by Cole, Robert
Two rifles were pointing at them.
The dark haired soldier, retrieving his rifle and handing the other to his mate, gave a low whistle. ‘Phew! Are we glad to see you,’ he said. ‘You took your time.’
‘Dirty mutants!’ sneered the other, quickly recovering his nerve in the face of two more reinforcements. ‘Not saying a great deal now, are you?’ He poked Alex in the ribs with his own revolver. ‘You really don't know what's down there, do you?’ he went on, pointing towards the floor. ‘Well, soon all your questions will be answered.’
They held a brief discussion amongst themselves, then made Alex and Elaine empty their pockets and searched their pack. In a short while the two soldiers Alex had surprised took their leave. One of the relieving guards pulled out a remote control device and pushed a button. At once the two floor panels began to grind apart.
‘Where are you taking us?’ Elaine asked.
‘You'll see,’ the man replied coldly.
Alex and Elaine were led down a concrete staircase, then along a lighted tunnel in which a faint rumbling could be heard. Their eyes widened, as with a tremendous noise and a sudden gust of wind, a tube train drew up beside them when they reached a platform. The air compressed doors hissed open as hundreds of people from the sixteenth sector caught the tube to the central shopping complex some five kilometres away, under the small village of Box.
The soldier grinned as he saw Alex's incredulous expression. ‘Everything here is linked by train,’ he said mildly. ‘It's like the London underground before the war, except the city is underground as well.’
But the train was not for them. At the end of the platform, the soldier pushed a button to summon a lift. The doors slid back and they were pushed in. They descended fifteen floors in a matter of seconds, emerging into chilly environment of shiny corridors. The two soldiers kept back beyond arms' length, perhaps, Alex thought, to prevent being surprised, but perhaps simply to avoid contact with the ‘dirty mutants’, as they persisted in calling them. Certainly, with their creaking, mirror like boots, their bright brass buckles and clean cut looks, they looked a world apart from Alex and Elaine. Even the tone of their voices conveyed a sense of unabashed superiority.
At length they came to a halt outside a large, iron-ribbed door, bearing the inscription ‘Security Section 15G’. The leading soldier identified himself by means of an intercom and a lock snapped open. Alex and Elaine were gestured into a stark, cream coloured office.
‘Major Collins, Sir.’ The soldier saluted a thin, grey haired man sitting at a desk. ‘We caught these mutants holding two of our men at gunpoint at the entrance to quadrant sixteen.’
The Major examined the two prisoners without much interest. ‘And why have you brought them here?’
‘Standing orders, Sir. Any mutants found within a kilometre radius of any main entrance are to be interrogated.’
The Major's gaze returned to Alex and Elaine. His eyes were deep-set and cold. ‘Why were you holding my men at gunpoint?’
‘We were trying to find out what was down here,’ Alex replied.
‘You don't know what's down here?’
Alex shrugged. ‘Should I?’
‘From what we overheard,’ the soldier interrupted, ‘he hadn't a clue we even existed.’
The Major nodded. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked abruptly.
‘Oh, around here,’ Alex replied, making a vague gesture.
The man smiled thinly. ‘That's not possible. You see, the few mutants that still remain in this area wouldn't dare come within ten kilometres of here. They know we exist and they have better sense than to try and bail any of us up at gunpoint.’
‘And who is ‘us’?’ Alex asked.
This question was ignored. The Major turned his attention to Elaine. ‘And where do you come from?’
‘North of here,’ she replied.
‘How far north?’
‘Ten kilometres,’ Alex cut in.
The man looked back at Alex briefly. ‘Don't cling to a statement we've already established can't be true.’
‘We come from Wales?’ said Elaine.
‘Wales?’ An eyebrow went up at that. ‘What part of Wales?’
‘The south.’
He frowned and tapped on the desk. ‘Soldier, have you checked through their belongings?’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘What did you find?’
‘Ammunition, food, clothing.’ The soldier paused. ‘And a map, Sir.’
‘Map? Anything written on it?’
‘I didn’t check Sir.’
The Major spread the map on the desk and studied it for a few seconds, then let out a short grunt of satisfaction. ‘You've stumbled over a couple of prize fish here, soldier!’ he smiled. ‘All right, take them to the detention room and lock them in. I'll be along in a few minutes.’
They were led through the office into a narrow corridor flanked by numbered steel doors. As they reached door eleven, the soldiers stopped, drew back the bolt and pushed Alex and Elaine inside.
It was a large, bare chamber, the only furniture being a small, metal legged desk in the centre of the room, with three wooden chairs clustered untidily around it. Directly above the desk, a fluorescent globe hung from an uneven sandstone roof. The walls were a shiny white.
‘He knows about the mine, doesn't he?’ Elaine asked.
Alex nodded. ‘Don't you remember? I circled it when I was showing you where I came from.’
She sighed, then walked over and sat on the desk. ‘But who are they? And why do they call us mutants? What does that word mean, mutants?’
Alex tried to smile back reassuringly, but only managed a grimace. The implication of any survivor calling another survivor a mutant was that the name caller had been living below ground at the time of the holocaust. This whole complex must have pre dated the holocaust, probably by years. These healthy, effortlessly superior people, incredible as it might seem, had perhaps never been exposed to radiation, perhaps had not even heard the bombs falling. They had lived underground while the surface was incinerated.
The door clicked open and Major Collins came in, followed by a thick set man, with brawny arms and a bulldog face.
‘Corporal Rowell, one of our most experienced interrogators,’ the Major said casually.
The corporal closed the door and took up position close to it, standing with legs slightly apart and his arms clasped behind his back, waiting to be called upon.
Major Collins crossed over to the desk and pulled out a pen and pad from one of the drawers. ‘It was extraordinary luck you appearing on our doorstep, so to speak,’ he said in quite an amiable voice. ‘We've known of the existence of your colony for nearly two years now, however until now we have lacked any information about you.’
‘Why are you so interested in us?’ Elaine asked.
‘Purely academic,’ the Major smiled. ‘We’re naturally concerned with anything that's happening on the surface. How the survivors are coping, the difficulties they face…that sort of thing.’ He straightened the paper and wrote rapidly across the top.
‘We still don't know who you are?’ Alex said forcibly.
‘Yes, yes,’ the Major nodded, ‘I imagine this whole thing has come as a rather nasty shock. It's not every day you find an underground city, especially after spending three years believing you were the only large-sized colony left in Britain.’ He clasped his hands together and leaned forward, confidently. ‘Well, as you must have gathered, even from your brief time here, our city is very large and technically advanced. Such an achievement you would expect to take years of planning and building. In fact, it took fifteen years to construct from its inception. It was designed as the last refuge for the government, a place of safety where our leaders could withdraw to wait out a nuclear holocaust. It was built as a precaution in the nineteen-eighties.’
‘Rather an excessive precaution.’
The Major shrugged. ‘Obviously these things don't come cheap.’
‘So you are what is left of the government?’ Alex asked.
‘Exactly. This city is the kernel, if you will, the embodiment of our civilisation. And now that the radiation has dropped to acceptable levels we have decided to re-populate the surface. This is why we seek information on colonies such as yours, so as to be able to render assistance, and indeed to learn from you.’
Alex frowned. ‘I'm not sure that I believe you,’ he answered.
‘Really,’ the Major raised an eyebrow. ‘Then what do you believe?’
‘None of this makes any sense,’ Alex admitted. ‘But if you are the government, then you've already deserted the population once. I'm not giving you the chance to do any more harm.’
The Major sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘We had to abandon the population. They were out of control, overrunning ration stations, killing anyone who stood in their path. All our attempts to establish some sort of discipline were thrown out of gear by the survivors themselves.’
Alex shook his head. ‘You were slaughtering anyone who opposed you. Your soldiers collected the healthiest people and put them into work camps where they laboured until they dropped or died of disease.’
‘We were trying to rebuild the country.’
‘You weren't doing anything of the sort. All you were interested in was keeping the food supplies from the survivors so you could hoard it all down here and let the 'mutants', as you call us, die in our millions on the surface.’
The Major's face hardened considerably at these words. ‘Of course you have every right to be upset. I couldn't begin to imagine what it must have been like. No food, contaminated water, snowstorms, hardly any difference between night and day.’ He looked from Alex to Elaine sympathetically. ‘In a way it's amazing anyone could have survived those conditions. That's why our soldiers have rather indelicately referred to you as 'mutants'. You represent something that is totally foreign to us. You have endured so much and you look so different it becomes difficult to…’ He paused, searching for words.
‘To think of us as human?’ Alex broke in.
‘I was going to say that it becomes difficult to relate to you,’ the Major replied coldly.
‘Difficult to relate,’ Alex repeated. ‘Yes, I would agree with that. I certainly found it difficult to relate to that feast we observed out there this afternoon.’
‘Ahh,’ the Major nodded. ‘Now I see what the problem is. And you have a valid point, I admit. We do have an excess of food.’
‘Then why didn't you give it to us?’ Alex cried. ‘The people on the surface have been starving for three years!’
There was a long pause as the Major seemed to brood over this question. Alex and Elaine waited patiently. At length he looked up. ‘This is a tough one,’ he said, ‘but you have to try to imagine what effect an offer of food would have had on the survivors. At no point had we enough food to feed everyone. We would have been swamped with demands, overrun with people fighting, squabbling, killing. It would have been a repeat of the holocaust. Riots would have broken out; the city itself would have been attacked. We would have been forced to kill survivors in our own defence.’
‘But if you had only shared some of your technology!’ Elaine put in. ‘Told us how to deal with the radiation! How we could solve our farming problems!’
The Major shrugged. ‘One thing leads to another,’ he said. ‘And that's precisely what we're offering now.’
‘But you wanted the dirty, contaminated rabble out of the way first, is that it?’ Alex said. ‘You let them die in their millions, and then you emerge like some fairy godmother waving your wand to put it all right again?’
‘You're talking about strategy here,’ the Major replied in a weary tone, as if the conversation had exhausted his interest. ‘The point is, we are willing to help you now. We have tremendous resources which we would gladly make available.’
Alex shook his head. ‘I don't believe a word of it. If your motives were sincere you'd have helped us long ago.’
‘Don't try my patience,’ the Major warned. ‘Ingratitude is an evil under any circumstances.’ He gestured for the corporal to move closer. ‘I want a little information from you, and I am prepared to go to some pains to obtain it. Do I make myself clear?’
Alex didn't answer. The corporal stood at ease, staring at the wall impassively. Neither Alex nor Elaine doubted for a moment that he would carry out the Major's orders, whatever they might be.
The salutary effect of the corporal's presence seemed to please the Major. ‘Well now,’ he said more calmly, ‘how many people are there in your colony?’
‘Ten thousand,’ Alex lied.
The Major heaved a sigh. ‘Young man, you're being very foolish. We know there are at least twenty thousand, if not more.’ He put down his pen and nodded. ‘Corporal!’
The corporal moved forward slowly. Alex nervously backed away, his arms raised defensively. The corporal closed his fists. Then, in a sudden fury, he struck Alex first in the stomach and then in the face.
Elaine screamed and rushed at the corporal, only to be flung across the room, landing heavily on her back.
Alex straightened, gasping for breath. Another blow struck him in the midriff, winding him. He was aware of blood pouring from his nose and his cut mouth. His chest stung, he gasped and coughed, trying to support himself on his hands, waiting for the next sickening blow. Instead he was grasped by his clothes and dragged across and dumped on a chair.
‘You see, it's useless to lie to me,’ the Major said, examining a tiny spot of blood, which had appeared in front of him. ‘We know certain facts about your colony already. There's no point in trying to deceive us. The truth is so much cleaner somehow, I always think.’
Alex turned his head and saw Elaine rise shakily to her feet. The corporal had resumed his place like a shadow, just behind.
‘Now, let's try again. How many people in your colony?’
‘Twenty thousand,’ Alex groaned.
‘And what type of military hardware have you got?’
‘Not a great deal.’
‘Not a great deal?’ The Major tapped his pen on the desk. ‘You'll have to be more specific than that. What type of military…’
‘I don't know!’ Alex pleaded. ‘I'm not in charge of defence! I only work in…’ Another blow sent him sprawling across the floor.
He rose slowly to his knees. His head was spinning and his right ear was numb from where the corporal had struck him.
‘It's true!’ Elaine shouted. ‘He doesn't know. He works in the fields, the same as me. We found a report mentioning a village called Box and we thought there might be some food down here. That's why we came.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘We stole a Land Rover.’
There was a moment's silence as the Major considered Elaine's explanation. ‘A large amount of ammunition, a couple of revolvers, packaged food, maps and a Land Rover. No, it won't do my dear young lady. This trip was planned with the knowledge of your superiors. You'll have to do better than that.’
The corporal grabbed Alex by the collar and lifted him back onto the chair. The Major's calm, faintly amused face appeared again.
‘Each of us has his line of work, you know, and the corporal here is no exception. He's very very good at this,’ the Major said dryly. ‘He knows how to prolong pain, what the body can bear and what it cannot. Now, before he starts bending and breaking things, I want to give you another chance. I need your help, you see. I want as much detailed information as possible on the size of your forces, the amount of weaponry and ammunition you have, how well the colony is defended and so on. The precise location of those defences will also be very helpful.’
‘Why? Why do you want such detailed information?’ Alex asked, hoping to stall so that he could have time to think.
The Major flicked his eyes up at the corporal and a pair of muscular hands closed round Alex's throat. As the pressure increased, his face turned red and his n
ose erupted in a fresh stream of blood.
‘Just answer my questions, young man,’ the Major growled.
Alex tried in vain to loosen the hands around his throat, vaguely aware that Elaine was digging her finger nails into the corporal's face. The pressure eased for a second. Alex broke free and dived across the desk at the Major, his right fist smacking into the Major's face, knocking him onto the floor with Alex on top of him. Dizzy and gasping for breath, Alex fought to pull himself to his knees. He turned, only to find the shiny black barrel of a revolver hovering centimetres from his head. The Major's flushed and enraged face glared from behind it, a trickle of blood ebbing down his chin from a split lip.
‘Get up!’ he snarled. ‘Get up before I kill you!’
Alex rose slowly to his feet. Major Collins rammed the revolver into his nose, making him wince in pain.
‘Corporal, bring the girl here!’ he yelled.
The Major’s face was so close that Alex could feel his breath. ‘That's the very last trick you'll ever play with me, mutant!’ he growled.
Two figures edged into Alex’s view. The corporal, dragging Elaine, forced her onto the chair Alex had been sitting in. His face had deep bloody scratch marks stretching diagonally from his right forehead to his left cheek. He pulled Elaine's head back as if to display what he had done to her in return. Alex drew a sharp breath when he saw her. The right side of her face was already black and swollen; the corporal must have struck her there repeatedly. Blood was still pouring freely from her nose and cut lips and her cheek had swollen till her eye was no larger than a slit.
The Major grinned when he saw the horrified look on Alex’s face. ‘No one does that to the corporal and gets away with it.’ He jerked the gun further into Alex’s nose. ‘Now, corporal, I want you to continue working on the girl.’
The corporal started twisting Elaine's arm around her back. She began to cry out, a horrible, high pitched squeal that only stopped long enough for her to fill her lungs again.
‘Stop it!’ Alex screamed. ‘It's not necessary! I'll talk!’
The Major signalled to the corporal and the terrible squealing stopped.
