Boy in the Tower (21 page)

As if I’m blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.

There’s no time for sleeping. And from somewhere in my head, a line of a poem pops out. I don’t feel like I can understand poems most of the time, but this one has stayed with me for a long time. Well, one line of it anyway. It’s something like:
And miles to go before I sleep . . . miles to go before I sleep
.

I’m not even sure exactly how long a mile is. Is it as long as a corridor in the tower? Or is it more like the length of ten double-decker buses? It’s probably longer. Miles and miles. It sounds like a long way. Walking down to the basement that night, it feels just like that. Miles and miles.

And then I am there and I am about to shout out to the others, and I can hear their voices talking, talking through the doorway, and then I hear something that stops me. Someone laughing. It’s a weird sound that bounces off the dark walls and I can’t understand why someone would be laughing when we are all in danger.

Then I hear Dory’s voice.

‘Stop crying, pet,’ she commands, not unkindly. ‘We need to think about what to do. We need a new plan. We can’t give up all hope. Not yet. Think of Ade. We are going to get him out of this, if it’s the last thing we do.’

I turn the light of my torch off and I don’t move. I flatten myself against the wall and listen in the darkness.

‘They’re in the building, Dory,’ Ben is saying. ‘What else can we do? The spores are in the air. We can block off the lower floors but they’re going to take over soon.’

‘Ben’s right,’ Obi says. ‘We haven’t got enough salt left now. All we can do is try and use the salt we have left on the one coming up the drain and then move further up the tower and then – then . . .’

‘Wait to be rescued. They’ll come. They’ll come. Did you listen to the radio tonight? Did they mention it?’ Dory says.

‘There’s a meeting about it tonight, I think. But they don’t think there are any survivors. They don’t know we’re here,’ Obi says.

There’s a long pause then, where the only sound is Mum’s cries. They are getting quieter now, though.

‘I’d better get the mask on and salt that Blucher,’ Obi says. ‘Coming up the water pipes.’ He gives a little almost-laugh. ‘I didn’t see that one coming.’

And then Mum says, ‘But the spores are through there, Obi. They’ll be in the air now.’

I can imagine Obi turning to her, as he once did to me. Back when I told him that I’d seen lights in the other tower and I thought Gaia was in there.

‘We must try to stop them,’ he says. ‘We must try for Ade.’

I walk away then, as quietly as I can, spreading my weight across my soles like I used to when I played the Silence Game, and I move noiselessly down the corridor, back to my flat.

I don’t want them to know that I heard everything they said.

Despite everything, I can’t help feeling cross that they didn’t tell me they had a radio all along. It’s difficult to explain why, after what I have just heard – even that the Bluchers have come up through the water pipes into the tower – I mostly feel upset about that.

And left out, I guess. Left out. It’s yet another thought I’ve had tonight that I need to unravel from my fingers and let fall to the floor. Because the other thing that I’ve overheard is how far they’ll go to protect me.

And it’s weird because it seems like, from their voices, they want to save me more than they want to save themselves. Even though they can’t, really, and Dory still believes for no reason that we will be saved, and Obi’s going to go into a room with spores in the air just to give us a last chance to survive this.

And I hang onto that thought and it makes me want to cry, but mostly to never forget that this is what people do for each other.

Obi said we were almost out of salt, so I go back to the upper floors and start collecting up the piles I made into a bin bag. When I fill one up, I start the journey downstairs again. It takes both my hands to carry it.

‘Ade! Ade!’ I can hear Mum running up the stairs, calling out to me. ‘Ade! Ade!’

‘I’m here, Mum,’ I shout down, and she runs up to me and hugs me so tightly that I think she’s going to break me.

‘Something’s happened,’ Mum says. ‘There’s a Blucher in the water pipe – they’re in the building.’

I can see where her tears have dried on her cheeks and the little white smudges where she has tried to wipe them away.

‘We need to get a mask on you,’ she says. ‘Just in case.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘We’ve only got two masks. Why do I need to wear one?’

‘Come downstairs and we’ll explain what we’re going to do,’ Mum says.

I don’t want to wear a mask.

I know what Mum means: they want to make sure I’ll be OK by giving me a mask. But I won’t wear one when it means the others can’t.

I don’t want them to protect me any more. I want to help them.

‘I’m not going down with you, Mum,’ I say.

She looks shocked, as if I have slapped her around the face. I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever said I won’t do something she’s asked me to do.

‘You need to take this bag of salt down to the others while I collect the rest of it.’

I hold the bag out towards Mum. She hesitates.

‘We need this salt, Mum. Take it down to them and I’ll come down with another bag when I’ve collected it.’

‘No,’ Mum says. I’m about to start pleading with her when I see a small but distinct twinkle in her eye.

‘No,’ she says again. ‘I’ll come back up for the next one.’ And she gives me a look that is not quite a smile but could almost be one.

She takes the bag and starts running down the stairs with it. She looks like she might fall over it and the bag bangs against each stair as she drags it alongside her. I have to get moving.

I run back up to fill another bag with the salt I found. There isn’t enough to fill it completely, so I’m back to going through people’s cupboards. I knock chairs over that I don’t see in the dark and I yank open doors, but I’m not able to find very much in people’s kitchens any more and I wonder if it is because I am not looking properly now, I’m panicking.

I remember what Dory said about missing someone, about it being a good thing because it shows that you care for someone. But it doesn’t feel like a good thing that I won’t see Gaia again. It feels like a knife through my chest.

I’m looking and looking for packets of salt or salt cellars, and tears run down my face.
I don’t want it to be the end
, I think.
This can’t be it, can it? I can’t believe I won’t see Gaia again
.

I grab at boxes and jars, but the tears have blurred my sight so I can’t read their labels.

‘Ade, it’s not up for discussion. As soon as we see the first crack you’re putting the mask on and you’re getting out of here. As far as you can go. You keep walking, run if you can, you don’t stop. Do you hear?’

Obi’s talking and talking at me but he’s not looking at me. He’s walking up and down the room in front of me and talking to his feet.

‘When you see the rescue helicopter, you take these fireworks and you put them in the ground and light them with these matches and then run away as far as you can until they’ve stopped exploding. The helicopter will find you then. OK?’

Obi’s packed up a bag with fireworks and some food for me, and also the rucksack with the silver oxygen canister in it. We only have one left now because the other one is empty after my adventure outside when I found Pigeon, and Obi used the last of it to go into the basement to kill off the Blucher in the water pipe.

Ben and Mum are pouring the last of the salt out of the windows so it’s just me, Obi and Dory again. Just like on the first day I found the water.

‘Dory, can you tell him?’

I won’t answer Obi’s questions. I can’t leave the tower without them. I won’t.

‘Ade,’ Dory says. ‘Ade, please look at me when I’m talking to you.’

I look up at her kind, familiar face.

‘Do you know why Obi and I didn’t leave the tower when everyone else did?’

‘No,’ I say.

‘Well, it was because of you. We knew about you. And your mum. And when you didn’t leave, we decided that we might as well hang around too. We didn’t care about the Bluchers and what might happen to us. Look at us. We don’t get these wrinkles from doing nothing. Obi and I have had great, great lives, and they’ve been made all the greater by knowing you at the end of them. You must leave this tower by yourself, dear Ade. I know it’s not what you want, but you must try to give yourself this one last chance. It’s what we all want. Me, Obi, Ben – and your mum most of all. I know there’s someone out there you are missing. I’m right, aren’t I? There is someone. You must go to them now. We can’t go with you. I’m so terribly sorry that we can’t. There’s only one oxygen tank left now and it’s yours, Ade. It’s meant for you. I know you can do this, Ade, because there’s someone out there you are missing and it’s time for you to go to them now.’

I feel a great weariness coming over me. A heaviness that pulls on the back of my eyeballs and down on my throat. I hear someone gasping and then I realize that it’s coming from me.

I cry and I cry.

And I realize that I must go.

‘That’s all of it gone,’ Ben says when he and Mum return.

I see Dory give Mum a small nod as she comes in, and Mum runs to me and gives me another one of those hugs that feels like it might break me.

‘You’re going to be OK, you’re going to be OK,’ Mum says. She speaks into my head as she’s holding me and her voice sounds muffled but I can hear her start to cry as she says it.

‘We haven’t got long,’ Obi says, and he looks out of the window at the tracks of rain running down the glass.

Obi helps me put the rucksack on and Mum takes off the scarf that she was wearing for me.

I know soon I’ll have to put the mask on, and no one will be able to hear what I’m saying, but I don’t really know what to say while I can still speak.

I don’t know how to say goodbye.

In the end, I don’t have to worry about that at all.

Just as Mum places the scarf around my neck, the walls of the room start to move around us.

Obi grabs the mask and pulls it over my mouth and starts to tape it up. He doesn’t look me in the eye, he just looks at the mask he is covering with tape. Then he ties the scarf around my face tightly so just my eyes are showing.

Pictures fall from the wall and smash on the floor. I close my eyes. Is the tower going to fall? Is this the end?

‘Good luck, kid,’ I hear Obi say.

The shaking has stopped. We aren’t crashing to the ground. I’m not sliding across the floor in a heap. Obi presses a torch and the bag of fireworks into my hand, and I hear Ben shouting, ‘Goodbye, Ade!’ over the din. Mum grabs my hand and pulls me to the door.

‘Go well, dear Ade,’ I hear Dory say.

Mum pulls me into the corridor and towards the staircase.

‘There’s no time, darling, just go,’ she says, and she pushes me towards the stairs. ‘You go from here.’ Her words are choked with tears but I can understand her.

‘Go now, go!’ she shouts.

I turn my back to her but I hear the last thing she says before the doors swing shut behind me.

‘Know that I love you, Ade. I really love you.’

Then the doors shut and I really am on my own.

I can see cracks in the walls as I walk down to the lower floors. They are thin and long at the moment, like spider webs, but I feel like I can see them widening before my eyes.

My head hurts. I want to turn back but my legs carry me all the way down to the basement. I go past Obi’s little bedroom and pull the plastic sheets down from the doors. I almost feel like I’m a robot, doing these things. I don’t think about them too much, I just do them.

Then I am there, right in front of the door which will take me outside, and without hesitating I put my hand on the handle and push it open. There’s something in front of the door so I can’t get it fully open.

It’s a tall, shiny Blucher, leaning right into the tower.

I edge past it and squeeze through the narrow opening.

I am surrounded by Bluchers. They have grown so thick it’s hard to find a path through them.

I have to force my way through, looking for gaps and finding holes, but I feel trapped, surrounded.

I am in a forest of Bluchers and there is no way out.

Then I hear a sound I haven’t heard in a very long time.

It takes me a moment to remember what it is. It is a bit like a heartbeat. Steady and strong. But much faster and louder.

The sound of a helicopter. Close by. Just above.

They have come to rescue us, just as Obi promised, just as Dory hoped.

I look up and I can see it! It’s real!

It’s hovering just by the top of the tower and it is waiting there. It is waiting for us to get to the top, to get into the helicopter, to rescue us.

I quickly turn round towards the tower, but I can’t see the door any more. It’s hidden behind the thick clusters of Bluchers, which are hungrily feasting on our building.

I can’t see how to get back.

I don’t know the way.

‘Follow my voice, Ade,’ Gaia said. ‘I’m over here.’

We were playing a kind of Blind Man’s Buff, but it was a much nicer version where kids didn’t push you about all the time. It was only me and Gaia playing it and I just had to try and find her by following the sound of her voice
.

‘Ade, Ade, I’m over here,’ Gaia said again, and I walked uncertainly in that direction and put my hands out in front of me
.

I felt something solid
.

I ‘Yes, you’ve found me,’ she said, and pulled the blindfold from my eyes so I could see her smiling face
 . . .

As I stand there, looking for the door, I think I can hear someone calling my name. I move towards the sound, and I push past a tall Blucher in my way.

I stop and listen. I hear it again.

I weave past another few Bluchers and stop again.