The Dystopiaville Omnibus: A Dystopian Sci-Fi Horror Collection Read online

  There were more books on the bed, most of them spilling out of Ellie’s rucksack. She’d brought more books with her than clothes.

  “What’s up?” Ellie asked. She was dressed in a pair of blue dungarees, which she wore over a white long sleeved t-shirt. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail.

  “Just checking in,” Reggie said.

  He noticed Ellie’s old Yamaha keyboard propped up against the wall in the corner of the room. Five years ago it had been a birthday present for the then nine-year-old Ellie. She’d loved it for about a year or so but clearly it wasn’t a favourite or it wouldn’t still be there in the farmhouse.

  “Still playing?” Reggie asked.

  Ellie looked at the keyboard and gave a half-hearted shrug. “Uh-huh. I dusted it down and switched it on last night, just to see if it works. Had a bit of a play around with it.”

  “Didn’t hear you,” Reggie said.

  “I plugged the headphones in,” Ellie said. “It was late and I didn’t want to disturb anyone.”

  “You were a natural with that thing.”

  It was true. Ellie had taken to the keyboard like a duck to water. She was good at reading music and more importantly, her improvisational skills were off the chart. She was a natural and if she’d stuck with it she could have been something special in either the classical or popular zones. But music wasn’t on Ellie’s radar. It wasn’t even close. She was the next Marjory Baker and she was going to save the world. That was all there was to it, at least in Ellie’s mind.

  “I like messing around with it every now and then,” Ellie said. “For relaxing and stuff.”

  She peered over the rim of her reading glasses.

  “Are you okay Dad?”

  Reggie’s back stiffened. He clung to the smile on his face.

  “I’m great. Why do you ask?”

  Ellie shrugged. “Well…”

  She was blushing. That was weird because Ellie hardly ever blushed.

  “Spit it out honey.”

  “Are you sad? About how things turned out with your job? It’s just that I haven’t heard you and mum talking about it much since it happened.”

  “We’ve talked,” Reggie said. “Getting fired was my fault Ellie. I lost my temper and I shouldn’t have said what I said to Mr Phelps. Wasn’t the right time, wasn’t the right place. Someone in my position should know better than to give into these occasional fits of temper.”

  “But you spoke up for your beliefs,” Ellie said. “Marjory Baker said that to speak up for one’s beliefs, especially when the whole world stands against you, is one of the noblest things we can do as human beings.”

  Reggie nodded. “Like I said. There’s a time and a place.”

  He pushed his glasses up off his nose. Ellie mirrored the gesture with her own glasses and they laughed.

  “Your mum and I are taking a quick walk,” Reggie said. “You want to come with us?”

  Ellie shook her head. “I’ll keep reading if that’s okay?”

  “Sure. We won’t be long.”

  “See you in a bit,” Ellie said.

  “See you.”

  Reggie closed the door and walked down the hallway towards Fern’s room. The floorboards groaned under his feet. The old farmhouse was nothing if not expressive.

  He knocked twice.

  “Fern?”

  Silence.

  “Fern?”

  “What?”

  “Your mum and I are going for a walk. We wondered if you wanted to…?”

  The door swung open and a disgruntled looking Fern stepped out into the hallway. She was towelling her multi-coloured hair dry.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  “I said your mum and I are going for a walk and asked if you wanted to come with us?”

  Fern chewed on her bottom lip. She wore a crinkled white t-shirt over a black long sleeved top – the t-shirt had a Batman logo on it, the bat wings dripping with blood.

  “Do I have to come?”

  “Of course not,” Reggie said. “Just letting you know.”

  As he spoke Reggie took a sneak peek over Fern’s shoulder into the bedroom. Fern saw it immediately and stretched up onto her toes, backing off towards the doorway in an attempt to block the view.

  “Dad!” she said. “Do you mind?”

  “I thought we were leaving those things at home,” Reggie said. He was pointing at Fern’s phone, which poked out from underneath her pillow. A pair of small headphones were plugged into the base. Reggie could hear the faint buzz of what sounded like hip-hop spilling out the earbuds.

  “Remember?” he said. “We said we’d bring one phone with us in case of emergencies. My phone. All other devices stay at home. That’s not what this trip is about and you know it Fern.”

  Fern sighed. “C’mon Dad. It’s just a…”

  “Fern,” Reggie said, cutting her off. “I’m not the one being unreasonable here. Okay? Those things have their uses, of course they do. But not here, not now while we’re at the farmhouse. We’re in the quiet lands for a reason, you understand?”

  “Of course.”

  Reggie took a deep breath and then smiled at his daughter. She looked so much like the teenage Terri that it was frightening. “Look,” he said, “there’s nothing wrong with listening to music. And if you’re texting a boy that’s fine too. Really it is. You’re sixteen. I was sixteen once and…”

  “Thirty years ago,” Fern said.

  Reggie laughed and it sounded hollow. “Has it been that long?”

  Fern was already closing the door.

  “Sure you don’t want to walk with us?” Reggie asked.

  “I’m good. Thanks Dad. I’ll see you in a little while okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She closed the door quickly.

  Reggie stood in the hallway, staring at the bedroom door. With a strange, sudden emptiness inside, he walked to the master bedroom and pulled his North Face jacket off the hook on the door. He put it on over his crewneck sweatshirt, all the while standing in front of the full-length mirror, staring at the man. Staring at Reggie Ward.

  Terri was waiting in the hall when he returned back downstairs. She had her back against the door, kicking her boot heels off the floor as if trying to warm up cold feet.

  “Just us then?” she said.

  “Just us,” Reggie said. He opened up the cupboard under the stairs and grabbed his hiking boots. Sitting on the bottom step, he wrestled them onto his feet. “Two flat out rejections.”

  “What a pity,” Terri said, laughing softly. “Quick, let’s go before they change their minds.”

  They stepped outside, closing the front door behind them.

  Reggie lifted his face to the sky. “Oh God,” he said. “It’s perfect.”

  No Schedule.

  No monotone announcements, no advertising blitz, no lies, no drivel and no instruction disguised as neutral information.

  “You hear that?” Terri said.

  Reggie was smiling. “I certainly do.”

  They walked hand in hand down the long driveway, their hiking boots scraping off the dirt track in unison. The fuchsia hedges that flanked the path were emaciated in the cold weather.

  Reggie and Terri strolled along the country road at a leisurely pace for about two miles. They stopped at a familiar sight. Perched atop one of the small hills, off to their left, a withered old bench looked down at them.

  “O’Brien’s bench,” Reggie said. “Have we walked that far already?”

  “Yep,” Terri said. “How are the legs doing old man?”

  “I could walk for hours.”

  “In that case,” Terri said, pointing off road, “I vote we climb up to the bench, sit down and take in the view. What do you say lover?”

  Reggie saluted his wife. “Let’s do it.”

  They climbed over a crumbling wall and stepped into the empty, overgrown field. Staying close to one another, they marched through the long grass in silence, list
ening only to their breath. The grass was cool and tinged with morning damp.

  The short ascent to the bench was fairly easy. But Reggie enjoyed the mild exertion anyway. It was easy to neglect one’s health in an overcrowded city where walking was as fashionable as silence. Out here, it didn’t matter whether he walked, ran or crawled his way to the top.

  They reached the peak, laughing and slightly out of breath.

  O’Brien’s bench had seen better days. The wood had long since rotted to a withered brownish-black and the metal plaque fastened to the wobbly backrest was nothing more than a rust-ridden stain, the words lost to neglect. The bench, a lonely wreck, sat on a concrete base choked with weeds.

  “I never did ask,” Reggie said. “Who put this bench all the way up here anyway?”

  “It was Jack O’Brien’s daughter,” Terri said, wiping the surface of the bench down with the back of her sleeve, “Shawna. She did it after the old man sold the land. Nice old man, I vaguely remember meeting him when I was a kid. Shawna is a silence-hugger just like us. Most people who come from this far north usually are.”

  Terri sat down on the bench.

  “Who owns the land now?” Reggie asked, taking his place beside her.

  “All this is private,” Terri said. “Nobody uses it for anything since the farmers left. But there’s always rumours going around that they’re going to start developing up here. Gives me the creeps.”

  Reggie put his arm around his wife and squeezed her shoulder.

  “Look at that view,” he said.

  It was magnificent. Occasional spurts of granite speckled the green blanket of the quiet lands. Wild honeysuckle scrambled over distant greystone walls. Reggie knew that the sea was only a short distance away, somewhere behind those hills. He was sure he could taste the salt in the air.

  “I could get used to this,” he said. “A walk to O’Brien’s bench every morning. That view waiting for us.”

  Terri leaned into him. She felt warm.

  “Sounds nice.”

  “It wouldn’t be so hard to be self-sustainable around here,” Reggie said. “We’d never have to go back to the city again.”

  “Yeah,” Terri said. “I guess so. We could grow our own food and God knows there’s plenty of fresh water running around these parts. We’d just need to earn more money beforehand to get the house up to par. The kitchen needs work. The bedrooms too. Don’t you think?”

  “Little things,” Reggie said.

  “And the girls,” Terri said. “We’d need to talk them around.”

  “The girls are on board,” Reggie said. “They’re on board with everything we do.”

  “Even Fern?”

  “Fern’s a teenager. Don’t worry about her.”

  Terri sat up straight. “Wouldn’t it be incredible though?” she said, staring longingly into the distance.

  Her eyes dulled. “It would never last though.”

  “It wouldn’t?” Reggie asked.

  Terri shook her head. “Those damn speakers are coming further north every year. Like a plague.”

  “I know,” Reggie said.

  “Here of all places,” Terri said. “This is my home Reggie. My real home. They’ll build houses and roads and shopping malls all over it. Families will flock here and they’ll bring the Schedule with them. Wait and see. In no time at all, everything we’re looking at right now will be gone.”

  “Won’t happen,” Reggie said. “Not on my watch.”

  Terri laughed. “We’ll fight it,” she said. “I know.”

  Reggie shook his head. “No,” he said. “We won’t just fight it Terri. We’ll win. We have to.”

  Chapter 3

  Iron Maiden’s ‘Fear of the Dark’ thundered off the walls of the prison transport van.

  Carter Morgan was alone in the back, sitting on a metal bench and headbanging like he was in a sweaty nightclub at two o’clock in the morning.

  It was pitch black. Without windows, Morgan had no idea where the big Sprinter van was but he could feel it jerking up and down as it drove over a series of scattered potholes. Morgan figured they had to be on the back roads. Some place remote where the local council, if there even was one, didn’t give a damn about road safety. Probably wasn’t even a proper road. Just a mud track laid flat by local tractors.

  Morgan shuddered at the thought.

  Were they taking a detour through the quiet lands?

  His foot tapped off the floor as Steve Harris’s crunchy bassline pulsed through his body.

  He felt the Sprinter picking up speed.

  The two guards sitting in the cab up front, which was blocked off from the rear, were probably laughing their heads off. Morgan could well imagine the driver aiming for the potholes on purpose, speeding up at the last second and knowing how uncomfortable it would be for the man in the back.

  Let them have their laugh.

  Morgan had put the screws through enough shit in his time at the Northern Prison and it would take more than a few crummy potholes for those bastards to get anything close to a fitting revenge.

  At least they were feeding him a constant stream of rock classics for the journey south. This wasn’t for his wellbeing, but they knew it would keep him happy and sedated, making for an easy transfer to the City Prison. Morgan was okay with that.

  Not to mention, the music kept his claustrophobia at bay.

  The van struck another pothole.

  “Hey!” Morgan yelled. “Speedy fucking Gonzalez. Save the Formula One shit for the motorway will you?”

  Morgan pressed his back up tight against the wall. His wrists were bound with handcuffs and already, barely an hour into the road trip, it felt like a set of vampire teeth biting down on his flesh.

  The van wasn’t slowing down.

  “Prick,” Morgan said. “I hope you guys are having fun up there.”

  His long blonde hair was damp with sweat. Morgan tried to think of something else. What was the point of worrying about a car crash anyway? He wasn’t the one behind the wheel so whatever happens happens. Right? It was like flying thousands of feet up in the air in a giant hunk of cylindrical metal. If the plane goes down there’s nothing anyone can do except scream, clasp their hands together and pray, or have one last shot of whisky.

  “Turn the music up!” Morgan yelled, banging on the wall with both hands. “And drive as fast as you want dickheads. Bring it on!”

  He howled in delight as Judas Priest’s ‘You’ve Got Another Thing Coming’ exploded out of the twin X-57 speakers. Morgan sang along, trying to make his voice heard. Although the back of the van was soundproof he wanted everyone in the quiet lands to bask in some good fucking music for a change. Fix a speaker to the roof of the van and let it go. Let the country bumpkins hear the sound of civilisation, up close and personal. Let them dance.

  Morgan rattled his chains along to the music.

  A second later he felt the van skidding on the road. His fingers clamped down on the metal bench.

  “Holy shit.”

  Morgan’s insides did a quick loop the loop.

  “LEARN HOW TO DRIVE FOR GOD’S SAKE!”

  Another skid.

  Morgan’s heart was pounding. He felt sick and dizzy, certain that the van had just done a full three hundred and sixty spin. There was a noise outside – the harsh, wailing shriek of the Sprinter’s tyres grappling furiously with the road surface. It sliced through the electric guitar of Judas Priest, blotting the music out like it was no more than a cowbell.

  Morgan grabbed the seatbelt buckle, making sure he was strapped in. Thank God he’d made that call before setting off.

  His body was thrust forward. The force was so powerful that Morgan felt like a stickman being snapped in half. The seat belt held him in place – if he hadn’t been strapped in he would have flown across the van like Superman, hit the wall and ended up unconscious or more likely, dead.

  There was a sudden, dizzying sensation of lightness. Morgan was trapped in the darkness of
his mobile cell, going purely on instinct as to what the hell was going on. The van felt like it was tilting over at an angle, or perhaps it was up in the air, all four tyres clean off the ground.

  Morgan was blind. Worse than that, he was helpless.

  A crashing thud.

  “AAAAGH!”

  Morgan’s bones rattled as the van rammed against something solid. It was a blunt, jarring sensation and the sheer impact knocked the wind out of the bewildered prisoner.

  His fingers were still locked on the underside of the bench. He held on for dear life as the van seemed to glide along the road like a skater on an ice rink. There was a ferocious scraping noise.

  It happened so fast.

  The sensation of movement lasted a few seconds.

  Then it stopped.

  Morgan didn’t dare let go of the bench. It was the last thing keeping him from a long fall to oblivion. He felt the van tilt, like it was hanging over the edge of something. A big drop? Now he was scared. He’d heard stories about the crazy, dangerous roads that ran like veins through the quiet lands. There were no metal barriers lining the edge of these roads, not even on high ground to stop vehicles from plunging over the side to a certain, horrible death.

  ‘Holy Wars’ by Megadeth kicked in.

  Morgan’s mind clawed at the music. Thank God, it was still playing. Good music stops for no crash. As far as Morgan was concerned, it was all he had now – a hand reaching into the dark water, pulling him back to the light.

  He unclicked the seat belt. With hands bound, he wriggled slowly to the wall that separated him from the driver’s cabin. The darkness was absolute. Jesus Christ, there was no light whatsoever in the back seeping in from anywhere. He winced at a few minor aches around his midsection, but apart from that Morgan detected nothing serious in terms of injury.