Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (118 page)

“Excuse me,” a woman says, approaching the ship. She looks nervously over all of us before settling her eyes on Mistress Coyle. “You’re the healer, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Mistress Coyle replies.

“She’s
a
healer,” I say. “One of many.”

“Can you help me?” the woman says.

And she pulls up her sleeve to reveal a band so infected it’s clear even to me that she’s already lost her arm.

[T
ODD
]

“They kept coming through the night,”
Viola says to me thru the comm.
“There’s three times as many here now.”

“Same here,” I say.

It’s just before dawn, the day after Mr Shaw spoke to the Mayor, the day after townsfolk started showing up on Viola’s hill, too, and more keep popping up everywhere. Tho it’s mostly men in town and mostly women up on the hill. Not all, but mostly.

“So the Mayor gets what he wants,”
Viola sighs, and even on the small screen I can see how pale she still looks.
“Men and women separated.”

“You all right?” I ask.

“I’m okay,”
she says a bit too quick.
“I’ll call you later, Todd. Busy day ahead.”

We hang up and I come outta my tent and find the Mayor already waiting for me with two cups of coffee. He holds one out. After a second, I take it. We both stand there drinking, trying to get some warmth inside of us as the sky gets pinker. Even at this hour, there are some lights on where the Mayor’s men got power running into some of the bigger buildings so the townsfolk could gather in warmth.

The Mayor’s eyes are on the Spackle hilltop, like always, still in the dark half of the sky, still hiding an unseen army behind itself. And I realize that just right now, just for these few minutes while the Mayor’s army sleeps, you can hear something besides their sleeping
ROAR
, something faint and in the distance.

The Spackle got a
ROAR
, too.

“Their voice,” the Mayor says. “And I really do think it’s one big voice, evolved to fit this world perfectly, connecting them all.” He sips his coffee. “You can hear it sometimes on quiet nights. All those individuals, speaking as one. Like the voice of this whole world, right inside your head.”

He keeps staring at the hill in a kinda spooky way, so I ask, “Yer spies ain’t heard ’em planning nothing?”

He takes another drink but don’t answer me.

“They can’t get close, can they?” I say. “Else they’ll hear
our
plans.”

“That’s the nub of it, Todd.”

“Mr O’Hare and Mr Tate don’t got Noise.”

“I’m already down two captains,” he says. “I can’t spare any more.”

“Well, you didn’t really burn all the cure, did you? Just give it to yer spies.”

He don’t say nothing.

“You didn’t,” I say, then I realize. “You
did
.”

He still don’t say nothing.

“Why?”
I ask, looking round at the soldiers nearby. The
ROAR
is already getting louder now as they wake. “The Spackle can sure hear
us
. You coulda had an advantage–”

“I have other advantages,” he says. “Besides, there may be another among us soon who could be most useful in regards to spying.”

I frown. “I ain’t never gonna work for you,” I say. “Not never.”

“You already
have
worked for me, dear boy,” he says. “For several months, if I remember correctly.”

I can feel my temper rising
right
up but I stop cuz James has come over with the morning feedbag for Angharrad. “I’ll take it,” I say, setting down my coffee. He hands me the bag and I loop it gently round Angharrad’s head.

Boy colt?
she asks.

“It’s okay,” I say, into her ears, stroking ’em with my fingers. “Eat, girl.” It takes another minute but then I start seeing her jaws work as she takes the first bites. “Attagirl,” I say.

James is still there, staring at me blankly, his hands still up from when he gave me the bag. “Thanks, James,” I say.

He still stands there, staring, not blinking, hands still up.

“I said,
thanks
.”

And then I hear it.

It’s hard to catch in the
ROAR
of everyone else’s Noise, even James’s, which is thinking about how he used to live upriver with his pa and his brother and how he joined the army when it marched past cuz it was either that or die fighting and now here he is, in a war with the Spackle, but he’s happy now, happy to be fighting, happy to be serving the President–

“Aren’t you, soldier?” says the Mayor, taking another sip of his coffee.

“I am,” James says, still not blinking. “Very happy.”

Cuz underneath it all lies the little vibrating
buzz
of the Mayor’s Noise, seeping into James’s, twining round it like a snake, pushing it into a shape that ain’t too disagreeable to James but still ain’t quite his own.

“You may go,” the Mayor says.

“Thank you, sir,” James blinks, dropping his hands. He gives me a funny little smile and then walks back into the thick of the camp.

“You can’t,” I say to the Mayor. “Not all of ’em. You said you just started being able to control people. That’s what you
said.
”

He don’t answer, just turns back up to the hill.

I stare at him, figuring it out some more. “But yer getting stronger,” I say. “And if they’re cured–”

“The cure turned out to mask everything,” he says. “It made them, shall we say, harder to reach. You need a lever to work a man. And Noise turns out to be a very good one.”

I look round us again. “But you don’t
have
to,” I say. “They’re already following you.”

“Well, yes, Todd, but that doesn’t mean they’re not open to suggestion. It can’t have escaped your attention how quickly they follow my orders in battle.”

“Yer working up to controlling a whole army,” I say. “A whole
world
.”

“You make it sound so sinister.” He smiles that smile. “I’d only ever use it for the good of us all.

And then there’s a sound behind us, fast footsteps. It’s Mr O’Hare, outta breath, his face blazing.

“They’ve attacked our spies,” he pants at the Mayor. “Only one man each returned from north and south. Obviously left so they could tell us what happened. The Spackle slaughtered the rest.”

The Mayor grimaces and turns back to the hilltop. “So,” he says. “That’s how they’re playing the game.”

“What’s that sposed to mean?” I say.

“Attacks from the northern road and the southern hills,” he says. “The first steps towards the inevitable.”

“The inevitable what?”

He raises his eyebrows. “They’re surrounding us, of course.”

{V
IOLA
}

Girl colt
, Acorn greets me as I give him an apple I stole from the food tent. He stables in an area at the treeline where Wilf’s taken all the Answer’s animals.

“He giving you any trouble, Wilf?” I ask.

“Nah, ma’am,” Wilf says, attaching feedbags to a pair of oxes next to Acorn.
Wilf
, they say, while they eat.
Wilf, Wilf
.

Wilf
, Acorn says, nudging in my pockets for another apple.

“Where’s Jane?” I ask, looking around.

“Helpin hand out food with the mistresses,” Wilf says.

“That sounds like Jane,” I say. “Listen, have you seen Simone? I need to talk to her.”

“She’s off huntin with Magnus. Ah heard Mistress Coyle suggestin it to her.”

Ever since the townsfolk started showing up, food has been our most pressing issue. Mistress Lawson, as usual, is in charge of inventory and has set up regular food chains to feed the people who are arriving, but the Answer’s food stocks aren’t going to last for ever. Magnus has been leading hunting parties to supplement it.

Mistress Coyle, meanwhile, has been deep in the medical tents, working on women with infected arms. There’s been a huge variation in how bad they are. Some of the women are so sick they’re barely able to stand; for others it’s nothing more than a bad rash. It does seem to affect every woman somehow, though. Todd says the Mayor’s giving medical help to the few women down there, too, all concerned now about the bands
he
put there, saying he’ll do whatever it takes to help them, not having intended this at all.

It’s enough to make me feel even sicker.

“I must have been in the healing room when she left,” I say, feeling the burning in my arm, wondering if my fever’s back
again
. “I guess it’ll have to be Bradley then.”

I head off back to the scout ship, but I hear Wilf say, “Good luck” as I go.

I listen out for Bradley’s Noise, still louder than any other man here, until I find his feet sticking out of a section on the front of the ship, a panel laying on the ground and tools everywhere.

Engine
, he’s thinking.
Engine
and
war
and
missile
and
food shortage
and
Simone won’t even look at me
and
Someone there?

“Someone there?” he asks, scooting his way out.

“Only me,” I say as he emerges.

Viola
, he thinks. “Something I can help you with?” he says, way shorter than I’d like.

I tell him what Todd told me about the Spackle and the Mayor’s spies, about the Spackle maybe being on the move.

“I’ll see what I can do to make the probes more effective,” he sighs. He looks out at the camp that now completely surrounds the scout ship, out to all sides of the clearing, with other makeshift tents up beyond the line of trees, too. “We have to protect them now,” he says. “It’s our duty, now that we’ve upped the stakes.”

“I’m sorry, Bradley,” I say. “I couldn’t have done any other thing.”

He looks up sharply. “Yes, you could have.” He pulls himself to his feet and says it again, more firmly. “
Yes,
you
could
have. Choices may be unbelievably hard but they’re never impossible.”

“What if it’d been Simone down there instead of Todd?” I say.

And Simone is all over his Noise, his deep feelings for her, feelings I don’t think are returned. “You’re right,” he says. “I don’t know. I hope I’d make the right choice, but Viola it
is
a choice. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.”
A child
, his Noise says,
A CHILD
, and his voice softens. “And I do believe you’re a person with integrity.”

“You do?” I say.

“Of course I do,” he says. “What’s important is taking responsibility for it. Learning from it. Using it to make things better.”

And I remember Todd saying,
It’s not how we fall. It’s how we get back up again.

“I know,” I say. “I’m trying to make things right.”

“I believe you,” he says. “I’m trying, too. You fired the missile, but we made it possible for you to do it.” And I hear
Simone
in his Noise again, with some spikes of difficulty around it. “You tell Todd to tell the Mayor we’ll only help with things that
save
lives, that we’re working for peace and nothing else.”

“I already have.”

And I must look so sincere about it, he smiles. It’s so much what I’ve been waiting for that I feel a little leap in my chest. Because his Noise is smiling, too. A little bit.

We see Mistress Coyle coming out of a healing tent, blood on her smock.

“Unfortunately,” Bradley says, “I think the road to peace lies through her.”

“Yeah, but she’s always acting so busy. Too busy to talk.”

“Maybe you should get busy, too, then,” he says. “If you’re feeling up to it.”

“It doesn’t matter if I’m not feeling up to it. It’s something I have to do.” I look back over to where Wilf is working the animals. “I think I know just who to ask, too.”

[T
ODD
]

My dearest son,
I read.
My dearest son
.

The words my ma uses at the top of every page of her journal, words written to me just before and after I was born, saying everything that happened to her and my pa. I’m inside my tent, trying to read ’em.

My dearest son
.

But they’re pretty much the only words I can make out in the whole stupid thing. I run my fingers down the page and then the next one over, too, looking at the scrawl of words stretching everywhere.

My ma, talking and talking.

And I can’t hear her.

I reckernize my name here and there. And Cillian’s. And Ben’s. And my heart starts to hurt a bit. I wanna hear my ma talking about Ben, Ben who raised me, Ben who I lost,
twice
. I wanna hear his voice again.

But I can’t–

(stupid effing idiot)

And then
Food?
I hear.

I put down the journal and poke my head outta the tent. Angharrad’s looking at me.
Food, Todd?

I’m immediately up, immediately over to her, immediately agreeing.

Cuz it’s the first time she’s said my name since–

“Of course, girl,” I say. “I’ll get you some right now.”

She nudges her nose against my chest, almost playful, and my eyes go wet with relief. “I’ll be right back,” I say. I look round but don’t see James nowhere. I head over past the campfire, where the Mayor’s frowning over yet more reports with Mr Tate.

He didn’t have many men to spare but after the attacks on the spies this morning, he said he didn’t have no choice about sending small squadrons of men to the north and south with orders to press on till they heard the Spackle
ROAR
, then to camp there, far enough away so the Spackle knew we weren’t just gonna let ’em march into town and steamroll over us. They’ll tell us when the invasion is coming, at least, even if they won’t be able to stop it.