by Peter Liney
I turned another corner, skirted around a jumble of walls and rubble, and found myself in the main square. Already it felt as if my heaving chest was being torn apart, my legs disintegrating beneath me. Still I forced myself on, blundering headlong into the fog.
They kept closing in and dropping back again, screaming, taunting, hitting me and moving away. This boy with heavily matted long fair hair, who once might’ve laughed the same way if he’d pushed a friend into a pool or something, came up behind me and gave a squeal of delight as he hit me on the back. I felt the pain of the blow and something else, more incisive, more penetrating, and I realized I’d been stabbed.
In the end I simply couldn’t go any further. No matter what the situation, when you reach that point there’s nothing you can do. I staggered to a halt, collapsing forward, hands on knees, helplessly watching as they surrounded me, holding their baseball bats and bricks aloft, getting ready for the kill.
I didn’t notice it and neither did they, but there must’ve been a slight thinning in the fog. The moonlight briefly edged through and instantly one of the satellites took a shot. It didn’t hit anyone—it was closer to me than them—but it sure brought things to a halt.
We were frozen there, staring into one another’s faces, too scared to move. I tell you, they were practically licking their lips, their eyes burning, bodies twitching, with the urge to mash sinew and bone.
God knows how long it lasted, it could only have been a few seconds, but then, just as suddenly as the gap in the fog had opened, it closed again; the moon was lost and they started jeering once more. The absurd thing was, it didn’t just close, it moved on, and seconds later there was another moonlit patch a few yards away. I barged through, running to stand in that spotlight as if it could take me out of there.
Again they circled me, weapons raised, falling back when the satellite took another shot. It had to be right on the edge of its performance, able to see but not calibrate its response.
The moonlit patch, my most fragile of sanctuaries, slipped away again and once more I ran after it. But as I did so, the fog closed right in and extinguished it altogether and I was left foolishly chasing after nothing. The kids whooped with delight. I hesitated for a moment, then turned and ran into the ruins, fearing my last chance had gone and I was merely seeking a place to die.
I managed to jump over a collapsed section of wall and stumble along an alleyway, but found my path blocked by one of the largest mounds of rubble I’ve ever seen. I ran at it as hard as I could, took half a dozen or so strides upward, then lost my footing and slipped back down. I tried again. And again. But no matter how far I got, I always slid back down. The kids didn’t even bother following me. Just waited at the bottom, mocking my efforts, taunting this lumbering old prehistoric beast, this sad ex-king of the jungle.
“Go! Go! Go!” they kept crying.
“He’ll have a heart attack,” I heard one complain. “We won’t get to kill him!”
I was struck on the head so hard it felt as if blood was welling up in my brain. Again I attempted to scramble up that precarious mountain, my hands ripped and bleeding, my legs capitulating to pain. Still I forced myself on. Stumble by stumble, slip by slip, till I managed to reach the top. However, no sooner had I, than dizziness engulfed me, whirling me around and around till I plunged forward into a deep pool of darkness.
I don’t know whether I was hit with a brick or just passed out, but it gets kind of vague after that. I remember falling, my forehead colliding with something, and a dull pain . . . the sensation that somebody had grabbed hold of me and was dragging me along. The sharp edges of bricks dug into my back, the fog closed in and out as I gained and lost consciousness. At first I thought it was them, the kids, but after a while I began to realize it was someone else. I even wondered if it might be Mr. Meltoni. I mean, he’s the only one who’s ever looked out for me. I swear at one point I saw him looking down, those big brown eyes of his deep in the shadow of his famous fedora.
“It’s okay, Big Guy,” he said. “We’ll get you out of this.”
I felt so weak. I couldn’t speak. I wanted to thank him for looking out for me again, to tell him how happy I was to see him once more. I also thought I should apologize for getting old, for losing all of my strength and muscle, all the things he’d once valued me for.
But do you know something? It wasn’t Mr. Meltoni. It was someone else. Someone I couldn’t have even dreamed existed and who was about to change my life forever.
CHAPTER FOUR
A small part of me came to—a solitary candle deep inside spluttering back into life while everything else remained dazed and dormant. For a long while I just lay there, trying to build on that small flame, knowing I was hurt and allowing my body time to assess the damage. It was only when my consciousness reached a certain level that it informed me there was something wrong: I couldn’t see.
I blinked a few times and turned my head from side to side, panic sweeping through me. I was blind! Those little bastards had beaten me so hard I’d lost my sight. Or maybe they’d done something to me while I was unconscious. I gave an involuntary low moan then stopped, forced to think again. The sound of my own voice, sharp-edged and echoey, made me realize what normally would’ve occurred to me right away. I wasn’t blind. I was inside.
At first I assumed it was a lean-to, but there were no drafts and not the slightest glimmer of light. I closed and opened my eyes, squinting as hard as I could, trying to make something out of the darkness. A shape. A shadow. But everything was lost to me.
I stretched my hand out, farther and farther, as if willing it to disconnect from my body, till my fingertips scraped up against a brick wall. Jesus, I was in a building.
You have no idea what that meant. I hadn’t been in a building for years. Never even thought I would again. I immediately stuck my other hand out, sweeping it from side to side, trying to touch something else, to give myself another clue as to where I might be. Back and forth, digging deeper and deeper into the darkness till suddenly I brushed up against someone’s face.
If I hadn’t been in so much pain, I would’ve leapt six inches into the air. As it was, all I could do was to try to scrabble away.
“It’s okay,” a woman’s voice said. “Calm down.”
“What the hell’s going on?” I shouted, my words sounding like they belonged to someone else.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean ‘nothing’? Where am I?”
“You were chased. I hid you. Don’t you remember?”
I paused. No, I didn’t remember. Not clearly. “Where am I?” I repeated, the dark now so threatening it felt like it was rearing up all around me, getting ready to pounce.
“I can’t tell you.”
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?”
“I can’t tell you,” the voice said, now with more than a touch of impatience.
Again I paused. “Why ain’t there any light?”
“I don’t need it.”
I stuttered and spluttered for a moment. What was going on here? Total darkness, total nothing, and who was I sharing it with?
“Who are you?”
“No one,” she replied.
That was it. That was as much as I could take. I tried to get to my feet, ready to bust my way out of there, but soon crumpled back to the ground.
“Oh, for chrissake!” she cried angrily. “Look, I’ve got some candles somewhere. If I light one do you promise to stay where you are?”
I grunted my agreement and she began rummaging around.
“Don’t know what makes you think you can go anywhere anyway,” she complained, seemingly more to herself than to me.
A match flared and I finally saw who I was talking to. It should’ve put my mind at rest, but it didn’t. You’ve never seen such a sight in all your life. I said a lot of us were reverting to animals, but she’s gone much further than anyone I know. I wouldn’t like to say how old she is. Fortyish maybe. With long
dark bushy hair that doesn’t look like it’s ever been on any terms with a comb, a kind of broad and primitive face, and nothing in the way of attire you’d recognize as clothing. Just remnants and rags loosely tied about her grimy body.
I just stared. I mean, I know it was rude, but I couldn’t help myself. She looked like something that had crawled up out of the ground.
“Better?” she asked, slightly begrudgingly.
I nodded my head, continuing to gape, and it was the fact that she didn’t return my stare or complain about it that eventually made me realize I’d missed maybe the most important thing about her: she’s blind.
Human nature being what it is I couldn’t help but amend my attitude, especially as only moments before I’d been spooked because I thought that was my condition. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I . . . I was a little confused.”
“But you’re not anymore?” she asked, with some surprise.
I stopped for a moment, looking around, realizing what she was getting at. We weren’t in a building at all. We were in a tunnel. “Well . . . yes. Guess I am. Where is this?”
She paused, taking a deep breath, obviously deciding how much she was going to tell me. “It’s one of the old subway tunnels,” she eventually said.
“But . . . I thought they were all filled in during the riots? Too much of a security risk.”
“Just the approaches to the City, on the other side. They couldn’t fill in the whole system. There’s miles of it.”
I paused. “You live here?”
She didn’t answer. Maybe cuz all her things were around us and she didn’t think it was necessary. I was about to ask her why scrabbling around in the dark all the time didn’t frighten her when I realized what a stupid remark that would be, that everywhere she went she was in the dark.
Both of us fell silent. My initial panic petered out and I realized just how weak I was. I sank back down onto a bed of plastic packaging softened by a few layers of rags, aware that somewhere something was hurting me more than any other part of my body. I knew that she’d bandaged me, but I was too tired and nauseous to ask any more questions.
For a while I just lay there, staring at the blackened roof of the tunnel. I didn’t feel so good. Everything was slipping away from me as if I was too weak to hang on to it. Presently the candle went out, everything went black, and I lost consciousness again.
I kept waking and falling back to sleep for what seemed like forever. Darkness and blackness, the boundaries blurring over and over till they weren’t there anymore. Sometimes I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, other times I’d call out into the dark to see if she was still there and for a few minutes we’d exchange a slurred and broken conversation. Then I’d slip away again.
“Why did you bandage me?”
“You were stabbed.”
“What?”
“One of the kids. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Does it hurt?”
“A little.”
“What’s your name? . . . Hey, are you there?”
“Lena. What’s yours?”
“Clancy. Most people call me Big Guy though.”
“Oh.”
“Have you got any more candles?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you light one?”
“’Cuz you been asleep.”
“Not anymore . . .”
But even as the match flared, even as I saw that strange, broad face with the pale, sightless eyes before me again, everything was starting to go black once more.
Turned out the main reason I was like that was cuz I’d lost a lot of blood. My body needed to shut down to get its strength back. All I can remember is that endless sporadic awareness of self, swaying back and forth between this world and another. But eventually the time came when I awoke and, instead of drifting off, began to sigh and stretch and she, hearing me, lit another candle.
“You okay?” she asked.
For a long time I didn’t answer. No, I wasn’t okay. I felt as if death had sucked me in and spat me out again, though only after a great deal of deliberation.
“How long have I been here?” I asked.
“Three days.”
“Oh,” I grunted, a little surprised. I thought it was more like a couple of weeks.
With considerable effort I managed to prop myself up against the wall, the pain in my back that had haunted me all throughout my unconsciousness, turning out to be all too real. I winced. More and more things coming back to me.
“How did I get away?”
“You fell down a pile of rubble. By the time they’d climbed up the other side I managed to hide you. After they left I got you down here.”
I stared at her. Was she serious? Not only is she blind, she ain’t much more than half my size. How could she have dragged me all the way down here? Under normal circumstances I would’ve thanked her for what she did. As it was, I was starting to wonder if maybe I was being set up for something.
“Are you alone?” I couldn’t stop myself asking.
“Yes.”
I shook my head in disbelief, already taking liberties with the fact that she couldn’t see me. And yet, if there were others, why didn’t they show themselves?
“I’d better change that bandage now you’re awake,” she said, moving toward me.
Don’t ask me why, but I backed away. “No, no, it’s okay. I can do it.”
She hesitated for a moment, as if she didn’t quite believe my stupidity. “For chrissakes—it’s your back! What are you, a contortionist or something?”
I grunted, realizing she was right, that I didn’t really have a choice. “Oh. Yeah, right.”
It’s funny, she hadn’t appeared to register my doubts about how she got me down here, but she must have, cuz as she came up behind me to unfold the bandage she grabbed hold of me under the arms, lifted me up and moved me away from the overhanging arch of the tunnel.
“That’s better,” she said.
I couldn’t believe it. I mean, okay, she struggled a bit, but she’s a helluva lot stronger than she looks.
“Oh, and by the way,” she said pointedly, “I believe it’s considered good manners to thank someone who saved your life.”
I could hardly get it out quick enough. “Yeah, right. Sorry. Haven’t quite got myself together yet,” I said lamely. “I’m really grateful.”
The point made, she didn’t linger over it, just silently carried on with her bandaging, finishing up by wrapping it around me several times and then securing it.
When she was in front of me, only inches away, I found myself helplessly staring into her face. Up close it’s even more remarkable. She’s got this really broad nose, turned up at the end, like she uses it for digging or something. Her complexion’s sallow, almost yellow, like a suntan that’s gone bad, and on her cheeks and neck there are clusters of freckly moles. ’Course, I probably wouldn’t have noticed half of this if she hadn’t been blind. But it’s like, without the eyes, there’s nothing to hold on to, no feature to communicate with, so you find yourself searching for somewhere else to address yourself.
For a few moments, she was that close I could actually smell her. To be honest, it wasn’t the way I imagined. There was a strong odor, but it wasn’t that unpleasant. In fact, it reminded me of when I was a kid, visiting my grandfather, playing in the garden—it was that smell you get when you’ve been rolling in damp leaves.
When she finished, she asked me if I wanted something to eat. I looked at her for a moment and it crossed my mind that maybe her notions on food might be a little different from mine, but I was hungry enough to try anything. “Yeah . . . Sure.”
I was in for one helluva shock. She set off down the tunnel, into the darkness, and presently returned with several small white eggs and a handful of mushrooms.
“Where d’you get those?” I asked.
She ignored the question, as if she couldn’t be bothered, concentrating on getting the fire going.
>
I tell you, watching her going about her business, being somehow clumsy and adept at the same time, is truly something to behold. Everything’s down to touch, smell, sound. The proximity of the fire, the evenness of the flame, the noise and aroma of what’s cooking. And the most amazing thing of all is that it was the best meal I’ve had in years. Mushroom omelet. Can you believe that? Here, underground, under the Old City—mushroom omelet.
Afterward I felt much better, more relaxed, and I had this strong urge to try to get to know her, to be on more friendly terms.
“So, how d’you end up down here?” I asked.
She paused for a long time and I sensed she was once again wondering how much to tell me. In the end I think her caution was overwhelmed by the novelty of having someone to talk to. Which, I guess, proves she’s telling the truth: she is down there alone.
“It’s a long story,” she told me.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I commented.
At first it came out a little fragmented, like she’d lost the knack of constructing a conversation, but I soon got the gist. She was born on the Mainland, to parents who later abandoned her when they hit hard times and decided they couldn’t afford her any longer (there ain’t nothing unusual about that. People’ll do anything rather than risk being made an Economic Detainee). ’Course she got shipped out here, age fourteen, which is older than most, and soon started working the tips for this guy De Grew, the number-one Wastelord on the Island. (I know him by reputation only, everyone does, and if only ten percent of what I heard is true, he is one evil sonofabitch. Rumor has it he was one of those on the first boat over, which makes me think someone was trying to get rid of him, and others like him, and saw this as the perfect opportunity.)
For a while she managed okay, picking through the garbage, living the miserable life they do. Then one hot summer’s day, she and a group of other kids got caught in a blowout. Two were killed, several maimed, and she ended up losing her sight.
“Volatiles” are one of the main hazards of Island life—methane and the more modern ones, the supercombustibles. In the old days, when the place was properly managed, they would’ve been burned off, but since we been out here, no one bothers to check them. Some days, all you gotta do is cause the slightest spark, kick metal against metal or let the sun heat up a piece of glass, and you’ll get a “blowout.” Or even a “chain blowout,” when the explosion from one pocket of gas ignites another, and the whole ground erupts around you like hell’s bursting up out of it.
