We head over to the Silver Water. At sea level the windows is smashed in. They’s all been punched in by the waves and those sudden storms that come whipping up from out at sea. It’s eleven years since Cyclone Summer, long enough for the sea to pull the ground out from under the towers on the other side and set them tilting and crumbling, but not so long that you can’t still find something worth getting from the safe towers on this side. Most of these buildings been picked over anyway, specially the lower floors. But if they’ve only been picked over by a few people in small boats, maybe there’s still stuff for us.
Ma pulls Licorice in close to the Silver Water and Dizzy throws a grappling hook right up two floors. There’s no point searching where the storm tide can reach. Those floors been swept through by big waves a billion times.
‘Off you go, little monkeys,’ Dizzy says.
We grab our sacks and scramble up the rope. Each sack has three floats tied to it. I go first, of course, in case something’s gonna go wrong. Jag wants to make sure it’s safe.
I wrap my hands around the rope up high on a knot, then pull hard and haul my feet up and wrap them around the top of another knot. I used to get sore stomach muscles and sore arm muscles, and sore fingers and sore insides of my feet, from hauling and pushing on these rough knots, but now I practise every day and my muscles are strong and my skin is tough. I get to the window, already smashed in, and pull myself over the sill, avoiding the sharp bits of glass.
‘Go, Jag!’ I yell.
Jag scrambles up the same way, but when he gets to the windowsill he pulls out a little hammer from his tool belt of useful things and smashes the sharp glass out of the way before he climbs over.
‘Remember! Canned food!’ Ma yells, like she thinks someone might’ve left stacks of canned food somewhere.
‘Come on,’ I say to Jag and tiptoe through the glass and across the room. Things are damp, green with mould, drowned by storm waves, ain’t nothing here for us. I lead him to the stairs and up and up, flight after flight.
‘This one?’ Jag asks, kicking at a half-falling-down door.
‘Nup, someone’s been here already. We’re going to the top,’ I say.
‘What? Nah, Neo, it’s too far!’
I laugh. ‘That’s what everyone else already been here said!’ I keep on climbing. I climb till my thighs ache, concrete step after concrete step, this part of the building only ever meant for emergencies back when they had something called lifts to pull people up and down. I climb till Jag is way behind and yelling at me. Then I see writing that ain’t jus’ numbers on the wall, promising me something more than jus’ somewhere where people used to live. This isn’t the top but it will do.
‘Here!’ I yell down to Jag, who comes grouching up the stairs, his tool belt clanging as it swings from side to side with every slow step. Each step he takes with his hands pushing down on his knees, like his thigh muscles gave up a few floors ago.
I hold the door open for him, and he grumbles through and holds on to a wall with barely any mould on it.
‘Why?’ he whines.
‘Coz this is my lucky floor,’ I tell him.
There’s no numbered doors here, jus’ glass doors either side of the hall. I run to the nearest and push them. They don’t move. ‘Jag! It’s locked! We’re the first!’
‘Really?’ Jag asks. He runs over like his legs don’t hurt no more and says, ‘Stand back!’
I don’t, coz I’m here to do stuff, not stand back.
He pulls a little thing with a red handle from a pouch on his belt, and then his hammer. Then he slides himself back along the wall so jus’ his arms is sticking out over the glass. ‘Get back!’ he says again.
I take two steps back.
He uncovers a super sharp point on the red thing, lines it up on the glass, and pounds it hard with his hammer.
There’s a huge bang like an explosion and then Jag is pulling his arms in, squeezing his eyes shut and turning away from the door as it clouds and explodes into glass chunks that throw themselves onto the floor in a tumbling mound and slide outwards, striking my bare feet and sending me hopping a few more steps back, landing on the glass-chunks and hurting my feet more.
‘I tol’ ya!’ he says, then throws his sack down on the crumbled glass in the doorway. ‘After you!’ he says.
The sack does hardly anything to make the glass not stab into the soles of my feet, shooting jolts up my legs, curling my toes, but they ain’t sharp enough to cut the skin. I lay my sack down too, and Jag follows after.
Then I grab up my sack, pick my way through the scattered chunks and run. It’s a room full of chairs and tables and amazing paintings on the walls and one side is all grimy sea-streaked glass. Ma tol’ me that in the times before the risen sea, people would come to places like this and sit down and people would jus’ bring them food. I can’t believe people used to live like this. Imagine food brought right to you while you sit on your bum like a newborn bub!
