Cyberwitch Academy: Learn or Burn

Chapter 15

Nobody is following me. Nobody is following me? I break my run into a fast walk. I want to vomit. Just want to crouch down in the gutter and keep throwing up until my whole body is empty. The ringing in my ears is like an alarm bell. Thoughts are just a slide show of horror. Focus. Breathe. I actually punch myself in the diaphragm.

I vaguely register the new weirdness in the car park as I pass by a flatbed truck piled high with wood. Then there is a horse and cart, like something out of a Sherlock Holmes movie. Except it's white. The red dragons of the witch hunt painted on the sides. The driver tends to the horse. Horse manure is an odd smell for the city. Teams of men are carrying the wood towards the sports field. They're building some kind of tower. It all adds to the feeling I'm trapped in a dream.

As I half walk, half run toward the school gate, I'm pulling civilian clothes out of my school bag. I pull on a hooded top and draw the hood up high. Then I take it down, figuring who looks more like a truant than the kid with a hood up?

And I realise I'm walking straight towards the back of the protestor, the man who grabbed my hair the previous day. He's blocking the exit.

I don't have time for this. He has his back to me. I move up behind him, he has all his weight in one leg, leaning against a fence post, still holding that dumb bag. I stamp hard on the back of his knee using all my body weight.

He goes down like sack of potatoes.

I sprint right out into the road, horns blaring, cars swerving. The protestors shout, but they don't follow me. I run up the grassy bank and push through the thorny bushes desperately, and I stumble into a wire fence. Then I'm climbing, scratching my chest and belly as I fall over the top and down into Richmond Park.

The Park is massive, almost like I've left London entirely and it's wild, totally overgrown. After a long-wet summer, the growth is crazy, and abundance of greens almost to the horizon, edged with the dark greys of cityscapes beyond.

The air throngs with mosquitos. I'm getting eaten alive, at least I got my malaria vaccination. What were once neatly cropped fields are now head height with grasses and wild flowers, and huge swathes of a strange plant that twines itself around the grasses, studded with drooping, dying white flowers.

There are the remains of a massive tent city. And clues to the violent eviction that left it empty. Broken things. Left behind, decaying shoes. Faded toys half swallowed by bramble. I try not to look at the bones. Must be animals. Surely.

I walk for about a half hour, away from the road. I can see a little wood. Is that a flock of little parrots? I don't even have the words to describe all this nature. Hardly ever left New York before. After the city states broke up with their nation's, city folks don't often risk crossing the borders.

The serious business of escape is calming me somehow. Blocking out the horrific images, the sense of being possessed by something evil, they fade away as I immerse myself in the grasses, thinking the way my ancient ancestors must have once thought about moving through the wild without being seen. How to step as lightly as possible, leave the least amount of trail. Trying to swallow down the intense flashbacks that come sporadically. No time for trauma.

I'm moving towards the woods, If I can get there, I think I can lose them, when they come for me, which they will, won't they? Was it even real? Why did the hunters in the car park just ignore me?

Then the sirens. Then the thundering of helicopter blades. Dogs barking. Then the whining of UAVs. Drones. I know enough to know that hunters don't use tech. This is regular police.

###

I make it into the woods, and to my surprise there is a little gate, drowning in thorny bushes, heavy with blackberries. And there is a sign. 'The Arabella Plantation'. I'm so tired, my mind starts glitching again.

HERE I AM

Once upon a time, this must have been a beautiful spot to come for a Sunday stroll. Now it's utterly wild. It's full of creeping life, thronging with insect noise, and it's dark interior and thick canopy offer my best hope at getting under cover.

LITTLE JUMPING JOAN

I find a spot where I can use a low hanging branch to swing over the fence and into the plantation. The pathways have been swallowed up mostly. It's so beautiful and weird I almost forget the danger. I'm exhausted. My body is dumping sleep chemicals into my blood stream, insulating me against the mental shock. I have a deep need to ball up and sleep.

WHEN NOBODY IS WITH ME

So, I climb into this tree and find a place to curl up and black out.

I'M ALL ALONE

###

Then I hear a twig snap. I'm still in the tree, looking outward through a thick bundle of branches. Must be late, as the last of the daylight is seeping away. I'm really, really cold. And I see a figure, a couple of hundred yards away. I freeze. I'm concentrating all my effort on breathing silently. Trying not to shiver.

This person, I can only see the eyes, is wrapped entirely in black, black hood up, black face mask over the mouth and nose, moving like they've been trained. She turns in my direction and in the gathering twilight I see one green eye and one brown, piercing, scanning the gloom. Some type of cop? Maybe this is how the hunters hunt? Take off the white and red?

But they're heading in the wrong direction. And just when their back is turned, I edge myself out of the tree I'm in as slowly and silently as possible. And I literally crawl through the undergrowth in the opposite direction. I'm under thick bushes and I keep going this way for about fifteen minutes moving slow to be quiet. Back of my hands and legs getting ripped to shreds by thorns.

Then I see a small clearing, surrounded by all kinds of trees, like something out of a fairy tale. There's a deep pool, covered in lilies and algae. It stinks. And there's another weed of some kind, filling the whole scene, weird little purple flowers, and buzzing, thick with buzzing, swarming with flying bugs of all kinds, they crawl all over me, and then I see her, across the pond, like a Buddha almost, a statue of a woman. Of the woman. The one who came before all. La antes que todo.

I'm mesmerised. I can't help but approach. Again, the sense of not being in control. I'm hearing voices again.

'Remember me?'

'Should I?'

Hope I'm not saying this out loud. Not sure.

The statue is huge, maybe fifteen feet high, looks really old, worn green stone covered in moss and lichen. It's a woman. Vast stone breasts hang down over a swollen belly and her face, it's almost totally disfigured the upper half like a swarm of bees has been carved into it.

And around the base, broken tech, old phones, all kinds of bizarre trash and an explosion of feathers where it looks like a fox has recently slaughtered a peacock. The trees around the statue are full of sleeping green parrots. I think I must be dying.

'You made me a promise.'

'Yeah, I suppose you're right.'

Then I notice I'm knee deep in the freezing water and I'm shivering. I'm going to freeze to death out here.

You know what. I'm just a kid. I can't handle this on my own. I'm innocent. I'm sick. I need help. I don't know what's happening to me. I need grownups. I need a warm bed. I'm innocent. I'm shivering really hard now.

'I hurt that girl. Is she dead?'

'Be there for me.'

'How?'

Silence.

And when I hear the dogs coming, and the drones, I don't run. 

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