The Hunger Rebellion

by G F Cusack

  “If you choose to take on this challenge, we are going up against a well-armed enemy and I cannot guarantee we’ll all survive. What I can guarantee is that I will be with you one hundred percent. I will be risking as much as you for our survival. If we relieve the Company of these resources, we should have enough to survive on through the winter. If we do not attempt this, we will not survive the winter. I have only one question for you all: who is with me?”

  After a moment of quiet, almost as one, the men and women around him shouted, “I’m with you, I’m with you, I’m with you.” It was a moving sight, even to Pepper. Any thoughts he’d had of abandoning these people were now gone. This display of trust from Frank’s people went a long way to instil confidence in him.

  Not one person was still, everyone was raising their fists in support. After the cheering had reached a crescendo, Frank signalled with his arms for quiet. Eventually silence again fell across the people. “I am humbled by your confidence in me. I will not let you down. Now that I know that this is what you want, we will implement the strategy. Go back to your vehicles and prepare. Your convoy commanders will be with you shortly to brief you. We are going to strike a deathly blow to the Company, we will get some revenge for our fallen friends and at the same time plunder resources to help us survive the winter. This is for our survival and we are survivors.”

  With that, Frank jumped off the back of the vehicle and hurried back to his own Jeep, keeping Flo close. Eric, Pepper and Debs followed.

  The next few days were going to be busy. He had got as much information as he could and he felt confident that they had the element of surprise. Whoever their guardian was that was supplying the information to Flo, he hoped to get the chance to thank him some day.

  41

  The attack on the border post

  18 September 2202

  The graveyard shift was one of the hardest for the guards to stay alert for. Stretching between 1 and 4 am, it was late enough in the night so that you’re shattered but too far away from morning for your body to be alert the next day. Marvin and Leo still had two hours left of their shift.

  Very rarely did anything happen at this time of night on the border posts. If they were lucky, they got to see some jackrabbits having sex under the tower downlights, not that this was much of a distraction. Games like betting on how many rabbits they would see provided a slight break from the boredom.

  The three-month tour on the border post always followed the same routine. In the 24-hour period of quick reaction force, they remained fully clothed in their gear, ready to deploy in five minutes. After that was a 24-hour period of enhanced readiness, where they needed to be ready to deploy within an hour. Those two periods alternated until, for just one 24-hour period every week, they were on a leisurely four-hour readiness to deploy – but that just never seemed to come round soon enough.

  They were constantly tired from the physical activity on the day of reduced readiness and there was little to challenge the sentries on the border. The rough roads that they navigated during their patrols across the border point jarred your bones to increase fatigue without keeping you fully alert.

  At 2.15 it was time for Leo to start the rotation. Whoever had come up with the brilliant idea of the sentry rotation clearly never had to do it themselves. Each of the ten sentry towers was manned by two sentries. The technique was that at fifteen minutes after each hour, one of each of the sentry pairs would leave their sentry tower and walk to the next one. It took approximately 30 minutes to walk between each tower.

  The theory behind this rotation was that not only did it give them somebody on the ground as a roving patrol, it also prevented any pair of sentries from lying down in their tower and going to sleep.

  Someone always seemed to be moving around and the constant requirement to reset your night vision (between roving out in the dark and manning a well-lit tower) made it hard to identify changes in the environment around the guard posts.

  Leo had just got to the bottom of the guard tower ladder when he thought he heard something. Although the sentries were supposed to keep in contact by radio, it was rare to hear voices on any radio as the sadistic sergeant on that shift punished anybody he believed was messing around, making them run around the next day with a large log above their heads. Rather than risk becoming a victim of this punishment, Leo decided to have a look for himself to find out what the noise was.

  The towers were situated in an arc. With this design, they didn’t cover as much area as they would in a straight line but the area between the towers that the sentries patrolled was more evenly spaced.

  Leo decided to continue on the arc while at the same time keeping alert for anything out of the ordinary. Within five minutes of leaving the base of his tower, he heard some rustling nearby. As he had not been provided with night-vision goggles and with only a small moon tonight, it was hard to discern shapes and the source of the rustling. He eventually realised that he had encountered two rabbits copulating and instinctively stopped to stare at them.

  For this reason, Leo failed to notice Pepper’s silent approach. In one clean motion, Pepper seized him from behind, clasped his hand over Leo’s mouth and at the same time slit his throat. Leo emitted less noise than the thumping of the rabbits and nobody else noticed this confrontation.

  This was not the first night that the rebels had observed the guard posts so they were well aware of the rotation of the sentries and timed the attack accordingly. At the same time as Pepper was dispatching Leo, Frank and several other rebels were ambushing the other sentries moving between the towers.

  In the overcast night, the downlights of the towers still did not really help the sentries in the towers to distinguish between their comrades and potential enemies. The border post had never been attacked so the guards in the tower rarely glanced at the patrols.

  As each of the sentries lifted the hatch to let their comrade into the tower, they were met with silenced pistols and dispatched quietly into the night.

  Even in the quiet of the night, the silenced pistols emitted scarcely any noise, alerting no one to the fate of the sentries. All in all, the rebels took out a section of ten linked guard towers, leaving a gap in the defences for the several hundred rebels to pass through. No alarms were sounded.

  Those manning the towers waited until the majority of their fellow rebels had passed through this gap. Then they followed, taking with them the radios from the sentries and any weaponry or other resources that they could strip from their bodies.

  When the rebels came across the main guard compound, it was obvious that security there was an afterthought. The Company had been more worried about an attack from the Sanctuary side of the border than from the southern side. The bogus warning signs and other camouflage, designed to make the wastelands look dangerous and inhospitable, had served the Company so well that it had become complacent.

  Around three hundred sentries were stationed about the border outpost – not a huge number but the Company believed that it was under little threat. A quick reaction force was also on standby to bolster those numbers via helicopter. It would be limited to the number of troops the helicopters could carry so effectively was more of an afterthought.

  Taking out the communications was the first task. The rebels made short work of the antennae and satellite dishes, stopping communications to any potential assistance.

  The only people awake at this time were the workers in kitchens and other support activities. Most of the soldiers were sound asleep in their beds and that is where most of them died.

  The guard towers had been equipped with breathing apparatus and gas masks, along with gas canisters designed to use against any potential attackers. Pepper and the rebels had taken the masks and deployed the canisters against the compound.

  The sleeping troops were oblivious to the release of the gas. Had this happened at a different time of day, they might have had the time to don their own gas masks and survive. The element of surprise favoured the
rebels and the whole assault was over in less than an hour.

  42

  Preparations for the festival

  21 September 2202

  The aging ceremonies routinely happened every month but the festival towards the end of each year combined the coming winter months of aging ceremonies into one big event. This ritual had come about because the elites wanted to retire to their secure compound for the winter but did not want to miss out on the entertainment that attending ceremonies offered them. The days of the festival were also a chance to show off their finery.

  It was little concern to the elites that by combining several ceremonies they were robbing some of the masses of months of their lives. Anyway, the extra fights they enjoyed as part of the festival were a way to placate the masses as well.

  Winter seemed to arrive earlier each year, with the effect that the elites took longer and longer holidays at their secure compound hideaway away from the capital.

  This year’s festival was scheduled for the middle of October. That was only a month away.

  Karla had to prepare for three days and three nights of fighting at the pits as well as the activities that she was working on for the resistance.

  Angus had been giving her daily updates from the boy Zap. When she learnt of the rebels’ successful assault on the border, she’d informed the other resistance leaders immediately. It had been only a few days since they had last met but already their initial plans were starting to take effect.

  The extra food was getting through to the masses, emboldening them to strengthen their rebellion against the Company.

  Stoking up the people was a great start but the extra rebel troops would help to do some real damage.

  When Zap arrived for his daily workout, Angus brought him to Karla’s office.

  “Hello Zap. I just wanted to thank you for all the good work that you’re doing. Have you spoken to your friend who is with the rebels today?” Karla asked.

  “Yes, they are making good time on their way to the port.”

  “I want you to liaise with Angus and keep updating him. We will arrange for someone to rendezvous with the rebels when they reach the other side of the water. With your skills, you are the one person who can make this happen. This could be critical to our survival. Are you up to the task, young man?”

  “I will keep communicating with them for as long as I can draw breath,” Zap replied.

  Karla lifted an eyebrow in the direction of Angus, prompting him to comment, “He’s a good lad and I trust him to do the right thing.”

  “I’m glad that you are committed to the cause and I will not hold you up any further. If there is anything at all that you need, tell Angus and we will do everything possible to get it for you.”

  “Thank you Karla. I realise that we are all in danger until this is finished and I won’t let you down,” Zap said.

  With that, Karla dismissed them and moved on to more pressing matters.

  The current plan was to launch the rebellion and the attacks on strategic targets in the days leading up to the festival. To hide this plan, however, Karla had to act as though the festival was going to take place.

  She had over thirty fights to schedule as well as gel distribution, elite seating and all of the extra security precautions that an event like this required.

  Already the volume of food delivered daily to the pits had increased to help build up the warriors ahead of the games. The extra food would continue to arrive right through the festival, when it would also be needed for the people attending.

  The elites supplied this food as they wanted a good exhibition from the warriors. One added advantage this year was that if the rebellion did go ahead, the warriors would be able to fight against the Company instead of for it.

  Keeping up the pretence that the festival was going to go ahead had another advantage. If the rebels failed and the festival went ahead, it would give Karla some plausible deniability of ever being involved. And then, of course, she would actually be prepared for the festival too.

  43

  Zap is summoned to Brand’s office

  25 September 2202

  Zap had been around the council buildings before, but he had never been summoned to see the supreme leader.

  Rumours were that when people went into his office, they never came out. These could have just been horror stories designed to scare people but, whenever anyone spoke of Brand, it was only in whispers.

  Even the most senior people that Zap worked under seemed scared to talk about Brand. He knew Dick had visited Brand’s residence on a technical callout and so he asked him what he was like.

  It turned out that Dick had not met Brand in person on that callout. He said that Brand lived in a suite in the council buildings known as the big house. Even the surroundings of his home had been imposing and he got the impression that Brand was someone to be wary of.

  With only this limited information, Zap found himself standing outside the supreme leader’s office, waiting to be ushered in. For twenty minutes, he fidgeted and paced nervously, still wondering why he had been summoned. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t come up with a harmless reason for him to be here today.

  The only thought that comforted Zap was that, if the supreme leader suspected him of wrongdoing, the troops would have abducted him and taken him straight to the gel plants already. An early trip to the gel plants was the ultimate fear of most Sanctuary citizens. Stories of disappearances were increasing. Even innocent people went missing at all times of the day.

  If the supreme leader wanted to see him, it could be a lot worse.

  When the office doors finally opened, Zap was greeted by a young, good-looking woman, wearing nothing but a thin gown. He had seen good-looking women before but he was taken aback by her beauty as well as by her revealing clothing.

  Expecting the security to be extremely tight, Zap was surprised he hadn’t been searched yet. As he approached the doors, he lifted his arms, expecting a thorough body search. One of the guards seemed ready to begin the search before a taller guard shook his head at him. This was confusing because, even though he wasn’t a threat, Zap hadn’t expected such easy access to the supreme leader.

  As hesitant as he was, he let the woman lead him into the huge office. At the far end was an enormous desk with a well-dressed man sitting in the only chair. The man was picking his fingernails with a large knife and smiling. This was unsettling. Zap hoped the smile was a good sign because he had never been so scared in all of his life.

  He was having problems just walking behind the woman. Placing one foot in front of the other suddenly seemed alien to him.

  The man stood up and put the knife on the desk and picked up a sheet of paper. “Come and sit,” he said, while perusing the paper. “Ethan, is it? Or do you prefer to be called Zap?”

  Zap was taken aback and unsure how to answer.

  “Come on, speak up,” the man said.

  “My friends call me Zap,” he managed to stutter out.

  “Well I assume you’d like to be my friend? So I’ll call you Zap. My name’s Brand but you can call me sir. Take a seat, Zap.”

  Zap did as he was told. Sitting in front of Brand, he suddenly realised that in his efforts to please his host, he hadn’t noticed that they were alone. When had the woman left the office? Was there a different exit he hadn’t noticed?

  “You are probably wondering why you were summoned here?”

  Zap was unsure how to answer this question. He didn’t know why he had been summoned but he knew he was scared so he decided it was best to say nothing here.

  “The reason you are here, Zap, is that it has come to our attention you have been communicating with a fugitive outside of the Sanctuary.”

  At those words, a chill ran up Zap’s spine and he felt the blood drain from his face.

  He’d heard that Brand had spies everywhere but the only person he’d told about his dreams was Dick. Dick was his friend though – maybe their apartments we
re bugged?

  What had he said? When had he said it? What had they heard? He had a million thoughts running through his head while he tried to maintain his composure on the outside.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” he replied quietly.

  “Come now, come now,” Brand said. “Don’t be shy. You should be proud of your skills. I’m aware that you can communicate with this person through your mind. What you may not be aware of is that she’s an enemy of the state. Are you a patriot, Zap? Do you care about the security of the state?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I care about the state,” Zap said desperately.

  “Great, because if you care about the state, you’ll be glad to know you can help. We’ve been searching for this woman for some time. The first thing you need to realise, is you must not believe anything that she tells you. She is a master of manipulation and she will get you killed. Are you are aware that she has killed before?”

  Zap was unsure whether this was a question or a statement. Before he had the chance to answer, he heard a voice in his head say, “How did I sire such a snivelling wretch.”

  The voice was Brand’s. For a moment Zap was confused, he’d only heard Flo’s voice in his head before. It now seemed that he could read others thoughts. Quickly regaining his composure, he decided to hide this skill from Brand as he tried to determine what was going on. What was Brand talking about? Who was he talking about? Was this man saying that he was Zap’s father? That made no sense.