The Knife of Never Letting Go (Page 20)

It’s full-fledged night now, dark as anything outside our little circle of light. You can only even see stars thru the hole in the treetops made by the crashing ship. I try to think back over the last week if I heard any distant booms from the swamp but anything this far out could’ve been drowned in the Noise of Prentisstown, I spose, and been missed by everyone.

I think of certain preachers.

Nearly everyone.

“We can’t stay,” I say. “I’m sorry about yer folks and all but there’s others that’ll be after us. Even if Aaron’s dead.”

At Aaron’s name, she flinches, just a little. He must’ve said his name to her. Or something. Maybe.

“I’m sorry,” I say, tho I don’t know what for. I shift my rucksack on my back. It feels heavier than ever. “Thanks for the grub but we gotta go.” I look at her. “If yer coming with?”

The girl looks at me for a second and then uses the tip of her boot to knock the burning sticks off the little green box. She reaches down, presses the button again and picks up the box without even burning herself.

Man, I really want one of those things.

She puts it in the bag she brought outta the wreckage with her and then brings the strap of the bag over her head, like her own rucksack. Like she was planning on coming with me even before now.

“Well,” I say, when all she does is stare at me. “I guess we’re ready then.”

Neither of us move.

I look back to her ma and pa. She does, too, but only for a second. I wanna say something to her, something more, but whaddya say? I open my mouth anyway but she starts rummaging in her bag. I think it’s gonna be something to, I don’t know, remember her folks with or make some kind of gesture or something but she finds what she’s looking for and it’s only a torch. She flicks it on – so she does know how they work – and starts walking, first towards me, then past me, as if we’re already on our way.

And that’s it, like her ma and pa ain’t just lying there dead.

I watch her go for a second before saying, “Oi!”

She turns back to me.

“Not that way.” I point to our left. “That way.”

I head off the right way, Manchee follows, and I look back and the girl’s coming after us. I take one last quick look behind her and as bad as I want to stay and look thru that wreckage for more neat stuff, and boy do I, we gotta go, even tho it’s night, even tho nobody’s slept, we gotta go.

And so we do, catching sight of the horizon thru the trees when we can and heading towards the space twixt the close mountain and the two farther away mountains. Both moons are more than halfway to full and the sky is clear so there’s at least a little bit of light to walk by, even under the swamp canopy, even in the dark.

“Keep yer ears open,” I say to Manchee.

“For what?” Manchee barks.

“For things that could get us, idiot.”

You can’t really run in a dark swamp at night so we walk as fast as we can, me shining the torch in front of us, tripping our way round tree roots and trying not to tromp thru too much mud. Manchee goes ahead and comes back, sniffing round and sometimes barking, but nothing serious. The girl keeps up, never falling behind but never getting too close neither. Which is good, cuz even tho my Noise is about the quietest it’s been all day, the silence of her still presses on it whenever she comes too near.

It’s weird that she didn’t do nothing more about her ma and pa when we left, ain’t it? Didn’t cry or have one last visit or nothing? Am I wrong? I’d give anything to see Ben and even Cillian again, even if they were . . . Well, even if they are.

“Ben,” Manchee says, down by my knees.

“I know.” I scratch him twixt the ears.

We keep on.

I’d want to bury them, if that’s what it came to. I’d want to do something, I don’t know what. I stop and look back at the girl but her face is just the same, just the same as ever, and is it cuz she crashed and her parents died? Is it cuz Aaron found her? Is it cuz she’s from somewhere else?

Don’t she feel nothing? Is she just nothing at all on the inside?

She’s looking at me, waiting for me to go on.

And so, after a second, I do.

Hours. There’s hours of this silent night-time fast creeping. Hours of it. Who knows how far we’re going or if we’re heading the right way or what, but hours. Once in a while, I hear the Noise of a night-time creacher, swamp owls cooing their way to dinner, swooping down on probably short-tailed mice, whose Noise is so quiet it’s barely like language at all, but mostly all I hear is the now-and-then fast-fading Noise of a night-time creacher running away from all the ruckus we must be making by tromping thru a swamp at night.

But the weird thing is there’s still no sound of nothing behind us, nothing chasing us, no Noise, no branches breaking, nothing. Maybe Ben and Cillian threw them off the trail. Maybe the reason I’m running ain’t so important after all. Maybe–

The girl stops to pull her shoe outta some mud.

The girl.

No. They’re coming. The only maybe is that maybe they’re waiting till daybreak so they can come faster.

So on and on we go, getting more and more tired, stopping only once so that everyone can have a private pee off in the bushes. I get some of Ben’s food outta my own rucksack and feed small bits to everyone, since it’s my turn.

And then more walking and more walking.

And then there comes an hour just before dawn where there can’t be no more.

“We gotta stop,” I say, dropping the rucksack at the base of a tree. “We gotta rest.”

The girl sets her own bag down by another tree without needing any more convincing and we both just sort of collapse down, leaning on our bags like pillows.

“Five minutes,” I say. Manchee curls up by my legs and closes his eyes almost immediately. “Only five minutes,” I call over to the girl, who’s pulled a little blanket outta her bag to cover herself with. “Don’t get too comfortable.”

We gotta keep going, no question of that. I’ll only close my eyes for a minute or two, just to get a little rest, and then we’ll keep on going faster than before.

Just a little rest, that’s all.

I open my eyes and the sun is up. Only a little but ruddy well up.

Crap. We’ve lost at least an hour, maybe two.

And then I realize it’s a sound that’s woken me.

It’s Noise.