by P. S. Lurie
Then I look up, far beyond the ship and the city and see a mountain in the distance that slopes sharply upwards into rough, barren land. Atop this, the land levels off, and one more fortress-sized building stands tall. I have no time to take this in as I’m nudged from behind by a policeman attempting to move me through the checkpoint. “Come on,” he says.
I shuffle on through the arena as cars and motorbikes sweep the periphery, and realise that I may be the only person entering the Upperlands for the first time because all of the other officers are either Upperlanders themselves or Middlelanders who were recruited as officers before our lives were destroyed.
I hear cheering and clapping. Sensory overload means I may have not attuned to this until now or it might have just started. I look around for the source. I missed it first time around because my eyes went to the ship but above me, opposite the Fence but in front of the ark, is a tiered balcony overlooking this concourse. Thousands of people who have attended this daybreak procession stare down at me. They are too far away for me to make out any details or clues of who they are other than that they all look clean and well-nourished. The Upperlanders make catcalls through the air and wave their hands or smack them together, celebrating our triumphant return. I wonder if these people are aware of what happened behind the Fence and would they be so jubilant if they did? Did they think it was equal that we sacrificed our population and they shared some resources with the survivors? Did they hear the shooting behind the Fence not even ten minutes ago, or did the Fence itself mask the gunshots?
Another noise is added to the mix. More electrical humming. A revving. I look behind me and spot a van driving through the gates of the Fence. It parks up to the side and two officers climb out. The passengers file out, grab their bags from the back of the vehicle and stand in a huddle. This is the first lot of Middlelanders to be Rehoused. The first lot to survive the night.
At least the Upperlanders kept to their word that the survivors would be Rehoused.
I stand to the side, in my full uniform, and watch as more vans trickle in.
I watch for my mother but there’s no sign of her. These people must be the closest to the Fence so if I wait a while longer I should see when her neighbourhood arrives. Unless something drastic happened, there’s no reason she wouldn’t be Rehoused as she was on her own. I wonder what she packed. I wonder if she cared about my fate.
Then I spot a familiar face.
Theia
The minibus carries us away from our street and onto the Upperlands. Every seat is taken but that doesn’t confirm whether that means one member of every household survived the night, whether by choice or not. I guess fewer lived because my family occupies more space in the van than allowed. Ronan sits next to me shaking, his fingers resting in my palm, as I stare straight on and clutch the handle built into the roof above the door. If this is the scariest part of what is to come then he can have his fear for now.
I glance back for the merest second at the pile of suitcases stacked up. If I had any fortune in the last twelve hours it’s that mine is on top, with the zip open for breathing space. Now I just have to trust that Leda won’t be starved of oxygen and choked to death. Maybe a gunshot would have been the wiser choice, just like with my grandfather. If she suffers at all then I have made the wrong decision.
Mr and Mrs Ethers, Jason Peters, my mother, my grandfather, Henry’s father. All killed from gunshot wounds. Everyone else died another way, whether more painfully or not I don’t want to imagine but their faces occupy my mind. My grandmother, the stabbing spree of the family opposite my house by one of the daughters, my father, Henry’s mother.
And Henry, who died slowest of all, in front of me.
My image of him is broken by the woman in the row in front having a panic attack. She pants heavily, starts wrestling with the confined space, and speaks in garbled tongue. “My daughter,” she manages to say amidst the babbling.
“Calm down back there,” one of the guards says, without turning around.
The man next to her puts his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Try to take some deep breaths.”
“Why couldn’t my daughter live? What have they done to us?” Her breathing intensifies. Then she looks around at each of us in turn. “Why are you all so passive? Why aren’t we fighting this? Look what they’ve done.”
Then I spot the realisation in her eyes as she looks back and forth between Ronan and me.
I want to shake my head, and mouth the word “no” to her, but I’m paralysed with fear; I’ve seen her plenty of times in passing and she must recognise that we are siblings.
She steadies herself. “That’s not fair,” she says, which to everyone else is out of context but makes complete sense to me.
“No,” I whisper. “Don’t do this.”
“Why is she allowed to bring her brother?”
“Please.”
The driver slows the vehicle down and turns around. “What’s going on?”
“Her. And him. They’re brother and sister.”
“No,” I manage to say. “He’s my neighbour.”
“I’m Henry,” Ronan says, unconvincingly, as he digs his nails into my skin.
The guard turns off the engine and there’s nothing I can do, nowhere to escape as he steps out of the van, walks to the passenger door and hauls us both out.
I begin to cry. “Please, don’t do this. You can’t hurt him. Kill me.”
The guard pulls out a gun. I glance at the van, at everyone staring at us. The woman is in shock because it has just occurred to her what she has done, and how it hasn’t benefitted her other than given her guilty conscience another weight to add to the load.
“Please.” I’m out of my mind but there’s nothing I can do. “Please!”
I watch in horror as the guard shoots Ronan in the stomach and he drops dead. I collapse to my knees, my voice taken from me.
The gunshot reverberates into the early morning sky until silence prevails. Only, out of the silence comes another sound: a baby’s cry.
My heart breaks into a million pieces as the guard looks towards the suitcases and in that moment I have lost.
I wake with a jolt, and find myself sitting down, back in the vehicle.
I’m next to Ronan, as we bump over a groove on the road and I take in my surroundings. I must have passed out from exhaustion – how much of what I just experienced happened? – and I look through the windows and see that we’re in line with the Fence. It’s deeper than I thought and takes a few seconds to pass through. The walls are solid and I doubt even the pressure of the sea would budge them. It’s not going to flow over the summit any time soon.
I feel myself shaking from the nightmare and wipe the sweat from my forehead as I train my ears. Leda isn’t crying.
The van continues into a wide concourse and because of my restricted view it is only when the officer parks and we climb out that I can look around and see a ship that occupies most of the space set back some distance on this side of the Fence. “What the hell?” I say to myself.
The guard opens the rear doors and we collect our suitcases. I make sure to take mine first and prop it on its side. I have to hope that no one will search our belongings or rid us of them. But I have no idea what will happen next.
Selene
It’s Theia.
One more face and it’s unmistakeable. Ronan, her brother.
A bolt of anger hits me when I figure out how this is possible. I want to run over to her and shake her. “What did you do?” I want to scream. “You killed Henry so Ronan could take his place.” I want to kill her.
I swallow this thought because no good will come of it. I’m not violent, I tell myself. I’m not violent. Then I remember that only a few hours earlier I killed two men. My mantra is untrue no matter how much I repeat it.
I’m hurried along, the guards wanting to sort out our return before moving onto the Middlelanders, so I will have no more wiggle room to wait for my
mother’s arrival. I decide to leave Theia and Ronan to fend for themselves. I turn back to the line and start to walk to a checkpoint and only then does it hit me that all the other guards are male and that I will have to take my helmet off, revealing my gender. I have no right to be here but I don’t care. I’ve been through too much; it feels like a lifetime ago that I was floating in the sea, for that briefest of moments finally free from all the horror of the night. But now I’m too tired.
I give up.
Then that voice in the back of my head that has emerged time and time again through the night flares up once more to tell me that I want to survive. After all, I’ve got this far. I’ll do what it takes to go on.
I reach a desk as two guards beckon me forward. I still have my helmet on, and the uniform makes it impossible to denote my gender but as soon as they ask me to speak I will give myself away.
“Name?” one asks me.
I remain silent.
“Name,” he says, more forcefully.
“We’re all a bit exhausted and in a bit of awe,” a voice says from behind me, and I recognise it immediately. It’s the guard outside Henry’s house, the same one who commanded me to shoot at the homeless in front of the Fence. My own personal nightmare that has followed me through this night and onto this morning. Of course he’d be next to me in line. “Go easy on him. It’s been quite a night.”
I’m pleased that despite his pleasure in killing innocent people he at least has some compassion towards his compatriots.
“Killing is exhausting fun,” he then adds, and any sympathy I had is short-lived.
Instead of repeating his questions, the guard waves a device over my left arm and it beeps. So far tonight I learnt the uniform had a hidden torch, built-in holsters for a gun, and now it is personally identifiable. I’m sure that there are other quirks I have no idea about but this one marks my downfall.
A monitor flashes into action, full of electricity, as if there was a surplus and no lag. A name appears. Jason Peters. Then another line, in red.
Deceased.
“I called that one in,” the officer behind me says. “Killed him in a kitchen.”
The guards grab me and pull my helmet off. They watch as my blonde hair falls across my face and reveals my true identity.
“You,” the man behind me in line says. “Impressive.” I look at him as he smirks at me and I take in his appearance for the first time with his helmet off. He’s younger than I thought, maybe only a year or two older than me. Sharp but handsome features, but there’s nothing attractive about the way he’s baying for my blood.
I don’t protest because what can I say except to beg for my life and I’m not going to give these people the pleasure of watching me in despair. I stand defiant and let them dictate my fate. After all, one person from each family was meant to be Rehoused so my mother will now have legitimate access to the Upperlands.
All three guards pull their guns on me but then a senior officer walks over. “Don’t shoot her. There’s to be no more killing.” He glances upwards towards the audience. “Not in front of them. Take her to the prison whilst we work out what to do.”
“I want to hear the President’s welcome,” one of the checkpoint guards says.
“It’s fine, I’ll take her,” the man who has been on my tail most of the night says. With that he grabs my arm and leads me away from the arena, into the Upperlands, so that we will not hear this welcoming announcement, whatever it may contain.
As we walk, I realise just how developed and comfortable the Upperlands is. There are all sorts of working vehicles on their roads and the infrastructure is developed. It’s not long before we board a train on a single track that winds us round building after building, all sheet glass. A bakery goes by in a blur, each window revealing more opulence than the entire Middlelands had access to. The biggest luxury is that there’s no risk of flood here.
There is no-one in the carriage except us because everyone else remains at the arena, watching the Middlelanders arrive, saluting and cheering them, revelling in their fear and exhaustion, and expecting them to be grateful to be the ones to survive the night.
We travel in silence, until the man asks me my name.
“Selene,” I say.
“Nathaniel,” he replies, and I almost laugh at how normal it sounds, as if I expected it to be spine-shuddering, but I say nothing.
The train passes an anomaly on the outskirts of the city. A red-brick building of six or so floors that looks like nothing else here, older and more worn-down, like something from the Middlelands.
“Selene,” he says, “That’s the prison.” He laughs.
I watch on until the building is out of sight and we carry on into the unknown, realising that he has other plans for me.
Theia
I watch more groups arrive in vans, until there are so many of us it’s impossible to know numbers, but I don’t recognise anyone. I hear the cheering from above and stare at crowds of Upperlanders, all in fresh clothes beaming down at us, but I don’t know if we’re just an irrelevance and they’re really welcoming their officers back. Why would they care about us?
We stand for what feels like an hour, with no instructions other than to wait. Finally, the last of the vans drives through the opening in the Fence and the doors begin to close in on themselves. I hear collective ‘Oos’ from the Upperlanders, who must be finding this as surreal, with the exception that they didn’t suffer deaths within their families. Do they know? Do they care?
The doors shut with a thud, solid and tight; if and when the flood arrives, no water will be trickling through.
I pay closer attention to the Fence. It stretches the length of the Upperlands and is more intricate on this side. Wires and pipes line certain parts, oversized blank television screens are affixed the whole way along, and near the solid gates there is a huge upright casket resting at the base, attached to a metal rod spanning the whole way up, big enough to house a few people. Finally, two guards walk towards this contraption, step inside and I watch as it moves upwards.
Of course I know about elevators because there were some in the hospital, albeit out of action, and watching it rise makes it obvious as to what it is but my mind hadn’t clocked it immediately because anything that runs on electricity is so far from what my life consisted of. Considering the glow of the city behind the ship, I have a feeling that Surges aren’t as rare in the Upperlands as the announcements made out.
I watch on as the elevator reaches the top of the Fence and the guards step out from the back. They soar above us so that their features are blurred. Then a noise hums from behind but this time I place it straight away. I don’t even need to look to the sky to know that it is a helicopter, like the one from which my mother was gunned down hours earlier.
The televisions come to life and the screen zooms in on the helicopter, which swoops overhead and makes the intricate descent onto the top of the Fence. Past this is a bridge that somehow floats from the Fence without any other support over the arena. Beyond the Upperlanders that watch above us, it looks like the walkway connects to the ship. The guards approach the helicopter as the blades wind down and they help a woman out.
She wears a floral dress, not seeming to be concerned by the breeze, and sports blonde hair. She walks with grace and carries an air of importance but I don’t recognise her. I can’t see where the camera is set but her face is broadcast close-up as she looks directly at us through the television screens.
It’s only when she starts, her voice somehow increasing in volume and coming out from invisible speakers, that I place her as the woman who made the announcement yesterday evening. She was crying then, with sorrow in her tone, whereas now her voice is soft and pleasant, not an ounce of distress. Whether Upperlander or Middlelander, she addresses us all and we listen to her speech in our thousands.
“Good morning everyone and, for some of you, welcome to the Upperlands,” she begins. “My name is President Imogen Callister and I wan
ted to greet you personally, considering it was on my approval that you are here. Many of you may recognise me from the announcement yesterday evening. Believe me when I say I was as upset as you at the choices we had to all make to be here today but I am convinced that what happened will benefit us all. I realise the decision to be Rehoused must not have been easy but congratulations for being the lucky ones to be chosen.”
A huge cheer rises from the crowds above us, but not a single Middlelander standing around me reacts. Their leader has reduced the massacre to nothing but a mild inconvenience. As if living over our families was an insignificant blip. I don’t know where this speech is going but I am terrified that surviving doesn’t mean we are safe.
“As you can see, we are making provisions for if the oceans reach the top of the Fence.” A few people turn to look at the ship behind us and the President gives a small chuckle. “It would be hard to miss our back-up plan for if we have to evacuate our homes too. If and when that time comes we will sail the seas in the Utopia.”
This is their reason for why we couldn’t all be Rehoused. Even if we wanted to argue our case we’re all exhausted, physically and emotionally, and, for most of us, unarmed.
“I will explain more about life here in due course but I want to settle you all in as soon as possible because you must be tired. As well as excited to be here. With us.”