Michelle Muckley - The Dawn - The Bombs Fall

The first double bell sounded, the end of breakfast. Zack made his excuses to Leonard, which fell upon a sombre mood thanks to a combination of his own doing and his exclusion from the Omega Lottery, and headed down to level twenty.

Zack waited about five feet away from the stairway, turning a pebble-like piece of glass around in his pocket. There was no chance of missing Ronson from here. Although there was no such thing as late anymore, because nobody had any idea what the time was, there was still that feeling of urgency in the execution of a plan well made. Several Guardians had passed him and he had tried to look casual. Some of them he thought he knew, some of them he was sure he didn’t. The stairway from level nineteen that led to level twenty had always seemed to Zack an obvious place to position a Guardian if they had really wanted to prevent people getting into Delta Tower from the sublevels below. But there was never one there. It made him believe that the bidirectional filtering of people both up and down was an accepted fact of Delta life. An essential part of it. Delta provided clothes, a bed for most, and a ration of water and food. It enabled you to survive. But to live is not only to survive. To live is to feel, to experience. To enjoy, to love, to belong. These were lost senses in Delta, and the underclass that dwelled beneath their city in the sublevels and occasionally filtered above ground, had done something to restore them.

It was true that those people who dwelled in the sublevels beneath the scorched land suffered. There were post-war diseases, and many of the children got thyroid cancer. Zack couldn’t look at them as they pottered around unaware of the significance of their swollen necks. Others, like the boy in the bar the night before, had bad teeth. Once Zack had seen a baby born down there. He had arrived towards the end of a six hour struggle. There was another man there. A doctor. Zack’s first thought had been one of hope. He imagined the excitement of a new child and the celebrations that would ensue. The only time that pain didn’t seem to matter. But as soon as Zack saw the child he knew it wasn’t good. The child was blue, the cord stuck around its neck. The man claiming to be a doctor turned to Zack and said I can’t do anything. I just can’t do anything.

The mother held the child until it died, blood pouring out of her, seeping into the trousers of the doctor as he kneeled in front of her. She kept saying over and over My baby. My baby . Zack held the woman close to him, tried to warm her whilst the doctor worked to save her. Zack knew she was dying from the way her breathing weakened, a sort of innate human knowledge because he had never seen anybody die before. He wasn’t sure which of them died first. Afterwards he and the doctor carried them outside, dropped them into the ashes of their old world. It was the only time he stepped into the dust left behind from the war, before the exits were boarded up. It didn’t matter to him that it might be this very act that would eventually take his own life in the years to come. He gazed out across the barren dust-covered wasteland, the only sound the wind and their feet on the ground. He knew in that moment, when he saw the ruins of the old world, that there was nothing left for him but Delta. He didn’t go beneath the surface of the ground for what were probably years after that.

He caught the first glimpse of the deerstalker hat coming into view. Zack moved towards the door and as Ronson walked through it he wedged the pebble of broken glass in the locking mechanism. He held the door until it rested onto the glass stopper and then scooped his hand around Ronson’s waist. “Just keep walking,” Zack said as they paced along the corridor. “That door will stay like that. Pull the glass out on your way back, ok?” Ronson nodded.

“I don’t think much of your contact, Zack,” Ronson said, puffing as they walked alongside each other. His hands were fidgeting with the edge of the hat to ensure that the scar was covered.

“Who?”

“That Guardian, Sam. Right full of himself, he is. Asked me what business I had going up where I didn’t belong. Told him to ask you if he had any problems. Don’t know if you’re going to be in trouble.”

“No, I won’t be,” said Zack, an angry fist forming in his pocket. “It’ll be Sam that regrets it when he doesn’t get his water supply topped up any time soon. Sorry about that. He is kind of an ass.”

“All of the Guardians are. Anyway, I don’t care. It’s worth it. Fresh water. It’ll be like heaven.” Zack could see that they both coveted the next step up. The lottery had infiltrated his thoughts since the announcement by Daley Cartwell, the only thing close to a celebrity in New Omega. As much as he wished that he could be satisfied with his present life, and as much as he tried not to compare it with the past, it was impossible. Zack watched Ronson as his head twitched left and right, taking in the details of the building, his fascination with the walls, the ceiling, the buzz of the lights, no matter how broken they were. It must be his first time above ground. As Ronson approached the first door, his hand was outstretched metres in advance, ready and excited to grip the handle and turn it. A mechanism that worked, as it was intended. Something that had survived. He even glanced back as they passed through the door and neared the water treatment plant. Ronson dreamt of a life as good as this. And yet for Zack this place was like a prison, somewhere he was trapped without options. His entrapment in Delta felt like his punishment, his penance for the wrong that he had done in the moments before the bombs fell. The wrong that he never got a chance to undo. The thought that this could all be behind him soon was like a hallucinogenic drug, heavy on the tongue and rich in fantasy. But it wasn’t just the new surroundings he craved. It was forgiveness. A chance to forgive himself. To be free from Delta would mean that the chains that bound him here were removed, shattered, and he could begin to leave his past mistakes behind. Every one of his dreams could be tied up in a single thought. Omega. He traced his finger over the marking on his wrist, the numbers eight, six, five, and two. Preceded by a sign. A small black triangle. Delta. His mark of captivity.

The last stretch of the corridor was heavily laden with Guardians. Water was a precious resource, and one worth fighting over. Blood had been spilt in Delta tower over water. Water was Delta’s job. Water filtration and supply to all other towers. Every tower had a responsibility. Zack turned to Ronson as they rounded the corner. “You scrub up all right, you know that?” Zack could see that Ronson’s natural instinct was to keep his head down, but this statement made him look up, made him consider the idea that he could still pass for something near human.

“I do?”

“Chin up, Ronny,” Zack whispered. “You belong here, remember? Don’t give the game away.” Zack gave Ronson a slap on the back, let out a laugh that ground its way out from the pit of his stomach as if they were discussing something else. “And yeah, you do.” Zack nodded at the final Guardians, their agreement to turn a blind eye already cemented in place from the many trades before.

Zack pushed open the door to the water treatment plant. Ronson stared at the three giant pipes rising up along the far wall. Attached to each was a series of taps, all locked behind a reception desk boarded up with wired glass. There was a gate at the side that opened with an electronic grunt when Zack punched in a key code.

“Won’t be long before others arrive. Hand me the card.” Ronson fumbled in his pocket, his fingers clumsy with nervous excitement. “Thanks,” Zack said as he took it from him. He pushed it into a card reader, and the name Boris Matthews shone in tiny yellow LED dots. Zack pulled a large plastic container from underneath the counter and positioned the opening up to the tap behind him. After a couple of clicks on the computer they heard the rumble of water cascading against the plastic.