“What do you want?” said Brenden, a little louder and more forcefully than he intended, his voice reverberating down the otherwise silent tunnel.
The man responded by withdrawing into himself, and by attempting to hide his hurt expression by focusing on the floor just to the left of the boy’s shoes.
“I’ve got this to deliver,” added the boy in a gentler voice, as if he were trying to reason with the man. “I’ve got to go. This isn’t even mine and if I don’t find out who it belongs to then I might as well have just let those others have it.”
Brenden continued to look down upon the fragile creature he had once feared so much. Eventually, his patience wore out.
“I’ve got to go,” he repeated before turning to leave.
“Wait,” said a hoarse voice, causing Brenden to swivel around abruptly in frustration. The boy intended to tell Peter to just leave him alone, in no uncertain terms, but the man prevented him from doing anything of the sort by surprising him. While his eyes still were fixed on the same patch of cement, now several feet further away from Brenden’s shoes, Peter now held aloft a piece of paper in the air.
“What’s this?” demanded Brenden as he snatched the paper from Peter’s hand.
When he unfolded the sheet, Brenden discovered a very familiar form, one that very much resembled the one he carried in his own pocket. At first, he did not understand. It was only when he looked over some of the details that he realised what Peter was trying to tell him: Peter’s assigned number was very similar to Brenden’s own; not only that, but it was exactly the same as the one on the bag of blood the boy was carrying.
***
When Brenden attempted to press the blood into Peter’s hands, the man pushed back to indicate he wanted the boy to keep it. After it became clear to the boy that Peter would not take the blood directly from him, Brenden placed the plastic container on top of the chest just next to where the man was sitting.
“I don’t want your blood,” Brenden said firmly, “I don’t know why I’ve ended up having to deliver this to you and I don’t want to know. I’m not sure if it’s the state you’re in that’s preventing you from talking to me, but if it is, drink the blood and tell me what’s going on.”
With more than a little hesitation, and seeing that Brenden clearly meant what he was saying, Peter carefully brought the bag of blood to his lips, tore off its little plastic cap and gulped down its entire contents. Though Peter made an effort to hide it, the drink evidently gave him great pleasure and relief; it was not just as if he were still a living man who had been given water to drink after days barely surviving in the empty wastes of a desert, it was much more than that as the process of rejuvenation, which took away some of the pain the man’s reduced state inflicted upon him, brought back the very memory to his body of what it was to be alive. In the minutes that followed, the man’s grey complexion gradually transformed into a pale white that could almost pass as something that would belong to a member of the living, and his dry, dull eyes regained something of the vigour that had haunted Brenden’s dreams. The clear joy of this rejuvenation, though, was short-lived. The change was only a partial one, as the extent of the man’s decay – resulting from his inability to source a supply of blood – was far beyond the task of what Brenden had been able to give him. Peter also became sombre as he was fully away that his next few weeks would be full of torment brought about by an intensified and excruciating hunger, the inevitable result of drinking blood once more.
“You want to know why you were given that blood,” said Peter, with a strain in his voice that indicated that his strength was still far short of that which he had possessed when Brenden had previously seen him. Nevertheless, as he then began to talk again, gathering a little more pace and composure as he continued on, it was clear the blood had done enough. “But, I’m sorry to say I can’t tell you. After they put us down here, they gave us nothing. I don’t know who would have been so cruel to make you, poor boy, track me, of all people, down. Perhaps they meant to give you the chance to hear an apology from me, and as I can give you nothing else, I will give you that. I am truly sorry for what I did to you. It may mean nothing to you, and I understand you may not even want my words of apology. But, for whatever it is worth, I’m sorry.”
It was evident to Brenden that Peter was telling the truth, and that towards the end of what he said, the man was clearly struggling to maintain his calm as an underlying anger at his situation grew. This anger - which was driven by his sense that someone was either playing a game with him or uncaring and unthoughtful enough to think that a reunion between him and the boy could in some way be positive – led Peter to
