Flare

Chapter 34

The only stop we made on the way out to the fields was in an old hangar that had been converted into a supply store. Here they stripped me down to my underwear and gave me a baggy pair of olive green overalls that zipped up the front, with no unit markings or other insignia.

Once I was dressed, they marched me past the airstrip and onto what looked to be a playing field, although now it was crowded with groups of people building temporary shelters from canvas, while at the far end three work parties were putting up more permanent looking structures out of wood and corrugated iron.

I didn’t try talking again, instead taking everything in as we walked, desperate to find something that might help me escape.

We finally stopped at the fence line just north of the playing field, where a group of miserable-looking civilians were building a wall, using old planks and bits of ply board to create a more permanent barrier just inside the barbed wire.

There were twenty people in the group, with three soldiers keeping a watchful eye on them, two with rifles at the ready while one approached us with a clipboard.

“Who’s this?” He asked my guards.

“Secretary wants him to work with you for a few days. Keep him busy, but apparently he might try and run away so don’t let him out of your sight.”

The soldier, a man in his thirties with the two stripes of a corporal on his chest, sighed and looked to the heavens.

“Why do I keep getting the misfits?” He complained. “Fine, leave him with me; we’ll keep him busy alright.”

The guards nodded and about faced, heading back to the comfort of the admin building. I watched them go, but turned sharply when a hand seized the front of my overalls and began to drag me towards where the group was working.

“Daydreamer, eh? We don’t have time for that. What’s your name?”

“Malcolm King.”

“Well, Malcolm, welcome to Work Group Seven. It’s our job to reinforce the perimeter, something which I suspect we’ll be doing for weeks, so I hope you’re used to getting your hands dirty.” He let go of me with a final shove and began to make notes on his clipboard. “Well go on, get working!”

I looked at the rest of the group. They were a mixture of men and women from sixteen through to sixty, and all of them wore matching expressions of hopelessness and bone-weary tiredness. I looked back at the corporal, trying to decide how best to tell him that I needed to find Melody, but one look at his stony expression convinced me that conversation would most likely end in a beating.

Sighing, I picked up a plank of wood and approached the fence, seeing how several of the group were creating a wooden framework with hammer and nails, while others attached the planks to this framework and a few, myself included, brought fresh material from a large pile nearby.

Everyone else wore their own clothing, my overalls marking me apart. At first I thought they weren’t talking to me because of that difference, but after a few minutes I realised that the only conversation was about the work, a muttered word here and there or a request for a different piece of wood.

Despite the cloud cover the day was hot and within minutes I was soaked through with sweat, my arms burning from the unaccustomed exercise. I suddenly realised why everyone looked so tired and I wondered how long they’d been working like this, keeping up a constant, plodding pace while armed soldiers hovered nearby.

As the day wore on we moved further and further from the woodpile, each trip taking longer as my arms turned to jelly, my fingers raw with splinters. I lost count of how many times I considered throwing down my load, refusing to do any more work until I had a rest, but the first time I made to put down the plank I was carrying, one of the other workers, a woman in her thirties wearing a filthy pair of jeans and a faded t-shirt, shook her head at me and motioned for me to keep going as she threw a worried glance at the guards.

“Don’t,” she whispered frantically as she passed me, putting a world of fear into that one word, enough for me to shoulder the plank again and keep walking.

We carried on like that for hours as the sun crawled across the sky, the only breaks a very brief stop for water that was passed around by the guards and another some hours later to relieve ourselves in a nearby pit that had been dug in full view of everyone else still working.

It began to remind me more of a concentration camp than a new world order, and it was only by sheer strength of will that I made it to the end of the day, the halt finally being called when it became too dark to see properly.

The walk back to camp was short but painful. My stomach was cramping from hunger and my arms hung at my sides as if made from lead. The guards pushed the group into a huddle and led us back, one in front and two behind to make sure that no one tried to slip away in the dark.

I was starting to think that we would be locked away overnight without food, but instead we were taken to a large tent lit by the soft glow of battery-operated lamps hanging from the ceiling.

There were trestle tables inside, crammed in with barely enough room to walk between, while at the far end several women were serving food from large metal containers kept warm over gas burners.

I followed the rest of my group, picking up a tray as I reached the counter. We shuffled along, trays held out while first a plate, then dollops of unappetising looking food were slapped onto it.

I looked up to thank the women for the food and almost dropped my tray in shock. There, stripped of her uniform and wearing overalls similar to mine, stood Emily, ladle in hand as she scowled and slammed mashed potato onto the waiting plates.

I shuffled closer and our eyes met as she filled my plate.

“What are you doing in here?” I whispered, the sound of food hitting plates covering the sound.

She glanced over my shoulder and looked back at me, brow furrowed in anger.

“This place is a fucking joke,” she whispered back, “I’m a fucking engineer, not a dinner lady!”

The woman next to her frowned and pointed at the person behind me. Emily scowled back but obediently put a scoop on the empty plate.

The pressure of the people behind me forced me onward and I looked back to see Emily still watching me, but too far away now for any conversation to go unnoticed in the almost silent tent. I gave her an apologetic shrug and moved down the line, having a scoop of peas and a lonely frankfurter added to my meal before I followed the rest of my group to a set of tables in the middle of the floor.

We ate in silence, too tired to do more than chew mechanically as the ever present guards stood by the entrance and watched us. My stomach began to complain as long-denied food overwhelmed it, but I forced the rest down anyway, unsure when my next meal would be. If I could, I planned to escape that night, to somehow find Emily and get through the fence. I’d seen a few likely places that afternoon, dips in the terrain that were hidden from the guard towers that stood watch over the perimeter, and I hoped that with a little luck we would be able to use one of those to our advantage.

My fork had just scraped the last of the potato from my plate when one of the guards came in and looked around.

“Time,” he called, “curfew, come on.”

Several people hastily shovelled the rest of their food into their mouths even as they were standing, then filed out. As I left the tent, I was again pushed into a large group and we were herded towards another tent about a hundred feet away from the mess, this one made of heavy canvas with only one entrance and the sides firmly pegged down, and a white W-7 stencilled to the side of the entrance flap.

It could comfortably have slept ten, maybe fifteen people, but all twenty one of us were shepherded inside, everyone else groping towards a set of blankets and a pillow set on the ground in the dim light. I stood there at the entrance, looking around for a spare set of bedding.

“You waiting for an invitation?” It was the corporal, appearing at my shoulder and making me jump.

“No, but I don’t have any blankets,” I said hopefully.

He shrugged and put a hand in the small of my back, propelling me further into the tent.

“Well you can either find someone nice enough to share, or you’ll have to do without tonight. I haven’t got time to send someone running off just to make sure you’re nice and cosy.”

I stumbled form the shove and turned to protest, but the flap was closed and zipped in seconds. A few moments later I heard the sound of a padlock snapping shut, and I turned back into the gloom, hoping to hear someone, anyone, offer me a space in their blankets.

It was a long, cold night.