Piers Torday - The Last Wild

Saying the words I have been waiting to hear for six years. But the voice is so faint –

‘Kes? Kester? Is that … you?’

I take a step back, suspicious. How does he know it’s me, through a locked steel door? I think of what Ma said by the fire. I look at Polly.

‘Yes, it is,’ she says, without any hesitation. Then — ‘I’m his friend. Can you let us in?’

For a moment there is silence behind the door. It doesn’t open.

There’s one last thump. A thump of frustration.

‘We need to break down the door,’ says Polly in a matter-of-fact way. She turns to me. ‘In fact, you need to break down the door.’

I lay down the wolf-cub as gently as I can. Stepping back, gesturing to Polly to move out of the way, I run at the heavy steel.

I charge and charge until my shoulder is sore –

Until with a noise like a broken spring –

The door clicks open.

Rubbing my shoulder, I stare at the doorway. At the silhouette of a tall man, crazy hair and beard sticking out in all directions. I can’t see his face at first, in the shadows, but then he steps out of the lab –

Through the broken door, into the light of the stairway.

My dad — Professor Dawson Jaynes.

For a moment, Dad just stares, looking past us and up the stairs. I didn’t know if the city would feel normal. But I had no idea how this moment would feel. And the shock nearly knocks me off my feet. It’s actually Dad . Still here after all this time — still with crazy hair, a crinkled shirt and a forgetful look on his face — still the same old Dad.

My chest tightens like a vice. I properly missed him. I missed him so much more than I realized. At first I don’t know if he’s thinking the same, because he snaps out of his stare and balls his fist up, ready to fight. ‘Is that wretch still here?’

With a flash of relief I realize he means Skuldiss. Polly and I both shake our heads.

Then he nods to himself and I know he feels the same because he says it.

‘Kes … Missed you … So much.’

And then he envelops me in a massive bear hug, pressing my face against his lab coat — but I wrestle free. There isn’t time for hugs now. I need help. Dad looks at me, then at Polly, and finally down at the wolf-cub, pulsing on the floor.

‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘Is this your friend?’

‘Yes,’ says Polly. ‘He broke into my house—’

Dad interrupts her with a wave of his big hands. ‘I meant, is this your friend?’ He points to the wolf-cub, and I nod.

‘Hmm,’ says Dad, kneels down, scoops him up in his arms and hurries into his lab. We follow him in, Polly looking at me all the time.

The lab used to be all clean white surfaces and glass. It’s filthy now. There are piles of paper everywhere, covered in crazy scribbles and diagrams and symbols and numbers, and unwashed plates and greasy glasses. A dozen computer screens flicker away, wires twisting out of them like ivy. The four big sloping glass walls that look on to the garden and the river beyond are smeared with dust and grime, making the room darker than I remember.

Then the smell hits me. I thought the stench in the cockroach tunnel was bad, but this is something else, perhaps because it’s — human. Polly and I both put our hands over our nose and mouth. Strangest of all — there’s a bed in the corner of the lab, the blanket pulled roughly back, a bare-bulb lamp on the floor next to it, poking out of a pile of clothes and shoes. And a single toothbrush stands in a mug by the sink.

Still carrying the wolf-cub, Dad frees a hand to sweep papers and plates off the worktop on to the floor. He lays him down in the cleared space and swings a big lamp over. He’s rolling up his sleeves, pulling on rubber gloves out of nowhere, and talking at Polly and me to get things, telling us where they are, in his usual forgetful Dad-like way — as if nothing has happened, nothing has changed.

‘Swabs, bandages and a dressing, I think — probably in the cupboard above the sink. You’ll have to borrow a chair to stand on — what did you say your name was again?’

‘Polly,’ says Polly, already dragging a chair across.

Then Dad is giving me orders, like I’ve never even been away.

‘Forty-eight milligrams or so of sodium thiopentol — Kes, if you would, it should be in a glass bottle on that shelf, or if not, try under my chair —’

Within minutes, the wolf-cub stops yelping, stops shivering and just lies there sleeping. A syringe of white liquid sticks out of his leg and an oxygen mask is clamped firmly round his muzzle, his chest slowly rising and falling.

Now Dad gives us stuff to hold and things to cut, never panicking, always staying calm, as he bends the lamp right down over the wolf-cub to see what he’s doing. Then he’s picking sharp instruments off a tray that Polly and I have carefully cleaned with wipes smelling of alcohol, the only clean things in the whole place — and we have to look away because of the wound.

Dad is digging around inside the cub, and then he says, ‘Salver,’ and I hand him a metal dish to drop the bloody, sticky bullet in. I think I’m going to be sick, but then he’s sewing Wolf-Cub up again, careful stitch by careful stitch. Dad injects him one last time, makes sure the oxygen mask is firmly on and steps back to check his work.

Satisfied, he invites us over, and hardly daring to look we creep nearer.

Underneath the mask, the wolf-cub is still breathing. My father pats him once and then marches over to the sink, ripping off the bloody gloves and tossing them on to the floor.

‘Hmm,’ says Dad. ‘Bit of rest and he should be …’

Six years and Dad still hasn’t learnt how to finish a sentence.

He dries his hands thoroughly with a paper towel, and chucks it — missing — at an overflowing bin in the corner.

We’re still just watching him. For a moment, no one says anything. There are so many questions bubbling inside me — questions I can’t ask. I stamp my foot on the floor with frustration. Polly jumps, and then, like that was her signal, she asks it. Like it’s the easiest thing in the world to say.

The question burning in both our minds.

‘Is it true, Professor Jaynes?’

Dad looks puzzled.

‘Hmm?’

‘What everyone said. Skuldiss, outsiders, Facto — they all said that you started the virus. That it was your fault.’

And he smiles. He actually smiles. A kind of sad smile, as he shakes his head.

‘Is that what they …? Right. I see.’ He scratches at his beard. ‘Well.’ Dad gestures to the chaos of the lab. ‘Whatever you’re thinking, whatever you’ve been told, whatever she thinks, it’s …’

His voice trails away.

‘Wrong?’ suggests Polly.

I hope so — I really hope so.

But Dad just nods in a vague way, like she’d just reminded him where his slippers were, and places his hands on my shoulders.

‘Kes,’ he says. ‘None of this is how it … you know …’

For some reason I can’t meet his eye. My own dad.

He sighs, and looks me up and down.

‘You’ve grown,’ he says and grips my shoulders tight. ‘You’ve grown so much.’

Then he turns abruptly away like he doesn’t want me to see his face. ‘Let me try and … explain,’ he says to the window, and starts to pace up and down, looking at the floor as he speaks.

‘Science!’ he announces to the mess all around him, the scribbled pages, the rows of test tubes — as if he’s just revealing to them only now what they’re actually here for. ‘That’s what I believe in, Kes. In thinking things through, using the knowledge we’ve discovered to … what’s the word?’ He stops pacing, picks up a rubber band from the dust on the floor, and peers at it suspiciously before shoving it into his pocket. ‘Where was I? Oh yes! Science.’ He turns to us, his face lit up. ‘Miracles! That’s what we can achieve with science. Real, living, breathing miracles.’