One of Us (2 page)

My head starts to spin and my legs go, and suddenly I'm being picked up and carried away. The smoke's fading, the smell too. The train never even left. It's still waiting at the platform but with blasted doors and twisted metal. We're climbing stairs, I think.
Yes, you can't use an elevator in a fire. I should try to walk
, I think, and struggle to get my feet down, but that makes us both fall, hard, onto the steps.

Sound slams into my head: “Evacuate the station. Move calmly to the nearest exit. Evacuate the station. Move calmly . . .” The ringing isn't in my head. It's the station alarm.

I start to cough again, choking coughs that I can't control, and my rescuer leans in to me, patting my back. He looks young, but he's got a scarf tied around his mouth and nose, so only his eyes are visible. His chest is rising and falling because he's struggling to breathe too. I want to ask him about the suitcase man, but I still can't talk, can't think.

His arm tightens around me and we begin climbing again. One, two. I cling to the pocket of his jacket.
Leather: that's why it's so hard to hold on to.
Five, six. It takes a long time. Ten, eleven . . . I lose count. And all the while, the alarm's ringing and the disembodied voice is shouting: “Evacuate the station. Move calmly to the nearest exit . . .”

That's what we're doing,
moving calmly
, his arm around me, my arm around him, two strangers clambering to safety. I almost faint again, but I hear his voice near my ear: “Not far now. Stay with me.”

And then there's daylight ahead, the gray light of winter gleaming through the glass roof of the station. I make my legs walk up the last few steps, and fall on to my knees, racked by a coughing fit that tears through my rib cage. Other noises rush into my ears: sirens from outside the station, shouting and screaming and running feet . . .

When I stop coughing he gets me to my feet, puts his arm around my waist and walks me across to a bench under the display board. He helps me sit and crouches in front of me, taking the scarf from his mouth. Under his sandy hair his face is streaked with sweat and ash. His gray eyes are level with mine and I can't look away. No one has ever looked at me so kindly. Not since Grandma.

“Thank you . . .” I cough out.

“You OK?” He takes a bottle of water from a woman who has come up to us, and unscrews the lid, passing it to me.

I nod, even though we can both see I'm not. “What about the man with the suitcases?” It's all I can think about—his moving lips, the figure kneeling next to him holding his hand.

The gray-eyed man gets up and sits heavily beside me. Then he shakes his head. “I think you're the last one to walk out. I was going to leave, but then I saw your hand come up from under the train.”

I take a sip of water, but it doesn't wash away the taste of smoke and blood. Now I start to notice what's around me: police and paramedics and rows of stretchers. People are huddled in groups—some in dark clothes and some in Brotherhood red. From their grimy faces and hair they must have been on the platform too. Smoke drifts up the staircase from the tunnels below. There's an ache in my chest.

“What happened?” I ask. “Was it a bomb?”

“An explosion,” he says carefully. “It's too early to say what caused it. Listen . . . if you're OK you should go to the cafe across the square. They're setting up a first-aid post there so the paramedics can use the station for the badly injured and the fatalities.”

Fatalities.
He's matter-of-fact. What about the suitcase man—is he no longer a person, just a fatality? I can't make sense of it so I just stand up. The gray-eyed man takes hold of my elbow.

“I'm fine,” I say too quickly. “Really. Thanks.” But what I'm thinking, illogically, is:
All I want to do is stay with you.
He makes me feel safe.

“Well, in that case, I'd better go.” He looks across to the police cordon.

Of course. He's obviously with the emergency services. “You're a policeman?”

He looks back at me. “What?” Then he nods. “Oh yes, a policeman. That's right.”

He touches my shoulder and his gray eyes seem to smile at me, as if we've always known each other. “Take care.”

“Thank you,” I say. It's not enough for someone who's just saved your life, not nearly enough, but he just nods again and turns away as if he's used to it.

I should've said a better thank-you
. I stumble to the exit. I didn't even ask his name. Without him, I would still be wedged in the gap between the train and the platform, surrounded by crushing metal and stone, breathing the terrible smoke, the smell I can still taste in my mouth. Or maybe not breathing at all. I turn to look for him, but he's gone.

The little boy from the platform is there, though. He's standing very still, his arms hanging stiffly at his sides. He hasn't got his backpack around his forehead anymore. I look for his dad, but a policewoman comes and crouches in front of him. She says something close to his ear, because it's even noisier out here with the sirens shrilling, then she takes his hand and leads him away. I see his face, running with ash and tears, and even from here I can make out the word he's crying, over and over: “Daddy.”

I have to get out.

O
UTSIDE, THE FREEZING
wind feels good against my face. For a moment I lift my head and look up at the dark Old City towers with the Brotherhood Meeting Hall spire looming up the hill behind the
square. I close my eyes and open my mouth, letting the sleet run in. The main road outside the station is closed except for police cars and ambulances, but in front of me the square is full of people running toward the station or just standing, staring.

I walk slowly across the square, head down against the driving sleet, forcing myself toward Fred's Cafe. After a few steps I look back at the station. There's a tendril of smoke twisting from the entrance—how does it form such a graceful curve? If I was painting it, I'd let the smoke and cloud merge together, make those tiny dots of movement opaque. Pastels? Or maybe charcoal, black and dense. Like the smoke from a crematorium. I give myself a shake. How can I even think of my drawing now?

It's steamy and warm in Fred's Cafe,
my
cafe, where I go every morning before getting on the train. It's packed but someone immediately comes over with a blanket. I don't know why, but I'm still shaking. I sit down in a corner so no one notices me. There's a television above the counter. Scrolling across the bottom of the screen are the words,
BREAKING NEWS
. . .
SUSPECTED BOMB AT CENTRAL STATION
. . .

I feel the shock, like a fist, deep under my ribs. I knew it.
That
was what I felt as I walked toward the station. I was afraid and I didn't know why. The group of Brotherhood boys in the entrance flicker into my mind. Is the Strife starting up all over again? What about the Reconciliation process?

Fred brings me a mug of tea. “Sugar, for the shock,” he says. “You're hurt, K. Were you there?”

I wipe my face and my fingers come away red. “I'm fine,” I say, but I know he's not convinced.

“Someone will clean that up for you in a minute,” he says.

I pick up the mug, but my hand is trembling so much that I have to hide it under the table. And the TV subtitles keep on rolling . . .
BROTHERHOOD BOMB
. . . My teeth are chattering . . .
CASUALTIES AT CENTRAL STATION
. . . I clutch my mug and stare at the screen.

I think of the Brotherhood boy who collided with me in the station doorway. I want to run back and catch hold of him, make him tell me he was the one who did this, make him look at the people on stretchers in the station. Make him look that little boy in the eye.

How can you face a danger you can't see? A person who looks like any other person, but who secretly wants to kill you and everyone like you?

I turn my face toward the wall. I can't cry here, in the crowded cafe.

Fred strides back to the counter. “Hoods,” he says, knocking the TV off at the switch. “They'd kill us all if they could.”

CHAPTER 2

I
DREAMT THE BOMB
: that's my first thought. Then I realize that I can still smell the smoke, still feel the grit in my swollen throat as I start coughing.

When the spasm finishes I gulp down some water from the bottle they gave me at the station. I get out of bed and pull open the thin curtains, to see the view I hate. Today the station is cordoned off and the square
in front is full of police vans. It's transformed from the usual gray emptiness to a mosaic of tiny colored figures. There's nothing to show the horror of what happened yesterday. Behind is the Old City, the turrets of the Brotherhood Meeting Hall dominating the sooty buildings that sprawl up the hill to the woods beyond. Far to the north, the roof of a stone mansion shows through the tree branches.

I can't face school today. But I can't bear to stay in here, on my own, so I'll go.

Yesterday's clothes are in a heap on the floor, still giving off that horrible stench. I pull on clean black jeans and a gray shirt, then slump back down on my bed. It's so tidy in my halfway house room, like nobody lives here. Maybe it would feel more homey if I stuck up some photos. But I don't have a single photo. Not even one of my parents. Grandma didn't like to be reminded. She wouldn't talk about them either, so all I have are their names, John and Jane Child: short, honest citizen names like mine.

I bundle the heap of stinking clothes, even my winter coat, into a plastic bag, and shrug on my summer jacket instead. On my way downstairs I have to stop in the brick stairwell to catch my breath. When I reach the lobby, I stuff the clothes into the bin and wait for the receptionist behind her glass partition to release the doors for me. She doesn't even look up and we don't know each other's names. At least in the children's home some people smiled at you. Head down, I huddle into the thin black cotton of my jacket and walk quickly out into the square.

Then I stop. I don't want to pass the station. I look around me. There are Brotherhood men in their checked shirts—Brotherhood women too, with checked scarves or red ribbons around their hats, long skirts swishing. I know they're just people rushing past on their way from the bus depot. But do any of these anxious strangers know who planned the bombing? Could one of them have another device nestling in their coat or secured in their backpack? Under their hats, are those women secretly pleased? But their faces look closed, revealing nothing.

I thought I could go to school today, but now I know I can't. I could walk around the far edge of the square to the cafe. But this is my town. Why should a Brotherhood bomb drive me out of it? I make my feet walk right past the cordoned-off entrance, and I fight down the nausea and force myself to look. On the newsstand the headlines scream: BROTHERHOOD SUICIDE BOMBER ON TRAIN. The police are mostly in uniform but some are wearing leather jackets and black jeans like the young man who rescued me yesterday. He's not there, though. Three brown-and-white spaniels wait beside a van, tense and alert, tails wagging.

Across the road there's a coffee stand under an awning, with nearly as many police crowded inside as there are at the station. The air crackles with walkie-talkies.

I think about the people who died in the train, deep underground. Under their coats and hats, some of them were citizens and a few of them Brotherhood, just like the people crossing the square with me now. They thought they were going to work, or school, or
somewhere normal, that day. Yesterday. It could have been me. I think of the little boy. Why couldn't someone have stopped it? Nothing has changed after all these years since the Strife ended. Grandma said they would always be waiting for a chance to destroy the fragile peace, to destroy us. And now that the Reconciliation process has started, will they destroy that too? Was she right?

The cafe is lit up, a little boat on a gray sea. In the glass door I see my own thin and anxious face, my black hair scraped any-old-how behind my ears and flicking over the collar of my jacket. The door dings as I push it open, and the smell of coffee greets me. I feel better. Safe. The cafe is back to normal, not a medical post today. Fred is emptying the coffee machine. The TV is on as usual, blaring news of the bomb, same as yesterday.