Dawn Rising

Dawn Rising

The still, muted orange, swirled and mingled with the gentle hues of mauve and lilac. A tentative sun rose, shyly, from the valley between two mountains, its golden rays weak, flaying out to light up the hazy purple heather, the intrinsic perfection of nature’s dawn.

Baxter turned away, he had to dress and prepare for the day’s work. The sunrise pulled him back for a last glance. It was his way of stamping it on his retina so that the beauty of all that he loved burned brightly in his memory. He was terrified of losing the ability to recall the sun. He gazed at it for long moments every morning: it was as much a part of his early ritual as his shower or his shave.

He heaved a mournful sigh as he was pulled from the past, and brought back to the glaring reality of fluorescent lighting and beyond that, eternal
darkness.

Baxter wasn't sure if his memory of the past was a blessing or a curse. The children flocked around him, begging to hear tales of the 'abovers,' as they called old people.

Bax was twelve when the nuclear war had destroyed the earth.

The few survivors had scurried beneath the ground into the subterranean bunkers that were the starting pegs of the new world. He’d witnessed the atrocities of war as they neared their head. He’d been one of the chosen to take shelter when the End of the World Siren had sounded across the city.

Baxter enthralled the new order youngsters with stories of life above ground. The children of
the new world inched towards him on their bellies, fearing to miss a word of the enchanted life that the abovers had lived. He described fresh air and the feeling derived early on a Sunday morning when you took a huge breath of brisk morning air and then exhaled it to the melodic tolling of the church bells calling the holy to worship.

He told them about toffee and chocolate cake, fresh baked and eaten still warm, of bonfire night and Christmas. He explained what it was like to swim in a river warmed by the blazing sun. He felt the sting of tears as he reminisced about the smell of sweet hay waking him on the night when he’d waited in the stable for his pony, Bliss, to deliver her first foal. How he'd felt very small when his father’s strong hand had shaken him awake to tell him that he'd slept through the whole event and that Bliss had someone she would like to introduce him to.

Bliss and her foal, Starlight, had both perished in the holocaust of the final war, along with most of his friends and family. Only Baxter and his mother and father had been spared due to his father’s expertise in physics. He’d been needed for the emergence of the new world.

Baxter, at the age of thirty six, was the last of the abovers. They'd all died, many of them soon after the end had come, some lasting longer, but
disease had been rife. The plague was unleashed just long enough before the bombs to establish in the earth.

In the early days, before the new world had formed, conditions were appalling for the abovers, and many just didn't want to live any longer.

One of the chosen hundred was an eminent scientist and geneticist of the old world, his name was Franz Schultz. He had achieved many great advancements in the fight against disease and hunger as the new world developed. But what was acclaimed as his greatest triumph, became his worst nightmare. He had killed himself, in disgrace, when he couldn’t stand look at the products of his creation. Professor Schultz developed an innovative serum. He said that it would enhance and speed up the natural process of evolution and enable the new order to cope better with life underground. Everybody was vaccinated with the serum.

It was hailed a miracle.

Eyesight was eighty percent improved, people could see in the dark. The body produced increased levels of vitamins and conditions such as scurvy and rickets, which had run rampant through the people who had not seen sunlight for years, cleared. The conditions were obliterated completely over time. Joints remained supple and didn't stiffen when people spent their days hunched over, mining the tunnels. Most important of all the changes was the fact that, gradually, the need for oxygen was reduced. Professor Schultz was proclaimed a hero. Thousands of years of evolution had been condensed into a matter of years.

The pedestal that Franz was elevated on began to revolve, and soon it was spinning out of control. There were those who had warned caution, but initial testing had far exceeded their expectations. It was decreed that the entire colony be vaccinated without waiting for final and post final results.

The first child to be born after the mass immunization had been little Helen Jenkins. Baxter had known the Jenkins family well. Like all parents to be, they'd been excited and impatient for the birth of their first child. The pregnancy had progressed well with no sign of distress to either mother or baby.

The delivery had taken a little longer than would be expected, but it had progressed normally. When her baby had been placed in her arms, word had it that you could hear Mary Jenkins screaming all the way to sector seven.

The child had been born sightless. White, depressed orbs lay where the eyes should have been. There was no need of eyes in the darkness. The evolutionary process hadn't allowed for the advanced lighting system that'd been installed throughout the new world. The nose of the child had been elongated and rounded, a perfect implement for burrowing. Legs and arms had receded into the body. The new streamline shape of the child's torso had been white and smooth. The skin had no pigment, for no sun would ever shine on it.

Many such children had followed, the spawn of the new world, first citizens of the new order. Baxter had seen creatures like them on the surface, all be it much smaller and thinner.

They'd called them worms.

Baxter took one last look at the beautiful sunrise tattoo emblazoned on his chest, and then put on his shirt.

Another day was about to begin in Utopia.