The
Wall
by
Mark Gillespie
Copyright © 2012 Mark Gillespie
All
right reserved.
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London. 2011. Riots, death, the wall.
Come rain or shine, when I was a child a long time ago, at least a hundred of us used to stand in the wall. A seemingly unending line of people, standing side by side under the moonlight would stretch long across the blackest night. Things made sense in the wall, even if that sense proved ultimately twisted.
What I know of the Old world and what I know of anything, came from my tribal Elders. In the Old World, there were too many people and the world was overcrowded. Tech-no-logical wonders existed, manmade tools that go beyond the imagination of the New World. This is what I know. Despite all that, there must have been little happiness in the Old world or the riots that destroyed London in 2011 would never have spread so far and wide and with such terrible speed. It was only when civilisation crumbled and a nameless land crawled back out of their countries that it must have felt real. All the tech-no-logical wonders died with the world. This was the First Apocalypse and the beginning of the New world.
London 2011. A name. A number. We don’t count years anymore and the land is known simply as the land.
I was born on the steep, rugged ground that my surrogate father Kym, our chief Elder's ancestors settled upon when the poison sky forced them to evacuate their homelands. A large caravan of refugees travelled with them and after much hardship on the road, they finally found a safe stretch of land that provided them with enough clean air, drinkable water and plenty of giant rats and berries to sustain life.
Growing up, our education was provided for by the Elders and it was mandatory for all of us to learn to read and write like they had done in the Old world. The First Apocalypse was also taught as an example of the potential damage caused when people are divided. The Elders spoke to us about nuclear power plants and radioactive contamination and I used to have nightmares about all the things they told me. The radiation damage caused by the violence finished off the Old World and as the poison chemicals escaped into the sky, the world was waiting to die. A cancerous monster was born and although most died immediately, a small number took flight in search of fresh air and a new tomorrow.
My mother died in childbirth. She had barely the strength left to give me life. I never knew my father. So few of us knew our fathers. As an orphan, it was left to the Elders and in particular, it was Kym who decided to raise me as one of his own.
Kym was very old or so it always seemed to be. He was tall with extremely long, angular features and his head was coated with a fine layer of wispy grey hair. He was our leader and he was my father. It was Kym’s great-grandfather who had originally founded our settlement. He was the first Elder of our tribe and the one who had invented the wall. I heard the story from Kym:
“As a species, we barely survived the poison sky. Human beings, we were left to die but the animals were different. Birds, fish, reptiles, all of these did eventually become extinct but certain animals - the dogs, bears and cats - the predators, were different. At first, people thought they were dead and decomposing animal carcasses would litter the ground as they passed through the graveyard that was the world. But because of radiation poisoning the people wouldn’t eat or go near the bodies so they let them be. But these animals, the dogs, wolves, bears and the cats were not dead and neither were they decomposing. They were changing. Eventually they awoke. At first, the beasts were not too dissimilar to what they had been but in time, the four legged creatures of the Earth would try to walk in an upright fashion. Initially, they could only do this for a short spell and their first attempts to do so were pathetic. But their gait and balance improved and they were soon walking on two legs with an ease and grace that defied the laws of nature in the Old world. Then the creatures developed sounds that began to veer away from their natural tones and instead resembled the pattern of human speech. In only a few years, little besides their animal physicality, and even that grew more human in appearance, would distinguish them from human beings. The poison sky had given birth to an unnatural evolution and as its evolution gathered speed, so did the beasts opinion of their place in the world. Proving that their savage nature was still intact, the mutant creatures began to prey on humans. The people were too weak to fight back and those who could, made a run for it. That is how our people settled here and in such large numbers. The animals do not hunt us when we are in large groups as their instincts remain wary of many humans. Neither do they come out of their dens until it is dark. My great-grandfather came up with the idea of the wall to protect our tribe. Those who are able, sleep in the afternoon and stand in the wall from sunset till sunrise. As long as we have the wall and each other, they dare not come.
***
The nearest thing to having a big brother that I will ever know was Sam. Like me, he was another one of Kym’s orphans, born with only a sad story to our name. And yet at that point, we didn't even have a name. When the Elders first took me in, Sam took an instant shine to me and it was mainly Sam, under Kym's guidance who raised me. All of a sudden I went from being an orphan to someone who had two loving fathers. But apart from sharing a devotion towards me, Sam was nothing like Kym. He was massive, built like a giant slab of rock and with an inherent aura, both unnerving and dangerous. Almost everyone was scared of Sam and the fact that he rarely spoke a word didn't exactly help matters. But when it was my time to stand in the wall and I was as terrified as anybody whose time has come, Sam was right there beside me. There was no safer place that I could be. It was cold and we only had the light of one fire burning and the heat of our heavy bodies pressed together. Sam's hatred of the beasts gave his life purpose.
Standing beside us in the wall was a warm and jovial, dark skinned friend of ours named Moses. He was older than Sam, long and lean in body and Moses was to smart and cunning what Sam was to strength and savagery. He possessed an important calming influence on Sam and as a child I worshipped both of them.
Sam worshipped Kym and felt a particular sense of duty to protect his father's heritage from those that hunted us. Kym loved Sam, no matter what blood flowed in their veins. Kym knew that Sam was our future and was delighted that the wall and his people meant so much to him.
“He is the most important brick in the wall,” Kym had once told me. “Although he has no time for people, Sam’s innate qualities, his strength and brutish force of presence will keep them from attacking us.”
Growing up as the children of Kym, Sam and I used to sit at his feet in the Tent of the Elders while he told us tales of the Old world, the First Apocalypse and things that had once been. We sat transfixed. Always. We were an unlikely family, the three of us but somehow it worked. Moses often joined us there too and we would all sit together, the four of us and talk until the afternoon called us to sleep.
And I would dream again. London. 2011.
Those in our tribe who were too old or too weak to stand in the wall were known as Gatherers. Gatherers would sleep at night while everybody else stood in the wall and during the day, whilst the wall was asleep, they would scour the local area collecting rations of food and water. The gatherers were usually safe as the mutants were mostly nocturnal by nature. Some gatherers did vanish but we'd never find out what happened to them. Not at first. If food and water rations in our camp got too low and the delivery of food supplies became crucial then Sam, Moses and the strongest of those in the wall were often called in as emergency gatherers.
It was on one such occasion, when Sam was out collecting berries alone, that something happened which would change not just my life, but all of our lives. And there would be no coming back from it.
Sam was late getting back to camp that day. Something had to be wrong as he never strayed far from camp for very long. A recurring dream had haunted Sam throughout his life that the beasts would attack camp in his absence and that he would return to find the mutilated, bloody and torn bodies of his people lying at his feet. He told me that he believed it to be a prophecy. I didn't say what I thought.
Our camp was visibly anxious that day. The Elders were huddled together at the edge of their tent and from time to time, they would strain their failing eyes down onto the dimming horizon that lay out before them.
Silence surrounded our camp as the last of the afternoon light began to falter. Soon the wall was supposed to gather and for Sam not to be there was both unthinkable and unsettling. There was no wall without Sam. Not one that meant something. I ran the length of our settlement until I found Moses perched on the outskirts of camp. This was the highest ground we had, a watch-post of sorts and it overlooked a vast expanse of fading green and brown muddy landscape that swelled beneath us. I sat down next to Moses who looked grim.
“Do you think he’s dead?” I asked.“I don’t know,” he whispered back.
We sat in silence, staring out at an emerging darkness that would not, no matter how hard we stared, hand over its secrets. Sam was not coming back and I felt sure of it.
It came from nowhere. I don't know what I heard first, the screaming or the sound of my heart pounding back and forth off the walls of my head. A frenzied, high-pitch and horrendous yelping signalled the abrupt arrival of death in our camp. It all happened so fast.
“All of them,” somebody screamed. "Dead."
A violent spurt of panic shot through the circuits of my body. Moses yelled at me to stay where I was and shot off in the direction from where the noise had come from, towards the Tent of the Elders. I knew that a mutant must have gotten into our camp and was now running loose. A bloody rampage was waiting for us all. It was already dark and for the first time in generations, there was no wall to stop them.
Despite the panic, I desired to see the invisible enemy that I had been raised to fear so much. Disobeying Moses, I ran directly behind him towards the tent where a huge crowd was now gathering and a mass frenzy of dark bodies leapt up in a wild dance of fury.
Where was Kym? The blood in my veins began to run cold with fear. My father.
Great effort combined with the luck of my small size allowed me to squeeze through the garrison of bodies and into the interior of the tent. I won’t ever forget what happened next. I won't ever forget what I saw. There was no creature, walking and talking like a man. It was Sam that I saw. A long, sharp knife tucked tightly within his grasp and a thick coat of blood smeared around his body. The mutilated bodies of all ten Elders scattered grotesquely throughout the tent and at his feet lay the body of our father. The soft grey hair was soaked bloody red and the thin, frail body that had cradled both Sam and I during our infancies was now as limp as a wet rag. The horror of what must have been his last thoughts were there, etched on his dead face forever.
I ran past Moses and when I got to Sam, I screamed and pounded my tiny fists off his ridiculously thick legs. This went on until I was all out of breath and then I flopped onto the floor, landing in a small but thick puddle of dark blood. I crawled over and tried to lift Kym up into my arms.
“Leave him,” said Sam. His voice was cold. The voice of a dead man, of something with no life in it.
"I will not."
The mob that had gathered at the edge of the tent was furious but everybody was too afraid to do anything. We were now at the mercy of those that hunted us.
Moses stepped forward.
“Sam,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “What have you done?”
“Moses,” said Sam softly, regaining a sudden awareness of what was going on around him.
Moses could barely conceal the emotion in his eyes. I put Kym down, laying his head gently on the ground and crawled on my bloody hands to Moses where I clung on to his legs.
“Sam,” said Moses. “These were our fathers.”
“Not anymore,” said Sam.
The tent grew quiet at last. We wanted to know why. More than anything, more even than the force of the shock itself, we wanted to know why.
Sam turned to face the crowd.
“Be warned," he yelled. "Once I tell you the meaning of this, your life will never be the same. Never. And when I've told you the truth that I owe you, I'm walking and you'll never see me again."
The crowd erupted again, shouting back in and throwing whatever they could at Sam, who stayed silent and motionless until Moses had silenced the angry mob.
“This is the truth,” said Sam. “Do with it what you will. This afternoon while I was gathering berries, I happened to notice that two men were following me at a distance. You hear? Men! There haven't been any other people spotted around these parts for generations. So I stopped and beckoned them closer. I sensed no danger and in fact, saw that they were starving. I didn’t have much but they were older than me, so I gave them some berries and water from my flask. They thanked me and asked where I had come from. But when I told them about our settlement on the high ground, I was amazed to see them burst into laughter. They asked me if this was really where had I come from and when I answered yes, the men burst into more fits of laughter.”
“You saw men?” asked Moses. “There are no men around here Sam. Apart from ourselves.”
“That‘s what I said to them,” said Sam, “But the proof was right there Moses. They told me that there were many others like them and that they had been living in these parts for years. Then the two men spoke to each other quietly for a moment and turning back to me, suggested that I return to their camp with them. In return for my generosity, they told me that they were willing to tell me a secret. Something that would, in their words, change everything. But then they warned me that I wouldn't like what they had to say. They gave me a choice and. I went with them."
I stood up, holding onto Moses’ arm as I found my feet and steadied them on the floor. I never took my eyes off Sam. Kym's dead, open eyes stared up at Sam from the ground. It was almost as if he was listening too, waiting to hear what justified his slaying at the hands of his son.
“They led the way and I followed,” said Sam. “And soon enough we had come to their hideaway. It was to be found by entering a large hole deep within a wide cavern, very close to where we are. Inside the cavern, I found it full of people. Men, women and children sat, their faces lit only by the faintest of fires. I felt their piercing eyes all over me. Immediately, I asked the two men who had brought me here how they had survived for so long with all the mutants that patrolled the area. But nobody answered. I asked why they had not come to us and joined the wall. Silence. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I lost grip of my fear. Something bad was about to happen. Finally an elderly man with a serious expression on his face stepped forward from the shadows and spoke."
“We are mutants.”“But you look just like my people,” I said."
“We are the same,” confirmed the elderly creature. “You are right about that. There are no longer such things as human beings in this world. Long ago, the poison sky wiped them out and what it missed, our forefathers took. But your tribal forefathers were sympathetic to the human cause and insisted on resisting against their true animal nature. They fought to save humankind and when the last man had finally died, your first Elders came up with the idea of bringing up their children as humans. A secret that your Elders still keep from you. A tragedy if you ask me. They make you stand in a wall so that they can control you and so that you will not think for yourself in the possibility that you discover your true nature. The wall does not stop us from coming. Your Elders know this. We have no reason to come. You see now? The world is thoroughly monstrous.”
In the Tent of the Elders, Moses collapsed.
“I saw some of our old gatherers," said Sam, ignoring the sight of his friend lying unconscious on the floor. "They weren't dead. The mutants had found them. They even showed me paper clippings that came from the Old World, in the chance that still I didn't believe them. I have them here. Look! This is what human beings looked like. And the four-legged animals of the Old World are there too. Tell me, which do we resemble more?”
Sam dropped the pile of paper clippings over Kym’s body with cold disdain.
“There you have it,” cried Sam, pointing to the clippings. “That's our truth. Men did not have ears shaped like we do. They did not have claws. Their teeth are not sharp like our teeth. We are not men. We are not women. There is nothing human about us. We are the very things that all of our lives, they taught us to fear. And what’s hiding out there in the darkness is us. Goodbye."
And Sam walked out of the tent, stopping for no-one, not even me. As he walked into that blackest of nights, I saw the faces of many more like us, gathered at the edge of our camp. They were waiting for him.
That was long ago. I never saw Sam after that. But now, as I reach the end of my own life, I find myself dreaming again of London in 2011. And I remember what it was like to have once been human.