by C. G. Hatton
Problem was, I couldn’t have sworn for sure that I hadn’t.
“I know you haven’t, Luka. That’s why I followed Calum. To warn you,” she said, voice small, shaking. “Peanut told me about the ore plant. Is that why we’re in trouble?”
“We’re not in trouble,” I said. “Calum’s just an idiot. You shouldn’t have followed him out here. Come on, we need to move.”
We went back out into the rain and across the rooftops as fast as we could. I wanted to get her to Latia’s. That was the only place I could think of to go. The thunder was still rumbling. Those storms didn’t usually last long but they always got worse, much worse, before they tore themselves apart. We slid down a gutter and fell out onto a flat roof that was mostly intact. I pulled Freddie up and helped her into a run. We weren’t too far from Latia’s district. I couldn’t feel my fingers any more. Freddie was trembling. I looked around. Unless we wanted to jump down a bomb hole, the only way I could see to get down was on the far side of the roof. We had no choice but to run out into the open.
There was a yell. Shots that pinged off the venting pipes next to us.
Freddie screamed, exhausted and about ready to collapse.
I grabbed her and pulled her back. We slipped round into the shadows and waited, listening as they yelled to each other, trying to figure out where we were. I grabbed a handful of rubble and threw it, as far as I could, watching as it hit the far wall with a clatter. They were stupid enough to fall for it, running off in the opposite direction. I gestured Freddie to be quiet, as lightning flashed in brilliant white tendrils across the sky, then we climbed up and round, back onto the higher roof.
Calum was standing there, waiting. He narrowed his eyes, a sly smile on his face, shifted his weight and hefted the pipe. Shadows moved on all sides as his cronies stepped out to surround us.
“Luka hasn’t done anything,” Freddie yelled, a clap of thunder drowning out her words.
I let go of her hand and moved, going for Calum as fast as he was coming at me. I ducked the pipe and got in the first punch. He went down but one of his buddies swung the rifle like a club. Right in my face.
I went flying, hit the ground and rolled, sprawling.
Then it all went into slow motion.
They got Freddie by the scruff of the neck and they dragged her away from me. She was protesting, kicking at them but they were too big.
They spread out. Freddie was screaming. The others were all shouting, jeering. They were still waving the rifles in the air.
Calum was on his feet, pulling something from his belt.
There was another flash of lightning.
Whatever he had in his hand glinted. The idiot had a knife.
I got up, reaching into my own pocket.
Calum held up the blade, grinning.
I heard Freddie yell, “No,” and saw her twist away. There was another crash of thunder then a gunshot, a sharp crack that cut through the storm and the darkness.
Freddie staggered.
My fingers closed around the cold, hard sphere of the grenade. Freddie turned, looked me right in the eye with terror frozen on her face, and then she was falling. I tried to catch her but I couldn’t move fast enough.
Calum slammed into me and a burning heat burst in my stomach. I felt my knees going.
I clicked the primer.
Calum pushed me away from him. I couldn’t help staggering backwards. I threw the grenade. There was a flash. And then my feet went out from under me.
I fell. I can remember hitting something. Pain so bad it didn’t feel real. I think I might have screamed.
And that’s when I bust my knee.
I didn’t black out. It would have been easier if I had but I lay there in the torrential rain, feeling every spark of agonising pain. I’ve had worse. Compared to some of the stuff I’ve been through since, with the guild, that night at the bottom of that wall was a breeze. But back then, I was thirteen and it was the first time I’d really got hurt, and boy did it hurt.
I couldn’t move without feeling like I was going to drop into a dark hole. I lay there, rain streaming down my face, every muscle tense, hand pressed over my stomach where the wetness was warm and sticky. I could feel every heartbeat pounding in my chest, feel it pulsing in my abdomen.
I can remember wondering if that was what it was like to die. Wondering if that’s what it had felt like eight years ago when the bombs had hit our building, and my mother and grandparents, and my uncles and all my cousins and all those other people had died. It had been raining that night too. Did bad things always happen in the rain and the dark? I could see every detail of it, relive every minute I was trapped there in the rubble as everyone faded and died around me. I could hear every voice and cry, every whisper that got quieter and quieter until there was nothing but my heartbeat in the darkness.
Lying there that night at the bottom of the wall, I did anything to stop thinking about it. I started counting, worked out volumes of water, volumes of blood, fluid dynamics and how much I reckoned I was losing by the minute.
I lay there forever, calculating distances and fuel consumption, trying to work out if I knew enough about flying a ship yet to steal one and get everyone away from there. I was expecting Calum to turn up and finish the job. I had no idea what he thought I’d done, why Dayton would think I’d done anything to betray them. I’d just given them exactly what he’d sent me in there after. I tried to backtrack over every second of it all, figure out if I’d screwed up, if I’d done something so terrible they could see it that way, and every time I came back to nothing.
I started to fade out, grey closing in but then I heard shouting. I tensed, adrenaline pulsing. If Calum turned up and held a gun to my head, there was absolutely nothing I could do.
Chapter 14
The shouting was joined by the noise of engines and weapons, far away, and then a voice really close up, yelling in my ear. Not Calum. I blinked.
Someone took hold of my wrist and someone pressed down hard on my stomach. There was a sting and the pain went sky high so bad it took my breath away, then just as suddenly, I couldn’t feel anything any more. I felt my knee well enough when they tried to move me and I think I screamed again.
“Give the kid something to knock him out, for Christ’s sake,” someone shouted.
I felt another sharper sting on my neck and I drifted off on a cloud.
I woke up in the medical bay again. When I was in there with concussion, everyone had seemed really pissed at me. That second time, when I was really hurt, they were different, way more protective somehow, as if there were degrees of being hurt and if it was bad enough, it didn’t matter what you’d done to end up there. That seems to be a trick I’ve got away with a lot since then.
There were more people around that time too. They were hustling with wounded and I caught snatches of conversations, talk of bombs and casualties, medical supplies being low and where the hell were the reinforcements.
It was hard not to feel guilty.
I was polite whenever any of the medics checked on me and I lay there listening, trying to figure out what I could move. There was a line in my arm again. My left knee was firmly immobilised in a brace. My stomach was sore but everything else seemed fine.
I slept a lot and one time when I was only half awake, I thought I could hear Charlie, but he wasn’t there when I opened my eyes.
Then for the first time since I’d got there, I woke and felt fully awake, different, more aware, the IV line gone.
There were quiet voices beyond the curtain. They were talking about me and that time it was Charlie. He was arguing, soft tones like they were trying to keep quiet but he was pissed about something.
“No,” a woman said, quiet but firm.
“He’s one of ours,” I heard Charlie say. “Just look at him.”
“We’re at our limit here,” she said. “The kid is good to go. We can’t keep him just because, yes, I agree, in all likelihood, he is probably the ba
stard sprog of some grunt who could have been here for one tour thirteen or fourteen years ago. The kid has family here. We’re releasing him today.”
Charlie sounded desperate. “We’re still fighting out there.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why we’re at our limit. I’m letting him go.”
There were footsteps, walking away, then he pulled back the curtain and stood there. He looked like he’d been working back to back shifts. He had that tang of dust and dirt and explosives hanging around him.
I sat up and said, “Hey.”
He forced a smile.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I need to go. Is it okay if I go?”
He nodded.
There was a pile of clothes on the end of the bed. Desert colours, stuff the soldiers wore off-duty. I guessed that my clothes had been trashed. I shrugged into a tee shirt that was way too big.
“It’s the smallest we could find,” Charlie said. “Here let me help.”
He got me up and dressed. The shorts were big but not stupidly so. The pack of cards was lying there on the bed. It was bulky somehow, like it had been soaked and then dried out. He must have rescued it for me. It meant a lot and I didn’t know how to say it. I stuffed it into a pocket.
My sneakers were there and he helped me into them and grabbed some crutches.
“You know how to use these?” he asked.
“I’ll manage.”
“No climbing.” He said it with a smile in his eyes.
I almost smiled back. “I’ll be fine.”
He looked serious all of a sudden. “Will you be fine?”
I looked at him, not sure what he was asking.
“You need to keep the brace on for at least three weeks,” he said. “The knee was dislocated. You haven’t broken anything but there’s ligament damage. Don’t walk on it. The stab wound…” He paused, looking at me as if he wanted to ask what the hell had happened. He didn’t. “That should heal up okay. Keep it clean.” He took a bag off the table in there. “There’s trauma patches in here in case it opens up again and there are antibiotics and painkillers. Go easy on them. There’s enough in there to last you a while. You run out, you don’t need to steal any more. Just come tell me. Okay?”
I nodded.
“Will you be okay?”
I took the bag and nodded.
“Come on then.” He turned away.
I didn’t move.
He realised I wasn’t following and turned back, looked at the way I was standing and said, “What?”
I bit my lip. I didn’t want to ask but I couldn’t not. “There were other kids up on the roof with me…”
He stared at me then said quietly, “There was a girl…” He shook his head slightly.
I sucked it up and packaged it away, the way I’d learned to eight years before. Life sucks. Losing people sucks. If you were afraid of it, it killed what time you had with the people you did have. I had no idea what Calum and the rest of them thought I’d been doing. I hadn’t betrayed them. Yet there I was, standing in the Imperial base, wearing an Imperial uniform. I might as well have.
Charlie gave me a lift out to a checkpoint, as far downtown as he could go. They had defences set up, coils of wire and barricades blocking the road. He helped me out and waited while I juggled the crutches.
It was hot, the sun right overhead so it was around midday.
I squinted up at him. “Thank you,” I said. Then for some reason, I added, “If he hasn’t already, Dayton’s going to hit the outposts.”
Charlie was standing by the jeep, leaning one elbow on the open door. “We know.”
“They think they can take back the mines.”
He frowned. “We didn’t know that.”
It felt like I was never going to see him again.
I shifted my weight, the knee starting to complain. “If you haven’t already, you need to change your codes.”
I turned to go before he could say anything else. I could feel him staring at my back as I made my way down the street. It was quiet but an ominous quiet, too quiet. Midday, this part of town? There should have been people around, going to the market or home from school, but not a soul.
I headed into the shade. I didn’t even know what day it was or how long I’d been in the garrison.
It must have taken me over an hour to get to Latia’s place. My back was drenched with sweat and my stomach felt like it had a knot stitched into it.
I leaned heavier and heavier on the crutches, hands sore, counting each step and thinking of a soft bed and a cold drink. Lemonade. Latia would never let me have beer.
I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw the door was open.
My great-grandmother never left the door open. If I could have thrown away the crutches and run, I would have sprinted. I could hardly breathe by the time I pushed the door open, yelling for her, desperately wanting her to call me back and ask why such fretting, everything was fine.
Except it wasn’t. I stopped in the doorway and stared. Chairs were overturned, a vase smashed on the floor. She’d never leave it in such a mess. I had a lump in my throat as I hobbled into the living room, pushing past the curtain, half expecting to find her on the floor.
There was no sign of her. I searched the whole house, top to bottom, almost falling on the stairs, shouting her name the whole time. I looked in the back yard and checked the alley, a heavy sick feeling settling over the ache in my stomach.
I limped back inside, awkward with the crutches, and was heading into the living room, no idea what I was going to do, before I realised there was someone else in the house. Heavy footsteps.
I turned as someone grabbed me from behind and flung me round, off my feet. The bag went flying, pill bottles skittering across the floor. I yelled as my knee twisted, off balance, trying to swing the crutch at them, anything to get free. I hit something. The grip loosened and I thought I was going to fall but there was a vicious curse and a fist punched into my stomach. I folded, vision closing in to a grey tunnel.
My right knee hit the floor. They had me by the scruff of my neck but there was no way they were taking me. I twisted free, the shirt tearing. I abandoned the crutches and scrambled away. I knew Latia’s house back to front with my eyes closed. I slid under a table, made a break for the side door, crawling, and slipped through before they could catch me. I kicked the door shut with my right foot, pain firing through my stomach and my left leg screaming at me. It locked. I could hear them shouting to each other.
I thought I was going to be sick.
I dragged myself up, elbowed open the window and fell more than climbed through it.
There was a gate at the far end of the alley. I grabbed one of Latia’s plant pots and threw it. It shattered, nudged the gate just enough for it to swing open, and I crawled behind the broken fridge unit she had out there.
I heard them bang open the back door, yell and thunder down the alley.
I leaned my head back against the hot bricks of the wall. The gate swung shut. And it was quiet.
I waited until it was dark before I made a move. I managed to limp back inside and grab my crutches. I started to scrabble about for the drugs and stuff that had spilled across the floor, but I heard footsteps outside and split, abandoning all but a handful I shoved into my pocket.
I headed to the last place we’d been holed up, hanging out in the shadows each time I heard a voice or the echo of a footstep or engine. Each time I stopped, it got harder and harder to move again. But I made it, climbed the stairs one agonising step at a time, and collapsed in a heap in a corner, one off the top floor, in our old bunkroom where there was still a mattress.
The pain in my knee was unbearable, the grubby tee shirt specked with fresh blood. I think I almost sat there and cried but I squeezed my eyes shut instead and pretty much passed out.
Chapter 15
I came round slowly, vaguely aware of my knee then my stomach, both throbbing in time with my heartbeat. It wasn’t terrible
pain, worse than uncomfortable, but not as bad as agonising.
Until I tried to move.
And that’s when I realised there was someone there with me. I hadn’t heard her come in. It was too dark to see but I knew it was her. She was snuggled into me, one leg tangled into mine, one arm thrown over my chest, hugging a blanket she must have pulled over us. I was too hot and my stomach was cramping but I tried not to move so I wouldn’t wake her.
She smelled clean. I wasn’t. I was dusty, sweaty, sore and aching.
I held out as long as I could then I had to shift my butt to ease the pins and needles that were sparking in my leg. She stirred and murmured something. I swear I tried to not wake her but the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I was and the more my leg felt like it was ablaze.
I moved, she jerked awake and we both cried out as she tried to fend me off and I tried to stifle a scream as my knee took her full weight.
She hugged me then and held onto me as if she’d never let go.
“We thought you were really dead this time,” she whispered into my ear.
“They killed Freddie.” It was an effort to form the words coherently.
“I know.”
I pulled away.
It was too dark to see her properly but I could tell she was trying not to cry.
“They took Latia,” I said, heart in my stomach, hardly wanting to ask if Maisie knew anything about her.
“I know,” she said. “Luka, I’m sure she’s fine. Dayton’s holding her because he wants you. He’s told everyone to find you. He’s saying…” She touched my cheek.
I batted her hand away. “He’s saying what?” I almost knew what she was going to say.
“I don’t believe any of it. Calum’s just been waiting for something like this.”
We sat there quietly then I had to lie back down because my stomach was cramping again. It didn’t feel good, I didn’t feel good, but I didn’t want to switch on a flashlight to check it.