by Jack Lewis
“Give it here,” Baz said to him.
He reached out.
“Thanks Baz.”
Terry passed the box over to Baz and then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Baz adjusted the box in his arms and started up the path to Terry’s house. Georgina appeared in the doorframe. She looked worse than usual.
“Hi Georgina. You’re looking great,” he said.
She smiled. “You’re a sweet guy, but a bad liar,” she said.
“How’s Kieron?”
“Kieron’s upstairs learning how combustion engines work. He’s going to be a Capita engineer someday. Or one of the Five. Wouldn’t that be great?”
“Yeah,” said Baz sarcastically. The edges of the box dug into his arms. “Where do you want this?”
She gestured behind her and as she did, the sleeves of her dressing gown slipped up her arm. He saw how bony her wrists were, and wondered if they were getting enough food rations for even one person, let alone a family of three. Maybe selling food was how Terry could afford to buy black-market medicine.
He walked into the house. Despite their lack of food and Georgina’s condition, the house was kept as spotless as a show home. It made Baz think that it was about time he cleaned his own place. In fact, everything about this family made him feel ashamed. He thought about the meetings of the Five with their grapes and their figs, and he felt himself redden.
Later on, he decided, he was going to sneak over and leave another food parcel on their doorstep. He’d done it before, usually when an attack of guilt left him breathless. When he filled a box with food and sneaked it to their house in the middle of the night, it was almost as if he was filling it with his own guilt and leaving it for Terry and Georgina to deal with. With each passing week, though, it became less effective as a conscience-cleaning device.
As he left the house, he saw a crowd of men outside talking to Terry. Baz’s chest froze when he saw that the men wore Capita uniforms. One of them turned to him.
“And this is your helper, is it?” he said.
Terry looked like a child caught stealing. He glanced at the boxes on the cart, and then at the Capita soldiers. Baz knew what was happening, and he felt his heart thump.
One of the soldiers grabbed hold of Terry.
“The Capita’s generosity isn’t good enough for you, eh? You have to deal with shady characters like this?” He jerked his thumb at the black-market trader, who slowly edged toward his cart.
“Hold it there,” said the soldier. He nodded at one of his fellow guards, and then at Baz.
“Take them in, lads. This one too.”
As the guards approached him, Baz already knew his fate. Terry had been caught taking black-market supplies, and Baz was implicated by association. Without thinking, he spoke.
“You don’t know who I am,” he said, as one of the guards approached him.
“You could be Ishkur himself,” said the guard. “And I wouldn’t give a shit.”
The guard was close enough to grab Baz’s arm. One of the others seized hold of Terry, who tried to shake himself away. The guard punched him in the stomach, and Terry bent over and gasped for air.
Georgina appeared in the doorway behind them.
“What’s going on?” she said.
Baz turned to her.
“It’s okay, Georgina,” he said.
“No, it bloody isn’t,” answered the guard. “Your husband and his friend are in quite a bit of trouble.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” said Baz. “You have no idea who I am.”
The guard smiled. “Okay. Who are you? Marduk? Nabu? Charles Bull?”
Baz knew it was useless. He couldn’t tell them that he was Tammuz, one of the Five, because revealing that little secret would get him killed. Besides, why would they believe him? Outside of the Grand Hall, he looked the same as everybody else.
Terry looked at Baz and then at the guards.
“He’s Baz Worthington,” he said. “This was all his idea.”
~
He knew that there was no point in struggling. The guards took Baz and Terry across the Dome and into the Capita Guard headquarters, where they were separated and put in cells. After leaving him to brood for an hour, one of the guards came to fetch him.
He escorted him into a room not much bigger than a shoe cupboard. There were no windows, and the ceiling was stained yellow from nicotine. The guard sat across from him, and they were separated by an oak table. He was a burly man with a moustache so sparse that Baz wondered why he’d bothered keeping it. He could smell the sweat from the man’s armpits.
After having time to think on it, Baz had realised how stupid he was. His first mistake was helping Terry. It was one thing to ignore his neighbour’s activities, but it was something else to actually help him. How could he have been such an idiot?
The second error was nearly the most costly. He’d come so close to telling the guards that he was Tammuz, one of the Five. If that had happened he wouldn’t have been sat in a room with the burly guard. Most likely, he’d be buried in a shallow grave somewhere outside the Capita lands, with his face burned away by acid. If Marduk and Nabu could see him now, he knew they’d be laughing at him.
The guard smiled, and Baz saw tiny patches of skin on his top lip where his hair didn’t grow.
“I’m Irvine,” he said. “Relief sergeant of the Capita Guard. Come here during the day and you’ll get Sergeant Yoski, who looks like the real deal. Get arrested at night, and you’re stuck with me.”
“It’s an absolute pleasure,” said Baz, making sure Irvine knew to take it as sarcasm.
“Your neighbour had a change of heart. Says that it was all his doing,” said Irvine. He tapped nicotine-stained fingers on the table. “Took a bit of cajoling from one of our guys with a hot fire and a poker, but we soon found out that Terry Long has a sweet singing voice.”
Baz looked around him. No windows, and only one door. Irvine was twice his weight and could probably have bashed his head against the walls before Baz could even resist.
“Terry won’t be taking black-market deliveries anymore,” Irvine said. “In fact, he won’t be doing anything anymore. God knows what his poor wife and kid will do. Still, we can’t have anyone disobeying the Capita, can we?”
“And what about me?” said Baz.
Irvine tapped on the table. “And what about you… That’s a good question. We’ve decided that the full weight of the Capita punishments won’t apply to you. Bet that’s a relief, eh?”
Baz took a deep breath. He knew that as Tammuz, he could have this man killed. As Baz, he was powerless.
“We’ve decided to slap you with a lighter hand,” said Irvine.
Tammuz knew the Capita laws better than anyone. If the punishment wasn’t death, then there was only one real alternative.
“Conscription?” he said.
Irvine nodded.
“Harsh for a first offence,” said Baz.
“You’re not a teenager caught smoking behind the cowsheds. You were assisting in the transportation of contraband.”
Baz leaned forward.
“Just…maybe it should be something a little less severe. I’ve got a wife and kid at home.”
Irvine shook his head.
“No, you don’t. We checked. You don’t have much stuff in your house, either.”
“You raided my house?”
“Would you expect anything less? It could do with a clean, though. I know you live alone but come on, man. Have some standards.”
Baz leaned on his elbows. Suddenly, he was exhausted. The walls of the cell seemed to close in on him.
“You guys don’t pull any punches.”
Irvine reached into his pocket. He pulled out a sheet of thin rolling papers and a plastic bag full of tobacco.
“Blame the Five for that. Do you think I want to be here dealing with worms like you? I’m balls deep in a fifteen hour shift. Unlike you, I really do have a family at ho
me. The Five don’t give a shit about that.”
He sat back and exhaled. He tried to roll a cigarette, but his fingers shook around the paper. Baz wondered if he had a medical condition.
“I can tell you this, because soon you’ll be miles away in a Capita uniform, taking pot-shots at Resistance fighters. And it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever see the Dome again. So here it is.”
He pinched the cigarette papers and sprinkled tobacco into it. Strands spilled out onto the table.
“I’m fucking sick of the Capita. And the Dome. If it weren’t for the infected, I’d leave here in a second. But I have to stay because I can’t risk what lies outside the borders. So I pull twelve hour shifts and deal with annoying shits like you, and then I go home and find my wife already in bed. Before I know it, it’s time to get up and put the uniform back on. I’m sick of it.”
“We’ve all got to do what it takes to survive.”
“If only the Five were here now. Just put me in a room with one of them for an hour, and I’d get them to see things differently. Show them what their decisions mean to the real people.”
Baz saw an opening.
“How about you let me go, skip the processing and go home to your wife?”
Irvine’s face became stern again. Whatever humanity he’d chosen to show Baz, was gone.
“Nice try. But no. You’re joining the Capita army. There’s a resistance town we’re going to invade. Apparently, it’ll mean more land and resources for the Capita. And I bet a lot of that will trickle down to people like me,” he said. This time his sarcasm matched Baz’s.
The universe was looking down on him and laughing. It was pointing an almighty finger and chortling to itself, cheeks reddening with the hilarity of the karma it was about to serve. The stupid thing was that he couldn’t blame anyone else. He’d sat in the Grand Hall and made this happen.
“Let me see,” said Baz. “Is this town called Kiele, by any chance?”
Irvine looked surprised. “You’re a clever one.”
“Just a lucky guess.”
Irvine finished making his cigarette and brought it to his lips. When he flicked his lighter and brought the flame to it, the fire engulfed the paper and ruined the cigarette. He slammed it down on the table.
“Get some sleep in your cell tonight,” he said. “Because tomorrow you’ll be a soldier.”
Chapter Fifteen
Eric
Keeping an eye on the guards had become second nature to him as he prowled through the yard. It was easy to see why the other kids had been caught in their escape attempt. They hadn’t exactly tried to be sneaky, and when the watchtower light had swept over them, they had panicked. If only they had gotten advice from Eric’s mum.
Just pretend it’s a wasp, he heard her say. When she told him that, she hadn’t been talking about search lights sweeping over a camp for the immune, of course. The advice still worked, and at times like this he missed her so much.
Over the last couple of days he’d spent more time in the yard checking the cabins than he had in the shed where he was supposed to be sorting shoes. He half thought that the guard stationed outside knew he was sneaking off, and just didn’t care.
There was only one cabin left to check. Nobody had seen his mum or sister, it seemed. With each passing day hope of finding them shrank, and Eric’s prospects paled as much as Kim’s face. He worried about the girl. She had hardly eaten, and Eric couldn’t even bring himself to tell her what had happened in Goral’s cabin. He felt like he was going to throw up when he thought of Allie’s naked body on the table, with blood pouring from his throat.
Across the yard, three guards picked stones off the ground and threw them at the DCs who worked in front of them. It was such pointless cruelty. Careful to make sure they didn’t look his way, Eric crept over to the cabin door and opened it.
Inside, this cabin was nothing like the others. Instead of rows of cheaply-made beds and waste buckets, there was a double-sized bedframe. Ornaments lined bookcases placed against the walls, and there was a photograph on one of them. It was of a boy and a girl running down a beach. Eric thought he had seen them before.
“It’s no use, boy,” said a voice.
Eric snapped his attention to the corner of the room. An old woman sat on a wooden chair. She was the oldest woman he had ever seen. Her skin was a mess of wrinkles etched deep into her, and her body was thin and bony and looked like it might shatter if she took a step. Eric wondered if she could even get off the chair.
“I’ve been here years,” she said, in an exotic accent. “And I know there’s no escaping. Look at this.”
She lifted the hem of her blouse and showed him her stomach. The skin sagged, and Eric thought he could see the bottom of her breast drooping down. A scar ran along her belly. It was thick and brown, like the stitching of an old teddy bear.
“I tried to escape once. This is the present they gave me.”
Eric felt disarmed by her. He sensed that she wasn’t like the rest of the DCs, but instinctively he knew that she didn’t work in the camp either.
“How come they didn’t kill you?” he said.
“Because of my little brother. I’m Marta Vitch.”
When heard the surname, he shuddered. He remembered Goral telling the story of his family name to Allie. It was as though it was a curse word, and it made Eric feel bad to even repeat it in his head.
“He’s your little brother?” said Eric. “He seems…”
“Ancient? He looks it, but he’s younger than me.”
“No.”
“Don’t believe me? Cut me open and count the rings.”
She gestured to another chair that rested against the wall. Eric looked at the window behind him. The yard was as busy as usual, but nobody seemed to be looking in his direction. He dragged the chair until it faced Marta.
“Why did he do that to you if he’s your brother?”
She traced her hand across the scar. Her skin rippled at the touch.
“He keeps me here, but he won’t kill me. He wouldn’t kill you either, I suspect. The guards would, but that’s not usually Goral’s way. Except when…No, his way is much worse. Don’t ever cross him, boy. And if you do, make sure you aren’t caught.”
Bullshit that’s not his way, thought Eric.
He looked around him. A light bulb hung from a cord attached to the ceiling, but there was no power running to it. In the corner of the room, high up on the wall, was a painting of a little village. A man in dirty clothes pushed a wheelbarrow along a dirt path, and a herd of cows grazed in the distance. It seemed like a nice place, and one that Eric would gladly have swapped for Dam Marsh.
“I’ve seen you poking around,” said Marta. “If you’re looking for escape, you won’t find it.”
“I’m looking for my mum and sister.”
“Which cabin are they in?”
“I don’t even know if they’re here. I haven’t found them, anyway.”
Marta gave him a sad smile. “Some people come here and they don’t stay as long as the rest of us. The Capita has certain plans for some folks, and different plans for others.”
Marta got up off her chair. The process seemed to take several minutes, and Eric wondered if he would see the afternoon sun start to set by the time her feet hit the floor. When she stood in front of him she stretched to full height, and suddenly she didn’t seem so old.
She walked across the room and into a small kitchen area, where pans covered a gas hob, and two white cupboards were fastened to the wall. Eric saw a loaf of fruit bread on the counter with foil around it, and crumbs were scattered on the plastic in front of it. His mouth watered for a second, and then he felt nauseous. Ever since the night in Goral’s cabin, food had lost its appeal.
Marta opened a cupboard and searched in it. She took out a handful of raisins and nuts. She wrapped them in a plastic sheet, and then walked across the room and handed them to Eric.
“Here,” she said, reaching out w
ith bony fingers. “For your friend. The girl.”
“How do you know...?”
Marta tapped her nose. “I’m not as stupid as you might think. Don’t let my years fool you.”
She settled back into her chair.
“You might be thinking of escape,” she continued. “But I would hate to see Goral get his hands on a boy like you. I know what he does, Eric. Don’t think I’m blind to it. It’s something the men in our family have always done. There was a time, back home, when people scuttled away when they heard the Vitch name.”
