by Kolin Wood
The scene reminded Juliana of an airport security point, except the frisking was being carried out by a huge, rough-looking men and not machines. At the foot of each table, scratchily written on assorted boards, the rules of the New Capital were spelled out clearly; they read:
-NO WEAPONS
-NO GRIEF
-NO ENTRY AFTER SUNDOWN
-NO TRADE, NO ENTRY!
Juliana glanced down at herself and shuffled a few more steps forwards. The combat jacket, far too big and covered in dried blood, held her combat knife and the thick journal that she had picked up from the table on her exit from the prison. Beneath that she still wore the smock given to her early on into her kidnapping; it was stiff with dirt and filth. Her mottled, bare legs looked thin and sinewy on account of the lack of regular nutrition, and they stuck from the tops of the large paratrooper boots like pale, white toothpicks. All in all, she had nothing.
The queue moved forwards again and Juliana managed to step a boot onto the steel bridge, its surface slippery from the mud. A scaffold barrier had been erected along either side to stop the people from tumbling over the edge. Being at the side herself, Juliana glanced over.
The smell hit her immediately and caused her to turn her head sharply away. Only once she had covered her nose and mouth with a sleeve from the jacket did she look back. Below, a stinking river of refuse stretched away and underneath them. The open air tunnel had flooded and there was no way of knowing how deep it was. Black bags glistened like hidden gems in the soup. Here and there, various articles of clothing and other recognisable items poked through the surface. On the far side, the side of the New Capital, an old guttering system spewed forth a constant stream of amber fluid that splashed down into the muck that Juliana assumed to be raw sewage. She turned away, glad as the stale sweat of the surrounding crowd once again masked the unwelcome assault on her senses.
It took another ten minutes to clear the bridge, by which time, the sun was nothing but a red shimmer on the sides of the smoke-blackened buildings. A large man pushing a loaded shopping trolley stood impatiently awaiting his turn in front of her, his toes on a dingy white line painted on the bridge.
A whistle rang out from inside the gate and Juliana watched as two of the guards stepped forwards to confer with one another; one of them nodded.
Surely they would not expect us all to stay here overnight until the gates open again in the morning?
As if in answer to her question, both men began to pack away their tables.
She looked around desperately; other than a much older woman stood behind her, everybody else that she could see was male. The idea that she might have to spend the night here on this road, surrounded by a pack of dirty men, gave her a queasy feeling in her belly. Would the sentries look out for them once the gates were closed for the night? She thought not. What would be there incentive?
Without thinking, Juliana stepped around the man in front of her and out into the open space beyond the bridge. The aggrieved man screamed and swiped at her, but held himself back and did not step over the line.
“What the fuck do you think you are doing?” hissed a large guard carrying a collapsible table, who had turned to face the commotion.
Behind him, Juliana saw that the two armed sentries on the gate had also taken notice, and both now had their rifles aimed on her. She cleared her throat and put her hands up in the air.
“Please,” she said as her eyes darted around the small compound looking for a friendly face. “I just want to speak to somebody in charge.’
Everybody in the vicinity had by now stopped what they were doing and were looking on. One of them—a fat man with a huge, overhanging belly—waddled forwards. His face bore an angry grimace and as he neared her she could smell the reek of stale booze on him.
“Is that so?” he said, as his eyes travelled down her, pausing momentarily on her naked legs, before rising back up, seemingly uninterested. “And what could you possibly have to say to me that I would find even the slightest bit interesting.”
Juliana took a small step backwards. Behind her, the man that she had just jumped in front of, slammed his fist down into a waiting palm.
The fat guard coughed and phlegm rattled in his chest, but he did not advance. “Well?” he said.
“I… want to report a crime,” she said, as steadily and as convincingly as she could manage. “There’s this place, a prison, not far; girls were taken there…”
The group around her roared with laughter as a few of the others stepped in for a closer inspection, wondering who the hell this crazy woman was. Soon they circled her, cutting off her entry into the city.
“A crime?” the fat man laughed, holding the sides of his belly which rolled like a water bed. “Why, of course! Just wait there, love, I’ll go and get Inspector Morse from the office.” The comment brought a fresh round of laughing and a back slap from one of the guards stood close by.
Juliana stuck her chin out defiantly, looking at each guard in turn.
“Then maybe your boss will take me more seriously,” she said.
The smile that had been plastered across the fat man’s face fell sharply as the laughter around them died down to a few stray guffaws. Several men whistled and shook their heads.
With a snarl, the man stepped forwards, once again placing himself uncomfortably close to her face. Whereas the eyes had shown a slightly drunken and uncaring glazed look before, they now twinkled; she had certainly got his attention.
“Listen,” he said quietly, causing a few of his comrades to step in closer and angle their heads to the side. “Let me make something perfectly fucking clear to you.”
He put out a pudgy, heavily inked hand, and Juliana twisted to one side in an effort to avoid it. This further enraged him and he grabbed her roughly around the waist, pulling her into his iron embrace.
“Get off me!” Juliana screamed, bringing more laughter from the group.
The man with his toes on the line was now smiling behind her.
Pudgy, moist lips tickled her earlobe.
“The only person that is stopping you from being torn apart by that crowd back there is me. They’ll fuck you every which way to Sunday and when they’ve finished with you, they’ll throw you down there in that river of shit to get fucked some more by those fat rats I seen. Do you understand me, sweetheart?”
The man dropped one hand to her buttocks and squeezed hard, bouncing her up and down against him while sticking out his tongue and pulling a face. At this charade, the crowd laughed again, harder this time, pleased to have the monotony of the day broken at last.
Incensed, Juliana writhed against him, wincing as his fingers pinched at her sensitive skin. With all of her effort, she leaned back so that she could see him and spat into his face. A low hum of pity ran through the people closest.
Furious to the point of losing it now, the man picked her up and began to walk towards the gate.
With her arms pinned by her sides and her body trapped against a huge gut, Juliana began to fear for her life. Maybe she had just made a huge mistake; there was certainly nobody here to help her. These men were as lawless as the boys that she had just escaped from. She twisted and turned in his thickset arms but he held her easily, ignoring the wolf whistles he was now drawing from behind them as he walked.
Once at the gate, the fat man whistled through his teeth. From inside there came a clank. The gate wheels groaned as one side moved slowly open. Another man—this one younger and fitter, with a Fedora hat cocked to one side of his head—nodded with a smile at the fat man as he carried her into the city.
Buildings suddenly crowded them on either side. Juliana could only watch over his shoulder as the other guards from the bridge filed in behind them, their arms laden with tables and confiscated bags of trade. Screaming and yelling began to sound from outside as people vocalised their feelings at the unfairness and their displeasure at the prospect of spending a night out there in the street.
Th
e fat man turned into an alley down the side of a building, granting Juliana her first glimpse of the inside of the new city.
‘Jesus Christ,’ was all she could say to herself.
The entrance gate sat at the top of a slight incline. At the bottom, the road opened up into a huge park. More people than Juliana could ever remember seeing anywhere in London even before the culling were tramping through muddy walkways or crowded into temporary-looking shelters. Smoke billowed from the tops of the tents and barrels set at various points in the mud. The whole scene reminded her of a South African township. Then the walls closed in around her again and the sight was lost.
“Get in there,” the fat man said with a bored sounding tone to his voice as he set her down inside a dark doorway.
He gave her a hard shove in the back and Juliana stumbled into a dark room.
A broken window on one side let in just enough of the dusk light to allow her to assess her surroundings. Her first impression was that it looked to be some kind of store room. Piles of Hessian sacks lined the walls, the smell inside was nutty and not unpleasant, and the floor underfoot was uneven stone. She turned back as she heard the door slam shut behind her, snuffing out even more of the light.
At first, Juliana thought that she was alone, that he had simply locked her in, but then she heard the breathing. It was slow, heavy and purposeful, followed by the sound of clothing rustling by the door.
“Listen,” Juliana said, a hint of desperation flirting with her voice. “I was being serious. There’s this place… a… a prison, not far from here. There’s a guy… he’s got one eye… he keeps girls there, dozens of them.”
The words tumbled out. The smell of booze wafted under her nose, and she saw movement in the darkness directly in front of her. “Please, if you just let me…”
Her words were stolen from her lips as the slap snapped her head to the right. The force of the blow made her stumble backwards and she tumbled onto a pile of sacks behind her. The man’s hands must have been covered in callouses because it felt like she had just been hit with a mallet or piece of stone. Her cheek felt immediately hot and swollen.
A deep laugh in the darkness and the smell of booze cut through the air once again.
Now apparent as to the man’s intentions, Juliana felt rage flow through her like a shot of adrenaline and she embraced it like an old friend. There was no way that she would be treated like that again. Not while she could do anything about it.
A boot came down, depressing part of the sack next to her leg as the man moved in.
With a push from her strongest arm, she twisted away to her left, feeling the whoosh in the air as the huge bulk dropped onto the pile of sacks where she had just a second before been laid out.
“What the…?” the man said, confused. “Where did you go?”
Aware that the opportunity as it presented itself amounted to little more than mere seconds, Juliana pulled the sticky-handled knife from the pocket of her jacket and jumped. Her knees, which she had pointed down under her falling weight connected with something hard and brought a wheezy howl as the breath was knocked from the man’s lungs.
With her free hand, she reached out in the direction that she thought his head would be, grateful as her fingers clenched down on a handful of greasy, sweaty hair. She pushed forwards, using her body weight to force his face into the sack below and muffle any noise.
“Stupid,” she hissed, driving the knife blade down into the middle of his back.
Beneath her, the fat man screamed. Even with his face buried in Hessian, the sound made the hairs on Juliana’s neck stand on end and she glanced back at the door, worried that the sound would carry through onto the street. She twisted the knife and felt her hands go hot and sticky.
The man’s head began to shake back and forth, causing her to lose the grip on his hair as he screamed again. One almighty buck from below and Juliana had to let go of the knife as she was suddenly thrown to the side. The hard stone scraped at her knees painfully as she hit the floor with a jolt, but she was back up on her feet and backing towards the safety of the wall behind within a second of landing.
A loud thump sounded in the darkness opposite and Juliana froze as her hands touched the cold bricks with sticky fingers. She heard scratching and then the sound of cloth being rubbed against cloth. A wheezing breath followed and then… nothing.
Juliana waited in the dark; not daring to move. Outside, the sounds of the city once again permeated the walls and flooded into the room, and she realised that there would have been very little chance that anybody would have heard anything whether the man’s scream had been muffled or not. Still, better to be safe than sorry.
To her right, a light source flickered in a narrow strip on the floor showing her the direction of the door, and she stumbled towards it, searching for the handle.
Just wait one more minute, she thought.
Several people had seen the fat man carry her down the alley, and they would expect him to emerge at some point, probably with a big, perverted smile on his face. She figured, therefore, that there was more risk in staying put. Besides, if somebody had heard anything, then they would surely have been in here by now. Slowly, she pulled the door open with a loud creak.
Outside, the alleyway was quiet and dark. The pungent aroma of urine stung her nose and she winced as she looked first back the way they had come, and then the other way, farther into the alley. The deeper down it went the darker it became, and it was not far before her the limit of her vision ended. A flaming barrel by the entrance to the alley provided the only light as the dull shade of the sky no longer penetrated this deep between the buildings.
It would be too risky to pop out onto the road, such was their proximity to the main gate. Her only option was to venture left, to go farther on in and hope to Christ that it was not a dead end.
With the door propped open, Juliana turned and made her way in the direction that she believed the body of the fat man had fallen on the other side of the room. The flames from the burning barrel did little but give her the very faintest of light to work with, but she soon found the body and knelt down beside it, careful not to get too close.
The man’s hulking form was lying flat out on his front. Where he had landed, one of the bags had split, and assorted packets of food lay scattered around him. The wooden handle of the knife—black with blood—protruded at a slightly uneven angle from the middle of his back. Given its positioning, Juliana guessed that she must have cut, or at the very least hit, his spine.
With a deep breath, she reached out and closed her hand around the knife handle. The already sticky surface now had extra adhesion and she grimaced as she pulled. A squelching sound came from below, but the knife didn’t come free; it was lodged more firmly in him than she thought. With another quick glance back at the door, she stood and hunched over the body, this time gripping the handle with both hands before she heaved again. This time the knife came free suddenly, making her almost lose her balance and stumble backwards. Cursing, she thrust it back into the crusty pocket of the jacket and moved back to the door.
Some men walked past laughing and she ducked back inside momentarily. Who knew what awaited her down the other end of this urine-soaked alleyway? She could only hope that it opened up into somewhere a little more amenable; somewhere that would at least give her the chance to escape into the heart of the city and blend in. Aside from the handful of guards on the gate and a few of the people on the bridge, she was fairly certain that it would be almost impossible to pick her out in a crowd. From what little she had seen over the fat man’s shoulder, it had looked as though there were thousands of people, and not much to order them.
Her mind flicked briefly to her son, and then over to the General. If the demented psychopath had gone anywhere, then he would likely be here. And if he was here, she would find him.
With one final check to the right, Juliana ducked out into the alleyway and turned away from the noise, picking up her pace a
s the darkness closed in around her.
9
A slightly twisted and rusty staircase had been bolted to the side of the two-tier Porta-cabin. It was located to one side of the arena where the General had sat the previous night and watched a man called Tanner destroy a huge gyspy in a no-holds-barred pit fight. A large, angry-looking shepherd dog turned and growled as the pair approached, bearing a set of sharp, brown teeth. The old man, known as Sal, swore, kicking out a muddy boot in its general direction. With its hackles still raised, the dog eventually backed down and slunk away into the darkness under the stairs.
“Ignore the stupid bitch,” Sal said, without looking back, “She won’t do nothing.”
As the two of them made their way up the suspect staircase, the General glanced back. The dog sat watching them. It was the only canine of any sort that the General had seen since the culling, probably because of the scarcity of food—especially meat. This particular dog, however, did not carry much on its scrawny body; it was basically a nasty-looking, walking set of teeth and would probably not be worth the fight.
At the top of the stairs a sturdy-looking, reinforced door opened into a drab office with a filthy, pale blue carpet and insufficient lighting. The room hung thick with smoke and smelled of stale booze. At the far end, behind an overly-grand desk, a large, thick-set man dressed in an impeccable-looking suit lay fully reclined on a high-backed chair, smoking on a thick cigar. He did not look up as they approached, instead blowing a plume of smoke at the ceiling.
Sal stopped a few feet in front of the desk and held out a hand behind him which the General took as an instruction not to approach any closer.
“Boss?” Sal croaked. “I have a man here th—”