IV - Paige
"It's
on fire." Paige said, feeling her
hopes dying inside her, fluttering to the ground and twitching, once, twice and
no more.
"What?" It was Josh's voice, strangely distant
behind her.
"Don't
talk such bloody rubbish, girl!"
Henry shouted, half out of breath, as he staggered up to the top of the
hill. "The city can't be on fire. We'd have noticed already if it was!"
Paige
didn't answer him. She couldn't take
her eyes off the terrible beauty of the flames licking across the familiar
skyline, shooting up the sides of church spires and running through the streets
like rivers. She barely noticed when
the old man finally reached the top of the hill and stood beside her, silent
but for his heavy breathing.
"How?" Josh asked, his voice now coming from just
behind her. She turned briefly to face
him and saw his eyes shimmering in the firelight. "The granite itself is on fire! How!?"
Henry
remained silent, apparently unable to rationalise what he saw just yet. Charlie was similarly mute, but then he
hadn't said much since they met him.
"We
can't go to the Police Station now."
Paige said at last. "What
are we supposed to do?"
"Do
you want to try the college chapel?"
Henry
looked like he was about to protest, angered out of his shock, but Paige shook
her head. "I don't want to go back
past the apartments."
"We
can't stand here all night." Josh
said, gesturing around him as he did so.
"We need to find some shelter.
Somewhere we can trust."
"There's
the convent."
"No!" Henry suddenly interjected. "We should keep moving until we have to
stop. There has to be somewhere where
people are taking refuge, there has to be support networks and services!"
Paige
sighed. Henry's rationality had come to
the fore once more. What he said was,
to some extent, logical, but she had abandoned logic at the door to her
apartment as the monsters gasped and moaned on the other side. She glanced up at the eerie facade of the
convent and shuddered. She didn't much
want to take shelter in there either, especially not in light of the strange
occurrences. She would be ready to jump
at ghosts around every corner.
"Okay." She said
resignedly. "Which way?"
"The
hospital!" Henry cried as if he
had just had a revelation. "Devara
Hill Hospital! It's on the edge of the
old town to the east of here. It should
be out of range of the fire and it's the logical place for people to assemble."
There's
that word again, logical, I wouldn't want to be relying on that right now. Perhaps that's why he looks so shaken? "Sure," she said, "let's head that way." She looked to Josh and he nodded, gravely. She couldn't quite pin the boy down. He had suddenly taken the role of leader,
and it made some sense, she supposed, after all Charlie was too young, Henry
too flighty and she herself had been close to gibbering when he found her. But there was something else about him,
about the immature way he had tried to seduce her before.
The
contrast sat uneasily with her. It was
witnessing a youth on a contested border between boy and man and she could tell
by the way he had looked at her sometimes, the way he had stared at the flames,
that he was struggling with it as well somewhere in there.
She
took one last look at the flames and gasped.
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