Wanted (Flick Carter Book 1) (6 page)

‘Carter! Head bowed. Now!’ the headmaster bellowed. Adam bowed his head, but kept sniggering.

‘Do it again,’ Ron whispered, and Adam tore off some more paper. He handed the rest to Ron, and soon both boys were flicking paper pellets around the hall.

‘WE WILL BE GOOD!’ the whole school shouted in unison, startling Adam. They had reached the responses, signalling the end of assembly.

‘Be Vigilant!’ the vicar cried out.

‘WE WILL BE VIGILANT!’ the children responded. Adam joined in this time.

The vicar stood for a moment watching the children, and then, seemingly satisfied he stepped back.

The headmaster now stepped forward once more. ‘We will now sing the school song. Mrs Granger, if you please.’ He signalled to a small grey-haired lady seated at the piano, and she started playing. After a few bars introduction, the school chorused the words to the song,

We are free to think, We are free to work,

From our duty and calling we will not shirk,

With vigilance we conquer all

In purity we prepare

A new world order, we answer the call

God and the King will guide us there.

As the singing came to an end and the music stopped, the headmaster raised his hands, and the assembly was silent. He pointed to the back of the hall. ‘Carter: My office. Everyone else, dismissed.’

A few minutes later, Adam was leaning against the wall outside the headmaster’s study. The headmaster was already inside; he’d come direct from the school hall. Adam hadn’t. Adam swirled his index finger around the pinna of his ear and then gnawed on the scrapings under his finger nail. Chatting during assembly was hardly a major crime. So he was up before the Beak again, but it was no big deal; a few harsh words and he’d be free to go.

‘Get in here, boy!’ bellowed the headmaster. Despite the fact that his door was closed, the headmaster had an unnerving knack of knowing when somebody was waiting to see him. Adam pushed himself off from the wall and opened the door.

‘Shut the door.’ The headmaster was writing something, and didn’t look up. Adam shut the door and walked over to the desk. He stood in front of it, and watched the headmaster write. He tried to make out what the head was writing, but it was upside down and just looked like nonsense.

‘Latin,’ said the headmaster, without pausing from his writing. ‘I’d be very surprised if you knew that.’ He put down his pen and pushed his chair back, looking up. ‘But then, there’s a lot of things you don’t know.’ He paused, studying Adam intently then asked, ‘Why do you think you are here?’

Adam shrugged. ‘Because I was disruptive in assembly?’ The guy was a buffoon.

‘Because you were disruptive in assembly,’ the headmaster repeated. He picked up the papers that he’d been writing, tapped them on the desk to straighten them, and placed them into a manila folder. He leaned back in his chair and regarded Adam. ‘Mmmm?’ he said, raising an eyebrow.

Adam fidgeted. The headmaster usually just ranted for a bit while Adam nodded and looked contrite. But this was a different tactic.

The head turned back to the things on his desk. Then, ‘You want to join the Watch, once you leave school, don’t you?’

Adam mumbled something. This wasn’t going the way he’d expected. He couldn’t explain why, but it disturbed him somehow.

‘Speak up.’ The head looked at him intently.

‘Yes, sir.’ Adam was surprised by the squeak in his voice.

The head finished tidying the things on his desk. When he was satisfied, he looked at Adam again. ‘Shut the door on your way out.’

Adam turned and left the room, shutting the door behind him. Walking back to his classroom, he pondered, what on earth was that about?

Adam kicked back against the railings. It was after lunch and he was back in the playground. He should have been messing around with his mates, but his mind kept dragging him back to the headmaster’s study that morning.

You want to join the Watch once you leave school, don’t you?
That’s all the headmaster had said. Nothing more; nothing less. But it sounded like a threat and that bothered him. He’d always regarded the headmaster as a bit of a buffoon, with no real teeth. He hadn’t actually told him off; Adam was always being told off, for being disruptive, or larking about, once even for ‘trying to be funny.’ Maybe that was it?

Perhaps it would be a good idea to lie low for a bit. Tone things down and not be so conspicuous. He looked out across the playground. No one seemed to be paying him any attention. The headmaster appeared to be busy shuffling some of the younger children around, and his mates, Del, Ron and Colin were standing around at the back of the line, not looking in his direction. Even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

‘Come on Adam, you’ll miss it!’ That was Rosie shouting from her position at the very front of the line. She was keen, Adam mused, but that was only to be expected; she was the youngest and got all the attention. Flick was the oldest and got everything first, but what did he ever get? Nothing. Nothing but grief and trouble. It’d be better once he was in the Watch, with his mates.

‘Carter, get in line!’ The headmaster had noticed now and shouted at him.
 

Adam reluctantly pushed himself up from the railings and sauntered over to the back of the line. His mates grunted at each other.

‘So what did he do?’ Colin asked. ‘It must have been really bad.’

‘Yeah, we thought you was going to get caned or expelled or something,’ Ron added.

‘Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?’ Adam said.

The three boys looked at each other, eyebrows raised, and sniggered.

‘You’re not going soft on us, are you?’ Del jeered, poking him in the arm.

‘No, I am not going soft.’ Adam said, the annoyance clear in his voice.

‘I don’t suppose it had anything to do with those Kingsmen, did it?’ Colin asked

‘What Kingsmen?’

‘Two Kingsmen came round searching the classrooms when you were gone,’ Colin said. ‘We reckoned they were looking for you. Thought you were going to be
disappeared
or something…’

‘Quiet at the back of the line!’ the headmaster shouted.

Adam hissed, ‘Look… Oh, forget it.’

Moments later, the headmaster raised his large black cane high and shouted, ‘Everybody follow me!’ He marched out through the gate into the street, and the rest of the school followed.

Adam kept quiet as they walked. Had the headmaster unexpectedly developed the power–or the balls–to keep him out of the Watch? Or did it have something to do with Colin’s Kingsmen? Surely a bit of mucking around didn’t warrant
their
attention? No, he didn’t believe that for a moment. He thought about the consequences of not joining; what else would he do? What else
could
he do? He’d never taken any interest in the inn, and fifteen years of living with Flick as a big sister was enough for anyone, thank you very much. Besides, he didn’t know whether his dad would choose him if nobody else did; it was a subject that had never come up. He was going into the Watch, and that was final. By the time they got to the museum, Adam had convinced himself that the headmaster was bluffing after all.

The headmaster climbed the steps of the museum to address the children. ‘What you will see here today may shock and disturb you. Relics of the Dark Times are very dangerous. The people back then were evil. They and their devices caused The Collapse, and that is why you must never touch these things or talk to Scavs. And always report any sightings to a Watchman. Is everybody clear?’

The children nodded.

He rapped on the big double doors with the end of his cane. After a few moments, there was the sound of bolts being drawn back and the doors swung silently open.

‘We’ll go through in small groups,’ he said, and started counting the children through, ‘One, two, three, four,’ his cane stopped the next child from going through for a moment, then he started counting again, ‘One, two, three, four.’ Everyone had gone through except for Del, Ron, Colin and Adam.

The headmaster looked at them. ‘You four,’ he said, eying them each in turn, ‘are a severe disappointment to me, to the school, to the town. If it had been up to me, you would not have been allowed to come today, but others persuaded me–reluctantly–to let you come.’

Adam wondered if he was talking about the Kingsmen from the school.

The headmaster continued, ‘We will be watching you closely at all times, is that understood?’

The four boys stood on the steps, looking at each other and saying nothing.

‘Is that understood?’ The headmaster repeated.

‘Yes,’ they muttered.

He tapped Del on the chest with his cane. ‘You. In.’ Del scooted through the door. He repeated this with Ron and Colin, leaving Adam on his own. At once the conviction left him; maybe the headmaster wasn’t bluffing after all.

Adam swallowed. ‘Just you and me together is it, sir?’ he said, trying to instil the confidence in his voice that he no longer felt.

The headmaster regarded him for several seconds. ‘I don’t know what it is you’ve been up to, but I’d think seriously about mending my ways, if I was you.’

As far as Adam was concerned he hadn’t been “up to” anything. At least not beyond the usual messing about. But he nodded anyway. Anything for a quiet life.

‘Now, follow me,’ the headmaster said, beckoning him to follow through the door.

They went inside. The large foyer immediately went dark, and Adam turned to see that the doors had closed silently behind them. He swallowed nervously and blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted to the dim light from two small windows.

‘Keep up!’

The headmaster was already several paces ahead, and Adam hurried to catch up. They went straight to a door at the back of the room and into a passage beyond. As they descended a narrow flight of stairs, Adam started to have suspicions that this was not the regular museum tour.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘You’ll see,’ the headmaster replied. He’d come to a door, which he pushed open. ‘In there.’

Adam went into the room. He fully expected the headmaster to follow, but was surprised when he heard the door shut and the snick of a key turning. He spun around. Sure enough the door was shut.

‘What the…’

He tried the knob. Locked. He banged his hand on the door and shouted, ‘Oi, let me out, scumbag!’

But no one came, and the door remained firmly locked.

He turned back to the room. Diffuse light came through glass blocks in the ceiling. Adam remembered seeing such blocks set into the pavement outside: the room was below the street. There was a long table in the middle of the room, laid out with a collection of objects.

This didn’t look like the usual museum stuff; old, beaten up, barely recognisable and worn through generations of kids touching and poking despite the teachers warning them not to. No, this looked like the real deal. The things on the table didn’t even look
old
. Some were barely even scratched. These was the kinds of things that, if the Kingsmen caught you with them, you weren’t just arrested, you were
disappeared
. Adam had heard stories: a friend of a friend that somebody knew had found something and been caught, and they were never seen again. Everyone knew, or thought they knew. So why did the headmaster lock him in a room full of the stuff? Was it to get rid of him? Was it a test? To see if he could resist temptation?

Well, he wasn’t going to play that game.

He wandered down the table, looking at the devices. Most of them just looked like boxes of some kind, some metal, others plastic. Small ones that could fit in your hand; big ones that would take an effort to carry. Some had knobs or buttons on them, others had wires attached. At the far end there was a strange looking three wheeled buggy, with metal poles attached to it, and a big fabric sheet at the top, like the wing of a bird. It had three large black shiny blades, at the back, like giant knives. Adam had never seen anything quite like it.
 

He picked up one of the smaller devices. It had buttons and knobs on it, and a rubber stick on the end. It felt heavy in his hand, and that intrigued him.

‘You know what that is?’ The voice was female and sultry and took Adam by surprise. He dropped the device, which clattered on the table. Slowly he raised his hands in the air.

‘I never touched it!’ Adam said, denying the obvious.

A few seconds later, when nothing had happened and the voice hadn’t spoken again, Adam dared to breathe, and cautiously lowered his hands. Perhaps the movement wafted the air, because he noticed the very slightest hint of perfume.

‘It’s a radio,’ the voice said again. Adam’s hands shot back up. ‘It’s used for talking to people that are a long way away. It works.’

When Adam didn’t move, the voice continued. ‘Put your hands down, you look silly.’

Adam lowered his hands and slowly turned. The woman standing in front of him wore black. He supposed that was why he hadn’t seen her in the shadows. She looked to be in her early twenties, pale face framed by straight shoulder length auburn-red hair with a fringe that cut neatly across her eyebrows. Her eyes were green, her nose was small and her lips, picked out in a thin line of dark red gloss were twisted up in the merest hint of a smile.

As she stepped out of the shadows, Adam noticed how close-fitting her clothes were. But even more than that, he noticed the golden crown emblem embroidered on her sleeve. She was a Kingsman.

His mouth dropped open. ‘What… Look… I only… Who… The headmaster locked me in here,’ he finally blurted. He was going to be
disappeared
, he knew it.

‘You don’t need to know who I am,’ she said, answering his unarticulated question. ‘And no, you’re not in trouble for handling the radio.’

The relief Adam felt was instant, and a big grin started spreading across his face.

She turned her attention to the devices on the table. ‘These are a collection of prohibited devices from the Dark Times. They were all… recovered… from people that were caught using them.’ She paused for effect, ‘I’m sure you know what that means.’