Blackout (33 page)

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'Whoever was the last man out of this place wasn't worrying about turning out the lights,' said Josh.

Kate smiled. 'It's the last man in that we need to worry about.'

Shafts of sunlight were shining right through the ruined structures as Josh started to walk down the main street. Twenty husks of buildings lined the eight-foot-wide track, but the walls were tumbling down, and weeds and cacti had started to take root in the mortar, turning it to dust. If you looked carefully, you could just make out what they might once have been - a bank, a hotel, an ironmonger's.

There had never been anything grand about Swansea, Josh decided as his eyes scanned the buildings. It had been built quickly and cheaply. The facades showed no signs of decoration: wood planks and steel girders flung together as fast as possible.

He picked his way carefully through the debris Uttering the street. This is just what I need, he thought. A man with no past hides out in a town with no present.

'Can you see anything?'

Josh noticed he was whispering, as if it was somehow wrong to raise your voice in this place. As if you might wake the dead.

Kate shook her head. 'But he's here somewhere,' she whispered back. 'I'm sure of it.'

Josh noticed the smell of the air. The accumulated dirt of decades had covered the place. Every broken wall and shattered slate seemed to be caked in a layer of filth. The wind had blown bricks, beams and plaster mouldings out into the streets where they had lain for years, breaking into fragments, embedding themselves in the surface of the ground. Nothing, he realised. Usually, you could smell a man. He left his scent imprinted on the air. Here there was nothing. Just the smell of decay.

'You sure you got the coordinates right?'

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Kate nodded. 'Swansea,' she said. 'That's how the coordinates came out. You sure you got the code right?'

Josh nodded. 'We talked about it. That memory is quite clear. Luke's a rock kid -- he knows all the classic albums off by heart. I think he must have learned them from his mum. We agreed on a whole bunch, and the tracks would be the clues. The Beatles and The Stones, of course. And Van Morrison. Some Dylan.'

'So where the hell is he, then?

'Water,' said Josh.

'We got some in the car.'

'No,' said Josh. 'I mean, there has to be a water source somewhere. Nobody can build a town unless there's fresh water. Luke's a smart kid. He'll be hiding out by the water.'

Kate looked at him, her eyes sparkling. 'So where is it?'

'Easy' answered Josh. 'Look for the smelter. You can't run one of those without water.'

He started walking towards the smelter. Swansea's main street* ran in a dead straight line with buildings on either side of it. Behind the buildings there were a few relics of what might have been residential houses. Straight ahead of them, Josh could see the mine. Its rusting hauling gear still rose high above the landscape. Next to it lay the disused conveyer belt that had taken the ore and started sorting it before depositing it in the smelter. The mine had been opencast. In this derelict country, no attempt had been made to cover up the damage after the mine had shut down. Huge pits were sunk into the side^ of the mountains, and huge piles of rubble where explosives had been used to break up thousands of tons of rock lay in massive, crumbling piles.

A barbed-wire fence had been put up around the plant, but it had long since rusted. Josh pushed open the door and stepped inside. The machinery lay silent all around. He walked quickly towards the door of the smelter. Rust had

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Unsettled into the hinges of the door, making it stiff. He leaned his shoulder into the door, giving it a hard shove. Once, then twice he heaved his weight against the door. The third time, the hinges cracked and the door swung open. Josh stepped inside. The smelter still had a smell of charcoal and metal that had lingered through the decades since it had last been used.

'Luke,' shouted Josh. 'Luke.'

His voice echoed against the tin roof.

'Luke,' he shouted again, louder this time. 'Luke?'

The words coiled around the derelict building, bouncing off the walls. Each time it bounced back it lost a fraction of its strength, and Josh could hear the sound gradually dimming, like the fade at the end of a record. Where the hell are you? Josh asked himself. Why aren't you answering?

I just hope you haven't left already. You won't survive out there by yourself, not for a minute. Too many people are looking for you.

A flashlight came on, its beam trained on Josh. He jumped, instinctively recoiling from the harsh light. Raising his forearm to his eyes to shield them, he turned around. A thin pale figure was stepping out of the shadows.

'Is that you, man? Is that really you?' said the boy.

Josh looked closer. The figure was obscured by the light blazing out from the torch. Josh took a step forward.'Luke?'

The light switched off. Josh could see clearly now. A thin boy, fifteen or sixteen, with straggly blond hair, thick lips, and a complexion that was pale and waxy. His eyes were sunken and there were dark shadows across his cheeks. His Limp Bizkit T-shirt had a couple of gashes in it. And he smelled strange: an acrid mixture of sweat, fear and dirt.

'Christ, you look terrible.'

Luke shrugged. 'You don't look so great yourself

Josh took another step forward. He reached out a hand, placing his palm against Luke's. The boy's hand was cold

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and sweaty, and his fingers were trembling. Scared, realised Josh. Scared the way an animal is scared. Or a child.

He pulled Luke closer, putting his arms around him and hugging him to his chest, the same way he might have greeted a long-lost brother. For a moment they remained silent.

'It's okay, man, it's okay,' said Josh. 'I'm here now. It's going to be okay.'

A tear was starting to trickle down the side of Luke's face. 'Hell, man, I've been so frightened. So fucking frightened, you wouldn't believe it.'

'We're here now,' said Josh. 'It's going to be okay.' He took the torch and started to look around. Luke had been living here alone for two weeks. Some dried leaves had been bundled into a pile to make a bed. A solar panel had been fixed up to provide enough electricity to run a laptop, and a tiny portable satellite dish had been set up to give the computer access to the Internet. Otherwise, Luke had been entirely by himself here, speaking to no one, frightened out of his skin. No surprise that he's starting to crack, realised Josh. There are many brave grown men who wouldn't be able to take that.

'Let's eat,' said Luke, nervously. 'We need to talk.'

Josh looked around. Luke's ideas, like those of many teenagers, of what he needed to survive while on the run were foolish. He had a dozen two-litre bottles of Coke, several boxes of crisps, and endless packets of biscuits. But little fresh water, no fruit, no bre%d, and no cereals. Another reason he looks in bad shape, thought Josh. He's just eating sugar and starch.

'Who's she?' said Luke, jabbing a finger towards Kate.

'Kate,' said Josh. 'She's a doctor. She's been helping me the last couple of weeks. I've been really lucky to have her along.'

'Are you okay, Luke?' said Kate. 'I can examine you if you want.'

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Luke shook his head. 'I'm okay. Scared. But okay.'

He poured out three servings of Coke into some plastic cups, and took a hefty swig of his own, downing it in one gulp. Josh could see that his hand was still shaking nervously.

'What the fuck happened, man?' Luke said suddenly, looking accusingly towards Josh. 'You were meant to help me.'

'I don't know,' answered Josh.

'Hey, you were meant to get me out of here,' said Luke, sounding angrier. 'That was the deal.'

'I don't know about that, either,' said Josh.

Luke looked startled. Josh noticed how the fear in his eyes, which had started to abate in the last few minutes as he'd grown angry, had suddenly returned. 'You don't know much.'

'I lost my memory,' said Josh. 'After I got shot. What happened immediately before that is a blank.'

'Your memory? Shit!'

'You'll have to tell me everything that happened between us, Luke,' said Josh. 'So let's all sit down. And you start at the beginning.' .

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TWENTYTHREE

Tuesday, June 16th. Night.

'It started with me and Ben. Just a couple of kids, right? We hang out together at school because we're both into computers. We started out playing games, all the usual stuff. Then we did some programming, and started following some of the hacking websites. Nothing sinister. We were just testing ourselves, I reckon. Seeing what we might be able to-do.'

Luke was sitting on the pile of leaves that he had swept together to make a bed for himself during the last two weelcs. He had a cup of Coke in one hand, a biscuit in the other. Josh was sitting next to him, his legs crossed. Kate was sitting just behind him, her hands resting on Josh's shoulders. Above them some pale shafts of light were beaming down through the cracks in the ceiling of the smelter.

'We did some stuff like hacking into the computers at school, changing grades. We got into a bit of trouble for that. We were hacking into the phone company so that we could get our calls for free. We hacked into a few other company systems as well. Not to do any harm. We just wanted to have a look around, see what we might be able to do.'

'Like what?' said Josh. 'Why were you doing it?'

Luke looked up, a hint of a smile on his face. 'Why does anybody do anything? Money, right? You met my mom. Do we look rich? I mean, I love my mom, don't get me wrong, man, but she's a wacko. Right?'

Josh smiled. 'She takes her own path through life.'

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'I never had a dad, at least not one that I knew. We never had a proper car or a proper house, or any of that stuff. So all the time I'm thinking, what if I could make some real money. A million dollars, two million dollars, something like that. Buy a place by the beach in Jamaica, where mom could just sit around smoking weed all day. Maybe go to London, visit some of the places The Clash used to play. Like that place on the cover of their first album.'

'The Westway?' said Josh. 'Forget it.'

'Well, whatever, man. I just wanted to get out of Hicksville. Me and Ben, both of us, that's what we wanted.' He paused, taking another hit on his Coke. 'You get onto the hacking websites, and go into the chat rooms, and you get all these stories from guys who hacked into corporate websites. You know, you get kids who hack into the Starbucks system and start messing with the prices of latte. Or whatever. And they're, like, the company pays them a million bucks or something just to tell them what the flaw in the system was and how they could fix it. All these stories going around of kids making millions just by sitting in front of their computers.'

'It's men, Luke,' interrupted Kate.

Luke looked up at her. Her red hair was tumbling down her neck, and her eyes were staring right into his. The perfume, noticed Josh. The perfume was drifting across the space between them, sweetening the fetid air of the smelter.

'What?' said Luke, his gaze darting up towards her the way a puppy's eyes flick up to its owner.

'When you're a bit older you'll realise that men talk a lot of rubbish. They sit around in bars, saying they've nailed this girl and that girl, done this deal and that deal. Usually, it's just bullshit.'

Josh laughed. 'Usually? It's always bullshit.'

'You think those kids didn't get money off Starbucks and the rest? Is that what you're saying?'

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'I think it happens,' answered Kate. 'I just suspect it happens a lot less often than the people in the chat rooms say it does.'

Luke nodded. From his expression, Josh could tell that he was disappointed. Part of being a teenager, he reflected. One by one your illusions get chipped away, like the paint being stripped off a piece of wood. Get used to it, pal. Life has a lot more disillusion in store for you.

'Whatever, that's what Ben and I thought. I guess we were naive. We figured we could hack into some corporate system, maybe they'd pay us some money just to go away'

'Porter-Bell, right,' said Josh. 'That's where you started.'

Luke nodded. 'There's kind of a buzz about it in the chat rooms. Hanging Bell, they call it, because they come down so heavy on hackers and because it's so tough to get into their systems. We figured we'd have a crack. After all, what did we have to lose? Nothing. It's not like we have girls calling us up for dates every night. We just hang out, playing witn our computers.'

'The Three Cities Attack,' said Kate. 'That was you?'

Luke remained silent for a moment. A look of fear crossed his face, as if a nasty memory had just broken through. 'We got lucky, I guess. That's the thing about hacking. You just try different things, and see what works. They got firewalls, barriers, everything you can think of around this system. But Luke and I designed this worm. You know what a worm is?'

Josh shook his head.

'It's like a piece of software that tunnels into a system and comes out the other end. You wrap the instructions inside another bit of code, and that's what allows it to get through. The system doesn't recognise what's coming through.'

'Like hiding a gun inside a laptop or something when you're going through Customs?'

Luke grinned. 'Just like that. Usually they don't get

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through. The firewalls are built to detect worms, along with everything else the hacker can throw at them.'

'But this did?' asked Kate.

'Well, we did a couple of dozen, and they kept getting thrown right back at us. Then we made it. A perfect worm. It sailed right into their system, undetected, and then, once it was inside, the thing unwrapped itself. And for a few minutes we had control of their system.'

'So you did The Three Cities Attack?' Josh asked.

Luke nodded. 'Ben and I planned it together. We figured we needed something pretty spectacular, something that was going to grab their attention. So we figured London, Paris and New York. They all use Porter-Bell software for their power grids, and they all use the latest version, which was all we had access to. So we switched it all off.' He flashed a smile at Kate, and Josh could tell that he was trying to impress her. 'It was a hell of a buzz, I can tell you. All that power, and all that chaos. All caused by Ben and me. We got a hell of a kick when we watched it all on TV.'