Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (5 page)

“Left the apples at the house, didja?”

I look at him. I chew on the wheat. He knows I didn’t. He can tell.

“And there’s a reason,” he says, still scratching Manchee. “There’s a reason which ain’t coming clear.” He’s trying to read my Noise, see what truth he can sift from it, which most men think is a good enough excuse for starting a fight, but I don’t mind with Ben. He cocks his head and stops scratching Manchee. “Aaron?”

“Yeah, I saw Aaron.”

“He did that to yer lip?”

“Yeah.”

“That sunuvahoor.” He frowns and steps forward. “I just might have to have words with that man.”

“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t. It’ll just be more trouble and it don’t hurt that much.”

He takes my chin into his fingers and lifts my head so he can see the cut. “That sunuvahoor,” he says again, quietly. He touches the cut with his fingers and I flinch away.

“It’s nothing,” I say.

“You stay away from that man, Todd Hewitt.”

“Oh, like I went running to the swamp
hoping
to run into him?”

“He ain’t right.”

“Well, holy crap, thanks for that bit of info, Ben,” I say and then I catch a bit of his Noise that says
One month
and it’s a new thing, a whole new bit of something that he quickly covers up with other Noise.

“What’s going on, Ben?” I say. “What’s going on with my birthday?”

He smiles and for a second it’s not an entirely true smile, for a second it’s a worried smile, but after that it’s a smile true enough. “It’s a surprise,” he says, “so don’t go looking.”

Even tho I’m nearly a man and even tho I’m nearly getting on up to his height now, he still bends down a little so his face is level with mine, not too close to be uncomfortable, just close enough so that it’s safe and I look away a little bit. And even tho it’s Ben, even tho I trust Ben more than anyone else in this crappy little town, even tho it’s Ben who saved my life and who I know would do it again, I still find myself reluctant to open up my Noise about what happened in the swamp, mainly cuz I can start to feel it pressing on my chest again whenever the thought gets near.

“Todd?” Ben says, looking at me closely.

“Quiet,” Manchee barks softly. “Quiet in swamp.”

Ben looks at Manchee, then back at me, his eyes going all soft and asking and full of concern. “What’s he talking about, Todd?”

I sigh. “We saw something,” I say. “Out there in the swamp. Well, we
didn’t
see it, it hid, but it was like a rip in the Noise, like a tear–”

I stop talking cuz he’s stopped listening to my voice. I’ve opened up my Noise for him and am remembering it as truthfully as I can and he’s looking at me something fierce and from way behind me I can hear Cillian coming and he’s calling “Ben?” and “Todd?” and there’s concern in his voice and in his Noise and Ben’s is starting to buzz a little, too, and I just keep thinking as truthfully as I can about the hole we found in the Noise but quietly, too, quietly, quietly, so as to keep the town from hearing if I can and here comes Cillian still and Ben’s just looking at me and looking at me till finally I have to ask.

“Is it spacks?” I say. “Is it the Spackle? Are they back?”

“Ben?” Cillian’s yelling it now as he’s coming across the fields.

“Are we in danger?” I ask Ben. “Will there be another war?”

But all Ben says is, “Oh, my God,” real quiet like, and then he says it again, “Oh, my God,” and then, without even moving or looking away, he says, “We have to get you outta here. We have to get you outta here
right now
.”

Cillian comes running up but before he says anything to us, Ben cuts him off and says, “Don’t think it!”

Ben turns to me. “Don’t you think it neither. You cover it up with yer Noise. You hide it. You hide it as best you can.” And he’s grabbing my shoulders as he’s saying it and squeezing tight enough to make my blood jump even more than it already is.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“Did you walk home thru town?” Cillian asks.

“
Course
I walked home thru town,” I snap. “What other effing way is there to get home?”

Cillian’s face tightens up but it’s not with being pissed off at me snapping, it’s tightening up with fear, fear I can hear loud as a shout in his Noise. They don’t yell at me for “effing” neither, which makes it all somehow worse. Manchee’s barking his head off by this point, “Cillian! Quiet! Effing! Todd!” but nobody’s bothering to tell him to shut up.

Cillian looks at Ben. “We’re gonna have to do it now.”

“I know,” Ben says.

“What’s going on?” I say again, all loud like. “Do
what
now?” I twist away from Ben and stand looking at them both.

Ben and Cillian take another look at each other and then back at me. “You have to leave Prentisstown,” Ben says.

My eyeballs go back and forth twixt theirs but they’re not letting nothing go in their Noise ’cept general worry. “What do you mean I have to leave Prentisstown?” I say. “There ain’t nowhere else on New World
but
Prentisstown.”

They take yet
another
look at each other.

“Stop doing that!” I say.

“Come on,” Cillian says. “We’ve already got yer bag packed.”

“How can you already have my bag packed?”

Cillian says to Ben, “We probably don’t have much time.”

And Ben says to Cillian, “He can go down by the river.”

And Cillian says to Ben, “You know what this means.”

And Ben says to Cillian, “It doesn’t change the plan.”

“WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON?” I roar, but I don’t say “eff”, now do I? Cuz it seems the situashun calls for something a little stronger. “WHAT EFFING PLAN?”

But they’re still not getting mad.

Ben lowers his voice and I can see him try to get his Noise into some kinda order and he says to me, “It’s very, very important you keep what happened in the swamp outta yer Noise as best you can.”

“Why? Are the spacks coming back to kill us?”

“Don’t think about it!” Cillian snaps. “Cover it up, keep it deep and quiet, till yer so far outta town no one can hear you. Now, come on!”

And he takes off back towards the house, running, actually
running
.

“Come on, Todd,” Ben says.

“Not till someone explains something.”

“You’ll get an explanashun,” Ben says, taking me by the arm and pulling me along. “You’ll get more than you ever wanted.” And there’s so much sadness to him when he says it that I don’t say nothing more, just follow along running back to the house, Manchee barking his head off behind us.

By the time we make it back to the house, I’m expecting–

I don’t know what I’m expecting. An army of Spackle coming outta the woods. A line-up of Mayor Prentiss’s men with guns at the ready. The whole house burning down. I don’t know. Ben and Cillian’s Noise ain’t making much sense, my own thoughts are boiling over like a volcano, and Manchee won’t stop barking, so who can tell anything in all this racket?

But there’s no one there. The house,
our
house, is just as it was, quiet and farm-like. Cillian busts in the back door, goes into the prayer room which we never use, and starts pulling boards up from the floor. Ben goes to the pantry and starts throwing dried foods and fruit into a cloth sack, then he goes to the toilet and takes out a small medipak and throws that in, too.

I just stand there like a doofus wondering just what in the effing blazes is going on.

I know what yer thinking: how can I
not
know if all day, every day I’m hearing every thought of the two men who run my house? That’s the thing, tho. Noise is
noise
. It’s crash and clatter and it usually adds up to one big mash of sound and thought and picture and half the time it’s impossible to make any sense of it at all. Men’s minds are messy places and Noise is like the active, breathing face of that mess. It’s what’s true and what’s believed and what’s imagined and what’s fantasized and it says one thing and a completely opposite thing at the same time and even tho the truth is definitely in there, how can you tell what’s true and what’s not when yer getting
everything
?

The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.

“I ain’t leaving,” I say, as they keep doing their stuff. They don’t pay me no mind. “I ain’t leaving,” I say again, as Ben steps past me into the prayer room to help Cillian lift up boards. They find what they’re looking for and Cillian lifts out a rucksack, an old one I thought I’d lost. Ben opens the top and takes a quick peek thru and I can see some clothes of mine and something that looks like–

“Is that a book?” I say. “You were sposed to burn those ages ago.”

But they’re ignoring me and the air has just stopped right there as Ben takes it outta the rucksack and he and Cillian look at it and I see that it’s not quite a book, more a journal type thing with a nice leather cover and when Ben thumbs thru it, the pages are cream-coloured and filled with handwriting.

Ben closes it like it’s an important thing and he wraps it inside a plastic bag to protect it and puts it in the rucksack.

They both turn to me.

“I ain’t going nowhere,” I say.

And there’s a knock on the front door.

For a second, nobody says nothing, everyone just freezes. Manchee’s got so many things he wants to bark that nothing comes out for a minute till he finally barks “Door!” but Cillian grabs him by the collar with one hand and by the maul with the other, shutting him up. We all look up at each other, wondering what to do next.

There’s another knock and then a voice comes thru the walls, “I know yer in there.”

“Damn and blast,” Ben says.

“Davy bloody Prentiss,” Cillian says.

That’s Mr Prentiss Jr. The man of the law.

“Do you not think I can hear yer Noise?” Mr Prentiss Jr says thru the door. “Benison Moore. Cillian Boyd.” The voice makes a little pause. “Todd Hewitt.”

“Well, so much for hiding,” I say, crossing my arms, still a little annoyed at it all.

Cillian and Ben look at each other again, then Cillian lets go of Manchee, says “Stay here” to both of us and heads for the door. Ben shoves the sack of food into the rucksack and ties it shut. He hands it to me. “Put this on,” he whispers.

I don’t take it at first but he gestures with a serious look so I take it and put it on. It weighs a ton.

We hear Cillian open the front door. “What do you want, Davy?”

“That’s Sheriff Prentiss to you, Cillian.”

“We’re in the middle of lunch, Davy,” Cillian says. “Come back later.”

“I don’t think I will. I think I need to have a word with young Todd.”

Ben looks at me, worry in his Noise.

“Todd’s got farmwork,” Cillian says. “He’s just leaving out the back. I can hear him go.”

And these are instructions for me and Ben, ain’t they? But I ruddy well want to hear what’s going on and I ignore Ben’s hand on my shoulder trying to pull me towards the back door.

“You take me for a fool, Cillian?” Mr Prentiss Jr says.

“Do you really want an answer to that, Davy?”

“I can hear his Noise not twenty feet behind you. Ben’s, too.” We hear a shift in the mood. “I just want to talk to him. He ain’t in no trouble.”

“Why you got a rifle then, Davy?” Cillian asks and Ben squeezes my shoulder, probably without even thinking.

Mr Prentiss Jr’s voice and Noise both change again. “Bring him out, Cillian. You know why I’m here. Seems like a funny little word floated outta yer boy into town all innocent-like and we just want to see what it’s all about, that’s all.”

“‘We’?” Cillian says.

“His Honour the Mayor would like a word with young Todd.” Mr Prentiss Jr raises his voice. “Y’all come out now, you hear? Ain’t no trouble going on. Just a friendly chat.”

Ben nods his head at the back door all firm like and there ain’t no arguing with him this time. We start stepping towards it slowly, but Manchee’s kept his trap shut for just about as long as he can bear and barks, “Todd?”

“Y’all ain’t thinking about sneaking out the back way, are ya?” Mr Prentiss Jr calls. “Outta my way, Cillian.”

“Get off my property, Davy,” Cillian says.

“I ain’t telling you twice.”

“I believe you’ve already told me about three times, Davy, so if yer threatening, it ain’t working.”

There’s a pause but the Noise from them both gets louder and Ben and I know what’s coming next and suddenly everything’s moving fast and we hear a loud thump, followed quick by another two, and me and Ben and Manchee are running to the kitchen but when we get there, it’s over. Mr Prentiss Jr is on the floor, holding his mouth, blood already coming from it. Cillian’s got Mr Prentiss Jr’s rifle in his hands and is pointing it at Mr Prentiss Jr.

“I said get off my property, Davy,” he says.

Mr Prentiss Jr looks at him, then looks at us, still holding his bloody mouth. Like I say, he ain’t barely two years older than me, barely able to even get a sentence out without his voice breaking, but he’s had his birthday to be a man so there he is, our sheriff.

The blood from his mouth is getting on the little brown hairs he calls a moustache and everyone else calls nothing.