Maude rubbed absently
at the sores forming on her ankles; the fresh red welts were raw and stinging
with each breath of warm summer wind that whipped at her legs, sweat formed
under the midday sun ran in light trickles down her pale calves angering the
weeping blisters further. Maude thought about what her mother might have done
to ease the feeling, she might have rubbed some medicated cream onto her ankles
though Maude would have protested at length about the smell that seemed to be
able to permeate through any dressing and rise above any perfume. When she was
smaller her mother might even have blown over the sores the soft wisps of her
cooling breath and a wave of her magic wand working its imaginary powers to
make everything feel better. Though that seemed like an age ago and during the
passing time so many things had changed; her mother was no longer with her, she
had perished just a few months past, Maude had watched her die, she had watched
her deteriorate from the strong bright eyed woman that she had been to a sallow
eyed shadow, thin and weak. Maude had been helpless though she had been so
desperate to do something, to save
her mother all she could do was sit back and watch as she wasted away. Since
then Maude had had to grow-up much quicker than she had planned to, she now had
to care for her younger sister Lilly; Lilly was the only living family Maude
had left and Maude she and so it was down to Maude to keep the final remnants
of the Walker family together and alive which was proving to be a hard feat;
Lilly was currently suffering with a chest infection. On an ordinary day, in an
ordinary world this would have taken a simple trip to the doctor though getting
the appointment would have been fight it still would have been far easier than
anything Maude had to do now that things had changed.
In just four months the whole world had
devolved, though some might say it had evolved but to Maude as she looked out
upon the fields of burning gold and the sky so blood red that it stained the
tops of the trees and dripped from their broken branches like rubies, the world
had definitely devolved, it had devolved in time, back into history, back into
the worst parts that history had to offer. The reason, singular for this
de-evolution? October King. When she had
first laid eyes upon October Maude though him charming, she wasn’t afraid to
admit that she found him attractive. Though he was slightly odd or rather the
better word might be eccentric, he was commanding and strong and he had eyes
that twinkled as though they held the entire sky of stars, housed them while
the sun was shining and when the stars came out to brighten the blackest of
night skies, his eyes held the sun burning and bright like they could see the
deepest fears, dreams and sins of the soul. She had developed a slight crush on
the mysterious man who had kept showing up on billboards, in the headers of
websites, in adverts and so had millions. October King was hypnotic, he was
charismatic and his voiced commanded the attention of the world.
It had started on a sunny day, Maude
remembered seeing his face that morning as she walked to school, that day her
socks had been driving her mad they were being defiant, refusing to stay up
where they belonged and she had had to continuously stop to pull them back up
to where they were supposed to be. She had not made it to school that day and
Maude had quickly forgotten all about her unruly socks. Buildings had begun to
smoke, to burn fall, explosions rung out in the air casting great plumes of jet
black dirty billowing smoke into the sky. Maude had frozen still, unable to
move a single step, rubble fell at her feet, dust covered her hair and coated
her lungs and nostrils making her cough, making tears stream down over her
cheeks. With the explosions came the blood curdling screams, screams that
finally jolted Maude free of her frozen stature. When the world began to move
again Maude realised that people were running but not just running they were
fleeing, women held their screaming babies tightly in their arms, other were
shouting down their phones at their loved ones trying to discern if they were
okay, if they were alive and finally
Maude too
began to run; she began to run in the direction of her home and her mother and
younger sister. She did not get there.
Maude had only taken a few fumbled,
unsteady, terrified steps when she fell to the floor, she felt the harsh sting
of pain flush through her palms and knees and then she felt the tremble first,
the vibrate of the earth as it travelled up through her finger tips and then
she heard the noise. It began as a din, like a low fog horn sounding across a
fog ridden sea and then it grew like the scream of an earth quake shattering
glass and hearts; it was the sound of a thousand perfectly polished jack boots
marching into the city. Maude did not stand, she felt she didn’t have the time
to stand and to run home any more and so she could only scrabbled across the
floor like a rodent running from the harsh false torch light of an exterminator
in the dead of night. She scurried across the broken road causing the burn of
her scraped knees to double in strength, dodging the rubble and abandoned cars,
the dropped shopping and forgotten bicycles. She scurried to a large laurel
bush, thick and green in the middle of summer and she tucked herself in to it,
curling as small as she could, trying to conceal every inch of herself from
whatever was causing the rumbling thunder that was rolling across the waste
land of London like tumble weeds in the west. As the noise grew in volume Maude
clasped her hands over her ears tighter trying in vain to block out the searing
terror it produced. She thought about her mother and her sister and she
wondered if they were okay, had they perished, had they been taken by whomever
was coming, was causing this destruction. Hot, salty tears began rolling down
over her dirty cheeks, tears of sadness and fear. As she hid under her bush,
her body uncontrollably trembling she sank into a black desperation and Maude
tried to convince herself that what she was experiencing was a dream, that soon
she would awaken upon hearing her mother’s voice travelling up from the bottom
of the stairs. She would then get ready for school choosing not to war the
unruly socks and then she would go about her day as normal but this was only a
delusion, a wish because with-in the second a pair of sweaty calloused hands
wrapped around her ankles and dragged her out from her hiding place.
Though it had seemed like only a few hours
had passed since she had been pulled from the safety of her dark, flora scented
hideout but it had actually been months and her life had changed so
dramatically that Maude was still half convinced that she was dreaming. The men
had worked quickly, they had been thousands in number, an army of thousands and
that had just been in London. They built camps though that was not what they
called them, they had this air of superiority over everyone who did not turn,
over those in history that they were mimicking and it was all down to one man,
October King. Maude had realised that it was October when she saw the broadcast
that went out across the world, the man whom she had though so beautiful yet
slightly odd was behind a world of people turning upon each other and though
Maude could not believe that one man could be responsible for such anger and
destruction she new deep down that the human race was capable of anything from
the most purest of good to the most low down, Dirtiest of evil.
When people had first been introduced into the ‘camps’ they had been told it was simply a half way
point to their new lives that they would soon come around to this new way of
thinking but they had lied. Months had passed and nothing had changed, more
people had been piled into the camps and the conditions had deteriorated below
those that a cockroach might live in; the camps could have been plucked right
from Adolf Hitler’s twisted mind. People were starved, tortured as a form of
‘teaching’ they were chained up and put to work building and clearing the
broken down rubbish dump that had been Britain’s most beautiful, famous and
loved cities. When she had gotten to the camp Maude had experience only one
saving grace, she had been reunited with her mother and sister though this had
been a short live happiness. In the camps the younger children had been prime
for brainwashing, October King wanted everyone to believe in him, he wanted the
world to be his and the people to fall at his feet in and worship him and his
way of thinking. The psychological torture had been excruciating though Maude
had not been young enough to be taken into the ‘school’ she had seen the
children as they passed through the ‘playground’ they were fenced in, housed in
the building, kept away from their families this had broken Maude’s mother heart.
She had fought for her daughter and this had lead to her death, she was
tortured for being so insolent and then out to work. Every night when she lay
on the floor of the pit that they called a room, shared with 12 others, she
would sob. Maude would lay in her bed wishing that there was something she
could do but there was nothing and all she could do was to listen to her
mother’s heavy breathing it grew weak and laboured, all she could do was wipe
her mother’s fevered forehead with dirty, foul smelling water and all she could
do was watch as she died, the guards had paid her no attention as she begged
for their help, they had ignored her cried of agony as she hugged her mother’s
dead body close until all the heat had diminished and her skin had grown sallow
and grey. They had taken the stiff, cold body that had once been Maude’s mother
and dumped her into a shallow, watery grave filled with the already rotting
corpses of others who had perished.
Maude had mourned her mother in the hours
that she had before she had to return to work and to her sister, she did not
know what she would tell her, she was only 5 years old and already her whole
world had been stripped down to its bare bones. Maude had spent the day
desperately trying to form the sentences that would inform Lilly of her
mother’s passing but the situation never arrived. In the night after her mother
had died Maude had been literally dragged from her sleep by one of the guards
and to what they called the ‘infirmary’ but what was known to those who were
imprisoned in the camp as the death house. Lilly had been taken ill; she was
laid on one of the infested beds, looking smaller than Maude had ever seen her
look before; her skin was yellow tinged, feverish and every so often she would
cough violently and eventually those coughs began to bring up blood and Lilly
quickly fell into a fitful
unconsciousness. Maude was at least allowed to sit with her sister for 15
minutes every day, after she had finished the work that had been given to her
however when it only seemed that her baby sister was falling further into her
sickness just like Maude’s mother had, Maude lashed out though this only
brought her more trouble and pain.
As she had sat by her sister’s bed, the
few minutes she had left with her quickly running away, Maude clutched her hand
and begged her to hold on, demanded that she wake up and then began to cry.
What happened next unfolded so quickly that Maude wasn’t sure it had happened
until after the fact; the guard walked through the open door,
“Tums up, git
up un git out” He spat at her in rough words that Maude could barely
comprehend, She stood, her fists clenched at her sides Maude turned slowly, if
she’d have been in a cartoon steam would have been shooting from her bright,
crimson red ears,
“I have 5 more
minutes left” she said forcing the words out through her gritted teeth, this
had been the first mistake she had made, talking back to the guards or any who
had turned was not accepted and the guard quickly made that known. He balled
his own fist and with-in a second of that action he had drawn back his arm and
put the whole of his strength into the hit. His fist connected with Maude’s
face with a crunch that reverberated around her skull, she felt her nose
explode spraying blood over her clothes, his clothes and his face. The force
twirled Maude around; it forced her backward and sent her sprawling across her
sister’s bed. Maude watched the blood drip from her face and soak into the
dirty sheets that were covering Lilly and even though Maude knew that her nose
was shattered and likely beyond repair or return to normal she could still
smell the thick stench of death that was encroaching upon her sister. This lead
to her second fatal move; Maude had never been a violent person, she had never lashed
out not even at her mother in a teenage fit and she had certainly never let her
emotions rule her actions however the world had changed and so had she, seeing
her sister laid in the dirty, festering bed made her blood boil beyond the
temperatures of hell. She turned, almost
as fast as she had when his fist had connected with her nose, this time it was
Maude who had clenched her fist and it was her fist connecting with his face
though it did not have even an eight of the effect.
As soon as her fist collided with his
cheek his whole demeanour changed, when he had hit her he had had a smirk upon
his face, this smirk had fallen, quickly, he looked as though he were made of
stone, not a single twitch, nor flinch crossed his face. He grabbed her arm sharply
and pulled her from the room, Maude was terrified she knew that something bad
was coming to her. He dragged her
outside which became literal when he feet fell from beneath her and she lost
her balance, he dragged her through the mud twisting her arm to such an angle
that Maude was sure it was going to snap. He threw her down into the dirt of an
old shed and he held her there with his own weight,
“Ima gonna
tech you a lessun you ain’t gonna forgut” he hissed into her ear, he was so
close that Maude could smell the thick reek of his breath. He pressed down
against her ass he tore at her clothes with his dirty, greasy fingernails, they
dug into the skin of Maud’s stomach, tore at the flesh on her thighs. She did
not scream out or fight for fear that it might bring more of the guards who
would only take as much pleasure in raping her as their comrade did. She bit
her tongue as he forced himself into her, his fetid breath burning the skin of
her neck, she bit her tongue until she tasted blood as his grunts and rotten
exhalations filled her head, until he was done, until it was over. The only
saving grace Maude found was that it was over quickly, that the fat sweaty
beast of a man had stopped, he rolled off of her, she could smell the filthy
stink of his sweat all over her skin, could see the droplets of perspiration on
her body. Maude did not move, she lay still, frozen until another man appeared
in the doorway, he moved into the room eyeing Maude with lust, she clenched her
eyes shut and waited for the disabling feeling of his weight upon her but it
never came. She opened her eyes and glanced over at the two men, the second was
whispering something, something that made the other grin,
“Git up” he
said pulling Maude from the floor, she held her torn clothes closed across her
body, “yer sisters croaked” he spat and shoved Maude from the shed. When the
words hit her Maude felt numb, she did not cry, or scream or wail, her baby
sister was dead and he had found the news amusing and so she did not cry, or
scream or wail she walked a few step ahead of him in the direction of the
infirmary and then she stopped but not long enough for him to react. She bent
quickly and retrieved one of the pick axes that they had been set to labour
with that morning, when she saw the axe lying on the floor Maude new that it
was simply meant to be. Usually the days
working tools had, at the end of zed day, been cleared and locked away to
prevent such an event occurring but on that day, the day that her fiver year
old sister had died and she had been violently raped, one pick axe had been
over looked. She bent, scooped up the axe and quickly turned swinging the pick
axe with all of the strength that she had in her body, She screamed every
profanity she knew, a vocabulary which had doubled since she had been herded
into the camp, as she sank the pick axe into the guards head, the guard who had
laughed when he had heard that her sister was dead, the guard who had ravaged
her. His skull rang with an audible crack as the iron sank into the soft matter
of his pea sized brain, he did not make a sound but fell to the floor in a pile
of fat and bone, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open in shock.
This had been Maude’s third and final
fatal action; the guard who had informed them that Lilly had passed away was
right next to his friend and now fallen comrade and he too did not stop to
grieve, to cry out or scream or wail, he simply pulled the thick bladed, heavy
handled knife from his belt, he moved with stealth more than his size should have
allowed and he sank the knife into Maude’s stomach. The angle caused the knife
to pierce her heart and unlike the guard she had killed Maude had time to
react,
“Thank you”
she said and spat the blood that had settled on her tongue into his face. In
response he twisted the knife and pulled it free from Maude’s body letting her
fall to the floor. Before the darkness enveloped her Maude felt his hot breath
on her face and though it smelt better the words that it carried were just as
rotten,
“Now you can
rot in a shit filled grave with your whore mother and you little whiny bitch
sister” They were the last words Maude heard before she died.
