Web of Fire Bind-up (6 page)

‘No, I suppose not, but –'

‘Nothing's ever certain, Sam. There are no guarantees about anything. Which is actually quite good news for us, as it happens.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Think about it,' replied Skipper. ‘If nothing is certain, then anything is possible. I agree that escape sounds unlikely. But the fact of you being here at all is even more unlikely. And yet here you are. So all things considered, the chances of escaping are, in fact, quite good.'

Sam heard Skipper chuckling happily to herself on the other side of the wall and in spite of everything his spirits began to lift.

‘But where am I?' he asked.

‘In deep trouble,' replied Skipper. ‘Smack bang in the middle of it, to be precise. But don't worry. I'm here to fix that.'

‘Tell me something,' said Sam, changing tack. ‘How do I know that I can trust you?'

‘You don't,' Skipper answered. ‘But then if you
knew
you could trust me, it wouldn't be trust, would it?'

‘But you could be working for them,' said Sam. The fear he had felt earlier was creeping back again. He was beginning to think about what Hekken had said, how he would turn him over to those vicious creatures from the train. ‘Why should I believe you?'

There was a long silence. At last, Skipper spoke. ‘Because you don't have a choice,' she said simply.

At that moment there was the sound of boots on the stairway again, and the clanging of keys opening doors along the passageway.

‘What's happening?' asked Sam in alarm.

‘They're taking us down to work in the tanks,' said Skipper hurriedly. ‘They'll probably come for you later, when the rest of us have gone. Look, just tell them someone attacked you and stole your clothes, OK? Tell them you got on the train to shelter from the storm. That should buy us a bit more time. Be strong, Sam. It'll be all right. Believe me.'

Sam held his breath as he heard Skipper's door being unlocked.

‘Come on. Out!' a guard shouted into Skipper's cell, and he heard the sound of light footsteps padding across the stone floor.

‘Patience is a virtue, you know.'

Skipper's voice was small, clear and confident: a light in the darkness. But then came the sound of a stinging slap and a little cry.

‘You wanna watch that mouth of yours, kid. Now move out!'

Sam's stomach flipped at the sound of this rough treatment and, running to the door, he heard Skipper's voice call softly as she went past, ‘Don't worry about me – just look at the sky!'

There was a grunt and a kick, then more shouting and the sound of a hundred footsteps fading away down the long, echoing stairway.

Sam was alone.

Look at the sky
. What had she meant?

He scrambled to his feet, leant back against the steel door and then ran at the wall, jumping towards the window as he had done before and hauling himself up by the bars.

He looked up at the sky, but there were only dark clouds casting deep shadows across the landscape. Down below he could see the prisoners being led in a long line across the courtyard towards the gates. Some were viciously punched and kicked for not moving quickly enough.

Sam realised that there was no one to look after him, no rules to protect him in this terrible place. He began to feel very frightened indeed. What would happen next?

He let go of the bars and dropped to the floor. Suddenly he felt very cold, hungry and tired. Shivering, he curled himself up in the corner and within a few minutes he had fallen into an exhausted and fitful sleep.

Later, when he awoke, the cell was much darker and Sam realised that it must be night-time. He had been asleep for a long time. Although the room was in shadow, a bluish glow shone through the window, which Sam presumed was the light from the moon.

He remembered what Skipper had said to him before she was taken away.

Look at the sky
.

Sam ran to the door, pushed himself off from it and leapt up at the window. Wrapping his arms around the bars, he rested his chin on the window ledge and looked out towards the far horizon.

Through a break in the clouds Sam could see that the sky was a deep violet and bright stars sparkled across the heavens. It was a breathtaking, beautiful night.

But what made Sam's heart leap – what shook him, scared him and filled him with exquisite feelings of danger and excitement – was his first glimpse of the source of the light that had filtered through his window.

Hanging low in the sky just above the horizon were two moons, one red and one green. A third moon, pale blue in colour, was just beginning to rise above the tree-tops. Sam's mouth dropped open in amazement and wonder. It was the strangest, most wonderful sight he had ever seen.

A different world
.

He remembered the other thing that Skipper had said to him: Anything is possible.

He rested his forehead against the cold metal bars and
breathed in the cool night air. Then he heard the sound of footsteps echoing down the corridor, and his stomach turned over.

They were coming for him.

Sally Palmer drew back the curtains and winced as bright sunshine flooded the room. Outside, the sky was blue and the birds were singing. It really was the most beautiful summer's day.

She shut her eyes tightly and felt hot tears spring up under her eyelashes. There had to be some mistake. How could it possibly be such a lovely day? Why wasn't the sky dark? Why wasn't it raining? Why weren't thunder clouds pounding the pavements in anger and sorrow at the terrible tragedy that had occurred?

She sat on the bed and put her face in her hands. It had been two days now. Two days since Sam's accident. But in spite of the fact that her world had changed completely, the world outside remained just the same. The sun still shone brightly from a clear blue sky. People still laughed and enjoyed themselves. They still watched television, ate ice creams and went for walks in the park.

Of course they did. How could they know?

They couldn't see the dark storms that raged inside her. They couldn't feel the chill of the bleak, desolate ocean that surrounded her or the currents that tried to drag her under. She was drowning in her own sadness and nobody knew it. There was nothing left to reach out for, no lifeline that would carry her to the shore.

Her husband, Jack, tried to comfort her, but he was suffering as much as she was. What words of comfort are to be found when your only child has been taken from you?

Your only child
. Sally wiped her eyes and laid a hand softly on the swelling beneath her nightdress.

No, not her only child.

She stared out through the window at the fields of ripening corn and thought about how she had wanted this second child so badly. Something stirred in her memory and she began to remember last summer. That business on the beach…

It had been Jack's idea to spend a day at the seaside, and Sam was having a wonderful time in spite of the rain. But Sally had suddenly been overcome by a wave of sadness and, feeling the need to be alone for a while, she had left Jack and Sam at the penny arcade and wandered slowly back along the pier to the stone steps which led down onto the beach.

Walking along the stony shore, she had listened to the pebbles rattle beneath the shallow rim of the ocean and wondered if the emptiness inside her would ever be filled.

A sudden voice carried on the wind had made her turn towards the sea wall. She saw a man dressed in a shabby suit standing all alone, with his arms outstretched and a mane of long, dark hair blowing around his face. Next to him was a large board upon which a sheet of paper had been taped and it fluttered wildly against its fixings. Spelled out on the sheet in red felt pen were the words ‘Behold he cometh: for the time is at hand', but the rain had made the ink run and it trickled down the paper in bloody streams.

‘The truth is Alpha and Omega,' he shouted into the wind, ‘the beginning and the end, which is, and which was, and which is to come…'

Sally had put her head down as she hurried past, hoping that the man wouldn't notice her, but she heard the crunch of boots across the stones and then he was standing in front of her.

‘Are you saved, sister?'

Sally had stared into those wild eyes filled with madness and wanted only to run away as fast as she could, back to the pier and the lights of the arcade.

But she didn't run. She just stood and looked down at her small, scuffed shoes, listening to the crash and thunder of the waves behind her. And then, as she raised her head and looked into the man's eyes once more, she saw in a moment how all the madness had suddenly disappeared, evaporating like a wraith into the stormy air. He stood there blinking, staring at her as though seeing her for the very first time.

‘I know what you are looking for,' he said, and took her hand between his. Her eyes were drawn momentarily to the blue sparkle of a tiny sapphire set into his earlobe, an unexpected fleck of colour in a grey and ordinary world. She stared at it and remembered all the years of trying for another baby, of seeing endless specialists and waiting in draughty hospital corridors. Suddenly she could bear it no longer; her lower lip quivered and the tears streamed down her face.

The man continued to hold her hand but made no other effort to comfort her.

‘You know,' he said quietly as the wind howled between them, ‘sometimes the things we want most are the hardest of all to get.'

‘Yes,' said Sally softly, ‘I know it.' Her face was wet and crumpled.

‘But perhaps,' the man went on, ‘when we want a thing so badly, that thing will try and find us too.'

Sally wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. ‘Who are you?' she whispered.

The man ignored her question and squeezed her hand. ‘Look in your dreams,' he said, ‘and I think you may find what you are searching for.'

Walking quickly back along the windswept pier, Sally had thought about the man's words, turning them over in her mind and trying to make some sense of them. Stopping and leaning over the balustrade, she had looked down at the beach again, hoping to catch sight of the stranger who had so unexpectedly touched her heart.

But there was no one; only the endless pebbles and an empty sea wall stretching away into the distance.

The beach was deserted.

Some days Sally had wondered if she was really losing it.

But soon after that, the dreams had started.

Now, as she stood at the bedroom window and watched a pair of swallows twist effortlessly through the blue, cloudless sky, Sally made a solemn promise. ‘I will find you,' she whispered as the tears ran down her face. ‘Wherever you are, I will find you and bring you home.'

Sam sat in the back of the car, wedged between two massive prison guards. Both had shaved heads and were wheezing loudly from the effort of bundling him into the back seat. With each wheeze, he was treated to a face full of stale, garlic-ridden breath so disgusting that he thought he might be sick.

He was handcuffed to the fatter one of the two, who seemed to have been stuffed into a uniform that was several sizes too small for him. The material was stretched tightly across his enormous stomach and the five buttons appeared to be under such strain that Sam thought it must be only a matter of time before they went pinging off in all directions.

The man suddenly turned to him. ‘What are you looking at?' he grunted.

Sam stared down at his bare feet dangling over the edge of the seat and tried not to breathe in. ‘Nothing,' he said. ‘I wasn't looking at anything.'

Which wasn't strictly true, but ‘Your big fat gut' seemed unwise in the circumstances.

The man nudged him roughly with his elbow. ‘Just don't try nothing.'

Sam made no reply. He raised his eyes slightly, enough to see between the front seats and through the windscreen. It was raining heavily, the wipers clunking backwards and forwards over great splurges of water that splattered against the glass as if thrown from a bucket.

The driver, a thin, weasel-faced man who sniffed constantly as he steered them through the dark city streets, removed a white, hairless hand from the wheel in order to wipe his nose on the back of his sleeve.

‘You boys mind if I turn the radio on?'

One of the guards grunted and there was a brief crackle and whine from the speakers as he twisted the tuning knob through the frequencies before finding the station he was after.

‘… and the Central Office for Economy and Administration released encouraging figures today showing that industrial production has more than doubled over the past year. A spokesman from the department said that this was largely due to the success of the relocation centres and corrective labour camps. The increased rate of preventive arrests has led to the rapid removal and rehabilitation of enemies of the state, who are now able to spend their lives usefully working for the good of the Empire.'