Chapter 4: Mark of the Beast by Stephen Simpson

 

The news reports carried on keeping the public informed. Military operations were underway all around Rheta. The governments of Rheta had to resort to significant action to reassure a scared and anxious population. Airports were closed, all around the world, and would not open again until every single person on Rheta, from the youngest to the oldest, had received their mark. It was speculated that the mark might be either tattooed on a person’s right hand or forehead. Nobody knew yet for certain.

Everything felt unreal. Lydia stared at the TV without really seeing or hearing anything. The feeling of being helpless, being at the whims of a cruel fate, had shaken her to the core. She realised there was no sense in being sad for what could have been. She had to adjust. Focus on the here, the now. She had to think about what the new future had in store for her, her family, and her friends.

She understood it was going to take a long time for her to process what had happened. A week ago, her greatest wish was for Jodie to fall in love with her, and to get an Apple iPad Pro with a compatible pen. She got the drawing tablet and pen, but she had not seen Jodie since the holidays had started.

A door banging in the kitchen snapped her out of her contemplation. It sounded like a gunshot. She pushed herself up off the chair, and slowly crept as silently as she could down the short hallway to the kitchen.

“We’ll have money, but we won’t be able to buy anything without that mark.” Her dad was keeping his voice low while he was talking to her mum, but Lydia had heard him just the same.

Her mum saw Lydia come around the corner and gave him the look by making her eyes a little larger and raising her one perfect eyebrow.

The late afternoon sun was shining through the kitchen window. At this time of the day, the kitchen was always bright as the sun started to set and the angle was simply perfect.

He started to fiddle with the coffee mugs on the counter beside him, saying, “This coffee is a new kind, love. I thought we’d give it a go…” He looked up at the doorway where Lydia had come to a stop to watch them, and pretended he only just noticed her. “Hey, sleepy head. Thought you fell asleep in front of the TV.”

“No. I was just thinking.” Lydia did not miss the quick glance he gave her mum. They were discussing something significant, and now was not the time for secrets. She hated it when they treated her like a child. She knew they thought at seventeen she was straddling the fine line between doing what children do and wanting to be grown up. Sometimes when they were full blown in the heat of an argument, she would hear things no child should ever hear. Other times, it was like this where it was all secret eye glances and hushed whispers.

“What are you planning on doing today?” Cynthia asked, turning her body in the kitchen chair to face her.

“I was thinking I should go to Liam’s. Maybe play a game, or something.”

Her mum gave her a worried look. “Do you think that’s safe?”

“They only live two houses down, Mum.”

“I don’t know, Lydia. After this morning, I don’t ever want to leave this house again. I wonder if we’ll still be able to get home deliveries. That’s going to have to be my go-to from now on.”

The sounds of screaming came from outside.

“What’s going on?” Bill asked as he stepped closer to the counter under the window. The window looked out at the busy street in front of their house.

Lydia followed him, with Cynthia close behind. They saw a man running down the road from the direction of the village centre. He was running so fast, the sound of his feet slapping the ground could be heard through the double glazing. His jacket hung from one arm, and his cream-coloured dress shirt was unbuttoned and flapped in the wind behind him.

Bill dragged his hand through his cropped grey speckled hair, and asked, “What the H?”

Soon after, a Police Land Rover came past.

“Are they after him?” Cynthia asked, standing on her tippy toes to see as far as she could down the road.

“It looks like they’re after him,” Lydia said.

“Maybe he was trying to loot one of the shops.”

“No,” Lydia said. “I saw on the local news feed that they’re deploying all army and police personnel with immediate effect. By tomorrow morning, we’ll be living in a police state.”

Bill clicked his tongue. “Not a police state, Lydia. That’s going a little too far. The government is only trying to keep us safe any way they can.”

“And that’s why I have to go see Liam, before I never see them again.”

Cynthia nodded as she moved away from the counter. “Okay, I’ll stand by the door to see you get there safely. I’ll watch you walk over.”

“Mother! Seriously?”

“Nobody will see me. Only you. I’d rather be sure nothing happened to you between here and there.”

“Two doors down?”

“Yes. Two doors down.” She put her arms up to tighten the bobble holding her ponytail of platinum hair together. “Are you going right now?”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Like this?”

“Then let me know when you’re ready.”

Lydia ran up the stairs to her bedroom, taking them two at a time. In her room, she quickly sprayed herself liberally with deodorant, and changed into black jeans and a light blue chunky jersey. She brushed her long, dark hair and then fluffed it a bit to give it some body. She was never one who favoured wearing make-up. She was too lazy to put in the effort.

Ten minutes later, she was back in the kitchen. “Okay. I’m going now.”

“Just a second,” Cynthia said as she stood up from the chair by the kitchen table. “There’s no going anywhere else. You saw what happened this morning at the shops? Right?”

“I know.”

They walked to the front door together, and then Cynthia stepped aside to let Lydia walk out of the house first. As Cynthia stepped out, she pulled her cardigan tighter around her. “It’s chilly out here,” she complained.

They both looked in the direction of the village centre when the sound of police sirens started wailing loudly.

“Quick. Go,” Cynthia said, after pulling Lydia closer for a quick hug. “Don’t go anywhere else, and let Liam walk you home. You hear?”

Lydia grimaced. “Okay.”

She walked the, maybe, twenty steps to Liam’s house, and looked back at her mum. She moved her head to the side, indicating that her mum can go inside now, but Cynthia just crossed her arms and stood there waiting.

Lydia sighed as she turned back to face the door and knocked.

She saw the dark shadow through the bevelled glass come closer and felt a spasm of excitement in the pit of her stomach. She would recognise Jodie’s gait anywhere.

Jodie opened the door. He glanced up from his phone for a second to look at her, and then looked back at his phone and walked back down the hallway to the back of the house.

The spasm of excitement turned into a fistful of hurt.

Lydia leaned out the door and waved goodbye to Cynthia before she closed it and climbed the stairs to Liam’s room.

Liam was sitting at his large corner desk with his back to his bedroom door. He was facing two monitors and Lydia could see that he had YouTube streaming on one monitor, while he was playing a game on the other. Large earphones covered his ears. The walls of his bedroom were covered in Manga posters, and his floor was littered with clothes.

“Are you always this messy?” Lydia asked loudly as she stepped into his room.

He jerked back in his red and black recliner office chair and swivelled to look at her. An immediate blush coloured the crests of his cheeks. “Lydia! What are you doing here? I thought you said your mum wouldn’t let you out of her sight.”

“I argued the end of the world, and not seeing you ever again.” She smiled and sat down on his unmade bed.

He quickly got up from his chair and hastily he started picking up clothes from the floor, trying to hide the underwear so that Lydia could not see it, but she already had. He was wearing boxer shorts, and his skinny, lily-white legs looked like those of a Daddy-Long-Legs.

Lydia felt her heart swell with affection for him. He had been her friend for the longest time, and they shared a lot of the same interests. They liked playing the same games, watching the same Anime, and the same YouTube influencers.

He left the room with the large bundle of laundry, and when he came back, he was wearing a pair of jeans. He wiped his hand through his long, blonde fringe hanging on the right side of his face. On the left side, his hair was cropped short. He asked, “So green eyes crying in the rain, what do you think about all this that’s happening in the world today?”

“Don’t call me that. You know I don’t like it.”

“If your eyes didn’t always look so sad, I wouldn’t call you that. I keep telling you.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “I can’t help the way I look, and you’re being a bully.”

He looked apologetic. “It’s not meant to be ugly. It’s like my cute nickname for you.”

“Well, stop saying it, anyway.”

It was his turn to roll his eyes. “Fine. You’re so sensitive today.”

“Do you blame me? This stuff’s got me all stressed out, as if I should be planning for my funeral, or something.”

“Yeah. I know what you’re saying.” He sat back down on his chair, across from her.

“And the internet is not any better. So many conspiracy theories all over the place,” Lydia said, folding her hands on her lap. What she really wanted was to chew her nails, but not in front of Liam. “Did you see the one where they say this barcode thing is predicted in the Bible as some triple six, mark of the beast thing?”

He nodded. “Yeah, and if you get it there’s no way you can go to Heaven because you basically sign a deal with the Devil when you get it.”

“I’m worried,” Lydia said. “I heard my dad say that he’ll get it so that me and my mum wouldn’t have to. You know how religious he is. It made me so sad when I heard him.”

“They say that the chip that they will stamp on us will look like an actual barcode so that it can be scanned. So, when you go shopping you wouldn’t need a bank card anymore or your phone, because the cashier will just scan the barcode, like we’re suddenly some kind of product too.”

“So, it’s true, then? We won’t be able to buy food or clothes or anything. No concerts, no being homeowners… Oh my goodness! No going to Uni?”

“Yip.” Liam nodded.

“Do you think those people who blew themselves up when they blew up those six cities were planning all of this? Do you think they knew this would happen? Were they like the pawns of the Devil?”

“Maybe not, but all the governments of Rheta were quick to use it to their advantage. Think about it. We’ll all be part of one big computer program. Imagine the algorithms!”

They sat staring at each other for a minute or two, trying to wrap their heads around something so big it was hard to consider that it would ever become a reality but there was no denying it, in a couple of days the barcoding roll out would start.

In a soft whisper, Lydia asked, “Are you going to get it?”

He replied in an equally soft voice, “Do we have a choice?”

Jodie was standing at the bedroom door, and Lydia wondered how long he had been there. She shifted on the bed, feeling self-conscious. “You’re right, you don’t have a choice, weirdoes.” He chuckled as he turned to leave.

Liam pulled his face and shook his head. He mouthed, “What a jerk? Right?”

Lydia raised her eyebrows to confirm.

“He’s signed up at the Army this morning. They are having a big intake because they’re expecting a lot of trouble from conspiracy theorists and religious people.”

“What?” Lydia has had a crush on Jodie since she could remember even though he treated her like he treated his younger brother. She could not help the way she felt about him, and she did not want him to be in any danger.

Liam nodded. “Yip. Him and all his macho friends. They think they’re the boss of everybody.”

“Aren’t you scared, too?” Lydia hated to admit it to her best friend. This was the first time she had said out loud how she felt since Christmas morning.

He gave her a long look. “I am. I don’t think I want to get the barcode. It doesn’t feel right.”

“I agree. I don’t want to get it either, but like you said, we don't have a choice”

Continue reading Chapter 5/17

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