The Meek.
Chapter 1. Life in the tunnels.
I make my way through the familiar passage ways as I do most days. Out
of the sleeping quarters, through the steep incline up to one of the main
through ways that lead out of the cave we are digging out and to the larger
tunnels. We’re lucky in our cave, as we haven’t told the council that we have
finished digging yet. This means that only those digging it out are allowed to
sleep and live it, as it would be unsafe for anyone other than a digger. There
are only fifty of us there at the moment, usually it would be fit to bursting
like everywhere else. How long we can get away with such luxury is anyone’s
guess. Certainly no one is willing to give up their hard work easily and inform
the council. Eventually the inevitable
inspection will come, and our tunnel will be deemed officially finished. Then
we will have to succumb our efforts to the masses. Those too ill, tired, old or
weary to work, and there are many of them. Life is short in the tunnels
compared to the old world. It is said people used to live as old as seventy or
eighty, though the oldest person I ever heard of in here was forty when he
died. I’m not sure why, it may be the dark, the damp, or it could be that
people just give up.
The tunnels drip cold chalky water continuously, which is channeled in
a never ending drainage system to the cleansing farms and out again through
leaky old pipes around the tunnels to communal pools where people drink and
wash. As I make my way through the dark, I see ahead the flickering oil lights
and my eyes stop straining and relax a little. Having lived and moved through
the tunnels all our lives we know them well enough not to need light, the
council decided, so only the bigger main tunnels are lit, and even then only a
few of those. Being one of the only places that there is light, these tunnels
are always hot and over crowded.
Charlotte had always been my best friend. I can’t really remember when
or how I’d met her, but I had always known her. We weren’t exclusive to each
other, we both saw different people. There had always been something unspoken
between us though, like we always knew we would be together one day. Not that
either of us mentioned it.
We spoke of everything, and when we were younger and still at school we
used to question what we were being taught all the time, like what had really
started the war, and whether we were on the good side or the bad side, but some
nights we would question life in the tunnels.
‘Where do you think the council sleeps?’ she asked one night. That day
we had learnt about the council, and how important their work was.
‘They told us today, don’t you remember?’ We had snuck in to the dome
in a tunnel my father had told me about. It came out at the very top of the
dome where it was too hot for anything to grow, so you could look down but be
to small to be seen from below, and look up and out and almost image you could
see the low flat horizon stretching off in a million directions in front of
you. It was our place, where we would often escape to just to say what ever we
wanted without having to worry about being overheard.
‘Yes, they told us, in the main chamber, but where is it?’
‘Only the council know...’ I tried to make it sound mysterious. ‘In
case we spread disease!’ I laughed but she failed to see the humour. She had
heard me imitate my father before, but she rarely didn’t laugh. Realising what
mood she was in I became more serious.
‘I know what you’re getting at’ I told her. ‘But just because we don’t
know the way through the tunnels to somewhere doesn’t mean there isn’t one.’
That was a saying I had heard my father tell my mother once and I felt a twang
of pride saying it to her. Charlotte hadn’t heard it before but didn’t ask
about it.
‘My dad says these tunnels stretch for miles.’ My father was a
tunneler, as I would be as soon as I was strong enough. She was to become a
gardener working in the glass domed green house where we now hid, as had her
mother and mine. We shared classes in school such as history and geography, but
there were some, the majority, that we didn’t. When she was spending a day
learning about crop rotation on the steep hole below the dome, I was being
taught the perilous job of digging out tunnels to house the offspring, waste,
and deceased of the population.
‘I know your dad says that, but has he ever seen any other tunnels than
our own and those he has dug?’
‘I don’t know, I had always just thought...’
‘That he had seen them.’ She had a habit of finishing my sentences.
‘Yeah’
‘Well, what if he hasn’t seen them?’ Perhaps he was just sat in class
one day and was told by the council that the tunnels stretch on for miles and
there are millions of us all living in tunnels. And as that is all he knows,
that’s what he’s told you!’ We both laughed at that, as it was just about
ridiculous enough to be true. We were at that age where nothing about the adult
world seems real or important. This time was our last breath of freedom before
we would leave school, take our jobs, and we would be exposed to the reality of
life.
One day, in a history class so we were both there to witness it, we
were told about the tunnels.
‘The tunnels stretch for thousands of miles from community to community
in an elaborate network connecting the entire country.’ Mrs Armstrong was old
and bent over and almost blind but she could have been my father if I shut my
eyes for their words and voices almost could have been the same.
‘The council live in the main chamber, working tirelessly to devise new
ways to make the surface clean so as to return mankind to his natural habitat.
Only the council travel from community to community, to reduce the spread of
disease.’ We never sat next to each other at school, and Charlotte had to turn
right around in her spot on the floor several rows in front of me so as we
could glance at each other as Mrs Armstrong repeated the words I had so often
joked at. Charlotte was hiding a smirk, and it took me a long time to work out
what she found so funny.
‘To prevent unprogressive behaviour in the network, the councilors
assigned each community a small team to help them work toward the collective
goal. The retaking of the planets surface.’ The thirty or so children sat on
the floor shifted uneasily at these words. One of the Councils helpers had to
be in attendance at each lesson taught. He stood by the door, silent, huge and
domineering. The helpers never uttered a word. They just watched, intimidating
people in to behaving how they… we… had always been taught to behave.
There was only once a week now that Charlotte and I had the chance to
meet.
When we had finished laughing, she said ‘What if there are no
councilors, only helpers.’
She was suddenly serious again. I thought fast. ‘Then we’re all I a lot
of trouble.’ We didn’t laugh or take the matter further. For all the talk of
the tunnels this was a worrying subject. No one had seen a council member in
living memory, yet their helpers were seen everywhere everyday.
I walked on, and as the light grew so did the crowd. I basked for a
moment in the natural light flooding in through the dome. It was easily a mile
above my head, massive transparent and life giving. The walls around it sloped
down steeply, each covered in vegetation, fruit and vegetables, the ancestors
of which had been rescued by the council from the radioactivity and grown here
to support those that made it to safety before the radiation killed everything
on the surface. At the domes base a huge arena in had been left for people to
gather. It was here that everyone was stating to assemble, as they did every
day, despite the impossibility of their numbers to the size of the arena. Not
all could fit in at the same time, so everyone’s time in the sun, like
everything else, was rationed.
I skirted round the outside where the crowds were thinner. Here the old
and sick gathered, sat against walls, exhausted anxious looks on their faces. I
continued passed them in to a smaller access tunnel, that sloped upward and
round to the left gradually for a while, following the gradient of the sloping
wall under the dome. After fashion the way split in to what seemed two ways,
but there was a third secret way through the low ceiling that lead up to where
charlotte and I had been meeting for years. She was already there. It took my
eyes a moment or so to adjust to the light out on our perch, and the radiance
and warmth filled my being, ridding me of the darkness of the tunnels.
