The Dawn: The Bombs Fall (A Dystopian Science Fiction Series) (7 page)

After the second double bell, the
signal for the end of shift one, Zack didn’t take the lift. Instead he walked
through the corridors, past the amblers, past those with nothing to do, until
he reached the stairway. There were two stairways in Delta Tower. The first,
and largely abandoned, was the stairway by which Ronson had illegally entered
Delta Tower at the start of the first shift. Until the twentieth floor nobody
used this stairway, and when he had walked up it last week to ensure that it
was still passable he was surprised at how untouched it felt. There was dust
everywhere, and each step took his breath away as the particles from underneath
his feet floated into the atmosphere, disturbed perhaps for the first time in
years. There were layers of paint which had been punched like inverted Braille
along the walls where furniture had been dragged up, the feet of the beds drilling
the story of Delta Tower into the Duck Egg blue walls that once looked so crisp
and clean. Some of the glass banisters had been shattered in the same incident,
and some of them had been destroyed when the ground shook and the sky lit up.

Zack took the other stairway. On the
final turn before floor fifty there was a series of yellow tapes with a sign
attached. It read,
No admittance, danger of exposure.
It was the only
warning needed. The doors were locked, at least that was what Zack had heard,
but nobody he knew had ever ventured up there. He had been up there once, before
the war. From the viewing deck there was an enviable outlook to the river and
the gardens below, and from the right corner on a clear day you could see the
dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. The silver barriers were high enough that it
didn’t feel like a risk, even when you were close enough to look over the edge.
The pyramid roof of Delta Tower rose high up above, and at night when it glowed
golden like a beacon it was almost as impressive as one of the great pyramids
of Giza. Zack used to look at it from his apartment. But the Omega Tower personnel
had sealed off level fifty and the roof as a no-go zone. There had been rumours
that the roof had blown almost clear off, but Zack was sure that the water
supply for the whole of Delta Tower used to be stored in that pyramid so there
was little chance of it being true.

Zack pushed open the doors to level forty
nine. There were a few people up there, always the same faces. Some of the
people who came here did so out of denial. They would stand here day after day
hoping that they would see something different. But they never did. Zack came
here for different reasons.

He walked towards the wall of glass. Those
close to him moved away. Privacy with the old world was a respected moment. People
didn’t come here for company, and they knew nobody else wanted it either. They
came here for a one-on-one with what was left of their past. A chance to look
at an ex-partner and ask for help in understanding the separation. Sometimes Zack
came here to reflect, to think about those he left behind. Other times he just
stared, allowing his eyes to travel over the peaks and troughs of the crumbling
remains, as if his mind still hadn't accepted or processed what had happened. The
vista was always the same. The view floated somewhere between day and night,
but couldn’t be described as either dawn or dusk. It was something else that
nobody knew from before. There was a greyness to the world, a bleakness that
soaked everything in misery. The wettest drizzle-filled day from the old world
a hundred times over. There was nothing of colour on which to focus your eye, no
life to watch and enjoy, or laughter of a child to lighten a heavy mood. From
where he stood he saw only flattened buildings, a decimated skeleton of the old
city. It was an almost unrecognisable landscape save the odd feature that clung
to the ground or burst through it. A charred tree, a small building whose wall
had survived, or a distant pylon almost intact. In the distance he could see
Zeta Tower, the lights of which always helped him orientate, like the red hand
of a compass always telling him which way was north. He knew from the other
side he would see Epsilon. He had heard rumours that there had been an incident
in Gamma, and that somebody had got in from the outside and killed all the
residents. Just rumours Zack guessed, like the roof of Delta. He thought maybe
they had been started like a primitive form of law, an early religion whispered
into terrified ears to help control the residents of the other towers.

His stomach was grumbling but he
ignored it. He had got used to controlling his biological urges. It was easy to
control hunger when there was no hope of it being stemmed. As he rounded the north-western
corner of the building he got his first glimpse. The giant tower of Omega standing
strong in the distance, ablaze with light like a sunlit shard of mirror. It was
a magnificent sight. There were more people here today staring at it, dreaming
about a new life because of the lottery. It gave everybody a chance, at least
in theory. He imagined more people would be here by the end of the day, a
steady stream of escapists all desperate for a look at the host for their
desires. Omega was like a blade bursting up through the ground as if the
building itself had decided to cut through the earth, slice it open and pierce
through like a unicorn's horn. It was covered in glass, just like Delta, and
the lights were always on. Unless you wanted them turned off. Then you could
make a choice. In Omega there were choices that simply didn’t exist for the
people who lived in Delta. He looked out across the miles between the life he
had and the life he craved. Every previous lottery had brought with it the same
masochistic hope, each time obliterated, leaving him feeling more desperate
than ever he had before.

He left level forty nine and walked
down the stairs, his fingers trailing along the lines of Braille-like puncture
wounds in the wall, dust clinging to his fingertips. Delta had been damaged,
and maybe it had lost its roof if you believed the rumours, but it had stood
firm enough. The blast had shaken it, just like it had the other remaining
buildings, but it hadn’t torn it apart. There were nine of them left, including
Omega. The rest of the city had been destroyed. Nobody knew by whom, but Zack
didn’t think about it anymore. There wasn’t any point.

“Excuse me,” said a quiet voice as Zack
felt something pull at his trouser leg. He hadn’t seen the boy lying on the
floor next to him, his head resting on the wall at an uncomfortable looking
angle. His limbs were limp and pathetic, like broken and charred matchsticks. His
stomach was swollen like a child of famine. So much for Creed Four. “Do you
have any food?” the boy said.

Zack bent down close to him. The
smell arising from the boy's breath was hot and stale.
Was he here when I
went up the stairs?
His lips were dry and cracked, and his head seemed
swollen too. “I’m sorry, Champ. I haven’t got anything.” Zack reached down and
picked up the boy's hand. It was tiny and shrivelled like the claw of a bird. “Where
are your parents?”

“I don’t know.” The voice was barely
audible. Zack leaned in closer.

“Where do you live?” Zack asked.

“I don’t know,” the boy said again.

“Your name? What’s your name?” Zack
could feel the quickening of his heart beat, that feeling of responsibility
coupled with absolutely no clue what to do.

“Billy,” said the boy.

“Billy?” Zack brought his hand up
towards Billy’s head, which given the chance of support, succumbed to the soft
cushion of his palm. “How did you get here? Where are your parents?” Zack asked
again. He could see that the boy was almost asleep, and as his head sank into
the flesh of Zack's arm his wrists flopped away from his lap. Zack reached down
and picked up Billy’s right arm. He held it softly like one would cradle a
baby. There were two small veins running along the surface of his wrist, and
the skin hung as loose as a cloth across the bones and tendons. There was no
number. No black triangle. He was a child born into disaster, born into a world
where life didn't exist anymore, and where he was lying in a corridor with
nobody to care for him. The Third Creed: No citizen of New Omega shall feel
alone. The Fourth Creed: No Citizen of New Omega shall die of thirst or hunger.
They didn't mean anything to the people of Delta Tower. Billy didn't say
anything, and instead his eyelids fluttered closed, no energy left to hold them
open.

Zack burst through the doors of level
forty eight. It was a different place to thirtieth. Nearly twenty floors up,
and it was chaos, each floor higher a descent into mayhem. There was rubbish in
the public spaces, people asleep on the floor, and the smell was putrid. It was
so hot in here and the smell of bodies was so rich that it hurt Zack's eyes. This
place had been an advertising agency once, or so the sign would suggest.

“Where are Billy’s parents?” Zack
shouted to the nearest crowd of people, huddled in a group on the floor. The
corridor was full of people hanging around, some sitting on the floor like the
nearest group, others propped up on broken window sills in the place that glass
should have been. But yet nobody answered. There was noise, a background hum, but
there was an undercurrent of lethargy in the place. Apathy. “You,” he said,
gripping the collar of the nearest man who was stumbling towards him. The man’s
head was floppy like a ragdoll, his eyes glazed, his smile fixed. “Do you know
a kid called Billy?” The man didn’t say anything. Instead he just rolled. He
rolled backwards, his eyes rolled in his head, he rolled on his trip.
Is
that what I look like when I do drugs?
He asked himself as he let go of the
man, who it seemed didn’t even know he had been touched.

He moved forwards, his feet
negotiating the carpet of legs and dirty blankets. With his breath held and
throat tight, he pushed open the doors to the Mess Room. Every floor had one. He
didn’t go into the one of thirtieth much. He preferred to go up to level forty
nine and look out of the windows and get lost in the silence and an occasional
memory. “Where are the Guardians?” he said into the air. He realised that not
only was the noise different to the other levels, but the only sounds that he
could hear were human in origin. It was the hum of chatter, deals, and trades. The
television next to him had been smashed, and as he looked along the corridor he
noticed that the others too had been damaged and no longer worked. One was
hanging from its brackets. Only one of them was still working but even that was
without the sound. Then his eyes settled on the only Guardian in sight. He was
dressed in the white uniform, the black epaulets and black boots. The cap and
balaclava were discarded at his side. This Guardian wasn't on patrol. He was
slouched up against the wall with a woman's head in his lap. Both of them high,
Zack would guess.

The smell of urine hung in the air
and he could feel the filth settling on his skin. The room was crowded with
office style armchairs, modern at the time of the war, dirty and pulled apart
at the seams today. Some of them had been pushed together to form settees. There
were coffee tables littered with pills and bottles that looked like water
containers but he doubted that it was water in them. He picked one up, brought
it up to his nose. Moonshine. No matter how far life on the other levels had
fallen below what he would have once deemed acceptable, this place was
something else. There was no order here anymore. He had heard that the upper
levels were a mess, but he had never seen it for himself. Even the Guardian was
a mess. And where were the others? He leant down to place the bottle back on
the table and as he did so he saw another child, a bit smaller than Billy, sitting
in the middle of the floor. It was a girl and she was almost naked, save some
sort of nappy, a makeshift effort that was grey from dirt and appeared to be soaked
through. Her hair clung to her scalp, slicked by grease to her forehead. She
caught Zack's eye and she smiled and giggled as she said something, words that
didn’t seem like language. She seemed too big for her age, like an oversized
baby.

“Where are Billy’s parents?” He
crouched down, and the child reached out to him. He took her hand in his. “Do
you know Billy?” Zack said to the girl.

“Biwwy,” the girl mumbled.

“Where are his parents? Do you know
them?” he said pulling her hand away from his cheek. He tried to tell himself
it wasn't because she was dirty. That it was just haste that forced him back. “Tell
me where they are.”

The girl pointed in the direction of
the nearest chairs. There were several men and woman all asleep or passed out,
their limbs interwoven and tangled like weeds. There was a layer of smoke in
the air, smoke that refused to filter away because there was nowhere for it to
filter to. He stood upright, moved towards the bodies. There was a woman lying
on the other side of the couch, spaced out and unresponsive. Zack coughed as
the smoke hit the back of his throat. Where the hell had anybody got cigarettes
from?

“Wake up,” Zack shouted, nudging the
woman with his fist. “Are you Billy’s mother?” She didn’t reply and seemed so
flat that he felt the need to check for a pulse. He picked up her wrist and
found her fingers to be even browner than his. He placed his fingertips against
her tattooed skin until he felt something to prove she was alive. “Hey!” he
shouted again, this time shaking her. She grunted and her face twisted as he
gripped her arms. “Wake up!” he shouted as he slapped her across the face. Some
of the other people in the Mess Room started to rouse. One of them spoke but
Zack didn’t wait to listen to him. If this was Billy's mother she was good for
nothing. She wasn't going to offer to help him. He tossed her arm side and stood
up.