Boy in the Tower (10 page)

I called out to Mum in the end, but she didn’t answer me. My voice sounded small when I said her name, like someone had turned my volume down.

I tried to imagine that one of my animals might come and visit me. Perhaps an owl could have flown up to the window, a snowy white one with wings that spread open as wide as my arms, and I could let it in and feed it mice. But no animals came to me that night and I tried not to think about it too much because that had never happened before.

In the end, I pretended Gaia was next to me. I closed my eyes and summoned her face in front of me. I imagined her telling me something bizarre and wonderful she had just found out.

‘Ade, did you know that there’s a fungus that lives under the ground? It’s really rather clever because it sort of joins onto tree roots and gives the root water that it needs to grow. And because the fungus helps the tree, the tree gives the fungus food so it can live. Cool, right?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, my head full of roots stretching out into a network.

‘So they sort of help each other live by giving the other what they need.’

‘Like they’re friends?’

‘Exactly, like they’re friends!’ she said, smiling.

Imagining Gaia helped me to just about drift off.

But when I did get to sleep, I kept waking up again, hoping it was morning, but it was still black outside each time I opened my eyes.

Every time I woke, it took me a long while to get back to sleep again.

I didn’t think the night would ever end.

So that’s what’s happened to me.

That’s why I’m still here in the tower, surrounded by Bluchers. I wonder if there are other people trapped like us and I wonder why no one has come to rescue us yet. Like they do on television. If something bad happens to someone on television, somebody always comes along to rescue them.

But that doesn’t happen here.

I’ve been watching the buildings falling. Sometimes it happens right in front of my eyes. I see the surge of the Bluchers, writhing around the base of a building, dissolving the brick, layer by layer. Then the walls start to lean just a fraction before it plummets to the ground. There’s something slow and fast about the way a building falls. At first, it’s so slow that it doesn’t look like it’s happening, and then suddenly it accelerates and collapses in one swooping, engulfing crash.

The other day I saw one of the smaller blocks fall, and just as it started to lean over on itself, I saw the door at the bottom of the block open and the tiny figure of someone dashing out. They ran in a diagonal line, desperately, in lunging strides, but in only a few steps they had collapsed from the spores. I could see the body lying unmoving on the ground. It looked like it was a woman with short, dark hair. She looked a bit like Miss Arnold but I don’t know if it was her.

Then the Bluchers came, one by one, in a blue-silver haze. At first there were only a couple but as I watched, a group collected together, and for a moment they seemed to pause, as if they were waiting for something. Then they covered the body until I could see it no longer.

I think about Gaia a lot. I hope that she did escape and that she’s safe. I imagine she’s somewhere in the countryside. I don’t know if that is what Brighton is like but I imagine it is in my head. Somewhere green where there are lots of trees and not many buildings, where there aren’t any Bluchers around.

My mouth feels rough and dry from sleeping. I divide up another orange juice carton and I sip at my half with tiny little mouthfuls but still I finish it quickly. It feels like I haven’t drunk anything though; my mouth just feels sticky and orangey instead. I open another carton and pour out half, and this time I drink it how I want to, in big, loud gulps.

I brush my teeth afterwards. It’s difficult without water. The toothpaste sticks to my teeth and they feel grainy afterwards but I like the minty taste. It makes me feel a bit better although my head is starting to hurt now. As if someone is trying to squeeze my brain like you squeeze a sponge. I think it’s because I haven’t had any water. Everyone knows that orange juice is OK but water is the best.

We learned about it in school when we grew the seeds. We all need water and if we don’t get it, it’s not good. We stopped giving water to some of the little sunflower plants when they were still quite small and they went all floppy, like they couldn’t stand up properly.

I go to my bedroom to see if I can find my school bag. It’s been pushed under my bed, forgotten about, but I find it in the end and pull out my topics book. I turn the pages to the one that was about the time the sunflowers went floppy and see the word I’m looking for.

It comes back to me now.

‘They are dehydrated,’ said Miss Farraway. ‘That means that they have not got enough water. What are they?’

‘Dehydrated,’ we chanted back to her.

This is how I feel: floppy and tired and my legs don’t want to hold me up. I cut out the word from the worksheet. It’s in large black letters and I stick it into my scrapbook.

I have DEHYDRATION

I end up falling asleep, which is funny because I couldn’t sleep properly at night and now it is daytime and I can’t stay awake. But when I wake up I feel worse, not better.

It is weird because you usually feel better when you’ve had a sleep. Mum used to tell me that I was full of beans whenever I woke up from a nap. But I don’t feel like that now. My head hurts more and my tongue feels too big in my mouth. It’s hard to swallow.

I start thinking about our last carton of juice in the fridge. More than anything, I want to drink it. I daydream about sucking it straight from the straw until there’s nothing left in it and the carton goes in on itself and makes a funny shape. But it’s all we’ve got left now. And I have to share it with Mum anyway.

Suddenly, I have a really good idea and I wonder why I didn’t think of it before: Michael’s mum’s flat. I bet she has things to drink in her kitchen. I didn’t look around properly when I went in before but there will probably be something that we can drink. I’m sure of it.

Michael’s mum’s kitchen is really tidy and clean. There isn’t a pile of dishes that are dirty on the side or anything like that. The cupboards have lots of things to eat inside them. Tins and packets and bottles of sauces, those kind of things. But there isn’t much to drink.

I only find a bottle of orange squash on the side which is half empty. But you need to add water to squash to drink it and I don’t know if you can drink it without water. I poke about in some other cupboards in the sitting room and there I find lots and lots of bottles of drink.

There are about ten bottles and they are all quite big. Some of them look like they have water in and others look like they are apple juice but when I look at them more closely, I see that they are bottles of drink which only adults have. Alcohol. But I’m not picky, it can’t be that bad, and I carry them, and the bottle of squash, into our flat.

It takes a few trips. I open one that looks like water and pour it into a cup. It has a sharp smell. I take a sip but it tastes like poison and I can’t swallow it. I spit it all out but I can still taste it and I hate it. I have to drink some orange squash without water to make it go away. It’s a bit better but it coats my mouth with a sort of furriness that tastes sweet. I sniff some of the liquid that looks like apple juice but that smells even worse, so I don’t even try it.

I curl up on the sofa and close my eyes. I’m going to fall asleep again but I’m so, so thirsty. More so than before. I can’t stop thinking about lovely glasses of cool water, and then, before I know it, I’m dreaming about them. I dream I’m drinking water and then I dream that I’m in a bath and I can drink straight from the taps and the water in the bath even though it’s full of bubbles. It’s really cold in my mouth but I’m not feeling cold at all in the bath. I feel warm and happy. I’m just about to swim under the water when something jerks me awake.

It’s a noise.

I wake so suddenly that I feel like I’m falling downwards but I’m not really, I’m just lying on the sofa.

The noise sounds like shuffling, like someone moving, but it isn’t coming from Mum’s room.

It’s coming from outside our front door.

My heart is beating fast, like when you run around a lot and then stop and stand still. Your heart goes
bam, bam, bam
really quickly. You can hear it in your ears somehow.

I know I should go and see what it is but I don’t want to. I sit as still as I can and wait to see if someone knocks on our door or says something. But there is just silence after that.

When I don’t hear anything else, I go to our door and open it really, really slowly. I don’t know what I expected to see but I never thought it would be what is sitting in front of me.

It is a huge bottle of water, sitting there like it has been waiting for me to open the door all this time.

There’s no note on it or anything but I know it’s for us. Someone has brought this to us. I look sideways down the corridor but there’s no one there. The shuffling sounds I heard have long gone.

My first thought is that it is Gaia. I imagine her peering out at me from behind a pillar. I feel like I can see the shape of her hair poking out.

‘Gaia!’ I imagine saying.

And I picture her leaping out, her arms outstretched. ‘Surprise, Ade! I bet you’re thirsty by now.’

I keep looking down the corridor, willing Gaia to appear, but after staring for a while I realize there is no one there but me.

The bottle of water is so big that I have to use both arms to move it, and even then, I can only lift it a little way off the ground and I have to keep stopping. I half carry, half drag it into the kitchen.

I try to pour out a couple of glasses without spilling any. It’s hard to do because it’s so heavy and it’s difficult for me to hold the bottle and the glass at the same time. I manage it in the end though, and then I’m drinking it.

I drink up my whole glass. I drink it so fast that I finish it after only a few seconds and I have to stop myself from drinking Mum’s straight away afterwards too. I quickly take her glass in to her and then I come back and pour myself another. Nothing has ever tasted so good, which sounds silly because I never thought water tasted of anything before.

The label on the bottle has pictures of mountains on it. They are green but also have snow on the top. There’s a blue sky and sunshine. I like the picture, so I tear it off to put in my book later. That’s when I hear Mum get up.

‘Where’d you get that from?’ she’s asking me.

‘I found it outside,’ I say. She goes to the kitchen and I hear her try to turn on the taps. It’s a squeaky, dry sort of sound.

‘Mum. The taps aren’t working any more. Have some of this water.’

‘Why aren’t they working? We’d better get them fixed.’ She yawns loudly and then drinks two whole glasses of water without stopping.

She doesn’t know, I think. I thought that maybe she might have heard some of the news through the walls or looked out of the window, but she can’t have. She doesn’t know that everything has changed. I suddenly want to ask her if we’ll be all right, but instead I tell her that.

‘We’ll be all right, Mum.’

‘We will be, Ade.’ And she kisses the top of my head. There’s a moment as she walks back into her room when she pauses ever so slightly, like she’s going to change direction and walk up to the window, to see what the world is doing. But she carries on walking and closes the door of her bedroom behind her and I feel glad that she didn’t look. It might be too big a shock to see the outside. There’s not much left now.

I take another glass of water, luxuriating in its wetness as I swirl the liquid around my mouth. Then I start to ask myself who brought it to our door. Was it the rescue people who had come to get us? But why hadn’t they knocked? Why did they only leave us water? I have to go and find them, whoever they were.

I leave the flat and walk up the stairs. The lifts aren’t working, like everything else. I decide I’ll walk past every flat from the top to the bottom to find who left us the water.

Everyone’s door is closed like it always is, so in one way it’s the same as any other day when I might go exploring in the tower. But the tower is missing all its sounds and smells and seems entirely different. Usually you’ll hear kids shouting and mums shouting at them to be quiet, and you’ll smell what’s cooking for dinner or who’s making a cake. I feel pretty sure that the flats I pass are all empty. There’s no sounds or smells coming from them, just a stale kind of emptiness.

When I’ve gone down a few floors from my flat, I catch the smell of something which makes me stop.

It’s a good smell, like meat cooking.

I press my ear against the door where I think it’s coming from and listen. I can definitely hear someone inside moving things about but I don’t knock. I just stand there and breathe in the smell. It’s the most delicious smell, so good that just having it in my nostrils makes me feel like I’m eating it. Maybe it’s chicken. Just like the chicken and rice Michael’s mum made that night.

I’m thinking about food so much that I don’t notice someone come up right behind me, so when he speaks to me, it makes me jump.

‘Are you the kid from seventeen?’

I nod, thinking that this is the first person other than Mum that I’ve spoken to in days. I know him. He’s the caretaker for the tower, who lives in the basement. He has a gruff sort of voice and he looks like he is a bit mad, but I know he is not from the next thing he does.

‘You look like you could do with something to eat,’ he says. And then he opens the door of the flat and leads me inside.

It isn’t chicken but it’s a little bit like it. The meat looks a bit darker but the skin is nice and crispy and it tastes just fine. I gobble up my plateful and drink down another good few cups of water. I’m so busy eating that only when I’m finished do I start to feel a bit uncomfortable that I’m sitting at a little red-and-white checked table with two people I’ve only just met.