London Wild (72 page)

The Colonel turned off the screen and then rounded on Charles. ‘Next I need to talk to you about the battle of Sou’nd.’ Suddenly his whole demeanor seemed to change. ‘So what happened?’

‘Sir?’ replied Charles, a little shocked and surprised by this approach.

‘How many civilians died?’
the Colonel asked sternly.

‘Sir,’ Charles started defending himself, ‘I warned you before we started that it was a bad idea to…’

‘Nevertheless,’ the Colonel interrupted. ‘I don’t have the exact figures, but several hundred civilians were killed by your carelessness. I mean, what sort of tactic was that, letting the civilians bring up the rear?’

‘Sir,’ Charles stammered a little, ‘in my experience the cats
have always attacked head-on. I thought they would be safer at the rear.’

‘The cats are hunters
!’ The Colonel’s normal monotone seemed but a memory now as he veritably yelled at Charles. ‘Hunters by their very nature go for the weakest target in the herd. You should know that. Yet you let your civilians and your support trucks bring up the rear without even a single tank in reserve to protect them! You were supposed to use them as a propaganda exercise, invite them along but keep them relatively safe, not lose them and hand the cats a coup!’

‘But sir,’ Charles started
, trying to think of what to say.

‘It’s not important
.’ The Colonel seemed much calmer again. The monotone of his regular voice was back. ‘The point is that you are not very popular with the civilians any more. The hero has fallen. Many want you to serve jail time for what they call the biggest disaster of our time. It’s not just the families of those who were slain. They all signed waivers, and though they hate you, they don’t have a legal leg to stand on. However, they are blaming you for the cats descending on London itself and all the recent escalation of trouble in the city.’

‘Again,’ Charles said, ‘I warned you of what I thought…’

‘Perhaps you did,’ the Colonel said quietly. ‘The point is, you aren’t very popular. Fortunately we have another little mission for you. Hopefully, by the time you get back, the cat problem will be dealt with and people will have forgotten your role in what has happened. Or at least they’ll remember only that you destroyed Sou’nd, and not the ripples that were caused by that event.’

‘When I get back
, sir?’ Charles asked.

The Colonel turned to face Aloysius
.

Aloysius took the cue. His hand went into a pocket inside the jacket he was wearing and pulled out a dossier. ‘At this very moment a series of talks are taking place upon the moon. We don’t expect any trouble, but each of the leaders at the talks has been allowed a retinue that includes six bodyguards. I think they might be worried that cats might somehow find a way to the moon to disrupt the talks
, as the talks in question are primarily concerned with how to deal with the cat problem. Hence the reason my ministry is involved.’

‘So I’m to be a bodyguard?’ Charles commented dryly.

‘Once you arrive on the moon, you will meet with a Major Terrance Williams, and he will tell you your duties and what’s expected of you while you are there,’ the Colonel put in.

Aloysius handed the dossier to him
. ‘The Prime Minister asked for you specially.’

‘But why now?’ asked Charles
. ‘Surely these talks have been going on for a week now. I remember hearing about them on the newspaper!’

‘One of his six bodyguards has been struck down with appendicitis. Normally this might have been dealt with on the moon, but the place has been stripped of anyone considered unnecessary, including doctors and other medical personnel, because of how secret and how vital the talks are considered to be. She’s being shipped back to Earth
, and you are to be her replacement,’ Aloysius explained.

‘Your orders will be explained on your arrival
,’ the Colonel repeated. ‘Even I am not privy to what those orders might be.’

‘There are not many flights to the moon at the moment, and though supply runs might need to be made in the future, they have enough to last for a while yet. However
, a shuttle will be leaving tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. specifically to take you and to pick up the soldier you are replacing,’  Aloysius continued. ‘Be at Gatwick Spaceport a good hour before then; the flight won’t be advertised, and it might take you that long to find it. If necessary, page Captain John Mulroy. He’s going to be flying the craft, so he’ll probably know where you should go. He’s expecting you, but you’ll need to show him your orders to confirm you are who you claim to be.’

‘Good luck
, Captain,’ the Colonel interjected again. ‘We intend to broadcast on every newspaper that will carry the story that you are headed to the moon to act as the Prime Minister’s personal bodyguard. This might help to fight some of the negative publicity you got from the Sou’nd thing.’

‘After I arrive on the moon, I hope,’ Charles commented. The image of him being waylaid at the spaceport by angry civilians ran through his mind.

‘This time we’ll wait,’ the Colonel agreed with an uncharacteristic smile. He had evidently thought of the same thing, adding, ‘We wouldn’t want to risk the wrong person hearing about it and trying to stop you.’

‘Good!’ was all Charles could think to add.

The Girl In The Rain

Lara was feeling very tired. The constant rain made its way through even the thickest foliage of the overhanging trees, and many of the trees in the forest had already lost their leaves as the autumn months had settled in, giving no shelter at all. As night had drawn in, she had wanted to lie down, to rest, but everywhere the floor of the forest was soaked through. In some places it had actually been washed away by the constant deluge. Many small streams had appeared amidst the undergrowth. Many found the quickest way downhill, often taking part of those hills with them, and collected together in tiny lakes at the lowest points of the forest.

She glanced nervously behind her every few minutes. How long would it be before any pursuit caught her?

All she was wearing were the rags she had been given on her first day in the Cattery. These
rags now stank with a week’s sweat and dirt and with the odor of the cell that had somehow clung to the material. They were no protection from the rain; she might as well have been naked and had even considered taking them off more than once. Somehow modesty prohibited her. She would keep them on at least until she found better shelter than a few leafy overhanging branches, especially when some of the larger leaves seemed to be in the habit of collecting water and then purposely dropping it on Lara just as she was passing underneath.

The shoes she had been issued in the cell were made of a very light
, flimsy fabric. They were designed to keep her feet covered while she was in the cell and nothing more. They hadn’t been designed for walking any great distances. Already these prison-issue shoes had fallen apart, and now she had to make her way barefoot.

She knew the truck had been traveling west. That told her she needed to head east to return to London, but she also knew that the
Cattery was out there somewhere to the east. She was sure she must’ve passed it already. She had probably circumvented the prison camp a long time before the night had even arrived. Yet she was still afraid that it might be waiting behind the next tree. There was also a constant nagging feeling that because she had no real way to judge which direction she was heading, she might be traveling round and round in circles. This feeling was further exacerbated when she passed a tree she thought she recognized from earlier that night. She feared the cold and the damp; already her body had taken to shivering uncontrollably whenever she paused for breath, and though she could probably put it down to how tired she was, she began to fear that the increased effort it was taking to move her limbs might be the onset of hypothermia. She also feared the return of the shuttle that had cut down many of those she had been traveling with, thinking that it must come looking for her. But what was most worrying for her was that she feared being alone, without the support of others of her race. She knew others liked to be alone, but they usually had the comfort of a weapon, if nothing else. All she had was her claws.

The soldiers hadn’t removed her claws. They had intended to euthanize her
, and it would have been a waste of time to de-claw her. But they had cut, rounded, and smoothed her claws so they would be no threat while she was waiting for her death sentence to be carried out. After a week in the cell her claws were growing back, but she wouldn’t want to rely on them in a clinch.

Assuming she survived that long,
what was she going to do when she reached the city again? She could imagine how her arrival in the city would go. She would walk down the paved roads, the nice paved roads that wouldn’t be trying to cut her bare feet to pieces with their littered twigs. The people in that part of the city would take one look at her and run away screaming. She wasn’t aware that most of the population of the city had left for what they considered to be safer climes. She would find a shop, long before the authorities caught up with her. There she would find the right materials in that shop to disguise herself as herd. Perhaps they’d sell clothes and shoes as well, or maybe they would be next door to a shop that did. She would find her mother and her father, and they would all live happily ever after.

It was a dream
, and she knew what the reality was more likely to be. She would arrive on the outskirts of the city, and the people of the city would panic at seeing her but then realize that she was unarmed and wearing no more than rags. This time her thoughts didn’t end quite so happily.

If only she had some food. If only she had some shelter. It was all too likely that she wouldn’t even survive to reach the city, especially if the rain didn’t stop soon. Her muscles ached with every step
, but she knew she couldn’t stop. She had to keep going and hope there would be some shelter a little further on.

There were a number of times she considered giving up. She could settle down to rest on the ground no matter how wet it was
, and if she didn’t wake again, well, it was the will of the Goddess. But hadn’t it been the will of the Goddess that she should escape from the truck with her life? Lara couldn’t accept that the Goddess would get her out only to let her die trying to reach the city. In the end it was her faith that was keeping her going. She started muttering prayers under her breath.

Then the forest came to a stop
. She was standing on a slightly elevated bank that overlooked a very wet road. A stream of water was gushing along the edge of the road just below her, flooding along the macadam with nowhere to go. Across the road was a field bordered by a simple wooden fence, two horizontal bars supported by vertical pickets every eight to ten feet. It was reinforced with what looked like chicken wire and was obviously designed to keep whatever was in the field inside rather than to keep anything else out.

Lara hesitated for a moment
. She knew she had to cross that field, but there would be absolutely no protection from the rain as she did so. It didn’t take long for her to realize that she was already soaked through and that she could hardly get any damper than she already was. Besides, she could hardly stay where she was, and if she left it until dawn before she tried to cross the field there would be a much higher probability of someone seeing her.

She moved down the bank of the road, hopping across the small stream and feeling relieved when her feet touched the smooth road, as opposed to the rough forest floor she had been traversing all night. It made her hope that the field she was heading to would also be a relative pleasure to walk across. She didn’t need to look at her feet to know they
were bleeding from all of the twigs and rocks she had trodden on.

Climbing the fence was more of an effort than she had expected. The chicken wire went above the top horizontal bar of the fence
, and it was barbed. It caught first her hand, then her rags, and finally her tail as she climbed over. Her hand suffered no more than a small graze, but her rags were ripped where she had pulled them free, and her tail had a small cut in it which bled for a few seconds.

The
journey through the field was a more relaxing walk. There was a growth of well cut grass, which suggested to her that this field was usually used to graze livestock. As the wet blades stroked her feet, they helped to ease her pain a little and cool the tiredness. The grass also helped to keep the field from being washed away in the rain, and though there were a few small lakes forming on the field, they weren’t as bad as they might have been.

She wondered as she looked back just how far she had traveled. She ha
d been on the move for close to twenty hours now, maybe longer. The first few of those hours had been spent traveling cautiously, fearing what lay ahead as much as what might be following.

Not only did she fear that hypothermia would yet get the better of her
, but she had few illusions that those awaiting the truck wouldn’t have sent someone to find it when it didn’t arrive at its intended destination. They would have realized that some of the prisoners had gotten away. She was the only one who had escaped from the truck and done so on foot. She was the one they were most likely to pursue with their dogs and their search parties. They might be right on her heels now, just on the other side of the road, lining her up in their sights to put a quick end to the chase. At least if they did they wouldn’t find out about her relationship with the Matriarch.