Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  Irish had made lurid jokes to Max throughout the entire process of preparing for the breech.

  “Well, boyo. There ain’t one hole that Irish can’t blast open,’ he had said, and winked.

  They had had to haul several barrels of liquid from the demolition store room, to the site. Max had strained to move them. They had been very heavy, even for him. Irish had looked as if he had no trouble moving the barrels. The muscles in his biceps had bulged as he had heaved the barrels along. Irish was a giant of a man and he had repeatedly had to duck the low ceilings to avoid banging his head.

  “How come you ain’t starving like everyone else?” Max had asked.

  Irish had wiped a layer of grimy sweat from his forehead. It had caused part of his face to turn white again.

  “The best workers get the best food. That’s the way it is down here. You either work or starve and nobody works harder than me! I’ve blown up half the city above to build this place!” he had exclaimed.

  Irish had indicated towards the numerous tunnels that ran off from The Scrapper. Irish had slid in towards Max and had added slyly, “An I fuckin' enjoyed it too.”

  Max had strained to heave the last barrel into position.

  “What’s in these things?” he had asked.

  Irish had grinned at him and peeled back one of the lids. The stink of a rancid chemical had wafted up and assaulted Max’s nostrils. He had recoiled, coughing and spluttering. Irish had laughed heartily at his discomfort.

  “You English nancy boys. This stuff (my fine fellow) is what we call Lucky,” he had laughed.

  Max had wrinkled his nose from a safe distance and peered curiously into the barrel. A viscous, transparent ‘gloop’ sloshed around inside the barrel.

  “Lucky? What the fuck is that?” he had asked.

  Irish had looked pleased with himself.

  “Lucky, my friend, is the works. The dogs-bollocks of explosives. We have almost fifty barrels of it!” he had announced.

  Max had stared at the lethal collection of barrels and the candles that had been fluttering not too far away.

  “Explosives? Then do you call it Lucky?” Max had questioned.

  Irish had laughed again and slapped the side of one of the barrels.

  “'Cause you have to be lucky to work with it and not get blown up!” he had replied and roared with laughter at his own joke.

  Max had grudgingly had to admit that he had been almost starting to like Irish.

  Max, Irish and the others had blown the tunnel to Drago’s instructions. He had almost enjoyed the explosion when they had thrown a torch down the tunnel into the waiting barrel collection. He had suspected that the heat wave, might have almost reached the main cavern. He had touched his scalp thoughtfully afterwards. The blasting work had eliminated his need for a haircut for a while. It had burned his hair back to his preferred length again.

  Max rested back against the wall of The Sump and smoothed his hand through his singed hair. He turned towards a group of people who were arriving back in the main cavern from the surface. A series of familiar whooping noises coming from the entrance tunnel brought Max back to the present. He looked up thoughtfully to see the hunting party return. Birdman loped down the stairs into The Sump. He was followed by several tired and pissed-off looking people. They were carrying a small open crate between them. A small crowd had gathered at the bottom of the steps to meet them. Others were arriving all the time.

  Birdman had a bedraggled looking bird in each hand. He spun around crazily, like a whirling dervish, as if he were dancing with them. He released them mid-spin into the waiting crowds with a jubilant cry. The birds’ corpses flew through the air one last time, shedding feathers as they flew before they were caught by the mass of hungry, clutching hands.

  The other hunters descended the stairs into The Sump. They were carrying a bird each. They fought off the beggars angrily, while they wrestled their way back to their lairs. The day’s work was done for them.

  Birdman stood on the steps throwing out more sorry looking corpses from the crate into the hungry crowds. He reminded Max of the overwhelmed food aid workers that he had seen abroad, when he had started his first tour of duty. Birdman seemed to be enjoying himself. He threw more and more of the birds into the crowd. It was a few drops of water into a starving desert. The people who had managed to catch the birds, were retreating from the crowds, to plop them into ready heated cooking pots. They were followed by an avalanche of skinny, begging hands. Birdman reached the end of the crate and held his hands up in an “I don’t know” gesture to the crowds. He looked disappointed.

  Max could hear the begging and grumbling of the crowd. They began to disperse when they realised that the food had run out.

  Birdman hopped down the stairs to where a small crowd of children were gathered. He was entertaining them with his talking puppet: a combined weasel and magpie. Max was sickened to see that he was also handing out several tiny sparrows, to share with them. He had to look away, when he saw a beggar child bite into the sparrows head. The saga would be repeated tomorrow – if – Birdman, and the others, actually caught anything.

  Max tried to block the disgusting image out of his troubled mind and returned to thinking about Aya. He had seen her only once since the day they let him out of the brig. Mother Esme had brought her out (one evening) to sit by the communal fire in The Sump, near to where he slept. Max recalled watching her expressionless face, staring blankly into the flickering firelight. It had made him feel guilty seeing her like that. He was thinking that she was just a kid really, and that he had only been looking for a bit of fun. The serious stuff was never meant to be part of the game and now she was an empty shell. He blamed himself for not being able to protect her enough.

  His nightmares had got a whole lot worse since he had seen the images that had been stored on the mason’s key. He knew the truth about the masons and, in a paradoxical way, he was glad that his wife and child had died in the first impact and had been spared to fate of others. Max shivered when he recalled the images of the corpse, oozing blue liquid, being loaded into a metal capsule to be incinerated for energy. It was energy that made Utopia what it was – rich and powerful. It was energy that was destined only for the lucky ones that lived in the two cities of Coney and Eden. It all made a lot more sense to him now that he had seen the bigger picture.

  He had been there at the very beginning when his unit had been ordered into the outskirts of London to mop up the mess. Max’s unit had formed part of an assault force who had been used to re-take the Greenwich and Deptford areas of old London from the warlords. Hundreds of rival gangs had merged together in the area under the leadership of one warlord. They formed a group known as the Skins. The Skins had rounded up women and looted supplies for miles around in the devastated city. They had constructed a crude fortress in the region. Mason Deckler had personally overseen the assault to re-take the area, so that central London could finally be ‘cleansed’ ready for the re-population. The refugee situation at Arethusa had reached bursting point and the Skins were making the re-settlement of London impossible. The battle had been hellish and had lasted for weeks.

  At first, the Skins had seemed well-fed and eager for battle. They also seemed to have been enjoying the slaughter and the apocalypse that had felled society. As the war continued, the figures Max and his outfit were fighting became thinner and thinner, until they were little more than skeletons scrabbling over the rubble. The Skins had finally exhausted the meagre food sources that were left in the devastated city. Finally, Max’s unit had stormed the makeshift walls of the Skin’s base. Max had been so high on Apexir at the time, that he had felt as though he had floated over the barricades. The newly promoted TALOS soldiers flanked Max on either side. They mercilessly gunned down anything that moved in the ruins.

  Max recalled the feel of the grip of his newly issued assault rifle. It had been a new design. It had been top of the range, laser-sighted and lethally accurate. The symbol of
the mason’s key had been engraved on the side. It had been designed for the newly formed TALOS units that were forming. Max remembered how it felt to use the weapon. Every few paces the kick of the rifle had felt comforting to him. He had spat death into anything that came into range of him.

  Bodies littered the blasted streets as his unit had advanced.

  He still remembered the burning pyres and gutted bodies that had been hidden amongst the flames. The gangs of London had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive and the smell of burning flesh had assailed his nostrils. He had felt as though he had been striding through the depths of hell itself. He had felt nothing but contempt for the skin-clad skeletons that he had slaughtered.

  Dark figures had followed his unit through the mist. They had been dressed in red and black and they had glared out from behind their masks with bright, blue glowing eyes. The heavy breathing noise, which had come from their breathing apparatus, had made them seem more like robots than men. They had carried long rifles, attached to blue canisters which had been strapped to their backs. Every time they had come across a corpse, they had sprayed it with a thick, blue liquid: tagging it for later disposal. Some of them hadn’t been quite dead yet. The liquid had caused the bodies to glow. When Max had looked back, there had been glowing blue lights, barely visible through the smoke. They had seemed to stretch forever in a blanket of sparkling blue. Max’s team had heard that the liquid was called ‘Blue-Velvet’. They had been told that it had been used to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

  His unit had a nickname for the people who had sprayed the bodies as well. They called them ‘Sweepers’. The name had stuck just as surely as Blue-Velvet had stuck to the rotting corpses. It had seemed logical to Max to have the Sweeper teams at the time because there had been millions of corpses and diseases had been breaking out all over the country. They were told that the bodies had been disposed of in mass graves to prevent the outbreak of dysentery, typhoid and other killer diseases. No one could have known what had really happened to them unless they had seen the pictures on the mason’s key for themselves.

  Max casually reached into the pocket on the leg of his smoke-blackened, combat trousers and fished out a single red pill. He chucked the Apexir down his throat: flicking his head back and swallowing hard. He forced the saliva to take it down his gullet where it would dissolve and take away the pain of his tortured mind. Lucian had given him a few of the pills, along with his knife, in payment for the demolition work. The rest of the pills were missing. Max did not ask where. He was satisfied with having the knife for the moment.

  Lucian had filled Max in on a lot of things – including the fact that Abigail Winters was his woman. Max had figured that Lucian had made a point of saying that – just to be clear. Max understood Lucian and he had to admit that he even liked him. He appreciated the trust Lucian had placed in him in letting him work with Irish and the explosives. It felt like a long time since Max had been given true responsibility with something important. It reminded Max of a time when he was ‘real’ soldier. He did not like to remind himself of the hellish work he had carried out. Max had been a young man the day they had shipped him back to Utopia to help with the rebuilding: a young man who had killed and had watched his friends be killed: a man who had married, and fathered a child.

  Max was a man whose mind was being eaten up with Apexir and hatred.

  The Apexir began to sink in, and Max thought that he could hear his old Drill Instructor ‘Samson,’ stomping through his mind as the drug took hold.

  “BENSON – WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING YOU SORRY ARSE PIECE OF GARBAGE? PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER MAN. I AIN’T HAVIN' NO STUPID SELF-PITYING LOSER ON MY PARADE. GET YOUR ARSE OUT OF THE DIRT!”

  Max thought that he could see Samson’s wild eyes. They seemed to be drifting across The Sump towards him. Max got to his feet shakily. He tried to straighten his back, as the phantom barrage continued in his mind.

  “WELL – WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO DO? – SIT DOWN AND TAKE IT? – OR FIGHT LIKE A SOLDIER?”

  The ghostly voice of Samson echoed in his brain. Max whispered to himself.

  ‘Fight, Sir! I’m gonna fight, Sir. Just like you taught me, Sir. Like a soldier.’

  His responses were automatic.

  “WELL FUCKING HELL SOLDIER-BOY. AREN’T YOU SO FUCKIN' SMART? DAMM RIGHT YOU ARE! – AIN’T HAVING NO WET ARSEHOLES ON MY PARADE - DO YOU HEAR ME SOLDIER-BOY?”

  Max thought that he saw Samson’s furious face hovering over The Sump. It burned as red as the fire that Max was staring in too.

  ‘Yes Sir. No arseholes. SIR!’ Max said forcefully, straightening up to attention as he did so.

  “GOOD – I DON’T HAVE NO TIME FOR LOSERS IN THIS ARMY. UNDERSTAND?!”

  The eerie voice of Samson marched right back out of Max’s injured mind.

  ‘Understood, Sir. No losers in this army,’ Max whispered to himself.

  Chapter 41: Through the Looking Glass

  Later that Day

  The Tunnels: Union City

  Ellie sat on the floor of the cave-dwelling that had been allocated to her and Jon Li. She was cold and miserable. She hated living in Union City and, try as she might, she couldn’t adjust to the semi-permanent darkness in the underground city. She hadn’t seen the sun in days and she had never felt so depressed. She couldn’t bring herself to believe what she had seen on the old, yellowed monitor screen in Spark’s Den. She recalled how Jon Li had just sat in the corner with his head in hands, crying silently, as they had watched the gruesome experiment. Ellie kept playing the scene over and over in her mind. It had been like a never ending nightmare which had kept getting worse.

  The light from the candle in front of her flickered dismally in the chill gusts that swept in from the passage outside. The filthy curtain, which covered the entrance to the cave dwelling flapped at the bottom with each gust. The dwelling was very near mother Esme’s home. The stove extraction-pipe, which came from Mother Esme’s dwelling, ran along the wall and disappeared upwards through the roughly hewn, ceiling. It was the only source of heat in Ellie’s new home. In the corner, a broken jug collected the drops of water which dripped constantly from the ceiling. She had positioned herself in one of the only places that stayed dry. There were a few odd bits of crockery on top of an upturned wooden box. Someone had banged a large nail in the wall and hung a picture on it. These had been left by the previous occupants. She had been told by Mother Esme that the previous occupants were now deceased. She did not say from what and she hadn’t dared to ask. She had feared that it might have been contagious.

  The proud new addition to the dwelling was a long car seat made from fine white leather, but now looking a lot worse for wear. It leaned against one wall like a bizarre, legless sofa. It had once belonged to a ‘fine’ executive by the name of Mr Jon Li. She stared at the gleaming white leather, which now had smears of Jon Li’s blood on it, after she had tried unsuccessfully to wipe it off. She hated it already. It reminded her of what she had lost.

  She wished that she was back in their penthouse in their own luxurious bed. It seemed to her, as though her life had changed from luxury to total shit in the course of a few weeks. In Coney City she had been scared, even terrified when she had begun to uncover more about the true nature of the society, but at least she had been comfortable.

  Ellie had spent long hours weighing up her hasty decision to side with Max and Aya, and to flee with them into the unknowns. It had occurred to her (on more than one occasion) that perhaps it was for the best not to know the terrible truth. She knew that there was no going back for her, even if she had not been wanted by the authorities. She thought that she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing the terrible price that came with living in Utopia. She realised that she had been hopelessly naïve in believing that they could just run, and that Jon Li could protect her from everything. She had accepted that.

  Ellie believed that nothing could have been worse than living in Arethusa. Sh
e could never have imagined a place like Union City, but she had found a whole new sense of terror in the underground world. She had felt like a mouse, trapped in a rat-infested maze. Everywhere, in the darkness, hungry eyes had watched her. The word “rape” kept skittering across her thoughts, like an ugly, rampaging beast. She hadn’t dared to leave the cave dwelling because she believed that there were several thousand strangers, and several thousand dark places for them to hide in, and it was a lone woman’s hell. She thought of the screaming babies that she had heard, while travelling down the tunnels to see Sparks.

  “Who would plan a baby down here? Nobody. That’s who.”

  A voice in her head had told her: “Rape. Products of Rape.”

  “You too. Didn’t you want an Ellie Junior? Jon Li was never Mr Right,” the mental voice had mocked.

  “Mr Right is a rapist. Ellie Junior will look just like him. Every day you’ll be down here in the dark, starving as you nurture a baby. Red’s baby.”

  She had nightly dreams of Skinny Edd, or Red, stealing into her cave dwelling and murdering Jon Li, before turning on her while she slept. Her fingernails had been chewed down past the quick. Her thoughts took a different tack and she cursed the chain of decisions that had brought her to Union City.

  “She could have just let Irene’s death go, couldn’t she?”

  “She could have just called security on Aya in the hospital, couldn’t she?”

  “If she had, she’d be at home with Jon Li in their penthouse drinking wine, laughing and enjoying themselves. She could have been drinking Dark Red wine, like the elites and like the Masons.”