Spiral

  Will shifted uneasily on his feet. “So the Styx programmed me — or someone — to make —”

  Drake waved him into silence. “Elliott and I watched all the films from the purging sessions. I regret to say” — he wheeled around to face Chester — “the upshot of it is that you mentioned a couple of the digits from the phone number, along with some Styx words that Elliott was able to translate.”

  “What . . . no!” Chester cried, blanching. “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Most likely the Styx conditioned you to call in and report our location. You may have even made some calls to them without knowing it long before we arrived here,” Drake said, without reprimand. “So the odds are they probably have a good idea of where we are right now.”

  “But . . . I wouldn’t do that!” Chester tottered back a step.

  Elliott went over to him, taking his hand. “You mustn’t blame yourself. You couldn’t help it.”

  “No, it wasn’t me,” Chester said, his voice uneven. “I’d remember something.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Drake said gently.

  Chester just looked at him, his eyes swimming with tears as he tried to speak, to say something to defend himself. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” he blurted and ran from the room. Mr. Rawls followed after him.

  “That went well,” Parry said without any suggestion of humor, then addressed everyone. “So now we’re on a condition of high alert, and we can’t stay here much longer. Our location is blown.”

  “But if it’s the Styx, why haven’t they attacked already?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps we’re on their ‘To Do’ list and they’ll get around to it when they have a spare moment,” Parry replied a little sarcastically. It was evident that he wasn’t taking this latest development well. “I’ve already warned Wilkie and the others, and Danforth is running a full systems check on the security cameras and thermal sensors around the estate to make sure they’re fully operational.”

  Drake took over. “What’s for sure is that we must be a prioritized target for the Styx. They won’t want us popping up at an inopportune moment and gate-crashing their party. When — and it’s not if — they show up here, we’ll have to leave in a hurry. So everyone should pack. And you should all check out a weapon from the armory in the basement.”

  Parry grimaced. “A damned nuisance.” He began to mutter to himself. “There’s too many of us. We’ll need more water and food to keep us ticking over in the alternative location, and I can’t do that with a wave of a magic wand.” Thwacking his walking stick hard on the floor, he hurried from the room, still complaining to himself.

  WILL CRADLED HIS STEN in his lap. “I feel better now I’ve got my old friend back.” He glanced up at Chester. “But are you OK about that Darklighting stuff?”

  Chester gave a small shrug. “What freaks me out is that I can’t remember a bloody thing about making any calls. Nothing at all.” He frowned. “Even that time in the cottage in Norfolk with nutjob Martha . . . there was a phone there. . . . Maybe I rang the Styx from it. I couldn’t have told them much because I had no idea where I was. When she bashed me over the head, I thought I was trying to call my parents. But maybe I wasn’t, and maybe she was right t —”

  “Don’t,” Will said. “You’ll end up going crazy yourself if you don’t just forget it. It doesn’t matter now. It’s done. And remember what they stuck in my head. That was worse.”

  “You’re right,” Chester agreed. “C’mon, it’s your move.” They were in the drawing room and on their second game of chess as a log crackled comfortingly in the fireplace. Drake had asked them to stay up until the early hours, in case unwelcome visitors decided to call at the estate.

  Will’s hand had wandered to his queen, but he withdrew it as his concentration shifted to the dancing flames. “Talking about Martha, remember all those times we played chess in her shack?” he said.

  Chester nodded.

  Will’s gaze was still lost in the fire. “We really thought Elliott was going to die,” he said.

  “You like her a lot, don’t you?” Chester asked casually, assessing his position on the board.

  Will didn’t answer straightaway. “Yes, I suppose I do. But you do, too, don’t you?”

  “Mmmmm . . . I don’t think she’s as keen on me as she is on you,” Chester said, still surveying his pieces.

  “I’m not sure about that,” Will mumbled, then focused on the game again with a grunt — it hadn’t been going his way.

  “You should say something to her,” Chester suggested.

  Will finally moved his queen, then spoke with candor because he felt that he could trust his friend. “No, not with everything else going on. It would make things too . . . too complicated.” Will glanced at Chester as it occurred to him that he could have broached the subject because he himself had strong feelings for Elliott, and his friend wanted his blessing. But when Chester remained silent, Will assumed this wasn’t his motivation. “I have to tell you, I’m not sure I’m cut out for all this relationship stuff,” Will confessed. “Not after what went on with my parents.”

  Will had been thinking about Dr. and Mrs. Burrows. Stuck in their lethargic and loveless marriage, they’d led separate lives for years. He couldn’t forget the acrimony between them when he and Dr. Burrows had returned to Highfield. Mrs. Burrows had made it quite plain that she wasn’t prepared to take her husband back.

  “Which ones?” Chester asked.

  “Huh?” Will replied.

  “Which parents? You mean your real ones?” Chester said.

  This prompted Will to think about his biological parents and what Cal had told him, how Mr. Jerome’s allegiance had been not to his wife when their infant son was losing his life to chronic fever, but to the laws of the Colony. Driven mad with grief, Sarah Jerome had deserted her husband when she’d done the unthinkable and escaped Topsoil.

  Although it seemed irreverent to do so, Will laughed out loud.

  Chester looked up with surprise.

  “Take your pick,” Will said. “They were all as bad as each other.”

  They heard hurried footsteps in the hallway, and Parry appeared at the door. “Multiple signals!” he bellowed at the boys, his paging device bleeping so rapidly, it almost became a solid tone. He went to the gong on the hall table and began to beat it, the urgent rhythm filling the house. Then he tore into his study with the boys following behind. Mr. Rawls, still manning the telex, was already on his feet. Parry went straight to the monitor on his desk. He jabbed at the keyboard, flicking through different camera views. “There! Got one on infrared!” Parry shouted. “They’re inside the wall.”

  Will could clearly see a dark form flitting under a tree. He drew in a sharp breath as, caught on another camera, a man stood in full view with the main gates of the estate behind him. “Look at the weapon,” Will said, instantly recognizing the long-barreled rifle with its bulbous night scope that the Limiters used. “It’s them!”

  “Oh, God,” Chester gasped. “It is!”

  “Well, it’s certainly not the vicar doing his rounds. And there’s another team,” Parry pointed out as a camera showed at least four men creeping in the lee of a wall. “We’ve got several breaches of the perimeter — all to the south.” Parry looked up as Drake entered with Colonel Bismarck. “Did you catch that?” he asked his son. “They’re here.”

  Drake nodded once. “Time to bug out.”

  Stepping from behind his desk, Parry consulted his watch. “The Styx are on foot, so it’ll take them eight — maybe nine — minutes to get here. Stick to the evac procedure we discussed,” he said to Drake. “Draw them east while we take the storm drain to the Bedford. And if Sparks isn’t waiting for you, just go without him. He can look after himself.”

  “Jiggs and Danf —?” Drake began.

  “Jiggs likes to do his own thing, and Danforth’s already left,” Parry interrupted, holding up his pager. Then he swept his arms at everyone in the study. “Now
, out — out — GET OUT!” he ordered. He went down on one knee beside his desk and flipped open a panel set into the floor. Inside a small recess was a key in a slot, which he turned. “I’ve primed the charges. They’ll not get a thing from this room.”

  Drake, Will, Chester, and Mr. Rawls met Elliott and Mrs. Burrows at the bottom of the staircase.

  “I sensed something was heading our way even before I heard the gong. I told Elliott to get dressed,” Mrs. Burrows said. “I take it we’re leaving.”

  “Yes,” Drake confirmed. “All of you grab your kit.” He surveyed the Bergens and weapons lined up at the back of the hallway. “My father will take you to the Bedford.” He threw a look at Colonel Bismarck, about to say something, but then seemed to check himself and addressed Will instead. “Got your lens handy?” he asked the boy.

  Will pointed at the top of his Bergen.

  “Good,” Drake said. “We won’t be using lights for most of the way, and I could do with a co-driver. You up for that?”

  “Sure . . . yes,” Will answered, flattered that he’d been picked instead of the Colonel.

  Having collected his Bergen and a couple of bags of equipment for Drake, Will didn’t have time to say good-bye properly. Giving his mother a quick hug, he turned to Elliott, but she was too busy getting herself ready to notice him. Then he and Drake rushed from the hallway and down the corridor to the kitchen. To Will’s surprise, Drake left the lights on in the room as he crossed to the back door, and even switched on the outside light.

  “You’re going to wave this about once we’re mobile,” Drake said, handing him a powerful searchlight. “We want them to see us.”

  “We do?” Will asked.

  “Didn’t I tell you we’re the hare?” Drake said with a chuckle. “We’re going to draw the Styx after us and give Parry a chance to slip quietly away in the Bedford.”

  They went toward the rear of the house, where there was a shed that Will had never bothered to investigate. As Drake swung the doors open, Will smelled gasoline, and in the small amount of moonlight, he could make out an angular vehicle. It had a windshield but no roof.

  “My old jeep,” Drake said, throwing his equipment into the back. “Had it since I was a boy.”

  “Whoa!” Will recoiled as a bizarre face loomed at him from out of the darkness.

  “Keep your pants on, laddie,” Sweeney growled. He turned to Drake, who was already behind the steering wheel. “Heard our guests coming up the drive. Caught snatches of something I didn’t recognize — might be words, but it sounded bloody ugly.”

  “They’ll be speaking Styx,” Will said. “That’s what their language sounds like.”

  “Ah,” Sweeney said with a rumbling laugh. “The Stickies talk funny, then.”

  “Both of you get a move on. Jump in!” Drake ordered. He was about to start the ignition, when he hesitated.

  “Go ahead,” Sweeney sighed, pulling his hat down over his ears. “Vehicle electricals aren’t too painful for me, although the current in the alternator puts my teeth on edge something rotten.”

  “No, I wasn’t thinking about that,” Drake said. “Why would Limiters speak during an operation? They’re too adroit, too good for that.” He shrugged, then started up the jeep, turning the headlights on full beam. “Time to shine that searchlight around,” he told Will.

  Revving the engine to make as much noise as possible, Drake backed the jeep out of the shed, then raced around to the front of the house and onto the drive. The wheels were churning up the gravel as Will pointed the strong beam down the hill where the Styx would be advancing.

  “That should do it, Will. No way they’ll have missed that!” Drake shouted above the roaring engine. He threw the jeep down the other side of the house, flooring the throttle to ensure it cleared a drainage ditch. Landing with a crash on the other side, they cut across several fields until Will saw a fence up ahead. But Drake didn’t stop, slamming straight through it and down an incline. “That’s the new north gate,” he laughed. “Lights out now, Will. Time to go dark.” He flipped his lens down at the same time as he extinguished the jeep’s headlights. “Silent running from here on in, chaps,” he said.

  Everyone filed after Parry as he swept down the flight of stairs to the basement. He hurried through the dimly lit and dusty corridor, taking them past the gym, the wine vaults, and finally the armory. As he came to a door of reinforced metal plate at the end of the corridor, he stopped to check that everyone had kept up.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he asked as Colly poked her head out from behind Mrs. Burrows.

  Not waiting for an answer, he turned back to the door and, from across it, lifted out an iron locking bar laced with cobwebs. “I might need some help with this,” he said to Chester, indicating the grips on the side of the door. As they both heaved, it wouldn’t budge. Then, on the second attempt, the door burst open with a scatter of rust and dirt. Chester was greeted by a blast of damp air, and as Parry’s flashlight beam cut into the darkness beyond, he could make out some kind of brick duct.

  “This chute leads down to the main drain. But mind yourself — it’s a mite slippery at the best of times,” Parry advised Chester, then gave him a hand through the opening. “Just slide yourself down it, nice and steady,” Parry added to the boy.

  Chester found himself on a slimy incline of around forty-five degrees. With his bulky Bergen on his back and his Sten hooked over his shoulder, he shone his flashlight into the pitch black below as he edged down on his bottom. He hadn’t gone very far when the slope became so wet and slippery he couldn’t control his descent. He tried to lean back and dig his heels in to slow himself, but it was no use. He skidded down the slope, building up speed until, with a large splash, his feet hit several feet of water.

  “Oh, just brilliant,” Chester grumbled, wiping the foul-smelling water from his face. As he straightened his Bergen on his back, his flashlight beam fell on a huge brown rat. At Chester’s cry of alarm, the rat took fright and scampered off. Parry had heard the cry and was calling to Chester.

  “Are you all right?” he shouted down the chute.

  “Why do I always always end up back in places like this?” Chester asked himself with a shiver. He shone his flashlight up at Parry, shouting, “Yes, I’m fine!”

  Then, as the others slid down the chute, he helped them, making sure they didn’t injure themselves as they landed. It didn’t seem to present any problem to Mrs. Burrows, who was using her new supersense. Parry came last, speaking to them as soon as he touched down. “This is the main storm drain connecting the lake to the river — nice example of Edwardian hydroengineering. But now we need to get our skates on.” He immediately began to jog through the muddy water.

  They all followed him, their lights ricocheting off the sides of the old tunnel built of ancient brick. Since he ran with a limp, it was clear that Parry found it taxing to move at speed. But Mr. Rawls was just as slow, losing his footing several times and falling into the water. Chester was there to help him up each time.

  In less than ten minutes, they’d reached the end. The wind chilled them in their sodden clothing as they emerged into a culvert, its almost vertical sides overgrown with ferns and other vegetation. Some twenty feet away, as the culvert widened out, Chester spotted the dark outline of a truck. With his shotgun in his hands, Old Wilkie appeared from around the side of the vehicle, and he and Parry immediately began to talk to each other in hushed tones.

  As the others approached the canvas awning over the back of the Bedford, Stephanie suddenly poked her head from under it. They were all soaking wet and splattered with mud, and for a moment, she regarded them with a look of consternation. Then she saw Chester. “Hi, it’s you! Gramps didn’t tell me you were coming, too.”

  “Er . . . yeah,” Chester replied.

  “Isn’t this sooo exciting! Nothing cool ever happens in this dump, and I, like, so adore this spy stuff. Guns and top-secret journeys in the night. It’s like being in a movie
!”

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” Elliott inquired.

  Chester was halfway through some mumbled introductions when Stephanie noticed Colly and gave a small whoop. “You found your dog thing!”

  “Keep it down back there,” Parry growled.

  “Ooooh, sorry,” Stephanie replied, just as piercingly, clapping her hand over her mouth as she made a silly face. “I’m always getting myself into trouble with my loud voice.”

  “It’s not the dog thing,” Chester told her. “It’s the . . . er . . . the other dog thing. There are two of them.”

  Stephanie nodded, aware that Elliott was staring up at her.

  “Anyway, I want you to come and sit next to me. I want my skier next to me,” Stephanie said. “Whoosh, whoosh!” she added, moving her hips and laughing brightly.

  “Whoosh?” Elliott repeated, frowning.

  “Skier?” Mr. Rawls asked.

  Chester gave them a helpless look, then swung his Bergen into the Bedford, and clambered up after it.

  “And I’m not, like, sitting anywhere near those dead pigs and cows,” Stephanie said adamantly. Now that he was under the awning, Chester saw that against the rear of the truck cab a dozen or so crates and blue plastic drums had been stacked. And above them, animal carcasses wound in some kind of cloth had been suspended. “Ewwww! See what I mean,” Stephanie burst out as she pointed at the gently swaying carcasses. “They might drip something totally yuck on my coat.”

  “No . . . yes, they might,” Chester agreed, wondering exactly how much she’d been told about their current situation.

  “Are we leaving now?” Colonel Bismarck asked Parry as he came over.

  “Yes, everyone needs to get in the Bedford. After a couple of hundred yards, the culvert drains into the river, which is running high for this time of year. So we’re all going to get wet,” Parry told them. He addressed the Colonel. “And I’d like you to ride shotgun.”

  “Ja. Of course,” the Colonel replied, patting his assault rifle.