Days Like This (2 page)

‘You know the rules,’ barked the trooper. ‘He has to take it himself.’ He ordered Daniel to get up.

‘His head hurts,’ Lily said.

The one female Blacktrooper stepped forward and caught Lily’s arm. She squeezed so hard Lily had to bite her lip to stop herself from yelping.

‘Stand still and shut up or you’ll be next,’ the woman hissed. ‘You two,’ she jerked her chin towards Megan and Pym, ‘control your children or they’ll be controlled for you.’

‘Quiet, Lily, Daniel,’ Pym said. ‘Just do as you’re told.’ His cheeks had flushed bright red.

Daniel laid Sherbet’s body gently on the sofa, then opened the vial and took his tablet. The others did the same. Alice’s gaze was fixed on Sherbet and she took long, shuddering breaths. Lily knew Alice was working hard at not sucking her thumb, something she still did, even though she was twelve.

‘It’s okay, Alice,’ Lily said softly. ‘It’s okay.’ Though how could it possibly be okay when they’d killed Sherbet?

The side of Lily’s face throbbed, but she wouldn’t touch it, not in front of them.

‘Let that be a lesson,’ the lead trooper said. ‘You shut up and take your pills, end of story.’

After an unscheduled sweep of the room to check for ‘censored material’, the troopers left, with Pym following behind them.

Lily grabbed a small linen tablecloth off a side table and swiftly wrapped the little bird. She fought down bitter tears. Ever since they had been forced to stay inside, cut off from other people, Sherbet had become more than a pet. He had been their friend.

Daniel sat down, his head sagging into his hands again, silent tears streaming. Lily knew he was blaming himself, wishing he hadn’t spoken up.

She touched her own head. She hadn’t told Daniel yet, but she was also starting to get headaches. Nothing like the scale of Daniel’s, though. Hers were more irritating than anything, but what if they got worse? She knew it wouldn’t do any good to tell their mother, who was at that moment gazing vacantly into the middle distance. Lily knew she should just leave it, but she couldn’t stand her mother’s indifference.

‘They killed Sherbet and you stood there and let them,’ Lily said, glaring at Megan. ‘And look at Daniel. The drugs obviously aren’t working.’

But Megan, with a slight shrug, just turned and left the room, holding the tray in front of her.

Alice lifted the sad little bundle off the lounge. ‘I’ll bury Sherbert in Mum’s garden,’ she whispered, leaning down to kiss Daniel on the forehead, before running after Megan.

Lily slumped down beside Daniel, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes to stop the furious tears. She felt totally helpless and trapped.

The house sounds Lily was hearing now were the only sounds she ever heard – the ticking of the grandfather clock and the sigh of its mechanism before the hour chimed. The click of the oven’s thermostat, the hum of the computer screens, the scrabble of palm leaves against the outer walls when the west wind blew up, the snap and crackle of the wooden front door as the sun hit it. Occasionally she heard the rattle of hail and storm rain that temporarily cooled their damaged world, and the ominous rumble and shake of earth tremors that were coming more often these days.

The harsh fact was that she, Dan and Alice were prisoners. Their parents had kept them inside this house for three years, with no contact to the outside world. Lily didn’t count the education programs they could access on their computer screens for their mandatory four hours of daily schooling. The programs had been installed when they were first confined to the house. Any idiot could see that the Central Governing Committee heavily censored them.

Lily shook her head. Three years! She and Dan had been fourteen then and Alice only nine. Lily still remembered what it was like outside, though – the air on her face, hot tar on a humid day, water on leaves, the feel of tree bark, the smell of red dust and summer rain.

Lily knew rain was almost a thing of the past now, at least inside the Wall. These days water-extraction pipes rose out of the ground, drawing up water from artesian wells to fill the tanks of people, like them, who were privileged enough to live in the water-inclusion zone. Even though she knew they were lucky to get water, Lily thought the ‘water moon’ deliveries were a poor substitute for real rain.

The thing Lily missed most was meeting new people. The only people they were allowed to see now were Pym’s slimy friend Max and the Blacktroopers, who were barely even human.

At night Lily often woke in a sweat from a recurring dream in which all her memories were rubbed out and she was alone in a closed-up world. She had to work hard at those times to remember what outside even felt like.

‘I can’t believe he killed Sherbet and they just let him,’ Lily said, snapping herself out of her reverie.

Daniel didn’t answer. He was obviously still in pain.

Lily shook her head. How could Megan just walk away from Daniel’s suffering? Where had her love gone? It was like someone had taken a giant sponge and soaked up all her joy and love and fury, her father’s too.

Lily had enough passion for all of them. She loved looking at historical events on her screen. She was mesmerised by the violent eruptions of volcanoes that went back into history, the massive cauldrons of smoking lava bubbling out of the earth. She was envious of that kind of energy. She wanted to smash the sedately ticking grandfather clock that ate her life. She’d like to crash through the hoardings that covered the old stained-glass windows. Sometimes she wanted to take her parents and shake them until their teeth fell out of their heads.

She was even jealous of the flying foxes that swooped in at night from wherever they roosted. They landed on the fig branches she could still see from the little window in the bathroom, the only one in the house that hadn’t yet been completely boarded up. But even the flying foxes came in much smaller numbers now. Would those little creatures eventually slip away altogether, to where all the other good things had gone?

Lily wanted to go back to the days when she and Daniel could run and play and climb trees, before her parents became strange, before the warming ate away at all the living things in their shrivelled-up world. Before the Wall.

Lily hated the Wall almost more than anything else. Its construction had marked the beginning of everything bad. Daniel had tried to be upbeat when it was built twelve years ago, cordoning off the privileged areas around Sydney Harbour, keeping out people considered less worthy, people who could not afford water or food from the food-production facilities, people the newly formed Central Governing Committee had deemed expendable.

Lily remembered how she had once heard Max telling Pym about ‘people over the Wall who defied the Committee’. It gave her hope that some people might have survived out there.

Daniel used to tell her they could overcome the Wall; that it didn’t have to define them. But the fact was, the Wall kept them in just as much as it kept other people out. It was a high price to pay for their supposedly privileged lifestyle.

‘Dan,’ she said now, ‘I’m sorry about Sherbet.’

‘It was my fault,’ he muttered.

‘It wasn’t. You were just standing up to them. You did the right thing.’

When he didn’t answer, she said, ‘What did you mean about the pills before? Are you saying you don’t think they’re for preventing disease?’

‘Can’t,’ Dan whispered. ‘Not now. Later.’

The weekend passed with the usual monotony, but at least Daniel didn’t get another headache. Monday brought the same pointless schooling routine they’d been following for the last three years. It was always the same. An hour each of English, Maths, Geography and History, in that order. The computer marked their work. Their father checked it. They did it all again the next day. Saturdays and Sundays were free.

This Monday morning had dragged more than usual. Lily couldn’t get her mind off what the Blacktroopers had done to Sherbet. She couldn’t stop thinking about Megan and Pym’s gutlessness, either.

At lunch, Lily saw that Daniel was still simmering, too. They ate in silence until Daniel pushed himself away from the dining room table, his chair tipping over with a crash.

‘You’re allowed to go outside, so why the hell can’t we?’ he shouted at Megan and Pym.

‘Sit down, Daniel,’ Megan said quietly. ‘We’ve been through this. You can’t go outside because of the Committee ruling. Why are you questioning this now? It hasn’t changed in three years and it’s time you accepted it. You know it’s dangerous out there, anyway.’

‘But he’s right, Mum.’ Lily appealed to Megan. ‘We’ve been stuck inside for three years. It was dangerous before that
and
we were younger, but you still let us go out. What changed? You’ve never explained that to us properly. The Wall was supposed to make it safe for us to go outside.’

‘Quiet, Lily. Don’t you start,’ Pym said. ‘And pick up that chair, Daniel.’

‘Make me,’ Daniel said.

Lily watched the flush rise in her brother’s cheeks. His lunch lay forgotten on his plate.

Pym clenched his fists.

Megan rose quickly, putting a calming hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Come, Pym,’ she said.

‘You just pick up that damn chair,’ Pym said, glaring at Daniel before turning to go.

‘And you just answer our questions,’ Daniel yelled after them.

Lily and Daniel listened to their parents’ retreating footsteps, followed by the sound of a door closing firmly. These confrontations were nothing new, though they were happening more often. Lily thought their world was like a pressure cooker with the steam building inside.

‘Seriously, it’s like we’re in prison,’ Lily said.

Daniel shrugged, flipping his chair upright with a deft flick of his foot and flopping down on it. He picked up his fork and prodded at a potato. There was a muffled burst of sound from outside. They both looked towards the commotion. Lily heard a girl screaming, followed by the staccato thump of guns and frenzied shouting. Then nothing.

‘It does sound dangerous out there, Dan,’ she said. ‘Maybe Pym and Megan have a point about keeping us inside.’

‘There’s more to it than keeping us safe. I don’t buy that,’ Daniel said. ‘It all goes back to the Wall. Didn’t the Committee build it to keep the violence
out
of the city?’

Lily nodded.

‘So how come since it’s gone up all we ever hear is Blacktroopers beating people up? Blacktroopers,’ he spat out the word, ‘
inside
the Wall, terrorising people. And then coming here every week, giving us all nightmares, force-feeding us drugs, killing Sherbet.’ His voice was full of pain and rage.

‘I want to know what them and their precious Committee are up to,’ he said.

Lily nodded. She knew he was right. From the top of the bathroom window she often watched how harshly the Blacktroopers dealt with people.

‘But Pym and Megan keep telling us the Committee’s there to protect us. And they give us the drugs to prevent disease,’ she said.

‘Get real, Lil. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything,’ Daniel said. ‘The Committee are thugs, just like their Blacktrooper security force. We’re being kept inside for a reason and it’s not good. We have to find out what’s going on before it’s too late.’

Their mother stood in the doorway. She’d moved so silently, they hadn’t heard her return.

‘It’s time to get back to your schoolwork,’ she said. ‘Clear up now and go to your screens before your father comes.’

Lily got up, listlessly stacking the lunch plates. Daniel was right to ask questions. He was right about the Wall, which had been designed to keep out the ‘undesirable people’, but instead just seemed to bring the violence right into the streets. He was right about the unfairness of their house arrest when their parents were still allowed out. He was right about the Blacktroopers, who were frightening when they were supposed to be there to help them; to give them the pills they needed to fight disease.

But what disease? Lily couldn’t believe she had never questioned this before. They couldn’t catch anything from the water because it came from deep underground, sucked up by the pipes at each of the eight phases of the moon, from new moon to full moon and back again. Their food came from the sterile food-production facilities. And the only other people they saw were the Blacktroopers and Max. Shiny, greasy Max who pawed and slobbered. Lily shuddered.

None of them had ever liked Max. Lily suspected that her parents didn’t even really like him, but he had always just been there. He and Pym had gone to school together. Max smiled a lot, though it never seemed sincere. It wasn’t as if there was much in their world to smile about these days. But the more the world changed, the more Max smiled his stupid smile. One day his smile would stretch so far around his head the top half of it would tip off and bounce along the ground like a sliced-off boiled egg.

The other thing about Max was that he liked to touch people. His hands were always snaking out towards you all moist as if he’d dipped them in oily water. Lily had perfected the art of twisting and slipping away from him. She shuddered again.

They’d waited too long; hoping things would change on their own for the better. Hoping they’d be allowed outside again. Hoping the Blacktroopers would stop coming and their parents would become more like they used to be before the Wall went up. But waiting wasn’t working and Daniel’s headaches were getting worse and making him weak. The Blacktroopers were becoming more violent. It was time to find out what was going on.