The Detainee

by Peter Liney

  “Left . . . Right . . . Left.”

  And finally I realized. It was the swing of his machete. She was telling me what direction it was going in.

  “Now, Clancy. Now!”

  And I knew what she meant. It was the moment when the machete reached the end of its sweep, that split second when I had a chance to jump him. I stood there, listening to its swish through the air, hearing her words. Jesus, I had to trust her. Get it wrong and I was about to dive straight into the wild slash of that fearsome blade.

  “Left . . . Right . . . Left . . . Right. Now, Clancy!”

  I just leapt forward as hard and low as I could, my eyes closed, expecting at any moment to feel that machete slice straight across my face, or take the top of my head off or something. But I hit the kid so hard I slammed him up against the wall, crushing the air out of him like a burst paper bag, and he collapsed to the ground.

  I jumped up, lit one of my matches, retrieved his machete and thrust it into his face. Not that he was in any shape to be concerned. He was just lying there, a look of real panic on his face, trying to get some air back into his crushed lungs. Before he could, I grabbed some twine and with Lena’s help, tied him up.

  “We’ll put him with his friend. Then we’d better go back up,” I said, concerned about where the tall kid might’ve gone.

  When we got to the storeroom and unlocked the door the first kid was starting to come around. We didn’t hang around. I just threw the other one on top of him and left them to it. Thank the Lord, both door and lock are solid and secure. The last thing we needed was for the tall kid to find them and let them out.

  You could hear the fear in Jimmy and Delilah’s voices when they challenged our approach. And the relief when they realized it was us.

  “What happened?” the little guy asked.

  “Two of them are locked up in one of the storerooms,” I told them. “We lost the tall one though.”

  There was a pause.

  “So what do we do?” Delilah asked, the thought of him lurking down there, waiting to spring out when you least expected it, unsettling her as much as it did the rest of us.

  “I don’t know.” I sighed.

  “Maybe we should just wait him out,” Lena suggested. “He can’t stay down there forever.”

  In the end, and in the absence of any other suggestions, we agreed with her. I mean, looking for him down there, on his own, that lanky, vicious sonofabitch, I really didn’t fancy it.

  For some time we stayed there in the dark at the foot of the exit tunnel, speaking little and in whispers, occasionally spooking each other by hearing all kinds of sounds, till finally Jimmy asked the question that maybe should’ve been asked long ago.

  “Why don’t we put the lights on?”

  I stopped for a moment. Yeah, why didn’t we put the lights on? There was no advantage to being in the dark anymore. It might even make us feel a bit more comfortable.

  “Lena?” I asked, knowing she was the one person it might put at a disadvantage.

  “Why not? I’ll go and do it if you like. I can bring us back something to eat. We could be here for a while.” She set off, her soft footsteps soon fading into the darkness.

  “What are we going to do with the two you locked up?” Delilah asked.

  “I don’t know. Keep them, I s’pose.”

  “Forever?”

  “For the moment,” I replied.

  Jimmy sighed, “How do we know they haven’t told other kids they were coming here?”

  “We don’t. But I kind of figure that if others had known, they would be with them, so maybe these three had a good reason for coming alone.”

  There was a pause. Delilah sighed. “We should kill them,” she said.

  “What?” Jimmy gasped.

  “You heard!” she cried angrily.

  I guess you couldn’t blame her. There are plenty of old folk who, given the chance, would take revenge for all the years we’ve been terrorized, all the horrendous things that’ve been done. And it would’ve solved our problem. But it’s like I said before, Mother Nature plants this idea deep down inside that no matter what children say or do, we share a common responsibility. Or maybe a common guilt, I don’t know. Either way, I knew I couldn’t kill them in cold blood. And Jimmy was appalled by the idea.

  “Jesus, Lile!” he cried. “That is so uncool!”

  “What did they come to do?” she spat. “Why did they break in here, if it wasn’t to kill us?”

  In the face of such intense rage, the little guy went quiet. It was hard to put up an argument in their defense at any time, let alone now. He sighed and tried to change the subject. “I wish Lena would get the lights on,” he muttered. “I can’t stand this much more.”

  It was only when he said it that I realized how long she’d been. I mean, I wasn’t worried or anything. The tall kid was way down below; she was off in the living area. It was just weird not having her there, not being able to account for her for a few minutes.

  “I’ll go see what she’s up to,” I said.

  I made my way down the tunnel, expecting to hear her voice at any moment, that she would suddenly come to me out of the darkness the way she does, but I arrived there without a sign of her.

  I paused for a moment, now feeling just that little bit uneasy. Maybe she’d gone down to the garden for something to eat? I was just about to head off in that direction when I remembered about turning on the lights. As I moved toward the switch, a voice suddenly came to me from out of the darkness.

  “Clancy!” Lena whispered.

  I tell you, it frightened the very life out of me. Not cuz it had been so sudden, not cuz it had come out of the darkness in front of me, but the tone in her voice. It didn’t sound like her at all.

  “Lena! . . . Jesus!” I cried. “You frightened the hell out of me.”

  There was a disturbingly long pause.

  “Strike a match, Clancy.”

  “Why?” I asked, but I was already doing it, fumbling with the box, dropping one or two on the ground. I mean, I knew something was wrong, I just didn’t know what.

  The match flared and I saw her in a moment of brilliance. Up against the wall, next to the light switch, the tall kid behind her wrenching back her head by her hair, his machete pressed against her throat.

  I can’t describe how that felt. I mean, this . . . thing was in front of me. This grotesque tangle of human limbs. Parts I knew and loved, parts that were strange and repelled me. And two pairs of eyes. One sighted with blood and a need for senseless slaughter, the other lost and helpless, as if gazing at some faraway horizon where she wanted to be.

  I been in a lot of bad situations in my life. Ones where people I cared about were under threat. I once saved Mr. Meltoni’s life, and his wife’s, and took a couple of bullets for my trouble, but this was something else. I’m a man of action. That’s what I do. I act. I’m physical. I barely got a brain in my head. You do the thinking, then you set me in motion. But my first reaction when I saw her like that was to want to just stand there and scream. That machete shoved up against her neck, pushing into her flesh, a fine edge of blood seeping around its blade. That woman is everything to me. There has never been, and never will be, another one like her; and now this worthless punk, who ain’t even fit to belong to the same species, could just jerk his hand across her throat and she’s gone.

  And you want to know something? Something truly sickening? He read it in my eyes. He saw what the situation was and started to laugh. Taunting me, pretending to do it, building up to that moment, that flick of the wrist as he sliced her open and her life gushed out onto the ground. And there was nothing I could do. Nothing. And suddenly I found myself pleading with him. Tears streaming down my face . . . Me! The big guy! Weeping and begging this little punk. Lena called out to me, told me not to, as if, no matter what the circumstances, she couldn’t bear to see me that way, but I couldn’t help myself.

  The match I was holding burned my fingers and I f
umbled to strike another. I died in those few seconds. Over and over. When I finally got it lit he was starting to inch away in the direction of the main hall, still holding Lena as tightly as ever, a trickle of blood now sliding down her neck.

  I’ve never been so scared in all my life. I mean, I could threaten, I could tell him what I’d do if he hurt her, I could cause him more pain than he’d ever known, but what good would that be if Lena lay dead?

  “Put it down,” he said, indicating the machete I was still carrying.

  I just let it fall from my hand. Tell the truth, I forgot I had it. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. It had never even occurred to me he might be able to find his way back through the flooded tunnels to the garden and the living area. Especially without a torch.

  He backed away a little farther, kicking a couple of cooking pots out of his way, still pulling on Lena’s hair.

  “Get back!” he shouted, and even though I hadn’t moved an inch, I took a couple of steps away.

  I was trying to calm myself, to think what I could do, but with Lena in that position, I just couldn’t. I thought about Jimmy and Delilah, how I could attract their attention without him knowing. I thought about the lighting switch behind him—it was something he didn’t know—but I couldn’t see an advantage in any of it.

  He shuffled a few more steps away, the light from my match making his eyes glow red. I made a slight movement to follow, but he cursed me and wrenched Lena’s head to one side, the cut on her neck bleeding that bit more freely.

  “No! Please!” I begged again. “Don’t hurt her! Please!”

  I mean, I hated myself for doing it, but I couldn’t stop. He was taking Lena away from me, with every stride threatening to end her life. Again my match went out and I struck another.

  “Please!” I cried.

  He shook his head, a really mean smile coming to his face. “Don’t you know what she’s worth?”

  I didn’t know what he meant at first. I wasn’t thinking that straight. Eventually it hit me. De Grew had put a price on her head. Money or drugs. That’s why there were only three of them. They wanted it all for themselves.

  He went to back away again and slightly stumbled on some uneven ground, almost losing his balance. Lena had a split second to attempt to wriggle free. She half turned and tried to drive her knee into his groin, but he was so much taller than her that she missed and in an instant he had hold of her again.

  I screamed out. I knew that was it. You can see it in someone’s eyes when they’re about to kill. He snarled at her, like it just wasn’t worth the trouble of keeping her alive, then jerked her head back, lay her throat open and went to drag his machete across it.

  “No!”

  In that precise moment a gust of wind swept down the tunnel and blew out my match.

  “Lena!”

  There was an awful slicing sound, of a blade cutting through flesh, and I knew it meant death. I went crazy. Rushing forward, calling out over and over, fumbling for her in the darkness. Someone tried to grab hold of me, to grip me around my neck, and I lashed out. Then a voice spoke.

  “Clancy, it’s all right! It’s all right!”

  I was so confused all I could do was hold on to her, wrap my body around her and protect her from whatever further blow was about to fall.

  It was only the sudden flickering light of their candle that alerted me to Jimmy and Delilah arriving. I looked around, trying to figure out what the hell had happened, where the tall kid was, and saw his body lying on the ground. Still I didn’t know what happened. Not till Jimmy turned on the lights.

  I was right, there had been a death, but it hadn’t been Lena’s. The kid was lying there, his head sliced open, part of his insides oozing out. I looked at Lena, thinking she must’ve done it, but she looked as confused as me.

  It was Jimmy’s slightly guilty look upward that finally alerted us to what happened.

  “Shit!” he muttered, staring at his generator.

  It was that damn propeller. Those long, whirling blades. The kid was so tall that as he’d been backing away, the same wind that had blown out my match had sent the blades spinning and he’d walked straight into them.

  Jesus, what a way to go. To some degree, it was almost appropriate: his death was every bit as sad and senseless as his life.

  We buried him down below, in one of the collapsing tunnels, right at the very end, so that, as the bricks fell, they’d cover him. I even put up a little cross. God knows why. I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted it, but it just seemed right.

  Not that anyone grieved, not for him, even if he was little more than a child. Maybe we reflected a little. Maybe we wondered where he came from, who his parents had been, why he ended up that way. But we’ve done all that before. A long time ago. Now I’m not sure there’s any point.

  As for the two we got locked up down below, well, they’re another matter. What the hell are we going to do with them? No way can we let them go, but does that mean we have to keep them forever? I’m pretty sure no one’s going to come looking for them, that what I said was right; they were bounty hunters who wanted to keep all the reward for themselves. But having them down there, no matter how securely locked away, ain’t going to do a great deal for our peace of mind. And who wants to be their jailers, anyway? Feeding them, looking after them, it don’t make any sense. And yet, the way things are, what other choice do we have?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  It wasn’t until late in the afternoon, after something to eat and a little sleep, that Jimmy and me went down to take a look at our two captives. We weren’t expecting any trouble, but the little guy insisted on carrying one of their machetes—more, I suspect, for his peace of mind than anything else.

  I felt kind of nervous as I was unlocking that door, like we’d set a trap and didn’t know what we’d caught. I kicked it right back on its hinges, holding my candle up to give the maximum amount of light in case they tried anything, but both of them were just slumped motionless on the floor. My first impression was that they looked a little pale, maybe even a touch scared. I guess what I’m trying to say is, they looked a bit like children.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out which one I hit with the door. He had a bump on his forehead so big you could’ve used it for advertising. I guess it was that, and the fact that he was younger and smaller than the other one, that made him look the sorrier of the two. He was also quite normal-looking for an Island kid. I s’pose it’s the life they lead, but they tend to have really hard little faces, even the very young ones, but he was slightly different. Mixed-race, of course, like most of them; his brown eyes peering out through long, matted hair giving him the look of a stray mongrel.

  His companion on the other hand was more typical; his acne-covered face as sharp and pointed as the machete he’d wielded. He also had half an ear missing and just behind it a bald patch where his close-cropped mousy-brown hair refused to regrow, which must’ve been the legacy of some fight or other. Both of them were dressed in rags, had dirt ingrained so heavily it seemed to be in the actual pigment of their skin, and like I said before, reeked of the landfills so strongly it was as much as you could do to share that confined space with them.

  And yet, I don’t know, seeing them there like that, kind of lost and forlorn, almost made me feel embarrassed. The little one couldn’t have been any more than eleven or twelve, and the other, well, maybe a couple of years older. You couldn’t imagine them doing anyone harm; you couldn’t imagine why we had to lock them up. But I’d have bet you these two had killed, and many times.

  For a long while there was silence. For the life of me I couldn’t think what to say to them. “D’you want something to eat?” I eventually asked.

  Neither of them replied. In fact, you would’ve sworn I hadn’t spoken, that I didn’t even exist.

  “Well?” I said. Again they didn’t reply. I turned to Jimmy. “Not big on conversation.”

  While my back was turned the little one suddenly le
apt to his feet and ran at me, trying to push and wriggle his way through and out the door. Jimmy slammed it shut and stood there with his machete raised, looking more frightened than threatening, but I managed to get a hold on the kid and toss him back.

  “For chrissake!” I shouted, more indignant than angry—I mean, we’re old, not senile, dammit. “Get back.”

  He slumped back down with his companion and for what seemed like an awfully long time we were on the receiving end of a very hostile silence. I tell you, it’s weird. We’re only a couple of generations or so apart, but you’d swear they were of a totally different species. I couldn’t think of one thing they might respond to. I gestured to Jimmy that maybe we should go, and the two of us left them still sitting on the floor gazing at nothing.

  The one thing that had been obvious to Jimmy and me while we were in there was that we needed somewhere more suitable to hold them. Something resembling a proper cell. A little farther down the tunnel there was another, slightly larger, storeroom, full of sand and cement, planks and scaffolding, that we immediately set about clearing and converting. We put up a wall of heavy-gauge wire mesh from floor to ceiling, cutting and welding in a padlocked door and a hatch for serving food. A couple of plastic containers took care of the need for water and a toilet, and we finished up by fitting extra locks on the outside of the door.

  The following evening we transferred them over, insisting on giving them food, though they still didn’t show the slightest sign of an appetite.

  It took us a foolish amount of time to figure out why. If Lena hadn’t said something we’d probably still be wondering. I returned to the living area with their dishes, the food again untouched, and Delilah started grumbling.

  “What a waste,” she complained.

  “We can reheat it,” I told her.

  “Yeah, yeah. We can do a lot of things.”

  Lena threw some wood on the fire, sighing heavily. “Clancy, they’re not going to eat anything.”

  “Why not?”