White and Other Tales of Ruin

There was a cave. The entrance was small and sheltered, lit by burning torches tied onto the walls, but it soon widened into a sizeable hollow beneath the ground. It was filled with people. Behind us, the roar and savagery of the tornadoes and the accompanying storm. Ahead, a cave swarming with those who had sacrificed Laura to the barbed wire. Where my best chances lay I had not had time to consider, but the storm was death for sure. My knee was bleeding where the shard of tree had slashed through my trousers, but I welcomed the cool dribble of blood into my shoe. It made me feel alive. And it meant that Laura was not bleeding alone.

“Where the hell are we?” Chele whispered.

Laura moaned and suddenly became heavier. “She’s fainted,” I said, hoping that was all. We carried her farther into the cave, her feet dragging on the floor, and no one moved their legs to let us pass. They put her up there, I thought, thinking of my first staggering sight of Laura bleeding and twisting on the wire, hung up to cure like a slab of ham. I wondered why the hell they may have lured us down here.

We found a slightly raised area of the cave, free of people, dry and dusty and flat enough so that Laura did not roll when we put her down. I was tired and terrified, panting with fear and exertion. Chele seemed the same. Her eyes were shifting constantly, looking here, there, somewhere else, never fixing on one place or person for more than a few seconds. It was a form of shock I had seen in my own bathroom mirror the night Janine had finally passed away.

“Chele,” I said. She looked at me, and I smiled to hold her gaze. “Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you. I’d still be out there in the storm.” As if to emphasise how bad that would be the noise increased for several endless seconds, the vibrations knocking grit from the cave’s ceiling and raising a sheen of dust in the air. There was no panic or screaming, only a disturbing look of resignation on most of the faces I could see, as if they couldn’t care less if the tornadoes plucked them from their hiding places.

I’d seen that look before as well. The faces of concentration camp survivors from World War Two.

It became hard to breathe for a few seconds as air was sucked from the cave, and then the chaos ended as soon as it had begun.

Outside, silence. There was no light coming from the tunnel entrance, but no noise either, no sounds of destruction. Could a tornado die out that quickly, I wondered? Could it possibly all end so soon?

“Hey, Nolan,” Chele said. “I did it for me as much as you.” She kept her voice low because there wasn’t much chat in the cave. Most of those who had come in before us were already camping down for the night. A kid was crying somewhere, someone else was whimpering quietly into the subdued light cast by the burning lanterns. And I was sure I could hear the covert sounds of sex.

“Thank you anyway,” I said. “You didn’t have to leave that coach. I know what happened to you, I’m sorry … and up until ten minutes ago I could have related to it. But look … look at her … look at my baby …” I burst into tears. They’d been threatening for a while, I knew that, but terror and adrenaline had kept them at bay. Now, as safe as I thought we could possibly be, I found it easy to cry. When I felt Chele’s arms close around my chest and back I cried more, because she must have cried so much herself. In a way I felt embarrassed, shedding so much grief over my child when she was still alive. But Chele would know how I felt. I was so sure of that that I didn’t even look up. She would know.

Perhaps by touching and holding me, she could gain some vicarious sense of joy and relief.

“Let’s help your little girl,” she said, releasing me suddenly and squatting next to Laura. I joined her there and touched my daughter’s cheek, feeling the stickiness of blood and the coolness of dried tears. Her eyes fluttered open and looked up at me, and even though she didn’t smile I knew that she recognised me. As she slipped back into unconsciousness I hoped she felt safe.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” I said, trying to see the shading of her lips and skin in the poor cave light. “And her arms …” I peeled back the sleeves of her dress and winced as they stuck in places, either tangled with dried blood or driven down into the wounds by the tight wire. There were puncture wounds all along her arms from the barbs, and longer, deeper cuts where the wire had been wound and pulled taut by her own weight.

It must have hurt so much. I was crying again, but this time there was rage mixed in with the relief, and while I spat on my handkerchief and did my best to clean some of the wounds I was listening out for the voice of Black Teeth.

“I’ll ask if there’s any — ”

“I’ll go,” I said. “If you don’t mind sitting with her? She’s asleep now, and I need to talk to these people.”

“I don’t mind,” Chele said, but she looked at me strangely.

“I’ll only talk,” I said. “And I’ll get what we need for Laura.”

Chele nodded.