Chapter 3: Mark of the Beast by Stephen Simpson
Cynthia pretended that everything was okay because she tried not to stress too much. Stress gave her a belly ache, and she believed her diabetes was stress induced.
Bill never turned off the television and told them in detail
what the latest updates were, even though Cynthia tried her hardest to talk over
him, he would not relent. He could not carry the burden of knowing all by himself.
Lydia could not sleep at night. She was scared. She had a
premonition that this was only the beginning. She had a constant, horrible
feeling that things were going to get a lot worse from here on out. She was
glad that she still had her mum and her dad. They made her feel safe in a world
that had descended into chaos.
This morning, Cynthia convinced Lydia to go with her to the
shops to stock up on some essentials. They did not live in the city, so they
were not in any danger of getting caught up in the riots and looting that was
still happening in the bigger cities. To make sure everything was still safe
enough, Cynthia had phoned her friend, Ruby, who was a cashier at Food4You and
got the confirmation that although the shop was busy, it was no busier than
usual for the week between Christmas and New Year.
Before they left the house, Cynthia made a lengthy list of
stuff they would need if it was indeed the end of the world. Candles. Toilet
paper. Canned Foods. Rice. Flour. Matches.
It was a bright day for December, and everywhere Christmas
lights were still shining brightly. It was hard to think it was supposed to be
a time of peace when six crazy people who listened to an audio book that they
had downloaded from the internet blew up half the world.
At the shops, Cynthia drove around the parking area three
times before she spotted an empty space and quickly took it just before a man
in a green Mercedes could steal it from her. The man gave her an angry glare
through his windshield and then gave her the finger. Lydia read his lips and
the words he was yelling were foul.
Cynthia muttered. “So stressful.” She leaned over and put
her hand on Lydia’s thigh. “Don’t worry, Lydia. All of this will blow over soon,
you’ll see. People are just panicking and scared.”
Lydia looked at her mum with a sideways glance and tried to
smile. “Let’s just do this so we can get back home again.” All Lydia wanted to
do was stay at home. Forever. She did not want to be with other people. She did
not want to go shopping. All she wanted was to be safely behind the front door
of their three-bedroom house.
Cynthia sighed a long sound, as if she was psyching herself
up to do it. “Okay. Let’s go.”
They opened their doors at the same time and got out. The
doors closed with a thump at the same time as a woman two rows of cars down
rammed an empty trolley into the backside of a small Kia. The woman had crazy
hair and was still dressed in her winter pyjamas with matching fur slipper
boots. She was screaming at the top of her voice at the woman in the Kia.
Lydia quickly moved closer to her mum and pushed her arm
through the crook of her mother’s arm. She held on for dear life.
Cynthia tsked. “Probably suffering from a hangover, that
woman. At this time of year, a lot of people do a lot of irresponsible drinking,
looking for trouble in all the wrong places. That woman in the Kia is probably
already on the phone to the police.”
They took the long way around to the doors of the
supermarket, avoiding getting tangled up in the heated argument between the
woman in her pyjamas and the driver of the Kia.
As the automated doors opened, and they were blasted with
warm air from inside the shop, Lydia glanced back and saw both women wrestling
on the ground. She gaped, and turned back to tell Cynthia, when her mouth fell
open even wider. There were people everywhere. The queues waiting at checkout
were long, and even from the doors, Lydia could see the shelves were almost
bare.
They should have come sooner. They waited too long.
“Come,” Cynthia said. “We’ll see what’s left. It’s no use
panicking. We bought a lot of food before Christmas, and we still have a lot of
leftovers from Christmas lunch. We’ll be okay. Let’s see if we can get some
matches and candles, at least.” Her eyes searched the checkout booths. “I hope
Ruby had the early shift today. Would hate to have to work on a day like
today.”
Lydia said, “At least no-one here decided that it would be
better to start looting.”
Cynthia whispered, “Don’t put ideas in their heads.”
There were no candles, or toilet paper, or rice, or flour,
or matches. There were a couple of cans of chopped tomatoes. Cynthia said, “I
don’t want to stand in that long queue just for a couple of cans. What would we
do with it anyway? I think we should rather go.”
Lydia felt as if she was on the precipice of a panic attack.
She could only nod. She did not want anything to do with any of this. She just
wanted to be at home.
When they got back home, Bill called from the lounge, “Come
look. Quick.”
Cynthia said loudly, while she struggled to lock the front
door as quickly as possible to keep the madness at bay, “Not now, Bill. It’s
crazy out there. You’ll never believe…”
Bill stepped into her line of vision while still standing in
the lounge. There was a straight view from the front door through the side of
the lounge, out to the back garden. “No. Cynthia. Come look first. You can tell
me what happened afterwards.”
Lydia followed Cynthia into the lounge and remained standing
next to her dad, while Cynthia sat down.
Prime Minister Foster was on the TV screen, standing behind
his podium. This time he was flanked by two men on either side of him, standing
behind their own podiums. He was saying, “… We have to do more to ensure that
the existing measures in place for a situation like this will have the effect that
we want. Historically, we would have invaded a country who instigated an act of
terrorism of such a large magnitude on another country, but these terrorists
were from six different countries, and each one of these individuals then acted
out these extremist behaviours on their own soil. There is no country to
retaliate against, as it has become known that the moderator of this radical
group of activists was one of the people who committed these crimes against humanity.
It’s crucial that the people understand that…”
Bill sounded out of breath when he said, “All the
governments. Every single one of them went to a big meeting the day after
Christmas…”
Cynthia interrupted him, “On Boxing Day?”
Bill replied, “Doesn’t matter what day, Cynthia. They’ve all
met and, apparently, they’ve come up with a solution so that this never happens
again. A plan to keep the citizens of Rheta safe.”
On the TV, Prime Minister Foster continued, “… Six
continents were affected, so one continent cannot go to war with another. It would
be all out war. World War 3 but without any allies as every country will be
fighting its own fight as blame is being thrown around. It is now almost a week
where the people of this country began to put up with constraints on their sense
of safety. Your safety. A freedom that has been taken from us, worse than ever
in either times of peace or in war. That is why you will understand, and as
every other country has agreed, the only way to defeat these terror campaigns,
the latest of which the most vicious threat Rheta has faced in my lifetime. The
death toll has been tragic and the suffering immense, and though we grieve for
all those we have lost on Christmas Day, it is a fact that by adopting these
new measures to avoid what could become a catastrophe for many more countries
in which the worst-case scenario could be more than six billion fatalities. It
will be thanks to your efforts and your sacrifice in stopping these extremists
that the world will be at peace again. Thanks to you we can protect humanity
and safe many lives. So, I know that you know that it would be madness now to
throw away this opportunity for a better future. We must also recognise that
this act of terrorism has come at a colossal cost to our way of life. We can
see it in the riots and looting of shops across Rheta. There are billions of
people who are fearful of another attack that could come at any moment. For all
our futures and the futures of all our children, I want to provide for you,
today, the shape of a plan to address these fears. To give us all a sense of
the way ahead, and on what basis we have taken these decisions to go ahead. The
leaders of Rheta have consulted, and I believe that as Prime Minister of this country
there is a strong resolve to defeat this together. Since our priority is to
protect the public and to save lives, we cannot move forward unless we know
lives will be saved, that there is a possibility for lasting world-wide peace,
and economic stability worldwide, but most of all that something like this can
never, ever happen again.
Lydia said, “This guy just goes on and on and on. Doesn’t
he?”
“Wait Lydia, I want to hear what he says,” Bill said without
looking away from the TV screen. “I want to see what they are going to do so
this never happens again, to such a level that there will be lasting world
peace.”
Foster said, “We have worked to implement new measures to
protect everybody, and from this Wednesday we want people to start attending
our walk-in centres to receive a tattooed mark which will be used as a new
transnational passport. This mark will replace the current passport system and
enable a person to travel to and from foreign countries without it ever having
an expiry date. The tattoo will be in the form of a barcode and will hold information
that certifies the personal identity and nationality of the tattooed. The
tattoo will have an embedded microchip similar to those in biometric passports,
making them machine-readable and impossible to counterfeit. I must stress that
this is not optional. For this to work, it will depend on each one of us, all
the people of Rheta, to follow the advice and to receive the mark when
instructed to do so. This measure will be in place to protect not just me, or
you, but every single person of Rheta. We now have a plan, and every elected
leader has the all-consuming pressure and challenge to save lives, restore
livelihoods, and gradually restore the freedoms we have lost. This is a plan
that needs each and every one of us to make it work. We will come back from this
tragedy, and although the world will be changed by this experience, I believe
we can all be stronger and better than ever before. We will be more resilient,
and more economically dynamic. Thank you.”
Lydia asked, “What kind of mark is he talking about? I don’t
want a tattoo.”
The news presenter came on screen, and was saying, “We have been speaking with experts and it seems these new tattooed passports will indeed be as the word implies, tattooed on our skin. Where on our bodies it will be still seems to be unclear. It will be an official travel document issued by the newly formed Central Rheta Organisation and will contain all of a given person's identity from birth certificate details to banking details. Already, on social media, the #notattoo is trending. Stay with us, as we go over to Peter Dunlop, our political correspondent, as he speaks to members of cabinet who has more information on this.”
All work created and posted on this blog is the intellectual property of Stephen Simpson.
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