Kzine Issue 13

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  What was it with the goddamn chips tonight? It felt like an omen. A good or bad one, he didn’t know. Maybe there was no real difference either way.

  He lifted the kid up and plonked her on the little sloping seat inside the shelter, then went to check the display: a 174 was due in ten minutes. That’d do.

  “You know the roundabout, don’t you?’ he asked Shannon. ’The big one, with the flyover.’

  She nodded.

  ’After you’ve gone round it, count four stops and get off. Go down the second road on the left, to number fifteen. That’s Auntie Vicky’s house. You ring the bell and you wait there until she lets you in. Got it?”

  Another nod.

  A train had just come in at the station, and a bunch of people spilled out the exit at the top of the slope. Pissed office workers in rumpled suits, pissed teenagers in tight clothes and ridiculous shoes, pissed old men in dirty overcoats. Some yelled nonsense into mobile phones, some stumbled toward the cab office, some to the KFC. The rest joined the pissed crowd already waiting at the bus stop. Friday night in Essex. Good times.

  One of the shouting teenagers suddenly fell silent. He glared at a girl who’d come back from the kebab shop across the road with — of course — a bag of chips. He stumbled, shouldering the side of the shelter. He dropped the phone and looked down at it in surprise, then covered it in vomit as his mates whooped in delight. The chip girl’s lip curled and she slid to the other end of the bench.

  Shannon was studying all this with evident fascination, and Johnny couldn’t help but grin. He knew the feeling. “Kid, if anyone ever gets on at you about being different, about not being normal, you ignore them. Because this? This is what normal looks like.”

  Shannon nodded, serious-faced.

  A bus appeared in the distance, but it was a single-decker. Not the one they wanted. Johnny thought about a cab, but would they take a six-year-old on her own? For some reason, that seemed worse than putting her on a bus.

  For a second, he hesitated. Was he doing the right thing?

  But the question answered itself, didn’t it? The very fact that he didn’t know proved he wasn’t fit to look after a kid.

  It was a funny thing — they wouldn’t give him Helen’s money until they’d been through a fifteen-foot-high pile of red tape and solicitors. But Shannon? Her, they couldn’t chuck at him fast enough. He shook his head. It wasn’t him that was screwed up, it was the world.

  He took off his leather and gave it to Shannon to hold, then sat down next to the chip girl. He bumped her shoulder and gave her a sympathetic, what-are-people-like? grin. She was wearing a sleeveless top, despite the cold, and when their skin briefly connected Johnny scooped up the contempt and disgust still rolling around in her system.

  Chip Girl flashed him a tight, slightly uncomfortable smile and shifted away an inch or so. It didn’t matter: Johnny was a smash and grab expert of long standing, and he’d got what he’d gone in for.

  He used to go mainly for the positives, the highs— satisfaction, excitement, attraction, joy. And there was a market for those, sure. But he’d soon learned that there was an even bigger one for the negatives. The contempt/disgust combo, for instance, was a sure-fire way of wrecking a relationship. And for every customer who wanted to be happy, there were two more who wanted someone else to be miserable.

  Shannon gave Johnny his coat back, letting her fingers brush his arm. Johnny felt her slip in and go rummaging around, then recoil. She blinked hard, her little mouth twisting. Johnny laughed. The kid was a natural at the smash and grab, too. But she’d need to work on her poker face.

  “Don’t give it away like that,” he said. “People won’t know you’ve been in their heads if you don’t react, and they won’t realise there’s anything different about you. Which is good. You don’t want to be normal, but you do want to be able to pass for it. Got it?”

  The kid nodded, but she still looked a little sour, as if she’d eaten something she didn’t like. Good. Maybe it would teach her a lesson.

  He put his coat back on, sat down on the bench and leaned his head against the plastic wall. The smell of chips, heavy with vinegar, was making him hungry. He had a stash of kindness and generosity squirrelled away, so he could use some of that on the girl in the sleeveless top. Get her to share. But kindness and generosity weren’t that easy to come by, and he couldn’t afford to waste any on a bag of chips at a bus stop.

  He watched Shannon swing her legs and blow spit bubbles. She got her looks from her mother, no question— but the other stuff, that came directly from him. Another reason why he should never have had kids.

  He’d been not much younger than Shannon was now when he’d realised that he could do something other people couldn’t. And only a little bit older when he’d realised he could make money out of it.

  He’d done his first job for free, in the school playground — a straightforward switch between the triumph of a bully and the humiliation of a victim. The victim — the customer — had watched the bigger kid crumple and cry, and had loved every second of the experience. Then Johnny had sucked that out and sold it back to him a piece at a time. Always maximise the profits.

  He smiled at the memory, and Shannon gave him a curious glance. Ah, the kid would be fine. Curiosity and good looks took you a long way in this world. That, and never letting your guard down.

  ’“People can be good,” he told her. “I know your mum told you that, and it’s true. They can be. But not many of them, and not for long. And not if it means they lose out on what they want. Remember that, kid. People will always pay for what they want, even if they don’t know what it is. If you do, you’ve got a head start.”

  A bus pulled up and swooshed open its doors. Shannon slid off the bench, but Johnny shook his head. “Not this one.”

  An old man with long greasy hair got on and started trying to blag a free ride with some story about a fault with his Oyster card. The driver was having none of it, and refused to leave with the old man on board. It became a stand-off, a wait to see who’d crack first — whether the blagger would give up and get off, or whether one of the other passengers would step up and pay his fare. The driver turned off the lights, picked up a newspaper and started reading. That was fair enough — he was going to get paid either way. The other people on the lower deck all gradually turned to stare at the old man. They weren’t friendly looks.

  He old man grumbled and cursed, but clearly knew when he was beaten. He got off. The driver folded up his paper, started the engine and shut the doors.

  “Human nature one, altruism nil,” Johnny said.

  A couple of cops wandered out from the station, chatting to themselves. The old man asked Johnny if he had any spare change. His overcoat was ripped and torn, and from the way it was bulked out he must have been wearing every piece of clothing he owned underneath it. No wonder he stank: stale armpits, piss, booze, mould. People should carry condemned signs, like buildings. Sometimes, the rot set in so far there was no way to rescue it. You just had to bring it down.

  He smiled — bad move, with those teeth — and gave Johnny a hopeful nod.

  Hope? Yeah, right. He had less of that to spare than money.

  “Piss off,” Johnny said. He grabbed Shannon and steered her away from the old tramp and the cops, over to the parade of shops behind the bus stop. He turned his back on the street and leaned his head on the window in front of him. It belonged to an estate agent, the display filled with photos of houses. Renovated three bedroom bungalows, newly built homes on sought-after developments, spacious apartments suitable for young professionals.

  The glass was cold and somehow managed, despite its inherently sterile nature, to smell dirty. Or maybe that was Johnny himself. Or life in general.

  He closed his eyes. He was a young professional, wasn’t he? A small business owner of sorts, an entrepreneur. Maybe he could buy one of these apartments. Settle down. Blend in.

  Yeah. Maybe. He turned, looked down the road an
d saw a line of buses waiting at the lights. Too far away to see what they were yet, but one of them should be the 174. The timing was right.

  “Get ready,” he said.

  But when he looked down, the girl was nowhere in sight.

  He checked the shelter, but she hadn’t gone back there. So where was she? Looking in one of the shop windows? The tanning salon, the bagel shop, the KFC? No. Playing in the road? No.

  Something expanded in Johnny’s chest, pushing outward. An unpleasant sensation, as if he’d managed to bruise himself from the inside. He paused to analyse it and came up blank. He didn’t know what it was, which made it worse. He was supposed to know all about feelings — what they were, what they meant, what they could be used for. That was his job.

  Maybe there was too much air in his lungs. He bent over, put his hands on his knees and blew out a long breath. It didn’t help.

  He straightened up again and looked around. Shannon hadn’t reappeared.

  Maybe what he was feeling was relief, the joy of freedom. Excitement and anxiety felt surprisingly similar to the body — it was the brain that decided which was which. If the kid was gone, maybe that meant his role in this was over. Maybe fate had stepped in to take away this responsibility that he never wanted in the first place. Maybe he could forget about it, walk away, get back to his life.

  Maybe.

  He called out Shannon’s name but she didn’t reply, and nobody else paid any attention. People yelling was part of the landscape here. Background noise, like traffic.

  He ran back to the station entrance, his too-big trainers snatching at the raw skin of his heel. He ignored it this time, let it dribble away. There would always be more where that came from. Pain was one thing guaranteed never to run out.

  Inside the station the shops are all shuttered but the lobby was still bright, still busy. Another train must have just come in. People fed their paper tickets into the barrier slots, or slapped Oyster cards on the yellow pads. A few were raucous, but most looked worn out. Johnny felt a sudden, unexpected sympathy. Just keeping going could be exhausting sometimes.

  A stocky man with a beard had a little girl slung over his shoulder, and Johnny took a step closer. But the kid was blonde, and peacefully asleep, and not Shannon.

  “Shit,” he whispered, and headed back to the bus stop. And blinked, because Shannon was sitting on the bench, rhythmically swinging her legs again and digging into a vinegar-stained paper bag full of chips. She gave Johnny a little smile and a greasy-fingered wave.

  Johnny sat down next to her. ’Where did you get those?’

  “The lady policeman,” Shannon said. “I told her you’d given me money for them, but I’d lost it. So she bought them for me.” She forked up another bunch of fat, squishy chips and added, with her mouth full, “She was very nice. She wanted to look after me.”

  Johnny glanced up, but the cops were on the other side of the road now. They didn’t look back. “And she let you go off on your own again? She wasn’t worried?”

  Shannon finished chewing and swallowed. There was salt round her mouth. “She was. But not any more.”

  She grinned and held out the bag of chips. Johnny took one. It was hot and soft and tasted like the best thing he’d ever eaten.

  “And anyway,” Shannon went on. “I’m not on my own, am I? I’m with you.”

  Johnny wondered what to say to that. He was still wondering when the 174 pulled up at the stop. The doors slid open and people started filing through them.

  Shannon’s bare hand slid its way into Johnny’s. Her fingers were warm as she pressed them down hard on his skin. Very warm. But her face was composed and still, as she looked straight ahead. Expressionless. As if she hadn’t even noticed that they were touching.

  “Bus,” she said. All the new passengers were taking their seats, settling themselves in and putting in earphones or folding up umbrellas. The driver was talking into his radio. The doors stayed open.

  Johnny sat still. It was hard, being on your own. Unnatural. Worrying. It would be better, wouldn’t it, if there were two of you? If you had someone to look after? Maybe that was how things were meant to be. Maybe that would be good.

  He’d never thought that was something he wanted, before. But maybe he’d been wrong.

  Shannon held out the bag again. He plucked out another steaming, vinegary chip and popped it into his mouth.

  Johnny and his daughter stayed where they were. After a while the bus doors closed, and it drove away.

  SYLVIA

  by Jackie Bee

  “Prepare to turn right in five hundred feet.”

  “Right my ass,” Marcus murmured, engaging his left blinker.

  “Just do as it says,” Bo said. “We are lost.”

  “No we aren’t.”

  “I told you to take the highway.”

  “Yeah, and hit all the traffic jams? Relax, we’ll be there in a minute.”

  The headlights splashed over the bushes and the trees by the turn, and settled on the dark country road ahead of them.

  “Recalculating route,” the GPS said. “Continue on main road for two miles.”

  Marcus clutched the wheel in his big hands and cast a concerned glance at his companion. “Just relax, okay? We lost them. We made it.”

  “They must have sent a helicopter,” Bo said. “If it spots us, we are done, you get it? I said highway, I said get lost in the traffic, I’ve planned the whole thing! Why on earth would you change plans at the last moment? I swear, it’s the last time we ever— ”

  “Rob a bank together?”

  “Last time we do anything together!”

  Bo pressed his forehead to the window, watching the shades and shapes of the night forest passing by. They’d lost the last police car about half an hour ago, but he was still waiting for something to go wrong. It had been too easy for the first timers they were.

  “Come on,” Marcus said. “You’ve planned it well. Now let me do my part, okay?”

  “Prepare to turn right in eight hundred feet,” the GPS intervened.

  “If you don’t listen to this shit, switch it off,” Bo snapped.

  “Don’t call her that.”

  “What should I call her?”

  “Sylvia.”

  Bo rolled his eyes. “Just to let you know, naming a GPS after your ex is pathetic.”

  “Why, it’s actually fun,” Marcus said, drumming his fingers on the wheel. “She says right, I turn left. She thinks she knows better, like the real one did, but I show her who’s the boss.”

  Bo stared at him. “Do you even realize how crazy that sounds?”

  “I’m not doing it now, of course,” Marcus said. “I’m not fooling around, I just know a better way than the one she wants.”

  “Recalculating route,” Sylvia said in her soft voice. “Prepare to turn right in three hundred feet.”

  “She wants that new road, I’m telling you,” Marcus said. “We’ll take the old one around the hills. Just relax.”

  “I’ll relax when I see that freaking house and lock the door and lay low while they are looking for us.”

  “Almost there,” Marcus assured him, turning the wheel.

  Bo let out a long sigh and buried his face in his hands, feeling that maybe he was too much of a nerd for all this unhealthy excitement. Not nerdy enough to invent a new social network or something, that’s for sure, only enough to study dozens of crime movies and books and transform the acquired knowledge into a perfect robbery plan. Still, he knew very well that in life, just like in software he’d been writing at work, even the seemingly perfect solutions could surprise with nasty bugs.

  Marcus, in his turn, wasn’t bothered by such possibility. Bo’s neighbor and friend since age six, he now worked in a garage, and was upset only by his income being lower than what he thought he deserved. After years of hanging out together, their roles were well defined: Bo came up with ideas, while Marcus was always ready to contribute to their execution.

&n
bsp; “Turn left at the light,” Sylvia said.

  “What light?” Marcus wondered.

  The road before them looked as dark and empty as before, though not as straight now it was circling the hill.

  “That’s it, you’ve broken it.” Bo placed his hands behind his head and glimpsed at his companion not without satisfaction.

  “Stop the car at the next intersection,” Sylvia said indifferently.

  The road stretched out ahead of them, dark trees on both sides barely visible on the periphery of their headlights.

  “Turn it off,” Bo said. “There’s too much going on without a fucked-up GPS.”

  “Stop by a tree and take a nap,” Sylvia said.

  Both men glanced at each other, then at the small, brightly lit device attached to their windshield. Bo leaned forward to examine it closely.

  “Since when are they programmed to say such things?”

  “You tell me,” Marcus said. “You’re the computer guy.”

  “Stop by a tree and take a piss,” Sylvia proposed.

  Bo frowned. “Anything else to do by the tree?”

  “Stop by a tree and hang yourself,” Sylvia replied readily.

  “Turn it off,” Bo said after a stunned pause. “Seriously, man, it gives me the creeps.”

  Marcus shot a quick glance at the navigator. “You do it. I’m driving.”

  “But it’s yours!”

  “Are you afraid to touch it?”

  “Just turn it off!”

  Sylvia paused, and then proceeded to shoot the words out like an automatic gun, fast and indifferent:

  “Leave sooner, drive slower, live longer. Normal speed meets every need. Alert today, alive tomorrow.”

  “Holy shit! It speaks in slogans now!” Bo reached for the GPS, but it went quiet, and he stopped his hand in the air.

  It was quiet for a while, and Bo had started to lower his hand when Sylvia spoke again.

  “Turn left,” she said, and then the monotone road in front of them suddenly unwrapped into a t-shaped intersection.

  “Shit!” Marcus swung the wheel right, barely negotiating the corner, and smashed into the orange road safety barriers blocking the road.