The Dawn: The Bombs Fall (A Dystopian Science Fiction Series)

The Dawn: The Bombs Fall

(Book
One)

Michelle
Muckley

Copyright © 2014
Michelle Muckley

British English Edition

First Edition

All rights
reserved.

This
is a work of fiction.  Any similarity to actual people, places, or events is in
every respect coincidental.

This
work is licensed for your personal enjoyment, but may be lent and copied
without prior permission.  These permissions extend to your personal use only,
and do not intend to cover the copying of the material for distribution to the
general public.

For
extra copies, and further information about the author, please visit:

www.michellemuckley.com

All rights
reserved

ISBN-13: 978-1501024672

ISBN-10: 1501024671

Dear
Reader,

Thank
you so much for taking the time to purchase and read The Dawn: The Bombs Fall.
First and foremost, I hope that you enjoy this book.  But secondly, if you do,
I would love you to sign up to my mailing list. You can do that
HERE
, and I will let you know
about special offers and future work.

In
the meantime, enjoy your time in The Republic of New Omega.

Michelle

For those who inspire me to be better
than I am

We knew the world would not be the
same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)

to
live is not only to survive . . .

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

“I saw the lights again this morning.”

From the corner of his droopy-skinned
eye, Zack could see Leonard turning his ration card in a rhythmical ninety
degree motion with the regularity of the second hand of a clock. The type that no
longer existed. From behind him the calls of the thirsty ricocheted up the
corridor, each set of fists jostling their way forward like an angry mob hell
bent on revenge. Zack was next in line.

Leonard's head was bowed, ashamed even to suggest that he had
seen the lights again. To make reference to such visions was as good as saying
he had a connection to the old world, like a disciple perhaps, or at the very
least a prophet. In biblical times they would have crucified him. They would
have set murderers free rather than listen to his ideas. They had talked about
this before, and Zack had tried to tell The Dreamer that it just wasn’t
possible. In fact even today his first thought, the automatic one that arises
without conscience or desire, was something along the lines of
stupid son of
a bitch.
But he stifled these words, and if he was honest with himself he
knew why. The idea of the lights was so seductive that to even consider it being
true was a bigger risk than he could allow himself to take.

“Oh yeah?” said Zack. He didn’t want
to encourage him. But he couldn't discourage him either. He couldn't do that.

“I know you don’t believe me, Zack. It
doesn’t matter. It’s coming, though. Slowly, it’s coming.” Leonard slid his
ration card under the chicken wire screen.

Zack looked over to the nearest
window, across the atrium and endless shades of rust that peppered his view. He
saw the same grey cover, the low hanging belly of cloud that blackened their
world. Nothing had changed. It was a desperate idea, the thought of light. Nothing
more than a mirage in an otherwise dry and deserted world of sand and dust and
death, created to nurture the hope of a life when the chains of this new world
would be broken. But it was a life Zack didn't dare to imagine anymore. False
hope was nothing more than a cancer with the ability to rot you from the inside
out. What was lost was lost, and the thought of life beyond the plains to which
his eye could travel acted like a poison. It was dangerous to imagine it now.

When Leonard had first mentioned the
lights Zack had lain on his bed that night, his head resting on a thin stained pillow.
He hadn't been able to stop himself gazing out in search of something. He stared
out from a grimy window not knowing if it was night or day, or even if such
parameters still existed in his world. He found nothing. That night his bed was
less comfortable. That night the smell of sulphur was stronger. His clothes
were itchier and his skin more sore than usual. He watched for hours as the torturous
clouds drifted past his window. Instead of allowing a chink of hope to pass
through, all they permitted was the infiltration of despair. Waiting for
something good, and believing in something that he couldn't see, only made life
less bearable than it was already.

“I hope you’re right, Leo. I really
do.” Zack pulled his ration card from his back pocket and slid it over the
glass topped counter. A faceless clerk pushed it into the machine and Zack
watched as his skeletal fingers nudged Leonard's card back across the counter
top. He followed it with a tablet and a water shot which he pushed towards Zack.
“Then maybe I won’t need these.” Zack picked up the tablet and threw it to the
back of his throat and chased it down with the shot of water. The beaker was
crumbled and broken from overuse, and he slammed it back on the counter like it
was a whiskey chaser.

“How many years can it go on for,
Zack? Come on, you’re a bright kid. You have to know that at some point it will
get easier. It’s only natural.” Zack knew in principle that Leonard was right. He
had to be right. There had to come a point when the sky cleared and when life
could start over again. Because the world had not died. It had been belittled
and wounded, like a soldier hiding under a fallen chariot. It was hiding in the
hope that one day its freedom would still be granted. But that day had branded Zack
and scarred itself to his memory. He could still remember the ground rolling
beneath him, the building shuddering around him, as if somebody had walked over
its grave. He had watched as the sky was scorched and the city crumbled to
nothing more than the charred remains of hot coal. That was the day the winter
began, a season that would remain unchanged for a countless number of years. The
season of the recluse. Up high they now stood, looking down upon their old world
at a lesson learned too late. “One day life will come back, and we can get out
of here.” Leonard's gnarled, distorted fingertips wrestled the card from the
desk. He fiddled at its edge, his fingers no longer nimble or able to retrieve
it. When the frustration grew unbearable he slid the card back across the desk
and cupped his other hand to catch it underneath before stepping aside.

“Wait, your tablet,” Zack reminded
him. “Excuse me,” Zack said, turning back to the clerk. “You forgot his
antibiotics.”

“Didn’t forget anything. He didn’t
meet his quota,” said the clerk, pointing at Leonard. Zack looked to his friend
who was staring down at his feet, his fingers working the ration card
hypnotically as if willing himself to be anywhere but in the moment.

“What do you mean, didn’t meet his
quota?” Zack said, shoving the next in line out of the way.

“He didn’t clock in,” said the clerk.
He reached his skinny fingers past Zack to take the next ration card from the
Delta resident. Zack's eyes followed the outstretched hand to find a man
dressed in the same dirt-encrusted overalls, the tired face looking back at him,
his eyes casting shadows over his sunken cheeks. The face could be his own. Zack
turned to Leonard.

“What’s he talking about?” Zack
reached down and snatched the card from Leonard's hand. “Check it again,” he
said, forcing the card across the desk as far as his arm could stretch.

“Zack, it’s OK,” said Leonard, pulling
at Zack's overalls like a nervous child. “He’s right.”

“He can't be. We walked from the Food
Hall together. I watched you arrive at work. You have to stand up for yourself,
Leo. Especially here.”

“I forgot. You know how I’ve been
lately. I just forgot to check in.” Leonard reached across the desk to take his
card back, his hand brown with a mixture of dirt and the marks of age. His skin
hung loose across the crooked bones and tendons of his arthritic knuckles.

“But you need your antibiotics,
Leonard,” said Zack, his voice soft and comforting. “I would have given you
mine if you’d told me.” Leonard pushed the card into this pocket. The man
behind them stepped back up to the counter. He had to be one of the youngest in
Delta. He picked up his tablet and water shot. Without a second thought he
threw it into his mouth and swallowed it down without any fear of their
judgement. There was no empathy left for the frailty of age. The man barged
past Zack, knocking him in the shoulder as he left, and the people waiting in
line edged forwards.

“No way, Zack. No way,” Leonard said.

“But you need them. You’ll get ill. You
can’t fight things off like I can.”

“Because I’m old?” Leonard took a
step away from the desk towards the corridor that would lead them to the
elevators.

“No, not that,” said Zack, breaking
into a jog to catch up with him, not knowing how to build an argument out of
anything else when he knew that he had meant exactly that. “You just need them,
that’s all.”

“You’re a good kid, Zack,” said
Leonard as they both settled into their stride, a pace faster than was
comfortable for Leonard, slower than was necessary for Zack. “But I’m not your
responsibility.” Leonard reached up to his neck, pressed at the muscles with
his finger tips, working out some sort of knot that had developed during the
day as he had worked hard for nothing. “Anyway, I’m telling you. Dawn is
coming. The world is waking up. Then I won’t even need those tablets. Or this
place.”

They walked back towards their
quarters in Delta Tower along the linoleum tiled floor, worn in so many places
the original concrete of the building was working its way through like a
fungus. In places there were small piles of dust, particles encouraged from the
wall by one of the few children who roamed the corridors with nothing better to
do. You could while away a good hour or two creating a hole in the wall with a
piece of loose metal, if the hours could still be counted. The dust piles
looked like sand and reminded Zack of happier times when he could lounge on a
beach in the sun. Sometimes he even thought he could smell the heat mixed with
sun lotion, the scent of coconut which could have been a Pina
Colada
. But his memories were sparse and
decaying. His parents' faces had faded. The image of movies, coffee shops,
restaurants, and bars were all a threadbare recollection of his yesterdays. It
hurt to revisit them. On some days, even Samantha's face seemed blurred, but he
wondered if he had tried to forget her on purpose, just so he didn't have to
carry the burden of his guilt into the new life that he hadn't dreamed of or
created for himself. The new life in which he was trapped in Delta Tower as a
resident of New Omega. Resident Number 8652.

The memories that he chose to keep
alive were the impersonal sensations. The brush of wind against his skin like
the hand of an anonymous lover, or the sun on his nose on a winter’s day as
comforting as a child's kiss. Sometimes he could imagine the ocean as it stung
his eyes, or the warmth of the sand burning his feet. These feelings were as real
in his memory as the dusty ground upon which he walked. He kept these memories
alive so that the smell of waste water and sulphur, and more often than not the
smell of shit overflowing from the waste tanks, didn't seem so bad. But these
memories could have been anybody's.

The once-mirrored lift drew to a
jerky halt on level thirty, and the doors scratched their way open. The sound
of New Omega blared out from the televisions which adorned every corner of
every wall. At least in the Food Hall there was so much commotion that
sometimes if you were lucky you could forget the constant noise streamed in
from Omega Tower. Every day they played a new image. A tree. Water. Artificial
sunlight. A playground with screens for windows which played images of a
pre-war sky. White and blue, occasionally orange. Never grey. Never reality. The
scenes from Omega Tower, the central command tower for the Republic of New
Omega where life was good were supposed to boost morale.

“I don’t know why they bother to play
those here,” said Leonard. “Surely they could save the power and give us more
lighting instead. Or heat.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” said
Zack. “And I could do without seeing Omega Tower at every turn. They say it’s
supposed to boost morale, but it doesn’t feel much like that. It's not like
anybody from here is ever going to get a chance to experience it.”

“You never know,” said Leonard,
rubbing at his wrist, thumbing over the small numerical tattoo. “Maybe the next
time there is a lottery it’ll be you. Maybe me.”

“Ha! You think? You are crazier than
I take you for, Leo.” Zack struck Leonard's cheek with a playful slap, and they
both laughed. Zack brushed aside some scraps of paper and dust balls that had
blown in front of his door with his foot. There was an air vent nearby, and he
was sick of clearing up the shit that it blew into his path, right outside the
only place he had left to call home. He stretched his foot across to Leonard's
door and kicked other pieces of scrap aside. “They’d never let somebody from
Delta win. From this shithole? Are you serious? Maybe from Alpha. Anyway, The
Omega Lottery is a fix.” Zack held up his wrist to expose the small numerical
tattoo, a near copy of Leonard's. 8652. He had no idea how many people came
after him. “This number is never going to get me into Omega.” He opened his
door and took a half step inside before turning back to Leonard. “Oh, I nearly
forgot. I’ll see you later, alright?”

Leonard smiled. He was embarrassed so
he opened his door for a distraction. “OK. Just don’t get in trouble for it,”
he said as he glanced back over his shoulder. “I wouldn’t want that. I don't
need it that much.” The knot in his neck resurfaced at the thought of the new
pillow that Zack had promised him, and he brought his fingers up and rubbed at
his skin. Something new. Something comfortable. “I could never live with myself
if you got caught trading on my behalf. Besides, I won’t need it for long,
because.....”

“Yeah, I know. It’s nearly over. Dawn
is coming. We’ll all be outside playing in green fields soon singing Kumbaya.” They
both managed another laugh, but it was half-hearted and whimsical. Mentioning
the old world was hard for everybody. “It’ll be fine. Just stay here. I’ll call
in later with it, OK?”

After exchanging silent thanks with a
nod of the head, they both retreated into their private rooms. Zack inserted
his ration card into the box that had been crudely mounted to the wall. The
electronic voice crackled out.

“Welcome, resident 8652. Successful
completion of daily tasks registered. Your president thanks you on behalf of
all New Omega Citizens.” Zack ignored the voice and looked in the shard of old
mirror that he had taken from one of the lifts. The back had been spoiled and
was peeling, blemishing his reflection with false age spots. Zack reached down
into the bucket at his feet and wet the cloth in the inch of remaining water. It
was grey like the sky and smelt like sulphur, but it was precious. Wringing
every last drop back into the bucket like the rain that never fell anymore, he
wiped it over his neck, his face, a few icy droplets trickling across his chest
making his skin contract. He peeled away his overalls and swiped the cloth under
his armpits where there always seemed to be a subtle layer of dirt. He tossed
the rag back into the bucket and grabbed a once-white T-shirt from a pile of
two. He pulled it over his head and then covered it with a jumper that would
have once been suitable for an athlete.