The Three Most Wanted (4 page)

How desperate was he to hang onto this one—only?—possible bit of normality? Once we started hiking properly, he’d be following us blindly day after day across an entire continent, never having anything but the most limited idea where he was or what was around him.
Don’t freak out, Bane
.
This is going to be bad enough for him as it is...

Bane turned to glare at Jon, opening his mouth as though to attempt some verbal decapitation—shut it again. Did he understand? But he still reached out as though to shift my sleeping bag away from Jon’s to the outside of the tent. Then a more calculating look passed through his eyes... Ah yes, anything coming through the sides of the tent would eat either Jon or himself before me.

Clearly the deciding factor. He withdrew his hand. I breathed a tiny sigh of thanks.
Thank You, Lord.

“Come on, Margo...” He moved to help me to the tent—Jon took advantage of the empty doorway and slid inside; by the unzipping and rustling sounds, he was getting into his sleeping bag with alacrity.

As soft snores started I let the “Night, Jon” die on my lips and concentrated on maneuvering inside. Bane unfastened my sleeping bag all the way, so I wouldn’t have to wriggle.

With me zipped in—comparatively painlessly—Bane gave me a goodnight kiss and slithered into his own bag with considerably more ease. Very distantly, a pack of wolves howled—Jon went on snoring quietly. Silence from the surrounding forest.

Lord
... I was fighting to keep my eyes open...
Thank you we’re alive and free and please look after Father Mark and the others and our parents and all Believers...

...A domed tent ceiling above me. Bane and Jon snoring on each side, almost drowning out the morning birdsong. I sat up carefully, but they were deep asleep. Unzipping sleeping bag and door as quietly as I could, I looked around.

The sky was blue, the sun glittering off the little stream and shining brightly on the grassy slopes and ledges. The forest looked green and mossy and inviting. The eerie nighttime blackness—which I’d glimpsed when nature’s call had dragged me painfully from my sleeping bag—had vanished like a dream.

Easing gingerly out of the tent, I sat down on a warm rock to breathe the fresh morning air and enjoy being awake for once—felt like I’d been mostly asleep for a week. After only a few minutes, Bane’s subconscious must’ve noticed my absence...

“Margo!” He sprang from the tent like a wolf from its lair, shirtless and knife in hand.

“
Bane!”
I snorted.

“Don’t do that to me, Margo!” He pocketed the knife and sank down on the rock beside me, yawning. His skin glowed warm gold in the morning light and I rested my head on his shoulder, my fingers drifting to explore the new, broad chest he’d grown whilst I was locked away...

“Margo, do you
have
to do that?”

My thoughtless fingers stilled. His face was very close to mine and for the first time since my rescue, a heat in his eyes said I was something to be desired as well as protected with his life. My cheeks burned. “Sorry.”

He leant in and kissed me. Not one of the “there, there, I love you, everything’s going to be fine” kisses he’d been keeping me well supplied with, not even the “I LOVE YOU!” kiss he’d given me just before the Channel Bridge, but a kiss combining “you’re my sun and moon and stars” with “and I want to be one flesh with you right now”.

Finally drawing away, he buried his face in my hair and breathed deeply for a while. “Why the hell did we let Father Mark drive off without marrying us?”

A snort of laughter escaped me. “Uh, Bane, priorities?”

He sighed. “Yeah, okay. And
practicalities
. Suppose we wouldn’t want to be married and sharing a tent with Jon. Nothing doing.”

Nope. But still, alas.

“Why don’t you get some more rest, Bane? You must be exhausted.”

“Well...” His eyes glowed as he set a quick kiss on my lips. “Tempting though it is to stay out here... I think I will get some more sleep.”

He slipped back into the tent, but the heat had their snores faltering after only another hour and a half. I lit the stove and by the time they yawned their way out I was performing the complicated culinary process of pouring and mixing. The ‘bacon and beans’ didn’t taste very different from the ‘chicken stew.’

“We’ve got to make the food go absolutely as far as possible,” said Bane, when he’d finished his. “Have you got your Reader, Margo?”

“Here.” I’d brought my coat out of the tent with me for the sake of all the important things in its pockets. He pulled the tiny data cable from his phone and stuck it in my bookReader for a minute, then handed it back.

“There. I bought books on identifying edible plants and trapping rabbits and that sort of thing. We’d better study hard while we’re waiting for you to mend.”

Dubiously, I placed my reader in a patch of sun and undid the back flap of its case to expose its solar panel. Edible plants,
maybe
. Trapping rabbits? Amateurs never had much luck at that, did they? Still, if we
could
get food that way... Going into towns with no safe ID cards and our pictures everywhere... I shuddered.

“Audio books?” Jon didn’t sound hopeful.

Bane shook his head. “Sorry. They don’t do them.”

“Oh well. I’ll just have to hope you don’t serve us all deadly nightshade as blueberries or something.”

“We’ll be careful,” said Bane defensively.

“Oh,” I put in, “Jon and I were saying yesterday about getting our story straight. You know, we’re rich New Adults from the north of England, obviously, and we’ll be going to university where?”

“University of York,” said Jon. “Gotta be stinking rich to go far afield, haven’t you?”

Bane nodded. “Yeah. What are we called and what are we studying?”

“Something similar to our real name. Or we won’t react to it. Margo could be Maria,” Jon suggested.

I shrugged. “Okay. You can be Josh, studying Physics.”

Jon shrugged as well. “Perfect. Bane?”

Bane screwed up his face. Not many B names.

“Dane,” I said. “That should be on the British C list.” That stupid list of racially-acceptable names the EuroGov made everyone stick to…

Bane snorted. “Right. Dane it is. Studying History.” Yep, Bane would pass muster as a history major. At least if they stuck to battles and tactics.

I thought a bit. “I’ll say history too. I’d say English, but... Well, I don’t want to give anyone any reason to put writing and me in the same thought.”

“Too right.”

“Can we really walk all the way to Rome in less than three months? That’s when university terms start, right?”

“Yes. Hopefully. If we overrun we’ll have to say we’re taking a year off. Some people do.”

“
Really
filthy rich people, mostly,” I said doubtfully.

“Well, fingers crossed we make it before then.”

“Deo volente.”

“Deo volente,” echoed Jon.

God willing
.

Good weather persisted, we didn’t see hide or hair of any other people and we all gradually relaxed and began to take it easy, even Bane. Bane and I studied the woodland survival books and set snares, without any luck. Bane finally found a handful of small berries we dared eat, but it clearly wasn’t going to be a very time effective way of getting food.

After a trip to the little forest room on the third night Jon came scrambling into the tent in a cold sweat because he’d heard something padding around nearby—when Bane and I stuck our heads out and shone flashlights this way and that—nothing to be seen. Just possible Jon had misinterpreted what he heard; more likely, something large had simply passed through.

The fourth day dawned nice and dry, yet again. My thighs were so much better we agreed, reluctantly, that tomorrow we must leave. This in mind, I laid out the contents of my pack again and Jon began to do the same. Bane sat and watched. Considering how much thought he’d given to each and every gram of weight, he’d no need to familiarize himself with the contents.

I’d read the long distance hiking guidebook now and we were definitely somewhat undersupplied, but the less of everything else, the more food we could carry. If we got caught, it’d surely be when trying to get food...

I shook the thoughts away. Bane had done a good job, really. He’d packed thermal underwear for each of us—we’d use this mostly to wear in our sleeping bags any day we got wet and muddy, and perhaps for crossing the Alps. We had the all-important waterproofs—trousers as well as jackets with removable fleece liners. But two changes of socks and underwear were the only other clothes we had, other than what we were wearing.

Jon grinned suddenly as he repacked his own rucksack. “So much for,
Captain, Captain, Jon hasn’t got enough clothes
...”

I had to laugh, remembering how we’d taken on the sadistic head of the girls’ block to get Jon’s clothes back. “Yeah. Wonder what’s going on back there. Bet the Menace is in so much trouble.”

“We can hope.”

Bane shot Jon a look. “
That’s
unforgiving, coming from you. What’s the score with this Captain?”

“She kept punching Margo.”

“Only twice,” I corrected. “But she made us watch Uncle Peter’s execution.”

Bane scowled. He’d been very fond of my ‘Uncle’ Peter, a priest who’d stayed often with my family for most of our lives. “Let’s hope she’s up to her neck in trouble, then.”

“Well, being found fast asleep on the dorm floor in your underwear with not a single one of your charges to be found has got to be a career stopper, at the very least.”

“Yeah,” said Jon. “It’s not like she can put the blame on anyone else, is it?”

“Surely the commandant will be in pretty hot water with the EGD,” put in Bane. “If he’s alive. He was in overall charge, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, but if he followed all the regulations I don’t see what they could get him for. And I think he had. The escape was obviously orchestrated from the girl’s block, anyway. At the end of the day, we just weren’t supposed to have something that looked like a nonLee.”

“And we only had it because the Menace told the Major she’d seen Finchley’s door card safely destroyed with her own eyes. I’d say she’s going to be in boiling water, quite frankly.”

“Yeah, how did you get that card?” asked Bane. “You said you’d tell me.”

“Oh dear, I don’t want to spoil your day.”

“She stole it off a guard while he was groping her,” said Jon, about the mildest one could put it.

“
What?”
Bane looked as though he’d sprint back over the Channel Bridge and introduce Finchley’s face to a cinder block all the same.

“Calm down,” I told him. “It’s not how I’d have chosen to acquire a card, but in the circumstances it all turned out for the best.”

Bane glowered at his faceless image of filthy Finchley for a while, then calmed down enough to think again.

“Why did they think it was destroyed?”

I let Jon tell him. But he made me sound so clever and cool-headed I wished I’d told it myself!

***+***

4

KITTENS

By noon the next day my thighs and stomach were so sore we had to stop, but at least we were moving. We shared a single sachet for lunch, but after the morning’s walking it left us far hungrier than normal.

“How far have we come?”

“Today? Not far.” Bane glanced at his phone and put it away.

“What’s not far?”

“Five kilometers.”

“That little?” From the ache in my shoulders, let alone in my healing areas, surely further! And they’d both spent most of the previous evening sneaking stuff out of my rucksack and into their own packs.

“You can’t exactly go fast at the moment, can you? It’ll get easier.”

Jon made a face. Though free from the weight of a double pack, he still had to hang onto Bane’s shoulder for balance, pretty tiring for Bane too—Jon was taller than him, though a bit more lightly built. Jon had roamed our campsite once the tent was up, learning the locations of the trees—but for him the hiking wouldn’t get any easier.

The little French town of Fruges lay in the bottom of the valley—a stunning view. But, hovering just inside the forestline, Bane and I were intent on the town itself, viewed through the binocular setting on his phone.

“Are there any food stalls?” asked Jon.

My skin had toughened up despite the week’s walking, but we were already sick of the tasteless sachets. Still, we weren’t going down there unless certain we could get food without having to scan our IDs.

“It looks like there’s some on the main street,” I said, unfastening my dyed hair and letting it fall on either side of my face, then putting my cap back on. The picture on the highway sign had been a recent school photo—none of those with my hair down.

Bane lowered his phone and called up a map, tracing his finger along a road.

“With a bit of luck we can buy food at a stall and walk straight on out the other side. If we get split up, try and meet
here
.” He tapped the screen. “Needless to say one of us has
got
to stick with Jon. You two will be playing the happy couple again, so I s’pose that’ll be you, Margo.”

He clenched his teeth for a moment, then flicked a hand dismissively. “We shouldn’t have to split up, anyway. We’re New Adults happy to reach a town and buy fresh food. We’ve no reason to cower or creep along. Happy, carefree,
got it
?”

“Happy and carefree.” Jon offered me his arm.

I took it, trying to echo him—but just ended up drawing a deep breath and gripping his arm too tightly.

He ducked his head to me. “Come on, Margo, just think, French bread, pâté, cheese? Yummm...”

“Oh yes, worth being skinned alive for.” The words were out before I could stop them.

Jon slipped his arm around my shoulders instead. “No reason why anything should go wrong, Margo. Anyway, Bane’s going to be just on the other side of me, dying to engage in his new hobby of rescuing you, so there’s really nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t want anyone else dying to rescue me...” I stared down at the town. The current tally stood at one helicopter pilot, one dismantler, one—question mark?—commandant and an indeterminable number of bridge guards.

“I didn’t mean it like
that
...”

“Come on.” Bane resolutely ignored Jon’s arm around me—practicing keeping his cool, perhaps. “Let’s just go down, shall we? We’ve
got
to pick up as much food as we can now, while it’s safer.”

Safer! Our pictures will be everywhere!”

“Yeah, okay, Margo, but the EuroGov may still think we’re with the Resistance. And once they realize we’re not, they’ll think we’re with the others… assuming the others made it to the Vatican State...”

He trailed off—chilling realization—if the others hadn’t made it by now, they probably weren’t going to.

“So,” he went on, “we’re probably still pretty safe at this moment. But
when
they find out we’re not in the Vatican and not with the Resistance, that’s when the EuroGov will start looking for three New Adults on their own.”

I bit my lip. The thought of the EuroGov did strange things to my spine at the moment. Three of the top officials, including Reginald Hill, the so-called ‘Minister for Internal Affairs’, with his soft voice and cold eyes, had interrogated me before sentencing me to Full Conscious Dismantlement.

Bane saw my expression.

“They may be looking for three of us then, but with a bit of luck they’ll be looking
everywhere
. There’s a lot of forest in Europe, and a lot of cities. They won’t know where to start.”

“Bane’s right,” said Jon. “They won’t even know we haven’t already managed to leave the EuroBloc, will they?”

Depends how good their spies are
... I tried to look happy and reassured—Bane wasn’t fooled.

“We’ve
got
to save as many of those sachets as we can for crossing the Alps,” he said gently. “So we need other food now.”

He was right, but I stared at the town and couldn’t move. Like a horse refusing a jump. I knew far too well what awaited me, if caught. Except I still didn’t, I knew only a fraction of the horror and even that... My blood felt ice cold.

Bane drew me from Jon’s grasp and into the circle of his arms. “It’s okay, Margo.” His voice was soft. “But the way to true safety leads through this town. We have to do it.”

And do it again. And again. All the way to Rome.

“Nothing’s going to happen. And if it does... I promised, didn’t I? They’re never going to hurt you again. Never.” Fiercely, he held me close, so close I felt the hardness of the knife tucked inside his jacket, digging into my ribs. And again I couldn’t speak, couldn’t scold him for that promise.

I eased out of his grasp after a moment, down to sit on the grass, and buried my face against my knees.
Lord, please give me strength. Mine is quite inadequate, always was.

Jon crouched beside me and put his hand on my shoulder. Praying too.
Lord, please let Margo get up and move?
Fair enough. My cowardly custard attack wasn’t getting us any closer to safety. Bane just stood over us like a Doberman on guard.

Let’s have a little more trust, Margo, shall we? If you’re meant to get all the way to Rome, you will, but you won’t be teleported so you’ve got to get up and put one foot in front of the other...

I lifted my head from my knees and got up on my feet again, marshalling a wan smile for Bane.

“Kiss?”

He obliged quite thoroughly and I bruised my ribs a bit more on his knife before finally stepping away from him and seizing Jon’s arm. “Come on, let’s go. Quick. Before I have another litter of kittens...”

“Hear, hear.” Jon followed me. Bane fell into position on his other side, to stop anyone from walking into him. If anyone wondered why Jon couldn’t avoid them…

“Everyone got their sunglasses?” asked Bane.

“Yep.” Jon slid them down over his face as Bane and I did the same. The sun wasn’t exactly glaring down, but fortunately the sort of rich young things we were imitating wouldn’t be seen dead without their shades even in midwinter.

“Right, we’re all sorted, then. Fruges, brace yourself for three happy, carefree New Adults.”

I concentrated on the buildings as we walked down the slope to the road. . Though built of creamy stone much like the village hotel of Little Hazleton, Jon’s home, they looked foreign to me. The shape of the roofs was strange, little windows sticking out from them, the subtler differences harder to pinpoint. However similar the forest might seem, you’d never mistake this town for a British one.

“Pretty place,” said Bane. “Must get loads of tourists here.”

“Probably why it’s still occupied.” My voice was almost steady. Most of the small towns that used to dot the European countryside had died out over the years, what with the reForestation, lingering economic woes, and the attendant—or rather, contributory, though the EuroGov wouldn’t admit it—shrinking population.

As we passed between the first houses locals moved briskly past us, speaking French, whilst families and older couples drifted along with omniPhones in hand, exclaiming over quaint nooks and crannies in a variety of departmental languages.

“Look at that.” I drew Jon to a halt, pointing at a particularly scenic cottage straight ahead. “Isn’t it pretty?”

“Beautiful,” lied Jon.

“Let me get a picture.” Bane pulled out his convincingly touristy—i.e. shiny—omniPhone. “Go on, you two.”

I positioned Jon and myself in front of the cottage. We wrapped our arms around each other and beamed for the camera, then the three of us sauntered on.

“Look, there’s some other backpackers,” said Bane in an undertone. “And some more, look...”

“Here’s the stalls...” I couldn’t quite keep the relief from my voice and forced myself to speak more brightly as we made a beeline for the nearest food stall. “Ooh, look at the nice food...”

“This looks like the stuff,” said Bane cheerfully, shrugging out of his rucksack and pulling out the reusable scentSeal food bag. “Let’s stock up. What d’you think, shall we get some of that sausage?”

“Whatever.” Jon turned slightly as though gazing up the street, food shopping being too boring for words, you understand.

“Let’s get some cheese...” I pointed things out to Bane, no need to pretend eagerness as delicious smells reached my nose. “Oh, and they’ve got pâté.” I switched to Esperanto and smiled at the stallholder. “Um, let’s see, could we have that block of Brie, please? My mouth’s watering already!”

“Camping rations?” laughed the woman. “It is no good, that camping food. You have come to the right place.”

“We certainly have! Is that a meat pie? Three of those, please.”

The stallholder wrapped the cheeses and pies each in a sheet of greaseproof paper and then a page from a heap of old newspaper behind her. I kept ordering and Bane put each packet into the bag, packing it just as efficiently as he could without drawing undue attention to the fact, and when it was full, I handed over several twenty Euron notes and scribbled ‘Jill Patts—00647961’ on the stallholder’s record of sales. Market stalls couldn’t afford hand scanners,
laudate Dominum!

As I passed the clipboard back to the stallholder, my eye fell on what was now the top sheet of newspaper. Only the picture was visible, not the headline.

“Actually, could we have one more sausage, please?”

“Where are we going to put that?” asked Bane in English as I swapped a few coins for the sausage.

“I’ll carry it. We can eat a meat pie for lunch and make room for it in the bag.”

“Fine, just don’t get the smell on your coat.”

“Yes, fusspot,” I said laughingly, because the stallholder was still listening and would understand the tone even if she didn’t understand our words. We all smiled and nodded and thanked her, Bane heaved his pack back on and slung the bag over his shoulder, and we walked the rest of the way through the center of the town and out the other side with only the briefest of stops to admire charming buildings. Slipping into the forest again, we walked several kilometers in a brisk, nervous silence before stopping for lunch.

“What’s with the sausage, Margo?” asked Bane, digging into his meat pie. Jon had already started on the bread and cheese. “D’you
want
to smell like food to bears?”

“No, I wanted the newspaper.”

I unwrapped the page from the sausage and smoothed it out. A front page. Major Everington stared out expressionlessly, immaculate as ever, save there were no gardening gloves at his belt or pistols in his holsters.

***+***