Piers Torday - The Last Wild

*They are coming, Kester Jaynes, they are coming. They are coming for you! Prepare yourself!*

I want to clap my hands and clear the craziness from my head. But I don’t have to. My brain crackles once more and my eyes grow heavy, as my thoughts slide back down into the darkness. The last thing I hear is the squeak of the white pigeon.

*Coming? I thought we were going? Oh —*

And then flapping, and then — nothing.

When I wake up again, it’s still night.

There are no birds. Just the sheets on my bed, the chair in the corner. Everything in the same place it has been for the last six years, apart from the window — which is still smashed, cold air blowing in.

Immediately everything feels different. The fuzziness in my head has cleared and the moonlight coming through the window seems somehow whiter and sharper than before. The shadows cast by the lines of the frame are crisper than I’ve ever seen.

I don’t even feel tired. I feel awake and ready for a fight, but I don’t know who with. Which is when I realize that I didn’t just wake up again. Something woke me up, something in the room .

A crisk-crack noise.

I pull the duvet up tight under my chin.

Crisking and cracking noises made by things I can’t see, things that just crawled on to the bed and up my leg. The floor is alive, and crawling all over me — on my stomach, along my legs, across my arms and up my neck. An army of leathery feet marches robotically over my chest. Tiny quivering jaws chewing air only millimetres above my skin.

Cockroaches.

A lot of cockroaches.

One of them crawls right up over my duvet, right on to my bare neck, and its feathery antennae brush my lips.

*Are you ready?* says a voice. A deep voice.

I recognize that voice. The voice I last heard only as a metallic rattle, now getting clearer with every letter.

*Are you ready?* it says again.

*Am I ready for what?*

I still can’t believe I’m talking to them. Just like that. He pauses and sighs. I didn’t know cockroaches could sigh. For a moment I wonder if he’s going to bite me. It would be a weird way to thank me for all that formula, I reckon.

*Kester Jaynes! I thought the fool pigeons warned you we were coming. I’m not going to ask you again. Are you ready to leave?*

I start to laugh.

*Leave where — my bed? To sit on a chair covered with cockroaches? No thanks!*

The cockroach shakes his antennae impatiently.

*No, to leave this place altogether.*

He barks some orders to the others. A ripple moves across them, and there’s some scurrying by the door.

*Who are you? What are you doing?*

*Silence!* snaps the cockroach. *You will learn soon enough.*

His head turns to face the doorway, like he’s waiting for something.

I follow his gaze to the thin line of light underneath the steel door. There are the outlines of roaches coming and going underneath, and then they are passing an object along, from one to another, an object about the size of each insect: a white plastic rectangle. It comes closer and closer to us over the sea of shells, until I see what it is.

A keycard — the one normally dangling from the belt of the snoring warden outside.

Now I sit up, and some of the roaches tumble off the bed.

But the one I saved in the Yard remains where he is on my chest. They pass the card up the line until it reaches him, and with his jaws he carefully places it down in front of me.

A keycard covered in roach-spit. I wipe it on my sleeve and pick it up, turning it over in the blue moonlight.

One swipe and the door is open — but then where?

The cockroach is just staring at me. Not that he has eyes I can see. But I can feel him scanning me, looking for something.

*Come with us now, Kester Jaynes. Or rot here forever. The choice is yours.*

I must sit there for only a few seconds or less, staring at the keycard in my hand, but it feels like hours. The cockroach is bristling mad to get going and taps me with his jaws again.

Like a switch has gone on inside me, a switch that I didn’t flick, I reach under the bed and pull on my trainers. Then I take them off, shake out the cockroaches and start again. Walking over to the cupboard, trying very hard not to tread on any insects — and it is very hard — I get out my things.

My only things.

1) Red Spectrum Hall-issue anorak.

2) Striped Mum-and-Dad-issue scarf.

3) Green watch.

*Come on, come on!* barks the cockroach.

I slip the watch on and fix the strap tight around my wrist.

One last look around the room, a deep breath — and I slide the keycard into the slot. The lights change, and with a soft hiss the door slides open.

I’m going home.

The cockroaches power into the corridor, filling the floor with a black flood of shells.

The warden is fast asleep in his chair, his hands flopping in his lap, his fat chin tucked into his neck. The loop which once held the keycard dangles empty from his belt. Those cockroaches must have seriously strong jaws.

He mutters and stirs in his sleep, making me nervously step back. I begin to realize this could actually be dangerous, but — as Mum would have said — ‘You’ve done it now.’

There’s a movement on my shoulder. I look down.

*How did you get there? I didn’t even—*

*Hurry,* says the cockroach. *Not all the men who guard this place will be as idle as him.*

In the ceiling above, the black ball begins to swivel towards us slowly.

*In that case,* I say, *we need to do something about that camera.*

The animal voice still sounds strange in my head.

The cockroach barks again and there’s a flurry of noise at the other end of the corridor. The grey curtains covering the window dissolve into fragments and fly quietly towards us. It’s only as they get closer I realize they’re not bits of curtain at all.

They’re moths — lots of moths. Just like the one from my room.

I shrink back, but they’re gone in a moment, flying up to the round camera swivelling in the ceiling. Locking their wings together, they swarm all over it till not one bit of shiny lens is left visible.

*How did you …?* I start, but my arm is empty. The cockroach leader is already scuttling along the floor towards the lift, the others making way for him as he does. Just before he gets to the open doors, he turns around and rears up, snapping at me.

*What are you waiting for? Quick march!*

First I feed him, and now he’s giving me orders. Climbing into the lift, I hold out my hand and the cockroach clambers into it. I bring him up to eye level and examine the insect again, looking at the white stripes across his back.

*I’m going to call you the General,* I say.

*If you wish,* he replies.

*Do you not have a name?*

His antennae flick quickly.

*Just because you can speak our tongue, it does not mean you understand all our ways. Now, are you going to make this cage move or are we just going to sit here and wait for that oaf to wake up?*

*What floor?* I ask.

*The ground!* And he rattles off my hand on to the floor as if that was the most normal thing for a cockroach to say. As if it’s normal for cockroaches to speak anyway. I bang the green button on the side panel and the lift doors slam shut.

Slowly we begin to clang our way down. Beneath the drone of the lift there’s a really tense silence. I fiddle with my watch. The General eyes it suspiciously.