Black Tide (8 page)

Some leap that. Still
…

Before he could think too much about it, Toby had flung himself out towards the deck of the boat.

THUD!

He landed heavily in the cockpit.

Safe – but sore
.

He rubbed his bruised shin. All he had to do now was get Tash on board and steer out into the open canal. Suddenly Tash landed with a surprising lightness next to him.

“Hi!” she cried. “What you waiting for?”

Toby smiled.

“Yep, what am I waiting for? Fort William here we come!”

As the
Charlotte Rose
powered down the canal, Toby tried to work out how long it would take them to reach Fort William. He had spent some time poring over the map, and it didn’t look that far. He glanced at the walnut fascia inlaid with shiny chrome dials.

Looks like we’re travelling at about ten knots, so we should reach Fort Augustus in roughly three hours. It’ll depend on how many other locks there are to get through. And Fort Augustus is about halfway from here to Fort William. With any luck we should be there just before it gets dark
.

Tash was down below, cooking up something or other from the packets and tins filling the cupboards.

Funny, but some of that stuff doesn’t look that old – certainly not three years old
.

When Toby and his dad and Sylvie had lived in the lighthouse at Collieston, before the dogs had made it too dangerous to travel across land, they had taken the old battered Land Rover and searched for food. He remembered how excited they had been about a trip to the Tesco supermarket at Ellon, but when they had got there the shelves were empty. Someone had already taken all the tins and bottled foods. All that was left were boxes and boxes of stale crackers and plain biscuits. They took them
home and ate them with the vegetables they grew in the compound and the eggs from their chickens. Once his dad had suggested killing a chicken to eat at Christmas, but Sylvie had got so upset at the thought of eating Matilda they ended up having nut loaf instead. Toby hadn’t minded; he didn’t like to see Sylvie cry.

“Tash? Can you come up here and steer while I check the map?” Toby shouted down the hatch. Tash arrived beside him and took over the controls. “If I’m not mistaken we must be nearly at the end of the
man-made
canal and about to enter into Loch Ness itself.”

Toby lowered himself down the steps and into the cabin. He stared at the map. There was a bit he didn’t understand. A faint blue line cut across the loch just after the canal opened up.

I wish you were here Dad – I could do with your help right now
.

“TOBES!”

“What?” Toby dashed back up to the cockpit. Tash looked at him in terror.

“Look!” she screamed. “Which way should we go?”

The boat had sailed out of the canal and was now powering across an open basin of water as it entered Loch Ness. The
Charlotte Rose
was speedily approaching a thin sliver of land in the middle of the basin. The narrow island was covered in birch trees and straggly bushes, and split the loch into two. To the left the water was picking up speed as the level of the river fell steeply, causing the fast flow to tug the boat
sideways. Toby hit the throttle to pull the boat out of the grip of the current and spun the steering wheel to the right. The boat swerved past the island on its left. At the end of the spit of land, Toby saw a large, yellow, triangular sign:

“Tash! The sign! You didn’t say you couldn’t read English well!” He turned to catch sight of the foaming waters beyond the spit cascading over a weir. “We’d have been wrecked if we’d hit that!” Toby’s heart was thumping furiously in his chest.

It’s like I’m responsible for everything and everybody, all the time!

“Sorry,” Tash mumbled and went back down below.

Toby realised now what the blue line on the map had meant: it marked the position of the weir on the canal. He brought the boat back to a reasonable speed and tried to concentrate on keeping it straight down the middle of the loch. Loch Ness’s dark peaty waters swirled around them, and he remembered the stories his dad had told about the Loch Ness monster. Nessie was supposed to live in the fathomless depths of the loch. Toby had once seen a very old photo supposedly taken of Nessie, but it just looked like three lumps protruding out of the water.

The rest of the morning passed quietly. Tash stayed out of sight in the cabin.

Bet she’s sulking. Well, I haven’t got time for all that sort of stuff. I’ve got to get us safely to Fort William
.

Yet, as he stood in the cold watching the grey clouds racing across the tops of the snow-covered hills, he felt quite lonely. The mottled brown-black landscape stretched into the distance: miles and miles of rock and scrub and mountains that had sat quietly observing in silence for thousands of years. It was good to talk over plans and things with someone else. He hoped she wasn’t going to be huffy all day. Just then he spotted something.

“Tash!” he shouted. “Come and look at this!” He heard her climbing up the steps.

“What now?” she asked moodily. Toby pointed to a ruined castle perched on the edge of a rocky promontory poking into the loch.

“Yes, that’s Urquhart Castle,” she said, matter-of-factly. “My father took my mother and me to see it the summer before the red fever came. We had a lovely day with a picnic and ice cream.” Toby glanced at her still face. She didn’t appear to be upset by these memories.

“Well, we haven’t got time to stop for a picnic now but I wouldn’t have minded an ice cream,” joked Toby, trying to make her smile, but she didn’t.

They passed round the end of the rocky headland, staring into the shadowy ruins of the castle. Toby tried not to think of the last time he had seen a ruined castle – at Findlater, where the dogs had been watching him out on the sea.

“Didn’t they teach you to read English at school?” Toby asked, trying to make conversation.

“I didn’t go to school,” Tash sullenly replied.

“Lucky you,” said Toby, not really meaning it. He missed going to school. He had had great fun playing football with his mates, and his teachers had been so friendly and encouraging, especially Mrs Patience, who had looked after him in primary one. “So why was that then?”

“I was bullied, so my father decided that he would teach me at home. But he can’t read English very well, so he taught me to read Russian instead. I’m also fluent in three other languages,” she said defiantly.

Poor Tash – how awful to be so badly bullied that your dad had to take you out of school
.

“That’s amazing, Tash,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. “I can only speak English and even that not very well. Fancy being able to read Russian.”

“Yes, ok,” Tash turned and smiled at him, “but it’s not very useful in Loch Ness, is it?

Toby smiled back.

It took longer than Toby had reckoned to reach Fort Augustus. The light was falling from the day as they left the open expanse of Loch Ness and cruised into the narrow basin leading to the town. Toby brought the boat to a halt before a bridge.

“Oh no! I don’t believe it!” he cried, staring at a huge flight of pens and locks that sloped away from the bridge. It was like a staircase of five steps to lift boats further up the valley.

It looked a daunting task to take the
Charlotte Rose
all the way up, opening and closing each set of gates behind her and then in front of her. Tash sighed.

“This is going to take us ages, perhaps we’d better wait until morning,” she moaned, clutching the side of her face. “We’ll be able to see better what we’re doing then, and we’ll have had a night’s rest.”

“No, we need to keep going. I don’t want to waste any more time getting there,” declared Toby. “Hush, what’s that noise?”

They both listened carefully. There it was: a low rumble of engines coming down the valley.

“The raiders! They’re coming this way!” Toby cried. As they looked up the road to where it swung close by the loch, they could see a line of headlights twinkling through the trees in the distance. “They must be a couple of miles away, which means they’ll be here in Fort Augustus in under ten minutes,” Toby calculated out loud. “We’d better try and hide the boat. They’ll easily recognise her. Maybe it’s her they’re looking for?”

I once hid the
Lucky Lady
from pirates in Peterhead harbour under a tarpaulin but there’s nothing like that here. But there was a small inlet on the left as we came into the basin – I’ll try there. Better hurry up!

The rumbling of the trucks and vans got steadily louder as he swung the boat around.

Is this daft, heading back towards them? I’ve got to take the chance. There’s nowhere to hide her here
.

“Where are you taking the boat? You’re going towards the raiders!” Tash yelled, grabbing hard onto the rail of the cockpit as the boat swerved in an arc and headed back the way they had come.

“You’ll see,” cried Toby as he yanked the wheel hard right and the boat veered into the inlet. “Perfect!”

An old wooden boathouse was tucked into the small harbour in front of them. The doors of the boathouse hung open so Toby cut his speed and nudged the boat cautiously inside. He turned the engine off and jumped out to tie her up to a railing.

“We’d better hide, too, in case they find her. We don’t want to be sitting ducks,” Toby called to Tash.

The boathouse seemed to belong to a large tumbledown house set in its own grounds. Toby and Tash clambered up a mossy bank and edged their way around what must at one time have been the extensive gardens, now choked with weeds and long grass.

“We’ve got a good view of the bridge from here. We’ll be able to see if they keep going or stop,” Toby told Tash. “I don’t think they’ve seen us – they would have fired at us by now. And anyway, they won’t think two kids are capable of getting a boat this far, what with the locks and everything.”

At that moment the ground under his feet started to tremble with vibrations from the large trucks entering the town. He threw himself down flat on the ground and then waved to Tash to do the same. She dropped to the ground like a stone and then wriggled up to be alongside him. It was now inky dark and the winter evening brought with it a cold dampness that leeched through their clothes.

“Can you see them yet?” whispered Tash.

“Yeah,” Toby peered over the bank. “I can just see the headlights coming down the main street. They seem to be slowing down.”

Toby and Tash lay and listened as the trucks and vans drove closer and closer. There was a screech of brakes as all the vehicles screamed to a halt on the bridge. They were so near, Toby could smell the acrid stink of burning rubber.

He froze. Had they seen him and Tash lying in the grass just yards away?

For goodness sake – don’t sneeze or cough! We’re right under their noses.

Toby lay cold and wet in the dank grass, and held his breath. He could hear angry gruff voices shouting orders, the sound of boots skimming on tarmac, van doors sliding open and then slamming shut, and the constant revving of engines. He knew that if the men discovered them, he and Tash were in serious trouble. The cold had now numbed his feet and legs but worse than that was the growing terror clutching at his throat and slowly choking him.

Breathe, take a breath and count… One elephant, two elephants, three
…

A small brown hand grabbed hold of the cuff of his jacket and stayed there, gripping tight. He could hear Tash’s shallow breathing not far from him. They seemed to be lying there for a lifetime, waiting for something awful to happen.

Then, as quickly as they had braked, the vehicles accelerated off, leaving behind them a swirl of diesel fumes and a cloud of hot smoke. Toby felt the air slowly returning to his lungs, and he stretched his sore, frozen limbs.

“Crikey! I thought we were goners for a moment there. I wonder why they stopped?” He staggered to his feet, pulling Tash up behind him. As he did so he
could feel her hand shaking, then he realised that she was shaking all over. She pushed her trembling fists into her eyes to try to stop herself crying.

“It’s ok, Tash,” soothed Toby, “you’ve just had a real fright. That was a bit close for comfort. Let’s get going, eh?”

Tash nodded silently. He squeezed her cold hand and together they retraced their footsteps back to the boathouse.

I’d like to know why those guys were in such a panic. What’s the rush? For soldiers they’re awfully jumpy. What have they got to be so worried about?

It took them hours to get the
Charlotte Rose
up through the staircase of locks. A bitter wind swept down from the mountains bringing a white drift of icy snow that covered the town in a frosty blanket. It made moving on the top of the lock gates slippery and dangerous. The levers were stuck solid with the cold so it took Toby and Tash twice the time and all of their combined strength to move them.

At one point Toby was so fed up with sliding and slipping and pushing and shoving that he wanted to give up. He was so tired he wanted to lie somewhere cosy and go to sleep, leaving the boat bobbing in the middle pen, stranded halfway up the stairs.

He leant on a lever, taking a rest to get his wind back, and watched Tash trying to turn the wheel of the sluice gate herself. She hadn’t spoken once while they worked.

She’s got such a lot of energy. She looks little but she’s so strong
.

“Hold on, I’m coming,” he dragged himself once more to balance precariously on the path and help with the wheel.

Come on, shift yourself! If Tash can do this, so can you. Just two more locks to do
…

Eventually the
Charlotte Rose
was sitting safely in the dark at the top of the staircase.

“I need to rest, even for just half an hour or so,” he told Tash.

“Thought you said we’ve no time for rest. We’ve got to get to Fort William quick,” she snapped back. She had put on her wolf coat for warmth, and looked madder than ever.

Can I trust her to sail the boat while I have a nap?

As if reading his mind, Tash said,

“Why don’t you let me do the driving for a bit? I can manage for a while and I promise I’ll shout for you if there’s any reading to be done, ok?”

Toby nodded tiredly; he’d have to trust her.

“Ok, but you’d better turn the lights on. There’s a switch to the left on the controls. And keep to the middle of the canal; there’s less chance of you bumping into anything.”

Toby went below and in seconds was fast asleep cuddled up on the sofa bed. He started to dream, a lovely happy-feeling one. He was playing ball in the sunshine with Jamie and Belle. The big white dog was jumping in the air and catching the ball in her mouth, then racing to them and flinging it at their feet. Sylvie was there, laughing and calling out to them, and his mum. She was standing in the door of their cottage,
saying something about being careful… He couldn’t quite hear her.

“What?” he called out. She had stopped smiling and was pointing frantically behind him. Her face turned black and her eyes went wide with terror.

“Mum?” Toby turned and looked. There was Cerberus, slobbering over Sylvie’s fluffy brown rabbit, Henry, who sat trembling on the grass.

“AHHH —”

“TOBY! Wake up! You’re having a nightmare.” Tash was shaking him gently. He sat bolt upright and stared at the wolf-girl kneeling beside his bed.

“It’s your turn to drive,” she said, curling up in a duvet on the other bed, the wolf skin draped over her legs.

Toby pulled on a dry sailing jacket and climbed up the steps. It was still night and the snow was falling fast, white and silent.

Well, the
Lucky Lady
might not have been as fast as this boat, but at least she had a nice cosy wheelhouse to keep the snow off
.

He turned the lights back on, and pressed the button to bring the anchor back up.

He worked out that they were still about twenty miles from Fort William, which should take them another couple of hours to cover.

Unless I just go for it. If I go as fast as this boat will go, we’ll be there much quicker but maybe we’ll have no fuel when we get there
.

He glanced at the fuel dial. It was reading half full.

Yeah, there’s bound to be more fuel at Fort William. Most important thing is to get there as soon as possible
.

Toby steered the boat out into the main stream of the canal and opened the throttle to maximum speed. The
Charlotte Rose
took off with a mighty surge, almost unseating him. He couldn’t help grinning as the boat powered through the water, throwing up a frothy foam trail behind it. He was enjoying the thrill of the speed as the wind blew the freezing air into his face. Toby only slowed down when he reached a low swing bridge at a place called Laggan.

Wouldn’t get
Lady
under this!

The heavy metal bridge sat on a turn-table but there was enough space under it for a very low boat, such as the
Charlotte Rose
. Toby held his breath as he nursed the boat under the metal girders and through to the other side.

We should be in Loch Lochy now. Strange name, like calling a street “Street Streety”! How about Mount Mounty? Or Lake Lakey?

At Gairlochy, Toby woke Tash and butted the boat up against the side of the next lock. The two of them worked in silence. It was taking them longer and longer to push and shove the levers as they got more and more tired.

“I think this might be the last set of locks before Fort William,” he said hopefully.

Toby decided it was too great a risk to keep the lights on, because they were approaching Banavie at the end of the canal. It was close to Fort William and if the raiders had lookouts posted they could catch sight of the boat.

The Charlotte Rose
was now in a straight man-made part of the canal lined with stone walls keeping the boat
on a steady path. Toby kept the engines ticking over gently, nudging the boat along through the darkness.

Tash crouched in the cockpit with Toby. She was still being very quiet, and Toby noticed that she kept rubbing her jaw with her gloved hand. Suddenly she stood up and nudged him, pointing to the sky in the distance, which was lit with an eerie fluorescent glow.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Looks huge, doesn’t it? Could it be the raiders’ collecting station? There can’t be much else going on in Fort William these days.” Toby gazed at the orangey light beaming into the black night.

He cut the engines and let the boat drift slowly along. They seemed to have arrived at Banavie. He could make out the dark silhouettes of buildings squatted along the canal. The engines burped and puttered and then there was silence.

“I think we’ve just run out of fuel,” he said dismally. Tash flashed on her torch and swept its beam out to the front of them. In the flickering light they saw a huge staircase of locks, this time going downwards.

“Oh no! More locks!” Tash groaned.

“Well, we’re not going to get through them anyway, unless we can find fuel. We could leave the boat here and walk down into Fort William. It might be safer anyway,” said Toby thoughtfully. “It’s not far and we can creep up on whatever that place is and take a better look.”

He tried to sound a lot braver than he felt. Now they were close to Fort William and hopefully close to his dad and Sylvie, his mind was going numb under the pressure of forming a plan.

What if they are under a huge guard of raiders, how will we get them away? What if they are injured or sick? What if it’s a trap and the raiders are waiting for us to turn up so they can capture us as well? And what does this General want with all of us?

Toby found a place to hide the boat in a slipway next to what looked like a deserted hotel. He didn’t know whether they would need it again but just in case they came back this way, it made sense to secure it. Tash was in the cabin packing stuff into a rucksack.

“We need to be able to move fast, so don’t pack too much,” Toby ordered, trying to keep his voice light and not give away the anxiety he was feeling.

“Ok, Bossy Boots,” she replied, pulling her wolf mask firmly down over her eyes.

They slunk across the overgrown gardens of the hotel and found their way onto the road. The snow was still falling in thick white curtains as they skidded down the icy tarmac, heading towards the orange light in the distance.

“Have you got a plan for once we reach the collecting station?” whispered Tash hoarsely, as they jogged along in the dark, their torches throwing bouncing beams off the frosty pavement.

“Nope,” admitted Toby. “Have you?”

“No – no plan,” she confessed. They smiled nervously at each other.

The main road took them down a hill and, following the signs to Fort William, Toby and Tash soon found themselves entering the town. The orangey light
shone to the left above the streets and houses, deserted since the time of the red fever. Toby tracked to the right, looking for the town centre.

“Where are you going?” Tash trotted along by his side.

“I want to quickly find a place. There’s something I need,” he replied, doggedly keeping to his route. They came to an area that used to be a shopping centre. The row of tatty, low concrete buildings lay along one side of a large grassed square. The shops had long since been ransacked; the grimy windows stared out bleakly from behind mounds of rotting litter. On the right of the square was a glass-fronted building, the windows of which were covered in posters of climbers, walkers and cyclists.

“This is it!” cried Toby. “This is where my dad used to come for his coffee and cakes before setting out to climb Ben Nevis. I knew it was around here somewhere.”

“Do we have time for a trip down memory lane?”

“Ok, give me a break. There’s something here that I really need, at least I hope there is.”

Toby pushed open the glass door and strode through mounds of drink cans, mouldy plastic bottles and empty shoe boxes to get to a row of shelves at the back of the shop. He ferreted around for several minutes.

“Hurry up, Toby,” Tash urged. “We’re not here for the shopping.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming but I have to get… Look at these.” Toby held out his old tattered boots. She crinkled up her nose.

“Poo – they smell!”

“Yes, exactly,” said Toby. His feet were sore and soggy; the skin had come off the soles and his toes were permanently wrinkled with damp. “My feet don’t smell too good either!”

The large boots had all been taken, probably by the raiders, but luckily there was one pair left in his size: smart Gore-Tex-lined walking boots that felt waterproof and comfortable.

“Bliss,” he sighed, standing in warm dry boots for the first time in ages.

“Have you finished your shopping trip now?” Tash asked impatiently. Toby gave the thumbs up and they both made for the exit.

As they left the shopping centre and headed up the hill towards the light, Toby and Tash could hear men shouting, truck engines bursting into life, and a steady hum of something electrical. As they got nearer, crouching in the long grass at the side of a snow-filled track, the noises got louder and louder. Toby could sense his body getting tauter and tighter as he wriggled through the snowy ferns to get a better view.

The track led to what must have been a small industrial estate surrounded by a tall mesh fence, and entered through an even taller metal gate with barbed wire strung on the top. Spotlights fastened to telegraph poles around the perimeter of the fence cast the orange light. The hum seemed to be coming from a bulky generator sat to one side, powering the lights.

Toby could see most of a large yard with several portacabins dumped round the edge and, in the centre,
rows of large metal containers with their doors flung open. Parked next to the containers were the trucks and white vans they had seen leaving Fort George in such a hurry. He even recognised some of the scruffy men from when he had been captured. They looked sour and even angrier now than they had then, their faces contorted into black rage and defiance.

Not a happy bunch, this lot
.

In comparison, there were a bunch of raiders in smart uniforms standing around the entrances to the portacabins. They were laughing and joking and looked relaxed and full of bonhomie.

Seems to be some sort of hierarchy. Some of the raiders are doing all the hard work while others look on. I bet those in the uniforms are the chosen ones with tattoos
.

Toby crawled nearer the fence, aware of Tash at his heels. He could now see that the raiders were taking stuff out of the containers and loading it into the trucks and vans. Great big boxes and armloads of goods in black bin liners were being thrown with haste into the backs of the vehicles. Across the yard a man on a fork-lift truck was loading pallets of
shrink-wrapped
packets and bottles onto a lorry.

What are they doing? They look like they’re moving out of here. But where has all that stuff come from? And where are all the people they have kidnapped?