CHERUB: Man vs Beast (3 page)

‘Remember last year, when we were in Idaho?’ Lauren said airily. ‘Remember cheating on Kerry with a girl called Becky?’

James nodded grimly.

‘I never told anyone; but, I mean, that information could slip out at
any
time and Kerry would kick your arse. So, I just want one little favour in return for eternal silence.’

‘You
what
?’ James yelled. ‘That’s not asking for a favour, that’s blackmail.’

‘I suppose you
could
call it that,’ Lauren smirked. ‘But James, you like Rat, you like Jake. Is it really such a big problem?’

‘What kind of scumbag blackmails their own brother?’ James asked indignantly.

Lauren ducked the question. ‘James, me and Bethany have everything planned out. There’s no way we’ll get caught.’

‘You know what,’ James said, trying to sound confident, ‘I’m calling your bluff. That thing with Becky happened more than a year ago and Kerry knows I’m no angel. She’ll understand.’

Lauren grinned as she headed for the door. ‘Fine, I’ll go tell Kerry about Becky now then.’

James acted casual as Lauren headed out into the corridor and turned towards Kerry’s room, but he couldn’t keep up the act and scrambled after her.

Kerry’s room was less than twenty metres away and Lauren was all set to knock by the time he’d caught up.

‘OK, you win,’ James whispered bitterly.

Lauren smiled contentedly. ‘Thought I might.’

James huffed, ‘But you can’t keep blackmailing me. You’ve got to swear on our mum’s grave never to tell anyone.’

‘That’s fair,’ Lauren nodded. Then she broke into a grin and gave her brother a hug. ‘Thanks, James.’

James was too pissed off to hug Lauren back, but he did have a grudging admiration for her cheek. Then Kerry’s door popped open.

‘Thought I could hear you two,’ Kerry said. ‘What’s going on out here?’

‘Nothing,’ James said unconvincingly.

Lauren smiled at Kerry. ‘I told this idiot to come and apologise to you.’

James was relieved to see that Kerry was smiling back at him. ‘Guess I overreacted,’ she said.

James shrugged. ‘Sorry I laughed at that joke.’

‘I’ll live,’ Kerry said as she stepped up and kissed James on the cheek. ‘Did I hear you say you were behind on
Great Expectations
earlier?’

‘Page one-twelve,’ James nodded.

‘That’s further than me,’ Kerry said. ‘I’m never gonna catch up, so I got the film version out of the library. You want to come in and watch it?’

‘Lifesaver,’ James grinned, as he stepped into Kerry’s room. Then he looked back at Lauren. ‘Catch up with you later, sis.’

‘I’ll send you a text with the details,’ Lauren said. ‘
Don’t
be late.’

Kerry looked a bit confused. ‘What’s she up to?’

James moved in to kiss Kerry back. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he grinned, as he looped his arm around her back and kicked the door shut with his trainer.

Angst kept James awake and he rolled out of bed a few minutes before the 2 a.m. alarm. He put on clothes that would make him hard to see in the dark: navy blue tracksuit with a baseball cap and black Adidas trainers.

Lauren and her best mate Bethany were waiting for him six floors down in a crawl space under the fire stairs.

‘Thanks so much for coming,’ Bethany grinned. ‘I don’t know how Lauren persuaded you. I never thought you’d agree in a million years.’

‘No worries,’ James said sourly, as he scowled at his sister.

James couldn’t stand Bethany. She was intelligent and funny, but her mocking tone and giggling fits drove him nuts.

‘Are you sure nobody saw you sneak down here?’ Lauren asked.

James shrugged. ‘Not as far as I can tell.’

‘Cool,’ Lauren said. ‘The shooting range is next to the training compound, so if we get stopped, we’ll say we’ve been assigned to a mission and we’re heading off to sign out some stun guns.’

‘That’s only gonna work if it’s someone who doesn’t know us,’ James pointed out.

‘Yeah,’ Bethany said. ‘But how many people are gonna be wandering around campus at this time of the morning?’

‘S’pose,’ James said. ‘So what’s our plan?’

‘The less time we’re out of our beds, the less chance that we’ll get noticed,’ Lauren said. ‘So I’ll explain as we run. Grab that pack and get moving.’

‘Are you sure this fire door isn’t alarmed?’ James asked, as he reached towards a large blue backpack.

Lauren shook her head. ‘Have some faith, bro. Me and The Bethster have every detail worked out.’

James felt his shoulder sag as he hooked the pack over his arms. ‘Christ, I thought we were taking them a few bits of food and stuff. What’s in here, lead weights?’

‘Me and Lauren have the clean clothes and food,’ Bethany explained. ‘You’re carrying all our equipment: wire cutters, electrical tools and three sets of waders.’

‘We’re the brains, you’re the muscle,’ Lauren grinned, as she pushed the fire door open. It was early summer, but the air still had a nip to it at this time of the morning. There was no alarm and Lauren looked back at her brother as if to say
I told you so
.

Knowing their packs would jangle if they ran, the three kids kept to a brisk walk. They cut across a squelchy corner of a football pitch, before heading into the woods that covered all of the undeveloped areas on CHERUB campus. After dealing with a tangle of undergrowth, their feet found a dirt path.

‘This takes longer than walking across the open fields, but nobody uses this trail except for running cross-country,’ Lauren explained.

‘And if we do come across anyone, we can use the trees as cover,’ Bethany added.

James felt slightly reassured: the girls had obviously put in a lot of thought.

Once they were clear of the buildings, Lauren broke into a jog. But they couldn’t run fast because the moonlight penetrating the branches was barely enough to make out the path. James moved up alongside his sister.

‘We’re going right up to the back of campus,’ Lauren continued, breathing heavily. ‘Remember when me and Kyle were on punishment and had to dig out all those ditches?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Most of them carry water off the farms that surround campus. They all feed into the stream that runs across the training compound. In a couple of places we cleared out ditches that join the stream
inside
the training compound. All that stops you getting in is a few strands of barbed wire and we can easily snip that.’

‘Before you ask, we’ve checked and it’s not electrified or alarmed,’ Bethany added.

‘What about video cameras?’ James asked. ‘They’re everywhere. The instructors know if a squirrel farts inside that compound.’

‘There’s fifty-three cameras,’ Lauren nodded. ‘But they all run off a single circuit. If we pull the fuse the whole lot stops working.’

‘How’d you find that out?’

‘Martin Newman got punishment, cleaning out the administration building,’ Bethany said. ‘We sweet-talked him into making a copy of the electrical plans for the whole of campus.’

Lauren giggled. ‘And now you’ve got to go to the cinema with him.’

‘Shut
up
,’ Bethany gasped. ‘Don’t you worry. I know I promised, but I’ll find a way to wriggle out of it.’

‘Martin’s gonna be so gutted,’ Lauren said. ‘Doesn’t it crack you up the way one of his ears sticks out and one doesn’t?’

‘You can’t talk, Lauren. You fancy Rat and he’s no oil painting.’

Both girls were giggling at their little in-jokes, which irritated James.

‘Make some more noise, why don’t you?’ he sneered.

‘There’s nobody around,’ Lauren said dismissively, but both girls realised they were being dumb and calmed down.

*

It took ten minutes’ jogging along the winding path to reach the back of the training compound. The three kids had slowly increased their speed as their eyes adjusted to the moonlight.

They were in good shape and none of the trio was seriously out of breath as they pulled up beside a ditch that was about a metre and a half deep. Lauren slid a torch out the back of her jeans and shone it around.

‘This is the spot,’ she whispered. ‘James, get the waders out.’

James was relieved as he slipped the weight off his shoulders and unzipped the pack. It hadn’t rained in a week, so they could find some hard ground to change their footwear, but they’d passed through a couple of boggy areas and their trainers were coated in mud.

After throwing two smaller sets of booted rubber trousers at the girls, James caught a whiff of feet as he wriggled the waders up his legs and hooked the straps that held them up over his shoulders.

‘Where’d you get these?’ James moaned. ‘They’re nasty.’

‘Kyle had them when he was on punishment,’ Bethany explained. ‘He wore them every day for six weeks, so I’m not surprised they’re a bit ripe.’

‘Once you get down in that ditch, Kyle’s smell is the last thing you’ll worry about,’ Lauren said, as she threw something at James.

He narrowly missed the catch, but realised it was a head-mounted lamp as soon as he picked it off the ground.

‘The light’s good for fifty metres, but don’t use it any more than you have to,’ Lauren said.

James slipped the elastic strap around his head and quickly flipped the tiny LED bulbs on and off to make sure they were working. Bethany was still struggling to get into her waders and Lauren sorted her out while James hooked on what was now a much lighter pack and set off towards the ditch.

He considered jumping into the muddy water, but it would splash up his arms and make a racket, so he took a cautious approach, sitting on the edge of the ditch with his legs dangling and gently lowering himself down.

There was a squelch as his waders sank into the twenty centimetres of mud that lay beneath the stagnant, thigh-high water. As his feet settled, James rested his palm against the clayish soil of the embankment to steady himself.

By this time, the girls stood atop the embankment and Bethany looked flustered.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t,’ she said anxiously.

James rose to the tantalising possibility of Lauren’s hair-brained scheme being called off.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said, perhaps a little too eagerly. ‘This is risky and the instructors are bound to punish Jake and Rat as well if we’re caught.’

‘We didn’t come this far to quit,’ Lauren said stiffly.

Bethany nodded apprehensively. ‘Lauren’s right – I always get the jitters.’

Lauren scowled at James. ‘And don’t
you
encourage her.’

James stared gloomily at the water as the two girls held hands and slipped down the embankment together. Bethany looked a touch wobbly as she took her first steps, but Lauren had months of wading experience under her belt and led off at a pace James and Bethany struggled to cope with.

It was less than ten metres from the spot where the path met the ditch to the tangle of barbed wire at the back of the training compound, but James’ thighs already ached from pushing his legs through the swirling mud.

Lauren flipped on her head lamp to inspect the zigzagging strands of barbed wire. She tried pushing them, but they were taut.

‘They’ve reinforced it since I was down here on punishment,’ Lauren whispered anxiously. ‘I hoped we’d be able to push the wires down and make a gap big enough to step through, but we’ll need to cut it.’

James turned his back to Lauren so she could unzip his pack and grab the chunky set of wire cutters from inside.

‘You know this is vandalism of CHERUB property?’ James said. ‘If they catch us, we’re in serious trouble.’

Lauren sounded annoyed. ‘Stop moaning, James. I’m trying to think.’

James watched as his sister artfully cut a single strand of wire. It left a gap of about half a metre at one corner of the ditch, right next to the embankment.

‘We’ll get a bit muddy, but we can squeeze through,’ Lauren said.

She snipped off the loose strand of wire, before bending it up and hurling it into the trees. ‘Nobody comes out here unless one of the ditches dams up, they won’t miss one strand of wire.’

James agreed with his sister’s logic, but wasn’t in any mood to go around throwing compliments at her.

Squeezing under the wire was a palaver that involved going through one at a time and feeding their packs through afterwards. James was broader than the two girls and ended up with mud streaked across the back of his tracksuit.

Once they were through, it would have been quicker to climb out of the ditch and run along the embankment, but they didn’t want to risk being caught on video so they carried on wading, keeping as low as possible with the white of their faces shielded by baseball caps.

Seventy metres beyond the wire, Lauren leaned against the embankment and quickly flashed the powerful beam of her head lamp. It caught one side of a concrete shed before she ducked down again.

‘Party time,’ Lauren grinned.

The ditch here was shallower than where they’d dropped in. The three youngsters stepped out and set off at a run towards the shed, with globs of mud sliding down the outside of their waders. When they reached the shed wall, Lauren and Bethany pushed the straps holding the waders up off their shoulders.

‘Get them off and put your trainers back on, James,’ Lauren ordered.

‘What’s the point?’ James asked. ‘We’ve got to go back the way we came.’

‘No we don’t,’ Lauren explained. ‘There’s only ever one training instructor on duty at night. As soon as they see that the cameras have stopped working, they’ll come down here. We’ll run in the other direction to the main training building. We can hand the packages across to the trainees, then we’ll sprint out via the front gate.’

‘What about the alarm?’ James asked.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Bethany said. ‘They’ll find out that it went off eventually, but the instructor won’t be anywhere near the control room to hear it.’

‘Doesn’t it sound anywhere else, like the security console on the main gate?’

Lauren shrugged. ‘Not as far as we know.’

James shook his head as he kicked the waders away and went into the pack for his trainers. ‘You mean you
don’t
know for sure?’