by Alex Marwood
He recognises me, she thinks. ‘Oh, hello, baby,’ she says, and gives him a finger to clutch. ‘Hello, Ilo. I’m Romy. I’m your sister.’
Among the Dead
October 2016
14 | Romy
My knife is beautiful. The most beautiful thing I own. It is perfectly balanced, perfectly sharp. I carved the handle from two slim pieces of walnut, made it to fit my palm, to nestle into my grip as though it were an extension of my hand itself, and the Blacksmiths riveted the blade smoothly between the two pieces with a hinge of horseshoe iron, and polished it until it gleamed. The blade’s not long, but it’s sharp. Just the feel of it in the pocket of my jeans comforts me.
Not enough to make me leave the flat, though. It takes me three full days to do that.
I need food, and cash, and a phone. I have twelve pounds, which must buy me enough for a few days, though honestly I don’t really know, but I’m sure it won’t buy me a phone. I need to find a library, so I can do the internet. And I need to work out how to get to Finbrough, because really, when it comes to finding my brother and sister, I don’t know where else to start.
*
I spend nearly an hour dressing. My choice isn’t wide, but still it takes me all that time, for my hands are shaking and I keep having to stop to rest, to calm my breathing. Eventually, I take one of the beta blockers I was prescribed back in Weston – my racing heart simply won’t slow – and then I have to wait for half an hour for it to begin to work. I don’t want to take them more than I have to, but my head is spinning and I feel as though my heart will burst out of my chest. I’m sorry, baby. Your mother has let herself get soft. I’m not the lioness you will need to keep you safe.
Once the pill starts to work, I settle on jeans, a T-shirt and a dark blue hoodie with a big front pocket, because they hide my knife well and because I want to be anonymous, at least for now. Once the dressed-for-work crowd has passed, this seems to be the primary uniform on the streets of Hounslow, and blending in is good. I pick up my keys and the bank card and put them in my bra, slip what money I have into my jeans pocket. And then I let myself out. I don’t take my address on a piece of paper. Despite what Janet thinks, I do, in fact, have a functioning memory.
The door swings to behind me and I’m still alive. No one has come at me with a machete, nothing has exploded, no boil-covered plague victim is grabbing at me begging for help. People, people, swishing past me on the pavement, and no one so much as looks in my direction. A plane passes overhead, so much louder without walls and tiles between us, and I cringe, cling to the wall behind me. And then it’s gone, and I’m on my way to find the Magic Piano.
The bank card was a brainwave of Vita’s. We all had one, leading to an emergency fund, in case one of us was separated, or kidnapped, or trapped in some way, and needed the means to bring ourselves home. Home no longer exists, of course, but the money is most likely still there and she would agree, I’m sure, that I’m going to be using it in the spirit, at least, for which it was intended.
I find a Magic Piano (this is what Spencer told me it was called) recessed into the plate-glass window of a supermarket. A man sits on the pavement beside it, with dirty hair and a dirtier coat, and a friendly brown and white dog, a polystyrene cup with a couple of 10p pieces in it resting on a piece of cardboard that reads HOMELESS AND HUNGRY, PLEASE HELP.
I wish he weren’t there. Maybe that’s what everyone thinks, which is why he’s homeless and hungry. I can’t give him anything until I’ve been to the Magic Piano, and I really don’t want to go to the Piano while he’s there. I slow down as I approach and try to look as though I’m dawdling while I make a decision.
‘It’s okay, luv,’ he says, and his voice sounds as if it’s coming from a storm drain: all cracked and grimy and full of flotsam. ‘I’m not going to rob you.’
A challenge. ‘Is that what you thought I was thinking?’ I say.
He jingles his dog’s chain. ‘People always think that, when they see a Homeless,’ he says.
‘With good reason?’ I ask, and he looks aghast. Then he laughs.
‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Haven’t met a Millennial with a sense of humour in a while.’
‘No one’s told me I had a sense of humour in a while,’ I tell him. The ice is broken and I’m not worried by him any more. I dig in my pocket and find the cash card from my box. Put it in the slot and punch in the number. 0712: Father’s birthday.
It thinks for a moment, then a figure flashes up on the screen that makes me blink. 73,887.00.
I stare at it. I’m not sure I knew there was that much money in the world. Maybe there’s a mistake with the decimal point?
I have just over £400 in my benefits account. We didn’t spend much, at the Halfway House.
73,887.00
WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER SERVICE?
My hand is actually shaking, slightly. YES, I press. Then CASH WITH RECEIPT. I suppose I should get a receipt, so I can show it to someone, if they ask. If there’s anybody to ask. They could all be scattered to the winds, the Ark lost forever, for all I know.
I choose £200. I have no idea how much a phone costs. Hopefully it will be enough. I wait, nervously, for alarms to ring, but after a couple of seconds it spits out the card, whirrs deep inside and then follows up with the cash.
‘Spare a quid for a cup of tea?’ asks my companion, immediately.
I give him ten pounds, which should be enough for him to buy some bread and cheese, or gin or heroin or whatever. I’ve learned a lot in the Halfway House.
‘Wow, thanks, luv,’ he says, and tucks it into a filthy pocket.
‘I don’t suppose you could tell me where the library is?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘I think there’s one up by Hounslow Central.’
‘I mean, to walk?’
‘Have you tried looking it up?’
I grind my teeth slightly. ‘I don’t have a way of looking it up. That’s why I want the library.’
Another funny look. ‘Well, hang on,’ he says, and the hand goes back into the pocket. Comes out with one of those little screens I see people staring at as they blunder into each other on the pavements. Prod, prod, prod, he goes, and then ‘There you go,’ he says, and shows it to me. There’s a map. A map! It’s too small for me to see properly, so I hunker down on the pavement beside him.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘You have the internet in your pocket?’
‘Where’ve you been?’ he asks. ‘Mars?’
‘Wales,’ I say, and he accepts this as an adequate explanation. I look at the map, try to memorise it, but it’s too small to read the road names. He does some swipey thing with his finger and thumb, and suddenly it’s expanded. ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘What’s this machine called?’
He laughs. ‘Mobile phone,’ he says. Like, mo-bile-phoooone. When they trained us how to put the SIM in and work one, the mobile phone was a little thing with push-button numbers on the front and a little tiny screen that showed you what you’d typed.
‘Where can I get something like this?’ I ask. If I have one of these, I won’t need the library after all. It seems extraordinary that a tramp should be walking about with such a miracle of technology in his pocket.
‘Doh,’ he says. ‘Shop.’
‘What sort of shop?’
‘If you want a new one, phone shop,’ he says. ‘But I got this one from Crack Converters. The pawn shop. It was only about £20.’
I can’t hide my astonishment. All the information in the world, in your hand, for £20? I could buy ten of these with the cash I have right now. Well, nine and a half, now he’s got my ten pounds. But still. ‘Where’s this Crack Converters?’
He points up the street. ‘Get to the main road and turn left.’
‘Wow, thanks,’ I say. ‘That was worth ten pounds.’
‘Oh, don’t,’ he says. ‘You’re a funny sort of Millennial. You’re not meant to believe in swapping cash for services. You’re meant to give me money and then tell your fr
iends how virtuous you’ve been.’
‘I don’t have any friends.’
‘Well, you’ll be able to tell the whole of the internet now,’ he says, comfortingly. ‘That’s almost the same.’
I get home £60.05 poorer – £40 for the phone, £10 for the charger, and £10 for a two-minute tutorial from the man in Crack Converters on how to switch it on, plus 5p for a bag to carry my purchases in. Extraordinary. It will take me years to understand the relative values of things. Six eggs are £1.79 in the Bath Road Minimart, and this bag will last literally forever.
Back in the flat, I find the contacts folder and press it to open. I only have one contact, stored for years on the SIM for emergency use. I touch it for a moment, wait, and it starts ringing.
He picks up on the eighth ring, just as I’m starting to think that he’s not going to answer. That it really is all over. That maybe he will never answer and I really am alone.
‘Bloody hell,’ he says. ‘I thought you were dead. What are you doing in Hounslow, 143?’
How does he know? A sudden flurry of paranoia. I glance around the room, half-expecting to see one of my former comrades standing in the corner, watching me.
‘I saw someone had been using a card in Hounslow,’ he says. ‘Seriously didn’t expect it to be you. Where’ve you been, 143? Having a little holiday in the fleshpots?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘They took my box for evidence. They’ve only just given it back.’
‘Yeah, enough of the petty details,’ he says. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want to come back,’ I say. ‘I want to come home.’
15 | Romy
‘Home?’ Uri splutters. ‘You think there’s a home for you here?’
I’d half-expected a response like this. I need to play it carefully. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I belong with you. I always have. I would be with you now, if I could be. Lucien always said that we should stay together, no matter what happened. You know he did. He always wanted us to gather around the One.’
Flattery. Not a lie, as such, because lying comes hard to me. But if Uri thinks I mean him when I speak about the One, there’s no harm in that, is there, baby?
A silence. It goes on for so long that I take the phone away from my face to see if we’re still connected. Eventually: ‘And what makes you think I’d take you back?’
‘I—’
‘You didn’t make the bus,’ he says.
A little chill runs up my spine. ‘Uri!’ I protest. ‘You left me behind!’
A sardonic chuckle. ‘To be fair, 143, I was pretty sure you weren’t going to make it.’
I’m lost for words. I thought I could handle this. Handle him.
Then he laughs. ‘You’ve shown you’re a survivor, I’ll give you that.’
I try to avoid the memories. Most days I am successful, but pleading with Uri brings them crashing back. I hope, baby, that you never know anything like the pain of lying pinned to a bed while over a hundred people die outside your window. Shouts. Then screams. Then howls of pain. You can hear all those things through glass, and wood, and even stone. But no one can hear you calling back. People scrabbling to get up the stairs to where I was, not to find me but to save themselves. They never made it. My mother. I heard her, calling my siblings, her familiar voice ringing out clear above the hubbub. And I heard her stop.
Then silence. Days of silence before anyone found me. The wings of carrion birds as they found the banquet on the courtyard gravel.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘Tell me where you are. Let me come home.’ In my mind’s eye I see him in the courtyard at Plas Golau, though it must be the last place one would find him now. But he must be some place similar. A central core, easily locked and easily defended, and easily locked to keep the people in, with open country all around to afford a view of approaching attack. Mountain country. But I’ve looked at the Cairngorms and they are huge. And, even if I did find them, I won’t make it inside without an invitation.
‘Yes, you have my respect, I’ll give you that,’ he says. ‘But that’s a long way from having my trust. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge here, 143, and you’ve been out of contact for months.’
‘You know what happens when you stop a course of antibiotics halfway through?’ I ask. ‘It’s not good.’
‘And yet, here you are,’ he says.
‘It’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. And they took my box for evidence. You know when I got it back? Yesterday.’
Plus or minus three days. He doesn’t need to know everything. Especially the bits that might suggest that I’m weak.
‘Excuses.’
I backtrack. ‘Okay, ask me,’ I say. ‘Tell me. What do you need from me?’
‘Have you found your siblings?’
‘I’m looking. They’re minors. Apparently I can’t just be told where they are. I need permission from whoever’s in charge of them. I’m not exactly on the list of approved guardians. What with the mental health facility and the mass suicide and everything.’
‘Jesus, 143,’ he says. ‘What have you been doing all this time?’
‘Waiting to get released.’
‘You need to find them,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘We should have taken that boy with us,’ he says. ‘He was good. Talented. Showed real promise.’
‘They come as a pair,’ I tell him.
‘Well, I suggest you make her safe, then.’
I stay silent. Don’t trust my voice. I haven’t even found her yet. Haven’t looked her in the eyes and remembered that she was once my sister.
‘There are three left,’ he says. ‘Not just her.’
‘Really?’ I’d thought there was one more. Not two. Who’s the second?
‘I need you to find them,’ he says. ‘There’s no certainty for any of us unless we know for a fact that they’re safe.’
I lay a hand on my abdomen and stroke the place where I imagine your head to be with my thumb. It’s okay, baby. Once they’re all safe, you’re safe too. See? We’re already one step closer. I wait, three beats, to make it sound like I’m deciding. ‘Who else?’ I ask.
‘78,’ he says.
We would count off every night before dinner, to make sure no one was lost or sick or AWOL, and I remember, after twenty years of constant repetition, almost everyone’s. I was 143, my mother 142. Eden is 201, Ilo 226. Uri loves to call us all by number. Only his Guards had names. They spoke of us en masse as ‘the Drones’.
78 is Jaivyn Blake. I’d assumed it would be him, as he was already on the Outside when he made his break for it. I didn’t like Jaivyn. He didn’t like any of us, either. Not even his peers, as far as I could see. I still remember the way he manhandled me, the day Eden was born. It will be a pleasure to find him.
‘And 139,’ he says, and my heart skips a beat. Eilidh.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I thought she was … ’ I begin, and then I stop myself.
I didn’t see her die. Not like Zaria or Farial. Didn’t see a body, just assumed that her vanishing meant what I thought it meant. It was me who cleared her box out from the dormitory and gave it to Vita. Surely you wouldn’t leave, and leave your box behind? Just … one day she was there and the next she wasn’t, and we never spoke of her again.
‘Where is she?’ I ask.
‘Working on that,’ he says. ‘And now you can, too.’
‘I’d thought we—’ I begin.
‘There is no we, 143,’ he snaps. ‘Find them and show me evidence that they’re safe, and we’ll talk.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say. ‘Where to start.’
‘Start with your own,’ he says. ‘And keep this phone on. We’ll be in touch when we know anything. And find me that boy too. If he’s still alive.’
16 | Sarah
As she’s leaving, the case worker takes Sarah out for a ‘chat’ on the brick parking space that her neighbours all refer to as their ‘drive’. Hands her a bulging folder of paper.
‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘it’s a bit chaotic. Had to shove it all together. You’ll need to sort it out before you hand it over to the new case worker.’
‘Um,’ says Sarah, ‘thanks.’
‘No, I mean, there’s other stuff in there that you’ll want to keep here, not hand over. Their birth certificates, for a start. You’ll need those. It took a while but we got that done for them – it was pretty much impossible to do anything else without them. You can’t really have someone in the government systems if they don’t officially exist, can you?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Anyway. You need the papers. As their legal guardian. You’ll need them for the school, for a start, especially if they’re going in after half-term. And their vaccination certificates. The schools are getting tougher about letting kids in unvaccinated. Herd immunity and that. There’s a few second-doses you’ll need to get sorted once you’ve got them registered with a doctor. I’m afraid we had to take a guess at their actual birth dates. Well, Eden was reasonably easy; she swears she was born on 9/11. Ilo, though … he seems to have a good idea when he was conceived, so we’ve extrapolated forward from that.’
‘That’s odd.’
‘Winter solstice, apparently,’ she says, and shrugs. ‘They seem to have had a bit of a thing for solstices. Though I don’t think his conception was anything official, as such. Just a party slip-up by the mo— your sister.’
Not the first one, Sarah thinks, and is shocked at her own spitefulness.
‘Anyway, we made it the 14th of September, as that probably isn’t too far off.’
‘Two birthdays in a week,’ she says. ‘Heavens.’
The bright Case Worker Smile flashes at her.
‘I wish I’d known at the time. We could have done something to celebrate,’ Sarah says, and gives the Smile right back to her in return. ‘Thanks for getting this sorted,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t even have known where to start.’
‘Pah,’ says the social worker, ‘we’re not actually in the business of incubating whooping cough outbreaks in our children’s homes.’