When the Storm Awakens - ch2

-Two-

She had long succumbed to the darkness, letting it wash over her. The will to survive having left, she had finally given up. At her side, the man she had found in her wanderings lay in a similar predicament, but he had ceased talking hours ago. He had urged her to hang on. “Help is coming…,” he assured her, “…don’t let go”. Now he no longer offered such words of encouragement, falling into silence, succumbing to the frailty of his condition and once again she was alone.

         She had been walking though the dim light, trying to make sense of her surroundings when she nearly tripped over him, hobbling out of a side passage. They had scared each other out of their wits. It took several minutes for either of them to settle down and talk. It took even longer for them to trust one another and longer still before they were happy to die side by side.

         As she lay there, on her side, facing the tall, dark man who called himself Sammy, she listened to his breathing and waited for it to stop. Then it would only be a matter of time before hers would to. If only they had found help.

         Then out of the dark, she heard a voice. Not a loud voice, not someone yelling, just a normal conversation. It’s only a hallucination, she thought, it’s not real; and she started to chuckle to herself, the start of a mad laugh.

         When she heard the voice again, it was almost on top of her. A mans’ voice: “He’s still warm!” She had fought her eyes open and stared at someone kneeling next to her, holding Sammy’s arm. The man turned his face towards her and jumped backwards, yelling with surprise: “Bloody hell! They’re alive!”

         Emily kept her gaze on him. She was still unable to speak. Her lips were dry and cracked. Her throat was parched and beyond ability to vocalise. Their saviour was not daunted. He seemed to be waving over another person and a younger man’s face came into view.

         “Are you sure?” the other one said.

         “Yes, I’m sure. They need water. We need to get them to the pipe.”

         “How are we going to do that?”

         “Carry them.”

         “You’re kidding? He’s got to weigh…”

         The first one interrupted him, “That doesn’t matter. You take the girl, and I’ll take him.”

         “Carry him with your shoulder? One at a time is better. We’ll take the girl first.”

         Emily felt his hands grasp her arms and pull her upright. She was weak from dehydration, but she managed to get her legs under her and walk to some degree with their help. She found it impossible to keep her head up. It hung down and lolled about as they walked her. All she could see was the floor passing dimly below her and her rescuers’ bare feet padding along on either side.

         Minutes later they dumped her unceremoniously onto a mattress, a much softer arrangement than the floor and left her. It was darker than where she was earlier, darker than the hall where she had collapsed. She closed her eyes and rested, waiting for either salvation or death.

         She must have slept, for moments later, they returned, grunting and struggling, carrying something into the room and over to her side. They heaved something heavy onto another bed and she could hear the sound of the frame taking the strain.

         “We’re not going to be able to get them to the water. We’ll have to carry it here,” She heard one of them saying as they moved around the room. “Look for something to carry it in - a bottle or a cup or something,”          

The men that carried her here were panting, and she suspected they had carried Sammy there also - not an easy task. He was a heavy man. Now she could hear them rummaging through cupboards and drawers.

         “What about this…?” The younger of the two had found something, “It’s a kind of dish.”

         “Perfect.”

         “There’s a couple. One each.”

         They were gone again for only a short time, and when they returned, one of them came to her side. He put his hand gently under her head and lifted it. Then she felt plastic against her lips.

         “It’s water,” he was saying. “It doesn’t taste the best, but it’ll do. Drink it.”

         She let the liquid enter her mouth, savouring the wetness of it and then swallowed painfully. A second mouthful went down easier, but the third caused her to cough. He persisted, managing to get a reasonable amount of fluid into her, and when he let her down, she felt a little better.



She slept fitfully, having been interrupted several times by either one of them forcing water into her stomach. She assumed that they were doing the same for her friend in the bed next to her, and the treatment seemed to be bringing both of them back from the brink of death.

         “How are they doing?” The younger man was standing over her, looking down at her with concern on his face.

         “Better I think. We’ve got to keep going though. We’ve got to get more water into them.”

         “There’s no more of them out there?”

         “No,” the older one said, “I don’t think so. There’s only the four of us.”

         Emily tried to speak; all she could get out was a whisper. The one leaning over her must have noticed her lips moving.

         “What was that?” and he came in closer.

         He turned to look at her full in the face, smiling, “You’re welcome,” he said.

---

She woke with a start and with the sudden need to take flight. She sat upright and swung her legs over the side, but her head began to swim. Over against one of the walls, one of the men who had helped her was resting. His back was against the wall and his head was down between his knees. At the sound of her movement – the bed was rattling madly – he raised his head then made his way over to her slowly.

         Placing a restraining hand on her shoulder, he forced her down again. “Take it easy, you’re not up to getting out of bed yet,” He said quietly, smiling at her reassuringly. “You’re safe here; I won’t let anything happen to you.”

         “How’s Sammy?” she croaked.

         “Your friend’s getting better, though I think he was a little worse off than you. Do you want more water?”

         She shook her head. She needed answers, not water and so she asked him, “Where am I?”

         His eyes wandered about the room, “This place? I have absolutely no idea but I can tell you this, we’re in some hospital, or medical facility. It’s deserted except for us.” He frowned. “Where we are doesn’t really matter, how we’re going to get out is much more important. When we’ve got you up on your feet – I mean really up – then we’ll get on to that.” He smiled again. “My name’s Jim by the way. Lewis is the other guy with me.”

         She cleared her throat to speak again. “Emily. I’m Emily.”

Over the next few hours she was almost back on her feet, having taken the remainder of her recovery upon herself. She took the water the two men gave her and drank it when she needed it.

         On the other bed, Sammy showed great progress, although he was still behind her. While she was sitting on the edge of the bed, Sammy remained flat on his back, although he was talking and even smiling at her worried expression.

         “I told you someone would come. I told you that it wasn’t in our future to die in this place.”

         “Yes, you said that. Now all we have to do is get out of here.”

         He smiled again. “A way will present itself, I’m sure of that.”

         She slid out of bed, letting her feet hit the floor and she wobbled there for a few seconds.

         “Where are you going?” He looked genuinely concerned about being left.

         “I’ll be back in a second.” She went slowly into the corridor, leaning against the wall periodically as she went. She followed the voices of the men, down the passage to the left. They were standing in the centre of an intersection, both leaning against the opposite walls with their arms folded.

         “I know what you’re saying, and I do agree with you, but I don’t see what we can do about it,” Jim said.

         Lewis did not want to back down. “I still think we should try.”

         “Neither of us knows what to do. There’s a real possibility that we could kill whoever is in there, and that’s something I don’t want on my conscience. The other thing is, let’s say we succeed, what are we going to feed them? There’s nothing for us to eat here. Tomorrow that’s going to start being a problem for us, and I’d rather not add to it.”

         “I still don’t think its right to leave them.”

         “Yes, of course you’re right. But we don’t have a choice.” Then he saw her approaching and he changed the subject, calling to her as she arrived, “Hey Emily, you’re up?”

That’s obvious, she thought.

“How are you feeling?”

         “Better. I’m on my feet and that’s got to be something.” She leant on the wall and adopted their posture, asking them about their progress, “Have you guys found a way out yet?”

         “Not yet, but we will.” Jim looked back to Lewis, and then made eye contact with her again.

                They’re keeping something from me. Her eyes darted back and forth between them. “What were you two talking about?”

         Lewis jumped in, “There’s hundreds, maybe thousands of us down here, and they’re all asleep, like we were. Now we’re awake, but they’re still stuck there. Jim wants to leave them.”

         “That’s not completely true, Lewis. I said: Leave them for now. I said we have to look to our survival first, then we can deal with all those others.”

         “They’re not going anywhere,” he explained, “…but we definitely should be. We’ve got a real chance to get out of here.” Jim was smiling, his white teeth glowing under the lights illuminated from below.

         She hadn’t had the chance to look at either of them until now; she’d been too sick and flat on her back. There was little lighting in the room where she had been recovering, but there was ample light in this place.

         What struck her first was the similarity of their appearance, and she knew this was nothing of their doing. Both of them stood at about the same height. They were both bald, having had their heads shaven almost to the scalp. They were unshaven and this added to the overall dismal appearance of both of them. They were dirty, their clothes, faces and arms were streaked in dust and dirt. Both were barefoot, and their feet were even dirtier than the rest of them. Lewis appeared unhurt. Jim however, had a large and angry cut over his right eye that needed stitches. It had bled at some stage, and his face and head bore the brown stains of dried blood. The illumination from below only added to the frightfulness of their appearance. Deep shadows played on their faces as they talked, like they were telling scary stories by torchlight. As she looked them up and down, the likelihood that she looked equally as bad to them was very high.

         “…if we don’t take it…” Jim continued, “…then we’d be a bunch of fools.”

         Emily nodded. “But we’re still not any closer to finding a way out of here. As soon as Sammy is up and about – and that will be soon I think – then we should be on our way. So which way is that?”

         “We’ll find an exit, don’t worry,” Jim tried to reassure her.

         She was eager to get the job done, and hated standing about waiting for the men to do it. Nothing was going to happen at this rate. “You don’t mind if I look, do you?”

         Jim raised his eyebrows then looked to his friend. “No, not at all. Go ahead. But I don’t think any of us should be wandering around alone.”

         “I’ll go with her,” Lewis offered.

         “Well, I’m going back to see Sammy.” Jim pulled himself off the wall and smiled to the other two. “Don’t stay out too late, kids.” He started back to the beds but turned with an afterthought: “Oh, while you’re looking…”
***


Sammy was asleep when Jim returned. He lowered himself onto the other bed and closed his eyes. I’ll just rest up a bit, until the kids get back.

         When his eyes snapped open, it was as dark as before. With a groan he swung his legs over the side and faced the other bed where Sammy was in a similar position, sitting on the edge of his bed and watching him. The other man took up the small metal bowl full of the rusty liquid and brought it too his lips, taking a drink. Although the room was essentially dark, there was enough light from the hallway to reflect on the bowl. Jim could see it glitter as Sammy lifted it, and could hear him gulping the contents eagerly.

         “Take it easy with that; not too much too fast,” Jim cautioned.

         Sammy wiped his mouth. “You’re James?”

         Jim nodded. “Jim. Call me Jim. Have the other two been back yet?”

         “No,” he smiled. “It’s just you and me.”

         “I have no idea how long they’ve been. I hope they’re not lost.”

         Sammy pulled himself onto his feet and groaned as he stretched. “We could go look for them. I’m sure they’re not far and Emily seems sensible enough not to wander too far in the dark. Oh…” He grunted when he became upright, grasping his belly, “Is there a bathroom here somewhere?”

         Jim joined him. The bigger man was trying to walk and wavered a little, Jim was at his side quickly to offer support, which Sammy accepted wordlessly. “Lewis found it over the way,” and he pointed with his free hand across the hall, into the area behind the frosted glass. They crossed the hall with Sammy limping, favouring his left knee. “There’s no water in there so…” Jim warned him.

         “I’ll manage.”

         Jim waited for him, leaning against the glass in the corridor. He caught a good look at his new compatriot while they were out in the hall. Taller than Jim, and definitely broader, Sammy had an imposing frame. He was not overweight, just large boned and to some degree muscular. He was dark skinned, probably originating from India or Pakistan, but his accent spoke of him being in this country all his life. Like the others he was dressed in the thin clothing and he was barefoot, bald and dirty. They were an odd group.

         Sammy was still indisposed when he heard the sound of shuffling feet and excited voices from down the corridor. Jim could see their legs first, walking hurriedly down towards him.

         “We’ve found it!” Emily clapped her hands together and grinned. Lewis was smiling behind her.

                Jim didn’t need them to elaborate. Nodding enthusiastically, he gestured into the room beside him. “Sammy’s up.”

         “We’ve found something else too.” Lewis reached out and put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “We need to show you.”

         He waited for Sammy to return and then followed the two young people back to the things they had found. Further down past the intersection they entered a large room full of furniture – tables, chairs and beds not unlike those in the medical bay.

         She had taken with her one of the bowls filled almost to the top with water. Walked to one of the walls she dipped her dirty hand in, wiping her wet fingers over a section of the wall, not plain concrete but a metal panel screwed there, it was a sign.

         She washed the grime that had accumulated enough to show something of the design beneath, explaining, “It’s pretty worn, but you can still read it… sort of.”

         Jim squinted at the markings that had been revealed. “It’s a map.”

         “Yes. And I might point out this part of it,” her finger was extended out and touching the plate, wiping off some of the grime, there were red letters underneath. “You can just read ‘exit’.”

         He nodded. Yes, there was the exit. Straight down the hall, if he read it right. “Can you lead us out with this map, Emily?”

         She nodded and smiled, and he responded likewise. “What was the other thing?”

         Lewis waved over through the gap, beckoning them to follow him. “It’s this way.”

         He led them through the open area, out to the other side. “There are offices down here, but we found something else. There’s a storeroom.”

         Jim had been looking at the computer systems that were sitting dormant on some of the desks. He tried one.

         “They don’t work,” Emily stated blandly, following Lewis into another hallway lit along the bottom of one wall as all the others. A line of doorways greeted them, all open and all dark inside.

         “Here…” Lewis went in to one of them and waited for the others to follow him. Jim was right behind, and he stopped, letting his eyes adjust slightly to the absence of light. The others followed him and did the same, and after a short time they could just make out the shapes of shelves sticking out in rows from the back wall.

         Lewis knew what he was after and went there immediately, retrieving an object and tossing it recklessly toward the others. Jim heard it hit the ground in front of him and roll to his feet.

         Jim bent down and retrieved it from the floor. It was a clear plastic bottle containing a colourless liquid.

         He stood in the hallway, trying to read the label by the floor-height lights. “We can’t drink this,” he declared.

         “We weren’t thinking of actually drinking them,” she exclaimed. Emily had followed him out expectantly. “We thought we could use them to cart water. You said we need to carry some.”

         “We’d have to wash them out well.”

         She nodded. She knew.

         “Good job. Is there anything else of use in there?”

         “No, just what we’ve shown you.”

“Okay. Now,” he exhaled noisily. “I think it’s time we got out of this place. What do you all think?”

They agreed. Sammy, who was only just back on his feet, insisted they were not to delay on his account. He would keep up, he promised.

“There are how many bottles in there?” Jim asked. Lewis told him. “They’ll have to be emptied out, washed and filled.”

“We’ll do that.” Emily indicated Lewis would help her. “How are we going to carry them?”

“Leave that to me.” Jim rubbed his chin. “Let’s get this done as quick as we can, then get going.”

“One last thing,” Emily began, looking at the ragged laceration above Jim’s eye. “Will you do me a favour?”

Jim narrowed his eyes.

“Let me fix up that cut, it doesn’t look good at all.”

---

There was a sense of urgency among them. All of them were starting to get extremely hungry and the lack of food was adding to their lethargy. The passage of time had become indefinable, and only the need to rest separated any period from another. Now that they were ready to leave, sleep seemed the last thing on their minds.

         Emily had cleaned Jim’s wound with the original contents of one of the bottles, as it turned out to be useful for that sort of task. With a bandaid in place, he looked more civilised. That being the last task to preform, they all gathered at the intersection with their supplies and prepared to leave.

         Jim had taken four sheets and tied them each together at their corners forming four identical sacks. After loading each with an equal quantity of the bottled water he handed them to his friends.          

         Emily set out, leading them at Jim’s direction. She had studied the sign, what she could read of it, and headed in the direction it had indicated as ‘exit’. The corridor stretched out ahead of them, lit by the same lights they had become accustomed to, and they headed down it, hopefully to their salvation.

         They passed the open area that Emily and Lewis had shown them earlier, continuing on down until the right hand wall reappeared making it a corridor again. Further along, they came to another intersection.

                This crossroad was different than the others, it was sign posted. The plaques were higher up and free of most of the dust and grime that had obscured the exit sign Emily had found. To the left was the ‘Dormitory’ and the right housed the ‘Servery’.

         “We should check that out,” Jim suggested, pointing to the right. “Lewis…?”

         Lewis seemed reluctant to go, and Sammy noticed it. “I’ll go with him.” Sammy declared, relinquished his load and placing it gently on the ground.

         “Shouldn’t we stick together?” Emily asked, looking down the passage to the exit expectantly.

         Jim put his hand on Lewis’ burden, wanting to take it from him. “They’ll be alright. We’ll stay here as a point of reference. Call out if you get into trouble – or if you find something.”

         “I haven’t agreed to go yet.” Lewis remained hesitant. He still wasn’t sure about the big man travelling with him. He seemed much more comfortable with Emily.

         “You’ll be fine. Sammy will be with you,” Emily reassured him.

         The two of them departed down the right passage, around the corner and out of sight, leaving Jim and Emily at the centre of the junction. Jim pulled his burden off over his shoulder and placed it down on the ground next to Sammy’s load. Then he joined them both on the floor, sighing deeply.

         “I asked you before if you knew where we were…” Emily began hesitantly.

         “Yes.”

         “Do you have any more thoughts on that?”

         He looked up and around at his surroundings. “This is a hospital I think. We have to be in the basement - it’s got that subterranean feel about it.”

         She agreed with a nod. “Where are the doctors and the nurses?”

         “Upstairs I hope,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction. “…but somehow I doubt it. This place is deserted and has been for a long time - you can tell by the state of everything. What’s bothering me is that but all of the equipment looks like it should have come from our time. That leads me to think that we’ve been asleep down here for…” he thought for a moment, “God knows how long.”

         “By why put us here in the first place?”

         “This looks like some big storage facility - they’ve stored us. Something happened to our world, some disaster of such magnitude I can only imagine. So they froze us, and stored us here.”

         “I didn’t know they could do that.”

         Jim rubbed the back of his head, “I didn’t think so either, but here we are. Really the only people who could use this sort of technology and keep it secret is the military – and I’m not talking about our military either.”

         She joined him on the floor. “I thought I was dead. Then you came along.” She smiled, “You’re my angel. You saved my life.”

         Jim chuckled and pointed to his dirty and wounded face. “Do I look like an angel?”

         “Close enough for me.” Her smile faded to a frown. “How did we get here? I don’t remember anything about this place.”

         “None of us do. The last thing I can remember was talking to my family over breakfast, and then…” he shook his head, “…blank.”

         “Why me? I’m just a student.”

         “What are you studying?”

         “Linguistics”

                “Ah, like ‘enry ‘iggins,” he chucked to himself. She looked at him blankly and he felt the need to elaborate. “You know, from Bernard Shaw: The Pygmalion.”

                “I know it.”

                Jim understood. “You probably get that a lot.”

                She stared at him evenly. “Not us much as you’d think. It’s not much help down here, though. What do you do?”

         “Lots of things.” He smiled.

         “Well, I’m glad you’re here - and Sammy and Lewis too.”

         “I’d save the thanks ‘till we get out of here. You know…” he shifted his position on the floor, “Something is bothering me about this whole thing.”

         “Just one thing?”

         “Okay, so there are a lot of strange things going on. But listen… Here we are - we’re the same people as yesterday – or at least the last time we can remember – but this place… This place has been here a long time. Presumably so have we, and we’ve been forgotten. It’s like someone decided to just turn out the lights and closed the door.” He thought for a moment. “The people that put us here are long gone. They’ve been dead for centuries maybe, judging by the state of this place.”

         “Well, someone’s keeping all the machines going, to keep the power down here.”

         He nodded. “Yeah, and where are they? If we get out, then we’re going to see a whole different world than the one we remember, a whole different world. The one we knew has long gone.”

         Her eyes opened wide, a realisation coming to her suddenly. “What about our families, our friends,” she gasped, tears beginning to well in her eyes, “have we left them behind as well?”

         Jim came over to her, wrapping a comforting arm around her. “There’s no reason for any of us to be here, at least none that I can think of. Maybe someone in your family was important, special enough to be down here protected from some calamity, and they took their family with them. Your people could be somewhere here, lying asleep, waiting for you to wake them up.”

         She looked back down the hall to the where she imagined the wall of lights, now invisible in the distance.

         Jim placed a hand on her shoulder, “I know what you’re thinking, but you’d better get it right out of your mind. There’s nothing you can do for them, you don’t know which bed they’re in and you don’t know how to wake them. Lewis tried to turn off one of the beds – I told him not to, but… they’re locked, they won’t budge. If we should succeed and we start bringing people out, then when do we stop? None of us will survive.”

         “But…”

         “Later,” he tried his best to look sympathetic, “We’ll come back and work it out. We’ll get them all out, and we’ll do it properly. They’re fine where they are, they’re not going anywhere.”

         She must have seen the flaw in his argument: “We’re out, so they could come out too.”

         “That was a breakdown, an error, a power surge, or something. It was a freak accident that we’re here. I’m positive it won’t happen again.” He took another tack: “This is our chance to do something really special, really heroic. We can save all these people, but only if we do this right. Anyway,” he rubbed his empty belly, “We’ve run out of time here. If we don’t find food soon, we’ll be no good to anyone. I, for one, am getting quite hungry.”

         She smiled weakly, “I suppose you’re right.”

         “Let’s just get out of here and go and see what kind of world we’ve woken up to. It maybe that we are in a basement somewhere, and as soon as we go up a floor or two there’ll be people ready to help us.”

         There was something stirring at the back of his mind, fighting to the front, struggling to push past those things that had held his attention for so long. Only vague images found their way to the front of his mind, fleeting glances that once seen, were snatched away again as if carried away by the wind. His frustration mounted, and with it he found himself screwing up his face, trying to enhance his concentration, but it was to no avail. None of the images congealed into a coherent picture, and he was left with the feeling that what he had to remember was extremely important.

         She had seen his expression, and hers took on one of concern. “Are you okay? You look…” She rested her hand on his shoulder and he relaxed.

         “Yeah… sorry.” He shook his head to try and clear it. He needed to clear it. “It’s nothing. I’ve a bit of headache from… you know… before.” He put his dirty, shaking fingers up to the dressing Emily had taped there earlier. “I’ll be alright.”

         “Where are they?” She craned her neck up, trying to see down the dimly lit passage to the servery.

         “I don’t think they’ll be long.” Jim was rubbing his eyes, his head was down and he was not searching for the others like Emily. “There could be thousands down here, all on machines like we were. Ours failed. That shouldn’t have happened. There should have been someone here to keep them going. They all went away some time ago, I don’t know how long. Like I said, they just turned off the light and shut the door.”

         He lifted his head and looked her right in the eye. “We’ve been literally forgotten. How do you forget thousands of people like that?”