“But when it is time to crack Alpha, we won’t make any more mistake.”
Chapter Forty Nine
There seemed to be a lot of downtime in the safe zone, which people tended to spend alone. Street came and went over the next couple of days, although kept herself to herself. Zack had tried to talk to her a couple of times but she seemed to be avoiding him. He wondered if she regretted sharing personal details like the death of her parents, and that maybe she felt uncomfortable with him as a result of it. He decided not to push it, realising that everybody was carrying their own burden, and that sometimes people didn't want to lighten their load. Sometimes you need the load to ground you, weigh you down. Otherwise you just end up floating away.
Besides Street and Serena, there were no other women. There was Reid, Nixon, and Stoat. Stoat had acquired his name on account that he had a long nose and a keen sense of smell for petrol and oil, and was always able to predict the arrival of a Red Eye in advance. They manned the base, receiving CB radio transmissions from the checkpoint stations along the route to Brighton, sleeping in shifts. The proceedings were occasionally interrupted by Stoat claiming proximity of a Red Eye, which after several false alarms lead Zack to seriously doubt the claim that he could sniff them out at all. The names of the others passed Zack by. He was hindered by the fact that everybody else seemed transient, always either on the way from or to somewhere.
They taught Zack how to drive the golf buggy, and then told him not to touch it unless they instructed him to. They demonstrated how to use the CB radio transmission, and by the use of a tatty old map indicated to him where the rebels held stations en route to Brighton. Communication wasn’t his responsibility, though. He shouldn’t touch that, either. Reid had taken him to a small clearing deeper in the safe zone where several fruit trees grew, apples and cherries, surrounded by wild blackberry bushes. He could help himself to these, Reid said, which was a relief because the meagre portions of bread, black tea, and scraps of dirty rabbit jerky had proven unsatisfactory to his overindulged appetite. Zack was sure Reid had shown him just to get him out of the way, but he could cope with that. He picked fruit and shared it with Serena back in their room. She was struggling more than he was, and seemed constantly tearful. It was a lot to deal with, because he was on the edge himself, but he did what he could and held her at night when she was scared.
News that Jackson was only five stops away from the Northern Compound, their safe zone, came in late on the second night. He had stopped at Station Five, some old country club south of Gatwick, which itself was Station Six. As far as Zack was concerned, Jackson couldn’t get here soon enough. On top of Serena’s anxiety he was trying to deal with his own. In a compound full of men the presence of a woman, because it had become clear early on that Street didn’t count, had caused quite a stir. He had seen how some of them had watched her as she moved about. For some reason, although he didn’t know why, he didn't trust the one they called Stoat, and made Serena promise to stay in the room as much as possible.
“Do you think they will have a doctor there?” Serena asked on the morning they were expecting Jackson to arrive. “Or at least somebody who knows how to deliver a baby? At least in Omega they had that.” Zack had been thinking the same thing. The idea of freedom and of choice was delicious to him, but with the hunger in his stomach and the new do-this, do-that army rules, he had become acutely aware that the freedom which he had craved for so long came at a price.
“I'm sure they will,” he lied, he hoped convincingly. She nodded her head, throwing a warm blackberry into her mouth. “Just try not to think too much about it for now. Let's just get through each day, one at a time, right?” She smiled, rested her head back on the mattress, licking her fingers. He edged his way down onto the mattress. For a while they stayed there without speaking, just staring into each other’s faces to see what new things there might be to learn about each other in the new world them found themselves in. It was she who broke the silence as she rolled onto her back. The breeze tickled the fine hairs that rested on her forehead. Her hair had started to grow out, to lose its shape. A smell drifted through the broken window, the scent of industry, petrol and dust, and he smiled to himself that Stoat was nowhere to be heard. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the groan of machinery and he pretended it was Jackson arriving to take them south.
“Zack, when you asked Duke about the tunnels that went north, who were you thinking of?”
“Samantha,” he said after a pause. She rolled to face him again.
“Was she your wife?”
“Girlfriend.”
“I had a boyfriend, too. It wasn't super-serious, because I was only like, what,” she stopped to count backwards in her head, “twenty three when the bombs came, but I think it was going somewhere.” Zack hadn't told her what Street had told him, about it being their own government which had destroyed their lives. He wondered now if it was the right thing to keep it from her. He didn't know why he hadn't told her. Had he wanted to protect her? If he had, what was it from? “Do you know where he lived?”
Zack shook his head. It was a rhetorical question, but he answered it anyway. “No.”
“Brighton. When I heard that there was a group of survivors there, I suddenly thought about him. I realised then that I hadn't thought about him in years. But straightaway after that, I suddenly got scared. Scared that he wouldn't like me anymore, or that he would have changed, or be disfigured from the war. And then I got stressed about the pregnancy, and wondered what he would think of me.” Zack didn't know what to say, so he took the stance that it was best not to say anything, and just nodded his head, as if to suggest he understood, which in some ways he did. “But then I realised something else. It feels so good to even think like that. Free thought, about things that didn't matter in Omega. Just real life, and connections to other people. Now all I can think about is how he is alive and waiting for me. I know it's not likely to be true, but I can't think of anything else.”
“It's not so far-fetched.” He wrapped his arms around her and she closed her eyes. After a while he could feel her twitching as sleep took her. As her breathing deepened and she slipped further into her subconscious, he wondered if his own dreams were too far-fetched, or if there was a chance that Samantha had slipped south of the destruction. But for the first time ever he was surprised to find himself torn. He couldn’t think of Samantha without thinking of Emily. And it was when he thought of them together that he realised that he was only really able to paint a clear picture of one of them in his mind. The image took him by surprise, threw up questions about the last ten years and all the things he had dreamed of. When he closed his eyes and imagined a face it was the image of the one who still needed him that he saw.
It was Emily.
Chapter Fifty
It was Zack who woke up first, disturbed by a commotion outside. He rose to his feet and looked out through the broken glass. Reid and Nixon were standing at the edge of a golf buggy, lifting some kind of equipment from the back. Far to his right he could see the rest of the people from the Northern Compound, at least the ones who were not on shift protecting the perimeter, congregating in a group. By the time he had convinced himself that it was Jackson, Serena had also woken up.
“What's that noise?” she asked, rubbing her eyes awake.
“There's a new golf buggy down there that I haven't seen before. I think it's Jackson.”
“I don't mean the people,” she said as she stood up from the mattress. “I mean that humming sound.”
Zack looked back at the window, strained his neck out through the broken glass which felt as risky as a guillotine. It was true that his hearing was still affected from the blast. His left ear had indeed never quite recovered. But if he concentrated he too could hear a rumble in the distance. He hadn't noticed the first time but there was a dusty glare in the distance to the North making the towers less visible.
“I don't know. Let's go and find out.”
; They picked their way down the stairs and the sound of people intensified. The quiet mutterings of yesterday had been replaced by barked orders. Unload this. Destroy that. Bring the supply kit. And shouting. Everybody was shouting as if they were on a countdown. They exited the building and Zack saw Street coming in his direction, and as she attempted to fly past he caught her in his arms.
“What's going on?” he asked her.
“We can't stay here anymore,” she said, shaking him away. “They are planning something. Whilst you have been asleep, ten, maybe twelve Red Eyes lined up on the other side of our barricade. God knows what their intentions are. Jackson is only half an hour away. Get your shit together. You're moving out in less than an hour.”
Zack felt Serena grip his arm. Her face was mixed with excitement and tension. Excitement for all she was leaving behind, fear for everything unknown. She began pulling at his arm, and because he didn't put up any resistance, she managed to drag him back into the building. But all the while his eyes were trained on the far reaches of the compound, the line of Red Eyes that he couldn't see but knew were there.
“Come on, Zack,” Serena was shouting, already up the stairway and on her way to the second floor. She stopped, peered over the banister towards Zack. “Zack, come on!” Her words snapped him from his daydream and he charged up the stairs after her. Zack dashed towards the windows that overlooked the northern perimeter of the compound. He concentrated through the haze of dust and sure enough, sitting beyond the perimeter of burnt-out cars that had saved him only two nights before, were three rows of Red Eyes in a four by three formation. More troubling still were the numerous Guardians and Comrades who surrounded them. He was no soldier, but this time they looked like troops, making plans, some barking orders, others following. They were running, two by two, lining themselves along the perimeter. Even from a distance he was sure he could make out guns in their hands.
“Zack, we have to go,” Serena said as she arrived at his side. It was then that she noticed the Red Eyes, and the troops only a matter of minutes away. “Oh my God, Zack. Do you think they have come for us?” She gripped him with one hand, but the other hand was wrapped around her belly, her mind on the future. Zack held onto the old charred window. The wood flaked away in his hand, the fragments swallowed up by the dirt on the floor. The whole place was falling apart. He looked up and realised for the first time that there was a portion of the roof missing. The layers of materials used to construct the walls were working their way free. There was even a hole in the floor through which he could see Street dumping some sort of computer equipment into the back of the golf buggy. He stepped back, suddenly feeling like he was on the edge of a precipice.
“Serena, I don't know if they came for us. But I do know that these people cannot fight them. They have a few beaten-up buggies that they move around in. Look out there past the barricade. I count twelve Red Eyes. They are tanks, Serena. And Guardians all over the place.”
“But Jackson will be here soon. He will take us south.”
“Who is Jackson? We don't know him, or who he is.” Zack looked around to the doorway. He remembered the newspaper article lying on the floor in the neighbouring room. Street would have him believe that his old government had done all this by themselves. That it was them who hit the kill-switch and turned against their own people. Only a few Tube stops from Omega and he had found survivors living on the edge of a war zone. What might he find if he went south? Or north? “We have to take a decision, Serena. We have to protect ourselves. I'm scared for you,” he said as he took his satchel from her and looped it over his shoulder. He licked his lips quickly before turning back to face Serena. “I'm scared for me. For us.”
“What are you suggesting?” She cradled her bag against her, the only physical thing she had left to protect after her body.
“We leave. We just leave right now, on our own,” he whispered. “When we left Omega Tower we knew what we were running from. Denunciation. The Omega Manifesto that would have seen us killed. I wanted to be somebody again. For myself. But we have no idea what we have found here. We don't know if we should trust it.” He sure as hell didn’t want to get roped into any plan blind, or go with the flow. He had flowed more than enough for the last ten years.
“What choice do we have?”
“I don't know. But I don't want to make the same mistake again, relying on somebody who showed up at the right time.” Zack moved towards the door, checked the corridors. They were alone. He skipped back towards the window, the water ration in his satchel bouncing against his hip. He looked out of the window towards Street and her team of survivors, then towards the Red Eyes.
“Zack, what are you talking about? What are you thinking about doing?”
He turned to face her, his eyes locked on hers. “The tunnels. We could get out through the tunnels.”
“And go where?”
“Somewhere they aren't. We could follow the Northern Line and go south. It goes all the way out of London. That would get us far from whatever is about to happen here.”
“Yeah, and then what?” she countered. “Where will we shelter? What will we eat?”
“Serena, three weeks ago I lived in Delta Tower, convinced the whole world had been destroyed. Now, it's like that was all one long nightmare. I don't believe anything anymore. All of this was just a matter of minutes away. Imagine what is further down the road.”
“That's where they will take us.”
“But I don't trust anybody now. Duke got us out, but I haven't even seen him since. We've never even met Jackson. They aren't a rescue team. They want a war. You didn't see Gamma, but I did. These people down there were the ones that destroyed it. At least when it was under the control of Omega the people were alive.”
“I can't believe you are saying this.” Serena walked away, breaking into a run and moving at pace down the stairs.
“Serena, wait!” he called, but by the time he caught up with her she was outside, and she had moved herself in proximity of the nearest golf buggy, which Stoat and Reid were loading up with wires and computer paraphernalia.
“Hey, Omega.” Stoat was calling him. A new nickname which Zack didn't appreciate. “Grab those boxes and load them up on here.” Stoat was pointing to a cluster of boxes positioned next to a doorway that had no door. They were open tray-like plastic containers, loaded with cables and black plastic boxes which might or might not have been hard drives from the old world. Serena had turned her back towards him, and was fiddling inside her satchel. She didn't want him around now. He was a risk to her future. Zack, torn between following the order or turning to run, reached down and snatched up a couple of boxes. He marched towards the buggy. There was more dust rising in the sky and the distant screech of tracks moving across the ground. The Red Eyes were positioning themselves.
“Serena,” he whispered as he loaded the boxes onto the buggy, grabbing the back of her right arm, just above her elbow. She was thinner than he expected. “We could leave now. We can follow the tunnels south,” he whispered as close to her ear as he could get.
“I'm going with them, Zack. With Jackson.” At first she was rigid and immovable, but without warning she spun around and hugged him to her chest. “I have to go. I feel like they can protect me. They know what's out there. We don't know anything. Please come with us.” As she said this Zack could see another buggy in the distance kicking up a dust trail and bumping back and forth over the imperfectly cleared road tracks. Reid interrupted them when he dumped another pile of laptops in the back of the buggy, and when he saw the other vehicle in the distance he started shouting to the rest of the compound.
“Street! Jackson is here. Get mobile.”
“Zack, please. Please trust them to help us. I need you. You are all I have.” There were tears welling in her eyes, and the grip that he still had on her arm was being tested by her trembling. Without any certainty that what he was agreeing to was right, he found himself nodding his head, reaching his arms up aro
und her shoulders to protect her. Just like he had vowed to. He looked back over her shoulder at Omega Tower and promised himself it wouldn’t be the last time he would see it. He looked east, thought the same thing for Delta.
“Okay. We'll leave together now.” He could hear her sobbing into his chest as he held her against him. He hadn't noticed last night that under the overalls she seemed so frail, like a tiny underfed bird. He looked over her cropped hair to see a man leap from the buggy that had just arrived. Street was there next to him, and as his feet landed on the ground she grabbed him, her arms wrapped around his body.
He was tall and slim, his hair long and blond, half hidden by a dirty beige cap. He was looking over at Zack and Serena, and whatever Street was saying, he was taking it all in. Zack tapped Serena on the arm to rouse her. She peeked out from his embrace, and when she saw the unknown face coming towards her she stood up tall, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve. When the long-haired new arrival got within a couple of feet of them Zack realised from his silken smooth face and hollow grey eyes, just how young he was.
“You must be Zack,” said Jackson, holding out a slender hand. Zack slipped his fingers around it and they shook. He offered it to Serena and she did the same. “Serena, good to meet you both. I don't know how you have adjusted to life in our compound, but we are glad you are here. Another two people who learned the truth that New Omega would rather hide. Progress.” He turned to Street. “I've got word. It will happen tonight.”
For a moment Street was immobilised, open-mouthed. She ran her dirt-covered fingers through her Mohican hair, a look of disbelief across her face. Stoat was starting to hop about behind them, and Reid gave him a nudge in the side. He got his act together, by which time Street had found the words to speak.
The Dawn: Omnibus edition (box set books 1-5) Page 47
