Wanted (Flick Carter Book 1) (32 page)

‘Zip it, Young!’ Dixon ordered. ‘We pulled Carter out of training early, don’t forget, so he doesn’t know.’ Her tone softened. ‘It’s standard operating procedure, when we stop a vehicle, we try to deposit one of these…’ she grabbed a small black box out of a storage bin near the roof and tossed it to Adam, ‘…somewhere in the vehicle. Preferably where it
won’t
be found, Young!’

Adam recognised the object that he’d seen briefly in Young’s hand when they’d looked at the back of the vardo.

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Young said. ‘I stuffed it as far back in the hay bales as I could reach. Didn’t figure they’d find it that quickly.’

‘Well, it’s too late now. Looks like they have found it, which means they’ll be on the lookout for us.’

‘So what does it do?’ asked Adam.

‘It sends a signal so we can track it, duh–that’s why it’s called a tracker!’ said Young. ‘What do you think Mo does up there all day?’ he pointed. ‘She’s not getting a facial, you know!’

‘Yeah, it’s just… I’m still used to “if you play with electricity, you’ll get reported to the Kingsmen”…’

‘So, who you gonna get reported to, eh? We
are
the Kingsmen! You gonna report yourself to yourself?
We’re allowed!
’

‘Yes, but who says?’

‘We do, dummy! Sarge, tell him, will you?’

Sergeant Wailing adopted the “put upon” pose, beloved of sergeants everywhere. ‘Cadet Carter,’ he started, ‘you said it yourself. When people are caught messing around with electricity, they get reported to the Kingsmen, and then they are “disappeared”. Well, what do you suppose happens to them?’

Adam thought for a moment. He’d never really considered what happened next; people were just gone. ‘They get thrown into a dungeon and tortured and killed in highly imaginative and painful ways?’

‘This is the twenty-third century, Carter, do you really think we torture and kill people willy-nilly?’

Everyone who wasn’t Lieutenant Dixon immediately called out, ‘Yes!’

Dixon turned around, groaning. ‘See, sergeant,
this
is what I have to deal with!’

‘Of course we bleedin’ don’t!’ Sergeant Wailing said in his best sergeant’s voice. ‘We recruits them. Not for the military obviously, but the scientific section is always crying out for people who can figure stuff out without getting killed in the process. Secrets of the ancients and so on.’

‘Look lively people, we’re getting close!’ Morgan called from the front, and soon the truck pulled off the road into a clearing.

‘Fire’s still smoking, looks like they left in a hurry,’ Dixon said. ‘Search the area and see if they left anything behind.’

They made a methodical search of the area, but didn’t come up with anything until Mo Fletcher poked at the remains of the fire with a stick. ‘I think we found the tracker, ma’am.’ She flicked a melted and twisted lump from the ashes. ‘They definitely found it and killed it.’

‘What does that mean?’ Adam asked. ‘Does it mean they’ve got Flick?’

‘Dunno,’ said Young, ‘Maybe. It could just mean they found the tracker.’

Dixon yelled at them, ‘Well don’t just stand around looking at it, let’s get cracking; they’re getting away! Oh, and Young?’

‘Ma’am?’

‘This time when we catch them, plant
two
trackers. They’ll be expecting the first one, and hopefully when they find it, they won’t look for the second.’

Adam shadowed Mo Fletcher for the rest of the morning, learning how she followed the signals from the trackers on a glowing map display built into the side wall of the truck.
 

‘The signals are picked up by radio masts–similar to that one outside Swindon–and by measuring the time it takes the signal to reach different masts we can work out where the tracker is. It’s a process called triangulation.

‘This green dot shows our position, and the yellow dots show the trackers. The numbers next to them are so that we can identify which is which.’

She pressed a button on her console, and a new series of bright dots glowed on the map. ‘These are the masts we’ve got working. It’s a slow job and right now it only covers a small part of the country. And when we do get the masts working, there are gangs of hooligans that come and break them.

She looked around and then whispered conspiratorially, ‘Between you and me, it’s the doctrine that all electricity is evil that’s to blame. People start thinking that the masts are evil–bad juju–and so they attack them.’

Adam nodded. It was something he’d always been told, even though he’d only accepted it with a pinch of salt. The scavenging mentality ran deep, even outside of the Scavs.

Adam jumped as a loud buzzer sounded close to his ear and a red flashing light appeared on the map. It was getting closer to their position.

‘Looks like we’ve got company!’ Mo said. She called out, ‘Lieutenant! Incoming!’

The lieutenant climbed up to the console and peered at the display. ‘Report?’ she commanded.

‘Unknown vehicle, ma’am, coming straight for us, so I suspect it’s airborne. No response to IFF, so it’s assumed hostile.’

‘How long till it reaches us?’

‘Five minutes, ma’am.’

‘Very good.’ She jumped down and shouted, ‘Incoming aircraft! Everyone evacuate to cover!’ She called back to Fletcher, ‘You stay here and monitor the aircraft. If it looks like it’s going to attack, get out.’

‘Yes ma’am.’

‘Carter! What are you doing still here? Get out on the double!’

Adam bolted through the rear hatch and ran for the nearest trees where he threw himself onto the ground. He crawled around until he had a good view back towards the truck, and watched and waited.

After a few minutes he heard a droning noise in the sky, and shortly after saw a large flying object. As it got closer he could see it had a big triangular wing and a carriage underneath it. There appeared to be two people in the carriage, one behind the other. It circled around once and then disappeared. A couple of minutes after that he heard a rattling and bumping sound as the carriage came to a stop on the ground several metres away from the truck. The big triangular wing, which Adam could now see was black with the Kingsmen crown emblazoned in yellow, tipped down so that the left corner rested on the ground.

He heard Dixon call the all clear, and the surrounding trees disgorged their hidden Kingsmen.

The two people in the carriage were wearing protective clothes and helmets, but once they had taken them off, Adam recognised them instantly: Corporal Barnes and Kingsman Garrett, the two men that had been left behind in Faringdon. They spoke to Lieutenant Dixon in urgent tones, although he was too far away to hear what they were saying. Once she glanced in his direction, but she didn’t call him over.

When the conference had finished, Dixon called everyone over and made an announcement.

‘Now listen up, we’ve got new orders. We’re to abandon the search–sorry Carter–and proceed to Bristol HQ. Report directly to the Officer Commanding. I shall leave with Corporal Barnes by air, assuming this–contraption–gets off the ground, and meet up with you later.’ She looked at Adam, who was standing watching her, mouth agape.

‘So are you saying my sister doesn’t matter any more? What was the point of all this?’ Adam stuttered, confusion all over his face.

Dixon sighed. ‘Look, Carter, I know she’s your sister but we have to face it, if we haven’t found her by now, we’re probably not going to. So yes, she’s escaped, for the moment anyway.’

He brightened, lifting his head and meeting her gaze.

‘Tell you what though, if you pass that vardo on the way, you can search it and plant those trackers. Okay?’

Adam nodded.

Dixon addressed everyone once again, ‘While I’m away, Sergeant Wailing will be in charge. That is all. Carry on.’

There were groans all round, as everyone jumped and started packing the camp away. By the time Adam had a chance to look up, Barnes and Dixon in the flying contraption were a mere speck on the horizon.

‘WHAT WAS THAT thing?’ Flick asked. They were heading along the main road as fast as their horse could pull the vardo, which, wasn’t very fast.

‘Tracker,’ Chas replied. ‘That’s how the Kingsmen have been following us. They must have planted it on the vardo when they stopped us, before we met you. They went around to the back of the wagon. At the time I thought it was just because they didn’t know there wasn’t a door there, but now I know different. We’re well shot of it, and now they won’t know where we are.’

‘But this is the only road…’ Flick pointed out.

‘That’s why we’ve got to keep moving. Unless we can turn off, they’re bound to catch us up sooner or later.’

‘How many of them are there?’

‘I saw four when they stopped us, an officer, a sergeant and two men. But they had that infernal steam wagon of theirs, and there was probably more inside it.’

‘So if we can’t see steam, we should be all right?’

‘I wouldn’t count on it. This road might seem like it’s straight, but there are enough dips and bends that they could be almost upon us before we see them.’

‘But if we
can
see steam, that’s bad, yes?’

‘Yup.’

Flick looked back, but she couldn’t see anything through the canopy of the trees that stretched both sides of the road. It was obvious that they couldn’t turn off; not only were the trees and undergrowth too thick to get a cart through, but the steep slope up on their left and down on their right would quickly tip the vardo onto its side.

‘If we can find a turning before they spot us, then maybe we can get out of sight. It’ll be dark soon, and with a little bit of luck, they might miss us,’ said Chas.

A few minutes later, they started seeing signs of an old settlement. Low walls started to appear at the sides of the road, and suggestions of brickwork could be made out under big matted piles of ivy. Then they spotted a turning to the left. It was a narrow track between overgrown walls, and quite steep.

‘We’ll keep going,’ said Chas. ‘If they see the turning they’ll have to check it out, and that’ll slow them down.’

They passed a turning on the right that sloped steeply down, and another on the left, and another. Then just as they were almost out from the ruined settlement, they turned off. ‘This one will do,’ Chas said.

The road they were now on was not as steep as any of the others that they had passed. It wound right then left in a big sweeping curve. Chas pulled into a wide gap between ruined walls that was quite well hidden from the road.

‘We’ll make camp here,’ he said. ‘We should be quite close to the river Avon, and we’ll reach Bath tomorrow. Hopefully we can lose them there. But for tonight, no fires, no lights, nothing that’ll give us away.’

‘What made you go on the run?’ Hannah and Flick were sitting in the grass, looking down on the river below them as it meandered through steep banks. They had finished their cold supper and had strolled a few hundred metres from the camp to enjoy the twilight. A large flock of small birds, maybe swallows or starlings was swooping back and forth low over the river, attracted by the flies and midges.

‘It started with a Scav,’ Flick began.

‘This is about a boy! It is isn’t it?’ Hannah squealed excitedly.

Flick nodded. The flock of birds split into two and wheeled around each other in an intricate spiral, rising up and up until they broke apart, darting right and left.

‘I knew it! It always is!’ Hannah clapped her hands. And grinned. She shifted onto her knees, Her eyes were wide with excitement, ‘Tell me everything.’

Then she gasped with the horror of realisation, ‘It wasn’t the Scav who murdered your family was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t him,’ Flick said. Staring straight ahead, she took a deep breath, ‘It was a scumbag called Griffin who tried to get to the Scav through me, and when it didn’t work, he killed my family.’ The memory flooded back and a tear trickled down her cheek. Talking made the memories seem more real, more painful, and she didn’t want to hurt, not like this.

But Hannah persisted. ‘Didn’t you go to the Watch, or the mayor or something?’ she asked. ‘They’d have locked him up.’

Flick sighed. ‘He
is
the mayor,’ she said simply.

‘Bugger. So he locked
you
up for a crime
he
committed.’

Flick nodded. ‘Anyway, I escaped.’

The birds swirled around in their intricate patterns, breaking apart and reforming like a big ever-changing ball, the noise of a thousand tiny wings thrumming in time to the pulse of their aerial dance. The two girls watched in silence.

‘What about you? Have you got a boyfriend?’ Flick thought this was much safer ground.

Hannah nodded. ‘I don’t see him much, ‘cos he lives in Bristol, and we travel around a lot. I haven’t actually seen him in, like,
months!
’

‘What does he do?’ Flick asked.

‘I don’t actually know. Something secret I think. He never talks about it anyway. We’re going to have our tattoos done next time I see him.’

‘Your tattoos?’

‘Yeah. Many Scavs have life tattoos. It tells their story, defines who they are. Whenever something significant happens it’s added to the tattoo. Not literally but like, a symbol.’

Flick wondered if Shea had a tattoo, and what it looked like and whether it now had her in it.

So have you got a tattoo? Can I see it?’ she asked.

‘I haven’t got it yet,’ she said, ‘but soon. Come on, it’s getting dark, let’s get back.’
 

Bad dreams kept Flick tossing and turning most of the night. When dawn finally came, four bleary eyed people staggered from the vardo, seemingly more tired than when they went to bed.

‘Let’s not do that again,
please?
’ Hannah begged. ‘Sleeping in the same
room
is bad enough, yet alone having to share a bed.’

Flick stomped off back towards the road, and flopped down next to a tree. The bad dreams were not her fault, and she didn’t see why she should apologise for them. She didn’t want to have them any more than the others wanted to hear her scream and shout in the night.

A moment later, Jules came up and sat down beside her. ‘It’s okay. Really,’ she said. ‘We’re just a little grumpy in the mornings.’