The Detachable Boy

by Scot Gardner

  I opened Ravi’s granddad’s old penknife.

  ‘I’m going to dig you out,’ I called, triumphantly.

  ‘Dig? But it’s brick. What are you going to dig with?’

  I felt the dull point of the blade. ‘Never mind about that, I’ll have you out in no time.’

  I arranged myself so the hole in the brickwork was at a comfortable working height and began scratching at the mortar. Small sparks lit up in the dim vent shaft and after a minute, I paused to check my progress.

  I’d ground the knifepoint flat and managed to scrape out a thimbleful of dried sand and cement.

  ‘Are you nearly finished?’ Crystal asked.

  ‘Almost,’ I lied. ‘Won’t be long now. Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. I’m just so hungry. I want to go home.’

  I clamped my teeth. You’re hungry. I’m hanging over eighty-four storeys of nothing, picking at your cell with a dodgy old penknife and your biggest worry in life is that you’re hungry? I unclamped my jaw, took a deep breath and thought hard for a way to entertain her. Take her mind off her . . . stomach.

  ‘How did you end up in there?’ I asked, and Crystal fell quiet. I kept scraping.

  ‘I really don’t know. I remember those men in the shiny suits. They taped my mouth closed and stuffed me in a bag and drove me to an airport. They put me on a plane then into a huge truck with other people. I could hear them talking, that’s how I knew where they’d taken me. I sent a message to Ravi and my phone battery went flat. When they finally let me out of the bag I was here, in this cell. What have I done? Why did they lock me up, John? Who are the men in the shiny suits?’

  I sighed. She had a right to know. So I told her. Everything.

  Crystal listened to me and the rhythmic scritch scritch of the penknife in the brick joint. And she asked questions. Intelligent, inquiring questions that made me think hard.

  ‘How come you never told us you were detachable?’

  ‘Well, it’s not something I’m particularly proud of. If I’m honest, I’m kind of embarrassed by it.’

  ‘Ravi knows all this?’

  ‘Not everything.’

  ‘Has anybody ever told you that that’s a bit weird?’ she said. ‘That you should see a doctor or something?’

  ‘I was born this way. There’s no treatment. I’m not the only one, I know that much. This place must be full of them. My mum said that when she was in hospital with me there was another detachable kid born. It’s normal . . . for some people.’

  ‘Normal? What’s normal about pulling yourself to pieces?’

  ‘I’m really not that different to you . . . only sometimes when I sneeze, my head actually comes off.’

  ‘Shh! Someone’s coming,’ Crystal whispered. ‘Hurry, John, hurry!’

  I froze. I heard the rattling of keys, then a female voice. A cartoon witcheypoo voice.

  ‘Here you are, my little bottom pimple. Some lovely doggy food for our little puppy. And some bread, too. Don’t mind the spots of mould; Chef lets it mature on the kitchen floor especially. Lovely coloured spots today, aren’t they? Look, some orange and green and some spidery white ones. Work of art, really. Ha ha ha ha ha!’

  The laughter faded and the cell door slammed. It became clear why Crystal had been feeding the rats. There are some things even she wouldn’t eat.

  ‘Don’t worry, Crystal,’ I whispered. ‘We’ll get you out of there and find you some real food. A big fat hamburger. Two hamburgers!’

  ‘Six hamburgers?’

  ‘Okay, six hamburgers.’

  ‘Are you nearly finished?’

  I hurriedly scraped at the deep groove I’d made with the knife. ‘Almost.’

  Suddenly, the brick I’d been worrying at burst from the wall and hit me firmly in the chest. The fright dislodged my little foot. I lost balance and scrabbled at the wall. My body hung and my little foot dangled over the abyss, held to my ankle by the fading elasticity of my orange sock.

  The brick thundered off the walls on its plummet through the darkness.

  I could feel my sock slipping, the weight of my running shoe and my foot pulling it off my stump. I flattened myself against the wall and tried to pin my sock to my ankle, but it was too late.

  My foot dropped.

  ‘John?’ Crystal said. ‘John? Are you still there?’

  ‘Mostly,’ I said.

  The brick hit the bottom of the vent with a final crack that echoed through the darkness like a gunshot. In the silence that followed, I considered my immediate future grimly. The guards would have heard the brick. The entire Hive would have heard the brick. It wouldn’t take them long to find the source of the sound. Not as long as it would take me to climb down to the hundredth floor with only one foot.

  ‘I kicked the brick right out!’ Crystal sang, her voice much less muffled in the vent now.

  ‘Well done,’ I said, my words thick with sarcasm. ‘That’s just great. Awesome.’

  ‘Thanks! We only need to get a couple more bricks out and I’ll be able to squeeze through.’

  I waited for the dull thud of my foot kicking the bottom of the Hive.

  ‘John?’

  ‘Shhh.’

  I heard nothing.

  ‘What?’ Crystal whispered.

  And then I saw it. On the shelf below me, hard against the wall, I could just make out the crumpled form of my sock sitting on top of my runner like a bad window display at a sports store.

  I smiled.

  ‘What is it?’ Crystal asked again.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing I can’t handle, anyway.’

  I lowered myself and collected my foot. I kissed it, but immediately wished I hadn’t. The thing stank like a wombat carcass brewed in swamp water. I gagged, reattached and dragged myself back to the opening.

  Crystal’s face was peering at me through the gap now. She was smiling.

  ‘Hi John,’ she said, and waved.

  I waved back.

  ‘Did I do good?’

  ‘You did good. Now, let’s get you out of there.’

  CHAPTER 18

  ‘I’M HUNGRY!’ Crystal moaned. ‘Can’t you dig any faster? Let’s get out of here and find some food !’

  ‘I’m going as fast as I can.’

  ‘What can I do? There must be something I can do.’

  She disappeared from the hole. I heard furniture dragging and then her face appeared again.

  ‘I moved the bed so I could hide underneath and help. I even made a body shape from a bunched blanket.’

  A long, thin body shape, I hoped.

  With me scraping and Crystal kicking, two more bricks broke free in the half hour that followed. I stacked them and helped her wriggle through the gap and onto the narrow ledge. She looked down into the blackness of an eighty-four-storey drop and paled visibly.

  She grabbed my arm and nearly pitched us both into the abyss.

  ‘W-w-w-what are we going to do now?’

  ‘Look up,’ I said.

  She turned her face skywards. Except for the glow from her cell, all the light that entered the vent came from above.

  Sixteen floors above, to be precise. There was light at the top of that long vent.

  ‘We’re going to climb up there. It’s our way out.’

  ‘No!’ Crystal squeaked. ‘I can’t do it. It’s too far. Isn’t there another way?’

  ‘Well, we could climb down. It’s only eighty-four floors and there are only about three hundred guards between us and the front door.’

  Crystal bit her lip.

  ‘It’s easy really. Just one step at a time. Think of hamburgers.’

  ‘Hamburgers?’

  ‘Big hamburgers you can hardly get your mouth around.’

  I guided her hand to the ledge above us and placed her foot in the first foothold. ‘And up!’

  She never stopped shaking, but she did start climbing.

  ‘Hamburgers so juicy you need three napkins to mop your chin.’
/>
  She lifted herself to the next floor. And the next.

  ‘John?’ she said. ‘I hate being the one to tell you this, but you stink.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment,’ I said.

  ‘Essence of unshowered boy.’

  ‘I thought heroes like James Bond were supposed to smell like cologne, not warthog.’

  At the top of the ventilation shaft was a steel room with a low concrete roof, so low that it locked Crystal into crouch position. I could stand with my neck bent. Light streamed into the room through gaps between the roof and the tops of the walls, gaps like the ones that rid city streets of storm water. Gaps that chunky rats like Argus would find a tight squeeze.

  ‘Now what?’ Crystal asked.

  I ran my hand over the walls. ‘I . . . I don’t know. The rats said it was the best way to the surface.’

  ‘Rats? There are rats in here?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a whole community of them. That’s how I found you.’

  ‘You followed a rat?’

  ‘More or less.’

  Crystal clutched her arms across her chest. ‘I hate rats.’

  ‘You hate rats? Then why were you feeding them through the hole in your cell?’

  ‘Feeding them? I wasn’t feeding them. I was hiding that disgusting food.’

  I looked into the shadows sharply. ‘What was that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it was a rat.’

  ‘I hate rats.’

  I gritted my teeth. ‘Right, then help me find a way out of here.’

  As if on cue, another siren blared, the sound carving up the air in the vent like a thousand swords.

  We looked at each other, our eyes bugging in terror. Below us, voices were calling to each other in terse military tones. Then banging and thuds – more bricks being kicked from the hole we’d made.

  Crystal pawed at the wall. I shoved at the roof.

  The roof moved.

  It lifted, then clunked back into position, and I could see that the section I’d pushed against was a manhole.

  ‘Crystal, help me here!’

  I counted to three and we pushed with everything we had.

  The manhole scraped open, covering us with blinding sunlight and sand. We dropped the lid to the side, leaving a gap big enough for a single smallish person. I reached for Crystal’s foot to bunk her out.

  Crystal’s foot reached for me.

  In her mad shove to get out of that prison she kicked at the air, only her foot missed the air and connected squarely with my nose.

  My head bounced low off the wall and skittered to the edge of the vent shaft. I dived and managed a miraculous save, dragging my noggin hard against my chest.

  My body shook. My head panted.

  I heard the sickening clip clap clop of something bouncing down the walls of the ventilation shaft. I scrunched my eyes shut and reattached my head, hoping beyond all hope that the thing bouncing down to the floor one hundred storeys below wasn’t some part of me.

  When I eventually found the courage to open my eyes, my worst fears were confirmed.

  I was missing one sock.

  I was missing one shoe.

  With my little foot in it.

  CHAPTER 19

  ‘JOHN? ARE YOU COMING?’

  I squinted at Crystal, a black shape with violent afternoon sunlight behind.

  I blinked hard and shook my head. ‘I can’t . . . I lost a foot.’

  Crystal puzzled for a moment. ‘How can you lose twelve inches? That would make you shorter than Ravi and he’s the shortest person I know.’

  ‘Not a foot, a foot !’ I poked the stump of my leg into the light and shook it like an unco-ordinated Cossack dancer.

  Crystal recoiled. ‘Eew. Did it hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then don’t worry about it. It’s only a foot.’

  ‘Only a foot? That’s easy for you to say. It wasn’t your foot. I need to go back and get it.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll wait for you. Hurry up!’

  ‘You need to get away from here. Can you see a building? A run-down old diner with a big shed out the back?’

  ‘A diner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do they make hamburgers?’

  ‘Yes. I mean no! No! Stay away from there. The place is actually the front door of the Hive.’

  ‘I see it – a dump and a half surrounded by cactus.’

  ‘Find somewhere else to hide near here. If I don’t make it back by night, head for the road. Just get out of here. Get a ride with somebody. Anybody. Find a phone and call your dad. Tell him you’re okay. Okay?’

  I took the money from my jacket pocket and peeled off several notes.

  ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Take this.’

  Crystal took the cash. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I lied. ‘I’ll collect my foot, then I’ll meet you back here. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Put the lid back in place. Quickly.’

  Crystal made little squeaks of effort as she pushed and dragged the lid into position. Her face appeared at one of the ventilation slots. ‘John?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe what it looks like from the outside. Wow. They’ve done a great job. Just looks like a pile of rocks.’

  ‘Go! Find somewhere to hide.’

  I watched her through the gap until she’d jogged out of view, and then turned to look down the vent shaft.

  ‘. . . yes. That’s right. Some sort of vent,’ a guard said. ‘I think she’s headed for the surface.’

  I realised, with a gulp, that climbing down after my foot wasn’t going to be an option.

  I could hear the guards grunting as they made their way up the vent towards me.

  I held my breath as I stepped off into nothingness.

  CHAPTER 20

  MIRACULOUSLY, MY BODY held together for the best part of the fall.

  ‘What was that?’ I heard, as I zipped past the guards. They were climbing in the gloom and hadn’t seen me.

  ‘Just the wind,’ said the other guard.

  And the wind it was.

  I shut my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself in preparation for impact. There was an updraught of wind and when I finally hit the mess of sticks and twigs at the bottom of the vent I was travelling as if I’d fallen from a mere ten storeys, though the impact still managed to bust me apart.

  It took two and a half minutes for me to gather my senses and a full complement of limbs.

  I shook my little foot. ‘I swear, one day you’ll be the death of me.’

  I could hear voices echoing in the vent but couldn’t make out any of the words. Many voices. I imagined the place swarming with men in vinyl and knew I had to find another way out.

  I detached and crawled through the pipe into the lift shaft. Above me, the clear lift reflected flashes of light as it passed floors on its way up.

  Against the wall, a huge pulley carried the cable that raised and lowered the lift. It must have been a continuous loop powered in another part of the Hive. The pulley whirred quietly while the lift was in motion and stopped abruptly when the guards reached their destination. When the lift went up, the cable on one side of the pulley would go up too while the cable on the other side went down. When the lift changed direction, so did the movement of the cable – that which went up would now be going down, and vice versa.

  I touched the cable. My hand came away covered in grease. If I grabbed the right cable at the right time, I’d be hoisted into the air. If I grabbed the wrong cable, I’d be slammed into the floor, the wall – or alternatively, minced in the workings of the pulley.

  The cables ran up the shaft barely a metre apart and I thought I could possibly swap from one to the other and always go up, regardless of the direction of the lift.

  The idea was great. In theory.

  In practice, I felt like a yo-yo. I would gain ten floors before the lift c
hanged direction too fast to swap cables and I’d lose five of the floors I’d gained. Up and down. Down and up. Down and down. It wasn’t long before my brain scrambled totally and my hands were ready to bail out. If my hands didn’t fall off then some other part of me would.

  It was then I noticed the clear lift box – loaded with figures clothed shiny and black – hurtling towards me. The lift was coming down. I was going up, up, up on a collision course with the narrow gap between the lift and the wall. The gap where the cables ran. The gap I’d fallen down after I’d escaped from the lift.

  I made myself skinny against the cable, sucked a breath and held on tight as the lift shot past.

  The lift continued down and I was hoisted higher. Then the sound of the lift motor became ominously loud. I looked up and let go of the cable just in time to avoid being dragged into the drive mechanism. I hurtled through the air like a skier over a jump and landed – on two feet – in a concrete service tunnel.

  I looked in amazement at my greasy hands, my torso, my legs. I couldn’t believe that – for once in my life – I’d actually landed on my own two feet. As if I’d meant it. As if I was a professional. As if I was a secret agent and I did that sort of stuff all the time. Then I spoiled it by bursting into a spontaneous Highland fling, though I resisted the urge to shout and holler.

  The service tunnel was lit every ten metres or so by a small globe screwed into the ceiling. I watched my shadow grow then shrink as I moved beneath each light. Then the tunnel forked. There was no flashing neon sign, no daylight to follow, no giant ‘GO THIS WAY’ arrow painted on the wall. Right or left? Left or right?

  From the right-hand tunnel, I thought I heard the low rumble of a diesel engine and I started to run.

  The lights in the tunnel strobed by as my feet clack-clacked on the concrete. The tunnel curved and I ran until the air was surging in and out of my lungs. There, on the dead-end wall in front of me was the sort of sign I’d been looking for. It was green with white lettering, illuminated from within like a holy vision.

  EXIT

  CHAPTER 21