“Honour.” Alba smiles when she sees me. “We thought you were dead.” Her eyes shift past me. “And Horatia. And Branwell. How did you manage to escape?”
I shake my head. Not now. She seems to understand. She looks between us, for Marrin I suppose, and her eyes widen. Timofei comes to stand beside her but he’s silent.
“What happened—” she starts to say.
I stop her. “It’s better if we don’t talk about it.”
She glances at Tia and nods.
“Where’s Dalmar? And Hele?” My heart hammers as I wait for the answer. Her face will fall, she’ll tell me that she’s sorry, that they stayed in the base protecting what they believed in until the end.
She frowns and a sob rushes from my throat. “They’re with the Guardian residents. They … resent me for forcing them to come here. I gave them a direct order—one they could not disobey—to leave the base with the rest of us. Some, bravely, remained to protect our possessions, but I would not allow Dalmar and Hele to do the same.”
Because Dal is her son and Hele is his world. I understand. I want to hug the woman in gratitude. “Thank you,” I say instead. “Thank you.”
She doesn’t acknowledge my thanks. Her eyes cloud over and she chews her lip; it’s a gesture I never expected to come from her. “I know I am in no place to ask, but would you consider doing me a favour, Honour?”
“Uh … yeah. I mean, it depends what it is.” I’m not leaving my sister behind. No matter what.
“Would you talk to Dalmar, and tell him that I made them leave for their own safety? Would you tell him … that what I did and what I said was because I value their lives—not because I am trying to control them?”
I blink in shock. That was a million miles from what I expected.
“No,” I say. Disappointment softens her sharp features. “But I will tell him that you made him leave ’cause you care about him.”
Her face goes sharp again and her eyes turn hard, but her shoulders sag and the expression is gone. “Just tell him that I didn’t do it out of spite or the need to control his life.”
“Okay.”
“Honour,” she adds as I turn away. “You do realise that this means I owe you?”
“It does?”
“Yes. Whatever you need, come to me and I’ll do everything to help you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I walk away again but a question worms its way free of the tangle of my thoughts. “Alba, how many Guardians made it out?”
“Of the base? Forty one. In total? We don’t know yet. We can’t be sure until we know nobody else is coming out of Forgotten London.”
“How will we know that?”
Alba’s sharp eyes are far away. “We’ll know when the town has fallen.”
“It … hasn’t already fallen?”
“No. The zones have fallen, but the town has not. When that happens nobody will be able to get here, to the free lands. That’s why we’re here—waiting. We’re waiting for survivors, but we’re also waiting for the Fall of Forgotten London. It’s why we’re so far out. We can see the town, but its destruction won’t be able reach us.”
I stare at the smoke-shrouded town in the distance, fire licking at mountains of rubble. But that destruction isn’t enough. It needs to cause more. I wonder when it will stop—the wrecking, the dying, the sacrifice.
Alba says my name. My eyes sting from the smoke. “We estimate that we’ll have a hundred and eighty Guardians after the fall, not including those in other Forgotten Towns and the Cities.”
“How many did you used to have?”
“More than a thousand. Later tonight, when we’ve found a safe place to sleep, I’ll read a list of the lost Guardians.”
My voice comes out scratchy and quiet. “How do you know which ones are dead?”
She doesn’t speak for longer than a minute. “Because they’re not here.”
I force myself to nod.
“Speaking of not here—I’m sorry to say that Marrianne Beaulieu escaped during the attack on our base. We’ll find her though, if she’s still alive.”
“She wrecked my family.”
“And she’ll pay for it.”
I stand staring ahead, and it’s a long time before she says anything else.
“Is your sister all right?” I look around me and everything gets out of hand—my breathing, my panic, my paranoia, my fear—but Branwell has taken her to Hele and Dalmar. Relief drags my breath out in a jagged gust of air.
“No,” I say flatly. “Marrin is dead.”
“I thought so. We’ve all suffered great loss.”
I force my eyes shut to stop them from going to where I know Miya stands, to where she’s been stood ever since we stopped walking. “Some more than others,” I say under my breath. It’s a moment before something Alba said comes back to me. “Where are we going to sleep tonight?”
“As far away as we can get before we collapse—in the grass of the free lands. Tonight we’ll sleep under the stars.”
My head snaps up and I watch the lights in the sky. Forgotten London is falling and burning, but the stars are the same. I find one, the brightest, and focus on it. No matter what happens, no matter who we lose, that star will be there.
01:00. 09.10.2040. Forgotten London, Dead End.
Alba wasn’t kidding when she said the town hadn’t fallen yet. The entire ground shakes, even this far out, and people grasp each other for stability. Fifty more people have joined us, coming in groups of three or four at a time—families.
The Fall doesn’t start with much, just a rumble of the ground and the same creaking sound from before. Someone points out cracks that are forming around the border, hugging the inside of the fence, and everything makes sense.
My guess is that the cracks go all around the border.
The noise gets louder, and people start backing away. I stand my ground to watch and so does everyone I know.
The cavern around Forgotten London gets deeper, wider, until it separates the whole town from the surrounding land. And then, much quicker than I expected, everything I can see—the remains of buildings, the fence, the smoke and fire—sinks. It falls, in one mass, down. Into the earth. Within a minute, everything is gone.
It is so loud that I cover my ears with my palms as I stare at the huge hole in the ground where my home used to be. It’s gone—completely gone. Anyone who came here now would see a massive crater and wonder what had happened. Nobody would think that a town used to occupy that space. There’s nothing left. When I heard that States wanted to wipe out Forgotten London I thought they meant to kill everyone in it, not destroy all evidence of the place itself.
I want to dart forward, to the edge of the hole, to see how far down it goes. To see if I can find anything of Forgotten London inside the earth. Tia’s hand slips into mine and holds me back.
We wait ten minutes, staring at the hollow, before The Guardians begin walking away and we go after them. There’s no point waiting to see if anyone emerges. Alba was right—nobody could have survived that.
“Look,” a Guardian calls, pointing to something in the distance, something moving towards us at a great speed.
The Guardians tense, bracing for an attack from Officials, but they don’t need to. The closer the figures get, the more obvious it is that it’s ordinary people. Even in the moonlight I can see that most of them are dressed in colours—drab grey, faded burgundy, sickly green. Civilian colours. Amongst them are sparks of white. They run together but they don’t move as one force like Officials would; nothing is disciplined about this, it’s only desperate.
I can’t make out their features or tell if I recognise anyone until they’re a few meters in front of us—at which point Miya makes a strangled sound halfway between a shout and a sob and begins to run.
Yosiah is at the front of the group, limping a lot more than usual. He begins to half-run-half-stagger towards Miya when he sees her. They m
eet halfway and Miya crumples as his arms come around her. Her knees give way but he holds her upright. He’s holding her so close that it looks painful but neither of them seems to care.
“It’s okay,” Yosiah says over and over, one of his hands coming up to run over Miya’s hair. I can’t help but notice how much his hand shakes. Broken sobs take over Miya, shaking her body so much that Yosiah has trouble holding her up. They fall into the grass; Miya crushes herself to Yosiah. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he keeps repeating. He lowers his face to talk so only she can hear and I tear my eyes away from them.
Horatia is staring at the newcomers, searching each and every one of them. My heart drops. She’s looking for Marrin, but she won’t find him. I watched the building collapse. He couldn’t have survived that. I squeeze her hand and she realises it at the same time I think it. Her eyes are red from crying, but the tears have stopped. When she buries her face in my shoulder, when I pull her as close as I can without bruising her, I feel her chest shuddering. I don’t know what to do but I know that nothing could ever make her feel better.
We walk together, Guardians and civilians, away from the hole where our homes used to be. Away from all we’ve ever known. Away from Officials and rations and Strains leaflets. Away from house checks and work factories and Victory Days.
Of all the things that could have come into my head now that we’re outside the town, now that we’re free, the one that does is the Strains warning that played on the radio every night back home, and States’s propaganda slogan that ended the message:
Good and goodness will prevail.
END
***
Read on for a preview of the next book THE WANDERING.
Out now.
Honour
23:27. 10.10.2040. The Free Lands, Southlands, Northey Island.
My name is Honour Frie. I am fifteen years old. I have escaped Forgotten London.
The free lands are not much more than a dead expanse of dust and burnt-out houses, occasionally broken up by a skeletal tree or row of brambles that look out of place in the epic nothingness. The island is so much bigger than I expected. We’ve walked for two days and we’re still weeks away from the top of the land. I thought Forgotten London was big but The Free Lands go on forever.
We walked through the day, the high sun and cold wind arguing over the temperature, until we got to an island ringed by a grassy marsh that used to be clear waters. Brown grasses cover the surface of the island, serving as a makeshift mattress for those who sleep restlessly under the stars.
I can’t sleep.
My paranoia tells me that Officials hide in the long grass, that the wind that stirs my hair is caused by an army charging at me, that the gentle lapping of the swamp water is soldiers swimming to kill us. My fear keeps my eyes open.
We haven’t come across any Officials yet, but Alba expects to. That’s why we’re sleeping where we are—far away from the cavern of what was Forgotten London, on a small circle of land that used to be called Northey Island. We’re moving gradually away from home, to a city in the north that will keep us safe—so I’m told.
I should feel safe here but I feel worse than I ever did in Forgotten London. I’m the most vulnerable I’ve ever been and I hate feeling like this. I’m exposed by the island’s lack of buildings, freaked out by its absolute silence. Give me the noise of bars and the raised voices of drunken arguments and I would feel at ease. Because of the complete lack of noise, I hear sounds where there’s nothing, which only fuels my paranoia more.
With every hour that passes I’m amazed I’m still alive.
But I’m free.
I escaped the Forgotten London border. I just don’t have the energy to be happy about it right now.
Most people are sleeping so I have nothing to distract myself from my delusions. I roll onto my back and watch the unchanging sky for a few minutes. When I’ve finally decided that there’s no chance of falling asleep, I tap Horatia on the shoulder to get her attention. She doesn’t acknowledge me but I know she’s awake. I’ve yet to see her sleep.
“I’m going for a walk. I won’t be long, okay?”
Tia doesn’t respond, but I didn’t expect her to. She stares ahead, unseeing. I brush the damp strands of hair from her forehead, trying valiantly not to let my smile flicker.
Lumbering to my feet, I swallow my worry with a gulp of salty air and follow the edge of the island. I’m careful not to go so close to the edge, in case I trip into the water and drown. After an hour or so of walking I see a figure silhouetted against the inky sky. I almost turn back but I think I recognise the way he stands.
“Yosiah?” I edge closer to the figure and it takes the definite shape of my friend.
“Honour,” he says without turning. His voice sounds how I feel.
I fold myself onto the grassy floor, running my fingers through the sharp, slick blades, and wait for Yosiah to join me. As Yosiah obliterates the grass beneath his feet with agitated fingers, I look across the water to the dark edge of the United Kingdom.
“Do you think we’re safe here?” I ask.
“No.” I think that’s all he’s going to reply, but then: “But we’re alive, and that’s a lot to ask for right now.”
I rest my arms on my knees and my head on my arms. “How’s Miya?”
It takes a few seconds for him to answer. “Bad.”
“Sorry.”
He stops ripping up grass abruptly. “I don’t know what to do.”
I don’t know what to do either. I’ve nothing to suggest, to help, so I stay silent. He clears his throat and drags a slow hand through his knotted hair.
“Has Horatia spoken yet?”
“No.” My voice is stuck somewhere below my tonsils. “Not yet.”
“She needs time.”
My sigh is visible as a cloud of fog cut through with moonlight. “So everyone keeps saying.”
“Loss can destroy anyone.” He glances at me. “How are you coping?”
I wish I knew. “I can’t understand anything in my head.”
“It gets better with time.” He heaves a deep breath, and then a gasp. “Look over there, across the sea.”
There’s nothing but the blackness of the land. “I can’t see anything.”
“Not the ground.” He points, and I squint in the dark to follow his attention to the sky.
“Stars?” I ask.
“Not stars. Do you see where the lights shine brighter? Where they look slightly blue?”
I do. There’s a patch of sky where the spots of light are bigger and pale blue if I focus on them. “Is it normally like that?”
“No. It’s an aircraft—a plane. The lights you’re seeing are windows.”
I jerk to my feet, my heart lurching with my body. “Can they see us?” I’m ready to grab my sister and run. I don’t think I can outrun a plane but I can try.
“No. The range of their sight is limited. I’m pretty sure they don’t have night vision.”
I gawp at him as he struggles to his feet, unsteady on his right leg. “Pretty sure?”
“Honour, calm down. It’s leaving.” His jaw is set, his chin sharp in the severe light of the moon.
I give him a weak smile. “I’ll calm down when you do.”
“They’ll be doing routine scans of the whole island for us. We’re okay here. They won’t search these small islands.”
“What about the safe zones?” I search frantically for the spot of brighter lights. It’s smaller than it was before. It is going away. “Officials will find them.”
“The safe zones have been set up for years. They know how to stay undetected.”
“But they’re all kids! What if they—”
“Honour.” He lays his hand on my shoulder. “They’ll be fine. Don’t you have enough to worry about, anyway, without another hundred children?”
He’s right, I do. I need to find a safe place for Tia where she can grieve, get better, and li
ve a happy life. I need to find a way to do what The Unnamed asked me to—to unite The Forgotten Lands. I need to find John and demand answers. I need to look after my friends. And I need, most of all, to make sure this never happens again. To stop States from killing more people.
All of those things are impossible right now.
“How do you survive, Honour? You worry so much I wonder why it hasn’t torn you apart.”
“Are you sure it hasn’t?”
“Yes.” His words are so strong that I look up. “You’re still living, still fighting.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Thanks. I think?” He doesn’t reply, so I fix my tired eyes on the sky again. “Are you sure it’s leaving?”
“I’m sure.”
I wait for my breathing to stop sprinting and then say, “They wouldn’t be able to land here anyway, would they? This island’s too small.”
He gives me a long look. Then he says, “No. They wouldn’t be able to land.”
I hear what he doesn’t say—they wouldn’t have to land to kill us.
“I can’t see it anymore.” I try to watch every inch of the sky but it’s impossible. I don’t stop scanning the darkness, though. Every star is a plane. Every plane is a hundred Officials coming to kill us.
“Yeah,” Yosiah says. “It’s gone.”
For a long while we don’t speak. We just stare at the marsh and the land in the distance, the water around the island brushing against our boots. My nostrils fill with the tang of the sea. Standing up for so long, just staring in silence, I find a way to be tired again. I think maybe I could sleep now.
“Yosiah!”
I jump out of my skin, turning my head at the same time Yosiah stumbles forward a step. My body coils against the threat, my hand itching for a weapon. I sigh in exasperation. This paranoia is getting out of hand. It’s only Miya, her hands in fists and her eyes blazing. Yosiah gives me an apologetic glance and then he’s walking away with Miya cutting a tense shadow beside him.
I settle down in the damp grass and watch the sky for aircrafts until I finally reunite with sleep.
***
The Forgotten Page 36
