Page 48 of Out of the Blue
Leah shakes her head. We tiptoe up, wincing at every creak of our feet on the steel. Allie stifles her coughs with her sleeve, but to my ears they rumble like thunder. Leah pauses at the top of the second flight, then leads us over a walkway and towards a large locker room. It looks much like the ones we have at school, only there are ragged blankets laid out over the cold, hard floor tiles.
I wonder if this is where Leah’s been sleeping. The thought makes my heart throb with sadness.
‘We’ll go through the turbine hall,’ she says. ‘Less likely to bump into anyone there.’
She leads us through more bleak hallways, past half-dismantled machinery and abandoned tools, dust and rusted nails littered at our feet. A couple of times we hear voices above us and draw back into the shadows. As we step into another large room lined with pipes, Leah lets out a gasp. A redheaded woman in black jeans and a ripped woollen jumper is walking down the stairs towards us – her mother.
‘Shit! Quickly, hide!’
There’s not enough time for us to go back downstairs, and little to hide behind except a huge cylindrical green tank in the corner of the room. Leah shoves us behind it. It’s wide enough to shield the three of us from certain angles, but if Mrs Maclennan comes this way she’ll definitely spot us.
‘Anyone there?’
Her voice bounces off the walls and high ceilings. Allie’s hand finds mine. I press the back of it to my lips, muffling a scared yelp. This is it. We’ve failed. It’s over.
Until Leah steps out from behind the pillar.
TWENTY-SIX
As if her mother were a loaded gun, Leah’s hands fly towards the ceiling.
‘It’s just me, Mum! I was – I dropped something. My hairband.’
Mrs Maclennan comes into my view. She looks terrible: her collarbones poke above the low collar of her jumper, and her lips are lined with cold sores. The past few months have left her with creases around her mouth and a stony look in her eyes that wasn’t there before, but her face floods with relief when she sees her daughter.
‘Oh, thank the Lord. I thought you’d been picked up by the police,’ she says, rushing forward to hug Leah. ‘How did you get back so quickly?’
‘I tried to get back to the van, but they both left before I could, so I – I got a bus.’
Her mum’s split second of hesitation feels like forever. ‘A bus? How did you pay for it?’
‘Didn’t. Snuck on with a big group of tourists.’ Leah’s fingers twitch, like the truth is bursting to get out of her. She tugs her sleeves over her hands. ‘Mum, do you know where Damien is, or Ross? I’ve got something important to tell them.’
‘About what?’
Leah doesn’t reply. Her mother’s eyes narrow. ‘They’re in the control room. Leaders meeting – they’ve been there all day.’
‘No, Mum, really – I need to speak to them. It’s important.’
Mrs Maclennan puts her hands on her hips, ready to argue, but Leah cuts her off.
‘Please! Believe me – they’ll want to hear this. Can you get them for me? They’ll be pissed off if I interrupt, but they respect you.’
Mrs Maclennan presses her a little more, but something in Leah’s tone convinces her; she eventually turns and walks up the stairs. For a moment, I wonder if Allie and I are what Leah plans on showing the leaders – if we’ll end up stuck with her in this miserable place, forced to pay or jump our way out. But as soon as her mother’s footsteps fade away she hurries towards us.
‘I’ll distract them,’ she says. ‘I’ll take them downstairs; they won’t be able to hear anything from there. Wait until you hear the door close, then go to the control room and get the Being.’
Allie and I gawp at her. Leah stares back, as shocked by this rush of courage as we are and, for the first time since she came back, I feel like I’m looking at the girl I fell for all those months ago.
I pull out Leah’s paper-bag map and memorize the route to the control room: up two more flights of stairs, and down a long passageway to the left. ‘How long do you think you can hold them off?’ I ask.
‘Probably not more than a few minutes. You’ll need to be quick.’
‘What are you going to tell them?’
Leah bites her lip. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I’ll blag it. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it gives you time to get her out.’
‘But—’
