Piers Torday - The Last Wild

‘I said — what do we make of those promises now?’

‘They’re barefaced liars!’ shouts the bearded man at the front, leaping up.

‘I hear you, Joseph, I hear you,’ says Ma, gesturing at him to sit down. ‘They killed all the animals the virus hadn’t took, but they still couldn’t get rid of it. Then they forced everyone to move to the cities, declaring this land — our land — a quarantine zone —’ more shouts and boos here — ‘and then …’ She looks down, grimacing, as if she doesn’t want to say the next bit. ‘Then they stopped giving us formula altogether.’

I give Polly a nudge in the ribs, but she’s staring at Ma, transfixed.

‘They wanted us to starve rather than carry on living in the countryside. Where we’ve lived all our life.’ The crowd aren’t whooping at this. They’re moaning.

‘And for the final insult —’ she spits on the fire, and it sizzles back in reply — ‘Facto told us that their top vet — the man meant to be looking after our animals — was the man who had caused the red-eye in the first place. The man whose experiments had gone wrong and unleashed hell on the world.’ The crowd are actually growling now. Ma curls her face into a flame-lit sneer and lowers her voice, and I have to strain to hear her, peering through the haze of smoke, as she says –

‘Professor Dawson Jaynes.’

There are more angry murmurs in the crowd — people start to shout and bang tin cups against the ground. I hang my head low, as if my dad’s name was written in glowing letters on my back. I can’t look at Polly or the mouse — but it doesn’t matter, I’m only just aware of where we are.

Because right now I’m somewhere else entirely, in my head, six years ago.

‘I’m working on a new …’ Dad had said, his voice trailing away as usual, not turning round from his computer, even though it was midnight and he hadn’t eaten anything that evening. Correction — we hadn’t eaten anything that evening. ‘This could be really … big.’ He dug his keyboard out from under the messy pile of papers on his desk, and brightly coloured shapes floated across the screen, bubbles and twisting spirals and spiky blobs. ‘Yes, Kes, this could change everything. This would really have made your mum …’

Click went the computer .

Ma pauses, letting the words sink in, and strides round to the other side of the fire. She looks over the crowd, blazing more fiercely than the fire itself. She pounds her fist into her other hand. ‘They said we were finished. They left us to starve. But now we shall take our revenge.’

Suddenly it’s like Ma is looking dead at us, and we both freeze, but then her gaze moves on.

‘Because, friends, a little miracle happened out on the plains today.’ A round of applause. ‘What if I was to tell you that I stumbled upon the son of Professor Jaynes himself.’ There’s a big cheer. I duck down even lower behind the crowd. Ma stops pacing and slows right down.

Everyone goes deathly quiet. This is what she’s been building up to all along.

‘Facto told us the animals are dead. They told us all the animals are dead. But they lied.’ She nods, agreeing with herself. ‘Because lo and behold, here is the son of the man responsible, in person, with a whole troop of living, breathing animals!’

A huge cheer goes up, and the bearded man with the flute plays a little scale on it that goes up and down. Ma lowers her hands, as if to say, ‘Enough.’ The muttering fades away.

‘So now,’ she says, the flames burning bright in her eyes, ‘we shall take back what is ours, what is our due after waiting and starving so long, all these long, lean years — we shall feast!’

The crowd start to chant, very quietly at first. She’s talking about food, but I have a very bad feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t feel less hungry right now.

‘Feast! Feast!’

We look around. Everyone is chanting. Every man, woman and child. It begins to get louder, and louder and louder.

‘Feast! Feast! Feast!’

Louder and louder the cries go, as all eyes turn back towards the tall barns of the farm.

‘FEAST! FEAST! FEAST!’

The whole crowd are on their feet, shouting, stamping, chanting –

There is a convoy of men making their way towards us from the barns –

Can’t see properly at first, they’re carrying something, pulling something, Ma looking on, gesturing them to hurry up –

And then all the chants and drums fade to nothing in my mind, like they’re happening on a different planet –

As I see what the men are pulling –

A crazed animal rearing and bucking.

Polly sees too.

‘Oh, Kester,’ she says.

It’s the stag.

He’s wrapped in ropes — ropes around his horns, ropes around his muzzle, ropes around his legs and body — and he’s bucking and rearing and kicking and bellowing. The ropes are held — just — by a fat man and a spotty skinhead, who struggle to hold on as the stag lashes out, his eyes rolling.

The crowd are going crazy now, surging and dancing around the stag — baiting him with shouts and cries. The last stag ever in the whole world.

Then the chanting and music grind to a halt.

There is silence apart from the crackling fire, and the stag straining at his ropes — every now and then the fat man calls out, ‘Hi-ya!’ and cracks a whip, which makes the stag rear and buck all the more. I can see he’s covered in cuts and scratches.

‘Don’t do anything. Not yet,’ whispers Polly.

But I don’t have a choice — because I am lifted clean off the ground, by an enormous arm around my waist.

Bodger.

With a grunt he pushes his way towards the fire, trampling junk and weeds, the crowd melting out of his way. It might be night but I feel like I have a bright searchlight shining right on me. I beat my fist against Bodger’s side, and might as well be hitting a concrete wall for all the difference it makes.

He dumps me on the hard ground right at Ma’s feet, and there’s a burst of applause, as if he’s just done a trick. Ma musses my hair, and I jerk away.

‘No need to be so unfriendly, Kester,’ she says. ‘Enjoyed the show so far, have you? Did you think it wasn’t for your benefit? Do you think we would have let you escape so easily?’ She grunts, like Bodger. ‘Well, you haven’t seen nothing yet. The star turn is still to come.’

Then, everyone watching with bated breath, she reaches into her belt and pulls out the massive knife.

‘You,’ she says, ‘you’re our star turn.’

A knife which she hands to me. It’s heavy and solid, pulling my arm down with the weight. I don’t want to — I can’t …

‘Go on,’ she says, pointing at the stag, rearing and bucking. ‘This is all your father’s fault. And in the country, this is how we make amends. You get first cut.’

My eyes widen and focus at the same time, taking in everyone and everything: the fire, shooting up to the stars, burning and hissing; Ma, her hand on my shoulder, gripping it tight; the faces of hundreds of hungry outsiders, nodding, urging me on, laughing, clapping, like this is a game …

Polly’s pale face right at the back of them, looking at me deadly seriously, as if she knows that what I do next will stay with us forever, that everything, all of it, rests on me; and finally, the stag himself, his muscles straining, a sheen of sweat all down his side.

The fat man pulls hard on the rope wound tight around his horns and the stag bellows in pain.