END OF PRIDE (The Soteria Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  As Bruce, Francis, Evan and Brie entered the cave, the residents turned their attention to the stranger. The chatter quietened. Brie’s face turned a few shades darker as all eyes honed in on her. She felt intrusive. The silent stares showed that she wasn’t the only one to feel it. Before the uncomfortable silence lingered too long Bruce introduced her and explained her story. They all listened with interest. Their stares turned from looks of caution to welcoming smiles as Brie spoke. After a quick introduction to everyone in the room, Bruce and Evan offered to show her around the rest of the bunker town, give her a well-needed Fosform shot and treat the wound on the back of her neck from where she had removed her registration chip. All the residents of T-Town bore the same scar.

  Everyone in T-Town seemed so inviting. Accustomed to living within the sub-plaza system, where trust and honesty were almost foreign, she asked Evan why this was. His response made perfect sense. Everyone there had once been in the same position of desperation and despair as Brie had been. Every one of them had been the stranger in the room, the intruder.

  The first room Brie encountered was just one of four communal rooms used for cooking and general recreation. Beyond the communal rooms were six sleeping quarters. The rooms were generous, with bunk beds built from jungle timber, stolen pallet racking and various bits and pieces from abandoned towns nearby. The bunks had foam mattresses and woollen blankets. Carpet mats covered the dirty floor and dream-catchers hung from the rocky ceiling. It wasn’t the accommodation Brie had grown up with, but it was far more accommodating than what she had endured on the run.

  Past the sleeping quarters were two storerooms for food, catering provisions, equipment and medical supplies. In the food storeroom, Brie saw entire pallets of Union-issue food. Twenty-kilogram plastic bags full of rice and grain, five-kilogram tins of powdered milk and dehydrated fruits. “Where on earth did you get all this food?” Brie asked, shocked. “How did you get it down here?”

  “The same place we get the Fosform, missy. We get it from the bloody Union scumbags. We steal it from right under their noses.”

  From the catering store they took Brie into the equipment store. There, in the centre of the dugout room, she saw it. Through the glass cylindrical syringes the fluid glowed blue in the lantern light. It was a captivating, tempting sight. A metal pallet with the letters ESHU stamped alongside the red, soaring eagle emblem had all but a few rows of syringes left in the timber boxes on top. When full, the pallet must have held thousands of doses. Brie knew that the initials stood for: Empire of Soteria Humanist Union. She also read the slogan etched into the pallet. The very slogan she had heard her husband recite countless times:

  LOYALTY-UNION-SAFETY-SALVATION.

  After diverting her eyes from the invaluable blue liquid, Brie noticed a huge collection of guns, tools, ropes, torches and other weapons, both modern technology and pre-Union. The residents of T-Town had somehow acquired rifles, taser cannons, nuclear shock balls, splinter mines, oxygen conditioners and night-vision masks. Bruce noticed Brie’s look of overwhelmed miscomprehension. “Bloody good supply, hey? If we ever need to, we’ll put up a bit of a fight. Now anyway, let’s get a dose in you. Lift up your sleeve and come ‘ere.” Brie obeyed and with the swift confidence of a Union injection administrator, Bruce shot the liquid into Brie’s arm.

  The cold rush of the serum coursed through her veins. Since her last sleep, everything had changed so much. A part of her thought she would just stroll up to the wall and climb over it, having never seen it, then walk off to find her freedom. Now it looked like she might spend an indefinite amount of time with these strangers, these criminals, in a dark hole under the surface of the Earth.

  “Well,” said Evan, standing in the storeroom's doorway. “Let’s get that neck of yours cleaned up. Where did you leave your chip?”

  “I removed it somewhere above the Northern Cape. That was three weeks ago, I think. Keeping time has been difficult.”

  “Well, shit, Brie. It’s badly infected,” said Evan, wincing. “First thing I will do is try to get as much puss as possible out of the wound, then I’ll sterilize it, clean it and cover it. I’m not going to lie. It will hurt.”

  “I believe you,” Brie said with nervous hesitation.

  After a messy, painful and stinking ordeal, Evan had drained Brie’s wound of the thick yellow puss, cleaned it with a saline solution then covered it with a gauze pad and bandage.

  “Now I’ll show you the rest of the place,” said Bruce, smiling. “Wait till you see the bloody tunnel. It certainly is a sight!”

  Led by Evan and Bruce, Brie left the equipment storage room and followed them deeper into the dim and dirty tunnel labyrinth they called home.

  SEVEN

  I woke to Laura’s soft and flirtatious voice.

  When I purchased her software, I could choose from hundreds of different voices and accents. After hours of indecisiveness, I made my selection. Now her voice had become a normal part of everyday life inside my apartment. From the speaker in the ceiling above my bed she not only bid me good morning, she told me the time and how much time I had, down to the seconds, until I needed to scan my registration chip at one of Block 7’s churches. It was Sunday. Sunday meant a nine o’clock communal service at one of the many churches in the block.

  After seeking my approval, Laura initiated daytime mode. An artificial image appeared of blinds opening across my wall, making the room come to life with an early morning glow. Although artificial, the light brought warmth to the room through ultra-violet radiation projectors installed during construction.

  I rolled over. I didn’t want to go to church. I never wanted to go to church. Like all the burdens of this so-called life, the thought of that damn Marriage Lottery still weighed me down, crippling me with endless uncertainty. The last thing I needed were propaganda-fuelled lies from the bible being recited to us, brainwashing us with contradictory bullshit.

  My Lottery draw was in ten days.

  I couldn’t seem to shake that feeling of constant unease. After lying in bed, lost in a vague zone of negative thought and pointless longing, Laura reminded me I needed to prepare for the day. She listed off the consequences of skipping a communal service. I didn’t want to face those penalties.

  I staggered into the small bathroom beside my bed and looked in the mirror. I looked dishevelled, sick almost. The lack of sleep had caused dark rings to appear under my eyes. My short, usually well-maintained hazelnut hair was messy from a night of tossing and turning. Despite not yet being twenty-three years old, there, in that moment, I looked thirty.

  After a shave and a quick shower I opened the fridge to collect breakfast, which on Sundays comprised butter biscuits and a vitamin-protein shake. Kitchens didn’t exist in most apartments in the sub-plazas. Other than the elderly, nobody cooked any longer. Not only was cooking a waste of time and money, cooking appliances took up valuable space in apartment cells. I had no intention of putting cooking appliances in my Block 7 apartment. Why waste the room when I had great, affordable eateries down the corridor in Block 6?

  I had three small rooms in my apartment and I was thankful for that. I had a living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. That’s it. My fridge was inconveniently shoved up against the side of my bed and was almost always empty. I did have a crate of vitamin- protein thick shakes. Always banana-caramel flavoured. I had raspberry flavoured loaves of butter biscuit and I always had frozen pepperoni pizza. I was a sucker for a frozen pizza.

  After breakfast, I put on my work uniform. I stepped into my navy-blue canvas leggings, blue rubber boots and a navy-blue polyester collared jacket. Union uniforms had no pockets. They served no purpose. It made it easier for the Union Army to monitor any missing Fosform Five.

  From my front door it was only a short walk to the closest internal transporter tunnel that took me to one of Block 7’s churches, aptly named BC74 for Block Seven, Church Four. Even though I could scan in at any church on Tier 3, I always attended Mass at BC74. I guess, despite my hatred for monotony, routine became unavoidable. Like so many people, I was a walking contradiction.

  Just after quarter-to nine and already the crowds had gathered at the large navy-blue entrance to the hall. Upon entering, I leaned over one of the many scanning booths attached to the wall and let the scanner locate my registration chip surgically inserted at the top of my spine.

  “636-124, Tyson Anderson, welcome to church,” an automated voice said from a speaker beside the scanning device. I stepped away from the wall and joined the crowd lingering in the aisles between the pews.

  It didn’t take me long to locate my closest friend, George Clarkson. George had been a friend of mine since before I moved into 3rd Sydney West. We met working out in the Pacific Ocean building the walls between Fiji and the Solomon Islands. Like me, he opposed the Marriage Lottery and the Union’s methods of control. We were careful about speaking our minds openly though. If they heard us talking of such things in public, there would be severe consequences.

  “Hey, George. Good to see you, buddy. You looking forward to another eventful Sunday morning session?” Sarcasm soured my words.

  “Hey, Ty.” He smiled as he shook my hand with a brotherly slap. “It could be worse, mate. Sitting here listening to the Father reciting bible verses is more tolerable than laying concrete out on those tropical islands. I’ll be a happy man if I never see a tropical island or that damned wall ever again.”

  George had spent twice as long as I had working on the walls. He endured the backbreaking work for almost four years due to an apparent glitch in the volunteering process. His distaste towards the Union spawned from those four years of backbreaking work.

  George and I took a seat in a pew near the back and waited for the service to begin. We chatted about trivial things until the lights dimmed and the organ came to life.

  As the pressurised air drove through the brass pipes, the hum of chatter ceased and we all rose as BC74’s resident Bishop, Father Nicholas Kassal arrived. Father Kassal was elderly and slow to get to the altar. He was a man of principle, forced to adapt to the unavoidable changes of the past fifteen years. He had been the resident Bishop at BC74 since before I moved into the sub-plaza and despite my cynical views towards the church and its ridiculous propaganda, I found him tolerable.

  “Good morning citizens,” he said before clearing his throat. “I’m happy to see you all on this glorious Sunday morning. As usual, a warm welcome to you all as we come together as one, in prayer and worship in the house of our Lord Saviour, Jesus Christ. As we prepare to celebrate the mystery of Christ’s love, let us acknowledge our failures and ask the Lord for pardon and strength. Let us begin by reciting our penitential rite.”

  In a monotone and quiet mumble, the citizens in the pews read out the words written on the screens before them. “I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do. I ask Blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord, our God.”

  “May almighty God have mercy on us,” Father Kassal bellowed from the altar, “forgive us for our sins and bring us to everlasting life.”

  I clenched my teeth. What a farce…

  EIGHT

  The service continued much in that fashion for a good hour.

  Father Kassal spoke about the Book of Romans, gifts, prophecies and other nonsense that made me disengage, unenthused. I began thinking about my parents. I rarely thought of them anymore. I’d trained myself not to. Mainly because it just made everything worse.

  The last time I saw my parents was when the Union shipped me off to the Pacific at seventeen years old to help build the walls. They had just made Fosform Five commercially available, but it still wasn’t affordable for most of the middle class. More people started getting sick. Because of my employment conditions, working on the walls’ construction for the Union, I received free weekly dosage shots and access to portable oxygen conditioners but my parents were far from wealthy. They couldn’t afford the drug’s unrealistic credit price.

  In the two years I spent away they got sick. By the time I returned they were dead and buried and the Union had sold their house, my home, at about one tenth of its value. The most fucked up thing of all was that the Union Officials didn’t even tell me. I received no call, no message, no satellite video meeting, nothing. I returned home to find an empty patch of dirt where my family home had been. Over three months had passed since they died and I knew nothing. I was so shocked that I didn’t even cry. That day was the day that I knew I loathed the Union. I hated those four fucking words. Loyalty-Union-Safety-Salvation. What a load of shit. With no siblings and no extended family to turn to for support, I felt pretty damn alone.

  I came back to the present as Father Kassal wrapped things up. Brushing away the depressing thoughts of my kin, I blinked away the welling moisture. At the end of the service, the crowds began to disperse. Other than Thursday, Sunday afternoon was the only day off for Block 7 residents so it meant that all the department stores, restaurants, food courts and recreational facilities were busy. There wasn’t a great deal of recreational opportunity on the whole third tier. Tier Two had all the theme parks, water parks, wave pools, rainforests and zoos. The finest restaurants and brothels were located on Tier One.

  “What do you wanna do today?” George asked. “You wanna head up to Tier Two and catch some waves? I haven’t been surfing in a month.”

  “That sounds perfect, man. A few waves will be just the distraction I need. I can’t believe that in ten days I gotta draw a number and get married! I’m not coping with it at all.”

  “I wouldn’t be.” George gave me a glum grin and shrugged. “I’ve still got six months until the Lottery and I’m already stressing about it. I can’t imagine how you feel.”

  “I feel like shit. I don’t know if I should just accept it and prepare myself to live this horrible life down here with a random stranger or if I should escape it?”

  “What do you mean escape it, mate? It’s not like you have a choice. Do you want them to torture you, or imprison you, or worse? You can’t escape it…”

  “I dunno,” I said, sighing. “A part of me just wants to scan in at work and then catch one of the transporter tunnels up to the surface and make a run for it. I’ve heard stories of people escaping this godforsaken place before.”

  George looked around, paranoid. “Tyson, watch what you say, mate,” he whispered, a flicker of fear in his eyes. “If the wrong people hear you say that, dressed in your Union uniform, you could get tried for treason. You know what they do to the treasonous? They’ll chop your damn balls off and leave you in a cage on the surface. If you ask me, I’d rather spend the rest of my days with an overweight and grumpy woman I have nothing in common with than get left to die in a cage on the surface.”

  “Well, you’re you and I’m me, George. I just wanna be free. Is that so much to ask for? Spending my whole life with someone I’m forced to marry because of a ridiculous legislation isn’t freedom. I refuse to give in. I refuse to be another part of the machine. I’m not saying I am gonna escape or anything, I’m just saying that I don’t want to draw this fucking number next week! It’s driving me crazy…”

  “Well, I think you’re kidding yourself. This is the world and these are the rules!”

  “Fuck the rules!”

  George looked around again. Fear oozed from his wide eyes. “Shhhhhhh… Look, man, next week is next week. How about we go get some waves and forget about it for the time being? Let’s just focus on today.”

  I took a breath and gave George a discouraging nod.

  We made our way to the main transporter tunnels between Tiers. There were seven main tunnels and each cell could hold a little over one hundred people but because church had just ended, the corridors teemed with pedestrians. We crammed into one of the seven cells and headed for Tier Two. After ten seconds, the cell doors opened upwards and the masses exited into the dark yellow pavilion.

  Each Tier had a different base colour for everything. On Tier Three everything was navy-blue, so I still found it odd seeing everything on Tier Two lively and yellow. Even though I preferred the warm and welcoming yellow of Tier Two, I couldn’t afford to live there. The apartments went for twice the price of Tier Three, and Tier One apartments went for twice the price of that.

  George and I wandered the large yellow halls past rocky waterfalls and perfectly manicured garden beds into one of the main shopping malls. The mall had seven levels of shops, all accessed by rotating corridors and escalators. We stopped on the bottom level for a vitamin shake and some noodles at one of our favourite Thai stalls. I leaned into one of the scanning booths at the stall to pay for our meal.

  Our biological registration chips that we scanned to sign in at work and church also stored our credit rations. Actual currency was no longer used in the sub-plaza. Instead, the credits you earned from work accrued in the system, which then transferred your credits onto your chip.

  A short walk got us to an internal transporter tunnel that took us to Block 3 of the Tier. Block 3 housed the water theme park. A six-second journey in the cell got us there. The block had water slides and roller coasters unlike anything I had ever seen on the surface. Some went for over a kilometre, winding their way through the blocks of the Tier. There were pools, lazy rivers, water fountains and more. The entry price was one hundred credits per person, comparable to a day’s work for the average income. To me, it seemed damn well worth it.

  After changing into our swimwear and leaving our clothes and boots on an empty bench beside one of the lap pools, we headed to the surfboard stall. We grabbed a board each from a yellow rack mounted into a fake-rock cliff and made our way to one of the two wave pools. As expected, the conditions were perfect. The waves were clean, two to three feet and because of the horseshoe shape of the pool, the waves wrapped around the artificial point forming perfectly barrelling waves.