The Retrievers

I feel the rush surging over me as I run. A sort of static energy from the crown of my head down to my legs. I was getting away…

The sirens above me on the lampposts wail intermittently between the automated message that echoes from speaker to speaker: ‘This is a public safety announcement. A section 30 has been committed in the area. Suspect is… IC1… male… medium build… wearing…. Black. Suspect is currently running… North on…. Townley Road. Please remain in your houses. Neighbourhood Defenders have permission to shoot upon sighting.’

I swallow and propel myself forward faster. The clicks of front doors locking and muffled shrieks cascade ahead.

I didn’t always used to live like this. Up to the age of nine my memories are like a series of rolling hazy vignettes in my head. A curly brunette boy, me, donning a birthday hat whilst blowing out candles on a penguin-shaped cake… a big grin on my frosting-covered face as I tear open piles of presents... laughing with my Dad as we threw snowballs from behind the cars in the winter… bowling on Friday nights with my parents…

But 2032 changed everything, when I was halfway through college. I was smoking a joint with Carl, my metalhead of a roommate in our dinghy dorm room covered with skateboarding posters on my side, and thrash metal bands on his. I was just passing it back to him. I remember the moment so vividly when my cell phone rang. It was Mom, and she was crying.

‘Brandon?’ she had choked. That voice when she was trying to pretend she was okay.

‘Mom? What is it… is Dad-‘

‘He’s fine honey… well, sorta… oh honey… we’ve lost everything. Have you been watching the news?’

I hadn’t watched the news since I’d moved out. Obviously.

‘No. Mom, what… what do you mean?’

‘Oh honey… the stock market… it’s not just crashed, it’s shut down. Everyone’s gone nuts. The interest rates have gone through the roof and-‘

‘Mom hold up…. Slow down… it’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. I’m leaving now, I’ll just pack a bag and I’ll be home in-’

‘Brandon….’ Mom had whispered, ‘We haven’t got a home. Everything. Everything is gone. Your Dad’s been arrested – we are in so much debt… head to Aunt Barbara’s okay honey? I’ll meet you there.’

There were so many conspiracies around the shut down. So much… bitterness. As always, the rich folk mainly did alright. Most of them managed to keep their homes - they didn’t have mortgages. Hell, some even squeezed a little upgrade in there too. Insensitive stories plastered the tabloid front pages for months: ‘How I turned my three bedroom townhouse into an ocean view LA mansion!’ Cashing in on the losses of the indebted bygone rich. Most of the middlers – like my parents – had to move out quickly, interest rates on mortgages were crazy high. And the poor, well, they stayed poor but had more company on the streets these days.

Central Perk was now one big refuge site. A ‘bring your own home’ type of affair. Dad had gotten into prepping just after his fortieth birthday, so we lived in the north of the park in the bell tent we got him a couple of Christmases ago. He hadn’t tired just yet of smugly pointing out how wrong Mom and I had been for all these years poking fun at his prepping. And I didn’t have the energy to argue that his 600 jars of sauerkraut and set of crossbows would not be useful even in a genuine apocalypse.

There were no jobs. The rich were given priority for the few that were out there… seen as more reliable with their cars and stable homes. There was money to be had around camp running errands, but none of them were legal. And today I was ‘retrieving’. A couple of years ago, people in the camp started to get angry – the pawn shops were big business, but they weren’t keeping to their word. And the rich seemed to get a lot of satisfaction from buying the most personal possessions we lost. So, we took it upon ourselves to send out and commission retrievals. Each item was worth around twenty bucks: that kind of cash could feed me, Mom and Dad for a couple of days.

I am now running so fast that my throat starts to burn from how quickly I’m breathing. The sirens overhead are still wailing when suddenly I hear a woman’s voice cut through. She’s repeatedly shouting ‘Stop!’ I look up and see her. She’s blocking the pavement ten or so metres ahead. A Glock in her hands pointing directly at me.

I have two choices. In a split second, I slow to a halt and raise my hands up. The static feeling within me melts into numbness.

She walks slowly along the road towards me, her hand shaking, causing the gun to jerk rapidly.

‘Can you let me go… please?’ I plead. My head is pounding. This has never happened before… back at the refuge they always manage to cut the tannoys on the grid for at least five minutes.

‘And why would I do that? You match the description.’

‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’

She stops shaking now and looks steely, angry even. ‘You drifters are all the same. Blaming us for everything that’s gone wrong in your lives…. as if it’s our fault you had no security in life-‘

I can feel the blood in my temples. Hot. Impatient. But I know I all the while she has the Glock in her hand I’m trapped. So I try a different tact. ‘Okay. Look, I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have broke in. Look, can I just give you the necklace? It’s all I took, I swear. And please… can you just let me go? You know what they’ll do to me if they arrest me.’

She looks uneasy. Like she’s not sure whether to trust me.

‘My family had no money. I had to give up this…’ I reach into my inside pocket and pull out the locket I’ve just taken from the house up the street. It had taken me twenty minutes of rifling through cupboards until eventually finding it in the freezer, of all places. ‘It’s all my mother left me before she..’ I grimace, looking down at my feet.

The woman sighs, and sways momentarily, as if physically weighing up her options. ‘If I let you go, you gotta promise you won’t come back here?’

I nod emphatically.

She outstretches her left hand whilst still pointing the Glock at me and motions for me to give her the locket.

As I run back to Central Park, I grin to myself and imagine seeing her opening the locket and looking at a photo of someone else’s mother. I was retrieving today, but not for me.