The Wounded

We passed through brass doors that screeched across the tiled floor, pushing broken glass and debris with it as it folded in. I blinked several times at the vast, open ceiling. It must have once been covered in glass, but now all you could see were steel girders cutting the sky into six even pieces, shooting light down across the mosaic-tiled floor below.

We were in the middle of a circle with dark tu

“What are we doing here?” I asked, my voice echoing out across the space.

Gus scratched his head, pointing at each tu

The rest of us glanced to each other, shrugging our shoulders. Had Gus finally lost it? He wasn’t making any sense. He just kept shuffling around in circles, pointing at each entrance and then rubbing his forehead anxiously.

His hand dropped to his side, and he itched his pant leg nervously. I thought maybe he was going to explain what the hell was going on, but then he cupped his hands to his mouth and screamed, “Salim!”

The name, chant, or whatever it was, bounced off the walls and came to rest in the silent minutes that followed.

I moved closer to Joseph. The other Survivor with us side stepped closer too. Something was moving towards us from tu

Yellow eyes appeared in the black of the tu

Joseph squeezed my arm a little too tightly. I pressed my toes into the red and yellow tiles, ready to run. Then Gus slapped his thigh and laughed. “Fourteen! Fourteen! I always get it wrong.”

*****

He looked pretty normal, except for the fact that as he started clapping his hands in a slow, steady rhythm, streams of monkeys spiraled around him in a circle. I tilted my head and stared at his intricate hair, knotted into tiny bumps all over his head like little, round hedges. He stepped out of the darkness, a gleaming white lab coat thrown over his shoulders, and smiled. Giant, white teeth glistened against his dark lips.

Gus threw his hands in the air and walked towards the dark-ski

“No,” I managed meekly. But Gus walked straight up to the man and opened his arms. The man whistled thinly, and the monkeys started scaling the columns of the central space, looking like a swarm of cockroaches, whooping and screeching as they went. One stayed with the man, jumping onto his forearm and perching on his shoulder, wrapping its striped tail loosely around the man’s neck.

Gus and the man hugged, and the rest of us were at an absolute loss for words.

Joseph recovered quickly and muttered, “Cool,” under his breath. I had no reaction other than to stare with my mouth open. Apella and Alexei were right after all. There were people, or at least a person, in this city all along.

Gus and the man, who I assumed was Salim, broke apart and turned to us. Salim stared down at us. He was as tall as Joseph and had a royal air about him. But he had a monkey sitting on his shoulder, and that was all I could look at. I wanted to say, ‘Do you realize there’s a filthy primate bouncing up and down on your nice white coat?’ but I couldn’t find any words for the circus I’d walked into. He stepped toward me and stared at my hands. I nervously put them behind my back, and he arched a bushy, grey eyebrow at me before clicking his tongue. The monkey on his shoulder screeched, jumped down, and scampered towards me. I pointed my toe out at it, trying to fend it back, but it went straight for my hands, pulling them in front of me and glaring at me with hard eyes like yellow candy.

Salim’s eyes widened when he saw my tattoo, the one I’d almost forgotten was there.

“What’s this then? What have you brought to us, Gus?” he asked in a very considered tone, bordering on condescension.

“They’re escapees, her and the boy,” Gus said dismissively.

Salim laughed loudly, the sound booming along the walls and hitting me in the face like a suffocating pillow. “No one escapes. Banished? Yes. Escape? No.”

It was Gus’s turn to be condescending. “You’ve been underground too long, old friend.”

Salim’s laugh cut out as suddenly as it started, and the monkeys began banging at the walls frantically. It was an erratic, earsplitting drumming, which sounded primal and deathly. The old man tightened his fist, the tiny pockmarks scattered across his cheeks stretching as he raised one hand in the air. It was suddenly quiet, but the temporary kind of quiet.

“Why are you here?” he asked, mindlessly stroking the tail curled over his shoulder. I tried hard not to gag.

Gus cleared his throat. “We are here to seek refuge.”

“For how long?”

“Indefinitely.”

Joseph and I both slumped noticeably. He squeezed my hand and looked out at me from beneath his dirty blond hair. The disappointment in his eyes darkened them to a murky sea-green. There was a storm in there. Any chance we had of getting back to Deshi just flapped and flew into the sliced-up sky.

Salim and his people welcomed us into their world. They squashed us into their small society and asked for nothing in return. They could see how broken we were.

Sadness was our dominant feeling. It surrounded the entire dim space. Each of us suffered from sudden and unexpected loss, which had driven an uncomfortable and permanent wedge into our hearts. The Survivors had been taught to accept death, but the violent murder of three hundred of its citizens was too many charms to kiss, too many broken hearts. It was drowning them. At night, it reminded me of my first night at the Classes, only over and over. People sobbed into their rolled-up jackets. Nightmares pushed u

I squatted down at the entrance to our allocated quarters, letting the thick blanket curtain, secured by clothes pegs to a metal line, hide part of my face. From here, everything looked half-enchanted/half-soggy with moss. The people of Monkey City had literally carved a life out of solid rock. Chipped-out, small living caves beneath the train tu

These people were not unlike the Survivors, less brave perhaps. Kind of guarded and dirty, but they had the same feel about them. They moved with purpose, they had their jobs, but unlike the Survivors, their sole purpose was to live and go u

I turned inwards, letting the curtain close, and gazed at my two boys sleeping. The coolness of the underground lair caused Joseph to pull his blankets up under his chin. Orry was wrapped tight as a mummy in the carrier. He was getting too big for it, and I’d already removed the top half. Soon his feet would be hanging over the edge.

I left them.

Tiptoeing along the curved path, I glanced down. Rash was down there somewhere, bunking with my father. Pietre and Careen were there too. They were always easy to find. You just had to follow the screaming, the ti