The Citadel and the Wolves (16 page)

When Wendy and I emerged from the long, dark tunnel, we found ourselves in an old railway siding. Rusting, empty carriages and old freight wagons stood silently in the siding like ghost trains. We were too tired and exhausted to outrun
the Roamers
who weren’t far behind us. We had to hide somewhere and pray.

We hid in the half-gloom of an old freight wagon. We waited.

When we heard them right outside, we held our breath. Wendy gripped my hand tightly. We were extremely frightened. My heart pounded in my chest. I thought it would explode. I turned my head and peered through a gap. I saw two or three outside. Hoods covered their faces. One, who was obviously their leader, was giving orders to the others. When his hood slipped, I saw his face clearly for the first time. I recognised him instantly. I was astounded.

Wendy and I stared at the door wide-eyed when we heard someone outside trying to open it.

It sounded like a helicopter overhead.
The Roamers
scattered. When I looked through the gap again, I saw it. It was a big army helicopter. One of the fleeing
Roamers
fired at it with an automatic pistol. He had just made a fatal mistake. The helicopter responded in kind, spitting flame. I saw him twist and fall. He lay still. He didn’t get up again.

The army helicopter chased off the remaining
Roamers,
spitting more flame. I couldn’t see if anyone else had been hit. The din of the rotors faded.

“I think they’ve gone now, Sis,” I whispered.

When I turned to Wendy, tears were running down her cheeks. We hugged each other gratefully. Strangely, I was the stronger one then.

We cautiously slid open the freight wagon door and climbed out of the freight wagon. We looked around fearfully. We stood over the other, staring at him curiously. We’d not seen a dead person close-up before. The right side of his face was missing.

Wendy and I ran all the way home through the woods on the other side of the railway embankment, avoiding the streets and main roads. When we got home, we would have some explaining to do.

Father sat Wendy and I down in the living room. Mother made us some hot, sweet tea. We needed it.

“What happened?” asked father who already knew the answer before he had asked the question.

“We fell over in the woods while we were taking a short cut home,” I lied easily, I thought. “There were no buses running.”

He sighed. “Wendy?”

“Roamers!” she blurted out before she burst into tears.

“Right, that’s it,” decided father firmly. “You’re not going to college anymore.”

I was stunned. “But, Daddy-”

He was adamant. “Jade, it’s got far too dangerous now for you girls. The situation has got out of control on the streets. You’re staying indoors from now on. The quicker I get that wall finished the better.”

I saw my whole world falling apart before my eyes and my dreams of becoming a scientist on the International Space Platform. It had all gone…It had gone.

“Jade, you know it-”

“No, I won’t,” I breathed before I leapt to my feet and fled from the room tearfully.

I sulked alone upstairs in my room, turning on the portable really loud. There wasn’t much on. It was mostly repeats in black and white. When someone tapped on my bedroom door, I ignored him. Father entered my room. He turned the TV down. I stood by the window with my arms folded.

“Jade, sulking in your room isn’t going to solve anything,” he said. “We’ve got to talk about this like two, sensible adults.”

I turned my head, gazing out of the window. I admitted that I was behaving like a child when I wanted to be treated like an adult.

“Listen to me, Jade; the world has changed dramatically in a short time. We talked about how things might be after the comet, and a lot of people are blaming it for what is happening to the world today, but I think it goes deeper than that. Something dark that has always been there has now risen to the surface. We use the comet as an excuse to explain it all away. What is happening out there is frightening; however, we’ve got to learn to cope with it. Do you understand that, Jade?”

My eyes were filled with tears. “Daddy, I want to go to university. I want you to be proud of me.”

“But, sweetheart, I am proud of you,” he said.

“I know,” I whispered.

I hugged him gratefully.

Wendy and I showered afterwards.

Wendy was looking on the window in her room. I was standing in the door watching her. I had something on my mind that had been nagging me all afternoon since our encounter with
the Roamers.
Dropping out of sec college didn’t seem to bother my sister. I was unsurprised. She was philosophic about most things in life. Would she be when I dropped this little bombshell on her?

I bit my lip. It wasn’t easy for me. “Wendy, are you still seeing Kevin Willis tonight?”

“Now that daddy has confined us to the house, I guess Kevin will have to call around instead. I can’t visit him. I’ve text him once or twice, though he hasn’t replied yet. He’s switched off his vid phone. I could only get through to his vid message service.”

“Wendy, don’t let him in.”

She looked puzzled. “Jade, what are you talking about?”

“I-I saw him, Wendy.”

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

She remained confused. “But I was with you all afternoon, Jade, and I didn’t see him on the way home.”

“I did.”

She sighed wearily. “When, Jade?”

“When we were hiding from the Roamers in the freight wagon, Wendy,” I answered, biting my lip.

She wore an odd expression on her face. “What are you trying to tell me, Jade?”

“When I looked through the gap, his hood slipped briefly, and I saw his face.”

“Whose?”

“Kevin Willis,” I answered quietly. “He’s a Roamer, Wendy.”

9. VPF

It was early morning.

We were like two, big kids. We were excited. Why?

Wendy and I were going on a shopping expedition with our parents, which was an adventure in itself nowadays as we soon discovered a little later. We had been cooped up in the big house for too long, and we needed a break to escape the boredom and monotony. We felt that father was being a little overprotective of us. Although we understood why, we needed to get out of the big house once in awhile before staying in day after day drove us both mad. Wendy admitted that she missed shopping until she dropped, but we both knew that the old days would probably never return. It was sad. We nagged daddy till he finally caved in. He couldn’t leave us in the big house alone. That really wouldn’t be fair. So we were going shopping.

With the high wall, which was nearly a metre thick, around the big house, like many others in Crown Dale Close, it had become a fortress, our own little citadel, intended to deter
the Roamers
and the other urban street gangs. It was something that I’d always feared. Perhaps it was inevitable. It still made me feel sad because we’d all lost some of our freedom in these dark times. Was this the future? Daddy said that it would return to normal one day. I wondered.

Wendy had finally got over Kevin Willis. She had been sulking for weeks, blaming herself. He never called that evening after our hairy encounter with
the Roamers.
He had probably become another street statistic. Wendy still wouldn’t accept that he was a gang leader and a member of
the Roamers,
insisting that I’d been mistaken, or that it was someone else who looked like him. I wasn’t mistaken. It was Kevin Willis. I suspected that she knew the truth about him deep down.

As daddy hitched the trailer to our Land-Rover, which was parked by the house, I watched him for a moment or two from the landing window. When he looked up and caught me, he gave me a little wave. I blew him a kiss instead.

I was barefoot. I stood in Wendy’s door in my pink polo neck and old jeans, watching her putting on make-up as she sat in front of her dressing table mirror. She was wearing her Sunday best, puzzling me.

“Wendy, you’re going shopping and not on a date,” I pointed out amused.

She painted her nails unconcerned. “You never know who we might bump into, Jade. There are lots of exciting hunks out there serving behind shop counters.” She added, “Unlike you, Jade, I like to look good when I go out, even if it is only shopping.”

Wendy had said it for me. I really wasn’t bothered. I haven’t dressed up in ages.

I put my head around my parents’ door later.

“Hi, Dad, Wendy and I are…” The words died on my lips. Father sat alone on the bed loading a revolver. It was the first time that I’d seen it in the house, and I was worried. “Dad?”

He was grim-faced. “This is a precautionary measure when we go out today, Jade. I hope I never have to fire it in anger.”

So did I.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Although it remained illegal, most people kept guns in their homes, for their fears were real enough. The government was powerless to do anything about it. People simply took the law into their own hands to protect themselves, their families and their homes. It was a question of self-preservation. No one relied on the government anymore.

“Daddy, will you show me how to use it one day?” I asked without thinking. The words just fell right out of my mouth.

He wasn’t annoyed. “Jade, never point a loaded gun at someone unless you intend to use it.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“And make your first shot count, Jade. You may not get a second chance.”

I murmured.

My father was a scientist, a gentle family man who adored his wife and kids, yet he was beginning to sound more like a sheriff in an old Wild West movie.

After he had loaded the revolver, he tucked it into a leather holster. When he caught me watching him, he winked. I smiled.

The picture of another time long past slipped into my head. Daddy stood on the dusty main street, a man alone wearing a tin star, facing down the bad guy in black. He’d done dirty deeds. But was he prepared to die? Daddy’s tin star glittered in the other’s eyes, and he knew fear for the first time. He was the law in this town.

“Jade?”

I giggled, and my cheeks burned when I realised.

“Ready?”

I nodded.

I noticed the troubled look on mum’s face when Wendy and I entered the living room with father. Mum glanced at his holstered sidearm.

We sat in the big, green Land-Rover, which was second-hand, as daddy opened the big, heavy gates. He had swapped the Japanese Jeep, which wasn’t, for the four-wheel-drive that was more robust and reliable. Mummy, who sat behind the wheel, swung out through the gates gingerly. We waited with the engine ticking over as father locked the gates behind us with heavy chains and two, large padlocks. Then he joined us, slipping into the front, passenger seat beside mother before we moved out. We were going shopping. But it wasn’t shopping as we once knew it.

Wendy and I stared in silence at the burnt-out shops and buildings.
The Roamers
had been busy again during the night, destroying things in minutes that had stood for decades, even centuries. They were the barbarians of the New Age. The white painted armoured vehicles of the VPF
(the Volunteer Police Force)
occasionally passed us on the road. Tommy pressed his face on the window excitedly whenever he spotted one.

After another crop failure, the government took the drastic measure of introducing national food rationing on top of petrol rationing as well as the rationing of luxury goods and utilities. The big supermarkets were ordered to close, and the government approved
Food and Utilities
distribution warehouses took over.

We drove through the gates of the
South East London
Food and Utilities
Warehouse
, a former sports centre, which was heavily fortified and guarded by armed men in black VPF uniforms. We found a parking space.

When mum opened her bag and took out her green ration book, dad waved it away.

“We won’t be needing it this time, love,” he said mysteriously. “I’ve sorted something else out.”

Mum looked puzzled. So did Wendy and I.

“Wait here, and someone will be along shortly,” instructed daddy. And with that, he vanished inside the warehouse building.

We waited in the car park by the stationary Land-Rover. When I glanced at mum with a question on my lips, she simply shrugged her shoulders. She was in the dark too along with the rest of us, Wendy and I. Tommy didn’t count yet. Wendy slipped her arm around me. When she whispered something quite rude in my ear, I giggled. Mum shot us a dark look.

After a few minutes waiting by the parked Land-Rover, an electric forklift truck approached us. It was laden high with supplies including cases of tinned stuff and luxury goods. We looked at one another, for we were unsure. The forklift driver, a youth, slim with long, greasy hair, stopped by us.

“You the Robinsons?” inquired the young forklift driver with an accent.

I nodded.

He smiled, revealing broken, yellow teeth. “This is for you then.”

As the young forklift driver unloaded the supplies by our Land-Rover, I noticed Wendy eyeing him up. She’s unbelievable. You can’t take her anywhere. She wore a big grin on her face. He winked at Wendy who giggled.

“It’s all paid for,” he said breezily.

As he left again on his empty forklift truck, Wendy watched him disappearing out of her life forever. She let out a small sigh. I put my arm around her.

Mum stared at the supplies, frowning. “I really don’t know what your father is up to, girls.”

We murmured. Mum, Wendy and I laughed suddenly. Tommy joined in.

Tommy ran around our feet, getting in the way. He treated the shopping expedition as one big adventure. He was too young to understand any of it. It was also work for Wendy and I. We exchanged curious glances as we helped to load the cases of tinned stuff onto the trailer. It wasn’t Christmas. It just felt like it. This looked like a year’s rations to me. I remained baffled till something happened a little later.

An urgent call of nature took me away from the others.

When I entered the public toilets, a familiar smell filled my delicate nostrils. It reminded me of the toilets at school, perhaps worse. I quickly turned my attention to the stalls, pushing open each door in turn. They were all empty. I had the toilets to myself. I hate sharing with strangers. I was the same at school. I used to wait till I got home. I chose the end stall because it was the furthest one from the door. I locked myself in. When I lifted the toilet lid and saw what someone else had left behind, I held my nose in disgust. Some people were so inconsiderate to others. I jerked the cistern lever. The long, dark shape vanished beneath a white, bubbling whirlpool.