The Roar (30 page)

‘What’s wrong?’ Mika asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s just a bit overwhelming. We got home from shopping this afternoon and I was making a cup of tea and wondering whether we’d eaten all the Fab mash when there was a knock on the door. Two hours later we were here. I suppose I’m a bit shocked. It’s so . . .’

‘Good,’ Mika finished for her, sitting down and taking his sneakers off. ‘Like another holiday, but for ever.’

He wiggled his toes in the plush pile of the carpet.

‘Those are definitely going in the laundry unit,’ Asha said, eyeing his sneakers and socks with disgust. ‘Pooh.’

He could feel her eyes on him again, searching.

‘What’s wrong, Mika?’ she asked. ‘What happened while you
were away?’

‘I won the competition,’ Mika replied, carefully avoiding eye contact. ‘There’s nothing wrong.’

* * *

Asha went to the kitchen to prepare food for the party. Mika shoved his clothes and sneakers in the laundry unit, dimmed the lights and sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of the glass wall. The air roads were busy with early evening traffic and in the street surrounding the park, the pedestrians looked like ants running in and out of golden holes. There was a police pod hovering opposite and he sensed them watching him. Only a few weeks before he’d seen the police outside his window and felt terrified, but now they didn’t bother him at all. He’d found Ellie and all he had to do was get through one night without leaving the apartment or letting his parents find out what he could do and he would be with her again. How he wished he could tell them.

That would make the party go with a bang, he thought.

Little did he realise, this party was going to go with a lot of bangs and his promise to Mal Gorman was not going to be as easy to keep as he thought.

45

LOOK NORMAL

M
ika grabbed his clothes from the laundry unit, warm and clean and smelling of spring, and dressed quickly, ready for the party. He found his mother in the new kitchen with two maids sent by the YDF. Mika smiled, watching her follow them around, trying to help them while they helped her.

‘What can I do?’ she asked, wringing her hands and looking lost while they laid out gold trays of party snacks and white china and cutlery. ‘Perhaps I should make tea. Would either of you like a cup of tea before everyone arrives and a little rest, or coffee if you prefer . . . a glass of wine?’

‘No thank you, Mrs Smith,’ they replied, primly.

‘Why don’t y
ou
have a glass of wine, Asha?’ David suggested. ‘Don’t worry about the food, have a glass of wine and relax until everyone arrives.’

‘I suppose I could,’ she replied, pensively. ‘Isn’t this lovely?’

‘You
are lovely,’ David said, kissing her, and they embraced with the Golden Turrets glowing behind them.

If only this was it, Mika thought, the fairy tale ends with a kiss in the fairy palace and everyone lives happily ever after.

He wondered how Ellie was feeling at that moment and suddenly the night seemed torturously long. He checked the time, it was only half past six; two hours before Mal Gorman’s message would arrive and twelve hours before he was due to return to Cape Wrath. He tried to relax, after all there was nothing he could do but wait until morning. What could possibly go wrong?

The guests began to arrive and soon the apartment was full of people laughing and making friends. Mika liked them all, particularly Leo’s father, who was a huge man with dreadlocks as thick as rope and a deep belly laugh. Iman’s little sister was the cutest baby he’d ever seen, and she ran around the adults’ legs with handfuls of food in her party dress. Everyone seemed happy to celebrate their new homes, but Mika and the children who’d won them gathered on the balcony where they could be alone. The French girl, Colette, sat on the floor hugging her knees and the rest leaned on the balcony and gazed at the Golden Turrets, their healed wounds like invisible lies on their skin.

Audrey’s green eyes were bright with fear. ‘I don’t understand why Mal Gorman wants to take us back again,’ she whispered. ‘This was supposed to be a game!’

‘It hasn’t felt like a game for a while to me,’ Santos said, polishing his glasses on his T-shirt. ‘I think being asked to sign the Official Secrets Act was a big clue.’

‘I’m scared about the promise we made,’ Audrey said. ‘What if something happens and we can’t keep it? Our families will be dumped in The Shadows! They might die!’

‘We will keep it,’ Mika said quickly. ‘Whatever our parents ask us, we’ll say nothing and the second part is easy – all we’ve got to do is stay in the apartment.’

‘There are five police pods watching us now,’ Leo said. ‘Look
at them. They’re all around the park.’

‘Gorman doesn’t trust us,’ Audrey whispered. ‘Perhaps he thinks we’ll try to run away so we don’t have to go back tomorrow.’

‘And
willingly
make our parents homeless?’ Leo scoffed. ‘How could he think we’d do that?’

‘Because he’s judging us by his own standards,’ Santos said.

‘I’m scared,’ Iman whispered. ‘I don’t want the apartment or the hover car. I hate it here with that booming noise. I just want to go home and be normal. I want to see my friends. Now they’ve taken our companions, we can’t even tell them we’ve moved. What are they going to do to us? I wish I’d never entered this competition.’

‘We wouldn’t be safe anyway,’ Leo said. ‘Mal Gorman was looking for us. The competition was about finding us.’

‘Why?’ Audrey said, desperately. ‘So we can move toy cars with our eyes? Why do we have to go back tomorrow? I don’t understand.’

‘I think we can do more,’ Mika said, darkly. ‘And Gorman knows.’

‘Like what?’ Audrey asked, fearfully. ‘It must be something bad if those government skeletons are interested in it.’

‘I think we can hurt people,’ Mika whispered. ‘I did it by accident to Ruben while he was trying to strangle me. I made him scream just by
looking
at him.’

‘I set fire to my bed,’ Iman said, her eyes wide. ‘After we got back from holiday I was trying to turn the pages of my book by looking at them and they burst into flames!’

‘Ruben lifted his own body,’ Santos reminded them. ‘If he can do that maybe we can too.’

He bit his lip and screwed up his eyes.

‘Not now, you perp!’ Leo said. ‘The last thing we need is our parents seeing
that
! Look. Mika’s mother’s watching us.’

They turned to see Asha eyeing them suspiciously through the glass wall.

‘We need to look normal,’ Mika whispered, anxiously.

‘How?’ Santos asked.

‘I dunno, smile a bit, look as if we’re having fun and don’t float or set fire to anything.’

46

HARVESTED FOR WAR

‘
W
hat time is it?’ Mal Gorman asked.

‘Twenty-seven minutes past eight, sir,’ Ralph replied. The butler was on his knees in front of the dressing-room fire, toasting a crumpet for Gorman’s supper, and his master sat in the gold chair with a blanket around his shoulders.

‘Only three minutes now,’ Gorman said quietly, staring at the fire. ‘Before the poor find out what we’re doing to their children and I become the most hated person on the planet.’

‘Surely they won’t
hate
you, sir,’ Ralph said. ‘You’re only doing your job.’

‘I know,’ Gorman replied. ‘But I don’t think they’re going to see it that way.’

‘But aren’t you giving them all a thousand credits?’ Ralph asked.

‘Yes,’ Gorman replied, pulling the blanket tighter around his
shoulders.

‘Well that’s very generous, sir,’ Ralph said, diligently buttering a crumpet. ‘I’m sure they’ll be grateful for that. They’ll be able to buy some food.’

‘They ought to be grateful,’ Gorman said. ‘But for some reason I’ve found poor people would rather starve to death than lose their children, so I’m sure there’ll be a few complaints.’

‘But the police will deal with those, won’t they, sir?’ Ralph said, in his most reassuring tone.

‘Yes,’ Gorman replied.

He thought about the prison complex off the north coast of Ireland and hoped it was big enough.

They can always build another one, he thought. And anyway, parents are not my responsibility any more, I have what
I want
.

‘Do you want honey sub on your crumpet, sir?’ Ralph asked. ‘Or jam?’

‘Honey,’ Gorman replied. ‘And two crumpets. Then send for Ellie, I suppose I ought to tell her what’s happening to her brother.’ He shivered suddenly and leaned closer to the fire.

‘Are you sure seeing Ellie is a good idea?’ Ralph asked, solicitously. ‘She can be rather stressful.’

‘She won’t be today,’ Gorman said, confidently. ‘I’ve got good news for her.’

‘Well if you’re sure, sir,’ Ralph replied, sceptically.

‘And when you’ve done all that,’ Gorman added, ‘make the fire hotter.’

‘Very good, sir,’ Ralph replied, wiping sweat from his brow.

Gorman picked up his companion and sent his message to the parents of two hundred and seventy thousand children while Ralph spread honey on his crumpet.

* * *

Boom. Boom.

Gorman’s chosen ones lay on the balcony staring at the moon.

‘Are we all mutants?’ Iman whispered.

‘Yes.’

‘I was normal when I was born,’ she said. ‘But I started growing horns when I was three. Feel my head.’

They touched the black girl’s scalp through her finely plaited corn rows.

‘Oh yeah,’ Audrey said, curiously. ‘I can feel them. What did they look like?’

‘Scary,’ Iman replied. ‘Like a goat’s. My real parents were so frightened they gave me up for adoption.’

‘No!’

‘I don’t mind now,’ Iman said. ‘My new parents love me and they wouldn’t care if I had hooves as well as horns.’

The French girl, Colette, sat up, and they watched with fascination as she peeled the skin off her left hand. It came off like a glove from the wrist, and beneath it, silver fingers glinted in the moonlight, fingers moved by complex joints and ligaments. Then she peeled the skin off her right hand, and held them out and turned them over so they could look at them.

‘They’re beautiful,’ Santos said admiringly, adjusting his glasses.

‘An artist made them,’ Colette replied. ‘I was born without hands and feet. There’s no circuitry in them, I control them with my mind just like you do when you move things. I’ve been able to do it since I was a baby but I kept it a secret, only my parents knew until now. I thought I was the only one, but I’m glad I’m not.’

Santos pulled up his sleeves. He had spurs on his wrists like those of a bird of prey, each with a single long curved claw. Leo showed them his skin-covered tail, Mika his webbed feet and Audrey her eyes.

‘I wish we knew why Mal Gorman wants us.’ Audrey said.

‘I’m sure whatever he’s planning to do with us, it’s not going to be what we want to do,’ Leo said. ‘For the past few weeks I’ve felt strange, restless, as if I’m supposed to be doing
something
. I’m sure we can see the light for a good reason, not just to move and kill things.’

‘I agree,’ Colette said. ‘I wish we knew more.’

Awen snarled and Mika felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle.

‘Something’s wrong,’ he whispered.

They all sat up and listened, but it wasn’t a noise they heard, but an eerie silence, as if millions of people were holding their breath at the same time.

Inside the apartment, David was about to pop the cork on another champagne bottle, but he too sensed a change and turned down the music.

‘Listen,’ he said.

‘How strange,’ Una commented, after a few tense seconds. ‘They’ve stopped banging on the pillars.’

They listened again and waited as if the dragon sleeping beneath its treasure was well-loved and they were worried about it. They listened to hear it breathe again, to hear its heart beat, but instead, they heard a terrible sound that pierced them through like shards of glass as a wail rose from the black water of The Shadows; a wail more terrifying than the plague sirens.

‘What was
that
?’ Asha gasped, looking at the floor. ‘What’s happened? Something terrible must have happened down there. It sounds like thousands of people wailing in agony!’

The children ran in from the balcony to join their parents in the apartment and everyone stared at the floor, listening to the terrible noise. Moments later, a companion called for its owner and one of the maids screamed.

‘What’s wrong?’ Asha cried, rushing to her side.

‘They’ve taken my son!’ the maid wailed. ‘They’ve stolen my boy!’

Everyone gathered around her and David read the message from Mal Gorman on her companion.

‘All twelve- and thirteen-year-old children,’ he said disbelievingly, ‘were taken this afternoon by the YDF from the arcades!’

‘Why?’ Asha asked. ‘What for?’

‘For
an army
,’ David replied, his face contorting with horror.
‘For an
army of children
! The government’s sending the children to war!’

Suddenly, all the other companions called out for their owners and every parent discovered they’d been sent the same terrible message.

‘No!’ Asha screamed. ‘Not Mika! Not after Ellie, PLEASE!’

‘They’re taking the children who won the competition tomorrow,’ David said numbly, his hands shaking as he read the message again on his own companion. ‘They’re all going to war.’

Asha turned to look at the six children, standing together by the glass wall. They looked strange, she thought, their skin luminous as if they’d spent a few hours in the wrong room of a nuclear power plant, and for the first time she noticed the similarity between them; despite their different skin colours and features, they looked as if they had been carved from the same piece of stone.

‘You knew something,’ she said to Mika, ‘didn’t you?’

He looked at the floor, not daring to speak, and Audrey began to cry.

War.

The Youth Development Foundation had been building an army of children.

Mika felt the blood drain from his face as he realised how obvious it was: Fit Mix to make them grow faster, Fit Camp to make them strong, Pod Fighter to teach them how to fly, and the competition to put them through selection tests for an army of children. No wonder Mr Grey was talking about ‘fine citizens of the Northern Hemisphere’, they all knew! Even Mrs Fowler! He and his friends had been grown like a crop! Harvested for war! He remembered how the Fit For Life nurse and the teachers had humiliated him the day he refused to drink the Fit Mix and felt so angry he wanted to smash everything around him. They’d punished him! They’d told him he was mad! They’d convinced him he was a paranoid freak, when all the time he was right and they knew it!

How Mika hated Mal Gorman at that moment as the promise he’d made took on new resonance; he had promised he would go back in the morning and do whatever he was told. He had promised to go to war.

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Asha cried. ‘How could you come home and not tell us what they were doing to you?’

‘We didn’t know,’ Mika said quickly. ‘Not about the army or the war.’

‘But you knew
something
!’ she cried, angrily. ‘Didn’t you? I realised the moment you came home! What’s happened to you? If this competition was about building an army, why did you win it? What can you do that’s so special? You’ve got to tell us!’

Mika hung his head.

‘We can’t tell you,’ Leo said.

‘What?’ his father shouted. ‘Of course you can! We’re your parents! Why do they want you?’

‘Sit down, now!’ David bellowed at Mika. ‘And tell us everything that’s happened while you were away!’

‘No,’ Mika said. ‘We’re not allowed.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ David yelled. ‘How can you be not allowed to talk to your
own parents
! This is insane! You’re going absolutely nowhere tomorrow! I’m not having my twelve-year-old child sent to war. How could they possibly believe that a thousand credits would make
that
alright! Now we’ve got a lovely new home and some money for
furniture!
Well they can STUFF IT. I FORBID YOU TO GO TO WAR AND THAT’S THE END OF IT!’

‘Please, Dad,’ Mika said. ‘Don’t be angry with us, we thought we were playing a game.’

‘I’m not angry,’ David said, his shoulders falling. ‘I’m
devastated
, Mika, I can’t believe it! Just when our lives seemed to be getting better!’

‘It’s not his fault,’ Santos’s mother said, gently. ‘We’ve all been tricked.’

‘Please, talk to us,’ Una begged Audrey. ‘Perhaps we can help.’

‘No Mum,’ Audrey sobbed. ‘You can’t help. We promised we wouldn’t talk to you. You don’t understand.’

‘Oh this is AWFUL!’ Una cried, putting her arms around her daughter. ‘You poor things! To think you were playing a game and to have
this
happen! You’d tell me if you could, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Audrey cried miserably. ‘We want to tell you the truth but we can’t.’

Iman’s baby sister began to wail desperately as she realised the party had stopped and everyone was crying instead of laughing. The cake she held fell from her hand and her father picked her up and cuddled her.

‘It’s OK, sweetie,’ he whispered, kissing her cheek. ‘They won’t take you.’

‘They’re just children,’ Una cried, desperately. ‘How could the government do this?’

‘Because we’re too old to fight,’ David said bitterly. ‘No babies were born for thirty years so the youngest of our generation is forty-three.’

‘But how could there be a war?’ Asha said. ‘There hasn’t been a war since The Wall was built. Surely we would have seen something on telly if we were on the brink of war, it doesn’t make sense. We haven’t got any enemies; there’s nobody to fight.’

‘The government must have kept it a secret,’ David said. ‘Until the children were ready.’

‘Perhaps the enemy are in a place we don’t hear about much,’ Leo’s father suggested. ‘Like the Arctic.’

‘But surely we’d still know something about them,’ Una said. ‘There’s no room for secrets any more, there’s not even enough room for people since we moved behind The Wall, even in the Arctic.’

‘This is crazy,’ Asha said. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘What
can
we do?’ Una cried. ‘How can we argue with the Northern Government? They make the laws and if they say our children have to go to war, then they have to go!’

‘I’ve just had a thought . . .’ David said, stiffening with anger. ‘The government haven’t taken
all
twelve- and thirteen-year-old children; I saw some earlier in the park.’

‘Yeah,’ Una said. ‘Come to think of it, so did I.’

Mika remembered the two boys and the girl he’d met in the foyer and realised they were right.

‘So how come they’re still here?’ Asha asked.

‘Because the government isn’t sending the
rich
children to war,’ David said, angrily. ‘Just the
poor
ones.’

‘Listen,’ Audrey said, as her keen ears picked up another noise in The Shadows. ‘Can you hear that?’

‘Oh my odd,’ Asha whispered. ‘What’s happening now?’