Read Online The Dawn: The Bombs Fall (A Dystopian Science Fiction Series) by Michelle Muckley - Free Book Online Page B

of flavour made him salivate and the thought of warmth made him
almost want to cry. The idea of new clothes, of running water, of all the
simple things that made him still yearn for his old life. His old apartment
where he had a television of his own that he enjoyed watching. A cat that used
to keep him company. Where Samantha came to visit before he let her down, and
before life conspired to destroy any chance he may have had to make it right. The
idea of the lottery had forced him to imagine a life of something worthwhile. Something
other than existence, and a life where perhaps he could atone for his sins.
    The first double bell sounded, the
end of breakfast. Zack made his excuses to Leonard, which fell upon a sombre
mood thanks to a combination of his own doing and his exclusion from the Omega
Lottery, and headed down to level twenty.
     

Chapter Six
    Zack waited about five feet away from
the stairway, turning a pebble-like piece of glass around in his pocket. There
was no chance of missing Ronson from here. Although there was no such thing as
late anymore, because nobody had any idea what the time was, there was still
that feeling of urgency in the execution of a plan well made. Several Guardians
had passed him and he had tried to look casual. Some of them he thought he knew,
some of them he was sure he didn't. The stairway from level nineteen that led
to level twenty had always seemed to Zack an obvious place to position a Guardian
if they had really wanted to prevent people getting into Delta Tower from the
sublevels below. But there was never one there. It made him believe that the
bidirectional filtering of people both up and down was an accepted fact of
Delta life. An essential part of it. Delta provided clothes, a bed for most,
and a ration of water and food. It enabled you to survive. But to live is not
only to survive. To live is to feel, to experience. To enjoy, to love, to
belong. These were lost senses in Delta, and the underclass that dwelled
beneath their city in the sublevels and occasionally filtered above ground, had
done something to restore them.
    It was true that those people who
dwelled in the sublevels beneath the scorched land suffered. There were post-war
diseases, and many of the children got thyroid cancer. Zack couldn't look at
them as they pottered around unaware of the significance of their swollen
necks. Others, like the boy in the bar the night before, had bad teeth. Once
Zack had seen a baby born down there. He had arrived towards the end of a six
hour struggle. There was another man there. A doctor. Zack's first thought had
been one of hope. He imagined the excitement of a new child and the
celebrations that would ensue. The only time that pain didn't seem to matter. But
as soon as Zack saw the child he knew it wasn't good. The child was blue, the
cord stuck around its neck. The man claiming to be a doctor turned to Zack and
said I can't do anything. I just can't do anything.
    The mother held the child until it
died, blood pouring out of her, seeping into the trousers of the doctor as he
kneeled in front of her. She kept saying over and over My baby. My baby .
Zack held the woman close to him, tried to warm her whilst the doctor worked to
save her. Zack knew she was dying from the way her breathing weakened, a sort
of innate human knowledge because he had never seen anybody die before. He
wasn’t sure which of them died first. Afterwards he and the doctor carried them
outside, dropped them into the ashes of their old world. It was the only time
he stepped into the dust left behind from the war, before the exits were
boarded up. It didn’t matter to him that it might be this very act that would
eventually take his own life in the years to come. He gazed out across the
barren dust-covered wasteland, the only sound the wind and their feet on the
ground. He knew in that moment, when he saw the ruins of the old world, that
there was nothing left for him but Delta. He didn't go beneath the