other in silence, until something I see just over her shoulder catches my eye. It’s a line of metal coat hooks, hung on a long wooden rail about a yard and a half off the ground. The name on the peg directly behind her is Edward McCoyne. The girl suddenly becomes invisible as I reach out and lift a small cloth bag off my son’s peg.
“That’s just old stuff,” she says. “My bag’s down there. Want to see it?”
“No, it’s okay…”
I open the bag and take out Edward’s soccer shirt. His name’s on the label inside the collar, written in pen in Lizzie’s handwriting. I remember when we bought this for him. Christ, he nagged at us for months to get it because all the other kids had one like it. The team changed part of their uniform a couple of weeks later and the little shit stopped wearing it, complaining that he didn’t have the right one anymore and… and what the hell am I doing? Got to stop thinking like this and get a grip. That life is gone now.
The girl brushes past me and leans against the assembly hall door.
“What’s in there?” I ask, glad of the distraction.
“More stuff,” she answers nonchalantly, shrugging her shoulders. She pushes the door open, and I follow her inside. I stop immediately, rooted to the spot. The entire floor of the large, rectangular school hall is covered with bodies. Some of them are piled up, almost as if they’re being stored here. There are bloody handprints on the walls, some of them too big to have been made by kids. The girl tiptoes through the carnage without a care and disappears out through a gaping hole in the outside wall where a fire exit used to be. I follow at a distance, stepping over dismembered cadavers and swatting away buzzing flies. I’m distracted by an Unchanged woman’s half-naked corpse at my feet, only a few days dead. She’s facedown with her arms stretched out and fingers clawing the ground as if she died trying to get away. There are chunks missing out of the back of her naked thighs. Are those bite marks?
The overpowering stench in here is unbearable, and it’s making me gag. I follow the girl outside, desperate to get some fresher air. I find her at the edge of a murky, weed-filled pool. I don’t know whether it’s a deliberately dug pond or the crater left by a small explosion or other impact. Whatever, she’s lying on her belly in the mud, thirstily lapping up the dirty green water.
It’s a struggle to get the children rounded up and into the van. There were eight of them, but three managed to get away. Generally it’s the older kids who understand what we’re trying to do and why we want them to leave here. The promise of fighting and food is enough to persuade them to go.
“Good result,” Keith says. “Job done. We’ll get this bunch back to the others. Preston can’t complain about a catch like this.”
I knew that was coming. For the last half hour they’ve been making noises about getting back to the people we left at the slaughterhouse. As far as they’re concerned, it’s mission accomplished. I know I should go with them, but I can’t. Ellis is still out there somewhere…
“I’m not going.”
“You soft bastard,” Carol snaps angrily. “Don’t be so goddamn stupid.”
“We’ve got a van full of kids,” Keith argues.
“Yes, but we haven’t got my kid.”
“We don’t need your kid.”
“I do.”
“You don’t. All you need is-”
“I’ll find her and bring her back to the rest of you,” I shout over my shoulder as I start to walk away. “I won’t be far behind. Few hours at the most.”
I can hear them arguing, but it makes no difference.
“McCoyne, wait,” Paul shouts. I take a few more steps before, against my better judgment, stopping again and turning around. “He’s right,” I hear him say to Carol and Keith. “We’ve been told to find as many people to fight with us as we can, haven’t we? It makes sense to split up. You deliver this bunch, we’ll keep looking for more. Okay?”
Keith thinks for a minute and eventually nods his head. “Fair enough. Makes no difference to me.”
I start walking again, my backpack on my back and my axe held ready in my hand.
“I’ll go with him,” I hear Paul say. “Julia told me to keep an eye on him.”
I speed up, more determined than ever to find Ellis. Seeing the kids in the school has made me feel more confident that she’s survived, but at what cost? What condition is she in? If I don’t find her and look after her, will she end up like the children we’ve found here?
“Hold on,” Paul shouts, but I just keep walking. I don’t need him. I don’t need any of them.
15
IT SEEMS THAT EVERY couple of minutes, something I see catches me off guard. This time it’s a gas station, an innocuous, desolate shell of a building that I normally wouldn’t have given a second glance. I stop in the middle of the road and stare at it. Lights hang down from its high canopy. The tall and once brightly lit welcome sign lies on its side, blocking the way to the now lifeless fuel pumps. Metal grilles pointlessly protect long-since-smashed plate glass windows. Inside, the shelves and displays have been stripped of everything of value-
“Problem?” Paul asks.
“Nothing,” I lie. “Just thought I saw something.”
I take a couple of steps closer, wishing I were alone. There’s nothing here, and he knows it. I just wanted to stop for a second and look and remember. It feels like five minutes, but it was probably about five months since I was last here. Lizzie took her dad to the hospital, and I was left with the kids. I took them to see a film. We drove halfway across town and used half a tank of gas to get to the cheapest theater. They argued about what they wanted to see. Ed and I wanted to watch one thing, Ellis wanted to watch something else. Edward and I won the argument. Josh slept through the film, and Ellis whined all the way through it. We stopped here on the way back home to fill up the car, and I bought Ellis some candy just to shut her up. Then that started the other two moaning… If I half-close my eyes I can still see her in there. She took forever to choose her candy, dragging it out and trying to get as much out of me as she could.
It’s the contrast that’s taken me by surprise today. Everything was so trivial and unimportant back then. I walked into this shop with Ellis and I was just like any other dad, trying to pacify his whining kid. Now look at me. A killer. A soldier (apparently, although I don’t feel like one). Virtually unrecognizable as the man Iused to be. Living from day to day and hour to hour… and if the war’s had this much of an effect on me, what might it have done to Ellis? I wonder what the little girl who, on that day five months ago, had nothing more important to worry about other than what candy bar she wanted, is doing now?
“Any time today would be fine,” Paul moans. “Stop fucking daydreaming. It’s dangerous out here, you know.”
“I wasn’t daydreaming.”
“You were. For fuck’s sake, get a grip.”
“I’m fine,” I say as I march past him.
“You were away with the goddamn fairies again. You need to clear your head, man. Get some focus.”
This guy never gives up. He’s like a dog with a bone.
“I am focused,” I snap back at him.
“Focused on what? A fucking gas station? Face it, McCoyne, you’re drifting. You don’t even have a proper plan.”
“Yes I do.”
“What, walk halfway across an enemy-occupied city to get to a house where you think your kid might have been? You’re making it up as you go along, man. Just give up and move on. You’ve got to start putting the fight first and everything else second.”
“If it’s such a bad idea, why did you come with me?”
“Like I said, to find more volunteers. Besides, I wasn’t crazy about being shut in the back of that van with a load of feral kids.”
“Volunteers-is that what you’re calling them now?”
