Michelle Muckley - The Dawn - The Bombs Fall

“I wouldn’t either,” said Zack. “I was on my way back down from level forty nine.” The other men nodded. They all understood. They all understood the need to dream. What else were they doing here, spending credits on tattoos rather than medicine or water?

They managed to get a few drops more into Billy’s mouth, although Zack was sure that he hadn’t swallowed any of them. All tattoo application was put on hold, much to the protest of those in line. The third double bell rang and Zack was forced to return to the water treatment plant for the second shift. He still had to see what was left for Epsilon Tower. The tattoo artist, who Zack had judged to have performed well in the guise of tower doctor, told him that it was best if he left anyway. There was no point staying. Zack offered to take his card with him, get it topped up for extra rations, and the tattoo artist seemed more than happy with the arrangement. He handed over his ration card and continued to drip feed Billy.

Zack had always thought it was pointless to bring a child in Delta. He believed that the daily life of New Omega wasn’t worth sharing with future generations. What were they trying to create now? Didn’t parents want the life of their child to be better than theirs? Wasn’t that the point? In Delta Tower there was nothing left to offer other than a selfish dream of a time gone by. The war had made life irrelevant. Unnecessary. Hadn’t it? He wondered if in a hundred years time when all those alive before the war were gone, if the few citizens left in Delta Tower or New Omega would find life here acceptable. Would it be possible to live like this, if they had never known any better?

Holding Billy in his arms had made Zack question his beliefs. It was the first time in years that he had held a child. A living one, at least. He had felt Billy’s pulse, his breath on his skin, as faint as they both were. It was real life, unmarked by a number and still full of all the same potential that used to exist when life was free. Zack had felt that life slipping away from him as he had ran with Billy in his arms. Real life being lost. A human life of love and pain and hurt and joy and all the other confusing emotions that he had tried to avoid before the bombs had fallen. That afternoon he made his checks, added vitamin A and Zinc to the water vats as indicated and fulfilled ninety percent of the Epsilon order. Not bad. But his mind stayed elsewhere. It was on Billy. It was on Billy’s parents and how they had abandoned him. It was on Samantha and the last phone call that they had shared half an hour before the bombs fell, when she had told him that he had to face the fact that she was carrying his child. His mind was stuck on how, at the moment when he had two choices, he had chosen the wrong one, and how now he was left with no choice or chance to put it right.

When he opened the door to the sick bay after the triple bell there was a man on the couch getting a tattoo. He was gritting his teeth and Zack remembered the pain when he had been marked on the wrist. When he had been reduced to nothing more than a number.

“How is he doing?” Zack said before he was even through the door. He held up the ration card and handed it to the tattoo artist. Zack took the normality of the environment as a good sign. The tattoo artist switched off his gun and set it down on the small wheelie table at his side. He took the card and slipped it in his pocket.

There is a certain look on a person’s face when they are about to deliver bad news. Some would describe it as pity, others might say sorrow. There is a tightness of the lips as if they are being forced to stay shut, the eyes and jaw too, locked so as not to allow your own emotion to creep through. To stay strong. Sometimes a person’s mouth gets over-active and starts to produce too much saliva, as if they are trying to digest something. In some ways of course, they are. Some people fiddle with their hands, making circles with one thumb around the base of the other, or their palms travel over their arms in search of a way to self-soothe. There are many giveaways for this kind of anguish. But by contrast, and exactly like the tattoo artist, sometimes those burdened with bad news simply don’t do or say anything. Their silence is enough.

“What is it?” asked Zack.

“I’m really sorry.” The tattooed first aider was standing up, pulling at the base of his T-shirt. “Really I am.” For a few moments, no words passed between them. Zack knew that Billy hadn’t made it. The others in the room had no idea what was going on and they looked left and right, first at Zack, then at the would-be doctor. Zack could feel his mouth drying, his head beginning to ache as the tears formed, along with the painful blockage in his throat. In the end the man with the face of a Maori warrior, who ultimately had lost the battle, picked up the tattoo gun and set to finishing the tattoo. The others who were waiting didn’t know what had happened and stared at Zack, motionless in the middle of the room, his eyes swollen and red. They were confused, because nobody here got sad anymore. There was nothing to lose in Delta that could ever hurt so much.

Zack nodded and turned to leave the sick bay. Nobody uttered a word. Zack didn’t see the tattoo artist kick his chair out from underneath him and walk into the back room to compose himself. Zack stepped into the nearest lift and pressed the button for thirtieth, but when the lift arrived he didn’t get out. Instead he waited for the doors to close on their own before pressing the button for level forty nine. He stepped out of the lift, darker now than before. He circled the floor until he found what he was looking for on the north side of the tower. A mass of broken buildings. Somewhere in the rubble that smothered the foundations, were the remains of Samantha’s apartment. He thought of Samantha’s hands on his skin and the smell of her hair. The memory of his mistakes blurred with the dust outside as it whipped up on the breeze from the remains of the broken life. The life he had been offered by her and which he had told her was impossible. He thought of the last words he ever said to her, and realised for the first time in his life that he finally understood how she must have felt on that day when he told her that it was unimaginable that they would go ahead with the pregnancy. That he wasn’t ready for fatherhood. That they would have to find a good doctor. His eyes settled on a pile of dirt that might or might not have been the place in which she died, and reminded himself that Delta Tower was a lesson, a punishment for a crime that he had dared to commit.

His head hung low, propped up against a feeble hand as he hunched over the bar in NAVIMEG. Ronson set a drink down as he saw Zack walk in, and he spoke to Zack too. No doubt something chipper and amusing in his usual style. But Zack hadn’t heard it and he paid the beaker of Moonshine no attention. At one point Ronson offered him a small puckered tablet, but again Zack did nothing. The sight and smell of the Mess Room on level forty eight was still too fresh in his mind, and he didn’t want to be any part of it. Zack huddled over the bar, his nose picking up the alcohol tinged scent of the drink, and he closed his sodden eyes to shut out the world.

Behind his eyelids, ideas and images of his life played out. His university days and Samantha, her blond hair cut into a bob, a blunt fringe that in his mind always made her seem kinky, and a bit like a stripper. He thought about how she used to lie at his side without any concern for her naked body, her weight balanced on a single elbow. She would lean over him, trace her finger along the ridge of his nose whilst whispering promises that she would love him forever into the curves of his ear. Sometimes she would let her finger drop down over the ridge of his chin, trace it over his chest, but Zack could never stand it and always ended up in fits of giggles. He knew that Samantha was the woman who he could have loved even after her beauty had faded. He would have loved her just for who she was. Sometimes he still tried to imagine her, perhaps living in Zeta Tower, or Alpha Tower. Even Omega. But he knew that she wasn’t there. It was impossible. She would have been in the building to the north of Delta when the bombs landed. The one that he was no longer sure that he could find. He tried to imagine her last moments, the speed of it, that she was right under a bomb when it exploded so that she wouldn’t remember a thing. But the idea of her surviving for hours or days, burnt and hungry before death finally clawed into her, was another possible reality. He had seen those bodies. He had seen their charred, dust-covered remains. He had looked for her face amongst the bodies on the one and only time that he had ventured outside. He had seen shapes that he was sure were human underneath the layers of dust. He had seen their bloated bodies in the water filters. He was grateful that he had never found her.