My mother called me to the front room,
where she was sewing something. “I heard they’re going to give out food,” she
said.
I peered at her through the near darkness.
Though it was late morning, almost no light leaked past the iron sheets we’d
used to barricade the windows. I wondered how she could see to sew. “Where?”
“The KC Market,” she said.
“The KC Market? That’s on the other side of
the city. How do we even get there?”
“We
don’t.” Her fingers went up and down, up and down, sewing, though I could feel
her eyes on me. “I can’t walk that far. You know that.”
I didn’t have to look at the bulk of the
white bandage wrapping her shin. My question had been idiotic. “By the time I
get there they’ll have given it all out,” I objected.
“No,” she said. “I heard it’s only tomorrow
that they’ll start the distribution. If you leave right now you’ll get there in
plenty of time. Besides, it’s safer travelling at night.”
I stared at her. There was something wrong,
but I couldn’t put my finger on it. “How do you know this, anyway?” I asked.
“Who told you about this?”
“Your Auntie Tub dropped in while you were
out.” Tub was her friend from upstairs. “I don’t know where she heard it.”
“And who’s giving out this food? Who has
food to give out?”
“Does it matter who it is as long as
there’s food?”
This talk of food was making my stomach
twist with hunger. “Does Auntie Tub plan to go as well?”
I felt rather than saw her look away. “No,
she says she’ll keep me company while you go.”
My instincts were all screaming now. “Why
don’t you tell me what this is really about?”
I asked. "What's wrong?"
“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong, except that we
don’t have any food. But you know that well enough.”
“We still have some parched rice and flour.
Besides, it’s not as though anyone else has any food either. Those who are
left, I mean.”
“That’s why I’m telling you to go, so that
you can get more before we run out.” My Mother put down her sewing and rubbed
her face, the familiar gesture suddenly strange and awkward. “I wish you’d
learnt how to sew,” she said inconsequentially. “It’s not really all that hard,
but you were never interested.”
“You can teach me if you want. After all
there’s not that much to do otherwise, anyway.”
She sighed. “All right, we’ll see when you
get back. You’d better get ready to start off.”
I stared at her, puzzled. Unfortunately,
the room was too dark to make out her expression. “Will you be all right?” I
asked.
“Yes, didn’t I tell you that Tub will be
here with me? Now get ready, and make sure to dress warm.”
I stood there for a minute longer, but she
didn’t say anything more, so I went to my room.
I was pulling on my jacket when I heard the
thump of her walking stick on the floor and she appeared. “Don’t forget your
cap and balaclava,” she said.
“Mum...”
“Do it. You know why as well as I do.”
“Mum,” I repeated. “Are you sending me
away? Is that it?”
She didn’t answer for a while. Then she
slowly walked over to me and touched my cheek. “Your face is growing so thin,”
she said. “I can see the bones. You’re starving slowly, and do you think I want
to see you like this?”
“You’re starving too. And we haven’t
starved yet, have we? We’ve managed so far.”
“So far, yes, but for how much longer? If
only I hadn’t hurt my leg, like a stupid idiot, we could have left. But now I’m
stuck here.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” I glanced down at
the bandage. The window of my room was tiny, didn’t look out on the street, and
so we hadn’t had to barricade it, so the light was a little better, and I could
see that the bandage was stained with blood. “You’re bleeding again,” I said.
“It’s nothing. It’s stopped already.”
“I’ll change the bandage,” I said,
kneeling.
“No, Tub can help me do it. Go quickly
now.”
I tried one last time. “Mum. You know these
people, whoever they are – even if they’re giving out food, they may not want
to do it for free. They may want something in trade. And we have nothing.”
“Yes, I thought of that. That’s another
reason you should go now, so you can keep a lookout for anything you find on
the way, something you can trade.”
I laughed. It sounded bitter and dry as old
dust in my own ears. “You know the city has been picked clean. What could I
possibly find to trade?”
“You’ll find something,” she said. “Don’t
worry about it for now. And don’t forget this.”
I stared at the object she was holding out.
“Mum?”
“Take it, I said. You know as well as I do
it’s not safe out there.”
I took it. The gun was long and crude,
little more than a pipe with a piece of curved metal for a trigger fixed to a
wooden stock, with a rope for a sling. It felt astonishingly heavy. “Where did
you get this?”
“I had it, from before. It was left with me
by...someone. Before all this started.” Her eyes were black pools of pain. “He
never came back for it, obviously.”
I didn’t want to look at her, so I examined
the gun. With a little experimentation I managed to open the breech. The inside
was perfectly clean and smelt vaguely of oil. “Do we have bullets? It’s no good
without bullets.”
“Here.” I took the packet she held out and
emptied it on the bed. The blunt-tipped dull brass objects spilled over the
frayed sheet. “So many of them!”
“Yes, there are seventeen. I’m told that
bullets are precious these days. Maybe you could trade a few. I don’t think you
ought to, though. You may well need them.”
I counted. There were seventeen, as she’d
said. “Mum,” I said thickly. “You think I won’t come back, don’t you?”
“Of course you will.” But she wouldn’t look
at me. “Don’t forget your cap, and take some water and a bit of food for your
journey.”
“I’ll come back,” I said. “I’ll come back
to you.”
“Of course you will. Didn’t I just say so?”
She was getting increasingly impatient and disturbed. Whatever it was that was
worrying her, I was a part of it. “Go now, quickly.”
With one last look at her, which she
wouldn’t meet, I went.
***********************************************
The war
had passed this locality by, which is why we were still here, but nothing had
escaped the gangs that came afterwards, or their looting and violence. The few
vehicles still left were gutted wrecks which had long since been stripped for
everything that could be used or bartered. Every window was blocked up with
metal sheets or sandbags, but I knew most of the houses behind them were empty.
Anyone who could leave had left already. If mum had been able to walk, we’d
have gone.
And now I was going.
I shook my head, telling myself that I
would be back, but kept remembering how she wouldn’t meet my eyes. The weight
of the gun slung over my back, was a reminder, too, that she thought I wouldn’t
be coming back. A gun shouldn’t be necessary on a trip through the town. Or
should it?
We’d heard rumours, back when there were
enough people left for rumours to go round, that strange and terrible things
were happening in the world outside. The tales varied so much that we never
knew what to believe, and mum called them all nonsense anyway. Things were
strange and terrible enough already without having to invent things to worry
about, she said.
Obviously she’d changed her mind about
that.
At the far end of our street, I stopped
long enough for a quick look back. A small, squat figure was standing outside,
watching – Aunt Tub from upstairs, making sure I was going. She was still
staring after me as I turned the corner, perhaps for the last time.
The sky was heavily overcast, the day
freezing cold. I came into sight of my old school, which was now a ruin. Back
when I used to spend every day squeezed into one of the back benches of its
dingy classrooms, I often daydreamed of burning it down. Now it was a roofless,
charred wreck, and I averted my eyes as I passed.
Just beyond the school was the river and
the bridge. When I was a very young child, before all this started, it had
glittered with golden light in the summer sunshine and been swollen and brown
after the rains. Now it was a thread of stagnant grey water, from which the
rusting wreck of an overturned lorry still protruded. The bridge itself was
crumbling and littered with debris.
I’d just reached the near end of the bridge
when I heard the noise of engines, coming closer.
These days, there is nothing good
associated with engines. When the war was washing back and forth over the city,
engines meant soldiers and fighting, and you hid when you heard them. After the
war had moved elsewhere, engines meant gangs on the lookout for loot and women,
and you also hid when you heard them. I had heard none for several weeks.
Scrambling under the bridge, I crouched
down among the weeds.
The engine noises came closer, rumbling
overhead, the bridge vibrating. Then they stopped abruptly. I heard voices.
“I tell you I saw something,” someone said.
“Well, there’s nobody here now, so you must
have been mistaken. Let’s get on – we’re wasting time.”
“Maybe under the bridge?”
My heart seemed to stop. Looking
frantically round, I saw a tiny niche behind one of the pillars. It seemed
hardly big enough for a doll, but it was dark. I crushed myself into it.
I heard footsteps, and an elongated shadow
fell across the weeds and cracked concrete. I tried to press myself further
back, but there was something in there already. Fear was metallic in my mouth
and throat.
The shadow wavered and receded. “Nobody
there,” the first voice said.
“Told you. Let’s get on, before they all
know we’re coming and...”
The engines started again and I didn’t hear
the rest.
It was only when the engines had faded in
the distance that I found the strength to crawl out of the niche. Something,
dislodged by my movements, fell out too, and rolled to my feet.
Without any particular surprise, I saw that
it was a human skull.
I thought about the words I’d heard, as I
climbed back on the bridge – “before they know we’re coming and...”
And what? Hide? Run away?
I had to run away, before they saw me.
So, crouching like a hunchback, I ran.
On the other side of the bridge, the city
was different. The buildings lunged towards the sky, the streets like canyons
between cliffs. Anyone could be up there looking down, and I wasn’t certain if
this area was still controlled by gangs.
Over the last years, we’d all learnt to
avoid gangs.
The rain finally began falling, heavy drops
that looked as grey as the sky and the concrete around. A flash of lightning,
jagged and searing white, snaked across the sky. Hopefully, it would keep
anyone watching indoors. Stooping to keep the worst of the downpour off my
face, I trudged on.
***********************************************
Long
before nightfall, it was so dark that I was seeing my way by the lightning, and
I was so cold and wet that I could no longer feel my feet. And though I needed
to keep moving, just in case there really was going to be a food distribution,
I couldn’t go much further without collapsing. I needed rest.
A particularly lurid lightning flash showed
me an open doorway, a broken steel shutter curled beside it like crumpled
paper. The thunder that followed was so loud that I felt as though I’d gone
deaf. Automatically, like a hunted animal seeking shelter, I entered the
building.
It was so dark that I had to feel my way,
and I couldn’t go too far for fear of falling over something and injuring
myself. I found a spot in the corner of a bare room, from where I could just
see the entrance, and sat down, the wall to my back, and set about trying to
rub the warmth back into my arms and legs.
The next thing I knew was that the thunder
and lightning had stopped, along with the sound of rain. I was very stiff, so
much so that I could barely move. There was the indescribable sensation of it
being the middle of the night. I must have been asleep for hours.
I was about to get up and move on when I
heard voices from the next room.
“She’s just a girl,” someone said. “She
won’t fetch much.”
“Even a girl can work,” the reply came. It
was a woman. “And, in any case, we can’t afford not to sell her. After they
come back from across the river the price will go down.”
I froze, certain they were talking about
me. But there was a scratching noise and I saw the dim yellow glow of an oil
lamp reflected from the far wall. Whoever it was didn’t know I was there. I
waited, listening.
“When will they be back? Not before
tomorrow, right? So what’s the hurry?”
“You think we’ll get this kind of offer
again?” There was a contemptuous tone in the woman’s voice. “Everyone knows
that they’ve gone, so there will be slaves on the market. So...”
Realisation burst on me like one of the
lightning flashes from earlier. Those engines I’d heard earlier hadn’t been
soldiers, or a gang.
It had been a slave raid.
We’d heard that slaves were currency, now;
they were bought and sold like cattle, though worth rather less because they
weren’t food. We’d heard it, but we’d never thought it would affect us. The
only ones left in the city were those too decrepit to leave, and they’d never
make slaves.
But
those of their families who stayed back to look after them would.
I had to get away before I was found.
Moving as silently as I could, I began to
edge towards the beckoning black square of the entrance. It seemed infinitely
far away, and I’d have to pass the band of light thrown by the oil lamp. For
all I knew whoever was in the next room was looking in my direction and would
see me at once.
And two slaves would sell for more than
one, even if both were girls.
Slowly, trying not to breathe, I eased the
gun off my shoulders and fumbled a bullet out of the pouch at my belt. The
breech of the weapon, which I’d opened so easily earlier, was absurdly stiff,
and seemed far too small for the thick brass shell. But somehow or other my
frozen fingers managed to cram it into place.
I must have made some noise while loading
the gun, because as I looked up from it the oil lamp suddenly shone in my face.
“Here!” The man was a bulky silhouette
behind the lamp. “What are you doing here?”
Suddenly the gun was no longer heavy. It
was at my shoulder, and the end of the barrel pointing right at the silhouetted
head over the light of the lamp. I could feel my lips peel back from my teeth
like a snarling dog.
“Back,” I said. “Slowly, to the other
room.”
“Don’t shoot,” he said. I could hear real
fear in his voice, and it sent a thrill through me. This man was afraid of me!
“Don’t shoot. I’ll do as you say.”
“Libog?” the woman called from the other
room. “What’s wrong? Is there...” She broke off abruptly as I followed the man
round the door, and she saw the gun in my hands.
“Look, girl,” the man began. “I don’t know
who you are, but I don’t mean you any harm.”
“Shut up and sit down,” I said. I never
could have managed this tone of authority without the gun in my hands. Far in
the back of my mind a part of me was watching as though someone else altogether
was doing all these things, some young woman whom I’d never seen before. The
man sat.
The room was quite large, so the lamp only
lit the middle, and threw misshapen shadows on the walls. There was a worn
table and a few chairs, and a bed over against the wall. I could only see two
people, the man and woman I’d heard talking.
“What do you want from us?” the woman
asked, beginning to rise. I, or rather this girl whom I was watching from inside
her head, swung the gun towards her.
“Sit down, Langgam,” the man said. The
woman was shaking, whether with fear or anger I couldn’t tell. “Sit down,” he
said again.
“That’s right,” I said. “Sit down.”
They were both quite old. The man, Libog,
must have been large once, but he was now emaciated and stooped, with a
straggling white beard. The woman was small, thin, and very dark.
“If you’re planning to rob us,” Langgam
said, finally sitting, “we don’t have anything, so it’s a waste of your time.”
“I’m not planning to rob you,” I said. “All
I want you to do is stay right here and not move a muscle while I leave. If you
try to stop me, or follow me, I’ll shoot.”
Langgam’s eyes glittered like a reptile’s.
“You have no right to order us around.”
“I have every right to protect myself.” I
began backing towards the door. “Remember, don’t try to follow me.”
“Wait,” a soft voice said, from the shadows
at the back of the room. “Don’t go. Take me with you.”
Both Libog and Langgam turned together
towards the corner. “Quiet!” the woman hissed. “Stay where you are.”
“Who’s there?” I demanded. “Come here.”
There was a brief rustling, and a small
figure came into the lamp’s flickering light. It was a girl, about fourteen or
fifteen years old. Her hair hung round her face and her arms were like sticks
poking out of her faded sleeveless sweater.
“She’s ours,” Langgam snapped. “You can’t
take her.”
I ignored her. “Who are you?” I asked the
girl.
“I’m called Miri.” The girl was trembling
as hard as Langgam, but with cold. The skin of her fingers was blue. “I don’t
want to stay here with them. Take me with you.”
I stared at her and felt something close in
my head, like a door. Everything shouted at me go, leave, get out now. But I
remembered what they’d planned to do to her, and what they’d been talking about
doing while she was right there in the
room with them. I swallowed hard, feeling something like a stone roll down
my throat.
“All right,” I said. “Come.”
Langgam came halfway out of her chair, and
only Libog’s hand on her arm restrained her. “You can’t do this!”
“Look, young lady.” Libog’s voice was
weary. “We can’t stop you, but this girl is literally all we have. If we lose
her, we’ll starve.”
“So you’ll trade her for food, is that it?”
I snorted. “And when that food is gone, what will you do?” I jerked my head at
the girl. “Come quickly.”
I thought Langgam was about to make a grab
for the girl, but she sagged back in her chair, looking old and defeated. “What
will you do with her, make her your slave now? Is that it?”
“None of your concern,” I told them.
“Remember, don’t follow me or I’ll shoot.”
***********************************************
We made
it out of the house before I started shaking. The reaction was so sudden and
overwhelming that for a minute I could not walk. Doubled over, I bit down on my
own fingers to stop my teeth from chattering. I felt as though I was about to
collapse in a jerking, twitching mass on the street.
It was the girl, Miri, who got me going. I
felt her hand on my arm, pulling. “Miss,” she said, “come on, miss, please.
They’ll start chasing us in a minute.”
I let her lead me, along streets I had
never been down before. Little by little, I stopped shaking, and finally
regained control of myself enough to stop and turn to the girl. “Where are we
going?”
She looked up at me. “As far as we can from
them, so they can’t find us. They’re horrible, both of them.”
“They’re scared of my gun,” I said. We
began to walk on again. The streets were narrower here, filled with debris, and
the buildings half-ruined. It must have seen heavy fighting during the war.
“Who are you, anyway? A relative of theirs?”
The girl shook her head. “I was lost,
trying to find my parents. We were separated, during the fighting. I got sick,
and didn’t have anything to eat. They found me and took care of me, at first.”
She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Then when I could walk
again they told me that I had to work to pay for the food and medicine they’d
spent on me. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since...working.”
The mention of food reminded me that I
hadn’t eaten all day, and suddenly I was very hungry. All I had was a small bag
of parched rice, which suddenly seemed far too little for me, let alone for
both of us. But Miri’s eyes glittered hungrily as I opened the pouch, and
before I’d chewed my first mouthful, all I’d given her was gone.
“Is there any more?”she asked hopefully.
“We’ve got to keep it for later,” I said.
“Try and chew slowly, to make it last.”
Once again I wondered why I’d brought her
along, what had possessed me to do such an insane thing. But when I put away
the remnants of the rice and reached for the bottle of water I’d filled from
the rain barrel before leaving home, I found the girl’s thin shoulders shaking.
“Miri,” I asked. “Why are you crying?
What’s wrong?”
She hugged me, her face crushed against my
chest. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I know I shouldn’t have asked you to bring me
along. But I was scared.”
“You did the right thing,” I said, patting
her inadequately. Her skin was freezing. I wish I had some clothes to give her,
or that I’d taken some from Libog and
Langgam. I didn’t dare to go back, or to look in any of the buildings around. “They’d
have caught me, too, if I hadn’t had the gun. Let’s keep going.”
The clouds overhead had finally parted, and
a half-moon sent down a little light, which was lucky. The streets were so
clogged with debris and wrecked vehicles we couldn’t have passed through
otherwise. “Do you have any idea where we are?” I asked.
She giggled suddenly. “No. But isn’t it
nice to be free?”
“Yes, well...” I glanced at her. “I was
rather hoping to find food to take back home to my mum.”
“Your mother? Where were you planning to go
for food?”
“There’s supposed to be a distribution at
KC Market.” Saying it now, I realised how silly it sounded. Who had food to
distribute? And how long would it last? “You know where that is?”
“No. They talked about this KC Market
place, Libog and Langgam, I mean. I think it was quite far away.”
“Let’s go and find it. We might get
something.” We’d better find something if I were to feed myself and Miri, not
to speak of taking something back home as well for my mother.
“Do you remember what it was like before
the war?” Miri asked as we walked on.
“Yes. Why, don’t you?” She must be old
enough to remember a little at least. The war hadn’t been going on that long.
“Not much. There were four of us – my
parents, and my brother. My mum was a teacher, my father worked at an office
someplace, and I didn’t like my brother much.” She threw that last bit in
almost defiantly.
“Go on,” I said.
She pushed her straggly hair back from her
face. “The night the fighting started, where we lived, I mean, my father was
telling us a story. It was a silly story about a fairy who had lost her way in
the human world and was too stupid to find her way back. My brother wouldn’t
settle down to listen. Suddenly there was a huge loud noise, the walls shook,
and the lights went out. My mother came running in from the front room, snatched
up both of us and crawled under the bed.”
“And?” I asked absently. The mention of
lights brought memories of electricity, of lamps turning on at the flick of a
switch. It felt like another universe. “What happened then?”
“I don’t remember too clearly, but it
became hot and I couldn’t breathe. I heard my father shouting that the house
had caught fire and we had to get out. There was a big crowd outside, and
people running everywhere, and my mother dragged my brother and me by the hand
through it. But somewhere along they lost me. Maybe my mother just let me go.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“She never came back to look for me,” she
said. “I kept running, screaming for her, but she never came back. Maybe she
thought they had a better chance with one baby, not two.”
“She might have come back for you,” I said
gently, “and missed you because you’d run away looking for her.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now
anyway. At least I survived. If you call it surviving.”
I knew the rest, could picture it, the
sick, starving girl stumbling through the gutted city. “I’ll take care of you,”
I said, feeling stupid even as I said it. How could I take care of her? I
couldn’t even take care of myself. But she merely nodded.
“You already did, saving me from them.
I’ll...” She stopped abruptly. “What’s that?”
I looked up, and, for a moment, it was all
I could do to fight down a scream.
I’d heard that it had happened a few times
towards the end of the war – civilians who’d risen up against the soldiers, of
which army it didn’t matter, and had taken summary revenge. I’d never believed
it. How could even a determined and furious band of civilians take on trained
soldiers armed with machine guns, and hope to win?
Once upon a time, before the war, this must
have been a traffic signal post in the middle of a busy intersection. The
lights were long gone, the signal a truncated metal tree growing out of a
concrete stump set in the shattered ground. The soldier they’d crucified on it
still had his uniform and helmet on, but he’d been dead so long that the cloth
had fallen to rags and he was just bones and sinew, mummified flesh and teeth.
“Do you think he was still alive when they
did that?” Miri asked. There was a strange note in her voice, almost like
satisfaction. I wondered for a moment what else had happened during her
wanderings, about which she wasn’t telling me.
“I don’t know and don’t care.” There was a
banner of some kind hung from the skeleton, the letters faded almost to
illegibility. I thought I could make out FUCK FREEDOM. “Let’s go.”
The next hours seemed to merge into each
other. By the time the sky began lightening, I was so tired I was moving only
because it was less exhausting to keep going than to stop. My eyes were blurry
from tiredness, and though Miri was still stumbling on by my side, she’d
already fallen a couple of times, and I didn’t think I’d have the strength to
help her up if she fell again.
We’d managed to find our way out of the
ruined section of town which we’d spent the night wandering, and had reached a
main road I vaguely recognised. In the distance, rising like a broken tooth
from a diseased gum, was the shattered cylindrical shape of the stadium. KC
Market, or what was left of it, should be not far on the other side of that.
“Come on,” I urged her. “It’s not much
further.”
She nodded. In the early morning light, she
looked even thinner and weaker than before, and I thought she might be younger
than I’d imagined, twelve or thirteen at most. Her clothes hung on her like
rags from a scarecrow’s frame, bulging out at the waist where she’d tied an old
rope in lieu of a belt.
“What will we do if there’s no food?” she
asked.
“We still have a little bit of rice,” I
said. “After that, I don’t know.”
The morning grew brighter. It was bitterly
cold, but Miri didn’t seem to feel it so much anymore. Her grip on my arm was
tighter than before, too. It was as though she’d found some inner source of
strength and energy.
We were close enough to the stadium to see
the shell holes in the cylindrical wall when she fumbled at the rope she used
as a belt. “Wait, take this.”
I looked down at the thing she was holding
out. “What’s in that packet?”
“Open it and see.”
I took a look. The packet was half full of
small tablets, green and pink and blue. “Drugs?”
“Yes. It’s enough to buy food with. Maybe.”
“Where did you get drugs?”
“Where do you think? How do you suppose I
endured those two people without drugs? They had lots, all kinds, once, but
they mostly traded them away long ago. I’d hidden this one packet for myself.”
She sighed. “I kept it under my clothes all the time. That was the only safe
place, because I knew he wouldn’t touch me. She watched him like a hawk to make
sure he didn’t.”
I opened my mouth but the words wouldn’t
come.
“Not for my good, you understand,” she
said. “It was only because she didn’t want him straying. Of course, if they’d
sold me...I’d have taken them all together if you hadn’t brought me with you.”
“And that would have...” I suddenly
realised why she’d seemed to have got stronger. “You took some this morning,
didn’t you?”
“Just a couple of the green tablets. You
can take one too. You need it.”
“No. But why are you giving me this?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Because you
were good to me. Because we need food.”
I put the packet into my pocket. “Even if
we can’t trade these for food, I’m not giving them back to you. You do realise
that?”
She smiled. There was a cluster of cold
sores at the corner of her lip. “Do as you want. They’re yours now.”
I nodded, and gave her the rest of the rice.
“You can eat this instead.”
Quickly, as though I’d snatch the grain
back from her hands, she did.
***********************************************
There was
no food distribution at KC Market, exactly as I’d imagined.
Someone had been here recently, though. The
rows of stalls were covered overhead with fresh plastic sheeting to keep off
the weather, and the trash littering the ground hadn’t all rotted away. It
looked as though it were only waiting for shopkeepers to set up their wares,
and customers to arrive. We walked along the rows of stalls, searching for any
food that someone might have left. Unsurprisingly, we found nothing.
I think we were both so engrossed in
looking through the stalls that we must have missed the sound of engines. And
so it was that we walked round a corner and almost into their arms.
There was a moment of total frozen shock as
we stood staring at them and they back at us. There were three of them,
clustered around a small lorry. All of them had guns at their belts or slung
over their shoulders. One, in a black cap, was in the act of lowering the
tailgate. He turned round, staring.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Just look at them,” the second one said.
He was tall and had a wispy beard. “They’ll do.”
“Yes.” The young man in the black cap
dropped the tailgate the rest of the way. “This might not be a total loss after
all, then.”
The gun on my back was as far away as the
moon, and against their weapons would have been no good anyway. I began to back
slowly away. “Look, we don’t mean you any harm. Just let us go.”
“Let you go? I don’t think so.” The man in
the black cap was younger than I’d thought at first, and bigger. “Things have
been a total loss lately.”
“That’s right,” the tall bearded man
nodded. He had a scar across his face. “There’s literally nothing but bedridden
old men and senile women left. We thought we wouldn’t have a single thing to
trade with.”
“We shouldn’t trade the older one though,”
the black cap told him, pointing at me. “She’s old and pretty enough to have
better uses.”
“As long as you don’t keep her to
yourself.”
I let them talk. I’d been backing away all
the while, and was almost at the turning. If we could get past it, and take off
running through the stalls, they couldn’t follow in the lorry. They could chase
us, but they were big and heavy, and we might be able to get away.
Of course, they could shoot at us, but if
they did, they’d be risking spoiling their own merchandise, wouldn’t they?
Only another couple of steps, and I could
run. But I couldn’t, because Miri hadn’t backed away with me. She was still
standing right there, silent and staring.
“Miri,” I tried to whisper, as though it
would do any good. “Come on, Miri.” But my whisper was stuck in my throat.
The man in the black cap reached out and
took her arm. It was too late, I should run, but I couldn’t. My feet were
suddenly too heavy to move.
“Wait.” It was the third man, who’d not
spoken so far. He was only slightly older than me. The small flat black pistol
in his hand was pointed in my general direction. “Take the older one, but let
this one go.”
“What?” The black cap turned. “Why?”
“I mean it. We’ll take the older one, but
we’ll let this one go.”
“No,” Miri said. “Both of us. We both go.”
There was a long silence, and then the
youngest man nodded. “I see. All right then.”
“What’s going on?” the black cap said. He dropped Miri’s arm. “I don’t
understand.”
“I’ll tell you later.” The youngest man
gestured with his weapon at me. “Get out, both of you.”
We went.
***********************************************
We were
back in the maze of the ruined city before I felt able to speak again.
“Miri...”
“Look, I don’t want to talk about it, all
right?” She kicked at a piece of rubble. “It was bad enough when my parents
abandoned me and took him with them. And now he’s...you saw what he is.”
“He let us go, Miri.”
“Yes. After I didn’t leave him a choice.”
“Did you want to go with him? Just for a
moment?”
“Why
do you even need to ask that?” She turned to me. “Did I ask them to let you go
and I’d stay with him? Did I?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” The sky was
clouding over. It would rain again soon. “We still don’t have any food.”
“We have the drugs,” she said. “They can do
magic, drugs can, if you let them. Or we can sell them for food, if we can find
anyone willing and able to buy.”
“There are plenty of unhappy people,” I
said. “Plenty of desperate people. Plenty of people willing to sell all their food
for a moment of happiness.”
“Yes, all we have to do is to find them.”
We passed the crucified soldier, and
neither of us bothered to look up at him.
The rain began to fall.
Copyright
B
Purkayastha 2017
