Ronni pulled at his arm. ‘Jimmy – the gates, we have to go through the gates . . .’
‘Too far away – too many soldiers!’
‘We have no choice!’
In those last few moments before the lights went out they’d been anxiously scanning the perimeter as far as they could see so they knew the gates had been open then, but the guards’ first reaction to the sudden darkness would surely have been to shut them to prevent what must be an enemy attack from penetrating the fort. But Ronni was right – what choice did they have?
They turned and they ran. The gates were easily two hundred metres away. They collided with other soldiers, running about confused. They picked themselves up and charged on. Someone was yelling, ‘Protect the President! Protect the President!’ Jimmy was sure he heard Mohican’s distinctive tones.
They came to the gates.
Open!
There were guards there, dim outlines against the blackness, but not close enough together. And they were facing the wrong way – out.
A better army might have had night-vision glasses and could have shot them dead. But these soldiers couldn’t see more than a metre in front of them. Jimmy and Ronni slipped between two nervous sentries.
‘You see anything?’ one of them hissed. Jimmy could almost feel his breath.
‘I can’t see nothin’, but there is somethin’ there.’
‘Should we shoot?’
‘Not me, I don’t give orders!’
‘Sir! Somethin’ movin’ – can we shoot?’
‘What is it?’
‘Don’t know!’
‘Where is it?’
‘Not sure!’
‘Hold your fire!’
Jimmy grabbed Ronni’s hand – there was too much chance of losing her in the dark – as they raced away from the fort. Jimmy’s legs, so recently sucked of all strength by the river, wobbled beneath him. Ronni had lain largely immobile for weeks and her muscles now strained and threatened to rip apart. But they kept going. The plain seemed to roll on for ever. Their feet, rushing though the knee-length grass, sounded incredibly loud purely because they were trying to be so quiet.
‘We . . . must . . . nearly . . .’Jimmy wheezed.
‘We . . . have to be close . . .’
And then, as simple as someone flicking a switch, the lights of the fort came on – just bright enough to turn them into running shadows, and they still had a hundred metres of the open plain to cross before they reached the relative safety of the woods.
For a few achingly long seconds they ran on, unobserved, but then the searchlights began to sweep back and forth. They passed in front, then behind, before finally converging on the escapees.
Without speaking or even looking at each other Jimmy and Ronni began to zigzag. The beams lost them for a moment, then caught up again. They let go of each other’s hands; Jimmy veered left, Ronni right. There was blessed darkness for another ten seconds and then they were found again, and this time they couldn’t shake them.
A shot rang out, then another and another, then the steady clatter of a machine gun. The soldiers of Fort Hope were not trying to capture them alive.
Jimmy threw himself the last few metres, crashing through undergrowth and rolling over three times before coming to a dead halt up against a gnarly stump. Although he was just a few metres into the trees it was suddenly absolutely black again, as if a giant wooden curtain had been pulled behind him.
‘Ronni!’ he shouted. ‘Ronni . . . !’
There was only silence. For a moment he feared that she was still out on the plain, shot down as she ran, but then he heard a low groan.
‘J-jimmy – are you . . . ?’
‘I’m here!’
Jimmy scrambled sideways. ‘Keep talking, I’m coming!’
He’d moved about a dozen metres when he collided with her.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked breathlessly.
‘Sore . . . sore but fine. Just fine. We did it!’ cried Ronni.
‘We really did it!’
They hugged each other, jumping up and down – and then abruptly found themselves very embarrassed about it and separated. Just as they did they heard the unmistakable rumble of a diesel engine. They hurried to the edge of the woods and peered out. A truck laden with solders was roaring across the plain towards them.
They weren’t done with running!
28
Captured
Claire ran and ran, but it was no good. Not long after the shooting stopped the horde caught up with them. She screamed as they pounced on her, screamed as they pinned her against the wall and prepared to rip her to pieces and devour every inch of her. Inside she prayed harder than she could ever have imagined that they would kill her quickly and eat her later, that she wouldn’t suffer too much, or at all. But there was one image that stayed with her through all the horror. In the moments before she was overwhelmed she caught sight of Cleaver standing with his hands clasped before him like a martyr. As they surrounded him and grabbed at him his eyes fastened on to hers and if she hadn’t been so concerned with her own impending death she might have sworn that she saw him smile.
Death was . . .
. . . not instantaneous. Instead, the horde, once it was certain that it was in control, quickly calmed itself. The prisoners were herded against one of the walls and counted. The Hawaiian-shirted Rodriguez was begging not to be eaten. They just laughed at him. Cleaver stood at the end of the line. He appeared unfazed. Ty, standing beside Claire, touching her shoulder, was physically shaking. Or maybe it was both of them. She tried to get her heart to stop racing. Steady breaths. She darted a glance up the line of prisoners and realised that Jonas Jones wasn’t amongst them. Had they killed him? The last time she’d seen him he’d been struggling to keep up. She wondered whether he’d collapsed from a heart attack. Or could he possibly have escaped? He was the only one amongst them who knew what part was needed to save the Titanic – his duty was not to think of them but to try and retrieve it. She crossed her fingers.
‘Just do what they tell you to do,’ Dr Hill whispered. ‘Keep calm. We’re not done yet.’
They were marched down the tracks. They weren’t restrained in any way, but with the cannibals walking on either side, prodding and pinching them, there was no hope of escape. When they reached the entrance to the service tunnel Claire was surprised to spot First Officer Jeffers and the two crewmen sitting on the ground with their hands clasped on their heads and a single guard watching over them.
‘Mr Jeffers!’ Claire gasped. ‘I thought you were . . .’
‘Ran out of bullets,’ Jeffers replied. His voice was low and his face barren of emotion, but his eyes were darting back and forth. Even though their situation appeared totally hopeless she could tell that he was still thinking hard, planning, calculating; she knew that he would never give up hope.
They were herded forward again. It was difficult to establish who, if anyone, was in charge. After what felt like an eternity of walking in flickering shadows they began to move towards what was literally the light at the end of the tunnel. They emerged on to a station platform that in turn led them up a permanently-stopped escalator. They climbed over jammed ticket turnstiles and then blinked out into the late afternoon sunshine of downtown Manhattan. As they walked an amazing – but still very unsettling – thing happened. People began to emerge from the buildings – at first, just one or two ragged-looking individuals, but then more and more, lining the sides of the broad avenues and moving closer and closer until they were right up close against the prisoners. Then they began to cheer and clap as if it was some kind of a victory parade in Ancient Rome. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands.
‘Where in hell did they all come from?’ Ty whispered.
‘There’re not that many, if you think of the millions who lived here,’ said Claire, trying to look on the bright side.
‘Know what this reminds me of? The way they’re looking at us? The all-you
-can-eat buffet we had on the ship.’
‘Thanks for that,’ said Claire.
But Ty was right. It was exactly how people were looking at them. There were men and women and children; there were old men and little toddlers, there were teenagers with guns slung over their shoulders; ghetto blasters pumped out music. Everyone looked rough and dirty and undernourished; but they appeared comfortable in each other’s company. They were a community surviving together. Claire thought that they probably didn’t eat each other.
Maybe they just send out for dinner.
They came to the junction of Broadway and 7th Avenue and looked down into what once provided one of the most famous sights in the city: Times Square. Here garish, animated digital advertising displays decorated almost every building. Here were the theatres that had once drawn in tens of thousands of tourists. Here was where New Yorkers gathered in their millions to celebrate New Year’s Eve. But now the neon signs hung lifelessly: a huge Coca-Cola legend, adverts for Panasonic and Budweiser and Pontiac, dead reminders of a different time.
Except for one sign.
In the very heart of the square a big pixilated cat leaped and roared above the New Amsterdam Theatre. It was dazzling, even in daylight. The Jungle King blazed above theatre doors which were open and a red-carpeted foyer which was swept clean. Two ushers in great coats and military-style hats stood, outside marshalling a queue which tailed back for several hundred metres.
‘What the . . . ?’ Ty whispered.
Claire could only shake her head. Jeffers, at the front of their column, was looking equally bewildered.
They were led past the queue and through the theatre doors. There was a concession stand directly in front where children crowded around and a woman in a green uniform was handing out buckets of popcorn. They moved up a short flight of stairs into the theatre proper. There were possibly a thousand seats inside – with half of them filled and more people coming in all the time.
‘This is surreal,’ said Ty.
They were guided down an aisle towards the stage, but then veered off to the left, through a door which hid them from the gawping audience and up into the backstage area. All around them there were men and women dressed in animal costumes or in native African outfits. A giraffe walked by, with a man on stilts inside. The sounds of an orchestra tuning up drifted towards them. They were kept there, surrounded by armed guards, while what appeared to be a full-scale theatrical production prepared to take to the stage.
The lights dimmed. The music swelled up and the crowd erupted as the curtain rose and the actors and dancers took to the stage. A musical number was energetically performed to wild applause.
‘This is really good,’ Ty said, having to shout to make himself heard. ‘But I have the feeling I may be dead already and this is just a weird dream.’
Claire closed her eyes and was almost – almost – able to imagine that the weird dream was not what was going on on stage, but everything that had happened in the past few months. That her parents had taken her to see a Broadway musical but she was coming down with the flu so that while she was enjoying the show she was also drifting in and out of lucidity. The plague and the Titanic and the cannibals were all fantasies brought on by her fever. When the show was over her mother would shake her back to reality and they’d drift out into a neon-lit Times Square and her father would hail a cab and they’d go back to a nice, comfortable hotel.
Almost.
As the closing bars of music faded the crowd, clearly familiar with the performance, began to chant, ‘Slash, Slash, Slash, Slash!’ Claire was quite familiar with the film version, she’d watched it repeatedly on DVD as a kid, but she couldn’t place this moment in it. Not the darkening stage, not the huge throne now being pushed forward by heavily muscled men in loincloths.
‘Slash! Slash! Slash!’
A man in a wolf mask stood at the opposite side of the stage and rammed a spear down on the fake savannah.
‘All praise King Slash!’
‘Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash!’ the audience screamed. Many of them surged out of their seats to line the foot of the stage, clapping and cheering as the throne emerged into the brightness of a single spotlight.
Sitting regally – Slash, the Jungle King!
Or a man in a lion mask, with a rifle across his lap. He stood, he held the gun aloft, shook it at the crowd. In response they punched the air, yelling, ‘Slash! Slash! Slash!’
Slash turned towards his prisoners on the side of the stage. They could not see his real eyes, only the huge painted ones on his mask, and it made him even scarier. It was as if he was studying every single one of them individually, yet somehow also all of them at the same time.
‘Oh God,’ Ty whispered.
Slash raised his free hand and ushered them forward.
First Officer Jeffers led the way; jungle drums broke out as they stepped on stage. The crowd roared in response. But then Slash raised a hand for silence – and it came instantaneously, as if he had flipped a switch. They were totally under his spell.
Slash turned his false eyes upon his subjects.
‘If you enter the city of the Jungle King,’ he cried, ‘you must suffer the wrath of the Jungle King!’
They roared in response. With the clapping and screaming and thumping of feet and drums it felt like the entire building was shaking.
‘Prepare the fires! Tonight we feast!’
29
Decisions
Jimmy and Ronni, propped up against each other in the thick branches of a pine tree, woke damp and sore to a grey, misty dawn. They had just kept running until they could go no further. When, in the early hours, all sound of pursuit ceased, they could only presume that the soldiers had given up and returned to Fort Hope.
Jimmy lowered himself cautiously down on to the forest floor. As he yawned and stretched – while looking vigilantly around him, obviously – Ronnie slithered down the trunk, completely out of control, crashing through branch after branch and snapping each and every one of them before landing in a heap at his feet.
‘In case any of you weren’t aware until now,’ Jimmy announced to anyone who might be in the general vicinity, ‘we’re over here. Hiding.’
‘Sorry,’ said Ronni.
By way of further apology she delved into one of the pockets of her khaki jacket and produced a small plastic bag, inside of which were two large, round, chocolate-chip cookies. She took one out and offered it to Jimmy. ‘Breakfast?’ she asked.
Jimmy took it and immediately bit into it. He gave her the thumbs-up. ‘Well done,’ he said, spraying her with crumbs. ‘But is this all we have to get us to New York?’
‘If you remember I tried to suggest—’ And then she stopped. She swallowed a mouthful of biscuit, but having bit into it with enthusiasm it suddenly looked as if she was forcing herself to swallow sawdust.
Jimmy’s cookie was delicious. ‘What’s wrong, has it gone off or . . . ?’
Ronni shook her head. ‘I’m not going,’ she said.
‘You’re not what?’
Her eyes flitted up, then down again. ‘I’m not going – to New York. You never mentioned New York. Not once. You never said it. I’m not going.’
Jimmy gave a short laugh. ‘Why not? What’s the problem?’
She kicked at a dead fern on the ground. ‘It’s not funny!’
‘OK – I didn’t mean . . . it’s just—’
‘I’m not going. Not back there.’
‘Oh. Right. I see. That’s where you came from. That’s why you were so upset when you arrived at Fort—’
‘I wasn’t upset! I was . . .’
‘Traumatised. Yes. I know. I’m sorry.’
They both looked at the ground.
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ Jimmy asked after a bit.
Ronni shrugged. Then, ‘If you want.’
‘Let’s walk while you do. At least we’ll be further away from the fort.’
‘I’m not walking in the
direction of New York.’
‘That’s fine. I’ve no idea which direction it is. We’ll just go . . . this way.’ He walked forward.
Ronni watched him for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No.’ She nodded in the opposite direction. ‘That way.’
‘That would be back to the fort. This way.’
Ronni changed her stance some forty-five degrees. ‘This way.’
‘No – that’s back where I came from. This way.’
‘That’s towards New York.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No I don’t,’ she admitted. ‘But you do.’
She studied him for several long moments.
Jimmy threw his hands up. ‘OK, you got me – that way’s probably New York. But Ronni, please listen to me. We escaped together. We’re a good team. I think wherever we go we can probably look after ourselves pretty well. I have to go to New York. The Titanic might not even be there, but if there’s even a small chance that she is, then I have to warn the captain that the President and his stupid army are going to try and seize the ship. It’s my home, it’s my life, and I think you’ll love it too. To get there we have to go through New York. If you don’t want to go, that’s your choice. But I have to.’
Jimmy gave her an encouraging smile, but when she didn’t respond he just gave a disappointed shrug before turning and walking away.
Towards New York.
She stood where she was.
He didn’t look back.
Ten minutes later, walking down a hill only sparsely covered in trees, with a cold rain falling and a breeze making it feel even colder, Ronni fell into step beside him, only slightly out of breath, and said, quite simply, ‘Cannibals.’
‘Yeah, I heard there were odd bits of cannibalism after the plague.’
‘Not odd bits!’ she exploded suddenly. ‘There were hundreds of them! I watched them! They chased me! They caught me! Jimmy, please, you have to understand what they’re like, what you’re walking into! They kept me prisoner in a dark hole! They fed me to fatten me up! Slash said he was going to have me for supper!’
Titanic 2020: Cannibal City Page 17
