FALLDOWN
Aunt Miranda would be furious. He knew that as he pushed up the latch of the gate and went on up the path. He had had to get away, though; even if just for a bit. Out of the house, out of its suffocating atmosphere, away from the recent past. She wouldn't understand, because she never did - she was hardly an understanding woman. Bray didn't blame her. She had always loved her life out in the countryside, far from the city. Then out of the blue her brother and his wife had fallen ill and died, and she had had to come back to the city to look after a pair of nephews that she hadn't seen in thirteen years. Martin had been little more than a new-born baby, that last time that the family had all got together, and Bray himself had been barely two years old. He remembered Miranda as a distant, vocal woman, swathed in red silk. Now she was quiet and sad, just like all of the adults. The strange disease that had killed Bray's parents was spreading, and more and more adults had it. More and more of them were dying all the time, and no doubt Miranda was cursing the day that she had left her home in the countryside to come to this place of death and disaster. Not that staying away would have done any good. The news was filled with images of people dying the world over. Experts were saying that it might mean the end of the human race, although they were being shouted down by others among their colleagues. Bray didn't know what to believe, and wasn't altogether sure that he cared. His parents were dead, and he felt numb from their loss. His brother; sweet, gentle Martin; had gone off the rails, and it was all that Bray could do to keep the younger boy from doing something stupid. There were funerals every day; friends of his parents; people that he had seen almost every day of his short life; carted away with increasingly little ceremony to the increasingly full cemeteries. He hadn't begun to work out how he felt about it all, and sometimes he just had to get away. Hence last night, curled up in a tree in the park where he had spent so many hours running laps, in the days before his life had changed forever. Just him and a battered copy of Plato's Republic. Something to distract him completely from the more disturbing of the wanderings of his mind. He had fallen asleep there in the end, to an accompaniment of police sirens and distant yelling. There was so much fighting going on in the streets nowadays. Fighting and looting, as the deaths mounted up, and the children, so weirdly untouched by disease, started to react to their changing circumstances. The world was going crazy, and they all had to deal with it in their own ways. Aunt Miranda would be furious. That was just too bad.
"Miranda?" He pushed open the door, ready to feel the full force of her impressive glower. Miranda was not a woman to do anything by halves. She didn't swoop down upon him with both barrels blazing, though, so hanging up his jacket, and tossing his book onto the shelf by the door, he headed for the kitchen. Maybe Martin was in there eating breakfast. It was unlikely, but nothing was impossible. He wasn't there, though. Bray had a nasty suspicion that he hadn't come back last night either. Martin had quite a gang following him around now; a jumble of children whose parents were sick or dying, getting together in old abandoned buildings to tell each other tales and pretend that they were braver than they were. There had been fights with other gangs, and skirmishes with the police, all of which Bray tried to keep from Miranda. He didn't want Martin getting into trouble. Their aunt's fury was not the kind of thing that was going to help him now. Bray wasn't sure just what would help his brother, save the fantastical resurrection of their parents. He just knew that yelling at the boy, and punishing him, was not going to stop him from going crazy. His world was falling apart, and it made sense if he fell apart a little himself.
The kitchen was empty. Miranda wasn't in evidence any more than was Martin. There were no stray crumbs on the counter, no recently used crockery, no coffee mug draining beside the sink. Bray poured himself a glass of orange juice, and wondered what to do. Martin hadn't been to school more than once or twice since their parents had died, and Bray had mostly stayed away too. It made more sense to him to stay out on the streets and try to keep an eye on his brother. His father had made him promise to look after the younger boy, and it was something that Bray had always done anyway. Poor little Martin, small and insecure, always needing somebody to look out for him. Bray had no idea where he was right now, but that didn't absolve him of the responsibility. No school again today, then. He had better head back out onto the streets and see if he could find his wayward brother. A thirteen year old boy could get into any amount of trouble out on the street, with just a noisy gang of similarly young children for company. If he got arrested they would both be in trouble. Miranda would find out about the missed school, and about the fights, and about the gangs; and then who knew what would happen. Martin wouldn't take punishment from his aunt, certainly not in his current state of mind. The chances were that he would run away for good. Bray didn't want to let that happen. He had to cover for his brother, then. He had to stop him from making things worse for both of them. He had to hunt the mutinous child down.
He wrote a brief note for Miranda, saying that he and Martin had gone to school early - not a lie, he told himself; just a necessary fabrication - then headed back outside. He felt like a thief sneaking away, but there was no helping that. If Miranda saw him she would only ask awkward questions. She always did. Bray didn't resent her presence, and he was grateful to her for coming, but at times it might have been better had she left them alone. The law might not allow two minors to take care of themselves, but the law didn't know what was best for Martin. And besides, what was the law nowadays anyway? They were drafting in the army to replenish the dwindling police force. There was talk of a curfew to curb the rampages of the gangs. It wasn't the old law that governed them all now - it was a new law, and not a good one. It came from fear and desperation, and it suggested at worse yet to come.
"Hey Bray." The voice came from the garden wall, startling him with its suddenness. He almost jumped. It showed him how tense he was, and he told himself off for being so on edge. "You look like you've got a guilty secret. Sneaking off without permission again?"
"Shut up, Ebony." He wasn't in the mood for her jokes just now. She never seemed to understand that he didn't share her predilection for teasing and humour at times such as these. Sometimes he wondered if Ebony understood feelings at all. She never seemed to empathise when he was mourning the loss of his parents.
"Oh, don't be so moody." She jumped down off the wall, lithe as a cat, undeniably beautiful. She had dyed her hair again, he saw - streaks of red and purple this time, amongst the tight, beaded plaits. Not the sort of thing that would ever have been allowed in school; but then she had stopped attending at the same time as Martin. Ebony had never seen the need for school anyway, and with half of the teachers dead, and many of the parents well on their way to joining them, she wasn't going to bother attending now. She slid an arm through his, pressing herself against him in a way that he had never been entirely comfortable with, but had at least enjoyed once upon a time. It just felt wrong, now. He tried to push her away, but Ebony, as usual, would not be pushed. Somehow she always managed to be stronger than he thought.
"No school bag," she observed. He shrugged, glowering.
"So?"
"So Bray the model student is missing school? Again? You're going to have the truant officer coming out. Aunt Miranda will ground you for the rest of your education."
"You really think that the truant officer cares anymore? Half the kids in this part of town haven't been to school in a month. They're closing St Edwards."
"I heard. Good thing too. Rubbish school." She finally let go of him, although she didn't move very far away. "So where are you going? I fancy a swim, myself. What do you say?"
"I have other things on my mind, Ebony."
"You always have other things on your mind. Your mind is so full of things it's a wonder it doesn't give in under the strain."
"If you don't like it..."
"I didn't say that, now, did I." She ruffled his hair playfully. "I like you and your mind just fine. All the brooding and the mystery, all the secrets. But if we're not going swimming, what are we going to do?"
"We aren't going to do anything. I have to find Martin. I don't think he came home last night."
"So? You didn't either." She grinned at him. "I saw you, asleep up in that tree. You want to be more careful, Bray. There are gangs nowadays, you know that. Big, strong gangs, that'll go for anybody they see alone at night. They're like wolves. You wouldn't stand a chance."
"I can take care of myself."
"Sure you can. But you don't exactly love fighting, do you. They do, and they have you outnumbered ten to one or more. Even I wouldn't take on odds like that. What were you doing up there anyway?"
"I didn't intend to fall asleep. I just needed to be on my own for a while. I hate it back home. Everywhere reminds me of..." He shrugged. Telling Ebony how he felt rarely served any purpose. He couldn't describe how it hurt that the house no longer smelt of his mother's perfume; how the sight of his father's study made his chest hurt; how even Martin's bedroom was a painful relic of another time. Ebony would probably just shrug and tell him to stop thinking of the past. To his surprise, though, she flashed him an oddly gentle smile.
"Poor Bray. You always did feel everything so deeply."
"I won't apologise for my feelings, Ebony."
"I wouldn't ask you to. But sometimes they're more of a hindrance than an asset, aren't they."
"Maybe." He quickened his step, suddenly anxious to be away from the familiar street; out of sight of his mother's little flower garden. "It doesn't matter. I have to find Martin."
"That's not difficult." She didn't elaborate, and after a moment he glared at her.
"Do you know something?"
"All you have to do is ask." She caught hold of his hand, tightening her grip when he tried to pull free. "Look, do you want to find him or don't you?"
"Of course I want to find him." He sighed. "Ebony, please..."
"That's all I wanted, lover." She released her hold, and put on a sudden turn of speed. "Come on. This way."
"Can't you just tell me?"
"Anybody would think you didn't appreciate my company. It's not good for you to be alone so much, seriously. I know you've always liked it that way, but lately your mind is going to a lot of places it shouldn't go to. You've got to stop dwelling on things."
"Ebony..."
"You might not think I'm right, but I know that I am. All those long walks on your own, all that time you spend sitting on your windowsill, staring out into the street. Oh, I've seen you. Brooding Bray, staring into the past, or into I don't know what. It's not healthy."
"You're my psychiatrist now, is that it?"
"Somebody has to be. Bray, wake up. The world is dying. The way things are, every adult is going to be dead within a year. Probably a lot less. The whole of the world is going to belong to a bunch of grieving kids who don't know how to look after themselves. And don't try to say that it's not going that way. You're far too intelligent to believe all the official bull."
He shook his head slowly. "I don't want to listen to this. Every day you tell me that--"
"I'm trying to help! You know what's happening. The adults are all dying. All of them. The world is going to be a place for survivors, and survivors aren't the ones who spend their lives staring into the past and feeling sorry for themselves, or hiding from the truth. Survivors get on with living."
"You have a pretty gruesome outlook on life, you know that? Who fills your head with this stuff?"
"I don't need people 'filling my head'. I have eyes, and I have a brain. So do you. You've got the best mind I've ever known. It's nearly as good as mine." She grinned then, although the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "I'm not painting a picture of the world I want. Believe it or not, I'd rather things had stayed how they were. It was an easy life, but it's all falling apart now, and you might as well face it."
"You think? You act like I'm walking around with my eyes closed. Like I don't see the same things you do. Truth is, I just see them a bit differently, and I'm not ready to write the world off just yet. I certainly don't want to get ready for it, the way that you seem to want to do. We don't even know if they're all going to die."
"Don't we? Really?" Her gaze was so piercing, so unsettling, that he looked away. "Do you really not see what's coming? I can't believe that. Every time I try to have this conversation with you, you tell me that I'm making mountains out of mole hills. That it's not as bad as it looks. Don't tell me you haven't realised what things are going to be like in another few months?"
"Maybe." They walked on for a few hundred yards, both thinking on different things, before Bray broke the silence again. "The truth is... the truth is I guess I've tried not to think about it. I've heard the news reports. I just wasn't sure that I cared, after my parents died. But it seems like everybody's parents are dying now."
"So you do see it."
"I don't know. Every other day you tell me that it's the end of the world, and that I have to start facing up to that. Well pardon me for being more optimistic. Gangs of kids fighting in the streets, and throwing bricks and bottles at policemen, doesn't usually mean the end of civilisation."
"True. But it's just a little different this time, don't you think?" She eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, and he got the impression that she was debating whether or not to tell him something else. "You know... Martin sees it. You should listen to him. I heard him speaking to a group of kids yesterday, and he's like a prophet. It's incredible."
"Martin?" He came to a sudden halt, blinking at her with a complete lack of comprehension. "Wait... Martin? He told you all of this?"
"No. I listened to him because he was saying things I'd already worked out for myself. When everybody else is saying that it's all going to be okay, and that things will sort themselves out in a month or two, me and Martin can see the truth. This isn't going to blow over. Martin's a visionary."
"Martin's a scared little kid! He doesn't know what the future holds any more than the rest of us do. All the experts in the world can't agree on what's going to happen, and you think some screwed up little boy has all the answers?"
"He's not a little boy anymore. He's nearly fourteen. And besides, pretty soon there's not going to be any more kids, Bray. Anybody who stays a kid isn't going to make it through alive."
"You make it sound like a war. If the adults do all die--"
"If the adults all die, it will be a war. It's beginning now, on the streets. What do you think the gangs are about? Fun and games? They don't get together to play tiddlywinks, Bray. You've seen them. We've both been out there when it gets dark. We've both seen the fights, and been caught up in one of two of them as well; but we're seeing it all differently, aren't we. It's a battle for power."
"It's confusion. Anger and confusion. Nobody knows what's happening; everybody is scared. Do you think Martin would even be out there if mum and dad were still alive? That's what's made him like he is, not what's happening to the rest of the world. It's the same for the other kids, too. They're lashing out, that's all."
"Now who's playing psychiatrist. Okay, sure. So they're angry and afraid and they're lashing out. But you think that's going to stop when all the adults are gone? It's going to get worse. And let's not forget that some of those kids were troublemakers to begin with. We saw them at the weekends, in the old days, getting drunk and starting fights long before the Virus came along. You think they're just scared and confused? The gangs are growing bigger, Bray, and they're going to keep getting bigger. You must know that. You've seen it, and you can't really be hiding from that much truth. When the adults are gone - before they've gone, probably - there's going to be a gang war like nobody's ever imagined. You wait and see."
"You sound like you're looking forward to it." He was disgusted with her, but when he turned away she caught hold of his arm, and pulled him back to face her.
"Looking forward to it? No. Ready for it? Damned right I am. It's going to happen, Bray. I don't know when, but I know that it's coming; and when it does, I'm going to be ready. I didn't choose to be here when the world changed, but if it's going to change, I'm going to make the most of it. I'm going to get what I can out of it, and so should you. Power, Bray. It's all about power. Power and chaos. It's the future, and it's coming sooner than you think."
"Power and chaos?" He felt his heart sink. "That's written on Martin's bedroom walls. He's written it everywhere, and I don't know how much longer I can keep Aunt Miranda from going in there and seeing the mess he's made. You put all that in his head, didn't you."
"Not me. Power and chaos is Martin's line, not mine. He's got the makings of a great leader, you know, and it's time you saw it, instead of thinking of him as some helpless little boy who needs his big brother to hold his hand. When the gangs take over, Martin is going to be right at the forefront. It's going to be his war."
"Not if I have anything to say about it." He pulled free of her, rather more forcefully than he might have intended. "Where is he? Tell me."
"You might know where he is if you listened to him, instead of going off being Solitary Boy all the time."
"You think I've let him wander the streets on purpose? When he's out there alone it's because I can't find him, not because I've turned my back. Either that or I thought he was safe at home."
"You were always off alone somewhere. Why would he stay at home?"
"Because he always does! Because he's Martin! For as long as I can remember, he's been the good little boy, who sits at home and never stays out when it's dark. Me, I go out for long walks on my own. I sit out in the park and read long after everybody else has gone home. I go down to the beach and swim when mum and dad think I'm in bed. But Martin? He's scared to be out after dark."
"He was, sure. Times change, Bray. The world's changing. Stop clinging to the past."
"Change the record, Ebony. I just want to find my brother. Whatever you think, he's just a messed up little kid, and I'm responsible for him. I promised my parents I'd look after him, and I'm going to do just that. So get out of my way so I can find him myself, or tell me where he is!"
"Okay. If you won't listen to me, fine. Maybe you'll listen to him. He'll be at the diner opposite the roller-disco." She paused briefly. "You know that Richard's dead?"
"Richard?" Richard had run the roller-disco, the weekend destination of choice for most of the kids Bray knew. He had spent many a night there himself, his one concession to sociability, usually with Ebony by his side. And now Richard was dead, just like so many of the other adults. It was impossible to take it all in, nowadays. Another death, another name on the list. Another plague victim. He hadn't even mourned his parents properly yet. He shook his head sadly, and wished that he felt more than just emptiness. "Poor Richard."
"They took his body away in the night. There's more and more of them that are going out that way, especially with the shortage of medical staff. They were the first ones to get badly hit by this, I guess. Probably exposed to the Virus more."
"Yeah... enough, okay? I've had enough doom and gloom for one morning. I just want to find Martin, and..." He trailed off. Find Martin and what? They had no real home to go to, and no real reason to go there. What exactly were they going to do? Leave the city, and look for somewhere a little less depressing? He had been so wrapped up in his own sadnesses these last few weeks that he hadn't stopped to think about just how miserable the city had become. The rubbish wasn't being collected. The buses were barely running. The theatres were closing, and the cinemas had halved their daily screenings. Most of the houses had their curtains closed even during the day, and every curtain closed usually meant that somebody inside was dying, or had recently passed away. That or somebody on the other side was trying to hide from the world, and the reality of what was happening. Looking around now, his mind filled with thoughts of Saturday nights at the roller-disco, he found himself beginning to believe what Ebony had said. A dying world. A world with no adults in it. A world of children fighting each other in the streets. The thought of it seemed to hurt his very soul.
"You okay?" Ebony sounded genuinely concerned. Maybe she was. Frankly, right now he didn't care. He couldn't care about Richard, he couldn't care about rubbish piling up in the streets, or about drawn curtains and terrified adults. He had to think about Martin, and he had to make sure that his brother was safe. He had to find a way out of this for them both. Turning his back on the girl beside him, he broke into a run.
The roller-disco was some way away, but Bray was in good shape. Being captain of the school basketball and swimming teams had its bonuses, and stamina was one of them. He slowed to a halt only when he saw the big sign above the door of Richard's place, bright pink against the dark colour of the bricks. It was morning, so the lights of the sign were off, and from what he had just heard it was likely that they would never be turned back on. He stared at the building for several moments, letting his eyes be drawn to the upstairs windows that he knew belonged to the rooms Richard had lived in. What must it be like, dying alone in a bedroom? Was it better or worse to know that you were one of so, so many? He cut the thought off, turned his back on the roller-disco, and headed instead for the diner. Find Martin, a little voice inside him was screaming. Find Martin, and to hell with everything else.
It was a nice little building, and one that he knew well. Everybody had gone there once the roller-disco had closed its doors for the night, heading for a meal and some music to wind down to; boys squabbling over the jukebox, girls trying to look as though all of that was beneath them. Bray had had a regular table near the door, where most people had left him in peace. Him - and, later, Ebony - watching the others from a distance, never a part of it all but somehow never all that separate, either. A good place to go to, a good cook, a vegetarian menu that had even almost tempted Ebony. The cook was dead now; Bray remembered somebody talking about it, the last day that he had bothered going in to school.
He went in through the door, his hackles up without him quite knowing why. It was different. The whole feel of the place was different. Somebody had scrawled Power And Chaos! along the back wall, in shaky lines from an aerosol. He recognised the handiwork, and didn't have to wonder who the somebody had been. The tables had been dragged into the centre of the room, and the chairs arranged in a rough circle around them; somebody had torn open the vending machine in the corner of the room, and sweet wrappers were strewn around all over the place. There were two boys sprawled on the lunch counter, dressed in school uniform. They looked drunk. Bray headed straight for the nearer of the two, and hauled him to his feet.
"Huh?" It was Martin, peering at him blearily through what seemed to be weirdly opaque contact lenses. His short blond hair was sticking up all over the place, and he was wearing a bicycle chain around his neck. Bray shook his head.
"You stupid idiot. You look a mess. Are the taps still working in here?"
"Probably. Nobody's disconnected the electricity yet, so the water's probably still on too." Martin blinked up at him. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you. You didn't come home last night. What the hell is going on, Martin? Ebony was painting a picture of you as some kind of prophet, but either she's been drinking the same stuff as you, or she's just making things up again. Because I'm not seeing a prophet, little brother. I'm seeing a hungover idiot who's got a lot of explaining to do."
"Get off of me." Martin tried to tug free, but his strength was no match for his brother's, especially in his current state. "You're not my boss. Nobody's my boss, not anymore. You want to be careful, man. You start acting like you're one of the adults, and you'll end up dead just like the rest of them."
"They're not all dead. Not yet, and maybe not ever. Now you're coming home before Aunt Miranda realises that you're gone, and gets us both into trouble."
"She'll just think we're at school. It's nothing to worry about. Anyway, who cares what she thinks. Who the hell is she, to go lording it over us?"
"She's your aunt, and she came a long way to stay with us in that house. Or would you rather we'd been sent to an orphanage? There's a lot of kids in this city who are being looked after by the state right now, and I bet they'd rather they had some aunt to come look after them instead."
"Then they can have her." This time Martin did manage to pull free. "Nobody's sending me to an orphanage. I'd like to see them try. All that's over, man. Being looked after by adults. Schools, orphanages, aunts - it's all pointless. You wait and see. Another six months, this is going to be a whole different city, and people will be playing it my way then."
"In another six months there could be a cure, and you're going to be looking pretty stupid." Bray shook his head, exasperated. "You're already looking pretty stupid. What's with the contact lenses?"
"It's a new look. A new me. My eyes are changed, because I've seen the future." For a second Martin's face seemed different - older, more intense - then suddenly he was just a thirteen year old boy again, annoyed by his older brother. "Now get lost, Bray. I've got people coming. They want to hear me speak, and I've got a lot to tell them. We've got a future to shape."
"You can't do that. You know they've banned public meetings. It's too easy for the Virus to spread if everybody's all together in one place."
"The Virus isn't interested in us, and we're not interested in what's being banned. The law is for the old world, and the old people. The dying people. We've got our own rules now."
"Oh, you think? And you think your contact lenses will keep the police from busting in here to break your little meeting up? Or the army? There's a lot of soldiers around these days. Real soldiers, brought in to help out the police. Seems there's been a lot of looting, not that I need to tell you that by the look of things."
"That's the sort of thing that happens when half of the police are dead." Martin didn't look remotely repentant. Somehow Bray hadn't expected him to be. "More than half. The police are a joke, now."
"They're not a joke when they've got emergency rules to enforce, and when they've got the army to back them up. This isn't a game, Martin."
"You think I don't know that?" This time there was no mistaking the change in the boy's face, and the heat that flared up even through the blank white and yellow of the contact lenses. "Everybody's dying, and I'm supposed to think that's a game? You walk the streets at night, Bray. You always did. That's when the government people come, dressed up like something from Star Wars, and take the dead people out of their houses. Seen them? They cart bodies away in special vans, like they're doing something secret. Like maybe they don't want anybody to know just how many dead people there are. The official figures, the ones on the news, they come from medical records and funeral records. But what about all the people who never see a doctor? The ones who don't go through the system? The official death toll is a lie."
"That doesn't make any sense. Why would anybody lie about something like that? It's not like the official figures are reassuring."
"True. But maybe the real figures are really bad. I've seen the vans, Bray. Men in boiler suits with headgear, so they won't get exposed to anything. You're not telling me that they're taking people to hospital? They carry out corpses, and they cart them away. Mass cremations outside of the city, that's what I heard. And I believe it. There are far too many people now for the cemeteries to cope. Far too many."
"You think that the government is lying?"
"Sure the government is lying." There was almost a fever behind the boy's words; the alcohol in his system giving him a weird kind of energy, so that the words tumbled out in a rush. "They tell the truth, there'll be panic everywhere. Far worse than now. It's over, man. Their safe little world, with all their laws and establishments - it's all over. It's time for a new way."
"It's time to go home."
"Home? I don't have a home. Haven't you heard anything I've been saying? The adults are dying. All of them."
"Yeah, I heard you." He believed it, too, more or less. Maybe the adults were all going to die. With each passing day, as the fog of his own grief lifted a little more, he saw things a little more clearly. Saw more truths behind the official stories. None of that stopped Martin from being his first responsibility, though, and catching hold of the younger boy's shoulders, he turned him towards the door. "We're going home, Martin. You think mum and dad want you out here, with all the fighting that goes on? They want you safe."
"There is no safe. Nothing is safe. How long before the houses get raided too? At the moment it's just shops being looted, but soon enough it's going to be the houses. The abandoned ones first, sure. And then the ones that still have people living in them. Nothing is safe, Bray. We have to be ready for that."
"Ready for it? Or ready to make it happen?" The words were tumbling out of Bray too now, in a rush of anger that he couldn't hold back. How could his brother have changed so much, so soon? How could he be thinking these thoughts, spreading these ideas, acting this way, when he had used to be so very, very different? Bray hated himself for not seeing it sooner; for not doing something to stop this change from taking place. It was his fault, it had to be. Ebony was right; he had been off on his own, like always, not seeing what was going on with his own little brother. "You keep talking about the world not being safe, but there's no reason for it to be that way. The adults dying doesn't mean that everything has to go crazy. You're not getting ready for the trouble, you're getting ready to cause the trouble. Maybe the rest of the city would like their future to be a little different."
"Listen to you." Martin pulled free, his expression one of growing disgust. Behind him, the boy still on the lunch counter raised his head and began to show an interest. "Peace, love and understanding, that's always the way it was with you. Save the whales, save the Earth, save the rainforests, be nice to your neighbours, so long as they stay at arm's length. Good old Bray, sure, but always one step out of sync with everybody else. Well you don't get to make the rules, Bray. I do. You're not the one that the kids are going to listen to, because you're not one of them and you never will be. You never were."
"That's what this is about? Some city-wide popularity contest? You've got to be kidding. Yeah, okay. Sure. You always were the one with people skills. But you think the kids are going to listen to you preaching 'power and chaos', just because you're the one who's on their level? They're not going to listen to all of that. Why would they want to tear their own city apart?"
"Not going to listen? They're already listening, and they're not going to stop. They're listening everywhere I go, and more than that; they're going to follow me. And we are not going to be preaching peace and flowers. Power and chaos - that's how the world is going to be, Bray. My world. My rules."
"Poor little Martin. So angry he's going to make the whole world suffer?" He hadn't meant to speak so harshly, but the words tumbled out even more haphazardly than before. There was no sense relenting now, even though he felt guilty for the outburst. "I know they meant the world to you, Martin. I know the three of you had something special. You were always together, you always leant on them. I know that. I know losing them was hard. That doesn't give you the right to behave like this now. You're like some kid throwing all his toys out of the pram. Some spoilt little kid having a temper tantrum, and not caring about anybody around him. You think if you shout loud enough, mum and dad are going to come back?"
"Spoilt." Martin's voice was cold, and he had gone quite, quite pale. Bray wanted to apologise, to reach out to the boy, but he didn't move. Martin would just push him away now, the way he always did when he was angry. "You always thought that, didn't you. Spoilt little Martin."
"Not really." Martin had been spoilt, there was no denying that. He had been his parents' pride and joy; their little blond angel to show off to the world. Bray had never resented that, and it wasn't as though the special treatment had ever made his younger brother unbearable; not like a lot of favoured children. Now though - now it was as though all those years of spoiling had suddenly spawned a monster. He understood the anger and the bitterness, in a way. That didn't mean that he intended to put up with it. "Listen, Martin..."
"Martin?" A girl's voice, about Bray's age. She cut into their conversation with all the blunt nonchalance of somebody who had no care for social convention. Bray didn't turn around.
"Can you give us a moment?" he asked. Martin merely smiled.
"I don't think we have a moment. Care to meet my friends, Bray?"
"Your friends?" For a second he didn't move, then slowly he turned. He hadn't heard the diner's door open, although that was hardly a surprise. He had been thinking only of his family. At some point the girl had arrived, and with her other children. Eight, nine, ten of them - all choking the doorway, and spilling out into the street. The youngest looked to be about twelve, the oldest perhaps seventeen; some in school uniform, others just in normal street clothes. The girl who had spoken already looked as though she was ready for a confrontation.
"Trouble?" she asked. Her question was clearly directed at Martin, and she spoke like someone ready to help out a friend. Martin smiled.
"I don't think so. Bray here was just leaving."
"Not without you. Martin--"
"These people are here to listen to me talk. If you want to listen too that's fine, but I'm not leaving until I'm done. If you try to cause trouble, they'll stop you. We'll stop you. And I know you're bigger and stronger than me, and I know you're a big school sports hero. But there are a lot more of us, and some of these people have weapons. You wouldn't stand a chance."
"You're threatening me?" He couldn't believe it. Sweet little Martin, who had held his mother's hand at every opportunity; who had looked to his brother to protect him at school. Sweet little Martin. The blond angel had become a blond devil. "This is crazy. Look, I know--"
"Know? All you know is books. Old books and long words, and poems written in languages nobody speaks anymore. Ancient history, Greenpeace and pacifism. Now there's a useful combination for what's coming." Martin's expression had become a deeply unpleasant sneer. "Leave, Bray. You don't belong here. I'm building an army, of kids that'll follow me, and help me build our new world when the adults are gone. I've got no place for a peacenik with his head in the clouds. You've always been off somewhere on your own. You'd better get back there."
"I'm not leaving without you." It had started off as a wish to find his brother. It seemed to have turned into a desperate need. If he could just get Martin to come with him; if he could just get the boy to turn his back on all of this; then perhaps everything else would work out too. Perhaps the other madnesses would cease, and the world would begin to set itself to rights. It made no logical sense, but what was logic when your kid brother was trying to lead a children's revolution? Martin just laughed.
"Then we'll throw you out." He didn't move himself, as though perhaps that was yet a step too far; but his companions didn't hesitate. Even the half-drunk boy lounging on the lunch counter was on his feet in a flash, snatching up a chair as though to use it as a weapon. Bray was too stunned to move.
"This is crazy." He barely heard his own words; all that he seemed to hear was footsteps, as though the handful of children were a huge army descending upon him. One of the older kids grabbed his arm, twisting it up behind him. Bray didn't even struggle. This was madness. It was a joke, it had to be. But Martin wasn't calling a halt to it, he wasn't telling anybody to stand down; the look on his face wasn't one of good humour. With the contact lenses hiding his eyes, he didn't even look sane.
"I'm not going home, Bray. That's not my home anymore, understand? All of that is over." Managing to look far taller than before, Martin looked upon his brother now with an expression of haughty disapproval. "You'll figure that out for yourself soon enough, I suppose. If the street gangs don't get you first." He nodded to his companions. "Throw him out."
"Forget that." It was Ebony, standing in the doorway, her body language as casually provocative as always. Martin glared.
"I give the orders," he told her, sounding rather more petulant than he might have liked. She nodded.
"Sure. Fine by me. But the police are on their way. They must have seen everybody coming in this direction, and you know what they're like about gatherings nowadays. Fun though all of this looks, we'd better break it up."
"Damn it." Martin looked disgusted. "Yeah, alright. Get out of here everybody. We'll meet again later. I'll send out the word about where and when." A police siren sounded out, answered by another one, and Bray felt the grip on his arm loosen. In a rush the other children were gone.
"Don't hang around in here, Bray." Still looking almost insufferably nonchalant, Ebony took a few sauntering steps towards him. "The police are coming. This place has been broken into, and they'll arrest anybody they see here."
"You don't look too fussed."
"Yeah, well I'm confident that I can get away. You I'm not so sure about." She grabbed his hand, and pulled him towards the door. "You might be able to run fast, but unless you start doing it, you're going to be in a cell before you can say 'Aunt Miranda'. And you know what she'll say."
"So this is what we do now? We run away from the police?"
"Yes." She pushed him towards the door, none too gently. "They don't stop to ask questions anymore, and from what I hear, nobody is worrying all that much about trials anymore either. So you run, Bray. Now." She pushed him out of the door, just as a police car came around the corner of the street, screeching to a halt with a huge, protracted skid. Several of Martin's acolytes were still running away, and they swerved off down an alley when the car came into view. Ebony swore. "Come on."
"We haven't done anything."
"You're breaking half a dozen laws just by being here. Half a dozen new laws. Are your eyes really shut that tight, Bray? Watch." She spun him around, to where the police car had stopped. Two officers wearing body armour jumped out, and dashed down one of the alleys. It was not long before they were back, a boy held tightly between them. They were not being gentle, and they clearly were not being considerate of his age. Bray thought that he recognised him. The boy was thirteen at the most.
"What will they do to him?" he asked, instinctively deferring to Ebony. She merely shrugged.
"Who knows? Depends on whether his parents are still alive, I guess. Now come on. There was more than one car, and I don't aim on getting picked up by another."
"Which way did Martin go?" He followed her up the street, copying her casual, unhurried pace. They didn't want to attract any attention. She shook her head.
"His gang have a few places they hang out in. He might have gone for any one of them. We'll make for the closest, but we'll have to hope he's there. The police will be all over the area looking for kids who look like they're running away. They'll want everybody who was at that meeting. Once we've gone to ground we'll have to stay that way at least until it's dark. Probably until the morning."
"I can't stay out all night again. Miranda will--"
"Bray, Miranda will either sound the alarm or she won't. Probably she won't. She knows you're upset. She'll just figure you need some time to work things out."
"I wasn't worried about her sounding the alarm. That's going to happen eventually anyway, if I can't make Martin go home. I'm worried about her, that's all. She's all on her own, and imagine what she's going to be thinking. She gave up everything to come here for us."
"I know." She reached out and took his hand, but what he had thought was another of her flirtatious gestures turned out to be something else, for with sudden force she propelled him around a sharp bend and into an alleyway. "But you have to stop thinking about your aunt, and start thinking about yourself. Now run."
"Ebony..." A police siren wailed, barely drowning out the noise of a screaming, speeding engine, and he felt his pulse quicken. It was an instinctive reaction; a fear of the sound, that came from somewhere deep inside him. Quite suddenly the police were the enemy. He didn't need her, with her stories and her warnings, to tell him that. His hand still in hers, they both ran.
They ran everywhere, or so it seemed. Heading north at first, then east when they heard another police siren; cancelling it all out by going south west for what seemed like ages, until a police car appeared out of nowhere and they had to change direction again. A pair of policemen chased them on foot across a park, and Bray caught sight of several pairs of eyes watching from a patch of bushes. Kids who had already taken to the streets; kids who had already learned that the police were no longer their friends. The world changed quickly, once you took that first step outside the cradle of society - or what remained of it. Could this really be the life that Martin wanted to live?
They lost the policemen in an ornamental garden, dodging between neatly sculpted bushes, and crawling under shining, white-painted benches. It was almost fun, like a game of chase played out in one of the city's most beautiful locations. It was a hot day, and water from the fountains sparkled in the air, and clouds of fanciful fishes basked in the sunlight. Bray was almost tempted to join them in their ponds, but always there was the sudden howl of a police siren to return his thoughts to reality. They must have been seen at the diner. People were looking for them. The authorities wanted to know what the gangs of children were up to, he supposed. In times likes these, they were probably anxious to hold onto what control they still had. Otherwise the looting would soon be out of control, and the gangs would get bigger. He might have sympathised with them, had he not seen that small boy being dragged away by the police; if he hadn't himself been chased over half the sector just because he happened to have been seen with a group of other kids. This didn't feel like law, it felt like persecution. It felt like desperation. The panic of a government that was out of its depth.
"So where are we going?" he asked at last, when they began to feel that they could take a more leisurely pace again.
"Drysdales. The private school."
"Drysdales? It closed didn't it? About a fortnight ago?"
"Yeah. All the city rich dashing off to their country estates to try to avoid the Virus." She smiled sardonically. "Not that it's going to do them any good."
"Nice building." Knowing the way well, Bray turned to head north west.
"For the time being, yeah. There's a caretaker still there. The place is alarmed, so I suppose it must all be locked up tight. Won't take long for all that to change, though. If there's one thing the gangs hate, it's school buildings."
"Yeah. I saw a school burning yesterday." Bray, who had spent so much of his life immersed in books and learning, didn't really see the sense in burning schools; but he had seen the look in Martin's eyes, and wondered just how much sense of any kind there was around these days. Only Ebony was really showing any now. She had spoken of his brother as a great leader, but she didn't look as though she was following his lead. Ebony was still Ebony - still cool, still calm. Still indisputably self-serving. Power, she had said - power was the way forward. She was using Martin to get that power, just as she was using the current situation. Should he hate her for that, he wondered? Oddly he found it reassuring. The world might be falling apart, but Ebony was still Ebony. She would always survive - and as long as she still had a use for him, so too should Martin. That was one thing at least to cling to.
"Penny for them?" They had turned down into a broader street, one that they both knew well. The more familiar the landmarks, the more strange the day felt. Bray didn't mention that though. Instead he just shrugged.
"I guess I'm doing a lot of thinking. Feels like I've had my head in the sand."
"Your parents died. You're entitled."
"Maybe. And shutting the world out seems like a better option than what Martin's doing to deal with all of this.
"You're different people."
"Yeah. But how did I not notice how different? I knew we weren't all that alike, sure. He always wanted to be around other people, and I always wanted to be alone. He was never all that academic, I guess... actually, there wasn't all that much he was interested in, except cars maybe. Cars and cricket. But how do we suddenly get to be on two different sides of something like this? He wants a war. He wants gangs of kids fighting each other in the street. He wants power and chaos, and he was ready to fight me for it. Why didn't I ever notice that there was all of that inside him? I just thought... I guess I didn't think all that much. Not about what he was really like underneath."
"Who does, Bray? Nobody ever really knows somebody else." A distant police siren made them both speed up, reacting to the sound as though they had been doing so all their lives. They cut down another side street, and kept instinctively to the shadows. "We're nearly there. You'd better let me go in first. Martin might be inside, and he might still want to have you sliced and diced."
"It's not funny, Ebony."
"No, maybe not." She reached out, giving his hand a brief squeeze. "Look, none of this is your fault, okay? However you feel, whatever you think you should have seen, or done, it's not your fault. He's just who he is, same as you are."
"Yeah." It was scant comfort. Ebony offered him the briefest of smiles, then pulled away and took the lead, slipping out of the side street and into the road beyond. Opposite was Drysdales, an exclusive school for the rich, surrounded by white walls and a wrought iron gate. Ebony climbed over the gate with all the ease of a gymnast, and he followed her without enthusiasm. Hiding out didn't appeal to him, even if there was a chance that Martin would be waiting somewhere here. He wasn't altogether sure that he wanted to see the boy again just yet. He needed a plan, first. Some way of persuading his brother that street fighting and power were not the answer to whatever was coming. But he knew in his heart of hearts that it would be no use. He had seen things in his brother that day that he had never seen before, but that seemed to have been there all along. Deep inside, he wondered if perhaps Martin was already lost.
"Here." They were running along the side of the school building, beside a well-tended flower bed reminiscent of the ones in the gardens that they had run through earlier. Ebony was gesturing to a place up ahead where the rubbish bins stood, waiting for collectors who were probably never coming. A faintly rotten smell drifted from them now, showing how long it had been since they had been emptied. Too long in this heat. Ebony went past them, to where a stone flight of stairs led to some kind of cellar.
"Down there?" asked Bray. She nodded, but didn't go down the steps. The door at their foot was padlocked, he saw now. Somehow he didn't think that that would be much of a barrier to Ebony, but presumably unlocked doors were too much of an advert to the presence of intruders. Instead she led him to where a small window stood half open, just below the level of the ground. She slipped through with her usual grace, and a moment later he heard her voice calling softly to him. Carefully, he followed her down inside.
He found himself in a large stone room, with a few wooden boxes scattered about on the floor, and a crate half full of beer bottles standing on a plain metal table by one wall. There was nobody else in the room, but the place looked inhabited somehow. A pair of blankets were screwed up in a corner, and there was a tin opener and an empty tin of pineapple pieces beside the beer crate. Ebony sat down on one of the wooden boxes.
"Make yourself at home," she told him. He stared around.
"Is this where Martin spent last night?" he asked. She shrugged.
"I don't know. I was in the park last night, or some of it anyway. Saw you there, remember? It's early days for him yet, you know. He's spent most nights at home."
"Yeah. Up until now." Bray sat down on another of the boxes, looking around at the bare stone walls without enthusiasm. "If he's right... if you're right... this is how it could be soon, isn't it. Hiding out in places like this. Hiding from people like him."
"Not necessarily." She shrugged, then reached out for a couple of bottles of beer, throwing one to him. "Join us."
"And have people hiding from me? No."
"I knew you'd say that." She smiled at him fondly. "But you know, there's a time and a place for idealism, Bray. A time and place for altruism and all the rest of that stuff. If the adults all die, the world is going to get very hard, very quickly. You can see that."
"Yeah. Kids are going crazy. It's probably only going to get worse." He shook his head sadly, still sure that there had to be a better way. "But that doesn't mean that it's okay to get like that too."
"Even if the alternative is starving? Living like a rat, hiding from the gangs? I know you like solitude, Bray, but that kind of solitude is just plain crazy."
"Maybe." He pulled out his penknife and opened up the bottle-opener, tossing it to her. "But wanting the city torn to pieces by warring gangs seems pretty damn crazy too." She flipped off the lid of her beer, and threw the knife back.
"There's nothing crazy about surviving," she told him. He had opened his beer, and she raised hers in salute. He followed suit, though slowly. "To survival."
"Yeah. The survival of the adults." He took a slow sip, watching her drink too. "What? Not your kind of toast?"
"Hey, like I said before, I didn't ask for any of this. I'd like things to go back to normal, and I'm happy to live an easy life. But it's not going to happen, is it."
"No." This time he took a longer sip, wishing suddenly for something stronger than simple beer. He had never been a drinker, but perhaps alcohol was sometimes the best option. "I think the adults are realising it too. I'd have thought they'd have figured it out first."
"Some of them probably have. Not the kind of thing you want to face up to though, is it. Not if you're one of them. Not if you're one of us too, maybe. There'll be a lot of people hiding from the truth, right up until the end."
"I almost envy them."
"No you don't." She left her seat, sliding over to sit next to him instead. The boxes were not big, and it was cramped with the two of them sharing. Gently she clinked her bottle against his. "What good does it do, hiding from the truth? Gotta be prepared, Bray. Be ready. Don't let the world catch you by surprise."
"I know." He smiled at her somewhat absently, his mind elsewhere. "Forewarned is forearmed. Martin has got that much right at least." He glanced briefly around the room. "I wonder where he is."
"It looked like he ran off with Jake Black. Tall kid with the ethnic necklaces? He's been sleeping rough since his step-father threw him out eighteen months ago, and he knows this sector better than anyone. There's no way the police will catch him. Martin will be safe enough."
"Yeah, I know Jake." Jake Black was trouble, and always had been; but Ebony was right. The police would never catch him. He could probably teach Martin a thing or two; and whereas Bray would have balked at that once upon a time - even just a day ago - he could see now that it might be a good thing. Martin had said that he wasn't going home. If Bray couldn't change his mind - and right now he couldn't see where to even begin trying - that meant that there were a lot of new things he had to learn. They both did. Bray wasn't about to walk away and leave the boy on the streets. "Maybe we should try to find them," he suggested, although the idea of spending the rest of the day dodging police patrols didn't exactly delight him. She shrugged.
"They'll have got a look at us. Must have done, to have kept after us the way they did. They might even have checked the CCTV footage for the area, and got pictures of us too. I'm not going back up there again just now. They won't give up until it gets dark."
"Aunt Miranda said that the increased patrols were comforting." He remembered watching them go past - the police, the army, a few civilian volunteers to bolster the numbers - and not really thinking about them at all. They had been no comfort to him, but neither had they been a danger. He hadn't stopped to think about what they might be doing, criss-crossing the city the way that they did. The new laws hadn't seemed to concern him before. Now he knew that he would have to find out more about them. "I never thought of them as the enemy before."
"Good boy like you? You never had to. They're the enemy now, though. The gangs are scaring people, the looting is big news, and that's bad for a government that knows it can't keep control forever."
"Yeah. They'll have to get tougher and tougher. They'll probably try to round the kids up. Ship them off to orphanages. Last thing any government wants right now is gangs of kids on the street."
"I hadn't thought of that." For a moment she looked young - she was young, he thought; younger than him - young in the way that she had always managed to hide. "We'll always be running then, won't we. It won't just be about hiding from the police when we break a few laws. We'll he hiding all the time."
"Doesn't have to be like that for you," he told her. "That's not your brother going crazy out there."
"True. But whether we like it or not, we've both got choices to make now. You heard Martin; he's not going home. So either we go back and try to live our old lives - which, let's face it, is just postponing the inevitable - or we stay out here and try to find new lives. Back there it's safe for the time being. Out here is where Martin is. It's where he's staying."
"So he says. Wait until things start getting difficult. He'll soon change his mind."
"He believes that civilisation is falling apart, Bray. He's expecting things to get difficult."
"I might be able to change his mind. Or I could force him. I could--"
"Keep him locked up in his bedroom forever? Hardly. Martin sees things the same way I do. The future is being built out here, and being a part of it now guarantees greater power later, when the new order starts for real. The ones who are hiding at home now, or who are still letting the adults run their lives - they're missing out. They're losing their chance to be here at the start of it all, and it'll cost them later. No, I'm not going anywhere, whatever the police and the army try to do - and believe me, Martin thinks the same. Hell, you don't get anywhere without taking some risks."
"Can't you forget power, just for a moment?" He sounded upset. She would have pressed more closely against him, had it been physically possible.
"The future is coming. We might as well be ready for it."
"Yeah, but we have very different ideas of how to be ready. And what to be ready for."
"True, lover." She chinked her beer bottle against his again, very, very gently this time. "But we both know that when the kids take over, it's not going to be your kind of world. I'm a realist Bray, not a dreamer. I'm going to be ready for what's coming."
"You and Martin, ruling the city together?"
"He's not exactly the one I'd choose as my consort. But with his vision I'd be a fool to turn him down." She laughed lightly, the sound, though brief, filled with music. For a moment she looked almost light-hearted. "Enough about the future. We've got a lot of time to kill before we can be sure it's safe to go back up there, and I'd rather not spend the time arguing with you."
"What else do we do?" It was hardly the most inspiring of rooms, with hardly the most inspiring of contents. She smirked, and he rolled his eyes. "No."
"As if I'd suggest such a thing. Especially when we don't know where that caretaker is. Do you have a book on you?"
"I don't think so. I did have one, but I left it at home before I came out again."
"Bray, out and about with nothing to read? I don't believe it. Check your pockets, lover boy. I'll get us another beer."
"I'm not getting drunk."
"Hey, I never get drunk. It's too dangerous. There's nothing wrong with a couple of drinks, though, right?" She fetched another pair of bottles, and sat back down beside him. "So what you got?"
"Gulliver's Travels." He had found it in one of his pockets, and vaguely remembered putting it there. He would never have thought of it had it not been for Ebony. Odd that she knew him so well.
"Do you ever read anything that was written in living memory?" She laughed, gently mocking him the way that she so often did. "Never mind. Read it to me."
"Read it to you?" It hardly seemed like the kind of thing that she would like. Ebony rarely read. She had always been more one for action - always off doing things, preferring to be anywhere but reading or studying. She leant against him, evidently settling in place for the long haul.
"I prefer music to books. That doesn't make me a cultural moron, you know." She took the book from him, opened it at the first page, and handed it back. "I even know that it's a satire. See? I've been to lessons. I've even paid attention in some of them."
"I'm suitably impressed." He shouldn't be surprised, he thought. She was smarter almost than anyone he had ever met. It was just that, with Ebony, nothing was ever that simple. She seemed genuine now though, and he allowed himself the slightest of smiles. Her weight against him was annoyingly familiar; annoyingly right; and he was already beginning to relax far more than he would have thought possible. "Okay, I'll read. For a bit. But no tricks."
"No tricks." She finished off her first bottle of beer, and smiled at him over its rim. "You're safe with me, Bray. Always."
But the thought lingered in his mind that he would be a fool if ever he believed that.
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