City of Dust

by Michelle Kenney

  But there were whispers right from the start, whispers that grew with the silence, that things were very different, once you got inside.

  Chapter 1

  Feral. That’s what they called us. Those who knew of us. It was ignorance bred from fear – fear of life on the outside, and fear of us. The Council said without it we would be far more vulnerable, that their fear was our greatest strength. I preferred a strength I could touch.

  Sometimes I would climb to the top of the Great Oak – the one that had somehow survived the devastating effects of the biochemical warfare – and stare out at the impenetrable, domed expanse of bright white that climbed and dipped as far as the eye could see. They said there was a roof like the sky at the top. They said humans beneath it had developed differently; but no one could corroborate the myths because no one had been inside … and returned.

  The stark contrast of lush forest before miles of deceptive brown dirt, culminating in a security fence four oak trees high, never failed to fascinate me. It represented the difference between us, in what our lives had become.

  I leapt back down the tree, trusting the foot and fingerholds I knew with my eyes closed, and crouched in the soft grass beside my favourite water hole. It was one of the first the Outsiders had trusted in the early days, as its trickling source began high in the hills of the craggy moorland mountains surrounding the only home I’d ever known.

  At the time of the Great War, before nature was allowed to reclaim what was once a bustling city, the moorland forest had covered only a few square miles. Now it stretched as far as the eye could see, swallowing up eerie ruins as it grew. It was dwarfed only by the monolithic Lifedome rearing up to the skyline, and swallowing one bite of the moon every night.

  Our ancestors had called this area Exeter, but now it was only wilderness, filled with every species of animal from every corner of the earth. In the old days, people kept them in treeless forests called zoos for other people to stare at, but that all changed when the cities were burned to the ground.

  I stared into the crystal-clear pond and watched small darts of life ripple through my reflection, my impassive features oscillating on the water’s surface. Large forest-green eyes stared back at me, at my sandy hair, clay-streaked skin, and lean limbs sculpted by a childhood spent moving and melting into trees. The elders said we’d developed a long way from the physical limitations of our ancestors, who had lived in endless rows of claustrophobic redbrick boxes. They said the charred bones of our ancestors still lay among the ruins, if you knew where to look. But that, like leaving the forest, was strictly forbidden.

  I dipped my stained hand into the fresh, clear water, and watched a smear of dried clay dissolve, creating a momentary swirling dance. The rusty pigment darkened the water, and my naked, bronzed skin emerged slowly. Removal of camouflage was also forbidden outside the village. It made you vulnerable to their Sweepers and our numbers were precious few already.

  As the water calmed, the reflection of a purple and black butterfly flickered across the delicate ripples. Each wing had been freshly decorated with perfect, concentric circles that disappeared into infinity. And yet something wasn’t quite balanced. I looked up to watch my shy companion, who was investigating the wild orchids clustered around the pond.

  Now I could see there was no water distortion at all, and that one wing was nearly twice the size of the other. The pretty insect corrected its defect by spreading half its weight on a lower leaf as it sought out the succulent nectar. I smiled. Its imperfection was a common by-product of life’s recovery.

  Come what may, nature finds a way. Grandpa’s favourite motto rang in my ears as I rolled onto my back, bathing in the sunlight filtering through the canopy of leaves. There was something in this sweet spring afternoon that made me want to linger. I let my eyelids droop, and relaxed into the gentle light warming my skin. The forest’s palette never failed to interest me, and I’d spent hours trying to locate exact shades for my drawings using berries, tree roots, soil, and leaves. They all offered something different, but there were certain shades that eluded me too, such as the first glimmer of dawn, and the warmth in my dad’s eyes when he smiled.

  My eyes flickered open. It was time for a snack. I reached into my small leather rations bag and withdrew a misshapen apricot. What it lacked in appearance it more than delivered in flavour, and I devoured the juicy flesh with relish until all that remained was a pitted stone. It was an intriguing stone: old and wizened, like it had lived a thousand lives already.

  Care for the seed, and it will care for you. Grandpa’s wisdom had guided and protected us all for as long as I could remember. I reached out for a large dock leaf, and rolled the hard stone up before stowing it safely in my rations bag. In the same moment, there was a rustle, about twenty metres away, among the willow and bamboo. My ears pricked. Something snapped, and then I was alert. The branch had been forced, which meant an animal. A big one.

  I leapt to my feet, sprung into the branches of the nearest willow, and pressed myself into the nutty bark. The thick foliage concealed me, as I scanned the trees and bushes carefully. They looked quiet enough but I knew better than to trust my eyes. The Sweepers had become increasingly intuitive when looking for specimens in this neck of the woods.

  Instinctively, I withdrew a catapult from the belt around my waist, and placed a small stone in the centre of the well-worn rubber. Stretching the rubber taut, I counted to five under my breath, a precaution my brother had instilled when we were barely out of village school. The forest held its breath for a second, and then I released. The tiny missile flew through the air, finding its target beneath an unsuspecting blackbird high among the jungle of trees.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mouthed and was rewarded with a sharp tweeting and flurry of feathers. But it was enough.

  A large black feline emerged lazily from the thick branches, and surveyed the clearing with an arrogant scowl. She fixed her unblinking yellow glare in my direction. It was a formidable look so many of her prey must have encountered before me. She lowered her eyelids and slunk forward unhurriedly. I released my hold and slid down the tree, stepping slowly into her full view. She paused, just a few metres away from me.

  On the ground she looked bigger, sleeker, and more foreboding; I could tell she wasn’t a young animal still cutting her teeth. My breath slowed as I focused on her dark, brooding face. The blaze in her gold-flecked eyes left me in no doubt I was in her way, but I knew enough about big cats not to run or climb. That only made you the prey. For a few heart-pounding seconds we regarded each other in a combative stand-off.

  ‘Hssss.’

  I clenched my fists and pushed my shoulders forward as I made the first challenge, eyeballing her intently. Her ears twitched in recognition of my strength, and then stilled. Eye to eye, breath to breath, there was nothing else except our racing hearts beating fast and free. The forest echoed our pulses and the birds held their song, waiting for the drum roll to reach its peak.

  She tilted forward. My legs tensed and her nose flinched momentarily. A cool breeze lifted my hair, and somewhere in the trees a lemur called its warning as the powerful animal sank back on her haunches. The moment had come. Adrenaline spiked my coiled muscles, propelling me upwards as she sprang. Her outstretched claws grazed my feet as I swung my light body up and over one of the overhanging branches. She landed lightly on a broken stump at the tree base and gave a disgruntled growl, not used to missing.

  The entire forest was hushed, watching and waiting as she looked upwards, assessing my strength with a hunter’s eyes. I stared back. Unflinching. Her ears twitched. She understood. We were just the same, her and I, two feral cats fighting for survival. Pulling her thick jowls back in silent acknowledgement, she turned and slunk back into the undergrowth.

  I exhaled slowly. Such a beautiful animal should be more aware of the price on its head; she was a predator to us, but the Sweepers had a sinister interest in the bigger animals. Sometimes we heard their cries, echoing through
the forest as they were hunted.

  I lifted my nose, the breeze was fresher than earlier. It was time to move. I set off in the opposite direction, trying to shake off the darker mood creeping through my veins. Stories abounded about life on the inside, about the mysterious projects they undertook. All I knew for sure was that Sweepers left a trail of devastation in their wake, and always stole life from the forest.

  Grandpa said the whispers began the moment the Lifedome started sending out collection committees. Those who’d considered the dome a safe haven began to suspect a scientific-military coup. And then there were suspicions of a new hierarchy based on age, health, intelligence, physical attributes, and more.

  Fear spread like a disease, and Grandpa’s Great-Grandfather Thomas was the first to take a group of dissenters into the forest. Many followed, setting up makeshift camps and villages on the fringe, but that only got the Insiders angry.

  They claimed to respect the wishes of those who chose life on the outside; but it was all lies. Images on the Lifedome walls shamed deserters, alleging they were not part of the new world effort. Sweepers raided the crumbled ruins of the city, looking for anyone who’d tried to remain. And then they turned their attention to the forest. The Council told stories of a second apocalypse when an army of Sweepers mowed down entire camps, leaving behind nothing but mangled bodies, withered wildlife, and devastation.

  That was when Thomas took matters into his own hands.

  He gathered together a selection of surviving crops and wildlife, and offered a truce. The Outsiders would supply the Lifedome with occasional samples, in return for an amnesty from hunting us. He didn’t ask what purpose the samples served, and the Insiders didn’t offer any reason. There were always suspicions of scientific research, that the Insiders couldn’t understand how life had survived at all. Yet our very existence was tantalizing proof, perhaps why they sometimes took us too. But no one ever talked about that.

  As usual, I waited under the gnarled willow for Eli to appear, and just as the sun began to dissolve into the berry-stained horizon I felt a pair of gentle hands shield my eyes.

  I grinned and spun to hug him fiercely. It was always such a relief to have Eli back within reach. I never liked splitting up, especially given his … differences, but we had little choice. Every man and woman had to take turns to forage and hunt in the outside forest; it was one of the village rules and the only way to supplement food.

  We’d cultivated small farms and certain crops grew well, but the good soil was still thin. The forest, on the other hand, had been one of the first places to recover and offer up wild roots, vegetables, fruit, berries, and occasionally, a kill. I left the latter to Eli. For all his shy nature and affinity with animals, he was also profoundly practical when it came to surviving. Today he had a small dead boar strapped to his shoulders, which Joe would make last for a week.

  ‘Grandpa will want to roast that one.’ I nodded at it.

  I received a wide grin in response, accompanied by a short flurry of fingers. Our improvised sign language had rescued him from a fortress of silence when we were tiny, and cemented our unique bond. When the other kids had teased, I’d protected him and slowly he’d became the voice of my conscience. Silent from birth, Eli’s differences were lost among the countless impacts of the war, even now, generations on.

  I watched Eli swing the boar from his shoulders, and tie its legs deftly with some braided twine, before we climbed up into the old bushy willow – the control tower for our infra-red security system. Thanks to Thomas’s initiative, the Outsiders had foraged enough component equipment to build a basic first-alert system. The technology was rudimentary, but effective. I used my chiselled key lever to flip open the false bark door, and was relieved to see the familiar flashing red light.

  Swiftly I flicked the switch upwards, and watched four meters drive straight lines across a small black panel, indicating a clear parameter of three miles. The system was designed to give those hunting and gathering the chance to access the hidden entrance to our valley in complete safety. If a Sweeper or human life was detected in the exclusion zone an alarm was triggered in the village, and those out hunting were not expected to try again until the zone was clear.

  ‘C’mon, we’re lit up like the 4th of July. Time to call it a day!’

  I signed one of our dad’s favourite expressions, before scrambling back down the knotty trunk. It was ironic that Dad’s voice rang bright and clear in my memory, while his face faded a little every day. He had been the village schoolteacher; a quiet man who always made time to read to us beside the fire, but one winter he just kept coughing. Mum made chicken broth and told us he would get better, but by spring he was dead. Eli and I had just shared our ninth birthday, and it was the year I stopped trusting in anything outside of my own control.

  We walked over to the familiar crossing stones, visible just beneath the rushing water. This was the trickiest part of the return journey, and timing was paramount. The river lowered twice a day, making the swirling water passable if you followed a specific route. Time it incorrectly, and the current would sweep you away and drop you over a fifty-foot waterfall. Eventually.

  Eli went first, leaping nimbly from stone to stone, while I followed closely behind. We reached the other side without mishap, and ducked beneath a protruding rock. It concealed the entrance to a small cramped cave, which always looked so unremarkable at a glance. This was the beauty of our valley home, and its discovery was retold at special Council gatherings, as a rite of passage.

  It was while Thomas had been hiding meagre food supplies that he made the chance discovery: a heavy metal disc concealing a slim dark tunnel and ice-cold water. Some believed it to be a disused mineshaft, others part of the old-world sewerage system. Either way, he glimpsed a stream of natural light, and desperate to protect his small following, climbed down into the icy water.

  The Council said he likened his first discovery of our hidden world to waking in Eden. I could understand why. I hated the tunnel, but it made the emergence into the sudden light and sanctuary of our valley so special. He named the valley Arafel there and then – lest we forget, he said, the dust clouds we were leaving behind. A few called the Hebrew name spiritual protection, but I suspected it was the solid rock between ourselves and the Lifedome, we really needed to bless.

  Taking one last look at the dusky forest behind me, I ducked into the cave to find Eli already sending his kill down the tunnel using our system of pulleys. Once the rope went slack, he pulled it taut three times, the general signal that all was clear, and stood aside to let me go first.

  ‘Race you to dinner!’ I threw back before dropping like an arrow into the freezing water. The temperature was always glacial, and hit my chest like a rock. I grabbed the guide line and followed it to the dark wall, before inhaling deeply and diving down into the blackness below.

  This was the worst part for me, blindly gripping a line and pushing against constrictive tunnel walls that scraped at and dug into my cold skin. And it was always just as my suppressed panic threatened to burst, that the tunnel would rise sharply, spitting me ungracefully into a pool of water at the back of a much larger cave. I swallowed hard to ease my protesting ears, and gazed out at my favourite view in the whole world: Arafel.

  The lazy afternoon sun was still bathing our woodland sanctuary, which was completely encircled by high, white peaks. The Great War had left its mark on our landscape, as well as the northern climate, and much of it was unrecognizable from before. Only an Insider Eagle aircraft could chance a glimpse of our village, but the Insiders dispatched them rarely, and it seemed the prospect of a descent through close, angular rock faces discouraged even their most skilled pilots. Thomas had made few rules, but the secrecy of Arafel’s location was considered sacrosanct – something no one ever questioned.

  Two sets of strong arms plunged in to pull me out as I reached the edge of the pool, and I smiled my thanks as I was thrust a woollen blanket. Wrapping it swiftly aro
und my cold limbs, I gazed out at our small forest village. The maze of interconnected treehouses, just visible among the leafy foliage, reflected one of the pillar beliefs of our community, and the hum of ordinary village duties reached out like an old friend.

  It looked as though evening chores were underway. Resisting chickens were being rounded up, a wooden coop was being mended, Jed was adjusting one of the rudimentary crop sprinklers and, judging by the noise, work was continuing on the drainage system.

  In truth, we lived like kings compared to Thomas’s time. When everyone else had abandoned their homes for the protection of the Lifedome, my ancestors had placed their faith in the natural world. And, despite its terrifying destruction and slow recovery, I couldn’t be more grateful. Life was raw, we rarely knew where the next meal was coming from, and we had precious few expectations. But we were free.

  I looked back, waiting for Eli to surface. He always did so with a smile on his face and didn’t disappoint this time. I helped pull him from the black water, and passed him a dry woollen blanket from the stack in the corner.

  ‘How on earth can you enjoy it?!’ I signed, pulling a face.

  He flicked water from his sandy hair, making me step back rapidly. His grey-blue eyes shone with silent laughter and I chuckled, feeling the last of my stress melt away.

  ‘Hey, nice work, you two,’ Raoul called from the mouth of the cave. Eli’s catch was already attracting a small crowd. ‘Sausages for breakfast, lunch, and dinner ’til Christmas!’

  Laughter rippled through the evening air, as we grabbed our bags and made for the entrance.

  ‘Don’t forget the greens.’ I winked, emptying the contents of my leather rations bag onto the homemade twig-and-twine platters, before walking away. My hoard comprised a wide selection of wild herbs, edible berries, field mushrooms, and my best find of the day: a whole branch of sweet, ripe apricots – Joe would definitely put those to good use.