Wasteland

by Terry Tyler

  Dylan prays, every day, that Rocky will get bored with Emma and move on. The thought of her emotional suffering breaks his heart, but he will be there to comfort her, to soothe the pain. He does not think her obsession for Rocky is real love; it is more like an addiction. She's admitted, once or twice, that Rocky is bad for her, but in the next breath she'll insist that he loves her, that she's the only person who understands him, that when they're alone together she sees a soft side that he reserves just for her.

  She's like a junkie who knows the gear is killing her, but cannot resist the sweet joy of each hit. Whose body cries out in anguish when she is without. Dylan remembers his own addiction to cirrus, only too well.

  When they sit around the table with Lennox, Dylan notices how forced her laughter becomes. He sees the rigid set of her shoulders, the wariness in her eyes when the company becomes overly rowdy. Then Rocky will remember that she's there, sling a casual arm around her shoulder, honour her with a kiss, whisper sweet words in her ear, and she lights up. She needs her fix, every few hours.

  In an odd way he even understands it, because he feels a sense of reluctant pride when the magnetic, popular Rocky singles him out to share a joke. Aware of himself as a bland face in the crowd though he is, his ego seems to have a will of its own where Rocky is concerned.

  Equally worrying is that his status as Emma's best friend means that he is accepted by Lennox's gang, too.

  He doesn't want to be accepted by them.

  He doesn't want to be in their orbit at all; he'd much rather be in the library with Bob and the nice people. But he can't leave Emma alone with them.

  Thrown to the wolves.

  Rocky has the best of both worlds; as he is not officially a member of the gang, he has not had to pledge allegiance to Lennox. He sits happily on the periphery, which earns him a certain amount of respect, but the rest of the Hope Villagers are not scared of him.

  They say, oh yes, but Rocky's not one of them. He just hangs with them, to stay in their good books. Knows which side his bread is buttered. Pretty canny, really.

  But Dylan has read enough books about gangsters to know that they can turn on you in the blink of an eye if you make one wrong move. And Rocky is too sure of himself. Too confident about his position in the microcosm of society that is Hope Village 9.

  Dylan spends every day in a state of extreme anxiety. He thinks Emma does, too; she has lost weight, and often seems quite manic. Jumpy. Every time a door opens, she looks up to see if it's Rocky.

  He worries for her, he worries for himself.

  If he could have one wish, it would be to be spirited out of Hope Village 9 forever.

  Chapter 19

  Rae

  Sisterhood

  The bleak landscape of forgotten England whizzes past. Anxious though I am to get to Waxingham, I wish we could slow down so I could take it all in. Wish I had my com so I could iSync.

  Waste: unwanted, unused, excess, ruins. Wasteland: the badlands, the wilds.

  I looked up both words on LexiCom before we left. I like the 'the badlands'. Kind of exciting. Ace fits it, with his messy hair, leather jacket and faded shirt, jumper and jeans. Boots that look as though he hijacked them from the twentieth century.

  In the distance I see those fences again; a Hope Village, and what must be the perimeter of a farming area. No megacities out here.

  We're speeding along an old road, the only vehicle on this deserted stretch, when up ahead I see a viaduct: a ziprail track. Ace slows down, and I hear the familiar rushing sound. We stop, and for a moment we sit in silence and watch the zip whizz by, up high.

  The gleaming silver tube of the present and future, sailing over the forgotten world of the past.

  I wonder where it's going. Taking megacity folk out to Wells for a long weekend, perhaps. Or from one megacity to another. The passengers won't see the two wastelanders sitting here, watching them. I wonder if any of them long to break the windows and see the real outside, like I used to.

  Ace gets off and stretches, so I do the same; I remove my hat and shake out my hair, studying my surroundings. The day is grey and damp, the grass verges untended, overgrown.

  "Road's fucked, ahead," he says, getting out a bottle of water and glugging from it. "Gotta take a detour." Our eyes meet, but he doesn't smile.

  "You know the route?"

  "Yeah. But I got a map, in case." From inside his leather he pulls out a clear plastic bag, and extracts a large, folded sheet of paper, which he opens and lays out on the bike seat. "It's not an official map; it's what Link's put together over the years."

  I'm fascinated. I see huge grey blobs for megacities, large yellow areas for farmland, pink dots for off-grids, blue for Hope Villages and red for permitted leisure locations. The map also has lines connecting the sites; the ziprail and road networks. Every part not covered by these colours is green: the wasteland.

  "They'll have their maps, too, showing all our settlements," Ace says. "They'll need to know where we are, when they decide to round us all up and stick us in Hope Villages."

  "D'you think that's going to happen?"

  He shrugs. "Yeah. One of these days." He wipes his mouth with his hand, and offers me the water bottle.

  "So, what―are there places to go to avoid this?"

  He sniffs, and looks off into the distance. "Could be. No one else wants to make plans, though, 'cause they don't think it's going to happen."

  "What makes you think it will, then?"

  "'Cause I ain't stupid."

  Fuck. What if he's right? Should I go back to Plan A, and get myself back to the megacity as soon as I've seen Lilyn and found John? Become Ginevra Mark II? I couldn't live in a Hope Village. No way. But the thought of being back in MC12 depresses the hell out of me. It'd be like having to pretend to be someone I'm not, for the rest of my life.

  I say all this to Ace, because I have no one else to say it to.

  He nods. "Yeah. You were right not to go work for Link on the inside, too. Like Yara wanted."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "'Cause it takes a special type of person."

  I laugh. "You think I'm too much of a wimp?"

  He shoves the empty water bottle back into the saddlebag. "Yeah, you and most of us. Be like being in the French Resistance; you'd be on a knife edge, every day."

  "What's the French Resistance?"

  He barks out a short, sharp laugh. "World War Two. Don't you read?"

  I feel myself grow hot. I do, of course I do, but mostly novels. "Yes, but not history."

  "Y'should. Teaches you about the present."

  I ask him what he means, but he doesn't answer; he slings a leg over the seat ready to go. Almost before I've got back on, he starts the bike up, and we carry on down the road.

  Waxingham is just another forgotten little village like others we've passed through. Land not needed for megacity, Hope or farmland, so left to fall into ruin because it wasn't worth the time, manpower or expense to demolish. I see no one, but smoke rises from a couple of chimneys; other wastelanders apart from Lilyn must have made their homes here.

  The smell of the sea makes me feel happy.

  Ace stops outside the back of a shabby, square grey building, and dismounts.

  "This is it."

  We're in what was once a car park, facing doors that have a permanently locked look, and a faded sign saying Travellers' Rest Café. At either side of the name are childlike pictures: waves, an ice cream cornet, a bucket and spade, a fish. I imagine someone standing up there on a ladder, years before, painting them. Feeling excited about opening their café.

  Ace beckons me and I follow him round the building to the front, where I see a motorbike and a couple of quad bikes, more curious machines that look as if they've been made rather than purchased, like Xav's van.

  My heart tightens in my chest; I breathe in and out, slowly. Four in, four out.

  We turn the corner, and there she is.

  Lilyn.

&n
bsp; My sister.

  She is sitting on a chair, just outside the front door, reading a book.

  For a moment, I just stare. She looks the same as in the picture, though a little older. Waist-length, wild, golden-brown hair, a padded jacket―brownish, faded. A long dress in a dark floral print. Scruffy boots.

  Ace hisses in my ear, "Go on, then."

  I step forward. "Hello―are you Lilyn? Lilyn Farrer?"

  Our eyes meet; hers widen. She's wary, if not downright scared.

  "Who wants to know?"

  I take another step. "I do―"

  She stands up, puts the book down and goes to stand behind the chair, as if it will protect her. "Who are you?" She looks from me to Ace; when her eyes settle on him, she relaxes. Of course. She recognises a fellow wastelander. I, on the other hand, may not be a megacity girl in my head, but I still have my MC12 salon hair with its choppy layers and hint of indigo, my neat, lasered eyebrows and manicured nails.

  This is the moment, then. The one that bears no resemblance to my fantasies. "Lilyn―I'm your sister."

  She stares, as if she can't comprehend what I've just said. "What?"

  "My name is Rae Farrer. My parents were Martine and Leo. Mum left me behind in MC12 after Dad died and you were sent away to a Hope Village."

  Ace steps forward. "She is. It's not a trick."

  Her mouth drops open. "You're-you're Baby Rae?"

  "I am," say I. "Honestly. I came out here to look for you―I found a way to get to the wasteland, and gave my guide the slip, because I had to find you."

  She lets go of the chair back to walk over to me―and as she does so, I see that I am to become an aunt.

  I have a family.

  Her lower lip quivers and, slowly, she holds her arms out to me.

  I bring my hand up to my mouth in an effort to stop it quivering, too, but it won't, so I stop trying. I feel Ace giving me a gentle push on the back―I go to my sister, and I let the tears fall.

  I can't stop staring at her. She has the same blood as me, we have the same parents; she knew them―I can't get my head around it. It's like magic, like being given a wonderful present when you're a kid. I remember my seventh birthday when I wanted this doll, and hoped and hoped I'd get it for my birthday, for months. My primary carer presented me with it on the day, and I was in heaven, the happiest I'd ever been. I can't recall why I wanted her so much, but I remember that feeling. I couldn't put her down, I took her everywhere. Used to wake up in the middle of the night and remember I'd got her, take her out and gaze at her. And this feels the same.

  I don't know if it's the same for Lilyn; I imagine not, because she's always been part of a family. She's having a baby and also has this guy Dan, who I can tell she adores by the way she talks about him, but I know she's pleased. She seems guarded, though; her eyes dart back and forth as she answers my garbled questions. When she goes out to the kitchen to make us tea, Ace says she's bound to be wary.

  "Getting dragged off to a Hope Village is every wastelander's worst fear. You might be working for them, for all she knows."

  The tea is horrible, weak and weird tasting, but I don't care. She gives us cheese sandwiches, which are gorgeous. The bread has a yeasty taste, and the cheese is crumbly and strong, nothing like the bland, packaged stuff we get in MC12.

  "We get it from an off-grid," she says. "Dan and the others, they take them fish, and we get bread, butter and cheese."

  "An off-grid? Is it the independent one?" She nods, and I glance at Ace. "Have you looked for John there?"

  She looks away, like she did when I mentioned him earlier. "Yeah, Dan asked. I don't even know if I'd recognise him; he was only nine when he went. He'll be in a Hope Village, I should think."

  "He could be, but I've tried the Locate database for Hopes―the info centre back in Fennington doesn't have a record of him, and said I should try the indie off-grids."

  She gazes out of the window. "Yeah, well, he's not there."

  "That's one to tick of the list, then," says Ace, so then of course I must tell her about the rest of our planned mission. She seems only vaguely interested; more so when I ask about her life here, with Dan. Then, she comes alive.

  It's only after an hour or so that I realise she's answering my questions but hasn't asked me anything; her eyes become glazed when I tell her about growing up in the megacity, like when mine do when Nash talks to me about techy stuff.

  I get it. MC12 killed her father, and separated her from her family. Perhaps she just wants to put it all behind her. It's a bit weird that she hasn't mentioned our parents, though. I'm reluctant to plunge in in case it's hard for her, but she falls silent for a moment and I've just decided that I have to say something before the elephant materialises in the corner of the room, when she says, "You know Mum's dead?"

  I love that. Not 'my mum'; just 'Mum'. Our mum.

  I nod. "Will you tell me about her? About both of them?" and I'm surprised when she shrugs and says, "Sure," like it's of little consequence after all.

  I thought having a real parent must be such an incredible, wonderful thing that you'd cry forever if you lost them; perhaps you take them for granted when you've always had them. I know Nash does.

  "I can hardly remember Dad," she says. "I mean, I can still see him in my head, and I feel sad when I think about him, and what it was like when we were all together." Here she smiles at me. "I can even remember our old house, before we went to MC12, but it's just blink-and-you-miss-it pictures in my head. But Mum―"

  She turns her head, back to the window.

  "Is it really hard to talk about her?"

  She frowns, shakes her head. "No, it's not that. Just that―well, my later memories of her aren't all that great. I mean, I loved her, course I did, but she never got over Dad dying and she blamed herself for leaving you, then losing John sent her over the edge―she drank too much and was whacked out of her head on all sorts half the time. I just try to remember how she took care of us when we first escaped. We were in this van going to Hope Village, then one of the guards got out to take a piss and she told us to run―looking back on it, I reckon she killed the other one. 'Cause she told me we must never give any clue about our real identities to anyone who wasn't a wastelander, or she'd be found and put in prison. So she was scared, too, as well as unhappy. Not surprising she was a drunk and a druggie, really."

  The flat way in which she talks about her makes me sad. She says she loved her, but I saw more softness in her eyes when she spoke about some people called Norah and Oscar who took care of her after Mum died.

  "She didn't kill him. The guard. He recovered."

  "Yeah? That's good, then." She doesn't sound bothered.

  I ask, "Have you looked anywhere else for John?"

  She shrugs. "Nowhere to look. People went out searching when he first went missing, but―well, they knew it was pointless. Back then, patrols picked up stray kids all the time." She looks at Ace; he nods. This is a world unknown to me. "I knew this little kid who got picked up by them but escaped; they told her they were taking her to the megacity."

  "To put her in NPU, then," says Ace.

  I say, "She had a lucky escape," but Lilyn looks at me as if I don't know shit about shit.

  "You reckon? How so? I mean, look at you. You look great, you're healthy, you've had a good education, you've got a job and a nice flat. It's not exactly child abuse, is it?"

  "No, but―well, yes, in a way―"

  "Oh, come on. I can remember, when we lived in MC12―it was always warm in our flat, and there was hot water whenever you wanted it, enough to eat, TV, medicine―those things matter." She pats her stomach. "I get to visit a doctor in Fakenham once a month, where I have to stick out my stomach so people notice and let me jump the queue. When I give birth it'll be a makeshift hospital, and if there are complications all they can do is ring one of the few doctors who give up their time for us, and hope they can get to me in time. Dan's mate Jude has got a proper powerboat, and a conta
ct over in the Netherlands―they don't treat wastelanders like rats over there―he's going to get us stocked up with stuff, but if we hadn't got that, it'd be a pretty fucking scary state to be in."

  Me and my mouth. "I'm sorry. I had no idea."

  "It's why megacity people put up with the bad shit," Ace says. His voice sounds flat. Gruff. "Not a lot of people can hack living like we do."

  "That's right," says Lilyn. "And yeah, I know all about the total surveillance, 'cause I remember Dad going on about it, even though I didn't understand at the time, but if you're ill or old, I reckon it would be a small price to pay. That's all."

  She gets up and disappears back into what I assume is the kitchen.

  "Ouch. Did I fuck that up?"

  "Nah." Ace bites his thumbnail. "She's just worried about her little 'un, that's all." He studies the nail, tearing a piece off. "Good to hear about that boat, though. I wonder if I could go and have a look at it. Worth bearing in mind."

  "For supplies?"

  "No. In case we ever need an out."

  Lilyn reappears, carrying a plate of biscuits.

  "Here," she says, plonking it down on the table. "Sorry 'bout that. I just get pissed off, sometimes. A year or so back we met these two prats who'd escaped from a megacity. Thought they were going to be like fucking warriors in the apocalypse, or something. Few weeks in, all they did was whinge about being hungry and cold. They went and begged for a bed in a Hope Village in the end. Couldn't hack it." She laughs, short and harsh. "Stupid bastards. Gave up their megacity flat, their jobs, everything." She fixes her eyes onto mine. "So what are your plans, Baby Rae? You going back, are you?"

  "I-I don't intend to, but the option's there―"

  "Take it."

  "I don't know that I can."

  "Well, think about it." She stares down at the plate of biscuits, then puts her hand to her forehead. "Sorry. I am. I just don't want you thinking it's some sort of fucking adventure playground out here. I never had the choice."

  A noise, like a bird call, makes her look up, and her face softens into the beautiful smile I saw before.