.
Chapter Six
Jake Gardner hauled himself out of bed and walked slowly and painfully to the bathroom. Ignoring the female voice warning him not to use more water than was absolutely necessary and reminding him that cold water was more bracing and healthful than warm, he turned the hot tap on full, perching on the side as his bathtub – a luxury he was glad he’d refused to give up in spite of high taxes, warning letters and threats to have it removed – filled up. He was shivering, his face hot, his skin an odd yellowish colour – although he’d spent so long looking at it, trying to establish what the problem was, that he’d forgotten how it usually appeared. The thirst was new. He felt as though his body had been starved of water. A fever, he’d thought, then dismissed the idea. Impossible. Ridiculous.
Jake knew all about disease. He worked with it day in, day out at the poultry production centre. But people were not chickens. The rules for humans were different. There was no such thing as human disease. There would be another explanation. Maybe he’d exerted himself more than necessary recently.
He eased himself into the bath, sighing with happiness as the warmth enveloped him even as his teeth still chattered.
A plague on your people.
He remembered the line from somewhere – he couldn’t recall where. Plague. Pestilence. Things man brought upon himself, he found himself thinking. But these were crazed thoughts. There were no plagues now; there were no gods now either. No higher powers – except of course the Authorities. Was this a punishment for refusing to throw out his bath? Was this his penance for being wasteful?
He shook himself. His mind wasn’t his own – racing, darting, seeing things where they weren’t, like a dream where things were movable, where the usual laws of physics didn’t apply. If only he wasn’t so cold. If only he could warm his bones up somehow.
Cull them. If disease is left it will spread, infect the entire barn. You’ve got to get them early.
He imagined himself as a chicken, running from his keeper, stumbling, his large body too heavy for his pockmarked legs, colliding with other chickens, knowing that it was futile, that he was going to die, going to be taken . . .
No, I’m human. Humans don’t get ill. Longevity. Did I take my Longevity? Yes. Yes, I took it. Take more. Yes, I’ll take more. Now.
The water was still warm; he didn’t want to leave its embrace.
Afterwards. I’ll take them afterwards.
He hadn’t been to work today. Nor yesterday. Had he been missed? What were people saying? He must go in tomorrow. He just needed some sleep. It was fatigue, plain and simple. Or perhaps he’d been bitten by some insect. He looked down at his body and felt his mouth fall open in shock. It seemed to be shrinking, wasting away before his eyes, the skin tightening around his bones as though the water, his blood, his flesh, was leaking out. No, the light must be playing tricks on him. He shook himself, then looked back, but was met by the same horrific image, his skin being sucked into his bones, blackening, shrivelling up. He was hallucinating. He had to be. But the pain – the pain was excruciating, his windpipe was constricting, he needed air, needed water, needed . . .
He hadn’t heard the front door open and looked up in shock and surprise when two men walked into his bathroom, his mouth open but no words coming out of it. He felt like a fish, gasping for oxygen, splashing fruitlessly in the water.
The men looked at him, their lips curled in disgust – the same look Jake knew he wore when picking out chickens, grabbing them by the legs and breaking their necks in one seamless movement.
‘I’m not diseased,’ he garbled. ‘It’s cold. I needed to warm up. I . . .’
The men looked at each other, shared a raised eyebrow, a wry smile. Then one produced a metal stick and dropped it in the water. Immediately Jake’s eyes opened wide and his body began to shake violently, his lungs expressing air in a loud howl of pain, until there was no more air, until the current had done its work.
Silently, the men emptied the bath of water, checked the body was safe to move, then wrapped it up and took it down to the lorry.
‘You’re a fast learner,’ Jude said appraisingly as Sheila deftly navigated her way through the Underground security network to pick up a message in its inbox. Sheila shrugged but inside she was glowing.
It was a few days later and, in order to make up for his broken promise, Jude had finally agreed to teach her how to use the computer. It had been a struggle – Jude’s computer meant more to him than anything and every time she hit the wrong key she’d seen him wince. But he hadn’t known how closely she’d been watching him all this time; hadn’t known that she’d already picked up a lot. All she’d needed was the opportunity to touch the thing.
‘Yes, I am,’ Sheila agreed with a little smile. She turned to Jude and studied his face briefly – a face that looked so like Peter’s except for the eyes. Peter’s eyes were intense, restless, always darting around. Jude’s were calm. In spite of her anger with him over not finding her parents, his eyes reassured her, they instilled confidence. She felt safe when he was around. She didn’t know why he always got so defensive about himself, why he always seemed to think that he was in competition with Peter. In her opinion Jude would win hands down. Peter was the sort of person who got you into trouble; Jude was the sort of person who got you out of it.
Her brow creased in concentration she stared at the screen, trying to remember the next sequence – the sequence that would enable her to reply to the message. In spite of her protestations that computers were incredibly dull – protestations that were the result of her defences kicking in because she’d known so little about them, protestations that she kept up so that no one would suspect her intense interest – Sheila had jumped at the chance to use one for herself. She knew that Jude’s computer was a treasure box of information; through it she could communicate with anyone she wanted to, find out anything and everything. She’d watched him carefully for months, learning how to unlock its secrets, how to make it work for her. The fact of the matter was that she had a plan, a dangerous plan – one that still brought her out in goosebumps every time she thought about it. She knew Jude wouldn’t understand, would try to stop her if he got a chance, and this was the one thing that nearly made her change her mind several times a day.
But she knew she had to do it. Jude might put up with the Underground, with its dank rooms and its meagre food supply, but Sheila had her sights set on a better life. She knew that this was not her destiny, that this life was not meant for her. She might have been labelled a Surplus, like Anna, but she knew that she wasn’t. She remembered her parents; remembered being told by them that she was Legal, that she was very special. She remembered the night she’d been taken too – she’d been at her grandparents’. Someone had called the Catchers and Grandma hadn’t had the paperwork. She remembered Grandma’s screams, remembered being taken by a man who smelt dirty and coarse . . . and then began the life that she should never have led. A childhood spent in Grange Hall, waiting for her parents to come, dreaming of the Outside, of a land of plenty where everything was warm and soft, where food was always available, where she could lie on a sofa daydreaming to her heart’s content.
When she’d finally been rescued – not from Grange Hall but from Pincent Pharma, where she’d been sent to be a Valuable Asset – she’d thought that escape would lead her to a better life, not to the Underground. It was hardly any different from Grange Hall here – small grey rooms, chores, rules. There was no cruelty here, she wasn’t ill-treated on a daily basis and encouraged to hate herself, but still, it wasn’t the world she’d been waiting for – it didn’t even come close. She wanted her old bedroom, wanted the softness of her mother’s embrace, wanted all the food in the world and all the love to boot.
She turned to Jude with a little smile. ‘If you didn’t look over my shoulder all the time I’d learn far more quickly,’ she said.
Jude shook his head. ‘That’s my computer you’re on. No one uses my computer without me there.’
Sheila frowned. ‘You mean you don’t trust me?’
‘I mean this computer has too much on it. It’s too important. If you make a mistake, press the wrong button –’
‘I won’t,’ Sheila insisted. ‘You always get annoyed that Pip doesn’t trust you, but you’re just as bad.’
‘I’m not,’ Jude said, his eyes widening. ‘This is different. This is . . .’
He trailed off uncertainly.
‘See?’ Sheila said triumphantly. ‘You’re just as bad as him.’
‘No I’m not,’ Jude said forcefully. ‘Fine.’ He stood up gingerly, looking as though he was fighting a magnetic pull to move away. ‘Fine. I’ll leave you alone for a few minutes. You know not to touch that button? And if you’re unsure about anything, anything at all –’
‘I’ll ask you, ’ Sheila promised. She held her breath and waited until Jude was far enough away, until she was sure he wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing. Then, her heart fluttering, she began to navigate through his files, doing exactly what she’d watched him do. Soon everything she’d ever wanted would be hers. She was going to look after herself from now on. She was going to be just fine.
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Chapter Seven
Anna stared at the piece of paper in front of her then grabbed it, screwed it up into a little ball and threw it in the bin. She looked up at the ceiling, searching for something, but she didn’t know what. It wasn’t inspiration she needed, it was more than that. It was the answer to the question that had been pressing at her for weeks, months: should she write back to her old House Matron? Should she put Mrs Pincent out of her misery? Would she be letting Peter down? Would it be an act of weakness or strength?
She sighed. Life in Grange Hall used to be so full of certainties: right, wrong; good, bad; useful, waste of space . . . Now nothing was clear. Peter didn’t seem to mind that – he had his own principles, his own guiding beliefs that were, as far as Anna could tell, a mixture of the Underground doctrine and his own gut feeling about things. Anna, though, struggled daily. It wasn’t just being on the Outside either – it was motherhood. Often she felt more driven by fear for her children than by rational thought; she wasn’t sure any more where she stopped and her desire to protect them began. As for Mrs Pincent – she was an ogre, Anna knew that. But she had also thought that her child had been murdered; she had suffered intolerably. Did that not affect her guilt? At the same time, unaware that Peter was her long-lost son, Mrs Pincent would have had him put down like an animal if they hadn’t escaped. Perhaps she deserved nothing but her own misery to keep her company until her inevitable death.
Then again, to hear from Anna would not give Mrs Pincent any pleasure. Not when she heard the truth from her pen – that Peter would not acknowledge her existence. Anna would simply be telling her the facts. It would stop Mrs Pincent writing, stop her hoping for a response from her son that would never come.
Surely even a monster deserved that?
Anna exhaled slowly. Peter had said she could. He’d said, ‘Write to her yourself if you want.’ Had he meant it? She couldn’t ask. To ask would be to revisit, to awaken Peter’s anger again. Every time the Pincent name cropped up his eyes would darken, his neck would tense.
She would do it, Anna decided suddenly. She would write so that there would be no more letters, no more reminders. It was for Peter that she was doing it, not for Mrs Pincent – not for the woman whose twisted, manipulative regime was the nearest thing to parenting that Anna had known during her incarceration in the Surplus Hall.
Slowly, she took out another sheet of paper and began to write.
The wind was battering Pincent Pharma, doing its best to unhinge drainpipes, to uproot the signage surrounding it. Hailstones swept past its windows, forcing people off the street, but at least the hail might melt, might provide a little moisture for the parched land below. It was summer, but the seasons meant little any more and the days were cold, dark and rainless. The landscape was not the same one that Richard Pincent had known as a child, but then again the world was not the same either. Doom-mongers had been warning of the end of the world for as long as he could remember and he had always brazened it out, carrying on just as he liked. His room, after all, was warm, secure and sterile and kept at a constant temperature, triple glazing ensuring that any sound or gust of wind was kept safely on the outside rather than encroaching on the sanctity of his workspace. He loved the control he felt every time he closed his window, shutting Nature out, proving yet again that he reigned supreme over his empire.
People used to speak of Nature as if it were a good thing, as though ‘natural’ conferred upon something a worth, a value. The truth, Richard knew, was that Nature was a tyrant who killed and maimed without a thought, to whom survival of the fittest wasn’t an ideology but a requirement. Nature did not favour the weak; Nature took no prisoners. If Nature hadn’t been Richard’s sworn enemy he might even have felt some kind of respect. Like knows like, he thought to himself from time to time.
‘Richard, are you listening to me?’
He looked over at Hillary Wright and for a moment was tempted to tell the truth: that he hadn’t slept in days, that he was terrified, that nothing was under control, that for the first time in his life he didn’t know what to do. Instead he forced a smile. She had no idea, and if he told her the truth what good would it do? His own scientists didn’t even get it; they might not argue openly with him but he knew that their view was the same as Thomas’s – that it was the virus that had mutated, not Longevity. But Richard knew they were wrong; he felt it in his bones. This was Albert Fern’s legacy, the ticking bomb that he had left behind. Richard would find the combination – he would triumph just as he always had. But to explain this to Hillary? Hopeless. She was a bureaucrat, not a politician – the Authorities had long given up on the notion of democracy since voting numbers had virtually evaporated and the same politicians had stood year after year. Now everything was run by civil servants who wrote lists and policy documents that organised and managed with tick boxes and regulations. Hillary knew how to chair a meeting, how to run the country in an ordered way, but she had no vision, no imagination. She thought that a few people had become ill after taking their Longevity incorrectly. And still she was reacting as though this were a major national crisis. If she knew the truth she would implode. Far safer to keep it from her.
‘I’m sorry, Hillary. Please go on,’ he said.
‘I had finished,’ she said pointedly. ‘I was waiting for you to say something.’
Richard nodded slowly, his default action when caught on the hop.
‘What would you suggest, Hillary?’ he said, playing for time. For weeks now he had avoided this meeting, brushing her off with the line that a rogue virus was only affecting a very few people, that those affected were being examined and treated, that Pincent guards were taking those affected in the night so as to prevent any further panic. And she’d believed him – why wouldn’t she? But the few bodies had become many, and those who had seen the Pincent vans taking their loved ones away had started to demand answers. Conspiracy theories were beginning to spread up and down the country.
And now Hillary wanted answers. Wanted reassurance. She sat forward in her chair. ‘It can’t go on, Richard,’ she said, pursing her lips. ‘The virus has spread. To America, to China, to the rest of Europe. People are dying, Richard. I’ve just been on the phone to Saudi. They say that bodies are stacking up.’
‘They are exaggerating,’ Richard said, his hand moving to his collar, which suddenly felt very tight. ‘I told you, if people take their drugs correctly . . .’
Hillary looked at him furiously. ‘They say it has affected people on the correct dosage. You said the virus wouldn’t spread, Richard. You said it would be contained. A few people taking their drugs incorrectly, you told me.
A few people
.’
Richard took a deep breath, tried to calm himself. The bodies. The vile, twisted bodies, their faces full of horror even in death. They filled his dreams and their stench seemed to follow him wherever he went. They were mocking him. Taunting him.
You lied to us. You said we would live for ever. We didn’t. You won’t either.
‘They are lying,’ he said, his voice strangled.
‘No.’ Hillary shook her head. ‘I have been sent photographs. Dried-up bodies. Horrible. Too horrible.’ She shuddered. ‘I need to know what’s going on, Richard. We already have protesters on the streets over water rationing. If people get wind of this, if they think that Longevity can’t protect them –’
‘It can protect them,’ Richard said forcefully, banging his hand down on his desk suddenly. ‘It has always protected them. Shut the protests down. Put more police on the streets.’
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Hillary said tightly.
‘Of course it is,’ Richard said.
‘Hundreds of people are missing, Richard.’ She looked at him searchingly. ‘Taken away in the middle of the night. Hundreds. I told you weeks ago that we needed to communicate more with their families, their friends.’
‘Families? No one has families any more, Hillary,’ Richard said irritably. ‘No one cares about anyone else any more. You know that. We have communicated, anyway – we have told people what they need to know when they need to know it.’
‘You mean you have told people nothing,’ Hillary said stiffly.
‘What else would you have us do?’ Richard stared at her insolently. ‘We’re getting to the bodies as soon as their identicards reveal their temperature rising. Would you have us spend our time instead counselling next-door neighbours and writing long letters to their estranged sisters and brothers?’
‘No, Richard, I would have you get rid of the problem,’ Hillary said. ‘They’re calling them the Missing. People want to know what’s going on
. I
want to know what’s going on. What do we tell the newsfeeds? That Longevity is safe? That no one is getting ill? They’re beginning to report on the missing people. We’re losing control here and you have given me no answers.’
Richard stood up heavily; he needed height over Hillary. He felt tired. So tired.
Hillary looked back at him boldly; he could see in her eyes that she suspected the balance of power was up for grabs. ‘Do I need to bring in scientists from other countries?’ she asked pointedly. ‘Do The Authorities need to take over Pincent Pharma?’
His eyes narrowed; he could feel adrenalin course through his veins. How dare she! How dare she question him! ‘Don’t you dare,’ he said angrily.
‘Then I need answers. Proper answers. Do your drugs not work, Richard?’ She was looking at him triumphantly, mockingly. She had no idea, Richard realised, how close she was to the truth.
‘Of course the drugs work,’ he lied.
‘I know they work,’ she said exasperatedly, ‘but you must tell me the truth. I don’t buy your story of a virus, Richard. Longevity protects us from viruses – we all know that. What’s really going on? Are the conspiracy theories true? Are you testing new drugs on an unsuspecting public?’
If only, Richard thought. If only it were that simple. He closed his eyes. When you are weak, attack – it is the best defence. That had always been his mantra. So why now, when he needed it, was he lost? Why could he not see what to say, what to do? Even Hillary could see his weakness – he was exposed, vulnerable. He needed his armour, needed to wrest control. He thought frantically. Then suddenly, like a dove appearing over Noah’s ark, an idea occurred to him – an idea that would get Hillary off his case, that would give him time. It was brilliant. He smiled to himself. He felt his energy returning.
Grimly, Richard leant towards Hillary, his eyes serious. ‘You really want to know what happened? Why people are ill? Why they might be dying in other countries?’
‘I really want to know,’ Hillary said, her eyes wide with expectation.
Richard stood up and sighed for dramatic effect. It was a bold lie that he was going to tell, and one that could backfire spectacularly – but only if managed badly, and Richard never managed anything badly. Slowly he turned to Hillary, his expression serious. ‘You’re right. There is no virus.’
Hillary nodded victoriously. ‘As I suspected. Go on,’ she ordered him.
Richard paused for dramatic effect before continuing. Then he took a deep breath. ‘There was a contamination,’ he said, his voice low. ‘The Underground . . . They contaminated a batch of Longevity.’
Hillary’s mouth fell open. ‘No!’
‘Yes. The terrorists, the vile, blood-hungry terrorists got through our security system somehow,’ Richard said distastefully. ‘I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure. But we’ve checked and . . .’ he shook his head. ‘I don’t know how it happened, but it did.’
Hillary’s mouth was still hanging open. ‘How many?’ she gasped. ‘How many tablets did they contaminate?’
‘We’re trying to establish that. Enough to have gone out of this country. Enough to mean that there are going to be more . . . bodies.’
Hillary was staring at him uncertainly; he felt his shoulders rise slightly, felt his chin lift. He had the upper hand again. For now. For a little while.
‘I should have told you before.’ He looked at her intently. ‘I’m sorry, Hillary.’
Hillary took a deep breath, then let it out. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘The fact of the matter,’ Richard continued, warming to his theme, ‘is that we are in the grip of the worst terrorist attack of the past two hundred years. And people need to know that. You want the trust of the public? Get more police on the streets. Assign Pincent Pharma more guards. We need to root out the Underground once and for all and we need to work together. I need all Catchers and police working directly for me until the Underground is destroyed.’
Hillary blanched. ‘We will work together Richard,’ she said. ‘But the Authorities are still in charge.’