Resurgence (5 page)

I give him space, clutching Opie for support as Hart strokes the pale, unmoving face of his father. His tears bounce onto the stones as he continues to wrench them away until he has uncovered
the body of his mother, hand-in-hand with her husband. Their legs have been crushed, drying blood pooled around their midriffs, but it is the sight of the interlocked fingers clinging to each other
in a final act of affection and defiance that forces a lump into my throat.

Hart’s animalistic wail is so anguished that I know it will haunt my dreams for years to come. His fingers scrabble into the ground, pulling the bodies towards him until he is hugging the
pair of them. The only way I can force myself to breathe is by turning away but there is little comfort elsewhere. Across the village, there are small pockets of people hunched over the wrecks of
their homes trying to pull out bodies. Their cries, shrieks and coughs drift on the wind, a cacophony of suffering reverberating from every corner of what was once my village.

Pietra shuffles towards Hart, wrapping her arms around his back and tugging him away from the bodies. His fingers slip lifelessly from his parents as he allows her to console him. It was only a
few hours ago she was telling me about their hopes of sneaking away so she could visit his mum and dad. That chance will never come, the opportunity wrenched away by bombs meant for me.

I swallow hard, knowing I have cried enough in the past few days. Opie’s fingers wrap tenderly around my stomach.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he whispers, reading my mind. ‘
They
did this.’

‘I know.’

‘You stood in front of a plane and got us away safely. You figured out Xyalis’ technology in a way he couldn’t. He needed doors but you did it without sending us into the
middle of a tree.’

Swallow. Think. Concentrate.

‘How did you do it?’ he asks.

His question takes me by surprise but I stammer a reply. ‘I knew that bank of grass so well. I don’t think I’d be so confident going to many other places.’

‘How do you know it so well?’

My arms are trembling, my whole body in fact. I am shivering even though I don’t feel cold. The only things that feel warm are Opie’s fingers.

‘Why?’

‘Just tell me.’

I breathe in through my nose, the freshness of the air tempered by a thin clog of dust as I try to picture the bank as it is during the summer. The grass feels so much greener and smells so much
better when the sun is out. ‘I remember rolling down there as a child,’ I say. ‘Picking the grass out of my hair and rubbing the mud from my arms. When I got to the bottom,
I’d turn around and run back to the top and do it again.’

‘I remember watching you.’

‘Then it was one of our spots when we needed a day away from the woods. We’d sit and watch the village, talking about everyone we saw.’

Opie doesn’t reply for a few moments but his hands tense around my hips. ‘This is
our
village and they’ve done this to us.’

I suddenly click what we should be doing, clambering to my feet with an awkward crunch of concrete. First I crouch and kiss Hart on the top of the head, knowing there are no words that can help
with his grief, and then I take Opie’s hand and lead him, Jela and Evan away.

On the next street over, a woman is picking through the rubble of what was once the bakery, frantically clawing at the rough material as tears stream down her cheeks. Her long brown hair billows
across her face as I place a hand on her shoulder. It is Mrs Cusack, the owner, and she jumps in surprise, her eyes growing wider as she realises it is me.

‘Who is it?’ I ask.

She wipes her nose as she speaks but her words are clear. ‘My husband was inside when the plane came.’

I drop to my knees, feeling the sharp edges of the wreckage digging into my flesh as I begin pulling the bricks away. The others follow my lead, working together to uncover the collapsed remains
of a kitchen.

My arms and chest ache as I dig, fully expecting to find a body, but we all stop at once as the painful croak of a man’s voice drifts from under our feet.

Mrs Cusack’s tearful ‘He’s alive’ spurs us on again. We ignore the jagged, harsh edges of the metal, slate and stone, pulling, throwing and heaving until, finally, we
uncover a solid iron stove. It has fallen to one side but the tall chimney is propped against a stack of bricks and underneath – wonderfully, amazingly – Mr Cusack is crouched,
sheltering from the carnage above him and gasping for breath. His brown hair is caked grey with dust and there is blood pouring from his knuckles, but the way he turns to his wife and smiles with
relief that they have both got through this fills me with an overwhelming sense of hope and energy. We leave them clinging and clutching at each other as if they are the only people in the world,
and move to the next spot.

We find many more dead bodies but every person we drag from the rubble wheezing and bleeding – but alive – gives us the encouragement to keep digging as we work our way around the
village. I am so engrossed that I don’t even realise Hart and Pietra have joined us until I fall back, exhausted from trying to lift a large slab of concrete. Hart reaches around me, grunting
with exertion, sweating with effort. He digs his feet into the ground before heaving the blockade clear and reaching in to pull a young child out from underneath a collapsed house. Hart’s
face is blank, lips unmoving, but his eyes are determined as he takes charge.

More people join us to dig until we are a ruthlessly efficient force, moving from house to house, checking and listening.

As more people come to help, I feel their stares querying me but they are not upset or angry – they are grateful. People want to shake my hand and pat me on the back. Adults who spent
years scowling and cursing me for running through the streets and sneaking out to the gully now embrace and thank me for returning. They ask what they should be doing and how they can help.

My hands are grazed with blood, the skin red and raw from the wreckage, but I become so busy directing people that I don’t have time to dig. Every person we pull out who is still alive is
met with a cheer and raised fists of rebellion. Someone suggests using the village hall as a hospital, so anyone who is struggling is helped there. The dead bodies are pulled free and left clear of
the rubble to be buried when we have found all of the living.

One of the women who used to run a market stall asks how my mother is and wants to know if Colt is safe. ‘You won’t let them get him, will you?’ she asks, hugging me
unexpectedly before returning to dig at a nearby house.

As it gets dark, I think we are going to have to stop but one of the older men chuckles at me, saying I have a lot to learn. He starts small, controlled fires in between the fallen buildings
that keep the cold of the night away and let us continue working.

The dead bodies we find outnumber the living by a ratio too painful to think of. Teachers, cleaners, women, men, Members, Trogs: we are all equal here. On every occasion that my arms begin to
droop with exhaustion, whenever my eyes start to close through tiredness, each time I have to gulp in the cool night air to make myself concentrate, we find someone else alive. We go again.

The elation eclipses anything I have ever known – the wondrous, magical relief that so many have survived.

Opie was right – this
is
our village and as we shiver and scrape through the butchery beneath us, we can all feel something happening.

Tonight we have started to take it back.

By the time the sun begins to rise, there are over a hundred of us, scratched, bleeding and drained, that have explored the entire village. Everywhere has been checked, the community so well
represented that everyone we can think of has been accounted for, either because we have found their body, they are recovering at the hall, or digging with us.

As the others trudge towards the hall, I take Opie’s hand and lead him towards the remains of my old house. In between the bricks and mud are the remnants of what I grew up with, items
that each hold their own memory. There is the skirt I had as a young girl that was in the bottom drawer in my bedroom. Without turning it over I know there is a greenish-brown mud stain on the back
that has never come out. There is the table where we ate, the last place I saw my father before he died as he hunched across it holding his head in his hands. Ornaments, cutlery, carpet, childhood
toys – they are all broken beyond repair.

A short distance away, a neighbouring property has collapsed onto Opie’s old house. He picks through a few odds and ends with his father but there is little worth keeping and nowhere to
store it anyway.

Slowly we make our way towards the hall, navigating around an enormous crater that has been blown in the square outside. It is like a smaller version of the gully, a bowl curving into the ground
filled with shattered chunks of concrete. Someone has started to move the dead bodies here, lining them up next to each other and covering them with the singed remnants of blankets and curtains
that surround us. Our next job is to bury them.

The solid stone steps up to the village hall are cracked but surprisingly solid and it is difficult to know how or why it was spared. Was it deliberate, or did the bombs somehow miss the largest
building in the village?

At the top, I turn and look out over the massacre. The sun has reached the top of the trees, spreading a blanket of orange-yellow haze across what’s left of my childhood. This was the spot
where I stood before taking the Reckoning, with a square full of people cheering and waving flags. So many of them are now dead and, for the living, our lives have changed.

It takes me a few moments to compose myself and then I head inside to find that the hall is more damaged than it appeared from outside. One of the thick stone pillars has a jagged crack
spiralling around it and the floor is covered by a light dusting of plaster. A giant painting of King Victor usually hangs directly opposite the main door. It was so large that it stretched from
the floor to the ceiling, showing him at his most regal, with a crimson gown and fierce determination in his steely gaze. I look up expecting to see the familiar sight but instead the yellowy
bricks have a dark rectangular imprint. The wall behind where the painting used to be shines cleanly and clearly.

I peer around the space, trying to see where such an enormous object could have disappeared, but then I am drawn to the lines of injured people on the floor. Some are sitting, most are lying,
but they are all resting on what I first thought was some sort of thin mat. The person closest to me is a Trog whom I recognise as one of the street cleaners. She stares at me in disbelief,
reaching out to touch my skin in amazement that I am there. I smile and let her, turning over the corner of her mat and realising the canvas painting has been slashed into rectangles and given to
the survivors to save them having to rest in the dust and dirt.

Of everything I have seen, this act of beautiful defiance cheers me the most. The woman runs her fingers along my arm gently before leaning back onto the makeshift bed with a murmur of pain.

‘Are you all right?’ I ask.

She nods slowly, her voice pained and croaky. ‘They said you were here but I didn’t believe them. You came back for us.’

It’s not strictly true, I came back for my mother and Colt, but she seems so transfixed by me that I don’t want to break the spell. I start to reply but then hear Opie shouting from
the main entrance. He and some of the other men are pulling the thick wooden doors closed. He only says one word but it is enough to send a ripple of panic across the room.

‘Kingsmen.’

The glass of the window is scratched and blurred but still intact. On the far side of the crater at the front of the hall, there are outlines of black figures massing. They are
organising themselves into a line, each with a broadsword swinging at his hip. The doors clang shut and are bolted in place as Jela, Pietra, Hart and Evan join me by the window.

Evan rests a hand on my shoulder. As the eldest of us, he is trying to stay calm but his voice trembles. ‘Can you jump everyone out of here?’

I take the teleporter out of my pocket but the back is still warm, even though we haven’t used it in hours. It should have cooled by now but has been used a lot because of the
experimentation with Opie. I haven’t yet figured out exactly how the cool-down period works but know it should be used sparingly.

When I shake my head, Evan begins peering around the room for another exit. Even if there was an obvious escape route, there would surely be Kingsmen waiting outside for us. Another loud clang
echoes as a door to a side room bangs shut, as if to emphasise the point.

Many of the patients are now sitting up, holding various improvised bandages to bleeding parts of their bodies. They are looking for reassurance, most turning their eyes towards me. A gasp from
Jela directs my attention back to the glass as two Kingsmen, each holding a flamethrower, walk along the length of the dead bodies we have placed ready for burial. One by one they run the flames
across the corpses, allowing the fire to lick and catch until there is one long inferno.

Pietra reaches out for Hart. His parents were with those bodies and I am hit by a mixture of fury and sadness. No one will be given a proper burial, their relatives denied the chance to pay
final respects. Ashes are drifting into the sky, a black cloud of disrespect.

More villagers move to the windows and gasp in anger and fear as the Kingsmen with the flamethrowers reach the final bodies and then rejoin the line of their comrades. There are at least forty
of them, likely more around the rest of the building. This is the biggest show of force I have seen. Imrin’s theory at Windsor Castle was that there were far fewer Kingsmen than we thought
protecting the King’s residence. He was proved correct but it looks as though there have either been many more recruited – or all of the Kingsmen from Middle England have been sent
here.

I hadn’t noticed their spying birds while we were digging for bodies and it was dark for much of the time anyway. As I wonder if the Kingsmen know I’m here, I am left in no doubt as
a screeching interference noise booms through the walls. The Kingsman in the centre is dressed slightly differently to the others, his borodron uniform more grey than black and he is holding
something cone-shaped to his lips that amplifies his voice.