by Chris Ward
If she hadn’t been so troubled by the events of the last few hours, she would have marveled at it all.
No one in the cities knew much about what went on out in the Greater Forested Areas, but because her father worked within the government she had a little more information than most. The official line was that the government had chosen to segregate forms of industry and the social status that went with it. It had been intended as a commune system, where energy could be concentrated on one or a handful of related tasks, with free movement between the GUAs and GFAs. As dissatisfaction with the system grew, especially in the cities, which still suffered a lower standard of living, the perimeter walls became taller and more fortified, with movement requiring first written notification of business, then a local council permit, and finally an official government-stamped document of authorization.
The final closing up of travel between the major conurbation areas of London, Bristol, Manchester-Liverpool, Birmingham and Newcastle-Sunderland to all but officially sanctioned individuals, coincided with the banning of several major forms of communication: the internet, mobile phones and also several major independent television networks. The BBC was shut down and reemerged as the Mega Britain Television Company, broadcasting mostly inoffensive game shows, cooking programs and old movies.
Those weeks were some of the bloodiest in British history, with massive rioting in all the cities. The people outside in the GFAs, though, with their comfortable standard of living and stress-free lifestyle, barely stirred. There were a handful of meetings, mainly concerned by the demolition of hundreds of minor population areas and the moving of large numbers of underemployed people into the cities, but as the cleanup operation gained pace many of the more powerful dissenters were ameliorated by unexpected financial incentives, or offers of land. Many of those that still didn’t sway simply disappeared.
Within the GUAs, though, the rioting lasted for weeks. Armed militias laid siege to government buildings and in some areas held open pitched battles with government soldiers. The uprising was always going to fail, though, and the government brought it closer to a close with the release of dozens of prototype Huntsmen. The creatures, some uncontrollable once released, cut a bloody swathe through the ranks of the dissenters, until finally the riots were subdued and a relative calm fell.
Then, of course, the government began to close up all the other major urban centres. Ports were shut down, airports dismantled, trade with foreign countries reduced, some cut completely. The food producers – the GFAs – were pampered and lavished with financial rewards, while all the time the distance from technology and urbanization was slowly lengthening. In the cities, unrest began to grow as the government squandered its financial resources on the GFAs and the increasingly crackpot space program, something that even many of those on the inside of the government failed to understand. The rich who’d stayed in the cities lived in better areas like her family had, in houses wired top to bottom with security devices, while the poor, the under classes, got by the best they could. Jess assumed that as the government’s financial resources began to run out and anarchy continued to grow, the government had no choice but to turn to insane fund-raising schemes like the faked assassination of the Ambassador.
She began to stumble as the night closed in, hindering her progress. Having spent her entire life in a street-lit twilight zone, an uneasy sense of claustrophobia descended upon her. So used to seeing violence on the streets, flashing sirens, uncontrolled fires, suddenly the sharp call of a bird carried double the menace; the crackle and creak of something moving nearby could be more than just a fox or rabbit. She found her knife in her hand, her breath quick in her throat.
Something rustled in the trees behind her, and the tension that had been building in Jess suddenly broke. With a gasp of terror she bolted, knife gripped tightly in one hand, the other hand held out in front of her to ward off the branches that were just fingers of darker shadow beneath the rising moon.
She ran hard, dodging instinctively between the trees, ducking low under heavy branches. And then her luck ran out.
Dashing through a thicker stand of trees in near total darkness, her foot snagged a root and she tumbled forward into a thicket of nettles and brambles. Crying out as something grunted and bolted away, she rolled over and over, slashing her knife towards unseen enemies in the darkness around her. Finally, almost in submission, she lay on her back, and realised she was staring up at the clear night sky. The trees were a dark shadow away to her right. Underneath her was grass.
She was out.
She brushed herself down as she stood up and looked around. The moon glowed brightly in a cloudless sky, a black sheet scattered with a myriad grains of glimmering salt, stretching away to meet a slightly lighter blue pushing up from the gentle curve of distant rolling hills. Far away, in a hollow several miles distant, she saw the scattering of lights that indicated a small town. Nearer, though, perhaps just a few feet away, across a flat open pasture dotted with large round humps (which she knew from a childhood book to be hay bales) she saw others, four, five maybe, moving about.
People.
Jess smiled with relief, both at being out of the forest and to find there were other people out here after all.
The first natives of this foreign land.
She looked around her for the nearest hedgerow, but the field seemed to stretch for miles in either direction. The huge bales would have to be cover, then.
Crouching low, she darted from one bale to the next until she was just fifty feet from the moving lights. Cautiously, she leaned out.
The light was coming from a couple of kerosene lanterns set down in the grass around what looked like a large truck trailer and from the torches several men were carrying. She counted six men in all, the glow from the torches revealing them as young, maybe just a couple of years older than her. All of them wore shabby overalls which looked black or brown. Working together, they were rolling the bales up a ramp on to the trailer.
At first, the performing of such an arduous task without the help of any kind of machinery made Jess think they were stealing them, but from the snatches of their conversation that she caught she began to realise different.
‘Six more, boys. Then we’ll call it a night.’
‘Six? We’ll be here til midnight and I wanted to grab a pint!’
‘We can be done by ten-thirty if we move quick. And anyway, if you boys want to come by mine when we’re done, I got a few cold ones in the fridge and a hot pack of cards just waiting to take your money.’
‘Sounds like a challenge!’
‘Got an early start though, eh, lads.’
‘That old sod Weston booked the cab to come by at seven tomorrow, take the first load. Weather’s gonna turn, so forecast says. Got to get these boys undercover ‘fore then.’
‘Curse on Weston for flogging off his forklift. We’d have done the lot in half an hour.’
‘Well, what I heard was that the council took it. Government rechartered it, gave him a payoff. Like they been doing with the cars.’
‘Cities are running out, seems.’
‘Huh. Seems like everything is, ‘cept beer.’
‘Don’t complain ‘bout that! Dumb government want to throw beer at us like water who are we to complain?’
Jess frowned. In London beer was illegal. You could get it on the black-market, of course, so readily that many people thought the government was actually supplying it. Here, though, it seemed people were drinking it unrestricted. She wondered what else they had.
A light suddenly flashed in her eyes.
‘Hey! You boys see that? Someone out there!’
‘No –’
‘I did, looked like a lass! Hey, you!’
Footsteps in her direction. Jess gripped the knife and looked about her. She had weapons, but six guys in the dark would be impossible to fight against. And they were a long way from any help.
She glanced left, right, picked an area ahead and to the le
ft where the bales were numerous. She glanced back to see what head start she had, then sprinted across the field, the sharp stalks of the cut hay scratching her ankles.
‘There she is!’
‘Hey you, maid, wait up!’
‘You from the village? Shouldn’t be out here after dark!’
‘Come here, we won’t hurt you!’
Jess didn’t give them the opportunity to prove their word. She ducked behind the nearest bale and dropped to the ground, shuffling deep into the recess left by the curved edge. A moment later the men jogged past, torches flashing back and forth. She knew they wouldn’t maintain the chase for long, so she quickly scrambled back out, rounded the bale and jogged back to the trailer where they’d left their lamps burning.
Behind the trailer, a gate opened on to what looked like a road. Jess glanced back, hearing a few more shouts out across the field as the men continued their search. On the edge of the trailer she found a small plastic lunchbox next to one of the lamps. She grabbed it then quickly extinguished the lamp and took that too.
As the men’s shouts came nearer as they returned to the trailer, Jess took her treasure and ran for the road.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Freedom Fighters
The handsome man called himself Ishael. Now, as he sat facing the Tube Riders, the four of them sitting in a row on an old, musty-smelling sofa, he rubbed his chin, picking at a piece of stubble. ‘So, let me get this straight. Those damn broadcasts are about you?’
Marta, holding a steaming cup of tea (that tasted just wonderful) in her hands, nodded. ‘It seems so. And now we have the DCA, Huntsmen and God knows what else on our trail. We’ve not had a great last twenty-four hours, let’s put it that way.’
‘That’s a fucking understatement and a half,’ Switch muttered.
‘Well.’ Ishael leaned back in the chair. His gun was back in a holster on his belt, but one of the other men was guarding the door to the small meeting room where they had brought the Tube Riders, a gun held loose in his hand. He watched them impassively.
‘That’s a pretty good reason not to kill us, don’t you think?’ Owen said.
‘Be quiet,’ Paul scolded.
Ishael smiled. ‘On the contrary. You realise that by being here at all you compromise our own safety? If you’re right about Huntsmen being after you, they’ll follow you right here. Perhaps we should just kill you and throw you out for them.’
‘You have weapons, you can fight them,’ Switch said. ‘Give us a bunch of guns and we’ll stand out there and wait for the fuckers. All we have is knives and other lame shit. Mostly other lame shit.’
Marta couldn’t help but smile at his crude attempt at modesty. They had been searched by Ishael and his men, and while herself, Paul and Owen only had their clawboards, Marta’s pepper spray and a couple of knives, Switch had yielded up a veritable armoury of his own. The men had looked quite impressed by the array of knives, throwing stars and other weapons. He’d told them with a proud smirk how he’d lost his nail gun in St. Cannerwells, but not before taking out a DCA agent.
‘You’ve survived so far,’ Ishael said, raising an eyebrow at Switch. ‘Anyway, say they come here and we somehow kill them? Two days later they’ll send more. If we manage to kill those, they’ll roll out the entire army. We can’t win. Do you have any idea how many prototypes they have? Handing you over might be the best way to keep ourselves alive.’
‘But you’ll expose yourselves,’ Marta said.
Ishael shrugged. ‘We’re just a smalltime gang, of no consequence to anyone.’
Switch scoffed. ‘No “smalltime gang” has that many guns, man. We might have stumbled in here by luck, but we know what you are. You might as well admit it.’
Marta knew Switch was right, but as she watched the little man’s face as he spoke, she couldn’t help but think that luck had nothing to do with it. She didn’t understand how, but Switch had known exactly who he’d find when he led them here.
Ishael looked at each of them in turn. ‘I don’t think you’re in a position to ask us to admit to anything. We have the guns, remember.’
Switch grinned. ‘Come on, man, if you were going to kill us, you’d have done it already. And if you are freedom fighters as I’m pretty certain you are, you’re fighting against the very people who enjoy doing that sort of thing.’
Ishael raised an eyebrow. ‘You’d better hope you’re right then.’
Marta was getting tired of the banter. She shifted forward on her seat. ‘Can you help us get over to France?’ she asked.
Switch, sitting beside Marta on the sofa, glanced at her. For once he looked taken off guard. His bad eye twitched like crazy. ‘France?’ he muttered. After all, they’d not really talked what would happen after they got to Bristol in any realistic terms.
Ishael smiled. ‘What exactly did you do so wrong that you need to get to France?’
Marta had thought about it a lot over the last few hours, during which they’d been allowed to rest by Ishael’s men. Although she’d never felt like a prisoner, armed guards had covered their every move. Despite their guns, though, they’d been amiable and kind, engaging in polite conversation with the Tube Riders without giving anything away. Paul, Owen and Switch had slept a while, but for a time Marta had lain awake, considering their options, and getting out of the country seemed like the only sensible thing to do. Quite how to do it was another matter.
‘We watched the Department of Civil Affairs murder the European Confederation’s Ambassador,’ Marta said. ‘They then set his death up as an act of terrorism, and we were shouldered with the blame to give them a reason to hunt us. We had proof, but . . . our friends didn’t make it. It’s left to us now to pass the information on and I’d say that setting the Huntsmen on us proves how important we are.’
Ishael’s tone went suddenly serious. ‘You said you had proof?’
‘A friend of ours recorded the Ambassador’s murder on a digital camera. But . . . the memory card got lost.’
‘Then who’s going to believe you?’
Marta spread her hands. ‘Well, who in Mega Britain has actually seen the Ambassador? He hasn’t made any broadcast appearances, yet all of us saw him with our own eyes. We can describe him, even what he was wearing.’
Ishael’s face changed. Suddenly his doubts had been replaced by hope. ‘You think anyone’s going to believe you?’ he repeated in earnest.
Switch nodded towards the door. ‘Where did you get those guns? They don’t exactly grow them on trees over in Wales, you know.’
Ishael smiled. ‘Quite right. Maybe we can help you after all. What happened to the others? The ones with the memory card?’
Marta exchanged glances with Switch and Paul. ‘We don’t know for sure,’ she said. ‘We got . . . separated. Out in the GFA.’
Ishael looked disappointed. He paused for a moment and rubbed his chin. ‘That’s unfortunate.’
‘But now we’ve found you . . .’
Ishael stared at her, his eyes narrowing. ‘You said you found us by chance? That’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think? That of all the people in Bristol that you could run into it just happens to be us?’
Marta and Paul both glared at Switch. Owen chuckled. ‘Sometimes you two are as blind as that Huntsman we ran into. He runs circles round you.’
Switch grinned again. He looked at Ishael. ‘Okay, you got me. It was all a bit vague until I saw that fence. Then I remembered. Figured you guys might still be camped out right under their noses, being the last place an enemy looks, and all.’
Ishael looked at him. ‘If I thought you were a government spy you’d be dead by now. So how did you – ?’
‘I’ve been here before.’ He paused, leaning forward on the sofa to fix Ishael with a stare. ‘I used to be one of you.’
Everyone was staring at him now.
Ishael’s hand dropped to his gun. ‘I think someone might remember you. Perhaps I was wrong –’
�
��Calm down, man.’ Switch held up a hand. ‘I wanted to ask before, but I guess I was hoping to surprise him, and I haven’t seen him about. Is William Worth still with you people by any chance? It’s been a few years, but . . .’
‘William? Yeah, William’s still here. But how the hell do you know . . .’ the words failed on Ishael’s tongue and he stared openmouthed.
Switch spread his arms. ‘I’m Steve Worth, man. The long lost son.’
Ishael’s hand fell away from his gun. He turned to the guard by the door. ‘Go see if Will’s back yet,’ he commanded, voice hollow with shock. ‘My God –’
‘William’s still doing good?’
‘He’s great.’ Ishael’s handsome features appeared to have taken on a red sheen. ‘I didn’t, um, recognise you, Steve.’
Switch smirked. ‘Well, I’m not ten years old anymore, and you know, the eye. You can’t plan for these things, eh. I remember you too. I used to take the piss out of your stupid name, but I guess that’s what you get when you grow up in a gypo commune. I see you’ve jumped up the chain of command. Cleaning pots last time I saw you, wasn’t it?’
‘Someone had to do it.’
‘Well, you’re looking pretty dapper these days too, I notice. So did Marta.’ Switch jabbed an elbow in her side.
Marta felt her cheeks bloom. ‘Shut up, Switch,’ she said, suddenly feeling no older than Owen.
Ishael too, looked a little uncomfortable, but before he could reply Paul rescued both of them by changing the subject. ‘Do you mind explaining what’s going on here, Switch? You said you had an uncle in Bristol. You forgot to mention he was part of an underground resistance group!’
Switch shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to get your hopes up. People die young in this country.’
‘Where the hell is he?’ came a loud voice from the corridor outside, and Marta jumped as the door burst open. A thickset Afro-Caribbean man stepped into the room, a beaming grin on his face. His curled hair was slightly graying, but his face lacked any meaningful age lines. The only real age was in his eyes.
