The Dawn: The Bombs Fall (A Dystopian Science Fiction Series) (11 page)

Zack couldn’t concentrate for the
next series of bells and alarms. On occasion he would realise that he was still
working even when the next shift had begun, and then later in his room he would
find himself still lying on his bed staring at the sky when the bell had
sounded for him to be back at the water treatment plant. The Tenth Creed: Every
Citizen of New Omega shall work for a better future without complaint or
malaise. Since he met Emily, the rules had started to feel breakable.

There were two main problems on his
mind that he couldn’t, no matter what he tried, shift from his conscious
thought. The first was how Emily had slipped into Delta, at least the
sublevels, and then mysteriously slipped away again, even though everywhere was
either boarded up or tightly controlled by Guardians. But the second was
altogether more troubling. Why the hell would she be here?

Everybody in Delta wanted to escape. Everybody
wanted out. There were those on the highest levels who were doing it with
drugs. There were those who spent all their credits on lottery numbers,
desperately hoping to be selected for redistribution into Omega. There were
those who did it in the sublevels with beakers of Moonshine and in the embrace
of a woman like Roxanna. And then there were those who did it through denial,
by keeping their head down, doing what they could to survive. But all of them
wanted the same thing. They all wanted out. People from Omega just didn't come
to a place like Delta Tower. The towers were there to serve, to provide, to be
regulated and controlled. Delta Tower didn't offer anything that Omega Tower
didn't already have.

The oxygen was produced by Alpha
Tower. This is what made Alpha Citizens so precious. The delivery of oxygen to
Delta Tower came every sixth shift, the gas pumped through giant pipes that cut
through the sky, just as it was to each tower. The previous lotteries, with the
only exception the first ever draw, had all been won by Alpha residents. Alpha
was rumoured to be almost as good as Omega inside, with Community Levels rather
than Mess Rooms, shops spend credits, and food so good that nobody ever went
hungry. He had heard they only worked one shift a day. Zack wasn't sure he
believed it, though.

Delta was the water tower, and it too
had its delivery quotas to meet. It was from these delivery quotas that people
had started to estimate the size of the other towers. If you knew how much
water they used it was easy to guess which of the towers must contain the most
citizens. Epsilon was the largest, save Omega Tower. These guesses were was
also where the rumours about the deaths in Gamma Tower had originated. Their
water supply had been suspended for a while, but then after six missed
deliveries they had been instructed to resume water transportation. The
delivery quantities had been halved. The previous residents couldn't have
survived on half a water supply. Not unless there were half the number of
citizens. The supply to Omega was over ten times the size of Epsilon.

The worst thing to come directly from
Omega was the live stream. The lobby was brilliant white, interrupted only by
the green trees and ice blue water of the pool. There was a fountain that
trickled water over a series of rocks, cascading across a manmade waterfall. There
were children playing, their clothes clean and bright, A-line dresses for the
girls, red and blue and yellow like a spilt tube of sugary sweets. Smart shorts
for the boys, long trousers in the winter, white shirts and jumpers. The adults
all wore the same. White A-line dresses for the women, similar to the girls'
dresses but sleeker in design, and for the men, outfits that looked like white
hospital scrubs. Omega Tower was white because it was clean. They introduced the
uniform, the regulation dress, within what Zack imagined to be the first year. The
clothes were distributed and cleaned centrally, another perk of Omega life. They
had been promised in all towers, but Delta hadn’t got them yet. It was designed
so that nobody felt different or excluded. The Eighth Creed: No citizen of New
Omega shall feel inferior to another.
What a joke,
Zack thought. There
had been talk about Alpha having the uniforms but nobody could be sure. Nobody
had them in Delta. That was what was important. Nobody could be sure about the
other towers because there was no way of communicating with them. At least
until now.

Leonard had seen the lights again,
but Zack hadn’t got there in time. They had developed a signal that when the
lights appeared Leonard would pummel his fists against the dividing wall six
times. The first time Zack hadn’t heard the knocking because he had got lost in
the iPod. In the period after the triple bell Zack had listened to it so much
that by the time the next shift had started the battery was already flat. The
next time when Leonard knocked the wall, Zack had been asleep. The third time
Zack was ready, sitting coiled like a spring waiting, but he scanned the sky
with the same attention that a hawk would scan a cornfield and he saw nothing. Leonard
came blustering in after that time, didn’t even knock.

“How can you not see it?” Leonard
asked, his hands working up and down his side, scratching through his clothes. “It
was right around here,” he said as he pointed at a particularly dark section of
cloud. “It's gone now, but I promise you I just saw it.” Zack's belief in the
lights had been fading with the same certainty that light would disappear at
the end of a sunset in the old world. But he didn’t want to be honest with
Leonard, he didn’t want to shatter his dreams or extinguish that flicker of
hope that he carried within him. Plus, he realised that he was also asking
Leonard to believe in something both impossible and dangerous, and yet Zack had
no doubts about what he had seen. He hadn't been back to NAVIMEG since he had
seen the Omega tattoo on Emily's wrist.

“I don’t know, Leonard.” Zack sat up
and swung his feet off the edge of the bed. The third double bell rang,
signalling that it was time to go back to work. Zack worked his feet into the
old trainers that he had been wearing every day since his Delta incarceration
began. He reached down, his head dizzy with hunger, nausea creeping over him
from the emptiness of his stomach. He swallowed hard and tied up the laces. “But
if you say it’s there, I’ll take your word for it.” Zack stood up and picked up
his water container, and pulled his ration card out of the wall-mounted card
reader box. There was about an inch of water left. It would be enough to see
him through the shift. The Guardians were rigorous in checking the water supplies
of those who worked in the Water Distribution Centre. Trades were allowed. Stealing
was punishable by denunciation under the rule of the First Creed: No citizen of
New Omega shall steal from another. Nobody really knew what denunciation meant,
but when it was threatened by the hyped-up Guardians, it never sounded like
something anybody wanted to experience. “Anyway, what’s with the scratching?”

“You’re only saying you believe
me
,
because you want me to believe
your
crazy stories,” Leonard said as he
continued to grate his fingernails over his ribcage. “I think I’ve only gone
and got the damn scabies.” Zack was sniggering, but Leonard didn’t see the
funny side. Leonard broke the scratching for a second and reached down to pick
up the small bag that Zack had taken to carrying with him over the last few
days. “You want this?”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said taking the
satchel and throwing it over his shoulder.

“I don’t understand why you have
started carrying that with you. It'll make the Guardians suspicious. What do
you need so much that you'll lug it around all day?” Zack was cautious, eyeing
his open door. He walked towards it and pushed it shut.

“Listen,” he said, hoisting the bag
onto a propped up knee. “I’m searching. I have been down to the basement every
day since. I have been looking at each floor, trying to see where she could
have exited from.” He opened the bag and offered it up for Leonard to rummage
inside; the iPod, an old magazine, a book called Super Structures, and one
ration of water that he had risked denunciation for.

“But why are you carrying these
things with you?” Leonard asked, pointing at the bag.

“If I find out how she got in,” Zack
said, shaking the items back down into the dirty satchel, “then I can get out
that way too.” Leonard was shaking his head, unimpressed by the plan. He looked
back at the windows to made one final check for sunlight. There was none.

“I think you’re mad,” he whispered as
they closed the door behind them, their conversation concealed by the sounds of
New Omega Television. “I've said before that to go out in that is suicide. Dawn
is coming, but it's a slow process, Zachary. Omega will tell us when it is
safe.”

“But you believe that the clouds are
breaking enough for sunlight to come through. The atmosphere might have
changed. It must have changed.” They stopped talking as they arrived at the entrance
to the lift, several other men and women, a small crowd of familiar faces all
waiting for it to arrive. Two Guardians were standing at the side, both with
their hands on their Assisters. Zack leant into Leonard’s shoulder and whispered
in his ear. “She got in somehow.”

Leonard exited the lift on level
twenty one and walked towards the laundry where he worked. Zack saw him punch
his card into the check-in slot, and before the lift doors closed Leonard
turned around and flashed Zack a wink. He also shook his head left to right
with a smile, demonstrating the freedom of movement. The pillow really had
helped him. He never complained anymore. It made Zack feel good.

That shift for Zack, just like the
rest of his shifts since he had seen Emily's tattoo, passed by in a daze. He
was unfocussed and distracted, and desperate for the bell so that he could just
get out, eat, and get himself down to the basement to continue his search. There
was no way that she had made it up to the lobby and got out that way. It had to
be the basement. He had searched level one, and two. Tonight was level three.

As soon as the triple bell sounded he
was out of the water treatment plant. He waited for the lift, and as expected,
Leonard joined him on level twenty one. They rode in the claustrophobic space packed
with people, several of which Zack noticed to be preoccupied by scratching
their limbs and fingers. They queued for their long-term antibiotics and
continued into the Food Hall.

Beyond the doors they found chaos. There
were people jostling for seats, people running, actually
running
with
their food to get a place at the tables. It was true, there were more people in
here than usual, but what was the hurry? Zack looked over at the serving hatch
to see mineral-enriched porridge being heaped onto a tray, and he turned to
Leonard and said, “Well, the rush isn't about the food, that's for sure.”

They got in line and more people
filtered in behind them. They reached the serving hatch and as Leonard handed
over his tray, Zack asked the server, “What did you put in the food tonight? Everyone
has gone crazy.” The server handed the tray back to Leonard and held out her
hand for Zack's. She was a small woman, pretty face, or perhaps might have had
at some point. She had bright blue eyes that always seemed to shine, and Zack
often found that he looked forward to seeing her because she looked so alive,
even when she didn't smile. Which was every day.

“You haven't heard, have you?” she
said, as she dolloped a lump of porridge into his tray. Zack looked to Leonard
who was already staring back at him, both of them wondering what they had
missed. Zack took the tray and the steam from the porridge wafted up and
caressed his chin. Maybe this was why he liked the server. It was one of the
few times he felt the comfort of warmth.

“Heard what?” they both asked in
unison.

“They announced the lottery. It's
starting any time now.”

They found an empty couple of seats
next to each other, the best they could find with a view to at least two
televisions. They had only just sat down as the music cut in, a mix of trumpets
and electronic piano like a fanfare mixed with 1980s electric pop.

Tonight,
began the voice over.
The Republic
of New Omega is bringing you your lottery, live from Omega Tower. The lottery
of the people is coming to your tower. Tonight, somebody will leave their old
life behind and join us to begin a new life here in Omega Tower. Tonight, somebody
will be sleeping in a new bed, wearing new clothes. Tonight, it might be your
world that is set to change. One of you becomes the future. You become your
neighbour’s future. Tonight one of you becomes The New Omega Lottery Winner.

This same spiel was playing every
third advert, which meant it was getting close. Every time it started it
brought the hungry crowd to its knees. The silence would descend, catch every
breath and pull all eyes to the screen as the same enthusiastic voice repeated
the same words.

One hundred and twenty credits for a
blood transfusion. Thirty credits for scabies treatment. The crowd went quiet
and the ecstatic voice played again. Next, fifty credits for a dental check. Regulation
clothing for all towers coming soon. A great time to peddle lies. Tonight you
become your neighbour’s future......

Zack had to zone out. He couldn't
take the crescendo. The butterflies were fluttering around his chest, dipping
and diving into his stomach so that the porridge couldn't settle. Leonard was
scratching himself, concentrating on his armpits. He had definitely caught scabies.
Zack’s head began itching and he hoped that it was just psychosomatic. He
turned to see that Leonard had already finished his porridge and was eating his
cracker bread like popcorn, one arm wrapped around the tray, the other
mindlessly shovelling shards of cracker past his badly fitting false teeth,
occasionally stopping to wriggle them back into place when chewing was troubled.
There was a gnawing in Zack's stomach that might or might not have been hunger
related, but there was no hope of him getting another mouthful of porridge down.
He pushed his tray aside. Leonard turned to look at him, temporarily distracted
by the insanity of wasting food.