Tuesday, 14th July 2106
Seventeen Days Earlier
“But, why?”
Amelia Judson despaired; her youngest was very inquisitive, even for a little boy of his age. This conversation, or rather argument, ran more-or-less as follows:
“Why can’t I go with you?”
To which the answer, naturally, for any mother, let alone one like Amelia- who’d seen far too much evil in the world- was:
“Because you can’t, the cities are much too dangerous. Grown-ups only!”
“If it’s dangerous, why do you go?”
“Because we need to, there’re things there that we need.”
“What things?”
“You know, clothes, fuel, food, that sort of thing.”
“But why is that dangerous?”
“Well, sometimes there’re some not very nice people who live in the cities, and they don’t like people like us coming into their homes- well, not homes really, but their… territory. It’s a bit like those dogs we saw a little while ago, remember, they didn’t like us going near them because they thought the bit of ground they lived on was theirs and no-one else’s. It’s a bit like that.”
“Why do we go then?”
“Because we need to, I told you.”
Ben seemed to go quiet, mercifully, for a few seconds, before:
“But you let Josh go!”
Sighing, Amelia rolled her eyes, getting bored of hearing this tale now.
“I’ve told you, he was making it up! We’ve never taken Josh with us, he’s not old enough. Just like you, young man!”
“And you let Carly go!”
“Well, that’s because she’s older, sweetheart. Although she doesn’t really like going with us because she knows just how dangerous it is, as you should. Now, let’s hear no more talk about this, the subject is closed.”
“But why?”
Amelia heard Fred chuckle from behind her.
“You know he’s not gonna take no for an answer! I’m sure you were just as insistent when you were his age.” His disembodied voice entered the tent.
“Can’t remember, too long ago.” Amelia exited to find her husband outside attempting to fix the camp’s recently acquired back-up generator. While the main generator was still fully functioning, it never hurt to have another ready. In fact it frequently hurt to not, as the family had learned to their detriment too many times for their liking. “Look, d’you want to have a word with him, Fred, I’m not getting though.”
“Stop your worrying, woman. Carly was like that too once. Eager to get out of camp, to prove herself to us all, ‘take me too, take me too’. She stopped all that fast enough after Nottingham though, didn’t she?”
Amelia sat down next to him, perched on the end of the crudely carved bench. “Can you blame her, it was hardly an easy first city.”
“Meh, maybe it was a bit of a baptism of fire, but whose wasn’t? Besides, we both had difficult first cities, didn’t do us any harm.”
“Speak for yourself.” Amelia replied indignantly, tapping the long scar running down the side of her head.
Fred didn’t look at her, “Blame your father.”
“I do!”
“It was his idea to send you to Paris, the not-so-romantic holiday destination.” He paused, thinking, “How does he always put it?”
Amelia smiled, “‘The world smells of shit, Milly, and the sooner you get up to your neck in the stuff, the sooner you’ll get used to the stink.’ It was alright for him to say all that, he’s fought against the Bemroth, he’s actually done something with his life.” As soon as she’d finished, Amelia immediately wished she hadn’t opened her mouth. She knew exactly what would come next.
“Excuse me, you call risking his and his family’s lives doing something with it? How old were you exactly when they put out a capture-or-kill on Nathan, fourteen wasn’t it?”
“Fifteen, but that doesn’t matter.”
Fred was astounded, stopping what he was doing to look at his wife, “What do you mean it doesn’t matter? It doesn’t matter that his actions got his brother killed? Doesn’t matter that it got him locked up and tortured? And I suppose it doesn’t matter that what he did to that starport means we have to constantly keep on the move so they don’t find him and by extension, us?”
“Why does it always have to turn into an argument whenever we start talking about my dad?! He’s a good man, like his dad, they were brave enough to say no when no-one else would!”
“And where did that get them, exactly?”
Amelia stood up, “That’s cold, Fred, that’s cold.” As she walked away from him, she didn’t look back. She knew this argument wouldn’t go anywhere. It never had before.
Josh’s foot slipped again, the bark splintered and broke away under the worn soles of his feet. A few minutes later he had reached the top of the tree and had a clear view of the whole plain, wide, flat and empty lying before him, stained red by the setting sun. He had never known a static life, always on the move as the family travelled the length and breadth of the country. It wasn’t too difficult to stay incognito, the Bemroth weren’t everywhere. They journeyed cross-country mostly- the roads were all unsuitable from decades of disuse and decay- and on foot or by horse and cart as motor vehicles created too much noise, not to mention the expense. The remains of large towns and cities were always somewhat hazardous, but trespassing on them was a necessary evil, considering the resources that could be found there. The only part of the country that the family would always avoid, at all costs, was the area formerly known as London. Now it, and much of the surrounding area was known only as Juya Hem’Seywa, Bemrothic command city of this sector of Earth. None of the family had ever seen it, and none of them ever wished to.
“Is that you up there, Josh, mate?” Matt called to the teenager, “We’re closing up, you need to come down.” Josh said nothing, but from the sound of breaking branches, Matt assumed he heard. He knew his cousin liked to be alone, but it wasn’t safe for the family to be separated at night. Turning around to look at the camp, he saw that the cover was almost in place. It was a blacked-out canopy erected over the entire camp made from some unknown Bemrothic-manufactured material, designed to stop their lights attracting unwanted attention, Bemrothic, human, or otherwise.
As he turned back, Matt froze, eyes widened and fixed on a dog that had suddenly appeared, standing just behind the tree Josh was about to reach the foot of. He hadn’t seen it yet. Matt’s hand shot to his hip, hand frantically grasping for the gun that he had absent-mindedly left at camp. Swearing under his breath, he called to Josh in a hoarse whisper,
“Stop! Don’t move!”
“What?!” Josh began walking towards him.
The dog snarled, its maw of broken, yellow teeth bared at Josh. Before he could turn to look, the animal leaped, sinking its fangs into his arm. His screams echoed across the plain, bringing others from the camp running over, where Matt wrestled the dog off Josh, as it tore out a lump of his flesh, and snapped its neck.
“Get him to Harriet, quick!” Matt pushed the dog away as Joe escorted Josh back to camp. He looked down at the still animal. Its rib-cage was jutting out through its chest, it must have been driven almost insane from hunger. Matt closed its eyes.
“You’re a lucky boy. That dog wasn’t rabid.” Josh’s grandma and resident medic, Harriet dressed his wound, wrapping the final layer of bandage around his forearm. As he left her tent, Harriet looked to his father, Fred, who was waiting outside. “Well, that will be the last of our bandages and antiseptic.”
“It’s alright, mum, we’ll just have to make a visit to Norwich a little sooner than expected. Mariangela should have what we need.”
She coughed, her fragile frame shaking, “I hope so. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to-”
“That’s fine, you go back to bed, I’ll bring you your tea later.”
As the moon was reaching its apex, much of the family slept. A little distance from the tents though sat the others, gathered around the electric fire. Fred cleared his throat,
“Our visit to Norwich is going to have to be sooner than we thought. We all know we’re running dangerously low on certain things, and now that our medical supplies are almost gone, frankly it would be life-threatening if we delayed too much longer.” There were murmurs of unhappy agreement throughout the group.
“When’s the latest we can hold it off until?” Simone asked.
Fred turned to Amelia who replied, “After consulting with Jude and Matthew on the ammunition supply issue, and now with the medicine, I’d say we’d have to leave within the week.” She looked to the two men opposite her, “Would you agree?”
Both of them nodded. So little was spoken when it came visiting one of the cities. None of them went to sleep that night with easy thoughts. Everybody knew what they might have to face in that city, and despite his experience in the field, Jude could only think about the people that he knew he would have to kill that day. He would try to be humane, they were still human after all.
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