The storeroom door burst open. Everyone waited for the guns to fire and for their misery to end. They closed their eyes, waiting for the inevitable.
There was only silence, followed by an echo of an occasional shot firing in the distance. Standing in the doorway was a soldier. He held a gun but it was pointing towards the floor. He did not look like a lifer or one of Staan’s men. He wore a traditional camouflage uniform and his head was shaven. He smiled and did not look like a threat.
‘Found you at last! Zordar said that, if you didn’t arrive at Ryde by nightfall, then we were to come and look for you. He thought that you might get captured by Staan. My name is Dernum. I lead a peace taskforce. Staan and all his men are dead. We’ve come to rescue you. You all need to come quickly,’ said Dernum. ‘Word will get around that Staan has fallen and this area will be up for grabs and there will be a new war. It will be morning in a few hours; we need the cover of darkness to escape from here.’
‘Thank you, Dernum. Have you really managed to kill Staan? How did you do it?’ asked David, rising to his feet.
‘It was difficult. It’s almost as if Staan had eyes in the back of his head,’ Dernum explained. ‘It was Zordar’s idea. He suggested that I distract him with bait, an abandoned baby, then creep up behind him and slice his head off with a silver sword. Staan’s downfall was a stillborn baby. His greed was his undoing.’
‘It does not surprise me. Staan was rotten to the core. Zordar was a good man; we will never forget him,’ said David.
Dernum looked puzzled.
‘Unfortunately Zordar was shot by the Channel patrolmen,’ continued David. ‘I am sorry to tell you this news. I know you and Zordar were good friends.’
Dernum’s smile faded and he looked miserable. ‘I don’t believe it! Not Zordar! We’ve been through so much together. I will miss him ... I can’t believe it.’ Dernum was silent for a moment and then took a deep breath to focus on the task at hand. ‘Look, we haven’t got much time. We’ve got to get a move on; you can tell me what happened as we travel.’
Dernum’s troops arrived and everyone gathered their bags up and made their way to the door. Dernum then saw the men in the corner. He looked thoughtfully at them. ‘One of these men will be able to walk. I’m not leaving the other one behind, while he has breath in his body, he’ll have to come with us.’ He looked at Kayleb’s rope. ‘We’ll need that, though.’
Kayleb handed Dernum the rope and watched as he made a carrier for the man. Dernum worked quickly and skilfully and in no time at all the limbless man was strapped to the back of one of Dernum’s men. Kayleb saw the lips of the man moving. He seemed to be saying ‘thank you’ but no voice came from his lips.
The man with one leg was willingly assisted by two of the soldiers and eagerly left the storeroom. He was smiling as he left. Freedom was only a hair’s breadth away.
Kayleb, Rowan, Cornwall and Indigo kept together and walked closely behind Dernum and his men. Rowan looked at Staan’s men. Some were dead and some lay there dying, their bodies slumped over the debris caused by the explosion. Some of the lifers were dead and looked like they had been frozen. They were still holding their laser guns with their fingers on the triggers; Rowan avoided looking at their eyes. He was very impressed by Dernum. He had managed to wipe out Staan’s troops without any casualties of his own. Rowan then looked at David with disgust. David had been messing with all their lives; he clearly knew what was going to happen in the future and Rowan felt that he was playing some sort of cruel game. David wasn’t to be trusted. The agony he now felt inside had gone on too long. He would be making his way back to London by himself.
As they left the crumbling building, giant shards of crystal lay scattered in the street. Staan’s head had been stuck on top of one of them, like a traitor’s head outside the Tower of London thousands of years ago. Indigo looked away, repulsed. Blood ran down the spike of crystal and, although nobody was attached to Staan’s head, Staan mouthed foul words as everyone passed him by. A flock of crows had begun to gather around Staan’s head. They cawed to each other, watching and waiting for a chance to peck out his eyes; some scavenged in the rubble looking for bits of flesh.
On the very edge of the city, in the first field they came to, Kayleb was overjoyed to find Max again. Max was eating a rat he had caught. He had spotted Kayleb first and bounded over to him with the rat still hanging limply from his mouth. Soon the city and its filthy streets were far behind them. Dernum had led them through fields and through woodland. It was still dark when everyone arrived in Ryde on the northern coast of the island. By some miracle, they had managed to avoid being attacked by any more lifers. Kayleb wondered who Dernum was. He didn’t seem to be like either a lifer or an ordinary Londoner. He reminded him of Conrad. Kayleb decided that he and his men had probably worked for the police authorities at some stage and had somehow ended up in the wilderness. The people of London who didn’t function properly in the positions they were allocated, were usually placed in another job. Kayleb wasn’t sure what happened to the failed policemen. They couldn’t be given another job because they would be picked on by their co-workers.
Dernum had two small high-speed dinghies that had heel chip scramblers and radar on-board. There was one dinghy for those who wanted to help David and another for taskers who wanted to return to London and forget all that had happened to them.
Rowan, along with Prozac, immediately entered the taskers’ boat. Everyone else, except Kayleb, clambered aboard David’s boat. Kayleb stood on the shore and looked anxiously at both boats. Max was running up and down the beach chasing the waves.
‘Get in this boat!’ Rowan called to Kayleb. ‘You really don’t want to be getting into his boat. You’ll only end up being thrown back into the wilderness again. It’s pointless helping David. He’s failed before; why would he succeed this time? If you get into this boat our lives will return to normal. Come on, Kayleb!’
Kayleb sighed. What was normal? The past few weeks hadn’t been normal; they had been disturbing. He wanted to see if Helen was still alive. Kayleb looked at David. If he stayed with David then he could bring David to Helen to heal her. He couldn’t lose contact with David; it was Helen’s last hope. He did not want to forget what he had been through; he did not want to be a victim again. Quietly Kayleb walked to David’s boat and climbed in. Max followed behind.
‘Loser!’ shouted Rowan, as Kayleb climbed into David’s boat. Dernum gave instructions to the men driving the boats and then helped to push the boats into the sea. He waved and then disappeared into the undergrowth, blending into the vegetation like chameleons. Kayleb looked for Cornwall. She was seated next to David at the front of the boat. Kayleb thought he would find her crying over Rowan. She seemed to be quite calm and didn’t even look at Rowan’s boat heading off into the distance. Kayleb was surprised and thought that he would never understand girls. They were curious creatures.
It did not take long to reach the coast of London with its hundreds of white wind turbines stretching into the sky and with every last space covered with either a garden-topped apartment or a polytunnel containing crops. Kayleb had mixed feelings. He knew that, once he stepped under the invisible protective shield, he would be returning to a civilisation that he knew. The difference now being that he would be free and critical of his homeland. Kayleb thought of Rowan. He was the loser. He wondered how Rowan could return to London as it was. Liberty was never thought about: following the program and all its rules was a Londoner’s life. Self-expression was quashed and punished. Something was lacking in London and hopefully David would be capable of making a difference. Kayleb hoped some good would come of David’s plans for London but he also wondered if people would change. They were so institutionalised now that any improvement would be met with resistance.
The wind that blew across the Channel was refreshing and the quickening sunrise felt inspiring. The future felt much brighter for Kayleb and he knew that he had made the right decision.