The Dawn: The Bombs Fall (A Dystopian Science Fiction Series) (3 page)

They drove up the A23 en route to the
city and it was only once they passed the turn that she was expecting to take
that she realised they weren't stopping for anything. Or anybody. Emily turned
to face her mother who was crying again, her shoulders shaking, her tears spreading
out from puffy, mascara-stained eyes. Her hands were clasped together as if she
was praying, and her father sat stoically like a statue staring from the
window. The sirens on the top of the cars ahead and behind wailed to notify the
less fortunate of their presence, and they sailed through the traffic as if
nothing and nobody else mattered.

“What about Grandpa?” Emily asked. Her
mother let out a whimper, the sound of a dog whose paw had been trampled. It
was a pathetic cry, one that she probably didn’t even expect to make. “Dad,
what about Grandpa?” Emily asked again, pulling at his arm. She studied his
face and found that was clenching his jaw tighter than usual, and she heard
some of his breath escape before he turned to look at her.

“There is no room for your
Grandfather, Emily. There is no time.” He reached across and placed his hand on
his wife’s knee, but this only seemed to make matters worse because Helena
Grayson let out another yelp, another pathetically trodden paw, and she pulled
her knee away from him as if he were a leper, and that his touch was that of certain
death.

“But, Dad,” Emily stuttered. “He’ll
die.” Another whimper. “Dad, do something.
You
can fix it.
You
can organise it.
You
can get him in, I know you can.” He didn't flinch
as Emily dropped to her knees on the floor of the car, as if he hadn't even
heard or felt her. “Dad, you can do anything.” Her words became more desperate
as each attempt at reason was met by a sullen, hopeless shake of his head. “You
can do it, Dad. You can. And if anything goes wrong we can sneak him in. He can
sleep in my bed. I’ll sleep on the floor. Dad,” she pleaded, kneeling next to
him and rubbing her hands over his clenched fists, begging for him to see that
it was possible. “He’s going to die.” She grabbed the car phone with her
remaining strength, gleaned from the desperation of the last hope. In her heart
she already knew she was defeated.

“I have to warn him,” Emily said. Before
she punched the third number her father snatched the phone from her hands,
leaving Emily broken and pleading at his feet, her eyes swollen with tears. “He’s
going to die,” she said one last time, before flopping forwards so that her
head balanced on his knee. The creator and consoler of pain.

Emily felt every bump of the last
twenty minutes of the journey. Nobody told her to sit back up. Nobody stressed
the importance of her seatbelt. Nothing in those last moments mattered. It was
only as she realised they had begun a descent into a car park that she woke up
from her daze. Her mother was talking to her, and Emily realised that she had
been for some time because she drifted awake mid-sentence. Her mother was
telling her about the wonderful suite they were going to live in, how she knew
the beds were going to be so comfortable, and how everything was going to work
out for the best. That she shouldn't panic. Her mother had stopped crying, and
she was smiling instead. But her cheeks were smeared with black, like war paint
on a soldier. It was as if somebody had flicked a switch. Perhaps she too
realised that their future had been decided for them by people more powerful
than they would ever be. They were here because they had no choice. And yet
somehow, they still had more choice than those they had left behind.

Before the car had stopped moving the
door opened, pulled from outside. They had been waiting for them. A man wearing
a dark suit and white shirt, with a curly wire like an endless pig's tail
dangling from his ear, peered in.

“Sir, welcome. You need to follow me,
sir.” Anthony Grayson stepped out of the car without hesitation. He knew what
to expect. He knew what was coming. He had been briefed. “Miss. Come on now,
Miss.” The suited man held out his hand and reached into the car, prompting Emily
to take it. She stared at it for a while, wondering if his family were here or
whether he too knew that the people he loved were going to die. “Miss, there is
no time for this.” Emily took his hand, pushed by her mother from behind. Her
eyes were downcast as he pulled her from the car, her rucksack trailing behind
her in a limp hand. She pulled her blazer across her chest, still feeling foolish
for her juvenile protest.

Around her she saw a storeroom. Piles
of sheets, boxes of what she thought from the words written on them must be
food. She saw people that she recognised from the television, politicians, and
maybe, if she wasn’t mistaken, an actor whom she had seen in a movie when she
had sat next to Amanda and made adolescent promises. Her father was asking the
man wearing the wire about things like time to impact and payload, and as Emily
walked along behind him she got the distinct impression that he was in charge. At
least in some capacity.

The man in the suit ushered them into
a lift, people and the sound of fear all around them. Everybody was shouting
and screaming, either in pain or in hope. Emily didn't know which, but thought
there seemed to be little difference between the two emotions right now. There
were both men and women crying, joined by other kids who looked as confused as
Emily. She tried to smile at one boy, no older than five, but he just stared at
her, dumbfounded and in shock.

Inside the lift, elbows and the smell
of breath nudged her from almost every angle. Others seemed pleased to have her
father around, and they greeted him with the title, Sir. One even made an
attempt to shake his hand, but her father's response was weak and apathetic. The
men watched Anthony Grayson, women tried to calm children. Somebody was still crying,
the sound of defeat, as if the person knew it was game over. It hurt Emily's
ears, scared her even more than the people who were shouting. But somehow it
was still better than the emptiness of silence. Silence made her feel like the
world had already disappeared. She slipped a hand into her father’s and felt
his grip tighten against her fingers. She pulled her headphones out of her
blazer pocket and one at a time placed them in her ears. She drew out her iPod and
pressed play. It didn’t matter what music it was. She was just looking for
anything to help her hide inside herself, to forget that there was nothing more
than a terrifying fragment of the world left. Just as she heard the beginning
of
Fix You
, the lift jolted and stopped. The lights flickered and then went
out. The iPod slipped from Emily’s hand and fell to the floor. She pulled her
hand from her father’s sweaty grip, but before she could crouch down somebody had
stamped on it, breaking the screen. Knees jostled her from both left and right,
including one which struck her in the lip. She followed the orange light, her
fingers scrambling amongst the panicked feet until she made contact and
snatched it back up.

“Emily, Emily,” her father shouted. “Give
me your hand.” She felt him grab her, pull her up and close to his chest. He
was hurting her again, but this was a different kind of pain, and one she knew arose
out of desperation. Light shone down on her as if the sun was rising just above
the horizon, and as she looked up she saw her father’s eyes glistening, his
pupils darker and wider than the deepest of oceans. The lift had stopped
between floors, and another man, probably in his fifties, had already pushed
open the escape hatch and had pulled himself through it. The emergency lighting
flickered into the lift from inside the shaft like ripples of sunlight through gigantic
summer clouds. The man hung his head back into the lift, reaching both hands
down, shouting at people to be calm. Anthony Grayson lifted Emily up like an
offering to the Gods, a sacrifice, a desperate last prayer before the end of
the world for them all to be saved. She felt him lift her above the heads of
others whose fingers clawed at her legs and feet. As the hands of the man on
top of the lift reached down and took hold of her wrists she heard her father
shout from beneath her, his words carrying her upwards.

“Just get her out!”

There were no Guardians patrolling
the thirtieth floor when Zack stepped into the corridor. The children had been
rounded up, and once the lights were dimmed there was little to draw people out
of their rooms. People retreated, cocooned themselves in their only private
space until they were forced to venture out again for the next shift to work
for the little that was on offer. Zack neared the end of the corridor and as he
turned the corner he saw a pair of Guardians patrolling the lobby near the
lifts. They ambled past the doors dressed in their white boiler suits with
black epaulets. Both were wearing the black balaclava and cap that made them
all look the same. Their Assisters swung behind them and it seemed they always
had one hand resting on the handle, ready to strike. They noticed him and took
a glance at each other, but continued on their patrol. Usually they didn’t
bother you if you weren’t causing any trouble. They knew certain things had to
happen after lights out. If you were causing trouble it was a different story.

The light illuminating the numbered
buttons continued to descend until it settled on the final destination. Ground
Floor. There was no choice to go any further because the final five buttons had
been removed from use by a well-aimed butt of an Assister in the early days. Back
then people still believed that they could find a way back to the old world,
the way it was before the war had destroyed it. They rode the lifts up and down
like lost souls somewhere between heaven and hell. They couldn’t accept that
neither home nor family existed anymore. Many fights broke out during this
time, mainly between people who already knew each other. Colleagues who had sat
together at adjacent desks and who had conversed only days before became
enemies in the fight to turn back time. That was what Leonard had called it in the
first few hours. Then the Guardians came and everything changed.

When the first bomb fell, Zack had thought
it a meteor. He even raced to Leonard's office to tell him to watch. He
remembered the meteor that had plummeted to Earth only a few years before in
Russia, and afterwards those who had survived told their stories to an
awestruck world. Leonard was already at the window when Zack swung through his
door, his hands pressed up against the glass. By then the first signs of a
cloud had already begun to form, mushrooming upwards in the distance. Leonard
and Zack watched together as the sky lit up and the orange blaze tore a wound
through their world. It was Leonard that shouted at Zack to
get under the
desk
as the explosion rocked the skeleton of the building. The intensity of
the burst grew until it stifled Leonard’s words. He sat crouched in front of
Zack, his mouth screaming something inaudible, his words lost in the roar of
the explosion. They waited there until the sound of the blast died down and the
building rested. It was silence that took over as people waited in their hiding
places gripped by fear, interrupted only by the occasional bang or smashing of
glass as the city fell apart around them. Together Zack and Leonard stumbled to
their feet to take their first look at what was left. Zack's hearing was
muffled and weak and he couldn't hear what Leonard was saying to him. But he
saw that their windows had stood firm. They had been rocked but not broken by
the evil that had ripped through their city, now left on the brink of
extinction.

At first nobody considered their
homes or their family. It was the shock. They had been stunned into nothing
more than gratitude for the sparing of their lives. It was only in the hours
and days afterwards that reality swelled like the wave of a tsunami, surging
forth to claim fresh victims. It was then that people started to realise that there
was nothing and nobody else left, and that's when people started to get scared.
Night had descended upon them. The city that would in time become known as New
Omega was covered in hot ash, without any hope for the break of another dawn.

The lift doors screeched open to
reveal the ground floor lobby, a once-grand entrance to what at one point was
the second tallest structure of the capital. There had been a pond here, and
fish swam in it. People ate them within the first few days. Everybody was
starving. There had been trees here too. The lobby became a sanctuary at first,
always full, people from all floors hoping to catch a glimpse of nature, waiting
for a saviour to show up and rush through the doors, to tell them there had
been a mistake. They sat watching the greenery, motionless in the absence of
breeze, trying to ignore the line of faceless Guardians who were all armed with
their Assisters and positioned along the perimeter. Within the first year the
trees died, and the lobby died with it. It became barren, infertile, and the
loss destroyed the dreams of many. It was devoid of decent life, and when the
final leaves fell from the trees a lot of people lost hope.

The Guardians were positioned as
expected at the entrance to the sublevels as Zack exited the lift. Five
subterranean floors that were supposed to be uninhabited, yet they were full of
people who remained unaccounted for. When the explosions came the doors were
locked and the lifts to the basement decommissioned. The sublevels became an unwanted
appendage. People from outside rushed underground from the streets, a place to
hide, they thought, until the dust settled and they could return to their homes.
But the dust never did settle, and they never made it out. Some of the
wealthiest traded their way into the building in the first few days of anarchy.
But the rest stayed down there, becoming the underclass, irrespective of where
they came from. They mourned in the cold and the dark, tended their wounds and
burns the best they could, shivering under coats in corners that didn’t catch
the nuclear breeze. But eventually a form of camaraderie took over. They found
ways to trade with those above ground. Some braved the fallout and went outside,
bringing in things like clothes and blankets from the shops that were not
completely destroyed. Others smuggled in alcohol. Others traded the only thing
they had, which was themselves, and this brought a steady stream of men from
the upper levels once word got out. New Omega soon shut them in, boarded up the
basement doors from the outside world. For their own safety they were told.

“Hey, Sam. Croft.” Croft always went
by his last name. Zack got the impression that it made him feel more
intimidating this way. Less human. Like it was necessary.

“Zack,” they both said in unison like
a chorus line. “Coming down to savour the delights below deck again?” Croft
smiled to reveal a set of ugly brown teeth through the hole in his balaclava. He
chewed tobacco like a Texan cowboy and spat a glob onto a brown patch on the
floor. It was against regulation. Zack took a step back.

“You know that’s not my style, Croft.
I’m here to do business. Just like always.”

“Level B3 has some good business,”
said Sam, nudging Croft in the side which resulted in them both sniggering,
celebrating the joke with a high five. Sam was huge, stood at nearly six foot
seven, and almost as wide. “Ask for Roxanna. Tell her I sent you.” There was a
glint in his eye that Zack didn’t care for, made him think that there was some
mutual agreement between him and Roxanna. He knew people had to survive, but he
liked to think that people did it off their own bats, not off somebody else's.

“Why, you get a cut of whatever she
gets?” Zack snarled. Sam straightened himself up, puffed up his chest. “Like I
said, not my style, Sam. Got some ration cards to give out.”

“What about our cards?” said Croft. “When
you gonna top ours up again?” Croft was the dumber of the two. It was a close
call, difficult to compare, but he made it. Just made it.

“Soon, just like I said three triple
bells ago. Now,” he said, patting Croft on the shoulder, the smell of tobacco
escaping from his mouth. “You going to let me through, or is it going to be a
dry month ahead for the pair of you?”

As he walked down the steps he passed
B1 and B2. He thought about Roxanna on B3 and the deal she had with Sam, and
realised that his own life could be harder. The stairs were empty tonight, and
there were no drunks blocking his path. Arriving at B4, he pushed open the old
fire doors and stepped through. There was no commotion, no chatter, or music. It
was dark even by the standards in Delta, and it always took a while for his
eyes to adjust. There were several tables filled with silent drinkers, even
those in company were mute, choosing not to speak. What was there to say?

There were a few children who had
been born since the war, some above and some below ground. Those below ground
bore the scars of a war which people didn't understand. Misshapen heads,
missing limbs, bad teeth, swollen throats. The birth of a child didn’t bring
new hope anymore. It didn’t bring a future of promise. Instead it raised every
question that every one of the 1984 people who were stuck in Delta tower when
the bombs landed had asked themselves over and over. There was no question more
frequently asked than why did the bombs fall? Who dropped them? Why wasn’t
there a warning? Many people suspected the Russians, other people said that the
idea was just a conspiracy and that the USA was the real perpetrator. Maybe it
was Iran, or Korea, people would counter argue. Omega Tower had never offered
any answers. But Omega Tower was all anybody had. Such questions remained unanswered
and would do for the rest of people's lives. People have no other choice but to
accept it. They are stuck somewhere between life and death, a death that was
offered, but never came.

Zack arrived at the bar and gestured
to the barman. Ronson's face was burnt and puckered and had the appearance of a
weathered lunar landscape, cratered and wounded, but stable. One eye had been
lost, a victim of the war. Zack always thought how different he would have
looked if they still lived in the old world. How such a burn might have been
treated by doctors in that time, and people would have commented on what a good
job they had done. He would have received a skin graft, Zack thought, or even a
face transplant, and maybe his eye would have been saved. In places the wound
was still red, like it might still hurt to touch. Sometimes he saw Ronson
sitting with his one good eye closed as if he was trying to block out the pain.
Physical or mental, he didn’t know.

The walls of the bar were constructed
out of old doors from containers that would have at some point sailed the
oceans on cargo ships. There was a logo on one of the panels that read NAVIMEG
and so that’s what people called the bar.

“Hey, Shiner,” Ronson said. It’s what
he called everybody on account of their presence in NAVIMEG. Alcohol was
homemade now, and it was strong. Moonshine, Ronson called it. “Take a seat.” Zack
sat down onto the stool, an upturned oil barrel, and shuffled about until he
was as comfortable as he would get. “Where you been?”

“Hey, Ronny. I’ve been busy. It's
been harder to get here. I've been doing extra shifts on account of somebody
going on the sick.”

“Extra shifts up on B3, no doubt,”
Ronson said with a smirk on the half of his face that moved. Zack wondered if
he too was getting a cut. He hoped not. Everybody was obsessed with B3 tonight.

“You know me, Ronson, it’s not.....”

“Yeah I know,” he interrupted. “I'm
just pulling your chain. It's not your style, right? You’re a good kid, Shiner.”
Zack was somewhere between thirty two and thirty five years old, he thought, but
to Ronson he was still a kid. It was hard to tell Ronson’s age due to the
scarring, but he had to be in his late sixties. He wasn’t at work on the day
when fire rained from the sky. He was outside in it, and anybody who doubted it
just needed to take a look at his face to remember. “Not an angel, though,” he
said as he placed a small beaker of Moonshine next to him. “At least I hope you
haven't become one. I take it you got it?”

“I got it,” replied Zack. “Of course
I got it.” Zack pulled a small plastic card from the back pocket of his
overalls and slid it across the dimpled metallic surface of the bar. Ronson
watched as Zack inched the card closer and closer, appearing almost frightened
to touch it in case he destroyed its precious value.

“And you are sure it’ll work?” he whispered
to Zack as he leaned in close. “Nobody is going to give me any hassle?”

Zack took a hit from the Moonshine,
pulling his lips back as if it was painful on the throat. “You go after the
second bell tomorrow,” Zack paused, thinking about his choice of words. He had
no idea what tomorrow meant anymore because there was no longer any concept of
time. Life worked via bells, alarms. You slept when you had the chance between
shifts which allowed you to loosely count the days. That's why he wasn't sure of
his age. In the beginning people counted days by marking the wall like a
prisoner or a castaway stranded on an island, but they soon lost track and
stopped bothering. There was no sunrise, no dawn, and no sunset. There was just
asleep and awake. Shift, and no shift. Exist, or die. No life, or time. “After
the first double bell,” he clarified. “Go to the lobby. Sam will be there, and
Croft too. Tell them I sent you and show them the card.”

“What if they don’t let me pass?”
Ronson said, clutching the card to his chest, even the thought of failure a
painful prospect.

“They will.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I just can. Now listen. Focus,” Zack
said. “You go through the lobby and take the far double doors. They are marked
Finance and Shipping. Go to the nineteenth floor and turn right out of the
door.” Zack stopped and picked up his glass of Moonshine and knocked the rest
of it back whilst Ronson used the time to recap the information. Zack waited
until Ronson was ready to listen again. “Follow the corridor all the way along.
Don’t stop to talk to anybody,” Zack warned, holding up a precautionary finger,
“but don’t keep your head down either. Look like you belong there. You remember
what that feels like, right?” Ronson nodded and they both smiled.