Emmy Laybourne - Sky on Fire

I put my hand on the wall – cold metal. The whole bunker was made out of steel, though some of the furniture was wood.

Batiste and then Ulysses stepped in behind us.

‘Praise the Lord,’ Batiste whispered and I fully agreed.

Suddenly a machine came roaring to life and there was a strong sucking sound near our feet. Everyone jumped.

‘What is it?’ Batiste asked me.

I sniffed. The air tasted weird. Like ozone.

I reached down and felt a long, thin vent at ground level. It was sucking in the air.

‘It’s an air-filtration system,’ I guessed. ‘It must come on automatically when it senses impurities in the air.’

Batiste and Ulysses lay down on the two couches. Niko struggled down with Max in his arms.

‘You two get off the couches,’ Mario ordered. Batiste and Ulysses slunk onto the floor.

‘Put the hurt boy there,’ Mario ordered Niko.

Mario unzipped his coveralls, removed them, and bundled them into a rubberized stuff sack. He did it pretty quickly, for an old guy.

‘Gotta think here. Gotta think about what to do first,’ he muttered.

He went past the kitchen to a closet set in the wall.

‘What can I do?’ Niko said. He was standing, hunched over, near the couches, and looked about a million years old.

‘Get his boots off if you can.’

Niko started to tug at Max’s boots and Max let out a shrieking howl.

‘All right, all right, just let him be for a moment,’ Mario said, tottering in with two of those plastic caddies people sometimes use to carry around cleaning stuff. You know the kind I mean. These two were filled with medical supplies. Mario put his hand on the couch and lowered himself down to sitting so he was perched next to Max.

‘Okay, should be okay now. You kids take off your layers. They’re loaded with compounds.’

‘You.’ He pointed to Sahalia. ‘There are trash bags under the counter. Get one and collect all the clothing.’

Sahalia groaned, but got onto her hands and knees and crawled over to the kitchen.

The rest of us, I guess we didn’t move fast enough for him.

‘Get on there! Take off your layers! You can’t be that tired, now!’

He was wrong. We were more tired than it’s possible even to be. We were completely wrung out, each one of us.

We started to peel off the layers, moving as slow as zombies.

‘You kids need to hurry! The air filter’s automatic. It’ll keep sucking until you guys are clean. And that’s not going to happen with those filthy outfits on.’

Mario went over to Ulysses and started pulling his sweatshirt off.

‘I don’t think you understand. The air filter’s automatic. It’ll keep running until all our solar is used up. Then it’ll start in on the gas generator. I only have a couple days’ worth of gas. So you kids gotta hop to and get these layers off and closed up in a bag.’

Ulysses started to cry. Mario was scaring him.

Ulysses had the outline of his face mask etched in red around his face. His tears spilled down his dirty face.

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t cry,’ Mario said, his voice softening a little. He let go of Ulysses’s sleeve. ‘We’ll get you cleaned up, son. Just get these clothes off.’

As the layers came off, we became the shape of little kids again.

There was Batiste, his straight black hair matted to his head.

Ulysses’s pot belly hanging out from under his monster truck T-shirt. The T-shirt had something dribbled down the front. Vomit, I think.

Niko took off his layers and got thinner and thinner. Was he so thin before? He looked like a skeleton. He looked tiny. I had remembered him as being so big and grown-up. Now he looked just like a sick teenage boy.

It was weird, taking off the layers. They felt like a part of me. I felt sort of naked without them.

But in the end I was just wearing the navy-blue long johns that were my base layer.

I remembered picking them out back at Greenway. I’d felt so hopeful then.

Dean, if you ever read this, you were right. If I’d known what would happen, how horrible and difficult it would turn out to be, and that Brayden would die anyway, and that Josie would go wild and run away and leave us, I never would have supported Niko’s decision to go.

Was it so stupid to think we could get to Denver? I guess so.

What do we know? We’re just stupid kids.

Sahalia took off her last sweatshirt and the whole T-shirt came off, like sometimes happens. I saw her boobs in her lacy bra. Big whoop.

We threw the clothes on the floor and Sahalia gathered them up. She put them in the garbage bag. Then she got out another one for our boots and masks.

Mario had Max’s mask off and was opening a little foil pack of pills.

I didn’t like what I saw. Max’s face was mottled with blisters. Around his mouth they were the worst. It looked like he’d had some kind of bike accident. Like he’d skidded across the pavement on his face. His eyes were screwed shut and he was stifling his cries.

Mario carefully opened up Max’s lips and teeth and placed a pill in his mouth.

Almost instantly, Max’s expression softened and his body went limp.

‘Gave him some powerful stuff. But should be enough for us to get him cleaned up.’

‘Do you have Benadryl?’ Niko asked. ‘It’s worked for us in the past.’

Then Niko staggered backward and just caught himself before he fell. He struggled to stand. He was on his feet, but barely.

‘Sit down,’ Mario snapped. ‘You fall on me and you’ll crush me.’

Niko collapsed onto the easy chair.

‘That’s my chair,’ Mario growled. Then he took a second look at Niko and changed his tone. ‘But you can stay there for a bit.’

Mario fished a pack of pills out of his caddy and tossed it in Niko’s lap.

‘Benadryl. Take four.’ He looked around and his eyes caught mine. ‘You, there. Can you get your friend a glass of water?’

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘Glasses in first cabinet there and water’s in the corner. Not too much water at first, you kids. Take two sips, then wait a moment. Then two more and so on. Otherwise you’ll all retch.’

I opened the shelves. It seemed like it had been years since I opened a kitchen cabinet and looked at stacks of dishes and glasses standing neatly in a line.

I took a jelly glass from the shelf. It had cherries painted on it and a yellow stripe around the rim.

Against the wall there was a large spring water bottle on a stand.

‘Can I have some water, too?’ Sahalia asked. ‘Please?’

Her voice was funny and I saw she was crying.

‘Of course. You all need water right away. And food, too. We’ll get to that. First I have to help this one. And you have to get cleaned up.’

My hand shook as I filled the jelly glass. I took two sips.

It was so clean, that water. I felt it go into my chest and through my whole, parched body, it felt like.

Sahalia had come next to me and I gave her the glass. She took a long drink.

‘Can we have some too?’ Batiste asked.

I went over to him and let him drink from the glass. Then Ulysses had some and by that time there was none left for Niko.

‘There are enough glasses for everyone, you kids,’ Mario crabbed.

But we were used to sharing. We didn’t care.

I refilled the glass and took two more sips. Then I walked over and gave it to Niko. His hands were bloody and blistered.

‘Thanks,’ he said. His voice like gravel.

‘Fella, what’s your name?’ Mario asked me.

‘Alex Grieder,’ I told him.

‘Well, I’m Mario Scietto. You seem to have your wits about you. You want to help me with this one?’ He nodded toward Max.

‘Max,’ I supplied. ‘Sure.’

‘You, missy!’ Mario said to Sahalia. ‘There’s a shower in the back.’