The Wall

The Wall – Book One

by
Ramz Artso

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Copyright ©2014 by
Ramz Artso

http://ramzartso.blogspot.com/

This book is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner and are in no way to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations and locales is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, scanned, distributed or used in any printed or electronic form, or any other manner, without written permission from the author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Cause to Worry

Chapter 2 – The Happening

After one thousand and twenty-three years of faithful service, the wall that had kept our nightmares at bay and protected us from the things abiding on the either side finally began to fall apart. It began at sunset, when the last shafts of sunlight were swallowed up by the omnipresent darkness, and nothing but the distant stars could be seen in the cold autumn skies.

Word of the disaster spread through New
New York, faster than wildfire and by the time the Controllers got there, the whole city was out to ogle.

‘W-what does this mean?’ my boyfriend,
Klarkson, who was seventeen and therefore an entire year older than me, mumbled under his breath with a shadow of confusion hanging over his handsome face. ‘What’s going to happen now?’

I had no idea. In fact, everybody around me appeared to be just as
bewildered and clueless as I was. Of course, just like the rest of them, I had heard the numerous stories about the ancient Great War with the wildlings from space, which had lasted for well over two decades and culminated in the near extinction of the human race and the building of the Wall.

‘The
Controlers should get everything in order,’ I finally answered, never removing my eyes from the disintegrating top of the white structure. ‘I mean, that’s their job, after all – to keep everything up and running.’

‘Yeah, yeah.
You’re right.’ But despite his playing it cool, my converser sounded just about as calm and relaxed as me, which wasn’t a good thing – not a good thing, at all. ‘Look, er, it’s already dark. So, I think it’s a good idea I walk you home.’

I took him up on the offer, knowing full well that darkness was the least of his worries. We walked hand-in-hand in complete silence, ignoring the jogging passersby as they endeavored to get to the safety of their homes
as fast as possible. I heard some of them exchange a few words of concern, occasionally voicing my fears as they did so.

Finally, unable to keep it in any longer, I turned to
Klarkson and asked the following, ‘K, do you think the wildlings will–’

‘Nothing will happen, Denise,’ he cut me off, throwing an arm over my shoulder. ‘Everything will be fine. The wildlings are all probably dead by now, and if not and they’re stupid enough to attack us, then the Controllers will make sure they regret it.’

I wanted to counter his argument, yet some part of me liked the idea that everything was under control and that NNYC was perfectly safe under the auspices of our ever-vigilant government. That being the case, I chose to remain quiet.

I was woken in the middle of the night by my mother, who seemed to be extremely upset about something and was therefore screaming at my dad, not to mention using swearwords while she was at it. The latter of the two kept trying to calm her in hushed tones and muffled endearments, and as I exited my bedroom and headed in their direction I heard him say – beg, really, ‘You’re going to wake Denise, Margaret. Please, lower your voice!’

‘What’s going on here?’ I demanded, wiping sleep from my eyes and instantly registering their concerned facial expressions.

‘It’s nothing, dear, go back to bed.’

‘No,’ Mom protested, ‘she has the right to know, Richard.’

‘Margaret, leave her out of this!’

‘No, Richard, don’t tell me what to do!’ Mom faced me with tears in her eyes. She had just opened her mouth to say something, when my ears detected a soft buzz and instead of uttering words, she gasped in surprise and released a heavy sigh before dropping dead to the ground.

‘Mom?’ I barely had the time to voice, when the buzz sounded again and my father divide right at me, carrying us both to the floor just in time to avoid a tiny black arrow from lodging right in my chest. That was when I noticed that an exact same projectile was protruding from my mother’s back. All of a sudden, I felt my stomach tighten with alarm.

‘Stay down and don’t move,’ my father ordered, before elbowing his way to his wife’s motionless body and checking her pulse.

‘Dad, is she breathing? What the hell is happening here?’

He preferred not to answer the first question, opting for the second one instead. ‘We are under attack by the wildlings,’ he delivered, almost emotionlessly, and my heart skipped a beat at his words. He shuffled back to me. ‘Listen to me very carefully, Denise. I want you to go
back to your bedroom, get dressed and meet me in the living room in two minutes. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, but what about Mom?’

He shook his head, glanced at the woman he had been married to for the past twenty years of his life and fixed me with a piercing stare. ‘I’m afraid she’s gone, D.’

‘What
? No!’ I exclaimed in denial, moving in her direction and instantly encountering resistance in the face of my father. ‘Let me go! Dad, let go of me!’

‘Cut it out right this instant!’

‘I said get off of me! I want to take a look at Mom, she can’t be dead!’

‘Stop, I said stop it, girl!’ He said this in such a commanding and authoritative tone, I couldn’t help but obey. ‘We don’t have time for this! I loved your mother, but she’s gone and there’s nothing we can do to change that. However, you and I are still alive and god damn it I intend to keep it that way! Now, pull yourself together and do as you’re told!’

‘O-okay,’ I managed croak out, choking back a sudden onset of tears, as I tried not to think about my dead parent and instead concentrate on the fact that NNYC was being invaded by the wildlings.

Moving fast, I crawled out of the master bedroom and quickly got dressed, while my father packed a big ba
g and armed himself with his impressive collection of deadly guns and razor-sharp blades. Just like Klarkson’s father, my dad was a Controller. In fact, the two of them were good friends, which was how Klarkson and I had met – at a family dinner, hosted for his mom’s fortieth birthday.

Wearing his
blue jumpsuit uniform, he bounded in my direction with a little pistol in hand. ‘You remember how to use this, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I think I do.’

‘You think, or you do?’

‘I-I do.’

‘All right, then. Just remember not to panic, okay? I’m with you, okay, honey?’

‘Okay, Dad.’

And with those words, I was following my father down to the elevator and out of the luxury condominium where we lived. Outside, we mounted his electric motorcycle and, rising a few meters above the ground, rumbled off onto the nearest highway.

During the ride, I received a message on my Videophone from
Klarkson asking if I was all right. I texted him back about Mom and told him we were headed in the direction of the Capitol Building, which was the Controllers’ headquarters. He decided to call me in response, but I declined the call, not wanting to talk in front of my only surviving parent.

About twenty minutes later, we reached out destination and the moment I leaped off the bike,
Klarkson came striding my way, while Richard moved towards Mr. and Mrs. Oakland; Klarkson’s parents.

‘Baby, I’m so sorry about your mother. What happened?’ he inquired, locking me in
a tight and much needed hug, as special combat teams, or SCTs as they were commonly referred to, began taking off aboard carpet-like machines knows as levitators. Not before long, they were all over the damn place, speeding to and fro with their flashing sirens wailing in the night.

‘I – she,’ I stuttered, unable to speak probably due to the lump that had suddenly formed in the back of my throat. ‘She was k-killed with
an a-arrow.’

‘Dear god, that’s
terrible! I don’t know what to say. I really am so sorry, boo!’

At that instant, the Golden Trumpets exploded in the night. That, of course, could only mean one thing. Every New
New Yorker knew that the blast of the Golden Trumpets was the worse sound that could possibly be heard. It was dreaded by everyone and it hadn’t been heard by any living soul for over a millennium. It meant that all the civilians had to flee to the Bunker, which was an underground city of sorts, large enough to house the entire population of NNYC.

‘
Klarkson,’ his father called out to him, looking like a maddened bull and marching towards us with my father and his wife in toe, ‘you are going with Mr. Eskman, Denise and your mother to the Bunker. As for me, I am needed here.’

‘As you wish, Dad.’

‘My condolences on the passing of your mother, dear,’ Mrs. Oakland said, looking as genuine as ever. She was a plump, kind woman who always wore her dark hair in a tight bun. ‘We will all miss her dearly.’

‘Yes, may her soul rest in peace,’ the man of the family added, lookin
g a tad uncomfortable. He was always a little weird around me, what with me being his friend’s daughter and his son’s girlfriend at the same time.

‘Thank you.
Thank you, both.’

‘Now, Richard,’ he told my father, ‘
take these three to the Bunker and stay by their side until I can join you.’

‘I
honestly think I’ll be of more use here once I get them to safety, Elliot.’

‘Don’t argue with me, Corporal
Eskman. That’s an order.’

‘Yes, sergeant,’ my father replied reluctantly, before asking everyone to follow him.

We boarded one of the levitators and, as we climbed higher into the smoke-filled air, the scene that developed before my eyes had me at a loss. The western side of the Wall was all but gone and the eastern one seemed to be up in flames. There were large swarms of the wildlings everywhere I looked and, what with seeing them for the first time in my life, I found it extremely hard not to stare at them with some close to awe. They were completely grey from head to toe and wore black rags that appeared to be a size too small for their bulky, muscular physique. And, as far as I could tell, there was some kind of rank and order between them.

‘Look away, babe,’
Klarkson said, doing so himself, ‘you don’t need to see all that violence.’

‘No,’ I replied, yelling so as to be heard over the n
oisy blasts of the chilly air currents, ‘I want to see the world for what it is, K, not live inside a bubble of make-belief.’

And so I watched on, not without tears i
n my eyes and a terrified heart to boot.

Not before long, we landed near a gigantic stairwell and alighted from the levitator at a quick pace.
Using my father’s service badge, we passed the security checkpoint in a matter of seconds and joined the bevies of parents, teenagers, children and infants descending the spiraling staircase with terror-stricken expressions and an occasional wound or two.

Once we were inside, Dad led us to some special wing assigned to the families of the
Controllers and asked his inferior to take us to our quarters. The room we were given wasn’t much, but there was enough space to fit a small table, two chairs and an equal amount of beds. There was also a tiny kitchen and bathroom in the rear.

‘
All right, guys,’ he said, hunkering down, ‘I have to go run some errands, so I’m going to have to leave you for a little while. Once the doors to the Bunker are sealed shut, I will come back. Klarkson?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I know you’ve only just begun the Controller training, but you’re a smart kid and I’m going to entrust you with my daughter just the same. Don’t disappoint me, son.’

‘You can count on me, sir. I’ll sooner die than
let something happen to Denise or my mother.’

‘That’s the spirit
. All right, then, see you all later.’

‘
Hey, D,’ Klarkson spoke up the moment his mom stepped outside to take a look at what was taking place inside the control center, which was visible through the huge glass panels present all over the place,’ you okay?’

‘No, I’m pretty f
reaking far from okay right now!’

‘I hate that Mrs.
Eskman is gone,’ he went on, ignoring my irritation. ‘I wish I could do something to change that, my love.’

‘
So do I,’ I told him, holding back tears and burying my face in his finely chiseled chest. ‘So do I, K!’

That was when I remembered
the argument that had woken me in the middle of the night.
What were they so upset about
, I wondered. My deceased mother, who was the last person you’d ever expect to see locking horns with someone, shouting – really? And not just at someone, but her own husband! Well, in short, that was unheard of.
Dad must have done something really, really bad
, I concluded, at the same time, deciding it would be a good idea to confront him about it.

‘I love you so much, my little cupcake,’
Klarkson whispered in my ear, thereby breaking my train of thought.

‘I love you just as much, honey.’

He was just about to plant a kiss on my lips, when the alert signal went off all over the Bunker. I nearly jumped up with surprise, and as Mrs. Oakland stepped inside, I heard myself say, with worry written all over my pale face, ‘Now what?’

‘Oh, dear lord, please don’t tell me they’ve gotten inside!’ was her reply.

Then a strong female voice sounded in the air. ‘Attention all units, code sixty-six! I repeat, code sixty-six!’

‘What’s that supposed to me
an?’ Klarkson asked anyone who was willing to provide him with an answer.

‘We better shut the door,’ his mother pointed out. ‘If the wildlings are inside the Bunker, then it won’t be long until they get here.’

‘But what about my dad? We can’t just abandon him!’

She stayed quiet for a while, ignoring the orange light
on the ceiling that kept flashing in and out of existence, and then added, ‘Tell you what, we’ll keep the door open for as long we can, okay, dear?’

So we did just that, straining our ears
for the faintest of sounds, we listened and we listened good. But our eyes detected danger before our ears did. Peering through the gigantic glass panels, we witnessed swarms of roaring, moaning and groaning wildlings flood into the command control center. The bloodthirsty scum were shooting arrows at the Controllers, who responded by opening fire at them from their machineguns. The only problem was, they were heavily outnumbered.

‘K, where’s my father?’ I demanded, rubbernecking and desperately
trying to make him out in the restless crowd. ‘What if he’s down there? What if something happens to him?’

And then I saw him. He was genuflecting to get a better shot at the enemy
ranks, when one of the archers got him, lodging an arrow right in his shoulder. I yelped up in horror and nearly threw up with worry, as the other wildlings moved forward to finish him off with their partially serrated swords, but their advance was staved off by a few other Controllers, who charged at the black masses with blatant disregard for their own safety.

‘Get him out of there!’ I began yelling,
before I rushed towards the glass and took to vehemently banging on it. ‘Get him the heck out of there!’

As if they heard me, my dad’s brothers in arms carried him off into the corridors, locking the door to the command center and thereby capturing the ugly humanoids inside the large, domed chamber.

‘Darling, move away from there,’ Mrs. Oakland implored, as the wildlings took to climbing the walls and columns hung with TVs and other electronic equipment. ‘Denise, will you please step away from the glass?’

That was when the
slamming began. Using their hammer-like fists and thick skulls, they took to beating the thick glass, and not before long it began to show widening, lengthening cracks.