‘Hey!’ cried the younger Europol agent, pointing to the body. ‘What’s that?’
The older Europol agent reacted first but he made one mistake: instead of reaching for his pistol he took out his baton. Dalby leapt at him and, before the Europol agent had managed to extend his baton, knocked him to the ground. The younger agent turned to help his colleague and so, for a moment, had his back to Tom who, without hesitation, picked up the piece of rock which had caused the accident and smashed it against the back of the sprout’s head. By the time the agent had fallen to the roadway Tom had lifted the rock again and had smashed it onto the older agent’s head. The older man was moving and the rock caught him a glancing blow on the neck and shoulder. But it was enough to make him cry out in pain. Before Tom could hit him again, Dalby had taken the baton and had used it to smash the sprout’s skull.
The fight, if it can be called that, was over in little more than a minute.
‘What the hell do we do now?’ demanded Dalby, who was gasping for breath. He stood up, holding the extendable baton in his right hand and staring down at the two bodies.
‘Grab their guns and batons. Empty their pockets. Make sure you take their notebooks and anything that identifies them,’ said Tom, who was struggling to right the trailer. Once he’d done that he pushed the two dead sprouts who’d been in the trailer back into place and then picked up handfuls of dead rats and threw them on top. Once the layer of rats had begun to cover the bodies he spread them around, to make sure that the sprouts weren’t visible.
‘I’ll get rid of these two,’ he said to Dalby. ‘Wait here.’
‘Shall I take their holsters?’ asked Dalby. ‘What about their flak jackets?’ His body was trembling with the shock of what they had done. His voice was shaking too.
‘Take everything,’ said Tom. ‘Strip them.’ He looked around. There was no one else visible for as far as he could see. The scavengers probably wouldn’t come out until it was dark. Was anyone watching from one of the tower blocks? Possibly. What could they have seen? Nothing much. Tom hated snoopers just as much as he hated sprouts. Possibly more. Everywhere was grey and desolate. There were no trees, of course. They had long since been cut down to provide firewood. There was no colour. No one had money to paint privately owned buildings and EUDCE never painted anything that wasn’t occupied by senior sprouts. Looking around he realised that he even missed the advertising hoardings. He’d hated them when they’d been there. Now he missed them. There were no hoardings because there was no point in advertising. Only EUDCE-approved companies had anything to sell. And they didn’t need to advertise.
What on earth had happened to the world, Tom wondered. How had England come to this? He had seen pictures of Brussels and Strasbourg on the BBC. The sprouts living there enjoyed many luxuries. They had beautiful homes and office buildings, limousines and nine course meals. They flew in aeroplanes and helicopters and had their rubbish bins emptied daily. They wore soft, freshly laundered clothes every day and in the evening they sat in air conditioned rooms where the temperature was kept at a comfortable temperature. Their electricity was provided by a mass of windmills and their supply never broke down.
‘What about money?’ asked Dalby. ‘Should I keep their money?’
‘Yes, keep the money,’ said Tom.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Dalby, anxiously as he realised that Tom was planning to leave.
‘Over there,’ said Tom, nodding towards the block of flats they’d been heading for. He pressed down on the pedals. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he shouted over his shoulder.
Chapter 23
If there had been an Olympic speed record for riding a bicycle while towing a trailer containing two dead bodies and a good many dead rats, Tom would have broken it comfortably.
When he reached the flats he parked the bicycle and rushed up the stairs to the first floor. There wasn’t time to do anything about protecting the bicycle from thieves. He just had to hope that there was no one around to try and steal it. It occurred to him too late that maybe it would have been a good idea to bring one of the guns with him. Or, maybe the taser.
The first floor of the building was deserted apart from a bundle of rags in one corner. It was impossible to see whether there was a human being amidst the rags. Tom headed for the lift doors. As with most buildings occupied by suspects, it had been a long time since the lift had worked and the doors, normally so difficult to prise apart, had been broken open years earlier. They were pulled almost together but it wasn’t difficult to move them apart again. The lift itself had gone years ago. It was, thought Tom, amazing what people would and could steal. What could anyone do with a lift cabin? Take it and turn it into a home perhaps?
The empty shaft had been used as a rubbish dump and stank of rotting and decaying vegetables and animals. Tom raced back down to where his bicycle was parked. Working feverishly he threw the rats out of the trailer and then, one at a time, dragged the two bodies up the stairs to the first floor. Levering open the lift doors he half pushed and half kicked the two bodies into the lift shaft. Then he looked down. He could just make out the fact that there were two bodies down there. But maybe that was because he knew they were there. He didn’t have time to cover them up. He had to get back to where Dalby was waiting. He rushed back down the stairs, threw the dead rats, or most of them, back into the trailer and then cycled back to where he had left Dalby and the two dead sprouts. Sweat was pouring from his forehead and his clothes were soaked.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ demanded a panicking Dalby.
He was holding one of the guns in his left hand and one of the batons in his right. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this.’ The two sprouts were lying naked on the edge of the road. Their clothes were in two untidy piles.
‘Stay calm,’ Tom said to Dalby, although he didn’t feel in the slightest bit calm himself He scooped the rats out of the trailer and threw them onto the roadway. He realised with a certain amount of horror that he no longer felt distaste at the idea of touching dead rats with his bare hands. What was happening to him? ‘It’s nearly over,’ he said. He was exhausted; almost at his limit. ‘Just help me get these two bodies into the trailer. Have you got all their ID?’
In reply Dalby put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a pile of papers.
‘Good,’ said Tom. ‘He pulled at the first of the dead Europol agents but was so exhausted he could hardly move the body. ‘Help me get these two into the trailer.’ His heart was beating furiously. His fear kept him alert and watchful; it protected him. Strangely, his fear was his most powerful asset; his most effective defence.
Chapter 24
Thirty minutes later Tom and Dalby stood on the first floor, looking through the open doors and down the empty lift shaft.
The four bodies they had thrown down the lift shaft were almost invisible in the gloom. Almost but not quite. ‘Go down and stay with the bicycle,’ Tom told Dalby. And while Dalby guarded their valuable transport, Tom collected together armfuls of rubbish which he threw down on top of the bodies until there was nothing visible of the dead sprouts. It seemed unlikely that anyone would find them for a very long time. With any luck at all the bodies would stay until the building was demolished; at which point they would be smashed to pieces and buried under hundreds of tons of rubble.
They left the sprouts’ clothes on the street half a mile away and threw the guns, the tasers and the batons down a drain a mile away. Tom used one of the batons to lever off the grating and then threw everything down into the water below.
‘Shouldn’t we keep these?’ asked Dalby as Tom tossed away the weapons.
‘Tempting,’ agreed Tom. He paused, holding the last gun. ‘But just too risky.’ He dropped it, listened for the splash and then he put back the grating.
He tore the identity papers into pieces and threw them down another drain. They shared the money they had taken. It wasn’t much but it was more than they’d seen for a long, lon
g time.
And then it began to rain: a torrential, monsoon type storm.
Even old-fashioned English weather seemed to have disappeared, along with cricket, crumpets and other manifestations of the oldfashioned English way of life.
This was no shower, not even a rainstorm. The rain came down so fast and so heavily that they were soaked to the skin within seconds.
But somehow it didn’t seem to matter.
Chapter 25
Several hours later, after a bath in hot water (a rare treat in a world where such a luxury could cost as much as a man’s suit but was something of a necessity when a man has been handling human bodies, dead rats and armfuls of garbage all day long) and an extravagant meal of roast potatoes and raw carrots, Tom and Dorothy sat together in their tiny living room.
The potatoes and the carrots had come from the allotment where Tom worked. They were gifts from allotment holders. Most of the people who had allotments grew high production crops – such as beans. Carrots, which were difficult to produce in the exhausted soil, were rare. Tom and Dorothy usually ate the carrots raw to ensure that they got as much of the vitamin content as possible.
‘One of the gardeners at the allotment has some tomato plants growing,’ said Tom. ‘If they produce any fruit he’s promised to give me two – one for each of us.’ If it ever happened it would be a highlight.
Dorothy had lit the wood burning stove and had opened the doors so that they could enjoy the sight of the flames inside. They opened a small bar of fruit and nut chocolate which Dorothy had been given by a grateful client. It was three years past its ‘best before’ date. The chocolate may have tasted a trifle stale but it was such a long time since they’d tasted anything like it that their taste buds had nothing with which to compare it.
Tom’s aunt was asleep in her room and they carefully wrapped her share of the chocolate back in its paper. Dalby and Gladwys, reassured and now too tired (both mentally and physically) to worry overmuch, were in their 16th floor flat.
Tom and Dorothy sipped sherry. It wasn’t a drink either of them was particularly fond of but it was slightly more palatable than potato wine. And Dalby had bought two bottles with some of the money he had taken from the Europol agents. One bottle for each couple.
‘You OK?’ asked Dorothy.
Tom nodded, stretched his legs and grunted. The fire crackled and spat a little.
‘Four more,’ said Dorothy.
‘Four more,’ agreed Tom. ‘Six dead sprouts.’ He had never felt so tired. But he didn’t want to go to bed.
There was a long silence. They both watched the flames flickering in the log burning stove.
‘Taking the money doesn’t seem right.’
‘It worries me more than the killing,’ said Tom. ‘But it’s daft to worry about it. They’re dead. The money would have just gone into the lift shaft if we hadn’t taken it. We need it.’
‘We can certainly use it.’
They watched the flames for a while.
‘I love real fires,’ said Tom. The fire was a necessity but it was, strangely, also one of their few luxuries.
‘Me too.’
They sat and watched but said nothing.
‘Gladwys said she has three friends who are in the same boat as they were,’ said Dorothy at last.
Tom looked across at her.
‘About to have to share their home with strangers.’
‘And she knows one couple who are being deported for not paying their Telescreen licence. They’ll be sent to Africa to work on the grain farms.’
‘There’s a lot of injustice out there.’
‘And a lot of anger.’
They sat and sipped their sherry.
‘It’s a pity Dalby couldn’t get whisky,’ said Tom.
‘Yes. Sherry is a very strange drink isn’t it. It seems like alcohol but...’ Dorothy didn’t finish the sentence.
‘It’s a big but.’
‘Are we going to stop now?’
‘Stop what?’
‘Stop killing sprouts.’
‘You want to kill some more?’
‘It’s the only way we can do anything to change things. Voting doesn’t make any difference. Protesting in the streets doesn’t make any difference...’
‘...and gets you arrested or beaten to death.’
‘There’s a lot of justifiable rage out there. A lot of people are very angry. A lot of people want to do something.’
‘Maybe they just like whingeing. Maybe they’ll moan but not do anything.’
‘Gladwys says she thinks people are ready to stand up and do something. We talked while you and Dalby were out.’
‘Ready to stand up and kill sprouts?’
‘She says she thinks they are.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. But I do know that we don’t have much choice. Do you want to carry on as things are?’
‘No. No, I don’t want to just carry on as things are. But do you really think killing sprouts will change anything?’
‘It might do. It would certainly help keep people sane. It would give people hope. Something positive to do and to fight for.’
‘Then perhaps we’d better organise a meeting.’
‘That’s what Gladwys and I thought.’
‘Oh you did, did you?’
‘We did. Would you like another glass of sherry?’
‘Why not? It’s better than potato wine. And I feel like getting tiddly.’
‘Do you think we can get tiddly on sherry?’
‘I don’t have the foggiest. Let’s find out.’
Tom picked up the bottle and refilled their glasses.
‘Where are we going to hold this meeting?’
‘Not here.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘So, where?’
‘I’ll think of somewhere. But we need to do some serious thinking before we have a meeting.’
‘What about?’
‘Well, for a start we need to find a better way to get rid of the bodies. We can’t go on tossing them down lift shafts or leaving them in hospital corridors.’
‘Someone might see us?’
‘Someone might see us,’ agreed Dorothy. ‘And eventually, someone is going to start finding the bodies. Then even the Europol idiots might begin to suspect that something is going on.’
‘So we need to work out how we can get rid of the bodies. Killing them isn’t difficult, but hiding the bodies is a problem.’
‘Killing them could get more difficult.’
‘Why?’
‘So far, the sprouts haven’t expected to be hit on the head and so it’s been easy to take them by surprise. But we can’t rely on that for ever. Once it becomes known that sprouts are being killed they’ll all get edgy. Even ordinary sprouts will start carrying weapons.’
‘That’s another reason for hiding the bodies so that they aren’t found. If there aren’t any bodies lying around then the authorities may just suspect that the missing sprouts have gone AWOL. They won’t want to start claiming that sprouts are being murdered when they haven’t even got any bodies. They’d look silly.’
Dorothy thought about this. ‘You’re right. We have to find some way to get rid of the bodies without anyone finding them.’
‘I need more thinking juice.’
‘Thinking juice?’
‘Sherry.’
‘Ah. OK. I thought you didn’t like this stuff?’
‘It’s growing on me. Every glass I drink tastes better than the previous one.’
Chapter 26
Sitting back in her reclining leather chair (designed for captains of ships and industry and retailing at a sumptuous 3,000 euros including all taxes) Chief Commissioner Dame Phyllis Stein, Provincial Commissioner for Administration and Protector of the People for Province 17 (formerly known as the United Kingdom and now subdivided into 12 subregions, each with its own Regional Parliament and Regional Commissioner), glowered at the s
prout sitting in front of her (on a far less luxurious chair).
Born in Poland but now loyal to her new homeland, the United States of Europe, Chief Commissioner Stein wore her hair short, as short as a private soldier in the English army of the 1950’s, a haircut that used to be known as a ‘short back and sides’, and was dressed in a heavy-weight wool trouser suit in a chalk stripe with a matching five button waistcoat and a Royal Engineers tie (which she wore because she thought it looked masculine and clubbish). She wore no make-up, not even lipstick or anything to disguise her rather grey, deathly pallor, and she wore no jewellery of any kind. The mannish effect she sought was rather spoilt by her bathukolpian figure which made her look what she was: a short-haired, butch lesbian wearing the sort of suit a man might wear.
She was variously described by those around her as arrogant, conceited and concerned only with her own pleasures and extravagances. It would have been difficult to find anyone prepared to disagree with these judgements in private though no one, of course, would have agreed with them in public. Her enemies thought of her less kindly than this.
Within the Region the Chief Commissioner possessed the sort of power over the English that would have last been enjoyed by a Roman consul. She enjoyed, in the true sense of the word, a considerable reputation for ruthlessness and she ran her region as though it were her personal property. When, during a particularly cold winter spell, an aide had suggested releasing some supplies of logs for junior sprouts and suspects she had cackled with laughter, demoted him two grades (an almost unheard of event) and transferred him to Glasgow. She told everyone she saw that the aide had been having what she called ‘a transient human experience’.
Under her supervision, and with her authority, profligacy and waste had become a purpose instead of an irritating consequence of inattention. (If a man bakes bread every day of his working life then it is reasonable to describe him as a baker; baking bread is what he does. Similarly, if a government wastes money efficiently and with regularity it becomes difficult to argue with the thesis that the primary purpose of the government is just that: to waste money.)
Revolt Page 13