Wasteland Read online

  WASTELAND

  Terry Tyler

  ©Terry Tyler 2020

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, websites, computer applications, product names and incidents are either products of the author's imagination, and subject to copyright protection, or used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without the express written permission of Terry Tyler.

  All rights reserved.

  Dedicated to Douglas and Barbara, currently watching 2020 unfold from up in the clouds.

  Author's Note

  Thank you for downloading Wasteland, the sequel to Hope, and the conclusion of the two-part Operation Galton series. Wasteland takes place thirty years later, and involves almost all different characters in new storylines, but it does follow on from Book One. If you would like a brief recap of the events in Hope, please click HERE.

  Incidentally, I must assure you that Wasteland is not my predictions for the future; it's just a story, dreamed up from my imagination.

  Enjoy!

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part 1: UK Megacity 12

  Chapter 1: Rae: August 2061

  Chapter 2: One Cringe At A Time

  Chapter 3: Waxingham, Norfolk

  Chapter 4: Eyes Everywhere

  Chapter 5: Mother

  Chapter 6: Over The Fence

  Chapter 7: Link

  Chapter 8: Contact

  Chapter 9: One Month Earlier

  Chapter 10: Going Underground

  Chapter 11: Hope Village 9

  Chapter 12: Frenemies

  Part 2: The Wasteland

  Chapter 13: Outside

  Chapter 14: Getaway

  Chapter 15: Proposition

  Chapter 16: Family

  Chapter 17: Phase 10

  Chapter 18 Hope Village 9

  Chapter 19: Sister

  Chapter 20: MC12

  Chapter 21: Off Grid #1

  Chapter 22: Hope Village 9

  Chapter 23: Off Grid #2

  Chapter 24: Three's A Crowd

  Chapter 25: MC12

  Chapter 26: Lake Lodge

  Chapter 27: Killer

  Chapter 28: Several Hours Earlier

  Part 3: Operation Galton, Phase 10

  Chapter 29: Run

  Chapter 30: Alone

  Chapter 31: Government Village, MC5

  Chapter 32: Road Closed

  Chapter 33: Truck

  Chapter 34: Government Village, MC5

  Chapter 35: Treatment

  Chapter 36: Flight

  Chapter 37: Two Days Later

  Chapter 38: A Few Weeks Later

  Epilogue

  Final Word

  All Books by Terry Tyler

  Prologue

  Jaffa

  Lake Lodge Off-Grid Community

  August 2056

  The Great Shift

  I am old now. I was ninety-two in February.

  My body fails me constantly, but my mind is as sharp as it ever was, and on the screens that are my window onto the world outside Lake Lodge, I see not the country in which I grew up, but a dystopian horror story.

  The pre-internet era is as a sepia photograph, a fuzzy film on an old projector screen, a hazy childhood summer afternoon when life was simple. Even the beginning of this millennium now seems like an age of innocence; technology moves faster and faster all the time, spinning into the distance before I've had a chance to understand the latest development.

  My friend Lita Stone once said that you don't notice sociological change because it's so gradual. One blind eye turned, one 'I accept' at a time―then one day you wake up to a world you don't recognise.

  That which was once considered unthinkable becomes the norm.

  Back in 2030, when I first met Lita, the Hope Villages for the homeless were in their infancy, supposed stopgaps until the residents were able to get back on their feet, but now there are twice as many, and nobody pretends they are anything other than community homes for those spat out by society. The worst are more like prisons, I hear, ruled by the gangs, rather than the warders.

  Some say they are the 21st century version of the Victorian workhouse.

  Since our benefits system trickled down the plughole, I believe around a tenth of the UK's population lives in Hope. Almost all the other ninety per cent lives in the shiny, new megacities.

  We had no idea that the Hope Villages were but the first stage, the prelude to the clearance of the towns, though the megacities were under construction even then. We assumed the demolished council estates and flattened land were paving the way for more Hopes; increased automation was stealing jobs at an alarming rate, with more poor souls losing their homes every day.

  Even when railway closures coincided with the construction of the ziprail network, high above the countryside, we didn't guess what was to come. Nor when apartment blocks shot up next to industrial parks, or when those apartment blocks―known as 'stacks'―began to fill up.

  Only when we saw the promotional campaign for UK Megacity 1, down in the south-east, and heard about similar schemes elsewhere in the world, did we see what the future held.

  Businesses and shops not already owned by Nutricorp were given huge financial incentives to move out to the expanded industrial parks: the business and retail 'villages'. Every district in the megacities is a 'village'. I imagine the word's meaning in dictionaries has already been changed.

  In the retail villages, shops are merely showrooms where you try on your shoes or your clothes and select your household items, your perfume, cosmetics and toiletries, even your weekly groceries. You place your order via your smartcom, and your goods are dispatched by drone or driverless van to your stack's delivery bay. There are no actual shops; odd single items, like a packet of paracetamol or a bottle of shampoo, may be purchased at the Daily kiosks in your workplace. Every item bears the Nutricorp logo, even if it retains its original brand name for customer recognition. All payments are taken directly from your account by the scanning of your smartcom; cash has been obsolete since the pandemics of the 2020s, when it was recognised as a vehicle for viruses. Workers no longer buy their lunchtime sandwiches or morning coffee from a bakery on their way to work, because such shops no longer exist. Instead, your megacity workplace has a 2-Go outlet in its foyer: beverages, sandwiches, pastries, yogurt, fruit. Smaller establishments like cafés, bars, gyms and beauty salons are housed in each megacity area's 'hub', with a 2-Go at either end.

  Even small galleries and arty shops that appear to be independent are owned by Nutricorp, under their 'Create' initiative.

  Our country has become standardised. During the transitional period, the promotional companies used that word a lot, emphasising that it meant quality and equality for all. Of course, it also means there is no room for individuality or free enterprise; the people have been standardised, too.

  As the megacities took shape, hospitals, medical centres and schools were relocated within. People needed to be near their work, near the amenities; in time, even the reluctant accepted the government's offer to swap their houses for a new apartment in the stacks, rather than remain in a ghost town.

  Over a period of twenty years, I witnessed the death of the country I knew.

  Each megacity has gated communities for the well-to-do, but the majority live in the stacks. Most are 'compact', with room only for essentials, fitted out with all mod cons by Nutricorp, on behalf of the government―the two are indistinguishable these days, especially as our Prime Minister, Freya Wilson (just entering her second term), is married to Caleb
Bettencourt, the CEO of Nutricorp UK. A politically sound marriage, indeed.

  At first, many rebelled at the idea of giving up their own four walls and a roof, but a house's worth is determined by what a buyer will pay for it, and, after 2035, the entire market was at a standstill. Others were glad to shrug off their mortgages in a time of fluctuating interest rates, their new apartment's rent-free period determined by the current status of the loan. The government prepared us for the great shift by making sure that the 'ecological Armageddon' was uppermost in everyone's minds; the stacks' low-fuel consumption was a major selling point, along with the ban on road vehicles; in the megacities, only those with special permits―doctors, police, cab drivers, politicians and important Nutricorp bods―may use them. Everyone else travels on the high speed ziprail, a 'connect' never more than ten minutes' walk away.

  If I lived in a megacity I would wince on a daily basis at the misuse of that word, but no one cares about that sort of thing any more.

  The super-lazy can pick up a seg outside their stack―they're those daft motorised, upright scooters―to take them to their nearest 'connect'.

  Cut-price medical insurance for all megacity citizens was another lure, though the cost crept up again later. The half who embraced the UK's new order did the government's job for them, by using social media to extol the benefits of a car-free, greener future, a fairer culture in which no one is judged by what they own.

  The other half had to grimace and bear it, because they had no choice.

  As householders moved out, residential and commercial areas were demolished, allowing the nearest megacity to expand into the space.

  During the later years of the great shift, Lake Lodge took in a couple called Todd and Meghan, whose eyewitness account sent chills down my crumbling spine. They had no desire to live in a megacity, so applied to three off-grids (now officially known as 'approved private homesteads', though everyone still calls them off-grids). I accepted them, so they took the demolition price for their house, insulting though it was.

  They'd held out as long as they possibly could which, Todd said, was a depressing, frightening experience.

  "The town where we'd lived for twenty years―it was gone. All the shops, bars and cafés boarded up, or just abandoned. We tried to stick it out, because we both worked online, from home, but we had to travel to a megacity just to get our hair cut or a tooth filled. Even the rubbish stopped being picked up; we had to take it to a special collection point. It became impossible to stay."

  Meghan said, "We count ourselves very, very lucky, because it's so much worse for the people with no job and no house to trade. All they have to look forward to is a bed in a Hope Village or―you know, out there."

  She was talking about the wasteland―the few deserted towns and villages left standing between megacities, Hopes and government-run farmland. Those who escape 'the system' are left to survive outside society. The lucky ones join off-grids. The others disappear into the wasteland.

  In the megacities, the wastelanders are known as rats.

  The authorities leave them alone, as long as they don't cause trouble. Charities help them, manning drop-in centres round the country, with medical supplies and basic foodstuffs.

  There are fewer people on this island now. The official figure shows a shrinkage of ten million, though some say it could be as much as twice that, and it is decreasing all the time. The government says it is 'stabilising'. Along with virulent, localised strains of flu over the last twenty years, the pandemics of the 2020s culled many of the vulnerable. Birth restrictions in the megacities have also contributed, but many believe more direct methods are employed.

  My friend Lita Stone discovered an early sterilisation programme in a Hope Village; active substances were found in medication and vitamin supplements given to the men. She blew the whistle and fled―she and her husband, Brody, are now in New Zealand. I helped them get away, just before the authorities caught up with them. I am proud of that. They are safe, happy, and settling into late middle-age, with two daughters and three grandchildren. New Zealand is one of the few countries that has, so far, resisted the great shift, but she believes it can only be a matter of time.

  Lita became a national hero; her actions and those of others who came after made the country a more compassionate place for a while, and more homeless shelters were opened. They called it the 'Lita Stone Effect'. The following couple of years was a good time, with an atmosphere of great optimism. Social media rejoiced; no, the big scary 'they' would not bring us down. But, armed with promises of change though it was, the new liberal government still managed to cock it up. Before long, The Right Honourable right-wing Mona Morrissey waved to us from the victory platform.

  #NotMyPM protests lined the streets and every timeline on social media, but marches, placards and tweets cannot take down a government, and nobody can take down Nutricorp, the retail behemoth that has, in effect, purchased the UK.

  The countryside suffered the same fate as the towns and cities. Banks became less accommodating towards small farms, with many of them plunged into dire financial straits until they submitted to Nutricorp. Vast swathes of land are now used to grow a new sort of grain, engineered in Nu-Pharm laboratories: Nucrop. We are told, via advertisements showing smiling families running through sunlit fields, that it is nutritious, delicious and, most importantly, sustainable. As is the cultured―or synthetic―meat now produced; the ecological benefits of a ninety per cent decrease in cattle, pig and dairy farming played a central part in the promotional campaign during the great shift.

  Some coastal areas and places of scenic beauty are maintained; these can be reached via ziprail for your annual holiday, a day out or a weekend away. At their far reaches, though, is a clear perimeter, beyond which the ordinary person cannot venture. As at the borders of the megacities and farming areas, armed guards patrol.

  I don't know much about life in the megacities, because those who live within are not allowed to venture outside the permitted locations. I know your life is governed by your smartcom, but my interest in technology shut up shop some years ago, when my old friend and tech wizard Dennis died of a brain tumour caused by constant use of ‘smart’ contact lenses, before the long-term side effects were discovered.

  He thought we would engineer our own destruction by creating artificial intelligence that would, eventually, rise up against the weaker, flawed human species, but the global Singularity Summit of 2034 put a cap on the advancement of AI. The future rarely develops as depicted in sci-fi films.

  I wonder if Dennis would be disappointed.

  I inherited Lake Lodge from my father in 2010 and turned it into an off-grid community in 2012. We still take people in, if we can, but more want to join us than we can take, always. Sometimes a group turns up, and we only have room for (or only want) one or two of them. I have learned to make difficult decisions without emotion.

  Lake Lodge is one of only six independent 'approved private homesteads'. Though our community had been in existence for thirty-five years, new laws meant that I had to pay ten thousand pounds for a permit; this extortionate cost notwithstanding, specifications are so strict that only around twenty-five off-grids still exist in the whole of the UK. The non-independents are 'linked' to the megacities, which provides certain advantages: limited electricity from the national grid, online shops to sell their produce, better internet and cheaper medical insurance, but this comes with a cost; they are little more than rural megacity outposts. I refused to consider this route, but when I am gone, the new owner will be free to do as she wishes.

  I am leaving the house to the friend who has been my carer for the past seven years: Kendall Gregory. Her husband, Steve, has a controlling temperament that makes me uneasy, which is why I named Kendall as my sole beneficiary. She was a friend of Lita, and has lived here for twenty-six years. I know she loves this place as I do, and I hope she won't sell out to Nutricorp, but it will not be my decision. At my age, my attitude about everything ca
n best be summed up as 'que sera, sera'.

  I am old. Bloody ancient. My hands are riddled with arthritis; I can't write or type, and I drop cups, spoons, hairbrushes. I often need help to get out of bed or up from a chair. Kendall and her son, Nick, do so much for me. I dictate letters to Lita and other old friends and watch the words appear on my screen (this still amazes me), then Kendall sends them winging their way through cyberspace to the relevant recipient.

  How I would love to write a letter, put a stamp on it, then walk down to the post box to send it off. Long ago, now. All gone.

  I sleep less these days, though sometimes I am not sure if I am awake or dreaming; I wonder if my mind is preparing my body for whatever comes next.

  Sometimes I think that, whatever it is, it has to be better than the world outside Lake Lodge.

  Five Years Later: May 2061

  Government Village, UK Megacity 5

  Below high ceilings in a stately building, Ezra Bettencourt takes his place around the polished mahogany table. He has arrived early; he likes to enjoy a reflective moment before a meeting begins.

  He smooths his hands across the dark wood, appreciating the quality of the craftsmanship. All the most important decisions of the last twenty-five years have been made around this table, and he eagerly anticipates today's announcement by The Right Honourable Freya Wilson. This is an Operation Galton meeting, and Ezra Bettencourt is the new Director of Operations for Phase 10.

  Attendance is limited to the inner circle: the PM, a few relevant ministers, the military officials who will work under Ezra during the Operation's later stages and, of course, Ezra's uncle, Sir Caleb Bettencourt.

  The door opens, and the rest of the attendees file in. Freya Wilson arrives last of all, accompanied by Uncle Caleb. She gives murmured instructions to the handsome young man in the waiter's uniform behind her, after which she greets the assembled company.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, the wait is over―I'm delighted to announce that Phase 10 will commence at midnight tonight."