“Wait a minute. After they blew the internet. They? Do you know who they are?”
Street sat down on the edge of a broken wall, the sight of Alpha and Omega still in the distance. She pulled out a piece of dried meat that resembled jerky from a pocket in the leg of her trousers. She handed him a piece and he took it without question. It was full of salt, but it was something. He sat next to her on an adjacent section of the wall and she stretched herself out backwards dropping one leg over the other side as if she was on a horse, turning her back to Alpha and Omega Tower.
“I don't know what bullshit they fed you in there, Zack, but whatever it was, it wasn't the truth. The Conservators did this to us, Zack. I guess they told you that some foreign country decided to go nuclear on us, right?” Zack nodded. “They did it. They had a plan all along. They wanted something new. Better. You and me, we weren't part of it. Actually,” she pondered, “come to think of it, you were part of it. Part of the Delta community. The water plan.”
“You are telling me we bombed ourselves?” Zack couldn't help but smile, and he was hovering on the verge of laughing. The idea was absurd.
“Not we. They bombed us. We stopped being we a long time ago. But is it so hard to believe, Zack? Look out there. A tower with oxygen filters built on top of it. Another that had the ability to pump and filter water, then deliver it to all the other towers through a series of underground pipes. A power station. A dockyard for receiving imports. Epsilon in the west over there,” she said as she angled her thumb over her shoulder like a hitchhiker, “full of police that would go on to become a network of Guardians. Look around you, Zack. Everything was destroyed except for what they built or renovated in the sixteen years before the war. Those buildings were part of a grand plan by a disgruntled cabinet of old ministers, the same ones that now make up the Conservators. They sit in a position of power, doled out as a sign of gratitude for the cooperation during the coup. All orchestrated by the old Secretary of Defence at the time.”
“President Grayson,” he said.
“He is no president. Everything was designed to create an elite community, the Republic of New Omega, starting with that tower in front of us. Grayson wanted power, just like everybody who already has power. The Prime Minister was weak, and Grayson saw his chance. It didn't even matter when they were beaten in the elections before the war. By that time he had everybody eating promises from the palm of his hand. You were just another pawn in making his promises reality.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Information flows both ways. Duke for one. He was part of the army, but he had been imprisoned after he was accused of war crimes during the Iraq War. Apparently he killed a few natives, strung them up and took some pictures. Geneva didn't take too kindly to that. But he was easy to recruit. When you know that the prison you are held in is going to be destroyed, you'll pretty much agree to be part of anything else.” She paused, aware that Zack was still thinking about Duke's past. “Don't judge him too harshly. We all do stupid things when pushed. All it takes is a moment of stress to tip you over the edge, and there's nothing like an impending apocalypse to make you say and do things that you shouldn't.” He thought about the person he shot outside Gamma and knew what she said was true. He had shot that person on instinct, not because of hate or premeditation. He didn’t even know he would do it until he had done it. Did that absolve him of guilt? He hoped that was the case, but he was less than sure that it was.
“But why? They killed nearly everybody. What was the point?”
“Actually,” she corrected, “they didn't kill as many as they would have liked. People got trapped in the Tube. Pretty much anything north of the old Central Line is inaccessible. But the people who were south of that survived. Some died later on, of course. The things they suffered. Kids with swollen heads. Lumps in their necks.” She closed her eyes at the memory of it but quickly reopened them again when the images became clear. “Most people think that they blew the Tube network on purpose, based on the fact that they left the Jubilee Line intact because of the connection with Beta Tower. We use it sometimes to trade with the Guardians for the food from Beta. We got lucky and discovered a near-intact pharmaceuticals factory. We traded drugs for information and supplies, although there are much stricter controls recently and those in Beta are suffering because of it. Those at the top don't like the idea of us benefiting from something they created.”
“It's hard to believe that our own government created this,” Zack said, his gaze held by the reflection on the glass surface of Omega. The closest Red Eye disappeared from view and the last of the Guardians that had been circling it trailed after it, slipping into a nearby road. The scene before him became quiet, tranquil almost, as if he and Street were the last two humans on earth. At one point he thought that she felt it too, because it was only when Conner called out to another of the rebels that Street began speaking again. It was a precious moment of silence.
“Believe it. After the initial dusts settled we started seeing the Red Eyes on the road. They delivered Guardians to each tower, started getting the chaos under control. They delivered food, clothing, blankets. Enough to make you rely on them at the beginning. They were completely prepared.”
“I remember that. We were thankful for them. We thought they were our saviours.”
“Hmm,” she scoffed. “So did we. We watched them moving around outside Alpha. We assumed they would help us too. It was several weeks after the bombs fell, the dust had stopped falling, and remembering it now, it looked like the most beautiful winter I had ever seen. We were wrapped up in anything we could find because of the cold. We were wearing scarves made of plastic wrapping from the Tube station, wrapped around our heads trying not to breathe in the air, creeping along like ghosts trying not to kick it up. We got close to the doors before they saw us. But when they did, they didn't think twice before they opened fire.”
“They shot at you?”
“They killed my father. My mum grabbed me, ran. She held me to her chest so that I wouldn't breathe in the dust, because as soon as we ran it swamped us like fog on a mountain lake.”
“I'm so sorry.” He reached out, touched her hand. She didn't respond. It was just a story to her now, the emotion faded by time and hardship. He remembered what Sarah had told him in the Refreshments Cafe just before he left and realised for Street this was just another rite of passage. When everybody goes through the same thing it stops being something legitimately heart-breaking and just becomes the norm. Retelling his story of Samantha wouldn’t elicit any sympathy here. There was no time to waste mourning the dead. It made him appreciate the people who were still alive that he cared for and that he still had the potential, no matter how small, to save. He repeated their names in his head. Serena. Emily. Leonard. Ronson.
“Those that survived moved away for a while, south, towards the coast. We thought if we moved they would leave us alone. And anyway, people assumed that the air was cleaner, and there was a hope that we could cross the channel to France. Mum survived for three weeks before her hair fell out and her skin turned yellow. But the journey became difficult, and the roads were poor. People were weak so we were slow. That's when the strongest men came back here. At first it was to scavenge anything they could find, but it was around that time that the first people started venturing from the tunnels. They were starving so we shared what we had. Then when there were more of us, we felt stronger. We started feeling aggrieved. We wanted like we had never wanted in our lives.”
Just knowing that it was weeks before people started emerging from underground was enough to awaken his hopes that Samantha had been able to survive. He decided to add her to his mental list and he revised it in his head. Serena. Emily. Leonard. Ronson. Samantha. Then he revised it again. Samantha. Emily. Serena. Leonard. Ronson. He still wasn’t sure if the list was right, but he started to feel that such an indulgence, ranking people in order of importance, was a selfish luxury. Especially as Samantha was probably
dead and Emily was the one who had saved him. Even to hope for Samantha’s existence felt like a betrayal of Street and the death of her parents. She was so matter of fact, as if she had told him of a teddy bear that had been lost, a childhood indulgence that had been almost forgotten, and here he was trying to rank people in order of importance. He decided he was being pathetic and focused on Street.
“Some of the tunnels are like graveyards, and we don't go in there.” Yeah, that’s better. Tunnels like graveyards. That certainly suffocated any hope that had begun to surface. “But some were able to survive because of the vending machines. They moved along the line, finding what they could until they could escape.”
“From the Northern Line?” He allowed the suggestion of one last chance to creep out.
“I don't remember. Maybe. You had people there?”
“I don't know.” He put the piece of dry meat to his mouth and tore off a strip. He spoke whilst he worked the piece around his teeth with his tongue. “Maybe. It's just a last ditch hope rather than a certainty.”
“Hang onto it. Some people don't have any hope left, and they don't fare as well as those who do.” When she said that, it was Emily’s face that he saw. His hope was alive in Omega Tower. He glanced at the giant structure and made a silent promise, the same as he had made to Leonard. I will come back for you.
“So where are all these people now?” Street took out another piece of jerky and threw it in her mouth whole. It tasted game-like, rich and chewy. There was a time such meat would have been a delicacy.
“South. There are a few communities. The main one is Brighton, but there are a few who congregated in Hastings, and some ventured towards Dover. They were brave. It was a long trip, but we rely on them now. They bring things from across the water. They have an agreement in France. As long as they don't go ashore, they provide them with food and medicine. There is a lot of illness. Genetic diseases and cancers that we cannot hope to treat. The borders are tight. Nothing leaves this island. Nobody comes on to it. At least not anybody who will be allowed to leave. We have been quarantined. They are scared of contamination. So essentially, bar a little bit of help, we are on our own. That's why we have to take it back.”
“Why don't you just all go south, abandon this place? What is there to keep you here?”
“You. And the girl you brought with you. And everybody like you who is trapped inside. It wasn't for three years that the sun rose. But once it did, we assumed things would change. People weren't angry at first. Even the people who stayed upfront weren't here to act as soldiers. We couldn’t fight. We were here to wait. To know when the doors opened. We thought once things got easier they would help us. Even after they shot us at first, we still believed they would do the right thing when they could. We assumed people would be freed. We saw Omega looking alive. Lights on. On a really clear day we could see people out on the roof. We knew the risk of contamination must have passed. But Alpha Tower looked as if it was dead. We assumed that nobody was in there anymore. We thought maybe we could use it for shelter. We knew the tunnels to it were essentially clear, so we moved up as far as Elephant and Castle, and started approaching.”
“You were there?”
“No. I'm telling you what they told me. I was just a kid. They saw the Red Eyes. Guardians on the doors. We watched as they arrived in vans, connecting orange tunnelling to the doors like it was still a risk. Nothing came out. Nobody.”
“Maybe it is empty,” Zack said looking back to Alpha Tower and the stationary oxygen filters on the roof. Street shook her head.
“No. They were still watching Alpha when three men turned up. They were loud and excited. They started telling us how they had been trapped in Alpha Tower since the bombs fell, but had been taken to Omega. They looked so healthy and strong, it was as if warriors had come to protect us. But one of them fell. He broke his leg. We were too weak to help carry him, so we looked after him while the others went back. We thought that was it. That they would come for us.”
“I’ve heard this story before. They held elections,” Zack said flatly.
“What elections?”
“In Omega. When those men left they took a vote on whether to help you or not. Proposition Protect. They decided to protect what they had and not risk the outside world getting in and ruining it.”
Street shrugged her shoulders as if nothing could surprise her. “Of course they did.” She bit her bottom lip to prevent herself from saying how it really made her feel - like a useless throwback from an old society. Unwanted. She took a breath in and then slowly let it out before carrying on. “They came for him. Took the injured man. Shot a few of us in the process. By that time we knew that there were people in Alpha living under a lie. We knew they were trapped in there. We felt something. We felt different. We were the only people on the outside who knew. It wasn't right. We had to do something.”
Another Red Eye rolled into view and Zack heard a collection of rebels behind them manoeuvring into position to follow it. Zack was already up on his feet, but Street was calm. She shook her head and Zack sat back down. “They come and go. You’ll get used to it. You’ll know when they are coming for you because their guns will be pointing in your direction.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” He resumed his position and took another bite of jerky.
“The towers communicate via a series of encrypted exchanges. Let's take Gamma as an example.” She took the gun from the makeshift holster and held it by the barrel, using the handle to score a line in the soft ground. She drew two circles at either end. “This is Omega Tower,” she said, tapping the gun in one circle, “and through fibre optic cabling which they laid underground before the war, they connect their server to Gamma.” She drew the butt of the gun along the line, ending up in the second circle. “Gamma has two codes. A public code which both it and Omega knows, and a private code which it keeps to itself. Omega encrypts a video feed of the nuclear war with the public code. That way Gamma knows it came from Omega. They use their private code to decrypt it and the images of a past nuclear winter play out on all windows in Gamma Tower. This is all possible because of this cable,” she said as she drew the butt of her gun along the ground to emphasize the line. “But if you can interrupt this path of communication you can act as a middleman, eavesdropping on the information they exchange. One of the guys we have did something similar on a small scale before the war. His girlfriend was indulging in a bit of cybersex with another guy. So Jackson got himself between the two of them. He made her and the other guy think they were talking to each other, but really they were both talking to him. That’s how he caught them. Same with these bitches,” she said as she nodded at the two towers rising above them. “If we can jack in to this cable, Gamma talks to us thinking it is talking to Omega, and Omega talks to us, thinking its talking to Gamma.”
“So what, though? This isn't some horny girlfriend. How does that help you achieve anything but eavesdropping?”
“Because if you can simultaneously make Gamma think that security has been breached they will reset their codes and send the public one to Omega. We intercept that message containing the new public code and send a fake code in its place to Omega. When Omega uses that fake code to encrypt the next video feed we can intercept it. We can hijack their video feed messages, preventing them from ever getting to Gamma and therefore interrupt the Scenic Simulation Programming.”
“And everybody in Gamma.....” Zack began.
“.....sees that the skies are blue,” finished Street. She smiled as she looked up, felt the warmth on her face. “Jackson believes that if we send a series of messages to Omega - he called them ‘pings’ - then for a while Omega would have no idea that the server was down. That would give us time to get people out.”
She holstered the gun and scuffed her boot across her rough diagram in the ground, destroying the evidence.
“Did you try this before with other towers?”
“We heard from the Guardians that there
was something big planned for Gamma. Maybe it was nothing, but we had no way of knowing. We were scared for the people inside so we decided we had to act. We wanted to do something like what I have just told you about, and we planned to breach security by stealing the backup disks, which would have forced them to reset the codes. But there wasn’t time and we rushed. We took a chance and cut the cables.”
“That’s when all hell broke loose in Gamma.” Street nodded to agree. “How did you even know where to find the cables?”
“There are rooms in the tunnels. One of our guys found some sort of junction box. At first he just assumed it was old world stuff associated to the trains, and he was looking at it out of curiosity. There's time to kill when you are on your own down there in the dark,” she said, without realising that perhaps Zack could never imagine having time to kill anymore. All time was a gift. “But when he lifted up a cover in the junction box he saw it was marked with the emblem of their so-called Republic. The Omega sign. If it was marked with their emblem we knew it had to be a junction point in their cabling. A switch from one floor to another from a deeper level. We cut those cables and the Scenic Simulation was interrupted. It was a good theory, but it turned into chaos. I heard that you turned up not long after that. We weren't prepared, and neither were they. We lost a lot of people on that day. Some of them, they burnt alive.” This fact seemed to cause her the most problems. Her jaw became fixed, locked with anger. As she turned to look at Zack - who had averted his gaze when he realised that she knew he was present when Gamma burned - there was pure hatred oozing from her face. But not for him. It was deep-rooted hatred, born out of poverty, the death of her parents, the loss of Conner’s wife somewhere in Delta. There was only one word that could sum up the source of her feelings. Omega. Sensing that she was waiting for him to look up, Zack steeled himself and looked directly at her prepared to face her judgement. But he found nothing of the sort. Instead she looked at him with pride and that’s when he realised that she believed they were on the same side.
The Dawn: Omnibus edition (box set books 1-5) Page 46
