After The Fall: The Will Of The People, #2

By Paul K Joyce

A year on from the failed coup to overturn Brexit, Joel Durand fights to escape from his prison camp. He begins a desperate race to find the Resistance, falling in love along the way. Six others make it out with him – one of them will betray him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul K Joyce
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781838296162

Book preview

AFTER THE FALL

––––––––

Paul K Joyce

AFTER THE FALL

Paul K Joyce

The second book in:

The Will of The People trilogy

––––––––

THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE

AFTER THE FALL

THE GATHERING STORM

––––––––

© Paul K Joyce 2023

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction.

Any resemblance to actual events or persons,

living or dead is entirely coincidental.

––––––––

My thanks to the Nottingham Writers’ Studio

‘Midweek Prose Critique Group’

Gary Dalkin and David J.

Cover artwork: Tom Partridge

www.paulkjoyce.com

Table of contents

Prologue

1: Walls

2: 5am

3. Hard Labour

4: Ground Zero

5. Routine

6. Resolve

7: Time

8. Lucy

9: Plan

10: Waiting

11 The Box

12: Reunion

13. Flight

14: Into the Fire

15: Reality Check

16: No Turning Back

17. Nowhere to Run

18. Farewells

19. Haven

20. Jack

21. The Red Dress

22. Betrayal

23. South

24. Hastings

Prologue

––––––––

Government of National Unity: Draft Press Release.

The greatest challenge to the stability of the United Kingdom in over eighty years is over. The traitorous Brexit Day insurrection that threatened this country with civil war and the overturn of the democratically elected government has been crushed. Emergency courts have delivered verdicts and justice has been meted out to those responsible. Those that supported the attempted coup have received long jail sentences and a repatriation programme is underway. But we cannot stop there. The network of supporters and allies of these enemies of the people runs through the very fabric of our society. These individuals must be exposed and face the full force of the new laws. Every citizen must watch out for suspicious Citizens must remain vigilant and do their patriotic duty. We will not allow subversives to undermine this great nation as we continue our path as a free, sovereign country. God save the King.

1. Walls

––––––––

After the executions, things went quiet—for a while. It was as if a nervous fog descended on the prison. No one seemed to want to lift their head or look anyone in the eye. I was no different. It felt as if someone had reached into my soul and torn out the connections. I was just Durand. J. Prisoner 10325. I felt nothing, and food remained uneaten—sleep, elusive. Only in dreams did my mind take flight. I wished I could have stayed awake. My subconscious never seemed to tire of jumbling the facts and events of my life into impossibly convoluted paradigms. Dad was there, idealistic and passionate, but a younger version, not the beaten, unshaven husk paraded before a national TV audience. Did Mum watch? Did she forgive him for what he did?

Grace was centre stage. Sometimes the reality of never being able to see my younger sister again was the hardest to bear. The image of her lifeless body haunted my waking moments, but in my dreams, she was tall, wild haired, and strong. Even with free will and my eyes closed, the dark ink of society infiltrated. Some element or nuance would infect the dream and it disintegrated into threat and danger. Grace would become distant and I couldn’t reach her. I woke to the dead echo of my cell and rivers of sweat.

Time was an elastic, non-definable thing. The doctor said I was losing weight and offered me pills. I was not compliant. Something in me, some small part of my tormented psyche still wanted to resist.

Imperceptibly, the seasons changed. A year passed. Then warmer winds reached wherever I was in this new world. Over slow, endless weeks and months, my frigid cell became almost comfortable, then hot and eventually an unrelenting, inescapable furnace. My thoughts shifted to that last winter, when it was just school, exams and the prospect of Oxford. I will never go to university, never train to be a physicist. At least not in this country. The thought seemed like an abstract concept, applicable to someone else. I didn’t seem able to feel anymore. I wouldn’t let my conscious mind think about the future I’d lost. Only Grace was the constant, as if an invisible link to some ghostly (non-religious) afterlife kept us connected. Despite these comforting thoughts, my mind inevitably strayed to the lesser planets around my star—the former classmates who shared my terrible adventure: Stark, Sky, and Sophie.

Indoctrinated first by his father and then by the hate-filled bile of the Brexit campaign, Stark seemed to enjoy his role as the school bully and leader of a nihilistic gang of like-minded thugs. I wonder what happened to him? I’ve heard nothing. But why would I? He was just a foot soldier in what happened during the transient dominium of the Temporary Administration.

The coup. They don’t call it that, of course. After the ‘insurrection’ came the restoration of ‘natural justice’. The old world has gone, maybe forever.

Sky joined us for the last part of our doomed journey to find Mum and Dad. I only knew her for what, a few hours? Yet there was something about her, something incredibly positive and forward thinking, like she was some philosopher. A wise head on young shoulders. I guess that’s what being adopted and losing your mum so early can do to a person.

I always save Sophie until last. My would-be girlfriend. She’s a dish I can pick over and enjoy slowly. I use the word ‘enjoy’ but I don’t mean it in the way you might imagine. I don’t enjoy anything anymore. No, what I mean is, as a device to kill time, to murder the endless hours, she is my saviour. I imagine endless scenarios where our lives pan out differently. I cling to those early moments with her, thrown together in drama lessons at school, my dick bursting out of my pants. My jacket could only hide so much, and my classmates didn’t let me forget it. But our bittersweet romance was doomed. How could I have known that she would betray me, betray us all? Beautiful, blue-eyed Sophie.

But that was the past. History. However, I couldn’t quite eradicate the dark shadow that was waiting to consume me the minute I stopped concentrating. Endless announcements on the too-loud intercom system interrupted my thoughts, and I would have to return to the beginning and start over. It kept me more-or-less sane. I wished they would just kill me and get it over with. I didn’t really have anything to live for. I’d given up on Mum. She was probably one of the righteous now—a new believer in the new regime. Sometimes I wondered if she might have second thoughts about supporting Brexit and having to live in a country that was so openly racist. I would try to imagine where she might be and if she thought about me, but most of the time I tried to put her out of my mind. It was too easy to remember the disturbed woman she became during that terrible day; when all our lives changed forever. Dad. Grace. It was just too much. Don’t think about it. Look at the ceiling, play with your balls, anything.

2. 5am

––––––––

It must have been late August and the day started off like any other. The wake-up alarm sounded. I turned over, trying to recapture the dense, realistic quality of my dream—people, a train station, dark suits—a terrible, burning urgency. It was only seconds, but it was already gone. I heard the metal plate on the door viewing-hatch move, squeaking and then coming to an abrupt stop. I opened my eyes and stopped breathing. Footsteps outside the cell and muffled voices. Then the needling tone of warder Smith. Smithy.

‘Durand. Joel A. 10325. Notification of resettlement. Get your things together. Ready in ten minutes.’

The hatch slammed shut. I took a quick breath and blinked twice. I heard a similar announcement to Vaughny next door. So, I wasn’t dreaming. An electric ripple of pure excitement coursed up my back into my neck, head, and arms. Resettlement, he said. Does that mean they’re not going to kill me? Resettlement. Where? I sat up. I needed a dump. Ten minutes. Last night’s revolting unidentifiable stew voided, and with the stench of shit raging, I grabbed what little stuff I had and stood ready. I counted. I must have done it in six.

‘Fucking hell, Durand,’ said Smithy. ‘Your shit stinks.’

I gave him my usual cool eyeball stare.

‘Yeah, Mr fucking cool cat,’ he said. ‘You can give me that look, but things are changing round here. No more easy life, matey-boy. You’re going to work. Yeah, that woke you up, didn’t it? You fucking losers are going to start making a contribution, instead of—’

‘Okay, Smith, that’s enough.’

There was another man behind Smithy, wearing military-style clothes. He had a weary look and there were flecks of grey in his short black hair. He looked about my dad’s age. It hurt to think that. It really hurt.

‘Just get them to the quad by zero-six-thirty, understood?’

Smithy sounded apologetic, but the other man couldn’t see his eyes, which flashed torture and a slow death my way.

‘Yes, sir. Right away, sir.’

He tilted his head. I moved forward and out into the corridor. It was cooler, but there was no time to enjoy the feeling. I joined a long line of inmates, all standing by their cells, disappearing in a slow curve. Vaughny was in front and began to turn.

‘Eyes, front.’

A voice came from further down the corridor. It was full of attitude. ‘I demand to know what’s happening. Under the Geneva—’

There was a sizzle like a fly meeting its end in a kitchen zapper, and then a sound like someone dropping a sack of potatoes. The momentary silence was quickly filled with mutterings and the echoing bark of wardens: ‘Move’; ‘Get in line’; ‘No talking.’ It looked like we weren’t even going to get breakfast. We shuffled past a crumpled body lying motionless on the tiled floor.

The quad was alive with expectation and the echo of boots exalted by high walls and possibility. Behind the brick and steel, the sun was already beginning its ascent into another blue, blue sky. It seemed to wait, hovering, maybe unwilling to let us experience its dazzling beauty. For a moment, our hands secured behind our backs, the aroma of dew and cut grass punched through the disinfectant and fat, and there was a transient feeling of high summer: rivers, girls, sandwiches and wasps.

‘Get in.’

They loaded us into windowless trucks with bare-metal benches facing each other. Eyes down, the rear doors slammed shut and locked. Thin beams of light from air vents seemed solid in the swirling dust. We were cattle, but without the dignity of ignorance. We smelled of institution, order, and obedience. Our heads rocked as shouts from outside signalled movement. We were leaving this place. I tried not to feel the emotion that coursed through my body. It was joy—a transient feeling of uncontrolled, pure exhilaration. Traffic. Cars. People. My ears were alive to every sound and smell as we negotiated city streets—acceleration and deceleration followed by slow movement. The driver had his radio on, tuned into some country-music station. Nightmare holiday. The stop-start movements eased and it felt as if we were on a bigger, smoother road. Drowned in sound and steady vibration, my mind moved to places that lay hidden, ripe for revisiting.

Mum loved to do crosswords. I could see her so clearly on a Sunday morning, hunched over the kitchen table, glasses on, poring over a mountain of near-identical pieces. I was usually making toast and caught her shape through scrunched-up eyes and wild hair. Dad, his head in the papers, would mutter and berate articles, flicking the type if something offended him. Mum would sigh and tell him that he should get out of the restaurant business and go into politics. He would remind her, with a bitter laugh that the English would never accept a Frenchman telling them what to do. This routine, this life, was upended by the Brexit referendum. Mum was for leaving the EU, Dad against. Grace and I tried to keep out of it and concentrate on our studies but the atmosphere in the house deteriorated. At some point Dad decided to do more than just talk about it.

The truck shuddered and I opened my eyes. We were on a motorway or dual carriageway. The engine had a steady, even drone. As my dream slipped away from me I surveyed the dipped heads of my fellow travellers. Thin. Everyone was thin and drawn, with hands impassively folded on numbed laps. Maybe it was because it was early or that we’d had no breakfast, but any spark of vitality or resistance seemed to have gone, crushed by the weight of routine and deprivation. The woman opposite wore a makeshift scarf made from what looked like sacking. She met my eyes for the merest of glances, but her expression never changed. Where was humanity, some spark of what Dad called la défiance? I could feel more than hear his words. Snippets of sentences and ideas returned uninvited, finding fertile ground in my imagination. Then, I was just a boy, with a boy’s limited horizon. I missed him. So much. The familiar anger boiled up inside me like hot metal. They made me watch, and I would never forgive them for that. My fingers tightened into fists and I knew that at least something inside me was still alive, able and ready to resist. Engine, dreams, faces. Where was I? What was happening? Hours passed. The smell of piss swirled like a yellow fog around us. Heads lowered.

Brakes squealed, and over the idling engine I could hear crows—or maybe rooks? Hundreds of them. In my mind’s eye, I could see giant oak trees and freewheeling dark shapes circling through thick air. Other throaty vehicles, trucks by the sound of them, pulled up close by. Mixed up with exhaust fumes, I could make out the smell of grass overlaid with a damped-down bonfire. Voices from outside. Men’s voices—and getting closer.

‘Right, you lot. This is it. Out you come.’

Metal doors flew open at the back, noisily secured. The light, previously just narrow beams and suggestions of the outside, burst in on us. I covered my eyes.

‘I said move it. Come on, I haven’t got all day.’ The man, silhouetted, had a strong north-east accent and seemed unfamiliar with the concept of empathy.

We formed a scrum close to the truck, each slowly taking in the unfamiliar surroundings. Low, military style red-brick buildings lay within a high metal fence topped with rolls of barbed wire and interrupted at regular intervals by sentry posts. It felt like the set of some dystopian film. Beyond that, distant walls rose like grey cliffs seeming to hold back towering encircling trees. I instantly felt isolated, forgotten. Other vehicles disgorged their human cargo before moving away in clouds of dust and black exhaust fumes. There were several hundred of us: men and women. We stood in discrete groups, waiting for instructions. We didn’t have to wait long.

3. Hard Labour

––––––––

They lined us up in a quad, facing a newer building: all glass and shiny metal adorned with air conditioning units. I squinted at the burning orb in the clear blue sky. This was the most sun I’d seen in a year and a half.

‘Move it,’ shouted a burly, grey-uniformed screw as we lined up in rough order. He was one of many, herding us into position. I shuffled in mute compliance, mesmerised by the sound of birds in the surrounding trees. Theirs was the raw sound of freedom and triggered a cold sadness quite unlike anything I’d experienced in the last eighteen months. ‘That’s it, keep those lines even.’

From a group of more senior-looking figures in front of us, a uniformed woman stepped forward. Hands behind her back, the row of coloured ribbons on her blue-grey jacket flashed in the intense light. Scraped-back hair framed pale angular features, with pinched lips. She scrutinised us with cold, narrowed eyes. Slowly, every voice was silenced, replaced by the shuffle of unsteady feet. The woman cleared her throat and lifted her chin. Her voice dripped with disdain.

‘My name is Governor Jackson. You are here because my superiors feel that you should be making a proper contribution to this great country of ours. My role is to ensure that you fulfil their mandate and that your time here is a productive one.’ She took a step forward, her head moving slowly, eyes panning along the rows of downcast faces. ‘We are in the business of food production. Potatoes; sugar beet; cereal crops. The staples of a hungry nation. The hours are long and the work is hard.’

No one moved. There was only the echo of her voice and the furnace in the sky. Our country? It didn’t feel like my country anymore. I thought of Dad. I could hear his heavily accented voice delivering his familiar polemic on human rights and the decline of society following Brexit. It washed over me at the time, but now, the true meaning of his words hit home. A man, two lines in front fell forward hitting