Into the Fire

by Peter Liney

  Was it instinct or what? The moment the thought occurred to me I just turned and ran, leaving the security woman calling after me. I hadn’t got more than a couple of hundred yards into the smoke before I heard a Dragonfly go over. I ducked off into this little gully that followed the path of the road and hid in the trees when it returned a few minutes later and started circling. They turned on their searchlights, trying to pierce the gloom, but I remained well hidden.

  I was on automatic, in survival mode, not wanting to think any further than that. I didn’t know if it was the security woman or the housekeeper who’d called for backup, but whoever it was, it meant I could forget all about Dr. Simon kidnapping Lena ’cuz she was some kind of medical miracle. Our good doctor was working for Infinity, and I would’ve been willing to bet anything it was them holding her prisoner.

  When the Dragonfly finally gave up and thrummed off into the smoke, I broke cover and began to make my way back to the churchyard, partly ’cuz I needed to tell the others what was going on (after all, we’d been missing more than a day) and partly ’cuz I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

  I felt sick to the stomach. Jesus, what a fool! What a first-class dumb-assed stupid old big guy! No wonder I was only ever employed for my muscles. How could I have allowed myself to be taken in by that smarmy bastard? Lena had been right: the moment he told me he’d waive his fees I should’ve known something was wrong. Instead, I guess he had all that time plotting, waiting for his opportunity—but why hadn’t he kidnapped her when she’d stayed at the clinic? None of it made any sense. And what the hell did Infinity want with her anyway?

  Was it something to do with Jimmy? Were they trying to get to him through her? Didn’t seem very likely. I didn’t think Infinity even knew the two of them were connected.

  Not that any of this mattered. There was only one thing my dull old heart was insistently repeating: I’d lost her! The woman I’d waited my whole life for had been taken from me. And as I passed yet another scene of blazing destruction, of life reduced to lifelessness, it momentarily went through my head that maybe normal order had been restored, a wrong had been righted; that there was simply no place in this hell for an angel like Lena.

  When I reached the sad remains of the church, wearily climbed across the piles of rubble and down the steps into the crypt, the others just looked at me. I guess they knew that me and Lena’s absence meant something had gone terribly wrong, and the fact that I was alone meant they were just too afraid to ask what.

  For a moment I just stood in front of them, unable to get the words out, wanting to tell them but knowing that if I tried, tears would flow.

  “I think Infinity have got Lena,” I eventually managed.

  Of all the things I could’ve said, that was plainly the one they least expected.

  “What?” Delilah cried, as if the death of Arturo made her less able to take such a blow; that it could be the final straw.

  I told them the whole story—well, as best I could. Dragging it up from my consciousness and fashioning it into any kind of sense felt a bit like sticking my fingers down my throat and puking my guts up.

  “It must be me,” Jimmy said. “They’re gonna torture her, find out where I am.”

  “How do they even know you’re connected?” I muttered.

  He thought for a moment, but came up with nothing. “I don’t know . . . What else could it be?”

  “Maybe it’s got something to do with the syringe?” Gordie suggested. “They experimented on her.”

  I handed the syringe to Jimmy to look at. “Something to knock her out, d’you think?” I ventured. “Make sure she didn’t make a fuss? Even then, I reckon she’d’ve put up a fight.”

  “She still would’ve shown up on the gate scan,” Jimmy pointed out.

  “Maybe she did?”

  There was a pause. I couldn’t bear the thought that while Lena had been fighting for her freedom—maybe even her life—I’d been only a few yards away, oblivious to the whole thing.

  Delilah sagged slowly down onto her sleeping bag. “What are we going to do?”

  There was a long silence. What could we do, three unarmed old folk and a couple of kids?

  “I dunno,” I said eventually, “but I’ll tell you one thing: Lena’s everything to me. If it’s a choice between living without her or dying trying to get her back, I’m gonna choose the latter every time.”

  Hanna slipped over and put her arms around me—the last person I would’ve expected to do such a thing—and though she never said anything, like always, I could feel her unspoken emotions.

  “We’ll get her back,” Jimmy said, and the others all muttered agreement.

  And yet, no matter how brave their words, how reassuring they all attempted to be, it was impossible to ignore the sense of despair, of hopelessness, that settled over us. We were already grieving for Arturo and now here we were, stricken by further disaster.

  Even if I’d been run over by a truck, I couldn’t’ve felt any more squashed. Everything inside me was knocked out or shut down, and as our conversations became progressively more desperate and the fact that I really had lost Lena sank in, I began to feel more and more frustrated. I had to do something.

  Eventually I headed off out, ignoring Jimmy’s plea that we should start looking for somewhere else to live. All I cared about was getting Lena back, and if Infinity really did have her, then there was only one logical place to start looking.

  The night we escaped from the Island I’d been aware of the Infinity building and how dominant it was, but I hadn’t really studied it. That afternoon as I made my way around the perimeter, I began to see exactly what I was up against. I ended up in this patch of scrub at the front that led down to one of the many rocky inlets in the bay, finding myself a little cover and just sitting there scrutinizing the complex, trying to work out how I could get inside. The side that faced the sea looked impregnable, yet somehow aloof. From the front it was a whole different matter: it was a lot more “in your face,” with concrete bollards lined up like soldiers on parade, fences which looked like they might well be electrified and a gate protected by double automatic barriers and armed guards. There was no way into that place other than perhaps flying in and landing on the helipad on the roof.

  No sooner had I come to that conclusion than a Dragonfly came whooshing over, its arrival triggering spotlights that even in daylight picked it out of the smoky sky, and a whole bank of laser cannons swiveled into action, primed and ready to bring it down at a moment’s notice.

  The one thing that puzzled me was the arrival of a line of half-a-dozen or so of those sinister white trucks—what the hell were they doing here? They just dumped bodies, didn’t they? In convenient dumpsters down dark alleyways, apparently. Whatever the reason, they got the same treatment as everyone else: they were searched, swept and scanned every which way. Not until the security guards were entirely satisfied were they allowed to enter.

  I expelled a lungful of tired air. The longer I stayed, the more intimidated I became. I also realized something else: I’d been so busy taking in all the major stuff that I hadn’t registered this constant background noise. It was a kinda rolling, sliding sound, traveling up and down, and when I saw the source, I knew I should’ve noticed it before.

  That top wire on the fence wasn’t electrified; it was a railway for security cameras. Every thirty seconds or so one whirred by, looking out for any possible intruders.

  I didn’t know exactly where those cameras were pointing and I wasn’t gonna hang around to find out either. I got to my feet, dusted myself down and stretched, hoping I looked like some hobo who’d been looking for a few hours’ sleep but had found his chosen spot unsuitable, and headed off. The last thing I needed was them taking a special interest in me.

  As I wandered away, my eyes went to the endless rows of windows on that huge building. “Lena, are you in there?” I whispered. “Don’t worry. I’m coming for you . . . Promise.”

  B
ut that damn place was so big, so damn formidable, even if I did somehow manage to get in there, it might take a day of searching to find her. I needed information on the layout, to know where she was most likely to be . . .

  Then again, who was I kidding? I needed a damn sight more than that. I needed a miracle to get me in there, and then something even bigger to get the two of us back out again.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I tried, but there was no way could I sleep without Lena next to me, though in terms of my thoughts, she never left my side all night. Jimmy kept telling me I had to stay calm, to think before I acted, ’cuz my impulse was to just get hold of the biggest weapons I could and blast my way into that place. It wasn’t exactly the best plan anyone’d ever come up with, but it sure as hell didn’t stop me wanting to do it.

  I had this real empty ache inside that wouldn’t let go for a moment; like someone’d ripped out my heart and all my other vital organs as well. What I’d said to the others was true: I didn’t want to live without Lena, I’d done it for more than sixty years and believe me, I knew just how damn pointless it was. If she was gone forever, then I needed to know so I could do something about it.

  And yet, in the odd few moments when I did manage to calm down—when I tried to take Jimmy’s advice and think things through—it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, there was just the tiniest glimmer of hope. They had to have taken her for a reason, not just to kill her, and hopefully that meant that for the moment at least, she was safe. On the other hand, how long would that last? If it was information they were after, then they might torture her—and that was one helluva disturbing prospect. But what the hell could she know? What information could she have that Infinity wanted? And really, that was the crux of it, the question I kept asking myself a hundred times an hour: why had they taken her?

  Later that day I went out with Gordie. There was a permanent need for food, which made it a good excuse to go somewhere, but actually, I didn’t need one. I think the others all sensed not only my pain, but also my helplessness too. I didn’t know what to do, and didn’t want to be questioned about it either.

  I thought about going down to the Infinity building again, taking another look, but even in the depths of my despair I knew that wouldn’t make a great deal of sense: being seen hanging around, acting suspiciously, would blow any tiny chance I might have had of getting into that place. And anyway, I still didn’t know for certain she was in there. So instead, we just wandered the City, blindly hoping that we might see or hear something that would help us understand what had gone on.

  There weren’t as many fires as there had been, though the smoke didn’t appear to have thinned at all. It felt like it had permeated everywhere and everything. We couldn’t go anywhere without smelling that odd acrid stench Lena had complained about. I guess that went for us, too, if we could’ve smelled ourselves: we were probably just as smoked as any smokehouse ham or herring.

  Gordie and me hadn’t exactly been deep in conversation—in fact, I was so lost in my thoughts, we’d exchanged barely a word. It wasn’t ’til he started complaining that I realized just how hard I’d been pushing us on.

  “Clancy! I’m tired—we can’t cover the whole city,” he whined.

  It took a moment for me to absorb what he’d said, to appreciate that he had a point, and also to grasp that I’d led us somewhere I didn’t recognize at all.

  “Where the hell are we?” I muttered.

  “The sun’s that way,” he replied. Like everyone who lived on the Island he was pretty good at working out that kind of thing.

  “So . . . down there,” I said, pointing left at an upcoming junction, though I wasn’t anywhere near as confident as I was making out.

  It wasn’t an area I knew at all, and we hadn’t gone that far before I began to wish I could’ve kept it that way. They would’ve had to have spent an awful lot of dough on it to convert it into a slum, and worse still—maybe ’cuz it was an underprivileged area—there were a lot of those zombie-sick around, slumped in doorways, reclining on stoops, draped out of windows, all as pale and lifeless as the moon. And just like when we’d been down on the beach, they started to take a real close interest in us, particularly Gordie.

  “Shit!” I muttered, noticing we were collecting a following.

  “What do they want?” Gordie asked, looking nervously over his shoulder. “Suck my blood?”

  Funny thing was, it might’ve been an attempt at humor, a little bravado, but I could almost believe it. They looked so weak and drained I could imagine a glass of Gordie and tonic doing them a power of good. Not that I said as much to him.

  I hesitated for a moment, considering turning back, but now there were more behind than in front. “Let’s cross over,” I said, seeing it was quieter on the other side.

  They all followed, starting to crowd in and surround us, with even more appearing, stumbling out of houses, rising up out of basements. I mean, a few of them, no problem, they were so weak you could just push them aside, but thirty or forty was another matter . . .

  This one old man made a clumsy grab for Gordie, trying to get hold of him, but the little guy sidestepped him easily. “No, thank you,” he said, trying to make it sound like he was well in control, but I could hear fear starting to whittle away at his voice.

  The old man reached out again but this time I pushed between them, putting my arm on Gordie’s shoulder and leading him away.

  It wasn’t so much of a problem when we were out in front of them—we were much quicker and could easily outpace them—but the more that appeared, the more the excitement grew, and they started calling to others to come out, too. It felt like we were slowly being swallowed up by a sea of wailing white faces with smudged inky thumbprints for eyes.

  “Get outta the way,” I growled, shoving a little knot of them aside.

  Even then, despite their number, I thought we’d be okay—but then there was a shout and I looked around to see this guy emerging from an apartment block with a machete.

  I guess old habits die hard even if you’re sick. There was this immediate scramble away from him and people started looking up into the sky, obviously expecting instantaneous punishment to rain down, but thanks to Jimmy, there was nothing.

  “Let’s go,” I muttered to Gordie, wanting to take advantage of their momentary lapse in attention. I mean, I had no idea how much danger we were in, but I didn’t intend to hang around and find out either.

  The guy with the machete started after us, people moving out of his way as he swept it in this slightly feeble arc. He was shouting at others to stop us and some tried, tugging at our arms and grabbing at our clothing. I snarled at them, told them to leave us alone.

  The machete guy might’ve been making heavy work of it, but he was starting to gain on us, mainly ’cuz people were getting out of his way but not ours. I tell ya, it felt as if we’d blundered into a street party for the living dead, only there seemed to be some misunderstanding about what was on the menu. Gordie’s face was almost as pale as those around us and he was keeping as close to me as he could—and yet, I still didn’t think there was any real reason to fear them; they were as weak as kittens, and I could already see our crazed pursuer was starting to tire. I barged more people out of the way, shoving and pushing harder and harder until we finally broke free.

  I checked behind us to see the guy with the machete had stopped and was draped over a hydrant looking as if he’d just run a marathon. And you wanna know something? That mean, scary machete-wielding punk who’d looked like he’d wanted to cut and dice us both, started to cry like a lost child.

  “D’you see that?” Gordie sniggered, suddenly full of himself again.

  “This whole city’s one giant damn asylum,” I muttered as I led him away.

  Once we got back on track, we began to make a slow sweep in the direction of the Square. I don’t know what I thought I was achieving—guess I was just trying to pretend I wasn’t helpless, or maybe I was reverting to o
ld habits, stratagems that’d served me well in the past. Back when I was working for Mr. Meltoni, if I thought there was information being held from me, I’d walk the streets ’til I found out what it was—forget about your limos, you gotta get out with the people. I remember him insisting I took his wife’s dog with me—Mitzi, this little Yorkshire terrier with a pink bow in her hair, can you believe that? A big guy like me with that fancy furry flea. He said it made me look less threatening, less conspicuous. Well, “threatening”—he might’ve had a point about that. But “conspicuous”? I never stood out more in my life. People didn’t want to talk to me ’cuz they were too embarrassed, or laughing too damn hard to pass on any information.

  We’d been making our way along the main road for a while when Gordie pointed down a side street, reminding me of the other reason we were walking the City: food. There was this market that had just finished for the day and everything that hadn’t been sold was being thrown away (I never did get that: in a city where half the population was starving, the other half were still chucking stuff away.).

  “Grab those crates,” I told him, starting to gather up as much as I could, knowing it wouldn’t be long before others spotted it. Gordie lugged over a couple of empty apple boxes and I began to fill them rapidly with whatever I could.

  “Not carrots!” Gordie whined.

  “You’d rather starve?”

  “Any time.”

  “That can be arranged,” I told him.

  “If I gotta eat green stuff, at least make it fruit.”

  I sighed and ignored him, stuffing whatever looked freshest into the boxes. I’d filled one for me and was halfway through his when I straightened up to rest my aching back and glanced up the street. I saw this big black limo appearing out of the smoke.

  “Jesus!” I gasped, grabbing Gordie and forcing him to duck down behind a pile of broken crates.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Someone I’d rather not see.”

  The car crept slowly by, windows down, music playing; the passenger’s head swiveling left and right, as if scouring the streets for someone.