She frowned. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”
“I want to explore the city,” I said. I couldn’t tell her the truth. She’d never let me go then.
“You won’t be allowed to do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s too dangerous out there with all the evil Skel hiding in the ruins,” she said.
“So no one is ever allowed outside?”
“Only the foragers.”
“What are foragers?” I asked. Hope blossomed in my heart. Maybe I had to become a forager.
“Foragers go into the ruins to collect paper, plastic and metals and bring them back to be recycled and used in our factories.”
"Then I want to become a forager when I grow up, Mother.” I declared.
“Girls aren't allowed to be foragers.”
“Why not?”
“You know why, Daughter. It’s because men are the only ones allowed to work.”
“That’s not fair.” I pouted.
“It’s nothing to do with fair, Daughter. The Founders taught that men and women are different and therefore have different roles to play. When the men work and the women manage the home and raise the children, there is less conflict in the home, and in society as a whole. It was common for both men and women to work before the terrible war that destroyed the world. As a result, the children felt neglected, behaved badly, did poorly in their studies, and became troubled grownups.”
I didn’t understand Mother’s explanation, but I did remember hearing the Chancellor saying something similar during the Solidarity Festival last month.
I dropped the issue then, but Brandon and I never forgot what that creepy old man told us. From that day forward, we never used our high voices again. And we were careful not to let on that we could hear what our parents said when we’d gone to bed, what our neighbours said when they argued next door, even the ultrasonic sound waves bats made when they flew outside our window at night.
I lived in mortal fear of the brutal Custodians, the town’s paramilitary police force. They were renowned for their heavy-handed approach to carrying out the law.
I was eight when I saw them apprehend a woman trying to hide a baby with a cleft lip. It was a Saturday morning, and my grandmother and mother had taken my brother, sister, and me shopping in the market. Brandon and I were playing eye-spy when a young woman ran past us, crying out for someone, anyone to help her.
Five heavily armed Custodians were hot on her heels, shoving aside anyone who got in their way. Eager to catch sight of the fleeing woman, I hesitated too long before moving to get out of one burly Custodian’s path. He clipped me on the way past, knocking me onto my back while he lost his balance and landed heavily on one knee beside me.
“Stupid girl!” he shouted, pulling back a fist to smack me out of his way.
But my twin brother, a mere grasshopper compared to the large man, jumped between us and stared the man down, daring him to hit him instead. As soon as it was apparent no blow was coming, Brandon dragged me quickly behind mother, who just realised what happened.
Scowling and muttering under his breath, the Custodian joined his fellows and helped them corner the mother with the baby. When she refused to hand the child over, the Custodian struck her on the side of her head with the butt of his gun, knocking her to the ground. Dozens of bystanders – my family included – watched helplessly as the crying baby and his wailing mother, her face covered in blood, were hauled away. We knew the child would not see out the day.
Needless to say, when I hit my teenage years, I began looking for an opportunity to escape, lest I end up sharing that baby’s fate. And now, finally, one had presented itself.
I wished I could run away with my brother. In fact, we originally planned to escape the town together, but after he started foraging and struck up a friendship with his teammates, he changed his mind.
I was on my own.
* * *
Father had a few beers too many during dinner. I could tell by the sound of deep breathing emanating from his room that he fell asleep as soon as he hit the sack.
I wasn’t so lucky with my mother and sister. It took Karen an hour to fall asleep, and I had to wait until sometime past midnight for Mother to join her. Like most flats in Newhome, we had two bedrooms. One for the males and one for the females. Sons slept with their fathers, and daughters with their mothers. Several times in my younger years, I was woken by the sound of my father coming to my mother’s bed, but those are not memories I want to revisit. And as far as I could tell, that practice ceased quite a few years ago. Thankfully.
I waited another hour to make sure Mother was sound asleep and crept quietly out of bed. Then I fetched the notebook I’d been working on for years, recording escape plans and what to do once out of the town. In it I listed all the things I needed to take with me, how to masquerade as my brother, notes on how he talked and walked, his workmates names, how to grow and care for vegetables and fruit trees, even first aid.
Slipping into Father’s bedroom, I turned on his bedside table lamp and took a quick glance at the notebook.
I hurried over to my brother’s chest of drawers and pulled out a pair of baggy jeans, t-shirt, loose fitting hoodie, fingerless leather gloves, socks, runners, and one of his trademark baseball caps. Fortunately, Brandon and I were the same height, of similar build, and had the same shade of strawberry blonde hair. That’s why I figured I had a good chance of pulling this off. I couldn’t believe I was actually going to do this. It felt surreal, like a dream.
I grabbed one of Brandon’s spare backpacks and his foraging pass, which he kept in the top drawer of his bedside table.
Having everything I needed, I moved quietly for the door, catching sight of Father as I passed his bed. Even asleep, he looked troubled, tossing and turning, face twitching and eyelids moving rapidly. I wish I knew what terrified him today.
I mouthed a silent “Goodbye, Father,” wondering if he would miss me. Would he see my disappearance as one less mouth to feed, or not even notice?
As I studied him, a memory sprang unbidden to mind.
Brandon and I were five, and were in the lounge-room with Father. He’d taken us shopping at the market and bought my brother a minigolf set that had caught his eye months ago. They stood at each end of the room, batting the plastic golf ball back and forth. My brother giggled his head off every time he hit the ball.
Father bought me something too. A set of sparkling plastic bangles that cost about the same as the minigolf set. I wore half the bracelets on each wrist, and was walking up and down the lounge-room, delighting in the way they glittered in sunbeams that shone through the windows.
A heart-warming smile rested on Father’s face as he played with my brother and watched me strut about with the bangles. I’d never seen him happier.
Suddenly the front door thrust open and Grandmother and Mother walked in, carrying bags of groceries. As soon as my mother caught sight of Father, her face clouded over.
“You’re back,” Father said amicably.
“What are you doing, playing something like that in here? You’ll break my China!” she snapped. Then she caught sight of my bangles and she grimaced in disgust. She strode over to me, yanked them off my arms, and flung them in the bin. I glanced at my father, tears cascading down my cheeks, hoping he would come to my defence.
“Do not waste our money on rubbish, Husband!” she said. “The Founders taught us a woman's beauty should come from her inner self and her actions, not from baubles and trinkets!”
The light that shone from my father’s face as he played with us went out, and he retired to his room, crestfallen.
Tears fell as the memory slipped away. I realised my father’s change in character wasn’t only from the accident and the ensuring three months he spent in prison. My mother’s endless tirade of criticism and disapproval wore away at him over the years, chipping away at his person, his individuality, his character. Long before the a
ccident, he had already faded from life, and from us. The accident and what followed were merely the straws that broke the camel’s back.
Sniffing back tears, I retreated to the kitchen and grabbed a couple of Brandon’s plastic foraging bottles. Their filters strained out silt and dirt when filled with water from natural water sources. I also grabbed three slices of bread left over from dinner, encased them in cling wrap, and nabbed a bag of dried fruit. I popped everything in the backpack, and then crept back to my room, where I added a bag with the assortment of seeds I collected over several years. Pumpkin, carrot, turnip, parsley, wheat, orange, mandarin, and apple seeds, to name a few.
My plan was to find an abandoned farm in the country, plant the seeds, and make a life for myself. Until those seeds produced an edible harvest, I would have to live off the land. Brandon told me what wild fruits and berries to look out for in the bush, even bringing samples back so I knew what they looked like. I don’t know how long I planned to live alone. Maybe once I had settled in, I would scout around to see if I could locate any small towns or villages that had managed to avoid the Skel by sticking together.
Finally, I added a few rolls of toilet paper and sanitary pads, and then hid the bag and the clothes under my bed.
I stood there for a moment, looking at the sleeping forms of my mother and sister, just visible in the pale moonlight coming through the cracks in the worn, floral print curtains. It felt cruel to acknowledge it, but neither of them would miss me. All my mother had ever done, as long as I could remember, was criticise and put me down. She seemed to carry a massive chip on her shoulder against everyone and everything. Except Brandon, perhaps.
I was never close to my sister, either, partly because we had absolutely nothing in common, but mostly because Brandon and I lived in our own world most of the time.
Thinking of Brandon, I was sure going to miss him. Our deep and meaningful conversations, camaraderie, the ability to know exactly what each other was thinking without saying a word. Downhearted, I climbed into bed and tried to sleep.
Chapter Four
Such was my state of mind that I didn’t fall asleep until the sun rose, at which point my mother shook me awake a few minutes later.
“Up you get,” she said.
“I’m not feeling too well,” I groaned. It was true. I felt emotionally and mentally exhausted from having had little sleep.
“Are you sick?” Mother asked.
“I feel terrible.”
I could feel Mother glaring at me. “Get up as soon as you’re able.”
She woke Karen, who dutifully climbed out of bed to attend to her morning duties. “What about her?” she asked as she followed Mother from the room.
“Not feeling well. Apparently.”
“She was fine last night.” Karen frowned at me, not wanting extra kitchen duties.
“Quit fussing and help me get breakfast. Your father will be awake soon.”
I slipped out of bed after they closed the door, and to the sounds of my family preparing breakfast, became my brother, following the steps laid out in my notebook.
The first thing I did was bind my breasts flat. Fortunately, I wasn’t abundantly blessed in that department; otherwise, I would have been in trouble. After that, I dressed in Brandon’s jeans, t-shirt and hoodie.
Next problem was my hair, which was a good six inches longer than his was. It required some amount of dexterity, but I soon trimmed it to the right length. That done, I tied my hair into a ponytail, put on the baseball cap, and pulled the hair through the hole at the back. This was the way my brother wore his hair, which was lucky for me, because it was easy to imitate. I would keep the cap pulled low to hide the large purple birthmark above my left eye and to shield my face. Not that hiding my face particularly mattered, because I was the female version of my brother anyway. All the same, if anyone who knew him got a good look at my face, they might see through my ruse.
To complete the transformation, I had to dirty myself up. Since he was a forager, it didn’t matter how often Brandon showered and scrubbed, he was never entirely clean. I went over to one of the potted plants on the windowsill, and using a mirror, smudged dirt on my face. Next, I scraped dirt under my fingernails and into the grooves around their edges. My fingers were finer than his were, but once I put my hands in the fingerless gloves, I doubted anyone would notice.
Checking my appearance in the full-length mirror in the wardrobe, I was shocked. I really did look like Brandon. The loose fitting clothes concealed my feminine figure, and with the cap and dirt, I believed I could pass myself off as him for a few hours. That was all I needed to make my escape.
Not wanting my family to fret because they didn’t know what happened to me, I wrote them a short note:
Dear Family, please don’t worry about me – I’m OK. I’ve impersonated Brandon today and will run away in the ruins while foraging. Don’t take it personally; I’ve been looking for a chance to escape for years. Brandon will explain more when he comes home. Love, Chelsea.
I hid the note under Mother’s mattress, so she would find it when she washed the sheets on Sunday. That done, I skimmed through my notebook to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, and then popped the book in the backpack.
Now I had to escape the flat without anyone seeing me. Having enhanced hearing at times like this was a bonus. I waited until I heard Father go to work and the sound of my mother and sister returning to the kitchen to have their breakfast. Then I made my move.
I exited the bedroom and moved as furtively as I could, darting through the lounge-dining room and slipping out the front door. As I stood on the walkway outside, it hit me that I was embarking on a foolhardy venture guaranteed to fail.
There I was, a young woman, outside my apartment and without a chaperone. It felt completely inappropriate; going against everything I’d been taught. Waves of guilt and tangible physical discomfort washed through me. Newhome law stipulated that girls and younger women – women under thirty-five – were not permitted outside without a suitable minder. This would normally be their mother, mother-in-law, or one of the men of the family. This was done to protect women, preserve their reputation, and prevent men and women falling prey to sexual temptation. Those who committed adultery or fornication were executed or consigned to hard-labour prison-factories.
Standing on the walkway, I felt exposed and self-conscious, convinced that everyone in the adjacent apartments as well as the two men behind me, knew I wasn’t actually a guy, but a girl in disguise. I froze on the doorstop and held my breath as a middle-aged man from several doors down caught up to me. He was dressed in a black business suit that had seen better days and his grey eyebrows needed trimming. I kept my head forward and my gaze averted, but my hands shook so severely that I had to grip the doorknob to hide it.
This is so not going to work!
“Morning, Brandon,” the man said as he passed me, inclining his head slightly.
“Hey,” I replied in my deepest, most Brandon-like voice.
Yes! He bought my ruse! He thought I was my brother! Maybe I could pull this off after all?
I hefted my backpack over my shoulder and followed the man towards the elevator, concentrating overtime as I struggled to walk like a guy. I tended to sway my hips slightly when I walked, which most definitely would not do.
The apartment blocks, which housed most of Newhome’s inhabitants, were ugly ten storey affairs. They had flat roofs with open walkways on one side and windows on the other. They were constructed in great rows, one after the other.
It wasn’t like that for the more fortunate people who lived in the walled off exclusive district of North End. Their apartment blocks, which towered over the wall that divided North End from Newhome Proper, were a beauty to behold. They were constructed from red, brown, and black bricks and tiles rather than ugly slabs of grey concrete.
Only the V.I.P.s and their families lived in North End. That included the Chancellor, councillors, geneticists, sci
entists, other council officials and senior business managers. And their families, of course. It was said they had no curfew, better schools, playgrounds, cinemas, even colour-brick roads! It was even rumoured that if you were able to attain a high enough position in a Newhome Proper vocation, you could earn a free ticket into North End.
Taking the elevator down, I took care to keep my cap down and gaze averted. All the same, I almost bumped into two guys loitering outside our building. One was slightly obese and towered head-and-shoulders above me. The other was just shy of six-foot, with swept back greying hair and a neat goatee.
I stepped around them and continued on my way. When I passed the next block of flats, I scowled at the massive billboard mounted on the wall facing.
‘Report the Mutant!’ read the caption in bold, red lettering over three-feet tall. The accompanying image depicted a man with a cleft lip as well as six fingers and toes. He looked mournfully at his two children, a young boy and girl, who were tarnished with the same deformities. They stared dejectedly back at him, their pitiful lives the result of no one having had the courage to turn him into the authorities before he procreated. The sign’s message was clear – if mutants were not dobbed in, their children would pay the price.
How I loathed that billboard! Cleft lips were correctable with surgery, and so what if they had six fingers and toes? That was a bonus as far as I was concerned – just think of the advantage that would give them with improved grip, balance, and dexterity. The father and his children were in no way less human than normals, and had just as much right to live peacefully as everyone else. I utterly resented the town’s practice of terminating unborn babies, children or adults found with mutations.
I forced my mind onto more positive thoughts and continued to the Recycling Works. My brother had given me an impromptu guided tour of the town last week when we turned eighteen and it had granted him the authority to act as my chaperone. One of the places he took me was his work, which was perfect timing, as I now knew where it was. Unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed to show me inside the facility.
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 74