The Dark Wild by Piers Torday

Author:Piers Torday [Torday, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2014-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

PART 4: IRIS

Not a pinprick far away in a domed ceiling above, not fringing the end of a smooth metal shaft, but an actual crack of daylight that is almost reachable if I stand on my toes.

Then the General is scampering ahead, and I’m clambering up boulders behind him, some of them slipping, hardly even noticing when they bounce against my shins or catch my feet as they fall.

I deserve to suffer. After what I did.

Then, where there was a crack, there is a hole, a hole with bars across it, the cockroach easily sliding between them. A hole through which pale blue twilight floods, along with warm air which I gulp down. Then I’m banging the bars, not caring about cutting my hands or even smashing my knuckles, until, with a clang, they topple free.

I haul myself out of the hole, on to tarmac, soaking and gasping for air. My eyes adjusting to the light, I look around – the patch of grass, the brick walls, the iron railings – and can barely believe where we are.

Our Culdee Sack. A drain right in front of our house.

*I told you a cockroach knows his tunnels,* says the General.

Slowly sitting up, the first thing I do is feel the ground. It’s wet. Only spotted with rain, but rain all the same.

I feel my heart lurch. Animals believe rain is the tears of the sky, the tears the sky weeps every time an animal dies.

*Kester! You have to come now!* hisses the cockroach.

I haul myself up and – barefoot, my soaking clothes ripped to rags – I hobble after the General towards the house.

It’s very quiet. Too quiet.

I have to hope that Stone didn’t return.

The front door is still smashed open, after Aida’s gang broke in. I’m surprised Dad hasn’t replaced it already, or even put a temporary door across.

But it isn’t only the door that is smashed.

My heart rises in my mouth as I follow the cockroach down our hallway, spattered with muddy boot-prints and scratches, tracing smears and scrapes along the walls.

There is a noise in our kitchen.

A man talking.

I slide along our scuffed walls, to listen more closely. ‘The Amsguard is completed,’ says the man.

The voice is familiar but I can’t work out where from.

‘The Amsguard is completed,’ he says again, like he’s talking to himself.

‘The Amsguard The Amsguard The Amsguard.’

I walk into the room, and switch off the juddering picture of Coby Cott and the giant white towers. The ultrascreen is lopsided and the projector broken, dangling from the ceiling on a single wire. Our formula bowls lie in shattered fragments all over the floor.

*Dad?* I say in the voice I know he can hear, but I am not surprised to get nothing in reply.

I’m too late. I never should have left them. I tread softly as I head down to the lab, just in case.

I say lab, but all I can actually see is what’s left of Dad’s laboratory. Worse than when we discovered him imprisoned inside it.

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