by Peter Liney
Okay, so as plans go, this one was frothing at the mouth, and Jimmy was absolutely right, there were so many places it could go awry. Maybe I had the whole thing ass-about-face? I mean, I’ve already told you, thinking is not my strength; I’d been forced into it ’cuz no one else’d come up with anything—not even Jimmy. Mr. Meltoni used to say, “Know your place and things won’t get complicated.” The very last words he wanted to hear from any of his boys was, “Boss, I been thinking”—he’d fire them on the spot. In fact, if he’d caught me doing what I was about to, I’d’ve been on my way out the door, too.
Eventually, I did tell the others—what I had in mind was so damn dangerous I didn’t think it was right to just slip away without saying a word. Or to put it another way, who knew if I’d ever see them again? We had a long discussion, as I anticipated, a lotta stuff was said I could’ve well done without, but in the end, no matter how great their doubts, they insisted on participating. Which was just as well, ’cuz Jimmy had come up with a few ideas, “A little bit of frosting on the cake,” as he insisted on calling it.
He reckoned triggering the growlers was down to movement rather than pressure. That day I threw rocks over the fence it had just been single impacts—it had taken Hanna’s footsteps to actually mobilize them. What we needed was to give an impression of movement, to have several people throwing rocks one after the other. Jimmy was convinced that would bring them out, and having growlers on the loose would not only be a distraction, but severely restrict the movement of the Specials. Which sounded kind of frightening but feasible. Meanwhile, he was gonna see what else he could do to cause a little extra chaos.
It sounded great, but as far as I was concerned, kinda nibbling at the edges, trying to distract Infinity from what was really going on, which was me getting in there. The thing was, though, was I gonna get in there? And if I did, what state would I be in? I needed to talk to Gigi—and soon.
I went to the usual places—or what was left of them—spraying message after message. This time I kept it really simple:
HELP!
It was enough, she’d know it was me, and sure enough, I woke the next morning to find her fast asleep in Arturo’s old sleeping bag again.
Actually, it was quite disturbing that she could enter the shelter at night, bed down and make herself comfortable, and not one of us ever heard her. I always thought my old ears were still pretty well tuned to that kind of thing, but I guess I was wrong. It was a good job she didn’t wish us any harm.
I’d kinda got used to the reactions when I told someone what I was planning on doing, but no one was more dismissive or more openly hostile to the idea than Gigi and it really threw me. She acted like it was personal, that my recklessness was infringing on her in some way. If it hadn’t been for the others sticking up for me, I don’t think she’d even have discussed the subject. Delilah and Jimmy got a little short with her, telling her she could at least try to help, and when Gordie and Hanna formed an alliance in my defense, well, she was pretty much forced to change her mind. In the end she said she’d speak to someone, find out what they thought and get back to me as soon as possible.
That afternoon, despite having to drag him away from tinkering with the satellite, Jimmy and me went out to search for all the things he’d need. We went down to the industrial area, finding a lot of places broken into and occupied, mainly by the zombie-sick. I guess they’d gone there to search for something that might ease their condition and just never had the strength to leave. There were hundreds of them, all wailing and pawing at you as usual. Thank God we were able to just push them aside, that their weakness meant their attempts to trash the place hadn’t amounted to much and everything Jimmy needed was still there.
We bagged everything up, he gave me a heavy box to carry, and we were out of that place in less than fifteen minutes, waving to those who came to the door to moan and howl after us. I mean, it was a terrible thing, and I did feel sorry for them, but again it went through my head that if it was that contagious—and bearing in mind the amount of contact we’d had with the sick—why hadn’t any of us caught it?
Despite how much he knew it meant to me, how lucky we were to find everything on his list, on the way back to the churchyard it became obvious that Jimmy’s thoughts weren’t on the plan but elsewhere.
“You know, they say smell is the most nostalgic of the senses,” he said as we paused for a few moments to take a rest.
“What?” I asked, my thoughts as far away from his as his were mine.
“I smelled something on that satellite the first day we brought it back.”
“Jimmy!” I groaned, thinking we had more than enough to worry about.
“It might be relevant.”
“Let’s just deal with one thing at a time, huh?” I told him, not unreasonably.
“It’s cool. You got my full attention,” he reassured me, then got that look about him that meant I had anything but.
“How long’s it going to take you?” I asked, trying to concentrate his mind.
“If I had the right tools, I could take it apart in a few hours.”
“Not the satellite! This!” I said, gesturing at the bags and box we were carrying.
“Oh . . . Dunno,” he replied. “I need to do a bit more research.”
“Jimmy!” I cried, frustrated by how casual he was being. “You said it yourself: it’s gotta be one hundred and ten percent accurate. There’s no margin for error.”
“Yeah, I said it myself,” he repeated impatiently, “’cuz I know.”
I picked up the heavy box again, reminding myself it was fragile and that I shouldn’t throw it at anyone, however aggravating they might be, then stomped on. I mean, I didn’t like losing my temper with the little guy, especially not with the pressure we were under, but I hoped it might help him focus a little. But I should’ve known better.
We were almost back to the churchyard and he’d barely said a word the whole way when suddenly he turned to me as if rousing himself from a coma.
“Maybe it’s got something to do with the fuel?” he said.
Despite all my doubts, the fact that he kept reminding me he “wasn’t any kind of a chemist and never had been,” Jimmy still came up with the goods—at least as far as I could tell without putting them to the test. As much as it pains me to say it yet again, the way he adapts and makes do, how resourceful he is—the guy’s invaluable, a genius by anyone’s description—certainly his own.
On the other hand, Gigi didn’t bring anything like such good news. She hadn’t been able to get a message to Lena and wasn’t optimistic about any kind of inside help. In fact, she was so lukewarm about the whole thing, to be honest, I wasn’t even sure she’d tried. It slightly threw me—somewhere inside I felt an old rusty antenna give a slight twitch. It wasn’t just that she was being dismissive, I had the feeling there was something else. Not that it made any difference; as soon as the time was right, I was going, come what may.
The only problem was—and, shit, that was an irony—I had to wait for Infinity to make the first move. A couple of days passed with torturous slowness; the others not saying much and me kinda grateful for it. I was forced to take off the organi-plasters ’cuz my wounds were healing too quickly: like everyone else, they had to bide their time.
With everything else that was going on, I hadn’t been paying too much attention to the kids. I was aware that Gordie and Hanna were spending more time together—not that they seemed to enjoy it that much; they barely said a word to each other—and that more and more of the things they did involved the other. What I wasn’t prepared for was Gordie asking me for advice.
I’d got into the habit of sitting out in the churchyard after dark and keeping an eye on things, gauging the City’s mood and waiting for my moment, and one night he came out to join me. He took a while to speak, and when he did, it was all about me and my plan. To listen to him, you’d think Infinity were in for the hiding of their lives, that I’d reduce that place t
o rubble, along with anyone who happened to be inside.
“It ain’t gonna be easy,” I told him, noting someone running down the far side of the street and wondering if it meant anything.
“You’ll pulverize ’em,” he sneered.
I guess it was his idea of a pep talk, but it was making me feel even more uncomfortable, as if my madness was contagious.
For a while he went silent and I thought he’d said all he wanted to, but he hadn’t even started. “D’you like Hanna?” he asked.
“’course I do,” I replied, now knowing where we were going with this. “She’s special.”
He sat there for a moment, slowly nodding his head. “What about Gigi?”
“Yep, she’s special, too. But in a different way.”
Again he nodded. “Which one d’you like most?”
“Gordie!” I protested, “I like them both.”
“Huh,” he said, like I was being a big fat disappointment to him.
“Which one d’you like most?” I asked, ’cuz that was really the point.
“I dunno . . . Hanna’s nicer, but maybe Gigi’s more fun.”
I chuckled and he instantly scowled. “Why you laughing?”
“No old guy would have a problem with that dilemma.”
“So what’s the answer?” he asked hopefully.
“Whoa! I can’t decide for you—no one can.”
“Ohhh,” he groaned in frustration.
“Anyways, you don’t have to decide now,” I told him, getting up. “But whatever you do, you treat them both with respect—d’you hear?”
He nodded, and as we walked back to the shelter I managed to put my arm around his shoulders without it getting shrugged off. Hey, maybe this being-a-father business wasn’t gonna be as hard as I thought.
Another couple of days ground slowly by. It was starting to drive me crazy, and to make matters worse, just as I feared, the others accidentally came out with stuff that made me wonder just how much faith they had in me and my plan. Delilah talked about how Lena wouldn’t blame me if I couldn’t get into Infinity; Hanna put her arms around me and started to cry, saying it was for no reason, but it didn’t exactly put my mind at ease. In fact, Jimmy and his satellite became a bit of a haven from all their well-intentioned comforting, and as soon as I got the idea that was where the conversation was going, I would head off down to see him, grateful for the fact that he almost always ignored me.
The little guy was still utterly obsessed with that satellite in the way that only Jimmy could be: trying to make sense of the bit he had and constantly speculating on the bit he didn’t. The only times we saw him were at meals and bedtime. Which was why, helping Delilah re-bag the food where the rats had got in, I was surprised to see him bustling up toward us.
Gordie and Hanna were playing games on the mini-screen as usual, but he snatched it from them.
“Hey!” Gordie protested.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Jimmy didn’t answer, just started punching in information, his fingers moving at astonishing speed for an old guy. Mind you, I was a little surprised at what he eventually came out with.
“I been peeing down there.”
“Sorry?”
“I been peeing down there!” he repeated.
“Oh,” I said. I mean, okay, it wasn’t such a big deal; maybe I had dug the new latrines a little too far away.
“How could I be so stupid?” Jimmy cried, returning his attention to the mini-screen, and I glanced at the others, wondering if anyone was making any more sense of this than I was.
“Urine!” Jimmy cried, as if it should mean something. “Ammonia!”
I didn’t say anything then but actually, it did remind me that Lena had said something similar.
“They really did put those things up there on the cheap,” he added.
“D’you understand any of this?” Delilah asked, turning to me.
“Not a word.”
“The satellites were solar-powered, but they always had a backup, an alternative source of fuel,” Jimmy told us. “D’you know what hydrazine is?”
All four of us looked from one to the other, but Jimmy didn’t bother waiting for a reply.
“Had a lot of uses: first as a rocket fuel last century, during the Second World War, later for space exploration. It’s highly toxic; caused a lot of problems. On more than one occasion, craft falling back to Earth had to be blown out of the sky rather than risk contamination. When all those other countries, tinpot and otherwise, joined in the arms race by building their own long-range ballistic missiles, a lot of them used cheap hydrazine derivatives—I mean, who cares if their missiles are polluting the atmosphere when their job is to cause as much damage as they can?”
“Is that what the punishment satellites used?” I asked.
“Something similar . . . This one,” he said, gesturing toward his workshop, “probably lost the majority of its solar-power capacity at launch and had to switch over to alternative fuel almost immediately. Which is why it didn’t catch fire—or not for long.”
There was a pause and Gordie turned to Hanna, his expression about as interested as when Jimmy gave them that lecture about the satellites before—but I knew there was more to come.
“Thing is,” he continued, “the way those satellites were put together, the systems they used, most of the backup would’ve slowly leaked out over the years.”
For several moments we sat there wishing he’d just come out and say it and not tease it out of us as usual, hoping someone might put us out of our misery. I should’ve known who it’d be.
“So those people on the beach, the ones we keep running into—the ‘zombies,’” Hanna said. “They’re not sick, they’re poisoned?”
Jimmy made this face. “Maybe.”
“Oh my God!” Delilah croaked.
“I don’t know what they mixed that stuff with, but not only is it toxic as hell, it’s got some kind of aggressive binding agent, so instead of evaporating the way it should, it ends up bonding with everything—concrete, stone, steel, everything—which is why this whole damn City is burning, and why the fires go on for so long and keep exploding.”
Again there was a pause as possibilities reared up before us like growlers outta the ground.
“Have we been poisoned?” Gordie asked, suddenly looking a lot more attentive.
Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe. To some degree. But I reckon there’s a kind of micro-climate out on the Island—we always got more extremes of weather, and the wind off the ocean—hopefully that protected us from the worst of it.”
“I never felt well over there,” Delilah grumbled.
She was right: illness had been a way of life. We used to blame the garbage, and probably most of it was—but not all, apparently. Still my mind raced on, careering through this new information, trying to link it with the old: was that why they kidnapped Lena, ’cuz she’d spent all those years underground, in a completely unpolluted environment? I guess that would make her pretty special, but for what purpose exactly?
“So the satellites weren’t protecting people,” Hanna commented, “they were killing them.”
But Jimmy’s thoughts were already elsewhere and, without another word he turned and hurried back toward his work area, feeding information into the screen as he went.
For several moments there was silence, then Delilah sighed. “That man never brings good news.”
In a way, she was right, but the little guy could only bring what was available. I also realized something else, that I should’ve had some idea about before: that was why Infinity were so intent on killing him, they were scared of what information he’d picked up when he broke into their system and what he might add it to now he was back on the Mainland. That he’d tell everyone the satellites hadn’t been “judgment from on high,” but a plague, and that, ironically, the person being constantly described as “the biggest ever threat to society” was, in fact, its savior.
For the
rest of that day my mind was in turmoil. I had no idea if what Jimmy’d said affected my plans to rescue Lena in any way, but for sure I was left with this uneasy feeling that the situation had erupted out of control yet again.
I didn’t bother to sit out and watch the street that night. All my confidence had been ripped right out of me. In fact, as embarrassed as I am to admit it, I felt so beaten, so pessimistic about what I was trying to do, that just for a moment it went through my head that maybe it’d be best for everyone if I didn’t wake up in the morning.
Which, as it turned out, was a whole lot closer to the truth than I ever could’ve imagined.
“Clancy! Clancy!”
Someone was calling to me from out of the darkness. Took me a while to realize it was Gordie.
“Yeah?” I said, struggling up onto one elbow, but he didn’t need to say any more. I could hear it, too: the sound of distant beating and shouting, the slight thrum of a Dragonfly over the City—it was another Clean-up.
I didn’t hesitate for one second, jumping to my feet so quickly I had a bit of a dizzy spell and had to stand still for a moment. No sooner had it subsided than I was ready to go.
“Are we still doing it?” Delilah asked.
“I am,” I said, and there was a brief pause, as if everyone was taking that in.
“Got everything?” Jimmy asked.
“Yep,” I said, checking my pockets, feeling the extra bulk.
“Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll be at the fence.”
I went around and thanked everyone, hugging them, then made my way out into the dark and smoky night.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Once I emerged from the dense vegetation of the shelter I could really feel the atmosphere, as if something tangible was rising up over the City, hanging there like a perfect storm about to break. I clambered across the rubble to the street, trying to work out which direction to take: sound can move in odd ways around a city, particularly with so much smoke. At first I started to walk up toward the Square, but then changed my mind, taking the next turning, heading over in the general direction of the ocean.