There are boxes and crates piled high to one side of us and solid rock to the other. The ceiling is way above our heads – this place is huge. Just when I start to wonder if we’re still on the right track, there’s another mark on the rock. They’re not obvious – you wouldn’t see them if you weren’t looking. Each one is like a prize.
Before long I get a sense of the walls closing in. The boxes and crates are only stacked one layer deep and you can see rock the other side. The ceiling’s getting lower too.
And then the lights run out. It looks like we’re heading for a blank wall.
‘Okay, Mia, let’s stop for a minute.’
I switch the torch on and train the beam ahead of us.
It’s the end of the stores, but not the end of the path. That carries on through a tunnel of rock about a metre wide and just taller than me. I can hear a murmur of voices behind me. Ahead, there’s only a dense blanket of blackness.
‘All right,’ I say, trying to make my voice more confident than I feel, ‘keep holding my hand, Mia. It’s going to be a bit dark here.’
‘Where Daddy?’
‘He’s going to catch us up. Come on.’
The roof is getting lower and lower. It’s not so bad when I can walk standing up, but soon I have to crouch down, walk with bent legs. Water drips from above us. There are puddles on the floor and then we’re walking through a sheet of water one centimetre deep, that becomes two centimetres, then three.
I daren’t think too hard about it or I’ll panic. Darkness in front of us, darkness behind us, a million tonnes of earth and stone above our heads. How long did Adrian say the tunnel was? Did he say?
The space gets narrower. I go in front of Mia, but I twist round so I can still hold her hand. She’s quiet as a mouse, trotting along, keeping up.
I shine the torch ahead and there’s a solid wall a couple of metres ahead. It’s a dead end. What the …?
We’ve been set up. We’re stuck like rats in a trap.
‘Stop a minute, Mia,’ I say, and my voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. I shine the torch in front of us, up and down, to the left and right. There’s a hole in the rock on the left-hand side, about a metre high, with a white mark above it.
‘I think this is it, Mia. I think we go through there.’
‘Dark, Mummy,’ she says.
I turn round and give her a proper hug.
‘We’re nearly there,’ I say, although I haven’t got the foggiest if that’s true or not. ‘You’re being very good. Have you still got your blanket?’
‘Ah-huh.’
‘Good girl, try and keep it out of the wet.’
The only noise, apart from our voices, is water dripping into water. I can’t hear Adam or Saul any more. We could be the only people left in the world here. Should we just go back? But there’s Saul and his gun, and Adam and his knife. God knows what’s happening in that room. Don’t think about it. Keep going.
‘You crouch down, Mia. I’m going to have to go on my hands and knees. I’ll go first, shall I? You follow me. Stay close, honey.’
I put the torch in my mouth and lower myself down on all fours.
The water’s ice-cold. It’s up to my wrists, soaking my knees and shins and feet. I crawl forwards a metre or two and then I freeze. What if the water gets deeper? What if the tunnel drops away?
My heart’s going fast now; I can feel it in my throat and my ears, hammering away. I can’t move. I’m paralysed. I’m not touching the rock above me but I can still feel it, the colossal weight pressing down.
Something barges into my bottom.
‘Me not like it here.’
Mia. She snaps me out of my panic, and I press on. Time doesn’t seem to exist here, so I start counting under my breath. I can manage a minute like this. One, two, three …
At sixty, I promise myself that I can do another minute.
And so we go on.
Mia’s right behind me all the time, bumping into me with her head. It’d be irritating in any other circumstance, but every little nudge reminds me why I’m here and spurs me on. I’m doing this to keep her safe.
At two hundred and seventy, the ceiling rises away. I take the torch out of my mouth and pull myself up on the wall. My knees are sore, my hands and feet are numb with cold. Mia puts an arm round my legs and leans her head on my thighs.
I gasp clammy air into my lungs. It feels like I’ve been holding my breath for hours. I lean against the wall and try to calm down.
I shine the torch around and I can’t believe what I see. We’re in an enormous cave, empty apart from a mass of stalactites clinging to the roof and their twins reaching up from the floor. After our cell, after the tunnel, the sense of space is mind-blowing. A vast underground cavity – I’ve never seen anything like it.
‘Wow. Look, Mia.’
We stand and gape for a few seconds. Then I play the torch beam along the wall, looking for white marks. Sure enough, there’s one a few metres on.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘We can hold hands now.’
The first sign that we’re near the surface is a change underfoot. We walk out of the standing water and into dry rock. Then there’s a softening of the darkness, just a hint of something different. The air’s changing, too. There’s a smoky undercurrent hitting the back of my throat.
‘Mia, I think we’re nearly there.’
‘Nearly there,’ she parrots.
The path starts to slope noticeably upwards. We turn a corner and there it is – a soft grey lozenge of light ahead of us.
‘This is it. Oh, thank God.’
My legs start to shake. I can’t turn to jelly now. We’ve got to get out and find somewhere to rest and hide.
There’s a rusty metal gate across the entrance. It’s only propped there, though. A padlock dangles open and useless from one of its bars.
Adrian said there’d be people here to meet us, but he lied, didn’t he? He said what he had to, to get us into the stores. His betrayal sits like a cold, hard lump in my throat. In my head I see him stroking Mia’s cheek. I thought he was on our side. But he sent us into the cave with Saul. How could he do that? I don’t understand. I’ll never understand.
‘Hello?’ I call out.
There’s no answer. I peer through the makeshift gate, but there’s no sign of anyone the other side. I take hold of it and heave it to one side.
‘Come on, Mia.’
I pick my way through the gap and Mia follows. Then I slide the gate back in place. We’re in the middle of a bramble patch, but the branches by the entrance have been broken back and the ground here is trampled. People have been here, and recently.
I try again.
‘Hello?’
Even outside the light is muted. It must still be early, but we’ve stepped out into a foggy world. Everything’s shrouded in a grey haze, the fog mixed up with woodsmoke.
I can’t see the sky, but I know it’s there. It feels like a huge weight’s been lifted off me. I can breathe again, really breathe. The bramble patch is in a sloping field with layers of buildings beyond. I can’t see any people. We’ve got no chance of hiding in an open field, so we’d better make for the cover of the buildings and take it from there.
‘Here we go,’ I say, but Mia’s ahead of me. She feels the release from our prison, too. She’s taken off and is running through the field, jumping over the molehills, laughing as she runs. ‘Wait. Wait for me!’
I can’t catch her, but it’s okay, because she runs in random, crazy circles and comes back to me. Her tongue’s hanging out like a little dog and there’s a light in her eyes which has been missing for a long time.
My legs are tired and shaky, but the fresh air gives me new strength. I take Mia’s hand and we walk to the edge of the field and on to the cobbled street beyond.
The road slopes down towards the middle of the town. We pick our way over broken cobbles then follow a path between the houses. There’s an empty canal, a concrete channel three or
four metres deep and three metres across, and at the bottom of it a metal structure lying at a sad angle, the bridge that used to go across.
We stand on the edge looking down for a moment. This place is so quiet that I hear the whine of the drone even though it’s still far in the distance.
Mia’s chip. Oh God.
Is there any point running? Is there anywhere we can hide from the spy in the sky?
Daniel’s mates in the forest had the right idea: shoot the bloody things down.
I can’t give up now, though. I can’t just sit and wait to be caught.
‘We’ll have to go back,’ I say. ‘We can’t get across this.’
I feel a stab of anxiety at backtracking – so much wasted time. But we haven’t got any choice. We go up the path again and back along the cobbled street. I can’t help glancing at the field we’ve come from, the trail of dewy footprints we left heading away from the mouth of the tunnel. As I look, a figure appears in the fog. It’s too big to be Adam. Someone else has come through after us.
I tug on Mia’s hand.
‘Run, Mia. Run, run, run!’
Chapter 40: Adam
The ground’s hard beneath me. I can feel the lumps and bumps of the rock through my clothes and part of me relaxes. This isn’t flat concrete. We got out. We got out of that prison and we’re back under the stars. I reach out for Sarah, and my hand finds hers. I open my eyes. At least, I think I do. I move my eyelids, but it don’t make no difference. It’s either pitch black or I’ve gone blind. Where are we now? On some cliffs? In a cave?
‘Sarah?’
My voice echoes back to me, along with someone else’s.
‘Not Sarah. Daniel.’
Where the fuck am I?
‘Daniel?’
‘We’re in the bunker, Adam. You’ve been out cold. Saul’s got away.’
It all comes back to me. Saul and the gun. Me and the knife. Me bottling it.
‘How long’s he been gone?’
‘About five minutes.’
‘Shit!’
‘I’ve nearly got out of this belt. Can you tense your wrists, really tense them? I think I’m there.’
My hands have gone numb, but I feel a tugging, pulling sensation and then Daniel’s free. He sits up and finds the torch in my pocket. His hand’s a bloody mess.
‘I thought he’d killed you for a minute.’
‘Yeah, you and me both. That’s the second time that bastard’s shot me.’ He laughs weakly. ‘I need to stop this bleeding. Might take a while.’
‘I’ve gotta go, Daniel.’
I haul myself up to a sitting position.
‘I know. I’ll follow you. I’ll fix myself up first.’
‘Can you manage?’
‘Yeah, yeah. You get started. He’s got five minutes on you, that’s all. You can catch them.’
Another explosion sets my spine vibrating. This one sounds more like a rumble. A stream of small stones and dust tips down from the ceiling a metre away from us. ‘Daniel, this ain’t a great place to be if they’re blowing it up.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t expecting any more bombs. That’s either very good news or very bad. I might go back in there, have a look.’
‘Just get out, mate.’
‘There’s others in here might need a hand. But you must go after Sarah. Go on, Adam. Go. Follow the white dots. There’s a bit where you have to crawl, but it’s okay. Keep going. I won’t be far behind.’
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘I’m out of here. Thanks, Daniel. I’ll see you later.’
I set off, heading away from the door.
Behind me, Daniel shouts out, ‘Have you got your knife? Check Adrian’s pockets, Adam.’
I double back and go through Adrian’s things. He’s unconscious, but still breathing. I remember his number – he’ll live. But he don’t deserve to. There’s a phone, another small torch and some keys in his jacket. I pocket the torch and chuck the keys over towards Dan. ‘Here, you might find a use for these.’
Then I leg it. I run past boxes and crates and bottles and buckets. There’s so much stuff here – food, medicine, clothes. Stuff that’s sat here for two years while outside people have been starving and suffering and freezing.
I can’t think about that now. What’s in my mind is that Sarah and Mia came this way, saw this, were here minutes ago. I’ve got to get to them, catch them up, but there’s one person in between. Saul.
Chapter 41: Sarah
I want to make it a game for her, but I can’t. I’m too scared. She nods and a frown creases the space between her eyebrows. She’s caught my anxiety. She can feel my terror in the sweat oozing out of me, from my hand to hers. I squeeze her hand even tighter.
‘Run, run!’ I say and we do, as fast as we can down a big sweeping road and into the city.
There are piles of rubble, streetlights lying at all angles like metal tree trunks, but you can tell it used to be a beautiful place. Parts of it still are. Here and there the buildings remain intact, standing like sound teeth in a mouthful of decay. Still holding hands, we run past a big church with a great arched doorway. The square in front of it is full of tents and makeshift shelters, the sort of refugee camp that sprang up in every city after the Chaos. The sort of place that was meant to make do for a few weeks until we all got back on our feet. Two years later it’s the sort of place most people are still living in.
Briefly I think about stopping. Maybe we could stay here, lose ourselves in the crowd. But as we pick our way through, the stench hits me. It smells like a farmyard. Instinctively I look down. The cardboard boxes, the plastic sheets, the wads of newspaper are all sitting in a thin soup of human waste. We’re treading in it. It’s on our shoes now. I grab the hem of my coat and hold it up to my face.
‘Mia,’ I shout, ‘do this. Do it with your blanket. Hold it up.’
She doesn’t argue. She can smell it herself. Her eyes are watering and red-rimmed.
We’re nearly through the camp when I get a stitch. I pull up and gasp as the squeezing pain grips me. I stand still and lean forward, but Mia tugs on my hand.
‘Mummy, run,’ she says.
‘In a minute,’ I say, and my words are no more than a whisper. The pain’s nearly taken my breath away.
‘Mum-my,’ Mia whines. She’s dancing from foot to foot on the spot. I know she hates it here – I do too – but right now I can’t move.
‘I know, I know. Just hang on a minute.’
I try to breathe slowly and steadily. The pain eases away, my stomach muscles relax. I let Mia pull me past the last shelters, down the side of the church and on through the streets. But her foot catches in the trailing edge of her blanket. She stumbles and the blanket falls out of her hand onto the flagstones.
‘Mummy!’ she wails. Her precious blanket is lying in a puddle, wetness soaking into it, making the blue darker as we watch.
‘Oh, Mia, for goodness’ sake!’
She’s looking at it, dancing from foot to foot again.
‘There’s no point whining. We’ll have to leave it.’
‘No, Mummy. No, no!’ She stops dancing and stamps. She’s crying now, flapping her hands about.
‘Mia, come on. We haven’t got time …’
I try to tug her away, but she digs in her heels so I’m practically dragging her along the ground.
‘Mia! Stop it!’
‘Mummy. Don’t!’
She twists her hand out of mine and starts running away from me.
‘Mia, wait!’
She doesn’t turn round. She’s running hell for leather down the street, away from the church, away from me. I try to run too, but I can’t manage more than a couple of steps before I get a stitch.
‘Mia!’
Her back shouts defiance at me. She’s getting further away. The pavement is cobbled and slippery. The sound of our feet is muffled by the fog. And now I listen I realise there’s hardly any noise at all. This city has a ghostly feel – it’s a place
that’s had the life sucked out of it. And now I get a tingling in the back of my head, a sense that I’m being followed. Still moving, I look over my shoulder. There’s nothing there. All I can see is a couple of hundred metres of empty street before the fog swallows it up.
I look ahead again.
The road’s empty.
Where’s Mia? Where the hell is she?
I pick up the pace, cradling my stomach with my hands. There’s a tall wall running down the right-hand side of the road, with branches reaching over the top. It could be someone’s garden or yard. About halfway along I come to an iron gate. It’s open.
I put my hand on the metal latch. It’s cold and wet – everything’s wet in this fog. Inside I can see bushes and trees and suddenly I’m overcome by a sense of dread.
‘No, not here,’ I mutter to myself.
But she must have gone in here. It’s the only place on the street she could have gone.
‘Mia!’ I shout. ‘Come back here.’
I can’t see her. There’s a path, with trees either side of it.
I’ve seen this before. I’ve been here. I know this place.
‘Mia! Come back!’ I’m desperate now as I realise what’s happening. Dreams and reality are colliding, like they did before. Like they did in the Chaos.
I reach up to push the gate wider so I can follow her in, but the stitch is back. It’s not just in one place now, it’s spreading over and under my stomach, aching, squeezing, paralysing me. It’s not a stitch – it’s a contraction. I’m in labour. Why now? Why?
I grasp the ironwork of the gate with both hands and lean into it, trying to breathe my way through the pain. I close my eyes for a few seconds.
Breathe. Breathe. You can do this.
My eyes are closed but I can still see trees, layers of dark trunks and stones like sentries in my mind’s eye. I can feel the gravel underfoot.
There’s a face close to mine.
There’s a hand with a knife.