The Fall (9 page)

They picked up the pace, Cole grunting as he moved.

‘Here . . .’ Ed led them down a narrow offshoot. It was the opposite direction to the way they needed to go to. Three-storey Regency flats boxed them in on one side; a red-bricked wall on the other, with tall oak trees blocking the sky. Toyotas, Mercedes and Golfs sat deteriorating by the curb. The Mercedes didn’t look that different to the Pure saloon cars. Ana wondered if this had once been a wealthy area.

‘This way,’ Ed called, leading them down an even smaller side road. Cole tripped and slipped from his brother and Rachel’s arms, collapsing on the ground.

 Rachel squatted down beside him, pulling up his trouser leg. Ana watched her fingers run familiarly across his skin.

‘Give me the medical kit,’ Rachel said. Dropping her rucksack off her shoulders, Ana took out the kit. Rachel snatched it and flung it open.

‘I just put arnica on,’ Ana said.

‘I only need a minute.’ Cole was breathless and wincing.

‘Arnica,’ Rachel muttered. She pulled out a roll of white gauze. ‘It needs ice and a support bandage.’

‘Come on,’ Seton said to Ana. ‘We’ll feed each car model on this street into the web search. Let’s check them all. Check the tyres too. No point pouring fuel into something with rotten tyres.’

‘And what will this
car
be running on exactly?’ Nate asked.

‘The ethanol from the camping stove,’ Ana said.

Cole smiled weakly. ‘Nice plan.’

Rachel’s frown intensified as she focused on the bandage she was securing. Relieved to be doing something useful, Ana left Rachel and Nate crouched beside Cole, while she and Seton headed back the way they’d come.

Seton held up his interface to the boot of each car and Ana shone a torch on the model. He’d found a program that automatically identified the vehicle model and told them if it was compatible with the fuel they had.

‘How come there are so many here that haven’t been stripped?’ she asked.

‘Supply and demand,’ Seton said. ‘People only stripped the cars at first, thinking they could get money for the parts or recycle them. But in the end, there wasn’t much to do with it all. This one.’ He pointed at a sleek saloon still in reasonably good condition.

‘Doesn’t look like it’s been sitting there for twenty years.’ Ana bent down to check the tyres.

‘It hasn’t,’ Seton said. ‘It’s a 2029 model. Even with the petrol crisis some people could still afford to drive around. It was only a decade ago with the Pure Genome split that regular cars disappeared from the City. Strange,’ he said, sarcasm entering his voice, ‘how many of the seriously wealthy people ended up in the Pure Communities.’

A Psych Watch siren echoed in the distance.

‘Anyway, this one will do the job. Now we just need to hope one of the boys knows how to spark the battery back to life and hotwire it.’

They ran back to the others. In the glow of Rachel’s interface, Ana could see the beads of sweat on Cole’s brow; the paleness of his skin. Even Blaize looked concerned. Rachel had bound the wound tightly with a roll of gauze.

‘Right boys,’ Seton said. ‘One of you lads know how to start a car without the ignition key?’

Blaize grinned. ‘I knew there had to be a reason I came. Certainly wasn’t the exercise or the company.’ A police siren started up far away, then another, both approaching from different directions.

Ed rechecked Cole’s interface. ‘Something’s going on right down the road from here. Three police cars and three Psych Watch vehicles are on their way. Not to mention the four Wardens already in the area.’

‘We should keep moving,’ Nate snapped. ‘There isn’t time to mess about.’

Ana cast around for something she could use to pour the ethanol into the petrol tank. She’d seen her father’s chauffeur use the petrol pump dozens of times. If they just emptied the liquid from the portable stove into the hole it would spill over, and they couldn’t afford to lose any of it.

‘Let’s drop the Princess plan and get out of here,’ Nate said.

‘He can’t walk on this,’ Rachel said.

‘If I have to, I will.’

‘Yeah right.’

Ana found a plastic water bottle and handed it to Blaize. ‘Can you cut the bottom off?’ she asked. He took out his flick knife and began working on it. Seton retrieved the aluminium cans from the camping rucksack on Ed’s back. He shook them.

‘We’re good,’ he said. ‘I’ll need Cole’s interface.’ Ed took off the chain carrying Cole’s matchbox-sized silver computer/projector, while Seton handed his own interface to Ana. ‘Keep Cole out of sight,’ he instructed Ed. ‘We’ll be back with a car as quick as we can.’

Ana, Blaize and Seton ran to the end of the street and turned right onto the road that led back to the park.

‘This is the one,’ Seton said, stopping by the Mercedes. Using his knife, Blaize hacked down on the door lock, while Ana watched the street and Seton kept an eye on the infrared heat readouts in the area. Once the lock disintegrated, Blaize ducked into the vehicle and flicked a switch which popped the bonnet.

‘There’s a solar charger,’ he said. Ana didn’t know what he was talking about, but he sounded pleased. ‘Let’s see if they disconnected the battery.’ He came around the front of the vehicle and disappeared behind the raised hood. After a minute he stepped back. ‘This might work. The solar charge was left connected to the battery which means it’s been regularly charged.’

‘Could it run the engine?’ she asked.

‘Nah. It’s just designed to keep the battery alive. The small solar panel is part of the dashboard. But something like that can’t provide enough energy to run the car.’

Ana leaned into the car and shone the light from Seton’s interface beneath the steering wheel. She pulled a small lever with the image of a petrol pump on it, then moved around to the side where the petrol cap had popped open.

‘Shall I?’ she asked Seton. He handed her an open stove can and she poured the fuel through the halved water bottle.

‘Down!’ he hissed suddenly. Ana ducked, arms still stretched up to the petrol cap as the ethanol trickled into the tank. Blaize jumped into the driver’s seat, pulled the door to, and hunched low. A couple of seconds later headlights arced onto the street from the far end. A hybrid crawled towards them. It had to be police or Wardens. No one else would be driving around these parts. With the can empty, Ana lowered her arms and covered the light from Seton’s interface.

If the police were equipped with programs as advanced as Dombrant’s, it wouldn’t matter how well she, Seton and Blaize were hidden, the police would pick-up infrared body-heat readouts.

The hybrid cruised past the slip road where Cole, Nate, Rachel and Ed were hidden. Headlights swept over the Regency three-storey building behind Ana. Like Ana, Seton was also ducked down, leaning against the front passenger door, hand cupped over Cole’s interface projection. His alert eyes held a look of calm determination.

The headlights grew brighter until white light haloed Seton. Ana held her breath. She tried to count like she used to under water, remain calm, fight the body’s desire to flee. The three seconds the car took to pass them seemed like eternity. Finally the world sank back into blackness. The vehicle turned onto Bayswater Road by Kensington Park and was gone.

Hands trembling, Ana shook the stove can to make sure she’d emptied it all. At the same moment, the choking cough of a battery split the air. Her heart jumped with excitement. Then the battery spluttered and died.

‘Wait!’ she shouted, running around to where Blaize sat in the driver’s seat. ‘Don’t try it yet.’ She poked her head into the car to look at the dashboard. He’d stripped the plastic panel around the ignition. Wires cascaded to the rotted carpet floor. One set had been wound together. Another set, the brown ones, Blaize was holding apart. Seton meanwhile had managed to wedge open the front passenger door and was getting in.

‘We need to hurry,’ Seton said, looking at the image projecting on the windscreen from Cole’s interface. ‘There’s another patrol car approaching from the west. It’s heading straight for the others.’

‘Let’s use the interfaces for the solar panel,’ Ana suggested. ‘In laser mode they’re fifty times more powerful than torchlight. It’ll give the battery an extra boost.’

‘We’ll light up half the street.’

‘Only for a minute.’

Seton looked from Ana to Blaize.

Blaize grinned. ‘She’s growing on me.’

‘OK,’ Seton said. ‘We’ve got thirty seconds.’ Ana and Seton switched the interfaces to laser mode and aimed them at the solar panel on the top of the dashboard. Seton counted. The silver panel sent beams of light shafting and reflecting all over the place.

‘That should do it,’ Seton said. Ana waved a hand over the interface sensor and it switched off. Seton flipped his laser beam to a soft ambient light. ‘Now try it.’

Blaize touched together the exposed metal ends of the brown wires he’d been carefully holding apart. The battery started.

‘Yes!’ he cheered. Seton looked round at Ana and nodded. She grinned, feeling his approval. ‘Hold these,’ Blaize said passing Seton the wires. ‘Don’t let them touch. We’ll get some tape from the medical kit to make them safe.’

Blaize used the automatic lock to open the back door and Ana jumped in. Within seconds, they’d backed out of the narrow space and were heading up the street. The interior of the vehicle smelt musty and damp, but it cruised along smoothly enough.

As they turned into Orme Lane, the street Cole was on, the patrol car turned in from the other end. The vehicles were approaching each other head on.

‘Police. Keep going,’ Seton said, ‘ and let me do the talking.’

Ana tried to silence her breathing but it came out raspy and shallow. The blue light on top of the police car began to flash. They crawled to a halt before it. On the pavement, level with where they’d stopped, Ana saw Cole’s legs sticking out from behind a rusty vehicle. She gulped in a breath, peered sideways and saw Rachel and Nate pressed up tight to a second car, not two metres from the police.

‘Don’t cut the engine,’ Seton warned Blaize. ‘And put that knife away.’

Two men dressed in blue v-necks and trousers got out of their vehicle.

‘Everyone stay calm,’ Seton said quietly, as he buzzed down his electric window. But the officers rounded the other side to where Blaize was driving. One of them tapped a baton on the pane beside Blaize’s ear. Blaize snorted, purposefully taking his time to comply with the request. He was enjoying this. He liked the action and the challenge.
Like with the rabbit
, she thought
.
He’d volunteered tonight because
this
was his idea of fun.
Please, please don’t let him do anything stupid.

‘Good evening,’ one of the officers said. He lifted up the interface on a chain around his neck and shone the projecting beams into the car. The light was blinding. ‘May I ask how you’ve come about this vehicle?’

‘It was just lying about,’ Blaize said.

‘And the petrol?’

‘We make ethanol with rotten fruit,’ Seton said. ‘My son’s got a thing about cars.’

‘And who’s this?’ The officer said, shining the projection directly on Ana.

‘My daughter,’ Seton answered.

Ana forced herself to look directly into the light, thankful that in the weeks after her joining with Jasper, his parents hadn’t permitted any of the interviewing reporters to take pictures. Her cropped hair, drawn face and scruffy clothes wouldn’t be what they’d seen of Ariana Barber. And she was supposedly still safely tucked away in the Taurell home.

‘There have been two stabbings just down the road from here,’ the officer said. ‘And there’s a brawl going on near the park.’ He broke off, cocked his head to one side and listened to a voice coming through on his earpiece.

The officer behind him was manipulating his interface and frowning at whatever information was projecting onto his hand. The first officer returned to consult with his colleague. The beam no longer in her eyes, Ana struggled with the darkness. She squinted out of the window, but couldn’t see Cole’s legs.

The first officer was back, leaning into the car. ‘I suggest you take your family home,’ he said to Seton.

‘Will do.’

A minute later, the police car was backing up the road. Ana, Seton and Blaize sat in absolute stillness, barely believing their luck. The car turned towards the park, blue light spinning, and vanished.

‘They didn’t even ask for ID,’ she said.

‘Lucky for us, they had more important things to do,’ Seton answered.

‘Yahoo!’ Blaize slapped the dashboard. ‘Now that’s what I call a night out!’

Ana scrambled across the back seat, got out and rounded the side of the car where Cole was hidden. Four pairs of eyes gaped at her.

‘They’ve gone,’ she said.

‘Think we got that, Einstein,’ Rachel retorted.

‘Stop trying to bully her, Rach.’ Cole hobbled to his feet and Ana helped him to the car. Once she’d settled him in the back, she returned for the camping rucksack propped up on the pavement’s edge and threw it along with them in the backseat. Meanwhile, Seton and Blaize insulated the live ends of the battery wires with thick tape from the medical kit.

Nate, Rachel and Ed hovered by the open car doors.

‘From here, I’ll go alone with Ana and Cole,’ Seton said to them all. ‘There’s no need for the rest of you to come. If we’re stopped and ID’d it’s better that as few of us are caught as possible. And we wouldn’t fit everyone in, anyway.’ Blaize scooted out of the front seat, leaving Seton to drive.

‘Hang on,’ Rachel said. ‘Who’s going to care for Cole’s knee properly, or stitch up the knife wound if the butterfly stitches don’t hold?’

‘The cut isn’t deep,’ Seton said. ‘The butterfly stitches will be fine if Cole rests. There’s nothing much we can do for the knee except hope none of the ligaments are torn.’

‘What if the wound gets infected?’

Anxiety prickled in Ana’s stomach. She studied Cole: his eyes were closed, head resting against the seat. She knew a little first aid, but not enough to treat an infection. How would she look after him if he got sicker?