Joseph’s hand shot up. My head snapped to him and then my hand careered into the air, waggling around like a loose stick in the wind, before I could stop it. Nobody else volunteered, which worried me, so Gus picked someone who was unluckily standing at the front of the group. The man’s shoulders drooped, and he shuffled reluctantly to stand on one side of Gus.
I handed Orry to Rash. He eyed the baby apprehensively. “Here, spend some quality time with you nephew.” I smirked as his face registered surprise.
He took Orry’s capsule with the child snuggled inside it and swung it under his nose. “Er, ok, but I’m not changing any crappy nappies.”
“I won’t be long.” I looked to Gus, and he nodded.
“Wait here until we return,” Gus barked gruffly to the rest of the Survivors. The group receded beyond the tree line like a low-lying mist, and the thump of packs hitting the ground and tins rattling travelled through the woods. Gus turned and walked briskly towards the city with the three of us trailing him.
*****
The city was the same as we’d left it almost nine months ago. Everything crumbled at the edges, colors once bright were faded and clinging to the remaining timber frames like mold. Gus was practically running, and my short legs had to scramble to keep up with him. He stormed through the streets, turning sharply like he was on a track. He knew exactly where he was going. Joseph kept looking sideways at me. We didn’t speak; it didn’t seem like we should.
Finally, we turned a corner and were faced with a beautiful stone building bordered by cobblestones. Its spires scraped the sky. A tattered banner flipped back and forth in the wind from one of its two high windows, looking like a pirate patch. The other large, arched window was splintered with red-stained glass; the building looked like it was crying blood.
Gus kept powering headfirst while the three of us stood back, taking in this foreboding building.
“DING!” The sound made us all jump out of our skin, and Gus paused momentarily before he climbed the wide, stone stairs and turned around to glare at us. The great wrought iron arms of a clock clicked into place, and it dinged another ten times.
My hand found Joseph’s, and we stared at the birds startling and resettling like they had heard this a million times before.
Gus stood at the top of the stairs. The dark, wiry man stood out against the light sandstone, with his hands on his hips, grimacing. “Hurry up!” He stomped his foot, and we ran-walked over to him.
We passed through brass doors that screeched across the tiled floor, pushing broken glass and debris with it as it folded in. I blinked several times at the vast, open ceiling. It must have once been covered in glass, but now all you could see were steel girders cutting the sky into six even pieces, shooting light down across the mosaic-tiled floor below.
We were in the middle of a circle with dark tunnels bordering the central part. Names and times were depicted on boards over each entrance. We were in a train station.
“What are we doing here?” I asked, my voice echoing out across the space.
Gus scratched his head, pointing at each tunnel and repeating the numbers aloud as he was reading. “Damn it. Was it four or fourteen? I can’t remember.”
The rest of us glanced to each other, shrugging our shoulders. Had Gus finally lost it? He wasn’t making any sense. He just kept shuffling around in circles, pointing at each entrance and then rubbing his forehead anxiously.
His hand dropped to his side, and he itched his pant leg nervously. I thought maybe he was going to explain what the hell was going on, but then he cupped his hands to his mouth and screamed, “Salim!”
The name, chant, or whatever it was, bounced off the walls and came to rest in the silent minutes that followed.
I moved closer to Joseph. The other Survivor with us side stepped closer too. Something was moving towards us from tunnel fourteen. It was a scurrying, swishing noise, sort of sporadic, stopping and starting. As it got louder, I stepped backwards, the entrance shrieking now, and I put my hands to my ears at the noise, which sounded like fangs, spit, and fur.
Yellow eyes appeared in the black of the tunnel, accompanied by yawning mouths that screamed and jostled, occasionally turning and snapping at each other.
Joseph squeezed my arm a little too tightly. I pressed my toes into the red and yellow tiles, ready to run. Then Gus slapped his thigh and laughed. “Fourteen! Fourteen! I always get it wrong.”
*****
He looked pretty normal, except for the fact that as he started clapping his hands in a slow, steady rhythm, streams of monkeys spiraled around him in a circle. I tilted my head and stared at his intricate hair, knotted into tiny bumps all over his head like little, round hedges. He stepped out of the darkness, a gleaming white lab coat thrown over his shoulders, and smiled. Giant, white teeth glistened against his dark lips.
Gus threw his hands in the air and walked towards the dark-skinned man. “Salim!”
“No,” I managed meekly. But Gus walked straight up to the man and opened his arms. The man whistled thinly, and the monkeys started scaling the columns of the central space, looking like a swarm of cockroaches, whooping and screeching as they went. One stayed with the man, jumping onto his forearm and perching on his shoulder, wrapping its striped tail loosely around the man’s neck.
Gus and the man hugged, and the rest of us were at an absolute loss for words.
Joseph recovered quickly and muttered, “Cool,” under his breath. I had no reaction other than to stare with my mouth open. Apella and Alexei were right after all. There were people, or at least a person, in this city all along.
Gus and the man, who I assumed was Salim, broke apart and turned to us. Salim stared down at us. He was as tall as Joseph and had a royal air about him. But he had a monkey sitting on his shoulder, and that was all I could look at. I wanted to say, ‘Do you realize there’s a filthy primate bouncing up and down on your nice white coat?’ but I couldn’t find any words for the circus I’d walked into. He stepped toward me and stared at my hands. I nervously put them behind my back, and he arched a bushy, grey eyebrow at me before clicking his tongue. The monkey on his shoulder screeched, jumped down, and scampered towards me. I pointed my toe out at it, trying to fend it back, but it went straight for my hands, pulling them in front of me and glaring at me with hard eyes like yellow candy.
Salim’s eyes widened when he saw my tattoo, the one I’d almost forgotten was there.
“What’s this then? What have you brought to us, Gus?” he asked in a very considered tone, bordering on condescension.
“They’re escapees, her and the boy,” Gus said dismissively.
Salim laughed loudly, the sound booming along the walls and hitting me in the face like a suffocating pillow. “No one escapes. Banished? Yes. Escape? No.”
It was Gus’s turn to be condescending. “You’ve been underground too long, old friend.”
Salim’s laugh cut out as suddenly as it started, and the monkeys began banging at the walls frantically. It was an erratic, earsplitting drumming, which sounded primal and deathly. The old man tightened his fist, the tiny pockmarks scattered across his cheeks stretching as he raised one hand in the air. It was suddenly quiet, but the temporary kind of quiet.
“Why are you here?” he asked, mindlessly stroking the tail curled over his shoulder. I tried hard not to gag.
Gus cleared his throat. “We are here to seek refuge.”
“For how long?”
“Indefinitely.”
Joseph and I both slumped noticeably. He squeezed my hand and looked out at me from beneath his dirty blond hair. The disappointment in his eyes darkened them to a murky sea-green. There was a storm in there. Any chance we had of getting back to Deshi just flapped and flew into the sliced-up sky.