Wanted (Flick Carter Book 1) Read Online Free

exists. It would have been really old when my great gran had it.’
    Flick thought for a moment, then brightened. ‘Will you be all right holding the fort for a few hours while I’m gone? Rosie’s out with her friend Alice, Adam’s… who knows where, but Dad’s here.’
    Maggie nodded, ‘Sure, I’ve got dinner to be getting on with–while we’ve still got food to cook, that is.’
    Flick grinned. She pushed open the door to the front bar and called out, ‘I’m going up the ridge, Dad. I’ll be back before it’s dark!’
    There was a grunt from somewhere out front.  
    ‘Be careful up there,’ Maggie said, an edge of concern in her voice. ‘No one goes out that way, and if you get stuck down that pit, it’ll be tomorrow before we can send Adam to pull you out.’
    ‘I’m always careful,’ Flick said, ‘and anyway I’ll be back long before curfew.’
    She waved as she slipped out through the back door. Her bike was old and had seen better days, perhaps even better centuries. She’d been given it by her father as a fifteenth birthday present, just as her father had once been given it by his father. Over the years it had been patched up and mended. The mudguards were long gone, but other bits had been replaced: a new saddle here, a wheel there, even the frame had been replaced at one time. But it was still the same old bike, even though not one bit about it was original. Flick’s own contribution to the bike was the addition of a carrier plate and panniers over the back wheel, and a clip for her bow on the crossbar.
    She made sure the panniers and her bow were attached, and grabbed a quiver of arrows before setting off through the town.  
    Faringdon had been fortified some years after The Collapse. The derelict houses and factories around the outskirts had been demolished, leaving just the inner core, and the piles of rubble had been banked up to form a defensive rampart. The four roads in or out of the town–north, south, east and west had to pass through large wooden gates, each of which was guarded day and night by a pair of Town Watchmen.
    ‘See you in the pub tonight Fred?’ she called as she cycled through the open southern gate.
    ‘Where else would I be?’ a voice called back.
    ‘Save us a coney if you catch any!’ called another voice.
    Flick waved, but didn’t stop or look back. It seemed that Maggie wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the food shortages.

    It took the best part of an hour to cycle the half dozen miles up to the ridge. The road south was little used and in places had overgrown so that it was not much more than a narrow track. Only horses and pushbikes–and very few of those–came this way. At the top, Flick parked her bike close to the edge of a large pit.
    The pit had been dug when people realised that things were not suddenly going to get better, and if they wanted new tools, they had to make them out of whatever they could find. The local flint was good for making sharp blades, and very quickly the available supply on the surface was used up.
    So enterprising people had dug a mine.
    That was a long time ago. Famine and disease had decimated what remained of the population, and the mine–never much more than a deep pit–had been abandoned since before Flick was born.
    Flick climbed down the wooden ladder into the pit. It was dark at the bottom, and she rummaged for one of the makeshift wooden torches that she kept in an alcove. She wrapped some oil-soaked rags over the end and got to work making a small fire by striking a piece of flint against a curved steel band that she kept tucked in her belt. Once the spark caught, she transferred it carefully onto some tinder and blew gently until the glow became a flame. Carefully she let the flame caress the oily rags until they caught and her makeshift torch burst into light.
    She looked around and saw the low entrance into a passageway cut into the chalk. The torch was burning brightly now, and she ducked down into the