Strangers in the Night by Raymond S Flex

of removing his focus from the present.
    From the Compound.
    From the Restricted Area.
    Mitts turned the circle of light onto his camp bed. Onto his sports bag—the same one he had arrived here with all those years ago.
    The one which, back in school, he had used to store his PE kit.
    He shovelled up the three or four books on computers into the bag. He laid them on top of the clothes he had already bundled in there.
    Only when he looked around the room—what had served as his bedroom for the past seven years—did he realise that he had nothing else left to pack.
    That everything which was his in the world was now nestled within that sad, little, plump sports bag.
    Mitts breathed in.
    Then out.
    It might be the last time—for a long time—that he got to breathe the air like a normal human being.
    He glanced down to his bedside table, to where he had left the folded-up note.
    He turned away from it quickly. He didn’t want to dwell on the contents of his scrawled handwriting within.
    He needed to have his mind straight.
    His plan depended on him being able to think straight.
    On him not getting carried away.
    Decided, he glanced upward.
    To the ventilation hatch.
    And then he went to work with the screwdriver.
     
    * * *
     
    Following the map he pictured in his mind, the supplementary section of one of those books about the Compound, Mitts dragged himself through the air vents. He counted the openings as he went, dropping down through the third one on his left.
    He wasn’t subtle about opening the ventilation hatch.
    He tucked his knee back into his chest and then kicked out.
    The hatch busted open.
    It clattered down into the room below.
    Each year he’d done it, getting through the air vents had been a successively more difficult squeeze for Mitts. And today, he had found it the toughest so far.
    That had been another factor in his decision.
    What might happen when he was too large to fit through the air vents at all?
    Then the only way out of the Restricted Area would be through the blast doors. Although Mitts knew that he simply had to get out, he wasn’t prepared to put his family at risk while doing so.
    If he died right now—if he got poisoned—then he would be the only one harmed.
    For some reason, he didn’t think that was going to happen.
    He liked to believe—because of his sickness; because he’d almost died—that he was stronger than the others.
    Better able to resist.
    At least these night-time visits outside of the Restricted Area, into the wider Compound, didn’t seem to have left any lasting damage on him.
    Nothing Heinmein, in seven years of weekly check-ups, had observed, in any case.
    Mitts shone his torch around.
    It was a windowless room, just as it had been marked on the plan.
    He had peered in here before, but hadn’t yet visited . . . thus why he’d had to bust through the ventilation hatch.
    The room consisted of a simple wooden bench down the middle, much like the changing rooms which Mitts had been forced to use back at school, for PE.
    Instead of there being lockers placed all around, and a slight scent of soap lather and mud from the showers, the air stank strongly of disinfectant.
    He wondered if that had been the odour he’d smelled all that time ago.
    The motivating factor for him wanting to explore the ventilation hatch.
    He studied the room.
    He noted the showerhead-like devices which hung down from the ceiling.
    He supposed that was where the disinfectant came from.
    A spray.
    He guessed the spray system was running off some kind of backup unit. There was no other explanation for it to still be functioning after all these years.
    In all his explorations of the Compound at night, he had never come across another soul.
    Not even bodies.
    The whole Compound was deserted.
    At least as far as he could make out.
    Mitts observed the white, semi-transparent overalls which hung down off the hooks which surrounded the room. He trod along, looking to the eerie masks which accompanied