“My risk factor’s gone up,” Thalia states, her voice flat. Wes appears in the doorway and winds an arm around her waist, leaves a kiss in her hair. Thalia relaxes, the tiniest amount, but when she speaks again, her voice breaks. “It’s gone up a lot.”
I scrape my hands over my skull, my world cracking apart again. The third time today. I don’t know if I can take anymore. “How much?” I ask, my voice raw.
“When I saw it last month, it was fifty eight.”
I can’t look at her; I’ll shatter. “And now?”
“Ninety three.”
Tia inhales sharply. Wes holds Thalia tighter, his face buried in her hair.
I just stare at Thalia until my mouth remembers how to work. “That can’t be right. That’s … it’s wrong. Printer error or something. I’ve known a risk factor to go up ten percent before but not that much. It’s gotta be—it’s just wrong.” I sound desperate, but I don’t care. It has to be an error.
“I asked the aid worker.” Thalia’s voice is quiet, weak, so far from her usual barking and ordering and sniping. That’s what really drives the truth into me—her reaction. That, and knowing Wes. If he believes is, believes the woman he’s completely devoted to, is dying, and has accepted it … I mash my lips together, pushing back all my arguments.
“There’s no mistake.” Thalia gives us a thin smile. “I just wanted to say goodbye. I’ll probably be gone by the end of the week so make the most of my good cooking while you can.” The joke falls horrifically flat. Wes makes a choked sound.
Tia looks crushed, her expression completely clear and empty in that scary way it always is when she’s cut up inside.
“What if they’re lying?” I blurt before I can think.
“Honour,” Tia sighs. “Drop it.”
“What if they are?” Wes’s voice holds nothing but defeat. “What can we do to prove it, or change it, or stop it? If they’ve decided the risk factor, then it stays. Your sister’s right—just leave it alone.”
But the crushing feeling in my chest won’t let me leave it alone. “But the risk factor doesn’t mean you’re gonna get anything.”
Thalia’s already made up her mind. She’s resigned to her death; I can see it in her eyes. “But I’m more likely to catch it, Honour.” Her voice is disturbing soft, disturbingly fond. Of me. Who she bosses around and argues with on a daily basis. “There’s only a seven percent chance I won’t.”
“There’s still a chance,” I insist.
“Stop it,” Tia snaps, “You’re making it harder for all of us.”
I clench my jaw, more because it keeps the tears back and less because I’m angry. Though I am angry. I don’t want to let it go, I don’t want to accept this. I can’t—John and now Thalia? This isn’t real.
It’s not happening.
***
Yosiah
18:41. 18.09.2040. Forgotten London, Shepherd’s Bush Zone.
I wait until the Officials have marched down the road before I knock on the back door of Honour’s house. This door seems to be the only thing they didn’t destroy. It opens slowly and Honour’s face comes into view. He looks worn out. His skin is sallow and his eyes are rimmed in darkness. His blinks at the sight of me.
“What—” he begins.
“Are you alright? After that...”
When the door is shut behind us, Honour sighs. “How did you hear?”
“I saw them go through our sector and I followed them. One of them mentioned your zone.”
“They came from Ealing?”
I shake my head and glance up as Horatia walks into the room and stands beside her brother. She offers me a strained smile. “They marched through Ealing and came straight for Shepherd’s Bush Zone. I don’t know how but … my instincts told me that it involved you. Or maybe it was paranoia.”
“I don’t get it.” I freeze, expecting him to press me about how I sensed it but he adds, “Why bring that many just for us?”
Horatia glances at me quickly. I keep my attention on her brother. “I think they came from Watford,” I say. “From the Street Official headquarters there.”
“That’s insane.” Honour gasps a laugh. “Why would they send Officials from HQ? I thought they only sent big groups out when there was an outbreak or a riot.”
I rub a graze on the side of my hand. “I thought there was. I thought you…”
“No,” Honour says quickly. “No, we’re fine. You shouldn’t have come here if you thought we had a Strain. You could have caught it—”
“I wasn’t really thinking,” I say. “And there’s no harm done anyway. What about John and the rest?”
Honour looks to his sister, his face shuttering.
“Thalia and Wes are fine,” she tells us. “They’re putting the living room back together.”
She’s holding something back but I let her have it; I know Horatia, and she only keeps secrets for good reasons/ “Do you need any help?”
Honour smiles slightly. “You’re a weird one, Yosiah. You want to help?”
I nod, feeling awkward now. “Yeah, with the house, your rooms. I heard a lot of noise, and I can see that they’ve trashed everything in here. They did the same to the other rooms, didn’t they?”
“Yosiah,” Horatia says, her voice different. I look at her, expecting the worst, and it says a lot about me that, “John’s dead,” isn’t the worst.
“Oh,” I breathe, remembering nights spent in this kitchen, sat around the table drinking cheap—and slightly illegal—beer, listening to John tell one of his legendary stories. That man could talk for hours. And now he’s gone. I lean back against the kitchen counter, struggling to process the fact I won’t see him again.
“I should go see what’s left of our things.” Horatia says in a soft voice, shuffling out of the room. I realise now it wasn’t a secret she was hiding from me, but something she didn’t want to face herself.
“They’ve broken pretty much everything we had,” Honour says, bereft as he looks around the kitchen. There are pans and smashed plates littering the floor, drawers and cupboards emptied, boxes upturned, cutlery bent out of shape, stores of food dirtied and cans hammered into a crumpled shape. It looks like a flare hit, but none of us would be alive it if had—the flares were what wiped out most of humanity, before disease decimated what was left. A Strain will get all of us eventually, inside the fence. It’s like we’re in a siege against them.
Honour interrupts my thinking, stops my thoughts returning to John, who’ll never laugh again or smile that crooked grin that never failed to coax one from me, no matter how exhausted I was. “So, were you serious?” he asks, watching me.
“About what?”
“Helping us fix this mess.”
“Oh, yeah, of course. I came here to help, however you needed it.” And if I’d have sensed the situation was going to turn deadly, that the military were gonna kill Honour and his family, I’d have helped in a more violent way. There are places you can run in this town that even Officials can’t find you—Honour’s family could have come with me and Miya.
Honour looks at me strangely; I can’t tell what he’s thinking. He quickly covers his expression. “You can help me sort out my room.”
From what I can see of the house, Honour’s housemates suffered the worst of the wreckage. With just a glimpse through a bedroom door I saw splinters of wood, bed linens ripped to shreds, knife marks in the walls, wallpaper hanging in ribbons on the floor, and an antique-looking glass lamp lying in shards on the worn floorboards. Compared to that, Honour’s room is just untidy.
The mattress is off kilter, the door hangs off a wall cupboard, and a wardrobe is upturned but looks intact. Their possessions are thrown around the room, but nothing looks to have been intentionally broken like in the other room. The forever-calculating side of me wonders if the other room was the one they properly searched, and this room was just overturned to avoid suspicion.
“What were they searching for?” I ask, eyei
ng the small room.
Honour’s eyes betray a moment of fear before he recovers. He pushes the door until it clicks shut.
“This,” he says. He puts something in my hand but it’s just a collection of handwritten notes on The Sixteen Strains. I wonder if I’m missing something, if there’s something important written here. All I can see, as I flick through, are facts I already know.
“I don’t understand.”
He sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. “I thought I was missing something, but you can’t see it either?”
I fold the papers up and give them back. “Are you sure this was what they were looking for?”
Honour sinks onto the end of the mattress, the weight of the world on him. I sit next to him, pressing my hands together.
“No. I’m not sure of anything; how can I be? But this is weird, John writing this and leaving it behind, and what else could they have been looking for?”
“I don’t—“
“He just left it here, all over the front room, and the next thing I know, he’s dead.” He drops his head into his hands, fingers digging into his skull. “I wish I could ask him what this is meant to mean. What the hell he was thinking.”
I chew my lip, keeping back the apology that won’t make him feel better. “Is there anything I can do?”
A laugh erupts from his lips, bitten off after a second. “Make the Officials leave us alone?”
“I don’t have that kind of influence.”
“Yeah.” Honour is quiet for a moment, giving me time to process the last few minutes.
Hesitantly, I ask, “Do you think this house search is connected to John’s … death?” There’s no way to soften this.
“I don’t know. I really don’t.” He lifts his head, his eyes intense and wild. “I think they killed him. The military. I’m sure they did.”
I bite my lips again then make myself stop. “They kill people all the time—I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d done this.”
Honour makes a sound of agreement. “Do you think this is all grief? It’s meant to mess with your head, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, quiet. “Yeah, it does.” I can’t stay on this topic for longer than a heartbeat or my whole chest will cave in. “If the Officials were looking for those papers, they didn’t find them. That’s good.”
He shrugs. “I have this shitty feeling they’re never gonna stop looking for it. I don’t want the Officials anywhere near here again. I don’t want my sister to get hurt. Thalia’s already—”
“Honour?”
“It’s fine. It’s just fucked up. It’s fine.”
I lay my hand briefly on his shoulder but don’t say anything. I can tell he doesn’t want consoling anyway. “If you ever need somewhere to stay, or someone to rely on, find me. I’ll help you with whatever you need.”
Honour looks at me the same way he did in the kitchen. Unreadable. “Why?” His voice is enveloped in confusion.
“You’re my friend.” I just hold back from saying, so is Horatia. “I wouldn’t want you being unsafe.”
“You’re a good friend,” he says, looking at me steadily, his brown eyes serious. “I can never tell if people are being fake or genuine but with you, everything’s out in the open. There’s nothing hidden with you, no secrets or lies or anything.”
I choke back a laugh. If he knew everything, he’d probably hate me for keeping it from him. “Yeah,” I say instead. Guilt burns in my gut.
***
Honour
20:18. 18.09.2040. Forgotten London, Shepherd’s Bush Zone.
Tonight I skip work for the first time ever.
I’ll get a strike against my name but it’ll show on the records that there’s been bereavement in my household, and it’ll be an assumed Grievance Day. Because everyone shares a house from a young age, and blood relatives are rare, people who live together are considered family. It’s not unusual for people to miss a day of work because of the loss of a family member. The Officials will be lenient with one day, at least. If I miss two, they’ll drag me out of the house and to the factory.
I head north through Shepherd’s Bush to Wembley Zone.
It’s weird to see all the deserted Underground stations. Their signs are chipped and worn and there are metal grates pulled across their entrances to keep out trespassers, but otherwise they’re in perfect condition. That’s the strangest thing about them: how undamaged the stations are compared to the wilted, crumbling buildings around them.
I used to think the stations had been rebuilt—the brick looks newer and cleaner than the other buildings—but Horatia pointed out that it’d be stupid for States to rebuild these pointless stations when there’s no transport anymore. Besides, the military refused to even repair the police stations, the fire service buildings, and the hospitals, so there’s no way they’d make repairs on a building like the one I trudge past now. I was so convinced, though.
Looking at them now I think about how stupid I was to think that. States would never give us the funding for that, not unless there was anything in it for them.
There are six Undergrounds along this route, all abandoned and empty. People have tried in the past to get into them, but that usually resulted in a bullet in the back of their head. The Officials don’t tolerate trespassing.
Heading through the zone’s centre—Shepherd’s Bush itself—is tricky. The number of military doubles compared to the residential streets, so I need to be extra careful that I don’t catch anyone’s attention. I’m not breaking the law, technically, but I am breaking a rule by skipping work.
But the Officials aren’t the worst thing about Shepherd’s Bush. That title goes to the people. Hammersmith where I live isn’t the nicest of areas, and it’s hardly spacious, but Shepherd’s Bush is a thousand times worse. The streets are always packed, and with the poorest people. Unwashed, staggering, prone to aggression.
In the five minutes it takes me to navigate the area, I come across three girls ranging between fourteen and seventeen years old, all struggling through the streets with children attached to their legs. One of them, the youngest, collapses against a wall with a baby in her arms and bursts into tears. Nobody stops to help her or ask if she’s okay. Some people even step on her legs, but I make sure I walk around her. My heart tugs me back, urging me to help her, but I can’t help her—it’s not like I can take her kid and look after it. And that’d only make me stand out, when I don’t need to be drawing military attention.
Kids are left on the streets alone all the time, their parents too young and too poor to cope. I can’t find it in myself to be angry at those parents, not when most are younger than me, not when I don’t know what happened for them to end up pregnant. Birth control isn’t exactly widely available here and condoms are expensive as hell—and those are just for pregnancies that come from consensual sex. In a place like this, in a town like this, rape is far from uncommon. No Official would step in to save a victim, either. It’s probably the only crime in the town that goes unpunished.
The more I walk, edging along the streets, the more I want to kick something. Every time I think about this, I put my sister in their place. It makes me sick. But tonight the streets are free of abandoned children, and the faster I walk, the faster my anger burns off.
In the centre of the road, full of pedestrians instead of the old traffic, a man is clutching his stomach and coughing up blood—an obvious Strains victim—and people press closer to the pavements to get away from him. I almost trip over a mountain of rubbish bags, stretching to see what happens to the man. I wish I hadn’t. Officials waste no time in surrounding him, all in masks to protect themselves. They execute him with an unnecessary amount of bullets.
One of the bullets ricochets off a building and strikes a girl in the head. She must be younger than me. Another shatters a window. Someone else swears in pain but it doesn’t sound fatal. For the thousandth time in my life, I escape death. If the military had been using the other guns, the
ones that whirr and charge up with blue fire, electricity, I might not have escaped getting shot. An indirect hit from one of those would sear my skin. A direct hit would burn me to ash from the inside out.
A kid starts crying, whether at the sight of the crumpled, bloodied man, the dead girl, or because of the noise, I don’t know.
The crowd moves faster. I got caught in the middle of a shift change, I realise, for there to be this many people on the streets. I should have timed it better.
I try to push further forward but the crush holds me back. I endure the putrid smell of the centre, the hum of nervous voices, the press of stranger’s against my, until a side street appears and I stumble into it. I almost fall over a girl laid out on the ground, a sleeping bag and cardboard disguising her legs, and she barks an insult at me that I ignore as I trudge on.
From there on, the way is blessedly quieter. There are people around, of course. There are always people no matter what time of day or night it is, but there are less of them here, and they don’t pay any attention to another teenage boy walking home from work. I suppose that’s the good thing about the different shifts finishing at all hours of the day—nobody can suspect you for walking from place to place.
Tonight I take a shortcut since I only have four hours of my ‘shift’. Normally, I’d only come here in the morning when I have more time, but this is an emergency. I cut through the centre of Harlesden Zone, or as most people call it: Harlequin Zone. It’s aptly named after the personalities that wander its streets. Harlequin is the only zone that still has an actual entertainment club. Every Friday, The Harlequin’s Den opens its doors to the weird and wonderful alike. Everyone in F.L. over a certain age has been there once. It’s a rite of passage. I went there last year, when Tia begged me to go with her after hearing about it at work. She saved every big of spare money to pay for our entry, which should have been impossible, but Tia is a miraculous budgeter. In the club, I saw enough fake feathers, ruffled cotton skirts, and breasts to last me a good few years. Horatia begged me to go again, but I refused. It’s much too casual a thing to exist in this world.