Into the Fire

by Peter Liney

  “Are you okay?” I called, but there was no reply. “Lena!”

  “Come on down,” she shouted at last.

  With some difficulty I made my way down, the point that there wasn’t a lot of room painfully emphasized by my head bumping on the overhanging stonework. One by one the others followed, the last a grumbling Delilah. I guess we were hoping for better things, but together we created nothing but chaos, everyone blundering around in the pitch-black, bumping into each other, tripping over, and yet again it crossed my mind that it was a valuable insight into Lena’s world.

  “Just settle down where you are,” she told us, with a touch of impatience. “At least it’s dry.”

  We tried to do as she asked but ended up falling over each other, sitting in each other’s laps, getting in a real tangle.

  “There’s more room over here!” she shouted. “Hey!”

  The kids started getting in an argument, accusing each other of all sorts of things, Hanna whopping Gordie, who promptly threatened to “lay her out, girl or no girl.”

  “Okay! Okay!” I shouted. “That’s not helping.”

  Finally, we sorted ourselves out, but no matter how tired we were, how long the day, I don’t think anyone was in the least bit comfortable. After a while I became aware that there was the tiniest glow of light spilling down, but initially I felt like I was being asked to bed down on nothingness, to fall back until I came across something solid to support me. Not to mention that our sudden departure from the Island meant we hadn’t brought a thing with us—no blankets, no matches, just the clothes we were dressed in. And it wasn’t long before we realized how cold it was.

  The night started with everyone feeling out their own little space, making themselves as comfortable as they could, but it wasn’t long before I heard Arturo snuggle in with Delilah and Jimmy. To my surprise, a little later, not only Hanna joined Lena and me, but eventually Gordie as well, though the tough little guy did stick it out as long as he could and, by the time he gave up, was trembling like a leaf. It took us forever to warm him up. But slowly our weariness and the endless hours of walking overwhelmed us and one by one we fell asleep.

  Couple of times in the night Gordie kneed me in the back, which I guess was his way of telling me I was snoring. Mind you, I gotta say, despite not having a clue as to my surroundings, just what that darkness held, I did sleep unusually well.

  However, in the morning, with a little daylight filtering down, I gotta bit of a shock—we all did. I suppose we should’ve guessed. It was a church—what would you expect in the cellar of a church if not a crypt? I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by any number of graves and carved inscriptions—around the walls, the floor—and when Delilah stirred, I tell ya, she practically screamed the place down.

  “What the hell?” she cried, gaping all around.

  “What is it?” Jimmy asked, waking with a jolt.

  “Look!”

  He took a couple of moments, but then just shrugged. “They’re not going to do you any harm,” he said, though you could see he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the situation himself.

  However, at that moment Delilah realized not only had she been sleeping in a crypt, but her actual bed, the flagstone she’d been lying on, was a grave.

  “For the love of God!” she shrieked, leaping up with an agility I wouldn’t normally associate with her. “I been sleeping with the dead!”

  “Lile!”

  “In the arms of a skeleton!”

  “Listen,” I said, “I’d rather lie with the dead than leave myself open to those who’d make me that way.”

  I was kind of pleased with that, but she didn’t even notice.

  “This place must be jam-packed with ghosts. I bet they had a real party last night jumping in and out of our souls.”

  “Delilah! You’re scaring the kids,” Lena told her.

  I don’t know how she knew it, but she was right. All three of them were starting to look just that little bit uneasy, especially little Arturo—maybe ’cuz he kind of regards Delilah as his ma now, and don’t like to see her upset.

  “I’m going outside,” she said, making heavy weather of the steep stone steps.

  “Don’t worry,” Jimmy told Arturo, the moment she was gone. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “There is!” the little guy came back. “We saw them!”

  “When?” Jimmy frowned.

  “On the beach!”

  “They weren’t ghosts!”

  “Zombies!” Gordie cried.

  “Gordie . . .” I warned.

  “They were!” Arturo insisted, and promptly headed off upstairs, as if to make it perfectly clear whose side he was on in this.

  A few moments later we went up to join them, and found it was substantially warmer outside than in the crypt.

  “Probably the damp,” Jimmy suggested.

  “That ain’t what’s chilling my bones,” Delilah complained.

  But gradually it became less of a griping session and more of a meeting. There was a lot to discuss, the most pressing subject being whether we should try to find somewhere else to stay, or just stick it out where we were.

  Delilah, of course, was all for moving on—in fact, she swore she’d rather swim back to the Island than spend another night in that damp ghost-infested pit. However, as Jimmy pointed out, it was relatively safe and in the end, and despite a lot of grouching and grumbling, we managed to convince her to stay at least one more night.

  “Thing is, if we’re staying,” Lena said, “we’re going to need stuff. Food, water, blankets.”

  Delilah grunted dismissively, as if the plan was breaking down already.

  For a few moments there was silence, no one caring to voice what I thought was obvious.

  “Well,” I sighed, knowing it had to be said, “I guess that don’t leave us with a great deal of choice.”

  “What?” Arturo asked.

  “We have to go looting.”

  Again there was a pause. Going on what we’d witnessed the previous night, I don’t think any of us fancied it very much.

  “I’ll go,” Lena volunteered.

  “No,” I told her.

  “Course!”

  “Lena!”

  “What?”

  I hesitated. I didn’t want to say it, but I didn’t have a great deal of choice. “You don’t know the area,” I eventually told her, both of us well aware that wasn’t exactly what I was saying.

  She went all quiet, maybe trying to come up with some logical argument why she should go, but there wasn’t one.

  It made me feel really bad. We’d only been on the Mainland a day or so but her blindness had already become more of an issue. Taking her looting with us, in a strange area, with all manner of broken and smashed debris around—it was out of the question.

  I wanted to say I was sorry, but I knew it would be a mistake, that she’d get angry with me if I even hinted at it.

  “Jimmy?” I asked the little guy.

  “Sure,” he said, as if there’d never been the slightest doubt.

  “Me, too,” Gordie chipped in.

  I turned and looked at him. He may only be a kid, but surviving for so long on the Island means he knows how to take care of himself. My only concern was he was a fairly recently rehabilitated member of the enemy and there were a lot of temptations out there.

  “Okay,” I said, not wanting him to sense any hesitation.

  “And me!” Arturo piped up.

  It took a while, and a fair amount of argument, but in the end I managed to convince the little guy to stay by telling him I needed someone to take care of the women.

  “Do I get to tell them what to do?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” I told him, silently wishing him good luck with that. I mean, I wouldn’t try giving Hanna orders, let alone Lena or Delilah.

  I went and put my arms around Lena, still feeling bad about her not being able to come and not knowing what I could say to make it
better.

  “Be careful,” she warned, as if that was the only thing that mattered.

  I gave her a big hug, squeezing her against my body. With what was out there, I needed all the strength she could give me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Really, all we needed to do was to keep a low profile, not to attract attention in any way, to fade in and out of the smoke. I mean, yeah, technically we’re on the run—we committed a Crime Against the State, after all—but amongst everything else that’s going on, I didn’t think that would be a priority. People’ve got more important things to worry about. Turns out it’s not easy to mind your own business where looting and lawlessness is concerned, and it didn’t take long to realize. As soon as we arrived in the shopping district there seemed to be nothing but fights going on all over.

  I saw a couple of old ladies wrestling with each other over toilet paper. Can you believe that? They must’ve been eighty if they were a day. Both of them ended up coughing and wheezing, having to sit down, almost having a heart attack over a roll of ass-wipe. People were arguing and fighting over all sorts of stuff as if they were worried stiff there might be a shortage, whether it was something they used or not.

  Looting—and I’m talking about the essential kind here; I got no truck with the other—ain’t just a matter of going to the nearest store and helping yourself. Like I said before, a lot of people were doing their best to carry on with their usual lives. You gotta search for an area where you know law and order’s broken down, somewhere mostly trashed and burned, but where there’s still the odd thing left to be taken.

  It took us a while, especially as we had to detour around what was probably the biggest and most ferocious fire we’d seen, exploding and popping away, ripping through everything, plainly not gonna stop ’til it took out the whole block, but eventually we located this one department store which had still been looted but looked like it had a few bits and pieces left inside. We hung around in the street for a few minutes, conquering our nerves—none of us had done anything like that before—then cautiously entered through one of the many smashed windows.

  The atmosphere inside was surprisingly subdued. You could sense something had happened, that emotions had run riot, but now everything was just drained and cold. There were a few looters at work, but it all felt a bit half-hearted. People were picking over stuff, dragging things out from beneath mounds of rubble, then considering them seriously, deciding whether it was worth bothering with or not.

  We climbed the motionless escalators to the fourth floor, where signs pointed the way to the bedding department. We weren’t very hopeful of finding anything useful but actually scooped up a few discarded blankets and pillows that’d obviously been dropped, maybe by someone rushing to get out. Then we went down to the basement food hall, but our luck had run out. It was stripped completely bare, with not so much as a drop of water or a single potato chip left. My stomach was starting to remember how long it was since it’d last been full.

  We left the building the same way we entered, relieved at how easy it had been—that there hadn’t been any trouble. Not to mention the fact that we’d all be sleeping a little more comfortably that night.

  Most of the big stores had been ransacked, so a block or so further on we thought we’d try a different approach and started venturing off down the side streets. It wasn’t long before we came across this traditional old camping store. Someone had already paid them a visit and it took us a while, but eventually we managed to find enough useful stuff: a couple of backpacks, parkas, sleeping bags, all ideal for our situation. Gordie even found a hunting knife, which, to his annoyance, I immediately pocketed. I thought it was far better with me than him.

  Unfortunately though, the search for food and water turned out to be another matter altogether. We tried store after store, always with the same result: endless bare shelves and nothing but maybe a little melted ice in the freezers. I didn’t know where else we could look, and Jimmy wasn’t being a great deal of help. He was forever getting distracted by all the technological innovations there’d been while we were away on the Island. I kept hearing him whistling over and over at how “cool” something was—particularly the screens. It looked like they could now “read” people as they pass by, not only addressing you by name, but directing targeted adverts toward you, based on your hobbies, make of phone, choice of shampoo, any damn thing.

  But not us, of course. Just like the moving sidewalk, the first screen we came across immediately realized we had no credit implant, that we were “nonpersons,” and it occurred to me that maybe somewhere a warning bell might be sounding, that if we had no status or record, they might guess we were escaped Islanders. Not that it worried Jimmy, every few moments he would stop, scrutinize something, nod his head and smile when he’d worked out what it was. He was like a kid in a candy store. And yet as the day wore on and still no sign of food or water, he might’ve preferred it if that candy store had been real. All three of us were not only hungry ourselves, but were starting to worry about those back in the church.

  We did manage to pick up a few useful items in a drug store where Jimmy went to find something for Lile’s cough. We got some organi-plasters and bandages and painkillers, that’d fallen down behind the shelves and been missed by earlier looters. Even so, it wasn’t much more than a diversion and we all knew it. What we really needed was food and water, and if we didn’t find some soon, we were in real trouble.

  Slowly, as that realization bit ever deeper, our conversation went from concerned to sporadic to a dull nothing. Jimmy lost all interest in new technology and suddenly looked both tired and ten years older. I mean, okay, sleeping bags, warm clothing, medical, all useful stuff, but the first priority had to be something in our bellies. We tried a few more places, supermarkets, delis, but it was no use, and with the night now starting to lock down, the atmosphere was beginning to change. The shadows were growing deeper and darker, the smoke wrapping itself ever tighter around everything. The time had come to get off the streets, to leave them to the real evil-doers, and as much as we dreaded returning without food or drink, we began to retrace our footsteps, heading back to the church.

  I was too immersed in my disappointment to pay much attention to this guy approaching from the opposite direction. There was a fire behind him, all cracking and exploding, so that all I could really make out of him was a dark silhouette. As he got nearer, I could see he was well dressed, around about forty, plainly a well-to-do Mainlander. It did cross my mind it was a little odd, that he wasn’t someone I’d expect to see wandering the streets, but nothing more. He slowed and looked us up and down, two oldies and a kid, like he was assessing us for something, then he resumed his previous pace.

  As he went by, he muttered something out of the corner of his mouth: “Food and drink. Victory West. Superfood-7.”

  He was gone before we could even react.

  “What did he say?” Jimmy asked.

  “Food and drink,” Gordie repeated.

  “D’ya know it?” Jimmy said, turning to me.

  “If it’s still the same place, yeah.”

  “What d’ya think?”

  “Let’s go!” Gordie urged.

  I turned to Jimmy. “Can’t do any harm.”

  It was amazing what an instant spring to our steps that little piece of information brought—we began chatting again, speculating on where we were going, if there really was food there. I’ll admit we were a little concerned at how we’d got the information, but when you’re that hungry, I guess the thought of eating overrides everything else.

  Course, we didn’t just march up to the place—we’re not as dumb as all that. We approached cautiously on the other side of the street, stopping to lurk in the shadows, to see what was going on. And actually, the answer to that was a big fat zero: the place was in complete darkness. No entry had been made, nothing was broken, and the doors and windows all seemed to be intact.

  “You sure this is it?” Jimmy asked.
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  “Unless they opened another one.”

  We just stood there, something not feeling quite right, but Gordie was all for a little action. “Come on. Let’s go,” he said, turning to head across the street.

  “Whoa! Whoa!” I cried, grabbing him by the shoulder and tugging him back. “Let’s just check it out first, shall we?”

  He gave a rather impatient sigh and slumped back against the wall. The three of us waited in silence, really not sure what we were dealing with, though it wasn’t long before we realized we weren’t alone, that there were others watching from the shadows.

  “See?” Gordie whispered angrily. “The moment someone makes a move, there’s gonna be a stampede.”

  Despite how cautious I felt, I knew he had a point. If we were going to get everything we needed, we had to be some of the first through the door. “Okay. I’ll get water,” I said, knowing it would be the heaviest item. “You two just grab whatever you can.”

  He was right: the instant we broke cover all the others came rushing out of their hiding places—far more of them than I’d been expecting. I immediately started to run, knowing it was going to be a free-for-all, that having cast their doubts aside, everyone was gonna grab what they could.

  In the absence of any kind of heavy instrument, I hit the door with my shoulder. There’s a moment I always get these days—if I’m forced to throw a punch or something—when I wonder if my old bones have become too brittle for that sort of thing, but the door gave way surprisingly easily, its frame crumpling, the glass popping out and smashing on the floor.

  “Quick as you can,” I said to Jimmy and Gordie, aware of this jostling mob rapidly converging behind us.

  Despite it being almost dark inside, I could see there was plenty of stuff to be had. The fridges were still working, which was kind of strange, bearing in mind the lights weren’t, but as the store behind me erupted with angry shouting, I ran over and stuffed as many bottles as I could into my new backpack, grabbed a large container in each hand, then headed back to the exit, calling across to Jimmy and Gordie. Something was telling me to get out of there as quickly as possible.