Living Hell

by Catherine Jinks

  ‘I want my mum . . .’ Yestin whimpered.

  ‘This stinks!’ Dygall exclaimed wildly. ‘What was that thing? What was it doing?’

  ‘It was a Remote Access Laundry Unit.’ I was surprised that he hadn’t spotted it. ‘And those blue things were scent pellets. At least, they used to be . . .’ I saw one flit by, dodging a sampler, and added desperately, ‘I – I don’t know what they are now.’

  ‘Enzymes, perhaps?’ Arkwright speculated, his blank gaze fixed on the same pellet. ‘Hormones?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lais said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Of course it matters.’ Arkwright spoke quite sharply, for him. ‘Everything matters. We can’t deal with any of this unless we know what’s going on.’

  ‘Well, whatever those blue things are, they don’t look dangerous,’ Zennor remarked, sounding more hopeful than relieved. ‘There’s no reason to think they’re dangerous.’

  ‘Perhaps we ought to catch one,’ Arkwright suggested. I knew what he meant – I knew he was right – but I couldn’t dredge up much enthusiasm. Harmless or not, the scent pellets were strange and disquieting.

  I just wanted to get away from them.

  Fortunately, Dad said, ‘Not now. Later. We haven’t even got a sample box with us.’

  ‘When we reach BioLab,’ Mum added, ‘we can work out exactly what we need.’

  So we pressed on, cautiously. I found myself watching the area above my head. Dad began to approach every junction with more care, even though – as Zennor had pointed out – there was no reason to regard the scent pellets (or the samplers, for that matter) as dangerous. They all seemed to be going about their mysterious business as if we weren’t there.

  ‘It’s like being Jonah inside the whale,’ Lais muttered, at one point.

  ‘Huh?’ said Dygall.

  ‘Jonah. You know. From the Bible.’

  Dygall didn’t know. Neither did I. Though we had done a unit on the Bible in our history course, neither of us could remember any Jonah.

  ‘He was swallowed by a whale,’ said Lais. ‘He lived inside it for a while.’

  ‘And then what happened?’ I asked.

  Lais hesitated. ‘Actually,’ she admitted, ‘I don’t really know . . .’

  ‘He was vomited up onto dry land.’ It was Zennor who spoke. ‘The Lord made him preach outside Ninevah.’

  ‘Well,’ said Dygall, ‘I hope that doesn’t happen to us. Unless we find the right sort of dry land.’

  ‘It’s a story about trying to avoid your destiny,’ Zennor began – and was suddenly hit.

  A scent pellet hit him. It exploded against his back in a cloud of fine blue powder. He dropped to his knees from the impact.

  Lais screamed.

  ‘Tuddor!’ she cried.

  The smell was very strong. It was vaguely soapy, and a little bit herbal, with a touch of citrus thrown in. Zennor climbed to his feet again.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he gasped. ‘I’m fine . . .’

  ‘Did it get on your skin?’ Mum demanded. ‘Zennor?’

  ‘I – I don’t know -’

  ‘There’s a bit on his neck,’ Arkwright pointed out. ‘And in his hair.’

  ‘Wipe it off! Quick!’ said Mum.

  ‘It’s okay. It didn’t really hurt. It – it just pushed me over.’

  ‘Don’t anybody breathe it in!’ Mum cried.

  We all stepped back, though the powder had pretty much settled. Most of it was on Zennor’s pressure suit: the mark looked like a big blue flower. Mum tried to dust it off, using her glove assembly. But it was faintly moist, and stuck like glue.

  So did the smell.

  ‘You should take that suit off,’ Mum suggested. Dad, however, said, ‘Not now. We’re nearly there.’

  ‘It might be toxic -’

  ‘He’s not dead yet. Come on. He’ll need to wash it out of his hair, anyway.’

  ‘It must have been a clumsy pellet,’ said Dygall, in a high voice. He was worried about his father; I could tell from the way he was standing. But he didn’t want to show it. ‘Dad must have got in its way, and it smashed.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Zennor repeated. Dad was already forging ahead, and Lais had started to move too. Arkwright hovered at Zennor’s elbow.

  ‘Can you walk?’ he inquired.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Zennor replied, and began to shuffle forward. Mum told Arkwright to go on – she would stay with Zennor. She didn’t want anyone else getting too close to him.

  I touched Dygall’s arm. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We mustn’t lose Dad.’

  Up at the front of the line, Dad had reached the next junction. He stopped. Cautiously, he peered around the street-corner, crying, ‘Hello!

  ’ Then he jerked back, so abruptly that he trod on Lais’s foot.

  ‘Ow!’ she yelped.

  He didn’t say sorry. I don’t think he could. He had swung around to face her, gasping, wide-eyed. As we watched, he collapsed against a wall.

  But when Lais tried to pass him, his arm shot out.

  ‘No!’ he choked.

  ‘What -?’

  ‘Don’t. Wait. Please . . .’

  Now we all knew that something was wrong. We slowed. We halted. We stared.

  ‘What is it?’ Lais whispered.

  Dad swallowed. He seemed to have aged ten years in ten seconds.

  ‘An – an accident . . .’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t look down the street.’ He straightened, and addressed us all. ‘We – we have to cross this junction, and BioLab’s just four more streets away. You kids – when we cross this junction, I want you to shut your eyes . . .’

  ‘Why?’ Arkwright queried. Mum gave him a vicious jab, and jerked her head at Yestin. Yestin gasped.

  ‘It’s Mum!’ he squeaked.

  ‘No,’ said Dad. ‘Yestin -’

  ‘It is!’ Yestin cried, and surged forward. It happened so quickly that Dad wasn’t fast enough to stop him. Yestin flung himself around the corner, just behind his rodog. What he saw made him stop – but it didn’t stop Bam.

  By the time I hit that junction, pulling against my mother’s grasp, Bam had reached the corpse that lay halfway down twenty-first street.

  He began to bark excitedly.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  I’ll never forget that moment. It changed everything. I saw the body, and everything else seemed to fade into the background. I knew that things would never be all right, ever again. I knew that the old world was gone.

  And I was right.

  The body didn’t belong to either of Yestin’s parents. I saw that instantly, because the face was still intact. It was Haido, and she was dead. Most of her middle part was gone – burned or melted away.

  You could smell it. That smell. It makes me sick, even now. Just to think of it.

  Yestin threw up. Right then, in front of me. I shut my eyes, but of course it was too late. That carnage is seared into my mind, and I can’t get rid of it.

  I wish I hadn’t looked. I wish I’d done what I was told.

  ‘No – no -’

  I don’t know who was whimpering. It could have been anyone. Dad – I’ll never forget this – Dad moved past me, and said, ‘It’s not your mother. Yestin? It’s not your mother. Look at me, son.’

  ‘Cheney? Come on.’ Mum was able to talk. Her voice was hoarse, but she was Chief Medic. She had seen dead bodies before. She could cope with them. ‘Over here. Now.’ She took my hand. She began to lead me away.

  Lais was crying. I could hear her. Dygall . . . I opened my eyes, and found myself looking at Dygall. He was standing as if frozen, staring, white-faced. Zennor’s arms were twined around him, from behind.

  ‘Come,’ Zennor croaked. ‘We can’t do anything for her.’

  ‘We have to get out of here!’ Lais sobbed. ‘Tuddor! These streets aren’t safe!’

  ‘Wait.’ Only Arkwright sounded calm. ‘We have to bring Haido.’r />
  ‘What?

  ’ ‘We have to, Lais. We have to find out what did this.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Mum agreed. We had already left the junction, she and I, but she turned back. She retraced her steps, dragging me with her. ‘That’s true. We need to know. Tuddor -’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Dad gave Yestin a gentle push. ‘Go on. You go with Quenby.’

  ‘Mum . . .’ Yestin sobbed. ‘Where’s my mum?’

  ‘Go on, Yestin,’ Dad urged. ‘She’s probably in BioLab.’

  ‘Come on, sweetie,’ said Mum. ‘That’s a good boy . . .’

  I don’t know how I did it, but I did it. When Yestin reached us, I put an arm around his shoulder. I said, ‘You stay with me. We’ll be all right.’ My voice wobbled a bit – I felt as if I could hardly breathe – but I did it. I talked.

  So did Dygall.

  ‘We need guns!’ he wailed.

  ‘Okay, go,’ said Dad. He picked up Haido’s feet. He was going to drag her along the floor.

  I looked away.

  ‘Was it acid?’ Arkwright asked Dad.

  ‘We’ll find out, Arkwright, just go!’

  Lais had already gone. She was way ahead of us by that time. I kept a firm grip on Yestin, whose body shuddered with every wrenching sob. I wasn’t crying, myself. I don’t know why. Too shocked, perhaps.

  ‘You kids,’ Mum panted, as we hurried along, ‘you kids, if you see any . . . remote units . . . you duck into the nearest cabin. Or a stair shaft . . . compartment . . . anything. Get in there and shut the door . . .’

  ‘Did – did a rem – remote do that?’ Yestin hiccoughed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mum.

  ‘It could have been a sampler that did it!’ Dygall exclaimed. ‘It could have been anything!’

  ‘Wait.’ Mum stopped abruptly. We all did. Lais was in front, and she had come to a standstill. She had reached the next junction.

  Dad was bringing up the rear. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw him. He was shuffling backwards, dragging his burden. Blocking it from view.

  ‘Well?’ said Mum. ‘Lais?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Lais croaked. She had edged around the corner. ‘It’s – it’s clear.’

  ‘Go, then!’

  Lais went. Mum and I followed, with Yestin. Zennor and Dygall were right on our heels.

  Then Bam shot past, dashing ahead, barking merrily. He shot down the platform (making pads of flesh wobble under his strange, chicken-leg feet), halted, turned, and shot back again. He kept doing it, as if he was impatient. Lais said wildly, ‘I wish that damn thing would shut up . . .’

  ‘It’s not a damn thing, it’s a good thing,’ Mum coughed.

  ‘It’s making too much noise!’

  ‘It’ll draw fire,’ said Dygall faintly. ‘Can’t you see? It’ll get hit first.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lais subsided.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Mum, ‘we don’t know how . . . I mean, it might not be the noise that . . .’ She, too, subsided, but I knew what she meant. Bam was our early warning system.

  We had reached the next junction.

  ‘It’s clear,’ announced Arkwright, who had overtaken the rest of us. Just looking at him, I felt safer. There was something about Arkwright. In the midst of this chaos, his mind was still working calmly. He had always been that way: his intellect was so active, his curiosity so rampant, that he didn’t seem affected by the concerns of ordinary people. He was too interested to be afraid.

  ‘Tuddor? How are you doing?’ he asked, stretching up to peer over the top of my head.

  ‘Fine,’ came Dad’s muffled response.

  ‘Need help?’

  ‘No.’

  Then Lais shrieked. When I swung around, the air was full of blue powder. Someone had been hit – another scent pellet.

  Arkwright? No. Lais.

  ‘Oh no! Oh no!’ she cried, coughing and waving her arms. Her face, hair and back were streaked with blue.

  ‘Quenby! Help! Quenby!’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Mum let go of my hand. ‘Don’t panic -’

  ‘Help me! Help!’

  ‘Don’t panic!’ Dygall snapped. ‘Didn’t you hear? It doesn’t hurt you! Dad’s fine!’

  Lais was groaning and shaking. Mum was trying to dust her off. Zennor said, ‘Come on. We can’t stop!’ From down in the rear, Dad lifted his voice. ‘Keep moving! Everyone keep moving, we’re nearly there!’

  Arkwright was the first to move. He marched across the next junction, while Bam capered around his ankles. I held on tightly to Yestin, and followed. Mum was just behind me, holding Lais. Then came Zennor and Dygall. Dad struggled along in last place, panting and grunting.

  Samplers and scent pellets swirled overhead. I tried to keep an eye on them, but it was impossible. There were too many, and the samplers were too fast. Some of them were even sliding along the bottom of the tube.

  I kept saying to myself: We’re going to make it. We’re going to make it.

  Over and over and over again.

  ‘Hang on, Tuddor.’ It was Zennor speaking. ‘You’ll never keep up.’

  Peering behind me, I saw Zennor drop back to help with Haido. He tucked his hands under her arms, and lifted her until she was fully off the ground. Mum said, ‘Don’t touch anything! Mind that stuff . . . watch her middle . . .’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Dad gasped. ‘We’re nowhere near the wound.’

  ‘Two more streets,’ Arkwright remarked. ‘Only two more.’

  I thought: And then what? It was the first time I’d even stopped to wonder. Suppose we reached BioLab and it was empty? Suppose everyone was dead in there, as well? Acid. Someone had mentioned acid. Hydrochloric acid? Had the Remote Access Repair Units stopped spraying struts, and started spraying people?

  I felt a lump rising in my throat, before it hit me: Sloan was in BioLab. Sloan was waiting for us. I was able to swallow the lump when I remembered that, because Sloan couldn’t be dead. Not Sloan. He would take care of things; nothing ever fazed Sloan. Together, he and Dad and Arkwright would work out a solution.

  And Mum, too, I decided. They would save us. They would.

  We passed another junction. Everyone was breathing heavily. Lais had calmed down a bit. Arkwright was lengthening his lead, walking briskly, apparently lost in thought. (I couldn’t believe how cool he was.) Yestin sniffed, wiping his nose on his hand. Once he whimpered, ‘My mum,’ and I gave him a squeeze.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ I said automatically, without believing a word of it.

  No one else said anything. What was there to say? We were dragging a corpse with us – we didn’t want to look back. We could barely open our mouths. Perhaps we were all in shock; I don’t know. Perhaps we were a little sick. I certainly was. The smell was getting to me: the sickly, dreadful, burnt-meat and chemical smell that kept wafting past me, from Haido’s direction.

  My mouth was dry. My heart was hammering. The blood was pounding in my head.

  As we crossed the next junction, I felt dizzy for a moment. I actually stumbled on something that looked almost like one of the limestone rock formations I’d seen in a mimexic caving tour. I think it was called a shawl. On the tour, it had been hard – a very thin and brittle sheet of calcite, almost like a petrified curtain.

  The one I tripped over was soft and springy. Like the webbing you have between your toes.

  ‘Cheney! Are you all right?’ said Mum.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Cheney?

  ’ ‘I’m fine, Dad! It’s okay!’

  ‘Just a few more steps, kids! Not long now!’

  It was true. We were close – so close. Arkwright was actually turning onto twenty-sixth street. I think we picked up our speed. I’m pretty sure I did.

  But it was too late.

  We weren’t fast enough.

  I never saw it happen. When I heard the screams, and whipped around, it was already over. Zennor was on the ground. Rolling and writhing – bucking – the noise
was – I can’t even describe it. I can’t. He had been hit in the face, full on. He was bubbling. Steaming.

  I only caught a glimpse. Then I was being hauled backwards. Someone grabbed me – Arkwright. He seized my arm and Yestin’s, and he pulled us along. We ran. We had to. When Yestin fell, Arkwright jerked him up again with the kind of strength that I never would have expected. Yestin was screaming. I might have been screaming – I don’t know. I couldn’t understand what was going on.

  I saw a familiar face: it belonged to Firminus. He was there suddenly. Arkwright practically threw me at him; I flew straight into his arms with a thump, nearly knocking him over. He caught me and shoved me at a hole in the wall. A door in the wall. The BioLab door.

  Sloan was on the other side of this hole. He was propping it open.

  ‘Zennor!’ I cried.

  ‘Quick,’ said Sloan. He reached across. He grabbed a handful of my suit, and yanked me through the hole. I hit the floor inside on my hands and knees. Yestin was so close behind, he nearly fell on top of me.

  ‘Sloan . . .’ I sobbed.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Sloan’s voice was perfectly calm. ‘It’s all right, you’re both safe.’

  ‘Mum!’ I gasped. ‘Dad!’

  ‘They’re coming.’

  ‘He’s dead!’

  ‘Shh.’

  Looking around, I saw faces. Scared expressions. I recognised Ottilie; her hair was coming down. I didn’t really know the other three. I would have seen them in the tubes, or at the Health Centre, but I didn’t know who they were.

  All at once a roiling mass of limbs seemed to burst through the hole behind me. It was Firminus, holding Dygall. Dygall was shouting and struggling. He was kicking and screaming. ‘Dad!’ he shrieked. ‘Dad!’ His elbow caught Firminus a great blow on the cheek, but Firminus didn’t let go. Knocked backwards into a slimy bulkhead, he slid to the floor, still holding on tight, his arms locked around Dygall’s chest.

  ‘Shh,’ he said, desperately. ‘Shh.’

  ‘Dad! Da-a-a-ad!

  ’ Yestin was shocked into silence. I crawled across to Dygall. I didn’t know what to do, but I had to be there. I didn’t even think – I just moved.

  ‘Dygall . . .’ I croaked.

  He kicked out at me. I doubt he even realised who I was. It was so noisy, he probably didn’t even hear me speak. Firminus pressed his cheek against Dygall’s fuzzy scalp, and held on grimly. Yestin began to howl.