Leaving Birmingham

© E G French

5000 words Short Story

The sun may have been shining up above, Topside that is. It was impossible to tell from the Chiefs' office which was, according to Frank Haynes, the undisputed high point of the city. Not that that counted for much when even the highest point in the city was almost a mile down into the crust of the earth. But it meant a lot to City Architect Haynes. It also meant a lot to the Chief and his fat wife, because it was about as far away from the filth of the Warrens as you could get.

How I hated them all now. Now that I was on the wrong side.

Chief Co-ordinator Harrison Darley had held the top executive post in the city for almost twenty years. The longest 'Presidency', in fact, since the post had been created soon after the last of the topsiders had been forced underground two hundred years ago. That was about when the climate had finally succumbed to over two centuries of abuse inflicted upon it by the unchecked greed of capitalist barons and ignorant government.

The first eco refugees had merely eked out a spartan existence in the huge concrete bunkers beneath the cities. Deserted gargantuan relics of the early nuclear age when the Earths' biggest worry was the threat of nuclear conflict. They called themselves 'Survivalists' and were, like their predecessors, considered by and large to be no more than oddballs at best or toothless anarchists at worse by the surface governments of the mid twenty first century. They were generally left to their own devices as long as they stayed out of the public eye and refrained from subversive activities. The survivalists obsession with arms and static defence techniques was, in most quarters, greeted with the same indifference afforded to the earlier 'post-nuke' survivalists of the United States of America back in the twentieth century, and were similarly taken as a rich source of comic material for the entertainment media of the time.

Maybe it was this slapstick perception of the survivalists that precluded any serious attempt at legislation to limit numbers and introduce arms procurement procedures.

Survival freaks playing war-games in the woods.

Some games.

Thirty thousand dead for a hole in the ground, and that was just Birmingham.

We didn't have big fights anymore. We killed enough of our own people legally. Well, we needed the space, didn't we. I'd been doing it for ten years now, re-locating they called it. When the lower warrens became overcrowded --- Birth control had been impossible to enforce--- we re-located the excess to units at the new living quarters on the far side of Central. Only there weren't any new units.

I suppose I'd re-located about three thousand in my ten years at it. Lately I'd begun to have these nightmares. I was too scared to sleep anymore. I was grateful for the job, sure, and the money was good. I had ten square meters to myself and a bed, if only I could sleep in it. But I'd had enough, I was getting out. The problem was, I'd just been offered an apartment on the far side of Central. The offer came down the tube this morning, I'd only told them yesterday.

That's why I'm in the elevator. I'm going out the hard way, all the way up.

I don't know exactly when I'd started to think about the kids. It was a gradual thing. It sort of crept up on me, the dirty faces smiling, trusting. We didn't carry arms or wear body armour until we got to the dump site.

Boy were they surprised.

In my dreams I can see only one face out of the three thousand, a girl, about seven years old. She'd lost her mother soon after arriving at the dump site. The trains were especially full that day. She'd held on to my hand all the way to the pit. She trusted me!. She asked me to find her mom. That's when I'd finally given in to it. I suppose I cracked. I actually looked around for the kids mother. I knew it was hopeless but I went through the motions anyway. In the end I smuggled the girl back to the warrens, for free. It wasn't much of a reprieve I know, but it had to be better than the pit. Now I was on the run. They couldn't let me back into the warrens now. If I spread the truth to enough people about the re-location program it could start the riots off again. That's if I could get enough of them to take notice, it was hard to get through to anybody down there. Myself, I'd been off the hard stuff for months now.

The kids were BORN hooked in the warrens.

'Shit!'. The elevator was slowing down. Too soon!.

I knew it was too good to last. I'd got out of the warrens using my Service ID. It had got me as far as the elevator, then I'd used the sonic decoder to open the huge doors and input the operator codes. I hadn't been able to get the intermediate codes, I was supposed to go all the way up. I had a few handy gadgets with me, you pick up some useful tools in bribes in my line of work. One of them was the Copscan. All police in the city carry scanners to sweep the area for weapons and illegal electronics when out on a search. The Copscan sent out its' own signal, hunting up and down the frequencies until it locked on to the police scanner. If you were quick enough you could pinpoint the cops position before they got yours, it was a two way thing and fatal in the hands of an amateur. The penalty for carrying illegal electronics was summary population control.

I had to know who was getting on. I took a quick look, a half second scan, straight up. There they were, six of them at least, thirty floors up, scanning right back at me. I had to get off the elevator, and fast.

Think quick...., twenty three floors left.....

Twenty....

I pointed the decoder at the control panel and fed the lot right in.

Nothing happened. I almost dropped the decoder, letting it slip through my sweat slicked fingers.

Ten floors left..........., I was sweating , shaking with fear.

Eight floors left, I pushed all of the buttons at once. It was a desperate move.

The lift suddenly shuddered to a screeching halt. I was being hammered to the floor by an invisible press. I blacked out.

I was looking at a doorway but it must have been for a very small person because it was only two feet high. Then I realised that the lift had stopped between floors and the doors had opened in emergency response. A quick look at the indicator showed that it had stopped between six and seven floors below the cops. I didn't know how long I'd been out but I was still clear.

The grey concrete corridor was lined with gurgling pipes of all sizes wrapped in silver foil. Air ducts, hanging from metal straps, criss-crossed overhead in startling contrast to the grey concrete. The faint sound of rushing air, rising and falling in steady rhythm with some distant pump, sounded like a stalking predator waiting to pounce.

I didn't dare use the Copscan again so I took pot luck and headed left. I ran. Running always brought unwelcome attention in the warrens. It was probably the same up here but I was in a hurry. It wouldn't be too long before the cops found the stranded lift and sealed off the area. I needed to put some distance between us.

It's amazing the detail you can take in, even at a steady ten miles an hour, when your mind is free of suppressants and other reality distorting chemicals. It was obviously a service area I had landed in yet the lights were much brighter than those in the living areas down below, wasteful. I couldn't see any cameras, not really surprising, the area seemed deserted. The passageway curved away to the right up ahead so I moved over to the inside of the curve, no sense in offering an easy target. I slowed down to a quick walk and eased around the bend. The corridor opened out into a large chamber and I could see about half a dozen large trucks parked in neat rows. People were unloading crates onto the raised platform bays alongside. Armed cops watched over the workers. There were several doors along the near wall. I took the first one.

It opened with just a slight push. A few steps down the short corridor there was an identical door. It opened easily as the first one so I just walked through as if I belonged on the other side.

I was in the mid levels. The sudden, calamitous chaos of the mid levels workforce rushing past in all directions slammed into my brain like a sledgehammer after the accustomed quiet of the service area. In a moment of pure panic, I almost turned and fled back through the door. As my initial panic subsided and some sense of reason came back to me, I realised that I was probably better off here than outside with the cops. Thankfully, I was dressed more or less the same as the crowds on this level, I wouldn't stand out. I began to feel at home in the crowd, I could disappear for a while. I searched out the nearest bar.

The one reality bending substance I hadn't managed to kick so far was alcohol and I felt safe enough to let go for a while, you had to have something or you went crazy. Within the hour I was blind drunk. I didn't even see the squad come in and begin checking ID. Mine was certainly useless now, they'd be looking for me by this time.

I was past caring by then. I must have blacked out.

I woke up in an enormous bed, lying on satin sheets. It was easily big enough for two people to stretch out comfortably in. In fact, it WAS fully occupied. I sneaked a look at the other occupant and breathed a grateful sigh of relief when I saw the obviously feminine curve of naked buttocks lying next to me. I tried to remember how I'd got here but my mind was a complete blank. There was only one way to find out.

I shook her gently until she muttered something unintelligible and turned to face me. She was beautiful. I pulled the silk quilt up from the floor where it had fallen some time during the night and self consciously covered my lower half when her eyes travelled down the bed, inspecting as they went. My apparent bashfulness seemed to irritate her.

'Suddenly he's shy'. She muttered to herself, lifting her eyes to the ceiling in an exaggerated display of disgust.

Lifting herself to a sitting position, she leaned over me, grabbed a pack of nics from the bedside locker and lit one. She raised her arm above her head and leaned back on the ornate headboard, one full breast followed dutifully. I saw the ugly black tracks down the insides of her arms. Smoke spiralled lazily up towards the ceiling. Casting a sidelong glance in my direction, she kicked the quilt back to the floor then settled back and pulled her feet up the bed, letting her knees fall slightly apart.

'What happened in the bar?'. I wasn't in the mood for games, I had a headache and an urgent need for a long drink of cool water.

She took a deep drag of her nic and let it out in a long sigh of disappointed resignation.

'The cops came in, checking ID, you didn't have any, I'd already checked'.

Bits of the night before began to come back to me despite the pain my head. I remembered dropping my card into the bin before getting drunk, there was just a chance I might have bluffed my way out of a cursory check if the police had no photograph.

'You were going to roll me?', It was no big deal, what did I expect if I was going to get stoned in a strange bar.

'How did you get me out, past the cops?'.

'I told them you were my old man, they believed me', you were putting on a good show of it. She paused, smiling at some memory, 'They left, I brought you here'.

'Why?'. I waited for the sting.

'Who are you?', She answered my question with a couple of her own, 'What's your name?'.

'John O'connell', It was as good as any!, 'Why did you help me?'.

'Andrea'. She began to trace delicate circles on my stomach with a shaped fingernail. I couldn't hide my arousal.

'What?'

'My name is Andrea'

'Why did you help me Andrea?' I repeated.

'I have some friends who go out without ID.'.

She looked suddenly hungry. I thought,.....what the hell, why not?.

I might have stayed with Andrea had it not been for the dreams. They were getting worse now. I'd wake up screaming in the night. Andrea hardly ever noticed, being pumped so full of sintheroin most of the time. Some nights she stayed out working. I knew what line of work she was in but I've never been the jealous type and the apartment was expensive. I was left with my dreams. It always started the same way. Thousands of people I didn't know, all blaming me, and the kids.... the kids just kept running blindly along the edge of the pit screaming for their lost parents until the high pressure hoses forced them over the lip. They said it went straight to the core of the Earth, a bottomless pit. I knew that was impossible, of course, but it might as well have gone straight to hell as far as the victims were concerned. No-one knew how deep the pit was, the screams just faded into nothingness as they went over. I woke up screaming most nights, the sheets soaked with my sweat.

I was losing weight and had started back on the hard stuff in an attempt to end the dreams, but it didn't work anymore, nothing did, the dreams were going to kill me in the end. Maybe it was right, maybe it was all I deserved.

But it couldn't be right, not when those men who had introduced re-location, the final solution to the problems of overpopulation, continued to grow fat on fancy dinners that would keep a family alive for a week in the warrens.

Life isn't as hard here in the mid levels. We have more room to live, more food to eat, and video, when the power is on. But that just meant that I had more time to think. My mind was still in the warrens. That dark, filthy maze of tunnels and chambers with it's multi-story block built ghettos. Home to a million souls who knew nothing better than the backbreaking toil of the mines or the power stations. That or the never ending stench of the immense sewerage systems.

Synthetic narcotics distributed freely by dealers employed by the government and paid according to the amount shifted, helped to ease the grind of existence. But when population levels rose there was barely enough food to go around and the extra demands on the meagre economy of the warrens, dependent on the strict job - population ratio, often collapsed completely. The resulting riots and an accompanying drop in production output greatly inconvenienced the residents of the upper levels.

The re-location program had been in operation for fifteen years or more and had kept Darley and Frank Haynes, the designer of the bulkheads separating the upper and lower levels, in a partnership of unopposed power ever since.

Even in the mid levels nobody thought too hard about conditions in the warrens. It was an embarrassing social necessity and therefore a taboo subject. Only Andrea's card-less friends, who I discovered were refugees from the warrens as I was, spoke openly about the plight of the people below. I kept the details of my previous employment from them, as they did theirs from me.

We didn't ask.

I became friendly with a young ex miner called Judd. He had a chronic breathing problem. He told me that he had got there on his escape, all the way to Topside, he'd been out into the open, he'd seen the sun. He said that there were people out there. People living outside!. The cops had told him that the air outside was poisonous and that it would kill anyone who stayed out too long. He had begun to have problems breathing after a while and thought that it was the air outside which had made him ill. He had decided to get back underground before the air finally killed him too.

Now he was convinced that it was the time that he'd spent in the mines which had damaged his lungs and maybe the cops had lied to him. He'd stayed in the upper levels for a while on his return and had once seen the President himself, being driven to the government building surrounded by armed guards in protected security vehicles.

I thought about that drive a lot. The man responsible for all of this was carried through the upper streets in a fancy car and had great dinners with his murderous cronies.

Hell...he probably went out dancing with his fat wife.

I thought about the sun for a long time. I tried to imagine what it would be like to stand out in the open with the sun overhead, feel the warm rays seep into my skin. I thought about it after the dreams had woken me up in the middle of the night. I thought about Darley dancing under the sun with his fat wife.

Then I knew how to stop the dreams.

Andrea was heartbroken. She said she'd become used to having me around, but I couldn't come off the hard stuff again watching her shooting up every day. I had nothing to pack so I just left. I went through the hell of withdrawal for the second time. The dreams got worse. I wasn't sleeping at all now. Judd took me to another of his friends places, I didn't want Andrea to find me. It would be so easy to sink back into the protective cocoon of Sintheroin addiction and fade away slowly with only the company of my terrible guilt in the final days.

I was as ready as I could be, I went back to see Judd. I knew I was not the same man who had left the warrens. The sleepless nights and the sintheroin had taken it's toll of my once strong body. I was an old man, not yet thirty five, but I had the strength to do what I must do and that was all I needed. I made the arrangements with Judd, he had the right friends. He would set it up.

There was no turning back.

It took a week. I spent the time watching videos of Darley, getting to know him. I sat for hours studying the pictures. I should still hate him, but I didn't feel anything for this man, no hatred, nothing at all, he was just a face on the screen. Where was the monster that had made me what I'd become. The creator of the beast which lived within me and was feeding on my soul. I would face him soon. Only this certainty kept me alive.

Judd knew the service tunnels like I knew the warrens. He led me unerringly through the maze to the north elevator. We didn't have the codes to ride it but there was a stairway running up alongside the main shaft. We stopped frequently on the long climb. Judds' breathing problem was getting steadily worse. I wasn't that much fitter. We had a fair amount of gear to carry, food and of course, the rifle. I carried the rifle, it was my freedom, my release from the dreams.

It was an antique twentieth century British Army solid projectile weapon, perfectly preserved, very crude. It used a mixture of explosive chemicals to propel a small metal missile at great speed to the target. It would go through the protective sonic scramblers which perpetually surrounded the President as if they didn't exist. I had five rounds of ammunition, as far as I knew the only five in existence.

I had one good shot of sintheroin in my pocket. I fought the temptation to use it when the long climb got really bad and it seemed like there was no end to the stairway. When we finally reached the upper levels Judd took us back into the service passageways and we began the long trek to Central. At least we were moving horizontally. Before leaving the passageway at Central he showed me the small elevator which he said led straight to topside, the one he'd used when he had seen the sun. I wanted to step in and just go all the way up, up to the sun, but I knew I couldn't do that, anyway I didn't have the codes.

He took me to the rooftop where he had watched the Presidents cavalcade travel along the roadway to the presidential building which we could see about half a mile away down the perfectly straight road. A few blocks had fallen inwards onto the solid concrete roof from the meter high parapet lining the edges of the rooftop. The fall had left a gap of about two feet across coming to roughly half way down the parapet. We were about thirty feet above the road.

It was perfect.

I looked up to see if there were any cameras in the vicinity. I couldn't see any.

The ceiling of the vast chamber was up there somewhere, but I could see nothing except the blinding brilliance of the mighty fluorescent lights far above, creating only the shortest of shadows underneath everything around. This was what the slaves in the warrens died for by the dozens every day. As the lights gradually dimmed Judd described the impossibly long shadows cast by things topside when the sun began to set, and the way they moved around an object as the day wore on. I tried to imagine a yellow sun travelling across the sky but all I could picture was the lights of central fixed firmly to a sky hewn out of rock.

I watched Judd sleep and longed for just an hour of peaceful release. But when I finally closed my eyes the nightmare started over.

The young girl I had saved from the pit was kneeling over the smashed and bloody body of her mother, crying softly. As I approached her she looked up at me, an unspoken question in her tear filled eyes. I couldn't think of anything to say, I just stood there, bewildered. Then her soft moans turned to a screeching wail. She pointed, accusing. I tried to motion her to silence, for fear of waking the others, the thousands over the lip of the pit just the other side of where she was kneeling alongside her dead mother. The screeching became louder, I panicked. She had woken them all. I could hear them scratching and clawing their way up the side of the pit. I had no choice, I ran straight up to her and kicked them both over the edge. The girl held on to the edge with bloodied fingers, I stamped on them until she let go. Her screech faded to nothingness as she fell.

I was back on the roof, Judd was shaking me, urging me to be quiet. I had been screaming out loud. I sat with my back to the parapet waiting for the lights to brighten while Judd slept in turn. I spent the next few hours fighting the sleep which was beckoning me back to hell.

I woke Judd when the lights were once again at full intensity. An hour, he said, before the cavalcade arrives. I cleaned the rifle one more time. The mechanism was working smoothly, lightly oiled and gleaming. I could smell the oil warming as I slid the cocking handle back and forth, making certain that it ran into all the channels preventing stoppages. I might need more than one shot.

Ten minutes before the expected arrival of the President the city was coming awake. The inevitable security sweep passed by ahead of the presidents' cars. We had no fear of detection with the ancient weapon. I loaded the bullets and sent the first one into the breach.

Here they came, three cars in the distance, black open top monsters running silently on tiny power cells which also fed the scramblers.

I lifted the rifle into position against my shoulder and peered into the sight, focusing it on a small irregularity in the road about a hundred meters away. It was a heavy weapon compared to the featherweight sonic weapons of the service but I'd practised a lot and become accustomed to the weight. Nevertheless I began to sweat and my arms felt like lead weights.

I lowered the rifle and wiped my eyes.

The cars were two hundred meters away when I looked back through the sight. He was in the second car, I recognised him immediately. I knew every fold of skin on that face. I followed him with the cross hairs of the sight fixed squarely in the centre of his face, just below the nose until the car reached the spot I had chosen for ranging. He seemed to sense something and looked up from the papers he was studying. He seemed to be looking right at me, too late.

I pulled the trigger.

The recoil of the heavy weapon lifted the barrel slightly so that the bullet entered the presidents head just above his left eye and exploded before leaving through the back of his skull. His head and part of his left shoulder disappeared completely. The cavalcade stopped immediately and security people ran around in confusion for a few moments. One guard, weapon drawn, ran to the presidents car then left to more productive labour when a quick glance showed him that there was nothing to be done there.

I was stunned by the spectacle revealed to me at close range through the telescopic sight and failed to withdraw the barrel of the weapon from the break in the wall for a few seconds. Judd leaned forward to push me out of the field of view. It cost him his life.

One of the security people had spotted the flash of the rifle and had already pointed the blaster in our direction as the president had slumped back into his seat. I fell back under the weight of Judds' sudden push and his momentum carried him forward, taking my place in the gap in the wall.

There was no flash of light or spurting blood but when he fell down I knew by the look of surprise and pain on his face that a concentrated beam of high energy sound waves had cooked one or more of his vital internal organs on it's way through his unprotected body. He tried to pull something from his breast pocket. It was an elevator decoder. In the seconds before he died he spoke two words through the bubbling blood welling up through his throat and beginning to flow down his chin, staining his shirt.

'The elevator'. He died silently after that, cradled in my arms.

I took the decoder from his clenched fist and ran. The security men were already in the building.

The passageway was still empty as I fled towards the elevator but I could hear the shouted commands of my pursuers not far behind. I reached the elevator doors, pointed the decoder at the panel and turned it on. The panel lit up and I heard the protesting whine of machinery as the lift powered up. It could be anywhere down the shaft and take up to an hour to get here. I could have run, possibly to safety, but I was sick of running. I waited for the lift. As the first security man came into view around a bend in the passageway the doors opened. I felt a searing pain in my right side as I fell through the doors. I fumbled for the decoder, it had fallen to the floor. The security man had just reached the lift as I got the doors to close. I felt yet another blast enter my thigh, same side. The lift started moving, up.

I dragged myself to the side of the lift and leaned back against the wall, I'd been hit twice. The one in my leg wasn't that serious, but the body hit had fried my kidneys, that was bad. I reached into my pocket for the sintheroin, if I ever needed it, it was now. My hands began to shake as I broke the seal on the sterilised vial and inserted the syringe.

As the veil of contentment began to descend over me I cried for Judd and for the people from the warrens I had taken to the pit, and I cried for myself. I didn't know if I had changed anything for those in the lower levels but I had tried, and who knows, if I had failed, in time someone else may try.

I must have slept, I don't know for how long but I woke feeling cold, there was a breeze blowing through the lift.

I hadn't dreamt at all! I was free.

The doors were open and the wind was blowing in, a crisp, clear wind bringing strange smells with it. I dragged myself out into the night air. My strength was fading fast. I managed to crawl behind a sandy hillock not far from the stark outline of the lift housing structure and slumped gratefully over onto my back to rest.

I opened my eyes and saw the most amazing sight I had ever seen in my life. Stars, thousands upon thousands of stars in the night sky. I wept with the joy of it. I tried to sit but I didn't have the strength.

It wont be long now.

I reached out for something waving in the breeze by my left side, in a moment of heightened awareness I realised what it was. After two hundred years of freedom from the interference of mankind, the Earth was beginning to heal itself. A lone flower had spread its petals in the night air and I could smell the musky fragrance on the breeze.

There was a slight brightening on the horizon, the dawn was approaching.

I'll just lie here and wait for the sun.

I hope I last that long.

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