Scorch

Outside, the street was deserted. Long ago, there would have been the occasional passing car and the far off hum of the city with its traffic jams, trains, buses and pedestrians. Now, the asphalt outside was cracked and grey from stillness.

Scorch turned back into the darkened room, letting the louvres of the blinds fall back into place. It was a puce box of a place, coloured with years of dust that had blown in from the west. A timber chair stood in one corner and a futon mattress lay in the opposite one. What looked like a bundle of tousled blankets was really two people, wrapped up. One was Scorch’s mother and the other was her younger brother.

“Scorch,” her mother whispered. “Come here.”

“I’m not going with them,” she snapped. “You can’t make me go to that place.” Roughly, she brushed back a strand of her dark matted hair from her face.

“You will,” the other woman said. “You cannot stay here.” Their meal for the last three nights had been rat. But they were lucky. At least it wasn’t nothing.

“Please, Mum,” Scorch began. “You know what they’ll make me do-”

“Not for the first few years,” her mother cut in. “They will want to make you healthy first. And if you go willingly, your treatment will be much better.”

“Mum-”

“Mellissa,” the woman snapped back. Scorch’s eyes watered at the use of her proper name. “Come here.” The girl exhaled violently, but stepped forward and crouched down by her mother. People used to say Scorch looked like her mother. Before Mellissa had become Scorch, that was.

Her mother was handing her something. A locket. It was open and each heart-shaped half contained part of what was once a whole photograph. One side showed a smiling, attractive, deep-brunette. The other side depicted a sandy haired man, also smiling, but where the woman’s teeth were perfect from years of bracers, the man’s were slightly skewwhiff, giving him a boyish look. Her father. “Mum, I can’t take this.” Her eyes began to fill with tears again and she looked down at the locket in an attempt to conceal the fact. She was pretty sure no one had smiled, like her parents had in that picture, for years.

“You will take it,” her mother went on. “Tell them who you are. Show them the photograph. Try to find your father.”

Finding her father was the last thing on Scorch’s bucket-list. He had abandoned them years ago for the benefits of conforming to the Government. Or whatever government there was left.

“Tell me you will, Mel,” her mother went on. “You can’t stay here. And if you go there, you want someone on your side.”

“Who says he’ll be on my side? Even if I do find him?”

“You’re his daughter,” her mother murmured. “You’re important to him, Mel.”

Is that why he left? she thought with spite, but she staid herself from saying it out loud. If she was going, which she supposed she would be, she didn’t want to leave with such hurt behind her. And Alex was there, clinging to their mother like a lifeline. Scorch had him to think about too, even though he was a constant reminder of the things that had gone wrong in the world. “My name’s Scorch,” she said finally, enough venom in her words to make her mother frown. But she took the locket from her mother, shoving it into a pocket in her jacket.

Scorch stood before turning away, going to her small hiking backpack. It had been the bag she had lugged to school every day, back when her school had been open. Her bag no longer contained any of her precious textbooks, but it contained a copy of Shakespeare’s complete works and two books in a series about a boy wizard. One was the third book, and the other was the first. With some consideration, she took the first book, leaving the third in her bag. There wasn’t much point in the third without the second and the third got a little dark. Alex needed as much light as possible. Perhaps she should have left the other book, but whether it was selfishness, or a hopeless incentive to come back to her mother and brother, she refrained. Scorch slung the backpack over her shoulder.

“Alex,” she murmured. He unfolded himself from around their mother. The way he clung to her reminded Scorch of a juvenile opossum hanging onto its mother. It annoyed Scorch somewhat. She never got the same treatment from her mother anymore. But he was only nine.

The boy took the book from her. Their mother had been teaching him how to read. Scorch hoped the novel helped. Of course, if it was him being taken in by the government, he would receive a full education. He would be taught everything from Australia’s colonisation to logarithmic functions and industrial chemistry.

“I’m going,” she said blankly. Alex rushed to a stand and wrapped his arms around her fiercely. There had once been a time when Scorch had thought Alex didn’t give a shit about her. She supposed it was just in her head. Alex cared about her wellbeing. Scorch remembered how she had stayed out late that first night of need, scavenging for food. Upon returning, finding her brother sobbing, it had turned out that her brother had insisted on going looking for her. Their mother had stopped him, of course, but it had been the thought that mattered to her. “See you, Al,” she murmured. “Read the book for me, won’t you?” He nodded, pulling back and lifting the cover, the illustration making her heart pang for the days when the worst of her concerns had been not getting an acceptance letter from the magical school the boy wizard attended.

Alex read out the title slowly, eyes narrowed in the dim.

“Good,” Scorch said. “Make sure you read in the light, don’t strain your eyes.” She stepped for the door before Alex hugged her again. “Time for me to go…Bye, Mum.” In the shadows, her mother nodded. “You know where to get food. Everything?” The woman nodded again.

“I do, darling,” she responded.

“I love you both,” Scorch murmured, before stepping out the doorway and pulling the door behind her, the hinges squealing in protest. The words had been said out of necessity more than feeling. They made her feel slightly nauseous, but at least she wouldn’t be guilty for not saying it.

Finally, she stepped outside onto the front lawn. A jacaranda had carpeted part of the overgrown grass with purple petals. Silvery gums stood stoically in the garden of the house on the other side of the road. All of the gardens in the suburbs were overgrown now. Some just looked wild, but others had a strange beauty about them, the shrubs growing in an almost organised chaos. Beautiful or not, there was usually food to be found in gardens that had self-seeded or the animals that frequented them now that humans were scarce.

Purposefully, Scorch turned right, heading down the hill and inhaled the scent of the trees, plants and earth. It had rained a few hours ago, making everything more pungent. It was cool, but Scorch undid the zip of her faded blue jacket, letting the breeze permeate her t-shirt. The hems of her jeans gently scuffed the tops of her runners.

Settling by the curb of a crossroads, she had managed to position herself in a way that would expose her to the road but be hidden from most other directions. Tall but spindly eucalypts offered her shelter from above. The smaller native shrubs that once decorated the roadside were now largely overtaken by thorny weeds but they put a screen behind her, making her feel a little less vulnerable.

She glimpsed movement far to her left with a sickening twist rising in her stomach. This was a known pickup point. Those who waited here had nothing to fear from those picking them up. It was a place for the desperate to hand themselves over to the Government.

Scorch took a step back into the nature strip. She had once heard of girls being beaten to death at pickup-points such as this one. The desperate, burdened with a misdirected blame and anger. A figure clad in a grey shirt and jeans sauntered out onto the road. It was a wide thoroughfare with two lanes and another nature strip in the middle, also lined with eucalyptus trees and weeds. It was a man that she saw. Not all men had gone over to the Government, for any variety of reasons, they chose to stay, or were rejected.

The girl was sure he had seen her. It seemed he was watching her from the corner of his eye, body turned mostly away from her. Scorch considered running, but was frozen in place. The man was impossibly thin; his limbs looked unnaturally stretched out, like deformed clothing that had had a bad run in with a washing machine.

A distant roar made her stiffen. It was the sort of foreboding sound that made her want to duck into the bushes and hide. But it was the thing she had been waiting for. Carefully, she eyed the man for a reaction. He didn’t move, but had tensed slightly and she wasn’t so sure if he was still keeping an eye on her from his peripherals.

She wished the envoys would hurry up, she thought she could see something gripped in his hand and she had nothing she could use to defend herself except the backpack containing her few books. She supposed it could become a flail if need be, although she really hoped it wouldn't come to that.

The bikes roared around the corner. Scorch forced herself to step out onto the road, in clear sight. Men, clad in black leather, some with guns slung over their shoulders, pulled up around her on motorbikes. Some looked dusty and had cracked plastic coverings but she spotted at least one slick, luxury machine.

“Get her, Luke!” one of the men called. Scorch noted, with some horror, that none of the bikes had a sidecar. Someone passed Luke a helmet. From his figure, she guessed he was around her age but his face was covered by a helmet, so she couldn’t be sure. He shoved the spare helmet at her.

She took it, wrangling it on over her head. Before she had secured it into place, Luke was already gesturing for her to hop onto the bike behind him. She glanced up in time to see the lanky, grey-clad man stalking toward the group of bikes. The thing in his hand was now visible. A crowbar.

Scorch carefully positioned herself behind Luke. He hurriedly reached behind him, grabbing her arms and pulling them around his torso, patting her hands briefly, before positioning his hands back on the handles of the bike. The message was clear. Hold on.

The bike revved forward a few metres and Scorch tightened her grip. Even through her helmet, which seemed to muffle outside sounds, she heard the gunshots. With her limited field of view, she still saw the body as it flopped to the ground, the crowbar along with it. It hardly surprised her that the man had approached so many armed men with nothing but a crowbar. It explained his isolation. So many had lost it when the silver crafts had appeared, hovering in the sky.

They were off, Scorch clutching Luke for dear life. The world rushed by on either side of her, grey and green blurs. Scorch was now Government property. That was if there had ever been a time when she wasn’t.