Zom-B (8 page)
Some of the others cry as we walk through the chambers of atrocity. I don’t. But I feel my throat tighten and I have to look away more than once and blink until I’m sure my eyes are going to stay dry.
Coming out of the exhibition is like emerging into sunlight after being in a dark tunnel. The museum doesn’t look so much like an adventure park now. The planes and tanks, the cannons, guns and swords that lie scattered around the place… They were used to kill people. Not actors, like in the movies. But real people like me and my mum. Like that little girl.
“Sobering stuff, isn’t it?” Burke says to a few of us standing silently nearby.
“They were monsters,” I growl.
Burke raises an eyebrow. “You think so?”
“Nobody human could have done that.”
Burke shrugs, then leans in and whispers so that only I can hear, “Maybe that’s what we should do with the immigrants.”
I gasp and draw back from him, shocked.
Burke raises an eyebrow. “You look surprised.”
“You can’t say things like that!” I protest.
“Why not?” As I stare at him, he says, “I heard about your fight with Nancy and how Mrs. Reed
white
washed it because of her friendship with your father.”
“How do you know about that?” I growl.
“It’s no big secret,” he says. “Aren’t the gas chambers where it will all end if the likes of Mrs. Reed and your father get their way?”
“No!” I shout, then lower my voice when the others look at me strangely. “How can you even suggest that?”
“Because it’s true,” he snaps. “This is where hatred and intolerance lead. Don’t be a child, B, and don’t act like you’re naive.”
“You’re wrong, they just want a society where–”
“Don’t,” Burke stops me. “I’ve heard all the arguments before. I’m not going to tell you which side you should be on. You’re old enough to choose. All I’m saying is be aware. Know what you’re signing up for and accept the consequences. Mrs. Reed and your dad are modern-day fascists. Only a fool would think otherwise.”
Then he walks off and leaves me trembling.
I think about the Nazis. I think about my dad.
“It’s not true,” I whisper. “They’re not the same.”
But a voice inside my head snickers slyly and asks the question that I don’t dare form out loud.
Aren’t they?
I wander off by myself, thinking about the Holocaust and what Burke said. I want to come back at him with a watertight argument, show him he was wrong to make such accusations about my dad. But I can’t think of anything.
I don’t pay much attention to the exhibits. Some of my mates tumble by, calling for me to join them, but I shake my head and stick to myself. I can’t get that girl’s book out of my mind. I keep imagining myself in her place, head bent over the pages, concentrating hard, unaware of the army of hateful Nazis bearing down upon me, surrounding the house, crashing in, taking me.
I push lower into the building, down the stairs to the World War I section,
familiar from my previous visit. I wish I’d paid more attention before. If I had, maybe I’d understand about the two wars, how one led to the next, how other nations let the Nazis build and spread and do whatever they liked.
There’s a trench re-creation that I vaguely recall, a life-size model of what part of a real trench was like, to give an idea of the hellish conditions soldiers lived in before they went over the top to be ripped apart by machine guns. I stroll through the narrow, nightmarish maze, pausing to study the details, holes where soldiers slept, things they ate, fake rats.
In a strange way I feel better here. It helps distract me from the horrors upstairs. This war was brutal but human. Soldiers fought other soldiers. Millions died, but there were no death camps, no gas chambers. No little Jewish girls were rounded up, humiliated, tormented, and executed.
If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t mind stopping here, in the years before the truly horrific war began, before people found out just how demonically vile they could be. I could live with a war like this. But not the one that followed. And for Burke to say that my dad was no better than a Nazi…
My blood boils and rushes to my cheeks. I won’t let that insult drop. I’ll tell Mrs. Reed. Burke can’t say things like that. If I rat on him, he’ll be out of a job, and good riddance to the bugger.
But as much as I’d like to hurt Burke, I don’t want to do that. Partly because nobody likes a grass. But mostly because the stuff
that he said got under my skin. I’ve always liked to think that I see things as they are. I know Dad’s no saint but I’ve never thought of him as a monster. But if Burke’s right, and I take Dad’s side, the way I’ve gone along with him for all these years, won’t that make me a monster too?
I’ve told myself it doesn’t matter that I never stood up to Dad. For the sake of a quiet life I’ve pretended to be on the same racist page as him. I didn’t think it made a difference, letting a minor bigot spout off without challenging him. But I’ve been questioning that recently, even before what happened with Nancy.
Did people like me go along with the Nazis that way in the early days? Did other children put on an act for their fathers, figuring nothing bad could come of it? Can the terrors of that war in some way be traced back to the kids who didn’t put their parents on the spot?
As I’m pondering my twisted relationship with Dad, I turn a corner and spot a struggle ahead. Two men are fighting with an Indian woman. She has a head scarf, a painted dot in the middle of her forehead, long flowing dress, the works. One of the men has a hand over her mouth. As I gape at them, the other man hits her hard in the stomach, and she goes down like a doll that’s been dropped.
There’s a baby in a stroller, maybe a year old, a boy. He’s crying. One of the men picks him up.
“Hey!” I shout. They glance around. It’s dark in here and they’re
not that close to me. They’re both wearing hoodies. I can’t see their faces. “What the hell are you doing?”
The men dart away from me, taking the baby. The woman moans and reaches out desperately, fingers opening and closing, clutching for the stolen boy.
I race after the men, not stopping to see if the woman’s all right. There’s no time to help her. If I lose sight of them, they’ll disappear into the warren of the museum and that’ll be the last I see of the child.
I hit the ground floor and hurry after the kidnappers. They’ve slowed slightly, so as not to draw attention to themselves. I want to roar but I’m out of breath from fear and the race up the stairs.
I’ve almost caught up with them when one of the men stops and turns before the museum shop. He tackles me and tries to wrestle me to the floor. No time to fight fair. I scratch at his eyes. He hisses and his grip loosens. I make a bit of space for myself and knee him in the groin. He groans and collapses. I jump over him and push on, ignoring the astonished crowd around us, people staring, slack-jawed, a few of my friends among them.
Out front. No sign of the man with the baby. I look right, then left, and spot him streaking towards the giant cannons and the road beyond. I shout, “Stop!” Then I run after him again.
The man halts before he gets to the cannons. Turns and waits. He’s holding the baby close to his chest.
I come to a wary halt a few yards from him. He’s not much bigger than me but I don’t want to take any chances. He might have a knife or a gun.
“Put down the baby,” I snarl.
In response the man pushes back his hoodie with his free hand. I feel my face go pale. He looks like a mutant out of a horror film. His skin is disfigured, purplish in patches, pustulant, some strips of flesh peeling from his cheeks. Straggly gray hair. Pale yellow eyes. He’s missing some teeth, and those still intact are black and cracked.
He points at me and I note absentmindedly that he doesn’t have any fingernails, just filthy, bloodstained flaps of skin. He stares, eyes widening, and crooks one of his fingers, like he’s trying to hypnotize me.
I think about tackling the mutant but I’m not gonna make the sort of dumb mistakes that people do in horror flicks. Taking a step back, I scream as loudly as I can, hoping that guards will come running.
Footsteps behind me. The man I knocked down outside the shop rushes past. He half twirls and spits at me. He looks like a mutant too, like he’s survived a nuclear war and is suffering from radiation poisoning. I think for a moment that the pair of freaks is going to attack me. But then I hear lots of people coming, muttering and shouting. A woman shrieks, “My son! Don’t hurt my son!”
The mutant holding the baby looks past me and his face twists with fury. He sets his sights on me again and leers. He licks his lips lewdly—his tongue is shriveled and scabby.
As the footsteps draw closer, the man raises the baby high, then throws him at me. I grab the boy like a ball, cushioning him as best I can. I fall backwards and land on my bum. The baby sits in my lap and laughs, poking at my nose with his chubby little fingers.
I look up. The mutants have fled. They’re moving fast now that they don’t have the baby. They reach the gate and seconds later they’re gone, out of sight.
Just before the crowd catches up with me, I stare into the baby’s face. I half expect him to smile sinisterly and say, “
don’t be afraid mummy
,” like the babies in my dreams. But of course he doesn’t. This is the real world, not a nightmare.
Then I think of the two men, their unnatural skin and yellow eyes. And I wonder.
I’m hailed as a hero by the baby’s mother. She hugs me and thanks me through her sobs, saying I’m wonderful, I saved her child, I should get a reward. Strangers look on and beam. Guards and staff from the museum congratulate me. My mates from school watch, astonished. Burke is smiling. He winks when I catch his eye.
The guards try to get descriptions of the men from me. I tell them I didn’t see much, that they didn’t let their hoods drop. I don’t tell them about the odd skin, the yellow eyes, that they looked like mutants. I’d sound like a lunatic if I did.
I shrug off the compliments on the Tube back to school, scowling and saying nothing. Burke tells the others to leave me alone and I sit in silence, listening to the
rumblings of the train, staring out of the window at the darkness of the tunnels, unable to forget the men’s lips, their skin, those eyes. If I
did
imagine all that, I have a more vivid imagination than I ever gave myself credit for.
Back at school, Burke asks if I’m all right. When he sees that I’m not, he offers to take me home early. I don’t want any special treatment, so I tell him I’d rather stay and I sit in an empty classroom for the rest of the afternoon. Burke and Mrs. Reed pop in to see me a few times–Mrs. Reed says I’ve done the school proud–but otherwise I’m alone with my thoughts. And if I could get away from them, I would.
The minutes drag but eventually pass and I slip out of school ahead of the bell, so as not to have to face my friends. I feel strange, like I’ve been violently sick. I just want to go home, rest up, stay in for the weekend, and hopefully return in better form on Monday.
Mum has already heard about the incident at the museum when I get back. She squeals when I walk in and calls me her little hero. Hugs and coos over me, asks if I want anything special for dinner. I grin weakly and tell her I don’t have much of an appetite, I’ll just have whatever she’s having.
She wants me to tell her all about it, the kidnapping, the rescue, how I stood up to two grown men. I try to shrug it off but she keeps on and on about it. Eventually I give in and start talking. I hold back the bit about how the men looked. I don’t plan on telling anyone about that.
Dad gets home before I’m finished. He’s grinning when he
comes in and sees us chatting—he thinks we’re gossiping. When Mum starts to tell him what happened, he frowns, tells her to shut up and makes me go through it again from the start.
Mum serves up dinner—fish and chips, usually my favorite, but they taste like cardboard in my current state. She keeps saying how brave I was, how she’s proud of me, how the staff at the museum shouldn’t have let me face a pair of dangerous criminals by myself.
Dad doesn’t say much. He’s got a face on him, the sort of scowl I know all too well. He’s brooding about something. Mum’s so excited, she doesn’t notice it, but I do and I keep my trap shut, not wanting to wind him up any further. It’s best to say as little as possible when he’s in a mood like this.
It finally comes out when we’re watching TV after dinner. Mum’s still babbling about the baby and how I should get a medal. Dad sighs irritably and says, “I wish you’d drop it, Daisy.”
“But aren’t you proud, Todd?” Mum replies, surprised.
Dad grunts and shoots me a dirty look. I act as if I’m fascinated by the chef who’s showing us how to cook a meal for six people in less than thirty minutes.
“Of course I’m pleased that you stood up for yourself,” he says to me. “But…”
“What?” Mum huffs when he doesn’t go on. I groan. Why doesn’t she know when to keep quiet?
“They were Indian,” Dad says softly, and I look around. I didn’t know what was gnawing at him before. Now it becomes clear.