Blueberry Buttons

The tram had been built over the last run of trees.
Governor Putnam told us we needed it.
The tram would connect us.
He claimed the trees had no use and so the work began, without question.

It took a hundred men, two weeks to remove the trees. Their flesh groaned as the long tendril roots were drawn from the Earth. Cracking the roads, revealing the Beatles and critters thriving beneath. The pesticides had soaked into the air making Sydney's sky a sickly lime. And between slopping towers the homeless who had sheltered under the strong oaks, and white gums, slumped in corners.

This was the beginning of the long night. Masks became mandatory, as the air thickened like soup. It smelt that way too, as the sewers were ill maintained, and the rotting bile slowly filled the subway beneath the city. Soon, fog lights were needed to see during the day, and unlit parts of the city became abandoned, for the only people who could live there were the blind.

I was a Toiler. Most of my days were spent travelling on the tram, crammed between people too poor to bath and those too insane to know they need it. I lived in the outer part of the city, outside the violent orange dome that held filtered air. And everyday, I would wake up with a thick layer of anxiety around my throat.

Slowly, without notice, Governor Putnam, was turning off parts of the city outside the dome. Air filters, fog lights, gone. And people say without light or direction we lost what made us civilised.

I had heard from work about district 34. The lights went off, and it became the Cannibal District. Homeless, diseased, the people had to be contained. So the government blew it up, and the neighbourhood disappeared. No-one would of noticed or cared, if all that rubble and asbestos didn't end up in our lounges.

It was a Tuesday when that layer of anxiety became a mask that engulfed me. I rose from the bed with an uneasy cation. It was black, save for the pale orange glow of the dome. Our district had gone dark.

Alone, I did everything normally. The tram would still run through our district, it always stuck to its path in the dark.

If I got to work I thought that would find me a new home, they would help me out of this mess.

There was no clock to guide me in how long before the tram got here, only the same far off chugging and grinding of metal that woke me. I left my tie undone and swept my suit jacket up under my arm. They were grey, like my white shirt. God knows what in the water does that.

Soon the sirens of screaming and looting began. I ran down my apartments stairs, down the alley. Around me the red was beginning. Fires were burning. Something the government warned against, since the air was so polluted. Already I saw the chaos like in District 34.

My neighbours had also taken to the streets, to avoid the violence inside buildings. We huddled on the side of the tram track. Families held their children close, many on phones were angrily leaving messages and waiting and waiting. No one seemed to be getting proper signal.

I clapped my hand over my mouth. Had to keep it in. Had to stay calm. My mask was still sitting by my bedside. Many around me had also made the same mistake. Some of the older ones were already coughing, with watery eyes. They wouldn't last long.

The tram didn't come.

Breathing became harder, and people began leaving the tracks. Abandoning the team for the supposed safety of their homes. I held in my cough as best I could, but I needed my mask. Only a few had stayed at the tracks as long as me.

I wheezed, trying desperately to stay calm. It was getting darker now. In the distance, more faint little lights were disappearing. Something was wrong, it pained me that my phone would not let me search the news. I had to know, had to get to work, get in the safe dome.

My legs started moving by instinct. The streets seemed different, alien. Cars had crumbled into each other and were still steaming from impact. Rubbish had blown into the streets, and glass was raining down from a skyscraper in flames. I couldn't tell where I was going, and by the second it was getting darker. People lingered in shadows but none approached me, and most of the yelling, moaning and crying came from up above.

I gave up trying to find my home, and instead starting following the tracks. Eventually they would lead to the city. Others also numbly followed it, but they were dropping like flies and some coughing until blood came up. I began walking closer to the street, staying to the shadows. Men who didn't have my dignity started peeling people off the tracks, taking them in alleys and abandoned building.

I walked
And walked
But the miles of the track were so long and my lounges felt so small.

The toxic air was sweeping into my head, making me swirl as I walked and sway. I felt so heavy that I was sick and feel to the ground. The warm concrete unpleasantly greeting the side of my face.

I lay there, feeling like I was part of the ground. That anyone could just walk over me. And then someone did. A man, with long grey rat nest hair, and a heavy build stepped over me towards an alley. He was clothed in a baggy marrone shirt and dark pants, wrapped in a scratchy blanket that trailed the ground. I looked up curious, he was hugging himself.  And singing.

"Tramvaja rickedy tramvajs aizbrauca no trases," the words were rough, through his smokers cough. The man smiled like a child as he continued, "nogriezts koks sagriež bites un atstāja mūs visus Miris."

I sat up, and for a moment he stopped, he looked at me and smiled again. He had something clasped between his two hands. The man ushers me forwards.

"What is it?" I wheeze, they was no getting back home now.

The man opens his hands and lets out a low fruity chuckle. There is a button in his dirt encrusted palm, Sēklas."

I roll my eyes, I was going to die next to a madman. Unhappy by my reaction he looked down at the button, confused like a child, then throws it into my lap.

"Sēklas" He shrieks, "use sēklas. Save city."

"What?" I exclaim, picking up the button. "With this? Governor Putnam couldn't save us, this won't either."

"Hehe" the man laughed again and started nodding very fast, "Tramvaja rickedy tramvajs aizbrauca no trases. It'll work, it'll work."

I looked at the button, it was old, and had the traditional four buttons not the three that are mandatory now. It was like the crazy mans hand, covered in dirt, but a little blue shone out from underneath.

"You've just a got to sew things back together," his long grey hair was flying around and the man got up, "Veiksmi, you'll figure it out."

"But we can't go back," I said, just before he turned around the corner, the pain in my head got worse and it's every word" a button can't save us, we can't save us, it's too late."

"Aaaaahh!" He kept walking, tapping his nose, "Smart one you are."

I was alone, in that alley wondering how long I could sit in pain before I feel unconscious. It was already so much darker now then when I left the house. People avoided me, so I saw no need to draw there attention.

I could glimpse the tram line from my deathbed. Many still walked along.
And they kept walking until the big dome went dark.