Heinmein had his back to them. As always, his office was a cluttered mess. He had papers piled up all around him. His head blocked the radiation-white light of the CRT computer screen before him:
A model from the last century.
Beside Heinmein, at his elbow, Mitts observed the emptied plate of scrambled eggs.
There was no sign of cutlery.
Mitts wondered if Heinmein had used any at all.
Mitts casually slipped a glance up to the door, saw the name engraved on the metal tag there:
DR H HEINMEIN.
It was something of a wonder to Mitts that, in all of the Compound, Heinmein remained in what had previously been his office.
For one, Heinmein’s office was absolutely tiny. There were tonnes of rooms which would’ve made better offices than Heinmein’s. It wasn’t anything more than a broom cupboard, really.
When Mitts glanced down to the laminate flooring, he saw that there was a thin mattress all bundled up into the corner of the room. There was no blanket. Nothing else. And Mitts supposed that Heinmein simply slept in the clothes he wore during the day.
That would explain an awful lot, thinking about it . . .
“Mm?” Heinmein said, not turning around, or shifting his attention away from the computer screen.
Mitts’s father looked to him, arching an eyebrow.
No matter how much Mitts wanted to get away from Heinmein—and his office—he took a deep breath and blurted it out.
“This morning,” Mitts said, “I smelled this, I dunno, disinfectant-like smell wafting in through my ventilation hatch.”
Heinmein didn’t respond.
As was completely normal.
On other occasions, when Mitts had been forced into some sort of interaction with him, Heinmein hadn’t responded until several hours later, resuming the conversation as if they’d spoken only seconds before.
Heinmein tapped away at his computer keyboard, just a whole bunch of clicking of spring-loaded plastic.
Mitts wondered if he should repeat himself, but he knew, even from the few weeks they’d been living in the Compound, that it was really not worthwhile.
He would get no reply from Heinmein.
As if to tell his father ‘I told you so’, Mitts turned back to him and gave him an eye-roll, coupled with a shrug of his shoulders.
Mitts’s father gave him a scolding glare then turned to face Heinmein himself. Or, at least, to face the back of Heinmein’s head.
“Doctor, did you hear? There might be some sort of a malfunction in the cooling system.”
Heinmein tapped out something rapid-fire on his computer keyboard. Then he stopped.
Still with his back to them, he tilted his head to one side, as if one of the many papers which littered his desk had caught his attention.
Mitts took the opportunity to examine Heinmein’s computer screen. But it was somewhat disappointing. He had somehow built up, in his mind, that despite all of Heinmein’s personal-hygiene failings, he would be working on something so stunning—so absolutely brilliant—that his detachment from reality would all be understandable.
But all Mitts saw on the screen was a series of charts: coloured statistics, the kind which he might get asked to produce in his second or third year of primary school.
That was the thing about older people, they seemed so out-of-kilter with technology.
So unable to help themselves.
Mitts had gone about the Compound some days, through all the areas he was permitted to travel through. In almost every one of the dozens of rooms there were many computers.
Whenever he tried to fire them up, though, whenever he jabbed the power switch on their monitors, they were totally dead. And they had seemed like far newer systems than the one which Heinmein was currently using.
Mitts supposed that Heinmein had done something to disable them.
Oh, Mitts knew that, even if the internet still existed, there was no one left out there to communicate with, but, still, he couldn’t help wanting to put his hands back on a touchscreen . . . a keyboard if he really had to make do.
It was strange to think, before he and his family had arrived to the Compound, he had hardly gone a day without laying his hands on some form of computer.
For the longest time, Mitts was certain Heinmein—his head still tilted to one side; his back to them—would respond to what he had said, that he would relieve the pressure which’d built up in the little, broom-cupboard office.
But, no . . .
Without any sort of acknowledgement that he had heard either Mitts or his father, Heinmein resumed his typing on that ancient computer. When Mitts listened in carefully, he could hear Heinmein muttering something to himself, under his breath.
Mitts felt his father squeeze his shoulder.
And, with a knowing glance, his father steered him away from Heinmein’s office.
Mitts could breathe again . . .
* * *
Mitts pressed his ear up against the cool metal door of his bedroom.
He listened for footsteps.
For the faintest sound of breathing.
Could hear nothing.
But it was best to be sure.
Soon after he and his father had returned from Heinmein’s office, his father had gone off to wash up in the kitchen. It was then that Mitts had ventured into one of the unfrequently visited maintenance cupboards which was located right at the very edge of the Restricted Area:
The area within the Compound where Mitts and his family—Doctor Heinmein—all lived.
At the end of the corridor, Mitts had been confronted with the sign on the inside of the blast door. The no-nonsense, high-vis, red-and-yellow stripes behind it.
RESTRICTED AREA
And then, a little below, a notice in white lettering with a black background which read:
For emergency lock-release, push button.
Apparently having been briefed by Heinmein, the very first thing Mitts’s mother and father had sworn him against doing was pressing that button.
Like a naughty toddler, Mitts had felt that tingle down in the base of his gut.
His eyes had traced the wall, the red button, covered by a breakable, glass box, and he had wondered what would happen if he did punch it.
Would a toxic, sulphur-smelling, smog billow in through the opening?
Suffocating them all?
Killing them all?
Mitts recalled when they’d been back home, when his parents had made a similar threat to him.
That time, though, they had implored him not to put his hand down the hole in the kitchen sink, that, because of the garbage-disposal blades nestled within, he could do himself terrible harm.
But that had been different.
Then Mitts would’ve lost a few fingers.
If he pressed that button now he would—in all likelihood—bring an end to humanity.
Mitts brought his ear away from his bedroom door. His ear ached a little, and he realised that he’d been pressing it a little too hard against the metal. That was the thing about the Compound, everything was built so that it might perform some no-frills purpose.
Back home, if he’d pressed his ear up against his bedroom door, all he would’ve experienced was the slightly warm wood.
Just thinking about wood now sent his nostrils tingling.
He could almost smell it . . . and, yet, he felt like he had forgotten what it smelled like at all.
Just as he had forgotten what fresh fruit tasted like, or how the sun felt against his skin.
Satisfied that nobody was coming, Mitts trod away from his bedroom door, and, as he had done earlier that morning, he brought the large plastic container which contained his possessions over so that it rested just below the maintenance hatch.
From the waistband of his jeans, Mitts removed the half dozen screwdrivers he had concealed.
All the screwdrivers had the same gunmetal-coloured, plastic handle, but they were all of varyi
ng sizes.
He hadn’t been one-hundred-percent certain which one he needed.
As Mitts had returned from the maintenance cupboard, he had been paranoid that his father would pop up from somewhere. That, at first, he would smile at Mitts.
But then he imagined his father turning his attention onto his waistband, asking what he had concealed there. And then Mitts would have to explain.
Thankfully, though, he had got back to his bedroom without bumping into anyone.
Mitts laid the screwdrivers on his camp bed, and then glanced up at the maintenance hatch, judging the screws by sight alone. He grabbed hold of one of the screwdrivers, leaped up on the plastic container, tried it out.
Nope.
He tossed that one back onto the bed.
Tried another.
Nope.
Another.
Nothing.
Mitts glanced down at the remaining screwdrivers. He plucked up one which seemed to be far too small. But he gave it a go, anyway.
He felt the screwdriver slip into the head.
He turned.
The screwdriver gripped.
But it didn’t move.
Mitts sunk his teeth into his lower lip. He put all the force he could muster into turning the screw. But it wouldn’t budge.
Not at all.
He must’ve spent a good minute or so trying to turn the screwdriver. And he only stopped when he tasted blood. Felt it trickle down his chin.
With a frustrated grunt, Mitts tossed the screwdriver off behind him, in the direction of the camp bed. But he heard it miss. He heard it clatter down onto the laminate flooring.
Sucking on his bloodied lip, Mitts barged into his en-suite bathroom, flipped on the light above the mirror, and took a look at himself.
Once he’d soaked a wad of toilet paper in cold water and was pressing it hard against his lower lip, he found himself staring back at his own reflection.
Even in the bright, even light, Mitts could tell that he looked pale.
His eyes sunken in their sockets.
Though Mitts had often heard people—usually his mother—describing his eyes as being a hazel-green colour; he thought that now they looked a little more of a sludge-brown.
Every week—every Sunday evening—Heinmein would give each of them: Mitts, his mother and his father; a check-up.
Heinmein would take their pulse, their blood pressure, a blood sample, and, of course, he would weigh each of them.
Although Heinmein never showed any sort of emotion as he scrawled the information down on his prehistoric clipboard, Mitts had noticed, each week, that he had been losing weight.
About a kilo a week average.
And though Mitts had never been the most robust of kids—he had broken more bones . . . had had more bones broken . . . than any other kid at school—even he thought that he had got scrawnier since they’d arrived at the Compound.
Mitts could see the way his clothing hung off his frame.
Sometimes Mitts allowed his dislike of Heinmein to overwhelm him, and he actually got around to blaming him—even if only in his own mind—for his mother’s state of health.
He thought that the weekly check-ups were only really a way of making him and his family feel deeply anxious.
They’d got Mitts feeling anxious, hadn’t they?
Satisfied that the bleeding had stopped, Mitts tossed the bloodied wad of paper into the toilet bowl. It landed with a splash.
As Mitts stepped out of his bathroom, and back into his bedroom, he promised himself that one thing was for certain. That he wasn’t going to allow Heinmein to tell him and his family what to do.
Even if his father was too naïve to see it, Mitts wouldn’t allow Heinmein to harm him or his family just because they trusted him.
* * *
Back up on the plastic container, Mitts continued to work at the screws.
Already, he could feel the fatigue webbing along the back of his right hand as he worked to undo the screw. And he was only about halfway to unscrewing the first of the four screws.
He supposed that these ventilation hatches had been installed using an electric screwdriver, that was how it’d got so tight. And Mitts cursed himself for being so weedy, for not having any of those muscles the sporty kids had. He knew that if one of those kids had been here, in Mitts’s situation right now, they would’ve got these screws out in a heartbeat.
Off, over his shoulder, Mitts heard a cough.
Out in the corridor.
He stopped dead.
His heart in his mouth.
Arms raised over his head.
Screwdriver pressed hard into the screw.
He listened out, hoping whoever was there would slip off into the distance.
A pair of knocks on his door.
Clean, metallic.
Resounding.
Mitts urged himself back to his task, this time shifting his focus from undoing to tightening. His aching wrist spun the screwdriver around, working the screw back into its place. It was much easier for him to get it back where it had been now that he had loosened it.
That done, Mitts jumped down off the container, tossed the screwdriver onto his blanket on his camp bed and then bundled it up, shoved it to the foot of his mattress.
He turned to his bedroom door, wondering if, whoever was there, had heard all the commotion he had been making.
Maybe they had heard it all.
Knew just what he was up to.
Mitts slumped on his bed, breathing in deeply, trying to urge his pulse to return to somewhere near its normal rate. Finally, when Mitts supposed that he could wait no longer, he called out, a little too loudly, and with his voice cracking, “Come in!”
Without any pause, the hinges of Mitts’s bedroom door squealed out.
And Heinmein appeared in the gap.
Like before—like all the times before—Heinmein bore the device.
Mitts took in the form of the device, its beige casing, the analogue dial with the needle currently lying propped against the Zero reading.
Heinmein hadn’t switched it on yet.
Heinmein dragged his leg behind him into Mitts’s room, and Mitts instantly felt a chill pass through his chest. Pass through his blood.
Heinmein mumbled something beneath his breath, but, other than that, he made no signal or sign of acknowledging that Mitts was even there at all.
In the first few days that Mitts and his family had arrived here, Mitts had been startled to discover—often in the middle of the night—Heinmein’s form skulking about his room.
The sweet smell of rotten oranges, and the biting odour of cheesy feet.
How that odour had got stuck in Mitts’s throat, just as it got caught in Mitts’s throat right now.
That device in Heinmein’s hands, purring along to itself.
The odd squeal and screech here and there.
In the darkness.
It was only when he told his father about these nightly visitations, that they came to a stop.
Mitts’s father stopping Heinmein invading his bedroom at all hours of the night was one of his father’s few interventions in Heinmein’s otherwise free rein within the Compound.
As Mitts observed Heinmein going about his work now, he pulled his knees up to his chest and watched him over his kneecaps.
Just as with any other time, Heinmein remained off in his own world—seemingly occupied within his own mind. He had flipped his device on now, and he was limping about the room. Aside from the odd screech or squeal, there was hardly so much as a tiny deviation from the ordinary, background-level clicking.
Nothing like it had been the first few days.
Those occasions when Mitts had awoken in his bedroom to hear those squeals coming from the device.
And how Mitts would cling to his blanket, trying to instil some sort of warmth in his body.
Only when he had heard his bedroom door slam behind Heinmein, heard the sound of Heinmein’s plodding
, sweeping gait disappear off down the corridor did Mitts realise that it wasn’t the temperature at all.
That it had been fright.
Mitts watched as Heinmein approached the ventilation hatch.
He scolded himself for not having had the presence of mind to think about moving the plastic container back to where it was normally located. He had left it right beneath the ventilation hatch.
Now, though, at least Mitts would have a clear view of his container, both because he had the lights in his bedroom turned on and because it was close by.
That was the other thing about the first few days in the Compound.
Following those night-time visitations, Mitts would always notice some of his personal possessions had gone missing from his plastic container.
He knew what it meant.
That his possessions were unsafe to keep.
That they might be putting their lives in danger.
But, still, Mitts found it something of a violation.
And that was why he had asked his father to put a stop to it.
Sure, the world might’ve ended, but that didn’t mean Mitts should have to deal with a stranger skulking about in the darkness. Waking him up in the middle of the night. Rummaging through his possessions on the pretence of ‘keeping them safe’.
Heinmein gripped tight to his device, making it purr as he waved it up in the air, in the direction of the ventilation hatch. He frowned to himself, screwing up his eyes behind his thick glasses. He was totally focused on the device before him.
On the dial.
Thinking that all his books were stuffed into the plastic container at Heinmein’s feet, Mitts realised he couldn’t do anything other than fix his gaze on that dial.
See whether there was any movement.
See whether or not doom might be near.
Heinmein shook his head some more, muttered to himself again, and then flipped the switch on the device. Brought all those chirps and chuckles to a halt.
It was then that he turned, his black-grey hair all sticking up in tufts, and he looked straight back into Mitts’s eyes.
For a long time, Mitts felt every muscle in his body draw taut.
Strangers in the Night Page 2