Strangers in the Night (8 page)

But he couldn’t.

No matter how hard he strained himself.

How hard he implored his brain to pick it out from the cold odour of damp gravel and mud.

Mitts was ready to turn away from the outside world. He knew his father would soon be stirring.

He would be coming to check up on him.

Wouldn’t it be a shock for him to find his son gone?

For a few moments, Mitts played with that imagining.

His father happening upon his bedroom, upon Mitts’s empty camp bed.

What would be his father’s range of emotions?

He would be distraught, of course.

Perhaps he would risk tapping the red button to open the Restricted Area blast doors.

Maybe he would put the rest of them in peril.

Put his mother in peril.

No, Mitts couldn’t allow himself to be responsible for that.

He needed to return to his camp bed.

He needed to return to the Restricted Area.

As Mitts turned away from the ventilation hatch, something caught his eye.

Later, when he thought about it, he was sure his imagination plugged in many of the details.

Grey-purple skin.

Saucer-shaped, beady black eyes.

Spiderlike fangs.

Gooey spittle hanging down from them.

And then, the overwhelming stench of sulphur.

More than anything—more than
anything else
—Mitts wanted to scream.

He wanted to use all his strength to scream harder than he ever had before.

But he could not.

The soft night closed in on the two of them.

He could feel the warmth emanating from her body.

Her skin fragile as a rose petal.

And her body slick, well-synchronised with this world.

No stranger to its devices.

The silk of her dress up against his skin. The bubbles of champagne easing their way down his throat. The dryness it left in his mouth as the alcohol took with it his saliva. All moisture.

Left him gagging with thirst.

Now that they could no longer see one another, it was hard to tell where each of them began, where each one ended. And it occurred to him that it didn’t matter any longer. That whatever fiction he told himself—whatever lies he said—that was all they would be.

Because they would be designed for one purpose, and one purpose only.

To conceal reality.

He felt her draw close now.

Close enough that he might reach out and touch her.

But he was afraid . . . so afraid . . . and so she made the first move.

Her lips were warm and moist up against his earlobe as she whispered, “Five minutes to midnight.”

PART TWO

SAM AMERICA

The air was heavy with ash.

It fluttered down like light snowfall.

Layered down over the loose stones of the beach. And onto the surface of the steel-grey waves. Whether the water reflected the sky, or vice versa, was a matter for debate.

And one which, quite frankly, had lost all meaning.

Sam America could feel his muscles rippling beneath his white cotton shirt. His woolly hair twirled in the sulphur-stinking breeze. White stars speckled his Yankee-blue waistcoat. Confederate-red clung to the stripes of his trousers, and to his suspenders.

He wore a pair of bulky, ankle-high boots.

His hat—red-and-white vertical stripes up the crown; white stars on a blue background about the band—had blown away hours ago.

Somehow—for some reason—Sam America felt naked without his hat.

Almost as if he might be a post-apocalyptic Samsun.

Sheered of his strength.

But, deep down, Sam America knew that he still possessed his strength, and, more to the point, that it would never leave him.

Because what the world needed now—what it
most
needed right now—was a hero.

SEVEN YEARS

W
hen Mitts woke
to the sound of a child’s cries, he was confused.

Eyes still closed, he reached up and rubbed at his temples.

He padded about himself, trying to clarify his location.

His camp bed.

Beneath him.

That familiar
creak-creak
of springs.

Beneath his weight.

The smells of baking wafted in beneath his bedroom door. He caught the scent of butter and flour.

He could already feel his mouth watering.

When Mitts opened his eyes, he realised that the bright fluorescent lights were operating at full power. It was morning. Perhaps
mid
-morning if his judgement could be trusted.

The battery in his wristwatch had finally run out a couple of weeks ago so he could never be one-hundred-per-cent certain of the exact time.

Today he turned eighteen years old.

He didn’t need a wristwatch to know that.

Seven years.

In the Compound.

In the Restricted Area.

He propped himself up on the mattress of his camp bed, still lost in a dream . . . of that superhero, or whatever the hell he had been . . .

He thought back to the moment when his father had told him that he was going to die—that he would be dead within a week.

That was the last time Mitts had attempted
to share his dreams with anybody.

Before, it had been the dancers.

Before that, visions of the hills.

Over his years in the Compound, Mitts had learned that each one of them needed to find their own way of coping with being encased within their own mind.

Mitts had never thought—
not for one second
—of telling anyone what had happened that early morning. When he had crawled through the air vents.

When he had come up against that . . . that
creature
. . .

And yet, Mitts was certain it was the encounter with the creature which explained
why
he hadn’t died a week after the dosage; as Heinmein had expected.

Mitts thought about how he’d felt Heinmein’s eyes lock onto him a week following the administration of the serum. It was like Heinmein had been holding up a test tube, patiently waiting for the liquid within to change its colour, so that it might confirm a hypothesis.

But Mitts had refused to change colour.

He had stayed the same.

He had
got better
.

Once a month had gone by, and Mitts still hadn’t died, Heinmein had begun to carry out experiments.

At first, these had taken the form of an extended weekly medical check-up.

Mitts had no doubt Heinmein had designed his approach to be subtle, so that his parents wouldn’t suspect. That Heinmein was merely doing all he could to
ensure
their son was fully cured.

But, soon enough, it had been impossible for Heinmein to hide his intent.

Following one of the weekly medical check-ups, Heinmein had insisted he be committed to one of the examination rooms. Heinmein had wanted to hook him up to all sorts of machines. To display all of Mitts’s bodily functions neatly on neon-lit monitors.

That was the first time his father said
no
.

Even now—even seven years later—Mitts could still feel the swelling sensation in his chest as his father faced off with Heinmein.

When he had analysed it afterwards, he knew just what the feeling represented:

Pride.

After that, Heinmein had taken special care
not
to pay Mitts more than his due attention during the weekly medical check-ups.

After a few months, Heinmein seemed to forget entirely about the matter.

If possible, Heinmein had become more reclusive.

Only ever leaving his office for food once every few days, rather than several times a day, as had been his routine.

Not that Mitts was complaining.

Not in the slightest.

Because, despite the years, his opinion toward Heinmein had not shifted.

He blamed him.

Distrusted him.

He knew it was his responsibility—
his responsibility alone
—to keep an eye on Heinmein.

But everything changed several months later.

Mitts’s mother gave birth.

Mitts slept through the entire experience.

When he went to the kitchen the next morning, he recalled seeing his father. He had been shaking all over. His complexion bone-white as he gripped a cup of black coffee.

His parents named the baby Fluva, and though Mitts wasn’t sure about
that
name, or his own, to be honest, he said nothing about it.

He had seen all those photos his parents thought they hid so carefully, at the back of their wardrobe. That album of yellowing, faded photographs in which his parents were decked out in all sorts of hippywear:

Tie-dye t-shirts.

Flares.

Wide-collared shirts.

Long hair.

Purple-tinted sunglasses.

. . . All those mysteries they had thought they kept secret.

Fluva—or ‘Floo’, as she became known throughout the Compound—took an extreme liking to Heinmein.

Mitts recalled the first few days after Floo had learned how to walk. Heinmein would come skulking into the kitchen, at meal times, when all the family were gathered about the table.

Floo—black-haired like Mitts’s mother—would toddle up to Heinmein and tug at the tail of his lab coat.

The first few times this happened, Mitts found himself almost hypnotised by the sight.

He was brought into mind of a nature documentary: a young, naïve member of a pride of lions going up to the aged, half-crazed male lion and batting him with a paw.

There was no telling if Heinmein might snap.

If he might kick out.

Knock Floo onto her back.

Shuffle off out of the kitchen, scowling, his dinner clenched in his fists.

Back to his darkened cove.

But that wasn’t what happened at all.

Mitts would never forget the first time Floo reached up and grabbed a fistful of Heinmein’s lab coat.

He could still recall how every muscle in his body had seemed to seize tight.

And then Heinmein had glanced down and . . .
smiled
.

Oh, it wasn’t any great wonder.

He showed no teeth.

And he certainly didn’t make any more fuss.

But, still, it was the first time Mitts had
ever
seen Heinmein break free of that sincere—
severe
—expression.

When this event continued to happen—when it transformed into a routine—Mitts’s mother made a habit of rising up from her seat. Walking alongside Floo. Doing her best to keep Floo away from Heinmein.

To Mitts’s mind, if Heinmein had been truly troubled by these little interactions with Floo, then why didn’t he wait an hour?

Wait until the kitchen was deserted?

He could’ve claimed his dinner in peace, then.

The only conclusion Mitts could draw was that Heinmein
enjoyed
it.

A couple of weeks later, Mitts’s suspicions were confirmed.

As with every mealtime, Floo clambered down from her high stool, toddled across the kitchen floor, and tugged at the back of Heinmein’s lab coat.

This time, however, it appeared that nobody, except Mitts, actually noticed this little scene playing out.

For some reason, that particular night, Mitts’s parents were so occupied by their dinner that they didn’t so much as look up to check on Floo.

But Mitts was checking on her.

At first, when Floo tugged on Heinmein’s lab coat, he didn’t react.

He kept his back to her.

He continued to serve himself dinner.

Just those gentle, almost soothing,
clunk-clunk
sounds as he spooned steaming rice onto his metal tray.

Finally, though, when he had apparently got through with serving himself dinner, he set his tray down on the kitchen surface, turned around to look at Floo, and then—and Mitts would never
ever
forget the sight—he crouched down and shovelled his hands beneath her armpits, lifting her up.

Clutching her to his chest.

When Mitts’s parents noticed the sight, they were just as dumbstruck as Mitts.

He thought that, like him, they simply
couldn’t believe
the sight.

Heinmein had shown them that he did indeed possess tenderness.

Human feeling.

Empathy
.

From that moment forward, whenever Floo would see Heinmein skulking about the Compound, she would stop and point at him, pronouncing, “
Dok-uh
!” in a loud and proud voice.

Heinmein would pause in his sweeping, dragging gait. And he would wave to her, a wide smile pinning back his lips.

Despite all this, though, Mitts didn’t trust Heinmein.

Not as far as he could throw him.

* * *

Mitts got himself showered quickly.

He brushed his teeth.