Wasteland

by Terry Tyler

  And then it's over, and they move off. I let out my breath; I hadn't even realised I was holding it.

  Ace peers out, ahead. "They're going left. We go right."

  Slowly, carefully, I clamber down after him, never before so pleased to feel firm earth beneath my feet.

  "It's not far now." Ace takes my hand as we creep through the trees. "Fast as you can; if they heard the shots out by the boats, they could panic and set off without us."

  And we'll be stranded. No vehicle, nothing.

  Crazy thoughts flit through my head as we run out onto a muddy track down the side of a field, then on down a narrow country road. The running machine at Mojo with the 'Country Lanes' surround. I should design one called 'Wasteland Escape'. That'd get the heart rate up, wouldn't it?

  I see buildings; Ace slows down to wait for me. "Waxingham," he says, out of breath.

  I didn't recognise it in the dark.

  "We've done it," I gasp.

  "They could still be heading this way."

  I put my hand on his shoulder, panting, waiting for my heart to slow down. "So what happened when you got to Waxingham?" Because I've been having horrible visions of Lilyn still sitting by the fire, smiling her pretty smile and insisting that there's nothing to worry about.

  "They're getting themselves down to the boats. Beth's been on the radio with her mate―squads all over the place. Lilyn won't let them go without us―they're hanging on as long as they can."

  "Right. Best we get there, then."

  We jog the last quarter mile or so, out to the water's edge past Lilyn's café, to find hordes of people milling about. There's room for eighty-ish, Ace reckoned, on four boats, but I'm sure there are more here than that.

  "Rae!" I hear Lilyn, see her waving to me. "Oh, thank God you're here! Come on―we're going on Jude's boat, and Dan said we can get five more on―Shanna's going to take Dan's, more turned up than we expected 'cause Beth and Grant have been on the radio, warning people, but some of our friends say they're staying―do you really think we absolutely have to go?"

  Pictures flash into my mind. Colt, hands up. Sloane, falling.

  "Yes, we do. Really."

  "Well, I'm not leaving you behind!"

  She grabs my arm, dragging me towards the jetty, where waves lap gently against the sides of the boats.

  Dan, Yara and Lock marshal the crowd; two smaller craft can't possibly take more than ten or twelve bodies apiece. I don't know anything at all about boats, but they look way too fragile to make it across the North Sea. They're small cabin cruisers, the sort you might use for a lazy afternoon river jaunt; one strong wave, and they'll capsize, surely.

  Which is better: Colt's fate, or taking a chance out at sea?

  I'm not a strong swimmer.

  Lilyn urges Ace and me over to Jude's powerboat, already standing room only, and I look around. Behind me is a woman I recognise from Fennington, with two young children, and another woman with her arm linked through that of an old man. They're dithering, like they don't know what to do.

  The woman from Fennington looks terrified, an arm round each of her children. A little girl, and a younger boy. The girl is crying.

  Mum, Lilyn and John.

  Gently, I prise my sister's fingers away from my arm. "Take them. The woman with kids, and that one there, with the old man."

  Her eyes are big, watery, frightened. "No, you've got to come with me―I made Jude promise he'd make sure there's room for you."

  Jude calls to us; he's ready to leave.

  Ace says, "No, Rae's right―we'll take one of the others." He guides the woman and the old chap down the jetty, and I rush over to the mother with her children. "Hey―you can go in that boat. Go on; take your kids and get in, now!"

  She stares at me, tatty fair hair whipping across her face in the night breeze. "Really? I didn't want to go, but―"

  Her son is not so slow on the uptake. "Come on, Mum. She says we can go." He grabs his mother's hand and drags her over to the boat. He doesn't even look at me.

  John.

  I put my arm around Lilyn and kiss her on the cheek, just as Jude gives a last shout to her, to hurry the fuck up―and then Dan is untying the rope, the engine starts up, and my last view of my sister is her arm silhouetted against the night sky, waving to me.

  "Nineteen in this one!" Shanna shouts out, standing by Dan's boat.

  "Go," says Ace. "Take some of the women; I'll go in one of the others."

  "No!" I don't want to say that I won't leave without him. It sounds too dramatic.

  Fuck it. I'm just going to say it. "I won't go without you. I won't, so don't tell me to."

  His face is as deadpan as ever, but his eyes―he puts his arms around me and holds me close. "I want you to get there. I'll be okay."

  I pull away from him. "No. Not without you."

  He touches my chin, lifting it up, just slightly, with his finger. "Why not?"

  I stare into his eyes, and my mouth wants to say because I'm falling in love with you, which I haven't even realised until that moment, but this is hardly the time, and anyway it's stupid, we hardly know each other, really, and―

  "They're coming!"

  Lock's screech shatters the moment; Ace whips round, away from me, all gooey shit forgotten, and I see them, too.

  Headlights, farther inland, approaching the coast road.

  "Everyone!" Lock shouts. "Never mind your stuff―we leave now!"

  All around me people drop bags where they are, and run―Yara makes a beeline for Dan's boat with Shanna at the helm, by far the larger and sturdier of the three, pushing out of the way a man who is trying to coax a terrified little girl to climb aboard.

  "Hey!" shouts King. "Yara, let the kid on!"

  She pretends not to hear him, and turns her head away, shouting to Shanna that they're all aboard, and they sail off into the darkness.

  "This one," calls Lock, and beckons to Ace and me.

  "You, too!" I shout to the man with the little girl; he drags her by the hand to the smaller boats. Ace all but pushes me in, I drag him after me, and a moment later I hear the engine starting up, as the headlights of the army convoy converge on the place where we stood, only minutes ago.

  "Let me see." I take Ace's binoculars and look, for only moments before we sail too far out. Some people are left on land. About twenty, I think. The fourth boat never got to leave―the man at the helm is forced out at gunpoint. One minute more, and most of them would have got away.

  Shots ring out, towards us, and Ace shouts, "Down!", but they don't hit their targets. We hear more, far in the distance, but I can no longer see land at all.

  I turn around; I'm with Ace, King, Q, the man with the little girl (I assume his daughter) and four others I've never seen before; Lock is at the controls.

  "Do you think they'll come after us?"

  "Doubt it," says Ace. "We're not worth the trouble. They wanted the wastelanders gone; we're gone."

  The inky black night feels so vast around us, this tiny vessel all that is saving us from the murky depths below.

  Ace puts his arm around me. "We'll get there. I'd know if I was about to die, and it's not happening tonight."

  The sea is fairly calm; I hope he's right. The cold air freezes my face, and it's going to get a lot colder before we get to where we're going. Nine of us huddle together, while King moves up to speak to Lock. I can't hear what they're saying, but next minute Lock turns back to us.

  "It's all good. Sea's calm, I know where we're heading, and we can radio as soon as we're in range. Nothing to worry about!"

  I hope not.

  My mind flits back to that first night, when Colt and I met Xav, Mick, Dior and Sloane. Three captured, one dead, and Xav is out there somewhere, too―though I gather from the others that he has nine lives. He'll need them.

  I wonder if I'll ever see England again. I don't suppose I will. I don't think I care. It's a place where individuals don't matter. Where children are taken from fam
ilies to fulfil an experiment. Where you are spied upon and reported if you put a foot wrong―shiny megacities hiding the precarious tightrope on which you balance, only a few ill-chosen words or reckless cocktail binges away from the quagmire of Hope Villages. And once you fall, there is no climbing back out.

  Where, if you don't bow down to the system and keep your thoughts to yourself, you're not allowed to live.

  The wastelands of East Anglia have been cleared. Ezra Bettencourt is happy; shortly, he can report the success of the previous day's missions to Freya Wilson. Three or four more days, and Operation Galton, Phase 10, will be complete.

  A few slipped through the net, but she doesn't have to know about that. In Norfolk, where the largest batch escaped by boat, his people on the ground wanted to send up a bird and stop them in their tracks, permanently, but Ezra made the decision to let them go. Such an exercise would show up on the logs, and he doesn't want either Freya or Uncle Caleb to think that the clean sweep was anything other than one hundred per cent successful. He has his political prospects to consider; his life, once the file on Phase 10 has been closed.

  In any case, he's seen the stream from one of his men's iSync; the last two craft to set off looked as if they might come a cropper crossing a duck pond.

  With luck, the sea will dig their sorry graves.

  Chapter 37

  Two Days Later

  Refugee Centre, Scheveningen

  This centre is run by a charity. Margot, who showed us to our sleeping area, described the megacities/Hope Villages system as 'a tyranny that has led us to a dark age of a type previously unknown to mankind, fooled as we were into thinking that those in power had our best interests at heart'.

  "But don't quote me," she said, mildly.

  I'm just cold.

  We sit on mattresses on the floor in large, scarcely heated rooms, with thin grey blankets over our shoulders, and dine on soup and bread. But we don't have guns in our faces. The people in charge try to help. They tell us we'll be rehoused at some point in the not too distant future; we may stay here or be offered places in Scandinavia or Belgium. These countries, too, share a more humane attitude towards those who choose to live outside the system, with wastelanders granted permits to form large off-grids on abandoned land; these offer a sense of purpose and community, we are told.

  Ace says it all sounds a bit too organised for him, and that wasteland life suited him because he could live according to his own rules.

  "I don't think it's possible to do that now," King says. "The world's changing again. Seems to me like you have to be a part of some sort of system, somewhere, or you starve, or get yourself killed. But we're the lucky ones; it could be so much worse."

  Ace doesn't answer; he just stares out of the window. I know it's going to be hard for him, and others who chose the wasteland as a way of life, a long time ago.

  I don't care where we go, as long as I'm with him and Lilyn.

  It's only now that I'm finally taking a breath, since the day I left MC12. I can talk to my sister, get to know the people I met only briefly, back in Fennington.

  Not all of them, though.

  Dan's boat, the one taken out by Shanna, never arrived. King got Margot and her helpers to enquire up and down the coast, but there is no trace of them.

  "I imagine they perished at sea," Margot said, with a flat sort of shrug. We don't expect her to give more than a general shit; caring for many refugees is a time-consuming business.

  Perished at sea.

  Dan and Lilyn go white with shock when they hear this.

  "Shanna told me to go on the big boat because of the baby," Lilyn says, in tears over the loss of her friend. "She wanted to make sure I'd be safe."

  Her other friend, Beth, was one of those left at the water's edge when the trucks pulled up. She hung back, letting others board first.

  I think of Yara, so quick to take the place of the man and his daughter.

  They are called Zack and Jenny; they have become our friends. Zack wept when he realised how close they'd come to getting onto that boat.

  When we realised Yara was gone, a few people made remarks to the effect that she wouldn't be missed, but there were at least eighteen others. Thea, who sat at the desk next to Ace on the day I met him. Chris and Sal, who rode the quad on which Colt and Sloane tried to escape.

  King says there's still a chance that they'll turn up somewhere, but I don't think he's even convincing himself.

  I'm sitting on a mattress with my back to a wall with my blanket round me; next to me are Dan and Lilyn. He has his arm around her as she leans on his shoulder; she has her hand on her stomach. We're told that her baby will be delivered in a charity facility near The Hague.

  I have nothing. Only the clothes I stand up in, and a few bits and bobs that were in my backpack; underwear, basic toiletries. I don't care. I remember Nash and Lori's love of gadgets and all that was new, shiny, and 'must-have'. I doubt grey blankets worn as shawls will feature on the trending lists this month. Hobo rather than Boho Chic.

  I wonder if Nash thinks of me. If he cares that I'm missing, if a proper search ever took place. I'm guessing not; they knew where all the settlements were when it came to rounding us up, after all, but I was a tiny cog in a machine so massive that it didn't matter when I fell out and rolled onto the floor.

  I fear so much for Colt. He's bright and quick-witted―surely he'll find a way to escape from wherever he is? Escape from what, to what and where, though? I like to think of him bounding over fields and ending up at Sunrise off-grid. That place would suit him down to the ground.

  Fantasies rarely come true, though.

  I think about Ginevra. I don't imagine she even knows what happened out there. I picture her in that little room behind the Artsi gallery, wondering why she can't get in touch with anyone. Wondering why the wasteland has gone silent.

  Day Three

  A pair of sexy, jeans-encased legs appears in front of me; I look up and smile. It's Ace, carrying a cardboard tray with eight cups of coffee, which he distributes amongst us. Me, Lilyn, Dan, King, Q, Lock, Zack, and a carton of fruit juice for Jenny. The coffee is greeted with much cheer, and jolts us out of our torpor. King reaches into his pocket and pulls out a half-pack of biscuits that, he says, he's been keeping for a special occasion. We laugh, and swoop on the slightly stale chocolate chip cookies.

  I feel oddly happy. It's not just Ace and Lilyn; I am a part of these people, part of their world, and what we have been through bonds us. It means so much more than a blood tie; John and I share parents and a sister, but I meant little to him, and there was scant connection between us. I felt more in tune with Dylan, and I say a silent prayer to no one in particular that he's safe at Lake Lodge. I try to convince myself of this because I feel bad for not waiting to see if he was okay, but if we'd hung on for him, we would not have got all these people to safety.

  Whatever choice you make can never be absolutely the right one. More than one person has asked me if I regret not returning to MC12 when I had the chance. I don't. Going back might have guaranteed me a longer, ostensibly safer life, but at what price?

  Like Lori and Nash and everyone else back there, I would almost have a panic attack if I momentarily mislaid my com. Yes, and I probably said, 'My whole life is in there', when it happened. But it's not; it's right here. All I miss from my com is those iSync streams of good times past, but I'm only twenty-four; I intend to have many more.

  Ace sits down beside me, laughing at something Q is saying. As he does so, he takes my hand and kisses it, and that lovely warmth of belonging increases tenfold; it's like he's making a statement, to the others. We're together. King gives me a little wink and a smile.

  Not that we'll get to take our relationship further than a kiss, right now.

  That's the trouble with these refugee centres. No privacy.

  I still know so little about him. He says he's not good at talking about himself but he's working on it. I can deal with that; we do
n't live in the great Heart share-athon of the megacity.

  He turns to look at me, and says, "Hey."

  I match his smile and say, "Hey," back.

  That's enough, for now.

  Chapter 38

  A Few Weeks Later

  This is hell.

  Rocky lies on his bed in the bunkhouse, uncertain whether to take off his jacket to use as a pillow on which to rest his aching head, or leave it where it lies, on top of the thin blanket, to provide a little more warmth.

  Bed.

  It's not a bed. It's a hard surface with a meagre apology for a mattress thrown across the top, and no pillow.

  This is Coal Field 4, Kansk-Achinsk, in the Central Siberian Basin.

  Rocky Storm, once known as John Farrer, has never been so cold, exhausted, hungry or miserable in his entire life. He and the other men work only for the roof over their heads and their food. They work to exist, exist to work.

  So much for the warm location, the building site camaraderie, the lazy days off spending the wages he'd expected to enjoy. Only when he asked one of the guards who stand over them, all day long, when they would get paid, did the truth dawn on him. The man laughed and said, in broken English, something like 'You food, bed!'. Later, a kinder, English-speaking guard explained. The only ones earning out of this arrangement are some fat cats back in UK Megacity 5, who sold them.

  The guard said, "The slave trade never ended."

  The only warmth in Rocky's life comes from his share of the moonshine they brew in the outhouse attached to their huts, and the odd smile of sympathy from the heavily clothed women who dish out their meals. He had meagre sex with one of them behind the bunkhouse, but it was such a miserable experience that it depressed more than cheered him.

  Rocky remembers the glee with which he swaggered after his number was called, back in that holding camp. He remembers Hope Village. Warm, with soft bunks. Better food. Payment for work done. Women. Hours of freedom, to enjoy himself.