He wakes before the alarm and lies staring up at the uniform pale grey of the plasticrete ceiling. Disorientated, he is unsure of what the time is, or what has awoken him. He was asleep and now he is wide awake; a discrete, binary process in place of a gradual continuous one. It is disconcerting, as if he has awoken from a nightmare but with no lingering recollection.
He lies there unmoving, as if waiting for permission, until the soft mellow tones sound. They blend into one another and drift across to him from the wood-effect acrylic of the bedside table. He rouses himself and rolls over, swinging his legs out of bed and silencing the alarm.
His wife stirs, the angular shadows from the blind sliding across her face as she turns towards him. Her red hair is tied up in a loose ponytail, faint smears of the make-up that she’s failed to remove the night before encircle her eyes. A wistful smile pulls dreamily at the corners of her mouth.
He goes to the bathroom to wash himself, jutting his stubbled chin out at the mirror as he shaves, examining the ever-deepening lines in his face. The dark brown eyes are still as youthful as ever though, keen, almost luminous. He stares into the glossy void of his pupils awhile, unable to shake the sense of unease.
His wife’s smudged eyes open languidly at the sound of the bathroom door sliding to. The nascent smile spreads across her cheeks as she rolls onto her back and stretches, disappearing into the pillows and reaching her arms wide. He smiles at her as he backs out into the living room, his eyes lingering on her until she is eclipsed by the door.
Slivers of bright white light slice through the darkness, exposing the dust and old skin particles that hang in the air. They eddy around his hand as it rises to shield his eyes, which screw up automatically in the glare as he hauls the blinds open. The evenly spaced grey plasticrete cylinders of the neighbouring burrows dominate his view, filing away as far as the eye can see. Each is smothered by the vines of geothermal and hydro-cycling systems that sustain their inhabitants. They are crowned by the utility strata; it’s underside having assumed the flawless blue of a summer’s day, with here and there an ersatz cumulous sliding past. It was a marvellous and comforting illusion, though it required a certain degree of complicity this high up; if you squinted it was possible to see the intricate patchwork of pipes and processors that formed the canvas for the image.
He hears a door slide open behind him, and turns to see his daughter standing with her shoulder against the door frame, one hand trailing her teddy, the other balled up into a fist, rubbing at her orbits. She shuffles towards him, her face drooping sulkily. He steps forward to meet her, hoisting her up by her armpits and lifting her face to his. He stares carefully into her downcast eyes for a moment or two, mock concern furrowing his brow as his face moves slowly closer. She holds out for as long as possible, frowning exponential melodrama at him, but then her face splits into a broad grin. He presses his nose against hers, kisses her on the cheek and places her gently back on her feet.
“What do you want for breakfast sprog?” He says, stroking her head as she hugs his leg. She leans her face against his thigh, clouded by what seems to be an impossible decision. He lets the silence stretch until he feels the time is right to play his master stroke, “Bacon sandwich?”
Her face snaps up grinning and nodding vigorously and he smiles back as he extricates himself and moves over to the culinarium. Sometimes they can afford to supplement their diet with Everymeat, but today is a special day. Today he has bought the real thing. Real bacon. He lays the thick, succulent rashers out gently under the grill with great ceremony, as if laying it to rest. He has spent a week’s wages on it.
The smell of it cooking creeps into his nostrils and curls up there, prompting memories of his youth to surface behind closed eyes. He allows himself a moment to savour them before turning the kettle on. Then he focusses his attention on the bread. That too is the best he can afford. He takes the small packets of butter, purloined from one of the Upper City hotels no doubt, and scrapes every last trace of soft greasy goodness from them. Real butter, smeared across real bread, yielding and fluffy with a slight crunch to the crust. Ten minutes later he has the bacon sandwiches arranged on a tray, along with two cups of steaming hot tea.
“Shall we go and wake up mummy?” He says to his daughter, who immediately tears off into the bedroom, her arrival met with a yell of surprise and a barrage of squeals and laughter. He picks up the tray and backs slowly through the door to find his daughter sprawled prone across his wife, small body spasming hysterically, writhing away from grown up hands as they goose her waist relentlessly.
“Turn it in,” he chuckles as he sits down on the edge of the bed, daughter nuzzling between them. He passes each a bacon sandwich and they all tuck in, the silence punctuated only by soft murmurs of delectation. When they’re done they sit there, he and his wife sipping at their tea, daughter lying contentedly between them. They finish and casually put their cups down on the floor, immediately leaping on the small unsuspecting form in a tickling frenzy.
* * *
He makes his way as casually as he can through the sprawl of makeshift dwellings, the same sprawl that he’s walked through countless times before. The same faces, worn and creased with age and anguish, the same grimy wares of dubious design and even more dubious origin, haphazardly arranged on rugs and upturned crates.
Its a far cry from the way it used to be, when he and his family had first arrived down here. They had moved to the Burrows when they were first built, “Affordable living only ten minutes from the centre of the capital,” was the promise they were made and it had held true. The open spaces between the vast concrete monoliths of the Burrows had been given over to parks and here and there a shopping arcade with coffee shops, bakeries and pubs, some office spaces and even the occasional square. It was all dwarfed by the soaring towers around them, but drew the inhabitants from their lofty perches to give a sense of community to the whole. Now however the parks were covered in a ramshackle web of tarpaulins and corrugated iron and the buildings were gutted; looted by the overflow of human flotsam that had drained down here.
He finds himself next to a stall littered with containers, each alive with a different type of insect. The sides of the containers curl up and back over into the middle, to prevent the tiny creatures from escaping. His eyes wander over a colony of ants, watching one as it clambers over the others, up towards the hole in the top only to tumble back down onto it’s writhing companions at the critical moment. It was like this before they came and took over, he thinks hazily. Like this but different. Like this but with more things.
He turns away and his legs carry him automatically through the crowds. The eyes, embedded deep in their shadowy folds, seek him out as he drifts past and burrow into him, searching for his purpose. They know, he thinks, they can see. The coarse, croaking patter of the fly pitchers hawking their wares seems louder than usual, a hundred gutteral voices all shouting at him. Even the acrid smells radiating from the food stalls seem more pungent, clinging to him and stinging his nostrils.
There is a commotion further ahead and he pushes his way through the crowd until he discovers the cause. Some Narmy are raiding a shack, a lean-to of rotting wood and rusted corrugated iron, looking for dissidents. The four inhabitants are lined up in front, kneeling with their hands behind their heads. A trooper is positioned behind them, her rifle sweeping back and forth across the miscreants; “suspects” was not a word that was used any more. Two more Narmy emerge from the shack, ducking under the dim mess of cables veiling the entrance into the harsh omnipresent light. They pause and put their hands up to their ears, angling their heads slightly. Then they reanimate, hauling the suspects up by the armpits and shoving and kicking them off towards the nearest checkpoint. The crowd part before them like fish before sharks.
There is a small crowd of spectators loitering, their impatience for the Narmy’s exit apparent in the poise of their bodies. They are waiting to pounce, to grab whatever is in the shack, strip it down and sell it on for whatever they can get.
His eye catches an elderly man on the fringe of the crowd, a worn cloth bundle clutched to a cavernous chest. The stark white halogens in the utility strata above cast deep pools of shadow under the burgeoning foliage of his brows. As the spectre turns to leave and the withered face catches the light, he is horrified to realise that it is familiar.
When he knew the man he was upright and strong. Time alone could not account for the change and he wondered how a person could become such a small fraction of their original whole. But then they had all lost something, their things, their loved ones, parts of themselves. He wonders what he looks like now.
His eyes follow the crippled figure as it scurries over towards the building it had once been proprieter of. The broken souls of its windows gape, the roof sags down as if the weight of its woes have become too much to bear. A rusted sign still creaks above the entrance; a jovial moustachio’d face in a boater, gripping a meat cleaver. The tangy aroma of bacon fills his nostrils, the soft yield of bread fills his mouth.
Some rushed to welcome the new masters, to ingratiate themselves, tripping over one another to fall at their feet and offer their services. The rest believed they should fight, not that they had the means to do much in the face of such overwhelming technological superiority, but there must be ways and they were not ready to give up their freedom. The conquerors did not need to divide them, they had divided themelves readily enough.
First came the Narmy, traitors from above herding the rest down into the Lower City. Then came the curfew, confining citizens to their homes. Many of the loudest dissenters disappeared in the chaos and the raised voices in the streets turned into furtive whispers in the cafes and pubs and finally passed into fickle memory, the niggling doubts in the backs of people’s minds.
He joins a long, winding queue which snakes its way through the plasticrete of a security checkpoint. Narmy soldiers toting automatic weapons loiter nearby, lazily waving the locals through one by one, occasionally grabbing one and dragging them out of line to be patted down and questioned.
Visions come to him as he stares into the distance. Hordes of people packed together on the greens. A thick border of Narmy soldiers facing them. Puffed chests and clenched fists and faces too close to one another. The fists swing, the crowd tears at itself, dividing and hurling itself back together again, bloodied and trampled bodies left in the intervals. The crowd turning outwards, rippling from the centre, lapping at the Narmy and then swallowing it. Figures surging into the shops and other buildings, fire and debris and bodies blossoming from the windows. He watches the leading edge until it disappears beneath his field of view; a foaming sea of people beneath, a shattered blue sky above. He closes the blinds and turns out the lights, hoping to shut out the fear as his wife and child cling to him. The noises are in the building, the thuds, the crashes, the screams. They get louder and louder as he pushes his wife and child behind him.
The Narmy soldier waves him through, staring at him with gathered brows, the barrel of his automatic gesturing him forward. He hurries to comply, making his way through the crowd to a cluster of tables arrayed in the shell of another dilapidated building. He walks towards the counter, the blood rushing in his ears, his head swimming. He reaches it and steadies himself, breathing deeply.
A thick-set middle aged woman rests her heavy forearms on the counter, “Mornin’,” she says, her eyes sweeping him up and down.
“Mornin’,” he attempts what he hopes is a grin, his eyes dropping back to the surface between them, “How much for a cup of tea?”
“Seven fifty.” The woman says, without a flicker of emotion.
He pulls a hand from his pocket, only now realising that he has held it clasped there since he left the Burrow. He lifts his fist, fingers uppermost, and unfurls them to reveal the burnished circular forms of some coins lain across the fluffy, rumpled canvas of a note, “I’ve only got seven thirty-five, that do?”
He watches as the woman takes the money from his palm, the grin still fixed on his face. She lifts the note up, letting the harsh light of the halogens reveal its hidden secrets. Her eye roves over it, from one corner, across an intricate path of verification to the one opposite. “Looks genuine,” she murmurs, more to herself than anyone else, “I’ll let you off this time. Take a seat, I’ll bring it over.”
She turns around and lumbers over to a kettle while he picks a table and sits down, still grinning. The hustle and bustle of the market drifts away to be replaced by the heavy tread of a boot on the side of his head and the screaming and sobbing of his wife from the bed as they take it in turns. He feels the thuds of the impacts as his body is beaten and the heat of the blade scores his face as he is forced once more to open his eyes and a small body spasming hysterically, writhing away from grown up hands, emerges from the vale of tears.
He looks down at the table before him, a gnawed styrofoam cup sits there, full of oily brown tea. Next to it there is a brown paper bag. He looks at the counter but the large lady has gone. He reaches inside the brown paper bag and grasps the object within. It is surprisingly heavy. He pulls it out and stuffs it into a coat pocket. He picks up the tea and takes a sip, seeing the ant crawling up the others in its desperation to escape, then tumbling back to the bottom. He rises from his seat and walks towards the Narmy checkpoint. The soldiers see him coming, one of them steps forward as he approaches, putting a hand on his chest but it is too late. His hand squeezes the detonator and it emits a low whine that builds in pitch exponentially. He has just enough time to see the cold dawn of realisation on the soldier’s face and to tell his wife and daughter that he is coming.
Copyright © 2017 Simon Chaney