Still Life (Still Life Series Book 1)

by Isobel Hart

  “No, why?”

  “Oh, just that he never arrived at the prison. We have to be so careful with all the extremists around. They keep attacking our men. Very annoying. Thank God for the curfew.”

  “Well, I have no idea where he is. Screwing one of your harem, I assume.” I prayed my voice resembled something close to normal and he couldn’t feel the jump in my pulse.

  “You really do look delicious in that dress,” he said with another sideways look at me. “I thought it would suit you.” I determined to throw the dress away at my earliest opportunity now I knew he’d selected it for me. “Here we are,” he announced when we reached the library, pushing the door open, then standing back so I could walk in first.

  Three chairs had been positioned under some lights, a couple of cameras focused upon them. A number of people were milling about, setting up and checking equipment. The earlier fire had burned down but continued to give off copious amounts of heat from the still-glowing embers. That, the lights and the number of bodies in the room made the temperature unbearable. I retrieved a small book from one of the shelves and fanned myself with it as I was ushered towards one of the chairs.

  Aiden was already sat in one, talking to a man in a smart navy suit standing just to the side of him. I guessed him to be the interviewer. It didn’t surprise me that it was a man again – one of them, I presumed.

  “Samantha, you look delightful,” Aiden said as soon as he noticed me standing awkwardly to the side of him. “Come and join me.” He patted the seat beside him.

  I turned to look at Richard, preparing to object again.

  Richard nodded over towards the corner of the room. I turned my gaze in the direction he’d pointed to see Heidi standing in the shadows. She was surrounded by two armed men, a gag bound tightly across her mouth. “Heidi?” I gasped.

  Richard nodded to the guards, who removed the fabric ties from around her mouth. “Sam?” she said shakily.

  “What are you doing here?” I turned back to Richard. “What is she doing here?”

  “I thought you might need a little incentive to co-operate. She’s it. We picked her up when we realised your importance to us. It was delightfully easy. Thought she’d be a handy addition to the herd anyway. Trouble is, she’s infertile – we found it out at her first health assessment – so she’s practically useless. Her only value is if she helps focus your mind. So really, Samantha, the ball’s entirely in your court. If you do what we ask, then she’ll be allowed to stay. If you don’t . . . well, she’s what we’d refer to as dispensable. The man she was with – Paul? – I think we’ve done him a favour. He seems delighted to be servicing the herd. Taken to it like a duck to water.” Heidi was crying now. Her swollen red eyes suggested she’d been doing a lot of that.

  “Shut up, you arsehole!” I shouted at Richard. I tried to move across the room towards Heidi, but two men stepped into my path.

  “If you sit and do what we ask, Sam, then you can have your little reunion afterwards. She can even attend the dinner if you like. As I said, the choice is yours. I’m a reasonable man, after all.”

  “You’re sick, the lot of you.”

  “Ah, but we’re not. We’re really quite disgustingly well. Far healthier than most of you overweight, germ-laden, cancer-ridden Sapians. You really are the most terrible abusers of your bodies. In my opinion you didn’t deserve to keep control if you couldn’t take better care of them–”

  “Enough, Richard. Please, you’ve made your point,” Aiden cut in. “Don’t antagonise her further. Samantha,” he said, looking at me again and patting the chair beside him.

  I watched, tears rolling down my cheeks, as they replaced the gag over Heidi’s mouth. Her eyes widened with fear. My brave, feisty friend looked broken.

  “Samantha,” Aiden said, and this time there was no question that it was an order and not a request.

  I walked to the chair and sat down, casting a final glance over my shoulder towards Heidi, trying to tell her with my eyes that she’d be okay. That we’d be okay. But I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.

  Aiden gave a final brief to the interviewer, a thin, mature man I realised I had seen on BBC documentaries, and then an anticipatory silence filled the room as someone called; “Quiet, please, and . . . roll cameras.”

  I focused on a spot on the carpet. I refused to look at either the interviewer or Aiden, however pleasing to the eye he might be. I listened, trying not to give any sort of reaction, as the interviewer again introduced the known facts about the virus. He emphasised the fact that a person had to be mortally wounded or ill for the virus to activate. What I hadn’t heard before, and what had me lifting my head to stare finally, was his summary of what had happened since last night’s interview. He described a situation of civil unrest across most of the world, which had forced many countries to enforce martial law. The U.K. specifically had a 9.30pm curfew, and any large gatherings of women were being broken apart, by force if necessary, with the ringleaders taken into custody. “Aiden, what would you say to the people that want to incite violence out there?” the interviewer asked.

  “Well, Terry, I’d ask them to think again. We’re a peaceful people. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. I understand why people are anxious, even frightened, about what they have seen happening, and what they’ve heard about us, but I can assure you they have no need to be. We want a peaceful resolution to this situation. At the end of the day we’re all human beings. There may be some small genetic differences, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get along together. Think of it like species of dogs – there are differences, but when you really get down to it they’re all dogs. We just want to be allowed to live our lives peacefully alongside everyone else.”

  “So why do you think people are so angry?”

  “At the moment they’re afraid. Once they see there really is nothing to worry about, things will calm down again and life will go on as before. That’s why we need to get control of the situation, for everyone’s safety, before too many more people are hurt unnecessarily. We can’t have women attacking men unprovoked on the street. It’s not civilised. So we’re acting to ensure it doesn’t happen.”

  “And the camps that have been set up?”

  “Those are to separate out some of the women who have been particularly troublesome. We find if we remove the ringleaders, then the situation usually calms very quickly. Because the bottom line is most people are reasonable. Even women.” Aiden smiled at his own supposed joke, and the interviewer laughed along with excessive glee. I wanted to smack the pair of them. “But I’m taking the best advice on how to calm our womenfolk,” Aiden continued. At this point he reached down and took hold of my hand. I stared up at him in shock. “If only everyone could get along like Samantha and me, I think the world would be a much happier place.” He patted my hand, gazing at me with a tender smile on his face, as I gawped at him in shock. “Samantha’s been explaining to me how women think, what is really important to them. Believe it or not, we live to make you happy,” he said, grinning at me this time. “We practically worship you.” He lifted his gaze slowly from my own startled face to look back at the interviewer. “I fervently hope we can find a way through these sticky times soon so we can get back to what is actually important here – living our lives, looking after one another, and loving and nurturing our families.” He lifted my hand on his final words and pressed a kiss to the back of it. My eyes widened with renewed shock as he looked across at me as if he loved me. The interviewer closed the interview, thanking Aiden for his time, before trailing what would be featured on the next programme. And then it was done.

  Aiden dropped my hand and stood. He thanked the people in the room quickly before striding towards the door, turning at the last moment to tell Richard, “I need to make a call. Have her seated beside me at the dinner. I want her ready and beside me at all the public events we have scheduled over the next few weeks.” Richard’s eyebrows went up in response. “Will that be a problem?” A
iden asked, his tone making it clear he expected only one answer. I wanted to scream at him, ‘What about me? What about what I want? What about what I think?’ but I knew my opinion meant nothing, no less a prisoner now than I had been in the cell.

  “Of course,” Richard confirmed, smiling. He didn’t mean it; the smile never reached his eyes. As soon as the door closed behind Aiden, Richard turned to me. “Come along. Bring her too,” he said to the guards beside Heidi.

  Richard led me, with Heidi and her guards close behind, back to the television room we’d sat in the night before. “You have half an hour until you’re all expected for dinner, I’ll come and get you,” he said, turning a key in the lock before opening the door. “Until then I thought you might like the chance to reacquaint yourself with your friend.” He nodded at Heidi. “After all, I’m a man of my word, and you did as I asked beautifully. The way you do everything, Samantha. Oh,” he said, as he turned to leave, “there’s a couple of your newer friends in there too. Lock them in and see that no one leaves,” he instructed the two guards as they manhandled us inside.

  Ella and Tara were slouched in chairs in front of the TV They both looked up as we stepped into the room. “Sam,” Tara said, looking relieved to see me. Ella looked less pleased, her resting bitch-face becoming even bitchier. I ignored them and moved straight to Heidi, who was making gasping sounds through her gag. She looked like she was having a panic attack, her chest heaving as her eyes began to roll wildly.

  “It’s okay, we’ll be okay,” I soothed her, making promises I had no idea how I was going to keep as I attempted to untie the knot at the back of her head, releasing it enough I could untangle it finally. She gasped for air when I removed the ball of fabric they’d stuffed inside her mouth. “God, Heidi, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you were caught up in all this.” I clasped her to me as we both sobbed, feeling her arms latch on just as tightly. All the fear and anger I’d been holding in for so long released.

  After what had to have been over five minutes, we calmed enough to pull apart and look properly at one another.

  “Have you two finished? Thank fuck for that. I can’t hear the bloody television,” Ella said.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Heidi, looking at her red, puffy eyes and tear-streaked face.

  “I think so. God, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I didn’t think I’d see anyone. I thought they were going to kill me.” She let out another little sob, and my own eyes filled with tears again. “They took me from outside Elliott’s flat. It wasn’t long after they’d arrested you. Elliott called me in a panic. He’d found your phone and was calling everyone he could think of to see if anyone could help. No one knew what had happened to you. All the authorities would say was that you’d been committed, considered a danger to yourself and the public, but we didn’t know where. No one would tell us anything – where you were or what you’d been diagnosed with.

  “Elliott told me about what you’d found out – the virus and everything. He’d been emailing everyone with what he knew. People started to listen. Then it hit the media. That’s when things changed. Sam, they took control. They’re everywhere. On the TV they made it sound like they wanted to live alongside us, but they don’t. They want it all.”

  “So when were you taken?” I asked, desperate for a glimpse into what had been happening in the outside world since I’d been held captive.

  “About a week or two after you were. I was at Elliott’s place, as I said. We’d been discussing what we could do. Women were starting to mobilise and form collectives to protect themselves, along with any men who were shown to be virus inactive. There was a media campaign, to make more people aware, using the internet mainly – men control all the primary media outlets. Elliott was at the centre of a lot of it.”

  “He was still okay, then? They didn’t get him?”

  “When I last saw him, he was. They tried a couple of times, but he’s got protection around him now. They didn’t succeed last I knew. But that was a while ago . . .” her voice trailed off.

  “And you? What happened after they took you?”

  “I was taken to a cell. It was a padded room.” She wiped tears away. “They took my blood. Tested me for God knows what. Then, less than a week later, men started to visit me. I begged them not to, but they didn’t give me a choice.” Her head dropped to her chest, and she started to cry again as she described days of being systematically raped.

  I listened, horrified. My own experience benign by comparison. “What happened after that?”

  “They knew I was your friend. That guy, Richard?” I nodded. “He’s an evil son of a bitch.” I nodded again, clenching my jaw. “He came and told me the blood tests had shown I’d had an early menopause,” she sobbed a bit again on the words. “I had no idea. Richard told me I was a complete waste of space and that they’d get rid of me if it wasn’t for you. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Oh, Heidi! Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

  “Why, though? Why you? What have you done?” Nausea threatened. I couldn’t tell my best friend, my friend who’d been desperately trying for a baby for months only to find out she would never have one of her own, that I was pregnant . . . with Edward’s child.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s like an episode of EastEnders,” Ella said. “Your dear friend is pregnant. Did she not tell you?”

  Chapter 29

  “We all are,” Ella added, looking smug.

  I looked at Tara in shock, and she nodded, before I turned my attention back to Heidi.

  Heidi stared at me open-mouthed. “You’re pregnant?” She looked like I’d just kicked her in the teeth.

  “I didn’t plan to be,” I felt obliged to say, but that just sounded worse when she had so badly wanted a child.

  “How? Did they rape you too?” She looked stricken for a moment, as her hand reached towards mine.

  “No . . . I, I wasn’t raped,” I said quickly, and Heidi’s hand dropped like a stone to her lap.

  “Then how? Is it Elliott’s?”

  “No.” I struggled to say the next bit. “Edward’s.”

  “Edward’s? You slept with Edward again? I thought you were with Elliott.” A note of disapproval coloured her voice.

  “It was from before. When Edward and I were sleeping together. I didn’t know. You remember what he was like then. I took the morning-after pill after we had unprotected sex that first time, but it didn’t work. Then I was on the pill. I wasn’t trying to get pregnant. I didn’t even know I was until they told me. They did a blood test – like they did with you.”

  “You weren’t trying . . .” She sounded broken-hearted. “It’s one of their babies?”

  “Yes.” I placed a protective hand over my belly. She flinched as I did so.

  “How many weeks are you, then?”

  “Just over fourteen.”

  “God, already? And it’s really one of them?”

  “I don’t know about that. All I know is it’s mine.”

  “But you never wanted a baby. You never even wanted to get married. What happened? Why the big turnaround?” She sounded angry now. Hurt.

  “You’re right. I didn’t want a child, or a relationship with Edward, or at least Edward as he was before the accident. But it happened, and now I have to live with it. I thought about getting rid of it, but . . . I can’t. It’s my baby too,” I tried to find the words to explain.

  “Elliott said they’re trying to get women pregnant because they need the combined DNA so they can completely wipe us out. You’re helping them.”

  “Not helping them. Just pregnant.”

  “These babies will help them,” she insisted, looking round at the others in the room. “That’s why they need me here – to make sure you toe the line,” she realised. “That’s why he wanted you on the film with him. But, why you specifically?”

  “They’re having trouble getting women to conceive, and even if they do they rarely seem to get out the first trimester.” />
  “Except you.”

  “Except me.”

  Heidi stood, and turned to Ella and Tara. “How far are you two along?”

  “Six weeks,” Tara said. “She’s the same. We only found out today when they tested us all at the prison.”

  “And were you raped too?” Heidi asked, looking sympathetic.

  Tara blushed, while Ella just laughed out loud. “No, honey,” Ella said before Tara could get a word in. “There was no raping here. I was quite willing. These guys aim to please, if you know what I mean, and they pleased me a lot. They’re going to be the powerful ones around here pretty soon, if they’re not already, and I aim to make sure I’m right there with them doing anything – and I mean anything – they want.”

  “Seriously? You don’t care what they’re doing? They’re destroying the human race, killing our men – you’re okay with that?”

  “From where I’m sitting there’s no difference. Men in positions of power or men in positions of power. Only difference is these ones value the commodities I’ve got – sex appeal and working ovaries.” Heidi flinched as Ella continued; “If they want to make little mutant babies, then I’ll be happy to help, in exchange for being kept nicely. I don’t see it really makes any odds which type of man is screwing me.” Heidi and I both stared at her in horror.

  “I wasn’t raped,” Tara confessed, her voice softer than Ella’s. “I met a guy I liked – first one in a long time that wasn’t a shit. He treated me real nice, then invited me to come here. The other men were nice too. They explained they like to be with women, that they were relaxed about monogamy. My friend persuaded me to try. I . . . I . . .” she stuttered. “I hadn’t been treated so nicely by men before. Most of my exes were arseholes who took what they wanted and then vanished. These guys weren’t like that. They really seemed to want to look after the girls. I thought it was okay.” She looked at us, seeking some sort of understanding. I’d seen it; I knew some of the girls had been happy with the set-up. “But at that prison I saw another side to them,” Tara said. “The side you saw.” She looked at Heidi. “Women were being held there unwillingly. They were taking women, with no respect, whether the woman wanted the man or not. It was shocking. I was only saved because I tested positive in the pregnancy test. They brought us straight back here,” she said. I shuddered thinking of all the women being held at the prison. And that was only one prison; this situation was repeating itself all over the country, possibly the world.