Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs

  Chapter 45

  The Dead and the Dying

  It felt like the game was up. Dr Meen was threatening to kill Lizzie, The Face was itching to pounce and more and more people were arriving in the shelter.

  And what's more Dr Meen was right. I didn’t have many alternatives now he held a knife to Lizzie’s throat and I didn’t know what to do. The situation was spiralling out of control. I glanced from face to face, looking for an answer. Rosie was petrified. Lizzie too. And everybody else just wanted revenge, to get their hands on the three kids that were threatening a golden future and a new order.

  It was then that, for no reason whatsoever, I thought of Albert. In that same instant I heard his voice, far off like mountains but crystal clear.

  Jay, you must destroy the Sphere!

  I looked around expecting to see Lizzie’s father, but he was no-where to be seen. Of course he wasn’t. Like I kept telling myself, this wasn’t a film. There would be no happy ending.

  Then the voice came again.

  Jay, the Sphere must be destroyed!

  Then, what Albert wanted me to do, the importance of it, hit me like a falling car. Surely it’s not up to us to destroy this thing? A bunch of kids? Surely?

  Hanz joined The Face or Ernst or whatever he was called and they sidled towards the gun. It could have been a comedy and I might have laughed if Dr Meen didn’t hold a knife to the soft throat of Lizzie, the girl who only wanted to help. And all the time the shelter became louder with the voices of the curious, becoming agitated and angry, echoing like children in a cave.

  Rosie came close and it was at that moment that Lizzie’s eyes looked for mine. They locked together for an instant and I remembered the first time we had seen each other. When she had come to ask for my help.

  How did it come to this?

  But Lizzie’s eyes had changed. The fear had left them and now they were narrowed, determined, and something passed between us, all of us, including Albert who wasn’t even here.

  I realised the ‘special powers’ we shared had shown me the horrible answer.

  I felt the cold weight of the gun in my hands, pressing hard against my hip, and I knew it was loaded and that I could use it.

  With confidence.

  Once again I thought of Albert and all that he’d said about fairness and honour and about how killing isn’t the answer. About how, if one person dies, somehow, we all suffer.

  We are all to blame.

  I thought about nothing else as I watched Lizzie bite hard into Dr Meen’s hand, the hand that held the knife. I watched as Dr Meen shouted in pain and gripped the struggling girl even tighter. I watched as the knife plunged deeper and it was then that I pulled hard on the trigger of the machine gun. There were flashes and the shelter was filled with the weapons’ horrible bark. Everybody ducked, following their instincts, the need to survive, and for a few seconds it left only me and Rosie as witnesses to what I’d done.

  I remember at the time thinking that the bullets I had fired had missed both Lizzie and Dr Meen because all I saw was their clothing move in odd ways. Little did I know that what I was watching was the bullets tear into coats and skirts and then on into both of them. I remember how it all happened in slow motion; the looks of pain and surprise on their faces; Dr Meen’s slow stumble backwards; the drop to his knees and the blood that had started to spread out and stain the clothes under his coat as if someone had taken a felt –tip pen to them. His eyes were wide in disbelief. Lizzie’s eyes were still locked on mine as she also fell to the floor, but sitting up with her legs stretched out. All I could focus on was Lizzie’s look of wonder and shock. She glanced down at herself but, unlike the doctor now stretched out on his back behind her, there was no blood.

  There was no blood!

  A rush of hope. The hope that the bullets had actually missed. I ran forwards and knelt beside her but Lizzie didn’t move. She just smiled weakly at me and I laid the dark weapon on the concrete floor.

  “Lizzie…I…” The words wouldn’t come, were stuck somewhere down in my throat like hair down a plug-hole, and I slipped an arm around her shoulders. Lizzie relaxed into me and time stood still as I cradled the little girl from 1946 and the people around us stood and looked on.

  “Lizzie.” This time the words climbed out. “I’m sorry. I had no choice.”

  It was true. The knife wound in her throat was deep and bleeding heavily but I still wasn’t sure if I’d hit Lizzie. There was still no blood from a bullet. The J-Sphere cracked and popped behind us and Lizzie whispered something as I searched for a wound.

  “Lizzie, what is it?” I asked her, leaning closer. “What do you want?”

  “Necklace…my necklace…”

  Avoiding the blood from the wound in her neck I found the chain of her Jesus on the Cross and pulled it out carefully and held the cross in my hands just below her chin. Lizzie reached up and closed a small, pale fist around it. She held it there. She looked at me. She smiled.

  I hated myself and I felt physically sick at what I’d nearly done.

  “Lizzie…” I tried again but I knew an apology would never be enough so I looked around to try and find something to stop the flow of blood from Lizzie’s neck. I caught sight of her handkerchief, dropped beside her in the struggle. So I picked it up and held it to her neck.

  And as the white handkerchief became soaked with blood I noticed a single, clean bullet wound. Small. In the centre of her chest.

  I was old enough to know the bullet had gone straight into her heart.