Cause for Alarm HAS BEEN UPDATED

[mors ontologica]

Here's an ever so slightly reworked version, but with a lot more added onto it. I'm finally getting to the end of Chapter 1! : D
CC only please.

I

That night I stood out in what I suppose you would call the back garden. It was more of a courtyard, really. When I first came to this house, I tried to grow vegetables in the muddy earth, among the weeds, so that they would not be seen and stolen by others. They were strangled by the roaming brambles and other creeping plants alike to it. After that I spent a week digging the whole place up, and we bred chickens for food. One morning I came out to feed them and they were all gone. Possibly an animal, possibly someone nearby thinking that they needed the food more than we did.
Now it’s just a barren, mini-wasteland. I come out to think, when I can, or to listen. That time I was out there to smoke. Luckily tobacco was something easy to come by these days. I don’t know if we grow it here, or if we have it imported. Both of which seem unlikely, but I have it and that’s answer enough for me. At least I can still have my vices. What I do miss is coffee and cigarettes. Coffee disappeared a few years ago. Suddenly it just wasn’t available any more. “Discontinued” someone said, when I asked. There was no point in asking why. Over time we had all grown used to not asking questions any more. This was just the kind of thing that happened on a slowly more regular basis.
We didn’t have any chairs out here. There’s no point in having things which can be easily stolen, I had come to realise. Instead I sat perched on the side of a large sink which was filled with rain water. I don’t know when or why that got there, but it served its current purpose. I took a deep drag on the cigarette, and relished the crackle of the paper as the fire crept its way slowly towards my fingers. I held the smoke in until it hurt, then exhaled a mushroom cloud, watching it drift and spiral away from me, twisting and turning like a strange, tribal dance with itself. I felt some of the tension ebb away with that dancing smoke.
As I took the last drag, I stubbed it out on the floor and flicked the end over the fence. Who was there to scold me for that anyway? I stood and stretched widely, yawning. A strange sense of uneasiness settled over me. There was an eerie silence which surely could not bode well.
I saw it in the birds first. If the birds stop singing and fly away, you try your best to follow them. As silently as possible I crept back in through the door as I heard the treads of the vehicle coming ever closer.
Quietly I raised the alarm and sad little figures came down the stairs, doe-eyed and frightened.
“Come now; just help me get the boards done. It’ll be okay.” I consoled them in hushed tones, forever doubting the promises I made to them on a daily basis. They knew the drill by now. We practised it regularly for such occasions as this. For some of them, they had been here before in this situation, and the helped the others along, but a the small few who had only ever practiced this were clearly scared, some with silent tears dripping a white stripe down their dirty faces. Sadness swelled within my chest, but I pushed it back within me, repressing it, and continued my work. They swung and locked the boards and windows inwards, then went on to help the stragglers. I went upstairs and tried to pull the curtains shut as quietly as possible. At the front of the house, where we were lucky enough to have glass, we never opened the boards. It made us too visible. I used to have all of them shut all of the time, but the house was so dark and dingy I found it was much better for morale to just set a little risk in opening the back ones.
A cold draught worked its way toward me from my room. I swore under my breath. I had left the window open. Idiot. I ducked into my sanctuary, keeping below the window, and peered up above the windowsill when I dared. The truck was slowly emptying people from its insides. They hadn’t seen me yet.
For a moment, I stood like a fox in the headlights (a phrase that has been passed down from the time before), torn between risking shutting it and being seen, or risking leaving it open, and the chances of them breaking in being greater.
When I worked up the courage, I stuck my arm haphazardly out of the window and took the hook of the board in my hand, pulling it closed slowly. My heart was in my mouth drumming a new time signature. I got the hook onto the latch, and went for the window. A sudden gust of wind howled through gaps in the boards and took the window from my hands. It slammed loudly against the frame work. My heart dropped from my mouth into my gut, and a cold sweat broke out. I saw through the gap that they had all swung round and were looking what I felt was straight at me. They clicked open the back gate, and walked into my garden.
“The kids!” I thought wildly, and turned and fled from the room. Not bothered by the sounds I was making any more, I thundered down the stairs. Some of the children were stifling sobs with grubby handkerchiefs or hands if they had nothing else. They knew things had gone wrong. I lifted up the patchy rub, and opened the trap door down into the cellar, herding them in as though they were sheep. I heard a steady thumping and splintering growing louder with each kick. They were breaking down my door.
“Quicker! Quicker!” I urged as loud as I dared. I couldn’t let the Outsiders know that I was not alone. After what felt like an eternity they were all in. I hurriedly put the door down and covered it again. I could hear them trying to kick in the back door. I tried not to be selfish and think about the expenses of having to pay for the damage, but it was difficult sometimes.
Although I knew what was coming, when the door gave in to the dark shrouded figures, it still made me jump. I stood before them, and then sprinted for the front door. I pulled it open and left it wide. There was no time to shut it. It would save it getting broken too… I hoped. I grabbed my bike from behind the bushes and jumped on.
The alarm went off, reverberating up and down the road. My head and heart pounded as I forced my legs to keep turning the pedals. The bells and the siren merged into a panicked cacophony, beginning to reach a crescendo. I couldn’t hear my pursuers anymore, but I didn’t dare stop to check. Just because I couldn’t hear them over the noise didn’t mean that they were gone. I skidded around another corner, swerving violently away from the mangled barriers on the side of the road. I had no lights on my bike, and the few street lights that still worked emitted a horrible artificial light that never seemed to do anything but create more shadows.
The shadows were where I was trying to stay currently. Becoming invisible was what I needed to do to get through this. As soon as I was around one corner, and out of view, I chanced a glance behind me. No-one was there. That didn’t mean I had lost them though. They were bound to have the dogs with them.
Already my lungs felt as though they were going to burst, and my legs were shot with pain. I had to carry on. I heard a shout behind me, and I knew that if I didn’t speed up I’d be dead in no time. I stood up, and pedalled yet faster. Faster than I could have imagined I could go. The bike rocked from side to side violently, and I veered out of the way of a tank which suddenly turned into the road. I wheeled round, and the pursuers on foot were coming toward me. On instinct I raced straight at them, then at the last second swung into a small side alley. I knew these roads like the back of my hand. So long as I kept on my toes I could get out of this, I told myself again and again.
I came out of the other side of the alley as the gunshots began. I felt the air beside me stir. Fear gripped me, and my mind could barely focus on what was going on. Every part of me was screaming to get out of there.
I continued on, through the tiny, winding side alleys of the outskirts, becoming more and more entangled in this intricate web of roads. Somehow I just seemed to know if I was coming close to a dead end, and managed to steer away. Slowly the houses about me were beginning to become more scarce, and small scruffy patches of vegetation were making themselves apparent. At first it was just weeds struggling their way through cracks in the pavement, and then there were grassy verges, and brambles on either side of the road.
I had no idea where I even was now. It was not often I left my own district. It was too risky. Panic clung to me now, and I heard the roar of an engine coming up the road. Acting purely on gut instinct, I turned my bike directly onto a high grass verge, and flew over the top, landing in a gorse bush. I fought back the urge to cry out in pain as the thorns snared my clothes and skin, clawing at me violently. My nostrils filled with the sickly scent of the little pungent flowers. I prayed that that my bike was out of view. I could see it hadn’t followed me the whole way into the bush, and I dreaded the scenario of the vehicle going past, spotting it, then a suspicious soldier with an itchy trigger finger pulling back the branches and planting a bullet right between my eyes.
It wasn’t worth thinking about. If it happened, it happened, and I wouldn’t know anything of it, I stubbornly told myself.
I was pulled out of the morbid trance as I heard the motor come crawling up the road, much closer now. I froze, and held my breath. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, as the stead rumble grew to a roar. Just as I thought I couldn’t take the tension any more, the sound began to fade. My ears filled with white noise instead, and I sat, chest heaving in the middle of the gorse bush, relived I had got through one more incident.
Getting home was the next step. The city would be alive with people looking for a woman on a bike. My description would be all over the radios, both public and of the Outsiders. I couldn’t leave my bike though. I needed it. I needed it for my job, to earn money, to collect food, for escape just like tonight.
For a while I pondered upon my options. I could bike back, and probably get chased home, and caught. I could walk back and leave the bike here, and collect it some other time. But being without a bike would make my life difficult, and the local Outsider Watchers seeing me without the bike would surely induce suspicion. I could not afford to bring attention to myself right now. The only other solution I could think of would be to stay here over night, and go back in the morning. There was no way of contacting the kids to let them know. There was a phone at the house, and I had one on me, but I didn’t dare call in case They were listening. We all knew they were capable, and if They were on an alert like this, then They would be far more likely to bug and trace the calls.
After an internal debate, I chose the latter option, but without the phone call. The kids would no doubt presume the worst, but they were strong. The older ones would take charge like I knew they could. We had done drills, and all I could do was hope that they would be able to do the same now it was a genuine emergency.
We always stocked up on food down in the basement room, and there was a working sink, and plenty of furniture. The mattresses we had would have to be shared out between them all, but they had enough supplies to last until I got home at least. I could not bear to think of what would happen if they ventured out of there. I forced my imagination to stop running wild, but there was every possibility that They were monitoring the house to wait for my return.
When I felt that the Outsiders has passed and the coast was clear, I cautiously poked my head up over the verge. I clambered out, and slid down onto the road. I could just see my handlebars sticking up out of the bush. How they hadn’t spotted it I had no idea. My head hurt just to think on it. My heart rate was finally settling to a normal rate, luckily so. I felt as though if it had continued on like that, that my veins would have exploded.
This time on foot, I scrambled up the side of the verge, and dragged my bike from the bush. It was only when I subjected my skin to the thorns again that I began to actually register the pain from the dive into the bush. The thorns had certainly done their job well. There were rips and tears over all of my already raged clothing. Some were full on tears, others were just little pluck holes. My skin was covered in thousands of tiny red lines, angry and gaudy against the pale of my skin. Most of them were no worse than a scratch a cat might give you, but I was heavily bruised, and where I had fallen against the branches, then the floor, the skin was scraped away. It was a miracle that I had not broken any bones.
Once the bike was free I set about pulling all of the weeds and thorns out of its spokes, and then stood atop the verge, and looked for a less prickly place to sleep and store the bike for the night. A little further down the road I spotted a less bramble area and trudged over to it. I pulled the undergrowth over the bike as best I could, and then checked its visibility from the road. It couldn’t be seen as far as I could make out. I then collapsed beneath a small sapling enclosed in ferns and fell into an exhausted slumber.
Every few hours I would awake, in a panic, sure that They had found me, or found the kids. I would wonder briefly why I was so cold, and why I was covered in water, and then remember it was nothing but dew and that I was outside. The horrors of the chase came back to me, and all my other worries would flood back into my mind like a tsunami wave. At dawn, I gave up on sleep altogether and sat until I felt it was a reasonable time to be deemed not suspicious to be about. I presumed it was roughly 8am.
Before I left, I buried my torn jumper, and rolled up my trousers. I tucked my hair behind my ears also. There was nothing I could do about the like, but if I looked different to usual, then the description of the bike and me would not match. It was the best I could for now.
Nervously I dragged the bike out of its cover, and set off back towards the city. I was worrying now about the Outsiders upping the perimeter control, but I needed to go home so I had no choice in the matter.
It was only as the smoggy sky-line was beginning to creep into view that a sudden realisation dawned on me. I was covered in cuts and bruises. How would I explain that if I got stopped? Before my mind managed to play out the scenario, I stopped it, and thought instead of excuses. I had taken a fall? They would never believe it. My mind was drawing a complete blank, too busy thinking of the horrible things they would do to me if I was caught.
As I drew nearer, I could see the Outsiders patrolling. My heart was in my mouth again, but I continued nonetheless. To stop now would be certain death. There was no way that I could look at all nervous, or out of place. I headed for a back road where there seemed to be less of the Outsiders. Their patrol cars were circling the main road round the edge of the city.
I managed to get past the cars, and my bike juddered over the countless potholes created by the barrage of bullets from the countless fights that had broken out over time. The ground around the perimeter of each city was always the worst. The Outsider’s didn’t like groups of people leaving, and from what I had heard of The Great Revolt, many people had tried to leave en masse. For days the citizens waged a losing war against the Outsider Grunts, until finally they were all dead, or had just given up.

(Once again stopped writing abrubtly. Sorry!)