Not yet, anyway.
“Get down, Holly!” the Traveller shouted at me and although I hardly heard his words above the roar of the gunfire, I pitched myself forward onto my stomach even as bullets streamed over my head. I was lucky. There was a trench in the ground, barely more than a few inches deep, but the sloping sides gave me a little cover. The villagers were still blasting at the police and more of them were falling, but then the Traveller twisted round with his gun and began firing himself. I saw the man called Withers-Green (“who does all the building for us”) crumple in on himself, clutching his stomach, and thought, he won’t be doing any building any more. Major Higham had finally reappeared as well. He started to shout something but suddenly the bottom of his face disappeared, turning into a smudge of red. More lights blinked out. Some of the police were returning fire. Three more villagers died.
Bullets in front of us. Bullets behind. It was like being in the middle of a war. All I could do was lie there, hugging the ground. I still had my gun in my hand but I was too scared to use it. I wouldn’t have known who to aim at anyway.
The police weren’t firing at us because they were afraid they’d hit Jamie, and the ginger-haired woman had told them that he had to be taken alive. The villagers were ignoring us because they had to defend themselves against the police. Caught between the two of them, I managed to crawl over to Jamie and shook his arm, trying to wake him up. This couldn’t go on much longer. If we were going to have any chance of reaching the Lady Jane, we were going to need his help.
The Traveller squeezed off a couple more shots then jerked sideways and I saw the shock and the pain in his face. He had been wounded – how badly I couldn’t tell. It was impossible to say how many of the villagers and how many of the police had been killed – or even who was winning. Only one headlight remained and as I grabbed Jamie, there was a tinkle of glass and that went out too. I just had time to see Jamie’s eyes open.
“You’ve got to stop them!” I shouted.
“What…?” He was still dazed.
“They’re killing each other and if we don’t stop them, they’re going to kill us too!”
“Where’s the Traveller?”
“I’m here!” He was still alive but he wasn’t shooting any more. Either he was in too much pain or he’d run out of bullets.
Jamie sat up.
It was the worst thing he could have done. He had been protected, at least partly, by the fold in the ground but now he was deliberately making himself a target. Bullets were still flying in all directions, although there were fewer of them now as there had been so many casualties. And it was pitch-dark. The policewoman wanted Jamie alive but he could easily have been shot by accident.
“We’re not here!” he shouted. “We were never here.”
I realized that once again he was using his power – and in a way that was more extraordinary than anything I’d yet witnessed. Jamie could control one person. He had sent Cosmo stumbling off to the latrine. But now he was pushing his thoughts out to the whole bunch of them, interrupting a bloody battle to plant the lie in their heads. I wondered if it could possibly work. There must have been twelve or more people still alive … from both sides. Could he really fool the whole lot of them at once?
It was time to find out.
“Let’s get to the boat,” Jamie said.
We crawled across the ground in the direction of the canal, moving diagonally, away from the line of fire. The Traveller came with us. I still didn’t know how badly he had been hit. It was very, very dark. The Lady Jane was little more than one shade of black against another and the only lights were the blazes of red coming from the guns as the shoot-out continued. We reached the boat. Jamie passed me the key and I unlocked the door. The people of Little Moulsford hadn’t tried to force their way in yet. Presumably they had been leaving that for the break of day. The three of us piled on board. The ignition key was hidden on a shelf inside. I found it and handed it to the Traveller.
He turned to Jamie. “Can we start the engine? Will they hear it?”
Jamie looked back. The shooting had become very sporadic. Someone – a woman – was shouting in pain. I think it was the major’s wife. “They’ll hear it but they won’t care. They’ve forgotten about us. But you have to hurry. It won’t last for long.”
The Traveller started the engine. Our own lamp broke through the darkness, illuminating the water ahead. I wanted to go into the cabin, find my bed and hide in it – but I forced myself back onto the towpath, untying the ropes, casting off. The Traveller pressed down on the throttle and as the Lady Jane pulled away I jumped back on board. The noise of the engine drowned out a little of the gunfire and even now I couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t hear, that they wouldn’t come after us. But if we had never been there, as Jamie had told them, how could we possibly be getting away?
The canal turned a corner and suddenly we had left Little Moulsford behind us. Jamie was steering. The Traveller had slumped onto the deck, holding his shoulder in pain. But I knew we hadn’t escaped yet.
“How long will it be before they realize?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jamie said. “I’ve never done anything like that before. If it had been one person it would have been easier.” He shrugged. “Maybe an hour. Maybe two. You’d better see to the Traveller.”
“I’m OK.”
I found a torch and turned it on him. He wasn’t OK. He’d been hit in the shoulder and there was blood spreading through his shirt. “What can I do?” I asked.
“Get me a cloth and some water.” He must have heard the panic in my voice. “Seriously, Holly. It’s not too bad.”
I hurried into the galley and did as he asked. He poured water onto the cloth and pressed it against the wound, then he drank the rest. Finally, he looked back in the direction we had come. There was absolutely no sound now, even though the fighting was probably still going on. That was the thing about the canal. You only had to travel a short distance and you would be in a completely different world.
“How do you think they found us?” I asked.
“The police? Who knows? Maybe it was one of the villagers. Or the fly-soldiers. Or they could have worked out that we had a boat.”
“They’ll come after us, won’t they?”
The Traveller nodded. “Jamie bought us time and he got us out of there. But sooner or later they’re going to follow.” He forced himself to his feet. “I’ll call the Nexus and tell them to be ready for us.”
“Call them?”
“I have a radio, Holly. They already know we’re on our way.”
“How far is it?” Jamie asked.
“Five or six hours. If we can get to the Sheerwall Tunnel, we’ll be safe. I still have a couple of surprises up my sleeve.” He went into the galley and I wanted to follow him. I’d never seen a working radio. I thought the technology had vanished years ago. But I stayed with Jamie.
“Five or six hours,” I muttered.
“If we’re lucky…”
Our single light picked out the way ahead. The darkness was pressing in all around.
That night seemed endless. The canal continued in a dead straight line, penning us in with nowhere to hide. We couldn’t turn left or right. We couldn’t reverse without a lot of manoeuvring. I found myself staring at the dim circle of light as it slid across the oily water, wishing it would move faster, wondering who else might be seeing it. All the time I imagined someone jumping out of the darkness. It wouldn’t have been difficult because the canal had become so narrow that we were never far away from the bank. Would it be one of the policemen or perhaps Mrs Higham and some of her cannibal friends, clawing at us with snapping teeth and bloodshot eyes? I wasn’t even sure which of the two possibilities would have been worse.
I had my gun and I was keeping it close. The Traveller was also on the aft deck. He might still have had a bullet in him but he had bandaged himself up, taken a shot of something – pills or alcohol – and if he was in pain
he was doing his best not to show it. There was an automatic rifle cradled in his arms and I wondered just how many more weapons there were concealed on board the Lady Jane. He’d mentioned he had a surprise or two in store. I hoped it was a box of hand grenades or, better still, a long-range guided missile system.
And so we stood there, the three of us, drifting through the night like statues or upright ghosts. It had become very chilly. Our breath was fogging … I could see mine against the reflecting light. A few tendrils of mist were reaching out over the water and the branches of the trees looked like steel. In a strange way it was the silence that scared me most. Of course there was the rumble of the engine beneath our feet, the one constant sound, travelling with us. But at the same time I was aware of the vast, empty countryside, the faint shadows of bushes and trees gliding past. It was like being trapped in a nightmare, unable to wake up.
We didn’t speak. Although we were cold, none of us went down to the galley to make a hot drink, as if we couldn’t tear ourselves away from the deck where we were standing. There were lots of things I wanted to ask. What was so important about the Sheerwall Tunnel? Did we have enough fuel to get there? Were there any more locks on the way? But I kept my mouth shut. I would find out soon enough.
And slowly, slowly the night faded and the dawn arrived, streaks of pale grey spreading through the sky. Had I somehow fallen asleep on my feet? The landscape had completely changed. We were on the edge of a city. There were buildings all around us, the remains of factories with smokestacks and loading bays. I could see at once that they were deserted. The doors were hanging open, showing dank interiors. Most of the windows were smashed. There was debris everywhere: bits of old machinery, oil tanks, tyres and industrial bins lying on their side. The ground rose up ahead of us and I could see houses, squeezed together like some of the cottages in my village, sharing a front gate. But there were rows and rows of them, more houses than I’d seen in my life. I got the feeling that they were all empty. I don’t know why. I suppose there could have been people inside, asleep, but they just felt deserted.
“We’re less than a mile away,” the Traveller said. He sounded exhausted. The bleeding had stopped but he had been up all night, wrapped in pain.
“How much less?” Jamie was still steering. I don’t know how he found the strength. He too had had no sleep.
“The Nexus will be waiting for us. They know we’re here.”
They know we’re here.
The words had no sooner left his mouth than I saw them. Three police helicopters were coming at us out of a sky that had gone from grey to white. They were flying in an arrow formation, still some distance away but closing in on us so fast that when I looked at them a second time, they seemed to have doubled in size. At the same time, Jamie cried out and pointed straight ahead. I followed his finger to a patch of empty land on the other side of the houses. At first I thought it was raining. Thousands of tiny black objects seemed to be falling to the ground. But then I realized that before they hit, they were slowing down. They were actually controlling their descent. They were living things.
Flies. A gigantic swarm of flies was pouring down and even as I watched, it began to form itself, like black smoke, breaking up and taking on the shape of men on horses. I had never seen anything like it. It was like black wax being poured into a mould. The separate figures were forming themselves in front of my eyes. In a minute they would be complete and then they would ride forward, passing through the streets and down the hill to the canal.
But there was the tunnel! It was right ahead of us, a circular entrance with a dark passageway leading into the hill, beneath the houses. Suddenly the Lady Jane, which had carried us steadily through the night, seemed to have slowed down to a crawl. The helicopters were getting closer and closer. I could hear the whirring of the blades. The horsemen were almost complete. We were trapped between them and no matter how hard I looked, the tunnel refused to get closer.
“We’re going to make it. We’re going to make it.” For a brief moment I didn’t know who was saying that. Then I realized it was me.
But was I right? And what difference would it make, anyway? I suddenly saw that putting any faith in the Sheerwall Tunnel was a waste of time. It was only about twenty metres long. I could see the circle of light on the other side. The helicopters could simply park beside the canal and wait for us to come out. Or the flies could break up again and come in after us. Even if the Traveller stopped the engine right in the middle, we couldn’t hide in there for ever. Why had he brought us here?
The helicopters flew overhead, so close that I could see the screws underneath the cockpit, and the scream of the rotors and the blast of air almost knocked me off the boat. There was a flat area beside the factory – perhaps it had once been a car park – and one after another they hit the ground, rocking briefly in the air before touching down. Almost at once the doors slid open and uniformed men burst out – so many of them that I wondered how they had all fitted in. Not all men. The woman who was in charge of them was there too, her ginger hair blowing wildly around her face. Meanwhile, the fly-soldiers were ready. They were further away but they began to gallop forward, following the road that would lead them through the rows of houses and eventually down to the canal path.
The tunnel was opening up in front of us. Jamie was standing absolutely still, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other clenching the throttle as if he could somehow will the Lady Jane to go faster. The Traveller brought up his gun and fired off several shots, aiming at the police. I saw one man go down but they surged forward without hesitating. They had already let us slip through their fingers twice. It didn’t matter how many of them died. They weren’t going to let it happen a third time.
Someone fired a shot and the handrail right next to me splintered, wood fragments flying up.
“Get down, Holly!”
It was the Traveller, shouting at me, and I saw that one of the policemen had been aiming at me, had come within inches of killing me. How could I be so slow and useless? I crouched down and fired six shots at the helicopter, the gun bucking in my hand. I smelled the cordite as it rose into my nostrils but I’m not sure I actually hit anyone. The police returned fire. But once again they must have been ordered not to hit Jamie and I was so close to him now that I was more or less safe. The bullets smashed into the side of the Lady Jane. Two of the windows shattered.
I looked up. There was a fly-soldier right above us, over the entrance to the tunnel. He drew back a spear. And just as the soldier was made up of flies, so was the spear. I swear I could hear it buzzing and briefly wondered what it would be like to be hit by it, to have it go right through me. Because he was aiming at me. There could be no doubt of it. Would the flies separate again when they were in my blood? Would they destroy me from inside? I cried out, but at that exact moment we plunged into the tunnel and a great tube of darkness and damp slid over us and the police and the fly-soldiers were cut off. There was no towpath. The police would be unable to follow us unless they decided to swim, and although the insects might break up again and fly after us, perhaps the darkness and the confined space might put them off.
Not that it mattered. We could stop and try to hide inside the tunnel. Or we could go on, in which case we’d be out the other end in about one minute. That was all the breathing space we had. The police would already be on their way to cut us off. We had come so far! We had managed to escape from Little Moulsford and we had travelled through the night. But it had all been for nothing.
And then I saw that the Traveller was already moving. He went over to Jamie and pushed up the throttle, cutting our speed by half. Then he flipped open a panel next to the tiller. I hadn’t even noticed it before. Inside there was a dial and a red button.
“We’ve got to move fast!” he shouted. “Leave everything behind. Go to the front of the boat. Get onto the roof.”
“What about the steering?” Jamie asked.
“It’s OK. It’s locked.??
? The Traveller turned the dial and pressed the red button. At once, a light began to flash inside the boat. I wondered what he had done. Was this a secret weapon, the surprise he had been talking about? “Move!” he shouted again. “We have to be on the roof!”
The canal boat was still moving – but at half the speed, so we had a little more time. Nobody had followed us into the tunnel. Everything was going black–white, black–white, so I could just make out what I was doing. We dropped our weapons, dashed through the galley and the sleeping area and scrambled up. The Traveller went first, then Jamie, then me, and there we were on our feet, not moving ourselves but still gliding forward with the curved ceiling of the tunnel so close to our heads that we could reach up and touch it. I felt moisture dripping onto my neck. It was very cold in the tunnel. We were already about halfway through.
“There’s a ladder!” the Traveller shouted. “Grab hold of it and swing yourself along. I’ll go first. Follow me!”
I saw it almost immediately. It was attached to the ceiling, running horizontally above the water. All we had to do was grab hold of it and wait while the top of the boat moved forward underneath our feet. As the Lady Jane continued, the steering locked, the speed constant, we would be left dangling in the darkness. What was the big idea? Were we supposed to hang there until everyone went away?
I transferred my weight to my hands and arms and began to walk forward along the roof of the boat, remaining in the same place. And then the Lady Jane had gone. My feet bumped over the edge and suddenly I was dangling there with only the dark water below me. The others were in front of me and I wondered how the Traveller could possibly find the strength to hang on after everything he had been through.
But he was grimly determined. “This way!” he shouted. He had his back to me of course but I saw him swing himself forward, moving from one rung to the next. It reminded me of when I was small, in the playground in my village. There had been a climbing frame and I’d often done exactly this. First the Traveller, then Jamie, then me … we clambered along the ladder and all the time the Lady Jane was getting further and further away in front of us. I reckoned it would be out in the light in about ten seconds.