by Ryan Casey
Because she knew what it meant for her.
She knew why they were looking out for her now.
She had two choices. Wait here. Lie around here.
Or try to get out of here.
In the end, she knew there was only one option.
Only one choice.
She dragged herself up. Tried to steady herself to her feet.
But the second she got up, she tumbled right back over.
She coughed. Spat out the dust from the ground. She could taste rubbish that had congealed against the bottom of the skip kissing against her lips. She wanted to lie down. To give up.
But she couldn’t.
She pushed herself back up again. Stumbled to one foot. Balanced on it. Then she slowly put her foot down and put some weight onto it.
The pain was sharp. Dull. She didn’t feel like she could physically support it much longer. It helped that she had a cast on it, but it still wasn’t ideal. The agony was still crippling.
But she had an idea. She had a plan.
She stumbled over to the side of the skip. Her movement was somewhat limited because she was attached to some kind of rope; a rope that linked her to the top of the skip. But she could still navigate herself around this space, mostly. She snapped away some of the loose pieces of wood that had been tossed into here some time ago. And then when she was sure she had it right, she pulled herself up onto them, supporting herself, like crutches.
She looked over and saw Marie staring at her, slight smile on her face.
“Thanks for the help,” Holly said.
Marie’s smirk widened. “Looks like you were doing just fine on your own.”
Holly dragged herself to the other side of the skip. She looked right up the length of it, up towards the top. Then she looked around, trying to find a way she could work her way up its side.
“There’s no point,” Marie said. “You might as well sit back. Settle down. Because there’s no way out of this place. Trust us. We’ve tried.”
Holly tightened her jaw. “I don’t just give up. I won’t.”
“It isn’t about giving up,” Marie said. “It’s about knowing how to use your energy. Where and when to conserve it. And trust me, honey. I know… I know this sounds terrible. But you’re a pretty girl. You’re going to need to conserve your energy. Really.”
Holly didn’t know how to feel. A whole mixture of emotions.
But strangely enough?
The strongest emotion was anger.
“Have you even heard yourself?”
Marie frowned. “What?”
“You’re saying I should just spread my legs and let these bastards do whatever they want to us.”
“That’s not what I’m—”
“It is. You might not think you can get out of here. You might have been here longer than me. You might have been through all sorts of hell. But I don’t care about any of that. I just want to try. I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to accept… accept this.”
Marie sighed. She stood up, walked over to Holly, put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re asking for trouble by doing this. Just as long as you know that. Just as long as you realise.”
Holly looked into her eyes. There was deadness to them. Deadness that teased a long time of abject misery.
“What happened to you?” Holly asked. “For you to—to get like this. For you all to get like this. To just—just accept things the way they are?”
Marie half-smiled. Then she looked over her shoulder. “We all come from different places. All come from different backgrounds. But that doesn’t matter anymore. None of it matters anymore. We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to survive. You’ll understand that, soon enough.”
Holly wanted to push some more. She wanted to press for more information; for more knowledge.
But then out of nowhere, it was Marie who broke the silence.
“My son. My daughter. They’re—they’re still out there somewhere.”
Holly looked at her. And for the first time, she saw something in her eyes. Tension. Loss. Like she was being torn in two directions. She didn’t want to accept the position she was in. She was trapped. But she was doing what she could to survive—as painful as it was.
Holly felt this pain, too. She felt it like a pendulum swinging rapidly.
She hobbled to Marie’s side. She reached up. Put a hand on her shoulder.
Then she forced a smile.
“We’re going to get out of here,” she said. “I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But we’re going to get out of here. And we’re going to find your children. We’re going to find them. I promise.”
Marie’s eyes glistened. “Holly, please be careful. Watch your step. Or—”
And then there was a sound.
A sound of footsteps, right at the top of the skip.
Then the sound of the metal of the skip banging.
Holly looked up. Marie looked up.
And when they looked, they saw him.
A man. A man Holly hadn’t seen before. Someone she didn’t recognise.
He was standing there. Wide-eyed. Clean shaven.
He was staring right down.
Right down at Holly.
“Hello, girls,” he said. “I think it’s about time we gave you your induction, Holly. How does that sound?”
Chapter Thirty
“Get off the streets. Right this second. Now!”
Mike didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think twice.
He just turned to the buildings on his right side, and when he was sure everyone from his group was with him, Scott and the three other people included, he ran.
His heart pounded. His chest was tight. The air was stuffy, and it felt like it was intensifying. But he knew that was probably just him. It was probably just the heat of his body intensifying. It was probably just his tension growing.
He just had to get the hell away from the approaching group.
But there was something else, too.
He had to monitor them. He had to check. He had to see.
Because there was a chance they had Holly.
There was a chance they had Kelsie.
“In here,” Scott said.
Mike took a left into one of the buildings, climbing under a shutter. He eased everyone in before him. And when he was sure everyone was inside, he threw himself under the shutter too.
But just before he got there, he saw something.
A light.
A light right in the middle of the street.
He kept still. Scott kept still too and kept quiet. He didn’t want to draw any attention to himself or his people. He didn’t want to move, not if he didn’t have to.
He took a deep breath, and steadily, he moved away from the shutter, the torchlight still glimmering at the end of the alleyway.
Scott stayed there. Not moving. Holding his breath.
Mike nodded. Gestured for him to join.
But then he heard something.
The footsteps.
They were coming down the alleyway.
They were getting closer.
Scott fumbled. Fumbled for his knife. Lifted it. Stood his ground.
Mike watched as the light glimmered closer.
He waited for the showdown.
Then the light stopped.
The footsteps stopped.
And then they started moving in the other direction.
Mike took a deep breath. He saw Scott take a deep breath too. Then he stepped away, away from the shutters, and the pair of them followed the rest of the group through the building, up the stairs, and into the room overlooking the town.
When Mike got up there, he lay flat on his stomach beside Alison. He was right by the window, looking out.
It was eerie, seeing the group from up here. There weren’t as many of them as first thought. Six of them. A smaller group.
But it was those torches. They gave the illusion of more people.
He could see them moving th
rough the streets, and he found himself straining. Straining to drag himself to the edge of the balcony. Because he had to see. He had to know whether Holly or Kelsie were with them. They had to be with one group. And the torches, they were characteristic of the group with the masks.
But where were they?
Where was the pair of them?
He felt something, then. Something around his hand. Alison’s hand. She tightened her grip around his palm. Interlinked fingers. Held them tight.
And Mike went to hold her hand back.
He went to tighten his grip around her hand, too.
But then he saw something.
There was somebody down there. Somebody over the shoulders of the man at the back of the group.
He could tell from all this distance away that it was Kelsie.
He went to pull himself away from the window.
“No,” Alison said.
“I can’t—”
“Mike, just no.”
He felt himself being torn in two directions. He wanted to go down there. He wanted to help Kelsie. He wanted to get her back.
But he could see Alison’s point. He could see exactly where she was coming from.
Going down there meant danger. Serious danger.
It was bad news.
And it could just get them all killed.
He stood his ground. Held his breath. And he found himself doing the hardest thing. The hardest thing to imagine. The hardest thing to conceive.
He watched the group pass by, carrying Kelsie along.
He watched them, and he let them.
Because he was going to follow them.
He was going to wait for the right moment, and then he was going to strike.
He went to sit back down, went to crouch, when something happened.
The torchlight. One of the torch lights.
Out of nowhere, it turned.
Turned right up towards him.
Turned right up towards his people.
And the next moment, the rest of the torches turned up towards them, bathing them in light.
“Shit,” Scott said. “Oh shit. We need to run. We need to get out of here. Now!”
Chapter Thirty-One
Holly felt herself being dragged up the side of the skip by the rope around her waist, and she knew she had to make a break. She had to make her brief moment of freedom count while she could.
Rain was starting to trickle down as the three men above her dragged her up the side. She could hear murmuring below. The mumblings of Marie and the others. She looked down at them. Saw the panic in their eyes. The fear in their eyes.
Because one thing was for sure.
Whatever this man and his people had planned for Holly, all these other women had already been through.
Whatever the “induction” was, these women knew exactly what it was.
Holly wasn’t intending to stick around to see how it ended.
She wasn’t prepared to lie down and accept this morbid future.
She reached the top of the skip. Right away, before she had a chance to even try writhing away, someone snapped some thick duct tape on her. One of the men grabbed her broken leg, making her cry out and rendering her useless right away.
They used this. Used it to their advantage.
Because the next thing Holly knew, she was strapped down in a wheelchair with nothing she could do about breaking free.
She looked at her surroundings as she tried to gather her composure. It looked like they were staying at some junkyard. That’s when it dawned on Holly for the first time that she wasn’t alone in that skip. There were other skips. But some of the other skips had things over them, blocking all sight of what was inside, and most sounds.
Most.
She heard muffled, echoed sounds from some, as this man wheeled her past them. And it made the hairs on her arms stand on end. She didn’t want to picture what was going on down there. She couldn’t bear to imagine it.
But up here, mostly, she heard silence. Abject, defeatist silence.
And that pained her to hear more than anything.
“Don’t worry yourself with what’s in the skips,” the voice behind her said. “We’re taking good care of them down there. Really.”
Holly felt her blood boiling. Because she wasn’t like the rest of the women. She wasn’t going to cower in fear at whatever this man had planned for her. “Good care of them? Ditching them in skips? Raping them in hope of impregnating them? That’s the kind of world you want to build? That’s your paradise?”
Holly felt her wheelchair come to a sudden jolt.
The man walked around to the front of it. Looked at her with his twitching eyes. “Whatever you do… do not ever imply to Calvin that these women here are raped. Don’t you dare even use that accusation.”
Holly frowned. “Accusation? But it’s—”
The man pulled back a belt and cracked it across Holly’s leg.
She screeched, a sharp jolt of pain shooting right through her body.
“I’ll repeat myself,” the man said. “Which is something I don’t like doing. Don’t you dare imply to Calvin that the women here are raped. Because that’s wrong. That’s so wrong. Okay?”
Holly didn’t say anything. Because she couldn’t. It was clear to her what was going on here. It was against the women’s will. It was some nutter who wanted to create a society in his own image. That was the problem with the end of the world. It seemed like plenty of good survived, sure. But mostly monsters survived. Psychopaths. Sociopaths.
But then why should that surprise Holly? Nature built itself on survival of the fittest. Evolution was inherently biased towards those who could filter their emotions; who followed their base urges regardless of the “morals” embedded in them from society itself.
It just stood to reason that the psychopaths rose to the top, just like they used to do in business. Just like it had always been.
She reached a caravan at the edge of the junkyard, and her wheelchair stopped.
“Remember,” the man said, walking around her, and reaching for the door. “Behave yourself. Hear Calvin out. You might just end up being surprised by what you hear.”
Holly muttered something inaudible under her breath.
The man opened the door.
The first thing she saw was the decor. It was old school. Little imitation fireplace. Carpet which had been worn down from years of use. A patterned sofa, a little too loud in today’s society.
And then she saw him sitting there.
He was long-limbed. Remarkably so, in fact. He had wide eyes, and a friendly face, kind of a look of a scientist about him. He didn’t look old. Maybe in his early forties.
But as he perched there like a praying mantis, Holly felt uneasy about him right away.
He stepped up, towering over her at six seven as she sat there in her wheelchair.
He held out a long, arachnid hand.
“Thanks for bringing her here, Jared. Holly, I believe? Pleasure to meet—”
“I don’t shake hands with abusers.”
His eyes narrowed. He tilted his head, looked back at Jared, who had pushed Holly in here.
“I told her to be on her best behaviour,” Jared said.
Calvin sighed. “That’s okay,” he said. “We can’t expect everyone to just react and adapt in the same way. We can’t expect everyone to just comply. It goes against human nature, after all. But anyway, Holly. As you probably know, I’m Calvin. And I wanted to just take a moment to explain to you what we do here. What we’re building towards. And what your role in all this is going to be.”
She heard the way he said those final words. And she might’ve been imagining things, but she swore she detected a glimmer of pleasure in them.
“I think I know enough about what you get up to here already.”
“Ah, you think you know enough. But if I’m correct, you’ve been in the holding skip with a bunch of women who, respectfully, are in the dark about
most things here just as much as you are.”
“So you’re telling me women over a certain age haven’t lost the ability to conceive?”
Calvin’s expression didn’t change. Just that same, flat doctor’s look, emotionless. “You’re correct about the trouble to conceive.”
“And you’re telling me you’re not raping younger women so that society can—”
“It’s that word,” Calvin said, raising a finger, his face suddenly changing to a look of annoyance. “‘Rape’. You’re wrong about that.”
“How am I—”
“What we do here is consensual. Entirely consensual.”
“Oh, I bet it is.”
“The women who choose to be breeders, that’s their decision.”
“Breeders? That’s…” A sickly taste filled Holly’s mouth as the reality of her predicament started to build. “The whole thing about it being a choice. That’s not what Marie told me.”
“Marie, huh?” Calvin said.
He stood up. Walked around. He looked like he was mulling something over; contemplating something.
“So is she lying?” Holly said. “Or are you?”
Calvin looked out of his window. Rain pelted down. It sounded quite relaxing as it hit the tin roof, in all truth. “Marie is… problematic.”
“Problematic?”
“She consented. Then she claimed she hadn’t consented. And ever since then, she’s been causing problems for us.”
“So why don’t you just let her go?”
“Because she knows too much. And besides. Sometimes your biggest problem can be your strongest asset, right?”
Holly frowned. She shook her head. “She knows too much? About this place? So that’s your reason for keeping her here? That’s your reason for keeping anyone here? Really?”
Calvin looked back at her. His face had turned. There was something different about the way he was looking at her now. That doctor-like lack of emotion had shifted. And he was looking at her in a strange way.
He was looking at her with sympathy.
“It’s not ideal. I know that.”
“Not ideal? You really are full of it, aren’t you?”
“We’re trying to do the best thing for the future of the country, here. And for all we know, for the future of the world.”