Dead City: Outbreak. Chapter 5

Pity the children to come unto me.

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“Robbie wasn’t at school yesterday.” The boy clicked a gun into Action Man’s hand then moved the arm into position.

Andy glanced at his son across the table. The boy’s bowl of cereal remained untouched. “Eat your breakfast, lad. Grandma won’t be happy with me if I drop you off starving. She’ll accuse me of not feeding you properly, you know what she’s like.”

The boy focused on his toy, making shooting noises as he directed the tiny weapon towards the cat curled up on its bed in the corner of the room.

“And Mr. Whiskers won’t be happy if you shoot him either!” Andy said.

Sam rolled his eyes. “It’s not real, dad!”

Andy spooned in another mouthful of porridge. It tasted creamy and sweet, just the way he liked it, although he’d used the last of the milk to make it. He’d added ‘milk’ to his shopping list, noting the item down with a churn in his stomach; the cost of food had risen to the point of inducing anxiety every time he thought of cooking a meal or going to the shops to restock. “I know that.” He managed a chuckle and urged the boy to eat. “So, tell me,” he said, returning to Sam’s comment about his friend Robbie, a boy whose mum and dad Andy had known since he was a kid and who lived only a couple of streets away. “Why wasn’t Robbie at school? Was he sick?”

Sam shook his head. “Nah. Alicia said the police took him away.” Sam pointed Action Man’s gun and pretended to shoot Mr. Whiskers again. The cat raised a single eyelid, decided Sam was beneath his contempt, and returned to sleep. The boy placed the toy beside his bowl and filled a spoon with cereal, holding it aloft before placing it in his mouth. Andy watched him with concern. Usually, the boy wolfed his food down. Leaning across the table, he placed a hand on Sam’s forehead. No sign of a temperature.

“How does Alicia know that?” he asked, rejecting the news as idle gossip, a case of Chinese whispers that had warped into something twisted; he knew Rachel and Doug—they were sound.

“She said her mum told her. She said Robbie’s mum had posted about it and she was deranged.”

“Deranged?”

“Yeah, real upset.”

“Devastated?”

“Yeah. That.”

Sam spooned another mouthful of cereal into his mouth and chewed.

“It sounds a bit odd, Sam,” Andy said. He decided to make light of the story. “Has Robbie been nicking cars again?”

“Don’t be stupid, dad! He’s only nine.”

Andy reached across the table and gave his son a gentle cuff on the side of the head. “Watch who you’re calling stupid,” he reprimanded. “Anyway, I’m sure it’s all just a tall tale. The police don’t just take nine-year old boys away from their mums and dads.”

For the first time since sitting at the table, Sam looked up. His eyes were wide and filled with hope. “Don’t they?”

Andy shook his head, surprised at the fear in his son’s face. “No, not unless the mum or dad has done something very, very wrong and I think we’d know about it if they had. Although,” he said with a dramatic raise of his brows, “they have been known to arrest boys who don’t eat their breakfast!”

Sam didn’t laugh. “You’ve not done anything wrong, have you dad,” he stated.

Here it was, the reason for the lack of appetite and loss of spirit. Andy stood and placed a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Of course not. I never even nicked sweets from the shop when I was a kid, so you don’t need to worry, the police won’t be coming to take you away anytime soon. It’s not something that happens, son. I’m sure there’s been some misunderstanding. Do you play with Robbie online?”

Sam nodded.

“Then I bet when you get on the game later, he’ll be there. I bet it’s all just a bit of gossip that’s got out of hand. Now, I’ve got to get you to Grandma’s for ten otherwise I’ll be late. Go and get in the shower. Quick sharp, soldier.”

“Dad!” Sam complained, but a smile crept to his face as he made his way upstairs.

As the boy showered, Andy checked his mobile, clicking on the social media app to see if he could glean any information about Robbie. He searched through his friends list and found Doug, the boy’s father. There was nothing posted on his timeline, which was not unexpected as Doug wasn’t a regular user of social media. He checked the mother’s profile. Again, nothing. Rachel hadn’t posted anything in over a week which was odd as she was a daily user. Her posts regularly popped up on his timeline with some gossip, photo of her latest pouty look, or a shared anti-establishment link complete with a fact-checking notice stuck to the bottom stating that it contained ‘misinformation’ or was only ‘partially true’.  

A quick search through other friends’ timelines turned up nothing about the boy and, after checking the time, and realising that it was nearly time to leave, Andy clicked the phone to off and slid it back into his pocket, confident that news of Robbie’s abduction was just a schoolyard tale.

His thoughts turned to the day’s arrangements with a flicker of excitement. He had arranged to pick up Mike, his friend and drinking buddy, at a quarter to ten. After dropping Sam off at his grandmother’s, they were to drive a hundred miles north to meet up with some of Mike’s mates who were protesting the extension of the ‘Zee-Cee Initiative’ to their town.

It was too late for Andy’s town; the surveillance cameras, digital toll gates, and automatic fines were already in place at every major junction. ‘A totalitarian bio-security surveillance state,’ Mike called it. ‘Prison planet’.  As soon as Mike had started banging on about a shady cabal forcing mankind into a digital gulag, a smart city where everything the serfs bought, said, and did, was watched, recorded, and logged, Andy would mentally switch off, but when the surveillance cameras had been installed, complete with facial recognition software, over the space of a few weeks across the town, and the local supermarkets had jumped on board the ‘ZeeCee’ initiative to track everything he bought, Andy had begun to listen and decided that coming to the fight late was better than never turning up at all.

After calling up to his son, and urging him to hurry up, Sam padded down the stairs, hair towel-dried and fully dressed, then sat on the last step to pull on his trainers. Ten minutes later they picked up Mike and then began the short journey to drop off Sam. The traffic was unusually heavy. It had slowed since the bollards slicing the town up into districts had appeared, but this morning it had practically stalled. As they inched along, the reason became obvious. A large police van, with a smaller car parked behind it, was double parked, forcing the traffic into a single lane.

“Looks like a raid,” said Mike as he peered up the road. “There’s a couple of coppers in the garden, all tooled up.”

Andy followed Mike’s pointing finger. Two black clad police officers stood at the entrance to the house as though guarding it. Andy turned his attention back to the road as the car in front moved forward.

“Whoah!”

“What is it?”

“There’s more coming out. Must be a big drugs bust, or a murder, or something. Who lives there?”

“That’s Freddie’s house,” said Sam. “He goes to my school.”

The car in front slowed to a stop giving Andy time to watch the scene. Three more police officers stepped out of the house followed by several more. Behind them a woman, her hair in disarray, dressing gown flapping open to show her pyjamas, was pulling her arm from the grip of a female officer.

“Shit!” said Mike.

Andy’s heart sank as the woman’s shrieks became audible and he realised why she was fighting against the officer so hard. The policemen who had stepped out of the house seconds before, were taking her child.   

“Dad! Dad!” shouted Andy. “They’ve got Freddie!”

Several women, one with a clipboard, stepped around the mother and followed behind the child who was being carried by four officers, each with a hand on his ankle or wrist.

“That’s … what the fuck are they doing?” exclaimed Mike as the child bucked against the restraining hands.

Mike flung open the car door and strode towards the police van. At the house, a man leant against the open doorway. Blood trickled from a wound on his head.

“Dad! Stop them,” Sam shouted. “They’ve got my friend!”

The young boy’s screams pierced the air.

Galvanised into action, the father lurched forward with a roar, pushing the women out of the way. The one with the clipboard and officious stride fell to her knees.

Mike ran towards the child.

“Stop them, Mike!” Sam shouted from the backseat.

Andy watched in fascinated horror as two officers turned on Mike, their truncheons raised in threat, barring his way. Mike took a step back, hands held up in surrender as the child was forced into the waiting police van and the father was clubbed and wrestled to the floor.

“Shit!” Andy whispered and Sam began to cry.