Tears in the Fabric of Time

Two

TwoThe tunnel stank, worse than ever. Jude sat in the water, if you could call it that. Closer to urine in its consistency and stink. Pure, perfect stench. Rat infested, faeces ridden, filth, nothing else. He studied the rivulets of slime dribbling down the brittle brickwork without reacting, well used to the grime, the disgusting aroma. The heat, however, was something else. Perspiration dripped from his eyebrows, plopped into the putrid yellow liquid around his feet. He lowered his eyes, fascinated by the way the droplets of sweat seemed to disperse the filth, like mini explosions. Must be the salt, he thought.

He turned as his father emerged from the gloom, sloshing through the sewage. He'd been gone only a few moments, scouting ahead to search for an exit. Now he came through the filth, driving himself on towards his son, his voice a mere croak. “Jude.”

Up close, his father's face appeared tense, streaked with black slug trails that ran from his forehead, down his cheeks and ended at his jawline. Congealed grease plastered hair to his head, forming a sort of obscene setting-gel, and Jude choked down a cry of despair. Father was no longer the man Jude remembered. He'd grown old with worry, but hard, resolute. A man on a mission to get home.

“I discovered a light,” his father said. “It's a long way off but definitely a light of some kind. A way out. If we can make it to open air, we can find our way home. They won't follow us there. We can disappear, try and get back to normal.”

Jude didn't want to allow himself to be drawn into false hopes. For too long life had been an endless struggle, scavenging for food and water, dodging from one unlit back-street to the next. He gave a slight snigger. “Normal? Since when has anything been normal?”

Father bent down, not reacting as his knees sank into the liquid filth. He gripped Jude's hand. “You mustn't give up hope. We will get out of this, I promise, but we've got to keep moving, son. It's our only chance because if they catch up with us, they'll smooth our brains, make us mindless automatons and have us working down the mines. Our memories, all our dreams and loves, all forgotten.”

“That might be better; better than all of this.” Jude pulled his hand free and kicked out, pushing his foot through the water. A great cloud of yellow sludge welled up from underneath, and with it came the overpowering smell of putrefaction. Father gagged, stood up and pressed a hand against the slime-covered wall for support. Jude turned his head away, voice small. “We shouldn't have come down here. It's a system we don't know, and that makes it dangerous. We should have tried to find another exit and get to the surface as soon as we could.”

“There was no time, not with the Militia after us,” said Father.

“From the moment we arrived in this hell-hole the whole world seems to have gone mad.” Jude put his face in his hands. “I don't want to do this anymore.”

“Anymore? What the hell are you talking about?”

Jude jerked, dropped his hands. Father's eyes blazed red. Even in the eerie half-light, Jude noticed the fury burning in his father's face, sensed the mounting threat of violence.

“You think you've had it hard because we got into one or two scrapes with the Militia? You have no idea what hard is! I've been living on the edge all my life. Your mother slaves away, greasing power generators whilst your brothers assemble and maintain machine parts, risking their limbs every second of every day. You know full well my epilepsy makes me unstable to work, but I do whatever I can.”

“And I do. You don't need to preach to me, Father. I know how everyone fights, living the lies, going through the motions, and I understand the consequences if any of us get caught. But all of us, in any way we can, struggle to overcome the oppression we're forced to live under.”

“Your brothers do more, Jude. More than the rest of us. They sabotage whatever they can, whenever they can.” He leaned forward, close enough for Jude to see the blackened stumps of his teeth, smell the sweat of his body, see the veins throbbing in his red, straining neck. “This morning, when you saw the girl running from the militiaman chasing her, you thought that was because of us, didn't you? You thought we'd tried to do something and it had all gone wrong, didn't you?” His hand struck out and grabbed Jude by the shoulder, shaking him. “Answer me, damn you!”

“Yes I did.” Jude tore himself free and stood, facing his father square on. “They are everywhere, getting closer and closer. They know who we are and I'm scared. Scared we'll get caught, every one of us will go to prison and I'll end up in some correction facility. I'm sick of hiding in dank cellars and stinking sewers, jumping at my own shadow. I want to do a decent job, a normal one. Get an apprenticeship, welding or something. I don't want to be running away for the rest of my life.”

His father looked at him for a long time, searching with unblinking, black eyes until he sighed, turned away and rubbed his grizzled chin. “I'm sorry, Jude, maybe we can discuss this another time, another place. Not here, not now, Jude, because we have to get back. The girl got away and the militiaman must have lost her, I hope, so we've got a chance to make it home unseen.”

“I dropped my diary.”

His father snapped his head around, disbelieving. “You did what?”

“I dropped it, in the entrance. I didn't realise until…until it was too late.”

His father's eyes clamped shut for a moment, and then he blew out a breath. “I told you not to keep that damn thing, Jude. Why the hell do you waste your time with it?”

“It's my way of remaining…sane. Like I said, it's a world gone mad, so I think and write to keep some sort of hold on what life used to be like.”

“You wrote everything in it, I know you did. Details, about us.”

“I never used real names. Well, not always.”

Leaning against the wall, his father stared towards the ceiling. “Dear God. If there are details in it about meeting places, times…Dear God, Jude.”

“I didn't write about anything like that. Thoughts and feelings, nothing more.”

“All right. So you dropped it, you said? In the water?” He shrugged. “Well, you can always start another one, I guess. You dropped it at the entrance, you say? What entrance?”

“Wait,” said Jude, feeling the pressure, l*****g his lips. He pressed his finger and thumb into his eyes, squeezed. “I can't…Wait, yes. When we dipped into that service room it must have fallen out of my pocket because I remember seeing the militiaman run past, stop and pick it up. It was sodden, some of the papers falling apart, but he took what was left. I'm sorry, Father.”

Jude's father's face appeared ashen, drained of blood. “You promise there's nothing important in it?”

Jude frowned.

“You know, like secrets?”

“Secrets? No, of course not, I told you, just my—”

“What's done is done, Jude. It can't be helped, so forget about it. You have to stay focused. Today, you don't give up, you understand? Today, we get back up to the surface, we blend in and then we make some plans. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Father held out a hand and Jude took it, feeling the strength. His father smiled. “It'll get better, you'll see.”

For lots of reasons Jude found that statement hard to believe.