Free Resurgence by Kerry Wilkinson Page A

something for me: Rush, Faith, Porter and Opie’s father, not to mention everyone at the village hall. I dread to think what happened
after we were smuggled away. It doesn’t even end there: Wray and Xyalis are at opposite ends of the spectrum, one innocent and naive, one desperate for power. But I still watched them both
die in front of me.
    And what about Imrin?
    My mother’s words drift into my mind from when she was talking about Jela and Pietra: ‘You’ve got some good friends there’.
    She’s right, I do. And Pietra can’t be another person added to the list of those who have died for me.
    I pull myself up, ignoring my aching legs and the pulsing behind my eyeballs. I remember sleeping in the camp at the gully but it seems like such a long time ago. My body is telling me to rest
but it has been a relentless week, each day longer than the last.
    Opie and Jela have been waiting nearby. No one blames them for not crowding Pietra; the fewer people close to the explosive, the better. As I move backwards looking from side to side, they join
me.
    ‘What are you looking for?’ Jela asks.
    ‘Pieces of scrap – it needs to be flat but solid. Not too bulky.’
    Pietra calls across for me to stop but I ignore her. Hart hasn’t left her side, despite her insistence.
    Many of the smaller pieces of metal piled about us are so rusted and brittle that they are unusable. Opie suggests heading around the gully towards our spot where we know there are broken
thinkpads but it isn’t something we can risk. There are Kingsmen close in the village and the possibility of spying birds overhead.
    As I begin to think we aren’t going to find anything useful, Jela calls us across to the van. After leaving the tunnel, we slid around it, ignoring what I thought was a rusting shell. She
has used a rock to smash the lock on the back, leaving the door hanging open.
    It is like a treasure trove inside, with tools hooked onto both of the side walls and a workbench built into the far end. Much of what has been dumped around the gully would be fully functioning
if it wasn’t for the country’s lack of fuel and batteries, but I have often come across things that seem to work perfectly well. The best item I discovered was a pedal car. From the
outside it looked like a smaller version of the vehicles that are scattered all around the gully, but there was a little compartment inside with pedals hooked up to a chain similar to a
bicycle’s. It required no fuel and had been discarded for seemingly no reason. There was no way I could take it back to the village as everything at the gully technically belongs to the King
and there is no point in being so obvious about things. That didn’t stop me from riding it up and down the edge of the gully until I grew out of it though. It would have been great for Colt
if I could have found a way of giving it to him – or getting him here without my mother noticing.
    Sometimes it feels as if entire chunks of land were picked up and discarded here.
    The underside of the van creaks ominously as I step into it, the entire thing rocking from side to side as I move around. Opie and Jela wait by the door but I carefully retrieve a pair of
long-handled wire cutters, an axe and a saw from the van walls. There are other things like spades, rakes and forks which would have come in handy around the village but they are of little use now.
I hand Opie a selection of pliers and screwdrivers taken from a drawer in the workbench, telling him to keep them in his bag. There are three knives which I take, knowing as I pocket them that it
is unhealthy for me to be thinking that I cannot have enough blades to hand.
    This is the life in which I have found myself.
    I exit the van carefully and head towards Pietra. She continues to object but I order the others to move away, including Hart, who protests more than anyone. Gently, I rest the metal end of the
cutters on one side of the ball part of the grenade and then