Numbers 3: Infinity (6 page)

Chapter 11: Sarah

F
rom the start Adam never looked in control of the bike. Over Saul’s shoulder I watched him struggling with it, fighting to keep his balance. He was an accident waiting to happen.

And now it has.

His body is powerless against the laws of physics. Velocity, resistance, momentum.

He lands six or seven metres away from his bike, smack down on his back, hands and feet hitting the ground a split second later. There are bits of bike raining down around him. And then nothing. No movement, no noise, apart from our engine and my screams.

I slam into Saul’s back as he brakes.

‘Get off,’ he says, but I’m on the ground and cradling Adam’s face before Saul’s even got the bike on its stand.

‘Adam! Adam, can you hear me?’

His eyes are closed. He’s out cold.

‘Let me,’ Saul says. ‘Move!’ He pushes me roughly to one
side and puts his fingers to Adam’s neck. ‘There’s a pulse.’ He moves his hand in front of Adam’s nose. ‘And he’s breathing.’

He sounds so relieved it’s almost odd.

He reaches into the inside of his jacket and brings out a phone. I haven’t seen one for two years.

‘Man down,’ he shouts. ‘We’re on the A46, north of the M4 junction. Launch a drone and get a fix on me. I need an ambulance here a.s.a.p.’

He ends the call and turns his attention back to Adam.

‘The medics will be here in twenty minutes,’ he says, almost to himself. It’s as if I’m not there. ‘They’ll assess his neck and back. His brain function.’

Neck, back, brain function. Oh, God, this is bad. Really, really bad.

Twenty minutes.

Each second is like an hour.

I scan Adam’s face, his fingers, his feet, looking for the slightest movement, the smallest sign. But there’s nothing. He just looks like he’s asleep, except that I know he’s normally restless in his sleep, as restless as he is awake; his legs twitch, he mutters and mumbles, he turns onto one side and then the other.

Now he’s perfectly still.

Saul paces up and down, peering down the road, but I can’t leave Adam’s side.

The ambulance – a four-wheel-drive – doesn’t announce itself with a siren. There’s no need. Since the Chaos, there’ve been no cars on the road. Four people jump out. They fire questions at Saul – what, when, how? – and all the time they’re getting to work on Adam.

‘Is he …?’ I splutter. ‘Will he …?’ No one hears me. I’m
pushed outside their circle and all I can do is peer through the gaps.

They fix a neck brace onto him, then ease him onto a stretcher.

‘Can I go with him in the ambulance? Please?’

Again, I’m ignored.

‘Get back on the bike,’ Saul says curtly. It’s the first time he’s spoken to me since the accident. ‘We’ll get there before they do.’

The bike. I can’t face it. My legs ache and my chest hurts where the wing mirror of the other bike hit it.

‘Please,’ I say.

He barely looks at me. ‘You can get on the bike or I can leave you here. Doesn’t make any difference to me. I only brought you along so Adam would come. You might still be useful to us, but I doubt it.’

In that moment, I understand I mean nothing to this man. Literally, nothing. He’d leave me at the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, without a second thought. With my boyfriend in an ambulance, my daughter kidnapped, and a baby on the way.

I feel numb, helpless, like all I can do is watch while the world spins out of control around me.

I get on the bike.

We set off before the ambulance does, crossing a bridge over a motorway. Three years ago there would have been nose-to-tail traffic. Today, there is a string of tents along the hard shoulder on one side and two people on horseback the other side. The road runs between gently rolling fields. We pass signs for Chippenham, Corsham and Bath, and I wonder if we’re heading for one of them when Saul starts braking.

I’m confused. There’s nothing there, just a track leading to a dull-looking hill. I’m expecting the track to go up, or round. But it doesn’t. It carries straight on. And then I see it: a large metal door set into the hillside. A pair of uniformed men, armed with the same rifles as Saul and his men, stand either side.

A bunker.

We come to a stop by the metal door. The armed men salute, and one of them slides back a bolt before pulling the door open.

I don’t want to be buried in there, shut in with no light, no fresh air. I can’t do it.

‘Is Mia here?’ I say to Saul’s back.

He doesn’t bother answering me, just kills the engine and dismounts.

‘Get off the bike,’ he says.

I don’t move. I don’t want to go inside the hill.

‘I’m losing patience, Sarah,’ Saul murmurs, then, before I can say anything, he grabs me round my waist with one arm and hauls me off the bike. I stagger as my feet hit the ground. My joints are agony.

‘Can you give me a minute?’ I ask. ‘I just need to stretch my legs—’

‘Stretch them inside,’ he snaps.

I look at the entrance in front of us – a square of light in the hillside, a bright, empty corridor about twenty metres long – and then I really start to panic. My breath is tight in my throat, I’ve got goosebumps everywhere, and my scalp’s tingling.

If I go in, I’ll never come out.

‘Is Mia inside?’ I ask again.

Saul pauses for a moment, as if debating whether the
information might be useful – to him.

‘She’s here,’ he says eventually.

Is he telling me the truth? I have no way of knowing.

But there’s only one way to find out.

The corridor is empty apart from a few wooden chairs lining the walls. The artificial glare of strip-lights on the ceiling hurts my eyes. At the end of the corridor is a metal grid, and behind that is something that looks like a lift door.

I follow Saul to the grid. He presses a button on the wall, but there’s already a whirring and whining sound. The lift thunks to a halt. Then the door concertinas open to reveal a squad of people in white coats, and another uniformed guard. He slides open the metal grid.

The white-coats barge past us at the double, heading to the bunker entrance.

‘Adam Dawson’s ETA five minutes,’ Saul says to one as he passes.

The man merely nods. He’s wearing a tweed jacket under his white coat. None of the other white-coats looks at me. It’s as if I’ve become invisible.

I step into the lift. It’s huge, easily big enough for twenty people. It’s an antique, though – the control panel isn’t a set of buttons but a retro dial with a metal handle. I hear the grid slide shut behind me, and I spin round.

Saul’s standing on the other side of the grid. ‘This is Sarah,’ he says to the guard. ‘I’m going to wait for Adam. He’s the important one.’ His piercing black eyes turn on me. There’s a mocking glint in them. ‘Don’t worry, Sarah. It’s thirty metres deep, you know. Safest place in England. Just one way in, and one way out.’

‘I want to see Mia,’ I say. ‘And Adam.’

‘You will,’ he replies, turning his back on me.

I’m dismissed. Unimportant.

The guard heaves the lift door shut, then winds the handle to ‘DOWN’.

The whole thing judders, and my stomach flips as the lift starts to drop into the earth.

What the hell is this place?

Chapter 12: Adam

I
can hear voices.

‘We’ve got eye movement … He’s coming round …’

Who are they talking about?

‘Adam. Adam, can you hear me?’

Now they’re shouting at someone called Adam. I feel sorry for the poor sod, whoever he is, with people yelling at him like that.

I open my eyes a little but the light’s so bright I shut them again quickly.

‘Did you see that? He’s back. Adam! Adam!’

I open my eyes again, and a circle of faces begins to drift into focus. Am I meant to know these people? I look from one to the other. They’re faces with eyes and noses and mouths and numbers, but I’ve no idea who they are or who I am or where I am. All I know is I’m alive and breathing.
What happened?

One of them’s talking to me now. Face like it’s been squashed in a lift door. 8112034. Fifty-something, tweed
jacket under a white coat. His hair’s too brown, not a hint of grey, parted on one side and hanging in two curtains either side of his puffy cheeks.

‘Adam, if you can understand me, blink now.’

I understand him, I’m just not sure I’m called Adam, but I blink anyway. A ripple of excitement runs round the circle of faces.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Now can you squeeze my hand?’

I peer down my body, past the big collar thing round my neck. The guy’s holding my left hand now. Bloody hell, I don’t even know him, do I? Or is he my dad or something? His chubby fingers squeeze mine.

‘Can you feel that? Can you squeeze back?’

I squeeze back.

‘Excellent.’

He works his way round my body. Arms, hands, legs and feet – all in working order.

‘Remarkable,’ he says. I don’t know him, but I’m pleased he’s pleased. I start to relax. ‘What’s my number, Adam?’

He asks it all casual, just lobs it in like any of his other questions, but it’s not the same. I don’t feel relaxed now. Alarm bells are going off in my head. Then I hear another voice. But it’s not someone in this room. The voice is in my head.

You mustn’t tell, Adam. Not anyone. Not ever.

‘I dunno,’ I say.

Tweed Jacket looms over me. ‘You don’t know? Are you sure? What’s my number, Adam?’

‘That’s enough. Leave it, Newsome. Let’s get him downstairs. He should sleep.’ It’s another voice speaking, deep and sharp. I move my eyes. There’s a man standing on the other side of me. He’s got cropped grey hair and a scar above his
left eye. His number’s shimmering as I try to get a fix on it. I’ve seen him before. My mind’s racing to remember, trying to place him, but I can’t get there.

Tweed Jacket straightens up.

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘We’ll try again tomorrow.’

The crowd thins out.

I close my eyes again, but I’m not sleepy. I’m going over and over what I’ve just seen, what I know. The faces, the numbers … and that voice.

You mustn’t tell.

She called me Adam, too, the woman in my head, so it must be true.

I’m Adam.

Adam who?

Chapter 13: Sarah

T
he lift thunks down. We’re at the bottom. The guard winds the handle to ‘OPEN’ and then drags the door back to reveal another corridor. This one’s dimly lit and concrete and so long I can’t see where it ends. The walls are lined with gurgling pipes and punctuated by metal doors with shuttered grilles at eye level, keyholes and numbers. Everything’s painted battleship grey. It’s like a prison.

The guard takes my arm. I try to shrug him off, but his hold is firm. Am I a prisoner? I look at him properly for the first time.

He’s young, not much older than me. He’s got the beginnings of a moustache, and his military beret doesn’t seem to sit at the regulation angle. He glances at me, nervously.

‘I’m to take you to see your daughter,’ he says to me. ‘We’re trying to … settle her in.’

Mia. She’s here. Relief floods through me. And now I don’t care about Saul and the soldiers and how weird this place is. I just want to see Mia.

The squaddie leads the way, deeper and deeper into the tunnel. He mutters something about food and a bed, but I don’t really take it in. Our footsteps echo dully on the concrete floor. I can hear a low mechanical throbbing in the background.

Every step feels like a step away from life and light and everything else I’ve ever known, but it’s also a step closer to Mia and that’s what matters. I try to note where we’re going, but we turn so many corners, pass so many doors and everything looks the same battleship grey, I soon give up.

Then I hear a sound that makes me freeze. A child crying. The noise is faint but unmistakeable. Mia.

We stop next to a door with the number 1214. The guard taps on it, and it swings open. Mia’s voice blasts out into the corridor. I get a glimpse of a square, plain room, a single bed in the corner. A woman is sitting on the bed and next to her is Mia, her face screwed up and beetroot red, her arms and legs flailing.

‘Mia!’ I shout. ‘Mia!’ I push past the guard and rush into the room. He doesn’t stop me.

Mia stops mid-scream and opens her eyes, then she throws herself at me, clinging to me like a little monkey, sobbing. I kiss her hair, hug her.

The woman stands up. ‘She was starting to settle,’ she says, unconvincingly.

At the sound of her voice, Mia increases the volume of her yells.

That’s my girl, Mia, I think. Give her hell.

The woman looks offended as she sweeps from the room, slamming the door behind her. I hear a key turn in the lock. There are towels on the bed and clothes in two sizes. But the walls are bare and there’s no window. It’s a cell.

‘We’re locked in, Mia,’ I say, trying to control my sudden panic.

She lifts her head up from my shoulder. Her eyes are puffy from crying, her breath is hot in my face. We might be prisoners, but Mia’s here. She’s alive.

‘Locked in,’ she repeats.

I hug her closer and look around the room. There’s a bathroom connected to it – for a moment, I think of running water, having a hot shower for the first time in two years.

‘Let’s have a wash,’ I say.

The bathroom’s functional but clean. I turn on the shower. The pipes creak and groan, then hot water squirts out of the shower head.

Mia shakes her head, clings to me harder.

‘Mia, it’s like rain – nice, warm rain. You’ll like it.’

I’m not taking no for an answer. I undress myself, then Mia, ignoring her protests. Holding her hand, I step into the shower, pulling her in gently after me. I tip shampoo into the palm of my hand and rub it into our scalps. The shampoo, the soap, the steam and the water all smell clinical, like we’re in a hospital. But they’re doing their job. The water draining away around our feet is grey. Bits of twig and leaf stick in the plughole.