Havoc (30 page)

Everyone shut up and looked at him. By my count, there were over three hundred people
in that church, and more behind pillars and in the foyer. The major had the complete
attention of every one of them: they were focused, hard eyed, not trusting him at
all, but wanting to trust what was happening right now, wanting to reach through
the space he'd opened up and grab this chance.

‘I'm clearing the church,' he announced. ‘Everybody out!'

Nobody moved.

He drew breath, and I think he meant to say it again, louder, but he must have realised
that these people weren't going to move, however loudly and often he issued the command.
They weren't looking at the major now, anyway, they were looking at my father, who
moved three steps to within quiet earshot of him. The armed grunts followed, like
moons dragged along in the pull of a planet.

My father spoke in a low voice to the major, who stared at the ground at first, then
lifted his head and looked slowly across the crowd. He was like a man advancing on
new territory, knowing it was laced with mines but feeling compelled to explore.
When my father finished talking, the major hesitated for a long moment, then gave
a sharp nod.

My father turned to the crowd. ‘Go,' he said.

And, simple as that, people headed out into the square. The news team followed, lugging
cameras and audio kit and trying to grab interviews on the run.

The Dry-dwellers stayed, so did the Hendrys. Lanya and I did too, and I could see
Anna and Samuel in the foyer keeping an eye on what was happening in both church
and square.

Fyffe drew the turncoat medic aside in that gentle way of hers. She looked concerned
for him and reassuring and wholly trustworthy. She told him her name and got his.
Then she took him into the gathering of Dry-dwellers and her parents and began to
introduce him.

The major watched the crowd leave and seemed surprised that they'd gone so calmly
and completely at a single word from my father. He gave a slight shake of his head
and said to him, ‘You're still under arrest.'

But my father wasn't paying attention. He was listening to the others standing nearby.
Fyffe had done good work with the turncoat medic: awed by the company he was suddenly
keeping, he was spilling information about the location of the vaccines.

‘How will you transport them?' called my father.

The medic looked around and stuttered, ‘Ah…er…'

‘A Hendry truck would do it,' said my father.

Thomas and Sarah looked alarmed, but Fyffe said, ‘Yes! That's a great idea!'

‘And an army escort would help,' my father added.

The major almost laughed. ‘I'm not authorising that.'

Thomas Hendry looked at his daughter, who was lit up with excitement and commitment.
He sighed.

‘You don't have to, Major. We've decided what we're going to do. You can choose to
help, or not.'

‘With respect, sir, I can't let you do that without authorisation from—'

‘Well, get it, man! We're not waiting.' Then the Hendrys and the Dry-dwellers, with
the medic in tow, walked down the altar steps into the body of the church, and hurried
away.

The major was in danger of being cut adrift; things were moving beyond his control,
fast.

‘You still have me,' said my father.

The major unclipped his comms unit and stared at it for a moment. I could see him
wrestling with the bargain he was being offered: would the arrest of this wanted
man be enough of a prize for his commanding officer to offset the action of escorting
the vaccines across the river?

He clicked on the unit and walked away, talking into it urgently.

My father turned to Lanya and me. ‘Go with the Hendrys.'

‘No,' I said. ‘I'm not leaving.' I knew what they did to their big-name hostages.
They murdered them.

‘Nik,' he said, ‘You have to go. You're part of this bargain.'

I looked at the grunts with their guns standing beside him, and at the major, still
talking but watching us now.

‘What will you do?' I asked.

‘What I can,' said my father. ‘Don't despair. Now, go.' It wasn't supposed to end
like this. He was supposed to come over the river with us, Lanya and I would get
the vaccine along with the rest of Moldam, and he would be the person who brokered
the lasting peace.

Fyffe reappeared at the doors of the church to see, I guess, why we hadn't gone with
her yet.

Lanya nudged me gently. ‘They're waiting for us.'

‘I know,' I tried to say but my voice wasn't working.

My father nodded and said, ‘Go on!' but I was ambushed by the ache of losing him
again. I couldn't move or speak. Lanya took my hand and walked a few steps, and at
last I went with her, down the aisle and out into brilliant sunlight and the turbulent,
crowd-filled square.

CHAPTER 41

We took the vaccine to Moldam.

We brought it across the river in a couple of Hendry trucks escorted by a crowd of
twenty thousand plus, and the army. The major had decided, or been told, to support
the bargain in play. And we did need the army. At the very least we needed them to
stand aside and let us pass.

And that's what they did: they gave us safe passage over Curswall Bridge, although
they did it in a stern-faced, we'll-only-do-this-once kind of way.

When we reached the barbed-wire barricades on the Curswall boundary road, the major
gave the soldiers guarding them new orders: roll up the wire, let the trucks pass.
And in we went. But once we were through, they rolled the wire back into place.

When we stopped outside the infirmary on the parkland west of the shantytown, I
turned to Lanya.

‘Made it. We actually made it.'

I jumped out and helped her down from the truck cab.

She swayed in my arms.

‘Nik,' she said, ‘I've got a fever.'

CHAPTER 42

I sat at Levkova's kitchen table and listened to the house shift and creak as the
day started to hot up outside. Slanting morning sunlight picked out the sunken armchairs
by the fireplace as though it was inviting me to slump into one of them, but the
grate was grey with old ash and behind me the stove was cold. I'd come in from sitting
on the front steps where I'd been people watching: kids were sloping off to school,
barefoot and cheerful, a hawker was hauling his cart up the street with a song-like
yell, stopping as women came out of their houses to buy vegetables, a fix-it guy
was going door to door offering to patch up broken stuff. Moldam was back to normal,
almost, although there was the small matter of having no bridge.

We'd made it in time, mostly. People had flocked to the infirmaries and makeshift
dispensaries and stood in
long, patient queues. Two weeks later the barbed wire was
rolled up and carted away and the quarantine was lifted. A few people did get sick—some
very young, some old or not too healthy. A few people died.

Levkova.

Sub-commander Tasia Levkova. The virus attacked her lungs and she died within just
three days. I couldn't get my head around it, how someone so staunch and fierce and
downright commanding could succumb and be gone in a heartbeat.

Not all of those who died died fast. Some were dying slowly.

Lanya lay in an isolation ward fighting a raging fever, fighting the bruising that
spread beneath her skin, fighting. They couldn't tell me if she was winning.

And me? I didn't get sick at all.

We buried Levkova in the hillside graveyard overlooking Moldam, the one where a rocket
had gouged a trench in the earth the night they blew up the Mol.

We buried her with honour and great grief. I'd only known her half a year, but that
was easily long enough to know what everyone standing at the graveside knew: that
she was fearless and she was wise and, although she tried not to let on, she was
kind too—why else was I now sitting in her house? When I'd first turned up in Moldam
she could have looked right past me with a not-my-problem
stare, and she could have
turfed me out at any time since. Instead, she fed me and gave me a roof to sleep
under and she treated me like I mattered. It was Levkova who told me that my father
was not dead. It was Levkova who brought us, despite our mutual suspicion, back together.

Now she was gone, and I was sitting in her kitchen missing her no-nonsense presence:
she would have told me to quit chasing down worst-case scenarios about Lanya and
my father and to go and be useful to someone.

I thought about going to the infirmary, but I'd hung around that place for two weeks
and the staff were sick of the sight of me. Only Lanya's parents were allowed in
to see her. They were in a daze of anxiety—proud, but you could see them wondering
why it had to be their daughter that turned hero.

I'd tried helping out on the hill; there was rubble to move and some half-destroyed
buildings to demolish, but the organisers needed workers who could pay attention
to bits of falling masonry and my brain was preoccupied, dealing ‘what if' cards
to myself. What if Lanya recovered but the disease blinded her? What if she was crippled
and could never dance again? What if, what if.

What if she died?

And my father? We'd heard nothing.

I got up and went out into the little backyard in search of some sun on my back.
Levkova's five chickens came running up, so I fed them and went looking for eggs
while they pottered about chuckling to themselves. Then I fired up the stove and
was heating water for breakfast tea when Fyffe came in from working a night shift
in the infirmary.

She kissed my cheek. ‘Hello.'

‘Hi,' I said. ‘How was it? How is she?'

She sank into a chair and rubbed her hands over her face. ‘The same, the same. I
wish I could tell you something different. Oh—but, in fact I can tell you this.
Guess who turned up last night!'

I opened the firebox of the stove and stuck more kindling into it. ‘Who?'

‘Sandor! He came back over the river to lay claim to a vaccination shot.'

That did make me smile. ‘Did he get one?'

‘Sure. Why not.'

‘What's he up to?'

‘Schemes.'

‘Naturally.'

‘He looked like he was doing all right—smart clothes, good hair cut.'

‘Also, naturally. What schemes?'

‘He's found backers to set up a ferry service between here and Cityside. He said
to say hello and to give you this.'

She handed me an envelope.

I peered inside. ‘Cash? What?'

‘Said he owed you. That you'd given him some a while ago?'

I laughed. ‘I did. I should invest in his ferries.' I held it out to her. ‘But actually
it's your father's. You should give it back to him.'

She frowned in mock disapproval. ‘Absolutely not. It's yours, yours and Lanya's.'

I thought about that. ‘Okay. I'll keep it.'

After she'd gone up to bed I put it away in a drawer where it sat in the dark like
Schrödinger's cat in its box, biding its time on the question of life or death.

Mid afternoon I was sitting at the table trying to reconstruct an old radio from
bits I'd found in the shed. Someone came through the front door without yelling Hello!—which
meant it was either an intruder or my father, who never announced his presence because
he'd spent all those years on the run.

Since it was unlikely to be either of those, I got up and went to see.

I was wrong. My father came down the hall like he was home, in one piece and with
a rare smile on his face. I stared for a second, then I met him halfway.

In the kitchen he studied me while I put water on to make tea.

‘You're well?' he said.

‘Yeah, I didn't get sick at all.'

He nodded, and wiped a hand over his face. ‘I didn't know what had happened—about
Tasia, about you—until I got here half an hour ago. I went to the infirmary. Thought
you might be there.'

‘Lanya's there.'

‘I know. I had a word with her.'

I blinked at him. ‘You
what?
She's awake? Since when?'

He laughed. ‘Well, very recently, I suppose.'

Awake. My heart was thumping and my words rushed out. ‘How was she? Is she okay?
Can I see her?'

He held up both hands. ‘Surely. I don't know. You can ask.'

I was locking the back door and heading for the front. I thought about waking Fyffe,
but decided that could wait.

We walked to the infirmary; running would have been better, but walking I got to
hear what had happened on the other side of the river.

‘They're setting up the inquiry at last,' he said. ‘There'll be a lot of talk before
everything becomes clear. Your agent friend, for example…what's her name?'

‘Dash.'

‘She's accused of insubordination, but being insubordinate to a superior who's trying
to perpetrate a war crime is, well, complicated.'

‘And Jono?'

‘That depends. He will face questions about his unauthorised access to nerve gas
and threatening a civilian with it, but he could be a key witness against Frieda.
Like I said, it's complicated.'

‘What will happen to Frieda?'

‘Once the inquiry is over, chances are she'll go to trial.'

‘Alone?'

He nodded. ‘Probably. She'll be loyal to the end. I don't know what that end will
be but I don't think she'll be taking anyone with her. That's her way.'

‘And all those people who were escaping to the Dry, what'll happen to them?'

He gave me a wry smile. ‘What always happens. They're busy proving they knew nothing
about any of this. I don't know if they'll get away with that; there'll be a trail
to follow, but whether a judge will be dogged enough to pursue it, we'll have to
wait and see. They're powerful people.'