Cosy,’ said Jen. ‘Looks like we’re on the wrong side of the wall, Pandora. Televisions, electricity, comfortable chairs.’
‘Yeah,’ said Pan. ‘And I’d bet they don’t eat the type of food we get, either. No gruel for them, I reckon.’
‘Fish and chips. Lasagne. Fresh vegetables.’
‘Stop it,’ said Pan. She pointed down the path. ‘One more house and then we go, okay?’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why?’
‘I mean, why are we hiding? What would happen if we knocked on a door and asked for information? What’s the game, who’s winning? Do you have any snacks in the fridge? Any chance of a beer?’
The suggestion was so simple that Pan was tempted to try it. What was the worst that could happen? Her experience with Nate when they had gone over the wall told her they weren’t welcome here, that The School was desperate to hide whatever was going on in the village. What had that court called it? A forbidden zone. She remembered the guards, the hood over her head, the guns, the cell. And she remembered Dr Macredie’s warning about what lay on the other side of the wall. Evil, she had said. Evil. No, they weren’t welcome here. But no one was going to kill her. She felt sure of that, if only because her death . . . like Cara’s . . . would have been simple to arrange. And maybe the people in the houses weren’t aware of what went on in The School. Maybe the guy in the chair would simply answer any questions they put. They could say they’d just arrived by boat in the middle of the night. Maybe that they’d capsized and needed somewhere to warm up. It would explain their drenched clothing. Pan dismissed the idea, tempting though it was.
‘The last time I was caught out here, I had a gun against my head and was locked up,’ she said. ‘It’s not an experience I’m keen to repeat. One more house and then we go.’
Jen didn’t say anything. She simply nodded, and they proceeded down the track, still staying in the shadows. Their footsteps, at least to Pan’s ears, seemed unnaturally loud. Pan led the way directly to another house with a light on. The cold was getting worse. Her face was numb and she had no feeling at all in her fingers. Even taking breath was painful, as if her lungs were dusted with frost.
The next house had its curtains drawn, but there was a narrow gap and the girls pressed their faces close. Even so, it was difficult to make out many details. There was a television, but it was off and the room seemed deserted. The light source came from the far left of the room and Pan could just make out the back of a chair. It was black and on castors. As she watched, the chair slipped back a fraction and she caught a glimpse of the side of a head. The person remained hidden, but Pan felt confident that if she could just get a better view she’d see a computer monitor. Pan moved further over, but the gap in the curtains was too thin to see more. She sighed. This was hopeless.
Pandora Jones: Deception Page 3
