The Clearing

  A chill settled on me as I remembered the guards from Cathedral Close. Those faceless figures in hoods. And Fred seemed to think they were heading this way.

  ‘They don’t bother with outsiders though. They ignored Jess n me when we was on the road. I think they’re just after the perimeters and compounds. God knows how many places they’re already controlling.’

  ‘So they’re marching at night?’ Luc asked.

  ‘Yeah. We never seen ‘em during the day. We heard they’ve already taken Romsey and Sixpenny Handley . . .’

  ‘Romsey?’ Pa said. ‘Romsey’s one of Eddie’s perimeters. They haven’t taken Romsey. He was only up there a couple of . . .’

  ‘You got a two-way radio?’ Fred interrupted.

  ‘Of course,’ Pa replied.

  ‘You try calling them up at Romsey then. See if what I’m saying ain’t true.’

  Pa got to his feet. ‘I’m going to have to talk to Eddie.’ He walked over to the door and beckoned for us to follow him out.

  ‘What about our deal?’ Fred called after us. ‘I gave you good information! You gave me your word . . .’

  But Pa was too preoccupied to answer. I followed him and the others out of the door. My mind was racing. Were James Grey and his religious army really capable of taking over our Perimeter? What if they were? What if we had to leave our beautiful house? What if our way of life came to an end and we were forced to live a different way? I shuddered.

  Everything suddenly felt more fragile and precious. We couldn’t lose our way of life. We just couldn’t. I’d seen what life was like on the outside. It was harsh and relentless. And there was no way I would conform to Grey’s way of living.

  ‘Do you believe him?’ I asked Luc.

  ‘Sounded pretty convincing. Dad’s going to be livid if they’ve taken Romsey. We’ve got some really good guards up there.’

  ‘Let’s get Romsey on the radio,’ Pa said to Roger. ‘Find out if it’s true.’

  ‘It might take a while. They don’t always answer straight away.’

  ‘Fine. You do it, Roger. I’ll be at my place with Eddie and Rita. Come and get us if anything’s amiss. In fact, check in with all Perimeters and compounds within a hundred mile radius. And double the guards at Hook Island. We need to warn them all. Without causing a panic.’

  Roger nodded and locked the cell door.

  As we headed back outside into the deepening dusk, the ground under my feet felt unsteady, like it was moving. I stumbled and Luc caught hold of my arm.

  ‘You okay, Riley?’ Pa asked, but his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Fine. I’m fine.’ But I wasn’t fine. I don’t think any of us were. What were we supposed to do against an army of thousands? I didn’t want to lose everything. I didn’t want Grey to make us live a half-life worshipping a god of his creation. And I didn’t want to die. If he was coming for us, then I needed to be strong. We would need to fight him. It was the only way we would keep our freedom.

  Had I always known this day was coming? Had it been waiting for us all this time? We thought we’d been so clever, that we had tamed the world again, or at least our small corner of it. We thought we’d kept the chaos out and left the rest of the world to deal with it. But the chaos was coming to find us. It was seeking us out again. Had this day been inevitable all along?

  Chapter Nine

  Liss

  *

  Sarah led them out of the dining hall through a door at the back of the hall and they found themselves walking along a dark musty corridor. Annabelle’s cries had become whimpers again and thankfully she no longer resisted Liss’s attempts to hold her hand.

  Sarah kept walking. They passed no one else. It was eerie to be in such a large empty building.

  ‘Do any other people live here?’ Liss asked.

  Sarah did not reply and Liss felt too unsure of herself to ask again. They came to a door and walked through into another large unlit hall. One wall was made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, and a small curved moon hung outside in the black sky. Was this the same moon which shone into her bedroom window at home? Liss didn’t think so.

  Beyond the hall were yet more corridors, lined with doors which led into unknown rooms. Liss yawned. The truck ride seemed an age ago. She realised they were now climbing a wide staircase with a smooth wooden bannister. The wood felt warm under her hand and she caught a whiff of furniture polish.

  The floorboards on the landing creaked under their feet. A bell chimed outside.

  ‘Hurry now,’ Sarah quickened her pace. ‘I have no wish to be late. Hurry, girls.’

  Annabelle had slowed almost to a stop, so Liss hoisted her up into her arms and half-ran after the woman.

  Eventually, Sarah stopped outside a door. It was unlocked and she turned the tarnished brass knob, pushed the door open and walked inside.

  Liss followed and deposited Annabelle back down on the floor. They now found themselves in a large-ish room lined with small metal beds.

  ‘I must go,’ Sarah said. ‘There is a bathroom to your left. I suggest you go straight to sleep. The others will be along shortly and Leah will not be pleased if you aren’t in bed.’

  ‘Which one is . . .’

  ‘Any bed will do,’ Sarah interrupted. And with that, she left the room and closed the door behind her.

  Over the chime of the bells, Liss heard the click of a key turning. She waited a moment until Sarah’s footsteps had died away, and then she tried the handle. She had guessed correctly - they were locked inside.

  But despite the locked door, Liss felt a little calmer, less panicked. Maybe because she was finally away from the grownups. Things felt a bit fuzzy though. Her earlier fear had softened and now she simply felt exhausted.

  A large window beckoned at the end of the dark room. The girls walked over to it, Annabelle’s hand still gripping Liss’s. Metal bars striped the outside of the glass. An old fashioned street lamp stood in the courtyard below, throwing up a soft yellow light.

  Liss pressed her nose against the glass, inhaling the dusty window smell. Her mind felt blank. She couldn’t seem to think anymore. Every time she tried to latch onto a thought, it slipped away like a wriggling fish.

  Annabelle was quiet too. Liss looked down at the girl who stared out of the window. Dirty tear tracks lined her cheeks.

  ‘Come on,’ said Liss. ‘Do you want to choose a bed?’

  Annabelle nodded and sank down onto the one closest to the window. Liss took the girl’s shoes off and lifted her legs up onto the bed. She pulled the brown scratchy blanket out from under her and laid it across her body. Annabelle’s dark curls splayed out over the sheet. There was no pillow. The little girl turned on her side, stuck her thumb in her mouth and closed her eyes.

  Liss sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the girl’s hair back from her face, gently soothing her to sleep like her mum did for her when she was ill. The bells had stopped chiming and the room now sat in silence apart from Annabelle’s regular breathing. The younger girl’s mouth had fallen slightly open and her face appeared relaxed. She was asleep.

  Standing up again, Liss returned to the barred window. Beyond the courtyard lay a patch of grass and beyond that towered a high brick wall with tall trees behind it. Their leafy silhouettes were unmoving, like a painting.

  Liss suddenly remembered what Sarah had said about how Leah would be unhappy if she and Annabelle weren’t in bed when she arrived with the other girls. Liss had no pyjamas. Not even a toothbrush and her mouth tasted horrible. But she thought she’d better at least try and go to sleep. She was tired, but awake. Scared, but strangely not panicky anymore.

  She eased her trainers off and lay on the next bed along from Annabelle’s. Laying her head on the stiff cotton sheet, she wondered if she would ever fall asleep. What were mum and dad doing now? They must be mad with worry. And what about FJ?

  This place was creepy and weird. Why had those people brought her here? What did they want from her? She was just a girl. M
aybe this was all a terrible dream. She should close her eyes and try to sleep and maybe when she woke up she’d be back at home and she could tell FJ about the awful nightmare she’d had. She closed her eyes and willed sleep to come.

  Liss dreamed of dark places and dimly lit corridors. She tried to run, but her legs felt heavy as if they had been stuck to the floor with gungy glue. She should be able to run faster than this. She was good at running – almost as fast as FJ. But it was no good. And now the darkness was closing in on her like a thick cloud. And there were voices hidden inside the blackness – whispers and mumblings.

  She crouched down to try and shield herself from the dark, but it was no good. The blackness was now in her hair and on her face, crawling up her nose and into her mouth. The muttering was growing louder and more insistent. She tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth. And the voices in the darkness suddenly merged into a single clear voice:

  ‘Silence,’ the voice said.

  Liss awoke, sweating and shivering. She realised the voice in her dream had spoken in real life. With a spasm of dread she remembered where she was and forced herself to lift her eyelids a fraction. The room was still dark save for the light from the streetlamp outside. The other girls were now here in the room, climbing into the empty beds.

  The woman, Leah, stood in front of the bedroom door like a sentry. It was she who had spoken, waking Liss from her nightmare. Leah’s face was hidden in the shadows, an eerie image and so Liss squeezed her eyes shut again. Her skin was hot and her throat was so dry. She needed water, but she daren’t get up or ask. Maybe when Leah had left the room she’d be able to creep to the bathroom and fetch a drink.

  It seemed like it took an eternity for all the girls to fall asleep. For all the coughs and sighs and sobs to stop. Finally the room was still, save for the occasional creaky bedspring. Leah remained at the door like a soldier or a statue. She was standing so still, Liss began to wonder if she was actually real, but eventually she moved, making Liss jump.

  To Liss’s dismay, Leah walked into the bathroom. After a couple of minutes she emerged wearing a long nightdress, her hair in a loose braid down her back. She carried her clothes neatly folded in a bundle which she placed on the floor at the foot of an empty bed. And then Liss’s heart sank even further as the woman climbed into one of the beds and turned on her side, facing away. Leah was going to be sleeping here; she was going to be here all night.

  The need for a drink of water was now so great that she was prepared to risk the wrath of anyone to get it. With trembling fingers, Liss pushed back the bed covers and stood up. A couple of the girls eyed her, but Leah stayed still. Liss tiptoed past the beds and pushed open the door to the bathroom.

  The stone floor was freezing, but there was a sink with two taps and Liss made her way across to it with relief. She twisted the right hand tap and stuck her face under the thin trickle of water, gulping the liquid down. Once she’d had her fill, she crept back to bed, pulling the blanket back up to her chin. Annabelle was still asleep in the adjacent bed, her face flushed, her hair plastered around her face, light snores drifting from her open mouth.

  Liss watched the girl’s face, and the sight of it eventually soothed her back to sleep.

  Liss was used to waking up with the sun and didn’t mind getting out of bed before dawn. But the other girls were finding it much more difficult. She had managed to rouse Annabelle and now the two of them were sitting on the edge of the bed, the small girl’s arms wrapped around Liss, a dazed expression on her face.

  Leah was already up and dressed and poking at one particular girl who was still in bed, her eyes scrunched up tight, the blanket pulled up to her nose.

  ‘All of you are to shower quickly and quietly,’ Leah said. ‘There are towels on the table outside the bathroom. Leave your old clothes in the basket by the door. There are fresh clothes on the table.’ She turned her attention back to the sleeping girl.

  ‘Get. Up. NOW.’

  The girl opened her eyes. The expression on Leah’s face told her all she needed to know and so she slid out of bed and staggered over to the others, rubbing at her eyes.

  There seemed to be some confusion. Leah had said there were towels on the table, but the first two girls had taken one each and now there were none left.

  ‘Um, there’s only two towels,’ a girl about Liss’s age said to Leah.

  ‘Then you must share,’ Leah replied.

  Liss and Annabelle were fifth and sixth in the queue. They went in together and showered quickly under the lukewarm water. There didn’t appear to be any soap. The two small towels were both already sopping wet and so they used their old clothes to dry themselves.

  The new clothes were home spun – rough cotton shirts and shapeless pinafore dresses. Annabelle’s was much too big and the skirt of the pinafore hung down past her ankles. Liss helped her to roll up the sleeves of the too-long shirt and then she put her own clothes on.

  ‘It’s scratchy and horrible,’ Annabelle said. ‘I want to wear my dress.’

  ‘Keep it on for now. We can pretend we’re dressing up.’

  Annabelle thought about it for a couple of seconds. ‘Okay. Are we Cinderella?’

  ‘Yes. And Leah’s the wicked stepmother.’

  ‘I don’t like this game.’ Annabelle’s bottom lip trembled.

  ‘Nor do I, but we just have to play it for a little bit longer.’

  ‘And then can we go home?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Each girl is to take one of these,’ Leah said, her hand outstretched.

  Liss waited her turn and took an elastic band from Leah’s sweaty palm.

  ‘Hair must be tied back from your face. No loose strands or I will cut them off with my scissors.’

  Liss fixed her own mousy locks into a pony tail, before helping Annabelle with hers. Her curls were trickier to tie back.

  ‘Ow!’ Annabelle cried.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Leah asked, walking over. ‘Are my scissors required?’

  ‘No,’ Liss squeaked. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘You’ve a mark on your neck, girl,’ Leah said, pressing her forefinger painfully against Liss’s throat. ‘Did you not use the soap provided?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Liss said. ‘I must have missed a bit. Oh, wait, do you mean the half-moon shape? That’s my birthmark.’

  Leah pulled and pinched at the skin where Liss’s birthmark sat. ‘Looks like the devil’s mark to me.’ She crossed herself before doling out the rest of the elastic bands.

  Once all the girls were showered and dressed, they followed Leah out of the room and back down to the now-crowded dining hall. There must have been well over two hundred people sitting at the tables and they were nearly all children. Liss’s heart skipped a beat – maybe FJ was here . . . But she quickly realised the room was full of girls. No boys at all. No FJ.

  You would have thought that with all those people, there would have been plenty of noise. Chatter and clanging cutlery and all that type of thing, but Liss was spooked by the almost total silence of the room. Just the occasional throat being cleared and the scrape of cutlery.

  The girls followed Leah to a wide service hatch where three women were dishing out breakfast. Lissy followed what Leah and the others girls did. She took a bowl from a stack on the side and held it out as one of the women dumped a couple of ladles of porridge into it. Then she collected a spoon from a deep cutlery tray. She made sure Annabelle did the same before following their room-mates to the trestle table from the previous night.

  Once they were seated, a voice rang out across the room. Liss raised her eyes to see where it was coming from.

  At the far end of the room, several women sat at a table on a raised platform. One of the women stood, her voice clear and strong, carrying across the heads of all the girls. It looked like Sarah, the woman from last night.

  ‘Father, pardon our sins and accept our thanks for these and all other blessings. We thank you for leading us here
to him and for delivering more of your children unto his care. We ask you to help them in this unsettling time and help them tread the path of righteousness to glory. In Christ’s name we ask, Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ echoed the voices in the room.

  Sarah sat down and everyone began to eat. The porridge was surprisingly good, piping hot and sweetened with a little honey. Liss and Annabelle cleared their bowls quickly. Still nobody talked. Was it always like this? Did nobody ever speak here?

  Liss cast quick glances at the other girls on her table. None of them looked her way. They all kept their eyes down, focused on their breakfast. There was the tall girl with the dirty fingernails, the sleepy girl who hadn’t wanted to get out of bed this morning, three outsiders who still had matted hair and dirty faces despite showering, an older girl with short hair and a permanent scowl, Annabelle and her.

  At the next table, a small pretty girl with pale blonde hair flashed her a quick smile. This startled Liss and she immediately looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. She glanced back at the girl and gave her a nervous smile in return. The girl raised her eyebrows, smiled again and then turned her attention back to her porridge. She looked a bit older than Liss. Maybe she would get to talk to her later. Find out what was going on.

  Chapter Ten

  Riley

  *

  ‘Sounds like Fred and whats-her-name are a couple of crackpots,’ Eddie said. ‘We can’t do anything drastic on the word of two people. Especially two people with their track record.’

  Twenty minutes had passed since we’d been in the cells with Fred and Jessie and we were now gathered in the large formal dining room of our Edwardian family house. Ma and Luc's mother, Rita, were also here, as well as my Uncle Tom, who was a Perimeter guard and Roger Brennan, Head of Perimeter Security.

  Everyone was seated around the fruitwood table as Ma served up a hastily thrown together supper of chilli and salad. Luc sat opposite me but we hardly acknowledged each other; this afternoon’s closeness had evaporated.