Moonlight On The City (© Biswapriya Purkayastha)
Page 2 I’m armed, of course, although I’ve left
most of my arsenal back with the sleeping bag and food. Weapons are no problem
now – there are all the gun shops and police stations ready for the looting,
and they don’t use weapons. I grin as the thought strikes me. They don’t
use weapons because they don’t need them. Of course they don’t need weapons.
Their weapons are built in. The short-barrelled pump shotgun is slung
around my shoulder, and I check it to make sure it’s loaded. On my hip the
heavy pistol is ready too, safety catch off and bullet in the chamber. One can
never take chances with them. I loosen the knife in the sheath strapped to my
other thigh. I hope I don’t have to use it. If I have to come so close, I’m
more likely than not dead anyway. I see a small patch of cloud drift slowly
across the sky. It moves ever so slow, so slow that I’m afraid the moon will
move past it in its trajectory, but at last it does cover the white orb. It’s
still a very small cloud, and I shall have perhaps a couple of minutes of
comparative darkness, no more. I sprint from cover across the dead ground
between me and the bridge, and slide past the grass verge and into the shadow
under it just as the moon comes out. Now I stop, very silent, and wait. I
listen, and watch for the slightest movement, listen for the slightest sound.
After what seems to be a very long time and what I know cannot be less than
half an hour, I decide that I am alone under the bridge. It’s easier than I expected to cross the
river, because the water is full of flotsam – piles of wreckage, of smashed
furniture and drowned cars, and I see part of a white light aeroplane that must
have crashed somewhere up-river and been washed down here. I step on the roof
of its cabin and the entire craft rocks slightly, but holds. A wing briefly
breaches the surface with a sucking noise. I freeze, but nothing else breaks
the silence, so I go on. I have only a little trouble climbing the
bank on the other side. There is a steep drop, too steep to get a leg over, and
I have to reach up with my hands, and, kicking with my feet, to pull and push
myself up. A certain degree of noise is inevitable, and I quickly roll away as
soon as I’m over the top. It’s soft grass, so rolling isn’t difficult. I’m in
deep shadow, and I wait – wait, as silent and as still as I can be, for one of them
to come around to investigate, but nobody does. Maybe they are ranging far
tonight. Or maybe they’re in the next street. Trying to anticipate or predict
their responses to any given situation is futile. They’re never predictable. It’s finally the moon that drives me out of
hiding. The moon, which has moved far enough round the sky to wash away the
pool of shadow in which I lie. I could curse the moon, but if it weren’t for
its white reflected light I might have urgently gripped the ground where I lay
for the rest of the night and well into the morning. And then, more likely than
not, I’d have gripped that ground in rigor mortis, if I hadn’t been already
pulled to pieces and eaten. Cautiously, my pistol now in hand, finger
in the trigger guard, I creep out of the grassy depression against a wall in
which I’d been lying. Now I’m in enemy territory; every step is filled with
danger. It’s not unknown territory for me though – once, months ago, this is
where I used to live, while they had my side of the river to themselves.
Then they drifted over to this side, driven by whatever instincts they possess,
and I accordingly crossed over. But I still remember these streets, oh yes I
remember. Here, for instance, from the upper floors
of this burnt-out building, I once held off an attack for six hours armed only
with beer bottles filled with petrol and with rags for wicks. I’d had help
then, naturally, but in the end the fire spread and I was the only one who’d
escaped. And there, in that alley, a young woman who had been my companion for
a while and I had lain side by side and watched them go by, waiting for
nightfall and the cover of darkness. In the scramble to escape, afterwards, we
had been separated, and I’d never seen her again. I see something moving from the corner of
an eye, and drop flat at once. The movement comes again, and a small shadow
detaches itself from that of a towering office building and pads away. I see it
in the moonlight a moment. A cat. I sigh, with relief and with some
appreciation. It must be one of the last cats left hereabouts. I haven’t seen
another in months. Odd, how I can appreciate a cat now, when I’d always hated
them back in the old days. [ Continue to page 3 ] |