The Fearless (16 page)

‘I think you’ll be OK,’ I murmur, rubbing his neck like I’ve seen Myo do. I’m both startled and pleased when he puts his head down and leans against me with a groan. By the time Myo comes back in the room, he’s stopped trembling.

‘How bad is it?’ Myo says.

‘He’s fine,’ I say. ‘Aren’t you, boy?’

Lochie stretches up and swipes his tongue across the end of my nose.

The ghost of a smile flickers across Myo’s lips as I wipe my face with my sleeve. ‘That’s it, you’re proper pals now,’ he says. Lochie goes to him for another neck rub, then flops down on the blankets I was sleeping on and puts his head between his paws.

Danny’s eyes are still closed, his chin resting on his chest. ‘Danny,’ Myo says softly. There’s no response. I press two fingers against the barterer’s neck. He has a pulse, but it’s rapid and faint. His breathing’s rapid too, and wheezy-sounding.

It takes him three hours to die. His breathing gets shallower, his pulse weaker, and he starts to make an awful rattling sound in his throat. It goes on and on. Myo and I sit either side of him, waiting until the rattling stops, and the only sound in the room is the hollow ticking of the grandfather clock.

‘
Shit
.’ Myo turns and punches the couch arm.

Lochie whines. I look at the clock and see it’s almost five a.m.

‘I need some air,’ Myo says in a hoarse voice, standing up and rubbing his hand across his face. He walks out of the room before I can say anything.

I gaze at Danny. Twelve hours ago, he was inviting us into his home, introducing us to his wife and showing off his baby daughter. We were sitting at his kitchen table, eating stew.

And now all three of them are gone.

I get up too, grab the lantern, and go after Myo.

He’s outside on the porch, his back to the house. His shoulders are shaking. When he looks round at me, I see his face is wet with tears.

I set the lamp down and touch his arm, and for a moment – just a moment – I feel something pass between us, a jolt of electricity that makes my skin tingle.

Then he steps back. The spell breaks.

‘I have to do something for them,’ he says, swiping at his face with the backs of his hands. ‘I can’t leave them here. They were my friends.’ His voice is cracked, full of pain.

‘Can we bury them?’ My heart is thudding; I feel flustered and weirdly guilty.

‘The ground’s too hard. We’d never manage it.’

Then, from the stable at the side of the house, I hear the horses nickering. I’d forgotten all about them. I look at Myo, and he looks back at me.

‘Right, this is what we’re going to do.’ His voice is still raw. ‘We’ll take the horses. We’ll get to the bunker quicker if we ride. We’ll take some supplies, too – we’ll need them if there’s snow coming. But before that, we’ll get that bastard Fearless out of the house. And—’

He swallows, looks away from me for a moment. I wait for him to compose himself.

‘And then we’ll torch the place,’ he says at last. ‘I can’t just leave them there to . . . you know.’

As I pick up the lantern, Lochie pads out onto the porch and sticks his nose into Myo’s hand, then mine, as if sensing we need comforting. I stroke his neck again. I don’t feel scared of him any more, despite his size. It seems strange to think that I ever was.

We gather supplies first, replenishing our packs with whatever food we can find in the kitchen, and more first aid stuff from a kit under the sink. The Fearless is still lying face-down on the floor near the front door, the knife handle sticking out of the back of his neck. Before we take him outside, I reach down, pull it out and wipe the blade on my trouser leg. The horror of the last few hours has numbed me. No point in wasting a good knife on a monster like that.

The body is heavier than it looks; rigor mortis has started to set in, making getting it down the porch steps a slow, awkward business. We drop it on the ground near the fence. Then we go to the stable, taking a lantern each and a set of keys I found hanging up in the kitchen. ‘Do you know how to ride?’ I ask Myo as I undo the door.

‘Aye,’ he says. ‘Danny showed me one summer. How about you?’

I nod. ‘I had lessons before the Invasion.’

The stable smells of hay and dung and horse, a familiar smell which give me a rush of longing for my old life. Near the door, there are racks full of tools and tack, and at the far end are two stalls with horses tethered inside. One is brown with a white blaze on its face, and the other is black with white patches all over, their coats shaggy and long to protect them against the cold. As we walk across, the piebald snorts and stamps its feet, its ears back, its eyes wide.

‘Shh.’ Myo slips in beside it, laying a hand against its face. ‘They’re spooked,’ he says. ‘They must’ve heard the noise earlier.’

When the piebald has quietened down, he takes his hand away. ‘This is Apollo, and the bay is called Flicka. We’ll need food for them – can you see what’s in those bins in the corner?’

There’s a row of them, metal with numbers painted on the sides. I prise off the lids and see they contain grain. Myo and I find some hessian sacks and fill them with as much as we think Apollo, the biggest, can comfortably carry, packing them into a set of saddlebags. ‘There’s an abandoned farm on our route – I used it for shelter on my way down,’ Myo says as we grab some full hay nets. ‘It has a barn that’s still got hay in it. It’s years old but I reckon it’ll be better than nothing if they’ve got through all this lot by then.’

I put bridles and rugs on both horses, saddle them and load them up with our supplies, and we lead them outside, tethering them to the fence around the paddock.

Myo and I look at the house.

‘We should move April downstairs,’ he says. ‘Danny would want to be with her.’

It’s an unpleasant task; April’s body is also stiffening, pooling blood turning the backs of her arms and legs purple. We wrap her in a blanket, propping her up on the couch beside Danny.

Myo takes a box of matches from his pocket. ‘I won’t be long.’

I carry our packs outside. After a while, smoke begins to drift out of the front door. Just as I’m starting to wonder where Myo’s got to, if I should go back in, he walks out onto the porch, his eyes streaming, his face grim. He’s carrying the Fearless’s gun.

‘Didn’t think this should go to waste,’ he says, putting the strap over his head and coughing. Inside the house, I can hear the fire spitting as it takes hold. With all the stuff in there, it won’t be long before the whole place is alight.

‘We’d better get out of here.’ Myo untethers the horses and I give him a leg up onto Apollo before mounting Flicka. As soon as I’m in the saddle, my body remembers what to do; it feels quite natural to pick up the reins and squeeze my legs against the horse’s side to get her moving. The gap in the fence is already open – it looks like the two Fearless got in that way too – and we ease through it and out onto the road, Lochie leading the way.

It’s still dark, but we have our lanterns, and their light is strong enough for us to be able to make out where we’re going. Frost has formed again, and the horses’ hooves ring against the icy surface of the road. ‘Better go steady,’ I say. ‘We don’t want them to slip. Can we cut across country a bit once it gets light?’

Myo nods. Before we ride away, I take one last look over my shoulder. Through the web of tree branches behind us, I can see the orange glow of the flames consuming the house, sparks flying up into the air, and hear the wood popping and cracking. Sadness and anger squeeze inside my chest, forming a tight band around my ribs.
I hate the Fearless
, I think.
HATE them
.

Where’s Jori right now? The thought of how close he must have been when the Fearless man and the girl broke into the house makes me feel sick with despair. That girl is taking him and Tessie to the Torturehouse
right now
. We
have
to catch up with her.

And when I find her, I’m going to take that gun hanging around Myo’s neck, and I’m going to shoot her right between the eyes.

In the morning, when I open my eyes, everything’s OK for a moment.

Then I remember.

She’s gone.

I might never see her again.

I sit up and grind my fists into my eyes. Yesterday was horrible – hours spent on watch on the sea wall with no one to talk to, nothing to do except stare at the sea and think about Cass. It took me hours to fall asleep last night, too, and when I did, I dreamed about
him
. He and Cass were sitting together in someone’s house, a fire burning in a grate nearby. They were talking, laughing. Cass was smiling at him in a way she’s never smiled at me.

She preferred
him
to me.

I get up, pace across the room. It’s still dark – about half an hour to go until first bell, by my reckoning – but Dad’s sleeping mat is empty. Either he’s in his office already, or he spent the night there. He does that a lot. The island is more important to him than his son, I guess. I don’t know why I even bother getting angry about it any more.

Cass. Cass. Cass
. I’m still the only one who knows what’s really happened to her. Everyone else, including Captain Denning and my father, thinks she’s been kidnapped. I did a pretty good job of spreading that story round yesterday, acting all grief-stricken about it, and because everyone was weeping and wailing over Patroller Cary, who is going to be buried at sea later today, they were quite happy to weep and wail over Cass and Jori, too.

Inside, though, I was furious – with her for going off with him, and
him
for ever coming here in the first place. I wonder where they are now, and what on earth he said to make her believe he’d help her.
Oh, Cass
, I think for what must be the hundredth time.
I never thought you could be
that
gullible
. Her note is hidden in a book on the shelf by my bed. I can’t get rid of it; it’s the last connection I have to her. A memorial’s been planned for her, Jori and Patroller Cary next week, and my father’s asked me to do a reading because Cass and I were friends for so long (
stop talking about her in the goddamn past tense!
I wanted to scream in his face when he suggested it). God knows what I’ll say.

As I get dressed, the Meeting Hall bell begins to clang. I grab my armband and head down to the Refectory to have breakfast before I go on duty. Another day of staring out to sea.
Great
.

To make matters worse, it’s raining. Standing at my post above the jetty, I glare across the water, hunched up under an oilskin, my gun cradled in my arms. With Cass gone, this feels like a waste of time. All I want to do is take a boat and go after her, shoot that freak in the head.

Only, of course, I can’t. I’m stuck on this stupid island, without Cass, for ever.

And there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Down the wall, Patroller Yuen whistles, pointing out to sea. Squinting, I see a shape emerging from the curtains of rain obscuring the view of the docks.

A boat.

An incredulous grin spreads across my face. It’s her. She’s back.
She’s back
. I want to whoop, punch the air.

But as the boat gets closer, my grin fades. It’s much too large to be one of ours. There are three people inside, not two, and it has an engine. Where did they get the fuel?

As they get closer, I see one of the people inside is a man, one is a woman, and the third is wrapped from head to toe in a blanket, their face covered up. The man and woman are wearing uniforms – black coats and trousers and caps.

Not Cass. And they’re not barterers, either.

I thumb the safety back on my gun.

‘
Ahoy there! Turn around!
’ Patroller Yuen shouts through cupped hands, her voice echoing across the water. ‘
You are not welcome here!
’

‘G
o and fetch Simon Brightman!
’ the man, a guy about my father’s age with a jagged scar down one cheek, shouts back. ‘
Tell him David Brett wants to speak to him!
’

‘
I said, turn around!
’ Patroller Yuen aims her gun at the boat, although it’s out of range. I point mine that way too, my heart beating faster at the mention of my father’s name. How does this David Brett know him? How does he know he’s here? And why is the third person on board wrapped in a blanket? Are they ill? I grip my gun harder, my finger resting on the trigger.

‘
This is your final warning!
’ Patroller Yuen shouts. ‘
Turn back, or we’ll shoot!
’

‘
Fetch Simon Brightman, or we’ll shoot!
’ David Brett cuts the engine, and the woman lifts something out of the bottom of the boat, hefting it onto her shoulder. I only know what it is because when I was younger, before the Invasion, I was obsessed with the military, and a cousin bought me a huge book full of different weapons and machines which I’d spend hours poring over, dreaming of the day when I’d be old enough to join the army.

It’s a surface-to-air missile.

Or, to be exact, a FIM-92 Stinger – a personal portable infrared homing surface-to-air missile.

My mouth goes dry. I run along the wall, yelling, ‘Don’t shoot at them!
Don’t shoot!
’

‘Listen to the boy!’ David Brett calls as I reach Patroller Yuen, a smile curving his lips. I scowl. Who does he think he’s calling a
boy
?

‘Is that what I think it is?’ Patroller Yuen mutters out of the corner of her mouth, slowly lowering her gun.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And if they fire it, they’ll annihilate half the island.’

She turns and looks at me. ‘Go and get your father.’

‘What? No – he won’t—’

Patroller Yuen’s expression grows cold. ‘Patroller Brightman, I am giving you a direct order. Do as I ask,
now
.’

I glare at her for a moment, then remember that for the first three months I’m in the Patrol, I’m on probation. And I can’t afford to mess up. Not unless I want to get redeployed to Maintenance, or, worse still, stuck in the school helping look after all the bratty little kids.