Fragments (2 page)

They’re all I had left. And they’re all gone.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know where to go.

All I know is that I’m in danger here. I don’t want to die too. I don’t want to be like those bodies. I have to get away.

Somewhere.

Anywhere.

C
HAPTER
2

monster

S
ome time later, I don’t know how long, I’m standing at the side of a road. I don’t remember getting here. I think I just walked until I ran out of grass. My ears are funny from the blast. Maybe I’m deaf. I don’t care. My face hurts and I wish I could stop this
shaking
.

I think about trying to get a lift but the first car that approaches me slows down and then speeds up again. I see the round, frightened eyes of a woman and a young boy as they accelerate away and I realise I must look bad. When you see someone covered in blood and bruises these days, you look the other way. You don’t offer lifts, even if it’s just a girl like me. No one wants to bring trouble to their door.

I need to get out of sight. If I could just find somewhere to lie down so I can think properly.

I cross the road and keep walking towards more fields. There are cows in one and high fences all round so I have to go a long way around, through scratchy grass-like stuff that itches and covers me in tiny pods. I don’t know what it is. I hate the countryside.

This makes me laugh. Me, of all people, being stranded in the countryside! I’m laughing really hard, so hard that my sides actually hurt and I’m gasping for breath and then it’s not funny and I’m scaring myself a bit.

When I was little and stropping about something Mum would poke me in the side and tickle me until I laughed and forgot why I was upset.
Give me a smile, Kylaboo
, she would say. Oh no. Big mistake to think about Mum. Mum is dead too. Everybody is dead . . .

Just keep walking.

Keep walking.

Don’t think.

Eventually I can see buildings ahead. I think it’s a farm because of the big barns in grey metal. But as I said, I’m not big on country things. There’s a fence along the back here. A large, red-brick house stands just beyond this area.

The fence is high, covered in spiked coils of barbed wire. Bound to be CCTV-ed up too. No way I can get in there. But still I walk towards the buildings. If I can only curl up somewhere for a while and rest, maybe clean up my face. I can’t think at the moment. I need to lie down for a bit. If only I could lie down …

When I get close to the fence I see that there is a tree just outside, branches spreading over towards the curly, vicious wire. Hope flares in me like a struck match. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s climb. It was the only reason Zander let me stay. He was the crime lord me and Jax lived with when Cal came into our lives. I was good for shimmying up buildings and getting through difficult spaces to get to his pickings.

There are engine-y rumbles from inside the grey barns and shouts from men working in there. I do a quick check for cameras. There’s one on the fence that moves slowly from side to side like an unblinking eye. I crouch low and wait for it to turn the other way. Then I run, gasping and wincing at the pains in my body – face, side, hands – all the way to the tree. Heart hammering, I hide behind it and begin to climb up, using the lower branches and knobbly places as footholds. I slip a little, though, and the inside of my arm scrapes down the bark. I have to bite my lip to stop myself from crying out.

Soon I’m inside the rich, glossy leaves at the heart of the tree. All the rain has made everything bright green. That’s what someone once would have said, anyway. It hurts my eyes. There’s no place for beauty now.

I’ve got a good view of the yard, though. A large lorry is open at the back and a couple of small, pick-up type vehicles are moving pallets around. Men in overalls are shouting things out to each other. There’s only, what, five of them? I’m sure I can slip past them.

I don’t have a plan once I get in. I just want to lie down.

I crawl along a sturdy branch of the tree, inching my sore body forward. The leaves camouflage my dirty, tattered clothes. Soon I’m over the barbed wire. I’ve done this so many times I know not to look at the metal teeth that could chew my skin open. I twist and jump, thumping to the ground. I land on my feet, though, like a cat. Maybe I have nine lives. Maybe I’m on my ninth.

I’m in-between two of the barns. I sidle up to the wall towards the front to peek out.

One of the pick-ups is whirring away down to the left, taking boxes from the lorry. A tall, fat man is talking into a headset and gesturing to the guy driving. I look left and right. Across the way there’s a lower building with horses poking long snouts out of windows. Stables. That’ll do.

I run across the dirt, out in the open. All my nerve endings seem to shriek at the certainty of being caught. The door is open and I hurl myself inside. Horses shift and toss their heads back, checking me out. Quickly scanning the stables I see one stall at the end that seems to be free and run to it, throwing myself inside and pulling the door closed.

It stinks of horse poo in here and I wrinkle my nose. Pain flares in my cheek again and tears prick my eyes. But for the moment, I think I’m safe.

Live moment by moment. That’s the only way. I learned that when Mum died of the pig-flu epidemic that killed off about a quarter of the country.

I stayed in our flat for a few weeks until they started clearing them out. Said they had to beat the infection there. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I had nowhere to live. I’d heard what happened to kids in care. Either you got recruited into the army, or . . . well, I heard worse stuff too, about ending up as slaves one way or another.

I sort of gave up for a day or two. And then I bumped into Jax, who used to live on the same floor. Hadn’t paid much attention to him before, I guess. He’d lived with a foster mum who ended up being carted off for terrorist offences. He looked as lost as I felt. So we sort of hooked up. Learned to live on the streets, stealing to stay alive. That was before we met Zander and he took us on.

Anyway, the point is that I have lost everything before and I found a way to live. If I can force myself to think only about
the very next thing I need
, and not look at the big, scary picture, I can stop myself from going completely crazy. I’ve been through bad times before and I somehow survived. Can I get through this? I don’t know yet. All I can do is clean my face and try to rest for a bit.

There’s a sort of open metal box on the wall and when I look into it, I can see a thin puddle of greenish water. No good. But horses need fresh water, don’t they? So there must be some in one of the other stalls.

The thought of going into an enclosed space with one of those hot, snorting monsters fills me with dread. I’ll get kicked to death. And do they bite? I don’t know, do I?

But I’m suddenly so thirsty I think I’ll die without some water to drink, let alone to clean my face up with. Decisively, I push open the door again and listen. I can hear a beep-beep-beep outside. I reckon it’s the lorry reversing out of the yard. I slip into the next stall where a massive, conker-brown horse eyes me with a starey, mad expression.

Horses are weird. Its eyes are messing with my head a bit. Like it can see inside.
Don’t be stupid, Kyla . . 
.

‘Hey, horse,’ I say, dumbly. My voice is all croaky and doesn’t sound like me at all. My cheek hurts when I talk. ‘Good boy. Nice horsey. Gonna share a drink with me, yeah? Good horsey.’

The stall stinks of hot animal sweat and worse. For a second I’m overwhelmed by the size of this muscle machine. It seems to fill the space. The metal water container is on the side in this stall, rather than at the front. It’s right by the bloody horse. I gently edge forwards. The horse makes a snorty-snuffly noise and its nostrils flare in a scary way. Its head is up and it shifts its big heavy feet. Maybe this is what horses do right before they charge at you . . .

‘Nice horsey, nice horsey, just share a little drinkie with old Kyla, OK?’ I’m mumbling all sorts of rubbish as I edge towards the water box. The horse snuffles again and steps back, away from me. Maybe it’s scared of
me
? This gives me confidence for half a second until I realise what it would be like if this enormous, snorting monster panicked in such a small space. I picture myself trampled to death and my heart rate kicks up a few notches.

But I force myself to take another couple of steps before reaching a shaky hand into the metal box. There is water in there but it’s warm and yucky. There’s probably horse spit in it and the thought makes me gag. But I’m so thirsty I reach over anyway and splash some onto my face, never letting my eyes stray from the horse’s. We’re eyeballing each other now. The water doesn’t smell or anything and I ignore the bits of straw in there, cupping my hands to slosh the warm wetness in the general direction of my mouth. It only makes me more thirsty and before I know what I’m doing, I’ve dipped my whole face in to drink, like I’m a horse too.

My face screams with pain. Maybe I’m really badly hurt. Oh God, what if the wound gets infected? Antibiotics are more precious than gold these days. The ones Cal gave me for my chest before have all gone now. I
have
to get my cheek clean. I plunge my face into the box and frantically rub until the water swirls pink.

After a bit I stop and edge slowly backwards from the stall. The horse dips its head and, for a crazy second, I think it’s saying goodbye. This makes me want to cry and I have to bite down on my hand to stop myself.

I slip back out of the door and into the next stall. I bunch the straw up as high as it will go just inside the door, hoping that anyone giving a brief glance over won’t see me unless they look carefully. Trembling all over, I drop down and cover myself.

It’s like being jabbed with a thousand needles and all the scratches I hadn’t noticed before on my arms suddenly hurt like hell. I thought it would be sweet-smelling, soft and comfortable. Let me tell you, straw is nothing like that. Must have got the romantic view from those stories Mum used to read from her Bible, the one her own mum brought from Jamaica all those years ago.

I’m so tired that, even with the itching and the horse pooey smells and the pain in my face, I think I can sleep. I close my eyes and try to make myself small, drawing my knees up like I’m a baby again. The images rattle through my head straight away: the helicopters with the beating blades, the explosion, the feeling of the hard dirt against my face. They play over and over and I can’t stop them coming.

‘I’m so sorry
,’ I whisper through my dry, sore lips. Maybe I made it happen. I was jealous and now everyone’s dead. This feels like poison inside me. I can never un-know it . . . I can never undo it . . .

Helicopter blades thump and then turn into wings flapping with a heartbeat rhythm. Black bird-like things closing in on me with their claws outstretched, with tattered, smoking wings.

But someone is here to help me now. A good angel. Blond, wavy hair curls around a small face with a pointy chin. Sparkly blue eyes with long sandy lashes. Freckles smattered across a cute, snub nose. A small pink tongue runs across pale, dry lips.

The face is right over mine.

Then I understand that I’m not dreaming. This is real.

C
HAPTER
3

picnic

I
scoot backwards like a crab, straw flying up around me so I start sneezing.

‘Bless you!’ she says with a tinkly laugh, except it comes out as ‘Bleth’ and I notice the gap where she has lost her front milk teeth.

‘Who are you?’ I whisper. I’m looking beyond her, expecting to see a couple of Counterinsurgency and Anti-Terrorism Squad dudes all tooled up there, ready to cart me off. I feel around in the straw with one hand, not moving my eyes from hers. Maybe I can find a stone or something to throw at them when they come for me.

‘I’m Ariella. I’m six. Who are you? And why are you in my daddy’s barn?’

She’s stopped smiling. I realise I might be scaring her now.

‘Um, I’m . . .’ Shall I tell her my name? ‘I’m Kyla.’ Too late. I’m not properly thinking straight. I have a ferocious headache over one eye and my cheek . . .
man
, that hurts. I lift my hand slowly to it and dab with my fingers. There’s a big semi-circle of skin missing, I think. Pain zigzags over my cheek and up to my scalp.

‘What did you do to your face?’ she says curiously.

I hesitate.

‘I fell.’ I know it’s lame. I expect her eyes to narrow in suspicion. I’m still thinking whoever is with her is about to come storming in here too. ‘I hurt it on the ground.’ But the corners of her mouth turn down and her eyes seem to shine a little more.

‘It looks really sore,’ she says sadly.

‘Yes, it really is sore,’ I agree. I find that I’m nodding weirdly. I never know what to say to children. Jax was great at that. Sometimes he had half the kids on the estate hanging off him like Christmas lights on a tree.

Ariella’s face brightens. ‘My mummy has special cream that she put on her tummy when Kit came out of it. He’s my brother and he’s boring because he cries a lot.’ She makes a disgusted face that’s almost funny. ‘Mummy says the special cream made her tummy better really quickly. Shall I bring it for you?’

I sit up a bit straighter and attempt a smile. Which hurts my face.

‘That would be great. Do you think you could bring me water and something to eat too, um, Ariella?’

There’s a beat while she considers me and then she smiles again. ‘We’ve got flapjacks. Do you like flapjacks? I do but I don’t like cheese. So I won’t bring any.’

I keep smiling, even though it hurts my face.

‘Got it, no cheese then.’ I try to sound bright. ‘Anything else is fine. Thank you. And, um, Ariella?’

She has turned away but she looks back at me, blowing a spiral of blond hair away from her face. ‘Hmm?’

‘Can it just be our secret? Me being in here? I might get into trouble with your mummy and daddy and then I’d have to go away. So can we make it a special secret?’ I feel like I’m pleading with her.