The Pack (5 page)

Victor was first to realize what had happened. “Floris! Floris! Floris!” He ran at the row of four attackers, but one of them thrust his shield forward, meeting Victor head on. Victor rolled backwards, his nose pouring blood.

“Come on, we've got one of them,” the weasel shouted.

Victor let out a high-pitched cry, but before Bradley and Hunger could act, the attackers brought the patched door crashing back into place and held it with a wooden plank.

Though it seemed hopeless, there was a corner of space that Fearless squeezed through, her back bent, the ridges of wood scraping against it. Her back legs kicked furiously and she was through and into the night.

By the time Bradley and Victor had broken out, there was no sign of them and the swirling snow was already burying their tracks. Still, Bradley walked out to be clear of the smoke fumes, to escape the claustrophobia, to think clearly what he should do. Hunger's shoulder leaned into him, and the dog watched him with his keen, yellow eyes.

“No,” Bradley told him, “not tonight. It's too dangerous tracking at night. Tomorrow the trail will still be fresh.”

But Bradley knew it was Victor he needed to speak to most.

He found him, snuffling around Floris's bedding, her blue-glass in his hand. A steady whine came from him. Bradley noted that he had wet himself.

“Victor,” he said, “Victor, you must listen.” Victor looked at him with huge, wild eyes. In the shadows the dark streaks of blood he had spread across his face looked black. “Victor, I know where they've taken Floris and I know why. It's me the weasel man wants. Me and the Old Woman, but she's too smart for him.”

Victor spoke haltingly, each syllable on the edge of a growl. “You say Floris is OK. You say Victor is OK. You say—”

“I know.”

“Floris is not OK. Floris is not here. And Victor not OK. No Floris, Victor not OK.”

Bradley took hold of Victor's hair and lifted his face to his own. “I do know, Victor, I do know. But tomorrow Hunger and I will start on her trail. Fearless already has. We'll get Floris back. Tomorrow, OK?”

And Bradley thought he had calmed Victor down, convinced him that all would be OK, for Victor fell against him and let Bradley stroke his head and ease him down onto the bedding he had shared with Floris, till Victor seemed to fall asleep, though Floris would have spotted the line of his jaw still set, his eyes working below their closed lids.

Exhaustion carried Bradley far off below the surface of sleep, where he usually floated through the night. Lost in the depths, he was not aware of one who could cover ground quickly and silently as a cat. But they had all developed similar habits to survive, so it came as little shock to find in the morning when a full sun dawned that Victor was gone and that the Old Woman stood, filling the doorway.

*   *   *

The Old Woman entered, stamping the snow from her feet. Bradley saw the white world glimmer beyond her.

From her night place, wherever it was, she had caught a glimpse of Victor, like a ghost, bent low, his hands at times brushing the ground, keening softly to himself, as he followed Floris's trail.

“I should have known,” Bradley said. “Night holds no terrors for Victor.” He remembered from the night before how the blue glare had returned to his eyes, the nocturnal eyes of a cat or a dog. Once Bradley too had had that power.

“Knowing would have made no difference,” the Old Woman said. “Floris is all that keeps Victor in the human world; the only tenderness he allows in his heart. He will do all he can to find her and, if he doesn't, yes, he will die as a dog, one that can't even return to the pack. No, nothing you could have done would have stopped him.”

Bradley recognized the truth of what the Old Woman said. He recognized too that what burned so brightly in Victor, about whom he knew so very little, was his desire to be something different from what he was. But Bradley also knew the shifting nature of the boundaries Victor had to cross to get there. And how necessary it was that Floris be with him on his journey.

Perhaps with Fearless he would be all right. Perhaps together they would know to come back for help. But then again, Bradley also knew, though his own eyes had lost some of their power, his ability to think things through had increased. And he could not see anything holding back Victor's or Fearless's anger. Bradley knew he had to set out after them as soon as possible.

“You mustn't do it,” the Old Woman said.

“What?”

“You mustn't go there.” How could it be, Bradley thought, that the woman who had filled the doorway so recently had shrunk so much? She was no different now from any of the other feeble old women who would not survive this winter.

“Why?”

“Because if you cross the boundaries, there is danger everywhere. Danger that you'll never return. Did you not listen to my stories?”

“Every one. But there is nothing else I can do,” Bradley told her.

“But there is, you can stay here … you can—”

“I can't … do nothing.”

“Then you will need all your wits and all your courage. And luck—a good seasoning of luck.”

“I'll take Hunger with me. Shelter will stay here and fend for herself.”

“I will look out for her,” the Old Woman sighed.

“Good. She will be a good guard dog for you to have around in case the weasel boys come back for you.”

Bradley wanted to be gone now, for he was beginning to feel new and different terrors. Not the ones he would have to face on the trail of Floris, Victor and Fearless, but the unaccustomed terror he felt deep in his stomach, when he looked at the Old Woman's strong but tired face, her soft eyes, and heard the voice he had so often lost himself in. It was the thought of leaving her. It was a desperate need to keep something to hold onto—something he could take with him—that made him ask, “Old Woman, what is your name?”

The Old Woman pulled off her headscarf and shook it. Her hair curtained her face, till she swept a hand through it.

“One last story,” she said.

*   *   *

“I was a teacher before the Dead Time. Yes, of children your age. Children whom no one else wanted to teach. I taught reading and writing. I taught that the world was a beautiful place and that the world was for everyone. And reading and writing, these were the tools to get you what you wanted—they were the foundations on which everything was built. Reading could take you into the worlds of the past or into the future. With writing you could create your own world or leave your own world for someone to discover—a world that would live forever. For nothing lives forever—only stories.”

“Ashes and dust,” said Bradley.

“Ashes and dust. That's what I've learned.” The Old Woman, Bradley noticed, had folded her scarf up into an oblong doll. She kneaded and she stroked it as she talked.

“I was a mother too many years ago and a grandmother. There was a place I liked to go with the children—a cabin far in the north—”

“Where wolves once lived?”

“Where wolves once lived. When the Dead Time came and they shut my school, that's where I wanted to go. I arranged with my daughter to meet me at the heart of the Invisible City and to bring the grandchildren. I'd bargained with someone for an old truck that wouldn't arouse suspicion.

“Things in the Invisible City weren't much better than here in those days. Vigilante groups had established strict curfews to keep the lid on the looting and the lawlessness. Up ahead of our truck, I saw a barrier. It was a checkpoint and I knew they wouldn't allow us to pass. I put my foot down and swerved to get round them.

“The wheels of the truck went over some loose bricks or something. The truck went over on its side and I was thrown clear. But just before I was, I heard the shots that ignited the petrol tank. The truck flared up. No one stood a chance…”

The Old Woman seemed to be folding herself into herself, like the head-scarf she squeezed in her hands.

“And you?”

“I don't know. Someone found me unconscious and spirited me away. I was nursed back to this. But I knew then that, to survive, I'd have to lose everything I'd known—how to read, to write, what I'd been, my name. All of that was over …

“Bradley”—the Old Woman reached out and gripped his forearm—“remember, I've told you the stories you need to survive. Remember them. And better for you … if you don't come back.”

“Your name?” Bradley asked.

“Bridget,” the Old Woman replied. And then, with the faintest hint of pride, as if she were blowing dust from an old family relic, “Mrs. Bridget Newton.”

PART TWO

THE FORBIDDEN TERRITORIES

6

CAPTURE

Bradley carried a small black backpack with a couple of slices of bread and a ham bone the Old Woman had brought out from her skirts and pressed on him. He took one brief look round at her, framed in the doorway, Shelter at her side. She seemed about to wave, but only brushed something—a snowflake perhaps—from her eye.

The snow was thick and before leaving Bradley had bound more rags round his feet for warmth. The laces of his trainers strained to close.

Hunger knew where they were going. He loped along before Bradley, his nose at times deep in the snow as he tracked Victor and Fearless. Every so often he would stop and turn to Bradley with a white nose to reassure him they were on the trail. Bradley nodded to him and waved him on.

They followed down Main Street, eerily deserted in the early morning, till they came to a broad square. In the middle of the square the snow was piled high on the neck of a broken statue. The square was the centre of a crossroads. To cross this road was to enter the Forbidden Territories. Hunger looked at Bradley:
Is this what you want?

“Come on, Hunger,” said Bradley. “We've no choice.”

At first, the Forbidden Territories seemed no different from the Zones: the same derelict buildings, the same braziers in the waste ground. They passed people wrapped in old blankets, stamping out the cold. Then they saw the first flag hanging from a street window. A black fist on a frayed white background—a sign to all from the warlord, Black Fist, that this territory was under his control. On one giant banner the fist appeared to punch a hole in a block of tenements.

Bradley and Hunger pressed themselves into a doorway. Four children appeared, dragging a sled. On it stood two others, their heads back, whooping. One of these wore a red blanket, which trailed on the ground behind him. The other began to point to an old man, scurrying up the opposite side of the street.

“Faster! Faster!” he shouted. “Come on, Rudolph, you're for the knacker's yard, you.”

Rudolph turned round. “Get stuffed, elf.”

“Come on,” Santa screamed above them both, “he's getting away!”

The old man slipped and fell into the gutter.

“Got you!” said Santa, as elf and the sled-pullers surrounded him. “Now, what you got for Black Fist's Christmas?”

The old man was pushing himself to his feet, when Rudolph put out a foot and sent him face down into the snow again. The children brayed.

“Right, let the old boy up now,” said Santa. “He wants to show us what he's got.”

The old man rose slowly to his feet, then held his coat open, to show he had nothing for them.

“Pah!” said elf. “Disappointing, old man.” Then he reached for the old man's belt and whipped it out. The old man's trousers slipped down around his ankles. The children cackled and hooted and pointed.

“Come on,” Bradley whispered, “let's go now.”

They edged along the bannered streets, pushing themselves into the shadows whenever they heard a whoop or saw a gang cross a road in the distance. The last of the Black Fist flags were ripped or crossed with red. Then the markings began to show they had entered the territory of Red Dog.

And it was soon after these appeared that Hunger found her—Fearless—lying under a light covering of snow. She was already stiff and the cold had frozen up the head wound that had killed her. Her teeth were still bared with the rage with which she had thrown herself at Floris's kidnappers. A reckless black ear fell across one of her eyes.

Bradley reached out and eased the mouth flap down over her gleaming teeth and closed her bulging eyes. Fearless to the end. Hunger circled her, sniffing at her, a low whine singing in his throat. He lifted his head to the cold winter sun. Bradley knew what he was about to do and put his hands round his snout to quell the warring howl.

“No, Hunger, not now.”

Hunger's eyes, black as coal, were fixed on him.
I want to be before those who did this.

“I know, Hunger,” said Bradley. “But remember—Floris and Victor. We need to find them first.”

Bradley lifted Fearless up and carried her into a derelict shell of a building. He could not bury her, so he covered her with rubble and bricks. Whatever happened to her carcass, she was always more than it was. And now she too was a story.

“Victor,” Bradley said. Hunger turned from Fearless's grave, back into the street. They had to move quickly, for Bradley knew that Victor's tactics would be no different from Fearless's. He too might already be lying up ahead under a snow shroud.

*   *   *

Hunger moved with purpose through the rest of that day's afternoon, rarely lifting his nose from the snow. It dawned on Bradley that it was not simply the hunt that gave Hunger such sure intent, but deep knowledge of streets he had already mapped with his scent. For of course no Zone could contain his appetite for space. Deep within him, he carried the imprint of an endless forest. And Bradley wondered whether, like him, Hunger was tormented by the shards of distant memory—the slant of sunlight through the trees, the sharp tang of home.

They passed five men fighting over a coat. Two of them took an interest in the black dog and the stranger. They let go of the tails of the coat, letting the other three fall, cursing, into the snow.