by Ann Kelley
Hours later, a dull grey dawn broke. He was still shivering.
‘What yer doin, man?’ Green eyes from a narrow, freckled, face regarded him from the wall behind him. He jumped up, trying to look fierce. Had he been robbed in his sleep? He remembered the rifle but fumbling he dropped it.
‘Is that real or pretend?’
‘Real of course.’
‘You’re not allowed.’
‘Who says?’
‘Them. TA.’
‘Just try and stop me.’
‘What camp are you in?’ said the grinning boy.
‘Whaddyamean?’
‘Aren’t you in a Repop camp?’
‘Are you?’
‘Course I am, man. Newlyn North Camp, me.’
‘What do you do there?’
‘Stuff. With other kids.’
‘Do you know a man called Joe Jenkyn?’
‘Nah. What’s your name?’
‘What’s yours?’
‘Tell us yours first.’
The boy wore sand-coloured shorts, a T-shirt and a baseball cap with Repop embroidered on it. He had a cotton scarf tied around his neck with an oak leaf motif embroidered in green. He looked well fed and relaxed, not at all scared of the rifle. He turned his cap the wrong way round, briefly revealing his shaved head, and grinned again.
‘Sid,’ said Sid.
‘Mine’s Buzz. Short for Buzzard, but I don’t like it much.’ He jumped down and stood in front of Sid. Sid had never seen anyone with green eyes and white eyelashes before.
‘Buzzard?’ They giggled together at the ludicrous sounding name and the giggles turned into hysterical laughter.
‘Buzzard?’
‘Buzzard!’ They fell about, slapping each other on the back, falling down and rolling around in the dust. It was Sid’s first laugh since he and Lo had run away. He felt empty of emotion, as if he had been drowned and born again.
When they came to their senses they wiped away tears of laughter.
Sid said, ‘Want some bread and cheese? It’s real.’
Buzz cheerfully took it and stuffed it into his mouth.
‘Mm, thanks. Where do you live?’ Buzz asked.
‘Here and there.’
‘You aren’t a Runner are you?’
‘Nah, I’m fourteen and I’m not sick.’
Words from another Runner came back to him – ‘You’ll be able to mate and have kids of your own later on, when the world is able to feed a bigger population.’ The boy who had told him this was sixteen, and fearful of being caught. ‘You’re one of the lucky ones, you are. You’ll be able to do lots of girls.’
Sid had blushed deeply.
Buzz pulled his cap around the right way and put away the remains of his snack. ‘You don’t look fourteen.’ Buzz was not much shorter than Sid. ‘Come meet my mates then.’
Sid picked up his pack and the rifle and followed the boy as he ran up cobbled alleyways and over granite walls, through gardens and back yards and down stone steps.
Sid was desperate to know if Buzz had also lost his parents in the Reduction Programme but shyness or something else – a deep hurt whenever he thought about his parents and Lo – stopped him. Were there camps of kids like him all over? Is that where he would have ended up if he hadn’t escaped from the jeep with Lo?
They came at last to a huge church halfway up a hill. At least, he thought it had been a church at one time. It had a square tower and a graveyard all around it. At the gate stood a pole where a black flag with a white cross fluttered. He was nervous about going inside, but Buzz took his arm and led him in through heavy, metal studded doors, over which was a banner that said ‘GREAT OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS GROW’.
On the whitewashed walls were brightly coloured murals of sailing boats and seascapes – Sid thought that’s what they were, though to him they were abstract images. He had never been inside an art gallery before. He was hypnotised by the sudden surprise of the paintings.
‘Where is everyone?’ shouted Buzz.
He led the way between sleeping bags laid out in neat rows to another room behind the main gallery.
‘Stash your stuff here if you like.’
Sid removed his blue T-shirt and stuffed it in the backpack. Now Buzz could see the khaki one he had on underneath.
‘I like your T, man. Where did you get it? Army, isn’t it?’
‘A Reducer gave it me,’ Sid boasted.
‘A Reducer? Really? Wow. I’m going to be a Reducer when I grow up.’
Just then a load of boys ran into the main hall, laughing and joshing.
‘Hey, Buzz, you’re in for it. You should have been in the fields with us.’
‘Who’s he? Is that a real rifle? Is he TA?’
‘Don’t be stupid. He’s too young.’ They jostled close to him.
‘This is Sid and he’s my friend,’ said Buzz.
Sid tried to look fierce and unafraid of this crowd of mud-caked boys, all with shaved heads, like Buzz.
‘Can I touch it?’ a freckled boy pushed his way forward. They all wanted to touch the rifle.
One bigger boy pushed roughly through the group.
‘Out of my way, people.’ A path opened up for him. He stood in front of Sid. ‘Who said you could come in here without permission?’
‘New recruit, Captain. I found him.’ Buzz placed a proprietary arm around Sid’s shoulder.
Sid had never seen such a handsome boy as the one who stood in front of him. He had deep blue eyes and long dark curling lashes, like a girl’s. His lips were full and pink. He was muscular and tall and he looked as if he had never been hungry in his life. He was the only one of the boys who had hair. And what thick curly blonde hair – like a girl’s.
The youth grabbed Sid’s ID badge that hung around his neck. ‘What’s this?’ He had found Lo’s ID, that hung behind Sid’s.
‘It’s my baby sister’s. She’s been taken away.’
‘Like mine,’ whispered the freckled boy.
‘And mine,’ said a sturdy kid with dark tanned skin.
The boys went quiet, some sniffed and brushed their cheeks, and slipped away, some to the showers to wash off the mud of their labours, some straight to their sleeping bags, where they lay with their faces pressed into the floor, their narrow shoulders shaking.
‘Have a shower and I’ll find you somewhere to kip,’ said the big boy gruffly. ‘I’m Sergeant Rook.’ He put out his arm and shook Sid’s hand. ‘If you stay you’ll have to have a new name.’
‘We’ll see,’ Sid said, echoing his father’s words.
‘We’ll see,’ Dad had said.
What was the question? His mother had been attending to his father’s injuries. Sid hadn’t been watching. No way did he want to know the extent of his dad’s disabilities. He only knew his father could no longer walk. A blanket usually covered his father’s thin lap. It was Sid’s job to keep Lo amused. He read to her to make her sleep. Remembering when his father had read to him at night, at first it had seemed an honour to do this – to read fairy stories to the small girl, to pretend to be a man. But later, he had come to resent the task; he wanted to be out, playing football in the streets, with boys his own age. Why should he have to baby-sit? Some of his friends had left a year before The Emergency. Gone to stay with family in other countries. Or just disappeared. He didn’t understand, but recognised the atmosphere of fear that enveloped the city. Shops closed without notice. There was a sudden shortage of basic foods – flour, salt, sugar, cooking oil. No more food deliveries were made to supermarkets. Because there was no more petrol. His mother kept him off school to help in the search for food supplies. Every day they went further afield for rice, flour, sugar, tinned goods and salt.
‘What’s for sale?’ He’d asked a thin man at the end of a seemingly endless line of disconsolate people.
‘Dunno, mate, tinned tomatoes, I think.’
So he’d joined the queue and waited two hours to get candles and matches, not tom
atoes. That’s where he’d heard the rumours: people suspected of being illegals were taken to Holding camps outside the city, where they were assessed, let go or disappeared.
Sid remembered why his father had said, ‘We’ll see.’
‘If we don’t go now it’ll be too late,’ Mam had warned.
‘We’ll see,’ his father had said, ‘We’ll see.’
Mam had been right. They should have gone away. They might have survived if they had left. Sid went over and over the events of those last few days in the city in his mind. How one day everything went on as normal, and the next there was The Emergency. How the streets were full of the noise of gunshots and tanks and people running and screaming. And even when the TA came to their door, Dad had not believed it was happening. ‘Bloody barbarians!’ he had called them, turning his wheelchair this way and that. Looking for a way out.
He could still see his mother’s face and hear her screams, and her last words to him – ‘Take care of my baby, save Lo!’ Rook was a big strong boy, a head taller than Sid. He stood next to him at the soup kitchen.
‘In Repops you get privileges.’
‘What’s Repops?’
‘That’s what we are. Repops. Chosen to repopulate Earth when it’s ready. Have to be healthy, eat properly, do exercise, fight, work hard at lessons, learn the rules, help grow things, do all sorts of stuff. Didn’t you belong to a Repop group before you came here?’
‘No, I didn’t realise…’Sid thought of the feral kids in the city. Runners and Legals were all mixed up together. Here in the Far West the authorities seemed to be more organised. ‘Why aren’t there any girls?’
‘Girls? Who needs them? Their groups are elsewhere in Fort K.’
‘What’s Fort K?’
‘Fortress Kernow, what used to be Cornwall. Don’t you even know that?’
‘I’ve been travelling. Are they eight to fourteen?’
‘Yeah, same as us. No other kids allowed to stay. We’re special.’
‘What about all those people in the pool? Who are they?’
‘TA. Army. In charge. Have to have someone in charge.’
‘What happened to your parents?’ Sid asked.
‘TA. Colonels, both of them.’ Rook looked proud. ‘Yours?’
Sid said nothing. His throat had tightened and he couldn’t speak as. He brought out the photograph and showed it to Rook. Rook held the photograph and nodded, smiling.
They took their vegetable soup and sat at a bench. Buzz sat on Sid’s other side, slurping his soup and dipping his lump of bread in it. Sid gulped his portion and wondered at his good luck. He had fallen on his feet. He had a sleeping bag, food, water, and the company of other boys.
‘You’ll need to be signed in properly,’ said Rook.
‘Will I?’
‘Yes, of course, so you get a uniform and a card.’
‘Got a card.’ He held out the laminated ID disk around his neck.
‘You need another one.’ Buzz slipped a hand into the neck of his T-shirt and pulled out the cord holding his ID. ‘A Repop card. Entitles you to free food, vits and soy milk. Repop Rations. They have to keep us fit.’
‘Vits?’
‘Vitamins, supplements.’ He punched Sid on the arm. ‘Build you up, kid. You’re too small and skinny.’ He sniffed suspiciously. ‘Better have a shower before we introduce you to the TA.’
At the TA HQ – a crumbling, disused seawater swimming pool, built in the 1930s, Sid was told to stand at attention. The TA officer was a straight-backed woman. Her eyes were the palest grey, almost colourless, her camouflage uniform immaculately clean and pressed. She looked him up and down.
‘Name?’ She didn’t smile.
‘Sidney Kingdom Freeman. Sidney after Mam’s father. Dad chose Kingdom after Brunel.’ He thought of the bridge collapsing. The huge waves born of the falling super-structure. It could be worse. His parents could have called him Isambard.
‘I didn’t ask for your family history, thank you. Date of birth?’
‘09.04.2076. Same birthday as Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Different year, obviously.’
‘Who? Never mind. You’re small for your age. ID?’
He showed her his ID. Lo’s disk he had put into his backpack before the interview. He wondered why no one had checked his microchip. It would give his entire medical history. Why they had to have all this other stuff was beyond him.
‘Address?’ Sid told her and she said, ‘You’re a long way from home, aren’t you? Why?’
‘Looking for someone.’
A woman sat tapping at a typewriter, pushing the lever over every time she reached the end of a line. She looked up and then went back to her typing.
‘Well, if you want to be with Newlyn North Repops you’ll have to work hard. No skiving off looking for friends.’
‘Okay.’ He shrugged.
‘You must answer “Yes, Ma’am.” And I believe you have a rifle.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘It’s mine. I found it.’
‘No firearms allowed in Repops.’
‘But…’
She raised a white eyebrow towards a guard, who produced Sid’s rifle like a rabbit from a magician’s hat.
‘You may keep the other things, except for the photograph.’
The guard put her hand deep into the pocket of Sid’s baggies, and removed the picture of his parents.
‘But…’
‘You’re starting a new life in Repops. Have to forget about the old one, don’t we? Clean slate?’ She sounded slightly less stern as she said these words. ‘Check his chip,’ she nodded to the guard, who stepped forward and buzzed Sid’s neck with a chip wand and showed the results to her superior.
‘I see you’ve had your malaria, cholera and flu jabs, that’s good. AOK.’
Sid’s parents had known many people who had died in the great Cow Flu pandemic – Dad’s parents, Dad’s brother, Uncle Bill, along with a third of the world’s population. Little good had it done his parents to survive, he thought, bitterly.
Back at Newlyn North Camp Sid was ordered to strip and one of the women hosed him down. The water smelt of carbolic. He tried to hide his privates from her, and she laughed at him.
‘Seen it all before, boy, don’t you worry.’
Another woman shaved his head. Her hands, though rough, moved his head gently this way and that. She even smiled at him.
‘You’ll do, squirt,’ she said and rubbed his head. He sniffed and grinned at her.
The guard locked the rifle away in a cupboard and presented him with cap, shorts, shirt and a tag with a number on it and marched him back to the gallery. It wasn’t until he was back in his sleeping bag and he went automatically to look at the photo in his baggies before he went to sleep that he realised the enormity of his loss. How had they known about the picture? There was only one other boy who knew about it. Rook! Rook must have informed on him. He’d pretended to be friendly when all the time he was spying on him.
At lights out Rook locked the door and kept the key on a string around his neck. Sid lay awake, boiling with anger. He had walked into a trap. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to find his grandparents, or go back for Lo.
At 0700 hours, after raising the Repops flag and saluting it, they mustered for morning exercises, which lasted three hours. After marching like soldiers through the town, they jogged for three miles cross-country (nowhere near Freedom Farm, Sid noticed), chanting songs to keep in step. Back at the camp breakfast was porridge, brown toast and a thin scraping of peanut paste washed down with apple flavoured vitamin drink.
Most mornings Sid went with a small group to do work experience in the fields. In the afternoon he sat in an airless classroom. He preferred digging, planting and hoeing, to being talked at about citizenship and politics. Hard physical labour and a full stomach suited him. However, guilt and remorse would return at night, as he lay in his sleeping bag, worrying about Lo. He shouldn’t have left her. Anything could have happened. How would
he know if the TA had found them, if the Reducers had raided? His mother would never forgive him if Lo came to harm.
But like the other boys he giggled about Ms Pigeon’s large breasts and bum, and had occasional romantic thoughts about the younger of the female teachers – Ms Gull, with her golden hair and snub nose. And he still thought about the daisy girl. Nights were worst because of the other boys crying. Some cried out in their sleep for their mothers. Sid still felt bitter about his photo. They shouldn’t have done that, he thought. Taking away my past, my family. I’ll never forget Mam and Dad, no matter what.
He imagined Lo in green shorts being a Forest Fairy and playing with other little girls and hoped she was happy and hadn’t forgotten him. She’d have a new name now. He hoped she knew the daisy girl and had told her about her older brother, how he was her hero!
He had a new name, Starling, which he thought was ridiculous, but Buzz soon shortened it to Starl and then Star, and all the others apart from Rook, called him Star, which made him feel better.
‘Could have been worse. They could have called you Blue-tit, or Great-tit!’ Buzz wrestled Sid to the ground.
He didn’t trust Rook after his photo was confiscated, and tried to have nothing to do with him.
But the Reducer’s khaki T-shirt gave him kudos of a sort, like a war medal. They hadn’t taken that away. Or the sunglasses.
One night, the boys all in their sleeping bags, Buzz asked him to tell the story of how he had saved the Reducer’s life. Rook, in the only camp bed, by the door, pretended not to listen, but the other boys were impressed. Sid omitted Lo from the narrative, letting them believe that she had been taken with his parents in the original Reduction. She would be safer if no one knew that she was close by. He couldn’t trust anyone not to give her away. Would he ever be able to find Freedom Farm again? He felt sure he would. In his head was a vague map of West Penwith, the big town of Penzance, with Marazion a few miles along the same softer, wooded coast, and then the boulder-strewn moors rising to windy heights with views of valleys plunging to the other bleaker terrain of the peninsular to the north. At its narrowest he reckoned it was about eight miles across as the crow flies.