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This story was posted on the CHERUB FORUMs by Andrew Telford
(AMT). I liked it so much I thought I’d put it on the official CHERUB website.
Andrew has already posted the next two chapters of this story on the forums
and you can read them HERE.
Mark is a fourteen-year-old who lives near to CHERUB campus and he’s dying to
know what goes on inside!
Mark
had always wondered what happened at the army base three miles south of his
house. It was jokingly known as Area 51B. There were stories. So many it was
hard to tell between fact and fiction.
Something was going on, for sure. Urban legends were
rife: biogenetic experiments, spacecraft, aliens and countless other conspiracy
theories floated amongst Mark’s friends. It was a nagging feeling that hung
around, always something to talk about, to break the uncomfortable silences
of teenage socialisation when the latest one minute wonder faded.
Adults and teachers had long ago relinquished their curiosity,
but they had other things to worry about. They didn’t hang around the woods
next to the immaculacy maintained, razor wire topped fence. Even the trees surrounding
the fence had been chopped, preventing any access to the top. It was watched
as well. No one knew exactly how, but it was. The half a dozen kids who’d been
brave, or perhaps foolish, enough to cross the line were always caught in seconds
and tossed out, with threats that another attempt would result in a prison sentence.
It didn’t seem credible, but it was said in such a way that it seemed a real
possibility, no matter what the government’s policy on imprisoning curious thirteen-year-olds
was.
Mark had questioned his father as to what went on. The
man claimed that it was an army base where the government stored medical supplies
and shelters in case of a national emergency. The large staff it required was
also explained away: research staff discovering viruses, radiation their causes
and preventatives.
You had to hand it to the adult population. They always
had answers that seemed real, but when you looked close, they didn’t quite add
up. Mark had seen kids going in and out. Some said they were the kids of all
the doctors and the research scientists who lived in the compound, but this
explanation didn’t add up: for one thing, there seemed to be more kids than
adults. For another, they often appeared in groups of half-a-dozen in mini vans
with blacked out windows.
Occasionally these strange kids appeared at the local
train station, treating the adults they were with like authorities, rather than
their parents. On the train they sat by themselves and didn’t talk to anyone
else.
On one journey, Mark made a point of sitting close to
a group of kids from the compound. They didn’t quite seem normal. Others didn’t
see it, but he did. One or two dropped words in different languages, and not
the normal ones taught in secondary schools. Some wore elements of military
dress, not Gap imitations but the real stuff. Even one of the girls wore military
boots.
As Mark sat on the train to London, eying these strange
kids, he thought about it more and more. It lay in the back of his mind all
that night and as he sat through an algebra class the next day.
Two days later, Mark got in a row with his Dad. He shouted,
screamed and called Mark ungrateful and cheeky. After fourteen years, Mark had
managed to tune out most of his Dad’s ranting, along with that of the obnoxious
women he’d chosen for a second wife.
After the row, Mark took a walk and replayed what he
would have told his father to do with himself, if it wasn’t for the fact that
it would just cause more trouble.
He ended up in the lower branch of an oak tree, staring
at the razor wire around Area 51 B, trying to take his mind off his father.
He decided that, no matter what, he was going to get inside the compound
and find out what was going on.