The Fearless (5 page)

At the gate a man and a woman with rifles were trying to break up two men who were squaring up to each other with furious expressions on their faces. ‘Come on, then,’ one of them kept saying. ‘Come on!’

‘Coming through!’ Ian Denning shouted as we got nearer. ‘Let us past, please!’

‘What’s so special about them, then?’ one of the men called. He was fat and balding and dishevelled-looking. ‘Slip you a few tenners, did they?’

‘That’s it,’ the female guard said as we hurried past them. ‘One more word out of you and you’re not coming in.’

Her threat didn’t stop the mutters that started rising around us. ‘Yeah!’ someone else shouted. ‘Why can’t they wait in the queue like everyone else?’

Ian Denning turned and pointed his gun at them. ‘This man is the reason you’re all here in the first place,’ he said, indicating Mr Brightman. ‘Now shut up, or none of you’ll be getting in.’

The queue went quiet, save for the girl still sobbing and screaming on the ground, but I could feel their anger, radiating towards us. I was glad when we got through the gates.

Mum gave another one of those terrible groans, her legs buckling under her. Mr Brightman swore. ‘We need to be quicker than this, Ian,’ he said.

By now they were almost carrying Mum between them, Mr Brightman limping heavily but moving so fast that the rest of us could hardly keep up. As we hurried after them through a dark maze of warehouses and machinery, I saw the silhouette of an enormous ship rising up over one of the warehouse roofs. At last, we reached a long wooden pier that jutted out to sea. We were surrounded by ships. Balanced on their keels in dry concrete channels, they looked truly gigantic.

And in front of us, across the water, was the dark shape of an island, the moonlight making a glittering path on the waves between here and there.

Hope.

‘This way,’ Ian Denning said, leading us onto the pier, where the smell of salt and seaweed was so strong it stung my nostrils. At the end a ladder led down to the water. I peered over the edge and saw a little wooden boat bobbing on the waves, with two men sitting inside. When they saw us, they began climbing up the ladder. Sol and I retreated behind Mrs Brightman, our eyes on their guns.

Just then, Mum screamed, and back in the direction of the dock gates, I thought I heard someone else scream, too. But the sound didn’t come again. Maybe it was just an echo.

Mr Brightman crouched next to Mum and explained she’d have to climb down the ladder. Mum shook her head. ‘You have to, Clare,’ Mr Brightman told her. ‘You can’t have the baby here.’

He and Ian Denning got Mum to her feet and guided her over to the ladder. Somehow, she made it down to the boat. ‘Diane, Sol, Cass, come on,’ Mr Brightman called hoarsely, beckoning us over. Then, behind us, we heard a yell. I whirled to see a man running along the pier. At first I thought it was the man from the queue, the one who said we’d bribed Ian Denning to let us through the gates. Then I realized he was younger, with longer hair, matted and filthy.

And that his eyes were as silver as the moon.

Ian Denning wrenched his gun from his back and fired it at the man. The sound of the shot was deafening, but he missed and the man kept coming. Sol and I both screamed and ran for the ladder. Mrs Brightman ran too, but she wasn’t quick enough, and the Fearless grabbed her and started to pull her back along the pier. As she shrieked and struggled, Mr Brightman fired his own gun – just as the Fearless turned back towards us, his face frozen in a manic grin and Mrs Brightman held like a shield in front of him.

The bullet slammed into her stomach, and her shriek turned to a screech.

She and the Fearless crumpled to the ground together. ‘Diane!’ Mr Brightman yelled hoarsely. ‘
Diane!
’

As he ran towards her the Fearless got to his feet again, blood pouring from a hole in his abdomen, his face twisted in a grimace. Ian Denning tried to shoot again, but his gun jammed. Mr Brightman just stood there, staring at his wife, who wasn’t moving.

‘Dad!’ Sol yelled. Even with the horrific wound in his stomach, the Fearless moved frighteningly fast. ‘
Dad!
’

Mr Brightman ran for the ladder and we all scrambled down it. Mum was already curled up in the bottom of the boat. The Fearless reached the ladder too; as he started to climb down, one of the men fired his own gun at him and hit him in the shoulder. His body jerked and he toppled into the water with a splash.

The two men started to row frantically, pulling away from the Fearless who, incredibly, was still alive, hissing garbled curses and trying to swim after us. At last, he went under the water and didn’t come back up. Then Mum made a noise that was half-groan, half-howl. ‘It’s coming! It’s coming!’ she gasped, sitting up.

One of the men thrust his oar at Ian Denning, and he and Mr Brightman scrambled to help her. I’d always thought having a baby would take ages, but within ten minutes, it was over. My brother was born while Hope Island was still rising up out of the water in front of us and the docks and the mainland were still falling away behind.

As drawn up by S. Brightman, Island Mayor, the
Hope Island Governing Committee and the
Captain of the Patrol in the first year of
occupation
(Invasion Year Zero).
Amended
I.Y.3; I.Y.5

1. No outsider is permitted to land on Hope
without a vote first being cast by the IGC and the island’s residents
. Any trespassers will be shot by the Patrol.

2. No Islander will have children without the permission of the HIGC. This is essential to conserve resources for the community.

3. No Islander will take food or any other items belonging to another Islander, or take food or any other items from the Exchange without presenting the appropriate number of tokens. Any Islander caught stealing will be locked up in the cells for a period of no less than one week.

4. No Islander shall cause deliberate injury to another Islander. To do so will result in the perpetrator being locked up in the cells for a period of no less than one month.

5. No Islander shall deliberately cause the death of another Islander. To do so will result in the perpetrator being outcast.

6. All Islanders aged 17 and over are expected to contribute to the community on Hope Island by working in the roles chosen for them by the HIGC.

7. All Islanders aged between 5 and 17 years must attend school from Monday to Friday.

8. No decisions are to be made that affect the island community without consulting the HIGC.

9. Any Islander who leaves the island without permission may be denied re-entry.

10. Any Islander who is taken by a Fearless and does not return of their own accord, unAltered, will be considered lost.

Seven years later

When I look at myself in the piece of mirror fixed to the wall above my sleeping mat, even my restless night can’t dull my excitement. My shirt and trousers, although patched and faded, are clean, and the worn leather of my boots gleams in the light from the oil lamp. My armband is blue, embroidered with the words
Hope Junior Patrol
. If my assessment goes well, today will be the last time I wear it.

On the mat beside mine, Jori stirs and sits up. ‘
Please
can I come and watch you do target practice?’ he says as he kicks his blankets back, the same question he’s asked a hundred times a day since he found out I was graduating from the Junior Patrol. His breath forms clouds in the chilly air.

‘
No
, Jor.’ I twist my mousy curls back into a knot, wishing, not for the first time, that I’d inherited Mum’s flaming red hair like my brother did.

Jori pushes his lip out. ‘But I want to!’

‘
No
. It’s too dangerous.’ I help him tug his favourite bright green T-shirt down over his head. ‘But you can join the Junior Patrol when you’re twelve, and then you’ll get to learn to shoot a gun yourself, eventually.’

Jori rolls his eyes. ‘But that’s
ages
. I’ll be
old
.’

‘Are you trying to say I’m old?’ I lunge at him and he shrieks, trying to dodge away, but I grab him and start tickling him while he squirms in my arms and giggles.

Then the Meeting Hall bell starts to ring, signalling breakfast. Jori wriggles free, still giggling breathlessly, and I chase him out of the apartment to the rickety communal stairs. If these apartments had been finished, we’d’ve had lifts, but whoever owned the island before Sol’s dad only got as far as putting in the shafts. Hope’s maintenance crew have boarded them over so no one falls down them.

Outside, the slowly lightening sky is iron grey, an icy wind gusting off the sea, and I can hear the waves crashing against the shore. Sadness tugs inside me. Despite the cold, winter used to be my favourite time of year before we came to the island. Mum and Dad’s too. Now, it just means me and Jori wearing every item of clothing we own in bed to keep warm because I can only spare enough fuel to light the stove for a few hours in the evening.

‘There’s Sol!’ Jori says, breaking into my thoughts. I look up and see a tall, broad-shouldered figure walking across the courtyard. My face heats up, and all thoughts about Mum and Dad are driven from my head. Damn.

‘Sol!
Sol!
’ Jori shouts. Sol turns, and my heart sinks a little.

‘
Jori
,’ I hiss.

‘What?’ Jori says. I sigh inwardly. I can hardly tell my seven-year-old brother that last night, after we’d been to our final Junior Patrol meeting, Sol asked me to go for a walk down to the jetty, and despite the sinking,
here-we-go-again
feeling in my stomach, I’d agreed. Or that, when we got there, pink-faced in the light from his lantern, he stammered, ‘Cass, I was wondering if . . . that is, if me and you might—’ He cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing, then gazed at me with a helpless expression while I wondered what on earth to say.

The thing is, I
like
Sol. But the thought of us being a couple – of Captain Denning marrying us at the Meeting Hall, of having his kids and us getting old together – makes me feel restless and trapped.

It’s ridiculous, I know. Even if I make it through my assessment, I’ll never leave Hope. The barterers have to come to us, bringing their boats over to a specially reinforced area by the jetty where we trade goods, scavenged from the abandoned towns and cities and empty houses or swapped with other barterers. This place is going to be my home for ever, so why
not
settle down with Sol? With no one from outside allowed onto the island – a consensus reached once we hit one hundred residents to try and conserve resources – who else is there? Sol and I should be like a pair of boots so battered and old they’ve moulded themselves to the shape of your toes and heels. We should fit perfectly.

And yet, for some reason, we don’t.

‘I’m sorry,’ I told him gently as the waves slapped against the jetty behind us, the boats creaking and rocking. I was uncomfortably aware that I was repeating the exact same words I’d said to him last time he told me he wanted us to get together. ‘I just don’t feel ready yet.’

I could see in his face that he was thinking,
why not?
A lot of the other Islanders our age were pairing up. ‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated. I didn’t want to stick the knife in any further.

Sol’s face hardened. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk you back to your apartment.’

And I couldn’t argue because he was the only one with a lantern, and on a cloudy night the island’s too dark to find your way around without one.

Jori skips across to him, grinning. With a stiff smile on my face, I follow.

‘Hey.’ I look up, searching Sol’s face for any sign of bitterness or resentment. A few years ago, he started shooting up, going from a scrawny kid whose nose was level with my shoulder to a six-footer who could easily pass for twenty. His eyes are a clear, pale blue, he still has a light dusting of freckles sprinkled across the bridge of his nose and in summer his hair, eyebrows and eyelashes are bleached almost white by the sun. No wonder Marissa thinks I’m crazy for not being interested in him.

‘Hey,’ he replies. His tone is as neutral as his expression.

As we start walking again, I decide the best approach is to act as if last night never happened. ‘You all ready for today?’ I say. ‘I’m so nervous.’

‘Why? You’ve been practising, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but . . .’ I trail off. So he is still annoyed. I sigh inwardly.

We climb the steps that lead out of the courtyard and are greeted by the view of the rest of the island. The remains of Hope’s half-built ‘town’ begin a few hundred yards from the Meeting Hall and the Exchange, and have been nicknamed the Shudders because of the way, every so often – usually after a bad storm or a long winter – yet another building shudders itself into a pile of rubble and dust, with a rumble you can feel in your bones if you’re close enough, and which is why a fence with hand-painted signs warning of the danger has been put up by the maintenance crew to keep people out. Beyond the Shudders is the sea wall, the Patrollers on duty at their posts, and then the sea, as grey and churned-looking as the sky. When we first got here, everyone had to camp out in the bare, unfinished apartments until there was enough manpower and resources to fix everything up. It was better than the alternative, though. From a young age, kids on Hope are taught about the dangers of the Mainland – how it’s still crawling with Fearless, waiting to pounce on anyone stupid enough to set foot there. How the barterers manage to survive, I have no idea.