Ice Diaries (21 page)

Morgan said, “When’s he
coming?”

“I don’t know. At that
point I forgot to keep quiet and said I didn’t see what it had
to do with either of them who Tori slept with, and Mike said he
thought it would be a nice idea if I called in on Jen to take a look
at her tie-dying. So I left and they went on talking, thick as
thieves. That was six days ago, and it’s been a whiteout ever
since. As soon as I could I came here to warn you.”

“That was very kind of you,”
I said. “Thanks.”

“You needn’t thank me, what
I’m afraid of is Mike’s going to dump me and take you
south instead and I’ll be stuck forever living with a load of
time-warp hippies.”

“I wouldn’t go.”

“He might not give you a choice.”
This struck me as melodramatic; I didn’t see that he could
compel me. She went on, “I could tell he fancied you, even
before this week. It was after the dinner at Nina’s, when you
were wearing that corset and all the eye makeup. It was like he saw
your possibilities. And he got a buzz out of you standing up to him.
Don’t know why, I have to agree with him the whole time or he
goes all icy on me. It’s bloody unfair. He kept going on about
what a waste it was, you mouldering here at subsistence level, you
deserved better. I got sick of the subject. Anyway, I’m worried
about what he’s going to do to Morgan.” She turned to
him. “He went ballistic when he realized you’d taken his
Semtex after everything else. He offered to sell some to one of the
House Committee at Strata, and when he unwrapped it to show the man
it was plasticene. The man laughed like he thought Mike was trying to
fool him and Mike was furious.”

Morgan gave a quiet snort of amusement.
But I didn’t laugh. I’d known this was a self-indulgent
mistake, annoying Mike for the sake of it. Immature and asking for
trouble.

“Not your smartest move,” I
said.

“Who says I was trying to be
smart? Just the thought of the look on his face makes it worth it.”
He smiled infuriatingly, as if enjoying a private joke. “Anyway,
let him come. I can handle Mike.”

“Better if you didn’t have
to.”

He shrugged. I scowled at him. There
was a brief silence, broken by Serena.

“And I should have said, he’s
got a gun.”

Ice Diaries ~ Lexi Revellian

Morgan sat up, not smiling any more.
“Where the fuck did he get a gun from?”

“A man in the flats. He did a
deal on the quiet with him, swapped it for the Lynx. So you can see
he’s really serious. We’re all wondering who’s
going to get left behind now we’re a sled short. Everyone’s
getting paranoid about it. Mac said Mike will shoot one of us. I
think
he was joking.”

I wondered if she knew David had been
offered a sled, presumably BJ’s. Morgan said, “What kind
of a gun is it?” Serena looked blank. “Is it a rifle, a
shotgun, a pistol?”

“It’s small, like a
revolver. Modern-looking. He wouldn’t let me hold it. He did
say the name … it had a number.”

“A Glock 17 or 19?”

“That’s it.”

“Which?”

“I’m not sure.”

Morgan said to me, “The police
use Glocks. They’re semi-automatic. Fantastically reliable,
work when they’re filthy or freezing, won’t go off if you
drop them. Just point and shoot – pulling the trigger
deactivates the safety catches.” He turned to Serena. “D’you
know what magazines he’s got? How many rounds?”

“The man gave him some boxes of
ammunition. I don’t know anything about them. They went down to
the car park so he could show Mike how to fire it.”

I said, “What does semi-automatic
mean? Is that like a machine gun?”

“Machine guns are belt-fed.
Glocks have a high capacity magazine with fifteen or more bullets,
and you get two with each gun. You can just keep firing till you get
lucky.”

“Maybe we should get out of here.
Now.”

“On the other hand, Mike’s
a novice. He’ll have problems hitting anything more than a few
metres away. A bullet’s small and a human’s big by
comparison.”

“I’m not totally reassured
by that.”

“Oh, I’m not thinking of
staying to give Mike some target practice. We’ll vamoose. I’d
rather take a chance on crashing the sled.”

Serena had been looking from one of us
to the other, biting her lip. Now she said, with a casual air but
sounding strained, “I know it’s a bit of a cheek asking,
but I don’t suppose you’d let me come with you? I’ve
got the snowmobile, and I’d much rather go south with you
guys.”

My heart sank. I didn’t want her
with us, but sensed her desperation and it seemed terribly selfish to
refuse. Morgan’s reaction was instant and decisive.

He shook his head. “Sorry. We’ve
got all our gear packed and ready to go, enough for us two, and you
haven’t even got a trailer. You’d hold us up. Plus I
don’t want the responsibility.”

“That’s okay. Just thought
I’d ask.” Her voice was flat. “I’d better be
off then, before the weather gets any worse or Mike misses me. Good
luck. Hope you make it south.” She got to her feet. “Can
I use your bathroom before I go?”

“Sure.” I felt dreadfully
sorry for her. As soon as the door closed, I said quietly, “I
feel mean. She did come to warn us. You don’t think we should
take her?”

“No, I don’t. It’s
simple: would she help or hinder us to get south? We’ll have
our work cut out as it is avoiding Mike and making the journey. We
don’t need delay while she gets her kit together, and we don’t
need her. The only possible reason for taking her would be to stop
her telling Mike we’re still here, and that won’t matter
if we go now.”

“Are you always this ruthless? If
I got ill or injured or we quarrelled, would you leave me behind?”

“Of course not.” He smiled.
“You and me are buddies.”

“Buddies?” I raised my
eyebrows. “
Buddies
?”

“Damn straight. I watch your
back, you do the same for me. Get ready to go. He could arrive any
minute. If Serena made it here, so can he.”

I rushed round collecting things and
putting them in backpacks. Everything we needed for the journey was
in the trailer hidden north of Old Street with the sled, except for
some stuff we used on a daily basis. I tried not to forget anything.

Serena reappeared, smiled faintly at
us, crossed to the door and slid it open. Morgan helped her heave the
trailer off the sled. Three inches of snow covered it.

He checked her petrol gauge and said
she’d got plenty, then told her to keep her compass at south
southwest and she wouldn’t get lost. I hoped he was right. The
snow fell thicker than before, and the moon, had we been able to see
it, was only a sliver.

“Will you be okay? It’s
almost dark.”

She turned on the engine and the
headlights. “I’m more worried about getting back in
without anyone noticing.”

“Good luck.”

She zoomed off through the gloom and
the snow, a fast-receding glow of light. I turned to go inside,
hearing the engine grow ever fainter.

Another twenty minutes and I reckoned
I’d got everything. I dressed in my new layers for the journey.
I took the letter from my mother out of the wooden box and put it in
an inside zipped pocket, deciding against taking the photo of David
on Kos. I packed a pen and my diary, and chose two paperbacks,
The
Big Sleep
and
About a Boy
. It dawned on me I’d been
contented here, almost happy, more so as time went on; having always
longed to get away, now the time had come I felt nostalgia for what I
would leave behind.

I said, “Are we off?”

“As soon as I’ve made sure
no one’s lying in wait for us out there. If Mike was only
waiting for the snow to lighten, and Serena went round in circles,
they could be here already. We’ll go upstairs for a better
view.”

Morgan went and moved the bed away from
the unused front entrance. I unlocked the balcony door so Greg would
be able to get in. I went to put out the candles, and he told me to
leave them burning. I had a last look round the home I was about to
abandon forever, then joined Morgan in the hallway. He opened the
door gently, listening in the blackness, switched on his torch and
shone it both ways. We slipped into the corridor, closing the door
behind us. I followed him towards the stairs and up a couple of
flights, into a flat two floors above mine. Its lock was missing –
I’ve broken into all the flats at one time or another. Before
entering he switched off his torch. So did I. I shut the door while
he went through the hall to the abandoned living room, its air cold
and smelling of damp plaster. He crossed to the window. Nothing was
visible beyond the glass except darkness and swirling snow.
Visibility was maybe fifty or a hundred yards. I shivered. We’d
be driving blind through this. The headlights wouldn’t help
much.

I said, “If Mike’s outside
we’d never know.”

“No, but it cuts both ways –
he’ll have trouble spotting us. I can’t see anything out
there.” He suddenly said, “Did you see that?”

“No, what?”

“A light.”

We both stared into the murk. Nothing.
“What sort of light?”

“Small, white. A torch. Someone’s
out there.”

“It could be Greg, though he
mostly comes in the morning.”

He slid the door open, and moved on to
the balcony, keeping down. I joined him, my feet sinking into
eighteen inches of snow. Crouching low, I peered between two panels
whose glass was opaque with snow. Minutes passed. Snowflakes
collected on me, and I brushed them clumsily off my eyelashes with my
glove.

I whispered, “Why don’t we
just leave further along if there’s someone here?”

“One more minute. I’d
sooner know who it is, where they are and what they’re up to.
Don’t want to bump into them.”

Then I saw it, the quick flare of a
flame and the dim shape of a man. His arm moved fast. Something flew
through the air, there was a crack and flames flared up beneath us; a
ball of fire, a yellow glow and black smoke. A Molotov cocktail,
thrown at my flat. A second one smacked into the glass, and the fire
belched higher.

“Let’s go.” Morgan
headed out of the flat fast and I followed. A louder explosion; an
enormous wall of orange light lit us on our way. Morgan ran along
corridors to our right, down stairs at the far end back to snow level
and into another flat. “Wait for me here.”

“I’m staying with you.”
It’s always a mistake in Doctor Who when two people split up.

“Okay, but don’t get in my
way.” He opened the balcony door, vaulted the rail and raced
towards my flat through the deep fresh snow, with me running more
slowly after.

The glare from the wall of flames all
along my windows illuminated a man alone, hood up, snow blowing about
him. He stood by a car roof top box full of cans and bottles with
rags poking out of their tops, lighting then hurling them steadily
one by one towards the conflagration. He’d moved on to big
plastic containers without wicks that exploded into flames five
storeys high when they hit. There was a stench of burning petrol and
the smoke blew in my eyes and made them sting. Behind the fire’s
roar you could hear cracks as the double glazing shattered. Inside,
all my painstakingly collected firewood and kindling, a year’s
work, waited to catch fire. I imagined how upset Greg would be when
he discovered my flat a burnt-out shell. Anger flared within me.
Bastard
.

The man saw us and turned. It was
Eddie, his face a swollen mess, with purple patches under both eyes
and a white dressing over his nose. His expression changed from
simple absorption to alarm. He grabbed a bottle and clicked a
lighter. Morgan kept running, even when Eddie threw the bottle at him
and it flared on the snow and set light to his clothes. He smashed
into Eddie, barrelling him to the ground. Eddie screamed as Morgan
punched his face with an audible crunch, making me wince. I
remembered what Morgan had said about watching his back, and scanned
the darkness, glad not to watch the fight. Just the noises made me
feel sick. I couldn’t see anyone. Eddie went quiet; when I
looked I saw him curled unmoving in the snow. Morgan stood, slapping
at his jacket.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He crouched and
went through Eddie’s pockets till he found a key on a ring.

“Is he dead?”

“No. Just not very healthy.”
He got to his feet, grabbed the trailer’s rope and headed back
the way we had come, his sleeve still smoking. I followed him,
shaking.

“Where are we going?”

“Mike’ll be in the corridor
outside your flat with the others, waiting for us to be forced out by
smoke. We must have just missed him. We’ll skirt round the
building, pick up the sled and get away before he susses out we’re
not in there.”

That sounded good to me. I was relieved
Morgan had decided to walk away rather than creep up behind Mike and
take him by surprise. I didn’t want him to beat up anyone else,
nor did I want anyone to beat him up, and if I never saw Mike again
it would be too soon.

The soft snow in our faces and
underfoot made the going heavy work, but it was a comforting
reflection that every step took us further from Mike. I quickly lost
my bearings, but Morgan seemed to know which direction to take. By
the time the building loomed into sight my legs were aching from
keeping up with him. He slowed to take stock of his surroundings. It
was so quiet I could hear our breathing. I turned and looked all
round. The conflagration wasn’t visible as it was on the south
side of Bézier, away from us, but thick grey smoke mushroomed
above the roof. Nothing moved, and though it was now snowing less,
our tracks were being obliterated even as I watched.

“I’m thinking we should
wait here till the snow stops. Camp if we have to.” For the
first time, he looked undecided. “Unless we go really slow, we
could bump into something under the snow and wreck the sled. Then
we’re buggered.”