Underground

• Jacinta Dowe, Grade 8
• Poetry
• 2009

It’s dark in the Underground. Slime drips from the roof and rats swarm through the sewers. It’s no wonder that five of the eleven refugees who escaped from the E.U.A army have already died.

Soon the rest of them will be dead too. Betrayed. I betrayed them to save my son, my joy.

He is clutching my hand tightly, scared of the strange men but too ashamed to admit it. How will he feel when he realises what I did? That I killed his friends, his beloved ‘Aunty’ Annalise…

And there she is, by best friend Anna, fighting the soldiers to protect the sleeping children; even now she won’t run and save herself. She gave up her life for those children.

I feel a vague sense of satisfaction. They only sent two men; a vast underestimation of Anna’s fighting skills. I smirk. Anna has been fighting since she was in nappies. Before the war began she had flown under the radar but when Europe declared war on Asia she flourished amazingly. Even before Australia sided with Asia and the war was officially a world war she had been decorated for bravery twice, promoted to Private and then, finally, trusted with the charge of the masses of children who flocked to the only safe place left on earth, the place that had been overrun by E.U.A soldiers; the children exterminated like cockroaches. Even then she fought, smuggling out as many children as she could before trying to run back and take down as many soldiers as she could. If I hadn’t held her back she would have died, Kamikaze style.

But I have no right to be proud of her, I am her enemy. I am a traitor.
Corrie gazes up at me in childish concern.

“Why are you crying mummy?”

I can’t breathe.


But I look up and it’s alright now, the soldiers are fallen, the children are safe. But Anna is just standing there and staring at me like she’s never seen me before.
Corrie sees her and, letting go of my hand, he runs towards her and jumps into her arms, chattering about the strange men that took him away, how his mummy came to save him, how he only cried a little bit, but he wasn’t scared. She just stands there and stares.

I turn and walk away. Corrie calls after me, his cries echoing against the cold, dark walls, but I don’t reply.

There are only tears now.