Going Underground

by Denison, L. N

  It was a brilliantly sunny day, one of the best days that Myron and Jen had seen in a long time. The sun almost blinded them as they caught sight of the world above ground.

  ‘Wow! That was unexpected,’ Jen said with surprise, as she cupped her right hand over her one good eye. Myron acted as if the sun had burnt out his eyes, tightly squeezing shut his eyelids and placing his hands over them.

  ‘Oh, come on, Myron, it’s only the sun. It’s been brighter than this before now,’ Jen teased him.

  Myron slowly opened his eyes and cupped his hands over them as Jen had done.

  ‘Where to?’ Jen said.

  ‘You know where,’ said Myron grimly.

  *

  Hyde Park was bustling with people. They had made their way into the desolate city centre to begin filling up the empty moments of their empty lives with scrounging for titbits. Myron and Jen just went with the flow of people until it was time to break off and head towards Myron’s family home, while keeping out of the sight of the daytime patrols.

  Knightsbridge was just around the corner from Myron and Jen’s current position. They slinked and slid their way between the bushes and crevices, trying not to draw too much attention to themselves as the patrolmen had cast their collective eye over the procession of people heading away from the park.

  Arriving at his family home, Myron was unprepared for what he saw. A pile of rubble and smoking timbers were all that remained of the once majestic manse. A look of horror plastered itself across his face, and then a single tear rolled down his cheek.

  ‘Myron, what’s wrong?’ Jen asked with concern.

  Myron didn’t answer; he dashed towards the ash and debris, not caring if he was spotted or not.

  ‘Myron, wait for me!’ Jen quickened her pace, forgetting about her sore feet. ‘Myron, slow down—watch out for the patrols!’

  Consumed by visions of finding his parents bodies among the rubble, Myron was oblivious to his surroundings and left Jen far behind him. His fears were realised as he reached what would have been the entrance to his home. Stumbling through the ruins, the sun glinted on something metal at his feet. It was the watch that his mother had given his father for a tenth wedding anniversary present, almost twelve years ago. It was one of the happier family moments that Myron had been a part of; a time when his father wasn’t so powerful within the ranks of the government, before he had turned into the monster that Myron knew.

  In the smouldering ruins of the kitchen, Myron chanced upon his father’s charred skeleton. He stared emotionlessly at it. It might as well have been the skeleton of a stray dog.

  In a daze, he stumbled toward his mother’s bedroom, dreading what he would find. Myron dearly loved his mother, who, even in her mild dementia, still always managed to recognise her only son. It had disheartened Myron to look at her in her fragile state, and his father hadn’t made the situation any better by sending him away.

  Myron found her in the bedroom, as expected. Thankfully, all he could see was one bony hand protruding pathetically from underneath a mound of bricks.

  Jen arrived five minutes later, looking horrified as she scoured the remains. Myron had returned to what had been the manse’s massive front porch. Tears brimmed in his eyes.

  ‘Your parents, they are …?’

  ‘Both dead.’

  ‘Oh, Myron, I am so sorry,’ she said, laying a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

  Myron wiped away his tears. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can salvage anything worth bartering with,’ he said, trying to sound brave.

  They separated and combed the ruins, which looked to Jen like the results of an arson attack. What else could it have been? It was highly unlikely for it to have been a missile attack. To start with, Myron’s house was the only affected building that they could see. He was too wrapped up in his grief for Jen to share her thoughts with him.

  Something had caught Jen’s eye as she looked around the ruins.

  ‘Myron, I’ve found something, and it looks important!’

  Jen dragged over an oversized briefcase that was miraculously undamaged amidst the rubble. It seemed to be made of a reinforced metal, which would explain why it was so heavy.

  Myron stared at Jen, exasperated by her lack of respect. ‘Can’t you leave me in peace for one minute, please?’ he said witheringly.

  Contrite, Jen moved away, towards the back of the decimated building, dragging the heavy briefcase with her. Curiosity got the better of her, and she opened it up. There was file after file of War Office notes and strategies. One by one, she laid the files out in the order that they had been placed in the briefcase. What was inside the files would prove Oscar Saracen’s conspiracy theories! She picked up the first file; the label read ‘Labour Camp Occupation.’ Jen’s stomach churned, recalling her hellish stint in camp number five and her inhuman treatment at the hands of Simon Besson, whose devilish face had embedded itself in her mind.

  Dare she look at the contents? There was only one answer: she had to know the true purpose of the camps.

  Jen spent half an hour or so sifting through the labour camp file. In silent horror, she read through every last detail of why the camps really existed. What Oscar had tried to tell the people in Hyde Park on the day of his arrest was true, down to the letter. Jen already knew that the camps had been a form of cleansing, but it was the experimentation that was carried out in the camps that had Jen thinking: why so many, what was the plan? Jen read further, but found nothing in that particular file.

  ‘Myron, come here! You need to take a look at this!’ Jen shouted urgently.

  While Jen studied the files, Myron had sombrely covered his father’s skeleton with charred fragments of draperies he had found. Now he joined Jen, who handed him the labour camp file.

  ‘Take a look at the fourth page.’ She pointed to a section of the handwritten dossier, which Myron read aloud:

  ‘The camps are purely a smoke screen to hide the bigger picture. Yes, their purpose is cleansing, but they are also a means of extracting the DNA of unwilling inmates through the bogus experimentations conducted. What happens to the DNA after it has been extracted, I do not know, and I have no way of finding out. Logically, my high rank within the government should make me privy to what goes on within the camp walls, but I have been kept in the dark until now. I have to meet someone tonight—someone who has the information that I am looking for to conclude my report.’

  ‘You know what these are, don’t you?’ said Jen. ‘They’re not governmental—they’re your father’s personal files! Looks like your dad was leading a double life,’ Jen concluded.

  ‘I don’t know, Jen,’ said Myron, scratching his head. ‘If he was so against the camps, then why send you to one of them for something so trivial?’

  ‘I don’t think he had any choice in the matter—read the next page!’

  Again, Myron read aloud:

  ‘After two weeks of having my son followed, I was forced to do something that made me question my role in this tyrannical, immoral and unethical government. I had to send a girl to one of these labour camps for nothing more than taking her tracking device off two days early, and for being with my son, whom I sent to the front lines for being with her. I hate myself for doing it, but the laws of the land dictated that I must.’

  Myron couldn’t believe what he was reading: his own father was a rebel! No wonder he was dead. His hatred for his father slowly faded, as he further explored the files. He began reading a file on the splinter groups and rebel cells prominent in the Kentish countryside over the last seventeen years.

  ‘I can hardly believe it,’ said Myron. ‘My dad was active in one of the rebel cells!’

  Myron and Jen knew what had to be done from that point on, but it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. They armed themselves with the rest of the files, and began to make their way back towards Hyde Park underground station to peruse the rest of Sir John’s materials.

  *

  The park seemed to be
bustling again; something was going on in the distance.

  ‘Look!’ Myron exclaimed. ‘That poster—looks like a couple of executions are about to be carried out.’

  The poster read:

  At noon on 28 February 2045, you will ALL bear witness to the execution of one collaborator and one traitor by hanging. Both of them shall remain nameless.

  The poster made it abundantly clear that viewing the executions was mandatory. Myron and Jen both knew hanging was a blessing compared to what they could have been put through, as previous conspirators had been subjected to deviant and inhumane capital punishment that neither liked to think about. Former punishments were positively medieval, such as being drawn and quartered or burnt alive.

  Myron and Jen joined the growing throng headed for the gallows. All the while, Myron held onto his father’s precious files for dear life.

  The crowd was getting extremely hostile, as they had been made to wait for longer than they had wanted. They had been waiting for the arrival of the condemned for half-an-hour, chanting the words “Death to the traitors!” and “Kill!” over and over again, wanting to satisfy their bloodlust.

  In the distance, the transport carrying the condemned made its way across the park, slipping and sliding in the overgrown grass. The bloodthirsty crowd whooped and roared in anticipation.

  As the vehicle got closer, the faces of the condemned were revealed for all to see. Jen’s eyes widened with terror as the vehicle passed her and pulled up to the makeshift gallows. There were two prisoners, a man and a woman, whose messy mop of red hair was unmistakable. It was Jen’s mother, whom the government had accused of collaborating with the enemy.

  ‘Oh, my God, it’s my mother!’ Jen cried.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Myron.

  ‘Positive! And the man is Gunnar Bailey—he was in camp five, too!’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Jen.’

  ‘Don’t be. The old bitch is going to get what she deserves.’

  While Myron was mesmerised by the impending spectacle, Jen began to back away, not wishing to witness her own mother’s demise, or that of Gunnar Bailey. She quickly turned and elbowed her way through the sneering mob.

  Even though she felt a great deal of resentment toward her mother, the shock of seeing her being driven up to the gallows had given Jen pause. She couldn’t help but think how things could have been better had they both made a bit more effort—but the continual fighting had made any kind of reconciliation unlikely, if not impossible.

  Myron was again oblivious to the fact that Jen had left his side, as he watched the two prisoners being led onto the platform. Lavinia was crying uncontrollably as the crowd tossed rotten fruit and dried dog turds at her and Gunnar. Someone picked up a shard of glass and hurled it at Lavinia, gashing her cheek.

  Lavinia’s wrists were bound in front of her, and a belt had been placed around her arms to prevent movement. The same was done with Gunnar Bailey. Both were given the choice of a sack over the head, but Lavinia refused. She would rather look out at the hateful throng of people and hope Jen would be there, so she could remind her long-suffering daughter that she was a mistake one last time.

  Myron turned towards Jen, but she wasn’t there. He looked round the crowd frantically, lifting his head over the top, peering across the park to see if Jen was in sight. Myron began to make his way back through the crowd, missing the execution completely: everything from the placing of the noose to the grisly cracking of the necks.

  *

  Jen had made it back to Hyde Park underground station with her share of the files. She needed something to occupy her mind, and distract her from her mother, but it was difficult. Every time she tried to focus on something else, images of her mother would appear in her mind. A sense of regret hit Jen as she thought about the many arguments and altercations she and her mother had had over the years. Then it came, the one thing Jen didn’t want to do. A tear rolled down her right cheek, then another, and another. It reached a point where it was beyond her control.

  Myron found Jen after an hour of searching across Hyde Park. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might have returned to the seclusion of the underground, the quietest place to be at that time of day. When he had found her, he saw her in a completely different light than ever before. Her defensive barrier had been broken down by a surreal event: the unwarranted death of her mother at the hands of governmental henchmen.

  Myron found it strange that Jen was shedding tears for her mother. He knew full well that she hated her: she had said as much, many times, in no uncertain terms. Then again, she must have thought it odd that Myron had done the same thing with his dad.

  Despite her vehement protests to the contrary, Jen felt some affection for her mother: Myron was sure of it. He thought it best to leave her alone to work through her ambivalence.

  Myron had lost both his parents, and now Jen was a motherless child, too.

  It had been one hell of a day.

  *

  The evening was spent skimming through as many of Sir John’s files as possible, making Myron and Jen forget about the harrowing events of that day for a while. The more they read, the more damning the material within the files became.

  Something had to be done, but they didn’t have the resources. It was all well and good having this crucial information—but without a way to disseminate their findings, the people of the British Isles would remain in the dark about the truth.

  The underground station was beginning to fill rapidly with curfew on the horizon. It had reached the point where neither Myron nor Jen could concentrate, as the noise was deafening. They couldn’t make their way into the open to find somewhere quieter to work because of curfew. The cubbyhole Myron had found Jen in earlier was far too dark to even contemplate using, even with a flashlight.

  ‘We’re going to have to stop until morning,’ Myron groused. ‘I can’t concentrate with all this noise!’

  Jen gathered the files and stacked them between the two of them, out of the way of prying eyes.

  Chapter Twelve

  Curfew was a couple of minutes in; everybody had made it to the safety of Hyde Park underground station. There were a few who had not made it on time, as evidenced by the distant gunfire of governmental patrol rifles. The lucky ones that made it to safety listened expectantly for the curfew breakers’ screams, saying a prayer for them. Exhausted, Myron and Jen were oblivious, having fallen into deep if uneasy sleep.

  The gunfire ceased abruptly, signalling the death or capture of the unfortunate souls who hadn’t made it to the safety of the underground in time. This sparked many conversations among the underground dwellers. The situation was growing out of control. So many unwarranted deaths had been carried out over the past weeks. Having been away from London for so long, Myron and Jen were largely ignorant of the recent atrocities the government was carrying out. They were gradually getting an education from their loquacious and opinionated fellow refugees.

  The commotion and the ranting aroused them from their slumber. Jen had been trapped in a nightmare and was grateful for the noise, sparing her from the visions of her mother swinging in the stiff breeze. She woke up crying, her body heaving with silent sobs. Myron held her close to him and rocked her gently.

  ‘I loved her, really,’ she murmured. ‘I just didn’t show it—she gave me so many reasons not to!’

  Myron thought Jen sounded almost angry with herself for not having made more of an effort to get along with Lavinia.

  ‘Your mother hated you, and you hated your mother—what will be, will be,’ he said harshly, and to the point.

  Jen looked at him thoughtfully, but said nothing, not taking his words to heart. She rose to her feet and walked away from him.

  Myron remained sitting against the wall, straining to hear the gossip as it made the rounds. Many people had voiced their concern with the way things had been changing, and everyone secretly hoped that someone would come along to release them from the iron yoke that the gover
nment had around their collective necks.

  ‘We can’t live like this anymore!’ stormed an idealistic young man with wild hair and intelligent, fiery eyes. ‘The government is going too far—we need someone with the courage to do something about it. Someone to stand up to these tyrants, to expose them for the liars and hypocrites that they are! A hero! We need a hero!’

  Myron had taken in every word, which only fuelled his convictions. The evidence he found is in his father’s files was enough to spark the fire, which he had every intention of doing once he had all the resources he needed.

  *

  Jen walked through to the entrance of the underground station, looking at the forlorn faces she passed along the way. One scruffy-looking man with a weather-beaten face, and a battered pair of bifocals, looked vaguely familiar. She tried to remember where she had seen him before.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, approaching him. ‘Don’t I know you?’

  The man looked towards her and beamed. ‘Jen! How are you?’ he said with delight. ‘Jen, it’s me—Oscar!’

  Jen smiled uneasily, wondering what he was doing there. She had thought him dead, not knowing what had happened to him after he had helped her escape from the camp on the day she had lost her memory.

  ‘Hello, Oscar, I’m surprised to see you here. What happened to you? I thought ―’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he interrupted, ‘I wasn’t sent to another camp, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m obviously not dead, either. No, I was picked up by an Army patrol and forced into fighting. I can’t say that I was too happy about it,’ he griped. ‘You know my stance on the war, and the true meaning behind it!’

  Jen nodded. ‘Yes, I certainly do. When did you get here?’

  ‘I’ve been here for three days. I saw you arrive with a man yesterday. That was Myron, I take it?’

  Jen grew suspicious. ‘I can’t ever recall telling you about Myron.’

  Oscar smiled. ‘Don’t get your feathers ruffled. I overheard you mumbling his name in your sleep your first night at the camp.’