Tuesday, 19 April 2011

catch.

“Why are you surrenderin’, honey?” The soldier’s strong American accent burned through my mind. I saw red. What I would give to charge in and strike him down, save her.
   “You plannin’ on jumpin’ down? Huh?”
   “Mhm,” she whimpered. I could picture her beautiful face, pale, and her dark eyes, frightened and tense.
   “You need a hand?”
   “No,” she sniffed.
   “Looks like it,” he said. “What happened to your hand?”
   “Nothing,” she said.
   “Nu-uh! Hands in the air!”
   I heard her cry out, choked by the soldier’s grasp. I could see his hands around her throat, strangling her to death just inches from his face.
   “Let go,” she whispered. “Please.”
   “Get your gun!” He shouted to another soldier behind him. I heard it click as the other soldier took aim.
   “You ready?”
   “Ben,” she whimpered.
   I froze.
   “Excuse me?” He sniffed.
   “Catch me,” she said.
   “What –”
   I leapt out and caught her expertly in my arms, elation leaping and bounding in my heart.
   “Run!” She shouted, wriggling out of my grasp and grabbing my hand.
   We bolted down the corridor together, turning as many corners as we could. We found a staircase and jumped down, skipping every four or five steps. My chest was burning, but I felt so giddy with happiness and energy that I kept going. I stole a glance at her and I could see the smile wide on her face.
   Eventually we found ourselves in the main foyer, crumbled to pieces and home to the flipped over chairs and tables of the cafĂ© and the turned over drinks and snacks machines littering the floor. We stopped, panting heavily and laughing breathlessly.
   “Thank you,” she said. She turned and hugged me tight. I hugged her back, smelling the sweetness of her hair, even through the dust clinging onto it. “I thought for a second maybe you weren’t going to catch me.”
   “Well it’s a good job I did, isn’t it,” I laughed. “It was a very good plan.”
   “Thank you,” she replied, smugly. “It’s good we’re on the same wavelength.”
   Then her vision switched to something behind my head and the sparkle in her eyes dimmed.
   “Oh, no,” she murmured.
   I turned around. “What’s up, baby?”
  And then I saw it. The huge bar across the double doors of the main entrance, even though the glass was cracked. There was also a huge amount of rubble out there that would be a death trap to climb over. It seemed our chances of getting out of here were slimmer than I thought.

Sunday, 10 April 2011

swift.

“What are we going to do?”
   “The parachute. Remember?”
   “The one on the rooftop? But that had holes in it,” she replied.
   “Did you see holes in it?”
   “Well, no, but –”
   “Well, then, let’s go!”
   I grabbed her hand – her left one – and pulled her to the staircase.
   “Wait!”
   “What?”
   “There are soldiers up there.” She suddenly seemed younger, frightened like a small child. I wanted to hug her and tell her it was alright, that I would make the bad things go away – but I couldn’t, and she was right: there were soldiers up there. With guns. I sighed indecisively.
   “What are we going to do?” She whimpered.
   “Come on, it’s our only hope.”
   We made our way up the staircase, slowly and trying to dampen our footsteps as we walked. We made it to the third floor and stared up at the hole we’d jumped down through earlier. We walked through the corridors looking for ways to get up to the next floor. When we got back to where we started, she sighed heavily and stopped.
   “This is no use. We’re stuck here forever,” she sobbed.
   I put my arm around her. “No, we’re not, baby, we’ll find a way.”
   I looked around for things to use to get up through the hole. It wasn’t that high – if I jumped I could touch the ceiling. If I just had something to stand on...
   To the right there was a broken door. Behind the broken door was an office of some sort. And in the office there was a desk, a little battered, but still able to stand on its four legs.
   “Look, here,” I pointed. I dragged the desk with little effort to just underneath the hole. Then I stood on top of it, cautiously raising my head just in case those soldiers from earlier were still there. The way was clear, and I hauled myself up. Then I turned back and held out my hand for her.
   “Climb on the table and I’ll pull you up.”
   She climbed up and I grabbed her hand, pulling her up with ease.
   “Pfft,” I scoffed. “Heavier than you look, eh?”
   She grinned. “Let’s go.”
   We carried on down the corridors of the floor, looking for a staircase. We found it, and were about to start climbing when we heard voices.
   “They’re somewhere in this building,” a man sighed. “They can’t get out – the entrance is blocked. So they’re somewhere in here. Find them and kill them.”
   She froze, her hand tensing harshly in mine.
   “Shh, come on,” I whispered, pulling her the other way and into a room on the left. It was another office, destroyed worse than the one on the floor below. We overturned the desk and sat behind it in the corner of the room and listened.
   “Check all the rooms again and then we’ll go down a floor,” said one of the soldiers, apparently the lead.
   The heavy boots scattered, quietening slowly as they walked in the opposite direction. We heard doors opening, furniture being thrown and moved around. I could feel her shivering next to me, and I held her hand tighter.
   “It’s okay,” I whispered. She turned and gave me a weak smile.
   Suddenly the door to the room we were in slammed open, and there were footsteps, heavy, menacing, pacing the room. I held my breath. I felt her hand tighten around mine.
   The sun outside was setting, dusk was falling fast and it cast long shadows into the room through the window. We could see his shadow morphing around the broken furniture of the office, gliding about the walls like a ghost.
   He cocked his gun.
   Her hand flew to her mouth and she screwed her eyes up tight. I held onto her tighter still and braced myself – seeming already to feel the wall of bullets slam into us, killing us instantly...
   He fired. The gunshot was louder than thunder in my ears, seeming to rip right through my skull and drill into my brain. She shrieked as the bullet tore a hole in the desk and in the wallpaper behind her head. I put my hand over hers over her mouth and held her close, praying the soldier hadn’t heard her.
   Too late.
   The soldier tossed the desk away and I came face to face with a merciless, malicious murderer – I could see right through his fiery eyes and into his soul; a soul that had killed thousands and wished to simply kill more and more. And this time was no exception.
   He aimed. I stared helplessly down the barrel of the gun.
   Suddenly she threw herself at the soldier, knocking the gun out of his hand. The soldier fell to the floor with a startled cry, and she picked up the gun and shot him in the head. A menacing silence descended on the room. She turned to me.
   “Let’s go.”
   I held onto her hand as we made our way through the corridors of the fourth floor, looking for the staircase. When we found it, we made our way cautiously up the staircase. We came to a T-junction in the corridors. Both of the ways looked exactly the same.
   “Maybe we lost them,” she said.
   “Maybe,” I replied warily.
   “Maybe,” said another, deeper, rougher voice.
   We turned to face another soldier. She held the gun up at him.
   “Ooh,” he mocked. “Very clever.”
   “I’ll kill you,” she growled.
   I tightened my hand on hers as he took aim. Tension lay thick and heavy. She tightened her finger on the trigger.
   An empty click.
   She cursed under her breath. The soldier laughed.
   “Right, then,” he said, strengthening his aim.
   “Split up!” She yelled, running down the left corridor.

Saturday, 2 April 2011

decision.

I sprinted down the right, coming straight away to a staircase and leaping up it three steps at a time.
   When I got to the top of the stairs, I decided to keep going. Part of me wanted to turn back and run and find her, make sure the soldier hadn’t got her. It didn’t sound like he’d followed me, after all. But she was smart – and she had a gun. We both knew the plan: to get to the rooftop.
   So I kept going.
   I ran through all of the corridors and up all of the staircases. Then I sighted the door that opened up onto the roof – opened up onto freedom. I burst through it into the wind and the rain that sprinkled down from the sky. It was refreshing and cold.
   But I spotted something that took my attention away from the refreshing rain and the cold air.
   My machine, the one I’d created in the first place, stood battered and dented at one side of the roof, on the other side of a huge crack. There was also another door, leading back into the building. There had been two staircases – and she had taken those and was already there. She was staring into the core of the machine that had been exposed. I cupped my hands around my mouth and called her name.
   She spun round and I saw her eyes light up. She ran towards me and skidded to a halt on the edge of the fracture in the building. It was way too wide to leap across, even with a good run-up. And the parachute was on this side of the building. I could see it laying to the side, a huge hole ripped in it. My spirits sank. Our plan was foiled.
   “Ben! It still works!” She cried. I drew my attention back to the machine with its icy blue glowing core. I suddenly hated it – hated my idea of being able to stop time and hated myself for trying.
   “We need to destroy it!” I shouted.
   “But... you created it,” she said, confused. “Why would you want to destroy it?”
   “Look what it’s done!” I cried, waving my arms at the pit before us.
   She hesitated, and then decided she’d lost the argument and destroying the machine was the only thing for it. She turned back to the machine and looked blankly at the buttons around it. She pressed one and the patterns in the glowing core fluctuated and morphed.
   “What do I press?”
   “Uh... well, you need to... it’s hard to explain without showing you!” I struggled. “Maybe I should go round and come up there?”
   “Don’t touch that machine!” The sergeant shouted.
   We froze. About twenty soldiers poured out of the staircase on her side of the building. Twenty guns cocked and twenty soldiers took aim. The wind blew and tossed her hair about her shoulders. She looked deadly beautiful in the face of death.
   And then she slammed her hand down on the keypad of the machine. The blue core fizzed and sparked, and the soldiers opened fire. She held her arms up in front of her face and turned her back on the bullets.
   The bullets that froze mid-air.
   A steady beeping echoed hollowly around the still air – frozen in time by my creation for a limited amount of time.
   “What happened?”
   “Grab my hand!” She screamed. She leant over the gap and outstretched her hand.
   “Wait – it’s still... the countdown...”
   “Help me, please.”
   Her fingertips were so far away. The gap was too wide. There were soldiers around us, frozen in time. The countdown was nearing its end – there was no time left.