A pat on her bony back, and grief swelled inside of him. If only he could provide better for his little girl. He swallowed the burn in his throat and fell back on his usual response. It even sounded mechanical to him, but he didn’t have anything else. “We’re going to win this, you know. We’re going to come out on top, and The Elitist arseholes will fall to us.”
“Not if one of the drones sees us.”
The sentiment rang true, but that didn’t stop Matt’s stock response. “Well, they won’t. We’ve managed to avoid them for long enough to know we can continue to do so.”
“There seems to be more and more of ’em every day.”
Matt couldn’t disagree as his resolve weakened.
“I know you don’t like to talk about them, Dad, but have you ever seen a gargantuan?”
A sharp shake of his head, and a cold chill snapped though his body. “No, thank god. I’ve heard about them from some of the people when we used to live in the community before it fell to The Elite. They’re supposed to be as tall as skyscrapers and as strong as a T-Rex.”
A sharp intake of breath, and the green of Louise’s irises—Scarlett’s green—stood prominent in the dark. “I hope we never see one.”
“Me too, sweetheart. Me too.”
Chapter 9
When they entered the next street, they both stopped dead. The ruins of fallen buildings blocked the road.
Louise broke the silence. “Another dead end. This is getting ridiculous. What shall we do?”
Although passable, Matt shook his head. “If we try to climb over that, we could too easily slip and it’ll be game over; a broken ankle for either of us and our journey north ends.”
Instead of a reply, Louise looked around as if in search of a better option.
Matt saw it first and pointed. “Look, over there, another alleyway.” He sighed. “These streets are like walking through a bloody labyrinth.”
“At least there’s always another option,” Louise said.
Matt shrugged. “So far, at least.”
Like in the previous alley, the darkness blinded Matt; unlike the last alley, he led the way. Without a drone on their heels, Matt took his time. With each step, he only lifted his feet a few inches from the ground as he walked. It minimised the risk of a trip. If he never lifted a foot high enough to stand on a brick or lump of rubble, he couldn’t turn his ankle again. The ache from earlier still throbbed through it.
The scrape of his soles over the rough ground echoed in the tight space. The occasional sound of a skittering rock or stone called out when either Matt or Louise kicked one away from them, but neither of them fell.
The street at the end looked much like the others—wide and flanked by ruin. Matt looked up into the night sky and found the North Star. The days of GPS existed only as a faded memory.
The conversation had died between the two, and Matt took the opportunity to glance at his daughter again. The day-to-day struggle had got in the way of him taking the time to truly appreciate her… to revel in her magnificence. What was the point of life, if not to appreciate one’s offspring? Before Scarlett had died, Louise had been a toddler and Matt had watched her wobbly little form for hours. He’d watched her walk a few steps and fall over. He’d watched her try to run and fall over. And even before Scarlett had been murdered, he’d watched her run. But something changed when Scarlett died. With only one of them to look after her, he’d watched over her instead of watching her. In an attempt to protect her, his attention suddenly went on everything but her. As a single parent, he had to be the eyes for both of them. He had to protect her from the harshness of this new world.
Hidden in plain sight, Louise had turned into a young woman. If he’d have been braver when Scarlett needed him, he would have prevented her death, and she would have made the decision months ago. It was long overdue; Louise needed to be told her history. She needed to understand the world better.
Matt took a deep breath. “Fuck Trojan Scum.”
A gasp, and Louise looked over at her dad. “What?”
“Your mum would have told you by now. Your mum would have done a lot of things better than I have.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That was when I knew things were about to turn sour. That particular image sticks in my mind as the defining moment.”
With a shake of her head, Louise said, “I still don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Sorry, I’m not making much sense. There was a World War Two memorial in London, and when the Trojans got in for a second term, the protests started soon after. Someone spray painted ‘Fuck Trojan Scum’ on the memorial in red paint. The red marks stood out in stark contrast to the black monument. The paint had run. It looked like blood. The papers used it to highlight how gross the people in opposition to the current government were. It was an easy target and the media loved easy targets; anything to fuel their propaganda, their campaign of fear and hate, and their slavish obedience to the current government’s vilification of the poor. Although, to be fair, I didn’t agree with where it had been sprayed. I mean, what did the women of World War Two do to deserve their memory being defiled in such a way? But the sentiment? I backed it wholeheartedly. Not that the Trojans were the only arseholes in politics. All of the political parties served the businessmen who were the ruling elite; the Trojans just did it with a sadistic grin on their privileged faces and a psychopathic lack of empathy for anyone in need.”
After she’d closed her mouth, Matt watched Louise gulp but not reply.
“I don’t know why, but that image has stayed with me more than any of the others. I’m sure there were more signs, but to see that, just days after the Trojans had been re-elected… it seemed like an omen, you know?”
The sound of bricks as they fell and hit the ground spiked Matt’s pulse. He turned in the direction of the sound. The city lived. The fallen masonry shifted and moved like a giant sleeping beast that twitched in the night.
Although he continued to look around, he also carried on speaking. “There were riots on the first weekend after the Trojans got in for a second term. A peaceful protest led to violence pretty quickly. After years of austerity, the poorer people of Britain had had enough.”
A shake of his head, and Matt swallowed back the bitter taste in his mouth. “The number of food banks—”
“Food banks?” Louise asked.
“Places like churches that took food donations to distribute amongst the poorer people in society.” Tension wound Matt’s back tight. “It was disgusting to see such an affluent nation drive its poor so far down they had to rely on handouts. It was the kind of thing I saw happening in other countries, countries that were on their knees through poverty. It never needed to happen in Britain. The country had about forty food banks before the Trojans took over. That number increased to nearly five hundred in their first term. It hit five thousand just before the revolution. And all the while, the super rich got richer.”
The innocence of childhood returned to Louise for a moment. “But why? That seems so unfair.”
“Because they didn’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves, darling; that was how it worked.”
A heavy sigh, and Louise shook her head.
The silence hung between them, palpable to the point where Matt could almost hear Louise’s thought process as she took in everything he’d said.
“Although in truth,” Matt said, “all politicians served the capitalist giants that ran the world. The only real difference between the parties was that the Trojans were more open about who their masters were. Their main drive was to reduce the cost of the welfare state so they could lower taxes and give more money to the wealthy. That was all they cared about. But it was during the second term when shit really hit the fan. After years of brainwashing, they’d convinced the general public that austerity was a necessity rather than something to suit their ideology. The voting public fell for it. They—”
Another sound of bricks
shifted in the shadows to their right. Matt froze for a second before he pulled back into the broken doorway of a fallen building and dragged Louise in with him. Her skinny frame came without resistance.
From his dark hiding place, Matt watched a fox pad down the road. He slowly lowered his bag, and his hand shook as he removed a small bat from it. He drew deep breaths to try to still his rapid heartbeat. After weeks of worms, beetles, and cockroaches, they needed something more palatable.
Years of practice had honed Matt’s hunting skills, so he dropped down into a crouch. His knees ached from where malnutrition had turned all of his joints rusty.
The gentle pad of each foot walked up the road toward them, the fox oblivious to the ravenous spotlight upon it.
The gentle shuffle of Louise’s feet behind, and Matt could hear she’d stepped back. She knew the drill.
With one final deep breath, Matt sprung from the building. For a second, the man and the beast locked stares. The gold rings of the fox’s eyes widened as it stood shocked by the surprise attack. The second ended as Matt brought the bat down on its head with a hollow knock. He caught it on the temple and the canid fell, instantly limp as if its muscles had all given up at once. To be sure, he bashed it again and the weak skull of the small creature broke like an egg beneath the blow. When he lifted the limp form up, a huge grin cracked his face and his stomach rumbled.
When Louise stepped from the building, he held the fox aloft for her to see. “We’re going to eat well tonight, darling.” With a clenched jaw, Matt said, “We’re going to eat whether they like it or not.”
Fire burned in Louise’s eyes when she said, “Fuck Trojan scum.”
An ironic laugh, and Matt shook his head. “Fuck the lot of them, darling. They were all the puppets of the ruling elite.”
Chapter 10
Matt closed his eyes before he leaned forward and blew on the fire’s embers. For a second, he remained where he was and let the tingle of warmth cover his cold face.
When he pulled back and opened his eyes again, he saw white flecks of ash circle around the top of the fire. The deep red glow, brighter than before, continued to cook their freshly caught fox. The smell, although smoky from the wooden fire, still made his mouth water.
In the corner of an abandoned warehouse, Matt looked first at Louise and then at their surroundings. Roofless, the building opened up to a star-filled sky. The weak sliver of a moon remained a feature in the black void. The building itself had white walls covered in graffiti. Not graffiti art like the kind Matt used to stop to look at, more like tags and slogans. It looked like the inside of a men’s toilet.
They may have been poorly crafted, but the messages, repeated over and over in various forms and with different words, said basically the same thing—Fuck the government, this is the revolution.
When he saw Louise look around too, Matt said, “This place used to have a roof on it, you know.”
Loose jawed, Louise looked at him, her expression unchanged. Of course it had a fucking roof on it. The place would have been useless without one.
“This was where we all met when we planned the revolution. This place was a mess even before London fell into ruin. It had been abandoned for years, so it seemed like the best spot for our base.”
Matt had driven a stick through the fox to spit-roast it. He turned the creature over before he pulled it toward him. Although still soft, it seemed cooked. A prod of its hot body with his finger to double check, and Matt took a bite from its side—the thing tasted like sour pork.
After several chews, he swallowed the tender meat before he tore a strip off and passed it to his daughter.
Ever hasty, she shoved the meat into her mouth. A second later, she let her jaw fall loose, rested the piece of fox on her tongue, and breathed out steam.
Matt shook his head and laughed. “It’s hot, by the way.”
All Louise offered him in return was a roll of her eyes and a nod of her head. Like he needed to tell her that.
In a world where Matt didn’t know where the next meal would come from, seeing his daughter eat made him glow. It had been his favourite thing to watch for years now.
With every open-jawed chew, a billow of steam puffed from Louise’s mouth. She finally swallowed the meat. “Where are we going, Dad?”
The question caught him off guard and Matt stammered for a second, “U… um, north. Enfield. We’ve had this discussion already. There’s a… um… pocket of resistance there. The next push to overthrow The Elite has to come from there. We need to get together with them and join the cause. The Elite are on the ropes and we can take them down, but we need to strike now and hit them where it hurts.”
“Which is?”
“Huh?”
“Where does it hurt? They don’t seem to have much vulnerability.”
The thought of the gargantuan ran through Matt’s mind. It didn’t matter that he’d never seen one because he’d heard their feet pound as they chased down the members of the resistance. He’d heard the screams as people were lifted from the ground. He’d heard their bones crack. He’d listened to their cries come to an abrupt halt. He’d seen the aftermath too many times. Just the thought of it turned nausea through his stomach. Louise made a valid point; gargantuan didn’t have any vulnerability, but The Elite that guided them did.
Without a reply to his daughter, Matt drew a deep sigh and looked around. He read some of the graffiti—This World is Ours for The Taking—Fuck The Elite—Our Unity Will Topple Them. That last one had been written by Johnny Squall about five years ago. There had been hope then, genuine hope.
Then Matt saw the dried bloodstain on the floor; a circle about the size of a child’s paddling pool. The brown splat had soaked into the porous concrete. It had been tattooed into the cold ground for all time.
A look back at Louise, and he found her still staring at him. She clearly wanted a response to her question. She chewed the inside of her mouth and her eyes were half-closed like his bullshit exhausted her.
Matt tugged on his collar and let it settle back against his dirty neck. She’d always been able to see through him, but he didn’t have any other choice in what he told her. In the starkness of her scrutiny, he turned away and looked over to the bloodstain again.
After he’d squinted into the darkness beyond the stain, he saw two rusty rings had been drilled into the wall on the other side of the warehouse. Rope lay bunched up on the ground beneath them.
“So why did the Trojans get voted in for a second time?”
While he continued to stare at the rings, Matt shrugged. “They used the media to lie and fear-monger. At some point, the people started to believe them. If you tell a lie enough times, it becomes the truth. They blamed the global economic recession on the opposition party and the people believed it. They continued to tell the people of Britain that the only way was their way, and if they let anyone else run the country, things would get worse. The truth was that austerity suited their ideology. It didn’t help the country one bit; it grabbed it in a stranglehold and stifled economic growth. They served up a trough full of bullshit and people ate it up. But I don’t suppose it mattered; we would have got here anyway. Politicians, regardless of their political leanings, danced to the drumbeat of the wealthiest. The wealthy were the ones who dictated policy. So as long as they got richer…”
“Austerity?” Louise said with a raised eyebrow.
“As a country, we were in debt. They saw the only way to heal our economy was to make savage cuts to the state and reduce that debt. To—” Matt stopped dead and bile lifted up into his throat. In the corner he saw a pile of what looked like human bones. Stark white, they didn’t look like they’d been there long.
A gulp against the dryness in his mouth, and Matt shivered. Unease slid beneath his skin as he looked around again. “They took people with disabilities off benefits, money away from families that needed it most, and drove the poor from their homes. The only people who benefitted from their first
term were the wealthy because they were given tax breaks. Everyone else got screwed over.”
After he’d torn another piece of meat from the fox, he handed it to Louise and continued to look around the warehouse. What had happened to this place since he’d last been here? Who used it now? He took another bite of the tough meat and watched the entranceway.
“So the people voted them in again?”
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s easy to motivate voters when you scare them half to death. Fear was a Trojan speciality. They came back with a vengeance in their second term. They made more savage cuts to the welfare budget and gave more tax relief to the wealthy. The poor literally starved while the richest companies in the country got richer. Of course, all of the people who benefitted from the regime had been the ones who had previously supported the Trojans by giving them money for their campaigns. That was how politics worked for all the major parties. Favours were never done for free. And don’t get me wrong, the debt did need to be paid down. The debate was how quickly. The Trojans wanted it to happen yesterday.”
Before Louise could respond, Matt heard footsteps outside. In one fluid movement, he jumped to his feet, picked his bag up, and tugged on Louise’s arm. “We have to go… now.”
Slower than her dad, Louise got up and looked over her shoulder at the warehouse’s entrance. “How can you be sure? They might be friendly.”
The sound of the footsteps grew louder. Matt shook his head. He wouldn’t risk it. He tugged on Louise again and she followed him out of the warehouse’s back door.
Chapter 11
Matt led Louise around the back of the warehouse. When they reached the far corner, they peered back in through an old window. The glass had been smashed a long time ago and the frame reeked of mould. Jagged shards of glass jutted out from the rotten wood like craggy teeth in diseased gums.
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