Chapter 5

Sophie got up early the next day. She didn’t have to go to work, but there were quite enough chores to attend to. This would help her keep her mind off the plague and the infected.

She made breakfast of the little food she had left (a small box of tofu and tap water), then went to the food distribution centre in her neighbourhood.

To access the distribution it was necessary to bring a card on which each month a number of caloric units were automatically charged. The cost of these was deduced from taxes on her wage.

The food has always been subject to rationing, for as long as she could remember: arable fields were few and afar, crushed between the overcrowded urban area and the quarantined areas, where thinking of growing something was pure folly. Out there, only dry and twisted shrubs could survive, plants that seemed to live more out of will and spite than thanks to real natural resources.

The outer areas of the city, in the eighth ring, housed large greenhouses where grains, beans and potatoes were cultivated, while the food industry worked tirelessly to synthesize the vital nutrients and produce cheap food which nevertheless gave the necessary nutritional intake to the citizens.

The distributed food was practical, economical and functional, but also terribly tasteless. It was old people in particular that complained because, they said, they could remember the rich and intense flavours of their youth: her grandmother often spoke of ripe and juicy peaches that she used to eat as a girl, and about beef steaks cooked on the barbecue. Sophie found the idea a little laughable: thinking of wasting space and nourishment for all those animals was a real absurdity.

However, curious foods sometimes appeared on the black market: hot spices wrapped in packages with incomprehensible writings, vegetables and fruit with intense and exotic colours, bitter chocolate, coffee.

They were sold by shady characters who lived in underground tunnels; she had no idea where they might have got these wares from. Perhaps they found old underground warehouses from before the Great War.

Old Louis, who lived in the housing unit in front of hers and who was old enough to have outlived two wives and, a rare case, able to collect his retirement funds, often launched himself into long monologues about how people of the first ring consumed those delicacies every day and it was only them, the poor ordinary citizens, who had to settle for canned vegetables and protein substitutes.

But old Louis liked to talk of conspiracies and secrets: Sophie imagined it helped him pass the time. The truth, according to her, was out there for everyone, as boring as it was reassuring.

She couldn’t understand, then, why people complained: perhaps the food was not particularly flavourful, but at least it was guaranteed. Would he have preferred to starve in the subway tunnels?

The sky was overcast and cloudy, but at least it was not raining.

The city was almost constantly topped by a dome of pollution that made the sky look dull even when the sun was shining. Sometimes, though, when the wind had been blowing for several hours and the day was clear, the light flooded everything, and the city was undeniably beautiful, with the glass of the buildings reflecting the sun like jewels and the curtains on the windows fluttering in the air.

It was worth to withstand so many grey days for those rare sunny hours.

Today, however, was not one of those sunny ones, and Sophie walked to the nearby food centre without much enthusiasm. As she was standing in the queue, groups of people around her did nothing but chatter about a possible new wave of the epidemic.

Perfect, just what I needed, she thought.

”That’s what they want,” someone said, “What they have always wanted. They want to infect us all, so they’ll be the ones to rule and dragons will hunt unrestricted.”

Sophie tried to focus on the row in front of her to block the words out.

Still about forty people, maybe a little more. She began to count: one, two, three...

“I dunno...” said a woman's voice, doubtful. “When my Simon had the plague, he seemed to be recovering. The fever had begun to wane... Then came the medical police, and they put in quarantine,” she sighed. “There was nothing I could do,” she added bitterly.

Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven...

“Oh dear, I'm so sorry ,” someone said, ”but I saw a survivor before he was taken away, oh yes! A scene I will never forget as long as I live, my word.”

Thirty-one, thirty-two...

”He had green scales all over his body, like a snake! And his eyes... they were not human eyes, I assure you. He had the evil stare of a beast.”

Thirty-three, thirty-four...

”He ran naked through the streets, looking like an overgrown lizard, and biting all those he could get his claws on. He wanted to eat them, you know, he would have wolfed them down! He kept screaming, or perhaps roaring, who knows. An animal, I tell you, an animal!”

Sophie had stopped trying not to listen. She could not help it.

The woman who had spoken before gave a stifled groan: “Simon...” she said.

“I'm so sorry, dear,” the interlocutor repeated, “But he wouldn’t have been your Simon anymore.”

It was common knowledge that those who survived the disease suffered an even worse fate: they turned into hybrid bloodthirsty creatures whose only goal was to escape and join their kind. Their kind, of course, were not the other humans anymore: those were the dragons.

It was said the lizard-men could hear them inside their head. They called them, whispered in their minds.

Their bodies also changed to become more dragon-like: scales appeared on various parts and they gained superhuman strength, which made them practically fire-proof.

Sophie had seen them too, in the newspapers and on television: they had almost nothing human left.

They kept what little consciousness, however, that allowed them to organize themselves: they found each other, and together they plotted to overthrow the government.

They raided the outer rings of the city where supplies were stored, riding their monstrous dragons and distributing death and destruction. They were a cross between wild animals and terrorists.

Some said that they lived outside the city, in the quarantined areas, in forests and abandoned villages; others said that they were actually there, in the midst of normal people. They hid their scales under hoods, gloves and raincoats, their vertical-pupiled eyes behind sunglasses. They roamed the city in disguise and had only one goal: to spread the disease as much as possible.

The weak would die, but the chosen would become like them, and the world would be dominated by their race, along with the dragons.

“As long as he’s out there, the General, no one will be safe,” said the woman who had mourned Simon.

The chief of the rebel survivors had no name (perhaps none of those creatures had a real name anymore), but the newspapers called him the General.

His digitally processed identikit had adorned the walls of the city since Sophie could remember: a particularly monstrous creature, even among those abominations.

Everything about him was scary and seemed deliberately wrong: the colours, the traits, the proportions. It was said that he was the one who had spread the first wave of the epidemic, that he raided the city for months, distributing his deadly touch to all who came within range. There were different opinions about him, but everyone agreed on one thing: he was a merciless creature.

Finally it was Sophie’s turn and, trying to shake off the disturbing thoughts that the conversation she was privy to had awakened, she prepared to withdraw her weekly ration: several cans of legumes, grains and canned fish, potatoes, three packs of protein substitutes, two packages of undefined green leafy vegetables (a variety of spinach, perhaps?) , seed oil, soft sweetened drinks, soluble barley, sweetener and the usual supplements.

”Only two strawberry drinks?” she observed, disconsolate. The others were lemon-flavoured. She hated lemon (or at least, its artificial flavouring).

The distribution operator shrugged: “That’s all you get this week. Maybe you can try swapping with someone,” he suggested.

”Thanks, anyway.”

She didn’t feel like talking to anyone, not even to suggest a swap of drinks, so she took the bags and walked towards home.

The identikit of the General seemed to watch her viciously from the posters on the light-poles.