The Fury: What happens when the world turns against you? - Softcover

BENNY / Bristol, 4:15 p.m.



IT WAS AN ORDINARY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON IN JUNE when the world came to kill Benny Millston.
It was his birthday. His fifteenth. Not that anyone would have noticed. He sat in the corner of the living room in the tiny box of a house that he’d called home ever since his parents had split up three years earlier. His mum lay on the sofa, idly picking foam out of the holes the dog had made in the ancient fabric. She was staring at the TV over her huge stomach and between two sets of freshly painted toenails, her mouth open in an expression of awe and wonder, as if she were watching the Rapture, not Deal or No Deal.
On the other side of the room, slouched in a wicker bucket chair, sat his sister Claire. She had once been his baby sister, until his actual baby sister, Alison, had arrived a year ago. The youngest Millston shuffled in her high chair in the door between the living room and the kitchen, smacking her dinner tray with a plastic spoon. Their dog, an elderly Jack Russell that he had named Crapper when he was a kid, sat under her, snapping halfheartedly at the spoon whenever it came close but too old and too lazy to make a proper effort.
Not one person had said happy birthday to him all day.
This wasn’t what was bugging Benny, though. What was really starting to scare him was that nobody had even spoken to him all day.
And it wasn’t just today, either. Strange things had been going on since last week. He couldn’t put his finger on it, exactly; he just knew that something was wrong. People had been treating him differently. He wasn’t the most popular kid at school, not by a long shot, but in the last couple of days even the guys he’d called friends—Declan, Ollie, Jamie—had been ignoring him. No, ignoring was the wrong word. They had talked to him, but it had almost been as if he wasn’t really there, as if they were looking through him. And the stuff they said—We don’t need any more players, Benny. We’re busy now, Benny. Goodbye, Benny—had been downright nasty. They’d been treating him like they hated him.
Things were no better at home, either. His mum’s vocabulary was usually limited to about twenty words, of which “Do it now,” “Don’t argue with me,” and “I’m busy” were the most common. But this week he’d heard worse. Much worse. Yesterday she’d actually told him to piss off, which had come so far out of left field that he’d almost burst into tears on the spot. Claire too was acting weird. She’d not said anything, but it was the way she glanced at him when she thought he wasn’t watching—the way kids looked at strangers, at people they thought might be dangerous.
She was doing it right now, he realized, staring at him, her eyes dark, lined with suspicion, or maybe fear. As soon as he met them she turned back to the television, pulling her legs up beneath her, crossing her arms across her chest. Benny felt the goose bumps erupt on his arms, his cheeks hot but a cold current running through him.
What the hell was going on?
Benny reached up and rubbed his temples. His head was banging. It hadn’t been right for a couple of days now, but what had started off as an irritating ringing in his ears now felt like somebody pounding the flesh of his brain with a meat tenderizer. And there was a definite rhythm to it, syncopated like a pulse: Thump-thump … Thump-thump … Thump-thump …
Only it wasn’t his pulse, it didn’t match. If anything, it reminded him of somebody banging at a door, demanding to be let in. He’d taken a couple of aspirin when he’d gotten home from school an hour ago, but they’d barely made a difference. It was literally doing his head in.
He realized Claire was glaring at him again. He pushed himself out of the armchair and his sister actually flinched, as if he’d been coming at her with a cricket bat. He opened his mouth to tell her it was okay, but nothing came out. The only sound in the room was that thumping pulse inside his head, like some giant turbine between his ears.
Benny walked toward the kitchen, Claire’s eyes on him. His mum was watching him too, her head still pointing at the TV but her eyes swiveled so far around that the red-flecked whites resembled crescent moons. He turned his back on them, squeezing past Alison’s high chair. His baby sister stopped banging her spoon, her face twisting up in alarm.
“Don’t cry,” Benny whispered, reaching out to her, and the way she pushed back against her seat, her chubby fingers blanched with effort, broke his heart. She wasn’t crying. She was too frightened to cry.
That’s when he felt it, something in his head, an instinctive command that cut through the thunder of his migraine—Get out of here!—surging up from a part of his brain that lay far beneath the surface. Run!
It was so powerful that he almost obeyed, his hand straying toward the back door. Then Crapper shuffled out from under Alison’s high chair and limped over to him. The dog peered up with such kindness and trust that Benny couldn’t help but smile. “There you go, boy,” Benny said, tickling the dog under his belly. “You don’t hate me, do you?”
And all of a sudden the voice in his head was gone, even the pounding roar slightly muted. Nothing was wrong. He was just having a bad week, that was all.
Benny poked Crapper tenderly on his wet nose then stood up, a head rush making the room cartwheel. He opened up the kitchen cabinet, searching the dusty shelf for a glass.
It wasn’t like normal was even a good thing, he thought as he filled the glass with water. Normal sucked. He took a deep swig, letting his eyes wander. Something on top of one the cupboards hooked them, a scrap of color peeking out from the shadows. Benny frowned and placed the glass on the counter. He scraped a chair across the floor and hoisted himself up, coming face-to-face with a rectangular box in crimson gift wrap. A ribbon had been carefully tied around it, topped with a bow.
With a soft laugh he reached out and scooped up the package. It was big, and it was heavy. About the same kind of heavy as an Xbox might have been. And that’s when the excitement really hit him, knotting up his guts. His mum had never, ever bought him a console—not a PlayStation, not a Wii, not even so much as a DS. But she’d always said he could have one when he was old enough. He’d never known just how old he’d have to be to be “old enough,” but now he did: fifteen!
He leaped down from the chair, bundling the box into the living room, almost knocking Alison out of her high chair in the process. So that’s what this had all been about: his mum and his sister teasing him, pretending they’d forgotten his birthday before surprising him with the sickest present ever, probably a 360 with Modern Warfare 3.
“Thanks, Mum!” Benny yelled, thumping back down in his chair with the box on his lap. There was a gift card under the loop of the bow, and he fumbled with it, his fingers numb with excitement. To Benny, at long last, maybe now you’ll stop nagging us about it! Wishing you a really happy birthday. Lots and lots of love, Mum, Claire, and Alison.
“This is so cool!” he said. “I knew you were just kidding.”
His headache had gone too, he realized, that generator pulse now silent, obliterated by the unexpected turn the afternoon had taken. He tore at the thin paper, one rip causing it to slough to the floor. Beneath was a...