by Jack Jewis
Once he was finished, he picked up another mask, standard issue this time. He attached it to his face, took hold of the ladder in front of him and started to climb. At the top he lifted the hatch, and a cool wind blew against his forehead. He climbed out of the hatch and let it drop shut behind him.
He was in the Dome. The wind came from vents in the ceiling sixty feet above them, though they could be shut with the press on a button. Most things in the Dome were mechanical and didn’t need power, which was handy. When the structure had first been built, a post-apocalyptic civilisation hadn’t been its purpose. On the contrary, it was made to be as eco-friendly as possible. It was just funny that something built to help protect the world had become so useful once it had ended.
He wasn’t Tammuz anymore. Now, stood in the pale light that filtered through the Dome’s glass hexagons, he had shed his Capita Five persona. He was no longer the man who decided which towns the Capita would take by force. Just as he had changed his mask in the tunnel, he had changed identity, too.
Now, he was Baz Worthington.
It was the name his parents had given him. He presumed that they'd decided upon it seconds after a doctor slapped his bare bum and then handed him to his mother. His real name was Barry, of course, but the other kids at school had basterdised it until it became Baz. If only they could see him now. He bet they never imagined that the small boy would become one of the Capita Five, responsible for invading towns like Kiele. Then again, nobody imagined how the world would change because the outbreak had happened so suddenly. As much as he’d like to shove it in their faces, they’d never know. Nobody would. Outside of the chamber, he would forever be Baz.
On his way home through the Dome, he passed by hundreds of cheaply-made cabins that were erected within feet of each other. From the outside, the Dome looked huge, but nothing could prepare you for the scale of it once you were underneath the glass ceiling.
He was almost home, when he stopped just short of his neighbour’s house. He saw them through the window, with their cabin lit by the flicker of a candle. They were a small family consisting of just Terry Long, his wife Georgina and their son, Kieron. Kieron and Georgina sat on a couch, while Terry was in a chair, reading to them from a book. Kieron sat tight against his mother; his head slumped against her shoulder. Baz saw that the little boy wasn’t wearing his mask.
He shook his head. Baz had known for a while that his neighbour was harbouring his immune son. It was something that could get the parents killed and the little boy packed on a train to Dam Marsh. He wished they’d just have a little sense and at least draw their curtains before letting him take off his mask.
Baz knew that it was his duty as a Dome resident to report it. He had a bigger responsibility than most since, although nobody knew it, he was one of the Five. The funny thing was that when Baz approached his neighbour’s house, he became oblivious to what was around him. His memory fogged over. It was a funny thing indeed, but how was Baz supposed to report what he didn’t see or remember?
That was the excuse he’d use if it ever came to it. The one thing he couldn’t explain was the supplies that he sometimes left on their doorstep. If he was ever caught doing that, he would soon be sat in the darkness of a Capita dungeon.
A lot of the Capita’s ideals were outdated and downright hateful. The problem was that they provided safety where nobody else could. In a world full of the cannibalistic infected, that was worth too much to give away. Tammuz didn’t believe in their ideology, but he appreciated being able to put his head on his pillow at night and not have to wonder if something would creep up on him in the darkness.
Figures turned the corner at the end of the street. Baz stopped. There were five men ahead of him in Capita uniforms. They marched in formation toward him, stopping a couple of feet away. He looked at their harsh expressions and saw the weapons they twisted in their hands. One of them spoke to him.
“Why are you out so late?” he said.
Anger flared in him at the disrespect, but he realised that out here, he wasn’t Tammuz. He was just Baz. A nobody. He put his hands in his pockets.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. “What are you doing around here?”
“None of your business,” said one of the guards at the back. “If you can’t sleep, then go home, shut your eyes and count infected.”
The guards walked past him in file. He turned and watched as they got nearer to Terry’s house. He hoped that they wouldn’t spot the candle light flickering in the living room. That they wouldn’t notice the boy sat next to his mother, his mask-less lips mouthing the words to the story that his dad read to him.
He thought he should say something, but he pictured the dungeons again, and knew that he couldn’t.
He clenched his hands into fists in his pockets. The guards walked closer to Terry’s house. As they drew nearer, one of them stopped. Baz’s heart raced in his chest. Was this it? Would Terry’s stupidity finally tear his family apart?
The guard bent down to his boots and tied his shoelaces. He straightened up, and the unit moved on, beyond Terry’s house and down the street. Baz watched as they stopped at the door of a different house further down. They paused for a few seconds, and then one of them stepped back. He lifted a boot and kicked the door open.
Baz stood on the empty street and listened to the shouts of surprise as the Capita guards carried out their raid. He knew that he shouldn’t concern himself with things like this. As Baz, he was nobody, but as Tammuz, his responsibility was greater. The Capita would expand, and Tammuz would drive them through it.
He turned up his collar and walked along the darkened street, thoughts of Kiele turning in his mind.
Chapter Nine
Eric
It was funny how everyone’s faces melded together when they were part of a crowd. The rest of the new arrivals all stood in the middle of the yard, bunched tight as if stepping out alone would isolate them and draw the attention of the guards. The shoes they had given him made Eric’s feet hurt, and when he walked through the yard and he felt the stones dig into his soles.
The longer-term inmates around them carried out their jobs without paying attention, wary of stopping in case it brought a baton down on their heads. Kim was next to Eric, and Allie stood beside her. Across from them, five guards fixed them with hateful stares. One of them wore thin-looking pale gloves, and Eric wondered if he was the guard who preferred his accessories to be made of human skin.
Two men walked toward them from across camp. Behind them were red bricked buildings that Eric knew were off limits to the DCs. He didn’t know what went on in them, but he knew that it was where Dr. Scarsgill worked. On the outskirts of the yard, there was a white running track that someone had painted onto the stone. Eric wondered if the camp had once been a training camp for athletes.
The guards gave way as the two figures approached. One of them, wearing a long waterproof coat, was Dr. Scarsgill. He had a tired look on his face. The other was an old man. His head only reached to Dr. Scarsgill shoulders. He had long grey hair that looked like a woman’s, and in his right hand he held a walking stick which he leaned on to support his weight.
“You all know now what we expect of you,” said Dr. Scarsgill, stopping in front of the DCs. “The presence of guards is testament to the fact that you can’t be trusted. Day by day if you carry out your duties, you build a little of that trust. That means the men next to me won’t have cause to harm you.”
“Yeah, right,” Eric heard a man whisper behind him.
Scarsgill put his hands in his pockets.
“When you work in camp as long as I have, people cease being people and they become a number. That means I don’t care for you. I won’t mistreat you. After all, you can’t mistreat a number. But if the sums don’t add up, I must start to subtract until they fit.”
He pointed to his right, across camp, where the infected shambled beyond the fences.
“Look at some of the old numbers that didn’t fit
my formula.”
Eric picked up on a tremor in the doctor’s voice. It was faint, but he was sure it had been there. He looked at the infected, and he knew that the doctor was lying. Whatever else might happen to them, Eric knew he and the rest of the DCs would never turn into one of the creatures.
The old man next to him smiled. “What the doctor is saying, in his usual obscure way, is that if you don’t behave then like anywhere else, you will be punished. But nobody wants that.”
Scarsgill nodded. “Thank you, Goral. I won’t pretend that I will always be up front with you all. It just doesn’t work that way. But I will tell you this. You will be used to further the species. We will take blood from you; blood that you will give freely.”
“I’m not giving you shit,” said a voice.
A few people in the crowd gasped. Eric looked behind him. Men and women in the crowd parted until a boy was stood alone. Not only had his head been shaved, but he didn’t have any eyebrows, either.
“Excuse me?” said Scarsgill.
The boy stood with his arms crossed. There was a look on his face that Eric hadn’t seen since coming to camp. It was an expression of defiance.
“Come at me with a needle and I’ll punch you in the face,” said the boy.
Scarsgill nodded at the guard with the gloves. The guard walked across the yard until he stood in front of the boy. Eric expected him to stand down, but the stern look on his face held firm.
The guard grabbed him by the collar, and in one easy motion lifted him three feet off the ground. The boy struggled under his grasp, but the guard slapped him with a gloved hand.
Goral took careful steps forward. His walking stick scratched across the stones with every move. He gave the boy a kind smile.
“Go easy on him, doctor,” he said. “He’s only a boy. Surely everyone had a bit of back-chat in them at that age?” Then he laughed. “Even you, Mr. Smarty Pants.”
Goral looked at the crowd. He focussed on a few boys and girls at the front.
“Put your hands up if you think Mr. Smarty Pants was naughty too, at your age?”
A girl at the front laughed and raised her hand. Eric felt Kim relax beside him, but it did nothing for the knots in his shoulders.
“That’s enough, Goral,” said Scarsgill. His cheeks were red.
Goral turned to the doctor. It was a slow motion, as though his joints worked on rusted hinges.
“You’ve said your piece, doctor. Now I’ll say mine.”
Goral turned to face them. He reminded Eric of an old man he’d lived with once. It was before he, mum and Luna met Dale. They stayed in a three story house with a few others survivors, and one of them was a sixty-three year old called Hal.
His mum hated Hal for some reason, and she didn’t want Eric spending time with him. Whenever he could get away with it, Eric would watch Hal as he did things around the house like boarding up windows and digging toilet trenches in the garden.
One day, Hal was outside reinforcing the wood around one of their windows. Eric was in the house, but he could hear the tune Hal was whistling as it drifted through the windows. He was going to go outside to talk to him, when all of a sudden the tune stopped. Hal started screaming, and there was a clanging sound as he dropped his hammer. They all rushed outside to find Hal on the ground, with two infected sucking the blood from his torn-open throat. That night, when everyone else was asleep, Eric had pulled his blanket over his head and cried.
“Let’s play a game,” said Goral. His accent was tinged with something exotic. “A competition, and the winner gets a meal in my cabin. Imagine that! A hot meal that doesn’t look like sick slopped into a bowl.”
Some of the kids tittered.
“The game is simple,” continued Goral. He leaned into his walking stick. “You all run around the race track until you just can’t run anymore. Whoever stays running last, wins.”
Kim tugged on Eric’s shirt.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered. “My stomach feels like its eating itself.”
Eric was going to speak, when Allie cut in.
“You have to, Kim,” he said. “Scarsgill is watching. This is a test.”
Eric looked at the doctor. He stood straight as a board and watched them all, eyes scanning the crowd from face to face. He’d never seen a man who looked so cold before.
“One of the men in the canteen warned me about it,” said Allie. “Whoever stops running first gets taken away.”
It made sense. Eric didn’t believe for a second that Goral just wanted to play a game with them. There was a point to everything they did in camp, no matter how stupid it seemed. The guards shaved them because they wanted them to feel small. They gave them mind-numbing jobs to tire them out. And if they wanted to play a game, there was a hidden motive.
He grabbed Kim’s hand.
“Just outlast a few of the other kids and you’ll be okay.”
Kim held her stomach.
“I can’t,” she said.
“You have to. Just think of your mum.”
~
They all lined up at the start of the track. Some of the older men and women stayed at the back and stretched out their legs. A few kids waited at the front with eager faces, the prospect of a hot meal in front of them.
Eric glanced over to his left where Scarsgill, Goral and the guards watched. One of the guards leaned in toward his friend and whispered something that brought a smile to the other man’s face. Scarsgill looked at them with his cold stare.
He was convinced that Allie was right. There was more to this than just a competition, but he didn’t plan on finding out what that was. As long as Kim was okay, that was all that mattered.
“Think you’ll win?” said Kim.
“I don’t know. Allie seems up for it though.”
The boy had left Kim’s side and gone to the front. He stood at the starting line with his hands clenched and stared straight ahead.
“My stomach,” said Kim, and put her hands across her belly.
Eric didn’t trust a word that Goral had told them, but he knew that Kim needed food. Maybe if he could win the race, there really would be a prize. He could get some hot food in Goral’s cabin and when the old man wasn’t looking, he’d sneak some in his pockets and take it back to Kim. For all he knew there wasn’t a prize, but Eric was going to try and win regardless. He didn’t have many other options.
“Ready?” said Goral. He stood beside the starting line.
Allie turned to him and nodded.
“Then go,” said the old man, and swept his arm forward.
They set off into a run. At the front, men bustled into the children. One man put a hand on a woman’s shoulder and shoved her away from him, using the space to gain a few precious metres.
Idiot, thought Eric.
Goral had said the last person running would win. That meant that this wasn’t a race, but an endurance test. A question flickered in his mind, and he wondered why the doctor and the old man would want to test their stamina. It didn’t matter. He needed to win so that he could get food for Kim.
The stones dug into Eric’s feet as they ran. Kim had started the run close to him, but inch by inch she was dropping away. Eric slowed so that he was beside her. Ahead of them, Allie bounded along the track with ease.
The cabins passed them by on their left and right as they rounded the track. The other DCs in the yard carried on with their work, though one man sneaked a look at them as he rested on his pickaxe.
“I don’t feel good,” said Kim.
Her pace slowed an inch. Eric grabbed her shoulder and squeezed.
“We’ve nearly done the first lap,” he said. “Everyone’s tired. Someone will drop soon. Just hang in there.”
He didn’t like talking that way, because he knew that something bad would happen to the first person to drop. The problem was that someone had to take the fall, and he didn’t want it to be Kim.
Soon enough Scarsgill and Goral were ahead of them,
and Eric and Kim jogged by. As they completed their first lap, Eric caught the doctor leaning into Goral to speak to him. He didn’t catch everything, but he definitely heard the words ‘the girl.’
He slowed a little more and squeezed Kim’s arm. A man went past them and jostled her shoulder.
“Hey,” said Eric.
The man ignored them and ran on, the only thought in his head a warm meal in a nice cabin.
As they went around the track again, they jogged by the dog kennels. The metal fencing excluded some of the dogs from view, but the animals grew wild as the DCs ran. Eric imagined someone walking over and letting them loose, and he pictured Kim falling to the floor as a pack of hounds swarmed her.