by Terry Tyler
"That is weird."
"It gets worse―last week Nick went out to see the wastelanders who live nearby―they help us at harvest time―but the houses had been demolished and all the people were gone. No one knows what's happened."
"My advice is not to try and find out."
"Steve said I shouldn't tell you; he thought you'd be all over it, wanting to know more, and I could get in trouble."
"I'm glad you didn't listen, but seriously, don't start investigating or looking stuff up―don't attract attention to yourself."
"Yeah, I know." Kendall sighs. "I keep worrying about that guy, though. Dylan. I'm so worried that something might have happened to him. 'Cause I sent him out there."
"So was it popular opinion that made you get rid of him, or Steve?"
"Oh, I stood up for him. Steve would have handed them both over to the police―it was about this girl who'd been murdered, I won't go into details―but it was me who made the decision. I think it might have been the wrong one, though."
They are both silent for a moment, then Lita leans forward, close into the screen. "As long as you both remember that Jaffa left the place to you. Not the pair of you."
Kendall laughs. "Steve was a bit pissed off when the will was read, to be honest."
"Was he? Anyway, listen. I want you to promise me, now, that if ever you get the slightest inkling that Lake Lodge is in danger, you'll call me, and I'll get you on a plane, immediately. Like, the same day. You can stay six months―we'll worry about visas and stuff when the time comes. Steve can come too, if you want." She raises her eyebrows and grins. "Or you can leave him behind."
"Maybe I will!"
"Seriously, keep your ears and eyes open. The minute they start trying to change any of the approved private homestead laws, call me."
"I will."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
Lita holds out her hand to the screen; they touch, across continents. "Stay safe, won't you?"
Five minutes later, Kendall takes a tray of scones out of the oven, salivating over the smell. As she cuts into one (because who can wait for them to cool?) she gazes out of the window, and imagines getting off a plane in New Zealand.
Just her and her son. Not Steve.
She smiles to herself. The thought makes her very happy indeed.
Eleven thousand miles away, Lita sits back in her chair, and shuts her eyes. All she can do is hope that Kendall will not be slow on the uptake if the worst does begin to happen.
Perhaps she should have told her the rest. About the clearances taking place on North Island. She will, next time they speak―and about her and Brody's investment in a private settlement on a previously uninhabited landmass in the Three Kings Islands.
Very soon, it will be time to go. She can sense it in the air―keeping yourself safe is about seeing the writing on the wall before it's written. Listening to the little voice in your head, the one that stopped her walking through a grey door in Hope Village 37, one Sunday afternoon thirty years ago. That took her to France in the early hours of a cold January morning, then further, to the other side of the planet, less than a year later.
Knowing when it's time to run.
And never letting them catch up.
The file on Operation Galton, Phase 10, is now closed. All operatives have undergone the necessary memory erasure procedures; sadly, a few are currently housed in a psychiatric clinic, but Ezra did warn that the process was not always a hundred per cent successful. He considers himself blameless; schizophrenia had not been confirmed as a side effect when the operatives agreed to go ahead, but, in any case, the financial incentive was enough to obtain fingerprints on consent forms.
Every scrap of paper and digital evidence has been destroyed. The holding compounds will remain standing in preparation for Phase 11, to commence next year: the streamlining of the Hope Village population. Meanwhile, the wasteland's overhaul has begun, and Ezra has provided Freya Wilson with iSync streams of the reforestation in certain areas.
Only this morning, she hinted that his future looked very rosy indeed.
Ezra stands, leaving his desk to look out of the window of his offices in Government Village, MC1. In the distance, he sees the sleek, shining ziprail delivering obedient megacity citizens to their places of work. Below him, others go about their days, oblivious to the events of the past couple of weeks.
If they knew, would they care?
Probably not. Even those charity workers who did their bit for the rats have accepted the change in focus without question.
A wise megacity citizen knows on which side his or her Nucrop bread is buttered.
A wise megacity citizen knows that you cannot live outside the system.
This is the future.
This is the UK, Year 2061.
In a quiet corner of the refugee centre on the west coast of the Netherlands, Ace and Rae lounge on mattresses, absorbed in their books; Ace has his head in her lap, and she strokes his hair as she reads.
She smiles to herself, and puts her book down. "Can I ask you something?"
He doesn't look up. "Uh-huh."
"When we first met, did you fancy me?"
Still, he doesn't move. "Yeah."
"What, straight away?"
"Yeah."
"So when you said you'd take me to look for my family because you hadn't got much else on, it was partly because you thought I was hot stuff?"
"No." He glances up at her, and gives her a half-smile. "It was the only reason."
She laughs. "I wouldn't have guessed. For the first day or so you acted like you thought I was a total dork."
He frowns. "Yeah, I've noticed that; the more I like someone, the more of a dick I am to them." He turns his attention back to the pages.
Rae smiles to herself. If he was one of her Balance clients she would educate him on fear of intimacy. Thank goodness he's not.
He still hasn't told her about his past, but the other night she pointed out how unfair it was that he knew so much about her, while she knew so little about him.
"I see what you mean," he said. "I'm working up to it, I promise. Soon."
This is a lot, coming from Ace.
She looks up at the people milling around, idly chatting, reading, looking out of the window at the bleak winter weather. They're all in limbo, until they're moved on to somewhere they can start their lives again, but they have a roof over their heads and enough to eat, and they are safe from the horrors seen by Xav. People are talking; the video has been passed around, just as he wanted.
She and her friends are happy, even though right now they have little except each other―and the one thing that keeps them all going.
Hope.
Epilogue
Christmas Day, 2061
The Bettencourt-Wilson town house, Government Village, MC1
Late in the afternoon, as the large gathering of A-list Bettencourts and their offspring relax after an extravagant lunch, Caleb turns to Ezra, rolling his brandy balloon between his palms.
"I was just thinking―I wonder what happened to that lad. Harriet's boy." He glances up at the ceiling. "He just popped into my head; Lord knows why."
Ezra frowns; his mind is befuddled by the sherry, white wine and port of earlier, his stomach uncomfortably distended. "Harriet?"
"You know. Lionel's girl. One of them. I think she's your second or third cousin, or second cousin twice removed, or whatever it is; I don't know how it works."
Ezra tips his head back, trying to recall. "The hippy?"
Caleb laughs. "That's the one! Forever blathering on about the consumer society, but not too principled to enjoy her share dividends."
Next to him, Freya's ears prick up. "Christ, Harriet? I haven't seen her in years! She married some third or fourth cousin from Mona's side, to keep the name and the money in the family, I reckon. Had four sons."
"That's right, that's right." Caleb smiles. "All as big a waste of oxygen as their mother, except the l
ast one who had a bit more spunk about him."
"That the one you were asking me about?" asks Ezra.
"Mm-mm; I seem to remember he went to the bad, as my mother would have said. Shame; I met him a couple of times and I was most impressed by him. Sharp mind. I told him there would be a job waiting for him when he left school, and he looked at me as if I'd offered him an Ebola sandwich. Dealt drugs at school, but then his girlfriend died from an overdose and he went off his rocker. Joined all sorts of ghastly anarchist groups, became an excruciating embarrassment to the family, then disappeared. I believe Harriet and Giles officially disowned him. "
"Ignace," says Freya.
"Eh?"
"That was his name. Ignace. He just used the last three letters, though, once he distanced himself from the family. Called himself Ace."
Ezra smiles. "Perhaps he became a rat."
Caleb raises his glass. "In which case he's probably working down a Siberian mine, even as we speak!"
Ezra and Freya join in his laughter, and the conversation moves on to other family gossip, the subject of Ace Bettencourt forgotten.
THE END
Final word
Thank you for reading Wasteland; if you liked it, I'd be hugely grateful if you would take the time to leave a few words on Amazon, Goodreads or BookBub. As an independent author, every aspect of publication and promotion is up to me, and reviews help so much.
What next? I've finished the story of Lita, Rae, the Bettencourts and Operation Galton, but I still find myself wanting to write in the post-apocalyptic/dystopian genres, so the next book will be set back in the Project Renova world, though completely separate from my series of the same name. The working title is Safe Haven; the story goes back to the beginning and the outbreak of bat fever, with new characters, elsewhere in the country.
If you would like to get in touch with me, you can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TerryTyler4 or on my blog: https://terrytyler59.blogspot.co.uk/
Thank you so much for your support, as always.
Terry Tyler
March 2020
More Books by Terry Tyler
The Project Renova Series (Post-Apocalyptic)
Tipping Point
Lindisfarne
UK2
Legacy
Patient Zero (short stories)
Blackthorn (set in the Project Renova world)
The Operation Galton Series (Dystopian)
Hope
Wasteland
The Lanchester Series (Contemporary Drama)
Kings and Queens
Last Child
Other Books
The Devil You Know
The House of York
Best Seller (novella)
What It Takes
Dream On
Full Circle
The Other Side
Nobody's Fault
You Wish
Round and Round (novella)
Nine Lives (short stories)
Terry Tyler’s blog
Terry Tyler on Twitter
Hope: Recap
In year 2028, many jobs have been lost due to increased automation, and homelessness is rife. The government's solution is the building of Hope Villages: compounds to house all those with nowhere else to go. The new Prime Minister, Guy Morrissey, declares that Britain can no longer support 'passengers'. His wife, Mona, starts her #FitForWork campaign, aiming to alter the public's attitude towards health and excess weight.
The Hope Villages are funded by Nutricorp, a massive US retail corporation that is slowly buying up every business in the UK. The CEO is Paul Bettencourt, Mona Morrissey's father. Mona's cousin, Caleb, runs Nutricorp in the UK.
Lita Stone and her friends Nick Freer and Kendall Clarke share a flat. Lita and Nick fall foul of Nutricorp, after which one piece of bad luck follows another, and the three find themselves with nowhere to live but Hope Village 37. Whilst there, Lita and Nick discover that the men's medication and vitamin supplements have been doctored with substances that cause sterility, thus culling the non-productive underclass of society.
Nick blows the whistle, and is found dead of supposed natural causes. Lita and Kendall escape, and go to live at Lake Lodge off-grid community, run by Jaffa Taylor. Jaffa and Brody, Lita's boyfriend, encourage Lita to reveal the details of what she discovered at Hope 37. After she has done so, she and Brody flee the country.
Meanwhile, Nutricorp's Paul Bettencourt is making sure that his daughter, Mona, will become the PM within the next decade, and tells her that new MP and social media star Freya Wilson is the future of the party.
It is revealed that the Hope Villages scheme is but an early phase of Operation Galton; the Bettencourts hint that a new order for the UK has only just begun.