Into the Fire (4 page)

“
No!
” Delilah protested.

I didn't know what to do. If things got any worse, I wouldn't bet on any of us getting through—yet it meant everything that we did.

“We should stick together,” Lena said. “Whatever we decide.”

I suggested finding some water, maybe wetting a handkerchief or something for Delilah to cover her nose; it might see her through. However, at that moment we saw this small group coming down the hill, emerging out of the smoke, coughing and spluttering, obviously in some distress.

I didn't know whether to speak to them or not—who knows who you might be getting mixed up with? But as they got closer, I thought I recognized one of them from the Island.

“Hey!” I called over.

They slowed but didn't stop, I guess every bit as suspicious of us as we were them.

“You're Detainees, right?” I asked, a look of recognition coming to one guy's face. “What's it like up there?”

“There's no way out,” he told us, breaking off from the group. “The City's completely surrounded by fire.” He just stood there for a moment, then kind of nodded apologetically, as if embarrassed to be the bringer of such bad news, before hurrying after his companions as they began to disappear down the hill into the smoke.

For a few moments none of us could bring ourselves to say anything; the only sound was Delilah's sporadic breathless hacking.

“Shit!” I groaned.

“At least that makes the decision for us,” Lena said, though there was real concern in her voice.

“Why don't I take a look?” I suggested. “There's gotta be some way out.”

“Clancy!” she said, a little irritated by my stubbornness.

Again there was silence. I mean, she was right, of course she was. The only trouble was, we had no Plan B. Nor C or D, come to that.

“This is worse than the Island,” Hanna suddenly ventured, as if she felt it was about time she gave her verdict.

I almost burst into laughter. That kid rarely says a word, but when she does, she has a habit of hitting matters right on the head.

“Just swapped fog for smoke,” Delilah complained, again starting to cough.

“And we're prisoners again,” Gordie added.

“Hey, hey—come on,” I said, not wanting to hear all this negative talk. “How long can fires burn?”

“These fires?” Jimmy answered. “Who knows?”

“Nah! Bit of rain, change in wind direction, they'll be gone. And so will we.”

Nobody replied, and I knew why. It might not be that far away, but the weather on the Mainland's completely different from the Island. Over there you can get four seasons in a day; here, with the surrounding hills, high pressure, things can get really locked in. This time of year, we might not see a change for weeks, maybe longer.

“I'm hungry!” Arturo complained again, the way kids do, as if all this life-or-death stuff is of no consequence compared with the demands of their bellies.

I paused, my eyes resting on him, my thoughts elsewhere, until it occurred to me that probably it wasn't such a bad idea, that things might look better if we got a little food in us.

I ain't got an ounce of pride, not anymore, not after living on the Island knowing the sorts of things we had to do to survive, some of the stuff we had to eat. Thing is, if you're not too fussy, you'd be surprised what people throw away. We know that better than anyone.

I'd noticed this little restaurant on the way up: Il Pomodoro Rosso, recently painted but now looking a little smoke-stained, the big Italian flag needing a wash. The windows had been boarded up—I guess as protection against looters, though I couldn't imagine it would be much of a deterrent to those we saw rampaging through
the City the previous night. We retraced our footsteps, headed up the side alley, found the trashcans and started to pick our way through them.

Okay, so hunger is the best sauce, but I still gotta say a lot of what we dug out was a helluvan improvement over what we ate on the Island. The only thing was, we'd assumed the place was empty, but while we were busily chomping away, the back door suddenly burst open and this guy came out pointing a fancy-looking hunting rifle at us.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

I put my hands up, more in a gesture of apology than anything. “Sorry. We were really hungry. We got kids with us. We thought . . . you know, it's just garbage.”

He stared at us as if we were some kind of new lowlife he hadn't come across before and didn't have a name for. Bearing in mind the way we looked, I guess that was understandable.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said, choosing to level his weapon at me.

I wasn't going to argue, especially now there were no satellites up there to stop him. I apologized again and led the others up the alleyway, the guy still squinting down the sight of his rifle, his trigger finger looking like it might twitch at any moment.

“Friendly,” Delilah commented, once we got back up to the street.

“Very.”

We walked on in silence, the full impact of our situation weighing heavier by the moment. What the hell were we going to do? How were we going to survive? This place
was
worse than the Island—maybe a whole lot worse. And, of course, the irony was, we were partly to blame. It was us who took out the satellites, who started the fires (or some of them) that caused all this smoke.

“Clancy?” Lena said, interrupting my thoughts. “We gotta find somewhere safe for the night.”

I grunted my agreement. Without satellites, there was no reason why those looting and burning should confine their activities mostly to the night, but for some reason, you knew they would. That as if
responding to some primeval call, they'd keep the very worst of their excesses for darkness. The hardcore, those we'd do best to avoid.

A lot of properties looked beaten up and deserted, but when you got closer, peered in the window or something, there were people inside. Those who'd already been the subject of intruders and were pretty hostile toward any more. We got chased by this armed gang, who might've made a real mess of us if they hadn't been distracted by an intact sports store with a window full of sneakers.

Night was rapidly starting to fall, pressing down on the smoke, compounding its darkness. In the far distance, deep in a remote fold, you could hear the sound of something starting up you'd rather not know about. None of us had spoken for a while and there was this sense that hope was dying with the remains of the day when Jimmy spotted this ruined church set back from the street.

All of us stopped and peered through the railings, even Lena, though she was sniffing rather than looking. It didn't appear that inviting—just a few walls, as crumpled as Christianity, in the middle of an overgrown churchyard; the odd gravestone poking out of the surging undergrowth like debris through floodwater. But at least it had the advantage of being isolated from other buildings, so that there'd be no chance of a fire spreading to it.

“Stay here,” I said, thinking I'd check it out, but Lena had other ideas.

“Isn't it dark?” she asked.

“Getting there,” I admitted.

“Then you need me.”

I thought about refusing, saying I preferred to go alone, but it was obvious how important it was to her. “Yeah. Sure.”

Slowly we began to pick our way through the tangle and whip of the undergrowth, expecting an angry shout at any moment, ready to turn and run. There was a path worn through there where someone had been in and out many times. However, Lena stopped, sniffed the air several times and finally gave it the nod.

“It's okay.”

I trusted her senses. I breathed a sigh of relief and made my way into the building.

Actually it wasn't much more than flagstones and mud, with walls on two sides, a little bit of roof, but most of it open to the elements. I was right; at some point quite recently it'd been someone's home. There was garbage everywhere, and the remains of a fire, and they'd used one corner as a latrine.

I sighed as if to indicate that maybe we should keep looking, but Lena put a hand on my shoulder. “It's okay,” she said. “If it was nice, everyone would want it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

I went outside, headed back toward the street and waved the others in. The moment they entered, Delilah and the kids started complaining about the smell.

“I'm sorry,” I told them. “The palace was fully booked.”

“Well, I'm not sleeping anywhere near that,” Delilah croaked, gesturing at the corner.

“Me neither!” Arturo chimed in.

“What about down below?” Lena suggested.

There was a slight pause, no one really understanding. “What d'you mean?” I asked.

“The cellar or crypt or whatever it is.”

It always amazes me what she smells, senses or hears. Really, it's like she's some superior being. And sure enough, on closer inspection, in a corner, barely discernible in the dark—plus someone had made a bit of a half-hearted attempt to disguise it with a couple of broken gravestones—we found a flight of steps.

I squatted on my haunches, peering down, but all I could see was black.

“No!” Delilah croaked, backing away. “No, thank you!”

Without saying a word, Lena pushed past us and began to feel her way down.

“Hey!” I protested, but she was already disappearing from sight.

We just stood there, helplessly waiting, yet again reminding ourselves that for her to stumble around in the dark was nothing unusual, that that was all she ever did.

“Are you okay?” I called, but there was no reply. “Lena!”

“Come on down,” she shouted at last.

With some difficulty I made my way down, the point that there wasn't a lot of room painfully emphasized by my head bumping on the overhanging stonework. One by one the others followed, the last a grumbling Delilah. I guess we were hoping for better things, but together we created nothing but chaos, everyone blundering around in the pitch-black, bumping into each other, tripping over, and yet again it crossed my mind that it was a valuable insight into Lena's world.

“Just settle down where you are,” she told us, with a touch of impatience. “At least it's dry.”

We tried to do as she asked but ended up falling over each other, sitting in each other's laps, getting in a real tangle.

“There's more room over here!” she shouted. “Hey!”

The kids started getting in an argument, accusing each other of all sorts of things, Hanna whopping Gordie, who promptly threatened to “lay her out, girl or no girl.”

“Okay! Okay!” I shouted. “That's not helping.”

Finally, we sorted ourselves out, but no matter how tired we were, how long the day, I don't think anyone was in the least bit comfortable. After a while I became aware that there was the tiniest glow of light spilling down, but initially I felt like I was being asked to bed down on nothingness, to fall back until I came across something solid to support me. Not to mention that our sudden departure from the Island meant we hadn't brought a thing with us—no blankets, no matches, just the clothes we were dressed in. And it wasn't long before we realized how cold it was.

The night started with everyone feeling out their own little space, making themselves as comfortable as they could, but it wasn't long before I heard Arturo snuggle in with Delilah and Jimmy. To my surprise, a little later, not only Hanna joined Lena and me, but eventually Gordie as well, though the tough little guy did stick it out as long as he could and, by the time he gave up, was trembling like a leaf. It took us forever to warm him up. But slowly our weariness
and the endless hours of walking overwhelmed us and one by one we fell asleep.

Couple of times in the night Gordie kneed me in the back, which I guess was his way of telling me I was snoring. Mind you, I gotta say, despite not having a clue as to my surroundings, just what that darkness held, I did sleep unusually well.

However, in the morning, with a little daylight filtering down, I gotta bit of a shock—we all did. I suppose we should've guessed. It was a church—what would you expect in the cellar of a church if not a crypt? I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by any number of graves and carved inscriptions—around the walls, the floor—and when Delilah stirred, I tell ya, she practically screamed the place down.

“What the hell?” she cried, gaping all around.

“What is it?” Jimmy asked, waking with a jolt.

“
Look!
”

He took a couple of moments, but then just shrugged. “They're not going to do you any harm,” he said, though you could see he wasn't entirely comfortable with the situation himself.

However, at that moment Delilah realized not only had she been sleeping in a crypt, but her actual bed, the flagstone she'd been lying on, was a grave.

“For the love of God!” she shrieked, leaping up with an agility I wouldn't normally associate with her. “I been sleeping with the dead!”

“Lile!”

“In the arms of a skeleton!”

“Listen,” I said, “I'd rather lie with the dead than leave myself open to those who'd make me that way.”

I was kind of pleased with that, but she didn't even notice.

“This place must be jam-packed with ghosts. I bet they had a real party last night jumping in and out of our souls.”

“Delilah! You're scaring the kids,” Lena told her.

I don't know how she knew it, but she was right. All three of them were starting to look just that little bit uneasy, especially little
Arturo—maybe 'cuz he kind of regards Delilah as his ma now, and don't like to see her upset.

“I'm going outside,” she said, making heavy weather of the steep stone steps.

“Don't worry,” Jimmy told Arturo, the moment she was gone. “There's no such thing as ghosts.”