Piggies (7 page)

10 Foraging

Ben walked back alone from Old Harold’s tree-house. There were so many competing thoughts in his head that he no longer knew what he really believed.

He thought of how terrible it was that Old Harold had been through the same experience as Ben and that so long ago he had given up believing in the existence of his own world.

But what if what the old man had said was true? That this was all there really was...

There was a sound from up ahead. Voices.

Instantly, Ben melted into the undergrowth, hiding until he was sure it was safe to go on.

This life seemed so natural to him.

That thought came as something of a shock, but it was true. It was as if Zeb had spent the last three days
reminding
Ben the ways of caution and fear, rather than
teaching
him.

The voices faded away, and Ben stepped out from hiding. He decided to keep clear of the main paths on his way back, just to be sure.

Was it really so easy to fool himself?

He couldn’t believe it. He had to hang on to his past. He wouldn’t give up like Old Harold had.

And then an awful realisation struck him: the details of his memories were fading. He had only been in this awful upside-down world for a few days, yet it felt as if he had been here for far longer.

When he tried to picture his bedroom, all he could see was that room where Doctor Macreedie had imprisoned him. When he tried to picture Kirby town centre, all he could see was the market square with parking spaces and the beasts coming out of the shops to stare.

And when he tried to picture his parents, he couldn’t do it... The memories were fading.

If they really were memories at all, and not just figments of his own imagination.

~

He lay on the hard floor of the community hall that night, still struggling to remember, still struggling to come to terms with things.

This was his world, he realised. Whatever had happened in his past, this was all that was on offer. It was a dangerous and frightening place, but he had found himself a community. Some of the people were good and some were not so good.

Some of them hadn’t accepted him yet. Robby was one: always looking for conflict, always looking for ways to remind people that Ben was the outsider. Perhaps more dangerous, though, was Alik: a powerful figure in the woodland community. He didn’t trust Ben, he didn’t think he should have been allowed to stay.

But others seemed more ready to welcome him: Walter, Zeb, Ros-Marie and her frail old grandmother. Walter had decided that the best thing was to make sure Ben learned the ways of the woods, which was why he had told Zeb to look out for him. They treated Ben as a young adult here, rather than as just another child. If there was one thing in this world that he liked, then that was it. He supposed people grew up more quickly, living in a world like this.

He tried to stop himself thinking in these terms: comparing this world with the safe world in his memories. He would gain nothing by thinking that way.

This was his world, now. This was all he had.

A noise broke the darkness. The soft tread of feet.

Peering through the gloom, Ben made out a tall figure. Zeb.

The young man came across and squatted by Ben. “Good,” he said. “You’re awake. Dad thought you might like to come foraging tonight. See a bit more of the world.”

Ben swallowed. “Sure,” he said. “Where are we going?”

“McDonnell’s farm. About two miles east, on the edge of a small village called Tippham.”

Ben knew the name. He climbed to his feet.

Outside in the dark, four others were waiting: Anna and Rose-Marie and two teenaged brothers Ben barely knew, Rick and Adam. Anna led the way and they walked in silence for some time.

Eventually, Adam spoke to Ben. “All you have to do is stay quiet and stick close to the rest of us,” he said. “We take whatever we can and we don’t take any big risks. Okay?”

“Of course,” said Ben. “What are we looking for?”

“You never know,” said Zeb. “The only rule is we never take too much of anything. Things we can carry, and things we can’t come by easily in the woods, like clothes and tools, are best. Electrical things, too – anything we can sell.”

“Sell? To the beasts?”

“There’s always a black market,” said Rose-Marie. “Alik and some of the others know where we can shift some of the things we forage. They exchange them for medicines and other supplies we can’t get hold of for ourselves.”

It hadn’t occurred to Ben that there could be anything like that going on. It made sense, he supposed. But it seemed very dangerous.

“How do they manage that?” he asked. “How can you trade with the beasts?”

“Some of them are too stupid to even realise,” said Rose-Marie. “You’ve been close to them, haven’t you, Ben? They can’t just sniff us out, you know. If you don’t make any stupid mistakes you can go into town and not be noticed. I’ve done it myself when I’ve had to. We all have.”

Ben could tell from her voice that she was boasting, probably not telling the truth. But what she said was certainly possible. After all, Ben had walked around Kirby without being found out. He had stayed a night in the Macreedies’ house before the doctor had been sure of his true nature.

“Quiet now,” said Zeb. “We’re nearly there.”

A short time later, the path opened out and there were fields to one side. A line of bungalows stretched along the far side of the field. Some had one or two lights on, but most were in darkness. This must be the village of Tippham.

Now Ben remembered what it was like to be scared, what it was like to know that you were only a single mistake away from a slow and painful death.

Suddenly, all his other worries melted away. All that concerned him right now was remembering all the things Zeb had taught him: how to move silently, how to hide yourself from prying eyes, how to avoid being caught...

~

They came to McDonnell’s farm a few minutes later. The farmhouse was an imposing redbrick building with stone columns at the front door and wooden shutters at the windows. There were lights on, and several cars pulled up in the main yard.

“Looks like there’s a party going on,” said Adam. “Looks like we picked a bad night.”

“We’re here now,” said Anna. “The least we can do is look around.”

The farmhouse was surrounded by big, low out-buildings. Some were rectangular barns, others were arched buildings made from corrugated steel, like the community hall back in the woods.

As they drew closer to the farm, Ben heard animal noises coming from these buildings. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s in there?”

“All kinds of things,” said Anna. “Mainly pigs. Some cattle. Stables for horses – they have some kind of riding school.” She paused, then said, “See the barn? The one with a tractor in the doorway? Alik asked us to look in there. See if there are any tools we can lift. Come on.”

They split up in the main yard. Rose-Marie, Adam and Rick headed towards the back of the building to see what they could find. Ben followed Zeb and Anna towards the barn.

Inside, there was another tractor and lots of attachments for ploughing and harvesting. Ben didn’t know what it all was. He was a town boy, after all.

He stopped, shuddered. He
wasn’t
a town boy. He lived in the woods. He was a woodlander now, whatever the truth of his past.

The other two had found a store room. They waved Ben over.

“Here, wrap the blades in these.” Zeb handed Ben some rags and pointed to a selection of chisels and saws he’d taken from a tool cabinet.

Ben set to work, wrapping the cutting edges so that the tools could safely be put in a sack and carried back to the woods.

Somewhere nearby a horse whinnied.

The three finished wrapping the tools. Then Anna gathered up the sack and slung it over her shoulder. “See you later,” she said.

Ben watched as she headed off across the farmyard towards the woods. It made sense, he supposed: she would gain nothing by hanging around to wait for the others.

“Come on,” said Zeb.

Ben went with Zeb to a door at the back of the barn. It was open a crack, and they could see through to the side of the farmhouse. The windows were open and voices spilled out into the mild summer night. Occasionally, a figure moved across a window.

It all looked so normal.

“Keep watch,” said Zeb. “I’m going to look around a bit more, see what else I can find.”

~

Ben was alone.

He wondered if this was some kind of plan: maybe Alik had told them to lead him away from the woods and abandon him. But every so often, he heard a small sound from the depths of the barn and he knew Zeb was not far away.

A horse whinnied again. From what Ben could see, the back of the barn butted on to some stables. Anna had said they had a riding school here.

He eased the door open a little wider. There seemed to be a faint light coming from the stables. Was there someone in there?

Ben slipped outside. If he stayed close to the back of the barn, he would be in darkness.

He edged his way along towards the stables.

The doors were split: the top half open, the bottom closed.

He reached the stables and stepped towards the door.

A head and shoulders suddenly appeared in the opening.

“Wha–?”

Ben froze. He was in the shadows still. Zeb had taught him that movement attracts the eye: stand without moving and you can be near invisible.

A bright light shone in his face.

“
You
,” said a girl’s voice. “What are you doing here?”

He recognised the voice. The light flicked out and for a moment Ben was still blinded. Then his vision returned and he saw that she had emerged from the stables, clutching a saddle to her chest.

It was the girl from town. The one with the spiky blonde hair and the tight jeans.

Rachel. That was her name. She’d been with the two boys.

She’d let them drink her blood.

Ben started to back away.

She stood there, smirking at him.

And then there was another sound: a sudden swell of noise from the house as a door opened.

“Rachel?” called a man. “Is that you out there, Rachel?”

There was a middle-aged man standing at the open door. He looked as if he was about to come right out.

Rachel looked from the man back to Ben again. “It’s okay,” she called. “It’s me, Dad. I’m just finishing.”

As the man went back into the house, Ben edged away, then turned and darted into the barn.

Zeb was by the far door, ready to run. When he saw Ben, he hurried over to him.

“We’d better go,” hissed Ben. “There’s someone outside at the stables.”

“Right. Okay. Let’s go.”

“Did you find anything else?”

Zeb collected a pick-axe he must have left by the big barn doors. He handed it to Ben, and stooped again to pick up a petrol can. “Just these,” he said. “Come on, let’s go.”

11 Rachel

He saw her again, briefly, about a week later. She was out riding a pony on one of the wide tracks that cut through the eastern side of the woods.

He was with Zeb and the two of them hid in the woodland edge as the horse and rider swept by.

She looked peaceful and relaxed, just her and her pony and the trees. She looked normal. But she wasn’t, Ben knew. That memory of her and the two boys would be imprinted on his mind for the rest of his life.

The next time he saw her was one of the rare occasions when he was on his own.

~

He’d been in the woodland community for two weeks, now, and they still didn’t fully trust him.

Half the people thought he was mad: a boy with no past, or with no past that anyone would believe. The others thought he was lying, covering up something in his past that he didn’t want them to know about.

But they were unanimous in not trusting him. Walter had been more sympathetic than a lot of the woodlanders, but Ben realised that even he was suspicious. He didn’t know if Walter thought him mad or a liar, but after a while he came to understand that Walter had asked Zeb to both look after him and keep an eye on him.

Zeb, himself, seemed to have accepted Ben now and he was far more relaxed than he had been at first. “You’ve just got to forget about what may have been,” Zeb had told him on more than one occasion. “What’s past is gone. You just need to earn people’s trust now.”

One of the reasons Zeb was more relaxed these days was that he clearly had other things on his mind.

This morning, Zeb had said to Ben, hesitantly, “Hey, Ben. You don’t mind if Rose-Marie tags along with us this time, do you?”

Ben watched them together: the little looks, the way they walked so close together that they kept touching, the space between him and them.

“How’s your grandmother?” he asked Rose-Marie, filling yet another silence.

“She’s having a good day, thanks,” said Rose-Marie. “Complaining about the food, which is a good sign.”

Silence again. Ben took the opportunity to study Rose-Marie as they walked. Her flame-red hair always caught the eye, but it was her easy smile that stayed in the memory. Ben had felt that she was intruding, at first, when Zeb had invited her along. Now, he realised that her presence was a good thing. Rose-Marie was well-liked in the woodland community and her acceptance of Ben could only be a good thing. In Zeb and now Rose-Marie he had two good allies.

The three headed out towards Tippham Lakes, a series of three connected lakes on the east side of the woods. Rose-Marie’s aging grandmother was teaching her how to use traditional herbal medicines and the wet woodland around the lakes was good for some of the plants she wanted to gather.

After a time, Ben paused and said, “Why don’t you two go on ahead? I’ll be okay on my own. We can meet up here again at noon, if you like.” It was a chance to prove that their trust in him was good judgement.

Zeb and Rose-Marie grinned back at him. “Sure,” said Zeb. “If that’s what you want.”

Ben watched as the two of them strode on through the alder wood. When they thought they were out of sight they held hands.

Ben followed a narrow path that led up a slope, away from the lakes. He didn’t know what to do with himself. It was just a relief not to have someone watching over him.

He wondered how much longer Walter would have him watched.

~

Rachel was sitting on a fallen tree in a small clearing. Her grey pony was tied up to a branch, its head down, munching at the rich green grass. Rachel was carving some letters into the exposed white wood of the tree trunk.

Ben hesitated.

He should turn round and slip quietly back into the woods, he knew. It was foolish to even think of anything else.

She saw him watching her.

“Hello, again,” she said. She didn’t seem too bothered by his presence. “New Boy.”

That’s what she’d called him, all that time ago in town.

“Hi,” he said. “I was just–”

“Just passing,” she finished for him. “Like the other night: just passing. When we met you in town I didn’t think you approved of nicking things, the way you looked when we said that’s what we’d been doing.”

He shrugged.

“But then you come with your mates, nicking stuff from the farm.”

“You could have said I was there,” he said. “You had the chance.”

She nodded. “I should have, I reckon. What did you want with all that stuff, anyway? Old tools and things.”

And then her expression suddenly changed. “Oh! Oh my... You
are
, aren’t you? Lenny said you were. He said that’s why you ran away. I just thought you were scared of us: mummy’s boy – won’t share blood with just anybody. But you are, aren’t you? You’re one of them: a feral!”

He started to back away.

She raised her hands in some kind of peace gesture. “No,” she said. “Don’t run away again. It’s okay. I’m not going to bite!”

She giggled, then stopped.

“Really, New Boy. It’s okay. I won’t tell anybody. I won’t do anything. Don’t run away.”

“My name’s not New Boy,” said Ben. “It’s–”

“Piggy,” said Rachel. “I’ll call you ‘Piggy’, okay?”

~

“Have you lived in the woods all your life?”

“Where do you live?”

“Are there many of you?”

“What do your kind eat?”

“Do you still fancy me?”

And, in a weak voice: “Oh my god, you really
are
, aren’t you? A walking, talking feral! You really are, aren’t you?”

Rachel was full of questions. He realised she must be lonely, living out in Tippham. From what she told him, she had no brothers or sisters and most of her friends lived in town.

He avoided most of her questions. He wasn’t stupid enough to tell her where the community was, or to tell her anything that might lead people there.

He shouldn’t be talking to her at all, he knew. But she was curious about him, and she was funny and suddenly it felt good to be with someone who didn’t seem suspicious of everything he said and did.

“I haven’t been here long,” he told her. “A couple of weeks or so. I’m just hiding out here while I work out what to do.”

“Where are you from, then, if you’re not from here?”

He looked away. He didn’t want to start all that again: the disbelief, the suspicion. She might just laugh at him if he told her, and that would be even worse.

“What’s it like?” he asked her. “Your kind. What you do to each other.” He didn’t know how to put it into words. It would sound stupid.

She smirked at him and tipped her head sideways, so her neck was exposed. “Easy enough to find out,” she said to him in a low voice. “Is that what you want?”

He looked at the smooth skin of her neck. There was no sign of the wound that Lenny had inflicted – they must heal quickly, he supposed. He wanted to touch the skin, see if it really was that smooth.

She laughed at the look on his face. And then her expression changed and, slowly, her upper lip slid back from her teeth. They were neat, small teeth, like a row of pearls across the front. Her canines were longer, but not the dagger-like fangs you see in the movies.

“It’s easy,” she said. And then she tossed her head, laughing at the expression of horror on his face.

“That’s not what you meant, is it?” she said a short time later, struggling to look serious. She paused, then said, “It’s good for you. That’s what they always tell you. It spreads immunity around, protects us from diseases. And anyway,” she concluded, grinning, “it tastes great!”

More quietly, she added, “In any case, what I don’t really understand is what it’s like
without
it. You... your kind...
creepy
.” She laughed and ran a hand through her spiky hair. “Who’d have thought?” she said. “A real live feral. You’ve got a nerve, haven’t you? Marching around as if you own the place. Sneaking up on people in the woods. Who’d have thought?”

He left her a short time later. He had to meet the others. “I come out here a lot,” she said, as he was leaving. “This is my favourite place.”

He nodded and headed off into the woods.

When he looked back, he saw her staring after him. He walked on, not sure if she could still see him in the shade.

It was a mistake, he knew. It could only cause trouble. He remembered his determination earlier this morning that he would do as Zeb urged him and try to earn the trust of the woodlanders. Talking to Rachel was hardly the best way to do that!

But... she was fun and she was interested in him and he didn’t feel that she was out to trap him with everything she said.

He shook himself, trying to see sense. He forced that image into his head: Rachel, her bloody neck exposed, Lenny and Stacker with her blood smeared across their grinning faces.

He didn’t know what to think any more. He couldn’t get a grip on the rules of this strange and frightening world.

A little later, he met up with Zeb and Rose-Marie. “Hey,” said Zeb. “Anything happen?”

Ben shook his head. No. He’d only spent half an hour talking with a vampire who was more human than a lot of the people who lived in the woodland community. That was all.