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by Rachel Martin

  “This is how things are now, Gash. You should get used to it,” Marc said turning to face Ashley, as if he just read his mind.

  Marc lifted his arm and leant his elbow on the bannister. He was looking down on Ashley, squinting, trying to understand him. They stood in silence watching each other for a moment, each one of them trying to discern the slightest flinch in the other. Ashley scratched his head under his cap and looked away from Marc’s prying eyes. He was heating up, he was getting hotter and hotter. This time the Sun and the greenhouse effect were only partially to blame.

  “I am used to it,” Ashley replied eventually, after a long, painful pause where he was trying desperately to find the right words, the words Marc would want to hear. He was now staring at the loose concrete beneath Marc’s feet, the bridge really was falling apart. He could see the metal square mesh holding it together.

  “Are you sure about that?” Marc asked.

  “I just… you know,” Ashley glanced down at the junkies jacking up in the trash, “want to get out of here, that’s all.”

  “And how’re you going to do that?”

  “Well…” he stared Marc square in the eye. “I have a plan, I know it’ll work.”

  “OK den,” Marc sighed. “What is it?”

  As Ashley divulged his secrets, Marc listened attentively while leaning on the balcony. He was staring down into the wilderness below. When Ashley finished, there was a pause. Ashley could hear Marc breathing. Marc finally turned to look at him.

  “Tell me what you see down there.” Marc was motioning down to the hordes below with an open palm while staring intently at Ashley.

  “Losers, diseases, druggies, death.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have no imagination.”

  Ashley laughed again.

  “Do you want to know what I see?” Marc continued.

  “What?”

  “Customers. Money. People who’ll do anything for what I can offer them. We own this turf Gash. Me, you, the gang. I’m not interested in some lame arse heist. Dat shits too risky. We ain’t that strong yet. You can obvs see dat.”

  “It ain’t that risky.”

  “You don’t know that. You think you know. But you don’t. No…” He shook his head. “It ain’t worth it. Dem guys’ll kill you for looking at ‘em wrong. In time, we’ll be ready, but not now. We just ain’t that strong yet. I mean did you see how Preston shat himself?”

  “Yeah I know, he’s a liability, but… I mean, are you really happy with this small time money? You can do more. So much more.”

  “I be surviving,” Marc growled. “I‘m doing the best anyone can hope to be doing out here, now.”

  “Why’d you bother robbing the store then?”

  “For a bust. Make you feel better. You always want more Gash, more, more, more, well there ain’t no fucking more. Not for people like us. You got to relax.”

  “You know Preston got that shit wrong man as if the soldiers were out here fighting crime? You know that shit like I know.” His voice was rising in volume and pitch.

  “Shut the fuck up, Gash. Keep quiet.” He stepped towards Ashley, threateningly. He was towering over him now. “As far as anyone knows there were soldiers. Right?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m not risking what I’ve made up here on some whim of yours.”

  “It’s not a fucking whim. It’s a fact. I’ve been listening.”

  “I said be quiet,” Marc snapped. “Keep your voice down, retard. You don’t understand, I know those guys, they’re crazy. We’re not doing that. Not yet, we need more people. We gotta wait for them kids to grow up a bit.”

  “This is the only chance. We have to do it now.”

  “I said no.” Marc slapped his fist down on the bannister, the whole bridge shook. “There’ll be other chances.”

  “I doubt it, not like this.”

  “No? Sure about that are ya?”

  “But Marc, the plan is perfect, I have all the things we need, the car, the codes, the gun. You don’t have to do anything but follow me.”

  “And what if you’re goddamn wrong?”

  “What if I’m not?”

  “I said no. It’s not worth it.”

  “Why?”

  Marc glared at Ashley, “because it’s not.”

  Ashley looked up at Marc defiantly; he couldn’t hold back a contemptuous snarl of the lip. Marc knew him so well.

  “You little prick Ashley, Fuck off,” Marc turned to walk away.

  “Fucking pussy,” Ashely spat.

  Marc span back and stood over Ashley, he leaned forward and pushed his face into Ashley’s face. Ashley didn’t flinch.

  “Say that again, bitch.”

  Ashley could feel the spray of saliva coming out of Marc’s mouth; he rubbed his face with his hand and glared up at Marc: “fucking pussy,” he repeated, squaring up to Marc.

  Marc punched Ashley in the stomach. He doubled over clutching his guts.

  “Who’s the pussy now?” Marc grabbed Ashley by the throat. “You need to learn who’s in charge here, Gash. You need to learn some respect.”

  Marc dragged Ashley upright by the throat and circled his neck in two strong hands. There was a moment where the two of them just stared at each other like Marc was giving Ashley a chance to repent before burning him at the stake. Ashley didn’t blink, he scowled instead.

  “Fine,” Marc said as he began squeezing.

  He was pushing his thumbs into the soft part at the front of Ashley's throat. Ashley tried to strengthen his neck by tightening the muscles. It was useless. He struggled and began clawing at Marc’s hands, trying to pull them away, but Marc was so strong, far too powerful for Ashley. He felt his feet being lifted off the ground. Marc began pushing him over the edge of the balcony. Tipping him over, to his death. His cap fell off. The sun started burning his face. Visions of Marc doing this before flashed across his mind. People dropping like stones onto their heads. The silent ones were the worst. Rats chewing on fingers, tramps stealing all they can get. The patch of blood would never wash away. His life was over. It blurred before his eyes, every pointless, ugly, meagre second of it. How he hated it. What was the purpose? A burning sensation gripped his chest. It rose upwards. He felt an intense pressure behind his eyes. Then a darkness engulfed him. Everything he knew was floating away on the wind as if his soul were bobbing away on an ocean. In its wake, it left the infinite vacuum of nothing. He lost his sense of self. He was scattered throughout the universe, becoming one with the further reaches of existence. Then he was flooded by an all-embracing warmth like he was thrust into the arms of the Creator. He had been injected with a pure sense of peace and tranquillity. He had the strongest sensation of falling, but slowly, serenely, falling through time, through star speckled space, forever. He lived a thousand lifetimes in a moment. He was becoming one. This is the end, the end, the end. He was golden inside. He blacked out.

  Eleven

  Looking down the garden, at the trees, the pond, the bushes, the flowers, the birds, Sadie could almost convince herself that things were not as bad as she imagined. Almost. The trees were so beautiful, the grass so green, the flowers so vivid, so colourful, so alive, they were a sweet, rose-tinted hue to the reality: Things really were that bad. She knew it, and all this, everything she had seen in the compounds, everything new that was being built and created was the last stand against the coming wave of the death. The more she learned, the more she saw, and the more she understood this to be the new nature of the world now. It was undeniable; they really were living on borrowed time.

  Sadie turned her head left, then right, her eyes gazing over the tree line, a thin strip of forest, a thin strip of hope. The trees grew on the edge of a stream which was unnaturally pumped throughout the compound, like veins moving oxygen and vitamins to the vital organs. The leaves rustled in the faint, hot breeze.

  Not that long ago, when she was still a little girl, the te
achers had promised to take them on a school trip to one of the nature reserves. The teacher’s had told the children all about the huge compounds up north that were home to massive tree replanting programmes. It was all so exciting. The children had been taught that these nature reserves were as heavily guarded as their compound, and were specially designed to stop logging. Sadie shook her head in despair. Even today there was logging. Every month on the news there was another story about a hole in the fence, dead loggers, and worse dead trees. They would never stop. Why did people think that money would save them? It wasn’t even real.

  When she was little, she didn’t really understand the purpose of the reserves, or the compounds, or all the security. All she knew was how excited her and her friends had been about actually leaving the compound and seeing a forest. What could be more wonderful? A nature reserve, it sounded so exotic, so different, so wild, and dangerous. The children clasped their hands together in glee and began imagining all the beautiful things they would see, like maybe an animal or two. But, shortly before the trip, it was cancelled, and never mentioned again. That was how things were in the compound. Things like that happened all the time. It didn’t take long for everyone, the children and their parents, to learn never to ask questions. Theirs was not to question why, and, over time, all these mysterious cancellations and omissions from the records were all conveniently forgotten. Well, that was until now, at least for her. She seemed to be remembering everything all at once, ever since seeing that letter. She clenched her fists.

  Sadie knew that in the bubble of the compound she was protected against disease, poverty, crime, and everything else. But, ever since going out into the Estates, she couldn’t shake the feeling that everything they were doing was far too little too late. She stared at the trees and had a sudden urge to run and hide in the nature reserves. She felt an affinity with the trees, for the forests, and the animals, there was a certain magic there that she would never experience. The forests had come so close to total annihilation; protection was the only way to save them, but, how can you protect a forest indefinitely? Was it inevitable that the loggers would win and everyone would die, eventually? And how long away was that? A year, two years, ten years? Plus, every year saw record-breaking heat. How much time was left before nature just gives up completely? These were the worries of her generation. Except for the fact that all her lucky peers were blissfully unaware of the world beyond the walls, the world that almost wholly forces you to give up hope. They believed they were on track to fixing it all. How could she still believe that? Was there any hope at all? Maybe, possibly maybe, and then, at that moment, she knew that somewhere inside her she did still have hope. But why did things have to be this way? How could her parents let her be born into a world like this? Was it their fault? Yes, it was. It was all their faults. The adults. They could have done something when there was still time, when hope was real. They could have changed things. But they didn’t. Why? Why weren’t they strong? Sadie just couldn’t understand it. She kicked the wall beneath her feet. She kicked it again and again and tightened her fists even harder, her nails were digging deep into her palms. How could her Mother judge the young people, her friends, living out in the depths of the Estate so harshly, when it was her and her peers who threw them into this pointless world in the first place? They all knew this would happen. This was all their faults.

  She would never forget the day she first ventured out into the real world. Perhaps she should have expected what she found, but she had never given it any level of deep thought before, the kind of thought that outside deserved. She should have researched, but she didn’t. She was a fool. Why didn’t the teachers warn them? To the children outside was just another place, like the nature reserves, different, alien, unknown, a little bit dangerous, a little bit exciting… it was never described as utterly ravished, or rife with disease. The thing that bothered her most though was the fact that her parents knew it was like that out there, they actually knew it! She squeezed her fists even tighter as she remembered that day… It was two weeks after breaking into her Father’s drawer, she couldn’t wait any more. She put her long black hooded overcoat on over her grey clothes and ventured into the tube station, somewhere she had never been before. She was always told to stay away from there. She followed the corridors down beneath the compounds where a stale, rotten smell seemed to grow and encompass her. She gagged a little, forced courage into herself and kept on going regardless. This was something she had to do. She had to know. But, when she saw the barrier at the end of the tunnel, she almost stopped and ran away, yet, courage instilled, she persevered.

  “I have to do this, I have to do this,” she whispered to herself.

  She slinked down the dimly lit corridor silently, against the wall hidden in the shadows, and somehow slipped through the entrance barriers right underneath the soldier’s noses. She guessed that hardly any people from her side actually wanted to enter the tube, so the soldiers never looked her way, besides they were far too preoccupied with keeping the unwanted out.

  “What am I doing?” she mumbled to herself as she passed on through to the other side, heart roaring in her chest.

  At the corner of her eye, she watched the soldiers whacking the unwanted away with the barrels of their guns, or tasering them, or firing rubber bullets at them. Well, that’s what she had thought at the time, but thinking about it now, it was far more likely that they were shooting real bullets. After all, what was just another dead unwanted citizen to them? The world was far better off without them. Wasn’t it? That’s what they thought anyway, the compounds, The Company, and the soldiers. That’s what she had thought, before. She kept her hood up and head down as she followed the tunnels to the platform, fighting to get around all the unwanted who seemed to be mindlessly wandering in circles blabbering to themselves. Being so close to the unwanted was an experience in itself. She had never seen poverty at such close proximity before. They simply radiated a stench of desperation. It was surreal. She was intrigued and repulsed in equal measure. They kept staring at her with their dead eyes, barely registering her. She shrunk into herself and kept her eyes on the ground, avoiding eye contact. The last thing she wanted was to draw more attention to herself. She pulled the hood of the overcoat over her head as far as it would go. She gripped the sleeves in her hands for comfort. Luckily, she thought, the coat seemed to blend her in nicely with all the people wearing faded hoodies.

  She boarded the train, it was busy but not packed, she found a seat in the corner. She remembered thinking that the station was probably the worst part and things would improve. She was wrong, so wrong. As soon as the train travelled beneath the compound walls, a border which was indicated by a bright light on the tunnel wall, things got worse. Every station was falling apart yet packed full. Never in her life had she seen so many people, in such total destitution, crammed into such a small space. She had never heard so many languages, or heard so many cries, or seen such sick, deformed children: That was the worst part, along with the smells. She would never forget the smells… She was holding her vomit down as the carriage heated up and more and more people piled on top of her. There was no air con at these platforms, not like the platform where she boarded. It was devastating. No wonder the teachers and their parents had told them not to leave the safety of the compound. She had always assumed it was due to a high crime rate, not this! This was worse. She was trapped inside a cloud of rot, decay, and desperation. Complete and total degradation all around her. It was morbidly fascinating. She wanted to cry, and stare, and scream, and stare. Still, the worst was yet to come. When the train emerged into sunlight, somewhere near one of the Estates, the true depth of the situation hit her: The masses, the poverty, the sunburn, the sickness, the death. She was frozen into her seat. She couldn’t move. Her eyes were fixated on the alien world outside the train. She was dumbstruck, overwhelmed. She didn’t move. She couldn’t move. She just waited for the train to reach the end of the line and take her back to the compo
und. Now she knew why the tube stop and all the tunnels beneath them would be filled up with concrete as soon as the shuttles linking the compounds were finished. There would be no need for the elite to ever venture outside the compounds ever again and see this! What then for the people outside? She already knew the answer. She shivered.

  On her way back into the compound, the soldiers gave her the oddest look as she emerged into view out of the crowds at the station turnstile borders. She scanned her microchip at the entry-point. The barrier automatically opened. She passed. The soldiers stopped her. They clearly didn’t trust her. They checked her neck for recent scarring. They rescanned her with a handheld device.

  “You know we’re supposed to call our boss if one of you kids gets out there,” one of them said.

  Sadie just stared up at him, lip wobbling, eyes watering, unable to say a thing.