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The Committee Provides

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By Charlie C. Published about a year ago 25 min read
Top Story - January 2023
14

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

Stood at the threshold, buttoning up his coat, George Mote watched her tug at her long plait of blue-black hair. Her gaze, heavy with grief, never shifted from the cracked concrete and leafless vegetation outside his block of flats.

He cracked his knuckles – a tic from his school days. He sucked in his lips, made a dry noise in his throat, then turned.

“Will it be today?” she asked.

George wedged his hands into the cavernous pockets of his coat. When he turned to her, she perched on the edge of the bed that’d once been his daughter’s, still looking down at the concrete. Between their words, the rumble of tanks by the beachfront. The glass animals his daughter had collected wobbled on top of the wardrobe. So did George. He squeezed his fist around an ancient photo.

“As soon as I hear, you’ll know.”

The girl nodded sagely. She’d still be sat there when he returned. A quick glance at her showed the air under the dress he’d given her where there used to be flesh. Even her face looked gaunter. If she withered away here, it would all be for nothing.

“Won’t be long,” he said. “Eat something.”

She made no response. George skulked out of the flat, careful to hide the doorway with his body before he locked it. The Committee had willing eyes in every block.

“Morning, Mr Mote,” cooed Joyce from the opposite flat.

She was a skeletal, spidery woman, like a ghost in her threadbare grey gown and slippers. Her talons wrapped around a mug. Her eyes were huge behind old glasses, watching intently. George crossed the faded crimson linoleum between them to the top of the staircase.

“Morning, Joyce.”

“On your way to work, Mr Mote?”

He gripped the railing as he trotted down the stairs. “The Committee provides.”

“Oh, indeed it does. If only all were as grateful as you.”

Grateful. As George reached the glass doors, the word stuck like a chicken-bone.

Who did Joyce think should be grateful? The millions shuffled around into work that was demanded by the Committee, regardless of profession, history, fitness or want. The thousands who’d been disappeared for trying to escape. The boatloads sunk into the Channel. Yes, he’d once been grateful. Grateful for his own luck. Grateful his country hadn’t fallen to the unhinged tyranny that now gripped much of the world.

When times got bad, the Committee provided. Had it not salvaged England from clueless politicians? Had it not kept most people alive, while the rest of the world toppled into chaos?

The Committee provided. However, it also took.

Out into the street, shoes cricking against thin frost, and George’s mouth was parched. His heart thudded double-time. So early, the only people he passed were litter-pickers and night-shifters on their way home. They kept their heads bowed. George didn’t look at them.

This could all be fruitless. All he had to use was a name scratched into his daughter’s diary – the last entry. Who knew if it was a real name? But when he’d asked in work, feigning idle curiosity, Travis had known someone by that name – a woman who spent her time in a pub called the Saint’s Rest.

A pub. George clicked his knuckles, checked his watch, and trotted faster along the concrete. Even with the vastness of tarmac beside him, he stayed to the pavement. Here, the streets were too narrow for tanks, but not too narrow for grey vans.

The Saint’s Rest nestled between two nondescript buildings, both with windows boarded and doors sealed. A sign of weathered colours hanging over the pub showed a bearded man asleep on a haybale. The place didn’t look any busier than its neighbours. George crossed the empty road with a glance over both shoulders.

But he’d harboured the girl for two weeks now. Surely, if someone was watching him, the grey vans would’ve come already.

As if summoned, one of the tombstone-coloured vans lurched around a corner beyond the Saint’s Rest. Scant sunlight flittered across the tinted dark windscreen. George swallowed a stone in his throat, and barged against the peeling door of the Saint’s Rest.

A dingy winter-light, the shade of blood-orange, perfused in small pools from the overhead neon beams. The bottles ranked behind the bar were mere suggestions of light playing against dusty glass. There was a fireplace to one side, cold, and a cracked photo of Winston Churchill over it. The inside air crawled over him, balmy and leeching.

A man with vast shoulders polished his spectacles behind the bar. He met George’s eye, then turned to polishing again. By the reddish light, the brand on his stubbled cheek came ablaze.

George’s insides shuffled. Should he really risk everything for some waif? If the grey van stopped outside, and if he was found with one of these people, his luck would all have meant nothing. And who was to say Travis hadn’t sent him here to be caught? He looked to the cracked photo of Churchill, who sneered back at him.

It took an age, but his heart dropped from his throat. He walked like a child to the man at the bar. The man looked up at him again, flexed his broad muscles under a ragged shirt. All George could focus on was the brand – the burned shape of the letter R.

The man studied George as he slipped his glasses on. He went to polishing the bar, and now George could see the scabs on his knuckles.

“Early to drink,” said the barman.

“I…” George halted. Saying the wrong thing could see him ruined. There was no telling by the other man’s face whether he would be sympathetic. “I was told to see Meera.”

The barman smiled, quick as a knife thrust. “You a friend?”

Inside George’s pockets, nails pierced palms. He glanced around the red room, but found no one except the mild-faced barman. Again, his nerves itched to pull him from this place and to his work.

“I think so,” he said. “A new friend.”

The barman craned his neck to the door. George couldn’t help swivelling, and he almost shrank into himself when a man in a grey overcoat prowled into the Saint’s Rest. From the shadow of his officer’s cap, restless eyes darted to every corner of the room. They twitched between George and the barman. The grey man approached with silent steps.

George’s fists trembled in his pockets. He tried to lean against the bar to look natural, then just slouched in place as the grey man stood beside him.

“A curious establishment,” he said. Like his appearance, his voice was completely unremarkable.

George noticed the barman was scratching his stubble, covering his brand. “A kind of museum, I suppose. How working people used to spend time.”

“A warning against idleness then?” The grey man glanced at George. “You, sir, your number.”

George pulled his citizen card from his coat without thinking. The grey man leered down at it, nodded sharply, turned to the barman.

“Why is this man here?”

“He was outraged, sir,” said the barman. “See, he works in the archives. He thinks places like this should be forgotten. Nothing good can come of keeping it all here, right?” He elicited a nod from George. “After all, what need do we have for museums or pubs? The Committee provides.”

“The Committee provides,” echoed George.

The grey man looked him over again, slowly. “You work archives?”

“From the First Day, sir,” said George.

“Hmm, well, there is a reason you only edit history on paper, George Mote. Leave the artifacts to the Committee. All will be clear, explained by the Committee. Until then…” He gestured to the bar. “Don’t make a habit of coming here. Things change quickly. The Committee provides, gentlemen.”

The grey man stalked out. George didn’t breathe again until the man had been gone half a minute. The bar man stared at him.

“He’ll be back. He didn’t believe us.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You wanted to see Meera?” The barman’s tone never shifted. “Follow.”

George wanted to ask when the grey man would return, and what would happen to the Saint’s Rest. He clamped his teeth together though. It could’ve been that the barman was part of some play intended to snare him – that the scene with the grey man had been a trap he’d yet to escape.

But then, why would the barman hide his brand? To appear more convincing? Well, George was already following.

The barman took him through a leaning backdoor, into a narrow hall, up hollow stairs to another narrow hall. He knocked on the scuffed, unpainted door they met, and it jerked open. A shadow ushered them in – no, a woman in a thick black robe and a widow’s veil. He glimpsed her hands as she shut the door, and there were weeping scabs across the skin.

If the grey man came up those stairs, George would be finished.

His voice emerged scratchy and meek. “Meera?”

“Yes,” said the veiled woman, folding herself onto a chair.

The room was tight, with only two chairs facing each other, and a small bed to one side. George took the second chair when the barman just lingered by the door. He tried to pierce the woman’s filmy black veil, but she might as well have been covered by the midnight sky.

“You didn’t come here to see what the rot-plague does to a woman’s face.”

George leant forward, hands squeezing at each other. It seemed so idiotic to have come here now, yet he was stuck, and there was one way through.

“He looks like one of theirs,” said Meera, fluttering her frail hand. “Send him away, Lionel.”

George looked down at his weathered silk shirt, his slate-coloured blazer, his polished black shoes, the tie dangling from his neck like a severed noose. Oh yes, he looked the part of a Committee loyalist. He licked his lips.

“I’ve seen the error in the Committee’s ways,” he said.

The veil swung slightly. “Error? The Committee doesn’t make errors.”

George’s heart plunged. He’d thrown himself into treason already.

Meera cocked her head. He stared into the blackness she inhabited. The decision had been made either way.

“The Committee makes no error,” he said slowly. “But, the Committee is still wrong. Everything they’ve done has been wrong.”

“And yet the economy has never been healthier. Our productivity has never been higher. Now we see, we should’ve cut away our gangrene long ago. Sinking the boats now – that was a spectacular play. Do you not agree?”

George held firm. His blood fizzled inside him, and a vein pulsed out the side of his head like a fuse. There was no taking back what he’d said, so he might as well plunge further into mutiny. Meera crossed her hands on her lap.

“You don’t believe that,” he said.

Bony shoulders rose. “I only repeat what the news tells me. England prospers while the uncivilised world crumbles.”

“But that’s not true, is it?” A pulse pounded under the skin of George’s face. He just wanted Meera to admit what she was: whether she was a friend or a betrayer.

“You’ve come here for my opinion?”

“I’ve come here for help, Meera.”

“I don’t help friends of the Committee.” She signalled to Lionel.

George rose from his chair, pulling the screwed-up photo from his pocket. Showing it would be the most treasonous thing. After all, the Committee told him his daughter didn’t exist. The photo – her young, smiling face – was blasphemy.

He held it out. Lionel took it, handed it to Meera, who hunched over. In the silence, George listened to her wheezing breath. He turned to the slits in the window. A grey van idled outside, silent and dark. He tried not to shudder.

“Should this mean anything?”

“She came to you, didn’t she?” asked George.

Meera dropped the photo into Lionel’s hand. George snatched it back. His focus didn’t waver from Meera’s veil. He’d gone too far now to run. Even if it killed him, he’d hear his daughter’s fate.

Finally, Meera nodded under her hood. “She came to me.”

“You put her on a boat?” George’s voice took on a strangled pitch.

“If you’re asking whether she made it-”

“Which boat?”

“Sir-”

“You have to know!”

His hoarse shout echoed in the small room. Lionel flinched away, but Meera only laced her fingers together.

“I can only say she made it as far as France. After, I have no contact.”

“She’s alive then.” George spoke mostly to himself, dazed, and looked to the window again, with something rekindled inside him.

The doors of the grey van opened. Two men in grey sauntered out to a building opposite – just a regular block of flats. No one said anything. Lionel stood beside George and watched. Meera stayed in her chair.

It took a minute at most for the grey men to reappear with their prey. A ragged-haired man cast his gaze around wildly as they dragged him to the van. He bucked, but they’d already drugged him, and they bundled him inside without a fight. A pedestrian faced the wall until the van doors slammed shut. But the van didn’t move.

“Who was it, Lionel?” said Meera.

“A Polish man.”

“Who was hiding him?” Meera’s question sliced into George, and he had to grip the windowsill to stop from keeling over.

The grey men must’ve found the answer. They emerged again, and stalked into the building. The next time, they dragged a second man between them – a withered old thing who’d remember the days before well. A splash of bright red dribbled onto the pavement from his bowed head. It remained the only sign of his passing, as the grey men tossed his carcass in after the refugee.

The pedestrian unpeeled from the wall, and scuttled off. George stepped away from the window.

“You look ill, sir,” said Meera.

“My name’s George Mote.” He held a finger to his lips as if to push back the nausea.

“So, you had an attack of morality? It can happen even to the most fervent believer in the Committee.”

“I didn’t think…” George trailed off.

“You didn’t think they’d come for your family? You thought they would stay terrorising the idlers, the scroungers, the leeches, the – oh, what word did they use, Lionel? – invaders?”

“I never-”

Meera’s veil trembled, but her hands remained crossed neatly in her lap. “You never? Oh, I suppose you never expected it to actually happen. Then again, the Committee were supposed to save us, weren’t they?” She sighed. “Unfortunately, we never learn.”

George continued to watch the van from the window. His mind fluttered to his flat where the girl would be sat staring from the window of his daughter’s room. What if a grey van trundled up outside? Would she try to run? Fight?

“She can’t stay with me,” said George.

Meera’s tone was sharp as broken glass. “Why not?”

“She… I have a job, I have… I just want to be out of this.”

“You made your choice. Did you expect her to be fine once you gave her a slice of bread and sent her on her way?”

The silence now was thick and stifling. Lionel padded to the door again, while George contemplated.

“After all that, you’d still run back to your cosy office job?” said Meera.

“Rewriting history,” added Lionel.

“Rewriting history as they want it.” She clucked. “A good little pet for the Committee. You should be grateful you’re not smart enough to hate them.”

Thin lines of blood seeped under the crescents of George’s nails. Their bite into his palms was numb. He turned sluggishly to his interrogator. Meera cocked her head, while Lionel held his own to the door.

“I do hate them.”

“Enough to lose everything?”

“I… They already took my daughter.”

“Meera!” said Lionel.

Footsteps thumped on the boards below, storming through the pub. George almost opened his mouth to scream his innocence, then clamped his teeth down on his tongue. If they were to take him away, he’d attempt bravery.

Meera unfolded from her chair, and glided to him. Bony, scabrous hands enclosed his own. Again, he tried to look through the veil. He glimpsed the exposed curve of a cheekbone, blisters of raw underflesh. Terminal.

“They caught me the first time,” she whispered.

“Meera!” hissed Lionel, as the stampede rumbled around downstairs.

Her hands were like paper against George’s, with less strength in them every second. He looked for her eyes, if they even remained behind the widow’s veil.

“They caught me and branded me. I was sent with the dredgers, there for four years – enough time to catch the rot – and I promised myself I wouldn’t die digging up old fossils to be destroyed.” Her hands regained enough strength to squeeze his. “My parents came to this country so I could have a better life than they’d had. Now, look, I’m the one who sends people away.”

“My daughter.”

Footsteps clattered on the bottom stairs. A door smashed open. Lionel pressed himself against theirs, teeth bared, fists balled.

“I knew I couldn’t last here much longer. There’s a boat – the Roach – that’ll be leaving from the pier in another hour. Tell the man there my name.”

The soles of boots slammed like sledgehammers. More doors crashed throughout the building.

“Lionel, the bed.”

“But-”

“George, please hold the door.”

George pushed in beside Lionel, and the big man detached. Now he could hear clearly the rumbling of grey boots. His harried breath rasped over the wood, and his heart threatened to snap his ribs. Behind him, Lionel tugged the bed away from the wall. Meera unlatched a trapdoor beneath it, and a waft of wood-dust sprang into the room.

Someone rapped at the door. The beats vibrated through to George's marrow. How thin the door was. He swallowed the tang of bile.

Lionel tapped his shoulder. As a muted order went out on the other side, George stepped away. Lionel drew a clunky revolver from under his shirt. Throughout the building, the ransacking ceased, and there was only George’s erratic heart and Meera’s wheezing to keep away the silence.

“Go now, George,” said the veiled woman. “I hope you make it.”

He backed away from the door, until he was looking down into the dark rectangle of the crawlspace. A flimsy ladder descended.

A ram pounded the door. Splintering protests ran through the wood, and Lionel braced himself flat. George sat at the edge of the hole. His sweaty, bloody hands wrapped around the first rung, and his feet dropped into blackness. Meera yanked the trapdoor closed. Dust sifted down, bristling inside his nose. He held a sneeze.

Above, the door erupted. Boots marched into the hidden room. Muffled words came down through the dark and dust, but George focused on his descent. His shoes slid on the rough rungs, but he closed his eyes against visions of falling to a broken death.

The first gunshot sent a fresh powder of dust down. George froze. An instant later, there was a brutal retort – dozens of rapid shots. A single hole punched through the wood above. He clambered down, slipped, and thumped down onto straw with his ankle bent. He hissed. A hatch snapped open against his shoulder. He went reeling out into the boarded-up building beside the Saint’s Rest. His feet kicked up phantoms of dirt as he stumbled across what had once been a family living room. He ignored the abandoned heirlooms as he hopped onward.

Outside, a siren wailed. The noise jabbing his eardrums made him stagger against the doorframe. Through chinks in the wood, he glimpsed a battalion of men in grey dismounting from a larger truck. He swallowed a shudder. Adjusting his cap, the grey man who’d questioned him inside the Saint’s Rest strode from the pub to meet his allies. George’s attention latched onto the rifles the new arrivals wore.

“There was another man with them,” said the officer. “He must’ve got out just before we swept the place.”

“How much does he know?” asked the head rifleman.

The grey man shook his head. “He may know nothing. Regardless, send men to his workplace, have his colleagues rounded up. We might just nip this in the bud now.” The grey man made to turn, then tapped a finger to his chin. “And send a van to his flat.” He recited George’s number, his workplace, his address. Each was a stab to George’s spine.

He needed to run. If he had any chance of beating the grey men to his flat – if he had any chance of saving the girl – he needed to run now.

George pressed against the door, but, horrifyingly, his legs stayed locked to their place. Another moment, and his doubts might consume him. It might not be so bad to confess his sins now, while the grey men were only beginning to hunt.

No. There would be no forgiveness. Not now. He could blame Meera for trapping him, but it’d been his own stupidity that’d made him reach out to that lost girl. Only when she’d sat at his window, a cup of untasted soup cooling beside her, had he digested the calamity of what he’d done.

Boots shuffled around the truck. Riflemen went to check the nearby flats. Pedestrians coming through the street saw them, and swiftly pivoted. George sucked in a short breath.

He shoved the door open, and went loping out across the pavement. With his heartbeat filling his skull, he kept expecting the jagged stutter of gunfire. He shambled to the end of the road before a cry rose. A bullet skimmed by him. He almost tumbled as he swung around into the next street. Not hit. Unharmed. So far, so good. Could he dare to hope?

The way to his flat suddenly seemed daunting, endless. Great blocks of uniform black and grey buildings reared around him. Pedestrians clinging to the walkways goggled as he went hobbling along the empty tarmac.

George glanced behind once, but no grey van followed. He reached the door of his building, and shunted through, panting like a shot animal.

His hand slipped on the banister. He fell onto his front. Stairs jabbed at his ribs and his gut. He swore under his breath, groped for the railings again, and hauled himself up. Joyce appeared in her doorway, unimpressed.

“Mr Mote, you look terrible. I should call someone.”

He flashed her a look, and she got the awful smirk she got whenever she had news of someone else taken away by the grey men. She retreated back into her flat. George shouldered open the door to his.

The girl still sat on his daughter’s bed. As he stampeded through, she leapt into a crouch, tucking her head under her forearms.

“We have to go!” yelled George.

“Today?”

“Now!”

She rushed to him. Her delicate hands clamped on his arm. A siren shrieked outside. George stumbled to the window, adrenalin shaking through him. The grey van slid to a stop, and two men clambered out.

“We have to run,” he told the girl, trying not to betray his own terror.

“Will we make it?”

“I think- Yes. We will.”

She pulled at his sleeve, and they careened out into the lobby again. Joyce glowered at George from her hallway, but with a smug tilt to her lips.

“The Committee provides, Mr Mote,” she called.

He trampled down the stairs, not even holding the railings. The girl pelted ahead, crow-feather hair flapping free of her braid. Grey silhouettes smeared across the glass of the door.

“Back!” shouted George.

The girl slowed. He tugged her away, just as the first of the grey men kicked the door open. George ploughed into him, swinging a fist. It connected with something hard, and one of his fingers crackled. He ground his teeth against the pain. They spilled out onto the street. Keep running – that was all he could do. He propelled the girl on ahead.

The second grey man lunged for George. Something fizzed and cackled in his grip. Taser. It stabbed into his side, and he jerked madly around it. Every cell of his body screamed. He dropped to hands and knees on the rough pavement. The current made him scrabble even as the grey man pulled the taser away. This would be the end then. Any complex thought was scuppered by electrical agony.

He lay on the cold ground, huddled around himself. The shimmering outline of the grey man stood over him. The taser laughed in his hand.

The girl charged. The grey man backhanded her before she could land a punch. His stunned colleague limped over. She backed away from them both, a red stain spreading across her cheek.

“Another refugee,” said the one with the taser. “This one’ll go to the drowners, I reckon.”

George managed to push away from the pavement. He leant back onto his knees. Even that drained what little energy he had left.

The two grey men advanced on the girl. She wiped the back of her hand over the cut on her cheek. Otherwise, she seemed shocked into helplessness. Then she glanced to George.

He rose, ungainly on his feet. Today was a day of slim chances. He had one now, while the two men were focused on the girl. Their problem was, they expected everyone to just give up. He lurched at them.

His punch cracked into the neck of the man with the taser. The device clacked down onto the pavement, and the girl darted for it. Before the second man could draw a weapon, she rammed the cackling taser into his midsection. He tried to double back, but she went with him, until he crumpled beside his colleague.

George looped his arm around the girl. Perhaps she was relishing her victory, perhaps just basking in her return to the world beyond George’s window. He stumbled along the deserted road. She soon overtook him, and he babbled directions to the pier. A ten minute walk, usually. But the pavement kept swelling under his feet, threatening to drag him down. His legs still tremored with electricity, and the siren’s wail made his ears throb. What little he’d forced down at breakfast rose from his stomach.

The clapping of the girl’s shoes against the ground faded. George looked up, leaning against a garden wall, but everything more than a step ahead was distorted. He bunched over himself. Someone grabbed his arm. He elbowed them away, then heard her voice from a distance. She pulled at his hand, and he managed another shambling step.

The ground wavered. He toppled, scraped his knees. He vomited onto the pavement, eyes screwed shut and watering, his muscles all quivering still. The girl hovered around him. Her frantic pleas were muddled to his ears, sometimes spoken in a language he didn’t understand.

Why did she care? He’d considered handing her to the Committee every day since he’d found her wandering in the dark behind his building.

“Go to the pier,” he mumbled. “There’s a boat there. The Roach.”

She didn’t need him, yet she tried to help.

She put her hands under his arm, and hoisted until she hissed with effort. George opened his eyes. The world was coming back together a little, so he tottered onto one foot. She hugged him as he raised to both feet.

The siren screamed again, and George limped on. The girl slowly unlatched her arms from around him, and her petit hand squeezed around his, as Meera’s had. Through the clarion wailing, the sea whispered to George. A burst of speed sent him loping around another corner, and the buildings fell back. A vast turquoise sheet of water waited for them. The pier jutted out into it. Close now.

The siren went silent. George and the girl sprinted across the open road. As they did, there was a predatory rumble from the other side. George fixed his gaze on the boat though. He could see it clear as the sea itself – a small but elegant craft swaying on the tide. He could even see the man at the helm.

The rumble built. He turned away from the boat, and the bore of an enormous cannon stared unblinking and inexorable back at him. The tank pitched forward on caterpillar treads, skin mottled by old paint and past skirmishes. The gun pointed right at them.

“Go ahead, tell him Meera sent us.”

George shoved the girl forward. She went sprinting onto the wooden steps of the pier, then her shoes were clacking over the beams. She didn’t look back, and George hoped she wouldn’t.

He watched her even when the boom of the gun ruptured the air. Grey vans screeched to a halt on his other side. Grey men piled out to observe.

He watched the girl stop at the edge of the pier, just a tiny silhouette against the bejewelled sea. She tilted her head back towards him. She hadn’t realised he’d stumbled to a halt in the road.

Then the blast shattered into the tarmac beside him. George spun through the air, and, despite the wrecking pain, he marvelled at how he seemed to float weightless just for a moment. Here, here, he was untouchable, beyond even the Committee. And, as he fell back to earth, through the ringing in his ears, he heard the engine of a small boat retreating to the ocean.

Short Story
14

About the Creator

Charlie C.

Attempted writer.

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Outstanding

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Comments (4)

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  • Christiane Winterabout a year ago

    Brilliant, immersive work - i'd love to see a part 2!

  • Alison McBainabout a year ago

    An engrossing story full of action and mystery... I could definitely see this as a scene from a longer work. Great worldbuilding. Congrats on the contest win!

  • mark william smithabout a year ago

    excellent! pulled me all the way through. beautifully written. you have a great future in this field. one of the best stories I've ever read.

  • I liked the action parts, it was a sad ending and engrossing story. Subscribed to your work.

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