The Disappeared (35 page)

‘We’ve got to get out of the Academy. Come with me.’ I stride towards the door.

‘We don’t want outside,’ Rex says. ‘We can stay here with no enforcers.’ The Specials cheer. They’re so used to following Rex.

‘There’s a fire! You’ll be killed. Come on!’ I shout at them.

‘Let’s get food! Rex’ll get you food!’ Rex cries.

More cheering.

There’s the sound of something crashing from somewhere below us. It sounds like another wall collapsing. The Specials are shocked into silence.

‘We need to get downstairs now,’ I say moving across the dormitory.

Kay appears in the doorway, holding Ali. She shakes her head. ‘We can’t get downstairs any more.’

Out on the corridor, even Rex can’t deny that things look bad. Everyone can see the smoke curling up the stairs. I run to the top of them. I can feel the heat of the spreading fire and hear crackling and hissing below me.

‘Blake,’ Kay says, ‘we’ve got to get Ali outside.’

‘But there’s no out,’ a blonde girl says.

I knew it. I knew this place was a death trap. This is the only staircase. There should be safety features. There should be an efwurding fire escape. And then it hits me. There is. I saw it when I was excluded.

‘Kay, we have to go up again,’ I say. I turn to the Specials. ‘Listen to me. You’ve all got to come with us. We’re going to the roof, to the top of the Academy. And then we’re going to climb down.’

From the back of the rabble, Rex forces his way through.

‘That’s stupid. We can’t get down from big high.’

‘We can. There’s a ladder.’ I realise that they won’t know what a ladder is. ‘There’s a kind of steps . . . stairs. I’ve seen it.’

‘How?’ sneers Rex.

‘I’ve been outside.’

They know that’s true. Exclusions get talked about. They know I’ve been out and come back again.

‘You can come with us or you can stay here with the fire,’ I say to everyone.

I take Ali back from Kay. ‘We’re going to get out of the Academy, Ali. You can see the trees again.’

Ali’s eyes roll open and she gives me the smallest nod.

‘I’m not going with this no-ranker,’ Rex says.

There’s an almighty bang. I’m thrown backwards off my feet, taking Ali with me. I cushion her fall but she lets out a terrible moan. A pulse of hot air passes over us. I struggle to lift Ali again. At the far end of the corridor I can see sky. And flames. Something in the kitchen below has exploded, creating a hole in the wall.

‘OUT! NOW!’ shouts Kay and starts pulling Specials up by their collars and shoving them up the stairs. I follow with Ali. Rex tails behind me, muttering.

At the top of the stairs Kay opens a security door. One of the little Specials finds a storage space full of boxes and stacks of chairs and a door with multi glass panels leading out on to the roof. I tell Kay to type ROOF into the panel and then she swipes my mother’s card. It works. The Specials pour out.

‘Now we’re stuck all high,’ Rex says.

Kay glares at him.

Outside it’s a beautiful spring day. A bright blue, cloudless sky. To the rear of the Academy, black smoke is streaming skywards.

‘Look, Ali,’ Kay says.

I turn round. In my arms Ali struggles to lift her head. To the front, filling the wide driveway, are hundreds of Specials. They keep coming. Pouring out of the Academy. My breath catches. They’re out. That could be the whole Academy. Out. Free. Ali smiles.
Take that!
I think.
You can’t keep us prisoners.

We cross the roof and I find the top of the fire escape.

‘How are you going to . . . ?’ Kay looks at Ali.

‘It’s fine,’ I say, but my arms and my back are already killing me. I can’t see how I can carry her and hold on to the ladder.

‘I’ll take her,’ Rex says.

‘No,’ I say. I don’t want him to help. I don’t look at Kay. I know her eyes will be telling me to change my mind. Instead I look down at Ali. She looks up at me. She doesn’t say anything. Just looks right into my eyes. She trusts me.

I hold Ali out to Rex. ‘Be careful with her,’ I warn him.

Rex hoists Ali over his shoulder and then starts down the ladder. The other Specials queue up to make their way down to the ground. Kay and I drop to the back of the line.

Kay looks at me and for the first time she doesn’t try to hide her feelings with a straight face. She’s afraid.

I open my arms and she stumbles into them.

‘Blake,’ she says, ‘I have to tell you my sorry.’

‘You don’t have to be sorry. You saved the day. You were perfect . . . You are perfect.’

She looks up at me and a jolt shoots through my body and out to my fingertips.

‘I’m sorry about Rex. I thought I wanted to be Dom. I had a long time wanting to be Dom. Then we found out about Rex and all things were bad and I thought if I could still be Dom then it would be okay.’

I stroke her hair. ‘Everything is okay,’ I say.

She looks down at the shrieking Specials surging around the front of the Academy and laughs. I laugh too. She wraps a hand around my neck and draws me down to her. She presses her full lips against mine. Oh, she is so sweet. I put my arms around her and pull her closer to me. She kisses me harder. It’s so good. She is so good. When we draw apart I keep my arm around her. It feels right.

She gestures down to the escaping Specials. ‘Look what you did, Blake.’

‘It’s because of you. I didn’t know how to do anything before I met you.’

We’ve reached the front of the queue. She presses her lips against mine again and then she starts down the ladder.

I follow. My hands are shaking so hard I have to concentrate to grip the rungs. The metal is rusty. Soon my sweating hands are coated in orange-brown flakes. The ladder shakes as we climb. I think about the explosion and hope there won’t be another one before we reach the bottom.

On the ground there are Specials everywhere. There’s a group fighting over some packets of food and some of the older boys are trying to smash in the windscreen of a parked car, but most of them are surging away into the trees.

My ears are ringing from listening to the alarm for so long.

I look around for Ali and Kay.

Rex has laid Ali on one of the wide stone steps leading up to the grand Academy entrance and is standing guard over her.

‘Find Ilex,’ I say to him.

To my surprise Rex listens to me for once and ploughs straight into the crowd bawling, ‘ILEX!’

I crouch down next to Kay, who is holding Ali’s hand.

Ali is staring up at me. She’s taking slow, rattling breaths.

‘You did it,’ she says to me.

‘
We
did it. Kay and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.’

‘Blake can do anything. You can get rid of all the bad.’

I stroke the hair off her face. A spasm of pain goes through her.

‘Just lie still, Ali,’ Kay says. ‘Ilex is coming and we’ll get someone to make you better.’

Ali grips my hand hard. ‘Tell Ilex I was brave,’ she says. ‘Tell him . . .’ She struggles for breath. ‘Tell him that I said Ilex is the best brother.’ She smiles at me.

I try to hold her here with my eyes. I try to keep her blood pumping by willing it. But I can’t do it. I can’t help her. I watch the sweetness and the brightness and the life run out of her like water through my fingers and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

She’s gone. Little Ali is gone.

Kay slumps against my chest and I put my arms around her. We sit like that while the Specials are running around screaming, throwing stones at each other and fighting over stolen food.

Kay breaks away to close Ali’s eyes. I stand up to see if I can see Ilex or Rex. They’re not there. In the distance I hear a siren.

‘We have to find Ilex and get out of here,’ I say.

‘Out?’

‘Away from the Academy.’

Kay’s eyes flick wildly between the Academy and the drive leading into the trees. Her lip is quivering. ‘I don’t think . . .’ she says. ‘I don’t know . . .’

She’s afraid to leave. The Academy is awful, but it’s all she knows.

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll be with you.’

‘We have to stay with Ali.’

Somewhere down the drive, men are shouting and Specials are screaming.

‘Kay, they’re coming to round us up.’

‘We can tell them. We can tell them about the Academy and how The Leader is bad.’

‘Kay.’ I hold her by the shoulders and force her to look at me. ‘The guards are coming. The guards work for The Leader. They will take us away and they will put us in another Academy.’ I fear that what they would actually do is worse than that, but I mention another Academy to shock her into listening.

Kay is shaking. She looks back at the Academy again. ‘What can we do? Where can we go? I don’t know how to.’

‘I’ll look after you. We’ve got to try to get to the entrance.’

She grips my hand and stares into my face. Then she nods. ‘What about Ali?’

‘We have to leave her, Kay. We’ve got to save ourselves. That’s what she would want.’

I stoop down and kiss Ali’s forehead.

‘We have to tell the Specials. They need to run away too,’ Kay says.

The forecourt is no longer jammed with Specials, but there are still hordes of them milling about.

‘Listen!’ I shout.

No one can hear me.

Kay climbs to the top step. She puts her fingers in her mouth and gives a piercing whistle. A lot of Specials turn round to look at us.

‘SPECIALS!’ I yell. ‘The guards are coming to lock you up. You’ve got to run. Run this way! Try to get out of the gates.’ Some of them don’t hear. Some of them look around wildly, paralysed with fear. But once the running starts, most follow.

I take Kay’s hand and we join the stampede into the trees.

‘When I arrived, I came from this direction,’ I say. ‘There must be a gate up here.’

We stay off the drive where we’ll be easily seen and instead fight our way through the overgrown bushes. I aim for where I think the entrance must be. Up ahead, we can hear Specials clashing with guards.

‘King Hell, Kay, look.’

Through the trees there’s an army of red advancing.

Kay sucks in her breath. ‘We can’t get out.’

What the hell are we going to do? Should we try and slip past the guards in the crush? Maybe we could try to hide.

‘Blake,’ Kay says.

I look up. There’s a guard ripping through the greenery on a motorbike. The Specials scatter on either side to avoid being hit. He’s heading straight for us.

I grab Kay by the wrist and run in the opposite direction. We stumble back through the trees.

I look over my shoulder. The bike is twisting and swerving, but it’s hard for the rider to make a path through the undergrowth. We move further away from the gate and the rest of the Specials.

‘I think we’ve lost him.’ I turn in a circle, scanning through the greenery in all directions.

Something red streaks out from behind a tree and grabs me by the shoulder.

Kay swings a fist straight into the streak’s face.

It’s not a guard. It’s Janna. She reels backwards from the impact of Kay’s punch.

‘Kay! Stop it. This is the girl I told you about. The one who can help us stop The Leader.’

‘What the efwurd are you doing?’ Janna spits at Kay. Her nose is bleeding.

‘What the efwurd are
you
doing?’ Kay says.

‘I’m trying to get you out of this mess.’

Kay scowls.

‘How?’ I say. Hope rises inside my chest.

‘Come with me.’ Janna looks Kay up and down. ‘Not her.’

I step closer to Kay. ‘I’m not going without her.’

Janna rolls her eyes. A gunshot goes off up ahead. She flinches back into a tree. ‘Just move it.’ She strides away.

‘Come on,’ I say to Kay.

She doesn’t move.

Panic tightens my chest. We’ve got to go with Janna. This is our way out. ‘
Please
. . .’ I say.

Kay shakes her head to herself, but she lets me take her hand and lead her after Jana.

Janna takes us to a van parked in between the trees. My steps slow. I reach out an arm to stop Kay.

The van has got the guards’ logo on it.

Janna has double-crossed us.