The Fearless (13 page)

‘From what? The Fearless?’

‘No, this is worse than the Fearless.’ He’s breathing fast, his jaw clenched. He’s
scared
.

I stare through the trees, wondering what on earth is coming along that road. And then I hear it – a sound I haven’t heard for so long that at first, I can’t place it: a low, throbbing hum that gradually gets louder.

Engines.

‘That’s a car!’ Cass says, turning to stare at me with wide eyes. ‘Who would have a car these—’

‘Be
quiet
.’ I stare at the road, my knife clenched in my fist, the pain from my busted rib forgotten. ‘If they find us, we’re screwed.’

If they find ME, we’re screwed.

She shuts up. Thank God. I pray Lochie stays away. If the Magpies find him, Christ knows what they’ll do.

They come into view, heading in the direction we’ve come from. It’s the same jeep I saw five days ago, open topped with a camouflage pattern painted on the sides. The same people are in it too, four men and a couple of women. I was near what used to be Oxford. They’d stopped to cook a meal, which I should have been able to smell from miles off, but it was a breezy day and the wind wasn’t blowing in the right direction. Me and Lochie came round a corner and almost walked straight into them. Just like before, they’re bundled up in heavy black coats and black caps, with trank guns across their laps. The only difference is this time, they don’t have two Fearless chained up in the back of the jeep. As they pass the spot where Cass and I are hiding, the guy beside the driver turns his head. It feels like he’s staring straight at us.

I hold my breath. Until a month ago, none of us had ever seen the Magpies. We’d only heard about them from the barterers. Then Ben almost got caught by another group of them when he was out on a salvage run with Cy. They were in the remains of one of the villages on the moors, searching one of the houses and not being awful quiet about it, because they thought there wasn’t anyone around to hear them. And because of all the noise they were making, they didn’t hear the jeep pull up outside. There were four of them, and Ben and Cy had to hide up in the attic while the Magpies pulled the house apart, looking for them. By sheer chance, one of the ceilings came down before they could get up into the roof, and they gave up and left. Ben and Cy were both pretty shaken up, though, and it freaked everyone else out too.

After that, Ben found out from one of the barterers exactly who they were and what they were doing. He gathered everyone in the Communications Hall and told us. ‘We have to be incredibly careful,’ he said. ‘If they find out about us, it’ll be the end of everything. From now on, no one leaves the bunker in groups of less than three, and if you do go anywhere, you take a gun.’

It was like the first couple of years after the Invasion when the country was crawling with Fearless all over again.

Like everyone else, I promised I’d take care, but all I could think about was Mara. It was almost two weeks since she’d escaped, after I took her outside for some air, and somehow, she’d managed to get away from me. I guess I was lucky she’d run instead of attacking me, but that was the only good thing about it. We searched for her across the moors, but she was nowhere, and then the weather started to get really cold, and Ben decided we needed to postpone our search until it improved again. All I could think was,
What if the Magpies catch her?
The thought of having to wait to go looking for her again made me feel sick with worry.

It was a few days later, after another barterer brought the news she’d been seen with a Fearless man, heading south, that I decided whether Ben liked it or not, I was gonna go after her straight away, and started squirreling away food and supplies to take with me. Who knows how she managed to hook up with him, but I wasn’t gonna let her go back to them. Not after I’d fought so hard to keep her away.

‘What were they—’ Cass starts to say when the first jeep’s gone past. I hold up a hand. I can hear a second jeep now. It’s going even slower than the first. The guy with the scar on his cheek, the one who was barking orders when I nearly bumped into them last week, is driving.

Something rustles behind us, making us jump. It’s Lochie, a small, furry body dangling from his jaws. ‘Stay,’ I hiss, holding up a hand. Lochie stops, ears pricked, putting his head on one side and then the other.

We wait until the sound of the engines has died away. Then I climb out of the ditch and walk to the edge of the trees, looking in both directions up and down the road. I wish I could take off my eye patch; only being able to see out of one eye makes everything more difficult. But I daren’t.

‘It’s OK,’ I say as Cass joins me. ‘They’ve gone.’

She hands me my pack. ‘Who were they?’

‘No one we want to run into, ever.’

‘Why?’

‘They’re rounding up Fearless,’ I say.

She frowns. ‘But that means they’re on our side, doesn’t it?’

‘They’re on no one’s side but their own,’ I say flatly. I turn to Lochie. ‘What you got there, lad?’

It’s a rabbit, which I tie to one of the loops on my pack by its feet. But Cass won’t be so easily distracted.

‘Wait,’ she says as I start walking again. ‘If they’re rounding up the Fearless, surely that’s a
good
thing? Maybe they could help us find the ones who took Jori.’

‘Cass, they’re not good people, OK?’ I whirl around to face her, the pain from my ribs forgotten again for a moment. ‘They’re not interested in helping people. Especially not people like you and me. If you’ve got any sense you’ll keep out of their way.’

She looks shocked at my outburst, but she doesn’t ask any more questions, and I’m relieved, because I’m not sure I could answer her if she did. The Magpies seem to be some sort of army, and Danny, who had a run-in with them himself not long ago, told me a lot of them come from overseas. Presumably they’ve been rounding Fearless up there too. He says that they’re taking the ones they catch to a camp somewhere in the countryside near London – or rather, what used to be London, before the fires. But he doesn’t know what they’re doing with them down there. No one does.

I turn back round and start walking again, cursing myself for not getting away this morning when I had the chance, and cursing myself even more for feeling guilty that I tried.

Guilt is good
, I remind myself. I’m terrified a day will come when I don’t feel guilt any more, and I become as cold-hearted and inhuman as they are. But, dammit, it makes it so hard because the longer I let Cass tag along with me, the more danger I’m putting myself in. There’s no
way
she can come back to the bunker. Somehow, we have to catch up with Mara and the other Fearless before then, and somehow, I have to get Cass’s brother away from them without Mara coming to any harm – or Cass finding out that Mara’s my sister.

I start to walk faster, even though it hurts my ribs. ‘Come on,’ I say gruffly over my shoulder. ‘We’ve got a few hours of walking ahead of us yet.’

And I don’t want to be out here in the dark with the Magpies roaming around
, I add inside my head.

We don’t see the Magpies again after that, but a couple of times we skirt around the edges of villages and towns. The houses, some cloaked in ivy or creepers that have grown unchecked, have smashed windows, crumbling walls and sagging roofs, destroyed by the weather or the Fearless – perhaps both. No one comes out to meet us. I’m starting to feel as if, while I’ve been living on Hope, the rest of the world has upped and vanished. Where is everyone? Where are the Fearless?

I’ve got a blister on my left heel. Eventually it bursts, making me grit my teeth every time I put my foot down. I struggle on, reminding myself that I’m doing this for Jori, but by late afternoon it’s so sore that Myo notices me limping. To my surprise, he makes me sit down on the verge and take off my boot. ‘Jesus,’ he says when he sees the blister. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘It’s fine,’ I say, although the sight of the raw pink flesh on the back of my heel makes me feel queasy. I reach for my pack, where I’ve got some basic first aid stuff – a bandage and some seaweed salve – stashed in a side pocket, but Myo has already pulled an old pencil case out of his satchel.

‘If that gets infected, you’re in trouble,’ he says, taking out bandages, tape and a tube of antiseptic cream, blue with a white cross on it, like the stuff we used to have in the bathroom cabinet at home. I’m in for another surprise when, instead of thrusting the stuff at me and telling me to sort myself out, he gently cleans and dresses the blister, then helps me inch my boot back on.

‘Better?’ he says when I stand up again.

I test it, grimacing in anticipation, but it’s not nearly as painful as before.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

‘You’re welcome.’

‘What about you?’ I say. ‘How are your ribs?’ He hasn’t mentioned them all day.

‘Sore,’ he says. He gathers up his stuff, turning away from me again, shutting me out. Clicking his finger at Lochie, who’s investigating something in a ditch, he starts walking again.

As I limp after him (both of us are hobbling now, an irony which doesn’t escape me) I get a sudden, fierce ache in my throat. I don’t often think about my old life – I don’t let myself, because it’s easier that way – but all of a sudden I have a terrible longing for things to go back to the way they used to be. Hot baths, frothing with bubbles. My soft bed in my cosy bedroom, and my bookshelves stuffed with books. Going swimming with Sol. Watching cartoons after school with Kali purring on my lap. Mum. Dad. And instead, here I am in a cold, empty landscape with a strange boy who will barely speak to me – who tried to abandon me. My old house is probably nothing but weathered ruins now, like the ones we’ve passed. There’s no running water, no central heating, no TV, no anything. And Mum and Dad and Kali are gone for ever.

I just hope I’m not too late to save Jori.

At last, with dusk turning the air blue around us, we round a bend and Myo points through the trees that line the road. ‘There.’

I’m so tired I don’t see the barbed wire strung between the tree trunks until I almost collide with it. ‘Watch it!’ Myo says sharply.

‘How do we get through?’ The strands of wire are too near to the ground to crawl under, too close together to squeeze through, and too high to climb.

‘Like this.’ Myo walks along the line of trees, grabbing the trunks of the smaller ones and shaking them. He reaches one that’s just a little bit taller than he is, grips the trunk in both hands and pulls. The tree comes clean out of the ground and I realize it’s not a tree at all – at least, not a living one. It’s been turned into a fencepost: the roots have been cut away to make a sharpened point, and the branches have been left on to disguise it.

Myo pulls the post to one side. As we squeeze through, I get a prickling feeling across the backs of my hand and my neck, as if we’re being watched. I turn, but no one’s there. I yawn. I can’t remember the last time I felt this exhausted.

Through the trees is a clearing with a tiny, ramshackle house in the centre made out of a patchwork of metal and wood. Its windows are boarded and smoke curls out of the chimney. To one side is a paddock and an outbuilding; I hear a whinny and realize it must be a stable. A lot of the barterers keep horses as they have to travel long distances.

We climb up onto the dilapidated porch, Lochie’s claws scrabbling on the wood, and Myo knocks on the door. I tuck my hands into my armpits, shivering.

A few moments later the hatch in the door scrapes back. A piece of wire mesh has been fastened across the hole. Whoever this barterer is, it’s clear he’s taking no chances. ‘Who is it?’ a voice says, male and gruff.

‘It’s Myo and Lochie, and a friend,’ Myo says.

‘Myo!’ the voice says. ‘We were expecting you yesterday. Thought summat had happened. Wait there a minute, mate.’

The man shuts the hatch, and opens the door. He’s in his thirties, with a neat beard and short brownish hair. ‘Come in, quick,’ he says. ‘It’s bloody freezing out there.’

We hurry into the house, and the man, who’s carrying a lantern, frowns out at the trees for a moment before he locks the door behind us.

The first thing I notice is how warm it is. Blissfully, deliciously warm. We’re in a narrow hall with all sorts of stuff stacked in neat piles – bicycle wheels, bits of furniture, pieces of wood, an old oil drum, a sweeping brush, a guitar with no strings, and who knows what else. And I can smell food cooking. My stomach growls.

‘Danny, this is Cass,’ Myo says without looking at me. ‘Cass, Danny.’

Danny steps forward and holds out a hand for me to shake, grinning again. He’s wearing patched trousers and a jumper that’s coming unravelled at the cuffs. ‘Nice to meet ya.’ I shake his hand, and he turns his attention to Lochie. ‘Hey, boy, you been keeping Myo outta trouble, then?’ he says, scrubbing the dog’s ears so roughly I’m surprised Lochie doesn’t yelp or try to get free. Instead, he presses his face against Danny’s legs.

‘Daft dog.’ Danny steps round Lochie and wraps Myo in a hug, thumping him on the back. Myo flinches, but he doesn’t say anything. ‘So what happened?’ Danny says, releasing him. ‘Me and April was gettin’ worried. And you look like you’ve gone ten rounds with a Fearless.’

‘Not a Fearless. I’ll explain in a minute,’ Myo says.

‘So,’ Danny says as he leads us down the hall. ‘Did you find out where—’

Myo glances sideways at me. ‘No. I’ll talk to you about it later.’

Danny frowns. So do I. What’s
that
about?

A woman appears in a doorway at the top of the hall. This must be April. She’s tall and slender, with long curly hair, and for a second, she reminds me so strongly of Mum it takes my breath away. Then she steps forward and I see her hair is dark, not red. She wears combats and a jumper like Danny, and in her arms is a blanket-wrapped bundle, from which a tiny fist emerges, the fingers opening and closing on thin air. ‘Dan? Who is it?’ she says squinting in the light of the lantern. I stare at her in surprise. I’ve never imagined the barterers living in houses and having families. I always assumed that they lived on the hop, moving from place to place to evade the Fearless.