by Lu Huiyi
A longer pause.
“Nobody cares about the power outage anymore, do they?” said Huat hopelessly.
“Wasn’t someone being a power outage denialist just five minutes ago?” Beng said.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t happening,” retorted Huat, who was, as usual, ridiculously easy to rile up. “I just think it will pass.”
Beng shrugged. “You didn’t see what it was like at the supermarket just now. Looks to me like it’s all going to shit,” he said. “No point hoping for a miracle.”
“City Hall’s still going,” said Huat, with that feverish stubborn faith that he tended to hold when he really wanted to. Sometimes, it was inspirational. Now, it was just irritating. “You’re too pessimistic; the newspapers have that effect on everyone. We aren’t down for the count yet.”
City Hall was the central hub of the little island-state of Singapore. It was where the malls and major events and big companies and fancy historical buildings could be found—a financial and entertainment hub of sorts. It was also the last to be hit by the full effects of the Deprivation. When it finally fell, everyone knew that the world as they had known it would never be the same again.
Not long into the crisis, it had become commonplace for everyone’s table-tops to be coated in dried spots of wax, defaced like a public park after Mid-Autumn Festival. Beng learnt to study under flickering candlelight and to angle his head and hands so that he didn’t cast shadows on the pages. Every week, he and Huat would make a trip on foot to the nearest operating supermarket to haul bags of charcoal or wood chips home for cooking; but sometimes people hoarded it all and the family would have to rely on rations. Eventually, a national quota was implemented in stores around the country, though it was not followed as well as it ought to be.
Amidst the doomsday mutterings and price hikes and the general undercurrent of panic, City Hall alone remained brightly lit. The last of the electrical generators were all devoted to keeping the city centre alive. For the first time ever, office-workers in the Central Business District were excited to get to work, where you could get artificial light and electric fans and sometimes, if you were very lucky, a functioning phone or fax machine.
But from the moment when they had lost power everywhere else, it had become increasingly obvious to everyone that the whole City Hall shebang wasn’t going to make it for much longer either. The whole thing just wasn’t sustainable. The energy that the country had left in reserve could not fuel even the city centre forever, and after a while, it seemed like people were all just waiting in predictable futility for this last farce of functionality to fall apart. After a while, the government took to redefining the boundaries of the city centre, whittling it down bit by bit, so that they could say that the city centre was still operational. But the people knew the end would come, and it did in just a few confused, dim and messy months.
“The government wouldn’t let City Hall crumble,” Huat kept insisting. He was obviously trying to sound sure and confident, but even his faith was wavering in the face of indisputable facts. “I’m sure they have a back-up plan. It’ll be all right.”
“Are you putting on your Archibald voice again?” Beng asked.
Huat ignored him pointedly.
“They wouldn’t let City Hall fail,” he repeated. “It won’t come to that.”
What it did come to was a short-lived attempt at using alternative energy sources. The government drained the remaining shreds of its money on a small army of solar panels, strategically positioned on the fringes of the Central Business District. For a while everyone was exceedingly triumphant and there were high praises of the government’s ingenuity and innovation, as well as a lot of smug, vindicated comments from Huat. There was talk of extending the use of solar panels beyond the heart of the city, and Beng began to think that things would eventually go back to normal.
Then the smog hit.
It came out of nowhere; the day before, they were still taking the sky for granted. The sight of blue skies was as natural as breathing—always there, and pretty much the last thing on anyone’s mind. But about a month into the solar panel trials, the country tumbled out of bed to find their world shrouded in a thick swirling smog, so thick that one could barely breathe through it.
Beng woke up in the middle of a vicious, hacking coughing fit.
“What’s happening?” he spluttered. He could taste blood in his throat. There was a mist of brownish-grey dust suspended in mid-air, drifting before his very eyes, even though they were indoors and every window already shut tight.
“Beng, take this.”
Beng reached over; his mother had soaked a hand-towel in water and was passing the damp square of fabric to him. He tied it around his nose and mouth. The towel helped a little, though not by very much.
“I guess they’ll cancel class today again,” he said. He had only begun his polytechnic course mere months ago, but the school was closed more often than not nowadays.
“Maybe it’ll pass,” Mother said, but in a manner that showed she didn’t quite believe it herself.
The onset of the smog was, as most things were, a confluence of factors. Higher temperatures, leading to swifter ozone formation. Deforestation in neighbouring areas, leading to massive dust storms that sent loose sand particles swirling wherever wild winds took them. In any case, the smog showed no signs of dissipating, and only thickened in the coming days and weeks. People began to get used to dim dusty mornings, the lingering smell of smoke, and walking around with stinging eyes and dry throats. The solar panels stopped working once the smog was bad enough that hardly any sunlight could cut through it, and the trials ended without so much as a whimper. People fashioned their own face masks out of towels and handkerchiefs, and tried to go out as little as they could manage. Beng gradually got used to seeing his cheeks and arms coated in a stubborn film of dirt and dust every time he so much as stepped out of the house.
Even Huat was a bit thrown off by this development. Not that he didn’t try to stay optimistic through it all, in his usual fashion.
“Other cities have experienced smog before,” he said one day. Beng stared at him in poorly-concealed incredulity.
“It’s been going on for a month now, Huat. And look at that!” said Beng, gesturing to the windows. “We just got out of bed and it looks like it’s 8pm outside.”
Huat did not turn to look; he knew as well as Beng did that the odds were not in their favour this time, even if he did not care to admit it.
“It’ll be fine,” he insisted half-heartedly, as he tried to start a cooking fire with crumpled newspaper. “You’re going to be really surprised.”
It wasn’t fine, but Beng found that he really wasn’t surprised at all. When it came down to it, neither was Huat—or anyone else.
The news that City Hall had finally come to a standstill spread like wildfire. The radio stations had unceremoniously ceased operations a few hours ago, and computers and televisions were all nothing more than junk pieces to be discarded, but Beng and his family heard the very same night anyway. His neighbours had heard from relatives who had heard from colleagues and friends, and everyone was stunned upon receipt of this fourth-hand news. The smog was especially bad that night, but everyone in their housing estate gathered in void decks and at community playgrounds regardless, hungry for updates from anyone with something to tell. It seemed catastrophic, even though the bulk of the nation had been living without light and power for a few weeks now. That the last bastion had fallen—
“It’s over,” said one of the neighbours, and Beng could tell that many around her shared her despair. “We are going to starve—there’s nothing left.”
“I should have migrated,” said someone, a man with a reedy, nasal voice, who dressed poorly but was said to have come into a vast family inheritance a few years back. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew he was loaded; he had made no secret of it when he had fallen into fortune—which meant that he went around making piteous offhand remarks
about how inconvenient and stressful it was to suddenly be in possession of an immense inheritance. It was too late now; none of the planes worked anymore. A few people were beginning to look at him with the sort of speculative viciousness that stemmed from need, and Beng thought he had better try to get away via any remaining means left.
“We need to go see the MPs,” another voice declared.
“Don’t know if they die already or not,” someone said bitterly, because with the lack of any way to make far-reaching announcements and the streets getting more unsafe, most prominent figures had been laying low, ostensibly working harder on crisis management than on public relations. In the meantime, conspiracy theories had been rife—maybe the Deprivation was unique to Singapore, maybe other countries had resources, and only this country, or the region was in darkness, maybe the leaders were hoarding the remaining electricity sources, maybe their leaders had offended some oil-producing state, maybe, maybe, maybe—
It was simply easier to buy into stories of political corruption or diplomatic folly, because it was nicer to believe that this current crisis still existed within the realm of human control. The end of the world’s oil supply hit everyone even harder than they had expected. It was not so much horrific as surreal, at the beginning. The roads were empty, and the traffic lights and street lamps were metal husks. The way people made social appointments had changed, now that it was no longer possible to go from one end of the city to another via a two-hour train commute—anything that wasn’t accessible on foot or by bicycle wouldn’t cut it. Most companies had ceased operation and the malls were out of stock for just about everything.
Suddenly people were roaming the streets, vaguely lost and unsure.
At first, Beng did the same too. Especially when all the schools closed indefinitely, and his world was suddenly a lot smaller, but also far too big to traverse at the same time. He found himself getting into the habit of slipping out alone for a walk at night, just to clear his head. The smog never quite went away, but it did let up a little in the evening. In time, after he had gotten used to the poor air, Beng could get around at night easily, if not comfortably, as long as he masked his face in some fashion.
The bougainvillea bushes along the roadside were now messy, untrimmed and starting to wilt, and the street signs getting defaced. Richer folk went about at night with little lanterns to light their way; from afar they looked like bobbing lights. Beng paced in the pitch-darkness, barely able to see before him, trying to pretend he wasn’t afraid.
He did that for a good week or so, at the very start of the Deprivation. It was a good distraction, and tired him out nicely so that he could crash out promptly upon getting back home. Then, one night, when he had barely gotten two blocks away from his house, someone caught him.
He was just turning a corner when someone’s arm shot out and wrapped itself around his neck. Beng choked, but the someone did not stop. He or she was prodigiously strong—already moving, dragging Beng backwards into what felt, and what smelled, like a rubbish dump.
Beng flailed wildly but it was no use. In his struggles, he cracked his head against the sharp corner of a wall and felt, almost instantaneously, a warm gush of blood. Dazed from the impact, he nearly blacked out for a moment and only dragged himself back into consciousness by sheer force of will.
I’m okay, he thought frantically, blinking blood out of his eyes. Head wounds bleed the worst. He had read that in some book. No clue if it was true or not, but there was nothing he could do even if it wasn’t.
Disoriented and dizzy, he thought he glimpsed a movement amongst the shadowy backdrop. There were people around. Passers-by. They had seen him being taken. But nobody made a sound, and nobody came to rescue him. He felt the beginnings of panic and squashed it down using the dwindling remains of his willpower, forcing himself to breathe slowly and steadily.
They finally stopped moving.
Beng was flung, like a rag doll, against the wall. It hurt. Half-blind, he tried to feel his way around. It seemed like a rubbish collection point of some sort; the kind of square brick structure where great bins of rubbish were stored within a housing estate. Someone wrenched his arm behind his back before he could make any significant movements. He let out a startled gasp of pain; nobody paid any attention to the sound.
This would be a terrible way to die. He thought, fleetingly, that he hadn’t even said goodbye to his parents.
A faint light shone in his face. They had somehow obtained an old-fashioned gas lamp. He blinked against the light, momentarily blinded, before his eyes got used to it and he could make out his captors. There were about five of them—a girl and four boys, who all looked a little older than he was. They loomed over him, boorish, flinty-eyed, unkind.
“What do we do with him?” said one of them. His hands were busy even as he spoke, patting down Beng’s clothes and feeling for any valuables, but Beng hadn’t brought anything of real importance out with him.
And he sure as hell wasn’t going to wait for them to plan. He tried to jerk upwards, to break the hold on his arms by the element of surprise, if nothing else. There was a grunt and a Hokkien curse, and then a solid punch in the gut that left the other boy wheezing. Beng wasn’t the kind of guy who was built to win in a fight, and right now he was sorely outnumbered anyhow. He slumped back against the wall as more of them joined hands to pin him down.
“He doesn’t have any money,” said the one who had searched his pockets. The lamplight illuminated his features. There was a raised scar that zig-zagged down his right cheek, making him look even more intimidating than Beng had initially thought.
“We can sell him,” said the girl.
Well, shit.
She was obviously the ringleader of the lot. The way she held herself and the way everyone listened when she spoke made that clear. There was something eerily sinister about her; she seemed like the kind of person who would kill not because she wanted to do it in cold blood, but because she genuinely believed herself to be doing the right thing. There was a single horizontal stripe of blood-red along her right cheek, like face-paint or an open wound.
Beng was reeling, stunned at what she had so casually said. Sell? But wasn’t that— Surely, they didn’t have such a thing as— But the suggestion didn’t seem to come as a surprise to the rest of them.
“The ships come in the morning. Can we wait?”
“Ships?” he managed. His head was still spinning.
“Tie him up.” The girl again, cool and calm, as though she was instructing a subordinate to make her coffee or do up a presentation.
“Got any rope?”
Someone supplied a thick coil, fraying at the edges. They had him secured with ease—either this bunch had been part of the Scouts in school, or this wasn’t their first foray into the lucrative trade of human trafficking. He was pushed into a sitting position of sorts; limp and uncomfortable on the cold, sticky, dirty floor.
The grime didn’t bother this gang. They made themselves comfortable and began a hushed game of cards to pass the time. Beng focused on taking deep breaths till the world steadied itself. Once he was certain he wasn’t likely to either puke or faint or both, he spoke.
“What ships?” he began, his voice ragged and weak.
Everyone ignored him.
“Look, I didn’t do anything.”
Still silence.
“What’s all this?” he snapped, and they finally turned around briefly at that. Or perhaps it was the combination of hysteria and defiance in his voice that had caught their attention at last, because he was terrified, but he couldn’t leave things well enough alone in spite of—or because of—that.“Is this your idea of a good time? Catch up with friends, go out at night, play a couple rounds of daidee? And oh, I don’t know, abduct random strangers in between, just for kicks?”
The girl looked up lazily at him.
“You think you’re some big shit,” she said.
“What ships are you taking me to?”
&nbs
p; She went on staring at him. Her eyes bore into him in a way that unnerved him a little. She seemed like the kind of person to remember a face.
“You probably shouldn’t talk like that on the ships,” she said. “Don’t say nobody warned you.”
“What do you—”
She turned back to her game before he was done talking, obviously losing interest in him. The rest followed her cue.
He retaliated by making as much noise as he possibly could, trying to get a reaction of some sort. For a while they seemed intent on letting him talk himself hoarse, but at some point, they finally recognised how annoying he could be when he really applied himself, and scrounged up some tape to seal his mouth shut.
Okay, maybe he should have thought this through better.
He waited, afraid they would never go to sleep—but eventually, a few hours later, they did.
Beng saw his chance, and he knew that his survival depended wholly on it. As soon as the last of them dropped off, he began to wriggle around as much as he could, trying to find a rough spot on the wall he could snag the rope on, to weaken it or loosen the knot somewhat. He wasn’t too sure what he was doing or whether he was making things better, but the blood circulation in his arms was beginning to get cut off and he figured any action was better than none at all. Fear coursed through his veins and kept him going.
After a while of futile scrabbling, he felt his wrists catch on something—a hook or nail of sorts, pressed into the wall. The height wasn’t ideal—to get to it, he had to hold his bound wrists up behind himself, high enough that he felt like he was going to dislocate his shoulder. But in the greater scheme, the ache was nothing. he began, as quietly and as quickly as he could, to try and saw his way through the rope.
It took forever to break free. When chunks of rope finally fell to the floor, Beng wanted to cry from relief and exhaustion. His hands ached something awful. As he began to tear at the binds around his feet, he noticed that his forearms were streaked with blood. Pain blended together with fear so seamlessly that he didn’t quite know what he was feeling. He must have cut himself while trying to get his hands free, he thought absently.