by Ben Oliver
Skirting around the bed, I make my way to the big wardrobe, never taking my eyes off the dead man lying motionless under the covers.
Pretend he’s not there, I tell myself, just keep moving.
I force myself to look away and grab an armful of shirts from the rail. I back towards the door, once again staring at the corpse, with an irrational fear that he might sit up and tell me to put his clothes back where I found them.
I leave the bedroom, quietly shutting the door behind me before running back downstairs, where I try to ignore the creepy feeling inside me while I wrap and knot the shirts around the bamboo canes.
I need two more things before I can leave; some kind of fuel so that my torches will burn longer, and something to light them with.
I find a first aid kit in a drawer in the kitchen – there’s some hand sanitizer with a high alcohol content. I shove it into my pocket. Next to the large artificial fire in the centre of the living room, I find a wind-resistant lighter.
It’s hard to run with the torches under one arm, the lighter and hand sanitizer in my pockets, and the bite wounds aching all over my body, but I move as quickly as I can to the platform, and jump down on to the tracks.
I look into the pitch blackness of the tunnel and my skin tightens at the thought of facing the rats again. I try to ignore the fear, try to think only of saving Wren, so that I can get back to the city and find my family.
I douse the material of the first torch in the flammable gel, and light it. The flame encircles the shirt and glows a pale blue at first before bright yellow fire emerges.
Are you sure you want to go back there? I ask myself.
I swallow hard and I think about Wren, about the others locked in their cells, about Kina.
I nod my head, take a deep breath and step inside.
The tunnel seems somehow more ominous with the dancing light of the torch illuminating the damp walls and the flat ceiling, where short stalactites grow out from the green moss that covers the concrete.
Shadows flicker in time with the fire and I can’t stop my eyes from darting around, sure that I’ll see a horde of giant, ugly rats with glowing yellow eyes, but there’s nothing.
I walk, slowly at first, as my vision adjusts to the gloom, and then I pick up the pace, moving deeper and deeper into the passageway.
After a few minutes I come to a fork in the track. In my fear and desperation to escape the rats I hadn’t noticed it before; the left fork goes slightly uphill, and the right slightly downhill. Logic tells me that the Loop is to the right – I had been walking with my hand against the left wall and would have felt the point where the tunnel splits if I had been coming out the other way, plus I’m sure I remember the gentle uphill slope.
I step into the tunnel on the right, just as my first torch begins to flicker and sputter. One minute later and the flame has died.
As I stand in the darkness, fumbling with the next torch, trying to pour hand sanitizer on to the shirt, I hear the first clicking of claws on concrete. In my panicked state I drop the open bottle of the sharp-smelling fuel. I curse myself and scramble around for it. Finally, my fingers wrap around the bottle. Another skittering of rat claws and the slap of a thick tail behind me.
Grabbing the lighter, I douse the cloth in gel, and light it as quickly as I can.
The flame bursts into life and for a second all I can see is a boiling carpet of black and brown fur, with a thousand milky little eyes staring hungrily at me. I am in the middle of a sea of rats.
The torch begins to shake in my hand as I think about how far I have to go, how long the torches last and how much hand sanitizer I have left.
I take a step forward and the swarm of rats moves with me – they keep their distance, staying away from the brightest of the light thrown by my makeshift torch. I take another step and my vermin chaperones come with me.
‘I hate these tunnels,’ I whisper as I start walking quickly towards the Loop, the rats moving as one writhing, scratching, crawling mass, never stepping into the light but never looking away from their next meal.
I run, the flame roaring beside my ear, and my footsteps no longer echo as the rats are joined by more and more, filling up the tunnel with their warm and foul-smelling bodies. They are behind me now, trailing the light, a sea of them, too many to count, too many to imagine.
The flame only illuminates the next few metres in front of me, and I’m sure that any second I’ll trip and the flame will go out, or I’ll run into a wall and knock myself unconscious, then all the rats will have to do is wait until the flame dies and I become an easy meal.
It’s not long before torch number two begins to choke and fade. I stop, this time not waiting until the darkness comes before lighting my third and final torch.
Too far to go, I think. The torch won’t last.
I pour most of the remaining fluid on to my final torch, light it, and throw the almost burnt-out one among the mass of bodies behind me. I hear them shriek and cower away from the fire and I run again, as fast as I can, pushing with every ounce of energy that is left in me as the flame burns away the fuel.
The rats keep pace with me, never getting any closer or any further away than the ring of light around me.
Where is it? Where is the platform? Where is the Loop?
I run even faster, sure that any minute now I will see my destination and I’ll be safe from these wiry creatures and their razor-sharp teeth and claws.
The walls, the rails, the green mould on the ceiling of the tunnel all rushing past me as I run and run and strain and push for the platform, for what is now, I realize bitterly, the freedom of the Loop.
The rank smell of damp coupled with the festering stink of the rats fills my senses and I can feel myself choking on it.I hear the flame crackle and the light dims.
‘No,’ I hiss and push myself even harder, forcing my legs to move, move, move.
The light drops to nothing and then comes back as the flame finds one last reserve of fuel to burn.
There it is, up ahead, the platform.
The flame dips once more, so close to going out that the rats have closed in and are at my heels.
I grab the last of the hand sanitizer from my pocket, use my teeth to pry off the lid, squeeze the gel on to the closest rat and drop the torch on to the leaders.
The squeals that come out of the flash of yellow flame are horrifying, almost human, cries of agony and terror as the rats become the light that they fear so much.
I make it to the platform without so much as a single new scratch to match the old ones. I climb up and lie on my back, listening with a mixture of sickness and triumph to the screaming rats.
I’ve imagined escaping the Loop time after time after time, but never once did I imagine returning. I shut my eyes and wait for my breath to return to normal before getting to my feet and walking back into the prison.
Kina is on her feet, her fingers wrapped tightly around the trigger keeping me alive, her eyes narrowed and watching. Having heard my footsteps, she is alert and ready for whoever or whatever might appear. She looks relieved when she sees that it’s me, but her expression quickly turns to one of shock when she sees the bloodstained jumpsuit.
‘What happened?’ she asks.
I try to answer, try to tell her about the rats, and the crazy people who tried to kill me, about the crumbling city, but I don’t know where to start. ‘We need to get to the drones,’ I say instead.
‘The drones? Why?’
‘They’re armed with a hallucinogen that puts the body into hibernation,’ I say, stumbling over my words as I try to explain as quickly as I can. ‘We need to use it on Wren; if we can slow her heart rate down then we can slow the bleeding and maybe keep her alive long enough to get her to a doctor.’
‘Luka,’ she says, putting a hand on my shoulder as I try to walk past her, ‘what did you see? Why haven’t you brought help?’
Again, I hesitate. How do I explain to her that there’s a war going
on? That we’re in grave danger? ‘There’s no one to help . . . the war is real, Kina. The city is burning. Wren is sick, she lost her mind and started killing people and there are others like her – I saw them in the village, they attacked me . . . it’s bad, Kina, it’s bad. I think whoever started the war has poisoned people, turned them into killing machines.’
She nods. Her eyes scan side to side, focusing on nothing as she tries to process the information that I have given her. ‘OK,’ she says, ‘OK, alright. So how do we get to those drones?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell her, ‘but I think I know someone who might.’
I walk past two of the open cells and from the corner of my eye I see figures draped over their beds, skin grey, unmoving. I make my way to Fulton’s old cell, where I had seen Woods run to hours before.
I slide open the hatch.
Woods’ bloodshot eyes stare at me. ‘Woods?’ I say, trying to get a reaction from the unmoving boy.
Slowly his head drops, and he speaks in a low, gravelly voice. ‘Luka, what was that? What happened out there? Is she dead? Did she kill anyone else?’
‘Woods, I need your help,’ I say, unlocking and opening his cell door.
‘Wait, wait, wait!’ he yells, leaping to his feet and pulling the door back towards the frame. ‘Is she still out there?’
‘No, she’s locked in a cell,’ I tell him, and open the door again, ‘like I said, I need your help.’
Woods steps tentatively out into the corridor, his wide, strong frame a contrast to his obvious fear. ‘My help? You need my help? Help with what?’
‘Wren’s going to die if we can’t get to the drones.’
Woods holds a hand up, silencing me, his eyes growing wider still as he stares at the corpse of Alistair. ‘A-Alistair?’ he stammers. ‘She killed Alistair too?’
‘Woods, listen to me,’ I say, trying to remain calm, ‘we’re running out of time, Wren is dying . . . Something has happened to her, there’s a virus or something,’ I tell him. ‘It changes people, makes them killers.’
‘She executed them, man. She ended their lives without a second thought.’
‘She didn’t know what she was doing,’ I tell him. ‘Just like everyone in Group A.’
‘I ain’t helping her!’ he screams, tears spilling from his eyes. ‘If I ever see her again I’m going to kill her. I’m getting Adam, and we’re getting out of here!
‘Woods, please . . .’ I start.
‘This is not a debate, Luka.’
I watch him amble, hunched and hitching shoulders, to Adam’s cell. He stops at the open door, and even though I can only see his side profile, he seems to age ten years in front of my eyes.
I walk over to him and place a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Woods.’
‘How can they all be gone?’ he asks.
‘If you want to get back at the people who did this, you have to realize that it wasn’t Wren. There’s a war going on out outside of the Loop – they’ve poisoned innocent people with something that turns them into murderers. Wren is a victim in this, she’s not your enemy.’
‘You’ve been outside of the Loop?’ he asks, looking at my bloodstained jumpsuit.
‘Yes, and whoever attacked the Region is winning.’
‘So who was it, Luka? Who is responsible for killing my friends?’
‘That’s what we’re going to find out.’
He stares at me, unblinking in his anger and grief. Finally, he nods his head. ‘Tell me what you saw out there.’
I explain everything from escaping my cell and locking Wren inside, to the rat tunnel and the other crazies in the village. Kina and Woods listen intently as I come to the end and explain my theory that the drone’s poisonous darts have the same effect as the hibernation medication that was given to slow down my mum’s death.
Woods is clearly still unhappy about trying to save the life of the woman who took his friends’, but he has accepted that Wren was not herself when she did what she did.
‘I’ll help you get the drone but then I’m out of here, understood?’
‘The more of us there are the more chance we have of—’
‘Luka, I got nothing left; Winchester is gone, Alistair and Adam are dead.They were everything to me in this place, and they’re gone. I’m leaving, I’m going alone, is that clear?’
I sigh. ‘Fine.’
‘Good,’ he says, crossing his arms over his chest. ‘There is a way to get to the drones.’
‘How?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know exactly, but Winchester spent months staying up all night to watch them and see if he could gather any information.’
‘And?’ Kina urges.
‘Who’s this?’ Woods asks, looking from Kina to me.
‘Answer the question,’ I implore him.
‘And a drone broke down, an engine fault or something, meaning they couldn’t fly it out of here to be repaired. So at about four in the morning they sent two mechanics up through the pillar. Winchester saw them open a trapdoor, grab the drone and disappear back down the pillar with it. They returned about an hour or so later with the repaired drone, attached it to the charge point and left.’
‘So there’s a way up the middle of the pillar?’ Kina asks.
I remember the door marked ENGINEER on the other side of the platform. ‘I think I know how to get there,’ I tell them.
Kina and Woods follow me to the entrance where the warning about exploding implants is written.
‘Wait!’ Kina calls, and points to the yellow words.
‘It’s OK,’ I say, pointing in turn to Wren’s severed arm on the floor, ‘I deactivated it.’
‘Pretty resourceful,’ Woods muses. ‘Fulton once came up with a similar plan.’
We cross the tracks, enter the staffroom and open the ENGINEER door, where we are faced with two more doors: REPAIRS and DELIVERIES.
‘This one,’ Kina says, and leads the way through the REPAIRS door to a set of stairs going down into the darkness.
We descend, and at the end of the staircase is a corridor. We walk along in darkness, following the wall as it circles around until I’m sure we’re under the exercise yard. A few more steps and I walk face first into a door. It’s unlocked. Inside is another set of steps, this one a spiral staircase leading up.
‘I think this is it,’ I say, and climb up and around until I come to a heavy metal hatch above my head. I push it open and tip it over until it crashes down with a loud boom that reverberates around the yard.
I climb up and on to the pillar. I’m in the centre of the yard, the wind blowing hard, whistling over the dividing walls. I stand for a while and just look at the Loop from this vantage point. It’s so strange to see the yard from here, to look down at the strip of concrete where I’ve spent hundreds of hours sprinting back and forth, sure that I would never leave until it was time to be transported to the Block. I look out over the cells to the almost desert-like land around the Loop, and if the walls that separated the yards weren’t only two centimetres thick, we could walk over to the roof of the Loop and climb down to freedom without having to go through the rat tunnels.
Woods and Kina stare out at the landscape, awed by the expanse. None of us talk for a full minute.
‘Come on,’ I say, finally.
I move towards the nearest drone, fighting against the vertigo brought on by the fifteen-metre drop on all sides of me. The drones are bigger than I thought they were, and I take the chance to inspect one close-up; a black carbon fibre shell covers the machinery inside, there are two propeller blades on either side and the large one in the middle, and three barrels of weaponry hanging below.
‘Wait,’ Woods says. ‘Won’t it attack? The light is still on.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘The charging point still works because the machinery for it is in the nuke-proof bunker underground, but whatever took out the rain and the screens will have wiped these things out too.’
‘How do you kn
ow that?’ Woods asks.
‘Wren told me,’ I reply, grabbing the enormous security drone and lifting it off the charging point. ‘Help me with this.’
Woods and Kina help me to carry the drone down the stairs, along the corridor and back up into the staffroom, where the dim back-up lights offer little help when it comes to figuring out how to get the darts out. Luckily, we have Woods, who seems to know his way around electrical equipment. He unscrews bolts and removes panels until he holds a magazine full of hallucinogenic ammunition in his hand.
‘Here,’ he says, handing it to me.
I push three rounds out of the magazine and examine them. The tips are hollow, meaning the fluid enters the bloodstream from the attached vial, so all I have to do is get one of these into a vein and Wren will enter a world of mental torture – but it might also be enough to save her life.
We move quickly back to the corridor, and still I’ve avoided looking directly into the open cells.We get to my cell and I open the hatch. I don’t like what I see; Wren is still lying on my bed but she’s a horrible shade of off-white. Her hair is matted with sweat and her skin seems somehow too tight, her cheekbones protruding too much, her cheeks hollow like she’s emaciated, and the sheets below her amputated arm are soaking up the still-escaping blood.
I open the door, kneel beside her, whisper that I’m sorry and push the small dart into a raised vein in her neck.
I see her body relax, and for a second I wonder if the solution inside the dart will work on people with mechanical hearts and lungs. But there must be nanotech infused with the chemicals; as I listen to the hum in her chest I hear the tone change as the mechanics slow down in response to the poison.
‘I’ll come back,’ I tell her unconscious body. ‘I promise.’
I step back out into the corridor and look from Woods to Kina.
‘I’ll take that back now,’ I say to Kina, pointing to the trigger in her shaking hand. ‘Thank you.’