The Three Most Wanted Read online

  The bus slowed and drew gently to a halt. Father Mark wasn’t a bad bus driver. I tried to draw deep, steady breaths, keeping my eyes closed.

  The door hissed open.

  “Hello.” Marian Forbes’ bright voice. “Are you coming on board?”

  “We need to see your travel documents. Are you a school group?”

  “That’s right. Heading for Venice.”

  “Group pass, then, please.”

  “Of course. Here you are.”

  A little beep as the guard scanned the group pass and the list of names appeared on his hand scanner. All real New Adults, safe in their beds somewhere in Yorkshire. The defection of most of the Facility’s boys to the Resistance had called for some last minute amendments—Miss Forbes and Mrs. Clayton had taken care of that whilst I was being carted half-conscious through the Fellest.

  “Forty-five students?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We must perform a headcount.”

  “Of course. Come aboard.”

  The heavy tread of someone mounting the stairs... I tried desperately not to tremble, not to gasp for breath, not to squeeze my eyes too tightly shut. Miss Forbes stayed silent until the footsteps were perhaps halfway up the bus, then began to talk again, presumably to a guard who still stood by the door. Hoping to distract them just that little bit more?

  “Must say, I’ve been on quite a few school trips to the Continent and this is the first time the barriers have been up on the bridge. Looks like you’ve had some trouble. Is it because of that escape?”

  “Just a precaution,” was the noncommittal reply.

  The footsteps reached the back of the bus, a slight pause—about the length of two pairs of long legs—then they retreated again.

  “Forty-five,” confirmed the guard.

  “Glad to hear it!” laughed Miss Forbes.

  “I’m sure you are,” said the voice, tolerant but uninterested. “On you go, have a nice trip.”

  “Thanks. Have a good afternoon.”

  The door hissed closed. The bus eased forward.

  “I don’t know about your joining the Sisters of Revelation, you should go to Hollywood,” said Father Mark, once we were moving again. Miss Forbes laughed rather hysterically.

  Easing my eyes open a crack, I looked out the window as the barrier slid past. Rows of bullet holes scored the concrete walls of the checkpoint booth and over by the side of the bridge a patch of freshly scorched and bubbled pavement suggested something large had been blown up. An armored vehicle?

  The Resistance were supposed to have gone through here three or four hours ago, about the time we’d left York, making very sure to be noticed. They’d done that, all right. Luckily for us. Knowing—or so they thought—exactly where their quarry now weren’t, the EuroGov had promptly relaxed the checks on those travelling through and exiting the British Department.

  The bus sped sedately on—sitting up and opening my eyes properly, I stared out at the channel. Grey blue, stretching away to the horizon. The mighty supporting arches of the bridge towered above us. Among all the climate crises and unending economic slumps, mankind had still managed a few technological achievements since the dizzy highs of the late twentieth century—and this was one of them.

  Bane took Jane’s place and slipped his arms around me, feeling me trembling.

  “There, we did it! And getting off the island was always going to be the hardest bit, wasn’t it?” He put on a confident voice—I rested my head on his shoulder and didn’t mention the one and a half thousand kilometers still to go.

  “Quite a sight, isn’t it?” I said instead.

  “Is it just. One sec...” Gently detaching me, he moved along the aisle, opening all the roof windows. “Smell the sea, Jon?”

  Jon stared into space with an entranced look on his face.

  “Thanks, Bane. I’ve never been to the sea.”

  “Well, you’re over it, now.”

  The Resistance had gone to town on the French checkpoints. Only one booth left standing, bullet holes and blistered pavement everywhere, and a group of engineers still trying to winch in a tank that had smashed through the thick bridge wall and dangled precariously over the water. No barriers left to put down—the lights were green anyway. The horse was gone, why cause backups by shutting the stable door now?

  I peered grimly at it all from behind the curtain.

  “I wonder how many guards they killed.” The Resistance hated the EuroGov just as much as I did, but they placed no more value on human life than the EuroGov—personally I thought they deserved each another.

  Bane said nothing.

  “Perhaps they ran for it,” said Jon.

  “There’s nowhere to run,” said Bane.

  “Did you know about this?” I asked him.

  “They said the Frogs would distract the checkpoints when they reached the other side, that’s all.”

  “You knew what they were packing, though.”

  “Yeah, but if you’re going to try and run the Channel Bridge by force, you don’t leave the bazookas at home, do you? They weren’t going to use more than they had to. Didn’t look like they had, at the other end. But I didn’t speak to the Frenchies.”

  “S’pose not.” He’d a point. From the look of the crumbled remains of the booths, most of the bazookas had come from the landward side.

  Bane’s face lightened slightly. “I’d love to hear the story behind that tank, though!”

  “What tank?” asked Jon.

  A massive highway sign hung over the traffic on the main autoroute out of Calais. My breath caught in my throat at the three photos displayed there, six meters high. Me. Bane. Jon. Beneath, it simply said ‘Wanted: call 112 immediately’.

  “How’d I make the three most wanted?” muttered Jon, after Bane filled him in.

  “You’re too easy to spot,” Bane murmured back. “They figure if they find one of us three, they find us all.”

  Everyone’s eyeballs pretty much rolled up in their heads as the sign went over us.

  “Margo,” demanded Rebecca, “why do they want you? They were after you back at the Facility, weren’t they?”

  “What did you do to piss them off so badly?” asked Jane, eyes narrowed.

  “Look in that bag, Marian...” Father Mark’s voice came quietly to us, “that’s right. Pass that book back to Jane and Rebecca.”

  A shiny new copy of I Am Margaret arrived in Jane’s hands—she stared at it uncomprehendingly.

  “You wanted to know where the stories went. There they are,” I told her.

  “The winning postSort novel,” said Bane. “Ignore the name on the front, that’s just some treacherous tart back in Salperton—Margo wrote that book.”

  “It’s all about Sorting,” said Jon. “They published it ‘cause they thought it was fiction, then Margo told the world she wrote it and it’s all true and the EuroGov developed this terrible thirst for her blood.”

  Jane opened it wonderingly, her brows drawing together as she skimmed lines here and there. She looked up at last with a troubled gaze, as though something had just occurred to her. “Margo... what exactly did they do to you in there?”

  My insides dissolved as the memories flooded me—the pain, the terror, the helpless hopeless helplessness...

  “Nothing.” I grabbed Bane, burying my face in his chest—I felt him shaking his head at Jane and no doubt glaring at her.

  We drove on until we began to see signs for the town of Omer, by which time I’d stopped shaking and disentangled myself from Bane enough to look out the window again. Father Mark left the main autoroute and drove into the forest. All very flat forest, here, nothing rising on the horizon. All fields, once, I suppose.

  Soon we came to a halt in a turnoff.

  Bane looked at me.

  “Are you sure?”

  I swallowed and Jane said, “You’d be better off with us, wouldn’t you?”

  “No,” I said quietly. “The Resistance have no
w done their level best to disappear. They’re heading for the Spanish department and the EuroGov will probably be vaguely on their tail. But because they can’t be quite sure where they are, there’ll be checkpoints at every major town on the continent. And though they’re unlikely to demand individual ID cards from a bus with a proper group travel pass,” please, Lord? “they will almost certainly take a look at each and every person on board. You see why we have to get off?”

  “Can’t we just drive along back roads like this?” suggested Rebecca.

  “A bus off the main autoroute will attract attention,” said Father Mark quietly. He’d come up the aisle unnoticed. “Especially one supposed to be driving straight to Venice. Until we get to the Italian department we cannot afford to attract any attention at all. All it takes is for them to demand our actual ID cards and... Well. Enough said.”

  The only person on board with a safe ID was Marian Forbes.

  I looked at Bane, trying to ignore the pleading in his eyes and the terror writhing inside me. “We’d better get changed.”

  Wordlessly, he lifted a duffel bag from the luggage rack and began to empty it. My jeans and tunic, Jon’s clothes and his own. Time to part company with my plastic sheet.

  Fully-dressed for the first time in almost a week, I wobbled and winced my way down the aisle straddle-legged like a cowboy, then Bane scooped me up, carried me down the steps and stood me on my feet again. Jane and Sarah managed to trail us off before Father Mark made everyone else stay in their seats. Sarah clung to me, crying—Jane just hovered.

  Pulling three hiking rucksacks from the bus’s hold, Bane and Father Mark began to fasten two of them together.

  “Bane,” I objected, “Jon can’t carry both of those!”

  “Well, I’m going to be carrying you, so you can’t carry yours.”

  True, but... “It’s such a lot for Jon to carry.”

  “Bane’ll be carrying a rucksack and you. That’ll weigh more,” said Jon stiffly.

  “I know, but no offence, Bane doesn’t need to concentrate so hard on where he’s going.”

  “He brought me a stick.” Jon held up a long, thin, telescopic hiking stick. He’d left his old garden cane in the hold—too noticeable.

  “We’ve no choice, Margo,” said Bane. “The only stuff we could throw out is food and it won’t get us far as it is.”

  A shiver ran down my spine at this reminder of the difficulties ahead. “Well—I s’pose we can always dump some if it’s too much.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Jon hefted the combined pack up onto his back and staggered slightly. “Phew. Not that I’ll be sorry when you’re walking again!”

  “Okay, we’d better move.” Father Mark slammed the luggage holds. “Back aboard, you two.”

  “I’ll see you soon, Sarah,” I assured her, a slight exaggeration even if everything went exactly according to plan for both groups. “You’ve got to go back on the bus now. Don’t be upset, Mark will look after you, and Rebecca and Caroline and Harriet will too.”

  “And me.” Jane gave Sarah a little pat on the shoulder and pushed her towards the bus. “Go on.”

  Since Jane had originally treated most of our fellow captives as near-subhuman, I was moved to hear genuine affection in her voice. It must have shown on my face, because Jane hovered for a moment more before finally giving me a quick, awkward hug and chasing Sarah up the steps. Father Mark hugged me as well and clasped hands with Jon and Bane—blessed us each in turn.

  “Good luck. May the Lord be with you.”

  “And with you,” we said pretty much in unison, our eyes flicking to the crowded bus behind him.

  He climbed back on board, the doors hissed closed, the engine started and the bus began to move, roaring away down the road. We stood and waved until it disappeared among the trees—then stood together in a long silence.

  ***+***

  3

  PRIME REAL ESTATE FOR HAPPY CAMPERS

  “I think… I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t actually do it.” Jon’s voice was subdued.

  “Father Mark can count.” My throat was tight, though. “He’s not going to risk the forty-two for the sake of three.”

  “Especially not when the three are so determined to be noble.” Bane gave me a dirty look.

  “Oh, don’t start. The more I think about it, the more I suspect we’d be barely any safer staying aboard. How many checkpoints could we get through before someone recognized one of us? Then they’d all get killed too. Thought about that, Bane?” This probably was our best chance, as well as everyone else’s. I wanted to believe it, anyway.

  Best chance doesn’t mean actual chance, though, does it? I pushed the thought away.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Bane, hefting the remaining rucksack onto his back and picking up the sling he’d made back in the Fellest. “Let’s get you back in this thing, okay?”

  “I might be able to walk, you know,” I told him. “It’s not as though my muscles were cut or my legs injured or anything major like that.”

  “Right, of course not, those evil dismantlers just peeled the skin off your thighs while you were still conscious—nothing major at all! Get real, Margo! Anyway, if you push too hard, you might get feverish again—Father Mark said so—and we’re not taking that chance, okay?”

  I gave in as gracefully as possible—with considerable relief. After a bit of trial and error—and a few yelps from me—we figured out the sling—and me—had to go on before the rucksack. But eventually we were heading away from the road, up a slight slope into the forest. Bane’s omniPhone had illegal trig mapping—technology usually reserved for the EuroArmy—so at least we weren’t likely to get lost.

  Jon tried walking alongside, swinging his hiking stick in front of him, but we weren’t following any sort of trail and the fallen branches and mossy hillocks caught feet and stick every other step. Soon he took Bane’s shoulder with his free hand, both to guide and steady himself.

  “Let’s get at least eight kilometers into this forest.” Bane pointed to the screen on his phone as they stopped an hour later for a drink. I blinked sleepily and tried to listen. “Then we can pitch camp and wait until Margo’s well enough to start walking in short stages.”

  Jon agreed, but by the time the sun began to drop in the sky they were both breathing in short gasps and their determined stride—or trip, stride, trip in Jon’s case—had become a weary trudge.

  Shortly after Bane announced monosyllabically that we’d gone six kilometers, Jon cracked.

  “Hadn’t we better look out for a good place to stop?”

  Man speak for: “I’m done in; surely you’re done in?”

  Bane just grunted but barely fifteen minutes later, we came to a stream with shelving grassy ledges running down to it, and he came to a halt. “Y’know, that looks like prime real estate for happy campers.”

  “Then for pity’s sake let’s take up residence without delay.” Jon couldn’t keep the thread of exhaustion from his voice.

  They scrambled down onto the grass of the nearest ledge, and Bane sat me down on a rucksack. “Jon, tent? I’ll collect some firewood. Well, I’ll scout around first...”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, as soon as you bring some wood,” I said, “I’ll cook. I can do that sitting down.”

  Bane muttered something about me taking it easy, but went off without voicing any more audible objection—must be tired.

  Jon unfastened the two identical rucksacks from one another and unerringly opened the closer one. How’d he identified it...? Oh, a scrap of fabric was tied to the top of each one. A length of silk ribbon on mine, a strip of denim on Jon’s and some hairy woolen stuff on Bane’s. Clearly Bane had never seriously considered leaving Jon behind.

  Jon took out the round tent tin, feeling around the grassy area.

  “You’ve got it smack in the middle of a large enough space, if you won’t bite my head off for saying so.” I’d a feeling he was actually tired enough to do so.
r />   He just said “thanks” and pushed the lever. The tin’s quarters shot in four directions on their telescopic poles, the tent fabric unfolded upwards with a sibilant whump and with a thud the pegs went into the ground. A chink from one corner—one had found a rock.

  Jon traced his way straight around to that corner. Click-click-click went the ratchet as he pulled the peg up for another try. Thud. All sorted. He began to pull out the guy rope reels and trigger the pegs. Squeak, squeak, squeak, thud...

  Pulling my rucksack towards me I unfastened it to examine the contents. My own sleeping bag from home nestled in the bottom compartment—an ancient, ex-tourist one, of course, but still a good three-season bag. Several foil survival blankets were tucked in with it—a fourth season, just in case.

  Squeak, squeak, squeak, thud.

  I raised the sleeping bag to my face and inhaled—then almost wished I hadn’t. The scent of home—the wave of homesickness was sharper than anything I’d felt in all the four months in the Facility. Because home no longer existed...

  Squeak, squeak, squeak, thud.

  The secret sanctuary where I’d been baptized and confirmed was now an innocuous broom cupboard, the priest hole an innocent alcove. Perhaps some of our things still remained, photographed and prodded and poked through by EuroGov agents, but not the people who made it home. Lord, please keep Mum and Dad safe!

  Squeak, squeak, squeak, thud.

  “There. Home sweet home.”

  Well, if home was mostly made by people, Jon wasn’t wrong. A normal change for a New Adult, even if my adult freedom had been seized by force and wiles and remained as fragile and elusive as a flower’s scent on a windy day.

  Our physical home couldn’t be much smaller and still fit us all inside. It didn’t even have a porch; the legally required enclosed forest stove burned in any weather and the cook would just have to get wet.

  “We’re going to have to remember we’re supposed to be rich, if we meet anyone,” I remarked, handing the sleeping mats in to Jon.

  Everyone we knew from our little town would be out hunting for work. Failing that, showing up each day at the place they wanted or thought they were most likely to obtain a job, begging for errands to run, making coffee and generally getting underfoot until the boss cracked and granted them informal apprenticeship, proper employment, or told them to clear off and never come back.