Migration

  As they all stood motionless – the whole work party in frozen silence – Matthew emerged from somewhere beyond Jennifer's gaze and walked slowly towards the visitor. She glanced around in a panic, looking for her bow or a knife, her heart racing with the powerful sense that they were about to be set upon, or Matthew ambushed.

  As she stared back at the lone figure, she could see dirt and scuffs on his suit, and as he moved slowly towards Matthew he seemed to be limping. Matthew and the visitor talked for a few moments whilst the gentle breeze sent the early autumn leaves fluttering softly around them, animating the portent of the moment that burned hot in Jennifer’s muscles and sinews. When Matthew took the visitor’s hands in his, it looked for a moment like a far away wedding, made serene by the fading light and the buzz in her ears. Eventually, Matthew and the visitor turned to the group and walked towards them, Matthew supporting the man’s weight by his elbow.

  “This is David,” Matthew called out loudly, still holding on to his arm, “he was attacked at Beta Farm by a large group of Drones. He says all of the apprentices and Migrants were killed.”

  Matthew let his news hang in the air and moved his gaze slowly across the group, as if he was measuring their response. The silence kept its firm grip on the moment, letting the cold breeze mark time with regular pulses in their ears.

  “Why?” Jennifer finally called out, having churned the question around her own mind since Matthew spoke.

  “I don’t know,” David answered meekly. “There was no warning, no reason, they just arrived.”

  “AarBee!” Matthew spoke forcefully to him, nodding out to the rest of the group watching.

  “Maybe, they didn’t say anything, just started shooting…”

  “Of course it’s AarBee. There’s no way anybody else could use the Drones.” Matthew snapped a little, then patted the air with his hands to calm himself down as they reached the group, “Was there a plot, a demonstration?”

  “No, nothing. Well not that I knew of. It was just a regular day…” David drifted away for a moment, as if the scene was playing over again, just beneath the surface of his skin.

  He looked up at the group, who all stood silently watching him, “Is there some food? I’m sorry but I haven't eaten since I left.”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sorry,” Matthew took his arm again, “Jennifer, could you look after David, perhaps find him somewhere to rest.”

  Jennifer stepped towards him and smiled, although her uncertainty and distrust was so in control of her face that only she knew there was a smile there. Now she was closer to him she could see he was only a young man, his boyish face perched awkwardly on top of a muscular adult body. Fear and exhaustion were everywhere about him. His hands were shaking and although he tried to hide his eyes with a downward, submissive stoop, there was so much terror in them that he looked like he would cry at any moment. She had seen this look before, in the hunters that she had killed and on the faces of her Lifer friends in the last moments before they slipped from living to permanent death.

  “Come on,” she said, her voice quieted by questions, before leading the way to the cave to feed him and find him somewhere to sleep. She grabbed a handful of berries from a container on the way past, which she dumped unceremoniously into his hands and he crammed into his mouth with a similar lack of ceremony. She took him to her bed, it was easier than searching for a spare bunk further inside the cave and found him some grilled meat rations that he devoured with a grotesque enthusiasm. He was clearly telling the truth about not having eaten.

  Once he was fed she encouraged him to lie down, which he did in a kind of wide-eyed stupor before falling asleep, to her amazement, in ten seconds flat. She stared at his sleeping face for a while, streaked with dirt and berry juice, but wiped clear of the fear that had distorted and aged it just a few moments earlier. He was well looked after, protected and loved. There was no loneliness or hopelessness scribed into his skin. The trauma from the last few days had lifted almost instantly, although Jennifer knew it would settle back down upon him in some way or another, eventually putting its mark on his smooth black skin and burrowing deep into his organs.

  She headed back out into the clearing, where the group buzzed with speculation as to what was happening in the Metropolis. Matthew was talking with a small group on the far side of the clearing, his arms waving animatedly about with a wild and twitchy passion. Zoe rushed over to her.

  “That must have been the day after I left!” she said with an excited horror, “I was at Echo Farm with my Mum just the day before!”

  “He’s Beta,” said Jennifer, “I doubt anything happened at Echo, they’re miles apart.”

  “Yes but, you know, it could’ve been me. It could have been us!” Zoe stared intently at Jennifer, looking for reassurance and perhaps someone to revel romantically in her near miss, at least for a moment, but Jennifer wouldn’t be drawn.

  “What do you think happened?” Zoe relented after a while.

  “I don’t know, and I can’t say I really care. What happens in the Metropolis doesn’t interest me, as long as they stay far away from here. They can all kill each other for all I care. Oh wait, they already do.” Jennifer gave Zoe an exasperated curl of the lip, and Zoe returned a look of shock at her coldness.

  “I was only there last week,” she said sharply, “it’s different for me.”

  There was a brief pause between them that Jennifer was about to fill with an apology, conscious of the coldness of her response and just how far she’d drifted from the girl-like-Zoe she used to be, when their attention was taken by calls from the group as they all turned to look again towards the forest. Standing at the treeline were a man and woman, clearly older this time, but both in Farm utility suits. The bright red trim of their uniform etching them out against the darkening foliage that swayed and hissed behind them.

  “Delta,” said Zoe in a stunned whisper.

  “Shit,” Jennifer answered.

  They welcomed these two into the clearing, just as they had welcomed the boy, hearing first their story of murderous Drones, out of control killing sprees and how they were the only few who had escaped, before they fed them and offered them somewhere to rest. Night was coming, the skies swirling with cloud and darkening into thick ochre ribbons high above the forest that reached all the way back to the wall and the savannahs beyond.

  In the hour or so before darkness finally shut down the possibility of navigating the dense and rocky woodland trails, at least without the risk of breaking an ankle or walking obliviously into the black plummet of a ravine, another six travellers turned up. Four arrived in one group, senior administrators from Beta. They knew David and were relieved and surprised to hear he had reached the camp. The other two arrived independently, a young man who cleaned the Vactrains that serviced Delta and an older woman in her late-twenties who had fled from the terminal at Beta when the Drones began firing.

  She had been due to migrate that day, and had set off to the Farm with her younger sister for company. She described how everything was normal when they pulled into the terminal. She had been talking to her father who had hollered with them for the journey, the doors had opened and everyone had begun to exit when the Hollers suddenly vanished. The Drones on the platform, who had been helping and talking only moments before, simply raised their weapons and began to fire into the crowds. She and her sister had seen hundreds fall. They had escaped only because the doors had failed to open on their compartment as they were too far down the platform.

  As they watched through the refracted glass of the door, people had simply stood frozen to the spot, not understanding what was happening, assuming perhaps that this was happening around them and not to them. Others had tried to run but had been picked off as they crossed the wide-open lawns and concourse. As more Drones poured out of the Farm, the stragglers and the wounded had been killed without hesitation, but not the young children. She remembered seeing the children standing in small clusters as the slaughter happened
around them, herded together or crouched alone on the floor.

  Whilst the Drones were busy killing, she and her sister had escaped from a fire window at the rear of their compartment, crawling along the tube before exiting via a maintenance hatch and slipping into the undergrowth, before finally heading out across the savannahs towards the wall and the forest beyond.

  She wept uncontrollably as she recounted how she had left her sister at the wall, a deep cut along her leg sustained as she fell from the train finally making her immobile, fate refusing to let her run out on her life with AarBee. She had left her propped against the wall with water and chocolate to make her comfortable, her skin turning as grey as stone, her fading eyes keeping watch across the wide savannah with a whistle to blow if she saw Drones approaching, or other survivors who could help.

  Refugees

  The camp was up late again that night, though not with the music and laughter of the night before. This time, a sombre mood mingled with the night air and woodsmoke. Small groups sat around the fires that dotted the clearing like beacons, whilst others came together around tables or curled up on rugs in the warm chambers deep in the cave. Some spat angry words and punched out violent gestures that cast long and haunting shadows into the trees or across the cave walls. Others talked in hushed and secretive tones, frightened and timid nocturnal creatures with one ear scanning the forests from a fear that couldn’t be placated. The rest sat quietly, with heads on shoulders and hands being held. Hair was smoothed gently from forehead to neck, as they thought of their loved ones who remained in the Metropolis or mourned helplessly in the tragedy of the loss of so many strangers.

  As the night deepened, the murmur of voices faded along with the dimming fires left unattended once everything that could be said had been shared. The cave that had been home to the Lifers since Matthew’s first steps inside it, wrapped gently around the group as one by one they settled into sleep, soothed by a lullaby of distant sobs that moved through the cave like a yawn before finally petering out. Every now and then David would shout out in his sleep, haunted by the faces of death and oblivion, and Jennifer would put her arm across him, letting the weight of her bones push him back to safety.

  In the early morning, when troubled thoughts and endless circling questions forced Jennifer and a few others out of sleep, it was raining hard. They stood together in silence at the mouth of the cave, watching the water pummel the earth and bounce in countless tiny explosions off the rocks and stray possessions that lay randomly around the clearing. There would be little they could do today until the downpour passed, there would be no escape from the heavy gloom that glued them together in that space, until the rain let them out.

  They ate breakfast and drank nettle tea there, the group growing by one or two every few minutes. Chairs were carried over, then a few tables with more food, blankets on knees, coffee, somebody even played some music. They sat there together for over an hour, a surprise audience in an enormous theatre, watching the morning perform a slow and meditative drama of light, movement and sound. Leaves shuddered and shimmered under the downpour, glimpses of muted daylight made the air roll through sharp and crystal vanillas to deep and dark mossy greens, and when the wind rushed across the clearing the rain clustered into giant chandeliers that swept across their view and down into the trees. Nobody spoke during their time in the mouth of the cave, there was no talking to be done. Soon though, they began to make little jokes with one another, stupid faces and childish games until smiles and giggles began to grow and the whole group was laughing hysterically together at the ridiculous moment they had made. Jennifer laughed too, an uncontrollable but silent belly laugh that she couldn’t remember ever having done before, that made tears run down her cheeks and her ribs ache as if she had been punched. Other members of the group, awake now and puzzled by this bizarre scene approached them with confused expressions, smiling a little to join the fun, and that’s when someone noticed Matthew. He was standing on the far side of the clearing, almost disappeared into the trees with his back to the cave, his arms clenched tightly to his chest, stamping his feet a little as if he was marching on the spot. The laughter stopped and a long awkward silence took its place.

  “What’s he doing?” someone finally asked.

  They all looked at Jennifer.

  “He goes there to think,” she said, trying not to show her concern.

  “In the pouring rain?” someone else came back. “Why is he standing like that?”

  “He’s fine!” she snapped. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  Jennifer stood up from her chair and tucked it back against the cave wall. She wiped a remaining tear from her cheek and looked around for a raincoat to borrow.

  “Look!” someone called out.

  Jennifer turned expecting to see the group staring at Matthew, but instead they were now looking back to the other side of the clearing. Emerging from the trees was another group of refugees, a huge group this time, fifty, maybe sixty. There were young children with them, babes in arms and a couple of people on makeshift stretchers that were now propped awkwardly on the rocks.

  “I’ll go get Matthew,” Jennifer said to nobody in particular. “You go and find out who they are.”

  With that, she raced into the rain without a coat towards Matthew who was still standing as he was, with his back to the unfolding events. As she ran towards him, she called his name into the driving rain, but he didn’t respond. She slowed her run as she came closer, dropping to a cautious approach when she came up alongside him. He was soaked through, his long grey hair funnelling water down his back and his clothes sticking to him like thin layers of latex. His head was dropped strangely low onto his chest and he seemed to be staring intently at his fingers, which twitched and fidgeted rapidly just above his stomach. His lips were moving equally fast, but she couldn’t hear his words.

  She called out his name twice and when she touched him on the shoulder he finally acknowledged her, not with a start, but instead with a strange, defeated smile she had never seen him give before, as his hands fell slowly back down to his side.

  “Hello Eve,” he said in the most normal of voices.

  “It’s Jennifer, Matthew,” she touched him again on the shoulder, feeling his heavy bones sticking up sharply from the wet skin and cloth that was draped over him. He looked so much older all of a sudden, she had never paid it much notice before. But now, soaked through and smiling gently in the rain, still hunched over slightly with the faintest trace of confusion in his eyes, he looked like a lost and lonely old man.

  “Who’s Eve?” she asked, the rain beginning to pool and flood across her own face.

  “Sorry, how stupid of me,” he said, shaking his head, his face firming up again as he spoke the words, his body reforming into the Matthew she knew better.

  “It’s raining.” Jennifer raised her palms up towards the thick and dark clouds that sprawled above their heads. She smiled back at him, bundling all her fear, bemusement and love into just one tiny configuration of the muscles in her face.

  “Yes, it’s beautiful isn't it, I wanted to feel it, to experience it.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly done that,” she said, casting an eye over his soaked clothes. “More refugees have arrived, too many. Look.”

  Jennifer pointed towards the opposite side of the clearing, where by now a number of Lifers had reached the large group and were leading them towards the cave. It was a pitiful sight, a random collection of Metropolitans, some in raincoats and boots, others seemingly in the clothes they wore in their apartments. Their utility suits had insignias on them, a few were from Farms, some seemed to be from the Server and Municipal teams. One girl was still wearing her restaurant uniform, her apron now tied around her head like a baby’s bonnet. It looked like a failed recruitment parade, made ludicrous and tragic by the rain and hasty organisation.

  The rustle of leaves and the sudden crack of a branch underfoot made them both start, and they turned back sharply towards the t
ree line behind them. In amongst the trees, cowering a little, with rain streaming down his short dark hair and sodden clothes, a young boy stared back towards them, his left hand outstretched as if to defend himself from a blow. Jennifer instinctively put herself between Matthew and the boy.

  “Stop there,” Jennifer shouted at him, reaching down to grab a heavy branch she’d spied at the foot of one of the Oak trees, her eyes fixed on him.

  “I’m unarmed,” he called back, raising both his arms to demonstrate, “I’m just looking for shelter.”

  “It’s alright,” said Matthew, putting a hand on Jennifer’s shoulder and stepping around her.

  “It’s OK, I’m sorry, we’re not used to so many arrivals.”

  Matthew took a step towards him and beckoned him out of the trees.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Prime Code,” he glanced at his uniform as he said it, as if it should be obvious to them.

  “And why are you here?” Jennifer asked bluntly.

  “We were monitoring some weird power surges and data shifts in the system, when… well, we just couldn’t work it out, it went crazy, you know? Systems offline, lock-outs, corrupt chains, glitches all over the place. Everybody went nuts trying to stop it.”

  He spotted the group of travellers on the other side of the clearing and pointed towards them, “They’ll be a lot more, it’s all gone crazy.”

  “It’s OK, you’re safe here,” Matthew smiled at him and flicked his eyes from Jennifer to the group in the clearing.

  “We need to get them inside and warm,” he said, the authority spreading across his face again, filling Jennifer with a comfortable emotion that she had only noticed she carried when it had temporarily faded moments earlier.

  Jennifer nodded and turned to head back towards the cave.