Numbers 3: Infinity
Read Numbers 3: Infinity Online
Authors: Rachel Ward
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #General, #David_James Mobilism.org
NUMBERS 3
INFINITY
RACHEL WARD
This is for my parents, Shirley and David, and grandparents and those who went before … and for Ali and Pete and whoever follows afterwards. And for Ozzy, of course.
Contents
T
he little girl sits in the dirt. She’s been exploring the forest, but now her legs are tired and she doesn’t want to walk any more. Anyway, it’s nice here. With all the stones and leaves and twigs around her she could make a nest for birds, or a house for mice. Her fingers are busy – picking things up, putting them down, arranging them – and her mind’s busy, too. She makes marks in the dirt with a stick – lines and circles – and her mouth moves as she sings herself the song that goes with her dust-pictures.
She hears the motorbikes before she sees them, a background whine that becomes a drone that turns into a roar. She holds her hands over her ears. She’s never seen a motorbike before and now there are three, big and black and fast, belching out trails of dark smoke. The girl glimpses metal and rubber and leather between the trees.
‘Dragons,’
she whispers, and the pupils in her blue eyes grow wide.
The motorbikes slow down. They stop. They’re growling
softly now, not roaring, but they’re too near. The girl sits very still. She can see them. Can they see her? The dragon at the front takes off part of its head. There’s a man inside. He scans the trees either side of the road that cuts through the forest. For a moment their eyes meet.
The man’s face is pale, but his colours are dark, like his clothes and his dragon. A swirl of grey and purple and black. The girl doesn’t like the colours. She’s never seen people-colours like these before. And she doesn’t like him looking at her. His eyes are dark, almost black, and they are hurting her.
She closes her own eyes quickly, and buries her face in her knees.
‘Seen something, boss?’
‘Just a kid. Let’s go.’ His voice is hard and low.
The dragons’ growl turns into a roar again, and then they’re gone.
The girl squints through her eyelashes. There’s nothing to show the dragons were ever there apart from a cloud of dust, which hangs in the air and then settles. Slowly she unwinds and leans forward, gathering in an armful of twigs and leaves, destroying her dust-pictures. If there are dragons here, she will need to build a big nest to keep the birds and the mice safe. Better make it big enough to keep
her
safe, too. She piles more and more stuff around her, snuggles in and closes her eyes. Then she waits for the dreams to come – the colours and pictures that will send her to sleep.
She wakes when she hears someone shouting her name.
‘Mia! Mii-aa! Where are you? Mii-aa!’
She doesn’t move. She wants to see if her nest is a good one, if she can be found. She loves playing hide-and-seek.
‘Mia! Mii-aa! Where are you? Where are you?’
The voice is getting closer. The girl curls in a tight little ball and buries her face in her knees again. It’s fun, this game.
She hears footsteps crunching through the undergrowth. Closer, closer, closer …
‘Mia! Here you are!’
There are feet right next to the nest. Mia turns her head a little and peeks upwards. The woman looks cross. The skin is creased between her blue eyes. Mia doesn’t like it. She wants her to be smiling and laughing. But her colours are the same as always, a haze of blue and lilac around her, colours that mean one thing – Mummy.
Mia turns her head into her knees again. She doesn’t want Mummy to shout at her.
Sarah bends down and grabs her daughter under her armpits. She lifts her up, still curled tightly in a ball, and holds her close.
‘Mia,’ she says, ‘you must stay where I can see you. Are you listening?’
Mia puts her thumb in her mouth.
‘I was just worried. I thought … I thought I’d lost you. I’m not cross.’
Mia takes her thumb out of her mouth and looks up. Then she reaches forward to wrap her arms round her mummy. Everything’s okay – there won’t be shouting and tears this time.
‘Dragons,’ she says. ‘Me see dragons.’
Sarah looks towards the road. She heard bikes a few minutes ago. ‘Do you mean motorbikes?’ she says, hugging her daughter close. She starts walking away from the road and back into the forest.
‘Dragons,’ says Mia. ‘Noisy.’
‘Did you see wolves and bears as well?’ Sarah says, smiling.
Mia shakes her head.
‘Dragons,’ she says again, firmly this time.
‘Better get back to the camp, then. The dragons won’t come near our fire. We’ll be safe there.’
But Mia doesn’t feel safe, even now, holding on to Mummy.
The dragons she saw made smoke themselves. A fire wouldn’t frighten them away, she thinks. They’d
like
a fire.
Better to hide. Better to make a nest and hide from the man with the dark colours all around him.
‘I
know you.’
I’ve watched the guy moving closer, picking his way through the ragged group of tents and shelters.
Here we go again,
I think. It’s the same everywhere. That’s why I try and keep away from people. But that’s dangerous, too, ’cause you’re vulnerable on your own. We ain’t got nothing valuable, but people’ll still rob you, take what little you got – food, clothes, even firewood. It’s happened too many times now. We have to stay near others. Safety in numbers, Sarah says.
Ignore him and he might go away.
I keep my head down, bashing the tent peg into the hard ground with a rock.
Less than a metre away, he crouches down beside me, leaning forward to get a look at my face.
‘I know you,’ he says again. ‘You’re Adam Dawson.’
I twist away. My fingers tighten round the rock.
He reaches across and touches my sleeve. He’s too close.
I can see the dirt under his fingernails, the bits of sawdust in his straggly beard.
‘Adam,’ he says, smiling. He’s tipping his face, trying to get me to make eye contact. ‘Adam, you saved my life.’
My heart’s thudding in my chest. I can’t deal with this. I want him to go away.
‘No, mate,’ I say, and my voice goes all croaky. ‘You got the wrong bloke.’
‘No, I’ve seen you. I’ll never forget you, your … face.’
He means my scars, my burned skin.
‘You saved me, Adam. I was in London. My flat was in the basement, right by the river. I saw you on the telly and I got out. So did millions of others. You’re a hero.’
Same story. I’ve heard it over and over.
I was only on the telly once, but it was the last TV most people saw. There are no TVs or computers in England now, no screens or phones. The networks and transmitters never got put back after the quake, at the beginning of the Chaos. And so I’m stuck in everyone’s memories as that mad-eyed, scar-faced boy, staring into a TV camera and shouting the odds about the end of the world. And they remember me because I was right. The world did come to an end – the world as we knew it, anyway.
Now everyone I talk to treats me like some sort of celebrity, some sort of saviour. I don’t want it.
‘We’ve got some meat,’ the man continues, when it’s clear I’m not going to talk. ‘Venison. Someone shot a deer, a big one. Come and join us. Come and eat with us.’
I stop bashing the tent peg. Meat … Can’t remember the last time we ate meat. It’s gotta be better than the nettle soup we were going to have. I look over towards Sarah and Mia, to Sarah’s brothers. Marty and Luke are scuffing the leaves
on the ground, looking for dry twigs, anything that would do for kindling. Mia’s sitting in our hand-barrow, watching as Sarah unrolls the mats we use for beds. She’s tiny for a child who’s two. Her arms and legs are as thin and brown as the twigs the boys are looking for. She’s almost like a little doll, with that mass of tight blonde curls, full lips and eyes that don’t miss a thing.
Sarah’s pretending to be busy, but I know she’s watching me out of the corner of her eye, waiting for my reaction. I know she’s heard every word. She don’t say nothing. She don’t need to. She’s hungry; we all are. My mouth floods with saliva at the thought of a square meal. But I know what’s gonna come with it – the fuss, the back-slapping, the questions.
I can’t stand people looking at me, and I can’t stand looking at them, seeing their numbers …
Everyone, everywhere has a number – the day they’re gonna die. I hate that I can see these numbers. I hate the feelings that come with them. Sometimes I could grab a flaming stick out of the middle of the fire and plunge it into my own eyes to stop me seeing. Stop me feeling the suffering and pain that’s waiting for every single person I meet. I’ve been scarred by fire, it’s nearly killed me twice, but maybe it would take away the thing that hurts me most.
The only thing stopping me is Sarah. I can’t do that to her. I’m difficult enough as it is, moody, restless. I couldn’t expect her to stay with me if I was blind as well.
She looks straight at me, then, with those blue eyes of hers, and her number speaks to me, brings me the comfort and the warmth it always does – an ending full of light and love. 2572075. The promise that we’ll be together, me and her, fifty years from now, when she passes from this life, easy
as if she was slipping into a warm bath.
Sarah.
I turn back to the stranger crouching next to me, and I force myself to nod at him and smile.
‘We will join you. Thanks,’ I say. The words sound like someone else’s.
His face lights up. ‘Great. Cool. Come over any time. We’re in the bender furthest from the path.’ He points to a tunnel-shaped tent, pitched between two tree trunks. ‘I’m Daniel, by the way. It’s good to meet you, Adam. I’ve waited a long time for this.’ As he strides off, I hear him calling, ‘Carrie, he’s here. He’s really here …’