Numbers 3: Infinity (17 page)

‘Sit back to back with him,’ Saul says.

I do what he says. Saul kneels next to us and binds my hands to Daniel’s behind my back with the belt. Daniel yelps as Saul touches his wrist.

‘Saul, please. I need to keep hold. I’ll bleed to death like this.’

‘Yes, you will, won’t you?’ Saul says, carrying on with his task.

He’s very close to me. I can see his pulse throbbing in his neck. As soon as he’s done here, he’s going to be chasing after Sarah. I’ve failed to stop him. I haven’t even bought her much time.

There is a way to save her, though.

I could give Saul what he wants.

‘Saul,’ I say, ‘you don’t need to catch up with Sarah. You don’t need to kill my baby.’

He tightens the belt until it digs into my skin.

‘Oh, but I do,’ he says.

‘You want some more time,’ I say. ‘You want to see numbers. You can see them through my eyes. My life, my gift. They’re yours, if you promise to leave my family alone. I’ll give them to you.’

He studies my face, like he was seeing it for the very first time.

‘I thought we were the same, Adam, but we’re not,’ he says. ‘We are different. You’d
give
me your number?’

It’s the only thing left to me. I didn’t have the guts to kill him when I had the chance. I let my girls down, like I’ve let them down so many times. I can do this for them and I will.

‘Yes. At least, I wouldn’t stop you taking it, however it is that you do it.’

‘All I need to do is make contact, like this—’ he leans forward and grips my shoulder, ‘—look into your eyes and reach inside.’

I can’t help it. Instinctively I try to look away, but his hand switches from my shoulder to my jaw. He forces me to face him. I screw my eyes up, shutting him out. He laughs and lets go of me, pushing my head away from him.

‘You really don’t get it, do you? Your baby is everything I’ve ever dreamed of, Adam. What gifts do you think she’ll
have? Yours and Sarah’s, Mia’s and Val’s? She’s the product of generations of gifted people. Why do you think your number will do when I can have hers?

‘Anyway, I can’t kill you. I haven’t given up on you yet. Think what we could do if we worked together. You haven’t got the stomach for it at the moment, but you’re young. You’ll learn. We’ll be like blood brothers – number brothers.’

‘Please, Saul. Leave Sarah and the baby alone. I’m begging you. I am begging.’

‘Like I said, you’re young. You’ve got plenty of time to breed another one and another. As many as you like.’

I’ve got goosebumps on the back of my neck.

‘Stop it. Don’t talk like that.’

‘Like what? Like someone who’s lived for two hundred and fifty years? Like someone who knows the score?’

‘No. Like someone who’s forgotten how to be human.’

‘What’s being human, Adam?’ he says. ‘It’s having intelligence. It’s being better than animals. It’s being able to outwit nature, to triumph, to persist.’

Maybe he’s right, in a blinkered sort of way. But he’s missing something. Something massive.

‘What about love, Saul? What about caring for other people, working together, living together? What about families, neighbours, friends?’

‘Not important,’ he sneers. ‘People come and go – you find that out when you go down the path I’ve chosen. No point getting attached if they’re going to die after seventy years. Three score years and ten is over before it’s begun.’

‘But it’s what life’s about. You get one chance to get it right. One lifetime to live.’

‘That’s old thinking. I can have as many lives as I like. Go on for ever.’

‘But every time you gain a life, someone else dies.’

‘That’s how it is.’

I’ve known it all along. He’s an insanely dangerous man.

But for his own warped reasons he’s choosing to keep me alive. And if I live, then my baby will die. I can’t let it happen. I can’t.

I’ll have to
make
him kill me.

‘You really are stupid, Saul,’ I say.

He shrinks away from me, almost as if I’d hit him.

‘Stupid to think I’d ever help you. I wouldn’t lower myself. Never. Ever. And if you leave me here, I’ll escape and I’ll do everything I can to stop you. I’ll tell everyone exactly who you are, what you are, what you’ve done.’

Behind me, Daniel is tugging at my hands, trying to shut me up. He don’t know what’s at stake. He don’t know I have to do this, go further, wind Saul up until he bursts with rage.

‘You’re the weakest, stupidest person I’ve ever met. You’re beneath contempt. You’re—’

He picks up his gun and holds it by the barrel, then he slams the handle into the side of my head. I’ve just got time to close my eyes and I keep them closed as the force of the impact carries me over, dragging Daniel with me. I’m out before we hit the stone.

Chapter 39: Sarah

I
keep moving. There are lights at intervals along the path, but the surface under our feet is rock, wet in places and very uneven. We’re managing a slow jog at best. Mia is doing pretty well, but she doesn’t have much choice. I’ve got an iron grip on her hand and I’m pulling her along.

There are boxes and crates piled high to one side of us and solid rock to the other. The ceiling is way above our heads – this place is huge. Just when I start to wonder if we’re still on the right track, there’s another mark on the rock. They’re not obvious – you wouldn’t see them if you weren’t looking. Each one is like a prize.

Before long I get a sense of the walls closing in. The boxes and crates are only stacked one layer deep and you can see rock the other side. The ceiling’s getting lower too.

And then the lights run out. It looks like we’re heading for a blank wall.

‘Okay, Mia, let’s stop for a minute.’

I switch the torch on and train the beam ahead of us.

It’s the end of the stores, but not the end of the path. That carries on through a tunnel of rock about a metre wide and just taller than me. I can hear a murmur of voices behind me. Ahead, there’s only a dense blanket of blackness.

‘All right,’ I say, trying to make my voice more confident than I feel, ‘keep holding my hand, Mia. It’s going to be a bit dark here.’

‘Where Daddy?’

‘He’s going to catch us up. Come on.’

The roof is getting lower and lower. It’s not so bad when I can walk standing up, but soon I have to crouch down, walk with bent legs. Water drips from above us. There are puddles on the floor and then we’re walking through a sheet of water one centimetre deep, that becomes two centimetres, then three.

I daren’t think too hard about it or I’ll panic. Darkness in front of us, darkness behind us, a million tonnes of earth and stone above our heads. How long did Adrian say the tunnel was? Did he say?

The space gets narrower. I go in front of Mia, but I twist round so I can still hold her hand. She’s quiet as a mouse, trotting along, keeping up.

I shine the torch ahead and there’s a solid wall a couple of metres ahead. It’s a dead end. What the …?

We’ve been set up. We’re stuck like rats in a trap.

‘Stop a minute, Mia,’ I say, and my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. I shine the torch in front of us, up and down, to the left and right. There’s a hole in the rock on the left-hand side, about a metre high, with a white mark above it.

‘I think this is it, Mia. I think we go through there.’

‘Dark, Mummy,’ she says.

I turn round and give her a proper hug.

‘We’re nearly there,’ I say, although I haven’t got the foggiest if that’s true or not. ‘You’re being very good. Have you still got your blanket?’

‘Ah-huh.’

‘Good girl, try and keep it out of the wet.’

The only noise, apart from our voices, is water dripping into water. I can’t hear Adam or Saul any more. We could be the only people left in the world here. Should we just go back? But there’s Saul and his gun, and Adam and his knife. God knows what’s happening in that room.
Don’t think about it. Keep going.

‘You crouch down, Mia. I’m going to have to go on my hands and knees. I’ll go first, shall I? You follow me. Stay close, honey.’

I put the torch in my mouth and lower myself down on all fours.

The water’s ice-cold. It’s up to my wrists, soaking my knees and shins and feet. I crawl forwards a metre or two and then I freeze. What if the water gets deeper? What if the tunnel drops away?

My heart’s going fast now; I can feel it in my throat and my ears, hammering away. I can’t move. I’m paralysed. I’m not touching the rock above me but I can still feel it, the colossal weight pressing down.

Something barges into my bottom.

‘Me not like it here.’

Mia. She snaps me out of my panic, and I press on. Time doesn’t seem to exist here, so I start counting under my breath. I can manage a minute like this. One, two, three …

At sixty, I promise myself that I can do another minute.

And so we go on.

Mia’s right behind me all the time, bumping into me with her head. It’d be irritating in any other circumstance, but every little nudge reminds me why I’m here and spurs me on. I’m doing this to keep her safe.

At two hundred and seventy, the ceiling rises away. I take the torch out of my mouth and pull myself up on the wall. My knees are sore, my hands and feet are numb with cold. Mia puts an arm round my legs and leans her head on my thighs.

I gasp clammy air into my lungs. It feels like I’ve been holding my breath for hours. I lean against the wall and try to calm down.

I shine the torch around and I can’t believe what I see. We’re in an enormous cave, empty apart from a mass of stalactites clinging to the roof and their twins reaching up from the floor. After our cell, after the tunnel, the sense of space is mind-blowing. A vast underground cavity – I’ve never seen anything like it.

‘Wow. Look, Mia.’

We stand and gape for a few seconds. Then I play the torch beam along the wall, looking for white marks. Sure enough, there’s one a few metres on.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘We can hold hands now.’

The first sign that we’re near the surface is a change underfoot. We walk out of the standing water and into dry rock. Then there’s a softening of the darkness, just a hint of something different. The air’s changing, too. There’s a smoky undercurrent hitting the back of my throat.

‘Mia, I think we’re nearly there.’

‘Nearly there,’ she parrots.

The path starts to slope noticeably upwards. We turn a corner and there it is – a soft grey lozenge of light ahead of us.

‘This is it. Oh, thank God.’

My legs start to shake. I can’t turn to jelly now. We’ve got to get out and find somewhere to rest and hide.

There’s a rusty metal gate across the entrance. It’s only propped there, though. A padlock dangles open and useless from one of its bars.

Adrian said there’d be people here to meet us, but he lied, didn’t he? He said what he had to, to get us into the stores. His betrayal sits like a cold, hard lump in my throat. In my head I see him stroking Mia’s cheek. I thought he was on our side. But he sent us into the cave with Saul. How could he do that? I don’t understand. I’ll never understand.

‘Hello?’ I call out.

There’s no answer. I peer through the makeshift gate, but there’s no sign of anyone the other side. I take hold of it and heave it to one side.

‘Come on, Mia.’

I pick my way through the gap and Mia follows. Then I slide the gate back in place. We’re in the middle of a bramble patch, but the branches by the entrance have been broken back and the ground here is trampled. People have been here, and recently.

I try again.

‘Hello?’

Even outside the light is muted. It must still be early, but we’ve stepped out into a foggy world. Everything’s shrouded in a grey haze, the fog mixed up with woodsmoke.

I can’t see the sky, but I know it’s there. It feels like a huge weight’s been lifted off me. I can breathe again, really breathe. The bramble patch is in a sloping field with layers of buildings beyond. I can’t see any people. We’ve got no chance of hiding in an open field, so we’d better make for the
cover of the buildings and take it from there.

‘Here we go,’ I say, but Mia’s ahead of me. She feels the release from our prison, too. She’s taken off and is running through the field, jumping over the molehills, laughing as she runs. ‘Wait. Wait for me!’

I can’t catch her, but it’s okay, because she runs in random, crazy circles and comes back to me. Her tongue’s hanging out like a little dog and there’s a light in her eyes which has been missing for a long time.

My legs are tired and shaky, but the fresh air gives me new strength. I take Mia’s hand and we walk to the edge of the field and on to the cobbled street beyond.

The road slopes down towards the middle of the town. We pick our way over broken cobbles then follow a path between the houses. There’s an empty canal, a concrete channel three or four metres deep and three metres across, and at the bottom of it a metal structure lying at a sad angle, the bridge that used to go across.

We stand on the edge looking down for a moment. This place is so quiet that I hear the whine of the drone even though it’s still far in the distance.

Mia’s chip. Oh God.

Is there any point running? Is there anywhere we can hide from the spy in the sky?

Daniel’s mates in the forest had the right idea: shoot the bloody things down.

I can’t give up now, though. I can’t just sit and wait to be caught.

‘We’ll have to go back,’ I say. ‘We can’t get across this.’

I feel a stab of anxiety at backtracking – so much wasted time. But we haven’t got any choice. We go up the path again and back along the cobbled street. I can’t help glancing at the
field we’ve come from, the trail of dewy footprints we left heading away from the mouth of the tunnel. As I look, a figure appears in the fog. It’s too big to be Adam. Someone else has come through after us.

I tug on Mia’s hand.

‘Run, Mia. Run, run, run!’

Chapter 40: Adam

T
he ground’s hard beneath me. I can feel the lumps and bumps of the rock through my clothes and part of me relaxes. This isn’t flat concrete. We got out. We got out of that prison and we’re back under the stars. I reach out for Sarah, and my hand finds hers. I open my eyes. At least, I think I do. I move my eyelids, but it don’t make no difference. It’s either pitch black or I’ve gone blind. Where are we now? On some cliffs? In a cave?