by Jack Lewis
The cat stayed in the middle of the road, tail curled up, body tensed, and stared at her. Heather pressed the horn but nothing would move it, and gradually she came to realise that it wasn’t being wilful, it just couldn’t move. In the face of two tons of metal it was paralysed, and even though the cat knew that running was in its best interest, it was stuck.
“Mum?”
She realised she was stood with the tarpaulin in her hands, and that she’d zoned out halfway through laying it.
“We’ve been doing this for hours. My arm’s going to drop off,” said her daughter.
It was a line typical of the ten year old. They hadn’t been working for hours and her arm was connected to her body the way it should be. She’d grown up for ten years without her father and if Heather really thought about it, it was shortly after he went that she could pinpoint the lying starting. Kim had a kind heart and good nature, but she enjoyed creating a mythology around herself that grew by the day. It was usually little things that did no harm; if the walk to school was a mile, Kim would say it had taken three. One day it took on a more destructive bent, as Heather had discovered during the break between classes.
Heather was stood by the staff room window with a cup of tea warming the palm of her hand. From here you could see for miles and it gave the rare view of something outside the Capita, where in the distance a valley of mountains stretched out into the sky. The door behind her opened. Heather turned and saw that it was Mr Erlich, one of only three other teachers in the school. He happened to be Kim’s teacher.
“Miss Castle.”
“I told you, you can call me Heather.”
“Heather,” he said, the word sounding strange as though the familiarity was hard for the serious older man. “Kim said something disturbing in front of the class today.”
Heather felt her face screw up. “Go on, you better spill it.”
The man stepped forward and put a hand on Heather’s shoulder. It was the first time he’d ever stood within a foot of her, let alone touched her. The friendliness was unnerving.
“What’s going on, Clive?”
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry. About your husband. I had no idea he used to…”
“Used to what?”
The man looked at the floor, and rubbed his hand across his forehead. When he looked up it was red. “That he used to beat you.”
It was complete bullshit, of course. Heather’s husband had never so much as spoken harshly to her, let alone anything worse. Kim’s fantasy that she had seen her father beat her mother had somehow spilled out of her mouth in the middle of class, and for the next few weeks Heather had to explain to the staff and the children that her daughter had remembered it wrong. When asked, Kim couldn’t tell her why she said it, and her eyes looked on the verge of erupting in tears.
The fact was that Kim was too young to even remember much of her father. Perhaps that was the reason for the lies. She was filling the blanks in her memory with things that seemed exciting to her.
“Jesus mum, what’s wrong with you today?” said Kim.
Heather shook her head and focused on the job at hand. There was a steady tapping as the rain dripped onto the hood of her raincoat, and even more of it fell on the outstretched tarpaulin and ran in channels off the slick surface. Below the tarpaulin were the vegetables. She and Kim had already managed to dry out and store some of their last crops, but this was bigger than the rest. This was the one that would finally give them enough supplies to start the journey away and leave the Capita behind for good.
It seemed irresponsible, but she didn’t know exactly where they were going. She knew there were two or three well-established settlements with populations growing to the point that they might rival the Capita someday. Even better, there were islands off the mainland where the infection wouldn’t reach, where the sea that surrounded them was better protection than a hammer or a gun. Wes also probably knew somewhere they could go. It was stepping slightly into the border of crazy to leave without a destination in mind, but anything was better than here. The Capita offered safety but its price was intrusion, fear, and control.
Heather knew the stories. Doors busted open in the middle of the night, people dragged screaming into the middle of the road and executed. Curtains in the houses around them twitching as sleepy neighbours watched. The Capita set the price of its freedom, and failure to pay it meant punishment without mercy and without humanity. As a teacher, Heather stood on a narrow ledge, where all it took was a complaint or two from the kids and she could face questions herself. She imagined Charles Bull pounding on her door in the middle of the night, his long beak breaching the tread of her bedroom door.
“What’s it like outside the Capita?” said Kim.
Heather crouched to her knees and laid the corner of tarpaulin. She took her screwdriver and gouged a small hole in it, and then the threaded a small stick through and drove it into the soil.
“I don’t know,” said Heather. “I’ve never been.” She’d travelled the mainland, of course, but that was all pre-outbreak.
“Is it full of infected?”
“It’s going to be dangerous and we might die. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“And you still want to leave?”
Kim crossed her arms. “I’m not the same as the other kids mum, you don’t have to lie to me.”
“I know I don’t, but there things I don’t think you’re ready to know.”
“You need me mum,” said Kim. “Once you had dad but he’s gone, and you have me to support you now.”
Heather grinned despite herself. “You’re a smart little jerk. Do me a favour and just stay a kid a while, yeah?”
A pounding sound came from across the house, and Heather realised it was the front door. Straight away her chest tightened and the cogs of her mind span. Visitors were rare these days, and friendly ones rarer. She picked up the screwdriver and walked through the house and to the front door. She turned the handle and opened it slowly, nearly losing her breath at the sight of the monster in front of her.
“Doing DIY, or are you going to stab me?”
Charles Bull filled the doorframe, and with him were two soldiers in Capita uniforms. One of them had a deep gouge across his face that ran in a channel from the corner of his eye to the edge of his mask, and it resembled a red tear that had streaked across his skin. He nodded at Heather and seemed human for a second, but the expression was quickly replaced by the blank stare that the Capita required of its guards.
Heather invited the bounty hunter in. As he followed her into the house every room suddenly seemed colder. Through the change in his eyes Heather knew that Charles was smiling at her, but it was like being smiled at by a shark. His mouth was covered by the mask and his dead eyes were surrounded by black leather.
“Mind if I take a look outside?” said Charles.
If you touch anything I’ll kill you, thought Heather. Then, who am I kidding? I’m terrified of him.
Charles walked through the living room and out into the garden, where he stood for a second or two looking at the sky as a flock of geese flew overhead. Then he turned his attention to the ground. He crouched down, took hold of one of the sticks Heather had driven into the soil to hold the tarp, and pulled. He lifted the tarpaulin to reveal a line of carrots with their heads poking out of the soil. He took hold of one of them and pulled at it, but it took more effort than he realised. With one heave he pulled an eight inch carrot out the earth, spraying wet soil across the stone paving that lined the garden.
It was akin to watching a stranger talk to your child on the bus. It was a feeling of intrusion, of someone opening the drawer next to your bed and rummaging round. This was their plan, their future, and Charles thought he could do whatever he wanted with it. Heather crossed her arms and fought to bring her feelings under control.
Charles scraped the soil off the carrot. He took an AVS sensor from his coat pocket, held it in the air, and w
aited for it to bleep green. He put a hand to his mouth and unzipped part of his mask. Even at home Heather kept her mask on all the time, because no matter what the AVS registered, there was always the chance a gust of wind could blow infected air their way. Charles didn’t seem to mind as he sucked in unfiltered air. He brought the carrot to his mouth and took a bite, his lips moving as he chewed. A second later he pointed his head toward the ground and spat chunks of pulped carrot onto the floor, and threw the rest of it across the garden.
A fire leapt through Heather, and it was only thoughts of Kim that kept her from exploding. Just on wrong word, one stupid action, and Charles’s men would have no trouble taking her away. Kim used lies to form a protective barrier around her, but that wouldn’t do her much good if she was left alone.
“Better in a stew,” said Charles. “Raw carrot is too bitter. Tastes too much of the earth.”
The solder with the scar on his face walked around the garden. Despite the pantomime of Charles’s mask, the Capita soldier wore standard issue. It made them seem more human, more “one of us”, but Heather knew that the Capita were masters of propaganda who played with emotions like children play with toys. Nothing about them or their soldiers was to be trusted.
“How long did it take you to dig the trench?” said the soldier, hovering over the onions.
“A year,” said Kim.
“A couple of weeks,” corrected Heather.
“You’ve done a sweet job,” said the soldier. “I’m Max, by the way.”
Across his standard issue mask he’d drawn a giant grin which spread from side to side, the mouth comically opened to reveal tonsils at the back. As he walked the garden his stance was casual, a contrast to the other solider who stood on the side-lines with his back so straight you could hang a coat on him.
Max pinched some soil between his fingers and rubbed it until it fell to the ground.
“You should start composting,” he said. “It’ll enrich the soil.”
“How do you know that?” said Heather.
The grin on Max’s mask was fake, but his eyes showed that there was a real smile behind it. He had an easy way to him that, if the Bull wasn’t here, could have relaxed Heather. At the other side of the garden Kim stared at the bounty hunter, unable to take her eyes off the mask that spread across his face as a growth.
“My mum used to grow marrows,” said the soldier. “She won best in show two years in a row. Would have won the third if the judges weren’t in Barry Sander’s pocket.”
“That’s enough, Max,” said Charles.
Heather wanted the men to leave, but she didn’t want to make it obvious. If she upset Charles there was honestly no telling what he could do. She’d heard the things he was capable of, and she’d seen him take Jenny from her class.
“This isn’t a social call,” said Charles.
Heather readjusted the tarpaulin so that some of the plants were completely covered, but there was still work to do. With any luck she’d done enough to avoid any damage, and that meant their plan was still strong. At the back of her mind she thought Charles might request the food to be added to the Capita stores, but she made sure the thought stayed where it was. She didn’t need more shit to add to her trench of worries.
“What can I help you with?” she said, trying to make her voice sound casual.
“Let’s go inside.”
He said it as in invitation to Heather, as if this were his house. He walked to the patio doors, slid them open and walked into the living room. His boots left faint imprints of mud on the carpet, but it had been a long time since Heather cared. Sometimes it was an achievement sliding out of bed in the morning, let alone getting to class. Everything else was low priority.
They sat in the living room, Charles leaning back into a chair and crossing his legs. Max and the other soldier stood behind him. Heather wondered if the other soldier was mute. He hadn’t said a word since being here. Charles was the first to speak.
“I need you to help me,” he said. “I need you to keep an eye out for DC’s in school. Among the children.”
Her mind flicked to Jenny, and she felt her stomach lurch. What had happened to her? She didn’t want to think about it. It felt selfish, but part of her worried that the girl had somehow known that Heather was aware of her secret, and that she’d told the Capita soldiers that she was an accomplice.
“There aren’t any in school,” said Kim.
Her voice was so calm. When she looked at Charles her eyes showed more curiosity than fear. Kids didn’t have any awareness of danger. They were protected by their parents and cushioned from the blows of the outside world, but that was going to have to change. Children needed to be scared these days. They needed to know what waited for them, both in the safe zones of the Capita and outside it.
Charles ignored the girl as though he hadn’t heard her.
“If you knew of any, would you report them?” he asked Heather.
“Of course,” she lied.
He leant forward. “Tell me. How could you teach the girl so long and not have a clue what she was?”
“They don’t exactly wear stickers.”
“Come on. I’m talking about a child. They can’t keep secrets.”
Heathers face flushed red, and she hoped it didn’t show. She wished she could get this despicable man out of her house.
“They tend to hide their condition,” she said, trying to keep the scorn from her voice. “Because they know how they’ll be treated.”
She regretted the words as soon as she said them. Talking ill of the Capita wasn’t wise no matter whose company you were in, and in front of Charles it was downright dangerous.
“You have no idea how they’re treated, Heather.” He managed to make the words sound like a reprimand and a threat at the same time.
Charles stood up out of his seat. She was struck with the impression that his costume made him seem taller than he really was, that if you peeled back the pantomime you would see a man who hadn’t eaten his vegetables as a child.
“Would you know if your daughter was one of them?” he said.
She almost leapt to her feet. To hear this man talk about her daughter made her face hot. Kim glanced at Heather, and this time she looked alarmed.
“She’s not one of them,” said Heather.
“But would you report it, I wonder? How deep is your loyalty to the Capita?”
“You expect people to choose the Capita over their families?”
“That’s what I did.”
The room was silent. Max, over in the corner, looked at the floor. Charles looked beyond Heather at the patio doors and the garden, and for a while his eyes softened and his shoulders sagged. One blink of Heather’s eyes later the effect was reversed, and Charles, with his leather coat and hideous mask, once again filled the room. He drew his coat together. His pick axe hung over his back until it rested parrot-like on his shoulder.
“Watch the children. Be my little magpie. Report anything worthwhile to me, and I’ll make sure you’re rewarded with breadcrumbs. Don’t report anything, and I’ll make sure you’re punished.”
Heather didn’t say anything, but that didn’t bother Charles, who carried on speaking.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this, but there’s a Resistance insider feeding information from the Capita. I don’t know who it is, but I’ll found out. These people can hide, but I know all the hiding places. But in the meantime, those of us who live under the Capita must stick together.”
He turned to Kim.
“Do you know how the air smells, girl?”
“No.”
“Have you ever wondered?”
“Yes.”
Kim’s response was strange. After all the things she lied about, all the facts and stories that she exaggerated for no reason, she decided to tell the truth about this? This was the one answer Heather didn’t want her to give. It made her seem suspicious. Normal people didn’t know the smell of the air. Normal people didn�
��t care, and the Capita liked normal people.
Charles knelt in front of Kim. As he bent down his leather coat creaked.
“Do you friends ever take their masks off?”
“Never.”
“What about yours? Have you ever taken it off? Even for a tiny second?”
Kim looked at her mother.
“I’m not stupid. I know what’s in the air. Mum taught me how to use the AVS when I was four.”
