Inner City Read online

  Chapter 6

  Callen woke in confusion, unsure where he was. He looked around to get his bearings. Then he saw the savages. They were still coming, chasing him up the hill. He got to his feet. His head felt strangely dizzy. Fear forced him to run. He looked to the tunnel above, pausing, fearing the boy with the knife; surely he’d be waiting to kill him. The Outlocked saw his hesitation and spears rained down around him. They were trying to kill him. He had no other choice and climbed towards the tunnel. The thought of the teenage boy was far less terrifying than the Outlocked savages surging towards him.

  Callen crawled closer to his escape, stopping at the cave entrance, looking for the boy, before cautiously re-entering the tunnel and scrambling its length to the cave. Out of breath, he searched every inch of the space with an anxious stare. The cave was empty - except for the old man lying on the ground where he fell. The blood from his belly had dried at the edges to rise away from the dusty ground. Apart from Callen’s ragged breath, silence reigned. He couldn’t see the boy with the knife. Callen hoped the attacking Outlocked had scared him away, but he couldn’t be sure, so he tried to stay silent. It was hard, even painful not to take the big gulping breaths his body needed, but the threat of the boy with his knife was enough to force him to control his breath as best he could.

  Callen moved from the light of the tunnel and inched towards the bed. He worked his way under the rags to blend into the pile. Five minutes passed, then ten; his breath softened. He lay motionless, camouflaged in rags and hoping he was alone. More time passed. The minutes gathered into an hour. Callen drifted quietly to sleep under the rags in this sanctuary underground.

  Callen woke abruptly from a dream. He sat and twisted his neck in every direction to get his bearings. He called “Mummy,” before seeing the rags lying over him. He ran a hand through the course rags and remembered everything. The light from the passageway had disappeared with the setting of the sun. Callen sat breathing heavily. There was something new at the edge of his mind; something that shouldn’t be there - a dream of being in a hospital. The memory seemed out of place. Callen tried to remember, but it was hard to separate from his dreams. Everything he’d been through made his head spin, but that one incongruous image, the hospital, overshadowed everything. He lay awake, thinking of that well-lit hospital room for hours and then, somewhere deep in the midst of reconstructing the memory, sleep crept up on him again.

  When he woke, it was morning. He was starving and ate from the old man’s supplies. His side was aching, as was his arm, but both wounds had stopped bleeding. As far as he could tell they’d begun to heal.

  The old man lay in his final foetal position, clutching at his stomach, stiff on the floor. Callen’s appetite wasn’t in mourning. He finger spooned the last of the chocolate fudge to his mouth and ate a fruit bar hiding at the bottom of his bag. With his appetite satisfied and his bag repacked, he stopped at the old man.

  “I’m sorry about what happened.” From anyone but Callen it may have seemed hollow, but to the man who saved his life on two separate occasions, it held more weight than a dozen sermons. Callen picked up his pack and left the room for the long dark corridor. Holding a lit candle, he navigated his way along the rubble-strewn floor until he came to the ladder that led to carriageway above.

  Along the carriageway, Callen braced as carriages raced through the tunnel. When he reached the opening to the platform, he poked his head out from the shadows and waited. He could see the early morning commuters standing or sitting on the platform, waiting for their carriage to work.

  When the next carriage arrived, Callen jumped onto the platform behind it, joined those waiting, then followed them aboard and took a seat by a window. He didn’t relax until the carriage began to move. He watched the sights whistle by his window. Station after station arriving and disappearing as the carriage started and stopped on its journey. A nurse got on and sat a few seats away. She never looked up from her reader and didn’t notice Callen, but he never took his eyes off her. She brought back his dream of the hospital. He had large pieces of that dream now. He remembered the nurse dropping her teacup, the tube in his arm, even the nurse fiddling with that tube. The dream was as real as any he’d ever had. For the first time, he wondered if it was a dream and he looked to his arm and found a small red mark where he remembered the tube entering. It hurt as he ran his finger across it. He looked at the wound on his arm and ran a finger across the slightly swollen cut on his skin. It seemed to be healing well. The more serious wound, the one hidden under his shirt itched. A deep itch caused by his shirt rubbing as the carriage swayed. He reached under his shirt to touch the area with a finger. It brought a pleasurable pain that instantly stopped the itching. Along the cut his finger found a small, hard sliver of something sticking out from his skin. It felt like a splinter. He explored it, wiggling it back and forth. He pinched at it to try and pry it out from his skin. It refused to move. He looked down his shirt to get a better view and stared in shock – it was the tiny end of a stitch, carefully tied off and almost completely concealed below the skin where the two sides of his wound came together. He quickly pushed up his sleeve to see his other wound. He eased open the edges of skin along the cut and found more stitches. Deft stitches again concealed almost perfectly below the skin. The nurse sat unaware of Callen’s dismay. Stitches like these were part of ancient medical practices, long ago abandoned and replaced by synthetic skin that instantly healed and closed all but the most serious wounds. There was only one answer for how he’d come by these archaic stitches, but it made no sense. It simply couldn’t be, it would make everything he knew a falsehood.

  When Callen got off at his stop, he was more reserved, more contemplative of this growing mystery. The discovery of his stitches, their most likely explanation and the recollection of his vivid dream had set his mind racing.

  When he came from the station to the street above the sights jolted his memory back to his task. He smiled on recognising familiar sights. He didn’t have to think where he was going. He was going home. Past his preschool with the flashing neon stop sign at the crossing. Past the plastic buildings that lined the streets and the shops that once gave Callen a place to spend his pocket money. People were everywhere, and no-one took any notice of him as he walked the street he’d walked a thousand times before. He stopped at the steps of his parent’s apartment building. A feeling of excitement washed over him as he pressed the buzzer to his home. The buzzer crackled to life.

  “Yes,” came the cold response from someone interrupted.

  “It’s Callen.”

  “Callen?”

  “Let me in!”

  A camera whirred to life. It swivelled to get Callen in the frame. A buzzer sounded. The lock on the front door snapped open.

  “Come on up,” said the voice through the intercom, suddenly sounding soft and welcoming.

  Callen went up to the twenty-third floor. He walked the corridor, passed twenty-three fourteen, fifteen and sixteen, until he stood outside his home apartment: twenty-three seventeen. A lock on the door opened. Callen’s face lit up in anticipation. A stranger opened the door.

  “Callen, is it?”

  Callen showed surprise, confusion and finally disappointment. Where were his parents? Why weren’t they home and why was this strange man in his house? The man ushered Callen in with the warmth of an old friend.

  “I was told you might pay me a visit.”

  “Where’s mum and dad?” Callen asked.

  “Moved, they had to. It’s the law when you lose a child.”

  Callen froze. When they taught him about reassignments at school, they hadn’t covered this, and he wondered how many more unwelcome surprises awaited him. The door buzzed again and the man hustled to the intercom.

  “Hello,” he said knowing who it was.

  “Police.”

  “Come on up.”

  The man turned with a guilty look. Callen’s face made the man wish he’d not called the police.
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  “I’m sorry,” he said. “They called the day after I moved in. They thought you might come here.”

  Callen said nothing. He ran to every room in the apartment. Everything was different. Not one piece of furniture remained that Callen recognised. His former life was a memory. It was as if his first parents never existed.

  A knock on the door signalled the arrival of police. The new occupant opened the door and showed a young woman in uniform into Callen’s old bedroom. The room was now a study, set up to act as a home office, the walls lined with a multitude of reading crystals. Callen stood looking at the unfamiliar furnishings as the policewoman entered. Callen turned and looked to her with defeat in his eyes.

  “Callen?” she asked, before offering an outstretched hand.

  “This is my room,” Callen said weakly, almost pleading for it to be true.

  “It’s not your room. It’s this man’s room. You’re going to have to come with me.” The policewoman’s voice had a ring of authority. Callen rushed to the window and crouched to find an inscription below the sill in a shaky juvenile hand: ‘Callen Carrus woz here.’

  “Look!” he implored. But neither the policewoman nor the new resident came forward to look.

  “Come with me,” said the officer, as she took Callen’s hand. Callen began to cry as he walked with her to the door. He knew where he was going; back to the Helfners. They would be waiting to get their son back. Callen’s first parents, Leona and Jonathan, were lost to him and he had no hope of ever seeing them again.