Bebo

Lire les chapitres

	Verse 5
	Verse 5 The walk home was much more tiring and laborious than usual. Adrenalin and the thrill of victory had worn off to leave a dark sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and every time my tired eyes closed I saw another masked officer lunging at me. We dodged anyone from either direction, never bothering to check if it was friend or foe, slithering through the shadows and trying not to wear ourselves out further. Ry found us, and joined our group wordlessly after her appearance out of nowhere. There were constant hoards of Mincers, rushing past in a clatter of parts and black smoke. All too disorientated or absorbed in chasing some other form of prey to pay much attention to us. It was a blessing, but each one forced us to crouch down and hold painfully still until they moved on or collapsed in mindless heaps. Olsen had never looked so beautiful as when we reached it that day. The people within its walls must have known something was going on, as every mother and father checked our faces as we moved slowly through the marketplace. Occasionally a small, relieved smile would spring up as one of us was recognised; more often was the case that we were met with looks of disappointment and then desperation as another parent realised we weren’t the child they searched for. I wondered sadly how many of them there were, how many there would be that never returned home. Ry left us silently as we neared her family shop, slipping off down the side street that would lead her back home to her father. Seth stayed with us and we climbed the rickety steps up from the marketplace to level one. Level one was full of warehouses, bits of machinery and old building parts. It was practically deserted, and the next stairway was easy to get to. We were all moving quickly then, wanting to get home. Well, in Seth’s case it may have been more to keep up with Nick, but he ran anyway. I just wanted to satisfy the childish instinct that screamed for my mother. Finally we cleared level three, and ran across the wooden boards towards home. Smoke came from the chimney and I saw my mother stick her head out of the window nervously, face lighting up as she saw us. She burst through the door and gathered me up as I arrived. “Oh, my baby! I heard and I just didn’t know what to think. Are you alright? Nicholas! Oh thank god!” She pulled Nicholas into the hug too and kissed both of our foreheads desperately. I saw the looming shape of my father in the doorway, and he put a hand on her shoulder. She let go and went to hug her almost-son Seth instead. A hearty hand clamped down on my shoulder in her place, and Nicholas’s too I saw. “I was worried. You boys okay?” I nodded my head shakily. “I think we’ll be okay.” My mother’s handkerchief came into view as she wet it on her tongue and began to wipe at Nick’s eye. “Ew, Mum. Can’t you use a wet cloth or something?” “Darling, this is a wet cloth.” “I meant one you haven’t salivated all over.” He pulled a face as he was lead into the house, swatting away her hands. “This is all the thanks I get for my worrying…” I heard her complaining faintly as the walls cut her off from me. “They’ll come here for survivors.” Seth said quietly, staring at the ground. “What happened?” My father asked, pulling a tooth-pick out of his pocket and grinding it between his teeth. “An ambush at the concert. The Secret Police…” “Another one? So soon? Usually they wait to trial the first lot before attacking again.” “They’re getting pretty efficient at this. Find the location, send out the troops, kill as many as possible and bring the rest back for questioning so that they look as though they’re being fair. It’s like a schedule.” Seth answered, glasses flashing in the watery sun as it climbed the morning sky. “Every bit of it’s planned, but where the hell do they keep getting the information?” He frowned angrily. My father shook his head. “It’s not safe to talk about it now. Get inside.” He pushed us both inside with huge hands, and the comforting smell of home pulled me into its embrace. I slumped on the pile of cushions on the far side of the room. Our house looked more like a caravan without wheels than a house. A caravan on which some giant toddler had connected random wooden playing blocks which made up our rooms and apartments. Inside was separated by a few oddly shaped doors and long swathes of cloth in different shades of red, orange, purple and yellow, with counters and cupboards and decorations of painted fruit lining the walls. It was a carnival shoved into a box. Buttons and beads from the pillows dug into my back, but I ignored them in favour of the hot soup my mother placed in front of me. She must have been stirring it frantically all the time we’d been slinking home. “What went wrong this time?” She asked with a smile, the worry thinly masked beneath smooth china cheeks. “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “We thought we’d taken all precautions.” The soup was hot in my mouth, and I focussed on the hunger growing in my stomach and shovelling my food. Across from me, Nick ate a little more sedately, Seth at his side. He was trying to refuse the meal from my mother without incurring one of her phases of extreme maternal affection. I noticed my father carving by the window, focussing more on the brightening world outside than the wood in his hand. It worried me that he was already so on guard. “Get changed out of those clothes, now. You’ve already trailed mud all over my kitchen. There’s spares of Nicholas’s for you, Seth dear.” I looked at us, a tattered group covered in mud…in blood. The urge to wash myself in the hottest water available until the night’s grimy events were soaked away was strong, but the rickety machine that brought Level Four hot water only came on Thursdays. A change of clean clothes would have to do. My bowl was stolen away and I was ushered past a bright purple curtain to the small misshapen door that lead to the bedrooms. The smallest room in the house was mine. Filled with odd things I’d collected on hunts; posters and old photographs of people long gone. A pocket watch in golden pieces that I was trying to fix without having to ask Seth for help, masks I’d found in an old sector house that must have belonged to a collector, and a key on the windowsill, hanging from a blood-red ribbon. The key opened a box that lay hidden under my floorboards; one which held the few disks and music-playing tapes I’d uncovered, a tape player for them that Nick had given me for my sixteenth birthday, and the only two books I’d found in my lifetime. An Encyclopaedia of the World, and a green, leather bound copy of Gulliver’s Travels. Beyond the half-drawn forest green curtain that separated my bedroom from my brother’s, Nick pulled off his top and scowled at the flakes of blood and dirt that peeled off to curl on the floor. Seth rummaged through the strange trunk the Nick kept his clothes in, searching for the ratty old top he usually wore when he slept at our house without having brought his things, and fishing it out moments later. “I’m sorry Seth.” Nick said suddenly. “Huh? What for?” He replied perplexedly. Nick was silent for a moment, fiddling with the undone buttons on his clean shirt. “I left you, when you needed the help. I left you and I feel…bad, I guess. It really sucked knowing you were there only because I wasn’t doing something to help.” Seth gave him a bemused look, and then collapsed on the bed with a sigh. “Don’t be stupid.” He smirked. “You took your initiative and went with it, you saved the people you could rather than pursuing someone already lost. It was the best tactic at the time.” He pulled the shirt on over his head, where it hovered slightly above the hem of his trousers thanks to a difference in height between the two of them. “No.” Nick shook his head. “They could have taken care of themselves. I shouldn’t have left you, you wouldn’t have left me behind, not ever.” Seth began to protest. “Don’t lie. You wouldn’t have, would you?” Seth stared at the suddenly interesting floor. “That’s different. You have Amos to take care of, other people to look out for. I would only have you to think about.” “That doesn’t change my mind. I’m swearing this now, you listening Amos?” He raised his voice. “Next time anything happens to Seth, I’m going back for him, and you’ll have to fend for yourself until I drag his sorry ass out of trouble. I’m not leaving you again Seth.” Nick vowed, a determined look on his face. Seth studied him closely. “Well then…” He returned quietly. “ I suppose I’ll just have to stay out of trouble, won’t I?” He grinned and tugged a lock of red hair. “Now stop with the melodramatics and put your damn clothes on.” I rolled my eyes at the two of them and went to the window to look into the busying street below. Behind me, vaguely, I heard Seth promise quietly that he would never leave Nick either, and I felt a sense of relief knowing that he would always have someone to look out for him. It wasn’t until later that Nick finally worked up enough courage to visit the last member of our abnormal family. It was him that lead us to the small, lonesome back room, down a short flight of four steps and into a completely round space. All that resided in that room was a rocking chair, a table and a fading photograph on the wall. I knew that if you looked at that picture you would see a very small, very happy Nicholas, holding the hand of a beautiful woman in a long dress and a wide-brimmed summer hat. Her long auburn-brown hair billowing with her skirts in the wind. The camera was, according to Nicholas, held by his father. Across from the happy scene, a rocking chair that could barely hold itself together cradled a small form shrouded in blankets and bits of torn paper and cloth. Nicholas walked up to this chair solemnly, placing on hand on the armrest. Sitting there with a vacant expression on her face was the woman from the photograph. Her hair was shorter then, but still tumbled past her shoulders in matted waves. Her mouth twitched in and out of a smile, appearing for some joke the rest of us couldn’t hear. “Hello Mother.” Nick said quietly. Seth stayed with me, within the room but barely in the doorway. The place was quiet as a shrine, and uncomfortably warm. I tugged the collar of my shirt open slightly and tried to ignore the temperature. “Mother, mother. Mother, mother, mother…” She drawled happily, not registering her son at her side. She stared at the same spot on the wall, below the photograph at nothing at all. Nicholas sighed and pulled the blankets up around her more securely. “Cold.” She complained, frowning. “Cold.” “I know, I’m sorry.” Nick stroked her hair, brushing the most troublesome bits back behind her ear. I wandered past them to the window. It was set into the very top of the wall, and was barred with old piping. Through it I could see the feet of people going past in the street outside. Since there was level five above us, and we were at the back of the house, no sunlight managed to get to that window. But the wood was easily warmed and didn’t cool much at night, and there was still perfectly enough light to see. Well, outside the window at least. I turned to catch the last of Nick’s conversation with his deranged mother. “And the secret police came again, I don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep holding the concerts for.” She suddenly began to laugh hysterically, as though it was the funniest thing in the world. I doubt she was even listening to what he was saying. Nick sighed again and just looked over to Seth with a defeated shrug. “I’ll get them for you one day Mum. I promise, those bastards won’t know what hit them.” She continued to laugh, but Nick was deathly serious. He pushed her chair gently so it started rocking, and the laughter was replaced with humming. I didn’t know the tune, it could have been some whimsical thing she made up, but it made Nick’s expression grimmer. Seth walked up behind him and put an arm around his shoulders, and they both jumped when my mother suddenly yelled down the stairs. “Boys!” She cried fearfully. “They’re here!” I rushed back to the window, and sure enough most of the feet from earlier were all rushing in the same direction. That only happened if there was a fire or an attack. Or in this case, simply an intrusion. Seth let go of Nicholas and ran out of the door the help my mother. I ran for the door as well, but stopped as Nick didn’t follow. “Mother, I have to go. If I don’t come back…If I don’t come back then you can be sure I took some of them out with me. Painfully.“ He tucked the blanket in again. “I love you.” “I love you, love you, love you…love you, love you!” He kissed her forehead and turned to leave. Suddenly, her arm shot out and clutched his wrist until he turned back round. “Love you Nicky. Love you, love you.” He looked like he was going to cry, but instead he just took her hand and squeezed it tightly. “Love you always.” And then we were off and out the door to his other mother, our mother. Ry was there, to my ultimate surprise, wheezing beside Seth with my mother trying to get her to sit down. “No, no, they come!” She insisted. “They come as black as night, reaping the young from every home. They have many of us already, if we wish to escape their claws of evil we must run!” She explained hurriedly. “Where are they now?” I asked. “Surely by this hour now at the second level, perhaps at the beginning of the third should their numbers exceed those that I have seen.” I started and bolted to our rooms. I shovelled things into two small packs. Clothes, two water bottles, my box and key under the floorboards. Anything useful, including the few knives Nick had stashed in his room. I slid one through my tattered belt and threw another one at Seth as I came back out. “We have to leave, now.” I handed Nick a pack and he gave me a bundle of food in exchange. He must have run for the cupboards when I ran for the rooms. “Well duh, but where the hell do we go?” “My house first.” Seth opted. “It’ll be safe for a while, since it’s outside Olsen’s walls. Last time it took them three hours to search it, and we were long gone by then. Most of the officers think it’s part of the Old Sector, half of them can’t find it when they’re ordered to. We can head back here when…-“ “There is no returning.” Ry said sharply. “A parchment is in town square, declaring Olsen shall now have a guard. They have shortened curfews and made a squadron to pace the whole citadel both day and night. If you return, you will surely be caught or perish.” She looked at me desperately, and I could feel the colour drain from my face.
Rédiger un avis >>>