Six Days (8 page)

When we get back to the sleeper side, Peyto’s waiting, but when I get closer I see that his eyes are all red. He looks at us, all quiet and lost, and I know he’s been crying.

I give him a hug then, cos it’s awful to see him so upset.

He chokes back his tears. “She’s dead.”

And there ain’t nothing I can say to that. Cos it has to be true.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” he yells at the
Aeolus
.

No answer.

“Maybe there’s a way she’s still alive,” says Erin gently. “Maybe she’s in stasis or something …”

“How, Erin? There’s nothing to keep her in stasis on Earth. She’s dead. She died years ago while I slept.”

“We can’t give up,” she pleads. “The others need us …” She’s on the edge of tears now, too.

Peyto takes a couple of deep breaths to get himself under control. “I knew she was dead. From the moment I woke up. I
felt
it.”

“Oh, Peyto …” Erin takes his hand. “We’ve got to keep going. We’ve
got to
. It’s not just us anymore, it’s the world down there, too; it’s everyone.”

He looks at her at last. “What do you mean?”

“The
Aeolus
said if the sleepers die, then the whole world will be in terrible danger.”

S
eeing Peyto brings it all back to me, about my own mum. I remember the feeling when she died. You suck yourself in, bunch yourself up, but your head goes out wandering into daydreams and memories, searching for that face you know you won’t see again. And when you come back to yourself, you’re a bit older, a bit harder.

Slowly, a calm settles down on us all. I check my watch cos I’ve lost all sense of time up here, and it don’t seem possible we’ve been on the ship less than an hour. Erin hands me something then. It’s a silky cuff, see-through and frilly at the edges. The solemn way she hands it to me, it’s like sealing a pact.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a …” She pauses, to spare me the boffin term, I think. “It’s like a countdown. You put it on your wrist, like your watch.” She draws up her sleeve to show me hers, close to the skin, and all you can see are marks there like a tattoo. Except the marks are pulsing.

“I’ve synched yours up to show the same thing as mine and Peyto’s.”

I slip the cuff over my hand and it comes to life – coils of ink on the underside of my wrist, itching a bit near the veins.

“A countdown to what?” I go.

“A countdown to … well, until it’s too late.”

The coils straighten into six bands, each one made up of dots no bigger than freckles. The top band is slightly shorter than the others. As I gaze at it, one of the freckles vanishes. I feel it prick me slightly. And then I get it – each freckle is an hour and I’ve just lost one. Twenty-four hours in each band. Six bands for six days …

There ain’t much to say about the journey back. We’re all wrecked, ’specially Peyto, who did his first-ever scav shift on top of everything else. We stash the suits back in the hollow, strap into the shuttle, and silently launch off from the
Aeolus
. A few minutes later, Erin tells us to brace ourselves for “reentry,” which is thunderous, like we’re being shook to pieces. But then the roar drops away, and the screens show us skimming into the Thames upriver toward the Jubilee tunnel.

My weight comes back, and it’s good to feel my bones settling into place, to be
solid
again. I take a deep breath of
chilly London air as the shuttle roof parts for us – just the smallest of openings.

“Won’t the Vlads spot us?” I go.

“Get up there,” answers Erin. “Tell me what you can see.”

Peyto helps me stand on one of the chairs so I’m practically level with the river surface, just peeking over a furrow of water so smooth that it’s like a fold of black velvet. No bubbles, no foam. The junk of the river, plastic bags and old buoys, bobs past my face, but the wake of the shuttle is so slight, it might as well be a knife drawing through the currents.

Some way ahead, I spot the wide stone arches of London Bridge, but they’re dark, no signs of movement. Behind me, though, the crumbled stumps of Tower Bridge are clustered with searchlights trained on the water.

I duck down. “It’s clear ahead. But there’s a load of action on the last bridge.”

“They must have seen us come down into the river,” mutters Erin. “No way round that.”

I take up my lookout position again, but the way ahead is quiet, past the broken humps of Southwark, the twisted wreckage of the Millennium Bridge. Even the two standing bridges, Blackfriars and Waterloo, are empty, so I start to breathe easier. Maybe the Vlads are all so caught up with where we came down that they left these bridges unmanned. And it’s a shock to be so
glued
to a proper place
again, to hear the lap of water, to see the city. Now as I look at the night sky, I know it’s the same, but somehow the endless darkness of space ain’t such a threat from down here.

Erin goes, “I’ve got control to steer now that it’s not an emergency. Which bank? North or south?”

“Best to land the same side as the dinghy,” I go. “Then we can take it back to where Wilbur is …”

Peyto just nods. His tears are over, but he looks proper haunted – all the stuffing battered out of him, like going to the ship has brung it all home to roost just how bad things are.

Erin glances at me, then she strokes the right-hand wall of the shuttle, and we veer toward the north bank. We all clamber out into the shallows, near the ruins of Westminster Bridge, then the shuttle closes up and disappears into the river. All’s quiet as we scramble up the bank, then down to the tunnel floor, where the water’s still low and the dinghy’s still tied up, thank God. I try not to get too chewed up about Wilbur. It’s only been a few hours, but what with everything that’s happened, it feels like a week. The ship don’t seem real just then. It’s like the stuff of fireside stories.

We paddle like ten men back toward the south bank, which is proper hard work cos we’re going against the flow now. The moonlit hole at the far end of the tunnel gets bigger, but there ain’t no sign of Wilbur.

“Where is he?” goes Erin. “Surely he’d be able to see the flashlight.”

“Well, I did tell him to stick with Sheba on pain of death …” But the truth is, I’m getting nervy, too.

“I see him!” cries Peyto.

And there he is, leaping up and down like a jackrabbit.

When we reach the far end, I slosh through the shallows and give him a mighty hug. “How’s Sheba?”

“Dozing off. I didn’t think you were ever coming back! I just came down for a last look and I saw the light!”

“Well, you did well holding the fort. We got what we came for, so let’s get back now before Dad gets wind, eh?”

Wilbur gives us all a hard stare then. “You’ve got to let me in on it,” he goes.

“Hey, ease up, will you?” I glance at the others. “There ain’t nothing to be let in on, you buffoon –”

“I saw it, Cass. I saw it and I
heard
it. A rocket shooting out of the river. It lit up the sky all white.”

“Ah …”

“I want to know, Cass. I can help. You know I can.”

I’m too plain knackered to lie.

“We must tell him,” goes Peyto.

“Yes, Cass,” urges Erin. “Wilbur could know something important.”

I think about where I’ve been, how it’d almost be cruel not to let him in on it now. And I’ve got to admit there’d
be some kind of relief off-loading what’s just happened, though God knows I’ve tried to keep him in the dark this far.

So after we haul the dinghy back up into its hiding place, we tell him. Everything. Well, nearly everything. Or anyhow, Peyto does. And it’s like telling the story chivies him out of his worries, bucks him up. I just chip in at the end, making sure to cut out the bit about the whole world going to rack and ruin. Things is desperate enough without scaring Wilbur to death on that score. One sharp look at Peyto and Erin and they get my drift. Wilbur listens goggle-eyed without saying a word for the whole journey back to Elephant and Castle. Peyto and Erin show him their flinders and he gazes at them, but his face is hard to read. He don’t even reach out to touch them, which is the first thing I expected him to do. He just leans closer to their halos of light, staring at all the tiny patterns blooming on the surfaces, gobsmacked but shy. And then he gives this little shiver, and his eyelids flicker, like someone’s just walked over his grave.

“How come they’re different?” he goes.

He’s right, but it’s hardly the most staggering thing about the flinders. And yet, it
is
the kind of thing Wilbur would spot about them.

“Well, I don’t know,” says Erin at last, as if she’s only just realized it herself. “Each one is a special match for a
person. And because each person is different, I suppose each flinder is different. It’s said that you don’t choose a flinder, it chooses you.”

He just nods at that, like it makes perfect sense.

“Wish I’d been there, on the ship” is all he says.

“It said you’d be there, at the tower, at Big Ben,” goes Erin. “How did you get the idea to go there in the first place?”

“I thought the artifact was there, that’s all.” From the inside of his coat he brings out a roll of Captain Jameson comics. “I pick up clues about where to try looking from these.”

“And Halina, are you sure you haven’t heard of her?” asks Peyto. “I know I asked you before but …”

Wilbur shakes his head and Peyto looks crestfallen. “I suppose the ship could be wrong – about Wilbur knowing something.”

“Maybe I just don’t know
yet
.” Vintage Wilbur – spooky eight-year-old pronouncement number thirty-one.

“Hang on, you said you found something else at Big Ben,” I try. “The so-cod-poo or something.”

“Sudoku – it’s a number puzzle. Gramps reckons numbers are important, too.”

“You been talking to Gramps? You never said.”

Wilbur looks guilty. “Sometimes. I go Sundays.” Dad gives him the day off on Sundays, cos scavving the whole time’s a real grind for kids.

“You’re meant to be sticking in the village!” I go.

Peyto rests his hand gently on my shoulder. “What else does Gramps say?”

“Just bits and pieces. He mumbles a lot. Forgets I’m there, I think.” He looks up at us more brightly. “But he collects clues, too. On the other side of the river.” He points at the dinghy we’ve just put back in its hiding place. “That’s his boat.”

“Wilbur! Why didn’t you tell us that before?”

He picks at his mittens. “I thought you’d get mad at me.”

“Gramps is a
looter
?”

“Then maybe he’s close to tracking it down?” goes Erin.

They all look at me as I think it through. “He’s a crazy old duffer sometimes … But still, there ain’t no point in us just signing up for another scav shift. So maybe he’s right, that scavving ain’t the way. It’s too slow …” I rub at the countdown cuff Erin gave me, thinking of the time draining away like grains in an egg timer. “I reckon it’s worth paying Gramps a visit tomorrow.”

Back at Elephant and Castle, we head for the stables. I get Peyto and Erin sorted with some old blankets and set them up a bed on the hay. It ain’t exactly the Ritz, but with all the animals in there, it’s pretty cozy.

“You’ll come and find us tomorrow?” goes Erin. She sounds all bent out of shape again, now we’re back on Earth.

“Yeah, course. I’ve got to get out of scavving …” I think about Dad struggling alone on the shift with his gammy leg. “But I’ll figure out something.”

I watch them bed down, fumbling with their blankets, and suddenly I don’t want to leave them either.

“Toodlepip, then,” I go.

Peyto looks at me blank.

“Good night,” I try, and the words sound all proper – not like me at all.

He grins back. “Toodlepip.” Like the worst Cockney accent ever.

I let Wilbur unhitch Sheba while I head back to our hut. I’m trying to dream up an excuse for why we’ve been gone so long, but my head’s fried. And worst luck, Dad’s waiting up, staring at the remains of the fire, his face stewing in fury.

“I’ve been worrying myself to death,” he says through gritted teeth.

Then Wilbur comes in and, before I can open my mouth, he goes, “It’s my fault. I took an apple to Sheba, but when I was feeding her, I got all dizzy. Reckon I had one of my spells …”

I look over at Wilbur then and I’m gobsmacked to see he’s got this whopping black eye and a cut across his forehead.

Dad hobbles over and leads him toward the fire. I hope he’s flustered enough not to notice the damage is a bit too fresh to have happened much more than two minutes ago.

Hating myself, I pick up the lie and run with it. “After the meeting, I went off to look for him. I thought I’d find him easy, but I searched all over.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me your brother was missing?”

I stare at the floor.

“I never figured on you being so stupid, Cass. He could’ve been anywhere!”

“Sorry …”

He turns to Wilbur. “You black out, son?”

“Yeah, dunno how long. Had all this froth on my face like that time in the summer.”

He’s all wobbly and pale, and that ain’t acting, so I figure he must’ve cracked himself pretty hard back at Sheba’s stable. There’s a couple of vicious splinters poking out his bonce.

“I don’t feel that good,” goes Wilbur, looking all set to pass out on us.

“Lay down here. Cass, fetch some water!”

We bathe his head, yank out the splinters, and make up a poultice. Ten minutes later he’s out for the count. I’m in shock – I can’t believe he’d go that far to cover up for us.

Dad can’t even look at me when he speaks at last. “I want you to stay back tomorrow, keep an eye on him.
No point in him tagging along for a shift, not in that state.”

“All right. Look, I’m sorry, Dad.”

“So you said.”

I want to ask him about the rest of the meeting, about Gramps, but there ain’t no point, cos I can tell he’s closed me off now.

For a while as I lie down, my head’s just spinning, whirring away, thinking about flying ships, and being weightless, and the curve of the Earth with its trapped skies stretching away from me …

It feels like I’ve been out for five minutes when Wilbur shakes me awake. Sunlight is peeking through cracks in the roof.

“Cass, we’ve got to go!”

Peyto and Erin are hovering warily by the entrance.

“Where’s Dad?”

“He went ages ago. There was soldiers up at the muster point, checking all scavs reporting for work. Old Fred says they’ve gone to Lambeth village, looking for anyone that’s not a proper scav, anyone that’s a stranger. They must’ve seen the shuttle coming back.”