A Town Called Dust: The Territory 1 by Justin Woolley Page B

most children who lived in Alice, she had never been beyond the Wall.
    Once the Wall might have risen majestically from the ground but now, due to hundreds of years of wear, haphazard repair and pillaging for building materials to use in the city, it zigzagged in height and was cracked and broken. Yet even in this state its lowest point was at least fifty feet above the ground. All around the Wall were the towers, fourteen in total, although only four of them, the great corner towers, were still occupied on a consistent basis.
    “Look, kitten,” Colonel Hermannsburg said, touching his daughter on the arm and pointing ahead. “They’re opening the gate.”
    Sure enough, the Great Gate was opening inward, the huge wooden doors creaking in a low drone as someone somewhere turned the wheel that drove the complex gear system. Before it was fully open ten Diggers marched out of guardhouses on either side and stood in practiced formation inside the arc of the gate. They held rifles by their sides which they raised up to their shoulders as the gap between the two doors spread wider. Lynn knew why they were there. It was their job to ensure none of the rabble from the slums came into the city.
    The slums lay directly beyond the Wall. It was hard to miss seeing the sprawling multitude of ramshackle buildings when the Great Gate was opened. The slums, every Alice child knew, were full of the destitute people too lazy and worthless to venture further out into the Territory and seek work in mining, farming, producing bio-fuel or doing anything else that would provide their life with at least some meaning. Instead they gathered around the Wall, desperately clinging close to the city. Crowds of deteriorating shacks and rundown huts were crammed against the sides of the road that led to Alice as if the houses themselves were begging passing travelers for money. Lynn had the sense that the entire population of the slums was peeking in through the opening gate, just trying to get a look at what it was like on the Inside.
    Even more off-putting than seeing the slums was smelling them. When the Great Gate was open and the wind was blowing in the right direction the smell from the slums would permeate the city. Lynn had smelled it before, and every time she did she thought that no matter how many times she smelled it she would never get used to it. She didn’t know how anyone could live in the slums with that stench hanging permanently in the air. It was cows, pigs, kangaroos and emus mixed with refuse, smoke, human sweat and the stinging smell of urine. Countless other unrecognizable odors floated in the air, but Lynn thought it was probably best not to know what these were.
    The gate had come to a slow stop, the creaking of wood dying away. The Diggers who stood across the gate’s opening moved to the side, standing in two lines as if they were an honor guard for whatever was about to come through. What did come through, moments later, were the stomping feet of the Holy Order. Lynn instinctively reached out and wrapped her fingers around her father’s hand.
    “It’s all right, kitten,” he said, squeezing her fingers with his own. “They’ll just be bringing in prisoners.”
    Two lines of clergymen entered through the Great Gate, their long red cloaks, each emblazoned with a white cross, flicking around their feet. They marched into Alice as if they owned the city which, Lynn had to admit, they basically did; at least, no one would dare say otherwise. Between the two lines of soldiers came the steady rumble of a bio-truck pulling a wheeled cage. Inside were thirty or forty men and women. Some stood with their hands wrapped around the thick bars, staring out at the people who had gathered to watch, while others sat, leaning against the bars with their heads down, preferring, it seemed, to sink away from the world. All of them were Outsiders, Lynn could tell that just by looking at them; all of them looked worn and ragged. Their faces