Boy 23 Read online

  I scamper across the big entrance hall, the stone floor cold beneath my bare feet. I head over to the large double doors that lead to the food hall, where the daily slop gets dished out.

  As I get to the door I reach into my pocket and take out a hairgrip, checking behind me once more before sliding the grip into the lock. I work it around inside, listening and feeling for clicks and clunks, adjusting as I go. After a minute it unlocks with a final clunk and I push the door. I’m inside.

  I hurry across the food hall, where the smell of greasy cooked meat hangs thickly in the air. At the far end is the door to the kitchen, which I pick and let myself in. I head straight for the cupboards, ignoring those with food meant for us girls and boys and making for the supplies reserved for the priests. Inside I find what I’m looking for – bread, ham, cheese and biscuits – and I help myself to a little of each.

  Jesper

  I yomp through the night, following the arrow on the scroll, and I try to convince myself this is the most natural thing in the world. Only it isn’t natural. It doesn’t feel right. Cos for a start, it’s night-time and that means I ought to be asleep. And for another, the wind is cold and biting. Even the ground feels strange. The grass is wet and springy under my feet and that’s all right. But all the rocks and stones? Well, I can feel them poking into the bottoms of my shoes as I walk over them.

  It feels weird being able to go wherever I decide, that there aren’t any edges or walls or locked doors. I can decide to walk to my left or my right or backwards, and nothing’s in the way and nothing stops me.

  But I don’t go wherever I want, do I? I go north-west, like The Voice told me, checking the scroll every few minutes. Cos if I keep walking in the direction The Voice said, surely everything will be all right. Everything will start to make sense soon.

  The darkness hides everything. Someone (or something) could be hidden from view, prying on me, waiting for me. (Cos they’re always prying, aren’t they?) With every nervous step I take, my eyes squizz this way and that for movement. My ears tune into the silence, waiting for the tiniest sound.

  And there are loads.

  ‘A-HOOOOT.’

  I stop in my tracks, terrified, holding my breath.

  I squizz into the darkness all around, trying to figure out what made the noise.

  Except all I see is darkness.

  Shadowy outlines of trees.

  The sky and the stars and the moon.

  All cloaked in darkness.

  And then the noise again. ‘A-HOOOOT.’

  I stay frozen to the spot, still squizzing, still listening.

  But I think I’ve worked out what it is. It’s gotta be an owl, hasn’t it – a scary-looking squawk with enormous haunting eyes? And then I remember the bag on my back and I carefully take it off, open it and silently take out the torch. I press the button on it. Nothing happens. So I stare at the torch and I work out why; there’s a handle on it cos it’s one of the wind-up ones. I turn the handle – round and round, trying to do it quietly – until I’ve counted to a hundred in my head, and this time when I press the button a beam of bright white light shoots out. I aim it into the darkness, lighting up the bushes and trees, showing their real colours – brown and green and all the colours in between. But I don’t see any haunted eyes prying out from the bushes. No owl.

  I’m not taking any chances though. I get the knife from my pocket. And then I carry on walking, torch in one hand and the knife (biggest, sharpest blade out) in the other. Only now I’m not so much yomping along as edging forward, nervous, cos I’m wondering what else is out there.

  Up ahead is a bend in the path, and as I reach it my torch beam catches something hidden away in the bushes and trees. A building, made of stone, just like My Place.

  I creep forward, thinking all the time about what I know from The Screen about buildings. They’re where people live and work, aren’t they? And The Voice told me not to go near people. My heart is beating so fast it feels like it’s gonna thump its way outta my chest.

  I calm myself with deep breaths.

  I have to go to the building, don’t I?

  Cos buildings also have things inside them that could help me work out what’s going on, what the Low Countries are. There could be a screen. I could speak to The Voice through it. Maybe this is what I’m meant to do – this building’s been put here for me to find.

  Or.

  Cos there is an ‘or’.

  Or maybe it’s a trap.

  I take one wary step at a time, squizzing nervously around.

  As I get closer, I see the building’s all beaten up. Worse than beaten up – it looks wrecked, falling down. Bits of wall are missing. Plants have started to grow up and over and through it, like they’re trying to hide it away. And as I walk closer, I see a tatty sign standing on a post in the ground. It’s yellow and black and there are words on it which are starting to fade to nothing. Only they’re words that don’t make any sense, cos they’re not really words at all, just letters that make no sense:

  WARNUNG. NICHT BETRETEN. KONTAMINIERTER BEREICH

  There’s a symbol on it too – like three C shapes joined together, on top of an o: And I have no idea what it is, what it means.

  Where the windows should be, there’s nothing but air. This place looks like it’s been hit by a bomb. And that makes me think that maybe there aren’t any people in this building – cos who’d want to live in a place like this?

  I shine the torch through the gap where the glass should be, but the gloom swallows up all the light and I still can’t see anything. So I continue creeping round the outside, dragging my hand along cold rough stone walls as I go, till I come to a doorway with no door.

  Beyond the doorway is more deep darkness – empty, black, ready to swallow everything. My torch beam cuts enough of a hole in the dark so I can see where I’m going. I walk through the doorway, feeling the ground beneath me, hearing it crunch as I step, feeling my heart pound in my chest.

  When I’m inside, I see there isn’t much here – broken walls, scrubby grass, bushes, trees growing up from the ground and out of the walls. It looks like there must’ve been squawks in here, cos the floor is covered in their dung. I squizz up to see if I can spot them roosting, thinking about Feathers, about how he’ll still be in My Place, snoozing on his perch in his cage, wondering where I’ve gone. But all I see above is sky and stars and the outlines of tree branches, and I realise that there isn’t a roof or a ceiling or anything. It’s been smashed to pieces. And when I shine the torch down on the ground, I see that most of the roof’s fallen down and broken into hundreds of pieces on the floor. Some of the pieces are black and charred like they’ve been burned.

  I move slowly and carefully through the building. The bad news is there isn’t much of anything – no screen, no bed, no food, no chair. But there are walls, and that makes me feel better, cos walls are safe.

  I sit down on the dirty ground, wrap the blanket around myself and make a decision. I’m gonna stay here till it gets light, until it’s daytime. Maybe things’ll make more sense when I can see properly.

  Or maybe I’ll wake up back in My Place and find none of this has really happened.

  Carina

  Inga stumbles into the dormitory looking bedraggled – hair tangled and matted and clothes even dirtier than is usual for this place.

  She’s been out for a week.

  The dormitory pauses to look round and stare at her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I ask as she approaches my bed.

  She looks up at me and says nothing.

  ‘Did they beat you?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘New Dawn?’

  She nods again. ‘And Father Frei too, when I was brought back.’

  Neither of us speaks for a second or two. I can sense the rest of the dorm is going back about its business.

  ‘Where did you get to?’

  Inga sighs. ‘About ten kilometres from the town where my
uncle and aunt used to live. I know people there. They would have taken me in . . .’

  ‘So what happened?’

  She shrugs. ‘I hadn’t eaten for three days. I was starving, and I saw some bread in a house, just inside a window. So I broke the glass and took the bread. And then they caught me.’

  ‘That’s bad luck.’

  Inga shakes her head. ‘It was stupidity,’ she says. ‘Another few hours and I’d have had all the food I needed.’

  And she shuffles on towards her bed.

  Jesper

  The digits of the clock on my wall change to 19:00 just as I squizz up at it. I hear a clunk as the door hatch opens. I drag my finger across The Scroll in an X to switch it off. I head straight for the hatch cos I’m starving and I can already smell my provisions.

  I take a squizz under the metal bowl that covers my plate, keeping my food warm. And I’m amazed, cos it’s roast chicken, potatoes and gravy – absolutely my favourite meal. The smell is fantastic. I take it to my table, sit down and start scoffing right away.

  Feathers flutters around his cage as I eat, chattering to himself. Then he perches on the side of the cage and pecks at it with his beak. And that makes me feel bad, cos he’s shut in. My knife and fork clatter on to my plate as I get up and open the wire door. Feathers doesn’t waste any time – he flies outta the cage, wings beating at a million miles an hour, and he’s off flying laps of My Place.

  I sit back at the table, tuck into my dinner again, wondering, thinking, until Feathers lands on the table and stands right in front of me, gawping straight at me, making the funny clicking noises he sometimes makes with his beak and his throat.

  ‘What’s up, Feathers?’

  Except he doesn’t answer, does he? He just waddles around my table and then takes off and flies around the room again.

  All of a sudden there’s a voice (The Voice) and it makes me jump. ‘Are you enjoying your food?’

  I squizz over to The Screen, which has just started to show one of my favourite clips – the one where this man makes a camp and catches a bushtail and makes a fire to cook it on.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good, Jesper. Savour every last mouthful of it, won’t you?’

  So I eat, like The Voice says, but in my head I’m thinking, What’s this all about? Cos this isn’t what normally happens. There weren’t any tests today and I didn’t earn any credit, so I shouldn’t have rewards. I didn’t get asked to choose a clip or what food I wanted, but still I got my favourites. That isn’t right, is it?

  So, eventually, I decide to say something. ‘What’s happening?’

  There’s quiet, except for the sound of me scoffing more chicken meat, slurping up gravy to stop it running down my chin, and Feathers’ wings beating the air as he flies to the top of The Screen.

  ‘How come I got my favourites today? The food and the clips.’

  And still there isn’t an answer, not for ages. It’s like The Voice is thinking of what to say, and that isn’t like The Voice at all, cos it always knows everything straight away, quicker than looking something up on The Scroll.

  ‘This is to mark a special occasion, Jesper.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘For all your achievements, Jesper. To mark a change in your life. You’re becoming a man.’

  And I don’t know what The Voice means, but seeing as I’ve got my favourite food and my clip, I decide not to ask any more questions, but to enjoy them instead. So that’s what I do – finish my provisions and watch the clip, and when that’s done I have a shower, change into my nightclothes, clean my teeth and all that sort of stuff.

  When I come back through, I grab the water from my provisions and I drink it all back in one go. It’s down my throat and in my guts before I realise what I’ve just done, what was in the water. Cos it tasted bitter, didn’t it? And I know exactly what that means. But it’s already too late. There’s nothing I can do about it apart from make myself sick. And if I tried that, they’d realise what I was doing.

  And this time the bitter water must be stronger than normal, cos as I pick up the tray to take it back to the hatch, I get this dizzy feeling, like the world’s swaying. I stop for a second to let it pass. Only all that happens is another rush of dizziness fills my head, and before I know it the tray slips from my hands and crashes on to the floor.

  The room lurches. Everything swirls, nothing staying still. I close my eyes to try to stop it moving, but that doesn’t work, does it? The whole world spins. And my thoughts spin with it and I’m thinking about the tray and that it needs to be picked up, and how my hands feel strange, like my fingers are too big and too sensitive. And the walls – I’m suddenly thinking about how they’re white and I’m wondering if they were always white or did they used to be grey, and I’m wondering who changed them if they did. And Feathers – cos if I sleep now, who’s gonna put him back in his cage?

  And then I realise I can’t feel my legs any more and I start wondering whether they’re even there. And then I’m falling on to my bed, lying there, unable to move, not even to open my eyes.

  I hear a voice echoing through my brain: ‘Sleep well, Jesper. Tomorrow’s the day.’

  And the rest is darkness.

  I don’t hear any cock-a-doodle-doo of the Waking Sound, but I wake up anyway and I open my eyes and squizz around. My eyes don’t see what they’re hoping to though. There’s no tray with provisions waiting for me, and no hatch in the door for it to come through neither.

  Cos I’m not back in My Place, am I?

  I’m scrunched up underneath a scratchy blanket in a dirty, broken building full of squawk dung and cold air.

  Above me, through the broken roof, I see the tops of trees and light beginning to creep into the sky, cancelling out the stars.

  I rub my eyes.

  I tried to stay awake through the night, watching the darkness in case something happened. But I must have fallen asleep. All I remember is my eyes feeling heavy and closing them for a second.

  But now it’s morning and the sky’s full of light. And maybe that’ll make it easier to see where I’m going, to figure out what’s happening.

  There are noises above me. Whistling. Cracking. Something’s alive in the trees above the building, prying down on me. And I don’t like it. It can see me but I can’t see it.

  I squizz around where I’m sitting, find the knife – biggest, sharpest blade still out – and I hold the handle tightly. I gawp around at the tree above. Something moves suddenly amongst the leaves. I tighten my grip on the knife.

  Then I hear a flapping noise and I look up. An enormous funny-looking black squawk flies from the tree, up into the sky, big wings beating so hard I can feel the air move.

  It’s just a stupid squawk. I’m safe.

  And I’m an idiot too. Frightened by a little squawk. It was twice the size of Feathers, but it’s still only a bundle of feathers and a beak and some eyes. It couldn’t do me any harm.

  I shift myself on my bed of squawk dung and dust and blanket. The fuzziness in my head has gone, but I feel hungry and thirsty. I take the food and water from the bag. There’s just a little dribbly bit of water left, which I finish in one gulp. The bread and cheese and fruit’s squashed, but I’m too hungry to care, so I scoff it all.

  Except when it’s all gone I don’t feel any better. Still hungry. Still thirsty. Still confused.

  This is the first day ever when it’s been morning and there are no provisions left for me. They’re always there without fail. I gotta find a way to get more food.

  And while all those thoughts are bouncing around my head, I realise something else, cos I haven’t been to the toilet in ages and right now I need to go.

  Only where do you go to the toilet when your toilet isn’t there?

  Cos I already know there isn’t a toilet in this building – I checked last night.

  I shiver as I get out of bed, creep outside into the forest and find a place amongst all the bushes to squat and
do my business. And while I’m at it, I do some thinking about the things I know:

  • The Voice said to head north-west, to the Low Countries. (And I have to do what The Voice says, because that’s who gives me what I need, who keeps me safe.)

  • I have a map on the scroll to guide me.

  • The Screen and The Voice have been teaching me things lately that I can use – like working out from the sun what time of day it is, and how to make fires to keep warm and cook. (Maybe what’s happening is they’re testing me to check I’ve learned it.)

  • Someone from My Place is probably following me, but I don’t know who they are or what they look like, cos I never saw anyone before in my whole life.

  I squizz around for something to wipe my backside on and I see something, hidden amongst the trees and bushes. There are crosses stuck in the ground – each made of two bits of wood tied together. A shiver runs down my spine. Because I’ve seen things like that on The Screen. On graves.

  I pull my trousers up in a hurry and run back to the building, then scramble around getting all my things together and into the bag as fast as I can. I don’t want to be near dead people. I have to keep moving. So I yomp out into the forest again, knife in hand, following the arrow on the scroll.

  Blake

  The sun’s beginning to come up behind the main building, as I approach. I’m met by armed guards before I get to the door.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I ask. ‘The power in my quarters is out.’

  ‘Power’s down in the whole facility, Mr Blake, sir,’ the guard answers.

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Technicians are trying to restore it right now. You need me to let you in?’

  I nod.

  The guard puts a key into the bottom of what’s meant to be an automatic door and then slowly pushes it open.