We fell, sprawling into the dust and I cursed at him through my laughter.
“Sorry." Taylor tossed the rotten doorknob aside and turned to help me back to my feet. Our white suits were now decidedly brown and I brushed uselessly at the dirt. It refused to budge so I gave up, embracing the filth instead.
I turned back to the door with a huff of irritation. It had a round hole in its centre and as I approached it, it started to drift inwards.
I looked at Taylor and sighed. "We probably should have tried pushing it before breaking it," I joked as he grinned at me
The hinges squealed in protest after years of immobility and the door stopped moving half way open.
"I don't see any ID screens or scanners or anything," I commented.
"But there could have been anyone out here. They wouldn't have even been able to tell until they opened the door. I could be an axe murderer come to kill them," Taylor said indignantly.
“The wonders of modern technology; axe murderer deaths must have halved overnight when the scanners came along." I grinned and moved cautiously towards the building again.
This time I pushed on the door itself and it swung inward without further protest.
It revealed a hallway with more doors on either side and a staircase leading up to the next level. I approached the first door on the left of the hall and it swung open easily.
"Look at this," Taylor called from the front door. "It was locked." From this side of the door it was clear that it had been forced open at some point. The frame was splintered and shattered and the metal bolt on the lock was bent out of shape. A chill ran down my spine as I thought about what that meant.
"I suppose they had to be sure everyone made it out safely before they poisoned everything," I said slowly, hoping I was right about that.
Splinters from the broken wood littered the floor and a small table was knocked aside, blocking the hallway. Its contents were scattered across the carpet.
I continued into the next room, stepping over the broken remains of a table lamp. Glass crunched beneath my boots.
The room was big and spacious. Cupboards topped with smooth counters lined the walls but the centre of the room was empty. A round table was pushed into one corner with four chairs placed around it haphazardly, one of them laying on its side on the floor. I moved further inside slowly. I had the strangest sense that someone had just left the room despite the clear evidence to the contrary.
The wall that ran along the front of the house held a huge window which looked back out towards the street. There was a stainless steel sink beneath the window and I walked towards it. It was filled with plates and cups coated in a layer of brown sludge and I wrinkled my nose at the unappealing sight.
Thick dust coated everything, deadening every sound I made and making the place eerily quiet, my movements created a muffled crunching. It felt like I had a pillow pressed over my ears.
I moved around the room, opening cupboard doors, pulling out boxes and tins and placing them on the counter.
"So you think it's okay that they busted into people's houses even if they didn't want to leave?" Taylor asked, following me.
"I dunno T, but if the place was being poisoned they wouldn't really get a choice would they?"
He stopped to survey the room as I tugged at a ring-pull on the top of a can. The label had deteriorated to the point that I couldn't read it but the can itself had stayed sealed.
"What is it?" Taylor asked, peering over my shoulder at the contents of the can as I poured it onto the counter. A handful of glistening yellow sweetcorn tumbled out in a river of juice. It looked good enough to eat.
"Dare you to try some." I shook the can at him.
“I would, but unfortunately I'm not allowed to take my helmet off," he said, rapping his fingers against his visor.
"That's handy," I said, turning away from the mess I'd made.
"Wait a minute, where's the bed?" Taylor asked abruptly, turning on the spot to take in the whole room.
“I don't think there is one," I said.
“Did they sleep on the floor then?" He was moving the chairs aside as if they were somehow concealing it.
“I don't think so."
Taylor stood up straight and moved to the counter by the window.
“What is this stuff?" He picked up a box that I had taken from a cupboard and shook it, listening to the satisfying rattle.
“More food, I think. Look, there's a picture of a kid eating on the front." He turned the box over to look at the faded picture.
"But this is enough food for weeks," he said pointing around at the stash.
“It must have been normal. Look at this - 'food waste.'" I'd found a cupboard with big, empty plastic trash cans inside.
“They wasted food?" The look of incredulity on his face made me laugh.
"It was a different time. I guess it wasn't in such short supply back then." We studied the stash a while longer, pouring some things onto the counter and trying to guess what they might have tasted like before we got bored of the game.
"Let's check out the rest of this place," Taylor said eventually, moving back out into the hallway.
The next room was full of big, squashy chairs all pointed towards a screen in one corner. Taylor jumped on one of them and dust billowed up in a cloud that filled the room while I laughed.
There was a shelving unit to one side of the room but most of its contents had been knocked to the floor. The walls were full of framed pictures of what appeared to be a family: a mother, father, a boy and an older girl. The children had been captured at various ages coming to an end with what looked like teenage years.
I picked up a photograph of them posing in front of the building that we were standing in. The girl was strikingly attractive, long brunette hair, a stubborn set to her jaw with full lips and eyes that were deep and dark, surrounded by long lashes.
The boy was younger but not by much. He was fair haired and had tougher, stronger features but all similar enough to the girl's to mark them clearly as siblings. He was taller and much broader too but with some lasting boyishness about him.
They looked happy. Like they had actually been caught laughing rather than just fake smiling for the camera.
The house was only recognisable by its shape. It looked warm and inviting with lights twinkling from the upper windows rather than abandoned and in disrepair. The brown dirt-filled space in front of it had been a green carpet of small plants peppered with little white flowers. The huge tree stood with a crown of green leaves and a rich, deep brown trunk which had faded to a much dimmer colour with the passage of time.
"She looks like you," Taylor said, peering at the picture over my shoulder.
"Don't be absurd, she's gorgeous," I laughed.
"Yeah and she looks like you. Same mouth, something about the eyes, though not the colour."
"Maybe I have a long lost sister who got all the genetic makeup for looks while I was blessed with a natural ability for tripping over my own feet. Lucky me," I said, scathingly.
“You don't see yourself very accurately," Taylor said, quietly.
“Maybe you don't either. Your years of enduring my face have made you immune to the plainness of it."
“You don't look like you did when we were children anymore. You're different." He looked deep into my eyes for a moment longer than was comfortable and I scoffed to break the weird atmosphere.
“I still feel the same," I said, punching him playfully in the arm and placing the photo back on the shelf amid a solid inch of dust. "Besides, she must be practically a hundred now if she even survived."
I pushed past Taylor who seemed to have something further to add and darted up the stairs.
"You check that other room down there and I'll see what's up here," I called back, glad to put some distance between us.
The second storey of the house was filled by four rooms. One was the most extravagant restroom I’d ever seen. It had a huge shower, massive tub, a toil
et and two sinks with space all around them which seemed to serve no purpose at all. The effect was only ruined slightly by the green tinged puddle that occupied the base of the tub.
I turned to leave and noticed a strange mark on the doorframe. It was a hand print. I leaned closer to get a better look and gasped as I realised it was made with blood, nearly falling on my ass as I stumbled back a step. I looked around at the wooden floor and I could see that more splashes lead in a trail down the stairs. It had dried to a dark brown and was hidden amid the grain of the wooden floor but I could tell that there had been a lot of it.
What the hell happened here?
I repressed a shudder and moved towards another door on the landing.
As I entered the next room, I was relieved to find something that resembled an apartment from the city. The bed was still in place, though the covers were in a heap on the floor. It was designed to sleep two people and there was a little shower room in a recess to the right of the door. A few of the drawers were open with their contents spilling out.
I moved across to lift the bed and see how the room looked once it was out of the way.
I fumbled for the release catch for a while then dropped down to lay on the floor and look for it when I couldn't locate anything. Under the bed was darkness. The light filtering through the filthy windows couldn't illuminate the shadows beneath it.
I still couldn't find a release so I braced my shoulder against the floor and shoved upwards. A cloud of dust dislodged and fell over my visor and I turned my head to the side automatically even though the helmet kept it away from my eyes. I heaved again and saw something move in the space beneath the bed.
There was no way that anything was still alive out here but I stopped, my heart pounding, as the shadows shifted and I made out a shape in the darkness. After a few seconds, nothing more happened so I wriggled forwards, reaching towards the place where I had spotted the movement.
There wasn't much room under the bed and it scraped along my back as I pressed forwards, my hand sweeping from side to side ahead of me.
I felt something brush my fingertips as I squinted into the shadows. I reached out again, grasping towards the source of the movement.
Whatever it who was still out of reach so I scrambled backwards and regained my feet, grabbed hold of the bed and wrenched it upwards.
It was much heavier than I'd expected. I managed to get it about a foot off the ground before I realised it wasn't going to fold against the wall and let it fall back to the floor with a thud.
Something was knocked out from under it and collided with my boot, I yelled out in surprise and stumbled backwards. The thing didn't move again, so I stepped forward cautiously and nudged it with my toe. It was a little black bear with a faded red label hanging from its ear.
I reached out to pick it up.
The bear looked happy, his string mouth turned up at the corners. I brushed some of the dust from him and inspected the label. It opened to reveal a message. 'I love you to the moon and back.' It made me smile. That was something my mom always used to say to me. I clutched him to my chest and turned to continue the search.
The other two rooms were both large sleeping areas too. They seemed to be designed with no real purpose other than sleep and clothes storage. All of the rooms had been left in a state of disarray with drawers turned out and a variety of possessions cluttering the floor. They each held single beds which brought my count up to four. Nowhere near our estimate of fifteen residents.
The second room was clearly filled with the belongings of the teenage girl. A large dressing table took up most of the space beside the bed and it was crammed with her things. Pictures of her with various friends were stuck all around the edge of a big mirror alongside ticket stubs for movies and bands. The table was cluttered with lipsticks, nail varnishes and bottles of perfume. Things that must have been far more widely available when she was alive.
I lifted the lid of a large wooden box which occupied the middle of the table. Inside was a horde of jewellery: rings, earrings, necklaces, bracelets. They had been preserved from the dust by the box and they sparkled in the faint light.
Even when I lived with my parents we’d never had the money for jewellery though my mom had a few pieces. She had promised me something for my sixteenth birthday but she didn't live to see it. The forgotten trinkets called to me in a way I couldn't resist and I thumbed through them greedily.
Sighing, I let the lid close on the box and started to turn away from the table. Something caught on my boot and I looked down to see a piece of paper on the floor. I scooped it up and unfolded it. The writing looked hurried and was blurred in places and it took me a moment to decipher it.
Kaitlyn. Your father and I have been selected, they've come to take us to the city. There's isn't much time and they won't let us wait for you. Find Reese and get to the waiting zone. We'll be able to get you accepted too, but you have to be there.
The hordes are heading towards the city and they'll be here soon. If you can't get there before they have to close it, stay together and find somewhere defendable. They say the phones should start working again soon.
I love you. Please hurry.
I felt cold. I let the letter drop onto the dressing table and hurried back out of the room. There was no way to know if Kaitlyn had ever gotten the message. Only a fraction of the population survived the changes that happened to the world when the contamination was set loose and if she didn’t make it into one of the walled cities then she would have been doomed.
“Anything up there?" Taylor called from downstairs.
I shuddered and moved towards the sound of his voice. I called back to let him know what I'd discovered but I didn't mention the letter. I didn’t want to think about it any more than I already was.
“The other room down here just has one massive table and a bunch of chairs. Why would they use a room that's bigger than your whole apartment for a table?" he called incredulously.
I followed Taylor's voice until I found him and tried to stop thinking about Kaitlyn and her family. There was no way for me to know if she survived and the idea of her ghost haunting this old house was all too present.
“They obviously used to have a lot more space available than we have in the city. And my apartment isn't that small,” I pouted. I wanted to protest more on behalf of my accommodation but it really was very small.
“So this is basically an apartment? For one family?" Taylor asked, ignoring my comment.
I looked around again, taking in the pure scope of the place. The wide open areas, the views through the windows that actually had space beyond them. I had one room with a kitchen, bed and sofa sharing the space and another tiny box for a bathroom. That was my entire apartment within Harbour city and even that was bigger than the apartments people lived in on the lower levels. Some of them had to share public restrooms.
It must have been such a different life back then. In the city, only the privileged few got to go up onto the rooftops. Very occasionally, Taylor and I would sneak up to see the sky and breathe the fresh air. Technically when we did so we were breaking and entering but the old guy who owned the penthouse had never noticed us and we only risked it at night when he was sleeping. We knew it was stupid but it was worth it to spend a few hours under the stars.
These people had spent every day with the wind blowing around them, flowing through their hair, filling their lungs. I hoped they knew how lucky they were while it lasted.
My eyes started to fill with tears and I raised a hand to brush them away. It bumped uselessly against my visor and I cursed.
I crouched down and started taking the sample bottles out of the bag that Taylor had left in the hallway. Some contained a swab which needed to be wiped on surfaces, others were just empty bottles for collecting soil. I pulled a swab from the first one and ran it through the layer of dust along one of the counter tops in the kitchen before resealing it inside the tube.
Taylor took another swab bottle
up the stairs and I headed back outside. I looked down at the little black bear that I was still holding. I wanted to take him with me but there was no way he'd make it through decontamination.
I walked around to the window and placed him on the sill so that he could watch the world go by. But as I left him there, my heart twinged with guilt. He may have had a better view now, but he still looked very lonely.
We spent the next hour exploring the rest of our area, filling our sample pots as we went. The heat of the sun piercing through the fabric of the biohazard suit was exquisite. I longed for the feel of it on my own skin. It was hard to imagine how this world used to be and although I had never experienced it, I felt like I missed it somehow.
“I think we should go up to the penthouse roof during the day," I said as we started to walk back to the cable car landing zone.
“Are you mad?" Taylor asked.
“We could make sure the guy who owns it is out," I insisted. "I want to know what the sun really feels like on my skin."
“Hot. It feels hot. I'm not going to get sent to the Lawless Trials so that you can find out what hot feels like. We'll go to the sauna next time we hit the gym."
“Great." I let the subject drop, knowing he'd come around eventually.
There was another dead tree in front of the last house in our search zone and I fell still as I stopped to look at it. This one had two pieces of rope dangling from a large branch that held a seat a few feet from the ground. It swayed in the wind as we looked at it and my heart ticked faster as I watched the movement.
While we conducted our search inside the house, we found photographs of a small child being pushed on the seat by his mother. Taylor looked at the picture for a few moments before grabbing my hand and pulling me back out to look at it again with a grin on his face which could only spell trouble.
“It moves!" Taylor announced excitedly as he pushed the seat and it flew into the air and back towards him again. "Get on."
“No way." I backed away from it as I shook my head. "Those ropes must be a hundred years old."
Rebel Rising: A Dystopian Romance (Cage of Lies Book 1) Page 4