Web of Fire Bind-up (9 page)

But what struck Sam most about her were her sparkling blue eyes. They shimmered with light, like the surface of the ocean on a summer's morning, and, for the first time since arriving in this terrible place, he felt the loneliness begin to drain out of him.

The girl brought her hand up in front of her chest and gave him the tiniest of waves. ‘Hello, Sam.' She smiled warmly at him.

‘Hello, Skipper,' Sam replied. He was about to smile back when a sharp blow in his stomach doubled him over and left him gasping for air.

‘Eyes front, prisoner!' yelled the guard, jabbing him again with the heavy baton. He grabbed Sam by the front of his uniform and slammed him up against the wall. Sam cried out in pain and fright.

‘You'd better be a real fast learner, son,' the guard whispered nastily as Sam struggled to get his breath back. ‘Cos if you ain't, me and my stick are gonna teach you real quick. Understand?'

‘Yes,' said Sam, his voice shaking. ‘I understand.'

He struggled to stand up straight again and tried not to show his fear. His body was bruised and he ached all over.

‘Now fall in, prisoner!' shouted the man.

As Sam limped over to join the others, he caught sight of a cross-eyed Skipper pointing at the guard's back and scratching under her arms like a chimpanzee.

In spite of the pain, he managed a weak smile and took his place in the line.

The column of prisoners halted at the tall iron gates on the far side of the courtyard, waiting for them to be unlocked. Although it was still dark, the stars were beginning to fade as morning approached, and the moons lay hidden in cloud.

Over to his left, Sam could see a group of new arrivals standing on the unloading ramp, caught in the cold glare of the metal lamps that shone from the top of the wooden huts. A group of men had been separated from the others and made to stand to attention, facing the wall. They were chained to iron rings and a guard was trying to hold back his dog as it barked fiercely at them, straining at its leash. Sam noticed that the guard was smiling. He shouted something to one of the other
soldiers, who laughed loudly, his smoky breath forming like a small ghost in the bitter morning air. Sam shivered and turned away.

The gates creaked open and the prisoners moved forward once more. Sam saw how thin and undernourished they all looked, shuffling along in filthy grey uniforms, their sad hollow eyes staring out at a life that had become merely an exercise in staying alive. He remembered what he had heard on the radio about enemies of the state being re-educated.
Some education,
he thought bitterly.

After following a muddy path through the woods for about a mile, they emerged in an open expanse of land where hundreds of trees had been recently felled. The ground was dotted with roughly hewn tree stumps and piles of freshly cut timber were stacked up on either side of a long straight road that stretched away into the distance. Running alongside the road was a high fence topped with razor wire, curled over in an arc to deter intruders and prevent escape. Sam breathed in deeply and caught the scent of sawdust and pine needles on the icy wind.

Beyond the fence he could make out groups of buildings dotted across the compound and what appeared to be vast squadrons of aircraft laid out as far as the eye could see. Powerful searchlights played back and forth across the area, their white beams occasionally sweeping along the line of prisoners and forcing Sam to screw up his eyes against their harsh light. In the middle of the whole set-up was a tall building with large windows
around the top which Sam presumed was the control tower. He felt sure that it was an airfield of some sort, but where were the runways?

The road branched off into the compound, which comprised of row upon row of military barracks, vast aircraft hangars and a complex of workshops and factories with chimneys belching black smoke into the darkness. The gates swung open and a barrier across the road rose with a mechanical whine. In the distance Sam could hear the hum of electrical generators and the muffled sound of heavy machinery whirring and thumping through the stillness of the morning.

As they continued their way across the compound Sam noticed that Skipper had moved up the line and was now walking beside him.

‘What do you think?' she said. ‘Pretty impressive, huh?'

‘What are you doing, Skipper?' Sam whispered anxiously. ‘Get back in line. They'll kill you if they see you!'

‘Relax,' said Skipper. ‘There's only two of them now and they're just thinking about the end of their shift. Look.' She nodded towards the front of the line.

Sam looked around nervously to see who else might be watching, but discovered to his relief that the guards who had escorted them from the prison had gone. Only two remained: one at the head of the column and another one bringing up the rear.

‘What is this place anyway?' asked Sam. ‘It looks like an airport or something, but there aren't any runways.'

‘What would they need runways for?' said Skipper.

‘Well, how else are the aircraft going to take off?' said Sam. ‘Maybe they just store them here or something.'

‘Oh, they take off all right,' said Skipper. ‘Believe me. I've got the scars to prove it.'

Sam was puzzled. ‘What do you mean?' he asked.

The prisoners at the front of the line were disappearing around the corner of a large building and, as they approached it, Skipper said simply, ‘Take a look for yourself.'

They turned the corner and Sam let out a cry of shock, put one hand up to his mouth and used the other to steady himself against the wall.

A few metres away, the huge green eyes of an enormous horsefly bulged from its monstrous head, suffused in the half-light with a dull metallic sheen. It was the size of a jet fighter and it crouched above them on six gigantic legs, each covered in coarse black hairs the thickness of industrial power cables. Two sharp, scissor-like blades protruded from its mouth and folded back behind its thorax was a pair of translucent, smoke-coloured wings with black veins running through them. They moved slightly in the breeze and the sound was like canvas flapping in the wind.

Sam felt a small hand in his and the next thing he knew he was being pulled away from the wall by Skipper, whose strength was obviously much greater than her small frame suggested. She looked at him apologetically.

‘Sorry, Sam,' she said. ‘I should have warned you. Not a pretty sight, are they?'

She brushed some dust from his arm and then pushed him forward as others began to overtake.

‘Better keep moving. We don't want old Stick Boy teaching you any more lessons, do we?'

Sam stumbled forward and fell into step with the others, unable to keep his eyes from the incredible sight that surrounded him. He realised now that the lines of aircraft he had seen earlier were in fact massed ranks of huge insects. In spite of his initial terror at encountering these monsters at such close range, his natural curiosity was already beginning to take over.

The nearest insects were all horseflies of the type he had seen in his bedroom. When was it? The day before yesterday? Longer?

It already seemed half a lifetime ago.

They were lined up in rows of maybe twenty or thirty, and the rows stretched away in columns that reached far into the distance.

Up ahead he could see several fields covered with more insects, but these appeared thinner, lighter and more graceful. Their legs were skinny and their slender abdomens pointed upwards at an angle to their heads. A long tube tapering to a sharp point stuck out from the front of each one and Sam immediately recognised them as mosquitoes.

‘Look over there,' said Skipper proudly, pointing towards the control tower.

Sam followed her gaze to a point a few hundred metres short of the tower. An area had been cordoned off
with coloured tape beyond which Sam could make out what appeared to be the black and yellow wreckage of an enormous wasp. Its thorax was partially caved in and one of the wings was missing.

‘Bit of a shame really,' Skipper went on. ‘I only had it serviced last week.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Sam. Once again, he had no idea what Skipper was talking about.

‘Sorry, Sam. I keep forgetting you're new to all this.' She looked ruefully across to where the smashed insect lay. ‘That was my wasp. I crashed it into the compound in the hope they'd lock me up in solitary. We've known for a while that they save the top floor of this prison for special cases while they figure out what to do with them. So we worked out that's where you'd be too.' She smiled. ‘Clever, eh?'

Sam was even more confused by this revelation, but before he could ask any more questions the group stopped by the entrance to a large, whitewashed building with a tangle of shiny steel pipes sprouting from its walls. There were no windows, but Sam could see clouds of steam rising steadily from vents somewhere high up in the roof. A metal door opened to reveal long strips of thick, transparent plastic hanging down across the entrance.

The guard at the front of the line spoke into a small grille and a few seconds later a man dressed in a green rubber suit pushed his way out through the plastic. He had two cylindrical tanks on his back connected to a
black hose with a silver nozzle on the end of it, which he held in his right hand.

The guard pulled the first prisoner forward and the man in the rubber suit began spraying him all over with a white powder. Apparently used to this routine, the prisoner held open the neck of his boiler suit to allow himself to be sprayed inside as well as out.

‘What are they doing now?' whispered Sam.

‘Don't worry,' Skipper reassured him. ‘It's just disinfectant. They don't want anything to happen to their precious babies, you see.'

The line shuffled forward as the first prisoner entered the building and the next stepped forward to be sprayed.

‘Babies?' said Sam. ‘What babies?'

‘Inside are the larvae tanks,' explained Skipper quietly. ‘This is where they breed the mosquito larvae so that they can make those things.' She nodded towards the fields of mosquitoes in front of them. ‘Lovely, aren't they?'

‘Seriously?' said Sam. It sounded incredible, but then so did everything else in this strange, frightening place.

‘Cross my heart and hope to fly,' said Skipper with a grin.

‘I used to collect mosquito larvae,' said Sam, thinking of the tiny wriggling creatures that he used to scoop out of ponds and water butts with a jam jar. ‘I saw one hatch once. It stepped out onto the surface of the water like a little ice skater.' He stared at the ground, remembering. ‘It was a lot smaller than the ones they've got here though,' he added.

Skipper smiled. ‘It's all relative,' she said.

‘What about those?' asked Sam, looking back at the horseflies that towered above the airfield.

‘The horsefly larvae are bred out in the marshes, but they bring the adults to the airbase. That way they can organise all their secret missions from here.'

Sam peered through the gloom at the gruesome features of the nearest fly.

‘Are they dead?' asked Sam. ‘No,' said Skipper.

‘They're not dead. At least, not in the way you mean.'

‘Well, they don't seem to be moving very much,' Sam replied. ‘In fact,' he added, ‘they're not moving at all.'

‘That's because at the moment they're missing a vital component,' explained Skipper. ‘Normally, mosquitoes are driven by their instinct to bite, drink blood and lay eggs. Horseflies are the same. They don't really think about it – they just do it. But the insects you see here are different. In the factory their natural development is interrupted during the final stage of their life cycle so that instinct can be replaced by something else.'

Sam looked at her quizzically but remained silent, listening intently.

‘Instead of instinct,' Skipper continued, ‘they use something that can think for itself.'

In the distance Sam could hear the sound of several vehicles approaching at speed. He shook his head. ‘I don't know what you're talking about,' he said.

At that moment a group of trucks roared onto the
field and skidded to a halt in front of where the horseflies were standing. Seven or eight men leapt from the back of each truck and began running towards the flies, strapping on helmets and masks as they ran.

Skipper looked at Sam and nodded in the direction of the new arrivals. ‘I'm talking about pilots,' she said.

Sam watched as they extended long ladders beside the huge flies and scrambled up to stand on the upper body of the insects. Several flashes of brilliant blue light followed and then the pilots disappeared from view.

Almost immediately there was a low humming sound and Sam saw that the wings of several horseflies were starting to move.

‘Get down!' shouted Skipper.

The next moment Sam was blown off his feet by the powerful downdraught from the enormous wings and the sound of humming rose to a deafening whine. He covered his face with his hands and heard the dust and debris whipping over his head as the ground shook beneath him. Seconds later it was over, and when Sam looked up again the flies were tiny specks in the distant sky.

All around him, prisoners were picking themselves up and dusting themselves down. Sam noticed again the haunted look in their eyes and realised it was the look of hopelessness and despair. He realised that he had never heard any of them speak a single word.

A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. He found himself staring at the man in the rubber suit, who
was pointing the disinfectant nozzle straight at him.

‘I don't think you need to –' Sam began, but his words were quickly lost in a cloud of white powder which left him coughing and gasping for breath.

Rubbing his eyes, he staggered towards the doorway and looked back. He just had time to notice that the sky was growing lighter before he was pushed roughly through the plastic sheets and away from the morning sun that was beginning to rise above the far horizon.