The Road To Utopia

There’s a rule in post-apocalyptia these days. It goes a little something like this. I’ll try to spin my best sales pitch.

Tired of fighting for your life every single day? Worried about the prolonged exposure to radiation? Feel the wasteland life just isn’t for you? Then there’s only one place to be! Utopia, the herald of a new age, the futuristic paradise humanity has been waiting for! It boasts a thriving ecosystem, a protective barrier from the Wastes and an ideal place to raise a family. The best place to live anywhere? You bet it is!

I suppose it’s a shame then, that a destitute, poverty stricken, misnamed shanty town called Haven surrounds it. Otherwise known as my home.

Murder and violence are the creeds which people live by there. Citizens often must fight to survive, sniffing for blood and substance like animals. The desperate, the craven and the depraved reign supreme.

Still, way better than the Wastes. It’s a real dog eat dog, abomination eat abomination, radiation eat everything world out there.

So, the rule applies. Death and taxes figuratively cripple, but it beats being caught in the middle of nowhere by a disgruntled wasteland creature that may actually cripple you. You’d rather pay off a warring drug lord than try to reason with a hungry predator out in the Wastes. You may hate Haven, you may hate the fact that the posters and the wandering merchants tricked you, and you may hate the fact that leaving is a death sentence. But one thing is abundantly clear. If you come to Haven you do not leave. Ever.

Enter me.

I left Haven in a whirlwind of tragedy and misadventure. For nine long years, I flitted from place to place like a moth attracted to a series of flickering lightbulbs, with only my trainer Keane for company, and even then, he sent me off eventually to fend for myself. I ran from hunters and creatures that must be seen to be believed. I saw horrors and darkness that cannot be described in words. I bruised, I bled, and I trained. Oh, I trained. I trained and trained. And then, after all that time, I came back. And you may not realise how mind boggling that is to any sane person out here. No one survives in the Wastes. No one thrives in them, unless they’re an animal, horribly mutated or both. But I did. And that’s where my story begins.

My name is Luke Cross, this is my story.

And it begins with a nightmare.

The dog was barking. A rough sound pierced the tranquil night, accompanied only by the chirp of insects and birds in the eve of morning. But not for a few more hours, the sun not yet peaking over the horizon. The dog was loud, scratching and howling, sure to wake the people of the village. And so, the boy took him out to calm him.

It started like this. Always started like this.

The cool air of the night rustled the boy’s second-hand clothing. A sown-up tracksuit and worn out trainers were the only protection from the cold, along with his brothers borrowed hoodie. A loyal hand me down, or hand over. They swapped clothes so often it was hard to tell.

The boy ran with his mutt, whipping through fields of corn and wheat, their pitfalls squelching in the mud beneath. Any other boy would have struggled to maintain the beast’s pace, but not this one. This one was strong, this one was fast. This one was different.

The dog stopped in front of him, his tongue shaking as he panted, his tail wagging as his master leant beside him, equally as exhausted. Rivulets of sweat rung down the boy even with the cold night air brushing it aside.

“No barking now, hey boy?” he laughed. The dog nuzzled him in return.

Their reactions changed from tired joyfulness to terrible dread at near the exact same time.

It was like the flick of a switch, the primal kick of instinct. The dog’s nostrils flared at the same time as the boy’s. Both could smell the smoke; hear the flames crackle even from the distance they’d covered. Without hesitation, they sprinted back towards their home in vain.

The boy wouldn’t, couldn’t register the sight in front of him as he approached the small crowd now surrounding his house. All he could do was barrel straight through the front door, ignoring and evading the villager’s attempts to hold him back. Everyone and everything felt like it was molten lava, melting in the embers of the ground as the boy burst into the house.

The very air felt like it was on fire. The boy choked, the smoke filling his chest and drowning him in its fiery sensation. To combat the rising strangle he ripped the sleeve of his shirt and shoved it in front of his mouth, momentarily relieving the harsh retch of his lungs. The boy ran through the boiling rooms, ignoring how the flames licked at his skin, as they seeped in and burnt it to a crisp as the young man bathed in flame. It was painful, so painful but the boy resisted the urge to scream, trying to hold onto some of that ever-precious oxygen. He swept his eyes over his house frantically, trying to think rationally as the building grew hotter and hotter, smothering him in smoke so thick he could barely see.

A section of the roof had come down, blocking the way to his elder siblings’ room, the door smashed in from the collapse. Beyond he tried to glimpse his brother and sister, but the smog would not lift as the fire raged around them.

He tried his parent’s door next, his face aghast amidst the flame as the knob rattled on the door. Locked?! Their door was never locked! Why the hell would they lock it?!

He glanced back. The only room that was open was his own, the one he shared with his youngest brother.

He barrelled into his bedroom, watching his own sanctum blaze away. His room, his bed, his private little place where he could escape from the world, burning away into oblivion. But that was unimportant. What was important was the stationary body still lying in the bed. Not moving, not feeling. Not breathing.

“Peter?” he gasped, barely able to open his mouth in fear of the smoke’s promise of an eternal rest. “Peter?!”

The words were muffled through the fabric covering his mouth but it didn’t matter. The lad was non-responsive, caught in the mind-numbing effects of the smoke that lulled him into a drowsy sleep. The boy could feel it too, the nagging sensation creeping into his mind, the gentle lull of his mind slowly wandering away from him, trying to induce unconsciousness.

The boy grabbed his brother from the bed and then suddenly withdrew his hands in shock, frightened as the boy felt the smooth trickle of liquid on his fingers. The boy didn’t want to look. The boy couldn’t look. Oh god please no...

The rag covering his face fell as he stared at his hand in shock, desperately hoping that his eyes were betraying him as the crimson bloodstain filled the boy’s vision. It wasn’t sweat, or water spilled in panic. The oozing wound staining Peter’s pyjama top told the tale. He’d been stabbed, right in his chest as he slept. Peter, his seven year old brother.

The boy wanted to vomit, to wail in outrage, but the only thing that happened once the boy opened his mouth was gut wrenching coughing. Fits and fits of coughing and the boy couldn’t breathe, and he could feel the sleepy sensation again, numbing his senses, encouraging him to let go of reality...

A burst of anguish cut through his thoughts and the boy grasped it, clutching the resolve like a buoy in a violent sea. Fury seized his heart. This was no tragic accident, no mistaken arson. This was murder.

And then the waves of anger pierced his soul as hopeless worry set in, as he realised what that meant.

“Mum!” the boy screamed, running for the parent’s bedroom. He remembered the lock but desperation lent him strength as he barrelled through the door, the wooden entrance crashing before him. The haunting sight of his brother, lying motionless and the blood staining the bed sheets threatened to overwhelm him but the boy forged on, focused only on the two limp bodies lying on the mattress. “Mum? Dad?!”

He ran across his father’s side of the bed to embrace his mother. The boy didn’t know why. Instinct, perhaps. Maybe to save her, maybe to comfort her. Or maybe to comfort himself.

It was useless. For when he laid his eyes upon the slit throat and the dead eyes in her skull looking nowhere in particular, his desperate hope, his bludgeoning resolve crumbled.

The boy remembered being delirious, inconsolable, stroking her pale face, uncaring as the flames steadily crept closer. He could feel his flesh blistering with the heat, the telltale signs of the burns seeping into the skin. He could tell it was happening but the boy felt numb, uncaring of their impact, nothing else matching the pain in his soul.

“Son...” The boy whipped round the bed, hope somehow springing eternal, his neck almost snapping his movement was so swift. A ragged intake of air on the other side of the bed gave him something to wish for.

“Dad!” the boy instantly responded, a desperate smile finding its way onto his face with the momentary fact that he had survived. “It’s Luke!”

“My boy,” he wheezed, his lips lifting in a momentary smile as he gazed upon his son. Then his expression grew stern, worry sweeping over his features as his lungs became blocked more and more. “You must go.”

“Not without you,” the boy insisted. “Not without...”

His words trailed off, like the blood seeping out of the wound in his stomach and only now did the young boy properly look at his father’s figure. Similar stab wound to the one inflicted on Peter. Marks on his knuckles where he tried to fight. And above all, the sleepy look in his father’s eyes as the smoke sought to claim him.

“You’ve got to go, son,” he gasped, with the last remaining life in his lungs. “Need you... to live. Please...”

“No,” the boy choked out, holding his father’s face in his hands. And as realisation set in, the boy’s heart truly broke. He found himself flooded with memories, reminded of all the things they had ever done. The times of football games, riding a bike, the first day of school, all long since passed.

There was room for so much more. So much more.

“Listen to me,” his father managed, giving everything he had for one last exchange. His eyes were wild and unfocused, endlessly tempted by the promise of an eternal sleep, an end to the suffering. His eyelids fluttered but he forced himself look at his son in the eye. “Listen... to me...”

The boy waited but no sound escaped his lips, only a rattled whisper of death as the life in his eyes went out. And finally, the boy couldn’t hold it in anymore.

One more scream as the salty tears fell. One more cry of outrage, of mourning and loss. The sound he made was inhuman, a pouring uproar of grief taken from the very depths of a shattered soul. And then he was gone, lost in the weeping for his family as the crackling flames moved ever closer.

This was it. The death of the boy. No story, no exciting tales, no happy ending. Just a tragedy to be forgotten in the rolling winds of the wasteland.

The boy died.

I died.

I wake with a start, my arms flailing wildly and my breath heaving, like it always is after a harrowing night. My shoulder slams into the wooden floorboards as my arm rears backward, a violent reaction out of my control. The world thankfully comes into focus as I take stock of my surroundings.

I look fitfully at the ceiling as the erratic rise and fall of my bare chest starts to steady. The plain white stares back at me, unflinching in its gaze. From the sore feeling in my shoulders I can tell I’ve rolled out of the bed again. I look to my left. The crisp white sheets are spread across the floor in a sweaty tangled mess. Must have thrown them off with all my thrashing.

Figures. First time having a duvet in a long while.

It’s the city that brought it on. Had to be. For the first time in years, I’m home. I’m not sleeping under the barren skyline, the stars blocked by the smog. I’m not curling up on a bed made of leaves. I’m back, and so are the memories I buried.

Once I can think without the flaming images accosting my mind I get up and open the window. The waning warmth of a wasting summer is stifling, dead heat hangs in the air as the sweat runs down my forehead in streams. Maybe I should invest in a fan.

The cool air breezes under the crack of the window as I take the city in. Not a chance I’ll leave it open, one can never be too careful. But the stuffiness of the room clears, and it is a pleasant respite for the moment.

Looking through the glass I watch the city’s night life properly. I think Keane once described some old place as a city that never slept. Haven fits that bill to a tee. Streaks of neon adorn the commercial rooftops, the buzz of the light attracting potential customers. Street walkers and homeless ones live side by side, both struggling to get by. If I focus my hearing I can almost feel the pulse of the clubs down below, even if I’ve never ventured to investigate. The clock ticks by and so do their lives, lost in the haze of the night life.

This is Haven in its prime, at its strongest. Dusty roads are replaced with sleek tarmac in the darkness. A scorching sun replaced by a cool moon, obstructed by the feather light clouds so high up above. If I pause for a second, I think I can almost feel Haven’s heartbeat. The sewer waters are its veins, the criminal underbelly the heart. The massive wall on the right overshadowing it all. In the winter you can barely even see the sky through the acid rain and the smog, but now with the arid climate you can almost make out the stars. I wonder, before the world ended, were they able to see the sky?

Nine years regardless. That’s all it took for farmland to be replaced with factories, schools replaced with nightclubs and houses for hostels. Just nine years. It’s crazy how young I am, and how bitter.

Here, age is not a major factor in comparison to experience. And when you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you get a bit cynical. I know I shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t be staring judgementally down on the city below. I shouldn’t be planning a bloody vengeance on the murderers that marked my family for death. It’s not fair.

But that has kept me going. For nine years it’s kept me going. The injustice of it all. The hope that one day I’ll hurt them just as much as they hurt me. So they can feel how I feel, hurt how I hurt. So that we’ll be, in some twisted way, even. Fair. That day’s coming.

Ugh, enough of that. Yeah, I’m paranoid. I’m also a messed up youth with an enormous chip on his shoulder. But that doesn’t mean I should dwell on it. I’ve cooled a bit now. And I’ve had enough brooding for one night.

I go to close the window, because, you know, paranoia, but as I go to close it I find my eyes drifting downward as my fingers linger on the latch. My acute eyesight has picked something up down below, and like a moth to a flame, I can’t help myself. My eyes zero in on it before I even know I’m doing it.

It’s an old man. He’s being beaten by a pair of thugs, probably young gang members. My perfect hearing picks up his cries, as well as their harsh laughter. They’re young, even younger than me. Their voices haven’t even cracked yet.

I can hear them. It seems impossible, and it would be to anyone that isn’t me. But I swear I can hear them.

The old man calls for help but there isn’t any. The thugs have stripped him of his long over coat, revealing skinny arms and shaky legs, his stomach presumably cracked from the kicking the guy’s giving him. The other guy is looking through his wallet, tossing out cards and notes with reckless abandon as I look on in horror.

I want to help him. Really, I do. And part of me thinks, sod it. Save the day. Be the hero.

But I know I’d never get down in time to help. A shirtless wonder, descending from the apartment from on high, here to deliver swift justice to the criminals of Haven. A nice little story it would be.

Instead, I just... close the window, murmuring apologies that I know he’ll never hear. There’s nothing I can do. I know that. It doesn’t make it any easier.

I take a moment to breathe.

Back to bed, I guess. Got a whole fresh canister of nightmare fuel for this one. Maybe I’ll actually be able to stay in the bed this time.

Sweet dreams.