Robin Jarvis-Jax 02 Freax And Rejex (30 page)

“How’d they get under my flamin’ shower?”

The old man fidgeted and looked away. “I don’t know,” he replied, but Charm and Lee could tell he was lying. “A witch’s trick perhaps? That would be so like her. At least they’re gone.”

“For now,” Lee said. “What if they come back, in the night?”

“Oh, most unlikely,” Jangler assured them. “The Doggy-Long-Legs crave minchet fruit most of all, even more than the Punchinellos do. That’s why they were chasing you. They could smell it on your hands from yesterday. They’ll be scampering through the forest right now, headed for the nearest crop and spinning nests in them. They won’t be back, oh, no.”

“But what if more come up that plughole?” Charm cried.

“Yes, that is unfortunate. I shall have that bathroom boarded up at once and made secure. Every damaged door must also be attended to. By the time you return from your work this evening, it shall be done. You females in that chalet will have to use other facilities from now on.”

“I ain’t stoppin’ in that place!” she exclaimed. “I ain’t fick!”

“You must,” he told her. “And that is an end to it.”

“But what about when we wanna go the bog after the lights go off? What we s’posed to do then?”

“I believe there are some buckets in the kitchen. I suggest you avail yourself of one of them.”

“Eewwww! Mingin’!”

“Wait,” Lee began slowly. “Did you say you’re sending us outside, out there – to pick that muck again?”

“Of course. How else are you to earn your keep?”

“Even though you’ve just said those piranha spider mongrels are going to be hiding in them stinking bushes?”

Jangler smiled. “You will have to take especial care,” he advised. “Watch where you put your hands; you’ll be no use without fingers.”

He turned his attention to the innumerable corpses covering the lawn, with the mini forest of jointed legs, bent at every angle. He frowned. This would never do. It would have to be dealt with forthwith. Calling Captain Swazzle over, he started giving instructions.

Lee and Charm walked back to the cabins. Alasdair was standing on the step of his, looking very pleased with himself. Whilst everyone else had been occupied, he had kept his head and made full use of the unexpected diversion by slipping unnoticed into Jangler’s cabin. Maggie’s phone was already being charged and the emails had been sent. It wouldn’t be long now. The world would see what was really going on here.

Gazing across the camp, Alasdair’s eyes rested on Jangler and Captain Swazzle. They appeared to be quarrelling.

“Spear too slow,” Captain Swazzle was growling at the old man. “Not enough quick.”

“But that’s all you use in Mooncaster!” Jangler objected. “Why would you want to change? It’s
the
Punchinello weapon.”

The Captain gave a thin laugh. “We not in castle now,” he said. “We here – in dream. We say spear no good for dream.”

“Oh, maybe. Perhaps you’re right. This grey place can be confusing. Sometimes I…” He checked himself and wrote on his clipboard. “So I’ll
order you and your valiant crew some new weapons. What alternatives would you prefer? Swords? Axes? Crossbows even? How about a mace or two?”

The Punchinello shook his ugly head and his nasal voice demanded, “We want guns. Plenty guns.
Bang bang
– yes.”

I
T WAS ALMOST
midday by the time the children were sent out of the camp to work. The Punchinellos had massed the Doggy-Long-Legs bodies in a great pile, including the ones from the kitchen, where Maggie and Esther scrubbed every surface clean. The ration of sausages was received gladly by everyone – except Jody. She let Christina have hers and Maggie gave her two of the mysterious apples to make up for it. They were careful not to let Jangler or the guards know about them, but where had the delicious apples come from? Only Lee knew the answer to that and he pretended to be as ignorant as the rest.

Later that evening, after an exhausting afternoon picking minchet, fearful of what might be lurking within every shadowy thicket, the work parties returned. In their absence, workmen had visited the camp once more and the chewed doors had been crudely boarded over. The entrance to the bathroom in Charm’s cabin had been nailed shut and stout planks had been fixed across the frame.

“Them spider fings could bite through that faster than it takes me to put me lipgloss on,” Charm commented. “This place ain’t safe. I won’t get a wink of sleep now.”

With one bathroom out of commission, the queues for showers in the other chalets were longer than usual. Whilst the children tried to cleanse themselves of the day’s stink and ate their soup, the Punchinellos built a small bonfire, using the workmen’s leftover wood. At first the young internees thought it was to burn the bodies on, but they were wrong. They soon realised the five Punchinellos were
cooking
the Doggy-Long-Legs.

Using their spears as toasting forks, they turned the corpses over in the flames. The spindly legs frazzled and curled up around the charring bodies. A pungent reek of black smoke rose high above the camp. Taking
swigs from jars of wine, the guards sang dirty songs. It was customary for the castle guards to celebrate and carouse after winning a skirmish and they intended to play their parts to the nth degree. The one with the half-eaten nose now wore a tight bandage and looked strangely deformed in the company of the others.

Fresh from the shower, Marcus stared out at them.

“Tonight would have been the perfect time to get out of this place,” he said. “They’re getting paralytic. We could escape dead easy.”

“Then where would you go?” Lee asked.

“Nearest village. There’s one a couple of miles that way. We get there, nick a car and burn rubber.”

“And every police force and zombie vigilante in the country will be after you.”

Outside, by the fire, the Punchinello called Yikker put the wine down, sniffed the air and a snarl rippled along his top lip. He turned towards the cabin, where Marcus was standing in the doorway, and clenched his large fists.

“Got to be better than being stuck here with them,” the teenager said, moving out of sight when he saw Yikker glowering at him. “There’ll be another night like this and they’ll get rat-faced again. I’ll have something more definite worked out by then. You coming with me?”

Lee shook his head. “You gotta get a better plan than that!” he said. “Even if you could get over the fence, you wouldn’t last three hours out there.”

Marcus said nothing. He walked back, between the beds, then examined the open area beneath the stairs. Crouching down, he pulled the edge of the beige carpet and peeled it back. There was a sheet of plywood underneath. The chalets were merely wooden boxes, raised off the ground by concrete blocks. Under this floor there was nothing, just a void and then the soil. An idea began to form in Marcus’s mind.

Alasdair had taken his guitar to Jody’s cabin and was playing it softly, singing ‘Fields of Gold’. He really was very good.

Resting her head on the pillow, eyes lightly closed, Jody imagined being free and walking “among the fields of barley”. Close by, Christina curled up on her bed, entranced. Gradually the other girls in there broke off their conversations and turned to listen. The two on the mezzanine crept down to sit on the stairs. The sandy-haired Scot held them spellbound. There was a sadness and a yearning, in the song and in his voice, that reached deep inside and made them remember how life had been, before one book had changed it all. At that moment, they felt the contrast and the pain of what they had lost more keenly than ever.

Watching the Punchinellos from the door, Maggie gagged as she saw them crunch their teeth into the roasted Doggy-Long-Legs.

“Barfarama!” she uttered in revulsion. And the spell of the song was broken. “I can’t believe they’re eating those things! In fact, they’re not just eating, they’re bingeing on them.”

“Can ye no?” Alasdair asked. “Two days ago would ye have believed you’d be eating kitchen rubbish?”

“That’s different,” the girl said.

“No, it’s not,” Jody joined in, nettled that the music had been interrupted. “It’s just a shift in what you see as normal. We don’t even question what those guards are now – or where they come from. We’ve accepted them as part of our life here. This time next week, or the week after, you might be glad of some roasted spider-mouth monsters to eat.”

Maggie shivered. “Not ruddy likely,” she said.

“We’re going to see a lot of changes,” Jody told them gravely. “I’ve been thinking about it – not much else I can do at the minute. It’s going to get awful worse here. Think about the absolute basic stuff, like when the soap runs out – or the toothpaste, or the loo roll. What happens then?”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Maggie confessed. “Don’t you think the old guy will replace it?”

Jody laughed. “You kidding?” she said. “Take a look at my back if you
want to see what he thinks of us. And how about malnutrition? We can’t live on just soup or expect phantom apples to appear from nowhere. We’re going to start getting weak and sick. You look thinner in the face already.”

“I’m non-stop starving. It’s driving me mental. My body isn’t used to this.”

“It will be. And how about this one – what sort of germs or diseases do those guards carry? Could be as strange and as alien as they are. As for the spider things, don’t tell me they weren’t crawling with fleas or lice or God knows what else. You think we’re going to be immune to that?”

“Aliens?” Maggie muttered. “Sooner you’re up and about again the better. You’re driving yourself crackers lying there all day. Oh, I could kill for some cheese and crackers… a great big lump of cheddar would be awesome. Why does everything relate back to food?”

Alasdair played a loud chord to cut through their misery.

“We willnae be here much longer,” he promised. “I bet you we’ll be oot of this hellhole this time next week.”

“Dream on!” Jody mocked, rolling her eyes.

Alasdair produced the phone from his pocket and handed it to Maggie.

“Fully charged and the emails went oot this morning,” he boasted. “All we got to do noo is wait. I hoped there might be something on the news sites by noo, but no. Probably keeping it hush-hush till they send the troops in.”

“You’re amazing!” Maggie declared. “How’d you manage it?”

“The name’s Bond,” the boy replied, raising one eyebrow. “Alasdair Bond.”

“You said your name was Alasdair Mackenzie,” Christina disputed.

“It were a joke.”

Maggie was so excited by the news she stood up and waved the phone in the air. If Alasdair hadn’t been distracted, he would have stopped her.

“Hey, girls!” she called to the others in the cabin. “We’re getting out of here!”

They stared back at her sceptically.

“Heard that one before,” a girl called Sally said.

“I’ll wait till the coach is here before I start packing,” another added with weary cynicism.

Maggie folded her arms, disappointed by the unimpressed reaction. “It’s true,” she insisted. “Alasdair’s positive about it. You’re a jaded lot. I’m going to tell everyone else.”

She turned to leave but Alasdair pulled her back.

“What do ye think you’re doing?” he asked.

“Popping next door. Why?”

“The fewer folk that know the better!” he said. “I cannae believe you just blabbed to everyone in here. I dinnae want old Mainwaring to overhear someone gassing about it.”

Maggie huffed. “No one’d be that stupid,” she said, dismissing his concern with a shrug.

Alasdair could see she wasn’t going to listen to reason. She was too hungry to spread the news. He wished he’d kept his own mouth shut.

“Well, dinnae take the phone wi’ you,” he said firmly.

Maggie dearly wanted to show it to everyone else, but perhaps he had a point.

“Hide it in your case for now,” Jody suggested.

“Oh, all right,” she agreed.

Maggie tucked the phone in among her clothes then hurried out to spread the happy tidings.

“She’s a liability,” Alasdair said. “Keep an eye on her. Dinnae let her use it after it gets dark. Every guard in the camp’d see the light. She’d only be wasting the battery on YouTube or Angry Birds or something equally useless. I’ve a mind to take the phone back to my cabin.”

“It’s not yours,” Christina told him. “That’s stealing.”

“I dinnae care. It’s our only contact wi’ the outside world. We cannae afford to let that big-mouth risk losing it.”

“Put it under my mattress,” Jody said. “Then she can’t accuse you of taking it. I’ll have a word. I’ll say we thought it best to hide it somewhere
safer. It’s best if she doesnae know where it is. She knows what she’s like – the slightest bit of temptation and she gives in.”

“Putting her in charge of the kitchen were a bad idea then,” Alasdair said, making sure no one was looking as he removed the phone from Maggie’s case and slid it under the bed.

“She wouldn’t eat more than her share,” Jody told him. “She’s all right she is.”

Alasdair picked up his guitar. “I’m just in a cranky mood,” he sighed. “Impatient to get oot of here, I suppose. I’ll leave you fair lassies and see ye in the morning.”

Returning to his own cabin, the Scot glanced over at the fire where the Punchinellos were glugging down the wine. He moistened his lips. He so wanted a drink. Just then Maggie emerged from one of the other cabins and hurried into another. To his surprise, he felt a twinge of envy. He wished he could be the one to tell Lee everything had worked out fine without his help.

“Dinnae be so petty,” he admonished himself. He entered his cabin and lay on his bed, wondering how soon they would be liberated.

The night closed in. Long after lights out the guards continued to sit around the fire, hooting and snorting, squawking to one another in a filthy-sounding, quacking language of their own. Eventually four of them staggered and waddled back to their own chalet whilst the other tried to climb the steps of the skelter tower, but fell asleep halfway up.

In the darkness of the cabin, Lee stared blindly at the pitched ceiling above his bed. Marcus was already fast asleep in the one nearby. Lee’s nose wrinkled. There was a peculiar smell coming from the other end of the mezzanine. Why didn’t Marcus spray his trainers as well as the rest of him?

Lee closed his eyes and started murmuring the words of
Dancing Jax
. Tonight would be a perfect time to return with something a bit more
ambitious and substantial than apples. He had taken an enormous risk slipping out with them first thing that morning. He was surprised the sentry in the tower hadn’t spotted him. He didn’t know it was glued to Spencer’s media player at the time, having watched five Westerns through the night.

Lee felt the usual pain in his heart and the rush of blasting cold. His eardrums thumped and the pit of his stomach dropped as though he was falling…

It was a frosty winter’s night. The moon was in a waxing crescent and the diamond dust of floating ice in the sharp air ringed it around with a halo.

Lee looked up and shivered. He wasn’t dressed for this sort of weather. His breath blew out in clouds of grey vapour and he rubbed his pimpling forearms as he swayed unsteadily. The disorientation he always felt when first arriving here never lasted long. He gazed about him, hoping to see the by now familiar landmarks. He appeared to be in a meadow. Dark shapes of twisted, naked trees and looming pines grew far off on his left and bare, craggy rocks climbed over to his right. There was no sign of the White Castle, or the village. He still hadn’t learned how to command the wheres and whens of his entrances here. There had to be a way of influencing them, but that control was eluding him.

“You gotta hone your technique,” he told himself. “You is plain wack at this.”

He took a step forward and jumped back instantly. His trainer had cracked through a layer of ice and freezing water engulfed his foot.

“Every damn time!” he grumbled.

Kicking the dead grasses and reeds that surrounded him aside, he discovered he was on a narrow strip of spongy ground. Everywhere else was swampy water. The boy’s swearing formed stuttering, foggy shapes in the air. He had absolutely no idea whereabouts in the world of
Dancing Ja
x he was. For all he knew he might even be beyond one of the thirteen hills. He tried to visualise the map at the front of the book. Was there
anywhere like this bog drawn there? He couldn’t remember.

Twisting about, he tested the ground carefully before taking another step. It seemed firm behind him so he progressed slowly that way, creeping bit by bit through the marsh. He didn’t know where he was headed, but as long as this soggy, ice-crackling path led to solid, dry earth that was good enough. If he could make it to those trees and beyond, there might be a view he would recognise. He had been hoping to reach the village tonight and steal some loaves from the miller. That would make Maggie’s eyes pop out in the morning.

The moon rose higher. It was so bright it cast a ghostly sheen over the landscape. The only sounds were the dry rustle of the dead grasses and the occasional plop or gurgle when a bubble rose to the surface beyond the frozen edges, so when Lee heard high-pitched squeaking overhead, he almost toppled over in shock. Glancing up, he saw black, winged shapes flapping through the dark.

“Bats,” he said. “Like this place isn’t goth enough already?”