The Disappearances (17 page)

The ride was bumpy; not because of the car, Linus was keen to point out, but because of the roads. Or rather, the lack of roads. ‘This beast was not made to drive off-road,’ he told Lucas, stroking the steering wheel appreciatively. ‘Rocks she can handle, but not craters and cracks like this. She’s meant for a more civilised place.’

Lucas looked at him quizzically. ‘So the old world was civilised?’ he asked.

Linus shrugged. ‘Some of it was very uncivilised,’ he said. ‘But it had its moments. And it had roads. Lovely, long, smooth roads.’

Lucas digested this as they flew over boulders and rocks, then turned to look out of the window. The landscape was desolate, just as he’d been told it would be; there were no green fields or pastures to be seen, no evidence of farming or production or houses. It was as though the City had nothing to do with its surrounding landscape; as though it existed in its own micro-environment, the large high wall keeping not only people out, but also the rest of the world too.

As Lucas watched the world speed by he realised how little he knew of the land outside the City walls, of the people who lived there. He had spent his formative years believing everything he’d been told about the Evils who roamed outside the City walls, about the death and destruction that they would invoke given half a chance. He had believed that humans were capable of such extreme evil that only by removing their amygdalas could they be safe, from each other, from themselves.

And then his father had told him the truth, had explained, patiently but hurriedly, that things were not as he’d thought, that the Brother had lied to his people, that Lucas had to be brave, had to make him a promise, had to be stronger than he ever thought possible.

Lucas had done as he’d asked; he had learnt how to navigate the System, had learnt how to ensure that the Brother noticed him, trusted him; he had given his father up as a traitor, and he had allowed his brother to grow up hating him. And all the time, he’d taken comfort from the fact that he knew, that he understood what was really going on.

But here, now, driving through landscape he’d never set eyes on before, Lucas realised he knew nothing.

‘People live here?’ he asked eventually.

Linus shook his head. ‘Not here. No water here. City’s seen to that. But there are places that are more habitable. The settlement where your brother is, for instance.’

Lucas held his breath.

‘They’re in the North,’ Linus continued conversationally. ‘About three hundred miles away.’

‘Right,’ Lucas said, trying to keep his voice level. ‘I see.’

‘Nice girl, that Evie,’ Linus observed.

Lucas looked at him sharply, but Linus was staring straight ahead at the road, his expression giving nothing away. ‘You want to hear some music?’ Linus asked.

Lucas didn’t say anything; Linus reached into a pocket on the side of the car door and brought out a thin metal disk which he inserted into a slot near the steering wheel. Moments later the car was full of loud, jangling music that caught Lucas by surprise; he lurched backwards, causing Linus to laugh out loud.

‘Now this,’ he said, a grin on his face, ‘is the way to travel. This is what I like to remember about the bad old days.’

He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove; Lucas sat back, letting the strange sounds wash over him. A beat, a jangling tune that somehow made him want to smile, made him want to jump up and dance.

‘Yeah, the bad old days, they had their moments,’ Linus said. Then he took his eyes off the road and turned to look at Lucas. ‘You know, truth was, they weren’t the bad old days at all. Not really. The Horrors weren’t good, but before that? It was better than now, that’s for sure.’

Lucas opened his mouth to respond, then changed his mind. The music was too loud, the car too jumpy; he couldn’t think properly, and anyway, there was no point asking Linus to elaborate. Linus would drip information to him as he saw fit, in his usual frustrating way. To ask questions would just be to engage in his irritating game. Far better just to nod.

And so they drove, darkness descending as they sped through the landscape until Lucas felt his eyelids grow heavy, until they wouldn’t stay open any more, until sleep enveloped him.

And then, with a start, he woke up and groaned. ‘Stop the car. I’m going to be sick,’ he said, leaning forward and clutching at the door handle.

Linus laughed. ‘Got yourself some motion sickness there,’ he said. ‘It’ll pass. Go back to sleep.’

Lucas closed his eyes then opened them again quickly when he realised it made things ten times worse. ‘It isn’t passing. Please stop,’ he begged, clutching his stomach.

‘Soon,’ Linus said reassuringly. ‘In about five minutes.’

‘You’d better not be lying,’ Lucas asked miserably. ‘Because if you don’t stop very soon I’m going to throw up all over your precious car …’

‘See those lights?’ Linus cut in, as though Lucas wasn’t even talking. Lucas looked into the darkness, straining his eyes. He hadn’t noticed any lights; had seen only black around the car as it trundled over the bumps and stones. He’d been wondering how Linus could have any idea where he was going, whether in fact Linus was taking him on a magical mystery tour that would lead only to yet another of his enigmatic smiles. But now, as he peered out of the window, he realised that Linus was right, that there were lights in the distance. Dim, tiny, but there.

‘What is it? Another camp? Another city?’

Linus pulled a face; Lucas groaned inwardly and not just because of his lurching stomach. Trying to get information out of Linus was like conversing with a two-year-old. He sometimes wondered why his father had put so much faith in someone who was so incapable of normal conversation, who seemed to take great delight in making others feel foolish, out of step. He knew the only solution was to ignore Linus, to ask nothing of him, but he couldn’t do that, partly because he wanted to know more, and party because talking was the only way of taking his mind off this terrible motion sickness.

‘Well?’ he asked, miserably, feeling like death, feeling even more humiliated by the fact that he felt so terrible. Lucas didn’t do weakness; he did strength, he did silence, he protected, he fought. But now he had been floored by a vehicle and there was nothing he could do about it. ‘Tell me. Is it the place that’s disappeared from the map? Is this the Informers’ camp?’

Linus’s eyes were glistening in the moonlight. ‘Part camp, part city,’ he mused. ‘Most interesting.’

They were close, Lucas realised with a jolt of relief. They’d be stopping soon. ‘Do you have any weapons in this car?’ he asked.

Linus grinned. ‘Oh, we don’t need weapons,’ he said, his eyes twinkling. ‘Not right now anyway.’

‘You’re sure about that?’ Lucas asked uncertainly.

‘We need information. You don’t get that with weapons,’ Linus said.

Lucas opened his mouth to ask a question, then decided against it and instead leant back in the seat and waited for the car to stop. It slowed right down and Linus started to drive towards what looked like a mountain of rock. As they approached, Lucas realised that there was an opening: Linus had chosen another cave for his car. They purred in, then he turned off the engine and they found themselves in total darkness. Seconds later, Linus brought out a torch and got out.

Lucas followed. The ground was rocky. Tentatively, he followed Linus out to the mouth of the cave, gratefully breathing in fresh air.

‘Let’s find out what they’re up to, shall we?’ Linus said, and upped his pace. Lucas nodded and followed him.

They walked for about half an hour in total silence. And then, without warning, Linus stopped, causing Lucas to almost bump into him.

‘What?’ he whispered.

‘There,’ Linus said, pointing to a pile of rocks. ‘We can watch them from here.’

Silently he moved towards the rocks then began to climb up. ‘You coming?’

Lucas hesitated. The lights were brighter. He reckoned the camp, or whatever it was, was about half a mile away. Even from here he could tell it was huge, far bigger than anything Lucas had imagined. It was made up of a cluster of large low buildings in the centre, surrounded by hundreds of smaller ones surrounding them.

‘Pre-fab,’ Linus said knowledgeably. ‘Impermanent structures, but they’ll have taken a while to build. These people are serious.’

‘Serious about what?’ Lucas asked.

‘That’s the question,’ Linus shrugged. ‘And what I think we have established is that we’re not going to get anywhere watching them from these hills. We need to get inside.’

‘With no weapons? You got any ideas?’ Lucas asked.

‘I’ve got one,’ Linus said, a little glint in his eye. ‘But you might not like it.’

‘Try me,’ Lucas said drily.

‘Well,’ Linus said thoughtfully. ‘If we’re found in there, we die. But if they bring one of us in …’

‘As a prisoner?’ Lucas frowned.

‘Not quite. Prisoners tend to get locked up, beaten, tortured. I don’t know what they’re like here but we know they’re not afraid of killing people. No, I have another idea.’

‘So, what is it?’ Lucas said impatiently.

Linus looked thoughtful. ‘It’s risky but I think it might work,’ he said. ‘Go look over there. Over the edge of the hill. Tell me what you see.’

Lucas opened his mouth to tell Linus he could go and look for himself, then decided against it and started to climb.

‘I can’t see anything,’ he said.

‘Further up,’ Linus called up to him, pointing towards the top of the rock. Lucas pulled himself up; it was only as he reached the very top that he realised, too late, that Linus was right behind him; too late for him to realise what was happening, too late to stop himself being thrown head first over the small cliff to the ground below.

‘You like this music, Devil?’ Thomas turned around, a half-smile on his face. He was not a handsome man, but there was steel in his eyes that told Devil he had authority. His eyes were close set, his hair cut short, but his wrist sported an expensive Swiss watch and his suit looked hand made.

Devil shrugged. ‘I guess,’ he said noncommittally. It wasn’t his sort of music. Jangling guitars. The sort of thing played by white boys with long fringes. The sort of thing he might have listened to years ago. ‘It’s a new band. I think they’re going to go a long way,’ the man said, his fingers drumming on his thigh, his head nodding in rhythm. Then he grinned. ‘Actually, I know they’re going to go a long way, because I’m going to see that they do. You know the phrase “familiarity breeds contempt”? It’s bullshit. The more we hear something, the more we like it. I hated this music the first time I heard it but now I love it.’

Devil shrugged, a non-verbal ‘whatever’. He pulled his hood over his head. He didn’t really know what Thomas was talking about and so he did what he always did when he wasn’t sure about something and ignored him. ‘Ignorance is failure,’ his father used to say. ‘Ignorance is weakness. And if you’re weak, the strong will walk all over you. You have to be one step ahead. You have to see what’s coming. You have to be educated, informed, so no one takes you for a ride, you understand, son?’

‘You smoke that shit?’ Thomas was looking at his cigarettes.

Devil’s eyes narrowed defensively. ‘They’re no shit,’ he retorted. ‘Silk Cut. Genuine article.’ They were the cigarettes his father had smoked. ‘Middle-class cigarettes’, his father had called them.

‘They’re all shit,’ Thomas said. ‘They pollute your insides. Kill you if they can. Nothing good about being an addict, Devil. Nothing at all.’

Devil looked at him insolently.

Thomas smiled. ‘You’re angry with me because you think I’m belittling you. Right?’

Devil didn’t answer.

‘Maybe I am,’ Thomas shrugged. ‘But if you have a habit like that you’re asking for it. You’re giving power to the cigarette manufacturers, letting them own you. People used to belittle me, but not any more. Now they wouldn’t dare. I own my own destiny. I make my own destiny.’

Devil stared ahead, sullenly. He was angry, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He’d take it out on someone later.

‘How come you knew my name?’ he asked.

Thomas smiled. ‘Actually I know more than your name, Devil. I know you. Know all about you.’

‘Yeah?’ Devil shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

‘Yeah,’ Thomas said thoughtfully. ‘Shame about that kid, huh? Must make you feel like shit. I mean, it was your fault he killed himself, right? You’re going to have to live with that for the rest of your life.’

Devil just managed to stop himself launching himself at Thomas but just in time he remembered that he couldn’t win, not with these two big guys either side of him. ‘It wasn’t nothing to do with me,’ he said instead, his eyes dark with anger, with defiance.

Thomas laughed. ‘We both know that’s not true, Devil. You know, if you play with people’s lives you’ve got to be able to take the consequences. Live with them. Embrace them. Can’t be lying to yourself. Surely your father taught you that?’

Devil’s head turned sharply. Thomas laughed.

‘Oh, I know about your father. Know all about him. That’s why you’re here.’

Devil closed his eyes for a few seconds then he opened them. ‘We don’t have any of his money,’ he said then. ‘Whatever you think I’ve got, I ain’t. He took it all with him. I ain’t got nothing.’

‘I know that,’ Thomas said reassuringly. Then the car indicated and pulled into a large warehouse. Devil looked around nervously. There were no other people. It looked like no one else ever came here.

‘Don’t be scared,’ Thomas said, smiling again. ‘We’re just here to talk. Nothing else.’

Devil looked away. How did this guy read him so easily? It unsettled him. More than that, it pissed him off.

The man on Devil’s left got out of the car, so did Thomas. Then they changed places. Devil felt his throat go dry.

‘Mmmm,’ Thomas said, leaning back against the seat. ‘That’s the mark of a great car. As comfortable in the back as it is in the front. Shows your passengers respect. Respect is important, Devil. Don’t you think?’

Devil shrugged. He wished this guy would get to the point. Tell him what he wanted. Then at least he’d know what he was dealing with.