“I’m done with this bullshit. We got Chiu here, that’s what he wanted. This lot will look out for him, they might even get him home eventually. But I’m not waiting around here to die and I’m not going back so I can wait around to die either.”
“But we’re going on a date, remember? A real one. At the cinema. Or out for dinner.”
“Real?” Farah snorts. “Real for me is tests and scans and needles and operations. You wouldn’t care much for me in that state. Why don’t we just live while we can.”
“But we’re so close,” I say.
Farah shifts, takes another step back. I sense her closing off. This is how she survived, I think. This is how she got through all that crap. She looked like she was out there giving the teachers grief because she wanted to but she was hiding just as much as I was.
“With or without you, Kyle,” she says. “It’s your choice.”
“Farah, please,” I say, sickly. “I don’t want to lose you.”
She bites her lip. “You don’t get it, do you? You are going to lose me, Kyle. It’s inevitable.”
“What do you mean?” I say, my voice small, almost nothing. “It’s the good kind of cancer, remember? You’re going to be OK.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Farah says. “You heard Abi. Even if by some miracle I get better… I’m not going to remember you, am I? And you’re not going to remember me. Either way … if we go back, we lose each other. We lose all this.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Either way, if we go back, we lose each other.
I must have known at some level; I just didn’t want to face it. We aren’t the first to be here and yet nobody in the ordinary world knows about this place. Even if some people make it back, the most that’s left are garbled memories, fragments, the unspoken fear that fuels our horror stories. I think about Father Michael’s pamphlets, the religious stories and all the ecstatic visionaries in history. Perhaps those people were here, perhaps their wild convictions, their rushing glimpses, are all that’s left of their memories of this place.
It’s not enough, I think. I’m not like Chiu. Everything Chiu loves and cares for is at home, he doesn’t need to remember this place. For me, it’s the opposite. Everything I care for is here. Farah, of course, but not just Farah. Also, those parts of myself I’ve found since I came here. If I forget everything I ever was, does that mean I’m still me?
Maybe Farah’s right: we should stay here.
But if we stay, she might die.
Marcus is working in the hallway when we get back: delicately resetting the charges that they used to stun us when we first arrived. He’s stacked their weapons neatly by the door to the sleep lab and now that I can look at them more closely, I see that they’ve been stolen from the stock cupboards of a nearby sports outlet. Hockey goalie equipment. Golf clubs. Something that looks a bit like a home-made mediaeval flail, crafted from the bar of a dumb-bell, a length of chain and a string of weights that have been padlocked together.
“You probably should know about our system,” Marcus says. “In case anything happens.”
We follow him back into the common room. Vikram and Benedict haven’t moved since we left. Benedict scrawls in his notebook, ignoring us entirely. Vikram looks up from his journal and watches with an air of faint amusement as Marcus talks us through the systems.
“Do you see this area here, marked with tape?” Marcus says, pointing to the floor.
“Sure,” I say.
“That’s the kill zone. In the unlikely event that somebody gets past the airlock we’ll fall back to this room here. They’ll probably want us sitting down – less of a threat, right?” He sits on the sofa next to Vikram to demonstrate, then leaps up and heads over to the taped-off area near the window. “And they’ll probably stand here, in this taped-off area.”
“Then what happens?” Farah says.
“We have a codeword.”
“Make us a cup of tea would you, Marcus,” Vikram calls obligingly.
“That’s my signal,” Marcus says. He walks briskly towards the kitchenette. “I go to the kettle – innocent enough, right? We figure nobody will be able to resist the prospect of a cup of tea in this place. But” – he stands by the switches – “if you see me go for the red switch, instead of the blue one, you’ll want to get behind the sofa sharpish.”
“Why?” Farah asks.
“Home-made claymores.” Marcus nods proudly towards the kill zone. He seems to be enjoying this much more than he ought to. “Three of them, pointing straight up, but angled towards the window.”
“You’ll probably blow the legs off everyone in the room,” Vikram remarks.
“Not so,” Marcus insists. “I was in the ROTC at university; I know what I’m talking about.”
“How did you make explosives work?” I ask.
“Basic exothermic oxidation reaction,” Marcus replies. “Anybody with an A-level in chemistry and an army surplus store can make them work.”
Vikram laughs. “He nearly blew his balls off before he remembered the principles of a timer fuse though.”
Marcus looks hurt. “Timer fuses are tricky. I have it wired up to the electrics now so there’s no need for a timer.”
He grins at us, like a child eagerly presenting his homework. I fidget uncomfortably. There are more people out there, I think. A whole city filled with people caught in this state. A lawless, hopeless world.
A shiver runs through me and a sudden memory of Jonah. We are the Founding Fathers, Kyle. And Ose glaring at me in the semi-dark of the service station. Imagine what a man like Jonah could do if he had weapons.
“Wait,” Chiu says. “What’s the codeword again?”
“‘Make us a cup of tea, please,’ ” Marcus replies.
Chiu frowns. “But Benedict said that earlier … when we came in.”
