Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (40 page)

Doctor Snow kisses him on the top of the head and ruffles his hair. Jacob goes running back over the bridge towards Doctor Snow’s house. When Doctor Snow turns back to us, a whole raft of pointed guns accompany him.

“You can see how this doesn’t look good, Todd,” he says, and there’s real sadness in his voice.

“He doesn’t know,” Ben says.

“Shut your hole, murderer!” says the beard, gesturing with his rifle.

Murderer?

“Tell me true,” Doctor Snow says to me. “Are you from Prentisstown?”

“He
saved
me from Prentisstown,” Viola speaks up. “If it hadn’t been for him–”

“Shut up, girl,” says the beard.

“Now’s not really the time for women to be talking, Vi,” Doctor Snow says.

“But–” Viola says, her face getting red.

“Please,” Doctor Snow says. Then he looks at Ben. “What have you told your army? How many men we have? What our fortifications are like–”

“I’ve been
running
from the army,” Ben says, hands still in the air. “Look at me. Do I look like a well-tended soldier? I haven’t told them anything. I’ve been on the run, looking for my . . .” He pauses and I know the reason. “For my son,” he says.

“You did this knowing the law?” Doctor Snow asks.

“I know the law,” Ben says. “How could I possibly not know the law?”

“What ruddy LAW?” I yell. “What the hell is everyone talking about?”

“Todd is innocent,” Ben says. “You can search his Noise for as long as you like and you won’t find anything to say I’m lying.”

“You can’t trust them,” says the beard, still looking down his gun. “You know you can’t.”

“We don’t know anything,” Doctor Snow says. “Not for ten years or more.”

“We know they’ve raised themselves into an army,” says the birthmark.

“Yes, but I don’t see any crime in this boy,” Doctor Snow says. “Do you?”

A dozen different Noises come poking at me like sticks.

He turns to Viola. “And all the girl is guilty of is a lie that saved her friend’s life.”

Viola looks away from me, face still red with anger.

“And we’ve got bigger problems,” Doctor Snow continues. “An army coming that may or may not know all about how we’re preparing to meet them.”

“We ain’t SPIES!” I shout.

But Doctor Snow is turning to the other men. “Take the boy and the girl back into town. The girl can go with the women and the boy is well enough to fight alongside us.”

“Wait a minute!” I yell.

Doctor Snow turns to Ben. “And though I do believe you’re just a man out looking for his son, the law’s the law.”

“Is that your final ruling?” the beard says.

“If the eldermen agree,” Doctor Snow says. There’s a general but reluctant nodding of heads, all serious and curt. Doctor Snow looks at me. “I’m sorry, Todd.”

“Hold on!” I say, but the birthmark’s is already stepping forward and grabbing my arm. “Let go of me!”

Another man’s grabbing on to Viola and she’s resisting just as much as I am.

“Ben!” I call, looking back at him. “
Ben!
”

“Go, Todd,” he says.

“No, Ben!”

“Remember I love you.”

“What’re they gonna do?” I say, still pulling away from the birthmark’s hand. I turn to Doctor Snow. “What’re you gonna do?”

He don’t say nothing but I can see it in his Noise.

What the law demands.

“The HELL you are!” I yell and with my free arm I’m already reaching for my knife and bringing it round towards the birthmark’s hand, slicing it across the top. He yelps and lets go.

“Run!” I say to Ben. “Run, already!”

I see Viola biting the hand of the man who’s grabbing her. He calls out and she stumbles back.

“You, too!” I say to her. “Get outta here!”

“I wouldn’t,” says the beard and there are rifles cocking all over the place.

The birthmark is cursing and he raises his arm to strike but I’ve got my knife out in front of me. “Try it,” I say thru my teeth.
“Come on!”

“ENOUGH!” Doctor Snow yells.

And in the sudden silence that follows, we hear the hoofbeats.

Thump budda-thump budda-thump.

Horses. Five of ’em. Ten. Maybe even fifteen.

Roaring down the road like the devil hisself is on their tail.

“Scouts?” I say to Ben tho I know they ain’t.

He shakes his head. “Advance party.”

“They’ll be armed,” I say to Doctor Snow and the men, thinking fast. “They’ll have as many guns as you.”

Doctor Snow’s thinking, too. I can see his Noise whirring, see him thinking how much time they’ve got before the horses get here, how much trouble me and Ben and Viola are going to cause, how much time we’ll waste.

I see him decide.

“Let them go.”

“What?” says the beard, his Noise itching to shoot
something
. “He’s a traitor and a murderer.”

“And we’ve got a town to protect,” Doctor Snow says firmly. “I’ve got a son to keep safe. So do you, Fergal.”

The beard frowns but says nothing more.

Thump budda-thump budda-thump
comes the sound from the road.

Doctor Snow turns to us. “Go,” he says. “I can only hope you haven’t sealed our fate.”

“We haven’t,” I say, “and that’s the truth.”

Doctor Snow purses his lips. “I’d like to believe you.” He turns to the men. “Come on!” he shouts. “Get to your posts! Hurry!”

The group of men breaks up, scurrying back to Carbonel Downs, the beard and the birthmark still seething at us as they go, looking for a reason to use their guns, but we don’t give ’em one. We just watch ’em go.

I find I’m shaking a little.

“Holy crap,” Viola says, bending at the waist.

“We gotta get outta here,” I say. “The army’s gonna be more interested in us than it is in them.”

I still have Viola’s bag with me, tho all it’s got in it any more are a few clothes, the water bottles, the binos and my ma’s book, still in its plastic bag.

All the things we got in the world.

Which means we’re ready to go.

“This is only gonna keep happening,” Ben says. “I can’t come with you.”

“Yes, you can,” I say. “You can leave later but we’re going now and yer coming with us. We ain’t leaving you to be caught by no army.” I look over to Viola. “Right?”

She puts her shoulders back and looks decisive. “Right,” she says.

“That’s settled then,” I say.

Ben looks back and forth twixt the two of us. He furrows his brow. “Only till I know yer safe.”

“Too much talking,” I say. “Not enough running.”

We stay off the river road for obvious reasons and tear thru the trees, heading, as always, towards Haven, snapping thru twigs and branches, getting away from Carbonel Downs as fast as our legs can carry us.

It’s not ten minutes before we hear the first gunshots.

We don’t look back. We don’t look back.

We run and the sounds fade.

We keep running.

Me and Viola are both faster than Ben and sometimes we have to slow down to let him catch up.

We run past one, then two small, empty settlements, places that obviously heeded the rumours about the army better than Carbonel Downs did. We keep to the woods twixt the river and the road but we don’t even see any caravans. They must be high-tailing it to Haven.

On we run.

Night falls and we keep on running.

“You all right?” I ask Ben, when we stop by the river to refill the bottles.

“Keep on going,” he says, gasping. “Keep on going.”

Viola sends me a worried look.

“I’m sorry we don’t got food,” I say, but he just shakes his head and says, “Keep going.”

So we keep going.

Midnight comes and we run thru that, too.

(Who knows how many days? Who cares any more?)

Till finally, Ben says, “Wait,” and stops, hands on his knees, breathing hard in a real unhealthy way.

I look around us by the light of the moons. Viola’s looking, too. She points. “There.”

“Up there, Ben,” I say, pointing up the small hill Viola’s seen. “We’ll be able to get a view.”

Ben don’t say nothing, just gasps and nods his head and follows us. There’s trees all the way up the side but a well-tended path and a wide clearing at the top.

When we get there, we see why.

“A sematary,” I say.

“A what?” Viola says, looking round at all the square stones marking out their graves. Must be a hundred, maybe two, in orderly rows and well-kept grass. Settler life is hard and it’s short and lotsa New World people have lost the battle.

“It’s a place for burying dead folk,” I say.

Her eyes widen. “A place for doing
what
?”

“Don’t people die in space?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she says. “But we burn them. We don’t put them in
holes
.” She crosses her arms around herself, mouth and forehead frowning, peering around at the graves. “How can this be sanitary?”

Ben still hasn’t said anything, just flopped down by a gravestone and leant against it, catching his breath. I take a swig from a water bottle and then hand it to Ben. I look out and around us. You can see down the road for a piece and there’s a view of the river, too, rushing by us on the left now. It’s a clear sky, the stars out, the moons starting to crescent in the sky above us.

“Ben?” I say, looking up into the night.

“Yeah?” he says, drinking down his water.

“You all right?”

“Yeah.” His breath’s getting back to normal. “I’m built for farm labour. Not sprinting.”

I look at the moons one more time, the smaller one chasing the larger one, two brightnesses up there, still light enough to cast shadows, ignorant of the troubles of men.

I look into myself. I look deep into my Noise.

And I realize I’m ready.

This is the last chance.

And I’m ready.

“I think it’s time,” I say. I look back at him. “I think now’s the time, if it’s ever gonna be.”

He licks his lips and swallows his water. He puts the cap back on the bottle. “I know,” he says.

“Time for what?” Viola asks.

“Where should I start?” Ben asks.

I shrug. “Anywhere,” I say, “as long as it’s true.”

I can hear Ben’s Noise gathering, gathering up the whole story, taking one stream out of the river, finally, the one that tells what really happened, the one hidden for so long and so deep I didn’t even know it was there for my whole up-growing life.

Viola’s silence has gone more silent than usual, as still as the night, waiting to hear what he might say.

Ben takes a deep breath.

“The Noise germ wasn’t Spackle warfare,” he says. “That’s the first thing. The germ was here when we landed. A naturally occurring phenomenon, in the air, always had been, always will be. We got outta our ships and within a day everyone could hear everyone’s thoughts. Imagine our surprise.”

He pauses, remembering.

“Except it
wasn’t
everyone,” Viola says.

“It was just the men,” I say.

Ben nods. “No one knows why. Still don’t. Our scientists were mainly agriculturalists and the doctors couldn’t find a reason and so for a while, there was chaos. Just . . .
chaos,
like you wouldn’t believe. Chaos and confusion and Noise Noise Noise.” He scratches underneath his chin. “A lotta men scattered theirselves into far communities, getting away from Haven as fast as roads could be cut. But soon folk realized there was nothing to be done about it so for a while we all tried to live with it the best we could, found different ways to deal with it, different communities taking their own paths. Same as we did when we realized all our livestock were talking, too, and pets and local creachers.”

He looks up into the sky and to the sematary around us and the river and road below.

“Everything on this planet talks to each other,” he says. “Everything. That’s what New World is. Informayshun, all the time, never stopping, whether you want it or not. The Spackle knew it, evolved to live with it, but we weren’t equipped for it. Not even close. And too much informayshun can drive a man mad. Too much informayshun becomes just Noise. And it never, never stops.”

He pauses and the Noise is there, of course, like it always is, his and mine and Viola’s silence only making it louder.

“As the years went by,” he goes on, “times were hard all over New World and getting harder. Crops failing and sickness and no prosperity and no Eden. Definitely no Eden. And a preaching started spreading in the land, a poisonous preaching, a preaching that started to blame.”

“They blamed the aliens,” Viola says.

“The Spackle,” I say and the shame returns.

“They blamed the Spackle,” Ben confirms. “And somehow preaching became a movement and a movement became a war.” He shakes his head. “They didn’t stand a chance. We had guns, they didn’t, and that was the end of the Spackle.”

“Not all,” I say.

“No,” he says. “Not all. But they learned better than to come too near men again, I tell you that.”

A brief wind blows across the hilltop. When it stops, it’s like we’re the only three people left on New World. Us and the sematary ghosts.

“But the war’s not the end of the story,” Viola says quietly.