The Pack (12 page)

It took a dog's eyes to make out Bradley's astonishment. He caught the glint of Hunger's eyes on him.

I could have told you,
Hunger said.

PART THREE

THE INVISIBLE CITY

11

MARTHA

When Bradley woke there was a silver skin of mist floating above the river. Martha was crouched at the edge of it, cupping water and sluicing it over her face. Between times, she stayed perfectly still, moving her head slightly to the left, then to the right, as she listened to the morning. She turned, saw Bradley's eyes on her and turned back to the river.

She soaked the red rag she had worn round her arm, wrung it and brought it over to Hunger. She began to stroke his wounds gently to wash the remains of the Hound of Hell's blood from his chest.

“It's OK, boy, it's OK.”

Hunger raised his head to acknowledge her, then let it fall again onto the embankment.

“You like that dog,” Bradley said to her.

“Yeah, reminds me…” She turned away. “He's a good fighter, that's all.”

Bradley let that stand, as he had let stand her admission the night before: “We do what we have to do to get by.” Her eyes had flashed at Victor and at him then, as if to say, I am what I always was. Yet now, when Victor woke, clawing at his collar, there was no longer the hard edge of the boy guard Skreech in her voice, as she said, “Here, I'll get that off for you.”

Victor looked at her, suspicious of the change and not yet ready to trust it.

“Come on,” said Martha. “Why would I hurt you?”

Victor lowered his head and Martha unbuckled the collar. She gave a sympathetic tut at the deep scores round Victor's neck.

“Wait there.” She took the rag to the water's edge again and rinsed it of Hunger's dried blood, squeezed it and brought it back to Victor. Cold as it was, Victor rolled his head at the relief of it.

“Better?” Martha said.

“Mmm,” Victor answered.

They stayed there in the gray light for a while in silence: Bradley, Victor, Hunger and Martha. There seemed nothing more that needed to be said. They were out of one danger and about to enter another. Bradley knew they needed to gather their energies from somewhere—to reform the shared space, warmth and intention of the Pack. Yet how could he lead them when he didn't know the direction they must take? He felt the question like a fur ball in his throat, but he could not spit it out. Martha saw his proud eyes dart to her and away.

“Well, you can't stay here,” she said. “Red Dog and the boy soldiers will be after you soon. Black Fist too likes a hunt. You need to cross over into—”

“What do you mean,
you?
Are you not coming with us?” said Bradley.

“I never said I'd come with you.”

“But you did. Back there, you did.”

“Look, you're out now. You can take care of yourselves from now on. I need to do the same. I'm going back to—”

“Back to Red Dog? But why?”

“Because it's better that way. I was very careful, no one will suspect—”

“But they'll find out. There's only you and two or three of the other guards who could've helped us to escape and by the time you get back, they'll all have told their stories. It would be madness to go back.”

“And madness to go on.”

“Yes, and remember it was madness to help us, but you did and we're out and you're with us.”

Martha dipped her head and covered her face with her arms. She began to rock slightly. When Bradley pulled an arm away, it was a very different Martha he saw. Gone was all Skreech's confidence, the way he used to slightly raise his head when he spoke, the way his experience came out as mockery, the way his jaw-line could tense into the hardness of a mask.

“I can't go back,” she said. “I can't.”

“That's what I'm saying,” said Bradley.

“No, not to Red Dog. To the Invisible City.”

“You've
been?
” said Bradley. “Been to the Invisible City…?”

Bradley noticed Victor becoming agitated, rocking on his heels and gently moaning.

“Yes, but I can't—”

“Yes, well, we must,” said Bradley. “We must get Floris.”

We must get Floris,
said Hunger.

“Floris,” said Victor, who had been moving closer and closer to Martha. “Floris,” he whispered. “Floris.”

“I can't—I…” Martha began.

Hunger had not followed the argument, but he had sensed the dramatic change in Martha's temperament; how the spirit of Skreech had drained from her. In the early days, when Bradley too was ambushed by some troubling vision from his past, Hunger had behaved no differently. He placed one front paw then the other on Martha's shoulders. Martha had to uncurl herself and lean forward to take Hunger's weight or else be pushed down onto the cold stone. Hunger stared at her and she saw herself reflected in those flame-yellow eyes. Her face calmed and she swallowed.

“We should be all right in the early morning,” she began, “but we need to move fast. You must keep close behind me and not stop for anything.”

“Where are we going?” said Bradley.

“We'll head for a park I know. The Mount is not far from there.”

“OK.” Bradley turned to Victor and Hunger. “You need to keep close, you understand?” He tapped the back of his thigh and Victor nodded.

“We're going to get Floris,” said Bradley.

“Floris,” said Victor.

“Let's go,” said Martha.

*   *   *

From the crumbling neighborhood that had been their Zone, they had seen the light grow from the towers of the Invisible City, as they were rebuilt to the way they were before the Dead Time and the riots that had left them smashed and looted. Now, as the mist unwrapped them, their surfaces gleamed in the thin winter sunlight. Each glinting pane of glass, each strut of shining metal said, “Keep out!”

They moved through shadows as far as they could. A few people clutching briefcases passed them in the opposite direction; all in a rush for one of the underground trains. The women's hair shone where it fell on their heavy woolen coats; it framed their grimly determined faces. They passed a glass-fronted coffee shop, where one of a row of men in creased suits looked up from his paper, half-stood on his stool as, wide-eyed, he said to his neighbor, “Did you see what I just saw?”

At least that was how Bradley imagined it. For he and the others were long gone, down another broad road and another set of risks. But it was hard not to slow down passing the shops, which were just opening up for trade; hard not to stare a moment too long at the pyramids of apples, oranges, melons, the buckets of trumpet-headed flowers, especially for Christmas.

“Come on. Got to keep moving,” Martha pleaded—only she knew the full penalty of capture.

A woman carrying a heavy square attaché case and wearing matching gloves and shoes spotted Hunger and flattened herself against the side of a building that ended in the clouds. “Oh my God, look, look! What is
that?
”

Hunger growled, low in his throat, in response. “Come on, Hunger,” said Bradley and tapped his thigh again. But it was Victor, cage-cramped and terrified of the light surrounding him, who was having most difficulty keeping up the pace Martha was setting. And it was Martha, glancing around to check they were all together, who caught sight of the policeman coming out of another street. He was only five yards behind Victor and Victor had fallen five yards behind Bradley.

“Just stop there!”

Seized with panic, Victor did. And curled himself into a tortoise on the pavement. Bradley saw the smile on the policeman's face as he reached down for the scruff of Victor's neck—one down and the others wouldn't get far in the Invisible City. Not once he put the word out. The dog, huh, shot on sight.

The policeman was straightening up, pulling Victor up with him, when he caught sight of a streak of black in midair coming towards him.

Hunger knocked him backwards onto the pavement and latched onto the hand, which had reached too late for the stun stick. The policeman yelled and tried to roll from Hunger's grip.

“Victor, Victor, come on,” Martha begged and Victor scrambled up and joined them.

“Now, Hunger, let go!” Bradley called.

They left the policeman nursing his bleeding hand, cursing. Let that black beast be someone else's problem, he thought.

*   *   *

“Almost there,” Martha called behind her.

The park was deserted, but Martha didn't let up. They ran under its green entrance and along paths, skirting grass, flowerbeds and a small pond, till the park began to thicken with trees. There was a small wooden hut in the trees, its slats green-edged and rotting.

“In here,” said Martha, tugging at the door. There were some old garden tools with broken shafts that Bradley spotted before Martha pulled the door shut behind them and they squatted, panting, in the darkness.

Bradley was aware of Martha's hand stroking Hunger's coat.

“You OK?” she asked Victor. Victor's eyes gleamed back at her in the gloom.

Splinters of day came through the cracked old wood. Eyes began to accustom themselves to the earthy light.

“Are we safe here?” asked Bradley.

“Safe nowhere,” said Martha, “but few people use the parks now and this old hut—”

“How do you know this hut?”

“Doesn't matter.”

“No, but if you'd like—”

“Why would I?”

“You've risked a lot for us, Martha, I'd just like to know a bit more—”

“Nothing to tell,” said Martha, snapping off Bradley's interest as Skreech had once done. But there was, and when they had sat in silence a long time, her eyes staring straight ahead, Martha told it.

*   *   *

In the Dead Time, life in the Invisible City was little different—the way Martha described it—to life in the Zones. People had to barter, beg and cheat to survive. Martha had had a dog then, Pepper, a black Labrador, and she wouldn't give him up.

A thought flared in Bradley's head: A bitch as black as coal, almost as big as himself …

Pepper had been a birthday present. Martha remembered the blunt black snout poking over the rim of the cardboard box, then the pink bow. How her parents' faces had glowed that morning—almost as brightly as her own.

“I'll find the food for Pepper,” she told her parents and she saved scraps from her own plate to feed her dog, whose haunches she still saw daily becoming more hollow. But then whose body wasn't going through a similar redefinition? Martha herself felt her ribs more clearly each morning.

As often as she could, she took Pepper to the park. The world of the park was a world they made themselves. Mostly, Pepper was still fierce enough to keep the odd drunk, who slept out on the benches, at bay; but when the gangs of boys began to roam the park, Martha would take Pepper to the old hut to sit out her fear in the darkness. Only one astonished old drunk had opened the door to find himself face to face with the black, snarling beast. He had never come back.

It could have been the gangs that got Pepper in the end or it could have been one of the patrols that, after the Dead Time, began the ruthless clean-up of the Invisible City. It had to be done, everyone agreed, but in the enthusiasm to return to normality, to put the Dead Time behind them, there was little debate about what was implemented.

First, all stray dogs and cats were removed from the streets—they harbored, after all, who knew how many diseases. Then the case was made that all animals were suspect. Had they not mixed with the strays? Who could guarantee their pet had been kept inviolable? No one would get the opportunity to answer that question. The vans patrolled the streets; money was paid to street gangs for each animal they could deliver to the Animal Care Centres.

It was stray children—the street gangs themselves—who were next. The Dead Time had created many of these. It was a time of great change and there are always casualties in times of change. Sometimes it was the child's own decision: he was a mouth the family could not feed and he took himself off to try his luck in the streets. Sometimes, through neglect, it was the parents' decision that drove the child out. Or a mother, in exhaustion, would shake her head, stare at her child, as if her heart had turned to stone: “What's to be done? What's to be done? What's to be done?”

Martha was lucky. Her parents had not weakened. In fact, when Pepper disappeared, they saw it, not as Martha did, but as a sign of hope. Now Martha, pale Martha, would give herself every chance she could. They looked forward to seeing her chest fill out, the flutes of her ribs covered again with healthy young flesh.

But the other children, the ones who roamed the streets, living as they had during the Dead Time—thieving, begging, tricking—this was no way to carry on in a city that needed investors to have faith in it, that wanted to show the world that it had turned a corner and put the bad times behind it.

The vans that had collected the pets and the stray animals were renamed—Child Care—and the round-up of the children began.

*   *   *

The inhabitants of the Invisible City noticed the benefits immediately. They could walk down streets without being harassed; they need not carry their valuables in secret pouches, making their waists red and sweaty in the summer heat; they could use the smart leather attaché cases which were soon on the market with their various fur trimmings.

In the evenings now, people came out of their houses and strolled down the avenues. There was always something to see—a building restored, a new coffee shop opened, music playing out into the street, trays of nutty biscuits, foaming drinks and boards chalked up with exotic menus that changed daily.

Martha didn't see many other children now when she walked out with her parents, but the grown-up world seemed calm. “Good morning.” “Good afternoon.” “Good evening.” Even the old greetings were coming back.