Fic: Afterwards
Title: Afterwards
Pairing: none
Rating: pg-13
Genre: angst
Fandom: Torchwood
Warnings/Spoilers: Adam
Author's note: This is the both the very first fic I've submitted, and the very fist fic I completed. It was originally posted on myfanwys_nest, where it tied for first place. I figured I should share it with the rest of the world now.
Thanks to my superbeta, aztiluna13, and her awesome proofing skills that can stand up to even my last minute flapping about..
Summary: “He’d been dreaming about the day before, when he’d searched the dunes and climbed up each sandy peak, gripping handfuls of spiky grass as his feet scrambled beneath him.”
The settlement consisted of hundreds of connected modular building units ranging from tiny single family homes to the administrative tower that rose up in the center, to which the earliest homes first attached, climbing up the sides like barnacles. Every day more and more prefabricated building units were assembled; massive cranes loomed over the expanding colony, raising new units into the sky, higher and higher, looking for a patch of uncluttered surface-top to which their load could be coupled.
Although the main settlement had not sustained any damage during the attack, the outlying utility buildings were not so fortunate. The loss of life was so great that there were not enough people left to run the power station that kept the colony running. Within a few hours of the attack, the massive generators had seized and died. Now, the cranes had stilled, and the child’s-block buildings were dark and utterly silent. A few settlers had lit oil lanterns - he’d seen them flickering through the windows as he hurried down the narrow lane that connected his housing section to the main plaza. Someone had even set fire to a great pile of scrap wood and furniture, burning in the square before the administrative tower, but there was no-one around to tend or enjoy it.
“Mom?”
The boy shuffled in the doorway. He thought about knocking on the jam, but it seemed so absurd, like he was a stranger asking permission to enter his own home. Instead, he scrubbed his palms against the stiff fabric of his nightshirt.
“Mom?”
No response. Carefully, the boy stepped across the dark room and climbed onto the bed. He could just make out the shape of his mother’s sleeping form beneath the blankets, illuminated by the thin, leftover moonlight that had managed to make its way down past the skyline and into the little court where their unit was installed and through the window. They were lucky, his father had said, to have a unit on the ground - one of the first ones built in the whole colony - so that they didn’t have to climb up flights of stairs and across someone’s roof to reach their own door. But the looming pile of the buildings around them cast the court into shadow even on clear days. At night, it was like being buried alive.
The boy shuffled across the empty side of the bed, seeking his mother’s warmth. He’d been dreaming about the day before, when he’d searched the dunes and climbed up each sandy peak, gripping handfuls of spiky grass as his feet scrambled beneath him. If he slipped and rolled down the dune the whole pile could shift and bury him alive, great tons of sand avalanching down to smother him in an instant before he’d even had a chance to say “oh.” It happened. His mother warned them about it often. He’d reached the top of a dune and levered himself to his feet, mindful of the way his heavy boots sunk into the soft sand. The sun setting in the East was stinking hot and he’d felt the dying rays burning the back of his neck as he scanned. The wind had shifted over the sand and brought with it a fetid smell. He should have known better than to look around because below against a clump of grass he’d spotted a dark patch that writhed eerily and, when the wind shifted again, resolved itself to be a swarm of flies and their feast of human remains. It was the body of a woman, laying on her back at the base of the dune opposite of the side he’d just climbed. She was lightly dressed in just a shirt and trousers, no boots, insulating coat or sand gear, and had probably been out on one of the boats when they’d come. How she’d gotten so far inland, he couldn’t bear to guess. He’d staggered back as the stench hit him full force and scrambled back down the way he’d come, nearly losing his footing.
And then there was a man, hurrying down the beach, bellowing at him. He was kitted out in heavy sand gear and a breathing mask, and was carrying a gun. Behind him, a column of men were marching at an orderly pace, each similarly equipped in gear and mask and each also armed. A transit with bulging wheels for navigating sand was accompanying them; as it got closer, the boy had known instantly that the bed was stacked with people not unlike the one on the other side of the dune.
The man had ripped off his mask and seized the boy by his shoulders, shaking him, screaming “What are you doing out here, are you stupid? Do you want to get killed?”
“Please,” the boy stuttered, “my brother. I’m looking for my brother. He’s got brown hair and -“
“I don’t care if you’re looking for your sweet old nan! Get your ass back to the colony!” The man’s thick hands wear like an iron collar pressing down his shoulders and squeezing around his neck. His face behind the sand goggles swelled to purple. “What if they came back? Eh? Nice bit of fun you’d make, out here alone!”
He’d propelled the boy then physically down the beach, meaty fingers around his neck forcing the kid to scamper along or be dragged. When the man released him finally with a shove, the boy had been running fast enough that he’d reached the settlement before the sun had set completely. It wasn’t until he’d lain in his own bed for the night that he’d realized he’d forgotten to tell them about the woman behind the dune.
His mother’s back when he pressed against it was stiff and tense. He knew immediately that she hadn’t been asleep when he’d stood in the door. When he’d come home from the dunes the night before, she’d been sitting in the kitchen toying with the dead wireless. She’d leapt up at the sight of him, and then sat again when she realized he was alone. Since then, they’d edged their way carefully around each other, not saying anything. He’d gone out on the sand again today, and again come home empty handed. There was a plate of dry bread and some softening cheese set out in the kitchen, but she’d already been in bed by the time he’d returned.
A sharp knock knock shattered the smothering silence like a stone through the window. The boy scrambled out of bed in an instant rushed to the door, tripping and banging through the darkened unit. The entrance of each unit had been designed with magnetic locking clamps. With the power on, it took almost a dozen men to force the door open the width of a finger; it slid open effortlessly under the boy’s hands. A portly, sweating man in faded robes leaned in. He had a tablet with papers over his arm and carried a burning oil lamp, which he swung into the boy’s face.
“How many are you, then?”
The boy thought about his own tablet. It was still in his bag under his desk, where he’d thrown it after coming home from school the day before. There were assignments clipped to it that would be due, and a terse note from his instructor that his father needed to sign.
“Hey, kid.” The portly man tapped his pen impatiently, “how many in your unit survived?”
“Three.”
It was his mother, standing in the still darkness of the frontroom. The sweating official raised his lamp past the boy to see her better. “Names?” She reeled off the family - mother, son and son - and took the tablet when the man held it out for her.
“Names, ages, relationship. Sign here after your name, kids gotta do the same. Where’s the other one?”
“I’ll sign for him.”
The man took the tablet back. “I can’t allow that, sej.” He said, addressing her with the honorific. “If he’s too little I’m to sign for him but I have to see everyone in the unit to getta head-count.”
“He’s not here at the moment.”
The man sighed and tapped his pen against the tablet clip. “Sej, you were instructed to keep all members of the unit inside the dwelling until further instruction,” he droned. “Do you know -“
“He’s just gone down to the beach to play, I couldn’t keep him penned up in here all day - you know how boys are.”
Looking from her, to the boy still standing by the door, and around the dark emptiness of the night room, the official seemed suddenly to understand. He gave the tablet to the boy to sign, instead. “Alright, sej, I’ll … come back tomorrow.” They knew he wouldn’t. “There’s going to be a meeting tomorrow morning in the hall, distributing rations, that sort of thing.”
He scrawled something on a form, then tore the bottom off in a strip and gave it to the mother. “You take care, yeah?” Then, bidding them both a good night, the portly man took up his lamp and left. The boy watched him through the open door as he shuffled down the row doors. There was a knock, an opening slide, and then the yellow glow of the lantern disappeared into next door.
When the boy looked back, his mother had disappeared again into the unit. Tomorrow, they would have to go to the meeting, sit for the first time in two days with the members of their community all silently counting faces and recalling names. His classmates, his instructor. The boys and girls from his brother’s school and their instructors as well, and all the men and women from his mother’s workplace and from the mine his father had supervised for more than ten years. Looking at him, at his family, counting their number. He couldn’t realize then that he would face a lot more than a weary, sweaty bureaucrat trying to take a census, or the broad indifference of his mother’s back. For now, he just watched as the man and his light moved through the court, disappearing and reappearing at each door, getting further and further away, until the night was dark once more.