‘Do you know what happened to him? Was he kicked out of the camp?’
‘No-one leaves the camp,’ she said, emotion sliding into her voice for the first time. ‘Did you know anyone on the outside who had ever been inside one?’ she asked.
‘No, but I didn’t socialise much,’ I said, ‘in fact I only met two people on the way here and those were the first new faces I had seen for six months.’
She nodded in acknowledgement, ‘When you arrived did David ask you if you had ever been here before?’ she asked, scraping the dirt from the end of the hoe using a metal strip sticking out of the ground under the tap.
‘Yes?’ I was puzzled, what did that have to do with anything?
‘He was checking if you knew where you were. You must have said no, to have the freedoms you do.’
‘I don’t think I have much freedom; everyone seems to know what I am doing; I feel watched all the time,’ I said, glancing around.
‘You’re here with me though,’ Ruth pointed out, ‘of your own inclination… that’s freedom.’
She paused for a bit, using the brush hanging from the tap to clear the remaining mud as she ran it under the water. I followed the hose along the ground; the source of the water was a large water tower outside the fence. My gaze rested on the fence, and as I absently watched, two soldiers came into view, walking in the narrow alley between the allotment and the chain-link fence.
I quickly shifted my gaze to Ruth, ‘Ok, explain it to me, what’s going on?’ I paused expectantly, Ruth picked up the now clean hoe and began walking to the other side of the allotment, in the few minutes we had been talking, everyone had finished up and had disappeared. We walked back alone.
‘I arrived here with a friend, Michael. He had been injured whist foraging in the city, his hand was crushed in a door…. By the time we got to the camp it was really infected, he had a fever and was delirious. He was taken away to the medical centre and, just like your Frank, he apparently died in the night.’ she swallowed. ‘I don’t think they treated him at all; they use an awful lot of synthetic opioids here, I’ve seen the inventory lists. I think they euthanised him, I imagine they justified it to themselves, they were putting him out of pain… even if they had fixed his hand he would never have been as strong. They don’t take in new people unless they can contribute.’
I looked at her as we walked past the tidy vegetable beds, it sounded incredible; something an emotional teenager would make up, an outrageous conspiracy theory in a typical small town. But then I really looked at her, her eyes looked sad but not irrational. I had been going to say something bland and commiserating but instead, prompted by the bit that had interested me, asked, ‘inventory lists?’
‘Things arrive from the other camps all the time, and there are lists that keep a record of what they have and how much they use. An enormous database showing stocks of food, medicines, clothes… everything, even books, are tagged’ she replied.
I remembered that David had gone through my bags when I arrived, a security check, he had said, but he had taken photos.
‘And have you noticed there are no computers here? No cars or bicycles, no phone signal for the major networks?’ when I nodded, she continued, ‘that’s the main method of control, the council have them, normal residents don’t. ‘Have you also used the money system? The Chiltern pound?’ she asked.
I nodded again, and she carried on. ‘There isn’t any way of changing the old currency into or out of Chiltern pounds, so the council control the flow of wealth in the town. Only adults who are paid by the council can earn Chiltern pounds. The council employees spend those pounds in the shops and facilities in town, which is how other people earn money. Only adults are issued with account numbers. That means kids have absolutely no money. It also means you can’t take any of it with you if you leave. It stops people from moving between camps and increases the government’s control.
‘How do you know all this?’ I asked fascinated.
‘Some of it we’ve just picked up, but the details… we found a computer in the Heads office at school, we were lucky, the password was on a post-it note on the monitor. Mark poked around a bit’
We were walking slower and slower, but were approaching the end of the allotment rapidly. ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘I haven’t collected my compost.’
Ruth pointed at the wheelbarrows lined up against the shed, then the enormous pile over to one side. ‘I’ll do it, it will look like you’ve made me do extra work, and give the right impression,’ she looked at me ‘scowl or something, look a bit bored or impatient.’
The rain was stopping so I closed my umbrella, propped it beside me and put my hands in my pocket sighing. I leaned against the shed and crossed one heel over the other, I let my eyes settle in the middle distance and my features relax into an expression of vacancy, then I began to hum.
‘Oh,’ said Ruth, her eyes widening then narrowing quickly as she stared at me. Up to that point, I don’t think she had comprehended how much I had been faking everything.
She pulled a wheelbarrow down and continued. ‘What we’ve worked out so far is this… the government sent the army to local councils to help distribute food. Because Halton Base was located just outside Wendover, the town got a lot of protection. The residents got sick but had food and resources.’ She was walking away into the shed as she spoke. I debated whether to follow but a minute later she reappeared with a spade.
‘This area of the Chilterns has a lot of rich people; they moved to Wendover for protection, co-opted the local council, and persuaded the base commander to help build the fence around the whole town. The soldiers patrol it, and no one was allowed to enter unless they had been vetted by the doctors.’ As she said this, she was lifting compost into the wheelbarrow, appearing to be working hard but actually spilling most of it back into the pile.
‘The call for survivors went out in January and they carefully set up the program to encourage anyone they needed and then, when they arrive, they are encouraged to stay.’
I nodded, ‘the nice house, clothes and food to draw you in, the Chiltern Pound to make you stay, as you can’t take any of it with you’
‘And the soldiers to remind you how much better off you are inside.’ She added ‘You haven’t been here long enough yet, but periodically, people attack the fence trying to get in, and the soldiers fight them off… but it’s all staged, we’ve seen the strategy plans’
‘But what about Frank?’ I asked, ‘why did they let him come?’
‘To get you,’ she said, ‘we needed a science teacher and I’ve seen your file, you’re earmarked for the council, they want you as a scientific advisor… not for actual science advice, but to liaise with new arrivals and get people to do whatever they want. You could make their lies sound plausible and sincere.’
‘But I wouldn’t have done that,’ I said, ‘there’s no way I would put myself before others, lie to people.’
‘They must have thought you would,’ she said shrugging, ‘if you were eased into it.’ The wheelbarrow was almost full; we were running out of time ‘Did you put anything on the entry essay on the form to make them think that?’
‘No,’ I said, standing upright and starting to pace back and forth, ‘I described my strategy of hide, wait and stay safe, I even put some of my experiences with the knockers in my essay.’
‘Knockers?’
‘The people who came knocking on doors asking for food; I hid from them.’ I understood suddenly how this could be construed, it wasn’t exactly altruistic. ‘but….’
‘That might have been it’ she said.
I was disturbed, had I been so selfish that they had thought I would join their little village fiefdom? Encourage others into what seemed remarkably like the medieval system of serfdom?