Days Like This

by Alison Stewart

  ‘I can’t believe he killed Sherbet and they just let him,’ Lily said, snapping herself out of her reverie.

  Daniel didn’t answer. He was obviously still in pain.

  Lily shook her head. How could Megan just walk away from Daniel’s suffering? Where had her love gone? It was like someone had taken a giant sponge and soaked up all her joy and love and fury, her father’s too.

  Lily had enough passion for all of them. She loved looking at historical events on her screen. She was mesmerised by the violent eruptions of volcanoes that went back into history, the massive cauldrons of smoking lava bubbling out of the earth. She was envious of that kind of energy. She wanted to smash the sedately ticking grandfather clock that ate her life. She’d like to crash through the hoardings that covered the old stained-glass windows. Sometimes she wanted to take her parents and shake them until their teeth fell out of their heads.

  She was even jealous of the flying foxes that swooped in at night from wherever they roosted. They landed on the fig branches she could still see from the little window in the bathroom, the only one in the house that hadn’t yet been completely boarded up. But even the flying foxes came in much smaller numbers now. Would those little creatures eventually slip away altogether, to where all the other good things had gone?

  Lily wanted to go back to the days when she and Daniel could run and play and climb trees, before her parents became strange, before the warming ate away at all the living things in their shrivelled-up world. Before the Wall.

  Lily hated the Wall almost more than anything else. Its construction had marked the beginning of everything bad. Daniel had tried to be upbeat when it was built twelve years ago, cordoning off the privileged areas around Sydney Harbour, keeping out people considered less worthy, people who could not afford water or food from the food-production facilities, people the newly formed Central Governing Committee had deemed expendable.

  Lily remembered how she had once heard Max telling Pym about ‘people over the Wall who defied the Committee’. It gave her hope that some people might have survived out there.

  Daniel used to tell her they could overcome the Wall; that it didn’t have to define them. But the fact was, the Wall kept them in just as much as it kept other people out. It was a high price to pay for their supposedly privileged lifestyle.

  ‘Dan,’ she said now, ‘I’m sorry about Sherbet.’

  ‘It was my fault,’ he muttered.

  ‘It wasn’t. You were just standing up to them. You did the right thing.’

  When he didn’t answer, she said, ‘What did you mean about the pills before? Are you saying you don’t think they’re for preventing disease?’

  ‘Can’t,’ Dan whispered. ‘Not now. Later.’

  TWO

  The weekend passed with the usual monotony, but at least Daniel didn’t get another headache. Monday brought the same pointless schooling routine they’d been following for the last three years. It was always the same. An hour each of English, Maths, Geography and History, in that order. The computer marked their work. Their father checked it. They did it all again the next day. Saturdays and Sundays were free.

  This Monday morning had dragged more than usual. Lily couldn’t get her mind off what the Blacktroopers had done to Sherbet. She couldn’t stop thinking about Megan and Pym’s gutlessness, either.

  At lunch, Lily saw that Daniel was still simmering, too. They ate in silence until Daniel pushed himself away from the dining room table, his chair tipping over with a crash.

  ‘You’re allowed to go outside, so why the hell can’t we?’ he shouted at Megan and Pym.

  ‘Sit down, Daniel,’ Megan said quietly. ‘We’ve been through this. You can’t go outside because of the Committee ruling. Why are you questioning this now? It hasn’t changed in three years and it’s time you accepted it. You know it’s dangerous out there, anyway.’

  ‘But he’s right, Mum.’ Lily appealed to Megan. ‘We’ve been stuck inside for three years. It was dangerous before that and we were younger, but you still let us go out. What changed? You’ve never explained that to us properly. The Wall was supposed to make it safe for us to go outside.’

  ‘Quiet, Lily. Don’t you start,’ Pym said. ‘And pick up that chair, Daniel.’

  ‘Make me,’ Daniel said.

  Lily watched the flush rise in her brother’s cheeks. His lunch lay forgotten on his plate.

  Pym clenched his fists.

  Megan rose quickly, putting a calming hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Come, Pym,’ she said.

  ‘You just pick up that damn chair,’ Pym said, glaring at Daniel before turning to go.

  ‘And you just answer our questions,’ Daniel yelled after them.

  Lily and Daniel listened to their parents’ retreating footsteps, followed by the sound of a door closing firmly. These confrontations were nothing new, though they were happening more often. Lily thought their world was like a pressure cooker with the steam building inside.

  ‘Seriously, it’s like we’re in prison,’ Lily said.

  Daniel shrugged, flipping his chair upright with a deft flick of his foot and flopping down on it. He picked up his fork and prodded at a potato. There was a muffled burst of sound from outside. They both looked towards the commotion. Lily heard a girl screaming, followed by the staccato thump of guns and frenzied shouting. Then nothing.

  ‘It does sound dangerous out there, Dan,’ she said. ‘Maybe Pym and Megan have a point about keeping us inside.’

  ‘There’s more to it than keeping us safe. I don’t buy that,’ Daniel said. ‘It all goes back to the Wall. Didn’t the Committee build it to keep the violence out of the city?’

  Lily nodded.

  ‘So how come since it’s gone up all we ever hear is Blacktroopers beating people up? Blacktroopers,’ he spat out the word, ‘inside the Wall, terrorising people. And then coming here every week, giving us all nightmares, force-feeding us drugs, killing Sherbet.’ His voice was full of pain and rage.

  ‘I want to know what them and their precious Committee are up to,’ he said.

  Lily nodded. She knew he was right. From the top of the bathroom window she often watched how harshly the Blacktroopers dealt with people.

  ‘But Pym and Megan keep telling us the Committee’s there to protect us. And they give us the drugs to prevent disease,’ she said.

  ‘Get real, Lil. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything,’ Daniel said. ‘The Committee are thugs, just like their Blacktrooper security force. We’re being kept inside for a reason and it’s not good. We have to find out what’s going on before it’s too late.’

  Their mother stood in the doorway. She’d moved so silently, they hadn’t heard her return.

  ‘It’s time to get back to your schoolwork,’ she said. ‘Clear up now and go to your screens before your father comes.’

  Lily got up, listlessly stacking the lunch plates. Daniel was right to ask questions. He was right about the Wall, which had been designed to keep out the ‘undesirable people’, but instead just seemed to bring the violence right into the streets. He was right about the unfairness of their house arrest when their parents were still allowed out. He was right about the Blacktroopers, who were frightening when they were supposed to be there to help them; to give them the pills they needed to fight disease.

  But what disease? Lily couldn’t believe she had never questioned this before. They couldn’t catch anything from the water because it came from deep underground, sucked up by the pipes at each of the eight phases of the moon, from new moon to full moon and back again. Their food came from the sterile food-production facilities. And the only other people they saw were the Blacktroopers and Max. Shiny, greasy Max who pawed and slobbered. Lily shuddered.

  None of them had ever liked Max. Lily suspected that her parents didn’t even really like him, but he had always just been there. He and Pym had gone to school together. Max smiled a lot, though it never seemed sincere. It wasn’t as if there was much in t
heir world to smile about these days. But the more the world changed, the more Max smiled his stupid smile. One day his smile would stretch so far around his head the top half of it would tip off and bounce along the ground like a sliced-off boiled egg.

  The other thing about Max was that he liked to touch people. His hands were always snaking out towards you all moist as if he’d dipped them in oily water. Lily had perfected the art of twisting and slipping away from him. She shuddered again.

  They’d waited too long; hoping things would change on their own for the better. Hoping they’d be allowed outside again. Hoping the Blacktroopers would stop coming and their parents would become more like they used to be before the Wall went up. But waiting wasn’t working and Daniel’s headaches were getting worse and making him weak. The Blacktroopers were becoming more violent. It was time to find out what was going on.

  Lily had barely been at her computer screen an hour the next day when the study door swung open. Daniel stood there with a cheeky grin on his face.

  ‘Tryhard,’ he teased, squinting at her screen. She might be the runty twin, but at English comprehension she was working well above his level.

  Lily leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. ‘You know how shitty Dad gets when we don’t finish our work.’

  ‘Stuff him,’ Daniel said. ‘What’s the point, anyway? Who cares if we finish our levels? This isn’t bloody school.’ He flicked her screen hard with his fingernail. ‘It’s a screen full of bullshit! Where are the other kids? Where are the teachers?’ He went to look under Lily’s chair. ‘Nup, no one there.’

  Lily nodded glumly. Even twelve years later, they both still remembered how great their school had been before it was shut down along with all the other schools in the city. Still, she tried to make a joke of it. She was worried Daniel’s anger would trigger another of his headaches.

  ‘It’s the rules, you know, Daniel,’ she said, imitating Megan’s high-pitched voice.

  They both laughed.

  ‘Screw the rules,’ Daniel said, grabbing a box off the shelf by the door. ‘It’s Scrabble time.’

  ‘You know I’ll cane you,’ Lily said. It was good to see Daniel back to normal. He hadn’t had another headache since the Friday before when the Blacktroopers had killed Sherbet.

  Maybe the headaches won’t return, she thought, though she didn’t really believe it.

  Lily tapped her keyboard and her screen went black. ‘I’ll finish it later,’ she said.

  They sat opposite one another, Lily delving into the Scrabble bag for a letter.

  ‘A,’ she crowed. ‘I’m up first.’

  ‘Dumb luck as usual.’ Daniel racked up his letters with a flourish. ‘Bloody hell! A whole bunch of vowels. Who needs vowels in life? They’re completely pointless,’ he said.

  ‘Just remember, there’s no such word as mimble,’ Lily said.

  ‘’Course there is.’ Dan frowned at his letters. ‘It means nimble, only with an “m”. Any idiot knows that.’

  ‘Well, this idiot is scoring nineteen. Actually, it’s a double-word score for first player so it’s thirty-eight.’ Lily plonked down ‘zombie’ in the centre of the board.

  ‘Whatever,’ Daniel grumbled. ‘There you go.’ He attached two letters to the ‘m’ of zombie. ‘Moo. How good is that?’

  He glanced over his shoulder, got up carefully and swung open the door. There was no one there.

  ‘You can never be too careful,’ he said. ‘Listen, Lil, I’ve got something important to tell you. I was serious about what I said yesterday, you know.’

  ‘What?’ Lily was studying her letters.

  ‘About trying to find out what the Committee’s up to,’ he said. ‘And listen, Lil, about the freak –’

  Lily frowned. ‘He’s still our father, Dan.’

  ‘Well, there’s something weird about him, about both of them. They’re looking younger every day. Have you noticed? Fat Max, too.’

  Lily nodded slowly. As soon as Daniel said it she realised that was what had been making her skin crawl whenever her parents or Max were around. All three of them had started to look different. Smoother or something. Lily tried to remember when she’d first noticed this, but Daniel interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘I’ve been working on hacking into the Committee’s central data system,’ he whispered, glancing over his shoulder again. Lily looked up quickly. Hacking was forbidden. Their parents had lectured them about it three years ago, around the time they’d been confined to the house and their computer access had been cut back to just the educational programs.

  Ever since then, the educational program automatically opened when they switched on their screens every weekday morning at ten. This was all there was; everything else was blocked. They didn’t try to search beyond the educational programs. Not ever.

  ‘Hacking?’ Lily was whispering now, too.

  ‘Yup,’ Daniel said.

  ‘But how?’ she said.

  Dan leaned towards her. ‘It’s difficult, but I think I might be close to making a breakthrough. I’ve found a few documents, but I can’t get into the central system. I’m being blocked by the Committee’s security firewall. I’m trying some codes. I’m close!’ His eyes were sparkling. ‘I’m really close, Lily. I don’t want to talk too much about it in case I jinx myself.’

  Lily stared.

  Dan nodded, happy with her reaction. ‘What do you reckon “serum enhanced” means?’ he whispered. ‘I read about it on the Committee site that I got into.’

  ‘No idea,’ Lily said, her Scrabble letters forgotten.

  ‘I think it’s what’s happening to Mum and Dad. I think they’re serum enhanced, Lil, that’s why they’re looking younger rather than older.’

  Lily thought about her parents and what Dan had said earlier. They did seem to be growing younger. She was an idiot for not seeing it earlier, but now that she thought about it, from side-on, Pym could easily have been a man in his late twenties or thirties.

  ‘Have you noticed the Blacktroopers?’ Lily said. ‘They look kind of stretched and shiny, too.’

  Daniel nodded. ‘And listen to this, Lily. I haven’t learned much from the Committee documents, but what I have seen is pretty weird. There was something about people being “hormonally lucrative”. I don’t like the sound of it. I think it all somehow ties in with the pills and my headaches –’

  ‘Your headaches?’ Lily said, alarmed.

  The door burst open. Alice stood there, her mouth a small, outraged ‘o’. ‘But it’s school time,’ she said, pointing at the Scrabble board.

  ‘Get over it, Alice,’ Daniel said wearily. ‘And anyway, why aren’t you at your baby screen?’

  ‘It is not a baby screen. Its’s a screen exactly like yours.’

  ‘He’s just teasing, ignore him,’ Lily said.

  ‘You can put down yak.’ Alice pointed over Daniel’s shoulder.

  ‘Only if yak’s spelt y-a-c, dummy,’ Daniel said.

  ‘I’m going to tell Mum and Dad you’re playing instead of learning.’ Alice glared at Daniel, and then stuck out her tongue for good measure.

  ‘You wouldn’t, would you, Alice?’ Lily said.

  ‘Well, I might just,’ Alice said, tossing her thick dark-blonde hair, which she admired whenever she passed a mirror.

  ‘So you’re a suck-up and a dobber,’ Daniel said.

  ‘It’s not my fault they like me best,’ Alice said, flouncing from the room.

  ‘Now you’ve done it,’ Lily said to Daniel.

  The fact was that Alice was given special treatment. She was the only one of them allowed into their parents’ wing of the house. Like many other things, the reason for this had never been explained.

  Before Lily could question Daniel any more about his hacking attempts, their mother came in.

  ‘Max is coming for dinner tonight,’ Megan said, frowning slightly.

  Lily opened her mouth, but her mother got in first, holding up her hands.

&nbs
p; ‘There’s no point arguing. He’s coming and that’s that. Be ready at six,’ Megan said.

  ‘Mum, you don’t even like him, why do you keep inviting him here?’ Lily said.

  But her mother was already halfway out of the door.

  Lily was surreptitiously rubbing her hand on the tablecloth, trying to wipe away the lingering sensation of Max’s oily handshake. As usual, he’d held on too long and trapped her by encircling her shoulders with his other arm. His breath smelled like chemicals. At least now he was seated at the other end of the table – the head of the table. He always sat there, without being invited. He’d made Alice sit on one side of him and her father on the other. Max kept reaching out to pat Alice’s hand, oblivious to her continued attempts to snatch it away.

  He’s drinking a lot, Lily thought uneasily. Even more than usual.

  Max was horrible sober, but he was a really disgusting drunk. The alcohol not only fed his temper, it fed his putridness. Was there even such a word? There should be – it was a good way to describe Max.

  ‘Mm, very tasty,’ Max was saying, leaning forward to survey the contents of a large platter that Megan had set in front of him. Max liked tidbits. That was his word. He didn’t eat food served normally. Still holding his drink with one hand, Max now reached out and swept up a handful of sweet pastries, some grapes and a selection of small sandwiches. He shovelled them onto his plate and began to hoover them up.

  ‘Ah, tidbits,’ Max said. He fingered the remains of a pastry before inserting it into his mouth and taking another gigantic slurp of alcohol.

  Lily glanced at Dan, who was balanced on the edge of his chair next to her, looking thunderous. He was stabbing his own tidbits with his fork and scowling at Max, who was either blissfully unaware or pretending not to notice.

  ‘Time to enjoy the fruits of our labour,’ Max was saying, waving his arms expansively. Lily saw with interest that her father was looking at Max with distaste.