War On Terror - Chapter I

So, time to start chronicling some story/novel stuff. This is the first chapter of a story I wrote for my English Language coursework last year, and then continued writing because I liked it so much (I only needed to do an extract for my coursework). It's written in the style of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four or Huxley's Brave New World. Here goes:

Chapter I

It is six o’ clock on a Wednesday evening in early October, and somewhere a young man is walking jauntily down a narrow side street. His eyes are ocean-blue, sparkling with sun-crested waves; thoughts of the girl he is on his way to see. He flicks his freshly washed hair out of his face, and rolls up the sleeves of his regulation white shirt. It is warm for so late in the year. He takes a right-turn towards the city centre, and accordingly, so do his shadows. He is being followed. The youth, whose mind is on more important matters, is blissfully ignorant of this fact and continues to swagger along, whistling broken tunes from times gone by. He walks between two identical rows of tall, sunny-coloured blocks of flats with identical white curtains shut behind every identical square window and breathes in the cool, processed twilight air. He is carefree – confident that Alyce will enjoy his company tonight. She is one of the forgotten generation, like him. Generation X, as they are known. The ones who can still feel the illegal emotion. Joss – for that is the name of the young man – thinks of the way Alyce’s unorthodox spectacles slide down her nose when she is concentrating, and how he laughs at her warnings about Fear. To him, she has always seemed over-cautious; nobody had been Found for months – nobody taken away for treatment to return soulless and empty...

          But thinking about it too much only puts him in more danger – the sniffer dogs could be anywhere – so instead he watches the sun dip behind the skyscrapers and quickens his pace. He ducks into yet another narrow alleyway as he nears the Latin Quarter just outside the city centre. It is without the clean, fluorescent strip lighting most of the rest of the City is continuously bathed in, instead using old-fashioned electric streetlights to illuminate the dingy signs of cafés that still serve caffeinated coffee and bars that still serve alcohol. There are fewer cameras here too. The establishment he is headed to is in a cellar under a fairly orthodox-looking club that advertises the usual vitamin-enhanced beverages and Decaffee. It is a meeting place for those of the forgotten generation brave enough to defy Them, and it is Alyce’s favourite place. There she writes and recites unlawful poetry, sings long-forgotten songs in a low, melancholy contralto, and quietly becomes intoxicated, surrounded by illegal substances such as caffeine and chocolate and the members of Generation X. They who did not come willingly to be treated, unlike their elders, who were desperate for an end to the fear that had stalked them for so many years, and they who did not unknowingly receive the treatment at birth, unlike the infants of now. They are the ones too young to have lived through the horrors of the yesteryears, yet too old to have never felt afraid.

          A soft sound behind him jerks Joss awake from his daydreaming. This is not an advisable area to be in if you are about to be the victim of one of Their ‘random checks’; it would mean an automatic black mark on your personal record. Joss instinctively puts his hand in his pocket to retrieve his ID card, and as he does so there is another sound from behind him; the ominous click of claws on concrete. This is no random check. The creature behind him is one of Their dogs. Suddenly the buildings on either side of him loom menacingly, silhouetted against the dying lights of the sky. He feels a familiar sensation creep up from his stomach to his tightening chest. It slams his heart repeatedly into his ribcage and his eyes widen in panic. Dread courses through his veins and he feels sick with the realisation he is afraid. He knows what this means. It means they want him. This is the War on Terror.