Strangers in the Night (10 page)

He wasn’t subtle about opening the ventilation hatch.

He tucked his knee back into his chest and then kicked out.

The hatch busted open.

It clattered down into the room below.

Each year he’d done it, getting through the air vents had been a successively more difficult squeeze for Mitts. And today, he had found it the toughest so far.

That had been another factor in his decision.

What might happen when he was too large to fit through the air vents at all?

Then the only way out of the Restricted Area would be through the blast doors. Although Mitts knew that he simply
had
to get out, he wasn’t prepared to put his family at risk while doing so.

If he died right now—if he got poisoned—then he would be the only one harmed.

For some reason, he didn’t think that was going to happen.

He liked to believe—because of his sickness; because he’d almost died—that he was stronger than the others.

Better able to resist.

At least these night-time visits outside of the Restricted Area, into the wider Compound, didn’t seem to have left any lasting damage on him.

Nothing Heinmein, in seven years of weekly check-ups, had observed, in any case.

Mitts shone his torch around.

It was a windowless room, just as it had been marked on the plan.

He had peered in here before, but hadn’t yet visited . . . thus why he’d had to bust through the ventilation hatch.

The room consisted of a simple wooden bench down the middle, much like the changing rooms which Mitts had been forced to use back at school, for PE.

Instead of there being lockers placed all around, and a slight scent of soap lather and mud from the showers, the air stank strongly of disinfectant.

He wondered if
that
had been the odour he’d smelled all that time ago.

The motivating factor for him wanting to explore the ventilation hatch.

He studied the room.

He noted the showerhead-like devices which hung down from the ceiling.

He supposed that was where the disinfectant came from.

A spray.

He guessed the spray system was running off some kind of backup unit. There was no other explanation for it to still be functioning after all these years.

In all his explorations of the Compound at night, he had never come across another soul.

Not even bodies.

The whole Compound was deserted.

At least as far as he could make out.

Mitts observed the white, semi-transparent overalls which hung down off the hooks which surrounded the room. He trod along, looking to the eerie masks which accompanied them.

They had those chrome, gasmask mouthpieces.

The ones Mitts had seen in a few films.

The ones he had seen in diagram form in several of the manuals he’d read through.

Mitts removed one of the suits off its peg. As he brought it close to him, the smell of disinfectant was almost unbearable. He had a strong urge to simply drop the suit.

To allow it to slide through his fingers.

But he held on.

Within his own mind, Mitts went through the steps of using the suit.

First, there was the zip.

He undid it all the way.

And then he located the little computer panel around the back of the suit.

This was the part he was most unsure of.

He tapped the Power button.

A green energy bar blinked on.

Full
.

Mitts stood, his face illuminated by the bright-green display.

He looked about the other suits in the room.

He wondered if they were all charged up too.

He tried out the few suits nearest to him.

All had their energy bars at full.

Working quickly, he snaffled the battery packs off the suits. He slotted them into his sports bag which hung down off his shoulder. He made sure to take all of them that he could.

With the combined battery power, he hoped to survive for months outside the Compound.

That done, Mitts stuffed a couple of the suits into his sports bag, seeing as they didn’t occupy too much space. If he snagged a hole in the suit he was wearing, it would be simpler to ditch it and put on a fresh one than to try and mend the damage.

He set about getting into the suit he had chosen.

He zipped it all the way up, held the helmet beneath his arm and then headed for the door.

The security keypad had power.

And the electromagnetic lock was engaged.

That was unexpected.

But it wasn’t an obstacle.

Digging into the knowledge he’d accumulated through all the manuals he’d read, Mitts used the manual-override code on the keypad.

The locks snicked back.

And Mitts plodded through the door.

Mitts had spent so many night-time hours prowling about the Compound that he was almost on autopilot as he swooped through the corridors.

He didn’t pause for any kind of a nostalgic moment. He felt nothing for the Compound. All the same, he would’ve thought that, after seven years here, he would feel
something
.

Somehow, he just couldn’t accept the Compound had been his home.

Or as close to a ‘home’ as it was possible to get.

Mitts made his way into the reception area of the Compound, where he put on the helmet. As he recalled it from the manuals he had leafed through, there had been a further three security points for anybody entering from the outside wishing to get here.

But there was no power in these outer areas.

Mitts had simply to push the rusted-up exterior door open.

He barged it with his shoulder, glad for all those sit-ups and press-ups.

They’d given him strength.

Before Mitts could really work out what he had done, he realised that he was out into the night-time air.

His surprise was so great that he almost forgot to flip the switch at the back of his suit.

The one which would allow him to breathe.

* * *

Breathing in the air of the suit was like sucking on disinfectant, straight from a plastic bottle.

Mitts felt it dry out his mouth. At the same time, it brought all the saliva in his tongue to the surface. He could hear the gentle, rhythmic
tick-tick
as the breathing apparatus responded to his respiration.

Already, he felt hot in the suit.

Mitts followed the exterior fence which ran around the Compound. At one point, he reached a gate. He unzipped his sports bag and produced a pair of wire cutters. He snipped a nice, big hole.

Then he ducked down and stepped through.

On the other side, Mitts glanced back over his shoulder.

A series of squat, cement buildings, lit up in the moonlight.

The Compound.

An ugly place.

Mitts’s focus drifted up to the moon.

He stood staring at it for a long while.

Often, Mitts would leave his bedroom behind, sneak out through the air vents just so that he might slump himself up by an exterior hatch and stare at the moon.

It made him feel almost as if he was back home again.

Almost as if things were back to normal.

Once, Mitts had stayed out in the air vent for the whole night, waiting for the sun to rise up on the horizon. But he didn’t seem to be able to pick out a vantage point where he could look at it directly.

All he could make out from his position in the air vent were the secondary details: the sun rays licking the concrete surrounding the Compound.

Mitts fixed his mind on his destination, guiding himself about the wire fence.

He used the Compound’s scattered buildings as a guide for his progress.

There was that one run of buildings which, at least on the plans, looked like it might form the shape of a top hat. He ran his eyes over the Compound, searching for that feature.

He found it.

Made toward it.

He took care not to break into anything more than a fast walk.

He didn’t want to trip and fall.

There was no telling what damage he might do.

A broken leg wouldn’t be any way to start off the journey.

He made his way around the back of the top hat-looking section of building, and then he went on a little further, past the pineapple-shaped outbuilding.

Then he turned his focus to searching.

He looked over the Compound.

Looking
for it.

It
had
to be here.

Mitts glanced up and—finally—he saw it.

The ventilation hatch which, for the first time, seven years ago, Mitts had sat slumped up against. The vantage point from which he had looked out on the outside world.

But that was only
part
of what Mitts was looking for.

He turned his gaze downward. To the wall beneath the ventilation hatch.

And he saw . . . nothing.

What had he expected?

It
had
been seven years.

There was nothing there.

Still, he couldn’t help but pace over.

He cut through the once-electrified wire fence.

Let himself through to the other side.

He stared down at the cement, looking for some sort of clue.

Something that might just give him a
hint
.

When Mitts squinted, he thought he might be able to see a damp patch on the concrete. But, the more he brought his vision clear—
sharper
—he became more and more convinced that he was only fooling himself.

‘Bringing the wool down over his eyes’.

He had read that expression in one of the many novels his parents had brought along into the Restricted Area.

Mitts felt his gut sink slightly. He had hoped that he might find something to either confirm, or deny, what he had seen seven years ago.

But, no . . .

Everything was just as muddy as it had been before.

Mitts moved on.

He knew—
logically speaking
—he needed to cover as much ground as he possibly could during the night, before the sun came up.

Because, when the sun
did
come up, Mitts would have no idea what to expect.

He turned away from the scene which’d so haunted him all these seven years—had haunted him so much that he hadn’t returned to this spot where he had seen that . . . that
creature
.

Not until tonight.

Mitts headed back toward the wire fence. Away once again from the place he had lived these past years. He did feel a slight sinking disappointment.

He would’ve liked to have found
something.

Anything
at all.

He set off back across the Compound.

Made it to the fence.

And then, from out of the darkness, there came a bright—
overpoweringly bright
—light.

It shone all over him.

Froze him.

He turned around.

Held his suited forearm up to the visor of his suit.

He heard his breathing coming faster now.

The staccato
tick-tick-tick-tick-tick
from his suit as his breathing pulled hard on the oxygen tanks.

Several beads of sweat rolled down his face.

A salty smell.

The
taste
of salt on his lips.

A spotlight, that was what it was.

He recalled from the plans.

But he couldn’t recall anything about automation.

Though that didn’t mean there
wasn’t
any automation.

Was this another section of the Compound which continued to have power?

Now that his eyes had adjusted a little to the bright light, he realised that there was a silhouette standing by the side of the machine. He tracked the silhouette.

He would’ve known that silhouette anywhere.

Just about
anywhere
.

He knew that silhouette now.

Heinmein.

* * *

Mitts thought about running. About escaping.

But something rooted him to the spot.

He couldn’t leave.

He couldn’t leave
now
.

Danger . . . he felt it in the air.

Before he could make any sort of conscious decision, he was striding back toward the Compound.

Headed for the reception area.

Back in the building, Mitts was confronted by Heinmein.

As always, he was dressed in his tatty lab coat.

Heinmein’s eyes were wide. His pupils inflamed by the lenses of his thick glasses. “You found your way out?” he said.

Before Mitts could say anything at all, Heinmein added, “But how . . . how did you manage it?”

Mitts told him about the air vents.

That he had come up here often, at night.

He said nothing about the grey-purple skinned being he had encountered those seven years earlier.

Heinmein’s glare never left him throughout the whole of the story.

Mitts waited uneasily for Heinmein to break out of his daze.

Surely he was fixing to attack.

However, Heinmein only reached up to adjust the lie of his glasses across the bridge of his nose.

He nodded to the suit which Mitts wore. “And I see that you found some toys?”

Mitts felt himself blush a little, though he didn’t quite realise why.

After all, he had made up his mind and he was determined to stick with his choice.

For him, there was no returning to the Restricted Area, and Heinmein might as well know
why
.

“I’m sick of it,” Mitts said, staring right into Heinmein’s black eyes, “sick of how you treat us all as living experiments.”

Heinmein remained still.

“I know you keep records—are using us for your research, for whatever end it might be.” Mitts shook his head. “I don’t want to be part of it anymore.”

Heinmein didn’t reply right away, and Mitts saw him swallow hard, watched his Adam’s apple bobble in his throat. And then he responded, “What about your family? You are not concerned about them?”

Mitts felt his chest tighten. Although he had thought over his response about a million times in his own head, it was totally different now that he had to say the words out loud.