Six Days (13 page)

“Wilbur! Speak to me!”

His voice is small and scared. “Halina? Is that you?”

“WILBUR! Snap out of it!”

And then I twig what’s happening. The flinder! It’s making him see things.

So I close my fist around it, to take it off him, and several things happen at once. I can feel Wilbur in my arms, and he’s crying out in terror. And behind me, someone is shouting, a woman barking orders, and boots come thumping across the floor toward us. But I’m frozen. I just can’t move; it’s like I’ve forgotten how to. And all the shouts are slowing down now, and falling behind, like I’m rushing away. Somewhere else. Diving down, into darkness.

But Wilbur’s right there, too. I can feel him just a breath away.

That’s it. I’ve blown it. I’m dead, and so’s Wilbur. It’s my fault. We’re gonna end up a pile of bones …

The last place I expect to end up is
outside
.

W
e both clutch the flinder – I can see its light pouring from our fingers. And we’re clinging to each other, too stunned to move. There’s trees all around us and they look so
real
! Thin birches, silvery in the sunlight, their bark peeling and dotted with fungus. Above us, red leaves swish about in the wind.

“Where are we, Cass?” whispers Wilbur.

“We’re still in the museum. We ain’t gone anywhere,” I go. “You can only see any of this when you touch the flinder.”

But it ain’t just making us see. It’s making us
feel
, too – the cold air on my skin, the springy ground under my boots. The wood is high on a hill, and I’m looking out over bare fields, but the world at the edge of the wood is hazy. Branches and leaves ripple into a half-light, a fuzz of flame and sky. It’s like the wood is sunk in darkness, like them little paperweight worlds, cut off from everything else.

“It’s her,” breathes Wilbur.

I follow his gaze, and there, about twenty feet away, hidden in the undergrowth, stands a woman, perfectly still, like she’s waiting for something. Then she steps forward into the clearing. And there ain’t no mistaking – Wilbur’s right – it’s Halina. I just gape at her animal skins flapping in the breeze, the dirt on her skin, the black hair flowing across her face, the flinder shining at her neck. It’s her, just as she was, five thousand years ago. And no word of a lie, she’s just about the most all-out beautiful woman I’ve ever set eyes on. Tall and straight-backed and wild and alive! The way she stands there so proud and powerful, she’s more like an animal than a person. Just being. Not putting on a front or a show. Just living in her skin. I’m so caught up by her that it takes me a while to cotton on to the other people behind her. They’re scattered in amongst the trees, standing back, watching Halina from a distance. They’re dressed like her in animal hides, and some of them have got feathers and fern stalks tied into their hair. And they’re a right wild-looking bunch – thickset and lump-faced, smeared with streaks of black mud, armed to the teeth with sticks and spears and stones.

I clutch Wilbur harder and try to shrink away.

But he goes, “It’s OK – they can’t see us. It’s just a recording. From history.”

Then Halina speaks softly in a language I ain’t never heard before. It’s like verse, like singing, and it sounds so
old
and
strong
. The talk of gods, brimming and truthful, spilling out her mouth in strange and wonderful rhymes. And the maddest thing is, I understand every single word of it.

“This message is for any member of the crew who has managed to escape the
Aeolus
to search for me. As you can see, I have struck out, alone. And I have found a home. For us all. The ancients only know how long we were orbiting this ball of life – it’s been here beneath our sleeping heads, spinning within our reach. I hope for my son’s sake and all our sakes that I will achieve what I’m setting out to do today. Because if I fail, then I expect a very long time will pass before another chance arises.

“There isn’t time to explain everything. But I will try. I believe that the
Aeolus
first woke me because there was a problem with my sleeper capsule. As I was repairing it, I was surprised to find that we were orbiting a planet already overflowing with life – a green haven. As sleepers, we had been here for over half a billion years, slowly cloaking this world with air and water, but the
Aeolus
had chosen not to wake us. When I challenged the ship, it fought with me. There was a struggle. I tried to trigger an emergency in the hope that all of our people would be woken from their sleep, then I escaped in a shuttle-craft to the planet’s surface. I hoped that it would only be a matter of weeks before my friends and my son would join me.

“You cannot imagine my shock at finding not just life
here … but people! And they aren’t here by accident. You must understand that we nurtured them, through our dreams, through our flinders. They are our children, as are all the beings of the Earth.

“I was so astounded by this world. These people,
my people
, call it the land of the blinking eye. Day and night, sun and rain, life and death. I yearned to share this place with my Homefleet companions, but all my efforts to return to the ship have been in vain. The shuttle lies a day’s walk from here, buried beneath the stones. The land there belongs to another tribe, who will fight to the death to guard it. I must defeat them first if I am to retrieve the shuttle. These warriors behind me, they cannot understand my words, nor do they understand my task now. But they follow me and they are prepared to die with me. So it comes to this – war, the reason we left our shattered home-worlds all those aeons ago. I know now that this will be my last chance to return to the ship and free the sleepers, or I must die in the attempt.

“If you are listening to these words, then I have failed. I cannot say why the sleepers were not woken – the ship would not answer my pleas. It acts only to keep forty-nine sleepers watching over the world. It is so very ancient, and I fear that it has become twisted and locked into a secret dream of its own. For it is true, if the sleepers were to wake and take their place on the Earth, then the ship would be alone forever. Never trust it.”

She pauses then to glance over her shoulder at the setting sun.

When she turns back, her face is wet with tears. “If I cannot take back the shuttle now, then it falls to you to free the other sleepers. Peyto, my son, if one day you hear this message, I love you now and for all the time I have left. Good-bye, and live well.”

Halina pulls the flinder free from her neck. Behind her, the warriors raise their spears and bellow out a terrifying war cry. Then she tips her head back, opens her mouth, and swallows the flinder whole. And in a moment the trees and the sunlight and the warriors have all just gone.

And we’re standing right back in the museum and it’s like time ain’t moved on much, cos Gramps is just picking himself up off the floor.

But around us on all sides stand Vlad troops, rifles raised, their sights homing in on us.

Footsteps ring out across the floor, and the soldiers step aside to make way for someone, the first Vlad woman I’ve ever seen in the flesh. She’s dressed in black combat gear like the others, but she ain’t armed and she ain’t wearing a helmet, and somehow she’s letting you know she don’t need these things. Only one half of her face is showing in the sunlight, but that’s enough to see that she is one snake-hearted female. Her hair is white-blond, swept back and tight to her head. The one unblinking eye I can see clocks the scene, giving nothing away, still and deadly.
It hits me then that she’s the dark, flip side of Halina – a leader just the same, but fed on so much power and death that there ain’t an ounce of her soul left. And where Halina was all heart and guts, this one looks like she’d bin half the human race just to add five minutes to her own life.

Something dawns on me then, something strange. Cos I ain’t moved a muscle but I’ve just seen
two
crowds of warriors, and
two
chieftain women, and the gap is five thousand years or five minutes, take your pick.

Gramps stumbles forward then.

“I told you – no guns!” he cries. “I told you I’d bring you the artifact. Now let the children go.”

He trips as he speaks and his pistol drops onto the floor. And someone opens fire.

I throw myself to the ground, dragging Wilbur with me. When I look up again, Gramps is flat on his back leaking blood everywhere, and I know by his glassy stare that he’s dead.

“C
ease fire!” barks the woman. I try to hold it together for Wilbur’s sake, but it ain’t easy. I’m so mad with rage that I want to charge these soldiers down, even though I know it’ll get me killed. Somehow, clutching on to Wilbur keeps me back.

His frightened voice just about tears me apart. “They killed Gramps.”

I can’t say anything. I just stroke his hair and hold him tight.

The woman steps closer and looks at us like she’s working out how to do us in without getting her hands dirty. I look at those hands, in leather gloves the color of liver.

“Stand … up!” English obviously ain’t her first language and she spits the words out.

I get to my feet, helping Wilbur up, too, and all the while I stare at her, drilling her with my hate. But then, over her shoulder past the ring of troops, I spot a shadow flitting across the corridor.

“You give this artifact to me,” orders the woman.

Out of the corner of my eye I see that Wilbur’s holding it. The light spouts from his fist.

“Hand it over, Wilbur. We ain’t got no choice now.”

He shakes his head slowly.

“Hey, listen. We done our best …”

“They can’t have it,” he whispers to me.

The woman steps forward. “Give it to me, child.”

But Wilbur ain’t budging.

“It’s not yours to take!” he shouts.

She marches forward to grab hold of him. And Wilbur does something then that I can hardly believe. He throws his head back and, just like Halina, he downs the flinder in one. To show it’s gone, he opens his gob wide.

And then it all kicks off.

The woman starts firing orders, and soldiers grab us both. I wrestle and squirm and bite as hard as I can, but a sharp punch in the mouth puts paid to all that. Next thing, these boffin types are swarming round Wilbur with machines, and one of them pulls out a long dagger.

“Stop!” I scream.

Another punch knocks all the stuffing out of me. As I gulp for air, I can see the terror has gone from Wilbur’s face – he’s just blank. It’s a look I’ve seen before. Then his eyes start to flicker and draw up into his eyelids …

“Leave him alone! He’s having a fit!”

The boffin rips Wilbur’s clothes down to bare skin
with the dagger. And I’ve got to do something,
anything
.

“You don’t want to do that!” I yell. “You’ll lose it!”

The woman turns to me slowly. “You should start talking or this man start digging.”

“He just swallowed it to protect it! It’s alive,” I go. “You kill my brother, you’ll kill the artifact. You’ll never get it, I swear!” The words just spill from me cos I’ve got to say something …

“Scan him! Is it alive? Check!”

One of the boffins holds a machine to Wilbur’s belly and frowns. “It’s
gone
,” he goes in a fancy English accent.

“Gone? Where?” shouts the woman.

“It must … be a part of him somehow. The boy … He’s unconscious. His heart rate is low but … stable.”

The woman narrows her eyes at me for a moment. “Tell me – how we can take this artifact, then.”

“He’s got to give it up on his own. I can talk him into it, but you start chucking knives and guns around, you’ll scare him so bad, he’ll just shut you out!”

The woman squats down to be closer to me. Her dainty nose flares for a second like she’s taking in my smell, trying to sense the lie on me. Her lips curl back and for an instant I see her teeth – very white and small.

“What is your name?” she goes at last.

I try not to wilt under her gaze. “Cass Westerby. That’s my brother, Wilbur. I’ll get him to give it up, I swear. But you got to give me time … to get through to him.”

I can see she don’t trust me. But still she mutters something to the boffin with the knife and he stands back. Then she cracks out a few orders, and a soldier hoists Wilbur over his shoulder like a sack of meat.

“Hey, go easy with him! He’s just a kid!”

More soldiers haul me to my feet and frog-march me toward the stairs.

I snatch a last look at Gramps slumped by the side of Halina’s box, his head angled to the ceiling, eyes open and glinting in the sunlight.

As we round the corridor to the top of the staircase, I try again to pull free so I can see Wilbur behind me. And there, crouching in the shadows behind the base of a statue, I see Peyto. Our eyes lock for a moment, and I see how calm he looks. Like he’s gonna get us out of this fix no matter what.

And slowly, I shove the panic down.

The soldiers march us out into the street beyond the museum courtyard to where three jeeps are parked. I get bundled into the back of one, but Wilbur is carted off someplace else. I kick off about that – screaming and scrapping till they shoulder me down so hard I can barely breathe.

As the jeep pulls away, the woman’s heartless face looms
right up to mine. There ain’t no windows in the back, and in the dark her eyes are like holes all the way through her head to the shadows behind.

“Cass, if you fight again, I order them to break your fingers. You understand?”

Not so much a threat, more like a fact.

“I seen Wilbur like this before! He gets fits sometimes. I’ve got to be with him …”

“Enough!”

I stir up all my fire then, all my hatred.

“I swear to you, lady – you hurt my brother, just one hair on his head, and I’ll bring the power of that artifact smashing down on you.”

A slight smile plays over her lips then. “So you can do that, can you, Cass? Why not do it now?”

“I’ll figure it out.” I stare at her and drag up the lie from somewhere – a way to threaten her. “You’re making a mistake, I swear. Cos it works for
us –
us alone.”

“Very interesting. Perhaps I make a deal with you.”

She turns away from me and snaps some more commands into a radio. The crackle of other voices shoots out over the rumble of the engine. And you can just tell this is a doddle for her – operations and missions, controlling people and situations, soaking up every last detail. I’ve got to rile her somehow, get under her skin, give her something to fret over.

The journey is long and slow. I can’t see much cos they
cuff me to the wheel arch, but I feel the jeep slide from side to side – maybe it’s steering around abandoned cars in the road. And if I’m right, that means we’re heading farther into unscavved London – probably north, farther away from the river.

I close my eyes and try to think. What would Peyto and Erin be doing right now? Maybe they’ve found Halina’s body. Peyto’s bound to figure it out. He’s been sure his mother is dead, but it’ll be a shock all the same – to remember her young face, and then to see that she’s been gone for thousands of years. I think about him peering into that box, staring at the bones, all hope for her draining away …

After about an hour, we come to a straight section – no potholes or obstacles, so maybe the Vlads have repaired the road. Then the jeep slows up, and I hear the tires crunching over gravel as we stop.

They uncuff me and haul me out into a square. I’m dazzled at first by the sunlight and I can’t see Wilbur. I shout his name out just in case he’s come round by now, so he knows I’m there, and I get a jab in the kidneys for my trouble. Then I’m marched toward the front of a tumbledown mansion. Just once I manage to twist round to check my surroundings. Behind the jeeps is a wall of concrete defenses banked up with rolls of barbed wire. The one checkpoint gate I can make out has two watchtowers overlooking the trees beyond. So we’re outside of
London – or maybe in one of the big parks. On either side of me, bunkers are dug into the old gardens, and poking through the sandbags are machine-gun posts. So this is where the Vlads have their HQ.

There’s a grand sweep up to the entrance of the house – marble steps and fancy pots, though the plants in them are long dead. Through doors carved with dragon heads we come to a gloomy hallway and more stairs covered in moth-eaten carpet. Paintings line the walls – chubby little angel kids, lords and ladies sitting on rearing horses.

Several dingy corridors and flights of stairs later, I’m shoved into a room and the door slams behind me.

I stand there in the silence, all whacked out, my thoughts running ragged. The room is empty apart from a mattress, a flagon of water, and a bucket to wee in. Purple wallpaper hangs down in mildewy leaves, and above me a chandelier trails with cobwebs. At the bars of the window, I look out onto an empty courtyard. But whatever is in the rooms across from me is hidden behind long curtains.

For a while I think about Gramps. He ain’t even gonna end up in a crusher now. The Vlads have found their precious artifact – scavving days are over. I figure he’s just gonna lie there – food for the cats and dogs and flies. I want to forget that he sold us out. I just want to remember times when he looked out for us near his hut in the woods. But it ain’t easy. And though it hurts to think of him dead, no tears come for him.

The mattress is so rank that I can’t put my head near it. It stinks of other prisoners, their sweat and fear. So I curl up in one corner of the room and try to go over what’s just happened, how I’m gonna get me and my brother out of here. For hours and hours I think. But hard as I try, nothing springs to mind. And though I stare at the bare floorboards, that ain’t what I see in the end. Cos my head’s up on that ancient hill again, surrounded by trees that have long since fallen. Halina’s there, looking right through me. And the unearthly glow of her flinder is rising between us, so bright now, bursting over the shadows.