Wolf Country Read online

  Tünde Farrand grew up in Debrecen, Hungary, and lived, studied and worked in several countries before settling in the UK in 2005. She has continued to work in this country as a language specialist and modern languages teacher. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Sheffield Hallam University, and lives with her husband in Sheffield.

  Published by

  Lightning Books Ltd

  Imprint of EyeStorm Media

  312 Uxbridge Road

  Rickmansworth

  Hertfordshire

  WD3 8YL

  www.lightning-books.com

  First Edition 2019

  Copyright © Tünde Farrand

  Cover design by Ifan Bates

  All rights reserved. Apart from brief extracts for the purpose of review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without permission of the publisher.

  Tünde Farrand has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as author of this work.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

  ISBN: 9781785630927

  To Nick, with love

  Contents

  Prologue

  16 June, 2050

  Book One

  One

  Boxing Day

  Two

  Wolf Country

  Three

  The Artist’s Son

  Four

  Date

  Five

  The Fight

  Six

  The Party

  Seven

  Two Old Fools

  Eight

  The Bride

  Nine

  Ouroboros

  Ten

  16 June, 2050

  Book Two

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Book Three

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Prologue

  It must have begun when my apple tree flourished and Sofia’s withered and died. Perhaps that was when Sofia first had an inkling that she didn’t belong. Dad used to say war begins at home, in the family. It was not his own idea; he must have read it somewhere and felt obliged to pass the wisdom on to his daughters. It took me twenty years to grasp its meaning, the realisation coming only yesterday after I put the phone down, an entirely changed person from the one who picked it up a minute earlier. I wonder what Dad would say now, if he saw me – saw us – like this, preparing for the final battle, a battle too painful and far too unequal to be fought in the sanctuary of the family.

  16 JUne, 2050

  I’ve never been alone at a monorail station before. It’s a peculiar feeling I can’t put my finger on. The sense of luxury, the absence of sound. Like I have my own piece of Earth.

  In the passenger lounge the pebble-shaped sofas are empty and waiting, the dimly lit wood-panelled bar silent. A fragrance of orchid is released and, for a moment, I’m fooled into thinking it’s real.

  Ten minutes ago, when we arrived from London, my fellow passengers left the monorail in haste. They hurried out to the square without stopping in the nineteenth-century station building. They wore well-cut clothes in the finest fabric, leather shoes soft as butter, but none of these could conceal their vacant stares, the servitude dried on their faces. A line of minibuses with tinted windows swallowed them up like a hungry mouth. The Owners must pay them well to make the long commute worthwhile. Apart from the financial remuneration, of course, there is the privilege of working directly in the service of the Owners. A privilege you can’t put a price on.

  The square is just as abandoned as the station. There is a high street running through the small town, and little side streets off it, all lined with original Victorian terraced houses, now functioning as traditional pastry shops and tearooms. It is not my first time away from a megacity, but the serenity still comes as a surprise. There’s not a soul apart from me. The tourists don’t tend to arrive before 10am.

  It’s a perfect English summer day, which usually lifts my spirits, though today it fails to do so. To kill time and avoid thinking about the ordeal I’m about to face, I watch the advert screens. There’s one on my left, another attached to the station building, and a third one across the road. The same video is playing on each screen. It shows an elderly lady, wearing a pale pink blouse, sitting comfortably in a Chesterfield-style armchair. Behind her, a flowery curtain is drawn open to reveal a breathtaking view. Roses are climbing up the windowsill, while in the distance rolling hills create the impression of heaven on earth. The lady, wearing gold-framed spectacles, leans closer to the camera. She says she could not be happier, and all the things Dignitorium residents usually say. I don’t want to watch it, and yet I can’t keep my eyes off the screen. Now there’s a new resident, from another Dignitorium, then another. The names and faces keep changing, only their message remains the same.

  Checking the time, I’m starting to worry I’ve been forgotten when a long black car pulls up in front of me. There’s an RR emblem on its front and a tiny statue of a winged woman. In the old system, these so-called limousines were used mostly by presidents and film stars. I’m flattered, even a bit excited, but I’m not sure about getting into the vehicle. The archive footage of fatal car accidents shown on the Globe always horrifies me.

  The last time I was in a car, I was seven. It was still in the old system, when everyone had cars. Now only the Owners do. They say they need them against the wolves. For everyone else there’s the monorail.

  The chauffeur gets out and looks around, squinting in the sunlight. He’s in his fifties, with deep wrinkles across his forehead; he seems a trustworthy type. In his immaculate black suit, with matching hat and white gloves, he oozes professionalism. Like the butlers I have seen in period dramas, he seems to have trouble turning his head, as if he had swallowed a stick. He greets me with a courteous bow, avoiding eye contact. If only he knew that I’m more afraid of his Owner employer than he is; that I am not a fellow Owner but a helpless person desperately trying not to blow her very last chance of survival.

  ‘Mrs Alice Brunelli?’ he asks, and when I nod he checks my identity on his ID Phone. The official photo of me was taken three years ago, and I wonder if – after the past few months – I still resemble that young woman with honey-blond hair, porcelain skin and a lively, elfish smile. Or has my face – carrying pain like an antiquity carries the mark of centuries – become unrecognisable?

  He nods and opens the car door for me. He must enjoy watching me struggle to get in. The door seems to be in the way. I do my best to mimic what I’ve seen in old films, to climb in sideways, without hitting my head or tripping over. I refuse his offer of help. ‘Are you comfortable, madam?’ he asks. There’s a slight hint of friendliness in his tone, now that he’s realised I’m one of his kind, a mere mortal.

  Inside the vehicle a gentle blue light illuminates the jet-black interior. The cool leather seat stings my arms, the cold seeping through my linen trousers and my blouse. The scent opens up a new dimension, a realm of privilege and opulence. In any other circumstances, I would be excited, but instead I’m ill at ease. This is
an alien world, alien and hostile.

  As the limousine reaches a high-security red fence, the gate slides open, then closes immediately behind us. We’re entering the infamous wolf country. I peer through the tinted window, trying to spot some wolves, but then remember that they don’t like coming close to vehicles. The landscape changes as the town disappears behind us. The road begins to climb and soon we reach the top of a hill; looking down, I realise how near we are to the coast, only a few miles from the silvery blue that seems to flow beyond the horizon. It shouldn’t surprise me; even as a child, Sofia was attracted to the sea. There’s something surreal about the car’s motion – like being able to fly – seeing the road ahead, running, bending, then we’re snaking our way through a forest. I don’t like the speed, though, and I’m on the verge of begging the chauffeur to slow down. Again I remember the bodies shown on the Globe, broken and blood-soaked, and a recent documentary illustrating how much living space roads used to take up and how cars had a disastrous impact on the environment. There is a sharp curve; I have to hold on to the seat. I press a button to my left and speak into the intercom.

  ‘Could you slow down a bit, please?’

  His expression in the mirror suggests he doesn’t understand.

  ‘I’m not used to this speed.’

  For a second it seems he wants to say something but then his face returns to a rigid mask and he slows the car down. It is still a little fast but I don’t want to ask him again.

  ‘When will we get there?’

  ‘We’ll be there in approximately twenty minutes, madam.’

  I check the map on my ID Phone but all areas that belong to the Owners – everything behind the red fence – is blanked out. The closer we get to our destination, the faster my heart beats, and my palms are so sweaty they leave wet patches on the soft leather.

  How did I ever dare to dream that my sister would help me? I think back to that evening, more than two decades ago. That was the day when Sofia and I, the enemies, became something much worse than that, something I don’t have the words for. That was the last time we saw each other. In the past, whenever I thought of Sofia, I was always overcome with anger, but now the questions overwhelm me. Does she regret what happened? Has she been thinking of that day? And when I manage to forget about the pain, just for a few seconds – usually early in the morning, when I’m between sleep and waking, and my mind is still enveloped in a white, thick fog – I catch myself asking: how has her life been for the past twenty years? Has she – like all of us – been moulded and mellowed by inevitable hardships, or have wealth and status shielded her? I know that for most of us, time smooths over the rough patches and casts a rose tint over everything. However, I am not one of those lucky ones.

  Eventually the floating sensation of the car calms my nerves, and another story, an earlier one, emerges from the cloud of memories. I was only nine; Sofia was twelve.

  It was about a year after the new system was introduced, though the transition was far from complete. Dramatic changes of that scale take years to implement, delayed by those who oppose them. The opponents were a minority of the retired population, those wealthy enough to escape the notorious retirement homes. They were clinging to an old, failed system like children to their abusive parents or Stockholm syndrome sufferers to their kidnappers. They rejected the new society and many went into hiding.

  Our grandmother, in her mid-sixties and bursting with joie de vivre, was horrified by the new system. She said she would rather face prosecution from the authorities than have a tracker installed. I, for one, was excited about the trackers, and Sofia, fascinated by the science behind them, was even more so, but Grandma’s reaction was understandable; she and her peers had grown up in a very different world. No matter how much Mum tried to explain, Grandma couldn’t understand that it was for the good of everyone, that if ever something happened to her, we would be able to locate her immediately. Apart from Grandma, we had all had the trackers shot under the skin behind the left ear when the new system started, gladly and voluntarily. It took only a second, and I immediately felt safe, protected, and even proud.

  It was reported in the media that with the help of the trackers, criminals were arrested within hours of committing a crime. As expected, this brought about a rapid fall in crime and won us over to the new system. But not Grandma. She – having been a homeowner, a rarity in her generation – even joined a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament, but it was stopped, and some participants were arrested; Grandma had a narrow escape. It was reported on the Globe that the authorities were looking for the ‘troublemakers’.

  Mum gently tried to convince Grandma that she would have a wonderful retirement in the Dignitorium, reaping the fruits of her life’s work until she felt she was ready. Mum even brought her a shiny prospectus printed with golden letters, but she tore it up. Later that day, Sofia and I spent hours piecing together the fragments, imagining ourselves living like royalty between the walls of the grand Victorian mansion.

  ‘I’m loving this new system,’ she said. I nearly said I agreed when Grandma’s tearful face came to mind.

  ‘Yeah. But poor Grandma…’

  ‘Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to retire in a place like that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged.

  ‘How do you want to die then?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about it. I don’t want to die.’

  ‘It’s not a choice, princess,’ she said and I felt – as usual when getting into a conversation with her – like a complete idiot. She excelled in sciences at school and had won a national competition. She even had a tiny room in our attic, which was her ‘laboratory’. Her ambition was to become a scientist. I, until my early adulthood, had no idea what I wanted to do.

  Grandma fled her old house the night before the authorities began the evictions. Her house – like most built in the old system – was not nice or practical enough to be kept; they rebuilt that district into a beautiful area for High Spenders.

  Grandma stayed with us. She came with just one suitcase of clothes and her wedding album. Everything else was left behind. We still lived in our old house, awaiting the completion of our new Mid-Spender area. I kept picturing our future place; Mum said the new homes would be more attractive and convenient than any accommodation in the history of mankind. We were overjoyed about the brand-new semi we would be given once it was built. Dad tried to explain to me and Sofia on our own level why the old world had collapsed. Even as a nine-year-old I understood that the increasing demands put upon the welfare system by the old and sick had led to the impoverishment of the hard-working majority. I can still feel the excitement in the air about getting free housing; I remember the constant media coverage, strangers hugging each other in the street, grown men crying with joy that the economic and housing crisis had been tackled for good. All we had to do in return was consume.

  In the old system our family was lucky because Dad had inherited a house, but when I visited some of my friends I saw the poverty they lived in, two to three families sharing a house, mothers and babies crammed into tiny bedsits. Apart from well-to-do non-profit people like Grandma, everyone hailed the new system. The majority of the working population, who were previously rent slaves, praised the gift of secure employment and accommodation in the regenerated megacities. The pensioners were set free from the subhuman conditions of the retirement homes, in which they had been kept like animals, up to ten of them sharing a room, all crammed onto two large piss- and vomit-soaked mattresses, starved and even beaten by staff. After the change of system, they were given an unprecedented quality of life in the newly completed Dignitoriums.

  Grandma refused to be called a non-profit person, though we kept telling her we loved her nonetheless. She had been with us for two days, occupying Sofia’s laboratory, when the authorities visited us, enquiring about Grandma. She was in fact out that evening at a meeting with ot
her non-profit people. They asked us to contact them once she returned, thanked us politely and left.

  Of course, Mum and Dad knew that Grandma’s fear was totally unfounded – we all knew it – but strangely we couldn’t bring ourselves to turn her in. When we looked into her eyes, the terror we saw was very real indeed. I suppose it’s like taking a little bird in your hands. Though you know you won’t harm it, the bird does not. Aged nine, I learned to appreciate the power of fear.

  We were prepared to defend Grandma if we had to, but they didn’t return. We hoped they had forgotten about her. In the evenings, after school, we would play cards or have dinner together. We did our best to make her happy, but she always said she felt like a prisoner. One day in the kitchen, when Grandma couldn’t hear, Mum said to Dad that Grandma was not a real prisoner, only a prisoner of her fear. That evening I asked Sofia what being the prisoner of fear meant.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she replied. ‘But I can tell you it’s far worse than being locked up in a real prison.’

  Grandma must have been with us for two months when, one afternoon, the authorities returned. The three young female officers – kind and softly spoken – came in, and after a warm greeting they went straight upstairs to her room. Paralysed, I hid on the landing while they stood in the doorway, smiling at Grandma. Her face turned white, but her fear was unnecessary, for they were very understanding. Their leader, a petite woman with a heart-shaped face, sat down next to Grandma on the bed, and patiently explained to her why they had come.

  ‘It’s in your own interest, Mrs King, that you make a choice now. Start to earn your Right To Reside, like everyone else, or retire to the Dignitorium. It’s totally up to you. I’m happy to announce that we have just completed a cosy little Low-Spender area, where the Right To Reside in a lovely studio is very affordable. I’m sure that with your family’s support you could spend some wonderful years there before you retire. You could even do a little part-time work.’ Grandma nearly exploded.