Piers Torday - The Last Wild

A picture I’ve found myself staring at many times before. He has such a strange face. Something weird about it that I can’t explain — like he doesn’t look quite real. Apart from his eyes, which stare straight through you, seeing everything.

I look away.

The thing you notice most about the rooms, once the lift has beeped shut again, and the wardens have turned the lights off behind them, is that there’s almost no noise. There are no screams and shouts from the Yard, just every now and then the squeak squeak of rubber shoes along the corridor outside.

I know it’s only me down here, sat on a plastic chair facing an empty desk, but you hear things in the quiet, you see. The sound of something shifting its weight on the ceiling above, or a gust of air that could so easily be a breath. Then, out of the corner of your eye, a shadow seems to bend and slide along the floor — a shadow with eight legs. Another varmint.

A black spider tapping about.

I hate spiders. How it got in here, the most sterilized part of the whole Hall, I don’t know. I just sit still, count to ten and hope it doesn’t come near me. When I get out, I’ll tell Dad about the Doctor’s rooms. How they leave you there, all on your own in the dark, for hours, just to wind you up. You can’t admit you’re afraid of the dark here because that makes you a wuss, but I am. If Dad knew, he’d never allow it, I know he wouldn’t.

It was raining that night, raining a lot, hitting the windows in noisy splats. It wasn’t properly dark, because of the moon. I was woken up by a strange sound from downstairs. I still remember how the toys on my shelf looked cross, with the shadows of the raindrops flicking across them, as I turned on the light to make the darkness go away.

For a moment everything in my room — the clothes in a mess on the floor, the toys on the shelf — they all looked normal and happy.

But then I heard the door downstairs ripping open.

I got out of bed to go and get Dad. The landing was pitch black, and I couldn’t find the light switch. The door ripped again, and I wanted to cry out for him, but I couldn’t. I knew I’d have to go into his room to wake him up by shaking his shoulder.

Perhaps he just left the door open, I thought, and started to go down the stairs extra quietly so as not to disturb him.

I got halfway down when I heard a whispering noise that came in with a wind, blowing across my face and making my cheeks cold.

The door was definitely open. At the bottom of the stairs I tiptoed across to shut it.

I turned around, and started to go back.

There was a squeak on the floor behind me. I looked back, and the door had come open again. This time there was a man standing there in the doorway. I couldn’t see his face because of the darkness.

I felt more frightened than I’d ever felt in my whole life.

‘Kester Jaynes?’ he said quietly.

I nodded, not knowing what else to do.

‘You’re coming with me.’

A noise in my head snaps me back to the present. Not the metallic rasping I heard in the Yard, more a high-pitched whistle, like a boiling kettle. A whistle that seems to contain words at the same time.

There is no one else down here.

I shake my head, as if the noise was a buzzing fly, but it doesn’t go away. And I force myself to look at the spider, sitting calmly on the floor, every one of its eight eyes watching me. The whistling gets louder and louder in my head, as if the kettle is about to explode, until the ear-piercing shriek begins to slowly form into a word.

A word, floating and twisting inside my mind.

*Listen.*

So I do, but all I can hear is the slap slap of sandals coming down the corridor, and the door sliding open, while the spider scuttles back into the shadows and squeezes through a super-thin crack into the wall. I think I am beginning to go mad. They said this would happen if I didn’t talk to anyone, that I would start making stuff up.

Imaginary friends.

Doctor Fredericks turns on an overhead lamp, shining it right in my face. I squirm away from the blinding light towards the floor, trying not to look at his chipped toenails. He doesn’t say anything like ‘Hello’ or ‘How are you today?’ He’s called a doctor but he isn’t the kind of doctor who makes you stick your tongue out and puts a cold stethoscope on your chest. He does wear a white coat, it’s true, but that’s the only thing doctorish about him.

I catch a whiff of blackcurrant. The pockets of the Doctor’s white coat are full of blackcurrant cough sweets, and there’s always one in his mouth. He turns on the tap in the corner and begins to scrub his hands.

‘Name?’ he says, his mouth full of lozenge.

He knows I can’t speak. He knows .

‘Name?’ he says again.

I just look blankly at him. Doctor Fredericks sighs.

‘Jaynes, Kester. You, ahm, were seen handling a, ah, varmint in the Yard.’

He’s drying his hands on a sheet of paper towel. I know what’s coming, but I don’t care. The cockroach doesn’t have a virus. The cockroach is my friend. It tried to speak to me.

I think.

‘Did you, or did you not, ahm, handle a restricted insect, young man?’

I stare straight ahead. A bristly hand knocks me round the back of the neck. I continue to stare straight ahead, trying not to wince.

The Doctor sighs and sits down behind his desk, like he’s still waiting for me to say something. After what feels like forever, he gives a long drawn-out breath and begins to pick at his nails, still not looking at me. His voice is softer this time, trying to sound casual.

‘Do you know why you’re here, Kester? Haven’t you ever wondered?’

I can’t help but smile and shake my head. I’m not going to show him that I care. The less you give away in here, the better. He waves his hand crossly at the world above our heads.

‘Do you think all of this is a joke? The Q-q-quarantine Zone, the glass roofs? Do you think Mr Stone —’ he turns and glances at the picture of his boss on the wall behind him — ‘is having a, ah, jolly g-g-good laugh?’

He leans forward suddenly. Now he’s looking at me. I catch a glimpse of bloodshot eyes behind the thick glasses.

‘Does it never, ah, occur to you, that you might be here for your own g-g-good? That we might actually be, ah, trying to, dash it to blazes, p-p-protect you?’

I shrug and stare through him as blankly as I can. The Doctor leans back in his chair and glances up at the ceiling again.

‘There’s still so much we don’t know about the, ah, virus. Where it came from, how it spread so jolly quickly. All we do know is that it mutates. Without any sign, or any, ah, warning. From animal to animal.’ He fixes me with his bleary gaze. ‘To humans. To varmints one day, our best scientists are sure of it. It’s not a question of if, but w-w-when. Do you understand me, boy?’

I shrug. I’ve heard the lecture many times before.

‘So, I’m going to ask you one more time. Why were you handling a, ahm, v-v-varmint in the Yard? Is there anything you would like to t-t-tell me?’

He waits.

I try to speak. To tell him something, just any word — not what actually happened in the Yard — just a simple word, to keep him happy.

I do. I try so hard.

But no word comes.

My body sinks into the chair with the effort.

‘Well?’

He waits.

‘Nothing? Ah well. What a shame. What a d-d-dashed pity.’

He stands and begins to pace up and down the room.

‘So, young, ah, Jaynes — the son of the great Professor Jaynes.’

Here it comes.

‘Do you think that makes you different? Do you think that makes you better than anyone else, eh?’ He leans into my face, and his whiskers brush my cheek. ‘Do you think it makes you s-special?’