high ceiling, and
if she'd been in her bed-room, she'd be looking at a movie poster of Johnny Depp. Instead, the poster that
hung on the rough brick wall above her was of a man lighting a cigarette, and the words said,
"Let 'em all come"
Men 41-55
Home Defense Battalions
Jazz felt a weight on her chest. She reached out and touched cool plastic; the comfort she had gained
from the torch had all but vanished.
She sat up, taking in a few rapid breaths to dispel the dreams she could no longer remember. They
had been bad, that's all she knew. Her mother had been there —alive or dead, she could not recall. But the
echoes of her dead mother's words still reverberated in her mind. She knew that they always would.
She was cold and uncomfortable, and it felt as though she'd been asleep for a long time. Her muscles
were stiff, her neck ached from where she had been resting her head at an awkward angle, and her right
hand tingled with pins and needles.
Jazz clicked on the heavy torch and shone it around the shelter. She was alone. The Uncles had not
come down here and found her, and although she knew the likelihood of that was remote, she still felt
incredibly vulnerable, as though the trail of tears she had left behind was something they could follow.
Who's to say? she thought. Until today I had no idea of what the Uncles were really capable
of. She aimed the strong beam all around the shelter, then clicked it off, satisfied that she was really alone.
They were waiting to kill me. The facts were punching back into her life like knives reinserted into
old wounds. They killed Mum, and they were waiting there to kill me as well! The why still did not
matter, though she thought it would soon. The simple fact of that terrible truth was enough for now.
She stood and stretched, letting out an involuntary groan that echoed around the shelter. She
crouched down, startled. No reaction from anywhere; no sudden burst of activity from the shady corners or
behind the shelving units fixed along the walls.
There was food here. She could smell it beneath the odor of old dampness and forgotten corners, and
she went search-ing. Starting at the end of the tunnel farthest from where she had entered, Jazz began
looking through the stacked shelves. She was immediately struck by the huge variety of goods down here.
This was more than just a hideaway, it was a store, and many of the items she found were distinctly out of
place. One shelf was piled with hundreds of CDs, ranging from Mozart to Metallica. The next shelf down
held boxes of plant seeds still in their packets, and below that were piles of random-sized picture frames, all
of them lacking pictures. A family that never existed, Jazz thought, and the idea chilled her more than it
should.
Between the shelving stacks, on the floor, were small cardboard boxes. Rat traps. She had no wish
to look inside to see what had been caught.
On the next stack were models of fantasy figures still in their boxes, empty sweets tins filled with
one-penny pieces, a shelf of sex toys of varying shapes and sizes, tourist guides to London and beyond,
stacks of watches still in their boxes, a variety of cacti, flat-packed furniture, jewelry, books, bed-ding,
bumper stickers, children's cuddly toys, dining sets, gar-den gnomes, empty wallets and purses, empty
rucksacks...
Peeking out from behind the units were old wartime posters, some of them unreadable but a few still
quite clear. It felt peculiar, reading these exhortations to a lost genera-tion that had feared losing itself. One
in particular struck her:
Keep Mum,
She's not so Dumb!
Across the print a newer message was scrawled in marker pen:
Make them go away!
The tone behind that desperate plea was more disturbing than the age of the poster it was written on.
It chilled her but at the same time made her realize how much her life had changed. Up until recently, things
had been controlled and overseen. But now she was...
Free? she thought. No. No flicking way. I'm more trapped by Mum's murder than I ever was
before.
Fighting back tears —Mum would want her to look after herself, not stand here crying—Jazz moved
on, and on, and eventually she found a series of shelving units with lockable doors. No doors were locked,
but they were all closed, and when she opened the first one her stomach gave an audible rumble of
pleasure.
She plucked out a pack of bourbon cream biscuits and ripped it open. They were soft and probably
well past their use-by date, but the first one tasted exquisite. She had
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