Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (71 page)

We stare at each other.

His Noise is quiet, disciplined, almost gentlemanly, which is why I didn’t hear it from a distance. He’s holding a basket under one arm and a red pear in his free hand.

He looks me up and down, sees the bag on my back, sees me alone out on the road in a break of the law, sees from the heaviness of my breath that I’ve obviously been running.

And it comes in his Noise, fast and clear as morning.

The Answer
, he thinks.

“No,” I say. “I’m not–”

But he holds a finger up to his lips.

He cocks his head in the direction of the road.

And I hear the distant sound of soldiers marching down it.

“That way,” the farmer whispers. He points up a narrow path, a small entrance to the woods above that would be easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there. “Quickly now.”

I look at him again, trying to see a trap, trying to
tell
but there’s no time. There’s no time.

“Thank you,” I say and I take off running.

The path leads almost immediately into thicker woods, all uphill. It’s narrow and I have to push back vines and branches to make my way. The trees swallow me and I can only go forward and forward, hoping that I’m not being led into a trap. I get to the top of the hill only to find a small slope down and then another hill to climb. I run up that, too. I’m still heading east but I can’t see enough over anything to tell where the road is or the river or which way I’m–

I nearly stumble out into a clearing.

Where there’s a soldier not ten metres from me.

His back is to me (thank god, thank god) and it’s not until my heart has leapt out of my chest and I’ve caught myself and fallen back into the bushes that I see what he’s guarding.

There it is.

In the middle of a clearing cresting the hill, stretching up on three metal legs almost fifty metres into the sky. The trees around it have been felled, and across the clearing underneath it I can see a small building and a road that leads back down the other side of the hill to the river.

I’ve found the communications tower.

It’s here.

And there aren’t that many soldiers around it. I count five, no, six.

Just six. With big gaps.

My heart rises.

And rises.

I’ve found it.

And a
BOOM!
echoes in the distance beyond the tower.

I flinch, along with the soldiers. Another bomb. Another statement from the Answer. Another–

The soldiers are leaving.

They’re running, running towards the sound of the explosion, running away from me and down the other side of the hill, towards where I can already see a white pillar of smoke rising.

The tower stands in front of me.

All of a sudden, it’s completely unguarded.

I don’t even wait to think how stupid I’m being–

I’m just running–

Running towards the tower–

If this is my chance to save us then–

I don’t know–

I’m just running–

Across the open ground–

Towards the tower–

Towards the building underneath–

I can save us–

Somehow I can save all of us–

And out of the corner of my eye, I see someone else break cover from the trees to my left–

Someone running straight towards me–

Someone–

Someone saying my name–

“Viola!” I hear. “Get back!”

“Viola,
NO
!” Mistress Coyle is screaming at me.

I don’t stop–

Neither does she–

“GET BACK!” she’s yelling–

And she’s crossing the clearing in front of me–

Running and running and running–

And then I realize-

Like a blow to the stomach–

The reason why she’s yelling–

No–

Even as I’m skidding to a stop–

No,
I think–

No, you can’t–

And Mistress Coyle reaches me–

You CAN’T–

And pushes us both to the ground–

NO!

And the legs of the tower explode in three blinding flashes of light.

{V
IOLA
}

“Get off me!”

She slaps her hand over my mouth, holding it there, holding
me
there with the weight of her body as clouds of dust billow around us from the rubble of the communications tower.
“Quit shouting,”
she hisses.

I bite her hand.

She makes a pained face, fierce and angry, but she doesn’t let go, just takes the bite and doesn’t move.

“You can scream and shout all you want later, my girl,” she says, “but in two seconds, this place is going to be swarming with soldiers and do you honestly think they’re going to believe you just
happened by
?”

She waits to see my reaction. I glare at her but finally nod. She takes away her hand.

“Don’t you call me
my girl,
” I say, keeping my voice low but just as fierce as hers. “Don’t you call me that ever again.”

I follow her down a steep slope, heading back towards the road, sliding on fallen leaves and gathered dew but always down and down. I hop over logs and roots, the canvas bag like a stone around my shoulders.

I have no choice but to go with her.

I’d be captured and god knows what else if I went back to town.

And she took my other choice away.

She reaches a stand of bushes at the bottom of a steepening in the slope. She ducks fast under them and beckons for me to follow. I slide down next to her, my breath almost gone, and she says, “Whatever you do, don’t scream.”

Before I can even open my mouth, she’s jumped out through the bushes. They close up behind her and I have to fight my way through leaves and branches to follow. I’m still pushing them back when I practically tumble out the other side.

Onto the road.

Where two soldiers stand by a man with a cart, all of them looking straight at me and Mistress Coyle.

The soldiers look more astonished than angry, but they have no Noise, so there’s no way to know.

But they’re carrying rifles.

And they’re raising them at us.

“And who the hell is
this
?” one barks, a middle-aged man with a shaved head and a scar down his jaw line.

“Don’t shoot!” Mistress Coyle says, hands out and up.

“We heard the explosion,” says the other soldier, a younger one, not much older than me, with blond, shoulder-length hair.

Then the older soldier says something else, something unexpected.

“You’re
late
.”

“That’s enough, Magnus,” Mistress Coyle says, lowering her hands and stepping forward to the cart. “And put your rifles down, she’s with me.”

“What?” I say, still frozen to my spot.

“The tracer malfunctioned completely,” the younger soldier says to her. “We’re not even sure where it came down.”

“I told you they were too old,” Magnus says.

“It did its job,” Mistress Coyle says, bustling around the cart, “wherever it landed.”

“Hey!” I say. “What’s going on?”

And then I hear, “Hildy?”

Mistress Coyle stops in her tracks, the two soldiers do, too, and stare at the man driving the cart.

“Iss you, ain it?” he says. “Hildy hoo’s also called Viola.”

My mind’s been racing so fast, so completely focused on the soldiers, that I barely took in the man driving the cart, the nearly expressionless face, the clothes, the hat, the voice, the Noise flat and calm as the far horizon.

The man that once drove me and Todd across a sea of things.

“Wilf,”
I gasp.

Now everyone looks at
me,
Mistress Coyle’s eyebrows so high it’s like they’re trying to crawl into her hair.

“Hey,” Wilf says, in greeting.

“Hey,” I say back, too stunned to say any more.

He touches two fingers to the brim of his hat. “Ah’m glad to see yoo mayde it.”

Mistress Coyle’s mouth is moving but no sound comes out for a second or two. “There’ll be time for that later,” she finally says. “We have to go
now
.”

“Will there be room for two?” the younger soldier asks.

“There’ll have to be.” She ducks down under the cart and removes a panel from the underside. She motions to me. “Get in.”

“In where?” I bend down and see a compartment hidden like a trick of the eye in the width of the cart, narrow and thin as a cot above the rear axle.

“Pack won’t fit,” Wilf says, pointing at the bag on my back. “Ah’ll take it.”

I slip it off and hand it to him. “Thank you, Wilf.”

“
Now,
Viola,” Mistress Coyle says.

I give Wilf a last nod, duck under the cart and crawl in, forcing my way across the compartment until my head’s nearly touching the far side. Mistress Coyle doesn’t wait and forces herself in after me. The younger soldier was right. There isn’t enough room. She’s pressed right up against me, face to face, her knees digging into my thighs, our noses less than a centimetre apart. She’s barely drawn her feet inside when the panel is replaced, plunging us into almost complete darkness.

“Where are we–” I start to say but she shushes me harshly.

And outside I hear soldiers marching fast up the road, led by the clopping of horse’s hooves.

“Report!” one of them shouts as they stop by the cart.

His voice–

It’s up high and I hear the horse whinnying beneath it–

But his voice–

“Heard the explosion, sir,” the older of our soldiers replies. “This man says he saw women heading past him down the river road about an hour ago.”

We hear the real soldier spit. “Bitches.”

I recognize his voice–

It’s Sergeant Hammar.

“Whose unit you two in?” he says.

“First, sir,” says our younger soldier, after the briefest of pauses. “Captain O’Hare.”

“
That
pansy?” Sergeant Hammar spits. “You wanna do some
real
soldiering, transfer to the Fourth. I’ll show you what’s what.”

“Yes, sir,” says our older soldier, sounding more nervous than I’d want him to.

I can hear the Noise of the soldiers in Sergeant Hammar’s unit. They’re thinking of the cart. They’re thinking of the explosions. They’re thinking about shooting women.

But there’s no Noise coming from Sergeant Hammar.

“Arrest this man,” Sergeant Hammar finally says, meaning Wilf.

“We were just doing that, sir.”

“Bitches,” Sergeant Hammar says again, and we hear him spur his horse (
yield
, it thinks) and he and his men march off at speed.

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “He wasn’t even
punished,
” I whisper, more to myself than to Mistress Coyle.

“Later,” she whispers back.

I hear Wilf snap the reins and we rock as the cart plods slowly forward.

So the Mayor was a liar. All along.

Of course he was, you
idiot
.

And Maddy’s killer walks free to kill again, his cure still in place.

And I’m bumping and juddering against the woman who destroyed the only hope of contacting the ships that might save us.

And Todd is out there. Somewhere. Being left behind.

I’ve never felt so lonely in my life.

The compartment is hellishly small. We share too much of each other’s air, elbows and shoulders bruising away as we ride along, the heat soaking our clothes.

We don’t speak.

Time passes. And then more. And more after that. I fall into a kind of doze, the close warmth sucking the life right out of me. The rocking of the cart eventually flattens all my worries and I close my eyes against it.

I’m awakened by the older soldier knocking on the wood and I think we’re going to finally get out, but he just says, “We’re at the rough bit. Hold on.”

“To what?” I say, but I don’t say any more as the cart feels like it drops off a cliff.

Mistress Coyle’s forehead smacks into my nose and I smell blood almost at once. I hear her gasp and choke as my stray hand is shoved into her neck and still the cart tumbles and bumps and I wait for the moment where we topple end over end.