Free The Dawn: The Bombs Fall (A Dystopian Science Fiction Series) by Michelle Muckley Page B

at the speed of a lightning bolt, a new found energy
that surprised even him. He was back through the door to level nineteen and
down the stairs in half the time it had taken him to arrive.
    After Ronson and Richard left, Zack
made the necessary checks on the water supply. It was his job every day not
only to dish out the rations, but also to measure the different mineral
quantities that they pumped in. There was lots of poor hygiene and substandard
nutrition throughout Delta. How many days can you eat the same fare without
getting bored or skipping meals, or sustain any acceptable standard of health? There
had been an outbreak of the influenza virus and many people had died. That's
when Omega announced the Mineral Supplementation Programme in the water.
    Today he had to fulfil the rations
for Omega and Epsilon Tower. Each day, a different order. The needs of Omega
Tower were always met, but for the other towers it wasn't always possible. They
got what was left.
    The irony of the New Omega Manifesto
wasn't lost on most residents. A set of principles supposed to ensure a fair
and comfortable life for all. Creed Four: No citizen of New Omega shall die of
thirst or hunger. Most people accepted that the manifesto really only applied
if you lived in Omega Tower. People joked that it was really called the Omega
Manifesto. The manifesto had been fly-posted on every floor, but after they
were defaced the Guardians were instructed to take them down. That's when the
televised address started, twice daily, read by President Grayson himself in a
pre-recorded speech. It always reminded Zack of how little he believed in it. They
were the promises of Omega Tower, but it was Omega Tower who made the demands
that prevented Delta Tower from fulfilling the requirements of the other
towers. Delta could only pump in so much water, and there was only a limited
supply of the chemicals needed to treat it. Sometimes they would run low, and
the water would end up with a specific taste or smell. In the early days the
pipes were always getting blocked and it made it hard to process enough water. It
meant that somebody had to go down into the storage facility where they drew in
the raw, untreated water. There were only a few instances recently, but
unclogging the metal grids blocked with anything from human waste to dead fish
was the worst part of work in Delta Tower. But it was better now than it used
to be. In the early days there were blockages nearly every other shift. The
problem was that some people had tried to hide in the sewers when the bombs
came. Most of them died and got washed into the water system as far as the
metal grids that were designed to stop small items going any further. None of
the bodies that Zack had ever pulled out had tattoos on their wrist, and that's
how people knew they were outsiders. The really unlucky ones.
    After the second double bell, the
signal for the end of shift one, Zack didn’t take the lift. Instead he walked
through the corridors, past the amblers, past those with nothing to do, until
he reached the stairway. There were two stairways in Delta Tower. The first,
and largely abandoned, was the stairway by which Ronson had illegally entered
Delta Tower at the start of the first shift. Until the twentieth floor nobody
used this stairway, and when he had walked up it last week to ensure that it
was still passable he was surprised at how untouched it felt. There was dust
everywhere, and each step took his breath away as the particles from underneath
his feet floated into the atmosphere, disturbed perhaps for the first time in
years. There were layers of paint which had been punched like inverted Braille
along the walls where furniture had been dragged up, the feet of the beds drilling
the story of Delta Tower into the Duck Egg blue walls that once looked so crisp
and clean. Some of the glass banisters had been shattered in the same incident,
and some of them had been destroyed when the ground shook and the sky lit