Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  Ellie had one final night with Jon Li before they would be risking their lives yet again and she was determined not to waste it. She gripped the blue-prints of the Genie facility tightly in her hands. They had been entrusted to her by Drago.

  Ellie and the four men took a sharp right turn and headed off down a tunnel. The tunnel ended in a barred iron door. A set of candles flickered at the end of the tunnel. The candle-light illuminated wording, that had been scrawled on an worn piece of paper. The paper had been taped to the door and the words read:

  Irish picked up a short baton from the ground next to the door and rapped on the door hard, three times. The clanging of metal on metal reverberated around the tunnel.

  ‘Knock knock!’ Irish said to the door cheerfully.

  They could all hear hassled scrambling and muttering sounds, coming from behind the door. The noise of squeaking metal announced the arrival of someone behind the door. A slit in the door opened to reveal two, strange eyes peeking outwards. One eye was hidden behind an antique monocle, the other stared blankly ahead. It was made of glass. Irish leaned down to the slit and waved at the strange pair of eyes.

  ‘Hi!’

  The man’s good eye widened when he got a look at Irish. Ellie guessed (by the wrinkles surrounding the monocle) that the man was likely to be very old.

  He was called ‘Keeper’: short for store keeper.

  ‘Ohhhhh no you don’t!’ a distressed and reedy voice came through the grating. ‘Not you again! The answer is no! Whatever you want, we don’t have it!’ the man protested, and tried to close the grating.

  Irish held the grating open with one finger, watching the man strain against it. He smiled at the man.

  ‘Oh com’on Keeper. There’s no need to be like that. What’s a few borrowed items between friends?’ Irish laughed.

  ‘Go away you sponging paddy! I’ll have no more Irishmen in my Store House with your sticky fingers!’ he squealed.

  Irish ‘tutted’.

  ‘Is that anyway to speak to an old pal? Besides, we’ve been sent by the boss, so open up,’ Irish reiterated, and started banging on the door with the baton again.

  The little man behind the grating became even more defensive.

  ‘Old pal? You blew up my house! As for the boss? Jameson! He still has two guns and those boots outstanding he borrowed!’

  Irish shook his head, and smiled.

  ‘How long are you going to hold that little accident against me? Besides, Jameson died seven years back you old git! I keep telling you he died in those boots. Drago is in charge now. Remember?’

  Keeper looked confused.

  ‘Drago? You mean the kid with the hat? God help us.’ Keeper shrank back, placated for the moment. ‘Well…What do you want then?’ Keeper asked.

  Irish mulled the question over for a few seconds, rolling his eyes.

  ‘Hmm. Not much: can of gas: dynamite: detonators,’ Irish said, tapping his chin while he thought up the list, ‘umm…one…two…three…seven cigars. Oh yeah, and all the gun’s an ammo’ we can carry,’ he finished sheepishly.

  Irish winked at Max and the door clunked when the strange man behind it released the locks.

  ‘I don’t think we have seven cigars…’ the Keeper muttered.

  The door swung open to reveal the strangest figure that Ellie had ever seen. He was indeed an elderly man who was sitting in a wheelchair. His skin was milky-white and cracked with age. He looked as though he had never seen the sun and hadn’t left the Store-House in a very long time. She suspected that he had been in there alone for so long that it had driven him quite barmy.

  The Keeper’s clothes had been stitched together from many different garments and his wheelchair had been assembled from all kinds of odds and ends: only half of which were recognisable. He had an enormous ledger on his lap. It had yellowed and crinkled pages. Next to it (on a tray that had been built into the wheelchair) was a pot of ink and a bird quill.

  The Keeper’s eye blinked at the party and he held up a frail looking hand in protest.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ he said, as they all went to move through the doorway. ‘You’re not all coming in! I can’t keep an eye on you all,’ he insisted.

  The Keeper nodded at Max, Ellie and Irish.

  ‘Just you three. Three at a time in the Store-House. No more: definitely no more than that!’ he declared.

  The Keeper waved a hand in dismissal at Red, and the man standing next to him. Red ‘hoicked’ up a glob of phlegm and spat it on the floor.

  ‘Fine. Whatever, just get me something decent,’ Red spat at Irish.

  Red thrust Keeper a ‘fuck-you’ sign, as he turned to leave.

  The Keeper stared impassively through his monocle and then he wheeled back from the door to let them enter.

  It was a warehouse of sorts. Many of the shelves were now picked clean long ago. Other shelves brimmed with equipment and supplies. The entire space was full of boxes. Ellie noted that there was virtually no food. They moved along the aisles while the Keeper flicked through his ledger looking for the items that Irish had requested. Each time they found one, the Keeper made precise notes about what was being taken and by whom. He continually muttered to himself while he scribbled with his bird quill. He was feverishly updating his records with a passion that bordered on obsession.

  Irish found a large pack to stuff the items in as they went around and Max was throwing items in it behind the Keeper’s back.

  Max had already acquired a pair of battery operated torches. He gestured to Ellie to try and find the batteries. She paused next to a shelf that was full of busted electric equipment. She found what she was looking for in a set of old television remote controls. She clicked the batteries out and held one in her hand and looked at it thoughtfully. Batteries, she thought. That’s what we are to them. Batteries. It made her feel ill.

  Irish was keeping the Keeper busy, while Ellie popped several more of the batteries into the pack. She had also found two hand-held walkie-talkies, amongst the trash. She held the radio up, trying to locate the touch-screen. Max spotted her and paused: amused. She was trying to work out the how the device worked. She held it up and ‘spoke’ into it.

  ‘On,’ she said.

  The radio remained lifeless in her hands. She felt Max watching her.

  ‘Um…Initiate…Activate? Er….Run?’ she spoke into the device, trying to work out how to start it.

  It remained dead until Max turned a dial on the top of the device. A hiss of static ‘burst’ from it and she jumped in surprise. Max grinned wolfishly at her, as he retrieved both of the radios and threw them into the bag.

  ‘I think you’ve been living in Coney too long,’ Max quipped.

  She felt inclined to agree.

  Across the Store House, Irish and Keeper had finally agreed (after a heated debate) on how much dynamite Irish was allowed to take. Both men were still sweating over the argument, when Max joined them. They had all moved to the part of the Store-House that was Union City’s, makeshift armoury. Max examined the rows of weapons that were placed along the wall. He concluded immediately that most of them were ‘useless’. He could see that they were either damaged or poorly serviced and were unreliable. Max began helping himself to a line of shotgun cartridges that were on a shelf. He was checking each one to see that it was viable and discarding the ones that were not. The Keeper had finished arguing with Irish and was scribbling furiously to keep up.

  Irish heaved a hunting-rifle from the top of a rack. Max wanted it for himself. He recognised the rifle as being the one that he had stolen from Deer Lodge. It did not take him very long to find Hawkins’s and Dillinger’s pistols amongst the weapons. He added them to the pack and noting that the silencers were still missing.

  ‘You’d better return all this!’ the Keeper protested, as he scribbled. ‘I keep careful notes!’

  Max was nodding in agreement while all the time, he was watching Irish sneak a few more sticks of dynamite into the pack beh
ind the beleaguered Keeper.

  ‘Uh huh. Sure buddy,’ Max replied. Will do, if we aren’t all dead tomorrow, Max thought.

  Max found a serviceable pistol and tossed it in for Red. He didn’t bother to get a weapon for Lucian because he figured that Lucian would have his own, arsenal. Irish had heaved down a long, steel fire-axe. He was looking at it thoughtfully before testing its weight. Max raised an eyebrow. Irish cheerfully added it to the bulging pack of chaos which they were preparing.

  Max turned to Ellie, to ask her if she wanted a weapon, but she wasn’t there. She had wandered off to look at the shelves of the Store House and leaving the others to their weapons. She didn’t want one, nor had no intention of killing anybody. She didn’t think that Jon Li would want one either.

  Ellie was trying to find the medical supplies, but all that she had managed to find were empty pill bottles and expired drugs meant for conditions of which she had never even heard. She was about to give in, when a ‘newish’ crate caught her eye. On the side of the crate it read:

  I.S.I.A.H MEDICAL SERVICES

  She knew at once what it was. It was one of the supply crates that the CUB used to send its supplies to Plastic Paradise. When the CUB manufactured drugs and equipment, they would ship them across to the hospitals. She had seen dozens of crates like it before. She recalled what Abigail had told her that insiders stole whatever they could from Coney and smuggled it back and she realised that the crate could contain many useful supplies, so she eagerly plied it open. Inside the crate was a bunch of strange, gel-filled, transparent bags. Her heart sank when she realised what they were and she almost felt like laughing bitterly at the irony. They were CUB engineered breast implants and they were the very same type as those that she had been working with for years. They were excellent for breast augmentation and incredibly expensive, but utterly useless to the desperate people of Union City who so badly needed the most basic of medical supplies. She imagined the bittersweet experience of stealing the crate, but then the disappointment when they had opened it. Like most of the other junk in the Store House, they had been simply abandoned.

  A hand on her shoulder caused her to jump.

  It was Max.

  ‘Hey Doc. I think were about done here. Unless you want us to find you a weapon?’

  She assured him that she was fine and he seemed resigned to her refusal of a weapon. They both went to meet up with Irish who was seeing off an assault from the Keeper after he’d raided the last of Union City’s cigar pile. The three of them retreated to the Store House exit with Irish using the pack as a shield from the Keeper who was trying to swat him with his bird quill.

  ‘Get your hands off those cigars! They belong to Jameson and he’s coming to collect them tomorrow!’ the Keeper yelled.

  Irish grinned back at him.

  When they were back out into the tunnel, the Keeper stopped at the doorway as if he were unable to go any further.

  ‘I keep telling you Keeper, Jameson is dead already. But it’s OK. I asked his ghost and he said it was fine. So add it to your book,’ Irish chuckled.

  The Keeper shook his fist at them.

  They heard the door close and the bolts go across. They could also hear the wheelchair squeaking as it rolled away. The Keeper had gone to re-check his inventory and the three of them were left standing in the cold tunnel.

  Irish hoisted the pack on his shoulder, and waved them goodbye.

  ‘Well. See you tomorrow for work. Don’t be late!’ Irish said exuberantly.

  Ellie managed a small wave as she watched Irish and his arsenal disappear up the passageway. Max looked happier with the loaded shotgun across his back and he offered to take her back to her cave dwelling. She did not refuse.

  Max had a definite spring in his step now that he was armed and ready to fight.

  She felt nauseous as they headed back to her cave dwelling where Jon Li would be waiting. Her mouth was dry.

  Max took his leave of her when they reached the entrance.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see Li right now. I still don’t trust him,’ he stated flatly.

  Ellie looked up at him: eyes watering.

  ‘That was my mistake, but I’m not going to make it again. We all need to trust each other now,’ she replied.

  Max gave her a knowing stare, before turning and heading off down the passage.

  She pulled the filthy curtain back to her cave dwelling and walked inside hearing Max’s footsteps receding down the passageway. Jon Li was already back and sitting on the car sofa: deep in thought. He looked up at her when she entered. She looked at his broken face and remembered her promise to herself not to waste any more time.

  It’s now or never, she thought and took a deep breath.

  ‘Jon,’ she said softly, and sat down next to him.

  He looked surprised at her attitude. He was expecting an onslaught of accusations.

  ‘We need to talk,’ she said quietly.

  He looked puzzled. He knew the questions were coming. He felt worse than the slime on the bottom of a putrid pond, but her voice sounded different to him. It gave him hope.

  ‘I don’t want you to tell me what went on with you and her Jon. It doesn’t matter anymore. There are greater things to worry about than what happened between you and her. I love you, Jon, and I want us to make the most of whatever time we have left. It might not be long,’ she whispered.

  He hung his head in shame. He felt like the loneliest man in the world.

  ‘I never meant to hurt you. Honestly I didn’t,’ he replied solemnly.

  She took his hand in hers. It felt warm and strong.

  ‘I know,’ Ellie responded, ‘it’s my fault too, Jon. If only I had trusted you more, none of this would have happened. I’ve been so lonely without you.’

  ‘I was confused. I thought I was doing the right thing. It got out of hand it…’ he tried to explain.

  ‘Please don’t tell me, Jon. It’s better I don’t know,’ she pleaded.

  ‘I’m so sorry Ell,’ he whispered, so quietly that she could barely hear his voice.

  The pain in her heart deepened when he looked at her pitifully.

  ‘I’ve let you down. I’ve let myself down. I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see me again. I do love you, Ell. Not her. I’ve been a stupid, selfish, fool,’ he said.

  ‘We both have,’ she answered, and moved closer to him.

  She blamed herself for not trusting him in the beginning and she knew that she was partly to blame for what he had done. She could see that he was deeply sorry for hurting her.

  ‘Ell, you shouldn’t be coming with us. We might not come back,’ he whispered.

  She had anticipated that he would try to talk her out of going on the mission and she looked at him defiantly.

  ‘No. If you’re going, I’m going too. We’re not going to be apart anymore,’ she said finally. ‘Let’s not waste any more time,’ she reassured, and put her arms around his neck.

  He looked uncomfortable, but she could see his resolve was melting away. She kissed him hard, and leaned on him so that he reclined onto the soft white leather of the car sofa. They held each other, relishing the time that they had left.

  He pulled her shirt up and moved his hands inside to touch her breasts and she could feel his desire ‘pressing’ against her.

  ‘No time to waste,’ she thought.

  “Ellie was in a cave. It was terrifyingly black. It felt enclosed to her, but she had no way of knowing how big the cave was and the stench of urine was overpowering. It was so strong that it burnt her eyes and nose.

  She was naked, alone, and curled up in the foetal position.

  It was so warm in the cave that she felt stifled.

  She was lying on something lumpy, warm and soft. She thought that she was lying on a round water-bed. She put her hands down to feel the shape of the water-bed. It was like a pod and when she moved, something inside the pod moved and slid around.

  It w
as alive.

  Fear bolted through her body and she scrambled over the pod and slid down the edge of it. She landed in an even more enclosed place where she could hardly breathe.

  There were more pods around her and they were pressing up against her face. She was trapped in between the mounds of throbbing, moving, pods. She could not climb up them, or go under them: they were too big and slippery. She squeezed between two of the pods, trying to escape and her naked body was pressed hard against them. Her heart pounded against the skin of the pods.

  It aroused a reaction from the sleeping thing that lay inside it.

  The thing whipped and moved like lightening and it thrashed against the wall of the pod and thumped her in the stomach. She panicked: fighting to get away. The things in the pods pushed harder against her, until she thought that she would suffocate, or be crushed to death. Her naked body bobbed up into the air like a popping cork and she landed back on the top of the pod again. She crawled on all fours and tried to balance herself against the movement. She did not dare to risk falling back into the spaces between them again.

  Her hands could feel a pulsing sensation through the skin of the pod and she was absolutely terrified.

  From somewhere in the dark she heard a hissing noise.

  The pods began to shiver.

  She wanted to scream but was too petrified and she was afraid (that whatever else was in there with her) would know she was there if she did.

  The hissing noise got closer and she could sense something very big moving over the floor.

  It was on top of her.

  She could smell its breath. It stank of an indescribable chemical. Terror ran through every nerve of her body. The hissing was above her head and then level with her face. She screwed up her eyes, as if to protect them, even though she was in complete blackness.