Survivors

The next few days were really miserable and unbelievably tense. The atmosphere was so bad even Bretnel picked up on it. He did, to his credit, make one extremely clumsy attempt to lighten the mood. Unfortunately it backfired so badly it ended with him receiving a broadside of abuse from Luke, which wasn’t that surprising or unusual, and then an even bigger tirade of abuse from Holly, which was. Bretnel decided to retreat to his secret part of the base confirmed in the resolution to “Let the young people sort it, whatever it was, without my indelicate interference”.

For Joe it was pretty hellish. Yes he’d been shocked by what Luke had done but he wasn’t upset like Holly was. Without a deep anger it was hard to keep the resentment going, and without the resentment the hours dragged. He just wanted it to blow over and then everything could get back to normal. This was mostly because he hated the bad atmosphere and he hated the fact that they weren’t mates. If he was really honest with himself, he fancied going to the town and exploring and the quicker everyone made up the more likely that was to happen. If he was being even more honest he really wanted to crash through the town as giant ant, or zoom through the buildings as a golden eagle, or a lion, or a snake or… well anything really.

Holly and Luke sulked with each other, in a sulk of such mega proportions it was such a world record breaking sulk it was almost heroic. When two people make so much effort to ignore each other and not speak to each other they almost inevitably constantly bump into each other, can’t avoid each other and have to speak to each other. Thus was the case with Holly and Luke. If he entered a room she was there, if she was walking down a corridor so was he, if he needed something it was always she who had it.

With fate throwing up so many chance encounters one of them was going to lead to something, sometime, somewhere, and this is that encounter;

Luke was reading in the bedroom when Holly came in to get a jumper to put on. Luke immediately leapt off the bed and made to leave. Holly was in the middle of the room which meant that Luke would have to pass very close to her as he hurriedly exited the room. Luke noticed this and at the last second suddenly veered to one side to avoid her. His veer was so sudden and so violent that Luke lost his balance a little and stumbled. The stumble meant that he then stubbed his toe into the big metal leg of Joe’s bed. The pain (as I am sure you know) of a stubbed toe is pretty intense. Luke hopped high into the air, swearing and grabbing for his injured digit. The compound effect of the veer, the stumble, the stubbing, the hopping and grabbing Luke was now completely off balance. His erratic awkward hopping was proceeding in a pretty much backwards direction. In fact he managed to hop so far backwards he went straight through the bathroom door, where he tripped over the toilet and then crashed with an almighty thud into the bath.

Holly despite the sulk couldn’t help rushing to his aid and Luke despite the sulk was too dazed to put up a fight to stop her. She dragged him up and plonked him on the loo seat. Luke had a big lump on the back of his head which he gingerly touched wincing, the pain in his toe now completely forgotten. Holly saw the wince and grabbed a flannel. She ran it under the cold tap before gently dabbing it to the swelling lump on Luke’s head. They stood like this in silence for a minute or two.

“Look Hol” “Look Luke” they both said at once. They stopped and smiled a little embarrassed smile at each other. It was Holly who first broke the silence “Luke I…”

But Luke interrupted her “No Holly let me go first. I’m really sorry that I upset you. I honestly didn’t think you’d mind that much. And if I’m being really honest I still don’t really understand why you did”.

“Okay” said Holly “But before I explain let me say sorry too. I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you as much as I did, but you really upset me”. She took a deep breath “We three have always been together and done everything together for as long as I can remember. And we’ve always looked out for each other, always! What would we have done if you didn’t come back, what would we have done if we’d lost you”. Holly’s eyes were filling with tears now.

“I’m really sorry Holly. I didn’t think”

“I know you didn’t, and that’s what I don’t understand. You always used to think about everything, plan everything, so what’s changed, why are you so different?”

“It’s this place” said Luke throwing up his hands. “It’s this that’s changed me it’s so … false! This isn’t real life, not our real life anyway ... and I’m sick of it!”.

“And what did you plan to do, leave us all !”

“No of course not, I’m not that stupid” said Luke with a little smile. “But I need to, we need to make this life feel more real”

“And you do that by taking stupid risks do you” said Holly accusingly.

“Yes” snapped Luke, getting angry again. “I felt more alive flying through the streets of that town than I have for weeks and weeks here. It felt really good, no that’s not true, it felt great”.

They were both quite for a while letting the things each other had said settle into their minds. After a while Holly said “Look Luke, I sort of understand what you’re saying, and in some things I agree with you. But, you can’t take a risk like that again. You can’t put yourself at risk like that, you can’t put us at risk like that”.

“Yeah I know and I won’t. I promise”. Said Luke but then he paused and looked Holly straight in the eye. “But I want to go back again”.

“And that’s fine” said Holly, holding his gaze as Luke’s jaw dropped disbelievingly. “It’s just that next time Joe and I are coming with you”.

Luke’s jaw hit the ground!