The Lanyard (15 page)

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

His toes inched to the border between the edge of the hole and the space it contained, the deep void ahead of him, so dark it seemed to sparkle with stars, as if those specks of light in the sky were not really burning gas, or hot sticks turned end on, but a sort of static noise, as if the lack of light scared the body into creating it, into embracing it. He inched to where the dirt turned to metal, the lining of the inside of this shaft, until his shoes passed across the edge and he waited for the cold to suck the blood from his feet and his ankles to break, held in the sky by this steel frame like a dripping candle, willing his soul to discover what was below.

The hole could have been the base of a launch tube for a rocket ship, the kind he read those comics about and dreamed about seeing somewhere far away in the distant sky. He imagined a seal could come across like a closing eye and shutter it, biting through whatever was trapped, segregating the insides from the rain, from the wind. Opening in that glorious movement he had seen, or imagined at least, when it was time to launch, when the top of the rocket was allowed to jut out after it was raised into place, with men flat on their backs as they waited for the sky to be hurled at their face, as they waited for the chance to break free, to feel the rush of the fire behind them, between them, threatening to burn them up unless they ran from it forever, like the boy, like the girl. Fugitives. Heat shielded, sun shielded, protected in a wrap like those inside the tin can city at the edge of the forest, at the bottom of the mountain, amongst the long, winding road.

He looked for the charcoal stains caused by the engine. He tried to picture it, vista filled with little dots that seemed to buzz in and out of existence as he stared, tiny bits of light that still existed, trapped, or perhaps scraps of sun evaporating from his vision like water from a lake, from the white part of his eyes.

Down there was the only way out. He knew she knew it. They both knew it, now they could hear the car, could hear the wheels whizzing over the top of the earth, cracking branches, slowing down, speeding up, tracking them. No matter how far they got, with no place for them to hide except this.

"I think we can make it," he said.

She grabbed hold of him again and tugged his arm.

"Are you crazy?"

"".

"You don't even know how deep it is. You can't see the floor."

She was right. He wished on a stone, or a cairn, to dismantle and drop in to see.

"Take my hand," he said.

"Don't."

"There's no choice."

She shook her head.

He turned to face her, stared her down.

"It's the only way."

"No," she said. "We can go North. The trees get thicker... Over there... We can hide."

"I don't want to anymore."

"Down there, up here, it's still hiding. What difference does it make?"

He reached and wrapped his fingers around her hand. She opened up to him and put her hand in his. Her warmth began to enter his skin. There was fire within somewhere still. Here, there. In her heart, in his. He squeezed her hand so as to feel it further. His thumb traced a pattern around hers. It was the pattern they had walked their whole lives, looking for a mountain to climb, but finding instead a mine, a hole.

A whole.

He looked even further into her eyes, into the shaft down into her soul.

"It'll be ok," he said. "Trust me."

"But if we go down there? They could still follow us. And then we'd be trapped."

"But they won't."

"How do you know?"

"I just do," he said, staring down over the edge. "I can just tell."

Ahead the darkness seemed to swallow him. He moved his foot so that the front part of it went over the edge and appeared over the vast dark space. He twisted his toes, although they were not visible beneath the cracked leather, turning one end up and then the other so that the shadows trickled along and then fell into the abyss.

"You don't know what's inside," she said.

"It doesn't matter," he replied.

No one would follow into that. It was no longer about physically being able to, he felt it was a mental thing, a psychological thing, like the ability to look a person in the eye, to look at a giant pupil like this, like this giant knot in a tree trunk filled with serpents bigger than houses, this hole in the soul at the centre of the world. He was sure of it.

How could anyone even begin to imagine dropping through this dark glass ceiling a hundred million layers thick, which would cut and tear at the skin, reaching through the hair, through the skull, between individual drops of blood, to render. For this is where only they could go, the boy and girl, where only the young could venture.

For they had seen all of those bodies stacked up. And he had wanted to set them free, to set them ablaze. And he had come back and kneeled at the side of it with a pathetic spark and all of the red eyes watching on had granted him this, and begged him to come back. And it was in that act that route into the earth was revealed.

"It had to have burned for a reason," he said.

"No, It was us. It was us. We wanted to flush you out."

He moved forwards again.

"We started the fire," she said.

She was crying. He had not seen tears coming out of an eye before, or at least he had not looked on them... The droplets of water seemed to start right at the centre, the dot in her iris that had widened into a slug of coal with silvering across the middle, sliding around, reflecting him, reflecting them, and then gathered at the base before they grew so big as to turn the corner and spread across her cheeks like tendrils that turned and then slid to her neck. He felt them in his eyes too. He blinked and then turned away, looking down to his feet as they edged nearer to the edge.

"I know," he said.

There was no other choice. There was no place for them to escape to. The world was burned away for them, from them, no trees to hide behind. Not anymore.

He took another step. She did not move with him and his arm stretched out behind. He pulled her forward gently and she appeared at his side, eyes closed until they were both on the edge.

"There's some pipes jutting out of the sides, I can see them, not exactly a ladder, but still..."

"We can climb it?"

"Not exactly..."

"Well what?"

"We can catch onto them as we fall, like dropping through branches, like..."

"Just stop. Don't say."

She held him tighter still, and made a sharp intake of breath that sounded like a gasp.

He planned to turn in the air. He would be sure to go first and then turn his body around so that he might support her. It was something like running down a hill.

He lifted his foot from the edge. A shadow came from underneath it and tumbled down the hole. Then the sun ducked away again and the shadow would not return even when he hesitated and moved it back.

"It's time," he said.

"No.."

"I have to do it."

She shook her head again.

"We both do."

CHAPTER TWENTY

"We did it," he said with a voice that resembled the shaking shadow of a whisper, his first words in the black at the bottom of the stack, at the base of the soft cone of bodies that had caught them as they fell, the last remnants of the pyre that remained below. That remained and belittled what had been of the peak at the top, that had logged rotting bodies and rolled them like a safe hand, lifting them along and depositing them in a void as wide as they could see. His words were soft. They were calm. And they were words that meant much to him, because they had done it, the way his father had suggested. He had done it. They both had. "We got away with it."

The girl didn't reply.

He knew she had come with him. She had gone with him. She had fallen with him. And he had felt her fingers, as they fell, until she had to let go.

He said it again, lower in tone, in pitch, as if his throat was on its belly: "We got... Away..."

He said it as if they had done something significant, something bold, when really the act had been just a step and nothing more, just the feeling of the world turning on its side and forgetting to hold them as she had forgotten to hold him, betrayed by gravity's purse. He said it although the words themselves seemed to disappear into space, although the world... Still, what his father had said about the way to live life: words by which he had plunged, not to rebel, but to escape, to vanish into the night. They had done that, hadn't they? And it had felt good. It felt like progress, even if it might mean that he still dragged the guilt of whatever it was around with him like a trailer on the back of a car, as if he hung a tent for it even now.

"Where are we?" she said.

He moved towards the sound, taking a step before knocking into something soft, almost tripping, the base of that cone full of death sat at the bottom of the shaft that they had rolled down, eyes closed, eyes open, scared, indifferent, boney fingers trying to blind, trying to catch under their skin to pull it away so they'd be like them, all sharp and fragile and lost.

Darkness held in each direction as he stumbled. Dark but safe, away from the world, just the hint, suddenly, of small blinking lights set into panels far off, of jewels, of stars to possibly guide him, to guide them.

"...Some sort of bunker," he said. "A base. A place to launch rockets? Somewhere to hide? To survive? I don't know..."

"And I thought it smelled bad outside," she said from somewhere close.

He found her arm and took hold of it. His eyes adjusted. Up above the circle through which they had fallen suddenly announced as a radiant blue light, like a sun. He lead her away from the cone of bodies that began to glint, towards the side. Now the floor at their feet became dull steel plate, fading out and then in. It was hard to see much ahead.

He stopped and went for the lighter in his pocket.

"Keep moving," she said and tried to coax him along.

He resisted, staring at his hands in the dark.

The wheel clicked. The plastic stub turned into a lamp with two flicks, with sparks that came out of it and danced and twirled together before they fled into space, returning to bring flame.

In the orange moonlight he had created, she shook him off, unbuttoned the front of her shirt and began to remove it, arms getting fast as she turned it over at her wrists. This new light turned her skin into soap. Specks of dust fell across his vision and bloomed near the the top of the flame, like rain drops that had the consistency of feathers, long like hairs that seemed to twist in the slight breeze, or larger clumps with spikes. He forced his lips together and held his nose for a moment before he realised it was pointless trying to escape breathing.

"What is it?" she said. Her voice was muffled now, as if coming from a different room.

He stared back past the stream to the circle at the top of the shaft. The sun seemed to pass over with the finish of the moon. He could not look at it for long as grit began to get in his eyes. He rubbed his hair and felt it there too. It was the dust from the fire. When he looked at it too closely it seemed to string together somehow, to flow in waves that might become the braids of ropes, dangling into the shaft, following him, following them, being dropped from the city of the living up above into this chasm of death in order to finally bring them back, or finish them off. He could see it surely now, like the head of a snake looking into the pit, descending, slowly, one inch at a time, twisting with the particles in the air, the long hairs lengthening, matting, joining and extending down towards them. He could taste it in his throat. He could feel the ropes pulling at him, keeping him in place, dropping down from the moon how ancient people must have imagined they would be invaded by beings beyond their control, attacked by difference, hunted by intolerance, or whatever happened then.

He turned to the girl. She had her head tilted back, gazing up. She had wrapped one of the sleeves of her shirt around her face and disappeared behind it, pulled it tight around in loops down to her neck, where the rest of it fell like a cape across her back. The sleeve pinned her hair to her head and he imagined that it could glow underneath with all those strands of copper bundled together like that, like wires in a filament bulb, like the one his father had smashed, and all he could do was stare.

"What?" she mumbled.

"Can you breathe through that?"

She nodded and raised a brow. Then she looked back to the white circle of sky up above them. "Do you think they saw us come down here?" she said.

He turned away from her all at once remembering the sound of the gun. He fought his fists out of the clenched claws they had become, running fingers over his face and pulling on the skin of his cheek so that his eyes were forced to be wide and began to flicker with the feeling of drying out. It was always them for her, even now.

"I don't know... Can you think about anything else?"

"Uh like what?"

"Like maybe not looking back."

"Well it's kinda hard when you can't see anything ahead."

"Whatever."

"Look, maybe your Dad brought you up good. Well, mine brought me up to... hunt.

"To hunt people."

"To hunt... To track, whatever, wherever. Go ahead and beat the shit out of me if you want. If it will make you feel better. It's what I deserve."

"You said there were others?"

"Others?"

"Other piles of bodies, other pyres."

"There are, or were, I don't know..."

"You said you started the fire... Did you see it? Did you see it happen, for sure?"

"I saw them go to do it."

"But what if the fire started down here?" he said.

"Huh?"

"Well if someone started it here... that means that someone is down here... Doesn't it?"

"I already told you..."

"I know, but how would flames move down from above... Flames don't move down, they move up."

"They didn't -- they left a whole stack down here. I guess someone soon will fill it up again and we could be stuck."

"We need to look around," he said.

"How?"

He took her hand and tried to head in the direction they had moved before, into the dark, keeping an arm in front of his face to avoid hitting something.

He slowed up.

Figures lurched for him out of the blackness with long fingers, men made from bone, the corpses from the pyre brought to life, joined together with rivets and iron so that the skeleton flopped around as they floated at him, dead-dog tongues extended. He closed his eyes but it didn't help. The fear was within. Admitting it eased it some. Enough to keep going, forcing himself on to where there was a dull green glow, where he had to stop again.

"What is it?" she said.

"Nothing."

"I don't like this."

"There's light up ahead, so we can see."

"So we can be seen."

"Well, we're here now."

"You're right," she said, taking the lead and pulling him behind. All at once they were out of the dark space and in some kind of short corridor with four closed doors running along the sides, and a noticeboard filled with squares of different paper that have taken on the green tinge down at the end. The corridor floor was tiled rather than metal. Their footsteps began to echo along it. Black square. White square. Red. A red splotch. They ignored it collectively.

He hoped she hadn't seen it.

On the noticeboard was a map of ordinary people's lives flattened and pinned to cork. There are pictures of men in white coats, hugging one another, arms around shoulders, with lank hair dipping over brows like limp string on unopened packages. Pictures of children and yellow dogs with black dots for nose and eye, lists of times and dates, impossible to read. A rota. It reminded him of the fridges they had found in all those other houses, with smiling faces papered over a layer of cold, of ice. Coloured letters fast to the metal, frozen words, rhymes that would slide when the door shut too hard and the meaning shifted.

"This doesn't make any sense," she said.

"I guess it
was
a bunker," he said, "a place to hide, to disappear, a place where people lived out...  Before...Where they thought they were safe?"

"Maybe nobody knew they were down here?"

"At least there might be food. Might be a torch, rope."

They returned to the doors. He pushed the first one but it stuck. He went to push it harder but she stopped him and her face took on a hesitant look that flickered with the lighter flame as he held it ahead of them, reflected in the wall. He moved the lighter near to translate her expression but she leaned away from it.

"What is it?" he said, lowering his voice.

"Just be careful, that's all."

"I am."

"Ok."

"Here, hold this." He passed the lighter to her, trying to keep his finger on the button while he swapped hands, hoping she would know to do the same, feeling all at once like a man passing on knowledge, the instruction of life, the way his father had... And then he was distracted, because he remembered his father had passed it to him so reluctantly. Because he had waited and waited until the fuel that drove them both was running out, the container made of cheap plastic emptying, just as one day the few cars that still ran on the roads would too, run out of gas, and become wrecks like the ones they passed so frequently, like he had.

Why hadn't he just told him all of the things he knew right away?

Why hadn't his mother, if she really wanted him to look her in the eye? She could have been honest at least. She could have perhaps saved them both from this. And why had his father felt he had to get away from her to do it. Maybe he couldn't look her in the eye, either. Maybe that was what girls all did if men let them, maybe they poisoned their pupils with silver mercury and then begged to be seen or destroyed, or both, turned them to heroic stone, frozen in fear.

"I'm ready," she said."

"Right. Be careful with it."

She seemed to know what she was doing. The flame flickered as he let go and then held, though steadily decreasing in size since he had set it in motion at the bottom of the shaft, as if the air was colder the further in they went and this chill was smothering the light. But it was light enough.

He took the handle with a firm grip, keeping it at
arm's
length and using it as a guide to position himself in the right place to shoulder. He tried opening the door normally one more time but nothing. So he kept the handle down and threw himself into it continuing through and plunging forward, hitting the ground and sliding some way, it felt like on ice, as she hurried to follow and pressed her hand into his back as he stood up.

Inside the room were rows of shelves that made lines down either side then turned in, criss-crossed. The shelves had containers on them. He moved towards them with a new sense of hope, no longer cautious, reaching for a box and misjudging how far away it was in the dark, knocking it so it fell into another, and another and then crashed to the floor.

The sound echoed. They clung together for a moment.

He picked up the box, not waiting for her to bring the lighter flame around, his fingers finding his way to the top of it and ripping open the cardboard seal. He sat with the box of grain cereal between his legs and began to laugh as he plunged his hands down into the bits, pulled some out and dropped them onto the floor so that they hit like heavy drops of rain, not caring to conserve them because there were enough boxes in there for them to live forever, like all of the galaxies of stars combined, spreading out around his feet.

He put one a piece into her hand and she bit it, her mouth so close to his ear that he could hear the crunches and then the saliva washing up from wherever it came to soak into them. She swallowed and her throat touched the side of his head. Her hand came back for more. He gave her a few more, and then tipped the box over her cupped hand so that a whole heap of the flakes fell onto it and piled like corpses fit to burn, spilling out to the sides, dropping like golden starlings killed by a cloud of poison gas.