The Dawn: The Bombs Fall (A Dystopian Science Fiction Series) (8 page)

“Biwwy bad,” said the girl on the
floor. “Biwwy gone.” Zack felt an urge to pick her up, to take her with him. He
had little parental instinct that he knew of and yet he felt drawn to her
because to leave her here felt like a crime. He hesitated in the space between
the child and door, before telling himself that Billy needed his attention
more. He turned away from the girl, not knowing what else he could say to her. He
paced up the corridor, avoiding the bodies on the floor. He thought of Ronson
and how much he seemed to want to get into Delta, but Zack knew that he would
rather live in the sublevels than on this level. He pushed open the door and Billy
was still lying there.

“Billy,” Zack said as he knelt down
at his side. This time Billy didn’t respond when Zack shook him. Zack felt for
a pulse. It was weak. He scooped Billy up, ignoring the smell of damp clothes.
He charged down the stairs, his feet skipping two steps at a time. It was only
a minute later that he arrived on level twelve.

“You have to help this child!” Zack
said as he swung through the doors of the sick bay, the nearest thing to a
doctor or a hospital in Delta. There was a man lying on the couch getting a
tattoo, another number on his wrist, an ode to the recently announced Omega
Lottery. There were three people waiting in turn, all with their sleeves rolled
up. Each one had their plastic card in hand, ready to hand over their credits
for the bleak chance of a better life. “Do something!”

The waiting crowd all turned to stare
at the boy, hanging like a withered flower in Zack's arms. The man getting the
tattoo jumped up from the bed, and after reminding the tattoo artist that he
would have to finish the job afterwards, made room for the child. Zack laid
Billy on the bed, his limbs dangling away from him like a puppet without its
master, his eyes open but absent.

“I’m not a doctor,” screamed the man,
still holding the tattoo gun. He was staring at Billy. He looked scared. “What
am I supposed to do?”

“This is the sick bay!” Zack shouted.
“You have to do something. You have been trained.”

“I have been trained to dress a wound,
put on a bandage. I might be able to clean a burn, but what can I do for him? Where
did you find him?” The hands of the tattoo artist had started to shake. One of
the men from the queue got up and slipped out of the door. Zack didn't see him
leave.

“I found him up on level forty eight.
Just do something. Anything,” Zack pleaded. The tattoo artist put down his gun,
and stood back.

“On forty eight? And you bring him
here? God knows what he's got.” He picked up a canister of water and unscrewed
the lid. Zack assumed that he was about to give Billy a drink, but instead he
raised the canister to his own lips. He took a gulp of the water before saying,
“It's a right mess up there.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand,
which Zack saw was covered in a black and red tribal tattoo, the same as his
face.

Zack grabbed the man by the collar of
his overall and shoved him against the far wall, the water spilling from the
canister onto the floor. “Are you fucking serious?” Zack screamed, the tattooed
man clamouring for the back of his head as it struck the cement behind him. Those
waiting leapt from their seats. One of them reached towards Zack and pulled him
back by the arms. Zack shook him away as swiftly as he would bat a fly, and his
arms flew free. “He'll die!”

“Go easy, man. It's not like it's
your kid.” The tattoo artist and would-be first aider, bigger and heavier set
than Zack, put down his water canister and pushed Zack away before straightening
up his clothes. “What am I supposed to do?”

“He needs to drink,” said Zack
turning to look at Billy. “His name is Billy. He is dehydrated.” Zack flopped
back into the nearest seat, and the others who were waiting their turn inched
away from the smell which he was carrying on his damp clothes. “He needs help. Kids
need help.”

Silence swallowed the room whilst
everybody except for Zack stood staring at the child. One of them touched
Billy's arm, picked it up like you might a rag under which you had trapped a
spider. He let go of the arm and it flopped back onto the couch and Billy
didn't flinch. The thud of the arm hitting the couch was enough to wake the
tattoo artist from his trance. “Sit him up,” he said to the man with the half-finished
tattoo. “Come on,” he said pulling on the sleeve of the reluctant would be
Samaritan. “Help me.” Together they sat Billy up and began dripping water into
his mouth. The facial tattoos made the first aider look like a Maori warrior. “He
has to drink something,” he said, echoing Zack's sentiments. He held up the
water bottle to Billy’s lips and a few drops passed into his mouth. He turned
to Zack. “What were you doing up there? I wouldn’t go up there.”

“I wouldn’t either,” said Zack. “I
was on my way back down from level forty nine.” The other men nodded. They all
understood. They all understood the need to dream. What else were they doing
here, spending credits on tattoos rather than medicine or water?

They managed to get a few drops more
into Billy’s mouth, although Zack was sure that he hadn't swallowed any of
them. All tattoo application was put on hold, much to the protest of those in
line. The third double bell rang and Zack was forced to return to the water
treatment plant for the second shift. He still had to see what was left for
Epsilon Tower. The tattoo artist, who Zack had judged to have performed well in
the guise of tower doctor, told him that it was best if he left anyway. There
was no point staying. Zack offered to take his card with him, get it topped up
for extra rations, and the tattoo artist seemed more than happy with the
arrangement. He handed over his ration card and continued to drip feed Billy.

Zack had always thought it was
pointless to bring a child in Delta. He believed that the daily life of New
Omega wasn't worth sharing with future generations. What were they trying to
create now? Didn't parents want the life of their child to be better than theirs?
Wasn't that the point? In Delta Tower there was nothing left to offer other
than a selfish dream of a time gone by. The war had made life irrelevant. Unnecessary.
Hadn't it? He wondered if in a hundred years time when all those alive before
the war were gone, if the few citizens left in Delta Tower or New Omega would
find life here acceptable. Would it be possible to live like this, if they had
never known any better?

Holding Billy in his arms had made Zack
question his beliefs. It was the first time in years that he had held a child. A
living one, at least. He had felt Billy’s pulse, his breath on his skin, as
faint as they both were. It was real life, unmarked by a number and still full
of all the same potential that used to exist when life was free. Zack had felt that
life slipping away from him as he had ran with Billy in his arms. Real life
being lost. A human life of love and pain and hurt and joy and all the other confusing
emotions that he had tried to avoid before the bombs had fallen. That afternoon
he made his checks, added vitamin A and Zinc to the water vats as indicated and
fulfilled ninety percent of the Epsilon order. Not bad. But his mind stayed
elsewhere. It was on Billy. It was on Billy's parents and how they had
abandoned him. It was on Samantha and the last phone call that they had shared
half an hour before the bombs fell, when she had told him that he had to face
the fact that she was carrying his child. His mind was stuck on how, at the
moment when he had two choices, he had chosen the wrong one, and how now he was
left with no choice or chance to put it right.

When he opened the door to the sick
bay after the triple bell there was a man on the couch getting a tattoo. He was
gritting his teeth and Zack remembered the pain when he had been marked on the
wrist. When he had been reduced to nothing more than a number.

“How is he doing?” Zack said before
he was even through the door. He held up the ration card and handed it to the
tattoo artist. Zack took the normality of the environment as a good sign. The
tattoo artist switched off his gun and set it down on the small wheelie table
at his side. He took the card and slipped it in his pocket.

There is a certain look on a person’s
face when they are about to deliver bad news. Some would describe it as pity,
others might say sorrow. There is a tightness of the lips as if they are being forced
to stay shut, the eyes and jaw too, locked so as not to allow your own emotion
to creep through. To stay strong. Sometimes a person's mouth gets over-active
and starts to produce too much saliva, as if they are trying to digest
something. In some ways of course, they are. Some people fiddle with their
hands, making circles with one thumb around the base of the other, or their
palms travel over their arms in search of a way to self-soothe. There are many
giveaways for this kind of anguish. But by contrast, and exactly like the
tattoo artist, sometimes those burdened with bad news simply don’t do or say anything.
Their silence is enough.

“What is it?” asked Zack.

“I’m really sorry.” The tattooed
first aider was standing up, pulling at the base of his T-shirt. “Really I am.”
For a few moments, no words passed between them. Zack knew that Billy hadn't
made it. The others in the room had no idea what was going on and they looked
left and right, first at Zack, then at the would-be doctor. Zack could feel his
mouth drying, his head beginning to ache as the tears formed, along with the
painful blockage in his throat. In the end the man with the face of a Maori
warrior, who ultimately had lost the battle, picked up the tattoo gun and set
to finishing the tattoo. The others who were waiting didn't know what had
happened and stared at Zack, motionless in the middle of the room, his eyes
swollen and red. They were confused, because nobody here got sad anymore. There
was nothing to lose in Delta that could ever hurt so much.

Zack nodded and turned to leave the
sick bay. Nobody uttered a word. Zack didn't see the tattoo artist kick his
chair out from underneath him and walk into the back room to compose himself. Zack
stepped into the nearest lift and pressed the button for thirtieth, but when
the lift arrived he didn’t get out. Instead he waited for the doors to close on
their own before pressing the button for level forty nine. He stepped out of
the lift, darker now than before. He circled the floor until he found what he
was looking for on the north side of the tower. A mass of broken buildings. Somewhere
in the rubble that smothered the foundations, were the remains of Samantha's
apartment. He thought of Samantha's hands on his skin and the smell of her
hair. The memory of his mistakes blurred with the dust outside as it whipped up
on the breeze from the remains of the broken life. The life he had been offered
by her and which he had told her was impossible. He thought of the last words
he ever said to her, and realised for the first time in his life that he
finally understood how she must have felt on that day when he told her that it
was unimaginable that they would go ahead with the pregnancy. That he wasn't ready
for fatherhood. That they would have to find a good doctor. His eyes settled on
a pile of dirt that might or might not have been the place in which she died,
and reminded himself that Delta Tower was a lesson, a punishment for a crime
that he had dared to commit.

His head hung low, propped up against
a feeble hand as he hunched over the bar in NAVIMEG. Ronson set a drink down as
he saw Zack walk in, and he spoke to Zack too. No doubt something chipper and
amusing in his usual style. But Zack hadn’t heard it and he paid the beaker of Moonshine
no attention. At one point Ronson offered him a small puckered tablet, but
again Zack did nothing. The sight and smell of the Mess Room on level forty
eight was still too fresh in his mind, and he didn't want to be any part of it.
Zack huddled over the bar, his nose picking up the alcohol tinged scent of the
drink, and he closed his sodden eyes to shut out the world.

Behind his eyelids, ideas and images
of his life played out. His university days and Samantha, her blond hair cut
into a bob, a blunt fringe that in his mind always made her seem kinky, and a
bit like a stripper. He thought about how she used to lie at his side without
any concern for her naked body, her weight balanced on a single elbow. She
would lean over him, trace her finger along the ridge of his nose whilst
whispering promises that she would love him forever into the curves of his ear.
Sometimes she would let her finger drop down over the ridge of his chin, trace
it over his chest, but Zack could never stand it and always ended up in fits of
giggles. He knew that Samantha was the woman who he could have loved even after
her beauty had faded. He would have loved her just for who she was. Sometimes
he still tried to imagine her, perhaps living in Zeta Tower, or Alpha Tower. Even
Omega. But he knew that she wasn't there. It was impossible. She would have
been in the building to the north of Delta when the bombs landed. The one that
he was no longer sure that he could find. He tried to imagine her last moments,
the speed of it, that she was right under a bomb when it exploded so that she
wouldn’t remember a thing. But the idea of her surviving for hours or days,
burnt and hungry before death finally clawed into her, was another possible
reality. He had seen those bodies. He had seen their charred, dust-covered
remains. He had looked for her face amongst the bodies on the one and only time
that he had ventured outside. He had seen shapes that he was sure were human
underneath the layers of dust. He had seen their bloated bodies in the water
filters. He was grateful that he had never found her.

Tonight, images of Billy crept in
there too. His tiny hand and skinny tattoo-free wrist. Zack hadn't been back to
his room to change his clothes, and he was still covered in Billy's smell. He had
considered going back to the sick bay to find out what they had done with the
body, maybe to go and see it. He had never spoken to a dead body before, but he
thought perhaps he needed to say sorry to Billy. He wanted to tell him that he
was sorry for the life that he had lived. That it was supposed to be better,
and that what had happened to him wasn’t how life was supposed to be. He
wondered if he had ever been told a fairytale. If he had ever listened to a
lullaby as he slept. If anybody had ever promised to protect him until they
died. He wondered if sitting there next to the corpse of a small boy and
reading him Jack and the Beanstalk, or a tale about Red Riding Hood might
somehow make up for some of the childhood he had lost. Perhaps it would make up
for some of the adult life that Zack had lost, too.

He didn’t know how long he had been
there when he felt the hand touch his upper arm. It startled him, and his eyes
shot open like a bullet from a gun. The hand was clean and abutted by a white
cuff. Zack turned his head to appreciate the form next to him and he was
surprised to see the same girl from the night before.

“I’m not in the mood,” he said. “Just
go back to wherever you came from.” The girl seemed unfazed, and rather than
moving away, she sat down on the oil barrel stool next to him. She placed an
elbow on the bar, rested her head onto it, her eyes not leaving his face. “What
do you want?” he asked as she picked up his untouched drink and knocked it
back.

“To say sorry.” She left the words
hanging between them, waiting for him to mould them as he saw fit.

“Sorry?” he said, raising his
eyebrows. “Why are you sorry? You know my type. You know what I am. You were
spot on.” Zack wasn’t in the mood for light chatter, especially not with a
woman who was so quick to judge him. He didn't need anything to remind him of
life in Delta right now. He just wanted to be alone with his memories and
regrets.

“That’s what I thought,” she continued,
letting out a huge breath, “but I was wrong. Ronson told me so.” Zack looked at
Ronson, who was trying to busy himself and appear as if he wasn’t paying
attention to what was happening, even though he was listening to every word
they were saying. He was still wearing the hat that Zack had given him, and
Zack knew he wasn’t going to ask for it back. He had even skewed it a little on
his head so it wasn’t straight, which meant that the scars were completely
covered. There was an ease about the way Ronson moved tonight. It reminded Zack
of freedom. But freedom was just an idea now, a word that doesn't really mean
anything, and neither of them lived in a world where it existed.

“What did he tell you?” Zack asked as
he looked back to the woman.

“He told me that I was wrong about
you. That you organised to get him a water supply. Fresh water, I mean.” Zack
looked down at the empty beaker, twirled it in circles on top of the bar in the
gutter-like crevices of the old container panel. “He told me that the pillow
was for your neighbour. Is that true?” Zack nodded. “Then, I’m sorry. I misjudged
you.” The woman held out her hand, a gesture of greeting, of repentance,
perhaps of friendship. Zack took it and they shook, the warmth of touch
something alien. “I’m Emily.”

“Zack.”

“I know,” she smiled. “Ronson told me
that too.” She held up her hand and nodded towards Ronson. “Another two,
please.”

“I’m surprised that you drink this
stuff,” Zack said as Ronson placed another beaker in front of them and topped
both up. Zack knocked back the drink, winced as it hit his throat. There was no
getting used to it.

“What else am I going to drink?” she
said as she tipped her beaker back almost as fast as Ronson could pour it. She
didn't seem bothered by it at all.

“I don’t know,” he said, taking
another sip. “Beer, wine, vodka. What I wouldn’t give for a glass of Merlot.”

“What’s Merlot?” He turned and looked
at her and put his beaker back down on the bar.

“Merlot?” he asked. “You don’t
remember Merlot? You don't remember the good stuff?”

“I was fourteen when, well, when,”
she stumbled, not having enough words to describe the nightmare which they had
survived, but never woken up from. “Well, you know. I was fourteen.”

“So now you must be what,” he said as
he started to estimate a potential age on his grubby fingers.

“Twenty four,” she said, before realising
his surprise at her certainty and adding, “I guess. Roughly.”

“Ten years? You think we've been in
here that long?” He pulled the beaker to his lips and finished the Moonshine. He
dragged his fingers through his mop of hair, brushed it away from his eyes. “So
you don’t know a good Merlot. Or a Cabernet.” He closed his eyes again, and for
a moment he and Samantha were sitting in a winter cabin, she holding up her
glass with her feet tucked underneath her on the sofa. He was pouring wine
whilst the snow fell outside. Eyes open. “You don’t know what you are missing. Especially
with a good cheese.”

She laughed, no idea what he was
talking about. He felt like his grandfather trying to explain how to tune a
transistor radio when Zack was a child. “And you? How old were you?”

“You mean when the world ended?” They
both smiled. “I was twenty seven.”

“What did you do for a job?”

“I worked here, just like everybody
else. I was an engineer. There used to be a huge road near here called a
motorway, which was.....” He stopped talking because she was laughing so much
that he couldn't continue. For a moment, transfixed by the sound of her
laughter, he forgot about the hell above ground. “What?” he asked when her
giggles finally subsided.

“I know what a motorway is. I was a
kid but I remember some things.”

“OK, well, I built it. I mean,” he
clarified, “that I designed it. Anywhere it had a bridge. That was my doing.”

“I think all the bridges fell down.”

“Ok,” he laughed. “I didn’t exactly
plan against a nuclear war. But they would have survived a lot of other things.
An earthquake, for example.”

“I wanted to be a doctor. I used to
get straight As in my exams. I thought it would be really cool to be a doctor.”

“It would have been,” Zack said,
thinking again about Billy and how his life could have,
should have,
been
so different. “But there is no such thing as a doctor anymore.”

“What? Of course there is.”

“You've obviously never been to the
sick bay,” he said, not waiting for an answer. “Spend most of their time doing
tattoos. They can’t do anything of use. They couldn't save your life or
anything like that.” He tried hard to blink away the earliest tears that were
pooling in his eyes, and he brought his hand up to wipe the edge of his nose. She
reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue to hand to him. He was about to
ask her how she had come to be in Delta Tower when the bombs fell, but as she
withdrew her hand from her pocket, she also pulled out a white headphone which
fell to her side. She followed his eyes down the length of the cable, stunned
as if he had seen a ghost. Something inexplicable that couldn't really be
there. He reached down and pulled the cable towards him, fingered the soft end
of the earphone as gently as he would a precious artefact freshly unearthed
from the ground.

“You have an iPod?” he asked,
ignoring the tissue that she was holding out for him. “Or an MP4 player?”

“No,” she said, pulling the cable from
him, stuffing it back into her pocket.

“You do. Let me see it. Please.” He
was sat upright on his barrel and pleading with her, his own hands now gripping
her arms. “I haven’t seen one in so long. I just want to see it. To remember
it.” She waited until he let go of her arms and then she reached back into her
pocket. She pulled out the iPod, the screen cracked and casing chipped, and
handed him the earphones.

“Put them in,” she said. He did as
she instructed and the sounds around him became muffled. She moved in close to
conceal him from the others in the bar, so much so that he could feel the
warmth of her body. He couldn't smell anything on her except for the faint
odour of something floral. Jasmine. There was no smell of the chemicals that
most people smelt of. He traced his fingers over the outside of the earphones,
the vibrations magnified and resonating loud in his ears.

“It works?” She nodded. He held out
his hand for the box. He took it, drawing his finger over the crack in the
screen. After staring at it for a while he pressed his finger onto the button
and saw the menu light up. The screen, as broken as it was, came to life.

“It works,” he began as a shout, but
finished as a whisper. “It really works,” he said again. A piano began to play,
and then a voice began to sing. It was the sweetest voice, girlish but profound
and with a depth so strong that as the strings worked into the beat he could
feel more tears welling in his eyes. The song was called
When You’re Gone
,
and he knew it. It was something Samantha used to listen to, and something that
he always complained about because it wasn't alternative or cool or anything
that he deemed worthy of his time. He thought about her sitting on his settee,
his cat on her lap because it was a fickle little bastard who always flirted
with her and ignored him when she was there. How that fact had once irritated
him. But that was all it was now. Just a memory. There was nothing left of that
memory except for this song which he hadn't even remembered until now. He
reached out, took Emily’s hand in his to know that he wasn’t dreaming. Emily
waited for the song to finish, for him to remove the headphones before she
reached over and switched off the iPod.

“Music,” he said, wiping his cheeks
with his fingertips, dirt smearing in stripes like camouflage. “I haven’t heard
it in years.” She reached across to pull the iPod in closer to her, but he draped
his fingers over hers like a cage. “Please, let me listen to it a bit more.” There
were only a couple of other men in NAVIMEG, and neither of them was interested
in what was happening at the bar. They were lost somewhere to a hallucinogenic,
Moonshine-constructed world.

“No, I have to leave,” she said,
standing up from her barrel and pulling her hand out from underneath his. “It
was nice to talk to you. I'll see you again.” Still he reached forward to take
the iPod back, to listen to something else. It could have been any music,
anything at all, and it would have sounded like the sweetest symphony he had
ever heard.

“Please, Emily, just a little bit
longer. Just one more song.” He reached for her wrist. He made contact and he
pulled her closer, the barrel behind her toppling over as she tried to hang
onto it. Ronson was soon at their side.

“No, I’m sorry I have to leave,”
Emily said, “I can’t be here any longer. I shouldn't be here.”