Bite Risk, page 16
‘They said if the experiment were to end prematurely, millions of people elsewhere in the world wouldn’t get the treatment they need. I thought the potential good outweighed the… small amount of suffering here.’
‘Just a minute,’ Ingrid says, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘Something about this doesn’t add up. You were happy for us to be treated like lab rats. You were still on board even after they killed Remi and his family. You must have known about that.’ He opens his mouth to object but Ingrid presses on. ‘In fact, you enthusiastically joined in, with your dodgy Howler party punch and who knows what else. But then you suddenly have a massive problem with it. I don’t buy it. What changed?’
He purses his lips in disapproval of her attitude. ‘Let’s just say I came to my senses. Regardless, I think it would be much better if you escaped, the three of you. Teach them a lesson.’
Elena puts my thoughts into words. ‘Except now we don’t trust you one bit, you sicko. How do we know you’re not sending us out there so Sequest can do the same thing to us that they did to Remi?’
Eddie pokes his nose towards the chocolate-biscuit plate and Harold nudges it away with the end of the tranq.
‘No, Eddie! Chocolate is poisonous for dogs!’
The little terrier flumps down at his feet again in a sulk, looking as betrayed as we feel. ‘Eddie doesn’t know what’s good for him, and what will kill him. Like you, apparently.’ His expression darkens. ‘Fine. If this is what it takes to get you to leave, I’ll tell you. Back in the spring, I saw something on the system. Just briefly, before it was deleted. Something I wasn’t meant to see.’ He glances away, unable to bear our scrutiny.
‘What did you see?’
He licks his lips. ‘The end.’
He seems reluctant to elaborate. We wait.
‘They’re wrapping up the whole experiment, in just a few months’ time. And because its existence is so sensitive, they’re going to make sure news doesn’t get out. If you know what I mean.’ He gives us a significant look. We return blank stares, until he capitulates, and explains. ‘They’re going to kill you all.’
The air seems to have been sucked out of the room.
Ingrid finds her voice first. ‘They can’t.’
‘I couldn’t see the details. But it’ll be the whole works. Armageddon.’ Harold fiddles with the tranq nervously. ‘When I saw that, I knew I had to do something. I can’t let them kill you. You’re my friends, believe it or not.’
There’s a long silence, and then Elena slaps her forehead. ‘Ohhhh… Now I get it. They’re going to kill you as well, aren’t they? No plans to send a drone to bring out their loyal workers, eh? That’s why you have a problem with it. They tricked you. You and all the other people here they conned into this sick project. You’re just as trapped as we are.’
From Harold’s deeply uncomfortable expression I know she’s hit the nail on the head.
‘That’s a very hurtful way of looking at it,’ he insists. ‘But it makes no difference, does it? If you want to save the people you love, then leaving without them for now is the only way. Tremorglade is a closed system.’
There’s silence for a moment as we digest this. If he wanted to send us to our deaths, he’s had plenty of opportunities to do it before now. He’s right. It’s the only way to save people.
‘We’re trapped inside a massive wall, according to you. How are we supposed to escape?’ I say.
‘That’s what I was about to show you. You’re not going to hurt me now, are you?’ He glances warily at Ingrid, who seems like she might. She shrugs and turns away. He hooks the tranq back on the wall, then picks up the biscuit plate, pops one in his mouth and starts to crunch noisily. He holds the plate out to us and we just regard it dumbly. This doesn’t feel like an appropriate time for cookies.
‘Just take it, will you? I need both hands for this.’
I grab it and he slides both his hands under the bedside table. In a smooth movement, his bed rises silently, and the floor underneath it opens up to reveal a large console with two screens. ‘My little work station.’
Elena raises an eyebrow. ‘Guess we know why this place is so expensive, huh?’
‘They fitted this just for me,’ Harold says, with a touch of pride, and in this moment, I think I see how they got to him. It wasn’t enough to be liked – loved, even – around here. He needed to feel important.
He touches one of the screens and it flickers to life. A map of Tremorglade appears, with the wall marked on it. ‘Now this will be slightly tricky.’ He taps the map and it zooms in. ‘The road leaves town there, as you know, and goes straight north. It used to be that when it came out of the forest, it forked east towards Yojay, and west towards Hastaville. Now, the wall blocks it before the fork. The river, however, runs north-west. It goes through a gap in the wall quite a few miles away from where the road leads. And it’s closer – only fifteen miles or so from here, though the going will be a little slow – there’s no path. So your bikes are no good, I’m afraid. But it’s a more direct route to Hastaville. This is where you get out. By river.’
‘In a boat, right?’ I croak, hopefully.
He shakes his head. ‘No, you’ll have to swim it.’
It’s the worst possible thing he could have said.
‘And since your little adventure in Warren’s house, spy drones will be keeping an eye out, for you in particular, Sel. Probably armed ones. Looking for any break in your habits. You coming here isn’t particularly unusual, but they’ll certainly take an interest if they spot you heading into the trees. Don’t go straight from here. Throw them off the scent by walking somewhere more crowded first. Hoods up. When they can’t find you tomorrow, we don’t want this to be the last place you were seen.’
I can’t help thinking it sounds like he’s covering his own back, rather than taking care of us. I glance towards the window, imagining cameras hovering up high, out of sight, but watching. My throat is dry. ‘Armed? They’re going to gun us down?’
‘I doubt it. How would they explain your bullet-ridden bodies lying in the street tomorrow morning? No, they’ll use tranquillizers and make it look like an accident. Delinquents messing about and taking risks. You do have form for that kind of behaviour, after all.’
This doesn’t make me feel better.
‘So we go somewhere more crowded. Then what? How exactly are we supposed to make it into the forest without them noticing?’ Elena asks.
Harold rubs Eddie under the chin, then looks up at us with a casual shrug. ‘We’ll need a distraction.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Ingrid wants to lock Harold up in Dora’s cage before we leave, but he points out that he needs to have access to his console to organize the diversion for us, so we leave him free.
It’s not that we trust him.
What choice do we have?
I wish we could take Eddie with us. If we survive this, Harold’s going to prison and Eddie is coming home with me. I’d never shut him in a box in the dark.
We walk out of Shady Oaks casually, like we’re just going for a stroll, leaving our bikes on the lawn where we abandoned them earlier. Harold will have some questions to answer about those, but that’s his problem. It’s ten o’clock – peak hanging-out time for the children of Tremorglade. Without our bracelets, it’s impossible to tell if anyone’s encountered Dora and raised the alarm, but I don’t think they have. People are chatting, messing around. We get a few odd glances as we pass, but probably only because we’re walking with Ingrid. A few weeks ago, I’d never have believed it myself.
The moon is flitting behind thick strands of cloud, hiding and reappearing, playing with us. We stick near to the last row of houses before the trees, approaching the forest road.
Then Elena taps my arm and whispers, ‘Don’t look, but there’s one coming.’
I hear it before I see it. It passes over our heads and its blinking red light catches my eye. A drone, just above lamppost height, skimming away from us along the street. It looks like a normal delivery drone – no one else pays it any attention, but collectively, we shiver. It’s headed in the same direction we’re going. We watch as it skirts a rooftop and slows, hovering. Is it following us?
The Confinement sense of doom is worse than ever. I tell myself it’s not a sixth sense, it doesn’t mean something terrible is going to happen – it’s just the infrasound making me feel that way. But it’s no good. I start to tremble. Harold’s been lying this whole time – why should we think he’s stopped now? I’m not sure that everything he said really adds up. If we go into the forest, we might never come back. Our bodies will be found in a few days, or weeks, mauled by wild animals. Quite possibly by Dora, if she went that way.
Just then, it happens.
A kid I recognize from the year below us is playing skittles in a front garden with a girl who is probably his younger sister. He stops suddenly, straightens and checks his bracelet. Up and down the road there’s a collective shift in body language as everyone gets the alert.
Then another one.
And another.
And another.
A girl close to us, about to win the jackpot in her group’s game of marbles, curses loudly and spits on the grass before joining her friends as they start running up the street, accompanied by the rattle of safety catches being thrown off tranqs.
Kids are coming out of houses, dragged from their sofas, from their pizzas and movies, by the series of alerts Harold sent. Harold picked six different areas across town to make sure there are kids moving in every direction, so that we won’t stand out.
They stream past us, our classmates, neighbours, friends, scared but for the most part willing to do what needs to be done. I feel a surge of pride in them all, and the prickle of tears.
‘Look.’ I follow where Ingrid nods discreetly. The drone has doubled back and is heading for Shady Oaks. Another one breaks out of the alley opposite – we hadn’t even noticed it was there – and buzzes off after it.
Heads down, hoods up, we start to move more quickly, half walking, half jogging, up to the start of the forest road. We don’t break pace but glance around as we reach it, scanning the skies, straining our ears for drones. I spot one high up over the trees, in the distance, a tiny pinprick of red light, coming this way fast. But it whizzes far over our heads, into town with the others. Have we fooled them? I remember that Harold said some of them can recognize us, and quickly hunch over, keeping my eyes on the ground.
Our feet pound the rough gravel towards the trees. We’ve already agreed we should go deeper into the woods for a short while, well away from the edge of town, before turning ninety degrees westwards to find the river, and following it downstream. At some point we will meet the wall, though I’m hazy on how long it might take us in this direction. A few hours? All night?
As we go deeper into the forest, the dense canopy blocks more of the moonlight and we struggle to see where we’re putting our feet. The road is in disrepair here, potholed, strewn with large stones and branches. Judging that we’ve gone far enough this way, we leave the road and follow Elena’s compass west. None of us want to risk switching on our torches yet.
‘Do you think they have infra-red cameras?’ I whisper. ‘Will they be able to track our body heat?’
‘No,’ Elena says, with a certainty she can’t possibly feel. After all the technology Harold described, infra-red seems kind of basic.
After that, we walk in silence. The occasional rustling bush and snapping twig tell us nocturnal forest creatures are watching our progress. We move as quickly as we dare, nervous energy spurring us on.
Harold’s betrayal sits on me like a dead weight, and though I know I need to focus on survival, I can’t help but dwell on it. His friendship was a lie. That first day when he fell over right next to me in the greengrocer’s, was that planned? Did he pick me out because he thought I’d be easy to manipulate? The offers of money, that I thought so generous. Was that out of guilt, or – nausea rises in my throat at the thought – was he buying me? His ticket out of here? Did he think so little of me?
Whichever way I look at it, there’s no avoiding the fact that he thought – no, still thinks – he’s better than us. More deserving of the truth, of being treated like a human being. I don’t doubt he was happy to carry on, until he realized he’d be counted alongside us, marked for destruction.
My whole life, I’ve felt incompetent. But never worthless, until now.
After half an hour, in which we might have gone slightly astray arguing over the compass, we come to the river, looking down on it from the top of a steep bank. Upstream somewhere, there’s Shady Oaks, and the waterfall. We head in the opposite direction, switching on the torches. Remi floats into my mind, and I wonder how far he got. I shake the thought from my head.
‘Stop.’ The tension in Ingrid’s voice makes me freeze. I start to whisper to Elena to stop too, only to realize that she already has. None of us are moving, and yet footsteps are still crunching through the undergrowth. I swing my torch wildly in the direction of the noise. A pair of golden eyes reflect back.
A low growl.
‘Dora.’
Ingrid’s way ahead of me. She points Harold’s tranq at the eyes, and lets off a dart, but Dora ducks low at the same moment she pulls the trigger, and it sails over her head. After that, there’s an empty click. Ingrid curses. Dora’s haunches wiggle slightly – she’s preparing to spring.
‘Run.’
I don’t need to be told twice. Keeping my eyes on Ingrid’s back, I follow her weaving path as she jumps fallen branches, avoids holes, Elena’s panting breath just behind me. I risk a glance back. Dora’s nowhere near as fast as Pedro, but she’s gaining, pausing briefly to jump obstacles, clearing them with ease.
I bash my right arm on a tree trunk as I pass, and pain courses through it. I cry out and stumble.
‘Come on!’ Elena yells in my ear.
Suddenly there’s a new voice. Two voices, talking. Except they seem to be coming from above, getting louder. People have found us. They must be from Sequest. Panic and terror wash through me.
And then I hear the words. ‘Oh, Henry, my answer is yes! Poor as I am, I am yours for ever!’ as something swoops down fast towards my head. I duck instinctively, but it moves past, whirring: a drone, lights flashing. It ignores me and dips in front of Dora. She skids to a halt and yowls.
‘My dearest Margaret!’ the drone gasps delightedly in an upper-class man’s voice. ‘Then we shall be married today!’
Finally the penny drops. It’s playing one of Dora’s audiobooks. The drone begins to dart about in front of her, toying with her, just as that one did to Pedro the night he was killed.
‘Harold must have sent it,’ Ingrid yells. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
We run again, leaving Dora behind, swiping ineffectually at the drone. When I glance back, I can’t see her – the happy voices grow fainter, leading her away.
We slow our pace, breathing hard, taking shaky swigs of water from our bags.
‘I don’t get it,’ I say. ‘I thought Harold said he didn’t have access to the drones anymore.’
Ingrid shrugs. ‘I guess he figured out how to get back in the system.’
I let it go, but can’t quell a gnawing sense of anxiety. Is there something important we’re not seeing?
Maybe it’s just the infrasound. Above me, there’s only solid black emptiness, but I can feel those drones. I know they’re up there somewhere, their malign sound waves pulsing through me, plucking at my nerves with their song of fear. Helpless, my body resonates along with it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I’ve no idea how long we’ve been out here now, but my legs are telling me we’ve walked a thousand miles. The river is a constant static rush next to us in its deep gully, nearer than before, as the ground we’re on slopes gently down. When I go to look over the edge, my breath catches. It flows so fast here, and it’s so wide. Not ideal for someone who failed to attain a single swimming certificate. I even had to be rescued from the baby pool once after I slipped and knocked myself out.
The sky seems lighter. Dawn isn’t far away. My heart starts hammering. We’re still not out. They’ll be searching for us soon.
And still we walk. My feet rise and clump down automatically. If I stop, I’m not sure they’ll start again. I’m having a snack – beef jerky from my pocket – when Ingrid whispers, ‘Hey, there’s a building over there.’
As I peer through the dense tree trunks in the brightening light, I see it too. A stone structure.
We move forward cautiously. As we approach, the structure reveals more and more of itself. It’s not a building: we’ve reached the wall.
With shaking hands, Elena flicks her torch on, and its light sweeps back and forth across the dirty grey stone, up and down. Harold wasn’t kidding. There seems to be no end to it.
Ingrid marches across in front of me. ‘We need to get down to the river.’
Reluctantly, I follow her, and we stand at the edge of the steep incline. The river is below us, not far, but it’s steep enough that we can’t just walk down it without slipping and rolling all the way into the river. Trees dot the slope, their roots bulging out at intervals, and Elena suggests we climb down backwards holding onto them. We can’t quite see through the vegetation to the point where the river goes through the wall yet.
Elena doesn’t hesitate, clambering down, grabbing onto roots as she goes. It doesn’t look too bad. Ingrid follows, keeping pace with Elena. I’m somewhat slower with my bad arm, which throbs at every step I take. My trainers slither through the dirt, and I make my way down with a mixture of climbing and sliding chaotically. By the time I join them at the bottom, my knees are a scratched, bleeding mess.
We’ve made it. This is the place Harold said is the only way out.
But as I take it all in, my heart immediately sinks. The river is a rushing white noise, streaming past us up to the wall. I had imagined a tunnel with the river chuntering politely along the bottom of it, where we could doggy-paddle to the other side. I thought I might not even get my hair wet.
