The Dying & The Dead 2 (15 page)

He climbed up the ladders and emerged
onto the streets. Sometimes he fancied that a breeze blew through the Dome, but
he knew that was impossible unless one of the glass panes had cracked. The old
structure couldn’t last forever, he knew. Glass would smash, houses would start
to rot, and crops would fail. This was why expansion was so important.

He closed the manhole and started to
walk down the street. For the moment he was thankful to just be Baz, the
hard-working nobody who was so unassuming that most people barely noticed him.

He was glad that Marduk would be
going to Camp Dam Marsh soon. Let Scarsgill and Goral deal with him, he
thought. Then he pictured Goral and his wiry body, and he shuddered. There was
something about the old man that he didn’t like.

Halfway down the street there was a
wooden bench. A brass plaque was nailed to it, and words had been carved into
the metal. ‘
Rupert Tellegen loved his bench, so we spread his ashes on it.
Enjoy your sit.’
To his left there was a cabin that Yuri Avaya had
converted into a shop. Yuri sold whatever goods his scavengers could find when
they combed the wasteland, and The Capita took a forty percent tax.

A Capita soldier approached him. The
soldier stared straight ahead, barely breaking his gaze even to blink. When he
passed Baz he turned his head and furrowed his brow at him. Baz stopped to see
if the soldier had something to say, but he walked straight by. As the soldier
went, Baz saw him playfully kick a stone down the street.

Why were everyone employed by the
Capita forced to hide their emotions under a cold veneer,
he wondered. Even in the meetings of
the Five, if discussion ever became heated, then Ishkur was quick to put a stop
to it. Sometimes Baz wished he’d just see one of them show him a feeling.
Sadness, anger, happiness. Anything.

He reached his own street. A few
yards away, his neighbour Terry Long was outside his house with another man.
The man had a cart with two wheels at the front and a handle and lever at the back
to make it easier to push. The back of the cart was covered by black tarpaulin,
and suspicious-looking shapes poked against the material.

The man passed a box to Terry. Terry
grunted as he took the weight. He gave a look to his left and then to his
right, and on seeing Baz, he stepped back in alarm.

“Just a food delivery,” said Terry,
eyebrows twitching.

Baz knew full well it wasn’t a box of
snacks. Terry’s wife, Georgina, had Addison’s disease. The Capita had a stock
of medical supplies, but no matter how urgent the case, they would only be
issued if they were earned with sweat. As it stood, Terry was in his
late-middle age with asthma, so most back-breaking work was out of the
question. Academically he wasn’t a Mensa candidate, so this meant that few jobs
were open to him.

He looked at the packages. Baz knew
he should report it. If he wasn’t going to do that, then the least he should do
was walk away and have nothing to do with it. He looked at his neighbour,
biceps tensed but face beetroot-red. He always felt pity for Terry.

“Give it here,” Baz said to him.

He reached out.

“Thanks Baz.”

Terry passed the box over to Baz and
then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Baz adjusted the box in his
arms and started up the path to Terry’s house. Georgina appeared in the
doorframe. She looked worse than usual.

“Hi Georgina. You’re looking great,”
he said.

She smiled. “You’re a sweet guy, but
a bad liar,” she said.

“How’s Kieron?”

“Kieron’s upstairs learning how
combustion engines work. He’s going to be a Capita engineer someday. Or one of
the Five. Wouldn’t that be great?”

“Yeah,” said Baz sarcastically. The
edges of the box dug into his arms. “Where do you want this?”

She gestured behind her and as she
did, the sleeves of her dressing gown slipped up her arm. He saw how bony her
wrists were, and wondered if they were getting enough food rations for even one
person, let alone a family of three. Maybe selling food was how Terry could
afford to buy black-market medicine.

He walked into the house. Despite
their lack of food and Georgina’s condition, the house was kept as spotless as
a show home. It made Baz think that it was about time he cleaned his own place.
In fact, everything about this family made him feel ashamed. He thought about
the meetings of the Five with their grapes and their figs, and he felt himself
redden.

Later on, he decided, he was going to
sneak over and leave another food parcel on their doorstep. He’d done it
before, usually when an attack of guilt left him breathless. When he filled a
box with food and sneaked it to their house in the middle of the night, it was
almost as if he was filling it with his own guilt and leaving it for Terry and
Georgina to deal with. With each passing week, though, it became less effective
as a conscience-cleaning device.

As he left the house, he saw a crowd
of men outside talking to Terry. Baz’s chest froze when he saw that the men
wore Capita uniforms. One of them turned to him.

“And this is your helper, is it?” he
said.

Terry looked like a child caught
stealing. He glanced at the boxes on the cart, and then at the Capita soldiers.
Baz knew what was happening, and he felt his heart thump.

One of the soldiers grabbed hold of
Terry.

“The Capita’s generosity isn’t good enough
for you, eh? You have to deal with shady characters like this?” He jerked his
thumb at the black-market trader, who slowly edged toward his cart.

“Hold it there,” said the soldier. He
nodded at one of his fellow guards, and then at Baz.

“Take them in, lads. This one too.”

As the guards approached him, Baz
already knew his fate. Terry had been caught taking black-market supplies, and
Baz was implicated by association. Without thinking, he spoke.

“You don’t know who I am,” he said,
as one of the guards approached him.

“You could be Ishkur himself,” said
the guard. “And I wouldn’t give a shit.”

The guard was close enough to grab
Baz’s arm. One of the others seized hold of Terry, who tried to shake himself
away. The guard punched him in the stomach, and Terry bent over and gasped for
air.

Georgina appeared in the doorway
behind them.

“What’s going on?” she said.

Baz turned to her.

“It’s okay, Georgina,” he said.

“No, it bloody isn’t,” answered the
guard. “Your husband and his friend are in quite a bit of trouble.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing,”
said Baz. “You have no idea who I am.”

The guard smiled. “Okay. Who are you?
Marduk? Nabu? Charles Bull?”

Baz knew it was useless. He couldn’t
tell them that he was Tammuz, one of the Five, because revealing that little
secret would get him killed. Besides, why would they believe him? Outside of
the Grand Hall, he looked the same as everybody else.

Terry looked at Baz and then at the
guards.

“He’s Baz Worthington,” he said.
“This was all his idea.”

~

He knew that there was no point in
struggling. The guards took Baz and Terry across the Dome and into the Capita
Guard headquarters, where they were separated and put in cells. After leaving
him to brood for an hour, one of the guards came to fetch him.

He escorted him into a room not much
bigger than a shoe cupboard. There were no windows, and the ceiling was stained
yellow from nicotine. The guard sat across from him, and they were separated by
an oak table. He was a burly man with a moustache so sparse that Baz wondered
why he’d bothered keeping it. He could smell the sweat from the man’s armpits.

After having time to think on it, Baz
had realised how stupid he was. His first mistake was helping Terry. It was one
thing to ignore his neighbour’s activities, but it was something else to
actually help him. How could he have been such an idiot?

The second error was nearly the most
costly. He’d come so close to telling the guards that he was Tammuz, one of the
Five. If that had happened he wouldn’t have been sat in a room with the burly
guard. Most likely, he’d be buried in a shallow grave somewhere outside the
Capita lands, with his face burned away by acid. If Marduk and Nabu could see
him now, he knew they’d be laughing at him.

The guard smiled, and Baz saw tiny
patches of skin on his top lip where his hair didn’t grow.

“I’m Irvine,” he said. “Relief
sergeant of the Capita Guard. Come here during the day and you’ll get Sergeant
Yoski, who looks like the real deal. Get arrested at night, and you’re stuck
with me.”

“It’s an absolute pleasure,” said
Baz, making sure Irvine knew to take it as sarcasm.

“Your neighbour had a change of
heart. Says that it was all his doing,” said Irvine. He tapped nicotine-stained
fingers on the table. “Took a bit of cajoling from one of our guys with a hot
fire and a poker, but we soon found out that Terry Long has a sweet singing
voice.”

Baz looked around him. No windows,
and only one door. Irvine was twice his weight and could probably have bashed
his head against the walls before Baz could even resist.

“Terry won’t be taking black-market
deliveries anymore,” Irvine said. “In fact, he won’t be doing anything anymore.
God knows what his poor wife and kid will do. Still, we can’t have anyone
disobeying the Capita, can we?”

“And what about me?” said Baz.

Irvine tapped on the table. “And what
about you… That’s a good question. We’ve decided that the full weight of the
Capita punishments won’t apply to you. Bet that’s a relief, eh?”

Baz took a deep breath. He knew that
as Tammuz, he could have this man killed. As Baz, he was powerless.

“We’ve decided to slap you with a
lighter hand,” said Irvine.

Tammuz knew the Capita laws better
than anyone. If the punishment wasn’t death, then there was only one real
alternative.

“Conscription?” he said.

Irvine nodded.

“Harsh for a first offence,” said
Baz.

“You’re not a teenager caught smoking
behind the cowsheds. You were assisting in the transportation of contraband.”

Baz leaned forward.

“Just…maybe it should be something a
little less severe. I’ve got a wife and kid at home.”

Irvine shook his head.

“No, you don’t. We checked. You don’t
have much stuff in your house, either.”

“You raided my house?”

“Would you expect anything less? It
could do with a clean, though. I know you live alone but come on, man. Have
some standards.”

Baz leaned on his elbows. Suddenly,
he was exhausted. The walls of the cell seemed to close in on him.

“You guys don’t pull any punches.”

Irvine reached into his pocket. He
pulled out a sheet of thin rolling papers and a plastic bag full of tobacco.

“Blame the Five for that. Do you
think I want to be here dealing with worms like you? I’m balls deep in a
fifteen hour shift. Unlike you, I really do have a family at home. The Five
don’t give a shit about that.”

He sat back and exhaled. He tried to
roll a cigarette, but his fingers shook around the paper. Baz wondered if he had
a medical condition.