Then she closed the gate behind them.
Mitts remarked at how smoothly she walked.
At how she hardly moved her shoulders at all.
How she held her chin upright.
Proud
.
He supposed she had spent a lot of time cultivating her image.
And she must’ve exercised a lot of energy in maintaining it.
She couldn’t allow it to drop.
Not for one second.
They closed in on the Village gates.
Mitts felt something spark in his mind.
On impulse, he reached out and touched Samantha lightly on the shoulder.
She flinched.
A little taken aback by her reaction, but unabashed nonetheless, Mitts said, “I know where you got those scars.”
Samantha continued to stare forward—toward the Village.
She didn’t look back.
“Do you?” she said.
She whistled.
And the gates opened for them.
* * *
Mitts could hardly believe it when he stepped in through the Village gates.
He had thought, at best, a feast might mean a rather noisy gathering in the kitchen of the Station.
Everyone with a plateful of something.
Lots of merry chatter.
Well, there was
lots
of merry chatter, all right.
But he hadn’t expected the streets to be packed..
He hadn’t expected a series of wooden benches to have been erected over the dilapidated streets.
All of the benches covered with tablecloths.
He recognised one of the ‘tablecloths’ as curtains from the Station.
Already, people sat at the benches.
Drinking from cups of all kinds.
Speaking animatedly.
Laughing.
Hardly having seen a soul in the past seven years of his life, Mitts had to admit that he felt somewhat overwhelmed.
He hadn’t thought there were this many people in the Village.
It was then he realised Samantha had slunk off.
That he was alone.
Before he had the chance to slink away himself, a trio of drunkards approached him.
Two men. And a woman.
“Oi!” the woman said, her tank top showing off her large cleavage. Her breath
reeked
of what Mitts supposed was alcohol. She held a shaking finger accusatorily out at him. “Last night, it was
you
who saved him.” She closed one eye as if she was having trouble focusing. “Weren’t it?”
Mitts looked to the two men; one on either side of the woman. “Uh,” he began, and then, not seeing a way around this, responded, “Yes, that was me.”
This caused a roar among the trio.
All three of them bellowed something or other.
Liquid splashed out of the cups they held in their hands and onto the ground.
Before Mitts could escape, one of the men grabbed him by his shoulder.
He pressed a cup to his lips. “Drink! Drink!” he barked at him.
The others joined in.
“Drink! Drink! Drink!”
Mitts felt the liquid running down his chin.
It sent a tingling sensation dancing across the surface of his skin.
Although he tried his best not to drink any of the liquid down, he felt the burn of it in his mouth.
He tasted its
sour
flavour.
More than anything else, he wanted to spit.
But he knew, with these watchful—
drunken
—eyes on him there was no prospect of that.
It might be interpreted as an insult.
And, although these people were drunk, they surely didn’t
deserve
to be insulted.
Mitts took some of the liquid down. It sent quivers through his whole body.
He felt it swill all the way down to the pit of his gut.
He looked to the happy, drunken faces.
Saw their smiles.
When the man removed his hand from his shoulder, Mitts took the opportunity to peel away from the group.
As Mitts made his way through the crowds, past all the grinning faces—all the words of congratulations—he felt overwhelmed.
He had deserved
none
of this.
Sure, he had gone after Yuvna. He had located him. But he had done nothing at all to protect him from the creatures.
All Mitts had achieved, it seemed, was those creatures’ deaths.
The
Strangers’
deaths.
Finally, he picked out Luca, sitting on one of the benches.
She sat opposite a guy Mitts had never seen before.
As Mitts sat, the guy gave him a wide smile.
Then reached over the table and grabbed hold of him with a two-handed handshake.
Another few ‘well-dones’ later, and Mitts turned his attention onto Luca.
She smiled gently. “I came by to look for you earlier, but I couldn’t find you.”
Mitts could feel the liquor heating up his stomach.
It caused blood to rise in his cheeks.
“I decided to take a walk,” he replied.
Mitts breathed in the smell of cooking meat.
Beef
.
He glanced about, trying to locate the source of the smell.
His nose led him to the Station door.
Yuvna emerged—
grinning
—bearing a tray with an enormous hamburger and a large serving of chips.
Before Yuvna had come within twenty steps, Mitts caught that thick, greasy odour.
He could feel his whole body
crying out
for the morsels which Yuvna brought.
“For my
hero
,” Yuvna said, setting the hamburger and chips down on the tablecloth.
At the back of his mind, Mitts wished Yuvna wouldn’t call him that.
Mitts regarded the food before him.
The lightly floured bun with poppy seeds.
Melted cheese leaking out around the edges.
Fluffy, crispy chips.
Smothered in salt and vinegar.
His mouth watered.
When he looked up, he realised that everyone’s eyes were fixed on him.
Yuvna stood over him—hands clasped—waiting for Mitts to deliver his judgement.
Mitts didn’t want to disappoint.
Finally, he shovelled his fingers beneath the hamburger bun. Felt the warmth of the meat passing through his fingertips. As he held the hamburger right before his lips, he found his stare drifting, off across the crowds. He picked out Samantha.
Standing there.
Her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail.
She eyeballed him.
The only face that
wasn’t
smiling.
When Mitts felt Yuvna’s firm grip on his shoulder, squeezing him—
imploring him to have a taste
—Mitts broke off eye contact with Samantha.
Turned his attention to the hamburger.
And took a large bite.
Sam America bent down over the boy.
The hazel-brown eyes.
The blond hair.
He reached out his hand.
The boy took hold of it.
As Sam America helped the boy free, up onto his feet, he couldn’t help noticing that it wasn’t a
boy
at all.
No, this was a
man
.
When Sam America spoke, his voice was thick and gruff. Just how he liked it. Since he hadn’t had the need to speak with anyone in so long, he had forgotten how much he loved the sound of his own voice.
“Y’kay, son?”
The man stood very still. He was breathing in and out very rapidly. Something about his features put Sam America in mind of a baby bird. And yet those biceps of his . . . Why, they were pretty much fit to burst.
Sam America glanced beyond the man. “Any other survivors? Any more buried here, underneath the rubble?”
The man just stared on beyond Sam America, gazing off over his head, as if there was something in the distance which Sam America had no ability to see.
When the boy spoke, his voice was so monotonous—so
numbed
by pain, or
something
—that Sam America almost missed the words.
“. . . No,” the man said. “Nobody left—nobody
alive
.”
A single tear rolled down the man’s cheek.
Sam America gripped the man’s shoulder.
Gave it a tight squeeze.
“Ain’t no shame, son. Ain’t no shame.”
The man tilted his face up to him.
“Who are you?”
“Who am
I
?” Sam America replied, jerking his thumb at his chest.
A smile broke out onto his lips.
“Why, son,” Sam America replied, “I’m just your garden variety superhero, that’s all.”
He smiled wider.
“At your service.”
PART THREE
A TORTURED MIND
Smart footsteps clack along the corridor.
Bright, white lights.
A smell of sulphur rips through the air.
Catches in the throat.
Hammering pulses.
Pounding skin.
A female figure in a white lab coat.
Clean. Neatly ironed.
Long red hair drapes down her back.
A scientist.
The footsteps cease.
The scientist pauses at the keypad.
Taps the numbers. No thought. All muscle memory.
A pair of flat tones.
Two blinking red lights.
Then a single—
subtle
—flash of green.
The door slides open.
Smooth, soundless.
The scientist treads through the doorway.
Into the darkness within.
AWAKE, AT LAST
M
itts could hear
Luca’s heavy breathing.
Breathing which told him she was sound asleep.
She wouldn’t be aware of anything until she woke in several hours’ time.
He had to make the most of it.
Bare-chested, wearing only pyjama bottoms, he slipped on the bedraggled pair of flip-flops he used as slippers.
The flip-flop straps had been repaired—
hundreds of times
—using scraps of elastic bands.
Occasionally, when Mitts was walking along, minding his own business, one of the elastic bands would snap. There would be the initial pain. The snapped elastic pinging against his skin. Then there would come the stumble—the fall.
And he would smash into whatever blunt object happened to be nearest.
He glanced over his shoulder, about the darkened bedroom.
The shapes of their
things
.
A chair covered with dirty laundry.
A wardrobe which contained dark-green tank tops, pairs of black jeans.
He cast a quick glance out through the thin bedroom curtains.
Out across the Village.
The night kept everything still.
Out on the landing, he took care to avoid creaking floorboards.
He could make out the faint odour of chicken casserole on the air. What Luca had prepared earlier that evening. It had been delicious. The pastry flaky. The meat buttery and smooth.
One of the best things he had ever tasted.
It had left him with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
A feeling which’d lasted until his dreams had come.
Mitts eased himself down the staircase. He put all his weight on the banister.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he paused.
Held himself still.
He listened out for Luca’s breathing.
That gentle,
predictable
rhythm.
Five years.
Five years they’d been together.
It was hard to believe.
Almost as long as he had spent in the Compound.
Down in the Restricted Area.
And so different.
Although he was twenty-three, he didn’t feel all that different to when he’d been eighteen.
Of course he was a little older, but was he any wiser?
His horizons hardly expanded beyond the Village.
Every day, it felt as if Mitts had only escaped the Compound to arrive here.
Another prison.
The cottage wasn’t all that large.
Upstairs there was a bedroom, bathroom, and what Luca liked to call the ‘box room’.
Satisfied Luca was still sleeping, Mitts shifted along the bare wooden floorboards.
He guided his way about various obstacles: