Among the Fallen: Resurrection

by Ross Shortall

  The GDP or Gross Domestic Product of Blackwater remains unknown, but its economy was largely dominated by the Beaumont Corporation, and it can be assumed most of the population was fairly prosperous. Approximately forty percent of the city’s inhabitants were believed to be directly employed with the company working in its many legal businesses, including pharmaceuticals and computing. However, only a select few knew of its alleged illegal activities in bio-engineering offering some of the best health plans, pensions and wage packages in the States. The corporation generously financed most of the city’s infrastructure, including the tram and subway system under the Crystal Century Project in a bid to improve public relations. The rumoured Bio-Weaponry Division is just that, rumour. Nevertheless, as far as rumours goes to its very solid and mostly ignored among the community of Blackwater.

  In 2008, Blackwater managed to privatize forty percent of its own Police Force providing the B.S.C.S

  trained troops and enforcement officers on the streets as well as taking on SWAT type missions for the Police with impressive results. On the 5th August 2008 during its debut mission, it is rumoured that just five of these soldiers were dropped on the roof of Juniper Towers apartment block after a one-hundred member strong cult took the building’s resident’s hostage. Within the hour, all cult members were dead with only four civilian casualties and two deaths, which were by the hands of the cult members themselves. All news reports and footage from the event were seized by Beaumont Corporation and still to this day; no footage exists of these enigmatic soldiers.

  The Guardian Project as it was known, received a mixed bag of feedback with some claiming Blackwater was used as a testing ground for the program; a mere experiment of the Beaumont Corporation’s power before it was presented to other cities in the States, showcasing the benefits of a privatized Police Force. Opinions were mostly positive as the city’s crime rate managed to drop an impressive sixty percent in just the first year, sending the mostly corrupt businesses underground in fear of appearing on the super cop radar.

  Finding the city was never the problem nor was visiting the city for that matter, you could drive up the one road leading into Blackwater in about an hour taking exit 89 from freeway 28874. However, if you wanted to live there, it was somewhat more difficult; you had to have money for a start; a trade to benefit the city and even then you had to stand before a committee and beg like dogs.

  With more than a thousand suburban applications every year it is rumoured the Blackwater Residential Panel, governed by Mayor Beaumont also; was one of the hardest panels on the Eastern Seaboard to stand in front of. Once a residential application was approved, each family was given a pass-card, so they could come and go as they pleased, which meant visitors to the city had to obtain temporary pass cards stating their purpose of visit, length of stay as you would at any given airport in the States. Although visiting the city was obviously free of charge, overstaying your welcome came with a heavy fine costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Blackwater for all intentional purposes was a fortress protected from vagrants, wanderers and immigrants and was hailed a success with only three other cities in the States following suit.

  Chapter Two: Alexandra Beaumont

  One of the three-million citizens who lived in Blackwater city was Alexandra Beaumont, daughter of the Beaumont Corporation Industrialist and Mayor, Grayston Beaumont. She was a typical, bolshie and arrogant twenty-one-year-old, not the most stunning girl on the planet but was never short of attention, especially from testosterone fuelled thugs her own age. She was a tiny five foot two, dark haired, brown-eyed shopaholic that wouldn’t exactly stand out in the crowd, but the type any woman-loving male wouldn’t turn down either.

  Generally, she lived day by day and kept herself to herself. Alex from birth was well off; she had a five percent stake in the corporation which was set up by her late mother before she was born. Despite her and her father’s volatile relationship, it was one of the only things that were solid between them and Grayston honoured the contract to the letter as it was his wife’s dying wish.

  Although Alex’s stake lawfully gave a substantial part of the corporation, she never exercised any rights of knowledge or even cared to be involved in the organizations business in any way whatsoever; one of the very few things that her and her father agreed upon. They lived in the same mansion on Blackwater Island, but Alex always felt like she was placed as far away from her father as possible. She had everything when it came to money, but as a family she had nothing; just a workforce that she had befriended and sadly, that was all she had her entire life.

  Alex was famed for a lot of things and most of them were quirky, if somewhat devious character traits. Being rich from birth she never really had to work hard at anything, and popularity automatically followed her anywhere she went. Whether it was her unique husky voice or her much gossiped about night-time activities, Alex was always the centre of some attention, whether she wanted to be or not. She was never spoilt; her money was hers and everything she ever bought either for her or her sister was paid for by her.

  Surprisingly independent for a rich girl, she actually breezed through life on face value alone, her private and somewhat disturbing home life was always kept quiet, but there was a second side of her that was specially created for those around her. Alex basically befriended anyone, but trusted very few. Most of the staff at Beaumont Estates she got on with bar a few and the best friend she had; Collette Walker, was actually Dorm Cleaner and Maid at Beaumont Estates. Alex was always rigging her timesheets and rotors without her father’s knowledge to get her out and about with her whenever possible. She was not the only one either; Alex was so defiant of her father that most of the time; half the work forces at Beaumont Estates were hardly there but with full pay; which at one point, her defiance actually led to the whole workforce accidentally having the week off which presented the biggest lecture in father daughter history, which Alex later boasted that her father was just pissed that there were no instructions on the toilet paper. That be said, Alex was almost ashamed of her money, okay, so she couldn’t live without it, but she mostly spent her nights down in the staff recreational room in the worker’s dorms under the house. She was not afraid to rub shoulders with poor, and in fact; she always preferred their company over her father’s friends hands down because she claimed their personalities were purer.

  Alex’s mother; Sherry Beaumont, died when Alex was a baby, a viral infection was the result of an inquest, but when Alex researched her mother in her early teens whilst working on a school project, there wasn’t a great deal of information available. The ugly truth, however, is that on the 11th April 1991; Sherry was rushed into a hospital with violent stomach cramps, blood discharges and sickness. Having taken the Beaumont family by surprise, this strange and closely instantaneous sickness ripped throughout her body while she carried Alex in the final stages of pregnancy almost killing them both immediately. Grayston Beaumont offered all the medical teams involved ridiculously big bonuses in desperation, but it did not save Sherry’s life. The mystery infection actually targeted her organs and life-support systems as if it was, in fact, executing her deliberately.

  She died at approximately 23:11pm and Alex was born just before her mother’s sad death, and from that moment on Grayston blamed Alex for it, resenting her and hating her for it in some kind of defence mechanism. The truth was that Alex was a carbon copy of her mother in almost every way conceivably possible right down to mannerisms, personality and even looks. The older Alex got the more her father rejected her, casting her aside ruthlessly and coldly. Alex was always aware of her father’s feelings towards her, but the staff at the Beaumont’s estate had a great hand in the way Alex was brought up and raised, hence her preference to hang and loiter with the workers rather than the rich and business-like company her father kept.

  By Alex’s sixteenth birthday, she was filled with enough mutual resentment for it to physically appear that she was unaffected on the outside and a
round staff. On the inside however she was aching for a parent, bitterness and twisted love bordering disturbing levels, which soon resulted in nightmares, sleepless nights and general feelings of persecution and emotional neglect.

  All Alex has to remember her mother by are a few shattered and vague memories, strange and curiously remembered metaphors from when she was a baby. A lot of people claim Alex’s memories of her mother are merely memories conjured up by her subconscious, like an off-the-wall defence mechanism to help her deal with the absence of a mother figure in her life; a theory Alex denies flat out. All Alex ever craved as a child was a mother, and she had many step forward in the form of babysitters and nannies, but in her heart and soul, there was always something missing.

  Her sister Sarah was the apple of her eye and although only her adopted sister, she never loved her any less, and she acted more of a mother to Sarah as her father had very little time for either of them. Sarah was adopted by the Beaumont family after she was found as a baby by Collette. There was a wide and extensive appeal to find Sarah’s mother at the time which eventually came to a dead end, so subsequently, after a lot of legal red tape, the Beaumont family successfully adopted her a year later with the emphasis on family loosely. Her father really wasn’t interested and Alex found she was begging for the adoption like Sarah was nothing more than a puppy found in the street. Her father buckled in the end just to get Alex off his back after she in protest, chained herself to his study door. After greasing a few wheels and a few palms, the adoption went through without a hitch and the red tape, as Alex suspected, was just her father being the stubborn old bastard.

  The mystery behind who Sarah’s real mother was and where she vanished to has always puzzled Alex. When she was found just outside the gates of Beaumont’s mansion six years ago, the island security was in full force due to the development of Beaumont Research and the Bio-Chemicals wing of Beaumont Pharmaceuticals. It was basically physically impossible to get on and off the island without being questioned by the BSCS Elite Security Force or being recorded by the CCTV that monitored every square foot of the island, so it always perplexed Alex how the enigmatic mother moved about the island without trace. Rumours went round that Sarah was actually bought or even the secret love child of Mayor Beaumont, but she was found that fateful day, and Alex always stuck her feet into the ground when she heard anything like that. She most definitely wasn’t sticking up for father, that much was true, but she fought for Sarah all the time and rumours like that were messing with her sister’s good name, something Alex never ever put up with.

  As far as intelligence went Alex was probably about average, she wasn’t retarded, stupid or even intelligent; she knew what she needed to know and learnt as and when. The strange thing is, when you have a bank account with millions already in it, the abilities of the brain are not really needed because the only thing you need to know is how to spend it, and being a typical twenty-one-year-old girl it almost came naturally. Alex had most stuff and did pretty much most things; Platinum gym memberships, the Chess Café, water skiing, Martial Arts, clubbing and everything else Blackwater had to offer and being without the need of a job or any other normal way of living she got extremely bored very easily.

  Aside from the friends at Beaumont Towers as she called it, she had her elite band of brainless teenage friends, social net-workers and pointless status hounds; plenty of male friends she used to use as boredom killers, attention thrills or just to screw now and then. For Alex, friends came and went like the wind, but she had a lot of older friends too. She liked to doss about at the Chess Café on the High Street, and her Chess playing skills were far beyond that of average. The old guys there frequently joked that she was an extremely tactful and cunning player and eventually beat all those that stepped up to challenge her.

  Alex hated Blackwater with passion and boasted regularly that if she ever ran out of things to buy, she would leave town and take Sarah with her. It wasn’t because Blackwater was a dump, full of hoodies and prostitutes, okay so it had its special areas, but deep down, it was because of the father she hated and what he represented; he was nicknamed Mr Blackwater, and he pretty much owned everyone in it through business, social outlets and employment. When a man has that much power over so many people, there will always be someone who consistently wants to break away, and Alex had the money, the reason and means to do it; yet sadly, she had a very good reason to stay; Sarah.

  As a child, Alex always questioned her father’s occupation as all children do, but her father owns the Beaumont Corporation, and she heard the rumours of Chemical weapons, three-headed lipstick wearing Monkeys and time machines. It obviously made her all the more curious and question him on numerous occasions; however, having the rather dysfunctional relationship they had, to get a straight answer let alone a full one was often impossible.

  What did Alex believe?

  Alex was always on the fence when it came to her father, it wasn’t because she defended him; God forbid; but more in the don’t know to do don’t care area of deluded reasoning. So even if her father did create two-headed dogs that could run ten miles on a single tin of food, it was something she didn’t know to have to worry about; as long as he didn’t involve her or Sarah in it, she didn’t care, not in a passing glance. In all honesty, there was no way she was going to stumble on the truth even by accident. If her father or his company were up to that sort of thing, then chances are it would be one of the most guarded secrets in Blackwater.

  Alex merely lived day by day, hour by hour, amusing her simple brain, hanging with friends and just doing what normal twenty-one year olds do. Clubbing, drinking, shopping and that were as complicated as her life got. She certainly didn’t need to work so most of her waking hours were spent having fun wherever she found it. Being a hybrid mother and sister figure for Sarah, being a good role-model was Alex’s main priority, and despite being far from perfect and making the odd mistake every now and then; she had the wealth of a nation and the support and help from the staff around her to do a better job than most. Sarah was Alex’s world, and Alex vowed to be everything her father wasn’t and everything her mother never had the chance to be; and she was deeply respected by all those who worked at Beaumont Estates; as both a loving sister and a devoted mother.

  Chapter Three: No Tomorrow

  As the sun glared over the mountains pouring light into Blackwater, the city suddenly awoke and the people rushed about their everyday business as they did every single day. Cars drove around the streets and shops opened as their workers hurried inside, the children strolled through the avenues in packs, laughing and playing on their way to school as the adults struggled to make a living. The sun gleamed from the skyscrapers, and all the phones around the city started to ring as businesses went into a full swing. All the way through from Challis Hill right down to Blackwater Bay, the city was alive and crawling with life. Even the Lake was a hustle with surfers, fisherman and boats; the Sea-Life Centre was being fed, and the lake glistened magically. Bails of string bound newspapers hit the pavements and early-morning alarms cried out in bedrooms; the sleepy inhabitants of Blackwater all opening their eyes and stumbling into their routines without question. As the populous heaved into motion, the birds soared over the skies and the sun’s infinite glare scorched over the rooftops as it did every day of the year. The island too was awake; the shopping malls opened their doors; the prison guards at the correctional facility ushered the prisoners around, and the industrial estates started their turbines and production belts; the city was officially and evidently alive. As eyes opened all over the city, the bright blue skies soared with gulls; the population greeted by the scorching morning rays and the blind smiles of the local radio stations.

  “Good morning, Blackwater City. You’re listening to Blackwater Radio Gold, it’s already seven-thirty here in the city, and the temperature has reached a sweltering ninety-five degrees as the record spring heat-wave continues all over Blackwater City! Clear blue skies today, with a
slight wind coming from the South over the lake, with a Pollen count of one-five for you poor hay fever sufferers out there. As always, if you are affected by the pollen, you can grab Sinus-Seven free of charge, generously supplied by the Beaumont Corporation at your local Pharmacy. In other news, Philadelphia airport was closed for three hours yesterday, after an inbound flight from Thailand was reported to have had an outbreak of Swine-flu amongst its passengers. Mayor Beaumont has insisted that the outbreak bares no threat to Blackwater at all, saying…”

  Alex leant over and switched off the radio, groaning as the joyous newsreader poured his irritating smiles into her bedroom. A grumbling and tired young woman opened her eyes as the sun beamed through her giant majestic windows and forced her from her sleep cruelly. She got up and despite being tired and sick as a dog; she sat and watched a bit of television and that was as complicated as the day got.

  Alex that day, spent most of her time in her pyjamas, walking around her mansion looking for something to occupy her mind, which in all honesty, was pretty much the same as any day in the Beaumont household, slow and often mind numbing. She was suffering the worst hangover in history after turning twenty-one just the day before, and the surprise Birthday Ball made it all worth it. She lay on her bed for a while with her ice pack, snatching at partial memories and flashbacks the best she could, wondering if her father was going soft in his old age. As much as she enjoyed the night before, she couldn’t help but wonder why her father was suddenly throwing her parties, the first in her entire life that was not arranged by a friend or even herself.