Boy in the Tower Read online

  I don’t want them to protect me any more. I want to help them.

  ‘I’m not going down with you, Mum,’ I say.

  She looks shocked, as if I have slapped her around the face. I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever said I won’t do something she’s asked me to do.

  ‘You need to take this bag of salt down to the others while I collect the rest of it.’

  I hold the bag out towards Mum. She hesitates.

  ‘We need this salt, Mum. Take it down to them and I’ll come down with another bag when I’ve collected it.’

  ‘No,’ Mum says. I’m about to start pleading with her when I see a small but distinct twinkle in her eye.

  ‘No,’ she says again. ‘I’ll come back up for the next one.’ And she gives me a look that is not quite a smile but could almost be one.

  She takes the bag and starts running down the stairs with it. She looks like she might fall over it and the bag bangs against each stair as she drags it alongside her. I have to get moving.

  I run back up to fill another bag with the salt I found. There isn’t enough to fill it completely, so I’m back to going through people’s cupboards. I knock chairs over that I don’t see in the dark and I yank open doors, but I’m not able to find very much in people’s kitchens any more and I wonder if it is because I am not looking properly now, I’m panicking.

  I remember what Dory said about missing someone, about it being a good thing because it shows that you care for someone. But it doesn’t feel like a good thing that I won’t see Gaia again. It feels like a knife through my chest.

  I’m looking and looking for packets of salt or salt cellars, and tears run down my face. I don’t want it to be the end, I think. This can’t be it, can it? I can’t believe I won’t see Gaia again.

  I grab at boxes and jars, but the tears have blurred my sight so I can’t read their labels.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  ‘Ade, it’s not up for discussion. As soon as we see the first crack you’re putting the mask on and you’re getting out of here. As far as you can go. You keep walking, run if you can, you don’t stop. Do you hear?’

  Obi’s talking and talking at me but he’s not looking at me. He’s walking up and down the room in front of me and talking to his feet.

  ‘When you see the rescue helicopter, you take these fireworks and you put them in the ground and light them with these matches and then run away as far as you can until they’ve stopped exploding. The helicopter will find you then. OK?’

  Obi’s packed up a bag with fireworks and some food for me, and also the rucksack with the silver oxygen canister in it. We only have one left now because the other one is empty after my adventure outside when I found Pigeon, and Obi used the last of it to go into the basement to kill off the Blucher in the water pipe.

  Ben and Mum are pouring the last of the salt out of the windows so it’s just me, Obi and Dory again. Just like on the first day I found the water.

  ‘Dory, can you tell him?’

  I won’t answer Obi’s questions. I can’t leave the tower without them. I won’t.

  ‘Ade,’ Dory says. ‘Ade, please look at me when I’m talking to you.’

  I look up at her kind, familiar face.

  ‘Do you know why Obi and I didn’t leave the tower when everyone else did?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Well, it was because of you. We knew about you. And your mum. And when you didn’t leave, we decided that we might as well hang around too. We didn’t care about the Bluchers and what might happen to us. Look at us. We don’t get these wrinkles from doing nothing. Obi and I have had great, great lives, and they’ve been made all the greater by knowing you at the end of them. You must leave this tower by yourself, dear Ade. I know it’s not what you want, but you must try to give yourself this one last chance. It’s what we all want. Me, Obi, Ben – and your mum most of all. I know there’s someone out there you are missing. I’m right, aren’t I? There is someone. You must go to them now. We can’t go with you. I’m so terribly sorry that we can’t. There’s only one oxygen tank left now and it’s yours, Ade. It’s meant for you. I know you can do this, Ade, because there’s someone out there you are missing and it’s time for you to go to them now.’

  I feel a great weariness coming over me. A heaviness that pulls on the back of my eyeballs and down on my throat. I hear someone gasping and then I realize that it’s coming from me.

  I cry and I cry.

  And I realize that I must go.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  ‘That’s all of it gone,’ Ben says when he and Mum return.

  I see Dory give Mum a small nod as she comes in, and Mum runs to me and gives me another one of those hugs that feels like it might break me.

  ‘You’re going to be OK, you’re going to be OK,’ Mum says. She speaks into my head as she’s holding me and her voice sounds muffled but I can hear her start to cry as she says it.

  ‘We haven’t got long,’ Obi says, and he looks out of the window at the tracks of rain running down the glass.

  Obi helps me put the rucksack on and Mum takes off the scarf that she was wearing for me.

  I know soon I’ll have to put the mask on, and no one will be able to hear what I’m saying, but I don’t really know what to say while I can still speak.

  I don’t know how to say goodbye.

  In the end, I don’t have to worry about that at all.

  Just as Mum places the scarf around my neck, the walls of the room start to move around us.

  Obi grabs the mask and pulls it over my mouth and starts to tape it up. He doesn’t look me in the eye, he just looks at the mask he is covering with tape. Then he ties the scarf around my face tightly so just my eyes are showing.

  Pictures fall from the wall and smash on the floor. I close my eyes. Is the tower going to fall? Is this the end?

  ‘Good luck, kid,’ I hear Obi say.

  The shaking has stopped. We aren’t crashing to the ground. I’m not sliding across the floor in a heap. Obi presses a torch and the bag of fireworks into my hand, and I hear Ben shouting, ‘Goodbye, Ade!’ over the din. Mum grabs my hand and pulls me to the door.

  ‘Go well, dear Ade,’ I hear Dory say.

  Mum pulls me into the corridor and towards the staircase.

  ‘There’s no time, darling, just go,’ she says, and she pushes me towards the stairs. ‘You go from here.’ Her words are choked with tears but I can understand her.

  ‘Go now, go!’ she shouts.

  I turn my back to her but I hear the last thing she says before the doors swing shut behind me.

  ‘Know that I love you, Ade. I really love you.’

  Then the doors shut and I really am on my own.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  I can see cracks in the walls as I walk down to the lower floors. They are thin and long at the moment, like spider webs, but I feel like I can see them widening before my eyes.

  My head hurts. I want to turn back but my legs carry me all the way down to the basement. I go past Obi’s little bedroom and pull the plastic sheets down from the doors. I almost feel like I’m a robot, doing these things. I don’t think about them too much, I just do them.

  Then I am there, right in front of the door which will take me outside, and without hesitating I put my hand on the handle and push it open. There’s something in front of the door so I can’t get it fully open.

  It’s a tall, shiny Blucher, leaning right into the tower.

  I edge past it and squeeze through the narrow opening.

  I am surrounded by Bluchers. They have grown so thick it’s hard to find a path through them.

  I have to force my way through, looking for gaps and finding holes, but I feel trapped, surrounded.

  I am in a forest of Bluchers and there is no way out.

  Then I hear a sound I haven’t heard in a very long time.

  It takes me a moment to remember what it is. It is a bit like a heartbeat. Steady and strong.
But much faster and louder.

  The sound of a helicopter. Close by. Just above.

  They have come to rescue us, just as Obi promised, just as Dory hoped.

  I look up and I can see it! It’s real!

  It’s hovering just by the top of the tower and it is waiting there. It is waiting for us to get to the top, to get into the helicopter, to rescue us.

  I quickly turn round towards the tower, but I can’t see the door any more. It’s hidden behind the thick clusters of Bluchers, which are hungrily feasting on our building.

  I can’t see how to get back.

  I don’t know the way.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  ‘Follow my voice, Ade,’ Gaia said. ‘I’m over here.’

  We were playing a kind of Blind Man’s Buff, but it was a much nicer version where kids didn’t push you about all the time. It was only me and Gaia playing it and I just had to try and find her by following the sound of her voice.

  ‘Ade, Ade, I’m over here,’ Gaia said again, and I walked uncertainly in that direction and put my hands out in front of me.

  I felt something solid.

  I ‘Yes, you’ve found me,’ she said, and pulled the blindfold from my eyes so I could see her smiling face . . .

  As I stand there, looking for the door, I think I can hear someone calling my name. I move towards the sound, and I push past a tall Blucher in my way.

  I stop and listen. I hear it again.

  I weave past another few Bluchers and stop again.

  I can definitely hear someone saying my name and I move again in that direction.

  Finally, I see the black door and I squeeze through the gap and slip back into the tower.

  I run.

  I hear Mum’s voice calling me. Ade, Ade, Ade.

  I sprint up the stairs and I pull off the mask and drop the rucksack as I go so I can get to her faster.

  When we meet on the stairs, we are both running so fast towards each other that we almost make each other fall over. But we don’t fall, we hold each other so close for just a second before we both start running again.

  Mum grabs my hand and she doesn’t let go. She’s stronger than me and she pulls me along with her. For just a split moment I think that there was a time when I was worried I would be the one pulling her from the tower, and that’s when I really start running.

  Run, run, run. We sprint up the stairs, two at a time.

  I don’t have time to ask where Dory, Obi and Ben are. If they have got Pigeon from Dory’s flat. If we are all going to be OK. Mum is pulling me so hard up the stairs, up towards the noise of the helicopter.

  When we reach the roof, the door is already open. The sound of the helicopter is so loud, it fills my head with its deafening vibrations. The rain lashes down on us and it’s hard to keep my eyes open properly.

  Suddenly Mum stops pulling me and lets go of my hand. She stands right in front of the doorway, frozen, as though someone has pressed her pause button and she’s unable to move forward.

  ‘Mum!’ I shout to her, but I don’t think she can hear me over the drone of the helicopter. ‘Mum!’

  Her face looks slack and wax-like, her eyes dull and deadened.

  ‘Please, Mum,’ I say. ‘Please.’

  I hold onto one of her hands and I squeeze it tight. At first it feels lifeless in my fingers, but then I feel Mum squeezing me back. I look up to her and see her face all twisted up as she stares at the helicopter. We take the steps over the doorway, together, side by side, and then we’re out on the rooftop, the wind whipping past our faces, making us squint in its force.

  I can see the helicopter hovering right next to the roof. There is just a tiny bit of space you have to step over to get from the roof to the helicopter. Inside it, I can see Obi, Dory and Ben’s smiling faces, their hands reaching out to me.

  I go first. There is a dizzying moment when I look down the gap between the helicopter and the tower. It goes down, down, down. The earth is so far away. I glimpse a flash of the silver-blue of the Bluchers that have reached the tower walls, and then I am in. Dory’s arms enclose me. I look around the helicopter cabin, searching for Pigeon among the bodies.

  ‘Where’s Pigeon?’ I shout, but no one can hear me over the noise of the helicopter’s blades. ‘Where’s Pigeon?’ I shout, again. ‘Where’s Pigeon?’

  Only Obi can see I am trying to say something and he leans forward, right towards me, so I can shout directly into his ear. He looks troubled when he hears me but he doesn’t look at me. He just stands up from his seat, and as Mum is stepping into the helicopter, Obi jumps out of it. There is a lot of shouting then but no one can hear much of what is being said. No one but me knows what Obi is doing. He runs through the open door and he doesn’t look back.

  I try to go after him. It was me who should have gone. But Dory and Mum keep holding me between them and I can only cry out for Obi to come back.

  My cries are quite lost though. Eaten up by the roaring of the helicopter.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  You know how I said that I’d never known time to slow down and stop as much as the moment the Blucher exploded over me? Well, I take that back now. Waiting for Obi to come back is the longest wait of my life. I don’t know if he takes five minutes or an hour, but to me, it feels like it will never end.

  I remember learning at school how there are 365 days in the year and twenty-four hours in a day and sixty minutes in an hour and sixty seconds in a minute. It feels like every real second that passes is an hour, that every minute is a day.

  I can’t take my eyes off the open doorway. I can’t stop willing Obi to appear through it. But however hard I think it, he doesn’t come. No one speaks now. It’s just the beating of the helicopter blades and the beating of our hearts.

  Then something happens which makes me feel sick from the bottom of my stomach to the top of my head to the toes on my feet. The the roof is moving. A low, ghastly groan comes from the tower itself. It is going to fall.

  Just as the top of the roof begins to slant, I see Obi appear in the doorway. A little grey bundle is clasped to his chest. Pigeon.

  The helicopter’s pilot tries to keep us in line with the falling roof but the gap between us and the tower is much larger now. Obi runs towards us. He runs so fast. He sort of throws Pigeon towards us, and he lightly jumps across the roof into the helicopter.

  And then Obi jumps too.

  As he leaps from the tower, the building gives way beneath him. It is completely collapsing now.

  The helicopter swerves away as the tower crashes downwards and Obi is left flying through the air. Flying in the space between the falling tower and us.

  I see his face as he jumps. He isn’t scared or panicked like you would imagine him to be. He looks so peaceful, somehow. And happy, perhaps. Happy. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense but that’s what I think.

  He would have fallen downwards for sure. He would have plummeted down just like those bodies of the pigeons did when Dory and I threw them off the balcony. Or perhaps Obi would have floated softly down, like the feathers.

  Gently and softly, making little circles as he went.

  But he doesn’t fall.

  The helicopter moves downwards in such a way that Obi falls onto one of the long poles that are right at the bottom of the helicopter. The bits that look like they are the helicopter’s feet. He falls right onto one of them and manages to just hold onto it.

  Ben and Mum reach out to him and pull him up into the cabin, right onto our laps.

  And as the helicopter rises up into the sky, with the tower crashing down behind us, we all clasp Obi to us.

  We hold each other tight.

  PART THREE

  After

  Chapter Sixty

  There’s a spot at the top of the road where you can just make out the blue line of the sea over the roofs of the buildings. You can’t see it if it’s foggy or raining hard, but most days, Gaia and I stop to look at it for a moment or two
.

  It’s there today. I mean, I know it’s always there, but we can see it today. It sparkles in the sunshine.

  Gaia and I walk side by side the rest of the way back home. Gaia talks about what happened at school today but I don’t talk much. I like just listening to her voice sometimes.

  We go the quick way home, which is past a few shops and down a couple of busy streets. There are so many people on the pavement that at times we have to walk in single file, but we always go back to walking side by side again when there’s space. And Gaia doesn’t stop talking.

  When we first moved here, we could never walk this way because people recognized me and would try to stop us and want to talk to us. Sometimes they were nice people who wanted just to shake my hand, but sometimes I didn’t like the way they spoke to me, and that’s when Gaia found a long route to school where you didn’t run into so many people.

  We sort of became a bit famous after we had been rescued, you see. Lots of people wanted to interview us but Obi said he’d rather have stayed in the tower than be on television or in the newspapers, and then none of us wanted to do it after that.

  In the end, Obi was quite right about someone else working out how the salt stopped the Bluchers from growing. They discovered that not long after everyone had left the city, and so, after everything, for all the worry about contamination, the Bluchers never made it out of London.

  We were the only city to be destroyed.

  No one else who stayed, like we did, survived.

  Pigeon’s doing OK. Although we have a little dog now, called Ollie, who he’s not too keen on. Mum takes Ollie for a walk every morning and night, so that’s good.

  We don’t talk about the time Mum didn’t go out much, but I just have a feeling it’s not going to happen any more.

  We see Ben quite often. He likes to walk with Mum and Ollie most evenings. I told him that maybe he should just get a dog too, but he said he likes Ollie well enough, so he’ll just walk with them for now.