The Rules

by Tracy Darnton

  A plane’s overhead, way up in the crisp blue sky, leaving white fluffy trails behind it. People going on business trips or holidays. I raise my head to watch – and wish I was up there. Dad follows my gaze then grabs my arm roughly and pulls me back inside.

  “It can’t see us, Dad,” I say.

  “It’s the chemtrail,” he says, breathlessly. “They don’t want you to know, but they spray us with chemical agents. All the time.”

  I’m struggling to understand what he means. He’s talking nonsense again, like someone who’s had a bump on the head. But he’s so intense, his hand gripping my arm so tightly it hurts. “You mean the white trails? I thought they were condensation trails,” I say.

  He laughs. A sudden cackle that echoes in the empty hall. “That’s exactly what they want you to think, stupid. That’s what they tell you in their books. They lie, honey. We know the truth. We have to protect ourselves, Amber.”

  Dad’s always trodden a fine line between reasonable fear and irrational conspiracy. The sensible precautions anyone should take versus full-on fortified ex-missile silo to sit out the century. What tips someone from the rational to the irrational?

  He puts on a front. He pretends. He cons people like Will. But not me. I know him. And I know he’s getting worse.

  The receptionist at the doctors’ surgery didn’t like:

  rain dripping off my jacket on to the carpet

  bikes leaning against the glass porch

  girls who don’t give their name

  drumming fingers on the desk

  bad manners

  swearing

  me.

  I was out of practice at asking for help.

  As I stood in the rain, trying to wipe the saddle dry, a young woman came out, sheltering under the porch to have a cigarette.

  “You showed her, like,” she said. “She can be a right stuck-up cow, that receptionist. Best entertainment I’ve seen all month, that was.”

  She offered me a cigarette. My hands shook as I lit it from hers, still fuming about the argument. I coughed as I breathed in.

  “Asking about Springside?” she asked.

  I nodded, spluttering.

  She took a slow, long draw on her cigarette, her thin face becoming even thinner.

  “It’s the new name for the mental health unit just near Swansea. My cousin was there for a while – post-natal depression. Think they thought a name like Springside would pep it up, make it sound like a hotel.”

  “Where exactly?”

  “On the station road beyond the massive Tesco and the leisure centre. I visited her.” She reached over and squeezed my arm. “It was nicer than I thought it would be. And my cousin got sorted – home with her kids in a few months. Know someone there, do you?”

  “I … I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  “She’ll be looked after there, love.”

  She threw her stub on the ground and put it out with a grind of her shoe into the wet grass. “Better get back inside before that bloody woman gives my appointment to someone else. Be all right?”

  I nodded, wafting smoke from the cigarette I was happier keeping away from my mouth. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t say thank you because I couldn’t trust my voice not to crack. I couldn’t let myself cry, deep stupid sobs that would take my bravery away.

  I knew where Springside was.

  Next stop was to check the post. I’d hoped for a letter from Mum but instead I found a money draft from Grandma and more prepping literature.

  I had a plan now: train to Swansea, get Mum. Dad didn’t like anywhere with CCTV so I hadn’t been on a train for ages. He didn’t want the state logging his movements and recording his face. MI5 obviously had nothing better to do than watch live coverage of who’s on the platform at a small station in Wales. Maybe if I had been anywhere near a station in the last three years, I’d have known that on some trains you have to book the bike in advance. I argued this point at the barriers, hastily detaching the trailer to make the bike smaller, looking at the near-empty train pull into and leave the platform. Without me.

  The next train was four hours later.

  New plan. This was fine, I told myself. Regroup. It was about thirty miles by road. I’d cycle to Swansea, collect Mum and then we’d get away together. London, Scotland, France. Somewhere. We’d manage.

  My hood flew back as I pedalled but I didn’t care. The rain was getting worse. Great pools of water formed on the roads. The bag was pulling on my back and knocking me off balance. I wished I’d brought the trailer after all, rather than leaving it at the station bike rack. I thought I’d be less conspicuous on the road without it but what if Dad came looking and found it? He’d assume I’d got the train and that narrowed down my possible destinations – including Swansea. I should have hidden it. I should have thought ahead. I’d made a mistake.

  I’d broken a Rule. Stay one step ahead.

  It would take me hours still to get to Springside. I counted through the minutes, counted through the Rules.

  Never break the Rules

  It was OK to have broken one.

  It was OK to have broken one.

  It was OK to…

  I rounded the bend and skidded to a halt, my brakes squeaking. A van was blocking the road, parked across both sides of the carriageway: a white flatbed truck with a cracked nearside headlight that I recognized only too well.

  “Get lost, did you?” Dad stood by the truck, leaning against the side of it, his arm stretching across the roof. He was pale. He retched and spat on the ground. His stomach must have thrown up all it could.

  My dad – full of bile.

  He walked towards me. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

  “It was a longer ride than I thought. I’m out of practice. I got a puncture on the trailer too. I had to leave it. By the station.”

  I spoke too quickly. My breath was shallow. I sounded guilty. The station wasn’t by the post office. Or the pharmacy. And the tyres didn’t have a puncture.

  “And the storm came in,” he said. “I was worried.”

  “Just a bit of rain,” I said, as the drops ran down my face. They blurred my vision. “I’ll cycle back.” I gripped the handlebars. We both knew I was facing the wrong way to cycle home.

  He shook his head. “Get in.” He said it so quietly that I thought I’d misheard him. “Get. In.” He opened the passenger door wide. Rain pummelled the seat while I stood there, holding on to the bike so hard my knuckles were white.

  “But the bike…” I started to say, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me off it. The heavy bag on my back sent me even more off balance and I fell to the ground, scraping my leg on the pedals. He dragged me and the bag towards the truck, shoved me into the front seat and slammed the door. I reached for the door handle, but the click of the lock sounded. He glared in at me through the window. I stared back at him, like a game of blink. He broke our locked gaze first.

  For a moment I felt victorious. I’d beaten him. But I hadn’t, had I?

  I shouldn’t have broken a Rule. Never break the Rules.

  He lifted the bike and threw it in the back of the truck.

  An alarm sounds in the hallway. Will looks up, surprised. We’ve got used to the monastic silence – no radios, no TVs, no music – so the sudden beeping makes us jump. “It’s the perimeter alarm,” he says. “Anyone coming to join us yet?”

  Dad looks puzzled and shakes his head. “What day is it?”

  I point over at my advent calendar propped up in the hallway. “The reindeer says it’s the twentieth,” I say. “Too early for Santa.”

  Will tuts at my sarcasm but rises. “I should check it out. Probably just deer. The forests are full of them.” But before he gets to the hall, there’s a knock at the front door. Dad bundles me into the dining room, one arm up my back, one hand firmly over my mouth. It’s the first time he’s touched me since he kissed me when I got here. That was bad enough but this, this triggers something in me. The fear’s back.
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br />   I recite the Rules in my head. That’s how stupid I am. Using the very thing that’s made me like this. I try to substitute new Rules. Rule number one: Don’t put up with this. Rule number two: You can change the situation. Rule number three: Survive.

  Then, a faint voice in the hall – Josh’s voice.

  “All right, mate. Sorry to disturb you. Just looking for a friend of mine. Amber Fitzpatrick. Beautiful girl, long brownish hair, funny?” He pauses. “Kind of annoying.”

  “Sorry. No. Never heard of her,” says Will. “It’s just me and my family up here on holiday. Why would your friend be here?”

  “Just a theory. The place meant something to her. If I leave you this number – could you call it if she turns up?”

  “Sure. I’ll show you out.”

  “People are trying to find her. Her picture’s all over the media,” says Josh. “Social workers, vicars, me. The police.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out. How did you get through the gate, by the way?”

  “I jumped it. Snagged my favourite trousers – that barbed wire is vicious for a holiday cottage. You should get a doorbell. How do you get your pizza delivered?” His voice is fading and the front door pulls shut with a thud. Will must be walking him along the gravel drive back towards the gate.

  Dad tightens his grip across my mouth. A feeling courses through my body like electricity. What is it? Hope? Rebellion? Josh is a link to the outside world. People are looking for me. This is going to end, one way or another.

  I drive my elbow into Dad’s stomach and twist my body to force all my weight against him. I don’t manage to throw him in one movement but he’s off balance for a second and I use the moment to get out of his grasp and dash to the door and scream out, “Josh!” Pain surges through my leg as Dad lunges for my knee and pulls me down. I slam my wrist on the hard floor and the breath is knocked out of me. He crawls over my legs and pins down my hands by my side, my face rammed into the floor. The tweezers, still in my pocket, are digging into my hip.

  “Shut your mouth,” he hisses at me.

  My hand is by my pocket. I wriggle my fingers and slowly, slowly pull out the tweezers, calculating if I can reach up to his face, his blue eyes, before he blocks me.

  “He’s gone,” he says. As he relaxes his grip, I twist and plunge the tweezers into his thigh. They’re not sharp enough, they don’t even pierce his jeans. A mosquito bite on a lion.

  They annoy him.

  I annoy him.

  And I will pay the price.

  Will’s back, boldly striding into the room. “It was the druggie dropout Amber was hanging around with before I picked her up. He’s clueless. But he…” He stops mid-sentence.

  From my position on the floor with my father wrestling my arms behind me, red-faced and furious, I can see how Will’s expression changes.

  Dad pulls back. He stands up and dusts himself off, while I scramble backwards and rest against the wall, my knees pulled up. I don’t want either of them to see me shaking. My kneecap throbs where it hit the floor. Fighting with Dad isn’t going to get me out of here.

  “Mr Fitzpatrick,” says Will, stuttering. “I-I don’t think that’s the way to treat Amber.”

  He’s calling me ‘Amber’, seeing me as a person.

  “She was jeopardizing everything.”

  “I walked him to the gate. He’s gone.” He pauses and says hesitantly, “You, you can’t keep someone against her will like this. It’s not right.”

  Dad smooths down his hair. “The ends justify the means. This is for her own good.”

  “It doesn’t look like that to me.”

  “I’m building something bigger than you. The Rules…”

  “The Rules are meant to be something good to live by.”

  Dad’s anger is building again. Will takes his silence as permission to continue criticizing him, disrespecting him. He doesn’t understand that with Dad the silence is more terrifying.

  “And what if the police come next? What will the others in the Ark think? How will the Rules work?”

  “I am the Rules and the Rules are me,” spits Dad.

  I stand hesitantly and ask for some water. The shakes have stopped. Who would win in a full-on fight between Dad and Will? Will surely. He’s younger and fitter. How soon before it comes to that? The hold Dad’s had on him is failing. How can Dad look like a hero when he’s wrestling his daughter on the floor?

  “That’s enough, Will. I’m very disappointed in your operational security,” says Dad. “No one should be able to walk right up to the door like that. Bring forward the timeline for setting up the electric fencing. Review the opsec now.”

  “But shouldn’t we check with the prepping group. It’s their…”

  “Sort out some better fencing,” says Dad, holding up his hand to interrupt him. “Now. Take the car. And if you want to take your place beside me in the Ark, don’t question how I run my family affairs.”

  Will looks over at me. “Is … is she going to be OK?”

  “Of course,” says Dad. “If she follows the Rules.”

  Will leaves me with him. I thought he was wavering, rediscovering his sense of right and wrong. But it’ll take more time. I’ve exposed a chink. I just need to keep picking away at it.

  Dad turns back to me. He’s smiling again, which freaks me out. “The electric fencing will also help with the electromagnetic fields from the mobile-phone masts. They think they can poison us but we know better.”

  That makes no sense at all but he appears to believe it.

  “They?” I ask, though I can guess the answer.

  “The government, of course. Not just here. They all work together – the deep state trying to keep us subdued with electrosensitivity.”

  There’s no trace of the anger from earlier – it’s like a switch flipped and the last half hour hasn’t happened. As though he’s explaining something to a schoolchild. There’s something wrong with how his brain works, I swear. I ease myself up, rubbing my knee, and edge slowly towards the door. He’s rearranging the paperwork that fell to the floor in the scuffle, humming to himself. A tear rolls down my cheek, despite myself. I don’t know if Josh was telling the truth or bluffing. Either way, he’s gone and I’m trapped in Dad’s unpredictable world again. Constantly on the alert for fight or flight. Am I ever going to get out of here?

  He turns and I think he’s about to launch himself at me again to keep me from the door. But instead he smiles an even bigger smile and says, “Don’t worry, Amber. Blood’s thicker than water. If it’s a choice between taking you and taking Will, I choose you, baby.”

  He picks up the tweezers as though he’s never seen them before and puts them on the table. Sweat patches are visible on his shirt from our tussles, his face still red. I follow him into the hall. He picks up the advent calendar, studying the tiny doors. “Four more days,” he says.

  “I didn’t think we’d be celebrating Christmas. Nothing’s ready,” I say. “I didn’t get you a present yet.”

  He shakes his head, smiling, and beckons me back into the room before closing the door behind us, as though he doesn’t want anyone to hear. Even though Will’s out of the house.

  “It’s already here, Amber.” Something wild flickers across his face. “We’ve all been waiting for the one thing. The one scenario. The one SHTF episode. But I’ve come to realize it’s already here.” His voice has dropped to a whisper. He pats the chair next to him and I sit down, knees together, back stiffly upright, on tenterhooks.

  “Climate change, political upheaval, betrayers of democracy, rising violent crime, civic unrest. All around us. Everywhere you look.” He thumps his fist on the table. “We’re in denial. Modern society is already imploding. It’s already here.” He crouches beside me and places his hands on my knees. I freeze. “It’s already here, baby girl.”

  He strides across to his boxes and pulls out the plans and photos of the Ark. “Luckily we’ve got a survival option. I’ve been blessed to h
ave gotten the funding, the knowledge and the infrastructure. All you and I have been doing is the final tweaks to an amazing project. As good as anything in the States today. Better than that. The Ark is the best bug-out place on earth.”

  He arranges the papers proudly on the table and pulls me over to look.

  “We’ll be a new society, living by the Rules, able to defend ourselves if trouble comes knocking.” He’s speaking so quickly, he pauses to wipe saliva from his lips. He can’t keep up with himself. “I can prove all the systems work. Run a proper stress test this time. Show them we can do it. Go for full implementation.”

  I tense up at his mention of the stress test. I’ve done one of those before and it didn’t end well.

  “I’m your only chance to survive, Amber. Don’t you see? We’re going for a lockdown. Four days’ time. Christmas Eve.”

  I thought I’d got good at lying, at disguising the common signs.

  But truth and lies were irrelevant. By this stage, whatever I said was wrong.

  I couldn’t explain what had happened

  why I’d left the trailer at the station

  why I didn’t have the shopping

  why I was cycling on a back road away from the town, away from Eden Farm

  why he was so sick after the lunch I made

  and I wasn’t sick at all.

  The journey back felt like a narrowing of my life. Other people in cars dropped away. Hints of normal lives happening in normal houses – a kid splashing in puddles in his front garden, a couple walking a border terrier, a colourful trio of cyclists on the lanes. We left them all behind and we were left with nothing more than our narrow world.

  Dad’s world.

  An escape plan in reverse. A gate closed and locked again. This time Dad added another padlock.

  The never-ending lane to our property. The hedges high above us on both sides, sometimes curling over the top, straining to make a tunnel. And all the time on that lane, he was silent. He didn’t need to ask me to explain myself any more.