Chapter Five, ‘Disaster’
I’m well past the entrance to the park by the time I make contact with them. I was able to ignore pretty much everything on my way up here, I was so pissed—but now even that has burnt out and when I finally slow down to a normal pace, I feel like the last person on earth.
Someone’s set that bus on fire. I’m supposed to feel angry, or righteous—or scared or something—but I just want the ground to swallow me up. I shouldn’t be here.
What’s it going to take for me to get myself together? I can barely see the road ahead of me, and although there are people out there, my eyes aren’t focusing enough to get much from them at all: all I know is that they’re on the wrong side. A few of them are going from house to house up the hill, trying the doors, shouldering them open. They disappear from view and I can hear shouting.
Do I run and help the people that live there? No. I just stand there, looking at the weapon in my hand; I shove it back into my pocket.
The whole thing is stupid. I haven’t seen any of them really trying to kill anyone, but I can hear stuff and I don’t know where it’s coming from. The ones who’ve wandered past me don’t seem too concerned about taking anyone out at all, which is what I’d assumed they would do; in some ways, they look more like a hastily-planned school trip than an actual army. Whatever they are, they definitely don’t seem to care about me— I’m not much of a threat.
Well, fuck it. Maybe I can catch them off-guard.
I’ve not done this before, so it takes me a while to get up the courage to do it, but after searching the streets to find someone, anyone, I finally set my eyes on a young soldier who’s looking a little lost, and he jumps out of his skin at the sight of me. “Are you lost?” I shout to him.
He doesn’t answer me, screws up his face at my words like he’s trying to understand what I’m saying. Even if he did, I think he knows I’m not going to help him in the slightest.
At this point, I feel like I’m supposed to do something, so I sort of chase after him.
I won’t lie, it’s awkward. Neither of us are going to win any medals for endurance: eventually we agree wordlessly to slow down, and from there we simply hang around like that, dodging each other like the already exhausted, nervous deer that we are until we get to the roundabout.
I consider saying something aggressive, accusing him of some crime, but it all feels hopelessly naïve.
In the end I’m able to get right up to him, and I grab his front collar and push him back—because I don’t know what else to do, because I’m scared of doing too much, of hurting him, or of not doing anything at all. It’s too much, too ridiculous for someone like me, for a town like this. No one even comes here, anyway.
I feel for the weapon in my pocket. “Go home,” I tell him. “You stupid fucking idiot. What did you think was going to happen, coming here?”
He doesn’t understand me; he’s just as jumpy as I am, eyes darting around for his friends—but they’re nowhere to be seen. It’s alright, really, I want to tell him; I don’t have any friends here, either. We look at each other for a while, him with a scrawl of confusion over his mouth, his lips taut, and me, not knowing what to do with my hands or the weapon or this frightened man in front of me.
“This is stupid,” I begin again. It’s all I ever say. But then there’s a crack and a shout behind me, and we both turn: a man sprints out from the alleyway with blood all over his shirt, and suddenly like the dickhead he is, he smashes hard into my shoulder—not caring about anyone else but himself—and the three of us collapse in a heap as he tries to stop himself falling over the kerb. I’m so pissed off at the intrusion, how unnecessary it is, the great stupid lumbering idiot on top of us who is now trying to leverage himself up by throwing all his weight on my ankle, that I shout at him, shove at him, claw at his face—I don’t care that he’s on my side, I want him fucking dead for his stupidity; my ankle sears with pain and the soldier is helping me shove him away when—someone, I don’t know who, takes out a pistol and when I go to get my hands on him for the final time, I’m sent stumbling back from the resounding fracture through the air.
There’s blood, and lots of it. I don’t think there’s any point in trying to help, and I don’t want to, anyway: it serves him right, I think, panicking like that; serves him fucking right.
I can still see the slick black hairs on the back of his neck, the weeping collar of a rapidly staining shirt—I shove whatever’s left of him away. People like that don’t deserve to live. I check my ankle: he’s a lucky man, because I’m able to put weight on it, at least.
The soldier crawls away from him, drops his pistol, stumbles onto his feet, as disarmed as I am; from the look on his face, neither of us have seen a thing like that before.
I pick up the pistol. It’s useless in my hands: after examining it over for a while, I drop it back down and opt for my much simpler weapon, one that I actually know how to use. It’s alright now. A few moments ago, I was quite happy to kill the guy in front of me if it came to it, if I absolutely had to. But now I just want him to leave. Go on, get out of my sight and find your friends.
I even chat to him a little bit, though he still looks frightened as hell. “It’s not always like this,” I tell him, and I shake my weapon for emphasis. “It’s actually quite boring around here, but then I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that…”
Why aren’t we charging at each other?
It’s pretty easy between us now, and the soldier’s taken off his helmet and is rubbing at his face and sweaty neck; we stare at the dead man between us. I suppose if you weren’t here, you might say something about finding the glimmers of humanity on both sides of the battle, but that’s not really what it’s like, is it? I don’t feel anything for the man in front of me, and it’s only with reluctance that I’d want him dead at all. Where’s the humanity in that? I’m too tired to care.
“Go on,” I tell him, and shoo my hands at him. “Get away. Here’s your gun.”
And I hand him it. By now I’m annoyed by the persistent confusion on his face, so I wave him off again and head back into town by myself. It’s very quiet on the walk back. We’d ended up in one of the streets behind the main road, down towards a little burn and one of the shitty garages that always overcharges you; I make my way through one of the alleyways and over the brim of the hill.
***
I was wrong about my leg. It’s difficult to walk, but I can do it—I just about make it to the high street, and I crouch down beside one of the last doorways in the alley in order to have a look at the damage.
There it is, dark pink and blossoming under my skin. It’ll be blue in a few hours, but I’ll be fine: it’s only a bruise, although it’s already larger than my palm; it sears with pain whenever I prod it, and I prod it quite a few times to make sure it’s only that.
It’s while I’m kneeling there in the doorway that I suddenly remember Emily. How much time has passed? More importantly, where the fuck is she? I gain some sort of control over the vision of my surroundings and I’m actually back in the same alleyway, the same step, the same wrenching headache as I remember our last conversation. There’s no evidence of her here, so I guess she’s gone for good. Fuck. I’ve really ruined things. She won’t want anything to do with me now, even if it all goes alright, and you know what, I’d agree—all I’ve got for my troubles in leaving her here is a shitty ankle and I haven’t accomplished much else besides that.
I might as well have stayed where I was.
***