Curfew

by Harris, Philip

  Curfew

  Philip Harris

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  Curfew

  THE WAR HAD BEEN RAGING for one hundred and sixty-eight years, two hundred and ninety-four days, seventeen hours, thirty-two minutes and six seconds when I was arrested. No one could remember why we were fighting. Was it north vs south? East vs west? Black vs white? If it had been any of those things in the beginning, it wasn’t now. Whatever boundaries there had once been had been blurred to extinction. Now there were simply two sides hell-bent on destroying each other.

  . . .

  I was born nineteen years ago, just before the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, long after the rest of the world had shown its disapproval by withdrawing its support, cutting us off and leaving us to burn ourselves out, or die trying.

  When I was five, my father vanished, presumed killed.

  When I was ten, my mother was attacked by three men on the way home from collecting our rations. She never told me what had happened, but after the attack she stopped leaving the apartment. I took responsibility for collecting food and scavenging for things to trade.

  When I was eleven, my best friend was hit by a supply truck. I watched him die in the gutter as the truck sped off into the distance.

  When I was twelve, the apartment building I lived in was attacked and my life changed forever.

  The enemy, whoever they were, had found a weapons cache just down the road and in their eagerness to inflict casualties, any casualties, they’d opened fire on the first target they came across. That target happened to be the building my mother and I lived in.

  The building was built in a U-shape and our third-floor apartment helped form the curved base of the design. It meant our living room had a 180 degree window and a stunning view of the mountains, or would have if it weren’t for the thick banks of smoke from the dozens of fires that raged constantly across the city.

  I was lying on the floor a few feet from the window, sketching on a scrap of paper when the first rocket hit the building. There was a heavy thud and the floor shook. I heard a scream. Plaster and paint dropped from the ceiling. I was used to hearing the sounds of war; they were an integral part of the city’s soundscape, but I’d never heard an explosion so close. Without thinking I stood up, ran over to the window, and looked out.

  Three men were standing across the street, next to a fountain that I’d never seen running. Two of them were carrying machine guns of some sort. The third had a rocket launcher and was struggling to attach a new rocket to the end of what was apparently unfamiliar equipment. A dead dog, missing its head, was lying in one corner of the concrete base of the fountain and I briefly wondered whether the men had killed it. Then the living room window shattered and a stream of bullets tore into my shoulder, shattering the bone and almost ripping my arm off.

  I discovered later, after my mother had saved my life, that I’d been struck by four bullets. Had any one of them hit a couple of inches to the right, I would have died there and then. All I knew at the time was agony. Confident I was going to die, I collapsed to the floor and began to half crawl, half roll away from the window.

  I felt my mother grab me and I closed my eyes and let the darkness shelter me from the pain.

  . . .

  When I came to, we were in the lobby of our building. The marble flooring was scattered with pieces of stone and glass and something had gouged a deep track across the back wall. There was a fire burning in the far corner, next to the battered remains of what had been post boxes back when there was still a postal service. My mother had laid me on the battered black leather sofa that had been a fixture of the lobby for as long as I could remember, despite numerous attempts by the residents and looters to liberate it from the building.

  My shoulder was burning, thick waves of pain washing over me as I struggled to remain conscious. I could hear the chatter of guns as the inhabitants of the building fired back at the attackers. My mother was looking around the lobby, her face twisted with anguish as she desperately tried to find someone to help us. I coughed and she glanced down, saw I was awake and tried to reassure me with a smile. I smiled back, hoping to do the same, but I could see the fear in her eyes. There was a smudge of red across her forehead—my blood.

  There was a muffled clump of an explosion from somewhere outside and the gunfire suddenly stopped.

  I tried to sit up but my mother shook her head and gently pushed me back down onto the sofa. “No. Wait here, I’m going to get help.”

  I nodded, trying to ignore the slivers of pain being driven into my shoulder.

  “I love you,” she said and stood up.

  The force of the explosion shifted the sofa sideways and sent my mother tumbling across the lobby as though an invisible hand had reached into the building and pulled her away from me. She crashed into a wall, the force of the impact holding her there for a moment before letting her slide to the floor in a crumpled heap.

  I think I screamed.

  Ignoring the agony in my shoulder, I rolled myself upright and struggled unsteadily to my feet. I was subtly aware of other people in the building as I picked my way through the rubble that littered the floor, but I was focused on the body of my mother and the way her head was twisted at an implausible angle. I knew she was dead but I was still hoping that she’d move again, sit up and smile at me, promise me everything would be fine.

  Her right arm was twisted behind her back, crushed between her body and the wall, but her left arm was laid out in front of her. I could see the bracelet I’d given her as a birthday present earlier in the year. I’d got it from a ragged street vendor in trade for a few circuit boards I’d found by the river. When I’d given it to my mother, the bracelet had been coated in a thin layer of rust but she’d spent the evening gently rubbing the metal with a cloth until it gleamed. She’d taken such good care of that bracelet that if you ignored the handful of dents in its surface you could almost believe it was new.

  I bent down, meaning to retrieve the bracelet, but as my fingers touched her hand I was shocked to find she felt warm. Confused, believing that dead bodies were meant to be cold, I grabbed her hand and stood up, trying to pull her to her feet. Her head lolled backwards as her body shifted, its weight pulling my arm down. I struggled with the body as the hope that had flared at the warmth of her skin began to fade, until despair set in and the tears finally began to flow.

  There was a flash, followed by another. I turned towards the doorway and the photographer standing there.

  . . .

  With that photograph, I became the poster child for the war. Like that girl in the Vietnam war photo the history books love so much. I’ve seen it dozens of times, on television, plastered across the covers of magazines and books, even hand-painted onto a leather jacket. I used to think that I might eventually get used to having that part of my life become public property.

  The background of the image is blurred, the fire in the corner and the post boxes almost indistinguishable, but my mother and I are sharply focused, softened only by the barest hint of smoke hanging in the air.

  My left arm is hanging limply at my side, scattered drops of blood captured as they fall from my fingertips, while I pull on my mother’s hand with my right. My clothes are soaked with blood, my once grey t-shirt now stained black. At some point I lost one of my shoes and you can see the grubby tip of my big toe peering out of a hole in my sock.

  It’s clear that my mother’s neck is broken. Her head is twisted brutally to the left. The smudge of my bloo
d is still there, a streak of red against her pale skin. Her dull, lifeless eyes look off to the right of the camera as though she’s staring at something beside the photographer. I’m staring too, directly at the camera. My ghost-white face glistens from the tears that are rolling down my cheeks but my eyes are dead, just like my mother’s.

  It’s an amazing image.

  The photograph was taken by a British woman. Years later, I heard her being interviewed on the radio. She talked about that photograph, about how it had launched her career, and she talked about me. About how she carried me to hospital, saved my life, then took me under her wing and saved me again, the second time from a life on the streets.

  I’ve never met her.

  . . .

  It took over seven months for me to recover from my injuries. I spent that time in almost complete silence, barely speaking to the nurses as they worked around me, preferring to fight through my grief alone. By the time I left the hospital I had come to accept my loss and abandoned the idea of embarking on a quest to avenge my mother’s death. Whoever had killed her would most likely be dead themselves anyway.

  After the hospital, I was placed with foster parents. They were good people, seemingly unaware that I was the young boy in the photograph that always seemed to accompany news reports of the latest atrocities, but I could tell my injuries made them uncomfortable. Although my right side was relatively unscathed, the explosion had left me deaf in my left ear, and the damage from the bullets meant I was unable to use my left arm. At first I tried to help around the house, to contribute as best I could, but after the third broken plate I stopped trying to help and began looking for a way out.

  I don’t know whether it was an inevitable reaction to my experiences or some latent ability passed down to me from an unknown relative, but over the years I managed to cultivate some skill at photography. At first I used an old Fuji my foster father found for me; later, I moved on to more sophisticated cameras scavenged from the city.

  Over time, I began to eke out a living photographing images of the war—selling them to the handful of media outlets still interested in our little disagreement. I’ve seen terrible things. People walking around with wounds that should have left them dead, whole families slaughtered and left to rot in the street. And worse.

  Profoundly aware of my hypocrisy, I’ve never photographed those people, limiting myself to images of half-destroyed buildings, burning vehicles or, rarely, a slice of nature’s beauty struggling to survive amidst man’s destruction.

  As soon as I was able to support myself, I moved into a place of my own, a one-bedroom apartment in the centre of the downtown core. I’ve lived there ever since. It’s a dangerous area; most nights my sleep is disturbed by gunfire, and the walls run with black water when it rains, but the danger brings with it plenty of material for photographs.

  Every morning, as the curfew ended and the city began to wake, I would leave the apartment building, step over the ever-changing stacks of rubbish that lined the edge of the street and walk among the wreckage of the city looking for new images of destruction. I spent almost every day that way for four years and barely spoke to anyone.

  . . .

  December. Cold. A light dusting of snow coated the concrete around the building where I had lived with my mother. A few flakes drifted onto the lens of my camera as I stared up at the third floor.

  I was standing next to the still-dry fountain, just as those men had all those years ago. I imagined I could hear the chatter of gunfire. The walls of the apartment building were battered and cracked. Most of the windows were broken but a few had been patched up with sheets of plastic. The windows of the apartment where I had lived were missing.

  I don’t know how I reached the building. I suppose it was inevitable that my daily wanderings would eventually bring me there, but it wasn’t a conscious decision. I hadn’t been there since my mother’s death and I’d had no intention of returning. Still, I found myself drawn inside, half expecting to find my mother’s body still there, her dead eyes now bloody sockets but otherwise just as I’d left her.

  The glass windows that surrounded the lobby were long gone, replaced by thin sheets of plaswood daubed with anti-war graffiti, but somehow the doors were still intact. The lobby was dimly lit; the plaswood blocked most of the grey sunlight and the interior lights had been smashed. There was no sign of life. I hesitated, my hand pressed against the cold glass, giving myself one last chance to back out.

  Chunks of concrete scraped against the tiled floor as I pushed open the door. A piece of metal wedged itself under the door, halting its progress, but there was enough of a gap for me to squeeze inside. I let the door swing shut behind me and waited as my eyes adjusted to the lack of light.

  Bizarrely, the lobby was much as it had been the day my mother died. At least, that was the impression I got. Someone had written “el muchacho murió aquí” across the back wall. Some of the ceiling had collapsed, partly blocking the entrance to the elevators, but the battered mail boxes and the black leather sofa that had saved my life were still there. The back of the sofa was tattered and torn. Shards of metal and glass were still embedded in the wooden frame and I realised how lucky I’d been that the sofa had been facing the back wall, rather than the window.

  I heard a muffled thump and the crackle of gunfire from somewhere across the city and for a moment I was convinced the building was under attack again. I tensed, waiting for the plaswood windows to explode as the inevitable rocket found its way into the lobby. I almost dived onto the sofa for protection, was about to move, when reality shifted back into focus and I remembered where I was. My hands were shaking. I let out a slow breath. I almost sat down on the sofa, but despite the scarcity of light I was sure I could see a darker stain overlaid on the black leather of the sofa. Remembered pain flared in my left shoulder.

  Wincing, I turned away from the sofa and saw my mother. She was sitting on the floor, her right arm crushed between her back and the wall, her left stretched out across the floor as though she was reaching towards me. Her clothes had changed. The black jeans and dark green blouse she’d worn that day were gone, replaced by a long white, almost bridal, dress. The crisp white lace seemed to glow in the gathering darkness but as I watched, a dark stain formed at the centre of her chest, rapidly spreading outwards until her entire body was awash with red. Her mouth was moving, slowly opening and closing, like some stranded fish. She shuddered once, a bubble of crimson forming on her lips, and I turned away and vomited onto the floor next to the sofa.

  My head was whirling as I stumbled towards the doors, desperate to escape into the fresh air. I pushed against the metal handles on the doors for several seconds, afraid they’d been locked behind me, then cursed as I realised I needed to pull. The metal that had caught under the door was still there, dragged back along with the door as it closed, and it snagged again. I kicked the metal shard away, sending it skittering into the wall, and pulled open the door. Cool air washed over me and I hurled myself out of the building and onto the concrete outside.

  . . .

  The corpses were fresh. The bodies of the two men were lying face down on the ground. The third, a young woman, had been rolled over, almost onto her side. There were rope burns around her wrists, stark against her pale skin. Judging by the wounds in the backs of their heads, all three had been executed.

  Tears rolled down my face as I stared at the bodies. Whether the tears were for my mother or these new deaths, I’m not sure.

  I was standing beneath the Duncan Street Bridge. It used to span the river, taking commuters to work every morning and leading them safely home again at night. Now it ended in an abrupt tangle of concrete and rebar fifty or so feet across the water.

  After I’d run from the apartment building, blind instinct had led me to a place with happier memories. When I was young, I used to play under the bridge, trying to catch the tiny fish that flitted around the banks of the river. My mother would sometimes come with me and sit on
the black rocks, reading while I clambered around with my jar of silver fish.

  I walked towards the water, climbed over the slick rocks and sat down. I let the memories drift over me for almost an hour, until the curfew siren reminded me where and when I was.

  As soon as I heard the siren, I realised I was at least half an hour from home. Even though my fear of the siren was deeply ingrained and I was normally home long before it sounded, I wasn’t concerned. There were plenty of buildings nearby and I could probably hide inside one of those, find an empty apartment and barricade the doors until morning. But even as I planned my route to safety, mentally picking a building that was nearby and seemed suitable, I knew I wasn’t going to hide. Instead of running for cover, instead of scuttling away to safety, I sat on the rocks of my childhood and waited.

  But the soldiers never arrived. Hell’s nightmares came instead.

  At first I thought it had started to rain. Every now and again I heard the scattered sound of raindrops on rock. Then something landed on my neck, sending a searing needle of agony into my skin. I twisted sideways, trying to pull myself out from underneath whatever was dripping on me. I flailed at my neck but the pain had gone almost as quickly as it had arrived. I gingerly dabbed at the base of my skull and I could feel the wrinkled skin of the burn. It was already tender.

  I looked up, trying to find whatever leaking chemical had caused the burn and my heart froze.

  The underside of the bridge was awash with creatures, each one about a foot long. They looked like black, snub-nosed lizards. Their ink-black eyes were out of proportion to the rest of their bodies, bulging an inch or more from the sides of their heads, the meagre light of the moon reflecting off the oily surface. Their skin, if that’s what it was, was sleek and seemed to shift as they moved, lagging slightly behind their movements to give the impression that they were created out of black smoke. Rather than ending in a point, their tails fanned out and dispersed to nothingness.