"Gabby?" I called out, cringing at the raspy sound of my voice breaking into the otherwise silent, dead space.
"You're awake!" Her equally croaky voice broke out as I heard something shuffle around beside me.
"Oh thank god. It was getting really creepy back here. I wasn't sure I could believe them that you were just in a really deep sleep."
"Gabby, oh my god!" I searched around with my hand until it came into contact with her arm. I pulled her into a giant hug and locked my arms around her tightly. I was never letting go again.
She was alive.
She was okay.
She was awake.
I had to calm my racing heart before it popped right out of my chest.
"I thought you were going to die," I mumbled into her greasy hair, as memories from the day before flooded my mind.
"Yeah, they told me you'd been worried." She whispered in return, stroking my back soothingly.
"I'm glad they found us though. They told me they're taking us to their base now. They wanted to keep me in the medical van but I didn't want to leave you. So now we're both in here." We hadn't yet released each other from our fierce embrace and our voices stayed hushed.
So we were relatively safe. And at least now I knew why it was dark, why we were shaking around so much. They were driving us to their base — that they didn't want us to know the location of — and we were in the back of a van. Any windows must have been blacked out from the outside.
I had never been in a working vehicle before. I couldn't help but think how much Liam would have loved it. Moving at such speed so effortlessly, away from the place where we'd always been trapped. He'd thought about leaving once. Hijacking one of the broken down cars parked at the edge of the city, fixing it up, and driving us away to safety. Unfortunately there wasn't a single drop of petrol left in any of them. It had all been syphoned out to be used in the generators that helped power the city. Specifically the ones located by government buildings and medic stations. Power was precious. A commodity not to be wasted on a futile attempt at escape.
Clearly these people had no such issue. I wondered if they used these often. Or was it only a special occasion thing.
Like travelling incredibly far distances to find runaways.
Just how far had they come?
"How long have we been in here?" I muttered quietly.
Somehow I felt like if we were being quiet I could pretend we were alone. But there had to be someone driving us, and they wouldn't be out there alone. They were most likely listening in on our conversation, making sure we weren't plotting anything suspicious. But I didn't want to think about that for the moment. I wanted to relish in the feeling of being held in my sister's arms again. My living sister, who had been on the cusp of death just a day earlier.
I felt safe in the grasp of her hug. Like she was protecting me from all evils of the world. It was nice to feel like a kid again.
At least when I didn't think about the context of this hug.
"Maybe a couple of hours. This thing has air conditioning, it's so weird." Now that she mentioned it I did notice we weren't sweating from the heat in here. The faint feeling of an unnatural, cool breeze sliding over my skin was almost unnoticeable. Air conditioning, when it worked, was usually reserved for the sick. Temperature control was rare. What else did they have that we lived without?
"I'm glad you're okay Rosa. I'm sorry I scared you like that."
"Me too Gabby. Let's just promise to never do it again." She let out a short laugh and we promised and linked our fingers together, as we often had when we were children.
I couldn't help but wonder if we would be able to make that promise stick.
✽✽✽
I'd never seen so many people in one place before.
Things like this were always too dangerous back home. It made us an easy target, one hit and we'd be gone. Wiped out like an anthill. That's why they targeted places like the school, where they assumed more of us would be. They didn't want to waste the resources on a building with only two people in it.
So as I took in all the bodies around me a growing panic began to set in.
My heart started pumping harder.
Faster.
My breath started coming quicker.
Shallower.
I needed to get out of here. I needed to get away from all of these faces. These people who were alien to me.
I had finally found somewhere that claimed to be safe for Gabby and I, and all I wanted to do was run away.
We'd been standing inside the base for about five minutes now. Being stuck in an underground water treatment facility — while being safer than out in the open in Xiet territory — was not exactly the most fun environment. Fighting off claustrophobia, I tried to ignore the large crowds of people streaming in and out of the room. Some were sitting around and eating. Others just passed through on their way to somewhere else.
"What is all this?" I asked, turning towards Nathaniel, who stood just off to my right. The rest of the people who had helped transport us seemed to have disappeared.
"This is the food hall. It's the designated space for us to eat. Prevents anyone hoarding supplies and getting more than others." I shot him a look.
"I figured out what the room was, thank you. I meant how do you have so many people."
"I told you there were heaps of us." I stayed silent as my eyes wandered around the room. "You have a lot to learn about the world outside your terrorist warfare." An anxious feeling filled my stomach.
I gripped Gabby's hand so hard I began to wonder if I'd leave a bruise across her knuckles.
"Please listen to me this time. We want to help you."
NINE
I stood for a moment, and just watched the scene playing out before me. There was a little girl sitting cross legged on the floor, a baby doll nestled on her lap. Every now and then she tugged on the pant leg of the man nearest her and showed him the outfit she'd dressed it in. He'd smile and tell her it was beautiful, then turn back to his friends. She'd change the outfit and repeat. Even though they had been designed for a toy they were in better condition than most real infant clothing I'd seen.
Children's and babies' clothes back in Palla were usually holding on by their last few stitches. The colourful patchwork of thread indicated how many times they'd been worn. Passed down through families as fabrics became harder to get hold of. With the sheer amount of people surrounding me here, I found it odd to see that they had these things available in such abundance. They were giving valuable resources to children to play with. These people were far better off than I'd expected. Even after all of Nathaniel's raving.
My eyes flicked over to him. He pretended he didn't notice.
I looked over at Gabby to see her staring out at the sea of faces with an expression that matched exactly how I felt.
Overwhelmed.
Slightly freaked out.
Needing air quite badly.
Being underground probably wasn't helping the atmosphere for that last one.
The treatment facility no longer dealt with waste water — thank god — due to the fact that the surrounding houses had been abandoned for so long that it wasn't needed. Nathaniel had explained on the way down that they had converted most of the space down here into living quarters. There was no trace of the waste water that used to pass through these facilities. The remaining few functional water tanks were now used to hold clean drinking water. The very water we'd be drinking for however long we ended up staying here. Maybe for the rest of our lives. Though that might not be very long anyway.
I was simultaneously glad I wouldn't be living in a pit of human waste, and anxious about spending the rest of my life locked underground with no idea where I was. I wondered how I was supposed to live surrounded by such a mass of humans. There were just so many of them here. How was I supposed to handle this?
The official numbers, when it came to the population of Palla, were kept secret in an attempt to keep something
from the Xiets and their sympathisers. I didn't know how many people we had, but I knew we were small. I couldn't even fathom the number of people in this room. I'd only ever seen a crowd of about twenty, maybe thirty people at one time. Even that was a rare occasion, unless you happened to frequent somewhere like the medic station, which was discouraged unless you really had no other option.
In this one room it looked like there were hundreds.
Gabby looked a bit like she was going to pass out again. I couldn't blame her as I felt myself teeter on the verge of hyperventilation.
"So," I cleared my throat, "are you going to give us a tour or what? What are we supposed to do here?" I tried to pass off my discomfort. I didn't know these people. They could easily pull out a selection of weapons and paint the floor with our blood.
I looked back towards the little red-headed girl, still playing with her doll, and had to hope that wasn't the case. I had to hide my anxiety.
"I was giving you a minute to adjust. But if you want to get started already, then we can. Hopefully we can find my parents while we're at it."
"Why do we need to find your parents?" I asked stumbling behind him, trying to catch up with his long stride. My legs were burning with each movement, and I couldn't help but wonder about his earlier promise of food.
One night of sleep and a couple of bread rolls wasn't enough to keep me going for long. I clutched the water bottle I'd carried with me from the van tighter as we wandered past numerous plates, piled high with some kind of lumpy breakfast mush.
"Because it's up to them whether or not you stay. We're more likely to find my mother at this time of day though."
"I thought you said that you were looking for us." Why would they spend so much time and effort looking for someone they didn't even know that they wanted?
"We were. That doesn't necessarily mean we want you to live with us forever." I frowned at the back of his head and looked over at Gabby. She didn't meet my gaze and instead stared distractedly at her destroyed shoes. I couldn't blame her. The pain was almost unbearable.
Every step resulted in agony. It shot up mercilessly from the bottoms of my feet like I was walking on knives. I could only imagine what my feet looked like, hidden behind the thin remains of my boots. Boots that, once a size too large, had grown tight from the swelling.
"What if we don't want to live with you forever?"
"Where else are you going to go?"
I had nothing to say to that. Unfortunately he had a point.
The rest of the walk through the facility was filled with awkward small talk and introductions with people I would immediately forget. Every now and then he'd tell us something useful. Directions. Names of the different areas and what we'd do there. Where we should avoid going due to contamination issues from when this place was still in use as a treatment facility. Where we should avoid going for security reasons. Not that I was likely to try and see what was hidden behind those excuses. That would be too much like asking for a bullet to the brain.
"This is where we keep tabs on the rest of the world," Nathaniel stated, leading us into a room full of computers, the monitors glowing with streams of text and video. I'd never seen so much technology in one place before, let alone when it was functioning. It took me a moment to shake the shock from my being at seeing it all. It was like I'd walked through a doorway into another world.
The people in this room were too focused on their work to even glance up at our intrusion of their space. That kind of obliviousness seemed dangerous to me. But then again I didn't even know what they were doing, or how they might have been trained to defend themselves. They could have all been armed to the teeth and I was just unable to see it. Who knew how far technology had evolved since we'd had access to it.
Or maybe they just didn't need to be on constant high alert.
Maybe, unlike me, they didn't live surrounded by bullets and flame.
"The rest of the world?" I tried to keep my voice steady.
It had always been a continuous thought in the back of my mind. The mystery of the world outside of Palla. Were they suffering as bad as us? I had always hoped that if they weren't that they'd been fighting on our behalf. That they'd been trying to save us. Or that maybe they'd been killed off in the war that sent us into this hell, and we were all alone. I had a bad feeling I was wrong with both assumptions.
"Well," Nathaniel started, as he distractedly typed something into one of the many open documents. "We're heading into the new season actually, so a majority of the world is planning holidays." I stared at him, briefly aware that my mouth had popped open.
Was he joking?
If so it wasn't funny.
"What?" I could hardly remember what a holiday was. I'd never had one. Taking a break from our hellish lives, while desirable, was laughable. It was impossible.
"Hmm?" Nathaniel flicked his gaze over to my stupefied expression.
"Oh, right. You don't know." He took a deep breath and looked back towards the computer screen for a few seconds before ultimately deciding to just come out with it.
"They aren't suffering any attacks like you were," his voice was slow, with a demeaning calm tone. As if I was some scared animal he didn't want to jolt into running away.
"They've hardly been affected by what's going on out here."
I stopped moving.
Stopped breathing.
Complete disbelief clouded up in my mind.
"You're kidding me right?"
"No. Look, I understand this might come as a bit of a shock to you, but the rest of the world isn't living like you were. Where do you think we came from? We came out here to help your people. Most of the world will never understand how messed up it is out here. And they'd rather keep it that way."
I was stunned.
How was this possible? How was there a whole world full of people who weren't willing to help us? We'd spent every minute of our lives hoping for a chance at five minutes of safety.
And they didn't even want to look.
I'd never felt so betrayed as I did in that moment.
The one thing we'd always relied on in Palla was the unspoken hope that somewhere, some time, help would come to us. I'd thought the horrors of the Xiets were the worst the world was going to serve us. I'd never even imagined being overlooked and shoved aside. Put in a drawer to be forgotten about.
All because it was too ugly.
Too brutal to accept.
"That's not fair." My voice was quiet, barely over a whisper.
"No. It's not. But it's the truth. I don't see the point in keeping it from you. They've left your people to fend for themselves and fight out your own war. They don't want to drag themselves into danger. And I don't actually blame them. They're safe. I can't hate them for wanting to stay that way." I felt it rising up my throat. The rage. The betrayal.
The entire world had abandoned us.
I was able hold that against them.
"You don't get it," my broken voice snapped.
"You have food and safety here. We don't have anything. They have everything and they won't lift a finger to help us. If they're fine then they could fight for us. If the world hasn't changed then they have armies. They could send them out to fight for our freedom! Why haven't they? Why shouldn't I be angry? Huh? Why? Tell me why!"
I was screaming. Or trying to. My voice had broken off into nothing when it became too much for my throat to handle. But I didn't even care. I was furious at the helplessness of my people, while there were so many who just stood by doing nothing. That was almost as bad as attacking us themselves. They were letting us die.
The sound of fingers tapping along keyboards, that had filled the room just moments before, had gone silent.
"Hey," I looked into his eyes at the word, feeling the tears streaming down my cheeks. A pinch of compassion looked back at me.
"We can only do so much. We're here right? Some of us are trying to help. But it's hard to help when you don't know what the problem
is, or how to fix it. They left the fight to protect themselves. Wouldn't you do the same?" I didn't want to think about that.
It wasn't fair.
Nothing about this was fair.
I was so confused and angry. If my family was safe and I knew without a doubt that doing nothing would keep it that way, I couldn't say that I'd give it up for a bunch of faceless bodies. But that didn't make me feel any better. It made it worse. Every man for himself right? I wanted to think that there was someone out there who would give it all up to help us, but I was forced to abandon the one hope that had gotten us through the hardest days, the most painful losses.
"We'll revisit this room later," Nathaniel stated, and gave me no more time to think about what I'd just learnt. He grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door. I reached for Gabby as we passed her. Together we wove around the people that were littered around the place. I lost my grip on Gabby's hand at some point, but I could still hear her footsteps behind me, pattering quietly. Almost indistinguishable from the chatter and noise of the occupied space.
The next 'room' we stopped at was actually an empty water tank with slightly discoloured walls, stained from years of contact with moisture. It appeared to be set up as some kind of lounge space, or a recreation room. There were some beat up couches and coffee tables scattered around the space. I noticed a strange table with handles that stuck out from the sides, tucked out of the way and surrounded by a group of young people somewhere around Gabby's age. They shouted with a mixture of joy and disappointment as someone 'scored'. Other than them, there seemed to be only a few other people here, a more manageable number than the cafeteria.
Still dumbstruck by the recent onslaught of information I found it hard to focus on any one thing. But the appearance of a massive green tree in the middle of the room, however, was not something I could ignore.
"You celebrate Christmas?" I asked, staring mesmerised at the glittering decorations placed sparingly around the room. They looked old and fragile. Many were cracked, torn, discoloured. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
"Not how you'd imagine. There are no presents or anything like that. No feasts. It's more of a celebration that we're all here together. A few people are lucky enough to have their whole families here for a couple of weeks." I thought back to the little girl and her doll and couldn't help but feel a pinching around where my heart was supposed to be.
Bright Cold Day Page 8