The Dawn: Omnibus edition (box set books 1-5) Page 7

  After the second double bell, the signal for the end of shift one, Zack didn’t take the lift. Instead he walked through the corridors, past the amblers, past those with nothing to do, until he reached the stairway. There were two stairways in Delta Tower. The first, and largely abandoned, was the stairway by which Ronson had illegally entered Delta Tower at the start of the first shift. Until the twentieth floor nobody used this stairway, and when he had walked up it last week to ensure that it was still passable he was surprised at how untouched it felt. There was dust everywhere, and each step took his breath away as the particles from underneath his feet floated into the atmosphere, disturbed perhaps for the first time in years. There were layers of paint which had been punched like inverted Braille along the walls where furniture had been dragged up, the feet of the beds drilling the story of Delta Tower into the Duck Egg blue walls that once looked so crisp and clean. Some of the glass banisters had been shattered in the same incident, and some of them had been destroyed when the ground shook and the sky lit up.

  Zack took the other stairway. On the final turn before floor fifty there was a series of yellow tapes with a sign attached. It read, No admittance, danger of exposure. It was the only warning needed. The doors were locked, at least that was what Zack had heard, but nobody he knew had ever ventured up there. He had been up there once, before the war. From the viewing deck there was an enviable outlook to the river and the gardens below, and from the right corner on a clear day you could see the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. The silver barriers were high enough that it didn’t feel like a risk, even when you were close enough to look over the edge. The pyramid roof of Delta Tower rose high up above, and at night when it glowed golden like a beacon it was almost as impressive as one of the great pyramids of Giza. Zack used to look at it from his apartment. But the Omega Tower personnel had sealed off level fifty and the roof as a no-go zone. There had been rumours that the roof had blown almost clear off, but Zack was sure that the water supply for the whole of Delta Tower used to be stored in that pyramid so there was little chance of it being true.

  Zack pushed open the doors to level forty nine. There were a few people up there, always the same faces. Some of the people who came here did so out of denial. They would stand here day after day hoping that they would see something different. But they never did. Zack came here for different reasons.

  He walked towards the wall of glass. Those close to him moved away. Privacy with the old world was a respected moment. People didn’t come here for company, and they knew nobody else wanted it either. They came here for a one-on-one with what was left of their past. A chance to look at an ex-partner and ask for help in understanding the separation. Sometimes Zack came here to reflect, to think about those he left behind. Other times he just stared, allowing his eyes to travel over the peaks and troughs of the crumbling remains, as if his mind still hadn't accepted or processed what had happened. The vista was always the same. The view floated somewhere between day and night, but couldn’t be described as either dawn or dusk. It was something else that nobody knew from before. There was a greyness to the world, a bleakness that soaked everything in misery. The wettest drizzle-filled day from the old world a hundred times over. There was nothing of colour on which to focus your eye, no life to watch and enjoy, or laughter of a child to lighten a heavy mood. From where he stood he saw only flattened buildings, a decimated skeleton of the old city. It was an almost unrecognisable landscape save the odd feature that clung to the ground or burst through it. A charred tree, a small building whose wall had survived, or a distant pylon almost intact. In the distance he could see Zeta Tower, the lights of which always helped him orientate, like the red hand of a compass always telling him which way was north. He knew from the other side he would see Epsilon. He had heard rumours that there had been an incident in Gamma, and that somebody had got in from the outside and killed all the residents. Just rumours Zack guessed, like the roof of Delta. He thought maybe they had been started like a primitive form of law, an early religion whispered into terrified ears to help control the residents of the other towers.

  His stomach was grumbling but he ignored it. He had got used to controlling his biological urges. It was easy to control hunger when there was no hope of it being stemmed. As he rounded the north-western corner of the building he got his first glimpse. The giant tower of Omega standing strong in the distance, ablaze with light like a sunlit shard of mirror. It was a magnificent sight. There were more people here today staring at it, dreaming about a new life because of the lottery. It gave everybody a chance, at least in theory. He imagined more people would be here by the end of the day, a steady stream of escapists all desperate for a look at the host for their desires. Omega was like a blade bursting up through the ground as if the building itself had decided to cut through the earth, slice it open and pierce through like a unicorn's horn. It was covered in glass, just like Delta, and the lights were always on. Unless you wanted them turned off. Then you could make a choice. In Omega there were choices that simply didn’t exist for the people who lived in Delta. He looked out across the miles between the life he had and the life he craved. Every previous lottery had brought with it the same masochistic hope, each time obliterated, leaving him feeling more desperate than ever he had before.

  He left level forty nine and walked down the stairs, his fingers trailing along the lines of Braille-like puncture wounds in the wall, dust clinging to his fingertips. Delta had been damaged, and maybe it had lost its roof if you believed the rumours, but it had stood firm enough. The blast had shaken it, just like it had the other remaining buildings, but it hadn’t torn it apart. There were nine of them left, including Omega. The rest of the city had been destroyed. Nobody knew by whom, but Zack didn’t think about it anymore. There wasn’t any point.

  “Excuse me,” said a quiet voice as Zack felt something pull at his trouser leg. He hadn’t seen the boy lying on the floor next to him, his head resting on the wall at an uncomfortable looking angle. His limbs were limp and pathetic, like broken and charred matchsticks. His stomach was swollen like a child of famine. So much for Creed Four. “Do you have any food?” the boy said.

  Zack bent down close to him. The smell arising from the boy's breath was hot and stale. Was he here when I went up the stairs? His lips were dry and cracked, and his head seemed swollen too. “I’m sorry, Champ. I haven’t got anything.” Zack reached down and picked up the boy's hand. It was tiny and shrivelled like the claw of a bird. “Where are your parents?”

  “I don’t know.” The voice was barely audible. Zack leaned in closer.

  “Where do you live?” Zack asked.

  “I don’t know,” the boy said again.

  “Your name? What’s your name?” Zack could feel the quickening of his heart beat, that feeling of responsibility coupled with absolutely no clue what to do.

  “Billy,” said the boy.

  “Billy?” Zack brought his hand up towards Billy’s head, which given the chance of support, succumbed to the soft cushion of his palm. “How did you get here? Where are your parents?” Zack asked again. He could see that the boy was almost asleep, and as his head sank into the flesh of Zack's arm his wrists flopped away from his lap. Zack reached down and picked up Billy’s right arm. He held it softly like one would cradle a baby. There were two small veins running along the surface of his wrist, and the skin hung as loose as a cloth across the bones and tendons. There was no number. No black triangle. He was a child born into disaster, born into a world where life didn't exist anymore, and where he was lying in a corridor with nobody to care for him. The Third Creed: No citizen of New Omega shall feel alone. The Fourth Creed: No Citizen of New Omega shall die of thirst or hunger. They didn't mean anything to the people of Delta Tower. Billy didn't say anything, and instead his eyelids fluttered closed, no energy left to hold them open.

  Zack burst through the doors of level forty eight. It was a different place to thirtieth. Nearly twenty floors up, and it was c
haos, each floor higher a descent into mayhem. There was rubbish in the public spaces, people asleep on the floor, and the smell was putrid. It was so hot in here and the smell of bodies was so rich that it hurt Zack's eyes. This place had been an advertising agency once, or so the sign would suggest.

  “Where are Billy’s parents?” Zack shouted to the nearest crowd of people, huddled in a group on the floor. The corridor was full of people hanging around, some sitting on the floor like the nearest group, others propped up on broken window sills in the place that glass should have been. But yet nobody answered. There was noise, a background hum, but there was an undercurrent of lethargy in the place. Apathy. “You,” he said, gripping the collar of the nearest man who was stumbling towards him. The man’s head was floppy like a ragdoll, his eyes glazed, his smile fixed. “Do you know a kid called Billy?” The man didn’t say anything. Instead he just rolled. He rolled backwards, his eyes rolled in his head, he rolled on his trip. Is that what I look like when I do drugs? He asked himself as he let go of the man, who it seemed didn’t even know he had been touched.

  He moved forwards, his feet negotiating the carpet of legs and dirty blankets. With his breath held and throat tight, he pushed open the doors to the Mess Room. Every floor had one. He didn’t go into the one of thirtieth much. He preferred to go up to level forty nine and look out of the windows and get lost in the silence and an occasional memory. “Where are the Guardians?” he said into the air. He realised that not only was the noise different to the other levels, but the only sounds that he could hear were human in origin. It was the hum of chatter, deals, and trades. The television next to him had been smashed, and as he looked along the corridor he noticed that the others too had been damaged and no longer worked. One was hanging from its brackets. Only one of them was still working but even that was without the sound. Then his eyes settled on the only Guardian in sight. He was dressed in the white uniform, the black epaulets and black boots. The cap and balaclava were discarded at his side. This Guardian wasn't on patrol. He was slouched up against the wall with a woman's head in his lap. Both of them high, Zack would guess.

  The smell of urine hung in the air and he could feel the filth settling on his skin. The room was crowded with office style armchairs, modern at the time of the war, dirty and pulled apart at the seams today. Some of them had been pushed together to form settees. There were coffee tables littered with pills and bottles that looked like water containers but he doubted that it was water in them. He picked one up, brought it up to his nose. Moonshine. No matter how far life on the other levels had fallen below what he would have once deemed acceptable, this place was something else. There was no order here anymore. He had heard that the upper levels were a mess, but he had never seen it for himself. Even the Guardian was a mess. And where were the others? He leant down to place the bottle back on the table and as he did so he saw another child, a bit smaller than Billy, sitting in the middle of the floor. It was a girl and she was almost naked, save some sort of nappy, a makeshift effort that was grey from dirt and appeared to be soaked through. Her hair clung to her scalp, slicked by grease to her forehead. She caught Zack's eye and she smiled and giggled as she said something, words that didn’t seem like language. She seemed too big for her age, like an oversized baby.

  “Where are Billy’s parents?” He crouched down, and the child reached out to him. He took her hand in his. “Do you know Billy?” Zack said to the girl.

  “Biwwy,” the girl mumbled.

  “Where are his parents? Do you know them?” he said pulling her hand away from his cheek. He tried to tell himself it wasn't because she was dirty. That it was just haste that forced him back. “Tell me where they are.”

  The girl pointed in the direction of the nearest chairs. There were several men and woman all asleep or passed out, their limbs interwoven and tangled like weeds. There was a layer of smoke in the air, smoke that refused to filter away because there was nowhere for it to filter to. He stood upright, moved towards the bodies. There was a woman lying on the other side of the couch, spaced out and unresponsive. Zack coughed as the smoke hit the back of his throat. Where the hell had anybody got cigarettes from?

  “Wake up,” Zack shouted, nudging the woman with his fist. “Are you Billy’s mother?” She didn’t reply and seemed so flat that he felt the need to check for a pulse. He picked up her wrist and found her fingers to be even browner than his. He placed his fingertips against her tattooed skin until he felt something to prove she was alive. “Hey!” he shouted again, this time shaking her. She grunted and her face twisted as he gripped her arms. “Wake up!” he shouted as he slapped her across the face. Some of the other people in the Mess Room started to rouse. One of them spoke but Zack didn’t wait to listen to him. If this was Billy's mother she was good for nothing. She wasn't going to offer to help him. He tossed her arm side and stood up.

  “Biwwy bad,” said the girl on the floor. “Biwwy gone.” Zack felt an urge to pick her up, to take her with him. He had little parental instinct that he knew of and yet he felt drawn to her because to leave her here felt like a crime. He hesitated in the space between the child and door, before telling himself that Billy needed his attention more. He turned away from the girl, not knowing what else he could say to her. He paced up the corridor, avoiding the bodies on the floor. He thought of Ronson and how much he seemed to want to get into Delta, but Zack knew that he would rather live in the sublevels than on this level. He pushed open the door and Billy was still lying there.

  “Billy,” Zack said as he knelt down at his side. This time Billy didn’t respond when Zack shook him. Zack felt for a pulse. It was weak. He scooped Billy up, ignoring the smell of damp clothes. He charged down the stairs, his feet skipping two steps at a time. It was only a minute later that he arrived on level twelve.

  “You have to help this child!” Zack said as he swung through the doors of the sick bay, the nearest thing to a doctor or a hospital in Delta. There was a man lying on the couch getting a tattoo, another number on his wrist, an ode to the recently announced Omega Lottery. There were three people waiting in turn, all with their sleeves rolled up. Each one had their plastic card in hand, ready to hand over their credits for the bleak chance of a better life. “Do something!”

  The waiting crowd all turned to stare at the boy, hanging like a withered flower in Zack's arms. The man getting the tattoo jumped up from the bed, and after reminding the tattoo artist that he would have to finish the job afterwards, made room for the child. Zack laid Billy on the bed, his limbs dangling away from him like a puppet without its master, his eyes open but absent.

  “I’m not a doctor,” screamed the man, still holding the tattoo gun. He was staring at Billy. He looked scared. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “This is the sick bay!” Zack shouted. “You have to do something. You have been trained.”

  “I have been trained to dress a wound, put on a bandage. I might be able to clean a burn, but what can I do for him? Where did you find him?” The hands of the tattoo artist had started to shake. One of the men from the queue got up and slipped out of the door. Zack didn't see him leave.

  “I found him up on level forty eight. Just do something. Anything,” Zack pleaded. The tattoo artist put down his gun, and stood back.

  “On forty eight? And you bring him here? God knows what he's got.” He picked up a canister of water and unscrewed the lid. Zack assumed that he was about to give Billy a drink, but instead he raised the canister to his own lips. He took a gulp of the water before saying, “It's a right mess up there.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, which Zack saw was covered in a black and red tribal tattoo, the same as his face.

  Zack grabbed the man by the collar of his overall and shoved him against the far wall, the water spilling from the canister onto the floor. “Are you fucking serious?” Zack screamed, the tattooed man clamouring for the back of his head as it struck the cement behind him. Those waiting leapt from their seats. One of
them reached towards Zack and pulled him back by the arms. Zack shook him away as swiftly as he would bat a fly, and his arms flew free. “He'll die!”

  “Go easy, man. It's not like it's your kid.” The tattoo artist and would-be first aider, bigger and heavier set than Zack, put down his water canister and pushed Zack away before straightening up his clothes. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “He needs to drink,” said Zack turning to look at Billy. “His name is Billy. He is dehydrated.” Zack flopped back into the nearest seat, and the others who were waiting their turn inched away from the smell which he was carrying on his damp clothes. “He needs help. Kids need help.”

  Silence swallowed the room whilst everybody except for Zack stood staring at the child. One of them touched Billy's arm, picked it up like you might a rag under which you had trapped a spider. He let go of the arm and it flopped back onto the couch and Billy didn't flinch. The thud of the arm hitting the couch was enough to wake the tattoo artist from his trance. “Sit him up,” he said to the man with the half-finished tattoo. “Come on,” he said pulling on the sleeve of the reluctant would be Samaritan. “Help me.” Together they sat Billy up and began dripping water into his mouth. The facial tattoos made the first aider look like a Maori warrior. “He has to drink something,” he said, echoing Zack's sentiments. He held up the water bottle to Billy’s lips and a few drops passed into his mouth. He turned to Zack. “What were you doing up there? I wouldn’t go up there.”

  “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?