Movers Read online

  ALSO BY MEAGHAN MCISAAC

  THE BOYS OF FIRE AND ASH

  Copyright © 2016 by Meaghan McIsaac,

  Published by arrangement with Andersen Press

  Tundra Books, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McIsaac, Meaghan, author

  Movers / Meaghan McIsaac.

  ISBN 978-1-77049-818-1 (bound). —ISBN 978-1-77049-820-4 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8625.I84M68 2016 jC813’.6 C2015-901066-7

  C2015-901067-5

  Cover designed by CS Richardson

  Cover image: © David et Myrtille / Trevillion Images;

  (birds) © Zorana Matijasevic / Shutterstock.com

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  FOR IAN

  YOU EARNED IT.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  A Message from Tomorrow

  Acknowledgements

  THE HOURLY TIMES

  Another Movement incident has rocked the sleepy suburb of Oakland Hills in the city of Avin. Police were called to the apartment of Michael Mermick, a 39-year-old insurance salesman and father of two, early Sunday evening. Mermick, a registered Phase 2 Mover, was found by Bureau of Movement Activity Control (BMAC) officers in his apartment after Movement activity was reported by neighbours. Suspicions were confirmed when officers discovered the body of Mermick’s unidentified Shadow at the front door of his fourteenth-storey apartment. The Shadow, BMAC reports, died at the scene, having suffered what appeared to be severe burns to the head. Mermick was promptly taken into the custody of Avin area BMAC. The Move itself has baffled experts, with wind speeds reaching 174km/h, the highest in recorded Movement history. Significant damage, not typical of Movement activity, was reported by residents within a 3km radius of the Move. Current BMAC status classification holds that only Movers with a Phase 3 status are capable of successfully Moving a Shadow from the future. How then, was Mr Mermick, who holds a Phase 2 status, capable of causing the Move in Oakland Hills? And so powerful a Move? BMAC has yet to comment. Mermick’s wife, Isabelle Randle-Mermick insists that BMAC’s monitoring of Mover status is flawed at best. And there are Movement activity experts who have voiced similar criticism. ‘While the signs and symptoms of Movement are well known to us,’ commented Professor Jacobs of Avin University, ‘the cause of the disorder is not yet understood. There is no measurable qualifier for Movement.’

  THE HOURLY TIMES

  Michael Mermick, a 39-year-old family man from Oakland Hills, was sentenced to the Shelves after being charged with Moving and murdering his Shadow, who has since been identified by Mermick as Oscar Joji (time unknown). But the question that has captured the interest of the country is now the subject of parliamentary debate. How was Michael Mermick able to Move his Shadow if he was only classified as a Phase 2 Mover? Mermick’s last phase renewal occurred last year, according to his wife, in compliance with BMAC and government regulations. But what if he had been up for renewal last month? ‘Annual phase renewal is simply not enough,’ prosecutor Sheila McCain told press on Wednesday. ‘If Michael Mermick had been monitored with the vigilance we expect of our government, his Shadow would not only be alive, but still in the year he belonged.’ BMAC has announced that status renewal for citizens with Movement capabilities is to be increased from annually to monthly with immediate effect. We Are Now, a group known for their anti-Mover sentiment, welcomed the change.

  PROLOGUE

  All the windows were busted. The wind from the Movement activity shattered them all. The cool storm air rushed around me, pulling at my T-shirt and tickling my baby sister’s nose as I held her in my arms. I sat there, under the table in our kitchen, away from the broken glass, while my parents whispered furiously in the bedroom. When I say bedroom, I mean living room/dining room/my room/Mom and Dad’s room/the baby’s room. It’s the only other room in our tiny apartment besides the bathroom. Which meant, even over the rush of the wind, I could hear every word they said.

  ‘BMAC will trace the Move here,’ Dad told Mom. ‘You know that, Izzy.’

  BMAC – the Bureau of Movement Activity Control. They didn’t like Moves. Their whole job was to stop Moves. But they hadn’t stopped this one.

  ‘They can’t prove you’re the one who did it!’ Mom said.

  And then the wind caught my sister’s little purple hat, ripping it from her baby-soft head and carrying it away. She screamed as the breeze tugged her fuzzy black hair. I rocked her gently in my arms, wanting her to shut up so I could hear.

  ‘BMAC doesn’t have to prove it. Look around you, Izzy.’ Around us was disaster. The splintered pieces of our apartment, our lives, scattered across the floor or half out the window. ‘They’ll take one look at this place,’ Dad said, ‘and then it’s the Shelves.’

  My stomach leaped into my throat. I might’ve been eight, but I knew what Shelving was. Every Mover knew what Shelving was. Still is. An endless sleep. A living kind of deadness.

  Mom didn’t say anything for the longest time. Neither did Dad. Even my sister stopped crying. The only sound was the roar of the wind outside. How did this happen? One minute we were watching my favourite show, about a ninja who lived in a kid’s pocket, and the next my parents were making me climb beneath the kitchen table while the world exploded around me.

  And then a bang made me jump.

  It was coming from the door.

  ‘Is it BMAC?’ Mom whispered.

  Dad stepped into the kitchen, his brown curls a frizzy windblown mess.

  Another bang.

  ‘Daddy?’

  Dad held out his hand. ‘Pat, take your sister to the bathroom.’

  But I didn’t have to. Mom was already grabbing Maggie out of my arms.

  I stayed there on the kitchen floor, my hot hands sweaty on the cold tile as my dad peeked through the hole in the door.

  Bang!

  ‘Breezes!’ Dad shouted. ‘Izzy, help me!’

  And he opened the door.

  All I saw was red.

  Blood red.

  A guy tumbled in, falling into Dad’s arms and bleeding from his mouth, choking out our last name: ‘Mermick.’ And another name
I’d never heard before. ‘Oscar Joji.’ He clutched his head with one hand, blood caked to his hair and seeping through his fingers, the skin blistered, red and peeling. ‘Oscar Joji.’

  I can remember that I screamed.

  And then the guy collapsed.

  None of us said anything – Dad, Mom, me. We just stared at the fallen guy’s body, seeping blood into our rug. He wasn’t gasping any more. He was dead. It’s the quiet that tells you that kind of thing. The quiet just lets you know. Even at eight, I knew it.

  Mom’s voice broke the silence. ‘Shadow?’

  Dad stared at his red, stained hands and nodded.

  I felt cold. Freezing cold. Like everything that had been warm and safe and good about our home had been sucked out the shattered windows. A Shadow. I looked at the bloody lump on the floor – he was from the future. And he was here, in our apartment. He wasn’t allowed to be here.

  ‘Mike,’ said Mom. She walked up to Dad as if the dead guy wasn’t even there – wasn’t there dead – and held Dad’s face in her hand. ‘Mike, we have to run. We have to go. BMAC is coming.’

  An entire flock of feathery, angry wings flapped in my gut and I pulled my knees up to my chest. BMAC is coming? Coming for who?

  ‘We can run, Mike,’ she told him. ‘We can still run.’

  Dad shook his head and kissed Mom’s hand. ‘They’ll find us.’

  And then Mom cried. So did the baby in her arms. And Dad hugged them both.

  The wings in my stomach pushed up against my throat and my eyes began to sting. BMAC was coming. What would they do when they found the Shadow? He couldn’t be here. How did he get here?

  Mom wiped away her tears and took the baby over to the bed. I didn’t move. Couldn’t remember how. There was a Shadow in our home. A real dead Shadow. And BMAC was coming.

  ‘Pat?’ Dad crawled under the table and we stared at each other for the longest time. He had brown eyes. I’ll never forget them. And when they caught the light, I could see flecks of green. ‘Pat, son, I need you to listen to me. BMAC is going to be here any minute and I need you to be ready for it.’

  My heart hammered in my chest so hard I could feel the beat of it vibrating down into my feet. ‘What will they do?’ I barely managed to whisper.

  Dad closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them again, they were wet. ‘They’re going to take me.’

  I knew it. Even though I didn’t really know it, some part of me had been waiting for him to tell me that. I leaped at him, wrapping my arms around his neck, and cried. BMAC was coming for my dad.

  ‘Listen to me, Pat,’ he said. ‘I need you to look out for your sister for me, all right? You need to take care of her because she won’t have me here.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ I told him, and squeezed him tight, as if my arms could somehow glue him to me and then no one could take him away. Not even BMAC.

  ‘You’re gonna be good for me, all right?’ His voice broke then. And a new bolt of fear shot through me, one that still makes the muscles in my stomach constrict when I think about it. He was scared. ‘You’re gonna be good and you’re gonna help your mother, because she’s going to need you, right?’

  I wanted to tell him yes, but my voice was caught, strangled in my throat. I remember the feel of his big hand on my back, warm and strong as he rocked me. He sniffed three times. Big runny sniffs that told me he was crying. My dad never cried. But he did then. The last time I saw him.

  I don’t remember how long we stayed that way, clinging to each other. Don’t remember the pounding on the door before BMAC finally broke it down. Don’t remember how many BMAC agents it took to prise me loose from my dad’s neck.

  I just remember the grey of their uniforms, swarming our tiny home like phantoms. I remember the current bindings they brought with them. The way they hissed and crackled a menacing electric blue around my dad’s wrists. I remember Mom screaming and cursing as they dragged Dad off.

  I remember, they walked right through the Shadow guy’s blood. Dad left twenty-eight red footprints from our door to the elevator. I counted them later.

  They took Dad. They left the Shadow.

  They took Dad to the Movers’ Prison and Shelved him till his trial.

  A living kind of deadness.

  Said it was procedure in a Mover’s case. That was six years ago. His trial didn’t help him much, cos he hasn’t been awake since.

  ONE

  It’s busted again. I’m sitting on our fire escape, fiddling with the hoses on our water tank. The warm rush of the Eventualies winds wrap around my arms and through my T-shirt. They say in the time before Movers, the Eventualies didn’t blow.

  I’ve got about twenty minutes before I have to leave for school and I still haven’t had my shower. This is the fourth time the tank has broken down this week. In the time before Movers, people didn’t have to deal with tanks either. Back then, water wasn’t as scarce. People just turned on their tap and didn’t even know where the clean, fresh water came from. At least, that’s what my teacher, Mrs Dibbs, says. Then again, if you ask Mrs Dibbs, everything was better before Movers.

  I boot the rusted metal barrel and there’s a loud clank.

  ‘You’ll break it that way.’ My sister’s sitting just inside the window, her cheeks resting in her fists, a black crow perched happily on top of her head. ‘You even know what you’re doing?’

  No. I don’t know much about water tanks at all. We’ve had the same one since before I was born. All I know is, when we need water, it comes out of there. Two steel drums bolted to the wall of our tiny apartment. The government fills up the big one each month, and if we get rain, it fills up the smaller one. There’s gauges and filters and when it’s working right, blinking green lights, but that’s about all I know. My eyes wander over the side of our building, dozens more windows with dozens of their own tanks. Their green lights are blinking.

  I look back at Maggie. ‘You got a better idea?’

  She grins smugly, big dimples dipping into her cheeks. ‘I do actually.’ She climbs out the window and the bird hops off her head and onto the railing, from where it squawks angrily at me and flaps its wings.

  I frown. ‘Grumpy today, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe that’s because you keep calling her an “it”,’ says Maggie.

  I don’t care what it is. I wrinkle my nose at Beauty – that’s the awful name Maggie gave it. The bird and I have never cared much for each other. In fact I keep leaving the window open, hoping the stupid thing will leave. And it does. But then it always comes back. The dumb bird comes and goes as it pleases. Has for years now. And every year it seems to hate me just a bit more.

  Maggie stands in front of the tools I’ve splayed out on the metal grate of the fire escape. I don’t know if you could really call them tools – a wrench that’s gotten rusty over the years, a butter knife and a shiny new screwdriver Mom bought the last time the tank broke. I still haven’t figured out what part of the tank requires the use of a screwdriver.

  Maggie stares down at the tools, the right corner of her mouth twitching.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ she says, and Beauty snaps its ugly beak at me.

  I don’t know what she’s thinking about. Maggie knows less about tanks than I do.

  Her eyes flick to the tank, and she cocks an eyebrow.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you know what this does?’ She points at a thin, cloudy hose poking out the top.

  ‘No.’

  She reaches for it anyway, unhooking it and blowing hard into the loosened end. As soon as she does, she starts coughing and Beauty takes to the air, flapping around and squawking in a panic. Maggie pulls the hose out of her mouth and a green, goopy sludge plops out onto the grating.

  ‘Oh, gross, Mags!’

  I grab the hose from her and she continues to sputter, clawing at her tongue to get rid of the taste.

  ‘It tastes like—’ She gags.

 
I swat the bird out of my face, but the dumb thing won’t get out of the way. ‘Yeah, that’s why you’re not supposed to stick your mouth on it.’

  ‘I’ll bet it helped though.’

  Maybe. Beauty’s come to a rest on top of the tank, its feathers ruffled from the commotion. ‘Move,’ I order.

  The bird just looks at me with its beady black eyes.

  ‘Beauty,’ says Maggie, and nods to the railing. The bird takes off, flapping its way over to Maggie, perching on the cool metal of the fire escape.

  With a roll of my eyes, I fasten the hose back to the top of the tank and stare at the gauge. ‘Nothing.’

  Maggie scoffs and pushes me out of the way, fiddling with one of the knobs. I’m happy to let her try. I’m out of ideas and I’m not gonna get my shower before school at this point anyway.

  ‘Pat,’ she says, wiping her sludge-soaked hand on the front of her shirt, ‘where did Oscar Joji come from?’

  The name makes my skin prickle against the rush of the Eventualies. Oscar Joji, we figured out later, was the name of Dad’s Shadow. My eyes narrow. ‘You know where he came from, Mags.’

  She keeps her focus on whatever she’s doing to the knob. ‘Yeah, but what year exactly?’

  ‘They don’t know what year, Maggie. You know that.’ I crane my neck around, worried I’m gonna catch someone listening. But there’s no one out here. Just us and the water tanks. ‘We’re not supposed to talk about it.’

  ‘But BMAC knew where that East Grove lady’s Shadow came from.’

  A sigh rushes up from my lungs. Last month, some woman in East Grove was caught by the Bureau of Movement Activity Control for Moving her Shadow. They caught the woman’s Shadow too, and the Shadow confessed she was from the year 2242. Oscar Joji couldn’t confess anything. He was too dead. I grind my teeth, trying not to call up the memory of him lying in his own blood by the front door.

  ‘Breezes, Mags. Why do you care so much about the East Grove lady?’

  Maggie shrugs, blank eyes staring at the tank, her finger tracing the rim of the main gauge. ‘Do you think BMAC Shelved her?’