by ES Richards
“That would be great,” Austin smiled, “thank you.”
Following Walter and the others, Austin led his family further into the cave and listened as the earlier settlers of the place began to explain what it was all about. He had been incredibly nervous when his family first arrived there, the welcome not going down as he had expected – least of all with the mysterious questioning and then the roar of some even stranger alarm. But looking around now, the cave seemed to be set up as a sanctuary. There were other children that Bowie and Miles could play with and a place where his family could be kept safe and secure from what was happening across the city. It was a far cry from home, but the place had promise and Austin was enthusiastic for what the next chapter of his life might bring there.
Chapter 10
“Go on, Bowie, you’ll be okay. I promise.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Austin added. “Daddy and I aren’t going to be far away. It’s just like how it used to be before. You liked school back then, didn’t you? It’s just the same as that.”
“With Miss Beaver?”
Austin looked at Dante and sighed, both of them finding it hard enough already to say goodbye to their son and send him off for the day without them. They didn’t need his reluctance, too. But it needed to be done. Now that they were living inside the cave, they had to follow the same rules and regime as everyone else. That meant Bowie needed to go to school – and they both wanted him to as well. It would serve him well to have some semblance of normalcy back in his life.
“No,” Dante shook his head, “Miss Beaver won’t be there, darling. But you’ll have a new teacher and I’m sure she’ll be just as good.”
“And you’ll be able to make new friends. Remember Kimi that you met the other day? She’ll be there. You liked her, didn’t you?”
Bowie nodded reluctantly, Austin and Dante both doing everything they could to get him excited about a day at school again. With the number of people who lived in the cave, they pretty much covered every profession needed. There was no shortage of teachers present and so they took care of the sixty or so children through the day, freeing up the adults to carry out their own work.
The children were split into four different age groups, Bowie fell into the second one, the youngest class more of a daycare for babies and toddlers. There were just over ten boys and girls like him, doing their basic lessons and advancing their reading and writing, alongside enjoying coloring breaks and storytelling. The two older age groups were taught additional skills as well as what they’d normally learn in school, the lessons adapted to the new world they were living in without power or any of life’s former luxuries.
“Come on little man,” Austin took Bowie’s hand and steered him toward the door, aware the day had already begun for most people. “You don’t want to hang around with us anymore anyway, we’ll just be doing boring grown up stuff. You’re better off without us.”
Gradually the three of them made their way through the cave. When they reached the designated classroom, Bowie stiffened up again, nervous at the prospect of a day not only with new people, but away from his parents.
“You’ll be okay,” Dante reassured him once more. “Just be brave, okay? You’ve shown us how brave you can be before. We know you can do this.”
“We’ll be back at the end of the day to pick you up,” Austin added, making eye contact with the teacher through the door as the woman walked over to let them in. “You ready?”
When the two of them finally walked away from Bowie a couple of minutes later, Austin had to force himself not to look back over his shoulder. As hard as it had been for Bowie, it was even harder for him to leave his son behind, even if it was just for a few hours through the day. The weeks that Austin had spent away from Bowie and Dante just after Trident had collapsed had been the hardest weeks of his life. Not because of everything else that was happening, but because he missed his family so much. He never wanted to be away from his husband or little boy again, even if it was just for the day.
“He’ll be fine,” Dante said to Austin, noticing his husband’s concern. “Will you?”
Austin smiled and straightened up a little, sniffing a little as he nodded. “Yeah. Wow,” he half chuckled. “It’s like the first day of school all over again. Do you remember that?”
“Don’t remind me,” Dante grinned. “We can’t be going through heartbreak like that again.”
The two of them laughed for a moment, remembering their lives before the world had changed. It was like looking back on someone else’s life now, the contrast so stark it was difficult to recognize themselves in the memories. There would be no tuning into the school website to catch glimpses of their little boy on the playground cameras, no waiting by the phone for a call if something went wrong. The world was very different now and that meant their days would be, too.
“Which way is it?” Austin asked as they came to a fork in the corridor. “Left?”
“I think so,” Dante nodded. “We’ll figure this place out eventually.”
Laughing again, the two men turned left and headed to meet up with Samuel and some of the others. They’d been in the cave for a couple of days now and the introduction was long over. A lot was happening in New York City and they were right at the heart of it, there was no time for sitting back and becoming comfortable – everyone needed to take action and play their part and the two of them were no exception.
For Samuel, he was already well on the way there. To his pleasant surprise, the promises Walter and Luc had made to Austin about medicine being available if they brought Meghan in were true. While Dante’s mother was sadly unable to benefit from it, Charles was. On their first full day in the cave, Samuel took his father to be checked out – despite the old man’s reluctance.
Without having to worry about his father, Samuel was freed up to explore the cave a little more and to find out what was going on inside it. Austin was preoccupied with his family, leaving Samuel to set about on his own, chatting to strangers and listening to tales about what people had been through since Trident’s collapse.
A few actually recognized him from the television broadcast on the day everything had gone down. In fact, by the time Samuel had recalled his story about what had happened on that day for the third time, he’d gathered quite a crowd of listeners who hung on his every word. After the few interactions he’d had with strangers previously about the broadcast, Samuel was reluctant at first to open up about it. However, he didn’t need to spend a lot of time in the cave to understand everyone there was in a similar frame of mind to his own – none of them cared what had caused things to end up the way they were, all they wanted to do was keep living and help things to improve once more.
Samuel wished he’d had that sort of mind frame his entire life. Repeating the details of what had happened the day of Trident’s collapse so many times, forced him not only to relive the parts other people deemed to be heroic, but also the moments he was ashamed of as well. The news broadcast which had been the last thing millions of people had watched worldwide, would not have been possible without the crew that recorded it. One of whom never made it out of the building alive.
It was easy to forget Sandy. When Samuel told people what had been going through his head when he gave that broadcast, he never mentioned her name. He didn’t speak of the woman directing him from behind the camera, the woman with a petrifying fear of heights that would later stop her from climbing down an elevator shaft to safety.
Had Samuel been the person he was now; he would’ve tried harder to coax her out of the Trident building. He knew he should’ve done more that day, fought harder, done something that would’ve pushed Sandy to cling onto the ladder and make her descent. But Samuel had been too afraid himself. Back then he’d been a coward – and he was the first to admit it now. He should’ve helped save Sandy, but instead he’d slid down the ladder himself, shrouded in excuses and left the poor woman upstairs to burn.
Her face still
crossed his mind sometimes when he slept. In his dreams, Samuel was met by the many people he’d let down over the years, but those in recent weeks visited most frequently. Gradually he’d started to use them as inspiration, pushing himself to be better so that he didn’t disappoint or let down anyone else in the same way he had them. He wasn’t completely there yet – aware that he could only truly overcome these demons when he admitted his mistakes out loud – but he was making progress.
It was for people like Sandy that he kept trying to better himself. Internally, that was Samuel’s own way of apologizing to her and everyone else; he told himself that if he made sure he never did that sort of thing again, then somehow it would make up for the past. Perhaps it was a coward’s way of reasoning, but it was all Samuel had as he now strived to make himself a better person in every sense of the word.
That was why he was so pleased to be in the cave now. Being surrounded by so many selfless and untiring people was both heartwarming and inspiring and Samuel was determined to join them and play his part. He’d already spent a lot of time with Lin in particular, learning about how she came to be in the cave and the incredible feats she’d already aided in. The woman took Samuel’s breath away in more ways than one, reminding him of something else he’d learned about himself since Trident’s collapse – his desire to have a family one day.
“Are they here as well?” Samuel asked, talking to Lin about her parents after giving her a brief update on his father.
Lin nodded. “They’re both pretty old now, but they’ve got a little space to themselves upstairs. I’m happy that they’re here.”
“Definitely,” Samuel nodded, “they must be proud of you. All that stuff everyone said you did before, sounds amazing.”
“It’s nothing,” Lin replied, shrugging away the compliment. She didn’t like to be talked about too much and when it was simply for doing something she saw as her job; she was even more reluctant to accept praise. “It’s just in a day’s work. Speaking of which, we need to get going. Where are your friends? They should both be here by now.”
Just as Lin said it, Austin and Dante appeared. The three of them had sort of been taken under the wing of Lin’s group, the general rule within the cave being that if you recruited someone, you were then responsible for making sure they settled in properly. As such, even though Lin hadn’t been with Walter, Luc and Taggy when they first met Austin in the middle of the night, she was playing her part in making them feel at home.
“Oh, you dropped him at school this morning, didn’t you?” Samuel asked, remembering it was Bowie’s first day back in a somewhat normal routine. “How was he?”
“A bit nervous,” Austin replied, “he’ll be fine though. Didn’t seem as bothered as either of us.”
“It never gets any easier,” Dante added with a smile. “What’s the plan for today? Let’s get going before I find myself waiting outside his classroom all day.”
Lin cracked a smile, “I doubt you’ll be as keen once we’ve got into it,” she teased. “Luc and Taggy are somewhere else today, so it’s just me and Walt. He’s already outside. Come on – it’s not all defending the city and saving the vulnerable. We’ve got a big day of scavenging ahead of us.”
“So, what does scavenging involve?” Samuel asked Lin as they made their way outside, Austin and Dante following just behind.
“Pretty much what it says on the tin,” she shrugged in response. “We’ve got a lot of mouths to feed here, so we need to restock our pantry as much as possible. We’re looking for food mainly but pick up anything useful you find along the way. Basically, if you see something and even half consider picking it up, do. Someone back here will find a use for it.”
“Makes sense,” Samuel nodded. “Whereabouts are we going? Where’s Walter?”
Lin pushed open a door to the street outside in response to Samuel’s question, revealing Walter standing next to an old yellow cab. “Might be a bit of a squeeze,” she said as the five of them stood by the vehicle, “but if we’ve got a working engine we might as well use it.”
Samuel was surprised the cab was working. It made sense they needed to cover more ground around the city than they currently were doing, and there was a smattering of cars still around that you could get up and running if there was someone that knew a thing or two about motors around. He just hoped they wouldn’t run into the bandits that forced him and his father out of Mr. Cavell’s Shelby Mustang – though the yellow cab was far more discrete than that had been.
Climbing into the cab, Samuel sat between Dante and the window and wondered where they were headed. Lin was right, there was a lot more to focus on than just winning the city back from the Gov – whom he had recently learned all about – before they could do any of that, they needed to survive. No matter what challenge lay ahead, the simplest task always needed to be tackled first.
Chapter 11
“They’re coming back to shore now,” Art reported, switching off the radio and clipping it to the waistband of his pants. “Shouldn’t be too long.”
“Finally,” April heaved a sigh of relief. “Did they say what happened out there? I was starting to suspect the worst.”
Art shook his head. “No,” he replied, “Dennis sounded a bit weird though. He didn’t give many details.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t being coerced?” April questioned, her military brain immediately jumping to the worst possible option. “Did he sound like he was reading a script or anything?”
“No, no,” Art denied the possibility immediately. “It was definitely him; I could hear some of the others in the background too. He just sounded,” Art paused, “I don’t know, different. I’m guessing things didn’t go exactly to plan out there.”
“Hm,” April thought for a second. “Maybe we should send someone out to meet them, just in case.”
“Do you really think it might be a trap?”
“I don’t know,” April shrugged. “But it’s better to be sure. Can you get on the radio and see who’s free? Your wife should be about done by now, right?”
“I’ll check,” Art nodded, picking up the radio again and switching to a different channel. He wasn’t overly keen about encouraging Jessie down to the beach if Dennis’ return could be a trap laid out by the Chinese soldiers, but he didn’t have the same suspicions as April did. Everything had been slowly falling into place for their uprising movement tonight and while he almost dared not think it, Art was practically convinced they were going to pull the whole operation off before morning.
After speaking to Jessie and getting an update on how things were going with her, Art put the radio down for a second time with a satisfied smile on his face. Jessie seemed good – she was positive and confident about how things were going so far, she had spoken to Martha and checked in on the boys and she was happy to go to the beach and wait for Dennis. Knowing his wife was safe made everything a lot easier for Art, the biggest worry lifted from his shoulders as he reported to April that Jessie and a couple others would hook up with Dennis. That, in turn, improved April’s mood and after a few final checks at the communications hub, they were ready to leave and return to the surf shack.
“You sure they’ll be fine here?” Art asked, nodding to the two soldiers he and April had tied to a couple of chairs.
April looked back and grinned. “I don’t think they could get out of those knots if they were the direct descendants of Houdini himself. Come on Art,” she beckoned, “let’s get back and get the next stage underway.”
“Okay.” Closing the door of the Chinese communications hub – that had once been nothing more than the maintenance room of the city hall – Art took one last look at the two Chinese soldiers before locking them away in the darkness. They were both unharmed, subdued with ease due to the element of surprise and strapped into the chairs quicker than you’d get a baby into a stroller. April was an incredibly talented woman, and it was impossible for Art to forget that.
As they’d worked their way acr
oss town to the comms hub, they’d done the same thing to every soldier who crossed their path. The intention was never to harm any of them, they simply needed to win back their island, get the information required and send the soldiers packing. So long as they sailed away and never returned, there would be no need for any further trouble. Before that could happen however, there was the small case of the information.
Back at the surf shack, Kitch and Tarek had been joined by a few others. The interrogations were yet to begin, but the soldiers had been moved from the positions April and Art had last seen them in. Instead of all eleven tied side by side behind the bar, they were separated in booths or at random tables. Enough space was between each of them so they were out of reach of one another and then there was one man strapped to a chair in what had been Jamie’s office, clearly selected as the first target of their questioning.
“Who’s going in?” April asked as they regrouped, filling each other in on the various updates over the last hour or so. “Are you up for it, Kitch?”
“I can do it,” Kitch replied, “but to be honest, we were sort of hoping you would, April. I feel like they’ll respect you more than me, you know?”
“You shouldn’t sell yourself short like that,” April replied, “your age doesn’t define who you are. You’ve been an excellent leader for us these last few days, Kitch.”
“Thanks,” Kitch smiled, the fact he was still on the wrong side of twenty easy to forget when you heard him speak. “But I’m still happy for you to do it, if that’s okay, of course?”
“Sure,” April nodded. “Why did you pick him?” She nodded to the soldier waiting in the office, the man Kitch and Tarek had decided should be questioned first. “What’s so special about him?”
