The Detainee

by Peter Liney

  “I told you, no one’s going to throw anything away that works,” he complained.

  I gave a long, drawn-out sigh of relief, panting to myself as if I’d been holding my breath for the last few minutes—which I might well have been. Thank God, the immediate threat was over. But at that moment, this loud hammering began somewhere deep in the innards of the tunnels.

  At first I couldn’t think what it was. I was that confused I thought there must be more of them, that they were breaking in somewhere. The vent over the garden, maybe. Then, of course, I realized. It was Jimmy. Down in his workshop.

  I stared across at the two kids. By now they were some way off, but I could still see them stop and look around, as if they could just about hear something but couldn’t quite make out what it was.

  I didn’t wait for their reactions, I took off as fast as I could. I had to get to Jimmy before they worked out what that noise was and where it was coming from.

  The candles were at the bottom of the slope, but I was in too much of a rush to stop and take one. It would only blow out anyway. I knew the route well enough. Or so I thought. Turning a corner a little too sharply, I ran straight into the wall. There were a couple of bright flashes somewhere, a real sickening thud, and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back. Such was my urgency I was up and running again almost before I knew it. Staggering a little, down through the main hall, plunging darker and deeper, then having to slow, to use my hands for the less familiar tunnel approaching the workshop.

  The closer I got, the louder the noise became. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing. It was more like thunder than hammering. I could just see those two kids up there, putting their headphones back on, adjusting their dials, making their way over to the entrance.

  Finally the glow of the workshop loomed up before me and I rushed in to find the little guy furiously beating this huge sheet of metal into shape. “Jimmy!” I hissed.

  He was making that much noise he didn’t hear me. I ran over, grabbed the hammer he was using and tore it from his grasp.

  He turned toward me, an astonished look on his face. “What the hell’s up with you?”

  “Shhhhh!”

  “What?”

  “Shut up!” I hissed angrily.

  He paused for a moment, utterly confused by my behavior. “What is it?” he whispered.

  “They’re up top looking for us.”

  “Who?”

  “Kids.”

  “Oh no!” he groaned, letting the sheet of metal fall from his grasp and collide with the wall.

  “For chrissake!” I whispered.

  “Big Guy, they ain’t going to hear that all the way up there,” he sneered.

  “They got detectors,” I told him.

  He paused for a moment, a rather different expression coming to his face. “What sort?”

  “Warmth, sound, infrared, I don’t know! Sort of a metal box with headphones,” I informed him. “And this, like a big triple-coned vacuum-cleaner thing they keep sweeping across the ground.”

  Jimmy’s face suddenly drained of all color. “Shit!” he moaned. “Sound detectors.”

  “Maybe,” I said, his reaction convincing me this was every bit as serious as I thought. Both of us went silent for a moment, not really knowing what to do or say.

  “Wonder what kind,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah. Some ain’t much better than a hearing aid. Others could almost pick up what we’re saying now.”

  We turned and stared at each other, momentarily too afraid to even speak.

  “I think they found them in the garbage,” I whispered.

  He nodded, far from comforted. “Where are Delilah and Lena?”

  “In the living area. You go find them. I’ll go back up.”

  Jimmy took a candle and the two of us set off almost on tiptoe, not speaking, communicating through gestures, finally separating at the main hall.

  It took me the best part of ten minutes to get back up to the entrance. All the way up I expected to meet those kids coming down. But when I reached the top and peered out, there wasn’t a soul to be seen.

  It should’ve brought relief, but it didn’t. I checked out the door really closely, as if I’d be able to tell if someone had discovered it or not. Nothing had been disturbed, not as far as I could see, but I still had this awful fear that we’d been breached in some way, that everything we’d gained was now in jeopardy.

  When I got back down to the living area I found the others all silent and grave-faced, waiting to hear what I had to say. Delilah actually had tears in her eyes. I mean, she’s been a different person since she’s been down here, like she’s found an old spark of herself and polished it up. The thought of someone taking that away from her was just too much.

  “They’ve gone,” I said, putting them out of their misery.

  “You sure?” Lena asked.

  I shrugged. “Sure as I can be.”

  Jimmy gave a long sigh of relief. “See!” he said to Delilah, and very much for her benefit. “They don’t have a clue where we are.”

  Delilah didn’t answer, just shook her head. She wasn’t any more comforted by that than I was.

  The real problem, that no one knew the answer to, was how efficient those sound detectors were. What precautions should we be taking? We were already talking in whispers—you couldn’t help yourself—but we had no idea if it was necessary or not. One thing was for sure, like it or not, it meant changes around the tunnels, and big ones too.

  From then on we’ve had to keep all noise to a minimum. Jimmy was told he’d have to give up his workshop, that it was just too much of a risk. The little guy went crazy. Apparently what he’d been working on down there was a much bigger generator, that’d give us enough juice for not only more lighting, but a few other things, too.

  It presented us with one helluva dilemma. I mean, I agreed with him, it’s too good a thing to miss out on. On the other hand, nothing’s worth losing what we got.

  In the end, after a great deal of hushed and heated discussion, it was decided that as long as Lena was prepared to act as lookout he could carry on. After all, with her sense of smell and acuteness of hearing, I’d back her against sound detectors anytime.

  But no matter how great or how little the threat, all of us have been left with this undeniable sense of loss. It’s as if those dense yards of moist earth that separate us from the surface, that have kept us safe and unseen for so long, have suddenly been blown away. We’re vulnerable again, open to attack, and it ain’t a nice feeling, I can tell you.

  For the rest of that day every little sound was a cause for alarm, even a cough or sneeze. And if a serious noise was made, someone dropping something, or knocking stuff over, well, we just held our breath and stared upward, wondering whether we’d been overheard or not. It was a bit like one of those old-time submarines: engines stopped, lying on the bottom, waiting for the depth charges to come drifting on down.

  The only place I felt at all comfortable was up at the entrance, staring out, keeping an eye on things. I spent the rest of the day up there, endlessly running my gaze along the horizon, till it got dark and I had to give up and return to the living area.

  The following morning I was back up at first light, squatting down, peering out through the gaps, my old knees locking up every now and then. I mean, it ain’t exactly my idea of fun, but anything’s better than not knowing.

  Couple of hours later Lena came up and joined me. Jimmy wanted to make some noise in his workshop and had asked if she’d be his lookout.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Haven’t seen a soul.”

  However, when she squatted down and pressed her nose to the gaps, she caught the scent of someone almost immediately. “Over there,” she said, pointing in the direction of the ocean.

  It took me a while, but I saw them way over in the distance, almost hidden by piles of rubble. Maybe the same
two kids as yesterday, scouring around, still using the sound detectors.

  “Yeah. You’re right,” I told her, feeling a little embarrassed.

  For a while I watched them, reporting everything I saw as they wandered up and down piles of rubble, went this way and that, not seeming to have a plan after all. Then they began to drift farther away till finally they were lost from sight.

  I sighed and stood up, straightening out my legs and back.

  “Gone?” Lena asked.

  “Yeah.”

  She nodded her head thoughtfully. “Maybe they don’t know where we are after all.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Maybe not.”

  Several days later and Jimmy was ready to install his new generator. I tell you, it’s huge, like some old turbo-prop engine. Just getting it up to the living area took one helluvan effort. He fixed up this bench for us to climb up on, and I took the weight and we attempted to attach it to the roof of the tunnel—plugging the brickwork, getting a good fixing, having to stop every now and then cuz we thought we heard Delilah relaying messages from Lena that someone was about.

  I couldn’t believe how heavy it was. Not the blades so much, but the huge J-bracket they were attached to. I had to prop it a couple of times with lengths of timber while I got my strength back. Sweat was pouring off me, forming this little pool at my feet. Thank God I was back in training. Jimmy kept telling me to “move it this way a bit,” or “move it that way a touch,” and “hold it steady, will you, Big Guy?” Tell the truth, it got pretty heated a couple of times. He also forgot to secure the propeller, which meant that when a sudden gust of wind swept down the tunnel, it started rotating and damn near took my arm off.

  And yet, when we finally finished, when it was fixed there, looking all big and purposeful and starting to spin, I almost got as excited about it as he was. The only miscalculation he’s made is that the blades are a little too long. The length of the bracket’s right, they clear the tunnel roof okay—and it ain’t going to be a problem for the others, they ain’t tall enough—but if I’m not careful when I walk under that thing, I’m going to get one helluva haircut. Jimmy says he’ll adjust them, but he’s so excited about getting it all working, I can’t see it being a priority and I reckon I’ll be best advised not to walk too tall in that particular part of the tunnel from now on.

  That evening, after several hours of connecting stuff up, he threw the switch on a length of the old subway emergency lighting circuit (I’d seen him messing about with it, but I’d just assumed he’d been taking parts), and we had lighting almost as far as you could see.

  If it hadn’t been for the possibility of being overheard I reckon we would’ve let out a whoop that would’ve echoed through every inch of the tunnels. After all that time in the dark, suddenly to be able to see so far was almost beyond belief. Delilah ran up and kissed one of the lights as if it was a relative she hadn’t seen in a long while.

  Jimmy was gone even before we had a chance to congratulate him. Limping off down to his workshop, soon returning with a selection of those electrical items he once claimed he’d fixed. And do you know something? They are fixed. The mixer, the micro-center, the irradia-fry, all of them. The only trouble is, by working, they make a noise, which means we can’t use them.

  The little guy was so disappointed it almost broke your heart. Delilah gave him a big hug, told him not to worry. I mean, as far as we’re concerned he couldn’t be a bigger hero than he is already. More lighting makes us feel braver. As if we can only cope with what we can see, and if we’re able to see more, then we’re pushing back the boundaries of fear.

  Again it occurred to us that lighting didn’t mean a great deal to Lena. You’d suddenly feel embarrassed by your enthusiasm, stifle it like it meant nothing, but the moment she got the idea that was what you were doing she’d beat up on you with some real full-frontal honesty. She wasn’t having any of it. If we were celebrating cuz we had lighting in the main tunnel, then so was she and that was an end to it.

  That night we all went a little crazy. We had this real urge to celebrate, to shout into the night the same way we’d lit up the dark, and once Lena produced a couple of bottles of hooch, well, that was what we did. There was a lot of fooling around went on, racing up and down the tunnel. Several times we said we should be more careful, that someone might be listening, but we were making more of a joke of it than anything. We hadn’t seen a soul since that glimpse the other morning, and even then they’d been some way off. No one was going to be out with a sound detector at that time of night. Anyways, sometimes you just get an urge that won’t let go till you give into it. You gotta be a little reckless now and then. It’s in the human spirit.

  Later, Lena and I made love. I mean, I already told you I ain’t one for giving out details about this sort of thing, but in this case, I don’t know. Tell the truth, it almost frightened me. I’m a down-to-earth, body-functioning big guy. I never held with anything else. But somehow we instinctively found this slow sliding rhythm that seemed to pass back and forth between us and induce a kind of trance. At first it was just acute pleasure, but then, something else. I could still feel my hands on her body, our nakedness where we touched, but it was like going into a different dimension. As if the physical was just too cumbersome, too restrictive, for us. I don’t know. It’s beyond me to explain. I’ve lived sixty-three years and no one’s ever told me two people could create such a thing.

  When the moment finally came it was almost more than we could bear. I had to stifle a scream. Partly cuz of the pleasure, but also cuz it was such agony to have to let go of what we created. Afterward we hugged each other as tightly as we could, as though it was a frustration, a sadness, to find we were separate bodies again.

  I might know a few fancy words, but I’m not very good with them, leastways not when it matters. But that night I finally said the three words I been waiting to say all my life. The first time kind of tentatively, almost losing my nerve, but then over and over. Like I knew it was only small change now, but one day it was going to amount to something a whole lot bigger.

  Later that night, God knows what time, Lena nudged me from a deep, satisfying sleep.

  “Clancy! . . . Clancy, wake up!”

  “What? What’s the matter?” I managed to mumble, though I was too dazed to really know what I was saying.

  “Clancy!”

  “What?” I asked again.

  She paused for a moment, like she was waiting for confirmation of what she was about to say.

  “There’s someone in the tunnels.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It’s amazing how the body can bypass the normally slow process of recovering consciousness when it has to. The moment Lena told me someone was in the tunnels I was up and on my feet.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Main hall. Coming this way.”

  “Shit!” I hissed, immediately realizing we must’ve been pinpointed by those detectors after all.

  I stumbled over to rouse Jimmy and Delilah, hesitating momentarily by the light switch, not having time to think it through but instinctively deciding it was best we were left in the dark. Delilah woke instantly, but we had to physically drag Jimmy to his feet.

  “What’s going on?” he whined.

  “For chrissake, Jimmy!” I hissed. “They got in!”

  “What?”

  Just at that moment we heard a crash. Someone knocked something over, by the sound of it an old oil drum; you could hear it rolling over and over and then slamming up against a wall. Instantly Jimmy went through the same rapid process of recovery I had.

  “Jesus! What are we going to do?” he whispered.

  Which was one helluva good question. The only direction open to us led down to the garden, but it’s a dead end really; the tunnel dips away after that and becomes flooded.

  “I don’t know,” I said, still joining everyone in a general movement in that direction.

  Whatever doubts I had, Lena didn’t s
eem to share them. She immediately took the lead, urging us on, and when we didn’t move quickly enough in the dark, got us all to hold hands: Delilah grasping onto her, then Jimmy, and me at the back.

  I felt kind of stupid hanging onto the little guy’s bony mitt. I could feel this real tension flowing through him, like it was being conducted from one person to another, getting stronger as it went along the line, but it did mean we made faster progress. Behind there were raised voices, a couple of excited cries, and we knew they’d reached the living area.

  “Come on!” I hissed. But I knew I was just saying it for the sake of it, that we were already going as fast as we could, and anyway, where the hell were we going?

  Someone gave a little panicky moan—I don’t know, I think it was Delilah, though it could’ve just as easily been Jimmy. I glanced behind and realized why. We were on the long, straight stretch approaching the garden and you could just make out the faint glow of pursuing light. It wasn’t candles. More like flaming torches, which, in case we had any doubts about who got in and was pursuing us, immediately confirmed our worst fears.

  When we reached the garden, a glimpse of the night sky, the stars twinkling away like they knew we’d never be able to afford them, seemed to release our panic and we broke into a sprint. Almost instantly, Jimmy and I managed to go sprawling over.

  I can’t tell you how loud that sounded, the two of us dragging each other to the ground, knocking a stack of empty cans over in the process. Behind there was another shout, the pounding of their footsteps noticeably increasing in tempo.

  We scrambled up, rejoining hands with the others as we got dragged into the black mouth of the continuing tunnel.

  “Where we going?” whined Jimmy, the way the ground was falling away beneath our feet obviously worrying him as much as it was me.

  But Lena just kept tugging us on. Down and down into absolute darkness and a tunnel no one knew but her. I was starting to panic, wondering if maybe she was so scared she was just leading us anywhere, when suddenly I heard splashing in front of me and found myself in water. Just a few inches at first, then a few more, till soon we were up to our knees and wading. Delilah was making these little protesting noises, like it was a cold day at the beach and someone was forcing her to go in for a swim, but Lena wasn’t having any of it.