The line to Malum

I woke up to a familiar smell. Like one of those smells from a memory, of somewhere you’ve been before but can’t get back to. And you miss the way you felt, who you were with, the things you were seeing, the things you once hoped for. A memory which makes you feel like something is missing, like you can pinpoint the exact moment it all went wrong. All from that smell that you can’t even quite place, that your brain may have even made up. The next thing I’m aware of is something rushing past me, or perhaps myself rushing forwards. Backwards? I don’t know.

Did I black out? It wouldn’t be the first time I woke up with my head spinning, desperately trying to grasp focus while trying not to throw up. But I don’t feel sick. I don’t feel drunk. I feel strange, like how during sleep paralysis you know you are asleep, now I know I am awake. But everything is heavy. And even before I can force my eyes open, I know I don’t know where I am. My mother always said I was a hoarder, even before I could talk. I would faithfully keep things under the torturous premise of one day, one day this will be useful, if I let this go then one day, I will miss it. The empty promise of one day this will be worth something. Perhaps it will make up for all the things I lost. The ever-swelling number of items I have around my small apartment is almost suffocating, like every old pair of boots, every dusty ornament, everything my dad ever touched, every letter I’ve ever received breathes the air with me, stifling me by my own volition. And that’s the way I like it. But now as I struggle to prop my eyes open, to stabilise my vision, I can’t see any of the plush animals, the old lamp which no longer works, my neatly folded pile of coats which one day will look good with the right pair of shoes. And I’m more certain than ever that I am moving, not my body being propelled alone but everything. My head feels so heavy I feel like it might weigh me down forever. I can’t feel my hands or my feet, but I suddenly feel anxiety shoot up from my stomach like reflux, and I throw my body upright so fast I feel like my brain hits the front of my skull, erupting a blinding headache which I think I had before, my synapses were just not awake enough to notice. And I realise immediately, I’m on the Lexi. Relief floods me because I know where I am. Fear floods me because I know where I must be going.

******

The day they announced the revisions to the train line, I was still living with my Mum on Eliza Street. The Subway had been a mess for over a decade when the tunnels were caved in during the Reclamation. It had operated as best as it could while they had been working om it, but somewhere along the way they’d decided to just have four main lines leading out of the city. They would run North, South, East and South-East. They were all named. Turi, Lexi, Allesse and Picta. People didn’t really have business anywhere outside the surrounding major cities. Most people didn’t have business outside this one. Not since the bombs.

“I think it’s good,” Mum had said, polishing a persistent streak of grime off her frying pan, “It’ll make things easier.”

The trains were colour coordinated. Turi, red, Lexi, orange, Allesse, pink and Picta, blue. Like they used to have in London, before, Mum told me. Made things easier. I never really used the trains. I rode my bike to school, and most of us just caught the cars or walked everywhere else. It hadn’t really mattered to me.

******

The Lexi was the South line. I know it immediately by the orange seats, the orange handles swaying aggressively on the ceiling. It’s dingy, but not too dark after my eyes adjust to the bright orange juxtaposed with the metallic black of the carriage. I’ve been lying across a seat, and the carriage is dotted with other people, maybe half full. The train is loud, but I immediately notice, no one is talking. No one seems to know each other. Some are holding their heads. Some are gazing out of the window, blankly, staring at the glass rather than through it. There is a strange uncertainty hanging in the air, but also submission. As if everyone has given up. I can see three pairs of legs spilling off the bench seats into the aisle, belonging to people reminiscent of myself just a minute ago. So fast asleep that they could be dead.

I don’t know why I am going South. The coast. Malum and the surrounding cities had been the business centre before the Reclamation. Now there are no surrounding cities. And Malum is the capital. And beyond that is just the sea. My parents took me there once when my father had to go there on business. We used to live in what is now one of many deadtowns in the country, between Malum and New Washington. My father was an Investor, and he was good at it. He was often asked to relocate the capital, but he loved us, and we loved the open spaces. Nature was the most important thing to my mum back then. And when it all died, a part of her died with it.

I look around, my senses rushing back to me in a sickening coordination which overwhelms me. And I start to panic properly. I grip the seat on either side of me, and the numbness rushes from my fingers so fast it hurts. I shove my hand in my pockets. Empty. Pins and needles start fighting their way up my limbs, and before I can stop myself, they force themselves up my throat and out of my mouth in a painful yell. My hand flies to the top of my left arm, just below my shoulder. There is a burning pain shooting up and down my arm like acid. No one in front of me so much as turns their head in reaction to my scream. The only person who looks my way is the guard who is standing directly in front of me next to the entrance to the next carriage.

“Tess?”

Still gripping my arm, the pressure applying only enough relief to remind me how much it hurt before, I twist my neck. I recognise the voice, but again my brain scrambles to place it. I feel like there is some sort of fog in my brain. Like I’ve been drugged. I react defensively when I feel two arms wrap around me, and I pull away before my body registers that it’s a hug. I awkwardly lift my chin buried in the embrace and contort my head to try to identify the owner of the arms locked around my shoulders.

“Rosa?”

Rosa had been my neighbour, my best childhood friend, before the Reclamation. She was from the same deadtown as my family, and her father was another major Investor in the district. Our mothers had been close. She still lived not far from me in the city, and we saw each other at school. We had managed to keep childhood jokes alive between us. Partly because we had nothing else to talk about anymore, but partly because we knew how much we both needed to hold on to that time, when things were simple and innocent. When things were good.

She pulls away from me so intently she almost would have pushed me backwards if she hadn’t grabbed my shoulders on the way past. My neck jolts and the whiplash migrates once again to the top of my throbbing arm. I open my mouth to speak but she’s stolen the words I’m about to say.

“Do you know what I’m doing here?”

“No,” I slide back along the seat and pull her down next to me. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“I can’t remember,” She looks at me, her white face tear stained and her eyes desperate. “Tess, I can’t remember anything.”

I can feel eyes on me. I turn my head, and see the guard watching us, intently.

“Do you recognise anyone here?” I lower my voice. She scans her eyes over the other passengers, already shaking her head, her whole body trembling forcefully.

“Only you,” She whispers.

I steal a glance to my left. He’s still watching.

“Why are we going South?” Rosa is still whispering, but her pitch is slowly rising. She’s replaced her statement with a question. We don’t go South. We can’t go South.

“Our mums have to be here somewhere.” I don’t believe it. But I don’t understand. “Do you have your phone?”

“No,” Her voice cracks. Tears spill over her lashes so quickly it’s like someone’s emptying a syringe on her cheeks. I can almost hear them splash against my hand, gripping hers.

“Okay,” I say, in my head formulating a plan. The guard is looking directly ahead down the aisle now, sometimes looking to the side at the wasteland rushing past. The train lines deliberately cut through old farmland, away from the deadtowns or any place which might bring up vibrant memories. So the commuters won’t be reminded. Like they couldn’t be. The grey landscape is unrecognisable from when herds of animals and crops coloured the countryside. Occasionally an old warehouse or particularly courageous skeleton of a tree stands out on the horizon. But apart from that, only grey. It looks like death.

I squeeze Rosa’s hand and am about to get up to approach the guard when I hear a rustle behind me. Next to my hip, I see a small hand slip between the faded orange seat and the backrest and deposit a ripped piece of paper. It looks like an old receipt, that kind of carbon paper they stopped making after the bombing.

Rosa hasn’t noticed it. I don’t dare turn around. Something about the motion of the hand made me feel uneasy. Like the contents of the note is a secret that will kill me. I reach across with one hand, still holding Rosa’s in the other as her head rests against my shoulder. Her eyes must be closed. I pray they are. I unfold the note quietly.

You need to go to the bathroom.

I nudge Rosa, and watching the guard as I do so, pass it across my lap so she can see it. She looks up at me, then looks behind us. I don’t feel any reaction from her. The person must be gone.

“Come on,” I say. I wait for her to stand, and I follow her out of the seat, taking the lead as we approach the guard. Even though he has been watching us this whole time, he purposefully does not shift his gaze to us until we are right in front of him.

He looks down. Doesn’t speak. Waiting for me.

“I – We need to go to the bathroom,” I say, my voice cracking.

“One at a time,” He replies, his voice gravelly and cold.

“I don’t feel well,” Rosa interjects, her voice swamped by tears.

He looks at us both, hard, for what feels like forever. The sound of the train against the tracks is louder here, and the carriage jolts, forcing us to grab each other for stability.

He doesn’t say anything, but he looks at as with a strange expression. Like he knows us. Recognises our faces. Like he despises us. He turns and unlocks the door behind him, and slowly steps aside. Motions for us to go through. Between the carriages there is a small flexible lavatory car which moves violently with the motion of the train. There are two separate lavatories, side by side, and opposite the doors, a water fountain which has been sealed off with grey putty. Straight ahead is the door to what I assume is the next passenger carriage, but the blacked-out windows leave everything to the imagination. Even if the carriages aren’t soundproof, the noise of the screeching metal on metal below us is deafening. I take a few steps forward and try sliding the connecting door open. It won’t budge.

I turn back and usher Rosa into one of the cubicles, locking the door behind us.

“We can’t go that way,” I say, although the feeling of being trapped has been painfully obvious since I woke up here. Rosa is tugging at her sleeve, uncomfortable. She pulls the arm of her sweater, exposing her small, angular shoulder. At the top of her arm is an aggressive, red dot. Like something has been injected there. I pull my own sleeve down, and finally see the source of the fiery pain that has been consuming my arm. A matching red puncture is nestled amongst my scattered freckles, like a cancerous cell floating amongst platelets. Seeing it brings the pain back, and I quickly cover it. We have to make a plan for when we arrive, I think, we have to get off this train and run. My brain is scrambling so hard I forget the reason we came to the bathroom in the first place. I am trying so hard to make sense of it, of anything, when I hear a noise behind me. I turn around, expecting the door to be opening, defensively putting my body in front of Rosa. I see a small piece of carbon paper sliding underneath the door, the same kind as the hand gave us before. I snatch the piece of paper off the floor, and stumble back to Rosa who has pressed herself against the back wall of the cubicle, bracing herself against the lurching motion of the train.

At first, there appears to be nothing written on the paper. My eyes scan over the grime it has scraped from the floor, but there is nothing. Until I turn it back over. In the top right-hand corner is a symbol I haven’t seen for years. A symbol Rosa hasn’t seen for just as long. A symbol which used to be all around our houses, on pads of paper, on pens, on the uniforms that smelled like our dads. The small, but unmistakable crest of our father’s investment firm. The realisation hits us both in tandem.

Rosa clutches at my arm.

“Don’t open the door,” she says.

“We have to,” I hiss.

“Are you insane?” Her voice cracks and the panic seeps in. Maybe I am insane. Maybe this whole situation is just a fantasy I’ve created in my crazy mind. Maybe the trauma, the hatred, has finally driven me mental. But I don’t know what else to do. I step forward and unlatch the door, sliding it open a crack. And I instantly wonder if I’ve made a grave mistake when the person swings the door open and rushes inside, sliding it closed with a thud behind him. He latches the door and turns around, and I take a moment to absorb him. He is small, smaller than both Rosa and me. He has unruly, wispy hair, which is so ashy it takes me a moment to determine if it is white or blonde. He is young, too young to have grey hair. But his eyes look wild, like he has seen the world end and begin again. Though he’s not the only one.

“It is you, isn’t it,” he says it like a statement, not a question. And if it wasn’t for the paper Rosa is now clutching in her fist, I would have no idea who he thought we were.

“Who are you? What’s going on?” I whisper so aggressively; I release a small shower of saliva into the air between us.

“You’re Mr. Willis’ daughter, aren’t you?” He says, his eyes fixated on my face, as if I am a relic he has just dug out of the earth and he the historian. As if I am something he never thought he would find.

“How-”

He interrupts Rosa before the word has fully left her lips.

“And you, you’re Bob Larson’s?”

I feel Rosa stiffen. I never really asked too many questions, but I knew that Rosa’s mother didn’t like to talk about Mr Larson. After the massacre, she had taken his photographs off the wall and hidden his things. The reminder was too painful. But Rosa, who was too young to really understand, I think she blamed the Reclaimers for taking her father, but she blamed her mother for taking his memory.

I want to reach and shake him. Demand how he knows this, how he knows us. But I am paralysed, as if all the questions are pressing against the inner walls of my body in a jumble of words, making it impossible to get one out. And then he says something that makes all the questions disappear. Makes my knees feel so weak I almost fall, makes the tears instantly set fire to my eyes.

“They loved you so much, you know.”

I turn to Rosa. She has her eyes pressed so tightly shut the tears almost can’t escape, as if she is trying to keep them trapped inside her. I grip her hand and brace my other against the wall as the train hits a bend in the track.

“Who are you?” I ask again, my voice stolen by the hurt nestled in my throat.

“Teo,” he says, pausing as if that should mean something to us. “I was an intern with your father’s firm, before.”

Before. Before everything was taken away from us.

He holds out his hand to me. I flinch slightly, unsure, before I realise, he wants to shake my hand. Tentatively, I reach out, grip his hand firmly. His hand is comfortingly warm, which surprises me. His skin is so pale it almost looks blue. He reaches for Rosa, who slowly reaches out her hand, and barely brushes his before recoiling.

“It’s really nice to meet you guys,” Teo has a sadness in his eyes. Like there is an emotional scar lingering like a film across his pupils. Like he has seen things no person should ever have to see. “We need to get you off this train.”

“What’s happening?” I ask softly. And that look in his eyes deepens. And suddenly I don’t want to know the answer.

“They’re taking you to the coast. And I don’t know what’s going to happen when you get there. But I know you’re in danger.”

“Why?” Rosa rasps, her voice sounding aged and tired. How many times had we had to ask that question? Why…why him, why us. Why.

“Because you’re the daughters of Investors. Two of the most brilliant Investors this country has seen in years. Because they knew things. Almost everything.”

“Is it the Reclaimers? Are they waiting for us there?” Rosa’s voice has gone from tired to shrill. To pure panic.

Teo looks from Rosa to me, back to Rosa, his brow furrowed.

“The Reclaimers didn’t order the death of your fathers,” he says finally, his eyes locked onto Rosa’s. “The Governor did. And everyone on this train, they’re a threat to the-.”

At that moment, the door is forced open with such a force it hits the wall and bounces back. Two guards’ rush in, grabbing Teo by his arms and hair, dragging him out of the cubicle.

*****

The week after the bombing, we were still in the city. The TV was full of scenes of people searching through rubble, bodies on the street, the air a strange hue of red. I’d overhead my parents talking about the new technology. It wasn’t the same nuclear as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not the same chemical makeup. Or something. I didn’t know what any of it meant. We were staying in a hotel, and I was allowed room service. My mother and I went to the pool, went window shopping, went to the Museums. The city was strangely unaffected, loudly aware but purposefully ignorant of the devastation that lingered like a corpse around the outskirts. My father had gotten a phone call the night before it happened. Had told my mother and I to pack a bag immediately, there would be a car sent for us. He held my hand the whole way there with an intensity that had terrified me. Like he never wanted to let me go, but knew that at some point, he’d have to.

When we arrived to the city, there were a group of men in suits waiting for us in the lobby. They all had the same crest embroidered on their breast pockets. I remember thinking how perfect they looked. Not a crease on their clothes, not a hair out of place. My father introduced us. They all knew my mother, and all smiled at me kindly. I held my mothers hand and leant into her leg as they talked. Something about intel. Something about an air strike. Something about you’re safe here. The Governor had called us all together, because we were important. If anyone could rebuild an economy, a society, a country - it was the genius of these men.

My mother had cried, had pulled me aside to sit in a small lounge with a fish tank. I watched as the fish swam back and forth, their bright transparent fins hypnotically moving as if they simply blended into the water. The Reclaimers were going to bomb the towns. And I thought about all of the people I knew, all of my friends, how they were all disposable. But not my dad. He would keep us safe forever.

They didn’t know it then, but not long after, all those men were going to die. And now, I realised. They were not martyred. They were sacrificed.

*****

One of the guards begins clubbing Teo on the skull, on the shoulders. His forehead splits open like a watermelon, blood cascading down his face. He turns to look at me through the crimson curtain splashing over his eyes, and he gurgles, “Go”.

But there is no where to go. I clutch Rosa’s head against my chest blocking her view. Like I had the day the newspapers published the pictures of our fathers hanging by their necks on Wall Street.

We sink to the floor, Rosa sobbing in my ear as I hold her. The guard grabs her, yanking her away from me. She kicks, screaming, as they drag her across the cold metal floor, across the blood smears which are inching their way across the floors, trickling down the steps to the doors to the outside world. I clutch for her hand, but suddenly something explodes next to my head. Smoke starts seeping into my nose and mouth, and I immediately feel a cold darkness snatch my consciousness, my breathing desperately slowing, and I’m fighting against the frantic dulling of my senses. And I lose her hand. And she slips away.