Tevun-Krus #8 - Dystopian SF

The Winter Night

And then there was nothing. No sound. No presence. Not even a stench.

'Do you think it's–'

A heavy black figure burst through the window, the essence of night flooding in after it. A wretched screaming, so loud and dreadful that it made his ears weep with blood, came out of the creature's huge grinning mouth. Then it turned its head this way and that, scrambling through the shadows for something, for its prey, for its food.

'Oh, Jesus, no–'

And then it was on her. Marcus saw the heaving black shadow mount his wife, saw it rip and tear and bite and yank and feast. He heard blood pumping out of her throat, the mangled cries for help coming out of the hole in her neck and not her mouth. He saw her hands search for his own, like a drowning figure that only seeks to be pulled out of the crashing waters.

'Marcus? Marcus–'

He sat up and opened his eyes. Sweat poured down his back, pooling around his sheets, sticking them to his skin like the blood of his dead wife had ten wretched years ago. Even after all that time, the pain never abated. When he woke from that dream – a dream that felt so real he fancied he was probably stepping back in time – Marcus found himself weeping, and he knew he wouldn't stop till that new rising sun showcased itself to the world.

He wiped his eyes and glanced at the clock. It was four in the morning. Work in two hours. Pushing a mop around the building, cleaning up after the rich bastards that had put him through the horrible night and killed his wife. It was a job fit for a rat, but he'd needed it to get to where he was – his realwork. The Winter Night was coming around again, and this time Marcus was going to unleash the Hackers on the Upper Jewel. He was going to make those bastards pay.

It had been hard getting into the Upper Jewel. People from the slums spent years working up to the most trivial of jobs in the Upper Jewel, as it had been for Marcus, ever since he swore revenge on the twisted regime that butchered thousands of people each year. It had taken him ten years of working seven day weeks, eleven hours a day, for whatever wage was thrown his way. He'd licked the arse of every higher upper he'd ever come across – all to get into the Upper Jewel, so he'd be able to bring justice to those in charge.

And now he had the means in which to do it. He worked in the Central Building – the heart of the Upper Jewel. A gleaming tower of glass and steel, so bright in the morning that most people had to wear shades to look at it. Marcus had never seen anything like it. Back in the Lower Jewel, the grandest building had been an abandoned school, some few hundred years old, that had escaped the bombs.

Seeing such a grand building had only fuelled Marcus' rage further. It wasn't fair that people in the Lower were starving whilst those in the Upper were building needlessly tall building, or wasting water in swimming pools, or fruits in bowls that would inevitably would never be eaten. It wasn't fair that every year his people had to fight and die and bury their loved ones so that those in the Upper would be safe. It was time that they understood the true meaning of life – terrible things happen to everyone. It was only fair that it happened to them.

Working in the Central Building meant he was close to the city's control system. Of course, he wasn't allowed any where near it, and would be executed on the spot for ever even looking at it. But Marcus had been there hundreds of times before – slipping in and out every other night, dreaming about pulling the lever that dragged the Upper Jewel's gates wide open. He pictured himself flicking the gleaming switches that controlled the city's power – a switch they used to light the city so bright during the Winter Night that no Hacker could ever go near it. In his mind's eye he saw the explosive lights flicker off, heard the screams of the Jewel's inhabitants scour the night, saw the rambling army of Hackers swarm through the streets, tearing and eating and screeching. Those were the good dreams, in which he liked the Hackers.