Chasing Imagination

Amy

Charging round the corner, Casper and I almost collided with Leah.

‘Leah!’ I gasped, ducking before she could accidently shoot us.

‘Oh, it’s you two,’ she said, diving just into an aisle so she could reach round and fire her gun at a guard who was racing towards us. She got him in the upper leg on her first attempt, and shot him straight in the head as he bent down in pain to clutch at his wound. The sight made me want to throw up.

‘How many of them are there?’ Casper asked, his light eyes wide with fear.

Leah shook her head, still managing to act sarcastic despite the situation. ‘How should I know? Too many, if you ask me.’

Casper once again pulled me backwards, practically lifting me up and into the safety of one of the aisles, out of the main aisle that connected all the others. Considering it ran right from one end of the room to the other, and to the hole in the wall also, it had become the main firing line.

As soon as he had done that, more bullets shot down the aisle, right through where I’d been only a few seconds before.

So that was three times he’d saved my life tonight.

I seriously owed him now.

Remorse surged through me; remorse at all the hate that had been boiling inside me these past few weeks. He didn’t detest me, and he was not a monster. Whatever this hunger that I had spoken about was, he was only killing to save another life—sometimes himself; sometimes another.

He began to take large strides down the aisle, peering through an empty part of the shelf where an entire rack of CDs had fallen down to see what was going on in the neighbouring one.

I hurried after him. ‘Casper!’ My tone was urgent as I grabbed his wrist, meaning for him to turn round. ‘Casper I—‘

‘RUN!’ Leah screamed. Suddenly, Casper was bolting back down the aisle to the other end, my hand still in his, as I struggled to keep up with his furious pace.

We were almost at the end of the aisle, gunshots from both Leah and a guard perilously close behind us, when someone practically dived in front of us. I instinctively raised my gun, and so did Casper, and I heard a shot, and I heard someone yell out.

‘STOP!’ the person in front cried, and Casper was pushing my arm down, stopping me from firing, before I knew what was going on. Then, still disorientated and confused, he pushed me into the shelf, books clattering down on top of me. More gunshots were fired as he, too, dived in, and then Leah came running back from the left, pink-faced and eyes watering, with a small but bleeding scratch across her cheek.

I looked to the right to see who the person was that had cried ‘stop,’ and saw that it was Linzy getting to her feet. I was almost overcome with relief; both that she wasn’t a guard and that I hadn’t shot her, and then Dan was charging in after her, his hair matted with sweat, blood dripping from his shoulder downwards.

A man appeared at the far end of the aisle. All pressed into the shadows on both sides of the walkway, we fired at him. It seemed to be Dan who hit him, which happened before the guard had even been able to retaliate.

And then we were running again.

‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ Linzy said urgently.

‘What about the bible?’ Casper cried in desperation. ‘The paintings? The books?’

‘It’s suicide staying down here any longer,’ she insisted dramatically. Her long legs enabled her to take the lead, sprinting to the end of the aisle and peering out into the main walkway, firing in both directions, then again.

Someone yelled out, and as I turned to the left, I saw a man staggering backwards. He was clutching at his chest, bleeding badly, but not so far gone that he couldn’t fight just yet. I saw him raising his gun.

My finger pulled the trigger of my stun gun so fast it was almost mechanical. Again and again and again I fired; and, from this distance, I got him on about the fifth shot. But it was right in the face, and he collapsed backwards, his head hitting the end of a shelf, and he groaned in pain.

But there were more. They were coming from all directions—Linzy and Dan were shooting at two from the right, pushed deep into the alcove of a spare part of shelf so as to make them harder targets. Casper charged down another aisle, firing repeatedly, and Leah followed him not a moment later.

A man appeared further down on the left. I saw him, and he saw me, and for an instant I was paralysed, but with some strange willpower I forced my feet to move. I practically fell backwards into the shelf, a couple of plastic boxes falling off from where my weight shook it and hitting me on the head.

The guard was striding towards us, and I aimed my stun gun.

As I backed further into the shelf as if in hiding, I felt the butt of the gun in my belt knock against the shelf.

I did have a real gun.

Once again, it was as if I was a machine. I was taking the gun from my belt in my left hand, swapping it into my right, and aiming it.

When the guard saw me, he began to back off, his own gun rising to meet me in the face.

‘You shoot, I shoot,’ he breathed, a toothy grin spreading across his face as he panted breathlessly.

I was breathing heavily. The gunshots from so close by were weirdly distant as my mind blocked out everything in the universe except this one man, and my gun.

Could I shoot him? Could I kill? Even to save a life?

The shocking thing was that my mind told me I could.

What was I turning into?

More gunshots rained down like glass all of a sudden, and I dived for cover under the shelf, sending boxes and artefacts flying.

And when I turned back, the man was staggering backwards, blood in his hands. My heart was racing and my blood was ready to burn, but surely I hadn’t pulled the trigger. Surely...

‘Amy!’

Of course it was Casper. Casper was racing towards me, gun raised.

I raised my own once again—my real, bullet gun—and pointed it at the guard. He had been shot in the side, just above his hip. A shot like that was pretty unlikely to kill him.

Casper looked at me, his eyes overflowing with fear. He leaned his hands on his knees, out of breath, and I noticed blood dripping from his forehead, just under his hairline.

‘Don’t do it,’ he breathed. ‘Please, Amy, don’t do it.’ His eyes were begging.

The guard was still holding his gun. Although he was crying out and leaning against the towering shelf, he would be able to raise it and fire it easily enough.

I shook my head, looking at Casper. ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘I have no choice.’

‘Please!’ Casper yelled out, looking at me with such tortured desperation. ‘He’s not dying; he’s only injured. I’ll kill him. I don’t want you to be responsible. I don’t want to have done this to you.’

But I knew Casper was no monster. Every time he had killed, it was because someone in the situation was inevitably going to die. He had only killed to spare another life.

And that meant that now, when I was aiming my gun, ready to pull the trigger, I was doing it through my own decision. Casper, or any of the others, hadn’t infected me. I hadn’t been possessed. I hadn’t even been influenced. This was my decision.

So I fired the gun.

I pulled the trigger.

I screamed.

I released a bullet.

And the bullet hit the man’s chest.

His pain was distant to me after that. I staggered back, crashing once again into the shelf, my head spinning as I fought to keep hold of consciousness, and Casper was running to me. He pulled me up, held me close, wrapped his arms around my shoulders.

‘Oh God, Amy,’ he whispered, shaking. It sounded like he was sobbing. Maybe I was sobbing. Maybe we both were. I couldn’t tell.

‘It wasn’t your choice to make,’ I insisted, letting go of him only so I could look him in the eyes. ‘It was mine.’

‘But it was my fault!’ he shouted, angry at himself. ‘I influenced you.’

I shook my head, holding his face in my hands, which were trembling violently. My head had just about stopped spinning, and I figured I wasn’t about to faint just yet. That could wait for later. For now, there were still guns being fired somewhere close by, and we were still very much in danger.

‘No,’ I whispered, not talking loudly, even over all of the calamity. ‘You did nothing. It was my decision. I swear.’ I wiped the delicate beads of blood from his forehead, trying my hardest to smile at him through my tears.

‘Amy! Cas!’ It was Linzy, running past us. ‘Get out! We’ve got to go!’ Dan was close behind her, and Leah seemed to just be finishing off another guard. For the hundredth time that night, Casper took my hand and pulled me towards the exit. We followed the footsteps, hearing guns behind us, and I expected at any moment to feel them on me, ripping through my flesh and tearing at my bones, but none came.

We reached the hole in the wall. Linzy was already through, pulling Dan after her. I hadn’t even slowed down properly before Casper was pushing me through. He didn’t mean to be rough, but it hurt as I landed awkwardly on the rough stones and fell over the other side into the tunnel. Linzy helped me to my feet as Dan pulled Casper and then Leah through after him, and then we were running again, running through the pitch darkness, scrabbling blindly against the walls as people fought to turn on their torches whilst stowing away guns. Even when the lights were on, they were being shaken so viciously that the underground tunnel became a haunted, untamed disco, strobe lighting flashing on and off, only adding to the confusion and delirium. I was disorientated beyond belief; tripping, stumbling, falling, crashing, but they were all the same—we all fell over each other on more than one occasion, but then we were coming to the end, running out, running away, getting free.

Dan was in the lead, and he practically burst through the back door of the abbey, throwing so much of his weight into barging it open that he fell forwards onto the ground. I was next, tripping over his feet and nearly tumbling after him, but I felt strong hands pull me backwards, and I staggered into Casper, who staggered into Leah, who narrowly avoided Linzy and then clutched at the wall to stop herself from falling.

Linzy helped Dan up and we all began to breathe raggedly and laugh hysterically. I clutched at a stitch that burned my left side, moaning with tiredness and realising that there was still so far left to go. The governmennt knew that the Vault—the most secret of places, had been infiltrated; no doubt the whole of London, non-Dreamer areas included, would be on red alert by now.

‘Did you get anything?’ Linzy asked, looking round at everyone.

‘Please don’t say that was all for nothing!’ Leah asked, sinking to her knees in grief, looking despairingly at her empty hands.

‘I—I got it!’ Dan stammered, his voice week yet conveying a triumphant tone.

‘You...got it?’ Linzy breathed, hardly daring to hope. It was in his hands though, practically falling apart at the seams, but still intact. The Bible.

‘You managed to keep hold of it?’ Casper asked in excitement. Dan nodded.

‘Somehow,’ he said in way of agreement.

We all fell silent, and I glanced round at the dark, mostly deserted night, sinking down against a low wall. Cars still flashed past, their headlights briefly illuminating us so we all ducked like they were searchlights, and then they were gone past again. The river glinted orange and silver under the city lights to the left, and Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament sat not far away, their silhouettes black on an already black horizon. Yellow beads of fire burned into the night from all around; artificial lighting in the times when real light could not be found. It highlighted the dark wisps of Casper’s hair and shimmered like flames in his eyes when he looked at me.

‘We should go,’ Dan announced, his tone low, almost sinister.

‘Already?’ Leah breathed from where she slumped against the same little wall as me.

‘They know we all made it out alive. They’ll be up here shortly,’ Dan said. ‘And that’s a promise.’

I just wanted to sink into the orange and black night; get swallowed up by the city lights twinkling around us, so beautiful in a world where beauty was long since dead, and forget. But I couldn’t. We were still here.

‘Amy?’ Casper was whispering, his voice close to me. When I opened my eyes, I was looking straight into his. ‘Amy, are—‘

His phone began to ring at that moment, and suddenly he was official again, standing up and answering immediately.

‘Casper.’ The voice on the other end, which I could faintly hear, sounded so fearful it made us all stop and watch.

‘Nightshade,’ Casper breathed. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh Casper, you’ve got to get out,’ she said, high-pitched and panicked, ‘get out of London and warn Markus.’

‘What is it?’ Casper sounded worried now; we all were. My blood froze in my veins, and my heart went into overdrive.

‘Get out,’ Nightshade repeated, her tone frantic, ‘the police have found us. They've broken in. The London Dreamers have been invaded.’