The Four Boys of Broomhall

My name is James Jacob Alty. At the time of writing I am forty- seven years of age. I believe this makes me the third oldest man on the face of the planet – though I hope this to be untrue.

I was two days shy of seventeen when the plague hit. By the time I was eighteen the world as we knew it had ceased to exist.

The plague, as I’m sure you know, turned out not to be a plague at all, but a military-funded bio-weapon. A terrorist group bombed one of the old country’s classified military bases and the bio-weapon leaked. I don’t think they knew what they were doing. I hope they didn’t.

I’m sure young folk, “plague babies,” don’t know what on earth I mean when I use old-speak like “bio-weapon” and “classified.” But all know of the plague. We drilled it into plague babies before they could even speak.

It is capable of being transmitted through any bodily fluid. Usually this is a bite, but getting spit, blood, or vomit into an eye or an open wound is just as effective. Always wear protection.

It is able to turn brother against brother, father against daughter—a man into a monster.

I once saw a mother who had sheltered her infant son through the hellish initial two years of the plague. She had dragged him through ghost towns and death fields. She told me she had been through two separate cannibal cities. She would keep him pressed against her breast, having seen what men were capable of, fearful to let another human being near her precious son.

I watched her eat him alive. She tore his limbs off and threw them to the masses, then swallowed him whole. The poor kid didn’t even scream.

But this is not her story. Nor is it mine, or even the story of the plague. This is the story of the four boys from Broomhall. This is the story of the first murder trial since the world ended.

I’ll let you know before we begin, I’m writing from a position of privilege.

I am both a Resident Regional Elder presiding over the case and the principal witness to the ‘alleged’ crime. Unlike the old system, where being a witness would have disqualified me from any judicial involvement, my involvement with the issue was a crucial element in my selection as Elder, one of the few things I prefer about our fledgling legal system. The junior member of a three-man panel, it falls to me to both judge and impartially share what I saw that day. God, I try to remain impartial.

The two boys, though I suppose they’re men now, chose the brightest of them to speak. Thomas Lang was his name, and he spoke on behalf of his deceased brother James Lang and their friend Arnold Venger.

Watching Tom and Arnie climb onto the raised podium of defence, two sallow, gaunt men who wore guilt on their faces like a mask, I felt a pang for the boys I once knew.

Tom had been taller than his brother, but both of them were dwarfed by Arnie. He was a giant of a boy; his skeletal frame reached six feet at only twelve years of age. All three of them were taller than the fourth boy. They used to tease him about it, in that good-natured way we all tease our pals. The quietest one in the group and a tad on the husky side, Lochie Phillips was the fourth wheel those boys needed.

They killed him in 2023.

Broomhall was a prison before the plague, but afterwards its solid walls provided sanctuary for those lucky enough to make it inside.

I arrived in 2017, part of a gang of five who had flown there when it became apparent we couldn’t live forever in the local airport. In 2020, I picked up the brothers and Arnie, along with Arnie’s parents and a few others. It was a mercy mission to a small island chain that we’d been in radio contact with for weeks. The Plagued can’t swim, and the islanders remained relatively unscathed compared to the rest of the world. Their issue had been hunger – and an awful issue it ended up being. I don’t think the boys ever came to terms with how they’d survived. But they had survived.