Chapter Seventeen
I woke before the sun rose. The cave was dark and the fire had burnt low. Coal was sitting next to it, his back to me. I checked on Taylor again but there was no sign of him waking up, I felt a knot tighten in my stomach and chewed on my lip. His breathing was steady but he still wouldn't stir. With a sigh, I stood and moved to the cave entrance.
All of my training injuries coupled with the few I had collected during my SubWar experience had grouped together to make my muscles seize up during the night. I gritted my teeth against the pain.
Reaching out, I cupped some of the cold water between my hands and splashed it over my face to rinse away the blood and grime that had collected there.
Kaloo had chosen to lay by the rushing water and droplets misted on her fur as she rested. She had her eyes closed but I wasn't convinced she was sleeping. I started across the cave towards Coal and she raised her head to watch me pass but made no move to stop me.
"Have you slept?" I asked, sinking to the ground next to him and enjoying the heat from the low flames.
"Someone needed to keep watch." He gave me a lopsided smile. "Besides, I don't sleep much."
I opened my mouth to ask why but changed my mind.
"Do you have to be very careful living out here? Because of the contamination?" I asked him.
"The contamination?" He laughed. "No."
"But I thought it wasn't safe out here?" I asked.
"Well I wouldn't say it was safe, but not because of contamination." He said the word like it was some kind of joke that I wasn't getting.
"So the safe zones are bigger than the Guardians realise?" I frowned. It seemed unlikely that they would make such an error.
"Do you really all sit up there believing that The Wall is the only thing between you and some mystery illness that would be your downfall?" Coal laughed again.
"Why else would they lock us all away in there?"
Coal studied my expression for a moment, the smile slipping from his face, before replying. "Various reasons, safety being one of them I suppose," he said vaguely.
"And what would the others be?"
"Perhaps some of them like sitting up there in their glass castles, using the rest of you to do all of the work," he said, leaning back on his elbows.
"Anyone in the city has an equal chance to progress to a higher level if they work hard enough. Housing is allocated depending on your contribution to society so the more you give the more you get back," I quoted instantly.
"Did you rehearse that speech or has it been drummed into you so often that you actually believe it?" He looked amused.
"It's true. The people living on the top floors and in the better buildings have earned their place there by contributing the most to society," I insisted.
"So what if a married couple live together and the wife contributes greatly to society but the husband does nothing?"
"They would be put somewhere in the middle," I guessed but I could tell Coal wasn't convinced.
"So she has to suffer because of her husband and he gets to gain from doing nothing?"
"Oh hell I don't know, but there is a system in place," I said, exasperated.
"And you all just blindly believe that? How could you know who contributes the most to society? What do they base it on? Hours of work? Or is it the type of work? The amount of educational qualifications you have?"
"I presume some kind of combination of all of them," I said, but listening to it laid out like that did make me doubt how it could possibly work fairly.
"And who gets to decide that?" He wasn't finished picking holes.
"We have elected officials called Guardians, who are lead by a President and together they work for the benefit of the population by-"
"Living in the nicest apartments on the top floors of the best buildings?" he guessed, smiling smugly at me.
"Well, yes, but they contribute a lot to-"
"And by any chance do these elected officials tend to come from families that live in those kinds of apartments in the first place?" he interrupted me again.
"Anyone has the right to stand for election," I said firmly.
"But would they have the funds in place or the connections required to run a successful campaign?"
I looked at him with my mouth hanging open ready to argue further but I couldn't think of anything to say. My mind raced back and forth and I tried to reject his arguments but couldn't. "Probably not," I conceded finally.
"So the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful and the rest of you work as hard as you can to try and reach the top floors whilst never really having a chance of making it up there." He smiled knowingly at me.
I frowned. I had to admit I'd never really heard of anyone making it very far beyond their original living area.
"Don't you know that the so-called contamination wasn't something that just happened entirely by accident?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" I frowned.
"I mean people are the reason we're in this mess. I'm probably not the best person to explain it." He shook his head and turned away.
"Can you try?" I reached out a hand and laid it on his wrist. I had only ever heard one explanation for what had happened at the end of the old world and I wondered how much Coal's understanding would differ from mine.
Coal turned to look at me again. The point where our skin touched sent sparks down my arm. He pulled his hand away but shifted a little closer to me so that our legs were only millimetres apart.
"It had to do with there being too many people in the world, so there wasn't enough food." He frowned, concentrating. "Scientists developed chemicals to give to the plants to make them grow bigger and faster, but it went wrong." I nodded, I knew that much already. "They were supposed to spend years carrying out tests but they didn't. They just started pumping it into farms all over the world. Instead of focusing on the problems that were being caused by the effects of the chemical, like the creatures and plants growing like crazy and becoming completely uncontrollable, they threw more effort into making the cities secure and finishing the Walls.
We think that they knew overpopulation was the world's main problem so they weren't exactly worried about something happening that could eliminate a good portion of that problem."
"You mean they knew what could happen?" I gasped.
"Maybe. It certainly seems convenient that all of those Walls were already well underway before the crisis."
"Why did people think they were building them?" I asked, wondering how they could have gotten away with such a thing.
"Counter terrorist measures. At the time, they said they needed to create safe zones within Walls for people to get to in the case of an attack; the cities were already highly populated and lent themselves to being altered into a space ready for a massive population quarantine.
Then they selected people to live within The Wall. Supposedly it was a random ballot with some exceptions made for people who had particularly important skills. Though in the case of an attack, they said everyone would be protected inside.
They kept the news stories about the walls and the terrorists separate to the stories about the food crisis so not many people saw the link."
"But if they were ready to shelter people in the cities then why did so many people die?" I asked. It was common knowledge that in the old world there had been billions of people whereas now the cities held only a fraction of that number.
"The changes they made were only meant to affect certain plants but whatever they did mutated and soon all of the plant life was contaminated and it started growing quicker than it could be cut back. Then the animals that ate the plants started to change too, and some of the people. Eventually the world had been affected so drastically that it was unrecognisable."
"What happened then?" I whispered, I knew the version that I'd been told but I wanted to hear his.
"They became something less - civilised, more primal. I don't know really. Our Elders say they lost reason
and only acted on instinct, you know food, shelter, food again. And they would fight to the death for whatever it was that they wanted. They aren't people anymore, they're like a different species."
"Are they still out here?" I shifted uncomfortably at the thought.
"Yes, they live in parts of the forest far away from any civilisation. No one in their right mind would willingly go near a Creeper nest.
Everyone headed to the cities to escape. They ran for the protection they had been promised when their taxes were paying for The Walls to be built. But the gates were shut."
"How could they do such a thing?" I shuddered.
"Things settled down out here eventually. It hasn't always been a negative outcome. Take Kaloo, for instance. She's bigger and stronger than the old dogs would have been but I see no disadvantage to it.
A lot of animals gained intelligence, some of the most formidable predators that live out here used to hunt alone, now practically everything hunts in packs. They all had to change in order to survive."
"So why don't we change when we eat the food now?" I asked.
Coal shrugged. "After those first few years, the changes stopped happening. It was like rapid evolution, everything that changed stayed different but didn't continue to develop after that. Maybe the chemicals are gone now, or maybe they just stopped effecting us, I don't know. But I do know that people don't suddenly die or become something different just by being out here, or eating the food."
"But why do we still live inside The Wall then? They could let us out."
"Our best guess: power. There are a lot of people who have a very comfortable lifestyle living in the tops of those buildings and that would all change if everyone beneath them was suddenly free to go and make a life for themselves outside."
"But that's awful, they can't just lock everyone away because it suits their lifestyle," I said, outraged.
"There are plenty of things to be afraid of out here other than contamination." He shrugged again.
"Like what?"
"You'll find out before long." Coal stood up and held out a hand to me. "We should get moving." He helped me up then dropped my hand and stepped back. He crossed the cave quickly and lifted Taylor into the makeshift litter without another glance at me. Kaloo appeared at his side and stood patiently while she was strapped back onto it.
I took a deep breath and turned away, hoping he couldn't tell how much he affected me.
Chained - Everything you know is a lie... Page 17
