Into the Fire Read online

  There was a momentary stand-off, the Dragonfly hovering menacingly, the Detainees looking at one another, wondering what to do. I mean, strictly speaking, it was a Crime Against the State, and ’til only a couple of hours ago, punishable by death from a satellite. But what the hell did that have to do with Infinity? They were supposed to report the news, not make it.

  Maybe the same thought struck the other Detainees—or maybe the prospect of freedom, so tantalizingly near, was just too much. Whatever, one group suddenly made a dash toward the road and the shelter of the buildings on the far side and immediately others followed. The Dragonfly wheeled in their direction, about to issue another warning, I thought, maybe intimidate them further by flying lower over their heads, but in fact, it opened up with its lasers.

  “Noooo!” Delilah screamed, and Hanna buried her face in her hands.

  I swear, if there was one moment when all our optimism, our hopes for a new life, came tumbling down, that was it. What the hell were they doing? What gave them the right? And they weren’t just stunning people either. They were blasting them to pieces. Everywhere you looked, Detainees young and old were getting cut down. People were screaming, running this way and that, some managing to escape into the City, others so panicked they just ran blindly back into the sea.

  The Dragonfly ceased firing and the woman again warned everyone not to leave the beach, this time mentioning something about “emergency powers.”

  “Let’s go,” I told the others.

  “Big Guy!” Jimmy protested, fearing we’d be spotted.

  “Come on!” I urged, glancing up, seeing another chopper leaving the Infinity roof.

  That was all the persuasion anyone needed. I took Lena’s hand and began to run as fast as this hulking old frame was able, calling at the others to keep up. Where we went exactly, I don’t know. It just became this crazy headlong dash down alleyways and through back streets, clinging to cover and shadows, desperate to get as far away as we could.

  At one point we turned a corner and came face to face with this huge blaze. I never seen anything like it, roaring and crackling away, not only sending flames several blocks into the air, but occasionally shooting them out horizontally, so they ignited other buildings. The heat was that intense, even from a hundred or more yards away, we had to back off and find another route. Nor was anyone doing anything about it. It had just been left to burn, to consume whatever it wanted. For sure there were no emergency vehicles around. I guess there were just too many fires and not enough resources.

  A couple of times, no matter how much we tried to avoid it, we literally ran into Mainlanders. The first group were like those on the beach—pale, ghostly; we were gone before they could even react—while the others more or less ignored us. Amongst everything else that was going on, I guess we weren’t exactly a priority, just more patients loose in the asylum.

  After a while, especially for us oldies, pain and discomfort began to overwhelm adrenalin and we were forced to stop, gasping for breath, begging the old ticker to calm down. Jimmy tried to be smart, to freewheel on the moving sidewalk, but it stopped the moment he got on and wouldn’t start again ’til he got off (it scans you, looks for your credit implant, usually on your wrist or behind your ear).

  I started searching for signposts and the quickest way out of the City, though actually, apart from what happened on the waterfront, things hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as I’d expected. Most streets were more or less functioning as normal. On the other hand, it was disturbingly quiet and I wondered if, maybe, we hadn’t come across the main event yet.

  As we approached the commercial district and the up-market shopping area I began to realize how right I was. You could feel the atmosphere starting to change. There were more people, a simmering clamor, and gradually, one sound that overwhelmed all others. I didn’t recognize it at first. It was like a plague of insects, the cry of a thousand cicadas on a warm summer evening, but as we got closer, it finally hit me. It was a mass accumulation of alarms, hundreds and hundreds of them, all different notes, different kinds, all futilely signaling their premises had been breached, crying out for help that plainly wasn’t gonna come. And as we turned the corner into one of the main shopping streets, finally we saw where everyone had gone.

  From one end to the other, as far as you could see, it was bedlam, with store after store being looted. People were using baseball bats, sledgehammers, scaffolding poles, anything to smash their way in. Within minutes, sometimes seconds, they reemerged laden down with so much stuff they could barely carry it. Their first few steps outside were always that bit tentative, taking a quick glance up at the sky, just to reassure themselves the satellites really weren’t working anymore.

  “Jesus,” I groaned, my thoughts immediately going back all those years to the Good Behavior Riots, when the state stopped paying the kids to stay out of trouble.

  “Quite a party,” Delilah croaked.

  I turned to Lena to explain what was going on, but she cut me short.

  “I can guess.”

  “You’re better off not seeing this,” Delilah told her.

  I don’t know why, but I glanced at the kids, concerned how they would react. I wasn’t altogether surprised to see Gordie looking just that little bit interested.

  “Anything you like?” I asked.

  He just shrugged and looked away, and I realized I’d gone too far. “Sorry,” I said, patting him on the shoulder.

  Again he shrugged. That kid’s got a whole dictionary of them, and each and every one’s got a different meaning.

  “I was out of line,” I added, but he still didn’t seem that bothered.

  The one good thing about what was going on, leastways as far as we were concerned, was that, amongst it, the presence of a small group of Detainees was unlikely to be noticed. And you know, I don’t condone such behavior—no matter what I used to get up to in the old days, I’ve now come to see all crime as wrong—but as we made our way down that street, and despite all the mayhem, I couldn’t help but feel that little bit relieved, that if that was it, their generation’s version of anarchy, then maybe we were getting off lightly. But I should’ve known better.

  We hadn’t gone more than three or four blocks before we heard it—a different sound this time, more potent, more threatening. In fact, it reminded me of being on the Island on a foggy night. There were the same wild shouts, the same frightened screams, the same summoning of madness.

  I guess we could’ve worked our way around it, but our curiosity got the better of us. There was an open area, set back from the street, and something was really burning away in there. As we approached you could hear this kind of low grumbling, like an explosion that couldn’t quite reach its detonation point but was furiously trying, and finally we came face to face with a scene which was much more in line with what I’d been expecting.

  There was this shiny new shopping centre—it couldn’t have been open for long, but all eight or nine floors of it were blazing away like it was made of rice-paper. And dancing all around, high on drink, drugs or merely adrenalin, thousands of rioters were, not only looting everything in sight, but burning it down as well.

  Most of the outside of the building was glass, and just as we rounded the corner some of its huge panes reached a point where they simply exploded, showering debris down on those below.

  “Jesus! Not cool!” Jimmy cried, instinctively backing away.

  All around us flames were leaping into the air the way they might when you light a barbecue—the same curve and character—but a thousand times higher, a million times more potent. The whole world was alight. Worse still, there was a pitched battle going on. People were fighting all over, and it didn’t take long to work out why. Looters were wrestling with looters, trying to steal what had already been stolen. A lot of them were armed with clubs or knives. I actually saw one guy stabbed to death by a gang of girls. I was going to get over there, try to stop them, but it was too late. They just grabbed up
his stuff—shoes, a handbag, maybe for his girlfriend or something—and ran off. Not going far before they spotted someone else who had something they wanted, a teenage couple, and immediately surrounded them. Everywhere we looked people were being beaten, even slain, for something that was never theirs in the first place.

  “Let’s go,” I told the others, though they were almost too stunned to move. “Jimmy!”

  “Can’t we help?” Lena asked.

  I turned to her, saw those sightless eyes registering such confusion. “No. We can’t.”

  When I took her hand there was a moment of resistance before I managed to persuade her that there was no other choice, that anything else would only be putting us all in danger, and we took off as quickly as we could. The kids having to be told to keep up, as if they would like to have stayed a little longer, that what we witnessed wasn’t much more than entertainment to them.

  I mean, that was it, that was what I feared more than anything, that the loss of the satellites would result in total breakdown, and I should’ve known that was where it’d be, in the home of designer labels and luxury goods. We saw two bodies on the sidewalk, still lying where they’d thrown themselves out of burning buildings, but we just kept going. This might’ve once been my city, my home, but having seen what I had I didn’t want to spend so much as a night there. I wanted to wake in the morning in a quiet country lane, or at the very least a leafy garden suburb, on the threshold of the countryside and freedom.

  What I didn’t appreciate was how hard I was pushing everybody, including myself, to achieve that goal.

  A little later, Jimmy came pegging up to Lena and me, his limp worse than I’d seen it in a while. “Big Guy, we have to stop soon,” he told me. “Lile can’t go much further.”

  “We gotta get out of this city,” I told him.

  “Tonight?” he exclaimed.

  “Uh-huh,” I replied, not letting my pace drop for a moment.

  “Clancy,” Lena protested. “We’re too tired.”

  I was about to argue the point, but looking at her, realizing how much more difficult it must’ve been, that she’d been hanging onto my hand running into nothingness ever since we left the Island, I saw I had no choice. “Okay,” I sighed, a little reluctantly. “Just for a few hours.”

  We took a couple of side streets into an unfashionable area where things were a bit more downmarket, less likely to be of interest, and eventually came across this old abandoned carpet store. Lord knows how long it’d been since it was in business—long enough for rust to have melded shut the padlock and grill. I forced them apart, wrenched the wire aside, then kicked the front door open.

  The first thing we saw was the welcome sight of a pile of carpet offcuts, in all colors and sizes, that we could use to sleep on. Lena and me grabbed a handful and retired to the back office, Jimmy and Delilah pretty well flopped out where they were, while Gordie and Arturo did the same. Only Hanna spent any time choosing exactly where she wanted to be, ending up at the far end of the room, as far away from those boys as possible.

  The moment I lay down, I realized I was every bit as tired as everyone else. Every muscle and bone in my old body seemed to be setting up a chattering protest. And yet, with Lena asleep in my arms within minutes, I was wide awake, thoughts whipping around my head like trash in a typhoon.

  What do they say about never going back? This was supposed to be my home. Okay, so we were nowhere near my patch, but I had the feeling that even if I was, even if this was my old street, I still wouldn’t feel warmly disposed toward it.

  To think we imagined this place would be heaven—okay, so not our idea of heaven exactly, but someone’s, maybe. Only a few hours ago we’d been making our way across from the Island, so excited to be free at last, at where we were going. Now look at us. So far we’ve confronted addicts, looters, arsonists, murderers—though all of them pale in comparison with Infinity. I mean, what the hell’s going on with them? Have they taken over law and order? And what does that mean for us?

  Just at that moment, Lena stirred in my arms, almost as if she could sense my fretting. “You okay?” she mumbled out of the dark, plainly only half awake.

  “We’re only stopping for a few hours,” I reminded her. “I want to be away from this place as soon as we can.”

  I waited for a protest that I was being obsessive, but there was none, and I realized she’d already fallen back to sleep. I kissed her on the forehead. I mean, whatever or wherever, I’m still the luckiest dumb old big guy in the world. No question.

  The last thing I reminded myself before I finally succumbed to that unfamiliar darkness was that it was up to me. I would have to get everyone up at first light, ignore their inevitable grumbling and get them out on the road. Too bad if they hated me for it. Above everything, we needed to get away, out into the country, and resurrect our bid for freedom and a better life.

  Though, in fact, did I but know it, it was already too late.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sometimes I wonder if it’s sleep that won’t come to me, or me that won’t allow it, that I don’t care for what it brings. Maybe it was being back in the City, my memories getting all stirred up, but I dreamed it was the old days and I was driving Mr. Meltoni.

  I could see that proud smile of his in my rearview mirror as he gazed out the window at his domain, the streets he owned, people nodding and bowing as we went by. As his main muscle and minder, I had it pretty good, I can tell you. Fancy lifestyle, plenty of money . . . plenty of R.E.S.P.E.C.T. And yet, somewhere along the line, I dunno why, and no matter how much I loved the guy, I began to feel that what I was doing wasn’t right. That nothing was worth what was going on, and especially not money. Even before he died, I’d stopped getting my hands dirty. When he did finally pass on, well, it was an easy decision: I was going straight, off to start a new life. The only problem was, my timing couldn’t have been worse. The world economy hadn’t had another hiccough, more of a damn cardiac arrest. A combination of greed, demographics and straight-out stupidity meant that even governments had gone broke, and could no longer afford to look after the needy, or the old, or the sick, nor could they provide any of the essentials like hospitals or schooling. If you couldn’t pay for it, you couldn’t have it, and that was it.

  The pension I’d contributed to every month for all those years got “lost” somewhere, probably in some fat cat’s pocket. I was classified as an “unsupported retiree”—an old person with no money or family—and sent out with the rest of society’s waste to live on the “Island”: a mountain of landfill in the middle of a polluted sea.

  I never dreamed I could hate life the way I did out there. No chance of escaping, not with those punishment satellites—if you tried, you got zapped. The only other inhabitants apart from us old folks were the kids. Kids who never got to go to school; who’d always been told that old people and their selfishness were to blame for the world’s misfortunes, some who’d got into trouble and whose parents couldn’t afford to pay for their incarceration. And boy, did they have it in for us. Though the real bane of our torturous existence was the Wastelords.

  The Wastelords were the dyed-in-the-wool Island survivors, young offenders, now adults—who abused the smaller kids in every way. They fed them drugs when the fog came down and the satellites weren’t working and encouraged them to go up to the Village and “have a good time”—in other words, to run amok, butchering us, burning us out . . .

  I guess there’s a worse life somewhere in this world, but I can’t imagine it. However, if there’s one thing I do know, it’s to never give up hope. One day I stumbled on this blind young woman living alone in the old subway tunnels, and from then on everything changed. Lena saved me, she took care of me, and finally, she gave me something I never thought I’d know in my sad old big-guy life: love. The two of us lived underground with Jimmy and Delilah, later joined by Gordie, Arturo and Hanna: the kids we captured, who became our friends—well, more like family really.

  E
ventually the day came when we were forced into fighting the Wastelords—but Jimmy had other, much grander ideas. He may be in his seventies, but when it comes to original computer geniuses, you won’t find any better. He’s always tinkering with stuff, pulling it apart, putting bits with other bits so it does something else, things I wouldn’t even begin to understand. He found a way of destroying the punishment satellites, which is how we all ended up out on that ocean last night.

  I don’t know when exactly, but somewhere along the line my subconscious must’ve decided that Lena had earned the right to be as present in my dream world as she is in my real one. And I guess as we’ve kept each other company just about every minute of the day and night since we became an item, that’s not exactly surprising. What is surprising—and I can think of any number of people who’d raise an eyebrow or two—is that this level of companionship should happen to me. I’d always seen myself as a loner, someone who prefers his own company to that of others. But I guess the truth is, there aren’t too many who want to admit to being lonely, and I’m no exception. There’s a stigma attached, an implication that you ain’t so much lonely as a loser. I mean, I’m sure there are people out there who prefer being on their own, ’course there are, but contrary to appearances—contrary to what I’d always assumed myself—I ain’t one of them.

  And don’t get the idea that Lena’s around just to alleviate that condition either. Nothing could be further from the truth. That woman’s taught my tone-deaf old heart to sing. I’d give my life a thousand times over for her—and that ain’t just talk either. I’d die happy knowing I prolonged her existence for just one single day. And as I sit here, holding her in my arms, both of us silently gazing out across the lake in the park to the shimmering warmth of the trees on the other side (it’s gone now, they built on it twenty-odd years ago), I know two things: one, that I’m dreaming, and two, that when I awake, when I make that transition from this world to the other, she’ll be there beside me too.