The Disappeared (25 page)

‘Get them!’ he shouts at Monkey-boy.

‘But I’m getting
shrap
!’ says Monkey-boy.

I fix my eyes on the back of Wilson’s head and keep running. Soon I can hear the boys behind us. We come out of the trees and pound back towards our shelter. I wonder if there’s anything there that we could use as weapons. There are only two of them now; maybe we could take them on.

We run and run. By the time we reach the lip of the rubbish pit, I’m exhausted. Wilson pulls me down into a crouch. I’m panting for breath. The boys are getting closer.

‘I propose a tactical diversion,’ Wilson gasps out.

‘You want me to divert them?’ I can hardly speak.

‘I will lead them off,’ he says.

‘No! That’s not fair. Let’s fight them together.’ I stand up, but Wilson lays a hand on my arm.

‘In times of emergency the greatest minds must be protected,’ he says. He gives me a smile like the old Wilson used to before he told a joke.

And then he punches me in the face.

I’m thrown backwards over the precipice and land on my back on something soft. I hear Wilson running. Then a cry goes up. They’ve seen him. I try to shout, but I’m completely winded. I roll on to my front and retch. I try to get to my feet, but I can’t find my footing. Whatever I’ve fallen on is uneven and slippery. I hear my blood rushing in my ears and the ground seems to be tilting. It swings up and smacks me on the side of the head.

I wake up. There’s a terrible smell. Like maggoty fish and rotten eggs. I try to turn away from it, but it’s thick around my head. My brain feels like it’s throbbing against my skull. I’m cold and I’m lying on something lumpy. I try to open my eyes, but they’re stuck shut. I lift a hand and rub away a thick crust of what turns out to be blood. When I peel open my eyes, the bright light makes me squint. I’m surrounded by black refuse sacks spilling with garbage. Wilson knocked me into the rubbish pit. Wilson. He whacked me down here to save me while he . . . An awful image of what they will have done to Wilson comes to me and I vomit into the rotting rubbish.

I slowly scrabble my way out of the pit. My arms and legs are weak and floppy. Finally I roll over the lip of the hollow. The air is fresher up here. And colder. The decomposing rubbish was giving off heat. That stinking pit has kept me alive.

I’ve got to look for Wilson. Maybe he managed to get away from those boys or maybe they’ve kept him tied up till this morning. Neither seems likely, but I’ve got to hope. I hug my arms around myself and try to rub some warmth into my arms. I’ll start by looking in the woods.

‘Blake!’ someone shouts.

For a moment my heart rises imagining that it’s Wilson, but it’s the wrong voice and the wrong name. I turn back in the direction of the shout. The gate in the fence next to the Academy is open. Enforcer Rice is calling to me. My exclusion is over but I don’t want to go back without Wilson. I start to run towards the woods.

‘BLAKE!’

I risk a look back. He’s following me. And there’s someone else. I try to increase my speed but my breathing is already ragged. I can hear them behind me. I scan the ground ahead for a weapon. I stumble to a halt and pick up a stick. I turn to face Enforcer Rice and one of the impeccables.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ I pant. I raise my stick.

Rice sniffs. ‘Take him,’ he says to the impeccable, already turning away.

The impeccable eyes my stick and snorts. He steps towards me and I focus all my energy into thrusting the stick into his eye.

He bats it away like he would a fly and pins my arms behind me. I’m forced on to my knees.

‘You don’t understand,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to find my friend. He needs help. They were going to . . .’

‘We see’d him,’ grins the impeccable.

‘Where? Is he all right? He needs a doctor. Show m—’

‘Shut up, Blake.’ Rice yanks me up. ‘It’s touching that you’re making “friends” out here in the Wilderness, but there’s not much a doctor could do for him now.’ He leans in so his face is close to mine. ‘Looks like wild dogs got him.’ He smiles. ‘Horrible mess.’ He pushes me in the back and smacks me around the head. I don’t feel it. All I can think about is that now Wilson really is dead and everything is my fault.

The impeccable half drags me back to the Academy, all the time cursing me for the way I stink. Once we’re inside Rice looks at his muddied boots and tuts.

‘I don’t like dirt, Blake,’ he says. He makes a fist and punches me in the stomach. I double over. I feel like I’m going to cough up my intestines.

‘That’s why I don’t like you,’ he says.

I can’t speak.

‘Should’ve left him,’ says the impeccable.

‘As we are approaching a day of scrutiny it doesn’t do to have too much wastage,’ says Rice.

I look up through my hair. Scrutiny? I suppose that when The Leader arrives for his visit it will be up to Rice to make sure that the Academy appears in a good light. Just you wait, Rice. There are a few things I’d like The Leader to scrutinise.

‘Get clean,’ Rice says to me. He does a little jump kick and sends his boot into my shin with a crack. I grasp my hands around my leg, but I manage not to cry out. The impeccable grins as Rice walks away. It’s the jump that makes me hate Rice most.

I drag myself upstairs. It seems odd to me that the dormitory is still here unchanged. It’s empty; everyone is downstairs in the morning grid session. I sit on my bed. I lean forward and place a hand on Kay’s pillow. I don’t know how long I stay like this but when I hear footsteps on the corridor I hurry into the shower and let the tepid water pour down on my bowed head. I can feel the blood pulsing painfully in my hands and feet as I start to thaw out, but there is a frozen space inside me that I don’t think will ever be warm again.

I know that I should go downstairs and into the grid, but when I get out of the shower I’m overcome by a wave of tiredness. I get into my bed. If they want me, they can come and get me. And what can they do anyway? Actually, they can do anything they like. But I just don’t care any more.

When I wake up, someone is stroking my hair. I blink. It’s my mother.

‘Mum!’

‘Shh,’ she says, but she wraps me in her arms anyway. We stay like that for a long time. ‘It will be all right,’ she says. I try to believe that it’s possible for anything to ever be all right again.

Eventually I pull away. ‘You shouldn’t be here. What if someone else comes?’

‘I know. I just had to see that you were okay. When I heard that you’d been excluded I didn’t realise what it meant. My roommate said something this morning. You know, I think she enjoyed shocking me, and then I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t get out of that stupid door to come and get you and . . .’ She catches her breath. ‘But you’re okay. You
are
okay, aren’t you?’

She’s searching my face. I don’t have the energy to tell her about Wilson now.

‘I’m fine,’ I say.

We hear a door slamming somewhere out on the corridor.

‘I have to go.’ She kisses my forehead and leaves.

When I wake again there are students coming into the dormitory. I roll over and watch the door, waiting for Kay. I see her white-blonde head peer around the door; she looks straight to my bed.

‘Blake!’

‘Kay.’ In spite of everything my heart lifts.

‘You came back,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say. But Wilson didn’t. Wilson will never come back. I look at Kay. No one is going to take her away. A wave of desperation rises up in me. ‘Listen,’ I say. I stand up and grab hold of her hand. ‘Kay, you have to promise me that you’ll come with me and Mum when we escape.’

‘I’m not talking escaping more times. Specials can’t escape,’ she says, pulling hand away.

‘Why not?’

Kay throws up both her hands in frustration.

‘Why won’t you just talk to me about it?’ I say.

‘Because it’s an efwurding stupid idea.’

It’s like she’s slapped me in the face. She brings her arms back down to her sides.

‘I don’t want to have bad words with you,’ she says. ‘I want you tell me about all things that happened to you outside.’ She touches me gently on the arm.

I want to tell her everything.

‘Hey Kay,’ Lou yells from the other end of the dormitory. ‘Rex wants you.’

Kay looks back at me.

‘You don’t have to go,’ I say.

‘Blake,’ she says. Already she’s tensed up, looking after Lou; she can hardly bear to still be here when she could be dashing off to her precious Rex. ‘I want to talk. I do. When I come back?’

‘It’s fine. You don’t have to talk to me. I just don’t see why you have to run because Ape-boy has called you.’

She touches my arm again, but this time I pull away.

‘Because I want to be Dom. Rex chooses who is Dom.’

A wave of anger washes over me. ‘Why is that? Why does everyone have to listen to Rex and do what he says? He’s not smart or brave . . . It’s just because he’s ginger and his name is Rex.’

‘Blake, don’t! Some people could hear you,’ she says. ‘Anyway Rex isn’t real his name—’

‘I like to think he’s called Pig-face,’ I interrupt.

‘—that’s what they’re all called.’

I stop fiddling with the label on my blanket. ‘What do you mean, that’s what they’re all called?’

‘You know. The top Red. He’s always called Rex.’

I feel a rush of cold in my chest. ‘Oh, that’s just lovely. You know what Rex means don’t you?’

‘Yes. I said it. The top Red.’

‘I know, I know, but in Latin – that’s a language they spoke a really long time ago – it means king.’

‘What’s “king”?’

‘An important person. He tells everyone what to do.’

‘Oh.’

‘Those Reds fancy themselves, don’t they?’

Kay shrugs her shoulders. She won’t say anything against the Reds.

‘Wait a minute,’ I say. ‘Is Dom really called Dom?’

‘No, it’s the littler word for, you know . . .’

‘Stop saying “you know”, Kay. I don’t know, do I? I haven’t grown up here and if I’m ever going to work out how to get out of here then it would help if you could tell me things without treating me like an idiot for not knowing in the first place.’

‘Don’t bad talk me like that. Just because I can’t talk satin—’

I snort. ‘
Latin
, Kay, it’s Latin.’

‘You won’t laugh at me when I’m Dom.’ She glares at me.

What a mess. A moment ago she was pleased to see me. I can’t bear to fall out with Kay on top of everything else. ‘I’m not laughing,’ I say. ‘Look, what is Dom short for?’

‘Domina. What does that mean in . . . Latin?’

‘Lady or mistress.’ This is weird. ‘It’s like someone has thought this out. Tell me some more names for things,’ I say.

She thinks for a moment, ‘Sometimes Reds are called Rufus – does that mean red?’

‘Sort of. It’s more like ruddy. Seems like someone is mocking the Reds.’

‘What’s “mocking”?’

‘Making fun of them, laughing at them.’

‘You’d have to be stupid to laugh at the Reds.’

‘I do it.’

‘I know.’

I pull a face at Kay.

‘Why are you all –’ she clenches a fist and grits her teeth ‘– like this? We knowed that Rex is the king.’

‘But who thought up these names?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know, people a big time back. Maybe the first Rex.’ Her eyes are on the door. She thinks I’m a waste of time and can’t wait to run to him instead.

‘I know you don’t like it when I question what Specials know,’ I say. ‘But let me ask you this: have you ever been taught any Latin?’

‘No,’ she says.

‘Do you think that they have ever taught Latin at the Academy?’

‘No. They don’t teach us any words, do they?’

‘So it seems unlikely to me that a Special made up those names,’ I say.

‘Who did then?’ She can’t help it, she’s interested.

‘I’d guess an enforcer, probably Rice. He’s got a pretty sick sense of humour.’

‘Rice? No, it was before him. From when the Academy beginned.’

I stand still. I feel as if I’m falling backwards and that the room is rushing away from me, but when I look at my feet I’m still here. It’s like a series of tumblers falling into place in a lock. My growing uneasiness about everything suddenly makes sense.

A thousand snippets of information, lingering doubts, unanswered questions and little clues have suddenly joined up in my mind. And the big clues that I’ve just been trying to ignore: a police force who don’t want to investigate certain crimes, an education system that mistreats children, and a government that makes sure no one really questions anything.

‘When you think about it, it’s obvious,’ I say finally. ‘It’s all the Leadership, all The Leader.’

‘What is The Leader?’ Kay asks.

‘Everything that is wrong. The leader is controlling everyone’

I lift a hand to push my hair out of my eyes and it shakes. Kay looks at the hand and then at my face. She puts an arm around me and leads me into the bathroom and into the cubicle in the furthest corner and locks the door behind us. She sits me down. ‘Tell me,’ she says.

‘But Rex . . .’

‘Efwurd Rex. Tell me everything.’

And for the first time I tell her exactly what has happened to me. Everything from the moment the men attacked me and Wilson in the factory block. What the old woman said. Having my records wiped. P.C. Barnes telling me to change my name. Finding Wilson again and what those awful boys will have done with him.