Strangers in the Night by Raymond S Flex Page A

them.
    They had those chrome, gasmask mouthpieces.
    The ones Mitts had seen in a few films.
    The ones he had seen in diagram form in several of the manuals he’d read through.
    Mitts removed one of the suits off its peg. As he brought it close to him, the smell of disinfectant was almost unbearable. He had a strong urge to simply drop the suit.
    To allow it to slide through his fingers.
    But he held on.
    Within his own mind, Mitts went through the steps of using the suit.
    First, there was the zip.
    He undid it all the way.
    And then he located the little computer panel around the back of the suit.
    This was the part he was most unsure of.
    He tapped the Power button.
    A green energy bar blinked on.
    Full .
    Mitts stood, his face illuminated by the bright-green display.
    He looked about the other suits in the room.
    He wondered if they were all charged up too.
    He tried out the few suits nearest to him.
    All had their energy bars at full.
    Working quickly, he snaffled the battery packs off the suits. He slotted them into his sports bag which hung down off his shoulder. He made sure to take all of them that he could.
    With the combined battery power, he hoped to survive for months outside the Compound.
    That done, Mitts stuffed a couple of the suits into his sports bag, seeing as they didn’t occupy too much space. If he snagged a hole in the suit he was wearing, it would be simpler to ditch it and put on a fresh one than to try and mend the damage.
    He set about getting into the suit he had chosen.
    He zipped it all the way up, held the helmet beneath his arm and then headed for the door.
    The security keypad had power.
    And the electromagnetic lock was engaged.
    That was unexpected.
    But it wasn’t an obstacle.
    Digging into the knowledge he’d accumulated through all the manuals he’d read, Mitts used the manual-override code on the keypad.
    The locks snicked back.
    And Mitts plodded through the door.
    Mitts had spent so many night-time hours prowling about the Compound that he was almost on autopilot as he swooped through the corridors.
    He didn’t pause for any kind of a nostalgic moment. He felt nothing for the Compound. All the same, he would’ve thought that, after seven years here, he would feel something .
    Somehow, he just couldn’t accept the Compound had been his home.
    Or as close to a ‘home’ as it was possible to get.
    Mitts made his way into the reception area of the Compound, where he put on the helmet. As he recalled it from the manuals he had leafed through, there had been a further three security points for anybody entering from the outside wishing to get here.
    But there was no power in these outer areas.
    Mitts had simply to push the rusted-up exterior door open.
    He barged it with his shoulder, glad for all those sit-ups and press-ups.
    They’d given him strength.
    Before Mitts could really work out what he had done, he realised that he was out into the night-time air.
    His surprise was so great that he almost forgot to flip the switch at the back of his suit.
    The one which would allow him to breathe.
     
    * * *
     
    Breathing in the air of the suit was like sucking on disinfectant, straight from a plastic bottle.
    Mitts felt it dry out his mouth. At the same time, it brought all the saliva in his tongue to the surface. He could hear the gentle, rhythmic tick-tick as the breathing apparatus responded to his respiration.
    Already, he felt hot in the suit.
    Mitts followed the exterior fence which ran around the Compound. At one point, he reached a gate. He unzipped his sports bag and produced a pair of wire cutters. He snipped a nice, big hole.
    Then he ducked down and stepped through.
    On the other side, Mitts glanced back over his shoulder.
    A series of squat, cement buildings, lit up in the moonlight.
    The Compound.
    An ugly place.
    Mitts’s focus drifted up to the moon.
    He stood staring at it for a long while.
    Often, Mitts would leave his bedroom behind, sneak out through the air vents