Broken City

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Chapter One

When I was a little girl my grandmother used to tell me stories. My favourite was about the time her family moved to Devon. It seemed so idyllic, I sometimes wonder if it could have been like that or if time had coloured her memories. If it had I can’t blame her.

I am sitting on the roof of our building as I think about all of this, behind the barricades of course so no bullets stray or otherwise can hit me, and I look across the blackened structures and smoking rubble that is our city.

 Once, I’m told, it was beautiful, but I can never believe that it was anything other than what it now is: a harrowing reminder of atrocities that should never have been able to happen, that so called normal people should not have been able to commit.

But they did and they still do.

I never saw it at the height of its magnificence; it’s golden years, when it seemed so strong and unbreakable. My father talks of it sometimes, he says it’s important that we know, that we don’t remain ignorant of what happened. Mother never speaks of before, she is a little afraid I think, to look back at what she had. Her life was so comfortable, so care free, so completely different from now.

Of course, we learnt the particulars in our lessons with Uncle Jep when we were children, how it all came about. And then after it had happened how everything was in disarray: the thought of hunger driving people into mad panic almost before the full extent of the damage had become known. There had been looting, angry mobs and so much violence. Murders had been casual happenings in the street, committed over the barest necessities of life.

You are asking, no doubt, what the government was doing while all of this happened, the answer is nothing. There was nothing they could do. The police force had been one of the first casualties to organization. The people had gone mad and there was no way to control them, it didn’t take long for the police to stop trying. The hospitals had gone on a little longer, but once the supplies ran out they too became empty, desolate monuments to the past.

In desperation the government turned to the army that some sort of order might be established, but it was too late. The army had split into factions, the military bases turning into private militia under the commanding officer of each base. They were in the enviable position of having control of vast resources. With the promise of food and stability in a world in which both had become luxuries, soldiers agreed to stay and obey orders. This having taken place, when base commanders received orders from government, these orders had been ignored and each base had acted purely in its own interests.

But their supplies had not lasted forever.

Thirty years was a long time, and now they were just tribes, the same as any other.

“Don’t sit so close to the barricade Deeta.”

Even before I look up I know whom the voice belongs.

“You worry too much, Tom.”

Tomasz shakes his head, a worried frown creasing his forehead.

“It isn’t possible to worry too much,” as he sits down beside me I feel his holster brush my arm.

As used as I am to guns and the necessity of them I shiver. Tom looks at me sharply.

“If you’re cold we’d better go back in,” he offers.

“No, I’m fine,” I smile.

I like Tom. He used to notice me when I was a kid and it was condescension on his part to pay me any attention.

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