Sunday 8th November

Diary Entry – 20660604

“I got away from that area of G. L., somewhere just north of Maidstone apparently, as quick as possible.  Hungry and cornered I might be, but I wasn’t going to give in quite so easily.  That night I trimmed my hair and beard as neatly as I could with the tiny scissors I had found in the first-aid box.  I had to really concentrate looking in the mirror; the scissors did the opposite of what I was telling them to.  As I brought the scissors forward they appeared to be moving backwards.  I had to re-interpret what I was seeing and tell my brain what to do rather than just let my hands move as the mirror image suggested.  It took a long time but not too bad I thought, looking in the big mirror in the Ladies room downstairs.  I washed in the stone-cold water and at least felt a bit fresher.  I could have done with some soap, but all the dispensers in the factory were empty or dried up.  I must have stunk but somehow you seem to get used to your own smell the longer you go without showering.  I was desperately hungry but most of my bruises from the Polis beating were healing.

I waited until a few hours after dark, and slunk out of my factory hide-out.  I kept close to the edges of the buildings and doubled back to the rear of the Tesda store.  I guessed that there might be some out-of-date food in the bins there, and I was right; they were out in the open and inside a metal-mesh fence, which I managed to climb over.  At this point I didn’t even try to hide my face; I was just desperate for food.  I hadn’t eaten in a few days, and was prepared to get caught trying.  I leaned over and rummaged in the large metal bin, and found some packs of manna-mash and even an out of date carton of manna-milk with that daft smiling cow on it.  I hated most manna, but unheated as the mash was it was delicious.  I quickly scoffed two packs, then stuffed a few more and the milk in my bag and quickly got back over the fence.  There were no lights here, just the bluey glow of the street-lights giving just enough light for me to see my way ahead.

On my way here I had noticed a metal storm drain cover to the left of the store – it had a small indented ring to one side.  I tried to lift it, but it was so heavy I could only manage an inch or two.  At the third attempt I managed to shove a corner of the laptop under the edge, then kneeling down and lifting with both hands I raised it about a foot, enough anyway to slide my body through.  The weight of the cover was pressing down on my back and my legs were dangling in an empty void, as I stuffed the laptop back in the bag slung round my neck.  My feet were scrabbling for a foothold, when suddenly I kicked something which made a metallic ringing noise to my right-hand side.  It must be a ladder I realised and so I swung my whole body over and with one hand grabbed the side-rail, and my feet onto a rung.  My shoulders were still taking the full weight of the cover, the very shoulders that had taken the hardest blows from the Polis beating, and I felt like crying with the pain.  I lurched my whole body into the dark storm drain and the cover slammed into its casing with a loud clang inches above my head.

I clung desperately to the ladder and listened hard for the sound of sirens.  Either they never came, or the cover was so heavy it blanketed out all sound of the outside world.  Resting to regain my strength I tentatively felt with my feet for the next rung and the next one.  There must have been twenty rungs before I hit water.  Now I realised just how stupid I had been; I had no idea how deep the water would be, or if there would be a current, or where it would lead me too.  How I wished now that I still had the wind-up torch I had so carelessly traded for a mattress in Hastings.

I kept descending, rung by rung, and then as the water came almost up to my waist I found the floor.  At least I could keep my bag with the food and laptop out of the water, as long as it didn’t get any deeper.  You cannot begin to imagine how frightening it is to be in pitch darkness, with all that freezing water swirling around your legs.  We are so used to light, and even out on Dan and Emily’s farm there was the moon, but this was absolute darkness.  The only things I could feel were the cold steel of the ladder, the rough floor and the icy water.  I knew I had to keep walking, if for no other reason than that I would die of cold if I didn’t keep my legs moving.  I also knew that the cover I had come down here from might be too heavy for me to ever lift again.

But most important I just had to get away from this area.  There was no doubt that I had been seen by the surv-cams raiding the Tesda bins, and the Polis would be scouring the streets for me.  So I just walked, one hand trailing the slimy wall, my feet on auto-pilot, the water dragging at my trousers.  On and on in total darkness, no idea where the drain was taking me, I occasionally came to a junction and I tried to keep turning alternately right and left – the worst thing would be to end up back where I had started.   I must have walked for hours, but just as you have no idea of direction, time itself disappears in this overwhelming darkness.  All there is is the biting cold, numbing your feet and legs, and even your brain feels numb as on and on you walk, dragging sodden trouser-legs one weary cold step at a time.  No idea of time or distance travelled, you have only the knowledge that if you stop you will die of exposure to keep you going.