Chapter Seven
His head hung low, propped up against a feeble hand as he hunched over the bar in NAVIMEG. Ronson set a drink down as he saw Zack walk in, and he spoke to Zack too. No doubt something chipper and amusing in his usual style. But Zack hadn’t heard it and he paid the beaker of Moonshine no attention. At one point Ronson offered him a small puckered tablet, but again Zack did nothing. The sight and smell of the Mess Room on level forty eight was still too fresh in his mind, and he didn’t want to be any part of it. Zack huddled over the bar, his nose picking up the alcohol tinged scent of the drink, and he closed his sodden eyes to shut out the world.
Behind his eyelids, ideas and images of his life played out. His university days and Samantha, her blond hair cut into a bob, a blunt fringe that in his mind always made her seem kinky, and a bit like a stripper. He thought about how she used to lie at his side without any concern for her naked body, her weight balanced on a single elbow. She would lean over him, trace her finger along the ridge of his nose whilst whispering promises that she would love him forever into the curves of his ear. Sometimes she would let her finger drop down over the ridge of his chin, trace it over his chest, but Zack could never stand it and always ended up in fits of giggles. He knew that Samantha was the woman who he could have loved even after her beauty had faded. He would have loved her just for who she was. Sometimes he still tried to imagine her, perhaps living in Zeta Tower, or Alpha Tower. Even Omega. But he knew that she wasn’t there. It was impossible. She would have been in the building to the north of Delta when the bombs landed. The one that he was no longer sure that he could find. He tried to imagine her last moments, the speed of it, that she was right under a bomb when it exploded so that she wouldn’t remember a thing. But the idea of her surviving for hours or days, burnt and hungry before death finally clawed into her, was another possible reality. He had seen those bodies. He had seen their charred, dust-covered remains. He had looked for her face amongst the bodies on the one and only time that he had ventured outside. He had seen shapes that he was sure were human underneath the layers of dust. He had seen their bloated bodies in the water filters. He was grateful that he had never found her.
Tonight, images of Billy crept in there too. His tiny hand and skinny tattoo-free wrist. Zack hadn’t been back to his room to change his clothes, and he was still covered in Billy’s smell. He had considered going back to the sick bay to find out what they had done with the body, maybe to go and see it. He had never spoken to a dead body before, but he thought perhaps he needed to say sorry to Billy. He wanted to tell him that he was sorry for the life that he had lived. That it was supposed to be better, and that what had happened to him wasn’t how life was supposed to be. He wondered if he had ever been told a fairytale. If he had ever listened to a lullaby as he slept. If anybody had ever promised to protect him until they died. He wondered if sitting there next to the corpse of a small boy and reading him Jack and the Beanstalk, or a tale about Red Riding Hood might somehow make up for some of the childhood he had lost. Perhaps it would make up for some of the adult life that Zack had lost, too.
He didn’t know how long he had been there when he felt the hand touch his upper arm. It startled him, and his eyes shot open like a bullet from a gun. The hand was clean and abutted by a white cuff. Zack turned his head to appreciate the form next to him and he was surprised to see the same girl from the night before.
“I’m not in the mood,” he said. “Just go back to wherever you came from.” The girl seemed unfazed, and rather than moving away, she sat down on the oil barrel stool next to him. She placed an elbow on the bar, rested her head onto it, her eyes not leaving his face. “What do you want?” he asked as she picked up his untouched drink and knocked it back.
“To say sorry.” She left the words hanging between them, waiting for him to mould them as he saw fit.
“Sorry?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Why are you sorry? You know my type. You know what I am. You were spot on.” Zack wasn’t in the mood for light chatter, especially not with a woman who was so quick to judge him. He didn’t need anything to remind him of life in Delta right now. He just wanted to be alone with his memories and regrets.
“That’s what I thought,” she continued, letting out a huge breath, “but I was wrong. Ronson told me so.” Zack looked at Ronson, who was trying to busy himself and appear as if he wasn’t paying attention to what was happening, even though he was listening to every word they were saying. He was still wearing the hat that Zack had given him, and Zack knew he wasn’t going to ask for it back. He had even skewed it a little on his head so it wasn’t straight, which meant that the scars were completely covered. There was an ease about the way Ronson moved tonight. It reminded Zack of freedom. But freedom was just an idea now, a word that doesn’t really mean anything, and neither of them lived in a world where it existed.
“What did he tell you?” Zack asked as he looked back to the woman.
“He told me that I was wrong about you. That you organised to get him a water supply. Fresh water, I mean.” Zack looked down at the empty beaker, twirled it in circles on top of the bar in the gutter-like crevices of the old container panel. “He told me that the pillow was for your neighbour. Is that true?” Zack nodded. “Then, I’m sorry. I misjudged you.” The woman held out her hand, a gesture of greeting, of repentance, perhaps of friendship. Zack took it and they shook, the warmth of touch something alien. “I’m Emily.”
“Zack.”
“I know,” she smiled. “Ronson told me that too.” She held up her hand and nodded towards Ronson. “Another two, please.”
“I’m surprised that you drink this stuff,” Zack said as Ronson placed another beaker in front of them and topped both up. Zack knocked back the drink, winced as it hit his throat. There was no getting used to it.
“What else am I going to drink?” she said as she tipped her beaker back almost as fast as Ronson could pour it. She didn’t seem bothered by it at all.
“I don’t know,” he said, taking another sip. “Beer, wine, vodka. What I wouldn’t give for a glass of Merlot.”
“What’s Merlot?” He turned and looked at her and put his beaker back down on the bar.
“Merlot?” he asked. “You don’t remember Merlot? You don’t remember the good stuff?”
“I was fourteen when, well, when,” she stumbled, not having enough words to describe the nightmare which they had survived, but never woken up from. “Well, you know. I was fourteen.”
“So now you must be what,” he said as he started to estimate a potential age on his grubby fingers.
“Twenty four,” she said, before realising his surprise at her certainty and adding, “I guess. Roughly.”
“Ten years? You think we’ve been in here that long?” He pulled the beaker to his lips and finished the Moonshine. He dragged his fingers through his mop of hair, brushed it away from his eyes. “So you don’t know a good Merlot. Or a Cabernet.” He closed his eyes again, and for a moment he and Samantha were sitting in a winter cabin, she holding up her glass with her feet tucked underneath her on the sofa. He was pouring wine whilst the snow fell outside. Eyes open. “You don’t know what you are missing. Especially with a good cheese.”