The Disappeared (34 page)

I jam my fingers into the crack where the two doors meet and pull.

‘Blake! That could be dangerous.’

I keep pulling. I have to know where we are.

‘Blake, it won’t help.’

Something gives and I can drag the doors apart. I’m staring at the concrete lift-shaft wall. We’re wrapped in concrete and metal. I can’t breathe.

Ali tugs my sleeve.

I try to pull the flailing fear tight inside me so that I can look at her without screaming.

She points upwards. There, in the concrete wall, is the bottom of a door.
Oh, thank goodness
.

‘We only went down a little bit,’ Kay says. ‘I think it’s the door where we came in.’

She’s right. The lift barely moved before the power cut out. That’s our way out. We can get out. I need to be calm.

Ali makes to climb on me again.

‘No, let me,’ Kay says and she pushes me into a crouch so that she can climb on to my shoulders.

I put my hands on the shaft wall to steady myself as I stand up. ‘Open it,’ I say. ‘Get it open.’

She wriggles on my shoulders. ‘There’s a no-lock lock.’

‘A what?’

‘A thing that opens the door.’

‘Like a catch? Just open it, will you?’

‘Ali, give me your shrap.’

Ali slips off a piece of copper piping that is strung around her neck and hands it up to Kay.

Kay struggles. ‘It keeps slipping. The catch has got slipping stuff on.’

I sniff. I think I can smell smoke.

There’s a click. The door opens. I look up to see a strip of light. The alarm blares louder and a wave of smoky air blows in. At the top of the lift, in front of Kay’s head, is a gap, about twenty centimetres high, leading on to reception. Kay hooks her hands over the edge and pulls herself up. ‘HELP!’ she shouts. ‘HELP US!’

There’s no response.

‘I can’t see a person,’ she says.

‘Can you get out?’ I ask.

She pulls herself up with her hands till she’s standing, bent over, on my shoulders. She turns her head and slides it through the gap; when she gets to her shoulders she stops. ‘It’s too little.’

Ali taps my arm. ‘I’ll, do it.’

‘Let Ali try.’

Kay scrambles down.

‘What do I do? How can I get Blake and Kay out?’ Ali says.

I take a deep breath. My teeth are chattering. I’ve got to look after Ali. ‘If there’s a fire, Ali, or if there’s danger, then you get out of the Academy,’ I say.

‘I want to get you out,’ she says.

‘Only if there’s no danger, go back to the maintenance room. There’s a key cabinet. Like a little cupboard, a door. See if you can find the override key,’ I say.

‘What’s “key”?’

‘Like shrap. Like lots of sticks of shrap hanging up. Look for one that says “lift”. L-i-f-t.’

She nods. Kay helps her on to my shoulders and I stand up. She slides out through the gap smoothly.

Her head appears back at the gap and she smiles
.
Then she’s gone.

I look at Kay. ‘At least she’s out.’

Kay nods.

‘Could you see the fire?’ I ask.

‘No. Nothing. No person. Just a mess. Broken things.’

‘Do you think it was Info equipment that started the fire? One of those big lights? Because Ali was heading back in that direction.’

‘It could have started any place. Maybe in the kitchen. There were Specials getting into the kitchen.’

She’s right. One of Rex’s Reds and a gas cooker wouldn’t be a good combination. I touch the side of the lift. ‘Does it feel warm to you?’

‘Should we close the door?’

‘No.’ Closing the door would be like closing the lid on our coffin. That strip of light is keeping me from screaming. ‘We should leave it open so Ali can hand us the key.’

She looks at me and says, ‘Okay, we’ll leave it for Ali.’

She’s being so nice to me after I’ve been such an idiot.

‘Kay?’ She looks up at me and I can’t stop myself from reaching out and pulling her into my arms. ‘Thank you for coming to fight. And for talking to the Specials this morning. You were the one that convinced them to help me. I’m sorry I got you into this mess and I’m sorry that you didn’t get to be Dom and to do all the things that you wanted to do.’

She shakes her head and puts a hand on my cheek. ‘All I wanted, Blake, was to be not just a Special. I wanted to know how it feels to be someone.’ She looks up at me. ‘And I do. You make me feel like someone.’ She rises on tiptoes till her face is close to mine. ‘This is how it feels.’

Then she kisses me and my head fills with rushes of colour and my knees shake and I hold her in my arms and wait for the world to fall down around us.

The longer we stand here, the less likely it seems that Ali is coming back. The alarm is still moaning on. I can definitely smell smoke. I keep my eyes fixed on the gap.

‘Do you think all the Specials will get out?’ I say.

‘Ilex will open the doors. And the enforcers too, they’ll open all the doors.’

I raise my eyebrows at her.

‘They will. The enforcers need to get out and then the Specials can get out too.’

Maybe she’s right. Maybe the enforcers will forget about hating us while they’re running for their lives.

‘Blake, I don’t understand a thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Why did The Leader try to get rid of you?’

‘I told you, I’m his son.’

‘So? You’re a good one. You were Learning Community, not some Academy scum.’

I flinch when she says ‘Academy scum’.

‘It doesn’t matter. He’s ashamed of me. He was married to someone else and he . . . got my mother pregnant. You’ve got to realise that he pretends to be so moral and the perfect family man.’

‘All the Academy babies are born with no marrying.’

It’s so hard to make Kay see that things are different on the outside. ‘It’s not the same. People care about rules and the proper way of doing things.’

‘They don’t think Specials are people.’

‘They don’t realise. They need to see—’

Someone is shouting down the hall. Using the protruding lip of the control panel as a toe-hold I haul myself up to look through the gap. Down the corridor, part of the wall has collapsed. Clambering over the rubble is Ali.

‘She’s come back!’ I say. ‘She’s come back for us.’

Kay scrambles up beside me.

Then I hear more shouting. ‘STOP!’ a man bellows, followed by something else I can’t hear above the alarm.

‘ALI!’ I shout.

The man is The Leader’s aide. He’s got a gun. He grabs Ali and spins her around. He’s shaking her. I try to push my head out through the gap, but it’s too small. He’s shouting in her face. She shakes her head.

‘STOP IT,’ I shout. ‘LEAVE HER ALONE!’

He can’t hear me over the alarm. I scramble with my legs, trying to walk up the concrete. I thrust forwards. I scrape the skin off my temples and I feel the wetness of blood, but I can’t get my head out. He’s waving the gun at her.

‘LET HER GO!’

Ali’s shaking her head again. She’s just a child, why can’t he leave her alone? He’s angry. He raises his hand and smacks Ali hard across the face. She falls to the ground. He leans over her and holds her by the hair.

‘GET OFF HER!’ Kay screams.

Now the aide is right in Ali’s face. Ali stares back at him. He’s shouting at her again, but she won’t answer. He pulls her to her feet by her hair. He’s obviously furious. Then a shower of plaster rains down on them. He ducks back out of the way. Ali makes a break for it, but the man sees her. He fires his gun. Ali falls face down.

He’s shot her.

He kicks the wall in frustration then climbs back over the rubble.

‘Oh no, oh no, oh no no no,’ Kay says.

The alarm keeps shrieking.

‘COME BACK YOU EFWURDING BASTARD! YOU CAN’T LEAVE HER. SHE’S HURT.’ I’m screaming my throat raw.

‘Ali, Ali,’ Kay sobs. ‘He’s killed her. Why did he kill her? Why?’

We hang there, crying.

This is all my fault.

Then Ali raises her head.

And she starts to crawl.

‘She’s moving,’ Kay says.

She is moving, but she’s moving very slowly.

‘You can do it, Ali!’ I shout, but she’s still a long way down the corridor and I don’t think she can hear me. She slowly drags herself closer to us. When I can see her face I can tell that she is looking at me. I shout again. Nod my head to encourage her.

‘I should sign to her,’ I say to Kay, ‘but . . .’ My arms are taking my body-weight. I can’t move them.

Kay drops back into the lift and I feel her shoulders under my feet. I try to keep some weight on the top part of my arms, which are stuck out of the gap; I only move them from the elbow down, to sign to Ali.
Good girl
I sign and
well done
and
keep going
and
I will look after you
. I repeat them again and again.

She keeps her eyes fixed on me and inches forward till she’s close enough to touch. She doesn’t stop. I don’t think she can.

‘Let me down,’ I say and I hit the floor just in time to catch Ali, who rolls right through the gap and drops into my arms.

Kay closes the door behind her. The sound of the siren is slightly muffled. Ali has been shot in the shoulder. Her clothes are drenched in blood. I kneel down with her in my arms.

‘It’s all right, Ali,’ Kay says.

Ali opens her hand and I see the key. Kay takes it.

‘I got it,’ Ali says.

‘You’re a clever girl,’ I say.

‘I didn’t tell him, Blake. I didn’t tell him where you were.’

My breath catches. The aide was looking for me. Ali was protecting me. She should have told him. She shouldn’t have come back for us. She should have escaped.

‘You’ve done really well, Ali,’ I say. ‘Just hold on. Everything is going to be all right.’

There’s the sound of another shot outside.

Kay springs to her feet and inserts the override key. She presses the
down
button. We don’t move.

‘Blake,’ she says.

I turn round. There is smoke seeping through the crack at the top of the door.

‘It won’t go down,’ she says.

The smoke is getting thicker. There’s another shot. It wasn’t supposed to all end up like this. I look down at Ali. Her breathing is shallow. She’s tried so hard to get us out of here and it was all for nothing.

‘What about up?’ I say. ‘Will it go up?’

Kay presses the arrow and suddenly we shudder upwards. It doesn’t stop at the floor we’ve come from. I hold my breath, imagining that we might just go up and up till we’re stuck at the top of the shaft, but then we stop and the doors jerk halfway open. Wide enough. I stagger out, carrying Ali.

I look about. Immediately to the left there’s a security door. Kay takes my mother’s card from my pocket and opens it. We’re on the first floor in the middle of a corridor of dormitories. ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘We’ve got to get out before the whole place goes up.’

We run along the corridor. I’ve never seen the place so empty. As we speed down the main stairs I smell smoke again. We turn the corner to see black clouds pouring out of the dining hall. Ali coughs weakly. I step back.

‘Get down low,’ I say to Kay. ‘Can you see down the corridor?’ Can we get to the door?’

Kay drops to the floor and crawls forward in commando style. She’s soon back.

‘Can’t get to the door. I can’t see it. It’s all hot and fire.’

My violent urge to be out where I can see the skyline returns. ‘We’ve got to find another way out,’ I say.

And that’s when we hear the screaming.

It’s coming from one of the dormitories. ‘Take Ali,’ I say, handing her over. I run up the stairs and into the dormitory.

There are twenty or so Specials riffling through the lockers at the ends of beds. Closest to me, Rex is shaking a girl who is screaming. I pull him off her.

‘She’s got my shrap. She’s stolen my shrap,’ he says.

I look round at the Specials. They’re all draped in bits of metal. They’ve been looting the dormitories.

‘It’s all stolen, you idiot,’ I say.

Rex pushes the girl away and turns on me.

‘Don’t,’ I say and when he sees my face he drops his fists.

I pick up the lid of one of the lockers that has been ripped off its hinges and smack it against a bedstead. The metal makes a ringing sound. The Specials turn to look at me.