Loop

by Ben Oliver

  The landscape slopes down to the area of man-made dirt streets where the homeless have built their huts and shacks from scrap metal and plastic, siphoning electricity in complicated masses of wires and makeshift fuse boxes that snake down from the Verticals, the dangerously frayed cables sagging into puddles of thick brown water. The irrigation system is a cobbled-together network of pipes and ditches that carries filthy waste water away from the houses. Ahead of us, the train tracks disappear into the shanty town and past a towering Vertical that pierces the sky. I try to ignore the deep red colour of the stream of water that flows alongside the homeless town, try to somehow block out the sound of the screams from deep inside the city.

  Pander’s song grows quiet and then stops completely as we all come to a halt and stare into the destruction.

  ‘Alright,’ Pander says, taking a deep breath, ‘let’s do this.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Akimi replies, her voice quiet and choked from the back of the group, where Pod and Igby hold her up.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Pander asks, a strange mix of frustration and understanding in her voice.

  ‘I can’t walk, it’s really starting to hurt. I think it’s bad.’

  There’s a moment of silence as we look around, waiting for someone to say the right thing, waiting – perhaps – for an adult to tell us what to do next.

  I think: Maddox would have known what to do. And I wish he was here. I wish he had lived long enough to escape with us.

  Malachai steps forward.

  ‘Lie down,’ he says, ‘let’s take a look.’

  Pod and Igby help Akimi to the floor, and as her right ankle rests on the hard ground she lets out a wail of agony.

  ‘It hurts so much,’ she breathes.

  ‘We’re going to have to take the shoe off,’ Malachai tells her. ‘It’s not going to be fun.’

  She nods, grinds her teeth together and nods again. ‘Do it.’

  Malachai slowly unties the laces of her bright white trainers. I kneel down beside her and take her hand.

  ‘Squeeze my hand when it hurts,’ I tell her.

  Malachai grips the shoe by the ankle and as soon as he pulls it towards himself, Akimi screams and a vice-like grip crushes the bones in my hand. I want to scream along with her, but I bite my lip and try not to react. The way I’m involuntarily squirming in pain earns me a look from Kina. I force myself to sit still and smile back at her.

  Igby turns away from the grotesque scene of Akimi’s ankle, which is moving like it’s held together with frayed thread. Slowly the shoe slides off her limp foot and her grip loosens on my throbbing hand.

  ‘Sock next,’ Malachai says, his voice sounding thick with nausea.

  He grabs the top of her sock with two hands and slowly pulls it off her foot, the pain in my hand increases as Akimi grabs hold once again.

  ‘Well?’ she says through hyperventilating breaths.

  Malachai stutters. ‘It’s, uh, it’s going to be OK.’

  ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Honestly?’ he replies. ‘It’s disgusting. It’s all limp and at a weird angle, I almost threw up . . .’

  Kina hits him in the arm, shutting him up.

  I lean forward and look down at the swollen mound of flesh where Akimi’s ankle used to be. The skin has become a mottled lump of bruises, there’s a horrendous kink just below her shin and her foot points unnaturally away from her body. I feel the dry bread and water from breakfast swirl in my stomach, and have to breathe heavily until I’m sure I won’t vomit.

  ‘God, it hurts,’ Akimi cries.

  A loud scream comes from just inside the city, maybe only fifty metres from where we’ve stopped on a patch of scorched grass and trees. Akimi suppresses her own cries until they’re involuntary grunts. All of our heads turn in the direction of the city. Malachai rises to his feet, a look of fear in his eyes.

  ‘Guys, just go. I’ll find somewhere to hide,’ Akimi says.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Malachai mutters, still staring into the city. ‘We’re not leaving you.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Blue asks, and looks at Malachai.

  ‘I . . . We should . . .’ he trails off.

  ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ I say, standing up. ‘You guys are going to find a place to hide, I’m going into the city to find something for Akimi – painkillers or something.’

  ‘Well, that’s all very heroic, testosterone-fuelled macho stuff,’ Kina replies, ‘but I don’t think you’ve thought it through.’

  I feel my face flush red. My first instinct is to deny her accusations, but the very fact that I’m embarrassed by her words lets me know that there’s an element of truth to them.

  ‘What . . . what do you mean?’ I ask, trying, and failing, to sound confident.

  ‘Even if you do manage to get in and out alive, even if you do make it back here with painkillers, she still can’t walk, she’s still trapped here.’

  ‘Well, what’s your plan?’ I demand.

  ‘I don’t have one yet, but I’m not just going to yell out the first thing that comes into my head.’

  ‘At least I’m trying!’

  ‘Oh yeah, great work, let’s all get killed one by one,’ Kina exclaims, waving the heart trigger around.

  ‘I got us this far.’

  ‘What do you want? A parade?’

  ‘Maybe a little gratitude . . .’

  Our escalating argument comes to a sudden halt as we realize that the rest of the group are murmuring and turning away to face the city. Our eyes follow theirs and we see the small figure of Pander disappearing into the smoke.

  ‘Pander, wait!’ Malachai yells.

  She turns, a blurry figure behind the heat haze of fire and smoke. ‘I can’t hear you!’ she yells, pointing at her ears.

  I run to the front of the group and use my hands to sign wait.

  Pander shrugs and raises her own hands, and they move quickly as she silently speaks to me. Then she’s gone, following the line of the train tracks through the homeless village and into the war zone.

  ‘What did she say?’ Kina asks.

  ‘She said that she can’t wait for us idiots for ever, that she’ll be back with the painkillers and then she’s going to find her sisters.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Igby asks.

  ‘We should go after her,’ I say.

  ‘Hey, it’s her life,’ Malachai replies with a shrug. ‘Shame, I liked her.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll make it,’ Igby says.

  ‘Maybe,’ Kina replies, but neither of them sound confident, and as we stare at the place where Pander stood just seconds before, a piece of rubble falls to the ground in a thunder of stone and smoke as if to punctuate the feeling of pre-emptive mourning for the young girl.

  One by one the group turns away, but I can’t help but stare along the tracks and into the city. My eyes move to the Black Road Vertical on the horizon to the east, my old home, and I feel a pull towards it, towards my dad and my sister. Whatever happens, I have to find them, that’s my first priority.

  I turn back to Kina, determined now to do something, anything. ‘Over there,’ I say, pointing to an abandoned diner on the edge of the homeless village. ‘We’ll get Akimi inside and barricade the doors, then we’ll figure out what to do next.’

  ‘Alright,’ she agrees.

  ‘I’m sorry guys, I’m so sorry,’ Akimi mutters from her spot on the floor.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Malachai tells her as he kneels beside her. ‘Do you think you can make it to that building?’ He points to the diner. Akimi nods and we help her to stand, her red dress billowing in the breeze.

  Malachai puts one of the injured girl’s arms around his shoulder and I take the other side. Slowly we make our way across the scorched ground, Akimi in tears at the pain, Blue walking with his head down, Igby guiding Pod, and Tyco last in line.

  ‘Wait here,’ Malachai says, pushing open the front door of the building.

  He steps ins
ide, walking on tiptoes over the broken glass and rotting food. He moves quickly through to the kitchen and out of sight.

  From behind us, in the city, we hear another scream of pain. We all share a look and I can tell that we’re wondering if it was Pander.

  Malachai returns, eating a banana. ‘All clear,’ he says, ‘and there’s a walk-in freezer that we can lock ourselves inside if anything happens.’

  I help Akimi to lower herself to the floor, and then step back.

  There’s a long silence between the group. We look around at our new surroundings. The diner is old-fashioned, and not in the way the vintage diners in town are – the ones that try to replicate the old twenty-first century style. This place is simply out of date: obsolete robotic waiting staff; the humanoid automaton at the counter frozen in time; the outdated neon lights. Four large windows line the front of the building, but three of them are shattered – so my plan of barricading the door is useless. There are seven booths alongside the windows, where customers must have sat enjoying their meals just days before, and on the tables are order and pay points, if they chose not to use the robots. A long counter runs along the far wall with a large menu above it. One of the strip lights hangs from the ceiling by wires and there’s a large dark pool of dried blood in the middle of the tiled floor.

  ‘Homey,’ Malachai says, throwing his banana skin towards a bin and shrugging.

  ‘So, what now?’ Blue asks.

  I look around the group. ‘I guess we stick to the plan.’

  ‘Yeah, I need to know if my parents made it,’ Tyco adds, speaking for the first time since his breakdown on the platform.

  ‘But what about Akimi?’ asks Kina.

  I nod. ‘Whoever wants to go into the city now to look for family – you can come with us. Some of us will have to stay with Akimi. We’ll meet back here as soon as we can. And, Akimi, we’ll try to find painkillers or something while we’re there.’

  Akimi raises a thumb.

  ‘I don’t have any family,’ Igby says. ‘I can stay with Akimi.’

  ‘My parents are dead to me anyway,’ Blue mumbles.

  ‘I’ll stay with Igby,’ Pod says, slumping his massive frame down on to one of the booth benches that he has felt for with his hand.

  ‘I—’ Kina starts. She looks up to the ceiling as if weighing up a tough decision. ‘My mother might be out there, I guess.’

  ‘Alright,’ I tell the rest of the group, ‘Malachai, Tyco, Kina and I will head into the city. We’ll meet you back here as soon as we can. Remember, Juno is still in the Loop, once we’ve found our families we need to get to the facility and find a cure or she’ll starve to death in there. And, Akimi, we’ll try to find painkillers or something while we’re in the city.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Blue mutters, walking over to an empty booth and lying down.

  I take one last look at my friends. Any other group of people would be terrified in this situation, but to us this is a reprieve, a pardon, a stay of execution.

  I catch Tyco’s eyes lingering on the detonator in Kina’s hand, but he catches himself before anyone else notices, and looks out of the broken windows, clearing his throat. Perhaps it’s just old habits dying hard – he’s spent so long wishing me dead that it’s hard not to see an opportunity to kill me when it present itself.

  ‘Don’t die, OK?’ Akimi says from her position on the floor, still twisting in pain.

  ‘I’m too pretty to die,’ Malachai says, with a smile that fails to convey the humour he’s aiming for.

  ‘Wait,’ Tyco says, walking into the kitchen and reappearing a few seconds later carrying four large chef’s knives with colourful handles. He hands one to Malachai, one to Kina and one to me. ‘For protection,’ he says, shrugging.

  I take the knife and tuck it into the pocket of my prison clothes. I feel stupid, like a kid playing make-believe games, but I remind myself that this is real, this is really happening.

  ‘OK,’ I say, taking a deep breath, ‘I guess we’ll see you guys later.’

  The rest of the group say goodbye and wish us luck.

  ‘Hang in there,’ Malachai says to Akimi, who is lying on the floor breathing fast through her nose, her arm draped over her eyes.

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ she replies, her eyes squeezed shut with the pain.

  Malachai is the first to leave, pushing open the doors and stepping out into the sunlight, his knife clenched in his fist. Tyco is next, then Kina, and then me.

  My heart is thumping in my chest as we enter the homeless village on the edge of town. We’re following the tracks, walking between the rails to avoid the river of blood beside us. The sun is directly above us now, so I guess it must be around mid-afternoon. Despite the sun there are still dark shadows between the huts, but out of the shadows it is warm. So warm, in fact, that the smell of the rotting food and sewage is drifting up into the air, along with something else that I don’t want to admit to myself is probably the smell of dead people.

  We walk on, trying not to look anywhere but straight ahead, trying not to think about the threat that could kill us at any second.

  I focus on the makeshift structures around us. The ingenuity that went into building some of these homes is incredible: strips of paper wetted with glue used to fill gaps in the scrap metal of the walls, homes built on stilts to avoid flooding from the river, others pieced together like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle built from thousands of bits of debris.

  ‘This is disgusting,’ Tyco mutters, eyes glancing briefly at the filth and the squalor.

  ‘Easy for you to say, rich boy,’ Malachai mutters.

  ‘Come on, there’s poor and then there’s living in your own filth.’

  ‘You think these people wanted to live like this? It’s rich kids like you that rig the system so they don’t have the opportunity to get out.’

  ‘Oh, save it,’ Tyco hisses. ‘I’ve heard all the excuses a thousand times.’

  ‘This must have been so easy for you to ignore,’ Malachai throws back.

  ‘Don’t blame me because you weren’t smart enough to make it out.’

  ‘What, like you, who made it all the way to the Loop?’

  Tyco turns on Malachai, grabbing him by the collar and standing nose to nose with him. ‘Shut up, you shut your mouth.’

  ‘Is this really the time?’ Kina spits, brandishing the trigger at them.

  The two boys seem not to hear her mocking tones as they butt heads like mindless stags.

  I run towards them to split them up, but stop when I hear shuffling feet from somewhere to my left. I look between the crowded shacks and hanging wires, trying to find the source of the sound, but then I hear more footsteps from behind me.

  ‘Do you want me to knock you out, Regular?’

  ‘Why?’ Malachai asks, and I can hear the smirk in his voice. ‘Is the rich kid in a situation that he can’t buy his way out of?’

  ‘Shut up,’ I say, backing towards them.

  ‘I don’t need money to beat the hell out of you,’ Tyco says through gritted teeth.

  ‘Hey,’ I whisper, ‘shut your mouths, there’s someone else here.’

  Tyco lets go of Malachai. I hear more footsteps now; feet shuffling through the mud, rippling the blood river from somewhere up the stream.

  Malachai turns his head left then right. Tyco reaches for his knife.

  I see a child sprint between two houses – I catch sight of her for no longer than a couple of seconds, but see she is covered in mud, wild eyes blinking rapidly. A second later a boy follows her.

  ‘There,’ Tyco says, and I turn to see him pointing the tip of his blade towards the corner of a hut made of rusted corrugated iron sheets and wooden crates. The mad blinking eyes of a woman in her thirties, or maybe her forties, peek out.

  ‘They’re behind us too,’ Kina says, ‘Three of them.’

  ‘Two of them to our left,’ I whisper, watching the feet of the children from beneath an old Galen Rye ‘As One’ banner blowing in the b
reeze.

  I remember the way the old lady brutally slaughtered the boy back in the village, the way she had brought the knife down over and over again, and I’m certain that we’re going to die here.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Malachai whispers, his eyes tracing the shapes of the makeshift buildings around us. ‘When I say “go”, follow me, understand?’

  ‘Malachai, there’s too many—’ I start.

  ‘Shut up and get ready to run.’

  I watch Malachai as he turns the knife over in his hand until he’s holding it by the tip of the blade. He raises his arm until the handle is beside his ear and takes a deep breath. I watch his eyes narrow as he steps forward and launches the blade between two shacks.

  ‘Go!’ he yells, and takes off in the direction of the knife he’s just thrown.

  I see one of the Smilers step forward with Malachai’s knife in his chest; he is silent, still smiling, still blinking, but his legs give way as the blossom of red around the blade grows.

  The world becomes a blur as I take off running. Sounds blend together, and above it all I hear my rattling breaths being sucked into my lungs. I focus on the heels of Malachai as he shoulders a middle-aged woman out of the way and climbs up the wall of a sturdy-looking hut and runs across its roof. I follow, pushing with my arms, dragging myself up and sprinting to the edge, where Malachai has leapt to the roof of the next shelter. In two strides he has crossed it and is jumping to the next.

  I turn to see Kina pulling herself up, one-handed, on to a nearby shack, the trigger still gripped in her other hand, the tendons in her neck straining. She runs to the edge of the home and leaps to the left, her feet landing almost soundlessly on the flat roof of another building.

  For a second I can’t take my eyes off the trigger in Kina’s hand, and even now, in the midst of all this turmoil, I am terrified that she’ll lose her grip and my world will cut to black.

  Put it out of your mind, Luka, I tell myself. Put it out of your mind, or you won’t survive this.

  I grit my teeth and follow, aware now that the ground around us is swarming with Smilers. They’re flowing like a river of killers, and I don’t want to see them, but as I tense my legs and dive to the next roof, following Kina, I look down and there they are: boys and girls; women and men; elderly people with walkers and wheelchairs stuck in the mud; all of them focused on one thing – murder. They’re chasing us but at the same time they’re attacking each other. Some have weapons, rocks, planks of wood, one older lady has a knitting needle, others are using their teeth to rip at the flesh of whoever is closest.