The Wall, Part I

by Rayna Friedman

Dear Readers,

These are the accounts of my experiences before embarking over The Wall, my time there and a few days thereafter. This compilation contains almost all of my experiences over the Wall, taken from my voice log and put in written form. Please be informed that all of which I have written in this literary document is the truth, contrary to popular thought.

Chapter 1:

I had been in my workplace, the Emp Times main office, sitting in my cubicle, staring at the TV. I had recently come home from my trip to the burned out, former war district (8), of the Mexican border and Texas. The news station was on, broadcasting about my venture into the war district. I had been one of the first to go there since the war itself. Every single shard from the bombs had been collected and the nuclear waste had been disposed of by the ANWA (American Nuclear Waste Association). But besides them and a few government officials, I was the first civilian to go into the district. I was always the first to do the “scary things” which everyone else in the country refused to do.

And then it struck me. I found it a little ridiculous, the world we live in. I mean, here we are, willing to send people into the war torn area of old war districts hundreds of miles away from our home and we’re too scared to send ourselves over the wall. So as I was sitting on an old chair by my writing desk in the main area of journalists, I thought to myself, ‘Why are we so scared of going over that wall and why don’t we just do it?’ Now it seems even sillier to me than it had before I began my “crusade over the wall” as the papers had called it.

If there’s some other massive nuclear war with new bombs that haven’t even been discovered yet and most of the world is obliterated, and there are a few survivors who want to learn of their world’s past, then this next part is for them.

The world we live in…well it’s a nice place depending on where you live in it. After the Great War, also known as the Nuclear War, also known as World War Four, in 2669, much of America was bombed out. The way it had worked out was that the Northern part of America was not hit so hard by the bombs while most of the south (latitude coordinates lying on the 37’ line and below) was bombed out completely. Hundred year old trees were uprooted and many turned to ash. The grass and other any other low plant life was completely crushed to ash by the many bombs hurled over our once great cities. All buildings from massive skyscrapers to modest, one family homes were blown away or crushed; not one was left completely intact.

But at the time of the bombing, of course there were the many bomb shelters all over each city. And the whole of America went underground, hundreds of feet below the bombing, and were kept safe. The actual nuclear bombing only lasted a week before negotiations were made throughout the entire world, but then the real damage began.

The government initiated its Post-bomb Bill, which called for the cleanup of the American cities. Teams of scientists, researchers, government officials and damage control operatives were to be sent out into the field. They would first collect as much data of the affected areas as possible and then send more professionals to use that data to clean up the nuclear waste products and restore America to its once shining beauty. And so the work began, but once the data was collected and looked at, the scientists realized that the damage had been too great. North of the latitude 37’ could easily be saved and cleaned of waste, but south of that was almost a hopeless cause. A new bill was passed through congress, the Save North Bill, which asked for the abandonment of cleanup south of that 40’ line

Protests ensued. The public went wild. Every (temporary) underground newscast team reported the bill’s plan. If people could have marched up to The White House with picket signs, they would have. But how much damage could the public do under the ground, while the world they knew was completely destroyed? Even so, the President and Vice President held a broadcast. They told the entirety of America that there was merely nothing that their scientific resources could do. It was, in fact, a hopeless cause and we would have to sacrifice some of our brethren to save those who could be guaranteed healthy, normal lives. Within two days, the “Underground Riots” stopped; people are selfish and care mostly about themselves. The masses didn’t care enough about their fellow southerners because they “knew” from what the government had told them that they couldn’t be saved.

By the next month, the north was up and running, the nuclear waste was taken care of, construction on the dilapidated buildings had begun, the government was back to work and life had slowly returned to normal. The south was told to stay underground until further notice, just in case the government could do something to restore their land to normal. But that notice would never come. Those in the south probably knew that anyway, though. But even though most thought things in relation to the south couldn’t get any worse…

When all of the northerners had come out into the daylight after weeks of underground living, they saw something that they had never expected to see. The real chemical clean up only took the scientific teams at most two weeks, but they had spent the rest of the month working on a much bigger project. What those northerners saw was a wall, The Wall. This new wall stretched the entire continent of North America right smack on that 40’ line. The Wall was created of what seemed to be pure stone. On its top stood metal guard posts every 25 feet and machine guns half way between each of those posts. On either side of the machine guns, there was a camera (one facing the south, one facing the north) that watched each side of the wall for those brave enough to come close to it. Those that came within 50 feet of the wall on the southern side were shot dead. Those on the north would trigger an alarm, and Wall Police would come to escort that person away. Built into the wall every 10 feet, were video screens that showed a woman from the shoulders up repeating the phrase “This wall is for the safety of our citizens” 24/7.

Although warned by the government of the effects of going outside, where the chemical waste was still circulating the air south of the 40’ line, there were a good many extremely angry southerners who couldn’t help themselves. They ran outside and to the wall. They began to bang on it, to hack away pieces of the stone with whatever meager weapons they had brought out with them. Before The Wall had been constructed, mere army officers would shoot whomever they could dead. But some were able to get away from the carnage and they fled to find whatever shelter they could, although not underground. They were avidly against living underground for the rest of their lives; they couldn’t bear to live that way.

Well those people who managed to survive the raining bullets from the wall were obviously exposed to the nuclear chemicals that weren’t cleaned by the government. And well, it changed them forever. Most died within the next month from exposure, but some lived to old ages. They continued to have children but those children had similar diseases and distortions as their parents. They were raised to hate those over the wall and that they did. They continued to fight (while poor and pathetic every time) against the guns and guards on the wall, as well as try to break the wall itself. But that wall was made not to be broken. But those infected did make some damage in multiple states throughout their history.

Those infected came to be known as Ills, their popularly chosen name. They became a clannish group of physically and mentally distorted individuals. They began to not only hate those north of The Wall but also those living underground who had not done anything about their imprisonment behind nuclear chemicals. And it was those Ills that began the stereotype of all people living on the southern side of The Wall. They were successful in this unintended endeavor by constantly coming up to The Wall and screaming like madmen as they tried to chip away from the stone. Each camera on top of The Wall captured every second of their mad stupors and used it to show the rest of the world of the horror on the other side of The Wall. The government had been using this footage that seemed to multiply exponentially as time drew on to warn its northern, civilized people from trying to come close to The Wall.

And well, it’s been 300 years since that Fourth World War and that had been the perception of most, if not all, of the people living on the North side of The Wall. And it was mine, as well. But I only hope my accounts of my time spent over The Wall may soon change all of that.

 So, that day, in that Chicago Times office space, I decided I would go over The Wall and discover as much as I could about the place and report the news to the world. Into Roge Gran, the chief of staff’s office I went.

“Heard about the broadcast; good work, Clay!” he said unenthusiastically, reading a stack of papers, not even looking up to see who it was. Although he really didn’t need to look up, I was the only journalist on the staff that would dare storm into his office uninvited. Most people working in the building found him to be a very scary man. I didn’t see it. And since I had come onto his staff, the Times made a hell of a lot more money than it ever did. The amount of digital copies sold a day rose immensely since my first article on the drug king at the time, Wald Rostfore (better known as Kin’ R). And ever since then, Roge made it his business to meet me personally. Actually, we’ve been somewhat friends since my first big article.  

“I’m going to go over The Wall.”

Roge snorted and laid the manuscript he was reading down on the table. He smoothed the papers down lightly and looked up at me quite slowly. He took his gold glasses that had been lying on the table near a stack of papers and placed them on the bridge of his nose.

“Clay, you just wrote one of the biggest articles of your life. Don’t you think you should at least wait a couple of weeks before you go on to another stupid idea?”

“Roge, when I was a young kid, fresh out of college, you got in front of all the new interns that year and told us to never turn down an opportunity for a great story. I want to go over The Wall and I will do it. I didn’t come here for your approval. I just thought that it would be nice for you to know. And besides, there isn’t anything you can lose from a story like that. Imagine how many copies that will sell. ‘Over The Wall’ written by Clay Burnam. The Times will make trillions.”

“First of all Clay, I damn well know that you didn’t come for my approval. Second, I know you’re one to go and do all that crazy undercover stuff but…over The Wall? I mean how the hell do you even think they’ll let you leave the North?”

“They let me go to Mexico, Roge. What’s so different over The Wall?”

“They’re crazy over there! Clay, you wouldn’t survive that! They’ll eat you in a goddamn second!”

There was a woman’s gasp by the frosted plastic door. I turned around to see what it was. There were shadows by the door that the second after I turned around were gone to the sides. I sighed and rolled my eyes. It was probably some stupid interns that heard the arguing and needed to find out what was going on in Roge’s office. I turned back towards Roge’s desk and ignored the kids by the door.

“Roge, are you listening to yourself? How do you even know that’s what it’s like over there? Maybe the Ills are getting tired and we could take the few left down, clean up the place., Aren’t we supposed to report the news? Don’t the people deserve to get a firsthand account of what’s out there?”

“Clay, we get new footage of them all the time. But if you really want to go…”

“Hey, Roge, relax, I’ll be fine.”

“I know you’ll be fine. Just don’t go to any government agent to get over that thing, ‘cause there isn’t a government man alive that’ll approve it.”

“Yeah, Roge…I know.”

“You know who to contact?”

“Yeah.”

I knew exactly who to contact. There were still a few people throughout the northern cities that were taught by their ancestors to hate what the government had done to their fellow brothers over The Wall. They kept to themselves in small groups, mostly under the cities. There were plenty in Chicago, but I knew of one man personally, from an undercover journey of mine a few months back. There’s a black market underground that those certain groups of want-to-be-rebels mostly deal in. They don’t like involving themselves with the rest of the North and would rather make their money one hundred feet under it. I wrote an article about that black market and met some very useful people down there.

“Well, see you in a couple of days, Roge,” I told him, turning around and walking for the door. I put my hand on the knob and heard the clatter of footsteps running away from the door. I laughed for a second.

“Just don’t get yourself killed Clay,” I opened the door.

“Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you?” I said waving my hand at him as I walked out the door and into the main journalists’ room.

I left the office and walked to the parking area. I got into my Elle car and started downtown. My Elle was not in the best condition, which was something I had never really cared about before, but now it seemed to serve my purposes pretty well. Downtown Chicago at the time was just about the closest thing a person in the North could get to something even remotely like the South. Downtown was where all of those unfortunates were dumped. There was actually a gate constructed to keep Uptown from Downtown in 2499. It’s funny, because it was actually constructed as part of the AAAC (American Annual Architectural Contest) to celebrate the New Year. It didn’t win that year though; some architect from Idaho won for his 50 foot wide, 800 foot tall storage facility.

Anyway, the gate is made of Immer, a technology created in the 24^th century. It was originally a science experiment by the Russian government’s military agency for indestructible aircrafts that would eventually be flown in wartime. The scientists had melted a multitude of metals as well as plastic. They then let the metallic mixture harden slightly and injected it with the melted plastic, creating a new material that was almost indestructible. They called it Immer. The metals were supposed to handle the aircrafts while the plastic would make death from crashing almost 0%. Well, the new material couldn’t handle leaving the atmosphere, because once it did, the plastic component of the Immer would melt almost instantly, causing the aircraft to fall and crash, which was quite counterproductive.

Immer wasn’t used again after that experiment.

To Be Continued...