The Dawn: The Bombs Fall (A Dystopian Science Fiction Series) (4 page)

“What if the Guardians see me?”

“They will see you, but they don’t
patrol nineteenth. Half of it is sealed off, but the doors you will use to get
in and out are good.”

“Why is it sealed?” Ronson asked,
crouching his elbows onto the bar, minimising the distance that information had
to travel, in case should get lost along the way and he would remain forever
curious.

“In the beginning, when Omega came,
they checked every floor. They deemed floor nineteen a no-go zone. Said it was
contaminated, that the windows were broken. They boarded everything up. The
doors are supposed to be chained, but they’re not anymore. It has a one-way
lock, so just push the bar and you’ll be in. Follow the corridor to the stairs.
Go up them. I’ll be waiting for you.” Ronson looked pensive, and he held the
card to his chest, gripped so tightly that even his knuckles were white. “That
stairway is quieter. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”

“What if they check me?”

“You’ll be with me.” Zack sat back on
his stool, pushed his shot glass towards Ronson’s side of the bar and tapped
his fingers. “I’ll take another.”

Ronson slipped the card into his
trouser pocket, trousers that were perhaps once brown, but were now a mixture
of rust red and black from dirt. He wiped his fingers over his lips, pursed and
contracted by the wonder of possibility. He picked up the clear unmarked bottle
and poured another Moonshine without looking at Zack. After setting the bottle
down he scanned his fingers, brown and scaly, encrusted with years of filth. He
ran his fingertips over his forearms before they eventually found their way up
to his face, resting on his scars. “But they’ll know. They’ll know that I don’t
belong. They’ll take one look at me and they’ll know it.” He covered as much of
his scar with his hand as possible, his fingertips resting into the scarred
shut eye socket, his palm against his cheek as if he was still shocked at the
thought of what had happened to him. “They’ll never let me pass.”

“Listen,” said Zack taking a sip from
the beaker. “It’s true. It’s obvious that you weren’t there originally. Even if
you were unlucky and still somehow got that scar that you’re trying to hide
from me up there,” he said, pointing above ground, “it would still be
impossible that people wouldn’t remember you. Wear this,” Zack said, taking off
his deerstalker hat. “This’ll cover most of it.” Ronson positioned the hat and
traced the outline of it against his skin. Zack couldn’t help but smile when
Ronson realised that the scar was almost covered. It was as if the hat could
turn back time. Time that neither of them counted anymore. “You see?” Ronson
nodded, smiled, and filled up Zack’s glass before grabbing a dirty cloth and
mopping up some sort of spill that wasn’t really there.

Zack picked up his third Moonshine
and swivelled around on the old barrel. He heard Ronson say that he would go
and get the trade and Zack nodded in agreement. But Zack's attentions were
already elsewhere. There was a woman with a child, a boy about ten, maybe
eleven years old. The boy's cheeks were the same sullen grey of the clouds
outside, a mixture of light and dark as the shadows cast on the hollows of his face.
He sat listlessly on a chair at the woman's side, his hands dropped into his
lap. He didn’t move or cry. He noticed Zack looking at him, and Zack smiled,
waved to try and get him to respond. The boy half smiled, revealing a set of
brown teeth, and perhaps if Zack's eyes didn’t betray him, a set of shrivelled
and receded gums. Some of the teeth were missing. It was the radiation. Zack
ran his tongue along the back of his own full set. The smooth, intermittently
interrupted sensation of enamel against flesh reminded him that in some ways at
least, he was one of the lucky ones. It was hard to remember that sometimes,
but it was true.

There were also a few other men,
single men sitting balanced on tables or makeshift stools. In one corner a
woman with dirty blonde hair tied into a topknot, and who might or might not
have been Roxanna, was chatting up the liveliest of the drinkers. One of the
other men was sitting on an old tea chest and Zack mused that the man looked
like a cast member from one of the West End shows that used to play not so far
from here. He looked like he should break into song.

In the far corner with her head
resting on the wall, there was a girl that looked out of place. She didn’t
belong here. Her clothes were too clean, her face a shade of flesh rather than
dirt grey. Her skin actually looked pink. Pink in the cheeks, as if she was
healthy. He watched her a while as she sat with her back against the wall, her
head tipped to the side. She was stationary, mentally somewhere else with the only
exception her foot, which was moving to a beat, something he hadn’t seen in
years. She was feeling something, as if she was listening to music. Her hair
was also blonde. But it was nothing like the other woman in the bar. It looked
clean. He imagined that it might smell like rosemary or sage, but then realised
that such ideas were just words now, and that he had no idea what rosemary or
sage even smelt like anymore.

The girl was young, and actually
looked it. He hadn’t seen something this perfect, something that looked so much
like life before the war in so long. The sight of her was addictive, and before
he was aware of what he was doing, he was moving towards her, absorbed in the
vision of the past. She realised whilst he was still approaching, and she straightened
herself up in the makeshift tea chest chair.

“Hello,” he said, awed as if he had
seen an angel descend to Earth. “Can I sit with you?” She didn’t say anything
but she moved back on the chest and nodded her head. She pulled her sleeves to
cover her hands. W
hite clothes, actually white
, he thought as he spotted
them, not grey or brown or green from mould.
White
. “I’m Zack,” he said
holding out his hand. He sat on a metallic box at her side. She watched his
gesture as if it was an infection moving towards her, even edging further back.
She didn’t offer her hand in return. Zack dropped his hand in his lap,
embarrassed, so he shuffled the box underneath him for a distraction. From up
close her skin was almost translucent, like a new and alien race. People just
didn’t look like this anymore. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

“I’ve seen you.” She was staring at
him from behind an unbreakable wall of judgement. Under her scrutiny he felt
the onset of an unreasonable sense of shame as he looked down at his finger
tips and his dry dusty skin. He dragged his palm over his hair, still messy
from where he had pulled the deerstalker hat from his head. “I’ve watched you
in here before. You're a trader, aren't you? You take things from people.”

Her direct approach captured his
tongue, sucked him dry of words. It was true that he was a trader, and he was
waiting for Ronson to provide his reward for the illicit water ration card. But
it seemed that she had already made up her mind about him, and her conclusion
wasn't favourable. This angel before him had judged that his intentions were
selfish, that he was a chancer who was out for himself, and that he had no
place in the heaven from which she came.

“I trade things, yes,” Zack finally
managed, his hair now smoothed into place after a lot of effort. “But for
something that people want.” He felt a desperate urge to justify himself, to
prove to her that he was good. That he wasn't what she had assumed. “For things
people need.”

“What about the things they have to
give up? What is he going to give you? Free drink? Drugs? Or maybe he is giving
you something
he
needs. Something he can't afford to lose, but doesn't
have a choice.” She pulled her hands in close to her armpits, her shoulders
hunched up. “Isn't life comfortable enough for you already up there,” she said,
tipping her head towards the ground level and above, “without taking from the
people down here?” She was about to stand up when he reached out and took her
hand. She snatched it back but the shock of his touch was enough that it
stopped her in her tracks.

“Don’t tell me you don’t do it too,”
Zack said. “What are
you
trading? Everybody trades because there is no other
choice in New Omega.” He knew as soon as he had finished saying it, the
emphasis all on the
you,
that he had implied that she was trading
herself. He wished he could take it back, but there was part of him that
thought that she deserved it. She had been quick to judge him too, so why
should he not judge her?

“What are suggesting?” she snapped.

He swallowed hard. “Look at you.” He
figured once he had started, he might as well continue. “You must be getting
extra rations. No way do you eat the shit I eat day after day. Got a deal with
one of the Guardians, have you?” He looked her up and down, his initial
admiration for her angelic presence banished by her harsh and unjust scrutiny
of his actions.
How dare she judge him?
She didn’t answer, just sneered,
her nose flared, the corners of her mouth turned down in disgust.

“Whatever,” she said as she stood up.

“Not got so much to say now, huh? Who
is it? Sam? Croft? One of the others?”

“I don’t need to say anything to justify
myself to you.” She wasn’t looking at Zack anymore, instead her eyes were
focussed on the bar, and a smirk settled on her otherwise sour looking face. “At
least
I
was right about you.”

Zack looked up just in time to see
Ronson approach. He sidled up close and passed a dirty edged and frayed cushion
into his lap. “There you go, Shiner. And a little something for your troubles.”
Ronson placed a small once-white tablet on the dimpled metal table top that
would have once shone and glistened under the sunlight in a bistro or cafe. It
rolled like the mangled slug from a gun, settling in one of the divots made
through damage, fights, time, or a mixture of all three.

“Like I said,” the girl said as she
leant back across the table. “
You
take the things he needs,
and
the things you don’t.” She motioned her eyes in turn from the cushion to the
tablet, all the while her head shaking. The tablet was lumpy and poorly formed.
A homemade concoction that offered an hour of dreaming. An hour of escape from
Delta Tower.

“Don’t you dare judge me,” Zack said
as he too stood up, knocking the table. He was surprised at her height. He was
over six foot tall and she matched him inch for inch, her aqua green eyes level
with his. For a moment he thought he heard the sound of the ocean, like when as
a child he would convince himself that he could hear the waves in an upturned
conch shell. He could almost smell the salt as the summer heat burned it from
the surface of a calm sea.

“Come on now, Shiner,” Ronson said,
breaking Zack's trance as he placed a cautionary hand against his chest. He was
still wearing the deerstalker and it was true that even up close the scar was
almost fully covered. “Take it easy.”

“All I was doing was trying to be
nice, Ronny,” Zack said, ignoring the girl. “I just wanted to talk to somebody.”

“Come sit at the bar. Talk to me. Take
your pill,” Ronson said as he picked up the puckered tablet. Zack watched as
the smirk grew across her face. “Don’t let this get to you. It’s nothing.” The
pressure underneath Ronson’s palm was growing until eventually with the girl
still watching him, even as the distance between them grew, Zack started walking
back to the bar. He sat down on the oil barrel stool from where he had got up
only moments before. He picked up the tablet and the shot of Moonshine that
Ronson had poured him without asking, and knocked them both straight back. His
head was starting to swim, and he could feel his eyes drooping heavier than
lead shutters. He slammed his beaker back down onto the flimsy bar top, shaking
the structure from its base to its surface before standing to walk away. Just
before he walked through the door of NAVIMEG he turned and said to Ronson, “After
the double bell, got it?” Ronson nodded, and as Zack's eyes scanned the room
for the final time he saw that the girl who had ruined his evening had already
left. Still pissed at her ignorance, and as drunk on that as he was the
Moonshine, he took the stairs two at a time. Several times he stubbed his toe and
only just managed to correct his balance before he fell. He stopped on each
level and scanned the crowds for her face and her golden hair which cascaded
over her shoulder like a waterfall. He ignored the crowds making trades, most
as high as he was. He paid no attention to the girls who offered themselves,
pushing their flimsily covered bodies away. But by the time he got to the
surface, the ground level where life was supposed to flourish and where he used
to believe it was possible for dreams to come true, he still hadn't found her.

“Take my hand!” The arms stretched
forwards from within the darkness, and as her father lifted her up, Emily felt the
man snatch at her wrists. The man pulled her up and pushed her backwards. Emily
rolled away from him towards the edge of the lift. She sat up, pushing herself
upright with both palms and she saw the man lunging himself back into the hatch
from where she herself had been dragged. There was an electronic whirring
coming from above her as some sort of generator kicked in, and the emergency
lighting flickered on and off in time with the sound of the electronics. She
could feel the lift rocking underneath her, and the steel girders which held
the whole thing in place groaned as they flexed. The whole thing was being
shaken from the outside, crumpled and moulded against its will.

“Dad!” Emily cried, trying to poke her
head back towards the hatch. “Get my Dad out!”

“Get away from the opening, Emily,”
shouted the man whose head was hanging into the hatch. He knew her name but she
couldn't place his face. Maybe it was the lighting. His skin was lit up green
like a cartoon character, shadows cast by intermittent light, and his eyes sunk
in endless dark sockets. “It’s not safe. We have to be quick.” He pulled up
another woman who blocked Emily's view. She was crying and seemed hysterical. She
told Emily to calm down, that everything would be alright. It might as well
have been her mother speaking.

The third person to be brought up
through the hatch was Helena Grayson. As she got to her knees on the top side
of the lift Emily thought how quiet her mother seemed. She wasn’t crying, or
causing a commotion. Nothing like what Emily expected and nothing like the
first woman. She looked at Emily and said only one word.

“Focus.”

She said it with a cold conviction
that Emily was not used to, and it came out as an instruction which she
wouldn't dare ignore. Emily stuffed the iPod back into her pocket and clutched
at her mother’s wrist. By the time the big man was finishing hauling up bodies
through the hatch there was only one left. Emily's father. He came out
sweating, his face red, his cheeks puffed out and hair lopsided as if he had
woken from a nightmare. There was another child in their group. A small girl who
reached up for Emily’s free hand. The hand was warm and slick, much like she
imagined her own would feel to her mother.

“Mum, what’s happening,” said Emily,
as she watched the big man who had pulled them from the lift ascend a ladder on
the inside of the shaft. The girders were still groaning their disapproval as
he climbed step after step. Emily was sure that he was too heavy. His feet
chinked against the metal bars, dust spraying out underneath him, flickering
like plankton as it passed the wall-mounted lights. He reached the doors of the
next floor and stepped off the ladder onto the shelf. He grunted, pulling at
the lift doors, shards of light filtering through from the other side of the
door, there one minute, gone the next as he failed to hold them open.

The man called back down. “Sir, I
can't get them open,” and without answering, Emily's father was skimming up the
ladder, swifter and more athletically than the first, portly man. Together they
prised the doors apart with their finger tips and light poured through to reveal
the inner working of the lift shaft, the only time Emily could remember the
light making something more terrifying than the dark.

In turn they all climbed the ladder,
their footsteps the sound of raindrops striking against a tin roof. Emily was
pushed forwards, her mother behind her. “Move, Emily,” she said. “Focus.” On
three separate occasions Emily stopped, her fear of heights gripping her as
tightly as she herself gripped the rungs of the ladder. Each time her mother
pushed her, screamed at her to focus as she coughed up the dust dislodged by
Emily’s feet. Tears flowed across their faces making tracks in the dirt covering
their cheeks. As Emily stepped from the ladder she was dragged into the doorway
by the big man. Her father grabbed her, his hands gripping her face as he
shouted, “Run down this corridor, Emily. Wait by the door at the other end.”

Emily nodded and did as she was told,
not waiting for anybody to follow. Her legs were like jelly, her heart beating
as violently as thunder. For a moment she was alone, and the isolation and fear
was suffocating. Her throat was dry, the taste of dust and cement from the lift
shaft stuck in her mouth. She stopped as the corridor opened out like a river
delta into a wide glass atrium. She looked up, her hands balanced on her knees,
her lungs panting. She was encased in glass all the way around, a protective
dome without which she would have already choked from the thick ashes that she
could see falling through the air outside. The glass above her was covered in grey
soot that reminded her of Christmas morning, but a warped, unfamiliar version. In
the distance she saw the orange glow, concentric rings of smoke billowing not
only outwards, but upwards and pluming like a delicate fountain of death.

If she had been there only moments
before, she would have seen the paint lift from the buildings and the cars as
the heat wave tore through. She would have watched as the nebulous wave ripped
across the land as if it had been cast out from the sky. She would have seen
the trees buckle under the force of the highest winds, hundreds of years old oaks
destroyed as if they were nothing but saplings. If she were higher up, she
would be able to see the fireball galloping towards her, only minutes away from
where she stood. She looked outside, her mouth wide open, hypnotised by the
sight of destruction all around her. In that moment she heard nothing of the
footsteps behind her as she watched the tempest growing in strength. Her father
scooped her into his arms and carried her like a limp ragdoll, jiggling about over
his shoulder.

“Don’t look at it, Emily,” he said,
and she closed her eyes, dust falling from her eyelashes with each step he took.

She clung to his neck like a small
child as he negotiated the stairs. Step after step they travelled down into the
dark. She sensed the light disappearing through her closed eyelids. Even the kaleidoscopic
light patterns that usually played out there, which were always most vibrant
right before sleep, failed to appear.

When her father stopped running she
dared to pull her head from inside the creases of his neck. They were in a
large room, sparsely decorated and crammed full of people. He sat on the floor,
Emily cradled in his arms like a baby, his fingers weaving in and out of her
hair as he kissed her forehead. When he pulled his lips away they were covered
in dust. She saw her mother at her side, her lips pressed into the cross which
she wore around her neck, her head rocking backwards and forwards.

“Sir?” a voice said above them. The
big man from the lift. The man who had first pulled her out. He had saved them
all, perhaps?

“Yes, Vincent?”

“The site is secure.” She felt her
father nod and his grip tighten.

“And the others?”

“Sir, we won't know anything until
they transmit the first of the reports. We expect that won't be for several
hours. Perhaps days.” The big man who had saved her life, and who Emily now
knew as Vincent smiled at her before standing up straight and walking away.

“Daddy?” Emily said. Her breath
fluctuated against his neck, and it sent a tingle racing across his scalp just
like in the first days after her birth. Her breath was hot, and he thought how
the life within her offered him more comfort than any of the preparations
around him.

“Yes, baby?” he asked.

“When are we going to go home?”

He swallowed hard before saying, “We
are home, baby,” and he stroked her damp cheeks with his thumb. Her mother was
still praying, and there was somebody close by who was crying. The same women
from the lift? She could hear their snivelling and somehow in spite of
everything that was already happening, it was this sound that seemed
unbearable. It was the sad whimper for a life lost. Some people were moving
about by torchlight, men dressed as Vincent was. Some women too. One of them
had jet black hair, like a raven, shiny like a white swan caught in an oil
slick. She smiled at Emily, who mustered a half smile in return, before the
woman continued to hand out blankets to people nearby, assisted by her torch. Vincent
came back, draped a blanket over Emily, and stroked her hair before he stood up.
She closed her eyes and thought about the log fire that they wouldn’t light in
their real home at Christmas. She thought about the table that she wouldn't set
on Sunday and how the fancy bone-handled knives somehow didn't seem so fancy
anymore. She peeped underneath the blanket at her T-shirt and realised that she
could try all she liked, and protest all she wanted. She could imagine the impossible
to be possible, or disbelieve what she was told to be true. She could want and
hope and dream of a different life, but in this moment she realised that there
is only ever one version of reality. The one you are in. It didn't matter how
bleak or hopeless it was. But more than anything she realised that sometimes to
do nothing was the only choice you had.