Days Like This (17 page)

Rosemary glanced at Peter. ‘We know that the drugs the Blacktroopers make people take have different purposes,’ she said. ‘The ones they give to the adults prevent them from really feeling their emotions.’

That must have been what Meredith was talking about
, Lily thought.

‘The first time I tried to escape I met a woman,’ Lily said, shaking her head and blinking back tears. ‘She died because of me.’

There was a pause before Rosemary said, ‘it’s all right. You can tell us when you’re ready.’

Lily swallowed. ‘Her name was Meredith. She told me she’d given away her children. She kept referring to drugs and poison. I think she’d discovered what was going on by accident. When she stopped taking the Blacktrooper drugs and the serum, she aged really quickly. And she started to regret giving up her children.’

‘Yes, that happens,’ Rosemary said. ‘I’ve already told you about how they’re reversing the ageing process. But how do you persuade people to give up their children to a horrible death? Not so easy, eh? So you formulate a drug that neutralises peoples’ emotions and makes their entire world all about fear and craving. That’s the drug your parents would have been taking. And then there are different drugs for adolescents. Different pills, different colours, shapes – sound familiar?’

Lily nodded.

‘The drugs most adolescents are given inside the Wall help the pituitary along and ripen it for draining,’ Peter said. ‘So you became a highly productive source of what they call serum, or what Meredith called poison. It is poison; she’s right. How old are you, Lily?’ he asked.

‘Seventeen. My twin brother Daniel is the same age.’

‘Yes, coming into peak production time – it’s gruesome, but there you are,’ he said.

‘So it wasn’t their fault,’ Lily said. ‘My parents, they couldn’t help it, could they?’

‘The drugs make people behave differently. It changes their personalities,’ Rosemary agreed.

‘They did become different,’ Lily said. ‘They were cruel. They didn’t care about Daniel’s headaches and when I tried to go outside, they almost let me lose my hand to punish me.’ She thought a minute. ‘Daniel and I were getting the headaches, but my sister Alice wasn’t, why not?’

Did Lily imagine it or did a tremor run through the people in the room? ‘What?’ she said, confused.

‘You say that your sister Alice never got the headaches. How old is she?’ Peter asked.

‘Thirteen.’

‘Come and sit here.’ He pulled out a carved stool beside his chair.

‘Why are you so worried about Alice?’ Lily said.

‘Rosemary will you go and find Greta please?’ Peter said.

‘It’s too early Peter, not now.’ Rosemary frowned, shaking her head.

‘Yes, now Lily needs to know everything. You know the rules.’

‘But she’s just arrived; she’s quite badly injured and this must all be a big shock. Give her time.’

But time was something Lily didn’t have. ‘No. I don’t need time. I want to know everything,’ she said.

Still shaking her head, Rosemary left Peter’s room. She returned a few minutes later with a girl so thin she was barely there. Her skin was luminous white like some kind of underground creature.

‘This is Greta, Lily,’ Rosemary said.

‘Hello,’ Lily said, but the girl didn’t respond.

‘Sit down, Greta,’ Peter said kindly. ‘We need you to tell Lily about what happened to you.’

Greta nodded, looking neither sad nor happy, merely resigned.

They waited. Lily couldn’t work out Greta’s age. She seemed about fifteen, but she could have been older, maybe a lot older. Lily forced herself to stay silent and wait. She sensed Greta was so on edge that she would run if spooked.

Eventually Peter broke the silence. ‘Lily, you said your sister Alice didn’t suffer the headaches that you and Daniel did, that most people your age suffer when they come to us?’

Lily nodded, curbing her impatience.

‘You deserve to know what was going on,’ Peter said gently. ‘Alice didn’t have any headaches because she’s the designated breeder in your family. She wasn’t destined for draining; only you and your brother were chosen for that. Your sister’s the “lucky” one.’

‘What do you mean by designated breeder?’ Lily heard her voice rising.

‘I’m getting there,’ Peter said. ‘Did the Blacktroopers or your parents feed your sister anything that you and your brother didn’t get?’

Lily took a deep breath. ‘Our pills were all different colours. Alice’s used to be white, and then they changed them to pink not long before I escaped.’

‘Yes, white tablets are placebos, pink is for breeders, black for adults, round yellow for adolescents targeted for draining and oblong yellow contains additional booster chemicals for those close to what they call harvesting.’

Lily had begun to shiver. ‘What’s a breeder?’ she said.

‘Let Greta explain,’ Peter said. ‘Tell her, Greta.’

‘My parents drugged me,’ Greta began, so softly that they all had to lean in to hear her.

‘I woke up in a strange room. My arms and legs felt so heavy I could hardly lift them.’ She swallowed. It was like she was reciting something she had learned by rote.

‘I was in a big bed. The sheets were nice. They were smooth and cool and the room smelled of flowers. But I wanted my mother. I didn’t know where I was. I was frightened. My heart was beating too fast. I didn’t want to call out. I tried to lift up my head and roll off the bed, but I couldn’t. So I stopped trying.’

She trailed off and Rosemary, who had her arm around Greta’s shoulders, gently said, ‘Go on.’ Bright red spots had flushed the girl’s cheeks. She brushed aside a strand of hair and Lily noticed pale silvery scars all up her arm. She saw Lily looking and dropped her arm quickly, pulling down her sleeve.

‘There was a door in the far wall that was closed, and some double doors which looked out onto a green garden, so I knew I was still where the water moon fell,’ Greta said flatly. ‘There were see-through kind of curtains and nice furniture, expensive, just like the furniture at home.

‘I couldn’t hear any noise anywhere. Everything was quiet. I started calling for my mother, as softly as I could. A man came in and told me my mother wasn’t there. He told me I would be rewarded for what I was about to do. I didn’t know what he meant because I wasn’t about to do anything.’

She looked down and twisted her fingers together.

Lily was beginning to understand where Greta’s story was heading and she went cold all over. If it was what she was thinking, she had to find Alice before it was too late.

‘Should I keep going?’ Greta said, looking at Rosemary.

‘Yes.’

‘No, she doesn’t have to,’ Lily said. ‘I understand.’

Greta looked directly at Lily for the first time.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s good for me to talk and people should know what those monsters are doing.’ She was so intense that Lily nodded reluctantly. Greta went on.

‘There was a woman in a white coat, who came in every day to test me. After about a week I asked her when it would end. She said, “When you are with child.” I didn’t really know exactly what she meant at first. Then I realised and I screamed at her and said, “I’m only thirteen.” She just told me to go and have a shower and she stood by the bathroom door until I did.

‘She wouldn’t say what was going on. She just snapped at me not to ask any questions. When I screamed at her she stuck a needle in me. It made me sick. I just had to do what I was told.

‘I tried to open the doors to the garden but they wouldn’t budge. I even tried to smash them with a chair, but the only thing that happened was the woman came back and injected me again.

‘Sometimes when the woman opened the door, I could hear other girls, but then she would shut it quickly and there would be no more noise. Once I waited by the door and when the woman came in, I ran at her and tried to push her aside. She was too strong. She knocked me onto the ground and then she injected me again. This man, Maximilian, he came every day. He was obviously a Committee member.’

Maximilian
? Lily frowned.
No, it couldn’t be
. She shook her head and made herself concentrate on Greta.

‘I don’t know how long I was there. The woman came one day and injected me as usual. When I woke up, I was back at home in my own bed, still wearing the hospital gown from the other place. I ripped it off and threw it on the floor and put on my own clothes. Then I curled up in my bed and squeezed my eyes shut. I kept them shut when my parents came into the room and sat on my bed. They said it was good to have me home and that we could go on as before, but I couldn’t bear to speak to them. They weren’t even my parents anymore. They were just two strangers.’

Tears ran down Greta’s face and they were running down Lily’s as well.

‘So I lay on my bed with my face turned to the wall. They couldn’t make me get up. Once my father pulled me off the bed onto the floor and then he shouted at me that I was ungrateful and I was lucky and that they had given me a gift and that I would live forever. He shouted and shouted until eventually he exhausted himself and went away.

‘They put a tray of food beside my bed every meal. I hardly ate anything. I didn’t want to eat at all, but I was too hungry. I only ever used the bathroom at night when my parents were in bed.

‘In the beginning I refused to shower, but my father lifted me off the bed and held me down until the water soaked my clothes. After that I did wash. At first my mother sat beside me on the bed and said, “Please listen, please listen, please look at me” over and over. Then she said, “It had to be done, we had no choice, it was out of our hands; it was all out of our hands.” She never said she was sorry, not once.

‘There was a baby inside me, but it wasn’t my baby. It was never going to be my baby.’ Greta half got up when she said this, her voice rising and her fingers clawing at her arms. Rosemary stood with her and eventually Greta sat down again.

‘I spoiled it for them and … and …’ Greta sobbed into her hands. She was bent over, rocking. Rosemary comforted her and gradually the girl quietened.

‘They put Greta out then, over the Wall,’ Peter said quietly. ‘It’s the cruellest thing. They know you will die slowly from starvation and lack of water. They left her there and that’s where we found her, barely alive.’

Lily looked at Greta with pity. She thought it would be impossible to overcome an experience like the one Greta had been through. You would think about it all the time. You’d dream about it. She couldn’t bear to think of Alice enduring the same horror.

Lily jumped up. ‘I have to go back. You must understand that,’ she said to Peter and Rosemary. She was so agitated and angry, her hands shook.

‘You have to be patient, Lily,’ Peter said. ‘There’s a rescue group scheduled to go out the day after tomorrow If you’re well enough, you can go with them. Waiting for a day or two will give your body a chance to heal.’

‘Didn’t you hear what Greta just told us?’ Lily said. ‘If we wait, the same thing will happen to Alice, and Daniel’s already been at the draining facility for almost two months. Who knows how disabled he is already or even how much longer he’ll be alive?’

‘The decision has been made, Lily,’ Peter said. ‘If you go now, you’ll jeopardise the whole group. We won’t allow it.’

Lily didn’t want to admit it, but they were right. She was exhausted and her body was sore and battered. She thought of the long journey back to the Wall, in the dark. She thought of the Blacktroopers out hunting. Her mind was willing. Her body was not. She would spend the next couple of days learning as much as she could about this place and asking people what they knew about the Committee’s schemes.

‘I’ll get Greta something to drink,’ Rosemary said. Looking worried, she slipped out.

“I’m really sorry about what happened to you,’ Lily said to Greta. ‘Thank you for telling me about it. Are you okay?’

Greta nodded.

‘Peter, do you know why the Committee is doing this? I need to understand because of Alice,’ Lily said.

Peter shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

‘Your parents would have agreed that your younger sister would be the one to produce offspring, who would then be used either for draining or breeding. In the early days when the Wall first went up, the Committee deemed many people to be unsuitable because of what they called “genetic incompatibility”. They turned these people out beyond the Wall.

‘After a time, the Committee realised they’d gone too far. There weren’t enough people to sustain even the small community left behind.

‘They needed a concerted breeding program so they forced people like your parents to donate their children not just to the draining program, but also the breeding program.’

Rosemary came back into the room with a small glass of greenish-coloured liquid.

‘Drink this, Greta. It’ll help you sleep.’ When Greta had drained the drink, Rosemary helped her up. ‘I’ll take her to bed and then come back for you, Lily.’

Lily waited until Rosemary and Greta had left the room and then she said to Peter, What exactly happened when the Wall went up?’

‘As I said, the Committee evicted many people,’ Peter said. ‘They left them to fend for themselves outside the Wall. Needless to say, a lot of them didn’t make it. In order to be allowed to stay inside the Wall, you had to be assessed and approved by the Committee. People were awarded points according to their assets.’ He stopped, shaking his head.

‘Go on,’ Lily prompted.

Peter sighed. ‘Wealth was the most important asset,’ he said. ‘After that, it was skill. If they thought you were useful to them – for instance, scientists who could advance their breeding or harvesting program, or people knowledgeable about electricity generation, water or food production technology – they awarded you more points. Having children bumped up your score as well. And, like I said, people had to submit to genetic testing to see if they were suitable for breeding or draining.

‘Anyone who didn’t score enough points was evicted. That’s when the Committee put together the Blacktrooper army to do their dirty work.’

Lily remembered the sounds of struggle and anguish that had come from beyond the Wall soon after it had gone up. She and Daniel had blocked their ears and eventually the sounds had lessened, replaced by an uneasy silence.