The Disappeared (28 page)

‘How do you know all this?’ I ask. ‘Maybe it’s a mistake. When Wilson told me they wanted to kill me he wasn’t exactly right in the head. Couldn’t we just have been mugged?’

‘Mugged and then wiped from the records? When I couldn’t get in touch with you I went to the Willows and Facilitator Johnson denied you’d ever been there. It was like you’d just disappeared.’

I roll a leaf in my hand until it splits. ‘He did that to me too. He’d known me for all those years and he deleted me just like that. Wiped all my records.’

‘I’m afraid there aren’t many people who’d dare to disobey The Leader’s orders.’

‘He could have done something! He could have tried to contact you. Or told someone or—’

‘I think it’s more to the point that he didn’t tell anyone. If they had learned about your reappearance at the Willows they would have tracked you down.’

‘Johnson sent me and Wilson off to be killed! Don’t go thinking he was protecting me by not telling anyone I’d shown up again. He was protecting himself. I bet he didn’t want anyone to know that he’d messed up.’

She acknowledges I’m right with the smallest of shrugs. She’s resigned to the idea that a teacher would throw away a student’s life just like that. This is the kind of world we’re living in.

She squeezes my hand. ‘Once I knew you were here I just had to get inside.’

‘Can’t be many people trying to break into an Academy.’

She gives a slow smile and I hear her lungs wheeze. ‘It’s a good job they take volunteers. And it’s not a bad place to hide. You know, maybe you should think about staying here. There are worse places you could be.’

Surely she doesn’t mean that?

‘It’s true. I’ve probably been safer here than anywhere else,’ she says.

‘What do you mean, safer here?’

She looks off into the trees.

‘What happened after you left me that message telling me to stay here? They said your account was terminated,’ I say.

‘They switched my account. They said it was a technical fault, but I felt like they were watching me.’

‘Did they threaten you?’

‘No. Nothing happened. I just . . . I’ve been waiting for it. I suppose I’ve been waiting for it for a long time. It doesn’t matter now anyway.’ She struggles to pull a folded piece of paper out of a pocket sewn into the inside of her shirt. ‘You should take this.’ She hands it to me and I open it up.

It’s my birth certificate.

‘If you need to, use it to bargain. If you find yourself in –’ she closes her eyes and takes a breath. ‘– in a difficult situation, tell them that you’ve given it to someone and told them in the event of your disappearance to hand it to the press. Do you understand?’

My mouth has fallen open.

‘This is important, darling, do you understand?’ she says.

‘And you’ll do the same thing?’ I ask.

She nods her head and smiles. ‘You take it. Put it somewhere safe.’ She leans back against the tree and breathes out heavily.

‘Mum, you really need help. I’ve got to—’

‘Don’t go, darling; I just need to catch my breath.’ She closes her eyes. ‘I’m sorry I’ve made such a mess for you.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘It was too dangerous a piece of information to give you.’

‘Even if you didn’t tell me The Leader was my father you could have told me what sort of man he was, you could have told me that the whole stupid system is corrupt.’

She opens her eyes. ‘And how would you have fitted in at the Learning Community then? Do you know what they do with promising young learners who start to question the system? They send them to Academies. Or worse.’

‘I’m in an Academy anyway and I can’t see how things can get any worse.’

‘I know, I know,’ she says and she stares hard into my eyes. ‘I should have told you the truth. I was just trying to keep you safe. I just want you to be safe.’

‘
AHHHHHH!
’ someone screams from the direction of the pool.

My mother’s eyes widen. ‘Run!’

I won’t leave her. I can see someone running through the trees; they’re almost on us. It’s one of those boys. One of those boys that stabbed my mother. I’m on my feet and I’m hurtling over fallen tree branches. We come face to face just outside the clearing – it’s Scarface. He hesitates for a moment, surprised that I am running towards him. But he’s too late to stop his momentum and he rushes to meet the knife as I stab it into his chest. He looks down at the hilt still sticking out. Then he staggers backwards and falls to the ground.

I’ve killed him.

The sunlight hurts my eyes. I lurch back through the trees towards my mother. I push back the branches and then stop like I’ve hit an invisible wall. She’s lying completely still.

‘Mum?’ I say.

Her eyes are staring blankly.

‘Mum?’

I can hear a bird singing in the distance.

‘Mummy?’

She’s dead.

I’m awake, but there is something wrong with my eyes. In the shadows I can see bodies. The trees are running with blood and in their branches hundreds of crows’ eyes stare down at me. A hand is reaching out of the ground. Its bony fingers grasp at my feet. I curl into a ball. The whole world is pulsing with death and dripping with blood. I smell someone’s fetid breath in my face. The Leader. My father. In front of me, Scarface rises up and pulls the knife from his chest. He points it at me. ‘Just like your father,’ he says. ‘Just like your father,’ join in the birds. And the leaves. And the dead bodies crawling towards me.

‘No.’ I say ‘NO!’

Then the heaving bodies blur into blackness and so do I.

In the morning everything is clear to me. I’ve seen all the evil that The Leader has brought. He has made everything bad. It’s his fault that my mother and Wilson are dead. It’s his fault that I am a murderer. His fault that no one sees how poor Kay and the rest of the Specials suffer. He is responsible for
all
of this.

And I must make him pay.

After some time staring into the leaves it dawns on me that I don’t even need to escape to get at The Leader. Soon he will be coming to the Academy to do his publicity stunt for the new Academies. What I’ll need to be able to move around the Academy freely is an enforcer’s ID card. I’ve never managed to get close enough to an enforcer to steal one, but now I realise that I don’t have to steal. There’s one right here in the forest.

I make my way back towards the clearing. I’m struck with a horrible thought and for a moment I freeze and then I break into a run. I should never have left my mother there. What if the rest of those boys came back for her and . . . ? My mouth goes dry. I burst through the trees. She’s still there. She hasn’t moved.

I move towards her as quietly as I can, as if I’m afraid of waking her. I crouch down at her side.

‘Mum, I need your ID card,’ I say. It feels like it would be rude to start fishing about in her pockets without saying anything. I try the pocket on the front of her shirt. It’s there.

‘Thank you,’ I say. I don’t want to just leave her in case those cannibal boys come back, or someone from the Wilderness. I need to bury her. I scan the clearing. There’s a natural dip beneath one of the trees. I carry her as gently as I can and lay her in it. I use my hands to scoop earth over her at first, until I find a flat piece of bark to use instead. I work hard at it for a long time. My face runs with tears and sweat. When I’m done, my mother is well covered and my arms are quivering with fatigue.

I kneel down and press my lips to the mound of earth. ‘I’m going to get him, Mum,’ I say out loud. ‘I’m going to put an end to all this blood and fear and cruelty. I promise.’

Then I walk back into the shade of the trees.

I spend the night hiding in the rubbish tip, clutching a sharpened piece of metal in case another one of those boys or anyone else from the Wilderness comes near me.

When Rice and two impeccables arrive at the gate in the fence, I’m sat waiting. Enforcer Rice seems surprised to see me, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even give me a lecture about my behaviour. He rips a bit of skin near his thumbnail off with his teeth. When we get inside one of the impeccables accidently brushes against him as we walk along the corridor.

‘Watch it, you idiot!’ says Rice. ‘I haven’t got time for this.’ And he rushes off.

‘Why are all the enforcers all . . . ?’ The taller impeccable makes claws out of his hands and bares his teeth.

‘They’re scared of a thing,’ says the other one.

‘What thing?’ I ask. What on earth would scare an enforcer?

The impeccable shrugs. ‘I don’t know. They’re scared, so they’re bigger mean.’

The impeccable takes me to the grid. I stumble to my seat and the rest of the day passes in a haze. Kay tries to talk to me, but I can only shake my head and turn away. After dinner she takes me upstairs and puts me to bed like a baby. I’m shaking with tiredness, but I can’t sleep. Images of my mother and Wilson dance in my mind.

Ilex and Ali come and talk in whispers to Kay. The light fades. I stay where I am. Staring. Thinking. Other students come in chatting and arguing. Then it’s late and the lights are switched off and everyone is asleep and I’m still staring.

‘Blake?’ whispers Kay.

I want to answer but somehow I can’t break my stillness. I wonder if I’ll just lie like this till I die.

I hear Kay getting out of bed. Then she climbs on my bed and lies down behind me, wrapping her arm around me.

And everything still hurts, but she is here with me.

When I wake up, Kay is still lying behind me. Her arm is around my waist. It feels nice. Warm. I’d like to just stay here and go back to sleep, but I start thinking about The Leader. My father. He’ll be here soon. I don’t have to go out and get him; he’s coming to the Academy. I struggle to remember what day it is. The last few have run together. I try to recall exactly when Tong told us he was coming. If Rice is twitchy it must be soon.

Kay stirs. I freeze, willing her to drift back to sleep and hold me for a bit longer. She stiffens. She’s definitely awake. She lifts her arm gently and rolls away, so that I can no longer feel her warm softness pressed against my back.

‘Blake?’ she whispers.

I turn over so that we’re lying side by side.

‘Mmm,’ I say.

‘What happened?’

The woods. My mother. The boy. The knife. A horrible wave of redness washes through me bringing back that crazy blood-dripping night and I’m afraid I’m going to be sick. I breathe in slowly. ‘She’s dead,’ I say.

And then I tell her. How my brave mother came to find me, how she worked out what happened to me and how she finally told me the truth about who my father is. I don’t tell Kay about Scarface. I don’t think I could bear her knowing what I did to him. When I get to the end, Kay slips her hand in mine.

‘Kay, everything awful that has happened: my mother, Wilson, those crazy boys – this whole efwurding system – it’s all The Leader’s fault. And he won’t get away with it.’

Kay doesn’t say anything.

‘All I need to know is when he’s coming and where he’s going to be.’

‘Rex will know.’ She looks at me questioningly. I don’t care about Rex any more. ‘Ask him.’ I say. In five minutes she’s back. ‘Tomorrow,’ she says. ‘He’s coming tomorrow.’

At lunchtime Kay takes me to the empty dormitory bathroom.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.

‘I’ve been thinking about this; do you know what would hurt him most?’

Kay shrugs.

‘If I ruin everything he’s worked for – his career and his reputation. We’re going to do what I said we would. We’re going to expose the Academy system and make sure that everyone knows that he’s responsible.’

Kay nods.

‘And then I’m going to kill him.’

I stare at the hinge of a cubicle door. I’m angry at myself for not having planned this out better. When I first knew that The Leader was coming I suppose I imagined the sort of school visit we used to have at the Learning Community. I thought there would be an opportunity for Specials to talk to him. I thought he’d want to talk to me and hear about everything that has happened and that he’d be able to help. I was such an idiot. Of course now I realise that they’ll be keeping him as far away from us as possible. In fact, Kay says that Rex says that the press conference will take place in the older part of the Academy, where Specials rarely go.