CHERUB: The Recruit

by Robert Muchamore

  James let out a big smile.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of harmless anthrax?’

  ‘Bungle only wanted to kill the Petrocon delegates,’ Mac said. ‘He made the first batch of anthrax with what’s called an attenuated strain. It’s used in the anthrax vaccine. It makes you immune to the nasty variety. It’s been in the air-conditioning at Green Brooke conference hall for weeks.

  ‘Security guards, cleaners, catering staff and anyone else who works regularly in the conference hall would be vaccinated by the time Petrocon started. On the first day of the conference a lethal strain of anthrax was going to be put in the air-conditioning, but only the conference guests would get the disease.’

  *

  Dr Coen stopped James’ antibiotics. By Friday evening he felt much better. The drip was taken out and James managed to eat without feeling sick. By Saturday morning he was almost back to normal. Ewart drove up from Wales.

  ‘Is Amy with you?’ James asked.

  ‘No, she’s back at Fort Harmony, keeping her ear to the ground to see if any information comes through about Bungle. It’s not very likely with all that’s going on: there are about fifty cops camped out at the bottom of the hill and loads of huts have got police on the doorstep guarding evidence.’

  ‘How did Amy explain me disappearing?’

  ‘You got into a fight with Amy in the night. Ran off. Stormed down the road and got run over by some lunatic driving a BMW. Amy lifted you into the car and the driver rushed you to hospital. You lost some blood and you’ve got a broken arm, but otherwise you’re OK. They’re keeping you in for observation.’

  ‘Good story,’ James said. ‘I should be allowed out of here today.’

  ‘After all you’ve been through this week I’ll understand if you want to go back to CHERUB and rest,’ Ewart said. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you could show your face at Fort Harmony for a few days. A week at most.’

  ‘Will I be allowed to see Joanna?’ James asked.

  ‘Why not?’ Ewart grinned. ‘Keep hanging out with Sebastian and Clark. Some little titbit of information might pop out, but mostly it’s to cover Cathy. It would look suspicious if you disappeared on the morning before the arrests never to be seen again.’

  *

  A nurse fitted James with a plaster cast on his fake broken arm. On the drive back to Wales James read all the latest stuff in the papers about the anthrax terrorists and the continuing hunt for the laboratory and Bungle. It was odd seeing the newspapers filled with stuff he knew about.

  The stories made Bungle sound like a supervillain, but James could only remember a big friendly American who cared about workers’ rights and the environment.

  *

  Cathy was waiting in the Land Cruiser fifteen kilometres outside Craddogh. James ran between the two cars and waved to Ewart as he drove off.

  ‘Hello, Ross,’ Cathy said. ‘Fake broken arm?’

  James nodded. ‘It itches exactly like a real broken arm.’

  As they got near the camp a policewoman pulled the Land Cruiser over and asked Cathy where she was going. Cathy got waved on. She had to drive across country because the bottom of the hill near the underground workshop was sealed off by police.

  The main hut was packed when James and Cathy arrived. The residents seemed edgy about all the police and media people hanging around. A few journalists and photographers were scrounging free stew. Amy hugged James when she saw him. James wanted to go down the village and see Joanna, but it was already late and he didn’t know if her dad was home.

  Sebastian tapped James on the back.

  ‘Hey, cripple,’ Clark said. ‘Feeling OK?’

  ‘Not bad, a bit weak.’

  ‘You’re lucky that driver didn’t splatter you,’ Clark said.

  ‘Would have been wicked getting up and seeing you mashed into the road,’ Sebastian laughed. ‘Got any scars?’

  James pulled up the sleeve of his T-shirt and showed the mass of bruises and cuts where the antibiotics had been injected.

  ‘Is that where the car hit you?’ Clark asked.

  James nodded.

  ‘We were gonna ask you something the night you got run over,’ Clark said. ‘But we couldn’t find you.’

  ‘Ask what?’

  ‘If you wanted to sleep over in our hut.’

  ‘Cool,’ James said.

  39. FUNERAL

  James couldn’t decide if he liked Sebastian and Clark. They had a dark side, but that made them interesting to be around. They slept in a rusty panel van next to their mum’s hut.

  James thumped the metal. Clark slid the side door open.

  ‘Get your butt in here,’ Clark yelled.

  James bent over to slip off his boots. It had become habit after a few days at Fort Harmony.

  ‘Leave them on,’ Clark said. ‘The filth is what gives our van character.’

  James stepped inside. Two gas lamps pushed out gloomy orange light. His hair brushed the roof. Clark’s mattress was below the cracked windscreen where the seats used to be. Sebastian lay at the other end, toying with a big hunting knife. The metal floor was wet and had grass poking up through rust holes. Everything was thrown about: dirty clothes, air guns, knives, shredded school books.

  ‘Duck,’ Sebastian shouted.

  Sebastian flung his boot across the van. It skimmed past Clark and clanged into the side, leaving a muddy splat on the wall. The second boot hit James in the back.

  James looked at the muck on his sweatshirt and smiled.

  ‘You’re so dead,’ he said.

  He hurled the boot back, then dived on to Sebastian and squashed him under the cast on his arm.

  ‘Bundle,’ Clark shouted and jumped on the pair of them.

  The three boys rumbled until they were all red-faced and out of breath. James was almost as dirty as Sebastian and Clark by the time they’d finished. Clark passed a bottle of water. James took a few gulps and tipped some over his head to cool off.

  ‘Want to go out and do something?’ Clark asked.

  James shrugged. ‘Long as it doesn’t involve killing stuff.’

  You’re such a girl,’ Clark said. ‘I want to go down the hill and shoot one of the cops up the arse with my air pistol.’

  Sebastian laughed. ‘That would be so cool. You haven’t got the guts.’

  Clark picked his air pistol off the floor, pumped it and loaded a pellet.

  ‘Want a bet?’

  ‘Five quid,’ Sebastian said, holding out his hand for Clark to shake.

  Clark thought about taking the bet, then started laughing.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t,’ Sebastian said.

  ‘I hate the cops,’ Clark said. ‘Fire and World were the best guys around here.’

  ‘I hope Mum lets us see them in prison this time,’ Sebastian said.

  ‘It would have been superb if they’d pulled it off,’ Clark said. ‘We would have been related to two of the biggest murderers in British history, and by the time people started getting sick Fire and World would have been gone. Nobody could have touched them.’

  ‘Two hundred dead though,’ James said. ‘They all would have had families and stuff.’

  ‘They were rich scum,’ Clark said. ‘With fat, ugly wives and spoilt kids. The world would have done fine without them.’

  ‘Ross, you should have heard some of the stuff Fire told us about all the evil shit the big oil companies do,’ Sebastian said. ‘This farmer in South America had an oil pipe burst over his land. His whole farm was trashed. So he goes to the oil company and asks them to clean up the mess. They beat him up. He complained to the police, but the police were getting bribes from the oil company. They stuck the farmer in a cell and didn’t give him anything to drink until he signed a confession saying he blew up the pipe himself. Once he’d signed the confession he got fifty years in prison. They only let him out when loads of environmentalists complained.’

  ‘That sounds fake,’ James said.<
br />
  ‘Next time you go on the Internet look it up for yourself,’ Clark said. ‘There are tons of stories like that on there.’

  ‘Fire told us loads of babies in poor countries die because their drinking water gets poisoned by spilled oil,’ Sebastian said.

  ‘Still, you can’t go round killing people,’ James said.

  ‘You say we’re sick,’ Clark said. ‘So how sick are those guys going to Petrocon? They’ve all got millions, but they won’t spend any of it to stop babies getting poisoned.’

  *

  They decided it wasn’t worth going out; you couldn’t do much with all the police and journalists around. Clark rigged up a target box at one end of the van and they had a shooting competition with air guns. James had shot real guns in basic training and wasn’t bad, even though he could only hold the gun with one hand. Sebastian and Clark were brilliant. Every pellet passed through the centre of their paper targets. Afterwards the brothers showed off tricks. Clark managed to shoot between the eyes of the grinning kids on the cover of his maths textbook while holding the gun behind his back.

  At midnight Clark and Sebastian’s mum stuck her head in and told them to go to sleep. They rearranged the mess so there was room for James to lay out his sleeping bag and turned out the gas lamps. The boys talked in the dark, mostly about Fire and World. Sebastian and Clark knew tons of funny stories about things Fire and World did at school and in prison. They sounded cool. James almost felt bad about being one of the people who’d got them caught.

  *

  Somehow they ended up fighting again. Battering each other with pillows and throwing stuff around. The darkness made it more exciting because everyone could launch sneak attacks. James’ sleeping bag got ripped open in a tug of war and the stuffing flew everywhere.

  Clark fired his air pistol. Sebastian and James dived for cover. They couldn’t tell if they were being shot at, or if Clark was only trying to scare them. Sebastian and Clark’s mum came back. All three boys dived under their covers, giggling.

  ‘It’s one in the morning,’ she shouted. ‘If I hear any more noise I’m coming in there and you’ll be sorry.’

  Their mum must have been tough because after she threatened them Sebastian and Clark straightened up their beds and said goodnight. James was sweaty, filthy, and his burst sleeping bag was on a metal floor, but he was so knackered after the last few days that he closed his eyes and was instantly asleep.

  *

  James first thought the banging was some prank by Sebastian and Clark. Clark lit his torch.

  ‘What is that?’ James asked.

  Someone was thumping on the outside of the van.

  ‘Open up in there. Police.’

  Clark shone the torch on the back of Sebastian’s head.

  Clark laughed. ‘Nothing wakes him up. I set a firework off next to his ear once and he didn’t even budge.’

  Clark got out of bed wearing shorts and a T-shirt and unlocked the door. Two powerful torches pointed in his face. A policeman grabbed Clark out of the van and turned his torch on James.

  ‘Boy,’ the policeman shouted to James, ‘get out of there now.’

  James put his bottoms and boots on with his free arm and stepped out. Fort Harmony was ablaze with flashing blue lights and torch beams. Police in riot gear were dragging everyone out of their huts. Kids were crying. Residents and police shouted at each other.

  The policemen knocked James against the van beside Clark.

  ‘Anyone else in there?’ one policeman shouted.

  ‘My little brother,’ Clark said. ‘I’ll go and wake him up.’

  ‘No you don’t, I’ll do it,’ the policeman said.

  One policeman stepped into the van. James spoke to the other one.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Court order,’ the policeman said. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and read from it. ‘By order of the High Court all residents of the community known as Fort Harmony shall leave within seven days. Dated 16th September 1972.’

  ‘That’s over thirty years ago,’ James said.

  The policeman shrugged. ‘It took us a bit longer than expected.’

  The policeman inside the van screamed. He staggered out, holding his thigh. James spotted the glint of Sebastian’s hunting knife sticking out of his leg. The other policeman shouted into his radio.

  ‘Code one. Code one. Officer down. Serious injury.’

  About ten cops came swarming over. Two grabbed the cop with the knife in his leg and carried him off. Two slammed James and Clark hard into the side of the van and started searching them for weapons.

  ‘Not those two, there’s a kid in the van,’ a policeman said.

  Clark shouted out, ‘I said I’d wake him up for you. He’s scared of the dark so he sleeps with the knife beside him.’

  ‘Shut your hole before I shut it for you,’ a policeman said.

  Six policemen surrounded the door of the van. Three of them had guns drawn.

  ‘Get out here, now,’ a sergeant shouted.

  Sebastian shouted from inside, ‘Don’t shoot me. Put the guns away.’

  ‘Put them down, he’s only a kid,’ the sergeant said. ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Sebastian.’

  ‘Sebastian, I want you to come slowly out of the van with your hands in the air. We know it was an accident. We won’t hurt you.’

  Sebastian stepped into the torchlight. When he got near the door the police grabbed him and slammed him into the mud. One cop put his boot on Sebastian’s back and locked on handcuffs. He looked tiny compared to the policemen all bulked out by riot gear. They dragged Sebastian off to a police car.

  ‘Let me go with him,’ Clark said.

  A policeman slammed Clark against the van again.

  ‘You don’t learn, do you?’ the policeman said.

  Sebastian’s mum was dragged out of her hut and put in the police car with her son.

  ‘What about us?’ James asked.

  ‘We’re taking everyone to the church hall in the village. There’s a coach at the bottom of the hill,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘I need to get my tracksuit and boots,’ Clark said.

  ‘You can’t go in there, it’s a crime scene.’

  ‘I’m barefoot,’ Clark said. ‘It’s freezing.’

  ‘I don’t care if you’ve got to walk across broken glass,’ the policeman shouted. ‘Get down to that coach or you’ll have more than cold feet to worry about.’

  James and Clark walked off.

  ‘I’ve got to find my sister and Auntie Cathy,’ James said.

  Police were everywhere, over a hundred. A chain of residents was heading down the hill. Anyone who put up a fight found the riot cops weren’t shy about pulling batons. James and Clark dodged into some trees and re-emerged beside Cathy’s hut. There was no sign of Amy, Cathy or the Land Cruiser. They went in the hut. Amy and Cathy had taken most stuff with them.

  ‘What you looking for?’ Clark asked.

  ‘My mobile,’ James said. ‘Looks like my sister took it with her. What shoe size are you?’

  ‘Two.’

  James kicked a pair of his Nikes into the middle of the floor.

  ‘Those are a three, you’ll grow into them. Take whatever clothes you want.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Clark said.

  Clark put on tracksuit bottoms and trainers. James found him a warm top with a hood.

  ‘My sister’s probably down at the village,’ James said. ‘Might as well get on the coach.’

  *

  James and Clark sat next to each other on the coach. It gradually filled up with residents, all of them carrying what they could. Clark was trying to hide how upset he was from James, but couldn’t hold himself together.

  ‘He’s only ten, they’ll realise it was an accident,’ James said.

  ‘Don’t bet on it, Ross. The cops will switch their stories around so he gets done. Whose story are they going to believe? A couple of kids who are
always in trouble, or the police?’

  ‘I’ll be a witness,’ James said.

  ‘If Sebastian gets sent away I’ll stab a cop myself so I can stay with him.’

  40. HALL

  Craddogh Church Hall was a madhouse. Eighty people with no air to breathe. Kids ran around screaming. Journalists kept asking Gladys Dunn for quotes and pictures, but the old lady needed rest. Michael Dunn threw a punch and got dragged away by police in a blaze of camera flashes.

  The residents wanted to go back to Fort Harmony to get their stuff, but police cars blocked the road and nobody got through. The police said everything was being collected and would arrive in a few hours.

  Clark had turned into a basket case. Sobbing for his brother and mum and screaming to any nearby cop that he was going to kill him first chance he got. James tried to calm him down, without much success.

  ‘You’re the first kid who’s ever been nice to us,’ Clark said to James.

  James felt bad. Clark wasn’t his real friend. He’d used him to help with the mission.

  *

  On TV you knew who the baddies were and they got what they deserved at the end of the show. Now James realised baddies were ordinary people. They told jokes, made you cups of coffee, went to the toilet and had families who loved them.

  James totted everyone up: Fire, World and Bungle were obviously bad guys for trying to kill everyone with anthrax. The oil company people were also bad for trashing the environment and abusing people in poor countries. The police were bad guys; they had a tricky job to do, but they seemed to enjoy throwing their weight around more than they should. The only good guys were the Fort Harmony residents and they’d all got chucked out of their homes.

  James couldn’t figure what he was himself. As far as he could tell, he’d stopped one small bunch of bad guys killing a big bunch of bad guys and as a result the good guys got chucked out of their homes by another bunch of bad guys. Did that make him good or bad? James only knew that thinking about it gave him a headache.

  *

  James left Clark with his family and went outside. There was no sign of Amy or Cathy. James didn’t have his mobile and the village phone box had about twenty people queuing up, trying to find somewhere to stay now Fort Harmony was shut off. James realised he might be able to phone Amy or Ewart from Joanna’s house. He was sure Joanna’s dad would be on duty with all that was going on.