“They said we’re violent?” I spit in disbelief. “I went to talk to Grant and they shot him dead, we retaliated,” I shout, even though I know my anger is misdirected.
“Unfortunately the food scavenging party didn’t know this, and when they were caught breaking into an apartment it turned into a big fight.”
“So what happened to Marshall?” I ask.
“The person whose apartment it was had a knife and he got stabbed before I arrived. The whole thing just got completely out of hand,” he says, shaking his head.
***
By sunrise the only member of the gang that hasn’t made it back to the rooftop is Redd. Lake doesn’t say anything but I can tell that he’s worried by the way he drums his fingers on the concrete floor. I hope it means that Redd’s made contact with Alana again and nothing more sinister.
This time there’s no dancing in the rain when it finally comes. Instead we huddle under the canvases and try to sleep, although I suspect that it will evade most of us. I wrap my arms tightly around my mother’s diary and try to conjure the feeling of safety and protection that I had as a child, knowing that my mother was close by. I feel Lake’s warmth as he slides under the duvet and roll over to rest my head on his shoulder, but all I can hear as the new day begins is Marshall’s death rattle.
I must have fallen asleep eventually because when I awake the rooftop is silent. It’s late morning, but instead of resting or planning this evening’s activities there’s a sombre mood that hangs heavy over all of us. I look into the next tent for Marshall; he’s lying in the same position but a duvet has been laid on top of him, covering his entire body. I feel heartless to think it, but I wonder what we’re going to do with the body. It can’t stay up here, but I don’t want the officials to take him away either. Maybe we’ll be able to bury him somewhere.
There’s an empty space at the side of me where Lake slept last night and the quilt is flipped back. I see him hanging pots over the fire but, despite my intense hunger, I walk over to the door and remove the barricades. Exiting the roof, I close the door behind me and sit on the top step to gather my thoughts. I’m still holding my mother’s diary, scared to put it down for a second in case someone takes her away from me again. But at the same time I’m reluctant to continue reading for fear of what else I might uncover. I try to think of my mother and Grant as a couple, but struggle to find anything that they have in common except the secret group they were part of, which so far only appears to have three members. I suck in a deep breath and hold it, forcing it down to the bottom of my lungs. I have to read on; we need to know everything that we can about this compound if we’re going to successfully pull it down before it crushes us all.
Opening the diary, I flick through the pages rapidly from front to back. Nothing jumps out at me; there are a few more structural drawings of the layout of the compound including: the waste disposal system, irrigation unit and detailed plans of the governor’s building. But they’re drafted and redrafted with numerous changes, so I think it’s probably more artistic interpretation than fact. On a page towards the rear I see a list of names entitled, ‘On outsider payroll’, which I presume means that they cooperate with the people outside in return for extra money. Scanning down the list I see that most of them are governors, including Jericho’s father, and some high-ranking officials. I decide instantly to never trust any of these people or anything they say, but at the same time I’m left with a feeling of helplessness; it’s like trying to win a trump hand when they have all the face cards and aces.
The volume of the noise outside the apartment increases as the main door is opened downstairs, followed by the patter of nimble feet rapidly ascending the stairs. I close my mother’s diary and rise to my feet, but don’t retreat back onto the roof. As the sound reaches me I’m relieved to see a shock of flame coloured hair and an angry scar. Redd. I join him as he sinks down onto the top step to get his breath back.
“What on earth’s going on out there? People are going crazy,” he gasps.
I sigh, nodding. “Apparently the food delivery was cancelled and officials are blaming it on us. This got everyone in the compound fired up, and in a fight Marshall was stabbed and died,” I say, letting my voice trail off into silence.
“What, he’s dead?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry to spring this upon you, but his body’s still on the roof.”
“Where’s Kim?” he asks more urgently, jumping to his feet and rushing to the door.
I follow him through the door as he runs over to Kim and throws his arms around her. She sobs into his armpit, her voice sounding hoarse from the effort. Casting my gaze towards the motionless outline of Marshall, I wince at the memory of him struggling to breathe.
Nobody leaves the roof for the next week. Nobody does anything but sit and wait, paralysed by fear and uncertainty. I look around the rooftop at the rest of the gang sat in small huddles; all of them are filthy and damp, bones poking out from under their thin pale skin, blank faced with deep hollows under their eyes. I notice Star under one of the canvases; her hair is matted together with sweat and she’s shaking. She props herself up on her side only long enough to vomit into the pan beside her before flopping limply back down. It’s clear that she’s going through the agonising process of drug withdrawal, but there’s nothing that anyone can do about it in our current situation.
Lake throws more wood onto the dying embers of the fire. I walk over and sit down beside him in silence. He drapes an arm around my shoulders, flashing me a wide smile but I can see from his eyes that it isn’t sincere. Nobody’s said it yet, but we haven’t got more than a day’s food supplies up here and everyone looks in dire need of a good meal.
Leaning towards him I whisper, “I don’t like what’s happened any more than you do, but we can’t lose momentum; we’ve come too far to go back now. Things can never go back to being how they were before, so we have no choice but to go forward.” I look at his face to check his reaction but it remains neutral, his eyes fixated somewhere deep within the fire. “LAKE!” I say louder, suddenly panicked by his seeming indifference to what I’m saying.
He nods slowly. “I know. We just need to let people grieve and recover first.”
To lose momentum and stall you mean. It suddenly becomes clear how little we know about each other. I only met him a couple of weeks ago, but there are friendships here that go back as many years as they are old. “There’ll be a time to grieve, but this isn’t it,” I say aloud for everyone to hear. “We need to get back out there and convince people that we’re not the enemy, neither are the officials; the enemy is unseen. We’re fighting against the people that have not only caged our bodies, but our minds too. We need to get out there and make people understand that we didn’t cancel the food delivery, they did. There’s another world out there that I want to see because I didn’t elect to be confined in here, and had our great-grandparents known the true nature of what lay ahead, then neither would they.” I finish my speech and pause, but there’s no roar of agreement followed by people jumping to their feet like I imagined. Neither do they object; instead the silence persists, infusing everything and everyone with a sense of dread.
After a long pause, Redd finally speaks. “She’s right. As most of you know we’ve been in contact with a woman on the outside called Alana who’s told us that we’re entirely off the radar. She asked me to take some photos of the compound so I adapted one of the security cameras and emailed them to her. She’s been trying to raise awareness about our plight, but anything to do with the compound is heavily censored and it doesn’t look like help is coming anytime soon.”
“Then why are we trying to get out?” asks a girl with a thin face and hood pulled up over her head. “It doesn’t sound like it’s any better out there than it is in here?”
“It’s going to get worse in here,” I reply, trying not to sound defensive.
“Oh, it already has, about the time that we met you,” she replies.
&
nbsp; I open my mouth to respond but close it again without making a sound. Perhaps Lake’s right; maybe they just need time, or maybe I’ve outworn my welcome. Either way I know that I can’t spend another night with a dead body lying in the tent next to me. I walk towards the door; pushing it open I glance over my shoulder, but nobody’s following me. They probably think that I’m just going to sit outside again, but I have a different plan. This time instead of sitting on the steps, I begin descending them.
By the time I reach the bottom of the stairwell and throw open the main doors, I’m almost running, with absolutely no idea who I’m running from or where I’m running too. My heart hammers against my rib cage at an excessive speed compared to what’s needed to propel my body forward. The streets feel hostile and everyone seems like a threat; even a child’s face at a window becomes a possible spy. I look behind me once more but I can’t return to the rooftop. The atmosphere hangs heavy, poisoning everyone. Where I can’t stay is an easier question to answer than where I can stay. I grip my mother’s diary and clench my teeth tightly together.
It’s time to go home.
Walking home back to the apartment block that my mother and I shared, I turn the familiar corners onto streets that once felt safe but now feel incredibly exposed. Although I doubt many people would recognise me these days; I barely recognise myself when I catch my reflection in a window. Peering into the glass I notice a flash of copper mirrored in the window and whirl around. Walking towards me with a baton casually swing from his right hand is an official, the metallic buttons down the front of his uniform glinting in the sunlight. I clench my teeth; I think he was there on the night that Grant was shot.
Lowering my head I scurry down the street and around the first corner, revealing the entrance to my old apartment block. The front visage has become more dilapidated in the last couple of weeks. My mother used to pick up the rubbish but now it gathers in large piles and there is a noticeable absence of people around the apartment block. Previously, there had always been a group of children who lived in the block, playing together outside to get them out of their mother’s hair.
I break into a sprint until I’m inside the apartment block, then I stand and listen. I can’t hear anything, not even the shouting and bickering of family members behind the paper-thin walls of the apartments. A shiver runs up my spine but I urge myself forward with slow and deliberate footsteps. Leaves have blown in through the doors and gathered at the bottom of the steps. It doesn’t look like anyone has been in or out of the building in days. Reaching to pull the door closed behind me to conceal my presence, I see an official notice taped to the outside. ‘Quarantine: Typhoid outbreak, do not enter.’
My thoughts turn to Jo. If they’ve evacuated the building then I won’t know where they’ve moved her to. Concerns for my own safety evaporate instantly and I run up the stairs, taking two at a time, until I reach the top floor. I’m disappointed to see the door of Jo’s apartment blowing freely in the wind because I doubt they’ve taken the time to leave a note detailing where she’s been taken. I walk through the door regardless and try to flick the light on, but the electricity has been cut. Drawing back the curtains to let the light spill into the room, I turn around and see something that knocks all of the breath from my body like I’ve been punched in the stomach.
Jo lies on the bed. She’s not conscious enough to register my presence, but I see her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. The room’s freezing cold and heavily weaved with the vile smells of various human bodily fluids. She looks like a corpse, with grey papery skin and sunken eyes. I take her hand in mine; she’s ice-cold but there’s no electricity to keep her warm. Ideas begin popping into my head and I think with more clarity than I’ve thought in the last week. Looking at her oven, I smile when I see that it uses gas. There’s no electricity to light it but I know where I can find a lighter, as well as two more thick warm duvets and pillows.
Striding over to the interior wall that separates Jo’s apartment from the one that my mother and I once called home, I press my ear up against it and listen carefully. Silence. Walking outside I try the front door but it’s locked, so I take Jo’s large metal doorstop and throw it through the front window. The glass shatters, leaving jagged shards along the bottom of the window which I knock out with the heel of my shoe before carefully climbing through the new gap.
Inside my old apartment I’m stunned by its appearance. I thought that it would have been ransacked and destroyed — the way that empty houses are — but the apartment looks almost identical to how my mother kept it. A lump begins to rise in my throat when I think about her here. It feels like I could just go upstairs, climb into bed, and then wake up the next morning and all of this would have been a bad dream. I snap myself back from my thoughts of longing because I’m here to get things for Jo. Rushing over to my mother’s candles on the mantle, I find a box of matches tucked behind one of them — like always. I push it into my pocket and head upstairs where I pull off both of our duvets and grab an extra pillow. Then, dragging the whole lot back towards the broken window, I push them through the hole before climbing back through and hurrying back to Jo.
I lay the duvets over the top of her and prop her up a little using the extra pillow, but she still doesn’t stir. Next I turn the oven on to gas mark nine and all the hobs on full, lighting them with my mother’s lighter. Sitting back on the chair I watch her helplessly as Jo tries to cling onto life. I feel anger rising from the very darkest part of my soul, reenergising my need to escape. “THEY DIDN’T EVEN TAKE HER WITH THEM. THEY DIDN’T CONSIDER HER’S A LIFE WORTH SAVING,” I scream, with tears pricking my eyes. But I know that good wishes and warmth will only go so far; she needs antibiotics and that means that I’ll have to go back to the infirmary.
Soon.
Chapter Eighteen
When I can’t tolerate the sweet and putrid stench any longer, I sit on the wall outside looking over the compound. The sun is still suspended high in the sky, but the streets below are empty; everyone knows that something is happening and it’s scared them indoors. I decide to wait until nightfall before sneaking into the infirmary because the darkness will provide me with cover and the infirmary is quieter, but I try not to acknowledge that this was Lake’s strategy.
Not wanting to stay outdoors in the open for too long, I shuffle back into Jo’s apartment to check on her. Beads of sweat have formed on her forehead but she still feels cold. I need to steal some antibiotics as soon as possible, but it would be suicide to try and get into the infirmary now. Walking back over to the chair, the box underneath catches my eye; it’s the one that Jo’s mother left her. I slide it out, flip back the lid and peer inside at the small collection of items at the bottom. Suddenly I’m struck by an idea; there might be loads of clues in my old apartment that my mother kept but I didn’t know what they were at the time.
Climbing back in through the broken window, I walk purposefully towards my mother’s bedroom. Her smell has dissipated and the trinkets that she kept on top of the cabinets have either been moved or stolen, but the furniture is undisturbed. I start by looking through her draws, but as expected I find only clothes. It’s the same story for the wardrobe, so I begin to check on top of the wardrobe and underneath the draws—nothing. I make my way methodically through the house, becoming more disillusioned with every room that I search. When I finish searching the last cupboard in the kitchen, which is the last area in the apartment, I slump down onto the floor. Without my mother it’s nothing but an empty flat.
Looking out of the window I see that dusk has begun to fall. I’d been so caught up searching that I hadn’t even noticed the fading light in the room. Running back up to my old bedroom I pull out my favourite pair of faded blue jeans with a rip in the knee. My mother hated these jeans and tried on many occasions to persuade me to get rid of them, but I never did. I also pull out a white t-shirt, thick grey jumper with snowflakes knitted into the design that my mother gave me last Christmas, and
find my mother’s black waterproof jacket.
Climbing back out of the window, dressed in fresh clothes, I scamper down the stairs. I don’t need to think about where I’m going because my feet know the route well. Around the last corner I see the familiar rows of lights in the infirmary, but when I reach the main entrance I’m surprised to see an almost continuous flow of people entering and exiting the building. Veering to the left I walk around the side of the building to see if I can find a quieter entrance. Passing several unmarked doors with access card readers next to them, I wonder whether the card that Grant gave me would have worked but I don’t have it anymore. I left it in the first apartment that Lake took me to because I thought I’d never come back here after my mother was killed. I feel a pang of something when I bring Grant’s name to mind, but I’m not able to identify the feelings because they’ve become so muddied.
The infirmary’s footprint isn’t actually that large, just spread over many floors, and after a couple minutes jogging I reach the back entrance where the deliveries are received. Staying close to the wall I check that none of the fire exits have been left ajar by a member of staff or patient sneaking out for a cigarette. The first three that I try are tightly closed, but up ahead I see a chink of light creeping around the side of the next fire door. With a last glance over my shoulder, I claw at the edge of the door with my nails and prise it open.
Peering in through the open door I don’t see anyone inside, so I quickly slide in and pull the door closed behind me. Creeping along the corridor, I try to quieten my laboured breathing and strain my ears to listen for any sounds that might indicate someone’s heading my way. Moving cautiously, I scan the ceiling for CCTV cameras but thankfully they don’t appear to have bothered investing in them back here. I run through in my mind what will happen if I see a member of staff or even a patient. Surely everyone will know who I am now, considering recent events, and I wonder what they’ll do. Would they try to restrain me or just let the officials know? I try to think of the quietest area of the infirmary that might contain antibiotics. My best chance will probably be the storage facilities that I’ve heard about in the basement, but I’ve never been there before so I don’t know the way, or if they even keep antibiotics there.