Chapter 21: Penny Lane

After a few minutes the joggling ride became rougher and the jeep slowed down. In another three or four minutes it stopped, started again, and stopped. The driver switched off the engine and it went quiet. Lights came on outside.

Boris got out, opened the back door, grabbed Grace and hauled her out by her elbow, so roughly that she’d have fallen except that he held her up. For a couple of seconds she dangled completely off the ground, at an angle, while Boris showed off his strength and humiliated her.

“Not much to you is there?” he sneered before he dropped her. “We coulda used a pushchair instead of a humvee.”

Grace didn’t reply as she struggled to stay on her feet and not be in a heap on the ground. The soldiers who’d been in the back ushered Mo out, not seeming to care one way or the other what Boris did to her.

With a lightning strike Boris gripped the back of Mo’s neck in one big hand. Grace saw the hulking bully squeeze, then press down. He forced Mo to his knees; in the dirt, head bowed. Still squeezing his neck.

“That’s so impressive,” Grace found herself saying, “how you took on a wounded guy half your size with his hands tied.”

“Get used to it kid,” growled Boris, “this place was made to deal with ragheads. See how we deal with smart mouths too.”

“Boris,” Xenia finally appeared from round the side of the jeep. She didn’t sound surprised, or even disappointed; just limiting. Boris let go of Mo and Grace helped him up and put her arm round him. He stood there, dazed.

She looked around. On the right were some cabins, in two rows. Wooden, and shabby. In front of her was a larger building, also single story, wooden, and shabby too. All around was a high wire fence with a roll of wire curled on top, glinting with little blades in it to shred anyone who tried to escape; then beyond it was a second fence just the same.

“Right,” Xenia was in charge. “The boy first, get the doctor, show her the receipt from the clinic, it’ll be in the backpack. Put the girl in a cottage.”

While Boris shoved Mo towards the larger shed-like building, one of the soldiers gripped Grace by her elbow and dragged her towards the nearest cabin. He was at least ten times stronger than her. Twenty. A hundred. He didn’t even really look at her.

“Not that one,” Xenia told the soldier, “number six.”

Instead of letting her walk normally the soldier hauled Grace by her arm along the dimly lit path between the two rows of cabins. She didn’t dare say anything as she struggled to keep up with his long strides. It was like he didn’t recognise her as a person.

There were eight cabins in two rows, each with a little veranda. The soldier turned into the veranda of the one before the last one on the right side, unlocked the door with a card, pushed her in and banged the door shut after her.

She looked for a light switch by the door, found it, and pushed it up. A light came on in the middle of the ceiling, in a dusty white shade, illuminating the dingy room which had a bed in it. And a small TV. There were two doors at the end, which turned out to be for a shower room and a tiny kitchen. In the kitchen was a big cardboard box, closed with tape, sitting on the worktop.

Was someone in the cottages next door? Could it be her mum, and the aliens? She looked at the bed: it was big enough for two, so they could be, if they were sharing - two in each. It was a pity there were no windows in the side of this little building.

What were they doing to Mo? Was Boris bullying him? Were his wounds okay? How long were they going to leave her here?

She didn’t know, couldn’t tell, and couldn’t do anything. Everything that mattered was going to be decided by people who didn’t even treat her like a person; who hauled her about, dangled her and mocked her for being small. Bullied Mo and called him names. Really horrible people. She sat on the bed and cried. After a minute of that she went into the shower room for some paper to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

Her wrists hurt, with the ziptie that was thin and hard, and quite tight even with the little gap she’d tried to make while Boris was doing it up. Anyway ... the rescuing version of Grace would do something, not just suffer and cry and be a victim. She was here on a mission, because she’d decided to be here. What had Xenia done to release the zipties in the plane? Pressed something.

She went back into the little shower room and turned on the light over the mirror. With a lot of peering and manoeuvring her arms she saw what had to be a little tab on the buckle of the ziptie. She got a fork from the tiny kitchen and held it in her teeth to prod at the tab. It wouldn’t work: there were too many prongs on the fork, and the buckle was on one side.

It didn’t help that the ziptie was all black so she could hardly see anything on it. She went back and looked for a better implement in the drawers, but there wasn’t one. Although there was a small kitchen knife, which was surprising, and some kitchen scissors.

She needed one single prong to jab at the tiny buckle. There wasn’t one though. But the fork was light. She jammed two of the prongs in a drawer, at an angle, and bent the fork up and down until the prongs broke off. Then she turned it round and snapped off the outer one on the other side, leaving one prong.