Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (23 page)

And then of course I see the answer.

Mayor Prentiss, not even holding a gun, just one hand on his horse’s reins, the other at his side, riding into town like he’s out for an evening canter. He’s watching the rout of Farbranch as if it was a vid and not a very interesting one at that, letting everyone else do the work but so obviously in charge no one would even think of asking him to break a sweat.

How can he make so many men do what he wants?

And is he bulletproof that he can ride so fearlessly?

“Todd,” Viola says behind me. “I swear, I’ll leave without you.”

“No, you won’t,” I say. “One more second.”

Cuz I’m looking from face to face now, ain’t I? I’m going from Prentisstown man to Prentisstown man cuz even if they’re marching into town and are gonna find out soon enough that neither me nor Viola are there and are gonna have to come this way after us, I gotta know.

I gotta know.

Face to face to face as they march and shoot and burn. Mr Wallace, Mr Asbjornsen, Mr St James, Mr Belgraves, Mr Smith the Older, Mr Smith the Younger, Mr Smith With Nine Fingers, even Mr Marjoribanks, wobbling and teetering but marching marching marching. Prentisstown man after Prentisstown man after Prentisstown man, my heart clenching and burning at each one I can identify.

“They ain’t there,” I say, almost to myself.

“Who isn’t?” Viola says.

“Ain’t!” Manchee barks, licking at his tail.

They ain’t there.

Ben and Cillian ain’t there.

Which, of course, is grand, ain’t it? Of course they ain’t part of an army of killers. Of
course
they ain’t, even when every other Prentisstown man is. They wouldn’t be. Not never, not no how, no matter what.

Good men,
great
men, both, even Cillian.

But if that’s true, then that means the other is true, too, don’t it?

If they ain’t there, then that means once and for all.

And there’s yer lesson.

There ain’t nothing good that don’t got real bad waiting to follow it.

I hope they put up the best fight ever.

I take the binos from my face and I look down and I wipe my eyes with my sleeve and I turn and I hand Viola back the binos and I say, “Let’s go.”

She takes them from me, squirming a little like she’s itching to leave, but then she says, “I’m sorry,” so she musta seen it in my Noise.

“Nothing that ain’t already happened,” I say, talking to the ground and readjusting the rucksack. “C’mon, before I put us in danger any worse.”

I take off up the path towards the top of the hill, keeping my head down, motoring fast, Viola after me, Manchee trying to keep himself from biting at his tail as we run.

Viola matches my speed before we get far at all. “Did you see . . . him?” she says, between breaths.

“Aaron?”

She nods.

“No,” I say. “Come to think of it, no, I didn’t. And you’d think he’d be out in front.”

We’re quiet for a minute as we hurry on our way and wonder what that means.

The road on this side of the valley is wider and we’re doing our best to keep to the darker side of it as it twists and turns up the hill. Our only lights are the moons but they’re bright enough to cast our shadows running along the road which is too bright when yer running away. I never seen no night vision binos in Prentisstown but I didn’t see no army neither so we’re both crouching as we run without either of us saying that we will. Manchee’s running on ahead of us, his nose to the ground, barking, “This way! This way!” as if he knows any better than us where we’re going.

Then at the top of the hill, the road forks.

Which just figures.

“You gotta be kidding,” I say.

One part of the road goes left, the other goes right.

(Well, it’s a
fork,
ain’t it?)

“The creek in Farbranch was flowing to the right,” Viola says, “and the main river was always to our right once we crossed the bridge, so it’s got to be the right fork if we want to get back there.”

“But the left looks more travelled,” I say. And it does. The left fork looks smoother, flatter, like the kinda thing you should be rolling carts over. The right fork is narrower with higher bushes on each side and even tho it’s night you can just tell it’s dusty. “Did Francia say anything about a fork?” I look back over my shoulder at the valley still erupting behind us.

“No,” Viola says, also looking back. “She just said Haven was the first settlement and new settlements sprang up down the river as people moved west. Prentisstown was the farthest out. Farbranch was second farthest.”

“That one probably goes to the river,” I say, pointing right, then left, “that one probably goes to Haven in a straight line.”

“Which one will they think we took?”

“We need to decide,” I say. “Quickly now.”

“To the right,” she says, then turns it into an asking. “To the right?”

We hear a
BOOM
that makes us jump. A mushroom of smoke is rising in the air over Farbranch. The barn where I worked all day is on fire.

Maybe our story will turn out differently if we take the left fork, maybe the bad things that are waiting to happen to us won’t happen, maybe there’s happiness at the end of the left fork and warm places with the people who love us and no Noise but no silence neither and there’s plenty of food and no one dies and no one dies and no one never never dies.

Maybe.

But I doubt it.

I ain’t what you call a lucky person.

“Right,” I decide. “Might as well be right.”

We run down the right fork, Manchee at our heels, the night and a dusty road stretching out in front of us, an army and a disaster behind us, me and Viola, running side by side.

We run till we can’t run and then we walk fast till we can run again. The sounds of Farbranch disappear behind us right quick and all we can hear are our footsteps beating on the path and my Noise and Manchee’s barking. If there are night creachers out there, we’re scaring ’em away.

Which is probably good.

“What’s the next settlement?” I gasp after a good half hour’s run-walking. “Did Francia say?”

“Shining Beacon,” Viola says, gasping herself. “Or Shining Light.” She scrunches her face. “
Blazing
Light. Blazing Beacon?”

“That’s helpful.”

“Wait.” She stops in the path, bending at the waist to catch her breath. I stop, too. “I need water.”

I hold up my hands in a way that says
And?
“So do I,” I say. “You got some?”

She looks at me, her eyebrows up. “Oh.”

“There was always a river.”

“I guess we’d better find it then.”

“I guess so.” I take a deep breath to start running again.

“Todd,” she says, stopping me. “I’ve been thinking?”

“Yeah?” I say.

“Blazing Lights or whatever?”

“Yeah?”

“If you look at it one way,” she lowers her voice to a sad and uncomfortable sound and says it again, “if you look at it one way, we led an army into Farbranch.”

I lick the dryness of my lips. I taste dust. And I know what she’s saying.

“You must warn them,”
she says quietly, into the dark. “I’m sorry, but–”

“We can’t go into any other settlements,” I say.

“I don’t think we can.”

“Not till Haven.”

“Not until Haven,” she says, “which we have to hope is big enough to handle an army.”

So, that’s that then. In case we needed any further reminding, we’re really on our own. Really and truly. Me and Viola and Manchee and the darkness for company. No one on the road to help us till the end, if even there, which knowing our luck so far–

I close my eyes.

I am Todd Hewitt,
I think.
When it goes midnight I will be a man in twenty-seven days. I am the son of my ma and pa, may they rest in peace. I am the son of Ben and Cillian, may they–

I am Todd Hewitt.

“I’m Viola Eade,” Viola says.

I open my eyes. She has her hand out, palm down, held towards me.

“That’s my surname,” she says. “Eade. E-A-D-E.”

I look at her for a second and then down at her outstretched hand and I reach out and I take it and press it inside my own and a second later I let go.

I shrug my shoulders to reset my rucksack. I put my hand behind my back to feel the knife and make sure it’s still there. I give poor, panting, half-tail Manchee a look and then match eyes with Viola.

“Viola Eade,” I say, and she nods.

And off we run into further night.

“How can it be this far?” Viola asks. “It doesn’t make any logical sense.”

“Is there another kind of sense it does make?”

She frowns. So do I. We’re tired and getting tireder and trying not to think of what we saw at Farbranch and we’ve walked and run what feels like half the night and still no river. I’m starting to get afraid we’ve taken a seriously wrong turning which we can’t do nothing about cuz there ain’t no turning back.

“
Isn’t any
turning back,” I hear Viola say behind me, under her breath.

I turn to her, eyes wide. “That’s wrong on two counts,” I say. “Number one, constantly reading people’s Noise ain’t gonna get you much welcome here.”

She crosses her arms and sets her shoulders. “And the second?”

“The second is I talk how I please.”

“Yes,” Viola says. “That you do.”

My Noise starts to rise a bit and I take a deep breath but then she says, “Shhh,” and her eyes glint in the moonlight as she looks beyond me.

The sound of running water.

“River!” Manchee barks.

We take off down the road and round a corner and down a slope and round another corner and there’s the river, wider, flatter and slower than when we saw it last but just as wet. We don’t say nothing, just drop to our knees on the rocks at water’s edge and drink, Manchee wading in up to his belly to start lapping.

Viola’s next to me and as I slurp away, there’s her silence again. It’s a two-way thing, this is. However clear she can hear my Noise, well, out here alone, away from the chatter of others or the Noise of a settlement, there’s her silence, loud as a roar, pulling at me like the greatest sadness ever, like I want to take it and press myself into it and just disappear forever down into nothing.

What a relief that would feel like right now. What a blessed relief.

“I can’t avoid hearing you, you know,” she says, standing up and opening her bag. “When it’s quiet and just the two of us.”

“And I can’t avoid not hearing you,” I say. “No matter what it’s like.” I whistle for Manchee. “Outta the water. There might be snakes.”

He’s ducking his rump under the current, swishing back and forth until the bandage comes off and floats away. Then he leaps out and immediately sets to licking his tail.

“Let me see,” I say. He barks “Todd!” in agreement but when I come near he curls his tail as far under his belly as the new length will go. I uncurl it gently, Manchee murmuring “Tail, tail” to himself all the while.

“Whaddyaknow?” I say. “Those bandages work on dogs.”

Viola’s fished out two discs from her bag. She presses her thumbs inside them and they expand right up into water bottles. She kneels by the river, fills both, and tosses one to me.

“Thanks,” I say, not really looking at her.

She wipes some water from her bottle. We stand on the riverbank for a second and she’s putting her water bottle back into her bag and she’s quiet in a way that I’m learning means she’s trying to say something difficult.

“I don’t mean any offence by it,” she says, looking up to me, “but I think maybe it’s time I read the note on the map.”

I can feel myself redden, even in the dark, and I can also feel myself get ready to argue.

But then I just sigh. I’m tired and it’s late and we’re running
again
and she’s right, ain’t she? There’s nothing but spitefulness that’ll argue she’s wrong.

I drop my rucksack and take out the book, unfolding the map from inside the front cover. I hand it to her without looking at her. She takes out her torch and shines it on the paper, turning it over to Ben’s message. To my surprise, she starts reading it out loud and all of sudden, even with her own voice, it’s like Ben’s is ringing down the river, echoing from Prentisstown and hitting my chest like a punch.

“Go to the settlement down the river and across the bridge,”
she reads.
“It’s called Farbranch and the people there should welcome you.”

“And they did,” I say. “Some of them.”

Viola continues,
“There are things you don’t know about our history, Todd, and I’m sorry for that but if you knew them you would be in great danger. The only chance you have of a welcome is yer innocence.”

I feel myself redden even more but fortunately it’s too dark to see.

“Yer ma’s book will tell you more but in the meantime, the wider world has to be warned, Todd. Prentisstown is on the move. The plan has been in the works for years, only waiting for the last boy in Prentisstown to become a man.”
She looks up. “Is that you?”

“That’s me,” I say, “I was the youngest boy. I turn thirteen in twenty-seven days and officially become a man according to Prentisstown law.”