by Cross, Amy
Then again, there's a fifth person. Or at least, there's supposed to be a fifth person. Down in one of the rooms at the back of the building, tied to a chair and awaiting her next round of 'interrogation', Mallory is supposed to be fully restrained. That's the idea, anyway. That's the theory. The truth is a little more complicated. Mallory isn't tied to chair. Not now. I let her go a couple of hours ago, but I didn't tell anyone. I'm just waiting for Bob or Henry to realize what's happened, at which point I guess they're raise hell and start trying to track her down. Maybe that's what the noise is, then; maybe it's Bob, racing along the corridors as he tries to find his former prisoner. If that's the case, there's only one thing left for me to do: I have to hope and pray that he won't find out that I was the one who loosened Mallory's ropes and helped her get away.
As I head over to the front door, I remind myself that there's no way anyone or anything could have got past Bob. If he'd fired his rifle down in the lobby, I'm sure I would have heard it, even all the way up here. The odds of the building having been invaded are pretty low, so the most likely thing is that Bob has discovered Mallory's absence. Standing by the door, I hear footsteps in the stairwell. Someone's coming up toward this level. I close my eyes again, realizing that I must have been right the first time: Bob has clearly been through to the back room, and he's clearly discovered that Mallory's missing, in which case -
Suddenly there's a loud banging sound on the other side of the door. Taking a deep breath, I force myself to wait a moment, figuring I need to make it seems as if I was asleep. After a few seconds, I open the door and stare at Bob, who has a fierce look in his eyes.
"She's gone!" he says firmly. He clearly assumes that I'll know what he means.
"Who?" I ask.
He stares at me. Out of breath from running up the stairs, he seems kind of wild, almost as if the mask of control has finally slipped.
"The girl?" I ask, surprised at how easy I'm finding it to lie to him. "Mallory?"
"She's gone," he says again, pushing past me and entering the apartment just as a sleepy Henry comes through from his room. "The ropes are untied and the back door's open!"
"What do you mean?" Henry asks as he reaches us. "You said -"
Without warning, Bob lashes out and pushes Henry back against the wall. It's a shocking moment of unrestrained anger, and he stares at Henry with an expression of pure rage. "I told you to make sure all the doors were locked," he says. "I told you to make sure there was no way in or out of the building."
"I did," Henry stammers, looking totally confused.
"Then how the fuck did she get out?" Bob asks.
"How did she get out of the ropes?" I say, hoping to distract attention away from the unlocked door in the back of the building. The truth is, Henry did lock all the doors, but I managed to briefly lift the key from the desk and open a door in the delivery room while no-one was looking. The last thing I need is for Bob to get angry at Henry for something that was my fault; at the same time, there's no way I can own up to what I did.
Walking over to the other side of the room, Bob seems to be full of the kind of pent-up, tightly wound energy of an angry beast. He paces back and forth, clearly finding it hard to stay calm.
"I swear I locked all the doors," Henry says weakly, close to tears.
"Shut up!" Bob screams, marching over to him and leaning into his face. "Shut the fuck up! I don't want excuses! All the excuses in the world won't bring her back, and now she's gone off to tell her friends all about us! Do you realize the level of danger we're in thanks to your incompetence?!"
"I was -" Henry starts to say.
"Shut up!" Bob screams again, before turning and using the butt of his rifle to smash the window of a display cabinet in the corner of the room. Glass drops own to the floor, followed by a brief moment of calm as Bob walks over to the window and looks out at the dark city. "Think about it," he says after a few seconds. "That bitch is out there somewhere, heading back to her comrades. As soon as she tells them about us, about our supplies, they'll come for us. They might be better armed than us, there might be more of them." He turns to us. "Your incompetence and stupidity might have doomed us all, boy. How does that feel? The blood of your own sister on your hands."
"I'm not dead," I say, starting to get worried about how far Bob's anger might drive him.
"Not yet," Bob says, walking back over to us. "But the risk level has increased dramatically." He pauses for a moment, staring at Henry. "It's my fault," he says eventually. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have got so angry. It was unprofessional of me. This is my fault as much as anyone's. I never should have given you so much responsibility, Henry. I assumed I could trust you to do the job properly, but clearly that was an error of judgment. It's my fault that you were given a job you couldn't complete."
"I checked the doors," Henry says, with tears streaming down his face. "I checked every door and every window, I swear. They were locked."
"Clearly they weren't," Bob replies, "and the fact that you still won't acknowledge your mistake is another sign that you're too immature to be trusted."
"They -" Henry starts to say.
"Then where is she?" Bob shouts. "Go down there, and show me where that bitch has got to, because she's most certainly not anywhere in this building. What are you suggesting? Did she gnaw through her ropes and then climb out through the mailbox? Did she escape into the air ducts? She's vanished into thin air, and the only possible explanation is that I trusted a foolish little child to secure the building and he let me down!" He states at Henry for a moment, and I can't shake the fear that he might hit him. "Get out of my sight," he sneers eventually. "I can't even stand to look at you. As far as I'm concerned, you're just a waste of space, so get out of here." With that, he turns and walks over to the broken window.
"Henry -" I start to say.
"Fuck off," Henry replies, turning and hurrying back to his room.
Once Henry's gone, I stare at Bob and try to work out what I should say. I know I can't tell him that I'm the one who helped Mallory to get away, but at the same time I feel as if I need to deflect some of his anger away from my brother. Walking slowly across the room, I try to desperately to think of some way that I might be able to calm him down, but ultimately I come up with nothing.
"I'm sorry," Bob says after a moment. "I shouldn't have reacted like that. Your brother's a good kid." He turns to me. "But that's all he is. A kid. He's nothing more than a child, and it was wrong of me to give him so much responsibility. I suppose I just wanted to believe that I could trust him." He sighs. "I'm gonna need your help, Elizabeth. I can't deal with this whole situation alone. Now that the girl is gone, it's more important than ever that we get our act together and work out what we're gonna do. I can't hold everything up together, so I need to know I can count on you."
"I just want to do what's right," I reply.
"As do we all," he says firmly. "As do we all. That's why I'm going to propose that we discuss the possibility of being more proactive. We need to secure the entire street, at least for now. We need to have some kind of early-warning system in place. I'm not sure what that should be right now, but we have to assess the situation and come up with some kind of plan." He pauses for a moment. "I know you might not necessarily agree with this, but I think it's worth considering the possibility that we should move to a more secure location. Within the city, ideally, but possibly further afield."
"We can't leave New York," I say.
"Because of your parents?"
"Because we're safe here," I tell him.
"We'll talk about this later," he replies, "but Mallory's escape raises the stakes dramatically, and we need to do more than just sit around and wait to be attacked. We need to accept the current reality and work out how best to face the threats that emerge. Otherwise, we risk sleep-walking straight into a lethal situation. There are people out there who'd kill us for our supplies. You understand that, right? They'd walk in here and cut out throats without any he
sitation. That's what people get like when they're desperate, when they need food to feed their families. They group together so they can work better, and suddenly the mob mentality takes over and..." His voice trails off for a moment, as if he's lost in thought. "There are only three of us," he continues eventually, "and don't take this the wrong way, but two of you are children. Unless you can both grow up real fast, we have a serious problem."
"But you don't know that Mallory is dangerous," I point out. "You don't know that she was here to get information about us. She might just be on her own. She might actually have been someone who could have helped us."
"I highly doubt that," he replies, heading to the door. "Get some sleep. In the morning, we'll all talk about this, and we'll work out what to do next." With that, he heads out into the corridor, leaving me standing alone in the hallway, trying not to panic. The thought of leaving the building and finding somewhere else to live is terrifying, but the thought of staying with Bob might actually be worse.
Chapter Two
Oklahoma
Sitting by the side of the road, watching as the sun slowly starts to light the morning sky behind a distant row of trees, I realize I can hear movement in the truck behind me. I guess my brother Joe is waking up from his long, hungover sleep. We've driven all night along the lonely roads that lead to Scottsville, and Joe slept the whole way. I was kinda hoping he wouldn't wake up for a few more hours, but I can hear the door of the truck opening, and now there are footsteps heading slowly toward me over the damp grass.
"What are we doing here?" he asks, sounding groggy.
"Just taking a break," I say.
"Why?"
"Because I've been driving almost twelve hours without stopping."
"Yeah, well..." He wanders over to a nearby tree and starts taking a leak. "I can take over from here, if you like."
"Are you sober?" I ask.
"Sober as a rock," he replies, zipping up and coming back over to me. "Might as well make use of me while you can." He pauses for a moment, apparently waiting to see if I might laugh. "It's a joke, kid. Come on, lighten up."
Taking a deep breath, I continue to just stare at the horizon. I can't stop thinking about the house we left behind, and whether or not it's still burning. All those familiar rooms, with flames ripping through all our possessions, while our mother's dead body was sitting at the kitchen table. For some reason, I keep fixating on her head, and imagining her hair burning away as the flames consumed her body. There's also the fact that I think I saw someone standing in the flames as we drove away. I want to believe I just imagined the whole thing, but there's a part of me that thinks there's maybe a connection between the figure and the dead cop.
"Seen anyone else on the road?" he asks.
I shake my head.
"Figured. Seen any sign of life at all? Planes, helicopters?"
Again, I shake my head.
"Fuck," he mutters. "They're really leaving us alone to get on with things, aren't they?"
"It doesn't look good," I reply. There's an awkward pause. "Mom said -"
"Let's not talk about Mom," Joe replies, with a firmness in his voice that makes me realize he's determined to block out all mention of what happened yesterday. "We got enough gas?"
"Yes," I say through gritted teeth. "I took care of that. I also made sure we have enough food and water to last a week. We're pretty well stocked up."
He nods. "Good job, boy. I guess I can rely on you after all."
"It's not as if I could leave it to you," I point out.
"So how much longer do you think it's gonna be before we get to Scottsville?" he asks. Typical Joe, always evading the difficult part of the conversation.
"You think we can just get up and get on with things?" I ask, finding it hard to believe how easily he's able to act like nothing's wrong.
"You know," he continues, "there's a good chance we're gonna find help when we get to Scottsville. There's gonna be people there. Scottsville's not big, but it's bigger than our farm, so there's probably some kind of rescue operation going on and there'll be people there. Like, from the government. There'll be information. This isn't the end of the world."
"You don't know that for sure," I say.
"Then there's only one way to find out," he replies, getting to his feet. "Seriously, I can drive for a bit. You need to get some rest." He pats my shoulder. I guess this is his way of being nice.
Chapter Three
Manhattan
"It was you," Henry says, standing in the doorway.
Rolling over in bed, I see that he's staring at me with a dark, pained expression. The first rays of sunlight are starting to come through the window, and a constant breeze is blowing through the apartment thanks to the broken window in the front room.
"What was me?" I ask, my heart racing. I know exactly what he's talking about, but I have to maintain a facade of innocence.
"I know I locked the doors," he continues, "and I know I locked the windows. I know for a fact that I didn't fuck up, so there's only one way they could have been opened. Someone did it on purpose. Someone helped her. Someone betrayed the rest of us. You must have got the key somehow and helped the girl to escape."
I stare at him. I want to tell him the truth, to tell him that we need to stick together and avoid the excesses of Bob's paranoia, but there's something about Henry that worries me. Over the past few days, he's been drawn closer and closer to Bob, and now he seems to be increasingly unstable. It's a hard thing to admit to myself, but I really don't trust my brother anymore.
"Don't even bother to lie," he says. "I've spent the whole night trying to work it out, and there's no other explanation that comes close to making as much sense. I know what you're like, Elizabeth. You care about people. You don't understand the hard choices that have to be made, and you've got this bleeding heart desire to help everyone." He stares at me, with a look on his face that makes it clear that he finds me to be pitiful. "You probably saw her and felt sorry for her. You probably untied the ropes and helped her out the back door. You probably even gave her some of our food, and some of our water."
"No," I say, even though he's pretty much spot-on. That's exactly what I did.
"So if I go down to our supplies and check," he continues, "I won't find anything missing?"
I pause, trying to work out what to say next. I can't admit the truth to him; he'd go to Bob.
"Or are we supposed to believe that she found the supplies herself?" he asks. "Is that what you thought at the time? You thought you could string together a bunch of unlikely events, and somehow Bob and I would believe them? I guess you must think we're pretty dumb."
"I didn't do anything like that," I say. I feel bad for lying, but I have no choice.
"Whatever."
"It's true!" I insist.
"Liar."
Taking a deep breath, I clear a space on the end of the bed for him. "Come and sit down," I say, figuring it's time I laid my cards on the table for him. There's been so much happening, it's difficult to know who I can trust. At the same time, I figure maybe I should go out on a limb and offer Henry a chance to make the right decision.
"I'm okay over here," he says firmly.
"Do you remember what it was like before all of this happened?" I ask, trying to appeal to the old, pre-Bob version of Henry. "One week ago. Do you remember how things were? You were probably sitting around playing video games -"
"Bullshit," he replies. "I didn't just sit around playing video games. I did so much more other stuff, but you didn't notice. I'm not saying it's your fault, but don't stereotype me as some kind of video game junkie, okay?"
"Okay," I say, taken aback by the level of resentment in his voice. "But life was different back then, wasn't it? We didn't worry about things like our food supply or the danger from people attacking our buildings. We didn't argue about girls tied up in the basement. We didn't have to think about people we found in abandoned cars, and you definitely didn't have to use a rif
le to kill them." I pause for a moment. "Are you okay about that, Henry? I mean, you shot that guy -"
"He wasn't a guy," he snaps back at me. "He was a monster."
"He was still a guy," I reply, "and -"
"No!" Henry says firmly, almost shouting. "He wasn't a guy! Not in any way! He was a thing, just like a fucking animal or something!" He takes a deep breath. "What I shot wasn't a guy, so stop saying that."
"Okay," I reply, realizing that this is a difficult subject for him. "But the point is, Henry, everything has changed in such a short period of time. You've gone from not knowing Bob to being his best friend in, what, four days? Do you really think he's the best person for us to be with right now? There's something about him that makes me worry, Henry. It's as if he's going deeper and deeper into insanity, and he's gonna drag us there with him. We need to break away from all of this, maybe find some other way to get through things. It's like Bob's going crazier every day."
"He's done a lot for us," Henry replies. "Without Bob, we might not even be here right now. He made us address the seriousness of our situation and take actions to keep our supplies safe."
"That's not entirely true," I point out. "It's not like he's saved our lives."
"Without Bob, we'd just be sitting targets," he insists. "We'd be sitting here defenseless and helpless, just waiting for someone to come along and take all our food. Without Bob, would we have gone out there and taken supplies from local shops, or would we be sitting on a little pile of stuff that's getting smaller and smaller?"
"But it's changing us," I reply.
"That's a good thing," he says. "Bob's making us grow up. He gave us guns, so we can defend ourselves, and he made it so we can recognize the dangers around us. He changed everything, and we have to stick with him. I know he can be kind of tough at times, but that's what the world's like right now. Bob organizes things and he makes sure we don't just become a pair of kids sitting around in an empty building. We might be dead by now without Bob. You know that, right? He might have saved our lives."