Chasing Imagination

Amy

‘I’m coming,’ Casper insisted urgently, following her out of the aisle at a run. I sprinted after them, out of breath by the time we got to the far side.

Dan was holding it, Leah peering over his shoulder to try and get the best look. We were in the furthest aisle from the way we came in, and, even in Vault One, this part was sectioned off. That hadn’t been too tricky for Dan though; I’d heard noises—perhaps he’d shot a padlock or broken some glass.

I gasped when I saw it, so small and ordinary looking—thick and leather-bound, with paper like onionskins that were yellowing and translucent with age.

‘Wow,’ I breathed. Even I knew the significance of a bible. Bibles had influenced so many millions of people for thousands of years. They had changed lives, started and ended wars, given people a whole different outlook on the world and existence and the way we lived. They were incredible books.

‘Open it,’ Linzy said, soft yet eager.

‘Not now,’ Dan said. ‘Later.’

‘Come on!’ Casper insisted.

‘No,’ Dan said. ‘We have a short enough amount of time as it is. If I so much as turn the cover we’ll all be addicted.’

It was a good way of putting it, and so true. Reluctantly, we all turned away, glancing down many incredible aisles as we went. I hadn’t even scratched the surface of all the treasures buried in here, but I still followed Casper back to the paintings.

‘Just one, Amy?’ he said, still as if he was asking my permission.

‘If you want,’ I replied coldly, not willing to speak to him despite the jubilation of the situation. ‘Just make sure you don’t hold us up with it.’

He was like a small child. He cheered quietly, and headed back to the painting aisle, near the entrance we had come in.

‘Head down there,’ he instructed, gesturing left. ‘See what you can find.’

I did as I was told for reasons unknown to me, wondering as I hurried where all the guards were. Casper and all the others had made it sound like this place was crawling with guards, but so far all I’d seen was the one watchman at the hole in the wall...the one that I had shot.

The only other suggestion was that they all stood guard outside. Even they weren’t allowed in here. But I’d have thought that, with the hole in the wall and the suspected break-in, even the government would have let them enter. Maybe they didn’t know about it. Maybe the watchman earlier was the first person to have found the hole. Nightshade’s lot had blown it out about two weeks ago, but if they were quiet about it and no one normally came in here, there would be no reason for anyone to have discovered it.

I headed down this aisle, which was full to bursting with rows and rows of ancient, withered books. I moved closer to the shelves and began browsing as if I was merely in a library, but I didn’t know many of these titles. Once again though, the thing I did know was that they were all immensely influential. 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell; Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl; Catch 22 by Joseph Heller; even one actually entitled The Interpretation of Dreams, which was by a man named Sigmund Freud who I’d sadly never heard of.

I was enthralled, turning over fragile paperbacks, their spines delicate and crumbling, reading blurb after blurb, grabbing each that I thought was remotely interesting, which was, indeed, most of them.

Footsteps sounded beside me, but I didn’t have time to look. My arms were full of books, but I needed more. These texts were too important to the survival of the imagination to just remain locked up down here, buried in the dust.

‘Now, what may be going on over here?’ a man asked. I froze. I did not recognise the voice.

I turned. At the end of the aisle, close to where I stood, was a man. He was dressed all in black, wearing a security guard’s badge, and he was holding a gun.

Gunshot after gunshot smashed through the air at that moment, and I tensed up in fear, screaming, expecting at any moment to feel agony pierce my skin as a bullet ripped into me.

But none came. And as I watched in horrific fascination, the security guard that had approached me staggered forward, blood spurting from his chest as a bullet went right the way through him. Drenched in crimson, he collapsed onto his face, dead before he even hit the ground. It was all over before he could even cry out.

Casper was standing at the end of the aisle.

I didn’t know whether to thank him or to scream.

Because the simple truth was that the guard was going to kill me. If Casper hadn’t been there, I would be dead by now. One of us would have spilt blood, regardless.

I’d once seen a piece of Linzy’s wall writing, though I didn’t know whether it was hers or whether it was from another song or poem, asking ‘would you kill to save a life?’ Sadly, I knew that the answer was yes.

And Casper had just saved my life.

We made eye contact across the distance.

‘Run, Amy!’ Casper yelled.

Without waiting for an explanation, I ran towards him. I could have cried...I probably already was crying, but suddenly I knew. Close by, down another aisle, I heard a series of deafening crashes as shot after shot was fired. There was a scream and a cheer and a cry and a bang as something heavy fell from a shelf.

This was where the guards were.

They had realised there were intruders at last.

‘Casper!’ I cried, running towards him. I was barely two feet away when his arms reached out and pushed me backwards so hard I fell to the ground. I screamed in shock, feeling emotional hurt shoot through me as though it was physical pain...but maybe he was only giving me what I deserved for ignoring him.

No sooner had I fallen back, though, that he dived into the aisle with me, pressing himself into the shadows of the tall shelf as bullets rained down the passage at the end of all the aisles.

Once more, he hadn’t been pushing me away; he had just been saving my life. Again.

He held out a hand and helped me to my feet, and in the shock of the moment, my legs gave way and I fell into him.

‘Whoa there!’ he cried, laughing despite the intensity and darkness of the situation. ‘Steady!’

‘I’m—‘ I began, but I was interrupted by more bullets coming from the other direction. I screamed and Casper shoved me behind him, sending me crashing into a shelf where paperback books rained down on me from above, many of them ripping apart in their fragile states as they hit the ground.

‘Stay down!’ Casper ordered. A man was standing at the end of the aisle, and I could hear more gunshots coming from the other direction too, further to the right, but close to the aisle we were in.

He fired bullets repeatedly at our attacker, crawling into the gap underneath the bottommost shelf for protection. The guard he was fighting dived and leapt about, dodging every blow. I shuffled into the little gap with him. There was barely room for both of us, but it was better than being out in the open.

Somewhere close by, Linzy called out.

‘Amy! Casper!’

‘We’re over here!’ I called out as loud as I could. There was no reply; only more, frantic gunshots coming from an aisle close by.

I fired my stun gun, missing the guard and hitting a pile of books, which crashed to the ground. I fired again and again along with Casper, as the guard aimed at us, but missed us in our hiding place, not daring to come any closer. To the right, down the long walkway that linked the end of all the aisles, pounding footsteps came charging across the concrete. I could see them from where we hid; most definitely those of a security guard.

They were coming past now, inches from where we hid, right at the end of the aisle.

I aimed out from underneath the very bottom shelf, taking a deep breath, and firing.

I hit him in the left ankle as he sprinted past.

‘Fuck!’ he cried out, staggering forwards in an attempt to clutch at his ankle and keep running at the same time.

I fired again, hitting him once again in the lower leg.

This time, he fell right forwards, hitting his face hard on the concrete, crying out in pain.
I fired again. Now he was lying down, I managed to hit him in the head.

He was unconscious.

Turning back to the guard currently in our aisle with a quiet but sick satisfaction boiling within me, I fired at the guard who had so far evaded both mine and Casper’s bullets. Eventually, though, in his attempt to get closer to us and fire back at his enemies, Casper got him right in the chest. The bullet ripped through his jacket and shirt and straight into his skin, splattering blood up the shelf behind him, which he staggered backwards into, dead in an instant. The force with which he hit the shelf caused it to groan worryingly, a surge of books falling forwards on top of him.

Casper was scrambling out of the gap under the shelf before I could even comprehend what was going on, on his feet, totally uninjured, and holding out a hand towards me. I grabbed it, confused, disorientated, with no idea about what was going on, and he pulled me to my feet. I swayed unsteadily, sick at the sight of all the blood.

‘Come on,’ he said urgently, never letting go of my hand as we ran the full length down the aisle. The way he held onto me reminded me of the night we stood on the rooftops of Kingston together. That was the time I could have truly said I loved him.

A hole of sadness was being carved deep into my heart as we ran, reaching the end of the aisle and almost colliding with Leah.