Breakdown, page 30
Careem twists Lenny in front of him.
Don’t look at Lenny’s face. Don’t see the fear there. Look at Careem. Hold your bluff.
‘Drop the machete,’ I say.
Tarquin is on his feet, crouching, a look of fury across his face. Kaylem sidles towards the edge of the wall, eases himself away, slides down towards me. There’s something else behind him. Can’t see it clearly. I don’t look.
‘Can’t shoot both of us,’ Kaylem hisses, and step by step he starts to creep towards me.
Kaylem coming closer. Careem with Lenny at knifepoint. Oh God what do I do? I waver. Help me, Nan. Help me.
But at this moment, Lenny lets out a cry. And from the corner of my eye I see that shadow streak forwards. A dog.
It’s the brindled bitch from Games City. The one Lenny fed his little pieces of meat to. The one who rested her scarred and hurt muzzle in his lap.
Like a bullet straight from hell, she streaks past, bounds in airy leaps along the wall, sprints forward, scattering loose stones and, like a demon, flies straight at Careem’s throat.
Too late, Careem realises this new danger. He twists Lenny round again. Tries to body shield himself. Swings the machete wide. Shoves Lenny at the dog, hoping the animal will attack him instead.
But the dog doesn’t hurt Lenny. She doesn’t waver one millimetre.
And Careem’s too slow. There’s one look of utter surprise. No time to shout, no sound again from Careem’s lips. The jaws of the brindled bitch snap to.
The machete clatters to the ground.
Lenny picks himself up, runs towards Tarquin.
Careem struggles.
But pit bulls never let go.
And I wheel round, gun in hand, and shoot.
The gun explodes, jolting my arm.
And like a stone Kaylem drops dead.
On the top of Hadrian’s wall, under the waxing moon, with the first streak of daylight in the east, I find them. Tarquin hugging Lenny, the two of them fused together. Their arms open as I scramble up beside them. I’m held in their tight embrace. Lenny’s hand slips into mine. He squeezes it under the winter stars.
Tarquin’s lips find mine. He kisses me in the fading darkness.
AFTERWARDS
Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.
Judges 14:14
It took us three days to cross Northumberland. We took the dog, the brindle bitch. She was heavy with pups and Lenny said, ‘She ain’t going back to no Games City. I don’t want them pups being hit and hungry.’
I don’t think she would have gone anyway. She stuck to Lenny like glue.
‘Having a dog along ain’t such a bad idea, anyways,’ said Tarquin.
Of course we didn’t wait for the army to find us. We left everything behind, even the gun. We put it near what was left of the General’s arm, so it’d look like he shot Kaylem. That’s if anyone could work out anything, after the dogs had finished with them.
We wiped out every trace of ourselves.
Lenny said that was a shame seeing as ‘Nobody ain’t gonna get the big picture now.’
‘What picture was that again?’ said Tarquin.
Lenny tried to explain. ‘How Missa’s changed everything,’ he said. And how the farm was ‘gonna be different with Harold in charge, ’cos he can do magic,’ and how ‘now Careem’s gone and that General too, maybe people gonna share out the food, and not just keep it for their own little boys and girls.’
Tarquin hugged him and said maybe that was gonna be true.
And then we set out.
And it looked like Nan was right. The world, when it’s left to itself, does recover. Up there by the Scottish borders there’s wild rabbit. And where there’s one living thing, you can be sure there’s another.
We caught enough to eat and Tarquin skinned them. I rolled the pelts up between dry grass, and told Lenny, ‘We got one sleeve of your new coat already.’
I don’t think the dog ever had so many bones to crunch on.
When we came down off the moors, it was a clear day, the whole of Scotland stretched ahead. We could see misty mountains rising up to blue skies. A warm wind blew.
I remember it, like it was yesterday.
‘We nearly there yet?’ says Lenny.
I look at Tarquin.
‘Yep, we’re nearly there,’ he says.
‘Must be just behind them hills,’ says Lenny.
He looks at me.
I don’t know what to say.
’Cos that’s just the place for a secret valley.’
Lenny and the brindle dog run up the hill and disappear round a bend, out of view.
Tarquin takes me in his arms, seizes the chance to kiss me. ‘Spring’s coming,’ he says.
‘There’s nothing there,’ I whisper. ‘When’re we gonna tell him?’
‘You really should learn to believe in things,’ says Tarquin.
I think of Nan. I believed in her. I never gave up, Nan. I got tougher. I fought back. I defeated the underworld. I found my Orpheus.
Tarquin grabs my hand and we run up the track after Lenny. We round the bend and there, stretched before us, is a narrow glen.
It’s full of sunshine. A stream runs babbling down to a tiny tarn at the end of the valley. Lenny’s rolling over in the long grass, tickling the dog’s tummy, playing at counting how many pups are inside.
I sit down on a pile of tumbled rocks that was once a little croft. Tarquin sits beside me. He kisses me again.
‘There’s nothing here. I told you.’
He laughs. ‘We better get to work then, innit?’
Tarquin picks up a rock beside us, examines it closely, sets it on another, steadies it.
Then he hands it to me. It’s big and very heavy. I nearly drop it.
‘Careful,’ he says. He takes the stone off me again. ‘Gotta hold on to that. It’s gonna be the cornerstone of our cottage.’
Lenny runs back. He’s doing a little dance, all knees and feet and elbows.
‘Look, Missa! Look what I found.’
He throws himself into my arms, twists round, cups his hand over mine and very, very gently, he releases his.
And there, still sleepy from her long winter’s rest, is a bee.
Lenny smiles and taps his chest where he keeps the Torch. ‘I told you it was gonna be OK, didn’t I?’
ALSO BY SARAH MUSSI
Angel Dust
Acknowledgments
Minty Barnor
Sakky Barnor
Joy Coombes
Ruth Eastham
Sophie Hicks
Annie Hadley-Stone
Jane Howard
Jenny Jacoby
Caroline Johnson
Maurice Lyon
Melissa Murawski
Georgia Murray
Sarah Odedina
Jet Purdie
Και σε όλους τους θεούς του Olympus
Thank you all
Sarah Mussi
Sarah was born in Cheltenham and raised in the Cotswolds, and received a BA from Winchester School of Art and an MA from the Royal College of Art. Sarah spent over fifteen years in West Africa as a teacher and now teaches English in Lewisham.
Sarah has written three previous books, has donated a story to an Amnesty International anthology, has given workshops for the SCBWI, and is the current Chair of the Children's Writers and Illustrators in South London society. THE DOOR OF NO RETURN won the Glen Dimplex New Writer's award for children's literature in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Branford Boase. Sarah is also the author of ANGEL DUST and SIEGE. Visit Sarah at www.sarahmussi.com and on Twitter: @sarahmussi
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hot Key Books
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT
Copyright © Sarah Mussi 2014
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4714-0190-9
This eBook was produced using Atomik ePublisher
www.hotkeybooks.com
Hot Key Books is part of the Bonnier Publishing Group
www.bonnierpublishing.com
Sarah Mussi, Breakdown
