Mind the Gap (4 page)

Her gaze froze on one shelf. A trio of black heavy-duty torches were neatly lined up. She grabbed one and turned it on. Nothing. That didn’t make sense. Organized people—whoever had made use of the shelter—wouldn’t have the torches as backup lights without keeping batteries. She searched the rest of the shelves, then opened the nearest cabinet and found what she was looking for. An entire box of batteries.

Jazz loaded up one of the heavy torches and flicked it on. Despite the lights that already burned in the place, the bright beam thrown by the torch thrilled her. The hidden people who had used this shelter could not have rigged the entire tunnel system with lights. There would be many dark passages underground. If she meant to find her way out, far from home and the Uncles, the torch would guide her.

“Hello?” she called, suddenly nervous that the hidden people, likely thieves themselves, would attack her for thievery. She feared them, but they needed blankets and torches and canned beans; therefore, they were flesh and blood. Not phantoms.

“Anyone here? Hello?”

Her only answer was the echo of her own voice.

Jazz glanced around again and wondered what these people had run from, why they were hiding, and if they meant to hide forever.

“Mum,” she whispered, hidden away far beneath the city. Her tears began to flow and she put a hand over her eyes. At last the fear that had driven her gave way to grief.

“Oh, Christ. Mum.”

Shaking with exhaustion now that adrenaline had left her, mind awhirl with mourning and ghosts and hopelessness, she made it to the nearest mattress and collapsed there. Jazz held the torch like a teddy, drew a blanket over herself, and pulled her knees up tight, as she did on the coldest winter nights.

In silence, buried in the grave of another era, she cried for her mother and herself.

Her dead mother’s whispering woke her up.

Jazz jerked upright, and for a few seconds she thought she was still dreaming. She was surrounded by a pressing darkness, lessened here and there by dusty bulbs hanging suspended from a high ceiling, and if she’d been in her bedroom, she’d be looking at a movie poster of Johnny Depp. Instead, the poster that hung on the rough brick wall above her was of a man lighting a cigarette, and the words said,

“Let ’em all come”

Men 41–55

Home Defense Battalions

Jazz felt a weight on her chest. She reached out and touched cool plastic; the comfort she had gained from the torch had all but vanished.

She sat up, taking in a few rapid breaths to dispel the dreams she could no longer remember. They had been bad, that’s all she knew. Her mother had been there—alive or dead, she could not recall. But the echoes of her dead mother’s words still reverberated in her mind. She knew that they always would.

She was cold and uncomfortable, and it felt as though she’d been asleep for a long time. Her muscles were stiff, her neck ached from where she had been resting her head at an awkward angle, and her right hand tingled with pins and needles.

Jazz clicked on the heavy torch and shone it around the shelter. She was alone. The Uncles had not come down here and found her, and although she knew the likelihood of that was remote, she still felt incredibly vulnerable, as though the trail of tears she had left behind was something they could follow.

Who’s to say?
she thought.
Until today I had no idea of what the Uncles were really capable of.
She aimed the strong beam all around the shelter, then clicked it off, satisfied that she was really alone.

They were waiting to kill me.
The facts were punching back into her life like knives reinserted into old wounds.
They killed Mum, and they were waiting there to kill me as well!
The
why
still did not matter, though she thought it would soon. The simple fact of that terrible truth was enough for now.

She stood and stretched, letting out an involuntary groan that echoed around the shelter. She crouched down, startled. No reaction from anywhere; no sudden burst of activity from the shady corners or behind the shelving units fixed along the walls.

There was food here. She could smell it beneath the odor of old dampness and forgotten corners, and she went searching. Starting at the end of the tunnel farthest from where she had entered, Jazz began looking through the stacked shelves. She was immediately struck by the huge variety of goods down here. This was more than just a hideaway, it was a store, and many of the items she found were distinctly out of place. One shelf was piled with hundreds of CDs, ranging from Mozart to Metallica. The next shelf down held boxes of plant seeds still in their packets, and below that were piles of random-sized picture frames, all of them lacking pictures.
A family that never existed,
Jazz thought, and the idea chilled her more than it should.

Between the shelving stacks, on the floor, were small cardboard boxes. Rat traps. She had no wish to look inside to see what had been caught.

On the next stack were models of fantasy figures still in their boxes, empty sweets tins filled with one-penny pieces, a shelf of sex toys of varying shapes and sizes, tourist guides to London and beyond, stacks of watches still in their boxes, a variety of cacti, flat-packed furniture, jewelry, books, bedding, bumper stickers, children’s cuddly toys, dining sets, garden gnomes, empty wallets and purses, empty rucksacks…

Peeking out from behind the units were old wartime posters, some of them unreadable but a few still quite clear. It felt peculiar, reading these exhortations to a lost generation that had feared losing itself. One in particular struck her:

Keep Mum,

She’s not so Dumb!

Across the print a newer message was scrawled in marker pen:

Make them go away!

The tone behind that desperate plea was more disturbing than the age of the poster it was written on. It chilled her but at the same time made her realize how much her life had changed. Up until recently, things had been controlled and overseen. But now she was…

Free?
she thought.
No. No fucking way. I’m more trapped by Mum’s murder than I ever was before.

Fighting back tears—Mum would want her to look after herself, not stand here crying—Jazz moved on, and on, and eventually she found a series of shelving units with lockable doors. No doors were locked, but they were all closed, and when she opened the first one her stomach gave an audible rumble of pleasure.

She plucked out a pack of bourbon cream biscuits and ripped it open. They were soft and probably well past their use-by date, but the first one tasted exquisite. She had no way of telling the time, but she felt that she had been down here for a long time. Even if she’d had a watch, it wouldn’t have done her any good; she could never wear one, because they always broke when she put them on. Her mother suspected the radiation from dental X-rays, though whether this was paranoia or a joke, Jazz had never been sure. Either way, she ignored it as absurd.

Whatever the hour might be, Jazz decided it was lunchtime.

Several biscuits eaten, she moved on to the next cupboard. There was plenty of tinned food in here but no tin opener, and she did not feel inclined to go searching for one. A box of crackers looked more inviting, and when she opened the last unit she found four fridges, stacked two high and all working. Inside—butter, cream cheese, salads, and milk.

She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of fresh food, and something moved behind her.

Jazz fell to her knees and clicked off her torch. She was still bathed in stark light, and for a moment she thought she was pinned within the beam of someone else’s torch. Then she remembered the fridge lights, and she slammed the doors closed.

That had definitely been a movement. An echo, perhaps, of something farther away, but definitely not dripping water. More ghosts? She imagined an endless procession of people fleeing endless bombing, but the things she had found down here were at odds with that image. Ghosts did not eat biscuits, drink milk, or listen to Metallica.

Jazz scanned the shelter by the poor light of the hanging bulbs.

Keep your wits about you,
her mother had once said.
That’s the best weapon you can have.

“See?” she said. “Richard Kimble’s got his wits. Evades capture. Runs. And he’s saving himself too.”

“
The Fugitive
is just a film, Mum,” Jazz said. She was sitting on the sofa with her legs tucked up beneath her, eating strawberry ice cream straight from the tub. Her mum’s whiskey tumbler was almost empty again, but although her eyes glittered and her face was flushed, her words were as clear and concise as ever.

“But you can learn a
lot
from a film. Why shouldn’t you learn from fiction? It’s a vast array of ideas, and you can take what you need from that. Look at him. You can see the planning in every movement of his eyes, everything he does. He knows not to stop running. He knows to lose himself and how to find himself again after that.”

“But he’s just an actor, Mum. Not flesh and blood.”

“Flesh and blood?” her mother said, and she froze for a few seconds, her eyes seeing something much farther away.

“Mum?”

“Flesh and blood,” she repeated, words quieter than ever. “Not everything real is flesh and blood, Jazz. Not everything at all.”

Those ghosts were not real,
Jazz thought, running low and fast toward the other end of the shelter. She wanted to get as far from the spiral staircase as possible, and she remembered seeing some cupboards and storage units piled haphazardly against the end wall. Perhaps there she would find cover from whatever was coming.

She could hear the footsteps now, a single set descending with confidence.

Whoever it is, they’re not expecting anyone to be down here.
It gave her a moment’s hope, but still she was terrified.

She almost fumbled the torch and held her breath, looping her index finger through the handle. If she lost that, she really would be in trouble.

If whoever came down was threatening, she could blind them with light, then run for the stairs. It wasn’t so far to the surface. A hundred feet, maybe? A bit less, a bit more?

She reached the end of the shelter, paused, and heard those footsteps still descending. She should have been counting steps, she knew. Should have been trying to work out how long she had, how close they were, how fast they were descending.

There were a dozen cabinets here, stacked against the crumbling brickwork, and most of them were full with all manner of goods. She started panicking again. She could lie down on one of the mattresses and pull a blanket across her, but how effective would that be? She had to hide, and now she was starting to wish she’d just gone to wait at the entrance tunnel, ready to clout the visitor over the head with the torch and run for her life.

She found a cupboard that was only half full, coats and jackets piled flat on its floor. She could fit in there.

The footsteps echoed so loudly that she was sure they were right behind her.

She glanced back, stepped into the cupboard, pulled the metal doors shut behind her, left an inch gap through which to see, and the person stepped into view.

He paused for a while at the end of the entrance tunnel, looking around the shelter, nose raised.

He knows I’m here. Oh fuck, he knows I’m here. He can smell me, see me, sense me!

The man was tall, easily six feet, and stood proud and straight. She thought he was older than his appearance suggested. He had long black hair that was tied in a loose ponytail and wore a trench coat that had seen better days. Its material was ripped in several places, and there seemed to be stains beneath both large pockets, as though he kept something in there that leaked. From this distance, Jazz could not make out his features, but his face looked pale and long, only the chin and cheeks darkened by stubble.

He held one hand out before him, fingers moving gently as though he was playing the air.

Jazz knew for sure that he was no ghost.

She tried to breathe slow and deep, but she was out of breath from her mad dash along the shelter. The torch was held between her knees; if it slipped and banged the cabinet, she would be found out.

The man looked around, moving his fingers before him again.
What can he see?
she thought. She shifted slightly and looked at the array of cupboards and shelving, trying to picture what it had been like when she arrived and make out how it had changed. Some doors were open, but they had not all been closed to begin with. The fridges were closed, the cabinets housing them shut. Some of the blankets on the mattresses were messed up—had she done that as she ran?—and…

She could just make out the biscuit packet, still half full but discarded carelessly on the floor.

Jazz shifted again until she could see the man. He did not seem to be looking in the direction of the biscuit cupboard. Indeed, he now seemed to have his eyes closed and his face raised, as though smelling the air of the place.

“You can come on down now, my pets,” he said. “We’re very much alone.”

The man walked gracefully into the shelter, and then Jazz heard the whisper of many more feet descending the spiral staircase. From where she was hiding, the footfalls sounded like fingers drumming on a tabletop, distant and ambiguous.

The man took something from the pocket of his trench coat, stuck out his tongue, and placed the something on it. He chewed thoughtfully, only turning around when the first shape appeared behind him.

It was barely a shadow, slipping into the shelter and dashing across the concrete floor. Jazz tried to keep track, but the poor lighting defeated her. It was as though this shape—whoever or whatever it was—knew just where the lighting levels were lowest and took advantage of that.

Another shape came from the entrance tunnel, then another, all of them much smaller and slighter than the tall man. They came low and fast, parting around the man like a stream flowing around a rock. Jazz counted four, six, perhaps nine shapes flowing from the tunnel. When she did catch sight of their faces, she saw only pale skin and dark eyes; the light was too poor, and they were moving too fast to truly make out any features.

They were all carrying something on their backs.

What am I going to see?
she thought.
I’ve moved on from one danger to…what? Something worse?

The man raised his arms and turned slowly around, and then all the shapes stopped and turned to look at him.

They were kids. Teenagers and younger. Pale, scruffy, yet most of them with a smile on their face, and a couple with expressions of outright joy.

“Ahh, my pets, there’s nothing like coming home,” the tall man said.