Following Meltdown

Following Meltdown

Vanda M Denton

© 2015 Vanda M Denton

All rights reserved by the author. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers and/or authors.

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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-326-42509-8

ISBN eBook: 978-1-326-48490-3

Knight

Nathan

It was later when mum put it like this: they gave into the mounting frustrations of a society in meltdown. I guess that’s one way of saying 25% of my Year 10 Class began beating seven kinds of shit out of their teacher. I didn’t argue with her because I love my mum, and I didn’t want her to know what going to school was like now. But the truth, as I see it, is the Baker twins were mean bastards because their dad was a fucking sadist. I knew what she meant in one way though. Even when all the Bakers of this world had been through all the youth training programmes available, their place in the pecking order would quickly be taken up by someone else, because although we didn’t all have sadists for fathers, that’s what the government felt like: Ron bloody Baker, deprived of his alcohol and growing fat while his sons got thinner and nastier.

It started as it usually fucking did with Baker and co tearing pieces off the sheet of A4 given to them by Mr Atkins, rolling pellets and flicking them at one of the few teachers I could stand in my shit school. But this time was different. I mean so bad I can’t even joke about it.

Old Atkins was trying to describe a new religion to us, and explained how it didn’t even get a mention in the text books. He treasured those crap books. We used to reckon he wanked over them in the stockroom. There were only enough left to share one between three, so Clive Baker knew it would be the best wind up of all to tear out a page, make a bigger ball, and chuck it in old Atkins’ face.

In a way I understood his reaction, and that was something else I didn’t want mum to know about in detail. Of course she knew cameras had been installed in all corridors so that anyone sent out of the classrooms could be identified by the youth training officers. And she knew that every time that happened the kid’s rations were reduced. We’d talked about it as a family of course, because since rationing had been introduced we didn’t have to go thieving or starve. So although we hated the Baker twins, at this stage the majority of the class also had some sympathy for them. You know, flicking pellets and chucking a couple of things is minor compared to being sent to the cameras in the corridor. At the very least, their father would beat the crap out of them if they caused him to go hungry. He hadn’t bothered to sign up for work when his Jobseeker Allowance was stopped. He lived on his sons’ and his wife’s rations. Mum used to tell me to try to understand them. I might have tried that for her sake. I might have felt sorry for them, if they didn’t scare the crap out of me.

I reckon Mr Atkins lost his temper because he had to scrounge, beg and even trade his rations to get that A4, he’d guarded those text books with his life, and he was sick of counting pencils in and out. He strode over to grab the twins with the intention, you could see it in his face, of throwing them into the corridor and therefore to a fate he knew damn well awaited them. But he fell over a girl’s foot. Sobbing Samantha it was. She was scared shitless, as always, and only trying to get out of the way.

I think that’s what you would call a seminal moment. Mum said that when they passed the law that said we either went to school and ate, or we didn’t do either, that was a seminal moment. It heralded another major change. On that occasion the government was admitting it had lost the ability to keep control of the British public through humane means, and was now willing to starve kids into submission. The falling of Mr Atkins heralded the beginning of the kids’ response to that, because once he was down it’s like they were halfway there. Even Clive Baker wouldn’t have dared throw a punch at Atkins when he was on his feet, but down there, tangled up in table legs, toppled chairs and Samantha’s twisted foot, Clive, who no doubt had been on the receiving end of his old man’s boot that very morning, lashed out in like manner at Atkins. Unlike Clive, who learned years ago to curl up and protect his crotch, old Atkins flailed and sprawled on his back, legs vulnerably spread trying to get up, and Clive slammed his toe in as hard as he bloody could. Only then did Mr Atkins curl up, in agony, too late for protection.

The air was thick with the knowledge that the balance of power had finally flipped. I looked around at my classmates, checking out who would help if I tried to stop the twins. At that stage it was mostly foul language with a thump to the temple or guts and the Bakers weren’t completely committed. But I could see: sides were being picked for something long-term and deadly. The majority were on the side that would eventually tattoo victim across their foreheads, then there were the Baker twins leading a hierarchy of ruling thugs. I felt like I was the only one without a side, though I hoped my best mate Chris would, like me, search for a third way. I admit that even at that crucial moment I sort of knew he wouldn’t though. Chris was the type of lad who could be all things to all people. He could joke with the girls, talk his way out of trouble with the bullies and make my mum believe he was the most respectful guy on the planet. But, and we never discussed this mind you, I know he had been scared shitless by the changes in our lives. He didn’t have a mum like mine who would talk things through, listening as much as telling. Basically Chris’ mum was as scared as he was.

Clive’s fist smashed into Atkins’ nose and we all heard the crack that stopped his threats. At first everything was still and silent, apart from Mr Atkins groaning over the pain and looking at the blood in the hand that had flown up to protect his broken nose. I reckon about 50% of the class had stumbled back gasping, the five hard-core members of Baker’s gang were like a pack of dogs with blood lust, a few were rooted with curiosity, and a couple laughed. Mum said the laughing might have been hysteria. She’s too kind for her own good, but I never elaborated because like I said, I love my mum and she wouldn’t cope with details like that. We talked about a lot of things and confided a lot, but much less than I wanted to. There was a lot of stuff I couldn’t tell her about. How things had changed in my life. I didn’t tell her what went on in the toilets out of view of the camera, when she asked why I always had to rush home to use the bog. I just said the school toilets were dirty. And I didn’t tell her I’d been rude to Mr Atkins a couple of times when Chris and I noticed that anyone who didn’t, drew attention from the Baker twins. And I have never told her how ashamed I felt over that because I played my small part in allowing them some kind of freedom to do what they did to him. Years ago, when Jo first started at the school, mum liked Mr Atkins, and I didn’t want her to picture everything that happened to him that day. The two that laughed, Jason Hubbard and Jack Wallis, are meaner bastards than the Baker twins. They were less thick though. That wasn’t hysteria mum. It was the pleasure of watching the violence and knowing everyone involved was going to get it, except them.

Like most of the rest of the class, when the gang really began laying in and poor old Atkins’ shouting had turned to pleas for us to help him, I calculated that a cut in rations was no longer relevant. I kept the shame of my cowardice at bay by concentrating on the fact that although I couldn’t help, I knew someone who could.

‘Nat!’ Chris hissed as I broke off from the crowd that was shaking in shock, and beginning to drift out of the classroom towards the stairs. ‘Where the hell are you going?’

When he caught up I whispered, ‘I’m getting Gabriel.’

‘Don’t be a fucking moron! When they’ve finished with him they’ll get you.’

‘Only if you fucking tell them,’ I spat, angry that he’d stop me, and angry at how scared I felt.

I glanced at the crowd. All eyes not leading shaking legs to the stairs were on the classroom. No one but Chris saw me speed down the empty corridor to one of the few other occupied classrooms. In spite of the horror taking place behind me, other memories flashed up clearly. The reason so many of these rooms were empty now: a few minor epidemics, followed by the Congo flu virus pandemic over a year ago that cut the population to a quarter, and the ‘new measures’ introduced in Coderford Community College.

Hell, those epidemics. It’s bloody hilarious thinking back. The first wave started in Asia, before we had armed police. Our scientists had been warning for years that we were due for a strain of flu that we wouldn’t fight off with the jabs and medicines in stock. On the telly we watched people dying in far off countries, which was a shame of course, but that turned to scary when it hit America, and bloody tragic when it reached Europe. There was a two week shut-down when the government told everyone to stay in their homes as much as possible. Kids with parents like Ron Baker and Wallis’ mum Sharon, who even two and a half years ago couldn’t make him do as he was told, were out on the streets. Me and my friends all had parents with varying degrees of control over us. My mum was the toughest. She did it by laying on the guilt. I felt like she’d die of a heart attack if I caught that bug. Because we couldn’t hang around the shops and corners any more, my mates tended to come to our house mostly.

Dad didn’t like it, but mum used to say, ‘This way I know where my son is.’

No one in my family got it. Dad said that’s because the Carters are as tough as old boots, and mum said it was because she made us stay in the house, even though we’d moaned and made her life a misery.

My mate Paul’s family got it though. Of course I wasn’t allowed to visit but mobiles were still working then and I talked to him. He told me he was gutted when his dad and brother died and he was alone in the house, and bloody festering, when his mum died. Mum still wouldn’t let me go over there. She said there was nothing I could do. The next day he didn’t pick up. I was shocked bloody rigid. Everything mum had said slammed into my guts. When I told her that I thought Paul was dead she didn’t go into lecture mode with stuff like, ‘See? If I hadn’t made you stay in you’d be laying on a stone slab now.’ She just said how much she loved me. She said that until you have children you don’t realise how much love you can have. She told me how not a single day goes by when she doesn’t recall something or other from my life, like the day I was born and my birthdays. And she talked about the time when Paul had come to one of my parties and she’d had to tell him off for pushing Jo over, but she liked him anyway. He had been such a happy, bouncy little boy, full of mischief but with a big heart. And she said it was terrible that he’d had to watch his parents die without any help from anyone, before dying all alone himself, but we shouldn’t feel guilty because sometimes things happen that are beyond our control. I cried over that while mum shed a few tears for a couple of aunties, and then it was all over. For three months.

The second flu epidemic saw off Nan, that’s dad’s mum, along with loads of my friends’ grandparents and a lot of young children. I remember wondering why dad wasn’t devastated when his mum died. I’d imagined how I would feel if I lost my mum. Mum said it’s different when you’re grown up because all your thoughts and energies go into taking care of your children who have only just begun life. Dad knew his mum had had a good long life and an easier death than many. Apparently we had the medicines for that strain, but it was one of those sort that old coffin-dodgers and little kids get complications with. We did all get that one, felt like we were dying, but recovered, only to get that fucking horrible winter vomiting disease. Talk about multi-coloured projectile vomiting and the shits. It was worse than the flu. I remember staggering on jelly legs to the bathroom, sitting on the bog with crap pouring out of one end, and honking in the sink at the same time. When we got organised Jo ‘prima-donnaed’ her way into the main bathroom, mum and dad used buckets and bowls in their room, and I had the downstairs bog. I really believed I was going to die, but it only lasted a week, and at the end the house was so rank that even me and Jo helped clean it.

That was two years ago and I was still thinking about it when I reached Gabriel’s classroom. We’d lost a few teachers by then, and quite a lot of pupils, so some classes were doubled up. At that stage I reckon there were only about seven empty classrooms in my school. I know one of them was this one, because it was one of the first to be converted. The corridors and playgrounds were becoming no-go areas, so security guards were brought in, toughened glass put in the windows, and the glass at the top of the interior door was boarded over, to stop stray kids gesticulating and swearing, and stirring up riots in the classrooms. That was a bad time. Man, I used to scurry down those halls like a giant Congo rat, avoiding all the infamous offenders.

Gabriel Harrison had been teaching science here for almost six months. It was one of those government appointed posts given him courtesy of the Department for Employment. Last year’s election brought with it a cessation in benefits for the jobless, and since economic depression had put his veterinary practise out of business, he was obliged to take this allocated job, or have no ration vouchers. He was one of the few forced to take a teaching post, who eventually tried to do the job. Most of the staff clocked in and breathed a sigh of relief when we settled down to our bartering, ignoring them. Gabriel was also my next door neighbour.

In the few minutes it took to sprint to his classroom I also recalled dad laughing over our nutty neighbour’s conspiracy crap. Gabriel had set up a system that would help me and my sister summon his help secretly. I didn’t argue with dad over those insults. He was getting so his temper hit Vesuvius levels over the smallest things, and then the whole house would be like ice for hours. I reckon he felt like a coward because someone else had offered protection to his kids.

I listened outside his door for a few seconds. I could tell he had the class’ attention on the human cardiovascular system, rather than allowing the usual swapping of goods, promises and threats. I tapped out the coded knock, and I didn’t need to see the kids’ faces to know that when he walked out the fearful ones would be trying to get invisible.

I immediately grabbed Gabriel’s arm, dragging him down the corridor, ignoring the cameras, and explaining on the way. We were still a hundred metres from the room and the racket had died down, but the pounding and cracking of breaking bones hadn’t.

Gabriel stopped dead. ‘Go and get your sister.’

Those sounds were the worst I’d heard in my life so far. I was rooted to the spot, believing I should stay and help Gabe, but too afraid even to get the offer out.

‘Go Nathan. No matter what her teacher says you have to get Joanna home.’

I raced off for Jo’s classroom, but we didn’t go straight home.

Gabriel

Once Nathan had gone I didn’t stop to think further. I didn’t even break stride. I’d been prepared for this, or something similar, since I was handed the whiteboard pens and tear gas to begin a job they always said you should only choose if you have the vocation. I’d tried on the mask, and examined the release system on the small canister many times, at first dismayed over the prospect of using them, and now fully prepared to do so. I stepped in the door unnoticed by the remainder of the gang thrashing, pounding and sometimes laughing, and released the gas. The effects were immediate. All youngsters fell away screaming, rubbing at their eyes. Only the Baker twins and half a dozen others had the presence of mind to head out of the door immediately, even though they’d been crowded around it and I had to push them aside to get in. I let them go. They’d be picked up soon enough. Now having unhindered access to Harold Atkins, I found my feet ridiculously reluctant to move.

I approached in a sideways stagger around the shuffled and toppled chairs and desks. I think I must have been staring at the broken and bloody pulp for several minutes before the truth hit home and my stomach lurched violently. Somehow I held it in, jaw clamped in a spasm, until I could escape the range of the gas, rip off the mask and hang on to the stair banister; over which I threw up. I don’t remember leaving the classroom and the chaos in the hall didn’t register for some time, but I do recall my horror in knowing what those children had done.

In a swimmingly nauseating daze I watched the brown vomit splash on the stairs below, while crying children pushed past, unseeing. Most stumbled on the steps but only one lost her footing completely, tumbling headlong, with the sound of an unmistakeable fatal break in the neck.

I could hear my voice distantly. ‘This is not happening.’

I recognised the foul-mouthed girl who never seemed able to grasp the most basic laws of physics, and wondered vaguely as I had many times in the past, at what point you stop making excuses for a child’s poor attitude. Whatever the answer, she did not deserve to end like that. Harold deserved it even less.

I’m ashamed to say that even by that stage, and in spite of the kind of life I’d led, I did not have the presence of mind to demand order. I suppose that although I had many times enjoyed the adrenalin rush of risking my own life I could not comprehend the motivation for brutally murdering a man who had shown nothing but kindness. Eventually I did stir myself to prevent more fatalities in the mayhem surrounding me.

It was young Nathan who grabbed my arm, pulling me out of the mob.

‘The school’s breaking up, just like you warned us, Gabriel. We’ve got to get out.’

‘You go,’ I began dragging back some perspective. ‘I can’t just leave…’

‘The kids are going nuts!’ Joanna tugged at my other arm. ‘We heard the row halfway across the school and most of us were out the door before Mrs Rose panicked and used gas.’

I could tell by the kids’ faces they had no idea their teachers had been issued with tear gas. I’d done all the hinting I could, especially in the light of knowing Nathan could be a hot-head. I’d heard him talking with his mates, under the big oak tree that bordered his garden and mine. He’d been winding them up about their ‘rights’. When I caught him alone I was subtle, but I did ram home some truths including the fact that the majority of Britons of all ages, no longer had much in the way of rights. I tried to give it a positive edge by promising the state of emergency wouldn’t last long. And by not mentioning that wealthy people seemed to be doing just dandy. I hid from him the sense of outrage that I had suppressed for so long. In his semi-awareness of the disasters Nathan could be, to some extent, anesthetised to the reality of that appalling injustice at least. As for me, well, my natural cynicism cushioned me to some extent. I knew that certain personalities tended to accumulate wealth at any cost to others, and that they would hang on to it without a second’s regret or guilt. At that time I had little faith in humanity, yet I suppose that I clung on to hope because I did not want youngsters like Nathan to become bitter before they had a chance to make something better of this world.

‘We can’t get out down there,’ Nathan nodded at the stairs decorated with my vomit, the dead child, and now with crying kids trying to feel their way back up because they couldn’t see for the tears streaming down their faces.

‘O.K.,’ I breathed, realising the ground floor must be saturated by now. ‘Get to the fire escape before that gets too crowded.’

‘But you’re coming with us,’ Joanna begged.

The poor girl was not so much anxious for my safety, as for my protection.

‘You know I can’t leave. You’ll be fine if you go now.’ I gave them both a push in the right direction. ‘Run, while you’ve got the chance.’

I was relieved to see them actually leave this time, knowing that they would lose nothing more than a day’s rations. Having seen what the Baker boys were capable of I feared others might crack. I could predict which children would be likely to attack any target, heedless of the cameras now, and I also worried about the brutality of some police officers. I was glad to know that Nathan and Joanna would be clear of the grounds before they arrived.

It’s amazing how efficient the police could be when bonuses were involved. The first to arrive must have missed Joanna and Nathan by moments. I heard one officer remarking on how much better our new and improved gas was, compared to the old type that had been released in a school across town last week. The gas I’d released already was neutralised in the air, though the children still suffered its effects in their eyes and throats. It did of course mean they were easy to round up and only a few that I saw were tazered.

A couple of my friends had been obliged to join the police force in the same way that I became a teacher. Though I’d lost touch with them some time ago Connie kept me up to date in the brief conversations I allowed her. The illnesses had, of course, decimated the police force as they had every other sector of society and those responsible for allocating jobs were not exactly conducting in-depth interviews or carrying out psychometric testing. You had every personality-type policing our streets that you might have encountered in our prisons. Apparently my friends spent as much time holding their fellow officers back as in dealing with villains not wearing the uniform.

I watched the team that was brought in to remove Harold’s body, and the girl from the stairs. Photos were snapped, bodies slipped and zipped into bags and stretchered away. I followed down the stairs, knowing I had to report immediately for the court hearing. As I passed the cold-storage van I counted five other bodies already stacked. I would discover their identities at the hearing. Though by no means surprised by these deaths I did feel appalled by the reality of what I had known was inevitable in that political climate. In spite of my intellectualising I was of course, suffering from shock.

By the law now, all relevant parties must attend the hearing within an hour of a crime being committed, ‘when the police are involved’ is the unofficial rider often quoted by the public. That being due to the fact that many criminals carry out horrendous offences but if the police are not called out at that time, it is no longer termed ‘a crime’, and no action can be taken. Can you imagine anything more ludicrous? Who in our society is likely to be most adept in taking advantage of the law? Certainly not the citizens that require protection. It wasn’t even a desperate measure that came about through a lack of resources. It’s the kind of idea that a dim-witted cabinet member might wake up with one morning, and wallop, there it is a law by the afternoon.

This hearing was less about Harold’s death, than about the riot that had been averted. It was, of course, held in the Citizenship Court. The children had been brought straight here and lined up on benches, ranked according to their age and grade. I noted they had less than half of each class, so there were many like Nathan and Joanna who had escaped this. No one bothered. Here they had plenty of witnesses to find the place to lay blame and punishment.

I recognised all three of today’s judges. It felt like a life-time had passed since I had treated Sir Ian Golden’s racing stallions, or that self-absorbed pop-star’s dogs. And the business tycoon, James Albion, I knew from an antagonistic affair to do with the banning of fox hunting many years earlier. He also was well-known by reputation as a man who could not abide being crossed in any way, shape or form, by anyone.

Missy Lover smoothed the skirt that hardly covered her thighs, crossed her legs, thank goodness, and opened the questioning of the seniors on the back row of green benches.

‘Green!’ She was loving it. I suppose no longer having a devoted audience of spotty teenagers left a gap in her life. ‘What can you tell us?’

There was shuffling but no speech, so she pointed a long red nail at one of the girls. ‘You tell me.’

Karen Gooderall, an average student with a dislike of all sciences, said, ‘We heard shouting down the hall and panicked.’

Obviously Colin Kray feared she might drop them in it because he was moved to speak, which was a rare occurrence, in my class at any rate. ‘We panicked Missy, and I think that worried Mrs Rose because she released gas in the classroom. Then all we could think of was to try to get away from that.’

The young, painted judge tossed her curly head and sneered. I studied the expression of the two men, and felt relieved.

It was nasty narrow-eyed Albion who wanted nothing more than to go home himself, who gave permission for the green row to leave.

‘Do not loiter in the streets,’ he warned. ‘You cannot avoid a camera and a second court attendance will automatically result in youth correctional training.’

They filed out a lot faster than they came in.

Other sections were quickly dismissed in this manner until the red rows were addressed. Already they were branded in some way, because the police had allocated these seats to Year 10. We were shown photographs of the dead, and I will admit that my first thought was one of relief because the adult body I caught only a glimpse of in the van before the police shoved me along, was not Connie or any other of my friends. This hapless bugger was a one-time author who was the first to be recruited to fill gaps in the ranks left from the earliest epidemic. In those days they were paid and though she never confirmed this, Harold told me she made more money teaching than she ever had writing. She loved her subject and though she wrote children’s stories, she didn’t love her pupils. It would never have occurred to me prior to Harold’s murder, but now I wondered if her death had been an accident.

When the rush of relief in finding this was not my friend and the shame for that passed, I returned closer attention to the pictures of the dead children on the screen. I recognised all of them: the contemplative boy who might have become a doctor, the girl who had a crush on me, the boy who never spoke and whose trauma I hoped one day to help him deal with, and the girl I had guessed had got herself pregnant. All of them. Each one of them had lives that should have been encouraged to develop into something good, but not one of those judges looked twice at their pictures. We were told by Missy Lover, with a theatrical sigh, that this had been a tragedy. That was followed by Ian Golden’s summing up, which amounted to the fact that Coderford Community College descended into disarray through actions which began in one Year 10 classroom. He swiftly questioned each of the three classes and found not one person who would do anything but drop Nathan’s class in every piece of horseshit they could think of. By that means, witness-wise, we were down to twelve pupils, the prosecuting police officer and me.

Jason Hubbard didn’t hesitate. He described the lead up from the flicking of the paper pellets to the kick in the groin, the broken nose and the subsequent beating. The only things he left out were the names of all involved, other than the Baker twins. It was a performance worthy of an Oscar. Hubbard was all wide-eyed shock for what the Bakers had done while the accused swallowed fury, trying to refute and counter Hubbard’s claims. Albion told them to be quiet or they would face serious consequences and in spite of the horror of their crime, I felt sorry for them. I had some idea that the Bakers were brutal because they themselves had been brutalised, and I knew without the shadow of a doubt that Jason Hubbard was the slyest, nastiest individual I think I have ever encountered. The only way I kept control of him in the classroom was through body language that told him if anyone around here was going to get thumped it wasn’t going to be me. He gave a detailed account of every blow struck by the twins, and he appeared to do so with regret.

Albion curled a vicious lip, ‘Who can corroborate that?’

Missy Lover sighed, ‘He means kids, can anyone back him