Baby (2)

“We need to find somewhere to stay tonight,” Dom announced.
“Where the fuck are we?” Angie called.
“How am I supposed to know?” Baby looked up at the dark sky, lightening storms flashed behind the thick clouds still, “I don’t even know when it is night any more,” Dom continued. They stepped over a large crack in the ground, the tarmac on the path had been pushed up and electric cables had been forced up with it, the wires entwining themselves with the grey rubble.

The earthquakes had started first, bigger than the one that had happened in Japan a couple of months before. They were predicted to begin at 6pm on the 21st of May, but they didn’t happen until four days later. Baby had been sitting in Eliza’s room, listening to Lady Gaga. Eliza had been chattering away about the new album coming out, about how excited she was about it, but also how the song ‘Judas’ hadn’t grown on her yet. She had dressed up as Lady Gaga for Halloween. Baby had painted a silver lightening bolt across Eliza’s face and Eliza had bought a peroxide blonde wig to cover her red hair. It hadn’t been a fun Halloween, Eliza had gotten so drunk at the party that she couldn’t stand and Baby had to take her home before midnight.

Baby could smell chips and fried chicken cooking downstairs and she was reading the back of a book that lay on Eliza’s bedside table. The first tremor wasn’t strong, the girls had stopped what they were doing as the shaking began, but nothing fell from the shelves or the walls.

Eliza left the room to go and see her Mum and as she ran down the stairs the second tremor began, more violent than the last one and she was thrown to the bottom. She hit the ground hard and lay there cowering as the room around her shook. Baby followed, clinging to the shuddering wall, as Eliza’s Mum pulled Eliza up from the floor and ushered them both to the front door. They clung to each other in the street as the houses around them crumbled and swayed and the road trembled beneath them. Baby watched as the road shifted around them, taking with it cars and lampposts like the strong current of a river. She thought of the Wordsworth poem she was studying at school. Eliza began to cry, she had reverted back to a child, clinging onto her Mum’s cardigan, her shoulders shaking with each sob. Car alarms began to sound and Baby pulled Eliza and her Mum towards one of the noisy cars.

They climbed on top and clung to the roof as the car shook, their faces screwed up because of the noise and watching as the world around them shifted and changed to the sound of the rumbling earth. People in the street imitated them struggling from the wreckage of their houses and they clung onto the roofs their own cars. Eliza’s next door neighbour was sobbing uncontrollably as he tried to climb onto his caravan. His driveway began to crack around him, the freshly laid block paving rutting up and collapsing with each new tremor. Baby watched as a dog was swallowed by the earth, its owner screaming as it yelped and fell into the new gaping mouth in the concrete. Baby could smell smoke and hear screams over the car alarms. She shut her eyes and held on as the earth shook and quivered around her.

Angie kicked a glass bottle that lay on the path. It spun on the pavement then fell into the gutter with a loud tinkling sound.

“Yeah, just let everyone know where we are,” Dom snarled. Angie rolled her eyes.

“You’ll just kill them anyway,” Baby whispered. Dom stopped walking.

“What?” he hissed, grabbing Baby by the throat and pushing her against a sagging garden fence. “What did you say?” he leaned into her face.

“I said,” Baby began, but she was interrupted by shouting,

“Get off her!” someone was shouting and Dom let go and of Baby’s face to look in the direction of the voice. Baby watched him pull a knife from his coat pocket and turn to the man walking towards them in the dim light.

“What did you say?” Dom snarled as the man got closer. Baby could see that the man was holding a hammer, swinging it to and fro in his left hand. Angie laughed but moved back behind Jake’s huge form, grabbing hold of Baby’s hand as she did so. Baby frowned but also moved behind Jake.

“I said to leave that girl alone,” the man replied and he stopped before Dom, staring him in the face. He was an older man and tall, with softly wrinkled bronze skin and thick, dark hair. His dark eyes studied Dom then looked towards Jake and the two girls.

“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” Dom laughed. He twirled the knife in his right hand.

“You’re one of those who rape women, rape children, kill the men protecting them. I’ve watched arseholes like you,” the man said. He didn’t sound angry. He simply stated it, like a fact; like he was telling Dom what the weather was like that day, or who had won the football match at the weekend. Baby sighed as she thought about those things and how they were a thing of the past, never to be considered or spoken about again. Jake cracked his knuckles and Dom shook his head at him.

“I don’t rape anyone,” he said to the man.

“What were you doing to that girl then?”

“She was backchatting,” Dom said. “I helped her before,” Baby wanted to laugh, but she knew in a way that it was true.

“Oh right?” the man sneered. He patted the hammer into his right hand, a threatening gesture and one Dom didn’t overlook.

“Yeah, now what the fuck do you want?” he asked. Jake stepped forward at these words, acting like a back up threat if Dom’s hadn’t worked. The man looked up at Jake and smiled.

“I didn’t come over to fight,” he said, letting the hammer drop by his side, hanging loosely in his hand. “I’ve just seen a lot of bad things happen to girls since this all began. Let me take them with me. My wife and I will look after them.” Dom laughed in his face,

“Do I look like I need your ‘elp?” Angie cried stepping forward, her hands on her non existent hips and Rapunzel braid swaying. The man looked round all three of them and smiled at Baby,

“Do you need help?” he asked Baby, but before Baby could answer Jake had stepped forward and hit him in the face. The man fell back and hit the ground hard, blood dribbling from his nostrils and pooling on his cheeks. Dom stepped over him and the others followed. Baby glanced at him as she walked by,

“I can’t come with you,” she said to his motionless body. He didn’t reply, but his eyes were flickering and Baby hurried after the others before he could answer her.

© Jade Tolley 2012