Red Fox (3 page)

3.

By the time we arrive at the town centre the next morning at quarter to nine, the place is swarming with people. The town centre is a large square area of paved land walled by a ten-foot high red brick wall.

This place holds good memories for me. When I was young, Jack and I used to play hide-and-seek in the flowering hedge growing along the inside of the brick wall while our parents watched musical concerts or public theatre productions. Clara and I have often scaled the very wall holding us in and walked along the top of it as part of a stupid school dares. Those same walls now feel cold, dangerous, and confining. I suspect the government chose it because there is only one entrance and exit. After today, I know the town square will hold some bad memories for me.

There are only two guards at the entranceway, both armed with guns, which are supposed to be prohibited. Even with the weapons, it surprises me there are so few guards to contain such a big mass of people. Inside, there are people I recognise and others that I don’t remember ever seeing. There are families and individuals, young and old, healthy and sickly.

The noise is overwhelming. People are yelling to each other, asking what is going on, demanding the two guards explain the situation. I glance at the top of the brick walls and weigh my chances of climbing it safely if things go wrong. I could probably do it, but I doubt the rest of my family could. The cobblestone ground is wet with puddles from the recent storm and the amount of people walking through the water has made it murky.

I am wary as we walk further into the square and find ourselves right in the centre of the crowd. The noise of chattering people is almost deafening but the talking is not care-free and fun like normal. People’s faces show fear and panic. Some are sweating profusely even though it is a cold day, and the heat drifting off bodies is making the square hot and steamy. It’s also making it stink like sweat and bad breath. Children clutch their mother’s hands and cry as they are pushed back and forth by the mass of people. A few people trip over each other and they vanish under the feet of dozens of others. I don’t know whether they get up or not. I’m sure that if people knew they were there, they would help them up, but that is how thick the crowd is. I’m pressed against Jack and my father but several other strangers have their elbows jabbed in my ribs or their face too close for comfort. I feel claustrophobic and insignificant among so many people.

The weight of the hundreds of people is oppressive. Though I see no real sign of danger, I feel a rising sense of dread and foreboding. My eyes dart here and there, my hands are bawled into fists and I’m breathing in ragged, fearful gasps. Jack slips his arm through mine and holds firm as not to lose me in the crowd.

I feel like a cow standing in an overly cramped, filthy cattle truck. Who knows, perhaps we are destined for the abattoir as well. Perhaps the new government has decided that the country’s population needs to be lowered for nature to continue recovering. The thought sends a ripple of panic through my body, but I push it away. Before my imagination runs totally wild, the shrill blast of a whistle rings out above the noise and people around me fall silent as they search for the whistle’s source. I stand on my tip-toes, looking over people’s shoulders.

At the front of the town centre, a man stands on the raised cement platform that was once designated for performers. He is a burly man with a close-shaven head and thick, grey eyebrows pulled low over narrowed icy blue eyes. With a square shaped jaw, broad shoulders and enormous hands, he is exactly what I imagine an army general to look like. He is dressed in the same maroon coloured jumpsuit as Holland, but it has a camouflage print and somehow it doesn’t make him look like a clown. However, I don’t think this vicious looking man could appear clown-like in a tutu. A gun holster is fastened around his hips and I see the menacing glint of a silver pistol there. A megaphone is clutched under his left armpit and a steel whistle hangs from a string around his neck.

One by one people look towards the platform, murmuring softly until they see the intimidating man looking over us like livestock in a saleyard. The man’s gaze falls upon me, and I immediately feel violated as his eyes work their way over my face and torso. It isn’t a perverted look—it is cold and calculating. I glare at him and grit my teeth. He looks away, unfazed, and then raises the white megaphone to his mouth.

“Good morning, everyone.” The megaphone screeches for a second and then we hear a deep, rough voice. “My name is Lieutenant Seiger. Sorry for having to call you to the town centre like this, but your government has decided that some slightly more drastic changes need to be made for the welfare of our country. In three corners of this courtyard there is a letter on a picket. The letters consist of A, B, and C. We also have a group D, and those placed in the D group are to rally outside of the town square. When I call your name, come up to this platform and I will tell you what letter you belong in. The people sided by you in these groups are going to become like your family, so please get to know them well. If you have answered the recent test correctly, you have nothing to worry about.”

I was right. This is about the test results. I don’t know how to react to Lieutenant Segier’s words. We’re being sorted into groups? Why and what do these groups all mean?

A stunned silence settles over the town centre, followed by murmurs of confusion. It’s as if everyone present isn’t sure whether they heard the man with the megaphone correctly. Then people shout in outrage and begin yelling out swear words at Lieutenant Seiger. I can imagine no faster way to cause a rebellion than to sort humans into groups like market animals. I can feel the heat radiating off the screaming people around me. The enraged crowd, blinded by their anger, batters against me. Seiger raises his megaphone and tries to order people into silence, but the townsfolk continue swearing and shaking their fists in fury. My family are one of the few that stand stone faced and silent, expecting the worst and knowing that rioting will only work against us.

Seiger eventually lowers the megaphone, scowling at the outraged crowd, and that is when I notice movement on top of the brick wall. There is a flash of shiny black and silver every few metres along the top of it and my stomach knots in terror as I realise what they are.

Rifles. Rifles aimed at us, the people standing in the courtyard. Black-clad gunmen sit behind them with their eyes pressed to the scopes. I am one of the first to notice and fear begins eating away at my insides like I’ve swallowed acid. Sweat breaks on my brow but I feel icy cold. I grab hold of Jack’s arm and my fingernails dig into his jacket. He puts his arm around my shoulder and draws me close.

“Just be calm and be quiet,” he whispers to me, his eyes also on the gunmen. “Calm and quiet.”

I take a deep breath and exhale it slowly. The fear is still there, waiting to swallow me whole, but I control it. Everywhere I look the gunmen are there, waiting and watching. Seiger has his hand up to silence people. I know if that hand comes down, the bullets will rain on us. A panic I have never felt consumes and paralyses me. It is the petrifying fear that comes only when one is faced with the idea of death. I grip onto Jack, trembling.

It takes another minute for everyone in the square to notice the gunmen aiming at us all. Thankfully, the fear of being shot where they stand is enough to quieten them. They resentfully stand still again, but I can feel everyone shaking from head to toe and they mutter horrible curses under their breath. Are they shaking with rage or terror? Probably both.

“Alright, shall we get started?” Lieutenant Seiger says without smiling. “We will work through the list alphabetically.”

I hold my breath as a guard brings Lieutenant Seiger a clipboard with several pages of names typed neatly on them. He finds the first name on the page.

“Amy Amair,” he calls through his megaphone.

I search the crowd for Amy Amair and a short, plump woman makes her way up to the stand. She looks horrified and is shivering and taking deep, ragged breaths. She trips on the first step, scrambles to her feet and then waits at the edge of the platform for judgement, not daring to go close to Seiger. Seiger crosses her name off the list, points to the front left hand corner of the town centre and says “A.”

Amy stumbles off the stage, white as a sheet, and makes her way through the crowd over to the left hand corner where there is a large white board with a black letter
A
held up by a wooden picket. She stands there obediently, probably too terrified to move, and we all watch her before Seiger calls out the next name.

“Andrew Amair,” is called to the platform but he also brings a young girl, probably only five years old, onto the stage with him. The little girl doesn’t understand what is going on, and she clutches her father’s hand and looks at Seiger with innocent curiosity. Seiger glances between the girl and her father.

“Is this Kaitlyn Amair?”

“It is,” the father says. The fury in his shaky voice is easily detected. I know if Seiger tries to touch his child, Andrew Amair will try to kill him.

“Andrew Amair in the A group. Kaitlyn Amair stays on the platform and will be in C,” Seiger says simply, waving Andrew away.

“What?” the father snarls, face livid. “You can’t take her away from her parents!”

Seiger raises the megaphone to his thin lips again and says, “Group C is for children only and they will be kept on stage for their own protection. We won’t have them being trampled because you can’t control yourselves. They will be returned to you after the sorting.”

Seiger pats the gun holster at his waist and looks at Andrew. “Into A, Sir.”

Andrew Amair has no choice. He squeezes his little girl’s hand hard, kisses her forehead, and walks over to join his wife. The child tries to go after him but Seiger gently pushes her behind him. There is no aggression towards the little girl and that relaxes me somewhat
. But not much
. There is a big difference between killing an outspoken adult compared to ushering an innocent child into place. Seiger won’t be so gentle with the rest of us.

The lieutenant continues to call out names. I know a lot of people who go forward for sorting early. Many of the younger ones go to school with me. By the time an hour has passed around one hundred people have been placed in their groups, and I have figured out the basics of the sorting. The C group is reserved only for children under the age of twelve. Any child older than twelve is sorted like an adult into A, B, or D.

There are around forty people in the A group, twenty children in the C, and another forty in D, which is the only group sent outside of the town centre. The Bs corner remains empty and its meaning unknown. I am starting to make a connection between the people being sent into the D group, but I pray my hunch is wrong.

Most people who are sent into the D group outside the town centre wall come from religious or spiritual families. A Muslim family I half recognise are sent out there instantly—Seiger doesn’t even look at his list. Another family who all wear the sign of the crucifix around their necks receive the same treatment and vanish from sight through the town centre exit.

Biocentrics do not think much of religion. They say it is something humans have invented to pass the time and that all it does is stop people from living life how it should be lived:
naturally.
There are other people placed in D too, people with disabilities; people with jobs that the government do not value; people who are not physically able.

I have no idea who or what the empty B group is reserved for but I don’t much care, because I know what is going to happen to those in the D group. They are being forced from the town centre so that when the gunmen shoot them down people in other groups won’t panic and riot.

D stands for dead; I can tell that by the distasteful way Seiger calls their names and places them. The Ds are going to be murdered. I’m sure of it; and that means I have doomed myself to a horrible fate.

“Jack,” I whisper. My heart is thundering in my chest. I can feel the world dropping beneath my feet. “Are you noticing a pattern here?”

“Yes,” he murmurs back as another individual is placed in the A group. “The Ds are not coming back. Whatever is going on here, the government is trying to get rid of the people it doesn’t see fit for the world they want.”

“Jack,” I say. My voice is becoming shrill with panic. “I lied in my test, remember? I wrote down that I believed in God.”

“What?” he hisses back. “Why?”

“I thought I should make myself out to be some sort of mellow, good-willed Christian girl, like Clara.”

“Freya!” he whispers and the alarm in his voice frightens me. Jack never gets scared. He was always the one to check under my bed for monsters, or in my closet for ghosts when I was a child—he’s always the one to comfort and soothe when things get bad. If he is scared, there is real reason to worry. “Why did you do that? You know the Biocentrics hate religion.”

“I was trying to paint myself in a better light. I wasn’t thinking straight,” I hiss in terror.

“You have to tell him you lied on the test.”

“He won’t believe me!”

In the stark silence, our lone voices are starting to get louder with desperation. Close by, people turn to look at us and Seiger eventually hollers at us through the megaphone to shut up. We fall silent, but my brain is screaming warnings at me, and telling me to run and hide. I can do neither.