by Gold, Amelia
The Day The Sun Fell From The Sky
By Amelia Gold
© Amelia Gold 2014
Cover image courtesy of Pixabay
Contents
Capture
Transportation
Selection
Assessment
Education
Rehabilitation
Distribution
Institutionalization
Transformation
Assignment
Experimentation
Passage
Resistance
Recovery
Rescue
Raid
Negotiation
Thank You
Capture
Dad is lying on the floor of the convenience store. I keep expecting him to get up, but of course he doesn’t. Because he’s just been shot. He’ll never be able to move again. Mum is shrieking at the loss of her husband and Mish is swearing her head off. Both of us have to push our weight against mum to prevent her from rushing to his body. Shiv the shop keeper is cowering against the back wall, shielding his daughter with his body and covering her eyes with his hands.
“Next time, ask yourself if they would do the same for you.” The squad leader says before lowering his gun. “Let’s go.” He says to his team.
“Thank you.” I mouth to the shopkeeper to let him know how grateful we are that he had tried to help us by letting us hide in his shop.
More guns are trained on us so I raise my arms above my head.
“What are you doing?” Mish hisses at me furiously.
“Copy me.” I whisper back.
She is about to protest when mum also raises her arms above her head. Mum is still in shock but she has come to her senses enough to see that this was the right thing to do. Outnumbered in the vote, Mish has no choice but to copy us.
I’ve seen this enough times on TV to know what is going to happen next. We’re going to die and there’s no real way to get out of it. We don’t have any weapons on us so fighting back is definitely not an option. We cannot reason with our captors because if that were possible, we would never have been captured in the first place. We are going to become part of a number. Not even people anymore. Just numbers on a report card. There must be another way. Between freedom, which is no longer an option, and death, now the only option, there has to be a third way – an option between death and life as we have always known it.
“On your knees.” The squad leader shouts at us, pushing the barrel of his gun into my back.
I get down slowly onto my knees. Mum copies me, and Mish, though cursing under her breath, is forced to do what we’re doing.
A warning shot is fired into the air and it rings loudly in my ears. It’s the second time I’ve heard the sound, though thankfully, there isn’t a second body. Yet.
“F**k!” Mish’s protest have become very vocal.
If she doesn’t shut up, the next bullet will most definitely go into her.
“Wait.” I shout before they can pull the trigger. “I offer myself.”
“What did you say?” The squad leader asks me, intrigued.
“I offer myself to the Hven Army. Please don’t shoot us.” I tell him.
“B**ch!” Mish mutters under her breath.
He lowers his gun and comes around to face me. I resist the instinct to look away and keep eye contact with him.
“Stand up.” He says.
Keeping my hands on my head, I get up onto my feet. He lifts my chin to examine my face.
“Don’t touch her!” Mish shouts.
He smiles before grabbing my hair, pulling my head toward him and licking the side of my face. I suppress the lump in my throat but I’m unable to stop the blush that’s spreading across my face. I avoid looking at mum and Mish because I don’t want the way that they are looking at me right now to be my last memory of them. There are now people watching the incident on the street but they will not help us. No one can help us.
After a moment of silence, he tells me to undress.
I don’t have time to consider the embarrassment that I’m going to be in. I just follow his instructions mechanically and I try to avoid thinking altogether.
After I have become completely naked, the squad leader eyes my body for a moment before shouting to the others. “Let’s go!”
I walk ahead without looking behind me as another gun is pressed into my back to make me move. I can hear Mish shouting “I hate you!” to me, meaning that she would have preferred to offer herself. There was no way in hell I would have let her though. At this point, my family and I are separated. I am loaded onto the open back of a small truck a few blocks up the street and mum and Mish are taken into a larger military truck.
Asides from me, there is one other captive. She is a naked female Knax, just like me. And, just like me, she’s crazy enough to attempt selection by the army.
“I’m Heth.” She comes over to me.
“I’m Myc.” I nod.
“Do you think we did the right thing?” She asks me.
“I don’t know.” I reply honestly.
I should be grieving for my father but I’m not because I don’t want to think about what has just happened. There is a slim chance that if we make the selection, our families would be allowed to cross the border into Uvana as refugees. There is also the chance that the telecasts tell a lie as we never see footage of families crossing the border. This part of the news report is always spoken, where the Venry authorities claim a certain number of people have been allowed to cross the border. If it is a lie then I have no idea what will happen to my family. I do have a good idea of what will happen to me and I’m trying to avoid thinking about it as much as possible.
*_*
We head north toward the border of Hven and Uvana, in the north-west of the country, where the selection will take place. We pass through several villages and townships and the scenes that I had tried so hard to avoid being part of is replayed multiple times before my eyes. The soldiers go door knocking in every district that we pass and people of “Northern descent” are taken onto the streets and executed.
As we draw closer to the border, more and more girls join us. Only a very small number of girls ever make this choice because it is insane and just as likely to get our families killed. After about two days on the road, about twenty girls now share the truck that I’m on.
After leaving the town of Avna, they make a quick stop on open road and one of the soldiers comes over to give us water.
“What happened to Lox and Hass?” A girl from Bass Village asks him.
“Shut it.” He ignores her.
“Are they alright?” She persists.
“She means her relatives.” I tell him.
“Really? I didn’t know.” He replies, sarcastic.
“What’s the problem?” The squad leader asks as he comes over to inspect the commotion.
“Bloody won’t shut up.” The soldier complains.
“Which one?” The squad leader asks.
“That one.” The soldier points at Mira, the girl who had been enquiring about her family.
“Come here, you.” The squad leader gestures to the girl.
She looks at us with a terrified expression on her face. She knows that they are going to “teach her to shut up”.
“I’m waiting.” The squad leader is impatient.
Before the girl can move though, I find myself climbing out of the truck instead. On the way down, I tell Heth to “look away”, knowing that she will pass on the message to the others.
“Did I ask for you?” Says the squad leader.
“No but I gave her the idea.” I tell him as calmly as I can manage.
&n
bsp; He smiles at the fib and then kicks me squarely in the stomach.
“She can walk.” He tells the other soldiers.
He wasn’t kidding.
My wrists are now bound together and chained to the back of the truck so that I have to walk with my arms stretched out before me. This slows down our travel speed tremendously, though the truck is still moving fast enough to make me run. I’m glad that our truck is at the end of the convoy and that the truck housing our families is further up the front. Mish would have gone ballistic if she saw me like this.
The running doesn’t stop and the ground is much hotter and sharper than I think it is. In my mind, I thank Heth for getting the girls not to look at me. They don’t need to see this. It actually could have been anyone one of us. The squad leader was just looking for an excuse.
Transportation
After what seems to me to be several hours of running but is actually only about twenty minutes, my feet have developed cuts and blisters, and I am completely out of breath with a stitch that won’t go away. I wish that I could tell them to stop or to at least slow down but I can’t do that without drawing attention to myself and I would prefer the girls not to see the condition that I’m currently in.
My body has become a lot heavier than I remember and my foot slips. There is searing pain as my body comes into contact with the road and I am being dragged alive. As much as I try to suppress it, I cannot stop the scream that escapes my mouth. When the truck finally stops after what I felt to be an eternity but was actually only a few seconds, I have no energy to get up. All I can do is to stay on my face on the ground and hope that the truck doesn’t start up again.
“Get up.” One of the soldiers approaches me.
The truck being stationary makes no difference to the amount of pain that that I’m in. Any movement I make is going to burn and I’m too scared to move at all from the ground.
“I said up!” A boot comes into my back, pushing me into the ground, and I scream at the pain it causes across my body.
“Stop…” Mira shouts before her voice is muffled, probably from Heth’s hand covering her mouth.
As much as I would love to stay in this position forever (I really don’t want to move), I can’t let the girls see how much pain I’m in. Specifically, I have to convince the soldiers not to swap me with one of the others. I’m sure that the army doesn’t need multiple girls with drag marks across their bodies for the selection.
I yank on the chain to pull myself forward. This repeats the same motion of being dragged and aggravates my injuries. I move forward about an inch before I have to rest again.
“Come on, we haven’t got all day.” Says the soldier.
The incremental movement is causing too much pain. I don’t have enough energy to push myself off the ground. All I can really do is to move forward horizontally across the ground. I can’t do it. I can’t get up.
“Maybe you need some motivation.” Says the soldier who had stepped on me before.
Then my shoulder explodes and I give an involuntary scream again. He has poked me with an electric prod normally used on farm animals.
“Let us help her.” Heth is saying.
“Let them through.” Says the squad leader.
Two of the girls come over to help me up. As I get back onto my feet with their support, an audible gasp can be heard – not just from the girls, but from two of the soldiers. Do I really look that bad?
I look down. Bad idea. Just as I had made the girls promise to look away, I make a promise to myself not to look down at my injuries again. They are making me nauseous.
“How does it feel?” The squad leader asks me.
Of course it’s not a genuine question. He just wants to humiliate me further.
“How would you feel if…?” Heth is angry.
“Don’t.” I cut her off before she can finish her sentence.
“She got what she deserves.” He laughs at us. “Maybe you’d like to try it.”
“Let go.” I whisper to Heth.
“You don’t have to do this.” She tells me.
“One of us does.” I remind her.
“Think of your family.” Says Ath, the girl that’s supporting me from the other side. “If you die, they won’t make it.”
“Thank you.” I say to the squad leader.
“For what?” Heth mutters in reply.
“For stopping the truck.” I tell her.
“You’re smart for a Knax.” The squad leader smiles.
They allow me back onto the truck so that we can travel faster. I really don’t feel like talking to any of the girls so I just close my eyes and pretend to sleep. Heth tells the others to leave me alone.
“We need water.” She whispers to me because she knows that I can still hear her.
“Won’t help.” I tell her without opening my eyes.
“They’ll get infected.” She replies.
“They look worse than they are.” I tell her.
“Actually, they’re a lot worse than they look.” Says a voice I haven’t heard before.
“Who?” I open my eyes to see that another girl has joined us. She is speaking Knav so she’s a Knax but unlike the rest of us, she’s fully clothed and she’s carrying a large bag.
“I’m Iv, your makeup artist.” She smiles.
“We must be getting close.” I murmur.
“Yes we are.” She replies.
“Makeup artist?” Ath is confused.
“They know that it’s a show.” I try to explain.
“Time to make you more photogenic.” She laughs.
She takes out a small jar of water and covers the opening with a white napkin. The she tips the jar upside down.
“This is going to hurt.” She tells me before pressing the wet napkin into a graze on my chest.
I look up at the sky to stop myself from screaming. The sky is cloudless and the blue is oddly calming. Ath squeezes my hand in support. Iv dabs the napkin across my body in quick taps. Obviously she’s done this before. Did they make people walk on the way to every selection?
“We need to bandage her foot.” Says Heth.
“No.” Says Iv.
“Why?” Asks Ath.
“They will get wet in the snow.” I explain.
“There’s no way for me to keep them dry.” Iv agrees.
“You could give her your shoes.” Heth tells Iv without sympathy.
“I did do that once.” Iv replies.
“What happened?” Ath asks.
I don’t think that I want to know. It was probably something really horrific.
“They shot her legs off.” She laughs without humour. “Though hers wasn’t from walking. It was from a beating she’d received. They’re getting more creative.”
“Are you scared?” I ask her
“Of?” She replies.
“When this is over, they will kill you.” I remind her.
“I’ll worry about it when it’s over.” She shrugs. “I might offer myself like you girls are.”
“Why would you want to live like this?” Heth asks.
“You are.” Says Iv.
“That’s ’cause we didn’t know any better. You do.” Says Heth.
“I may not actually get a say in it.” Iv laughs darkly.
She bends over and pulls a makeup tray out of her bag.
“I’m going to have to do you last.” She tells me, her voice becoming more business-like. “Girls I’m going to have to put makeup on your face and on your body. We have to do this quickly so that I can continue to help Myc.”
She works through the group, covering up blemishes and birth marks with foundation. Then, instead of shaving or waxing, a layer of fake skin is fitted over our body hair and stuck on with glue.
“They will hurt when they come off.” She warns us.
Now I know why she is making me over last. She will have to cover all of my injuries with the fake skin.
Selection
When we are finishe
d with my makeover, you can tell that my body is not following its natural contours but you can’t see what this is hiding. At least mum and Mish won’t know what has happened (I hope).
We make it to the snow fields where the selection will take place. A line of cameras tells us that the media is already there. Behind them is a large pen with barbed wire fencing. They make us watch as our families are being forced into the pen at gunpoint. The message is clear. For those of us who are not selected, our families will be gunned down inside the pen.
Though my injuries are now covered up, it’s still hurts to move. I try to keep a straight face as we climb out of the truck. Heth and Ath try to support me.
“Don’t.” I tell them.
“Why?” Asks Ath.
“You’ll make yourselves a target.” Iv tells them softly.
They march us across the snow in single file. We stand should to shoulder, naked in the snow, as we turn to face the cameras. We can vaguely see the faces of our families in the pen behind them.
The squad leader speaks to us using some sort of pre-prepared speech. “Though the Venry are reclaiming this great nation and we are cleansing these lands of Northern influence, President Vann is willing to pardon the families of Northern girls who are willing to give themselves to the people of Hven.”
Being northern is actually a myth. While our ancestors may have come from Knaxa, just north of Hven, most modern Knax do not live anywhere near the north. Most of us resided in central and southern Hven before the army came in to drive us out. The people who actually live in Knaxa are now called Knaxians. They have very little to do with the Knax of Hven.
After this, they start calling out numbers at random from a list.
“One-One-Five!”
The girl steps forward as her number is called out. She holds perfectly still as her breasts and genitals are fondled by the soldiers. Then she is kicked to the ground and beaten. Finally, after surviving this humiliation on live TV, she is dragged through the snow and loaded onto another empty truck that’s waiting on the other side.
“One-One-Nine!”
It’s Mira, the girl from Bass Village. She moves forward but she has no idea what she’s doing. When the soldiers come over to touch her, she panics. She covers herself with her arms and shouts “No!” – earning a vicious slap across her face.
