Fierce September (22 page)

‘Leave them alone!’

That was Paz.

We ran on. I couldn’t think, wouldn’t imagine.

Marba’s voice thundered. ‘Step away. Put the weapon down.’

‘You’re among friends.’ That was Silvern.

We were there. I took in the scene in a millisecond. Mother was on the ground, blood pouring from her head. Hera, locked in her arms, howled hysterically.

Raggedy Jason. It was Raggedy Jason threatening them.

‘Hera! Stop crying. Stop!’ I put the full force of my fear into the command. It was clear that Raggedy Jason was feeding on her terror, hyped up by her howls. ‘Good girl. That’s better. Another deep breath.’

It felt like a lifetime before she quietened.

Pel, gentle Pel stepped forward. ‘Sir, I’ll look after the stick for you.’ She held out her hand.

Raggedy Jason stopped his wild capering. He glowered at Hera and Mother, then at Pel smiling at him with her hand out for the stick.

He flung the stick away. ‘Food. Gimme food.’

I scrabbled in my bag, grabbed a handful of the supplies Vima had put there. Paz took them from me, walked a couple of paces away from Mother and Hera. ‘We have food for you. Come on, I’ll give you what I have here.’

The moment the ragged figure turned away, I was on my knees beside Mother and Hera. Brex was there too. So were some of the others.

‘Mother?’

She didn’t answer.

Brex had her fingers on Mother’s throat. ‘Juno, she’s alive. Knocked out but alive.’

I picked up my sister. She nearly strangled me. ‘Willem. They’s going to hurt him.’

‘Shh, darling. Tell me later. Let’s get you back.’

I kept my eye on Raggedy Jason while the others made a stretcher with their hands, lifted my mother and began walking. Raggedy Jason wolfed down the food and ignored us.

Hera was quiet except for the occasional repeated sobbing of Willem’s name. When we were nearly back at the Centre she said, ‘My mother hurts.’

‘Yes, darling. She’ll get better, she will. Hush now.’

People crowded the foyer, waiting for us. All the children from the stratum below ours were there, along with the parents Willem had left to care for them. Roop waited, holding Merith. Sina was there with Jovan in her arms. But we no longer had a physician. Who would care for my mother? My stratum carried her inside and lowered her carefully to the floor.

Sina ran forward, pushed Jovan into Wenda’s arms, then fell to her knees beside Mother. She gave orders. ‘Bring water, a cloth, bandages and antiseptic.’

‘Oh no!’ I stepped back from Mother for fear I might contaminate her, stepped away from everybody else. I felt sick with the realisation: I was meant to be in quarantine. I backed further away, still holding Hera, stammering apologies.

Sina looked up and smiled. ‘You are well, Juno?’

I nodded.

‘We won’t worry then. Let’s get Sheen comfortable.’ She began sponging the blood away with the supplies Brex had fetched. But Roop ran to the lift with Merith and disappeared. Her message was clear: I’d brought danger on my people once more.

‘Juno, look,’ Sina said. ‘She’s coming round. Talk to her.’

I put Hera down, knelt beside Mother and took her hand, but all I could say was, ‘Mother, it’s all right. You’re safe. Hera’s safe.’

After a few seconds she whispered, ‘Hera. Got to find her.’

‘Mother! She’s here. You found her. You saved her.’ I swallowed panic. Raggedy Jason had damaged her brain. Why couldn’t she remember?

Hera wept. ‘I here, my mother. I here.’

Sina took a blanket and wrapped it round Mother. ‘Juno, don’t worry. Give her time. It’s like when Vima couldn’t remember after Hilto hit her on the head.’

The sick feeling subsided. I scrubbed at my eyes, strove for calm, whispered, ‘Thank you, Sina.’

She was brave. Even saying Vima’s name was still hard for her.

Hera climbed onto my lap. ‘They’s going to hurt Willem. Grif said goodbye Hera. Willem says goodbye Hera.’ She leaned against me, just a tired little girl.

Silvern squatted beside us. ‘Is that what you were doing, Hera? Were you and your mother going to find him?’

Hera nodded, her eyes closing. ‘I go all by myself. Scary man chase me then my mother came. He hit her. Got to find Willem.’

‘We’ll go to Willem’s house in the morning. We’ll tell him,’ Silvern promised. Hera must have picked up something from Willem and tried to find him by herself. Mother must have woken to discover she’d gone.

Hera’s eyes flickered open. ‘He’s gone to the mountain place.’ Then she fell deeply asleep.

Behind me, I heard my stratum asking questions. Where? How?

I said, ‘Oban says there’s a mountain near New Plymouth. Willem’s school’s there too. That must be the place.’

There was more discussion. I half listened, my attention more on Mother as Sina tended to her. She seemed to be trying to wake up. I tried to soothe her. ‘It’s all right, Mother. You found Hera. You saved her. You’re both safe now.’ She sighed and relaxed.

All the time I was talking to her I was vaguely aware that Silvern, Paz and Marba had volunteered to go to New Plymouth to try to find Willem. Biddo looked on the net for a train. It left at 5 am.

It was twenty to five already. I stood up, struggling under Hera’s weight. I handed her to Brex. ‘Please can you look after her?’

Silvern snapped, ‘You’re not coming with us, Juno. Don’t be stupid.’

‘I’ve got to. Don’t want to but I have to.’ And don’t ask me how I knew that, because I didn’t know myself. I tried not to look at Mother. I knew I should stay with her – maybe Sina was wrong and she was badly hurt. But I couldn’t ignore the sharp knowledge in my mind, unclear though it was, that I should go to New Plymouth.

‘I have to come with you,’ I repeated.

Silvern shrugged. ‘Let’s go then.’ She gave me a sharp look. ‘You do realise though that we might miss the train? That we don’t even know how to get on a train? Or where the station is?’

‘We checked the map,’ Marba said. ‘We should be able to find it but we need to go now.’

Sina said, ‘I’ll care for Sheen, Juno. Please don’t worry. I’m sure she’s not badly hurt.’

I wanted to hug her, but I couldn’t risk it. ‘Thank you. More than I can say.’

Moments later we were off, Silvern, Paz, Marba and me.

The streets were still empty. It wasn’t until we reached the station that we saw other people. Luckily there were enough of them for the four of us not to stand out, even though we hovered in a dark corner for a moment to get our bearings.

A voice boomed around the huge space, scaring us rigid. ‘New Plymouth train departing Platform 5 in three minutes.’

Three minutes and we couldn’t see anything that said Platform 5.

‘Come on!’ Paz ran across the tiled floor. ‘We follow those people. There can’t be too many trains leaving right now.’

‘Yep, this is the platform,’ Marba said, pointing to a sign.

The five or six people we were following jogged up the platform to carriages nearer the engine.

‘We don’t want to be with others if we can help it,’ Silvern said. ‘How about we get in this one? Everyone else seems to be going past it.’

Just then a couple of men ran past us, elbowing us out of the way. One of them muttered, ‘Hurry up! There’ll be hell to pay if we miss the bloody thing.’

That was enough to stop us dithering and we scrambled into the carriage.

‘Weird,’ said Silvern. ‘Where do we sit?’

‘Who cares?’ Paz answered. ‘There’s floor space. That’ll do.’

‘We could do with some windows,’ Silvern grumbled. ‘What’s the point of travelling if you can’t see where you’re going?’

‘Go to sleep,’ Marba said. ‘We don’t know what we might be getting into. We’ll need to have our minds fresh.’

I was glad to stretch out on the floor with a mailbag for a pillow, but didn’t think I’d be able to sleep for fear of being haunted by dreams of my mother with blood pouring down her face. But before too long the sound of the moving train got into my head and I fell asleep, to dream of one of Grif’s lullabies that wove itself into the rhythm of the train. It was a gentle song, not a sad one.

A voice booted us awake. ‘What the hell are you people doing in here?’

We sat up, disoriented.

‘Well?’ the man barked. ‘Cat got your tongues?’ He glared down at us, his spiky grey eyebrows quivering with fury.

Marba spoke for us. ‘Aren’t we meant to be here, sir? This is the train to New Plymouth, isn’t it?’

I gulped. Had we made a mistake?

The man looked baffled for a moment, then his face darkened. ‘Well blow me down. You’re some of that Taris lot, unless I’m mighty mistaken.’

There wasn’t much point in denying it. Marba nodded.

I couldn’t bear the suspense any longer. ‘Is this the New Plymouth train?’

‘It is,’ he said, ‘so you’ll all be good enough to show me your travel passes if you please.’ He didn’t sound friendly.

We stared at him. Travel passes?

He threw up his hands. ‘No travel passes? I’ll be chucking you out at the next stop, and good riddance is all I can say. Come to think of it, even if you had the passes you’d be out on your ears. Murderers, liars and spongers, the lot of you!’

I was on my feet, my fists hammering his chest, before I could think what I was doing. ‘What do you know about us? How dare you say those things – how dare you! It was one of
us
who discovered the virus that one of
you
let loose. That virus killed my grandmother.’

Marba and Paz grabbed me and dumped me on a mailbag. Silvern stepped up and looked at the man calmly. ‘Perhaps you’d be so good as to listen to our side of the story,’ she said, her voice icily polite.

‘It’s a bit different from the stuff on the net,’ Paz said.

Marba didn’t wait for the man to comment, but launched into a summary of our life since we’d arrived. Because it was Marba, his account was factual and unemotional. Maybe for that reason the man did listen. He shoved his cap up so that he could scratch his head. ‘That’s as may be. Fact remains there’s plenty of evidence against you lot.’

I leapt back up from the mailbag. ‘Fact?’ I yelled. ‘The only
fact
is that somebody in this horrible place killed my grandmother.’ I sucked in a sobbing gasp. ‘Why? Tell me that. You seem to know everything about us, so tell me why my grandmother had to die.’

‘Juno, shut up,’ Silvern ordered.

But I’d gone beyond reason. ‘My mother got attacked tonight. This is a horrible, ghastly place and I
hate
it!’ I swiped the tears out of my eyes and glared at him. ‘I hate you too!’

Marba wrapped an arm around me and clamped a hand over my mouth. If he apologised to the man for my behaviour I’d bite him. But none of them said anything. They just waited for his response.

The man settled his cap back on his head. ‘Well, I’m blowed if I know the truth of it.’ He looked at me. ‘You. What happened to your mum?’

Marba let me go, muttering to stay calm for the love of Taris. I caught a sharp mental command as well:
Be
careful what you say.
But I was too upset to be calm and careful. Perhaps if I hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have told the man about Hera and how she said Willem was going to be killed, but the whole story came out.

Silvern hissed at me. Paz frowned. Marba watched to see how the man reacted.

‘Well, that’s a tarradiddle if ever I heard one,’ he said, but he didn’t seem so angry now. He looked at us as if we were tigers escaped from a zoo, then without a word he stomped out the door at the far end of the carriage.

I collapsed onto the mailbag. ‘Don’t start,’ I warned the three of them. ‘Just don’t say a word.’

They didn’t speak and I shut my mind against anything Marba might try to send me.

There was no heating in the carriage, or if there was it wasn’t working. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. By the sound of it, the others were no more successful.

After about an hour the train slowed. ‘It’ll be interesting to see if he chucks us off,’ Marba said.

It wasn’t worth yelling at him. Marba was Marba and even dire emergency didn’t change him.

Silvern yawned. ‘The sort of interesting I can do without, thanks.’

The train stopped. I sat with my knees hunched up, waiting for the man to come back. No sign of him. We didn’t speak. As the minutes stretched out, my nerves stretched with them.

Then the train began moving again. ‘Interesting,’ Marba said.

I couldn’t stop shivering.

‘That’s reaction, not cold,’ Paz said, and patted my head. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘Even if that man does let us go all the way to New Plymouth, what are we going to do when we get there?’ I looked at the three of them. ‘We haven’t a clue where to go. We don’t even know if Willem’s still alive.’

‘Cheerful little thing, aren’t you?’ Paz grinned at me. ‘We’ll just have to do the best we can.’

Silvern’s eyes were shining. This was an adventure for her, something different, a chance to use her mind. She loved the uncertainty of it, the pitting of her wits against an opposing force. How much did she care about Willem?

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘We need to find somebody who knows something about New Plymouth, and the only person we know is Oban. We’ve got to find him, or find a way of contacting him.’

I felt ashamed of my uncharitable thoughts – she might find this whole thing exciting, but it wasn’t stopping her using her brain. She was being a lot more use than I was. Why had I insisted on coming with them? I should have ignored the urgency in my mind. I should have stayed with Mother. Should have stayed with Vima. Should have … but I was here now and stuck with it.

About ten minutes later the man reappeared. His face betrayed nothing of what he intended to do.

‘Follow me,’ he said, then stomped down the carriage.

We trailed after him, glancing at each other. What did he want? Was he going to throw us from the moving train?

He opened a door that led into a small compartment with bench seats along either side.

‘Windows!’ Silvern yelped. She ran to kneel on one of the seats so that she could look out.

‘Sit down, face me and listen,’ the man ordered.