Wanted (Flick Carter Book 1) (3 page)

Shea shifted his weight, and pain stabbed through him again. Blinking back the tears, he tried crawling towards the line of trees, slowly, slowly. If there were any houses or people, that's where they'd be, and help was what he needed now, never mind who they were. Each time he pushed himself along a bit he winced with pain, every push taking longer and moving him a shorter distance than the last, until he stopped moving altogether and the world became dark.

‘YOU’RE SURE THEY didn’t have any?’ Flick asked.

Maggie nodded. ‘The shop was as empty as I’ve ever seen it,’ she said. ‘It’s been getting worse for weeks. There’s been no bread to be had for the last three days, and if you hadn’t brought that venison home the other day, I don’t know what we should have done.’
 

Maggie Watson had been Flick’s best friend since their first day at school together, and at the last Choosing, she’d been taken on as cook and housekeeper at the inn too.

‘But the wagons coming in to town are as full as ever?’ Flick said.

Maggie nodded.

‘So what’s happening to it all?’

‘I think it’s been going up to Mayor Griffin’s place. There’s something fishy going on there, I’m sure of it,’ Maggie said.

Flick paused from doing the dishes. ‘Really, what makes you say that?’

‘All the strange men around town for a start. Where do they come from? Where do they live?’

‘So you think they are all staying up at the mansion?’ Flick asked.

‘Well, it fits. And it would explain the sudden food shortages,’ Maggie said.

 
‘They can’t all be the mayor’s estate workers surely. I mean he doesn’t need that many. Does he?’

Maggie shrugged. ‘You’re the one that’s been seeing his son Joe. Hasn’t he said anything?’

Flick shook her head. ‘I think “seeing” is a bit optimistic. I’m pretty sure he’s not interested in me. At least, if he is, he doesn’t show it. But I’ll ask him what’s going on the next time I see him.’

Flick dried her hands.

‘Tell you what,’ she said after a moment, ‘I want to go up to the ridge for some flints; I didn’t realise how low I was until those Kingsmen wanted a look this morning. I can take my bow and see what I can bring back.’

‘Did you see that coach they had?’ Maggie asked, her eyes lighting up, ‘Wasn’t it amazing?’

Flick nodded. ‘A relic from the Dark Times. We don’t see many of those about.’

‘Do you think it was? That would make it, what, a hundred and fifty years old?’

‘At least,’ Flick said. ‘It must be incredibly valuable.’

‘My gran says they’ve got all sorts of things from before The Collapse, and that they just keep them hidden away to stop people like us from having them,’ Maggie said. ‘She says her gran told her about things that they used to have that we can’t even imagine now. Machines that could fly, machines that let you talk to people the other side of the world just like you were in the same room, electricity that came out of the walls. Gran’s gran had an old book, with pictures…’

Flick cut her off. ‘There’s lots of things that we don’t know from the Dark Times–that’s why they’re called the Dark Times after all. We just know they ended in The Collapse, and well, here we are.’

‘But the book came from
before
the Dark Times, when they still had real books on paper…’

‘And have you seen this book?’

Maggie shrugged. ‘It must have gone to someone else in the family, if it still even exists. It would have been really old when my great gran had it.’

Flick thought for a moment, then brightened. ‘Will you be all right holding the fort for a few hours while I’m gone? Rosie’s out with her friend Alice, Adam’s… who knows where, but Dad’s here.’

Maggie nodded, ‘Sure, I’ve got dinner to be getting on with–while we’ve still got food to cook, that is.’

Flick grinned. She pushed open the door to the front bar and called out, ‘I’m going up the ridge, Dad. I’ll be back before it’s dark!’

There was a grunt from somewhere out front.
 

‘Be careful up there,’ Maggie said, an edge of concern in her voice. ‘No one goes out that way, and if you get stuck down that pit, it’ll be tomorrow before we can send Adam to pull you out.’

‘I’m always careful,’ Flick said, ‘and anyway I’ll be back long before curfew.’

She waved as she slipped out through the back door. Her bike was old and had seen better days, perhaps even better centuries. She’d been given it by her father as a fifteenth birthday present, just as her father had once been given it by his father. Over the years it had been patched up and mended. The mudguards were long gone, but other bits had been replaced: a new saddle here, a wheel there, even the frame had been replaced at one time. But it was still the same old bike, even though not one bit about it was original. Flick’s own contribution to the bike was the addition of a carrier plate and panniers over the back wheel, and a clip for her bow on the crossbar.

She made sure the panniers and her bow were attached, and grabbed a quiver of arrows before setting off through the town.
 

Faringdon had been fortified some years after The Collapse. The derelict houses and factories around the outskirts had been demolished, leaving just the inner core, and the piles of rubble had been banked up to form a defensive rampart. The four roads in or out of the town–north, south, east and west had to pass through large wooden gates, each of which was guarded day and night by a pair of Town Watchmen.

‘See you in the pub tonight Fred?’ she called as she cycled through the open southern gate.

‘Where else would I be?’ a voice called back.

‘Save us a coney if you catch any!’ called another voice.

Flick waved, but didn’t stop or look back. It seemed that Maggie wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the food shortages.

It took the best part of an hour to cycle the half dozen miles up to the ridge. The road south was little used and in places had overgrown so that it was not much more than a narrow track. Only horses and pushbikes–and very few of those–came this way. At the top, Flick parked her bike close to the edge of a large pit.

The pit had been dug when people realised that things were not suddenly going to get better, and if they wanted new tools, they had to make them out of whatever they could find. The local flint was good for making sharp blades, and very quickly the available supply on the surface was used up.

So enterprising people had dug a mine.

That was a long time ago. Famine and disease had decimated what remained of the population, and the mine–never much more than a deep pit–had been abandoned since before Flick was born.

Flick climbed down the wooden ladder into the pit. It was dark at the bottom, and she rummaged for one of the makeshift wooden torches that she kept in an alcove. She wrapped some oil-soaked rags over the end and got to work making a small fire by striking a piece of flint against a curved steel band that she kept tucked in her belt. Once the spark caught, she transferred it carefully onto some tinder and blew gently until the glow became a flame. Carefully she let the flame caress the oily rags until they caught and her makeshift torch burst into light.

She looked around and saw the low entrance into a passageway cut into the chalk. The torch was burning brightly now, and she ducked down into the passage, taking care not to hit her head on the low roof. After a few metres, the cave curved around to the right and the last trace of daylight was gone. The roof was getting lower and she had to drop to her hands and knees, pushing the torch along the chalk rubble on the floor.

She held her breath. Was there something moving at the back of the cave? No, it was just a shadow from a protruding rock, caught in the flickering torchlight. She waved the torch around just to be sure.

‘Jumpy,’ she muttered to herself.

Then she saw it, a seam of flint, a good ten centimetres thick about halfway up the cave wall.

Pay-dirt
.

She wriggled herself into a sitting position, and pulled the bone-handled stone axe from her belt. She was proud of this axe, it was the first tool she’d made by herself, even if it wasn’t her best work. Once she was comfortable she started chipping away at the chalk.

She worked quickly, putting the rubble into a leather covered basket that she would drag to a small spoil heap whenever it was full. Soon she had a nice pile of flints, and was about to call it quits when something caught her eye. This was a big one.

She picked up the torch to have a good look. It seemed to be well embedded. She tugged on it.

Nothing happened.

That was too simple. She started chipping away at the surrounding chalk, stopping every minute or so to try and wiggle it loose.

Finally it moved. Just a few millimetres at first, and not in the right direction, but she pulled at it and wiggled it, and gradually it moved a bit more.

‘Come on, out you come…’ she muttered, giving it a really hard tug.

And out it came. Flick fell backwards as the giant flint broke free and fell to the earth with a thud, bringing the cave wall with it.

It was dark. Flick lay on her back, feeling the weight of rubble on top of her. Panic gripped her chest with icy claws, radiating out to a cold dampness on her skin. Blood pounded though her ears with a rapid thump thump, thump thump.

Oh Crap!

The torch must have gone out when she’d dropped it. Cold sweat tickled on her cheeks as it mingled with gritty chalk dust. She spat the chalk away from her mouth, coughing as she pulled in a lungful of the dusty air. A cascade of small stones rattled away, dislodged by her spasming chest muscles.

Calm down; you’re still in one piece.

She tried to move an arm and found, miraculously, that it came free from the stones quite easily. She felt about and started pushing aside the powdery rubble. It was only a thin layer of small stones; any big rocks must have dropped straight down as she fell back. She pushed them aside and worked herself up into a sitting position, shaking the last few pebbles from her hair, and wiping the grit away from her nose and mouth.

‘Felicity Anne Carter, if you want to see your seventeenth birthday, you should be more careful!’ She imagined her mother scolding her.

‘Love you, mum,’ she whispered back to the darkness.

Flick felt her way back through the passage to the shaft, where a dim grey light filtered down. The flints she had already gathered were in a neat pile near the foot of the ladder, and she transferred them to the basket ready to be pulled up and loaded into the panniers on her bicycle.

I’m not doing that again in a hurry!

She brushed the worst of the chalk dust from her leathers and hair. Once she’d let her heart rate get down to something approaching normal, she climbed onto her bike and pedalled off, wobbling slightly. After some minutes she came to the lumps and bumps that made up the earthworks of an ancient fortification and stopped for breath. This was the highest point for miles around and the view was breathtaking. Complex shadows played over the short grass, which rippled in the breeze, but today she couldn’t appreciate beauty of it. She shivered, banging her arms together against the cold, slapping the leather of her jacket, and sending more chalk dust into the air. The sun had gone, hidden behind clouds that were scudding in from the west. More rain would be coming soon and it was best to be off the ridge when it did.
 

Time to go.
 

She kicked off along the track that would take her down the side of a steep valley to the lane leading back into town. As her bike got up speed, a ray of sunlight blasted its way through the clouds, striking the hillside opposite and lighting up the giant horse carved into it a brilliant white.
 

At the bottom of the hill, something caught her eye, snagged in the branches of a tree and flapping in the wind like a big black flag. She stopped and stared at it for a moment before deciding to set off across the field to investigate, cutting a trail through the long meadow grass. She wasn’t a Scav–far from it–but that didn’t mean she wasn’t above the odd bit of illegal scavenging when the opportunity arose. After all, whatever it was could be valuable.

Twisted metal poles thick like scaffolding hung from the tree, caught up in pieces of fabric and rope. Higher up in the canopy there was more of the shiny black fabric that had originally caught her eye. Close up she could see that the fabric itself wasn’t black, but it was covered in hundreds of small black glinting squares joined by tiny brown strings. But how on earth did it get up there? That was a mystery.

On the ground was more mangled wreckage. A small two-seat three-wheeled buggy had bits of broken tree lodged in its twisted and scratched up tubing. If there had been anyone driving it, they were long gone; hers were the only tracks through the long grass. It almost looked as if it had fallen
through
the trees. That was another mystery.

She walked around the contraption, tugging at it. Some of the poles dislodged from the tree. They were surprisingly lightweight, not steel or iron–something else–but far too big and awkward to do anything with. Then she spotted something in the grass a little way away. It was a small box. She picked it up. It was quite heavy, but fitted comfortably in her hand. There were small knobs and a big, bendy rubber stick on one end. On one side was a clip, possibly designed for a belt. She shook the box; it didn’t rattle. Shrugging, it went into her bag; she could figure out what it was later.

In her mind, Flick was already calculating what the wreckage could be worth. The poles could go to Dad in the forge, along with the carcass of the buggy: metal was always valuable even if it wasn’t steel or iron. The seats and wheels would be good for trade. The fabric sheeting with the strange black squares? Well, it would come in for something.

It would take several trips to transport the wreckage back to town if she did it on her own, and she’d have to come back with a trailer, or maybe a wagon. She could always get help–Adam would do it, or Joe possibly, but she’d have to swear them to secrecy and share whatever money they got for it.