by P. S. Lurie
Her words are jubilant and there is another round of applause.
“However. I can sense that some of you may be upset with our decision to carry out what shall be respectfully known from here on as the Great Cull, but this was not a decision we took lightly. I do not wish for there to be any ill will directed towards the Upperlands but I am not naive to think some of you may be angry through your current tiredness. Therefore, we will require you to prove yourselves to us before being fully integrated into society here. You will be offered adequate accommodation within the barracks and be given jobs. You will not go hungry or uncared for but you will need to demonstrate your loyalty and your gratitude to our cause. Each week a select number of you to have shown loyalty and gratitude will be moved into our permanent accommodation. Those who disappointingly rock the boat will be punished.” She and the other Upperlanders laugh at her pun, which is neither funny nor sensitive considering our circumstances. I don’t understand what she’s saying; the content seems superfluous and deliberately vague.
“For now, the guards will show you to your temporary dwellings, where more information will be provided. We need harmony for utopia. We need loyalty and gratitude for utopia to prosper. We need proof of this before the day comes when we may need to board... the Utopia.”
The loudest cheer emerges and, with that, she walks towards the helicopter, which takes off and disappears overhead to the mansion on the much higher piece of land, unable to be reached any other way.
The screens blank out and the guards descend on us. They separate us out first by gender, until a thousand or so men and a few thousand women are standing across from one another. There’s nothing I can do except let Ronan follow the men to the other side of the arena.
Then one guard shouts out words that chill my core. “Anyone ten years and under needs to step forward.”
I watch on helplessly as our six to ten year olds are filtered out, and led off through a tunnel and out of sight. “Where are they taking them?” I ask a nearby officer.
“President Callister wants to make sure they are given priority treatment. Last night must have been the most difficult for them because they lost their parents.”
It’s a fuller answer than I was expecting but tells me nothing about what will happen next. Seeing as the Upperlanders have convinced themselves that their so-called great cull was worthy, I dread to think. I have to believe that if we show loyalty and gratitude, whatever that means, then we are now, in one way or another, safe.
But the sun rises higher on this new day bringing with it only the promise of more uncertainty.
ONE YEAR LATER
6 A.M. - 7 A.M.
Ruskin
“It’s so early,” I croak, over the ritualistic scratching of metal against concrete that wakes me every morning. It’s my alarm clock of sorts but there is little that is positive about what the noise symbolises and offers nothing in the way of a reason to get me up at the crack of dawn.
I adjust to the dim light that radiates through the barred gaps in the wall overhead. I guess it will be a fine day, cold as usual at this altitude but not overcast, not that it matters because the closest I will get to the fresh air will be on tiptoes with my face pushed against the iron-clad bars, seeing the same view of the outside world day in and out: half a tree and not much else. Even after this long, hacking away at the bars has done nothing except make the tiniest indent in our attempt to escape. I may be starving and marginally thinner but even with the bars removed the opening is too small to climb through, and we are too high off the ground. We could have given up with chipping away months ago but we didn’t because on rainy days I can reach my fingers through and feel the drizzle; with no release date set, our only purpose is constantly trying to better our situation. Being able to put an arm through, cup the rainwater and drink something other than the turgid drip from the sink would be a vast improvement in our quality of life.
For now, life is this cell, with the occasional gift of food and clean clothes through the grate in the door and diminished sensory input from anything other than what I can routinely and dully see, hear, smell, touch and taste. There is one thing worth looking at in here, which always gives me cause to smile, at least most of the time anyway but just not right now.
“Come back to bed,” I say, over the sound of the grating.
“You’ve forgotten what day it is,” my cellmate says with an unnecessarily jovial voice.
I haven’t, I think to myself. I know exactly what it is but there’s neither cause for celebration nor a reason to wake up this early with nothing ahead of us but to sit and ponder.
“Done.” The scratching stops.
I sit up and admire what he has maintained for so long. Along the side of the bare grey slab of concrete that is one of our walls, above his bed, he has tallied how long we have spent together in this prison cell. Rows and then columns of sets of four lines crossed over with a diagonal slant, adding one more each day. Today marks the seventy-third complete grouping. Three hundred and sixty five little lines. A tradition that takes up a measly couple of minutes of an otherwise unfulfilling day.
A whole year documented.
“Happy anniversary,” the boy my age says.
“That’s depressing.”
“Don’t do that.” He walks over and sits on the edge of the bed, then he leans in and kisses me. “We did it.”
“Did what?”
“Didn’t kill each other. Didn’t go mad. Didn’t get ill. We survived, Ruskin.”
I want to say, “So what? We survived for what?” But I see the glimmer of pride in his eyes and I know that he’s right. We actually did survive. And that is the answer to my question whenever I wonder what the point of any of this is. We survived not to find out why we were put in here or to hope we would be reunited with our families but for one another. The alternative, not surviving, never crossed our minds.
“How about this for a plan,” I say, energised by him. “We go to the lake and hire a rowboat then we’ll come back and I’ll prepare us a candlelit meal.”
He laughs. “I’ll make a cake. Wait, do we have candles or do I need to pop out and pick some up?”
I scratch my head, fully buying into the fantasy of a world that we’ve created and share in our collective consciousness. “I think we have some left over from your birthday. Happy anniversary Jack.”
“Happy anniversary Ruskin.”
Jack lowers his head to mine to kiss me again then places his forehead to my chest. He’s about to draw in close and curl up next to me but the dull vibration of footsteps along the corridor outside our cell stops him in his tracks and causes us to wait and find out if the rare visitor to this part of the prison is for us or not.
Theia
Leda’s cries grow louder, drawing attention to herself.
“No,” I plead with the guard. I want to stop him from unzipping the suitcase and finding my sister. I try to bargain with him but he grabs my arm to prevent me from going anywhere.
“It’s ok Theia.”
I shake off the man’s arm but his face fades and my brain tries to make sense that what I hear instead is a softer voice. I place it as I come out of my disturbed sleep, then I take in my surroundings and remember it was the same anxious nightmare again that greets me every morning.
Melissa’s hand soothes my shoulder. She has climbed down from the top bunk in our room in the barracks and perches on my bed. I look over to the other bunk across the room but both beds are empty, one unmade.
“Same thing?”
I nod and check on Leda, who is curled up next to me on the bed still asleep but her face a deathly pale as it has been every day for the last month. If I wasn’t so worried about her I would be grateful that the illness has rendered her effectively silent and easier to conceal in here. She’s a year older than in the nightmare that always takes me back to immediately after the great cull but in reality she’s still not as big as a twenty-one month year old should be. I y
awn and remember that I was awake most of the night, ineffectively rocking her to sleep. “Sorry,” I say to Melissa who also looks exhausted.
“It’s fine. I’ll bring some more medicine after the announcement.”
“Only if you can.”
“I’ll try.”
My head scans through everything in my life. Most of it revolves around Leda, my focus now that Ronan has been out of my care for... how long must it be now? Right, the special announcement is today, so it must be a year since the night in the Middlelands. “The great cull,” I murmur to myself.
That event, in which most of our community died, was one year ago but it’s never far from our minds. Everyone made a sacrifice to be here, not in life itself but in guilt and turmoil. Not a minute goes by without remembering the events. In some unspoken agreement within the barracks we all agreed we’d never discuss it openly because we all did things we would rather not disclose. There’s only one person who I talk to about that evening, and not because I particularly want to but because I owe her that much.
I check on Leda. Her forehead is cold and she splutters in her sleep. The rest of us go about our daily duties, proving our loyalty and gratitude as the Upperlands wish but once we were moved into these barracks Leda has never left this room. It’s unhealthy for anyone to be in a confined space, out of sunlight, to not have fresh air or suitable nutriments, and she has suffered greatly. I feel the tracking watch around my wrist, strapped to me a day after being Rehoused, which Leda is missing and can’t travel without. It’s awful for her to be here but far less safe for her to be anywhere else.
I think of the monthly executions. It would be disastrous for the rest of us too.
“Thank you,” I say to Melissa.
“For?”
“The past year.” Although she couldn’t get hold of the vaccination that prevented us all from dying from the illness that spread through the barracks, Melissa, who used to live across the back gardens from me, who witnessed so many of my losses that night, has been not short of a life saver for Leda. And for me. There’s no way Leda would still be here had all three of my roommates not agreed to risk their lives protecting her, taking it in turns to care for her, to keep her secret between the four of us. Melissa, Selma, me and, until recently, Harriet. Not just roommates, these women have become allies. A family, even.
Family. The word makes me shudder. I had a family and in the space of twelve hours most of them were killed. What is now left of my family is my younger sister.
And Ronan, seven years old and who knows where. Separated from me when we were Rehoused. I’m only meant to care about the welfare of the children from the Middlelands as much as the rest of us, which is not at all because I shouldn’t have any vested interest in one boy above any other. We were assured that they are in good hands, but all we have been told is that they were taken to be raised in better conditions whilst the rest of us would have to put up with lesser resources until we proved ourselves like Harriet did. Innocent children, as the Upperlanders taught us, who would be given access to resources, whilst we would have to prove our loyalty and gratitude first before being promoted to Upperlander status.
Loyalty and gratitude. Two words never far from my mind, drilled into us all the time by the Upperlanders, the same people who decreed my family would have to die for me to live. We don’t say what we really think when we’re told to be loyal and grateful.
“You’d better get ready.” Melissa checks her watch. “I’m due at the hospital in thirty minutes but I’ll see you at the arena?”
“Do I have another choice?”
“Selma was on the night shift so she should be back soon for a couple of hours’ sleep before meeting us there. Maybe Harriet will wave.”
I sit up. I don’t even mention that us both working means Leda will be left here on her own. In other circumstances, leaving a small child would be neglectful but we’ve become accustomed to taking the risk. The biggest problem is that she’s become sick with the illness that’s spread around the barracks and no medication that Melissa has managed to smuggle out of the hospital has helped. Melissa was a nurse in the Middlelands and was given work at the hospital here. After what she did for Henry at the coast years ago, and then communicating with her across the garden one year ago, as well as watching what happened to my mother, we’re bonded in a way neither of us could imagine. I’m grateful that she’s willing to risk stealing medication for Leda. Unfortunately, it’s not enough.
Taking my sister to the hospital is out of the question as she is unaccounted for because no child under six was allowed to be Rehoused and she’s without an identification watch so I can’t even pass her off as an Upperlander. I can’t stand to see her suffer and I’m not sure she will recover with time alone.
I check my own watch, a far sight more advanced than the wind-up antique I wore in the Middlelands. This is the only sophisticated piece of technology awarded to all of us by the Upperlanders. It not only tells the time but our identity and location too. It’s a crime to go anywhere without it, not that I can remove it even if I wanted to because it is solidly affixed.
I dress in plain clothes and wash my face in the tap in the corner of the room. Clean water. Cold, without the option to raise the temperature as with the Upperlanders’ apartments, but from a reservoir. Potable too. This is not from the sea so there’s no need for distillation or boiling before considering going near it. Our skin is no longer covered in sores from washing in brackish water. Access to fresh water still amazes me, as if the Upperlanders don’t realise that their idea of poor quality of life for us here is exponentially better than before. Talk about gratitude, the Upperlanders have no idea how unappreciative they are when they complain about little things like hot water running out or their Wi-Fi networks going down.
Melissa finishes getting ready. “I’ll see you at the arena,” she says on her way out.
I stay on the bed with Leda and then force myself to get up, knowing that I have to leave in a few minutes, wondering if Melissa realised how serious I was about my gratitude to her, sincere and true compared with how I feel about the Upperlanders. With the exception of Selma, since the cull and writing our messages to one another across the gardens, Melissa’s become my confidante. On the nights neither of us can cope we offer the support we can. I tell her what happened was not her fault despite never having told me directly what became of her parents other than that they died before the guards came to her house. I don’t know how they died and I don’t know her part in it.
But it doesn’t matter. Whether we killed to survive, or to protect ourselves, or to defend ourselves or out of fear or hatred, it just doesn’t matter. Because we are here now and trying to make sense of a world in which we are still on the outside, with our fates not yet determined.
Until we prove our loyalty and gratitude, we haven’t secured our spots on the Utopia. Total Flood was exceeded long ago and, with the continued rising water reaching higher up the Fence every day, time and security are things we don’t have in abundance.
I kiss Leda on the forehead and my heart still has the ability to break a little more at how cold she feels. “I’ll be back soon baby,” I say to her and head into the Upperlands.
Selene
“You shouldn’t be here.” His presence is unannounced and makes me jump. I turn and note the concern on his face before he continues. “There’s no need to be up and about this early. We have a couple of hours before the announcement.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Are you sure you want to come today? For your first time out of the apartment. It might be overwhelming and I don’t want it to set you back.”
I take a while to think about it before I answer. “I do,” I say but it is unconvincing and I am not sure I mean it. I’ve debated it for weeks and I’m still uncertain.
He walks over to me, completely and comfortably naked whereas I am wrapped in a plush dressing gown. He’s handsome and I let him take me in his arm
s and feel him push himself up against me. I notice him grow stiff through the fabric near my hip but I’m not in the mood – the pills mean I’m never in the mood although I allow it to happen most of the time he wants it – and this time I break away. “I’m trying to find something to wear.”
“You’ll be the most beautiful girl there, no doubt about that, even if you wear a paper sack.”
I smile at the compliment. “Thanks Nathaniel,” I say and hug him. His body is firm and toned. He’s a little taller than me, which says something considering my stature. We kiss for a while and I feel safe in his embrace.
“What’s wrong?” He sees the concern on my face.
“I had that dream again.” The Fence was built shortly after I was born and I’m not old enough to remember life before it, but then again I don’t remember anything about my life before these past months. Nathaniel assures me it’s impossible I could have been down to the coast so my dream that I’m floating in the sea can’t be more than my imagination. It wouldn’t have unsettled me if it was only once but I’ve dreamt it on and off for months, more frequently as today’s announcement draws near.
“The same thing?”
I nod. It’s always me floating in the moonlight, peaceful. I’m not scared at first. The water is cold but calm. I’ve left my clothes behind on solid ground but I can’t for the life of me picture what I was wearing before I stripped. Even after the nightmarish turn it takes and I make it out of the water, I still wake up before I find my clothes. I don’t know why but that detail bothers me. At least that’s what I disclose as the most disturbing part of the story.
Nathaniel throws on some loose clothes and slings a bag over his shoulder. “I’m going to the gym. You’ll be alright here for an hour?”
“Of course. I was thinking of coming with.”
“The announcement will be exhausting enough, princess. Maybe you’re best to focus on that.”