Omega

Omega Page 24

by Bradley Stoke

  Chapter 24

  Only a furlong from the Art Gallery, Beta and I were at last indisputably in the Suburbs. In the early evening sun it seemed so much the peaceful haven I remembered it, sheltered by the weight of its very presence from the disorder and chaos that had pursued us since the Election. The avenues and streets were lined by a comforting array of lamp-posts and mature trees; the neatly trimmed hedges and lawns guarded by plastic garden gnomes kept a decent distance from the pavement; and television aerials and satellite dishes decorated every roof.

  “I can’t believe the Truth is here!” Beta exclaimed. “I can’t imagine anywhere less likely.”

  This was difficult to dispute. It was, after all, this very assumption which had originally persuaded me to leave the Suburbs and seek the Truth elsewhere. “It is where the Truth is supposed to be though!”

  “Where do you suppose we ought to start looking?” Beta wondered, regarding a cat dozing idly on the doorstep of a semi-detached house. “Should we knock on people’s doors and ask?”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  Song birds tweeted in the tall trees above our heads, and swallows glid through the air. Then we heard a rumbling thundering noise which gradually became louder and louder, heralding a centaur in a jacket, suit and tie, galloping along the road and right past us without pausing to glance. Beta watched him disappear down a road distinguished by a red post box at the corner.

  “What was that?”

  “A commuter returning home,” I surmised.

  “He seemed to be in an awful hurry!” Beta said, frowning. “You don’t think he was running away from something?”

  “Why would he be doing that? This is the Suburbs. Nothing ever happens here. If anything happens it’s somewhere else. Not here. The most dramatic thing to happen here is when a bus is late or there’s a power cut.”

  Beta nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. It seems very quiet, I must admit.”

  We strolled along, occasionally attracting stares from elderly women twitching lace curtains who had probably never seen anyone dressed like Beta in their streets. A pig in a three piece suit wandered by, carrying a newspaper and umbrella in one trotter, and a briefcase in the other. He stared at Beta from the corner of his eye, trying hard to disguise his curiosity.

  Every road seemed much the same as every other, and we were soon lost in a maze of identical streets, cars parked in the drives of semi-detached houses and numbers on the doors, just above the vertical slit of the letter box, for the postmen’s benefit. It was in one street much the same as the others we first saw signs that the Suburbs might not be quite as peaceful as we imagined. A few cars had smashed windscreens and the entrails of radios strewn over the seats and onto the pavement where the doors had been wrenched open. Dustbins were lying on their sides, with cereal packets, empty detergent bottles and discarded newspapers spilling out onto the pavement. We stepped over the rubbish, and past the crystal fragments of a car window. A newspaper raised itself up from the ground in a sudden gust, and billowed against a hedge. The pages divided themselves and scattered their separate ways on the herbaceous borders and heathers of a front lawn.

  “Help me! Help me!” cried a voice from an upstairs window in one of the houses. We glanced up to see a child in a school uniform waving at us. “Call the police! Get help!”

  “What’s wrong?” shouted Beta, standing by the gate.

  “We’ve been attacked! Robbed! It’s horrible! My hands have been tied! I don’t where Mummy and Daddy are!”

  “We’ll help!” said Beta determinedly, pushing open the gate and running up the drive to the front door, which we could see now had been forced open on its hinges.

  I followed her, and into the hallway where clothes were lying scattered about and a picture of a countryside scene had been violently thrown to the ground and broken across the back. An ugly red patch was smeared on the pale floral wallpaper and jagged fragments of a hall mirror lay splintered on the floor. I dashed up the stairs to where Beta was opening doors and looking inside. She disappeared into a bedroom marked by a tiny floral name-plate, and I followed. Inside was the child, her hands tied behind her back, a hanky tied loosely around her throat where it had presumably been used as a gag and a fresh red and blue bruise beginning to swell under her eye. Her face was a mess of tears and her legs were tied together at the ankles and knees by sheets that had been ripped off the bed and torn into strips. The bedroom had all the paraphernalia of childhood - toys, videos, cassettes, clothes and comics - thrown all around the place. The doors of her cupboards were open and boxes of more toys threatened to fall out. A large poster of four young men carrying guitars and signed by each was torn across the middle.

  “It was horrid! Beastly!” sobbed the girl as we undid her bindings. “These horrid people burst into the house while I was watching telly...” She pointed at a screen which had been thrown onto the floor, its wires pulled out and the glass shattered. “They hit me. They threw things around. They destroyed my teddy. Then they tied me up.”

  “Who were they?” Beta asked.

  “I don’t know! They all wore black leather. One was a horrid black hog with horrible horrible big fangs and a black beret. I don’t know where Mummy and Daddy are. Why didn’t they help me? Why didn’t they stop them?”

  “I’ll ring the police!” I announced, doing what I believed was the best thing.

  I strode out of the bedroom into the hallway, wondering where the telephone might be. I pushed open a door on the opposite side of the landing and looked at another ruined bedroom. I saw a telephone sure enough, but smashed to pieces, the bare wire of its leads stretched across the room. This room was ruined just as much as the other. A wardrobe had been pulled over, framed photographs lay shattered about on the carpet and another television was destroyed. I heard a small moan from behind the bed. I strode round to find a middle-aged woman, half of her clothes ripped off, with bloodstains on her bared breast and a nasty gash across her face. Like her daughter, her hands and arms had been tied together, and her mouth was gagged by a silk scarf stuffed into it and trailing over her chin.

  I pulled the scarf out. “Are you all right?” I asked pointlessly, as it was obvious she wasn’t. “Is there anything I can do?”

  The woman looked through me with a wild stare. “They raped me,” she moaned. “They raped me!”

  I bent over to pick her up, but with a sudden spasm of violent energy she angrily pushed herself off. She collapsed back onto the side of the bed, a trickle of blood dripping from a reddened mouth. “They raped me. Raped me. Why? Why?”

  “Can I help in any way?”

  “They raped me. Me! Raped...”

  I backed out of the bedroom. The best course of action was clearly to get help. I ran down the stairs to look for another telephone: there must be more than one! And indeed there was. In the living room, but similarly destroyed and by the sprawled body of a man in a cardigan, slippers and polyester trousers, whose face lay in a puddle of blood studded with small white pebbles which I recognised with shock as being his own teeth. He hadn’t been tied up like his wife and daughter, as presumably there hadn’t been any need. I rushed out of the living room, too frightened to determine whether he was alive, and charged up the staircase to rejoin Beta who was comforting the school-girl.

  “What’s wrong?” Beta asked as I entered. “You look terribly pale.”

  I didn’t know how to answer. The image of the blood on the pile carpet amidst the smashed ornaments and furniture and loose scraps of paper were too clear in my mind. “The phones have been smashed!” I at last said. “We’ll have to use a public telephone!”

  The child nodded her head. “There’s one just round the corner.”

  “We’ll go there,” I said with some determination. “All of us. Together!”

  “Why all of us?” queried Beta with a frown.

  I swallowed the bolus of spittle that was rising in my throat. “It’s better if we all go!” I sa
id with conviction. “We’ll get the police. And an ambulance. They can sort it out.”

  “An ambulance? Why? What’s happened?” Beta asked.

  “We’d better go!” I repeated with urgency. “Now!”

  “I don’t want to go!” said the child. “I want to stay here! With Mummy and Daddy!”

  I felt hopeless in my dilemma, but thankfully Beta assessed the horror of the situation with more clarity than the child. “We’ll come back straight away. Don’t worry! You’ll be alright.”

  Reluctantly, the child agreed, and so we walked out of the house through the scattered ruin of her family’s possessions, past the wreckage of the car and along the road, where we could now see that other houses had been attacked. I felt extremely disorientated. This could not be happening! This was the Suburbs. This was not right.

  Inevitably, we found that the telephone box had been vandalised. The telephone had been wrenched off the wall, the glass windows of the red kiosk were smashed and a pool of loose change was scattered along the edge of the pavement.

  When the child saw the damage she burst into a fresh torrent of tears. “We’ll never get the police! Why did they do it? What are they doing? And where’s Mummy and Daddy?”

  “We’ll find another telephone box,” said Beta soothingly.

  “We won’t! They’ll all be smashed! It’s not fair! I’m going back home! I want my Mummy and Daddy!”

  She then dashed off, her thin white legs flicking back and forth as she ran.

  Beta looked startled. “We ought to chase after her!” she said, staring at me. “She can’t be just abandoned!”

  I couldn’t deny the moral urgency of Beta’s assertion, but I wasn’t at all sure I knew what we could do. I was frightened of returning into the girl’s home where her parents were in such a bloody state. However, I left such thoughts behind me as I dashed after Beta back where we’d come. We ran round the corner of the avenue where her home was, to see her screaming and running off at a tangent down a cul de sac to one side. She was soon out of sight, her sandaled feet pacing along a path between houses, and we saw what had frightened her.

  I had never seen such ugly gargoyles before in my life, and certainly not in the Suburbs. And there were so many of them. Cruel faces, with vicious fangs and horns, wings protruding from the backs of some of them, destroying cars, smashing windows and shouting at each other. Most of the gargoyles were no more than three or four feet high, but one particularly ugly specimen, with the face of an eagle and savage long claws towered high above the others, whooping with joy at the destruction meted about him. Beta and I similarly turned about and dashed down the pathway, marked by a sign featuring the silhouette of a walking man.

  We ran and ran through a maze of paths running alongside and behind the gardens of deceptively peaceful streets, having lost all sight of the child, and now much more concerned about our own safety and survival. At last the paths emerged into another avenue, much the same as the ones we’d left but thankfully lacking in any evidence of vandalism or violence. We paused by a telephone pole, leaned against a garden wall, and panted in short urgent breaths.

  “Who were they?” Beta asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. They don’t come from the Suburbs. They must have come here looking for the Truth.”

  “They don’t look like they were particularly interested in the Truth. Whatever they’re here for, it’s not to find the Truth. The only thing they seemed interested in was destruction!”

  We walked on, unsure which direction to go and in any case totally lost in the grid of streets. It seemed here at least there was nothing to worry about, although when we tried to use a public telephone box to alert the police we found the lines were uncharacteristically dead. I put down the receiver with disgust.

  “Surely, they must know what’s going on!” Beta remarked. “All that couldn’t be going on without the police knowing!”

  My Suburban faith in the police persuaded me to agree with her, although I was troubled that an institution that normally cleared away the evidence of car accidents and suicides in the Suburbs with commendable haste and efficiency should be so absent when most needed. I nodded, and walked along with Beta, squeezing her hand tight as much to comfort myself as her.

  It was then that we saw the figure of the Artist approach us, unsteadily wandering from side to side along a road that was mysteriously free of traffic. As he came closer we could see a bloody gash disfiguring his chin, caked blood on his upper lip beneath his nostrils and his smock badly ripped and revealing much of his hairless chest. When he saw us, he ran his fingers through his blood-soaked hair, and smiled weakly.

  “They set fire to the Art Gallery! They burnt it down! All those masterpieces! All the Biriyanis, Tortellinis and Salamis! Destroyed forever! Unforgivable! Absolutely unforgivable!”

  “Are you alright?” asked Beta with some concern. “We were terribly afraid they might have killed you.”

  The Artist bent his head down and despairingly clasped his forehead in his paint-splattered fingers. “I’m alright. I think. But the Art Gallery is totally destroyed. Everything! Up in smoke! Never to be seen again. The treasures of the nation. A priceless national heritage! Gone forever. Forever!”

  “How did you escape?” I wondered.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know at all. They were distracted I suppose: the vandals. They found something else to do. Perhaps it was some other thing they wanted to destroy. I was just left. On the floor. By the foot of what was left of Pork’s Monument to Eternity. I just lay there, with my tongue on what used to be a tooth.” He opened his mouth to show a gap in the front of his mouth where an incisor should have been. “I was in such pain. There was blood in my mouth. And my eyes. Seeping through my hair. I don’t know where my beret is. I just lay there. I could hear all the destruction. It was horrible! Humiliating! And then I smelt smoke. I didn’t know what it was at first. My nose was so caked with blood I couldn’t smell very well. Then I saw a cloud of smoke waft over the Art Gallery. Then I realised. They were burning down the Art Gallery. Not content with what they’d done to the contents, they were destroying the entire flipping edifice.”

  “But you’re alright,” said Beta soothingly. “You’re alive. They didn’t kill you.”

  “I wish they had. My life is nothing now. Much of my own work must have been destroyed in the fire. I got up. There were still globules of blood dripping on the floor in front of me. But I got up. Somehow. I couldn’t stand very well. I had ... I have such a horrible headache. But I crawled through the gallery. I don’t know how. Over all the ruins of great Art. The Culture. The essence of civilisation. And then out of the Art Gallery. I saw flames behind me. Yellow, red, black flames. And smoke. But I got out. And then I ran and ran.”

  “Were many Illicit Party people there?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t look. There might have been. If they were, they weren’t interested in me any more. I just ran and ran. And then I just fell on the grass and lay there. I was sick. So sick. I just lay in blood and vomit, with the smell of smoke from the Art Gallery. It billowed out of the entrance. Consuming irreplaceable classics. My own Untitled No. 24. My own Esoterica Divined. Even my Omega Psi: Surrender. All destroyed! Consumed by fire, now only a memory and never to be seen again!

  “As I lay there consumed by misery and despair, I felt someone’s hands on my back. I drew back, thinking it was another Illicit bastard. Or worse. But it was a centauress. She had come from the Country and had galloped to the Art Gallery for shelter. She was very concerned about me, and wiped off some of the blood from my face with a handkerchief. She knelt down beside me and told me why she’d been running away from the Country. There had been a fire in the forest where she’d lived, and she’d fled from it. She was very worried that her home might have been burnt down in the flames, but it was too perilous for her to return.”

  “That must have been the fire we saw!” Beta exclaimed. “Did she know what
had caused it?”

  “She didn’t say. All she knew was that there had been a fire. But she said that she had seen many many of these people, Illicit Party, Black Party, and others who were not in any political grouping. There were dragons, wyverns, gargoyles, minotaurs, all sorts rampaging through the Country. People she had never seen before. She had no idea where they came from, but she told me that it was certain that they were en route to the Suburbs on this damnable quest for the Truth. She was terribly worried for the health of her foals who had been at school during the fire. She had no idea where she might find them, as their school is a long way from her home. Schools are scattered about thinly in the Country, and they travel there each day by bus. She said she had seen hundreds of these monsters and political activists descending on the Suburbs from all directions. They’re all converging here and causing havoc wherever they go.”

  “Did she actually see any evidence of this?” I wondered.

  “Oh yes! Yes, she had. Although she said that what they had done to the Art Gallery was the worst she’d seen. I looked back at the building where flames were bursting through the windows and yet there was no fire service to extinguish it. Where were they? What’s happened? Has totally lawlessness, anarchy and chaos descended on this land?”

  I reflected on the destruction we had just seen and had to agree that that was exactly what had happened.

  “Even here? In the Suburbs? How can this be?” the Artist bewailed. “The centauress said she had seen houses ransacked, farms attacked by gangs of grotesque monsters who were devouring all the livestock. She saw a pack of manticores attack a herd of sheep and tear them apart limb from limb. A smilodon was tearing at the throat of a young mastodon. And she even saw a tyrannosaurus swallow a pig whole in a few short gulps. She was understandably worried about her family and, of course, herself. Normally centaurs have no natural enemies except alcohol and mange, but even they can’t cope with carnosaurs or dragons.”

  “Nor can anyone else!” Beta said, with a shiver.

  “The centauress had galloped a long way before she came to the Art Gallery. She said she had no idea where she ought to go. Everywhere was full of gangs of these people. Not all of them were violent, she said. Some were like pilgrims looking for the Truth as if they were heading for Mecca. There were people of all sorts. Some from the City. Some from all over the Country. Many, of course, came by car or van, and there were dreadful traffic jams on the Country’s roads which are really not designed for that kind of volume.”

  The Artist paused, and wiped his nose from which a fresh trickle of blood was emerging. He glanced quizzically at the red stain on the back of his hand. “The centauress was no doctor. She really couldn’t do more than talk to me. And then she galloped off. Probably back to the Country. I decided to come to the Suburbs. This seemed the safest possible place to come. But before she left, she told me more about the foul things she had seen.”

  “What sort of things?” I wondered.

  “Like this car she saw being attacked in a village. It was an enormous car. Totally unsuited for Country roads. How it had ever got there, she couldn’t say. Perhaps with so much traffic on the roads and all the police diversions it had simply got lost. All these Black Party people... At least I think they were Black Party from how she described them. All dressed in black leather, she said. They were all piling on top of the car. They were shaking the vehicle from side to side. And then the people inside got out. There was a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros and some others she said...”

  “I think we know the car you mean!” Beta remarked. “Was there a dog as well and a fat man?”

  The Artist frowned. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I can’t remember whether she mentioned any other people. But it’s not often you see such large pachyderms driving around in the Country. Most cars aren’t big enough! But I remember she said there was a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros. And they were probably foreigners too, she said. They didn’t seem at all sure what to do. Anyway, she didn’t say very much. She simply said she had seen them come out of the car and try to fight off the vicious leopards and coyotes who were besieging it. Of course, that wasn’t too difficult for big animals like them. At least not individually. And then she saw two allosauruses appear and the fight was a lot less even. The car was totally destroyed. I think she said that the people attacking it just pulled it completely to pieces.”

  “And what happened to Wilma and Wayne? The two people in the car?” Beta asked anxiously.

  “I don’t know. The centauress didn’t say. Perhaps she didn’t know. They may have got away for all I know. But without their car: that’s for certain!”

  We mused on the news for a few moments. Beta was clearly very upset by it, and squeezed my arm tightly to her side. “How can there be so many horrible things happening in one day? What’s happening?”

  The Artist sat down by the side of a wall, behind which could be seen the twitching curtain of a nervous occupant, distressed either by the sight of the Artist’s wounds or the fear that he might inconveniently demand assistance. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I’ve stood at a bus stop for ages waiting for a bus, but none arrived. I don’t know how I can find my way home. And I am trepidatious regarding any encounter with these monsters that have been unleashed into our midst.”

  We sat by the Artist who had become uncharacteristically silent, while nursing the unpleasant gash on his forehead.

  Beta squeezed my hand. “All these horrible horrible things!”

  While we sat there, we saw another familiar figure approach us, carrying a baby in a kind of pouch around her chest. It was Una walking along the street, looking nervously from side to side as if expecting to see some more horrors emerge. Beta stood up and walked into the middle of the empty road waving her arms from side to side. Una saw us, waved back and without increasing her stride headed towards us.

  “How are you? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you still recuperating at the Embassy?”

  Una looked sadly into Beta’s eyes, clutching her baby close to her breast. “I thought the Suburbs might be the place to come. Everyone else is coming here. They might be coming to find the Truth, but I thought I might come here, find a job, find somewhere to live, start a new life for me and my baby.” She was wearing a long dress that was really a little large for her and came almost down to her ankles.

  “How did you get here?” I wondered.

  “Oh, I hitch-hiked. I went to this motorway junction carrying my baby and stuck my thumb out into the road. I didn’t really care where anyone was going, but since most people were going to the Suburbs I thought it was the place to go. I didn’t wait long. Less than half an hour, anyway. A van stopped. It was spray-painted all sorts of colours with lots of slogans on the outside, including ‘THE TRUTH’. There were plenty of young people inside. They weren’t from any particular political party or religious group, though they were mostly sympathetic to the Red Party. They were very glad anyway that they had won the Election. There was a girl with very long hair wearing a colourful thin cotton dress. Another girl with her head shaved wearing only a pair of black leather shorts. A man with short spiky hair, covered in earrings and studs who kept smoking all the time. There was a pig driving who also had ear-rings and a woolly hat over his head. They had heard about the search for the Truth, and decided to join the flow of people heading to the Suburbs.”

  “Why were they doing that?” Beta asked. “I thought it was mostly just Illicit Party people coming here.”

  “Oh, everyone’s coming. Not just Illicit Party. I suppose it’s something that appeals to a lot of different people: the Truth, that is. They said that in different ways they’d each been searching for the Truth already in the City commune they lived in. They’d sought for it through religion, mysticism and meditation with the assistance of gurus and paperbacks. It seemed right to them that they should be in the midst of all the excitement.”

  “And where are they now?” I
asked, looking down the empty street.

  “I don’t know. I lost them. It took a long time to get to the Suburbs. There were a lot of cars on the road. It was a very slow long journey. A number of different vehicles are heading here: carriages, vans, cars, coaches, anything with wheels. I’ve never seen anything like it. When we got here, it was not at all obvious where to go. The pig drove us all around the place. The streets were very full, and almost all of them were full of cars parking in all the available spaces, blocking people’s drives and on the pavement. There were all sorts of people wandering about. Some like the people in the van I was in. Some dressed in Rupert suits. Some in the sort of clothes that people in the Suburbs wear: I suppose they must have been ordinary Suburbanites. And then we saw these horrid monsters loom up in the street ahead of us!”

  “Monsters?” asked Beta.

  “I don’t know what else to call them. Dwarves with faces on their chests. Things a bit like vultures and a bit like rats. Things with long cruel fangs and vicious claws. I’ve never seen things like that before in my life. And neither had the others in the van. These monsters chased after the van, and there really wasn’t space to turn round. The driver reversed the van backwards, but there were cars behind us and we couldn’t go back further. As the monsters approached, they were smashing other cars and really looked very dangerous. I don’t know when the decision was made or whether it was wise, but the doors of the van were thrown open and we all ran out. The pig jumped out as well, but he was suddenly descended on by all these winged monkeys. I didn’t want to look back. All I was interested in was my baby. I didn’t want him to get hurt! I just run and run. Past all the damage that’s been done in the Suburbs and the fires that have been started, and then I got here. It seemed nice and quiet. No cars. No chaos. And I’ve been wandering around here ever since.”

  “But why are you here at all?” Beta asked. “Why aren’t you still in the Embassy?”

  “The Cat Embassy? No. Haven’t you heard the news?”

  “The News?” I asked. “No. Why? What’s happened?”

  “The Cat Kingdom’s being invaded. It started last night. There were rocket attacks on the capital city, Felis, which razed the Royal Palace to the ground and may well have killed the King. The Canine Republics with the assistance of the Illiberal Socialist Republics have declared war on the Cat Kingdom. There are Dogs and others overrunning the country. Mice and Dogs who live in the Kingdom are assisting the invaders. Cats are being slaughtered indiscriminately. It sounds really appalling! When the news broke at the Embassy there was total chaos. All the Embassy staff were running about. They didn’t know what to do. No one really knows what’s happening in the Cat Kingdom. It’s all a horrid mess! There are radio broadcasts from Mice declaring their own republic. And there are uncorroborated reports that the Illiberal Socialist Republics are behind most of the worst violence.”

  “So what did you do?” Beta wondered.

  “I didn’t know what to do when I was first told the news. I hoped that maybe my plight would have made it easier for me. But a Cat came into my room and told me that they were abandoning the building. They’d heard that there was a likelihood that the Embassy might be attacked. In some of the other Cat embassies round the world, especially those in countries who are uncertain in their support for the Cat Kingdom, the embassies had been attacked and burnt to the ground by Dogs and Mice and others who have grudges against Cats. She warned me that it was probably safer for me to leave. The Ambassador had already left and has gone into hiding. She was very worried about her own safety. As she told me, however imperfect the Cat Kingdom and its King might have been, it had at least represented an internationally recognised force sympathetic to the Feline cause. She was frightened that the Feline diaspora would begin again. She was at least grateful that she wasn’t living in the Cat Kingdom.

  “That’s why I left the Embassy, while all the Cats and the staff were shredding papers and erasing computer disks. There was an awful amount of panic amongst the staff, many of whom had already abandoned the building, and those left were worried about their jobs and probably their very lives. I was given this dress to wear - it was the best fit they could find - and this pouch for my baby, and then I had to go into the street again. It wasn’t easy. I had to make my way through a crowd of desperate-looking Cats who were pressed against the gates and clamouring for information and advice, and some Mice and Dogs who were shouting abuse and throwing beer cans and stones at the Embassy and at the Cats. I was terribly frightened for my baby. I clutched him so close to my breast I thought he might suffocate.”

  “And that’s why you decided to come to the Suburbs?” Beta surmised.

  “Exactly. Where else could I go? The City’s totally failed me. I can’t return to Unity. I thought a borough famous for its peace, calm and stability was by far the best place to come. I’m not in the slightest bit interested in finding the Truth.”

  The Artist coughed weakly. His hand was cupped over the wound on his cheek which had started to seep a small trickle of blood. “I ought to be taken to a hospital,” he remarked softly. “I could get lockjaw or gangrene if I’m untreated.”

  “Of course you should!” said Beta with alarm. “We should have thought.” She glanced at me. “Where shall we go?”

  I shrugged a shoulder helplessly. “I don’t know. This part of the Suburbs is as unknown to me as it is to you.”

  “Well, we’ll have to go somewhere,” said Beta determinedly.

  Una pointed back in the direction she’d come: “There’s some shops and a post office I passed on the way here. Perhaps there’ll be a hospital or something near there.”

  I nodded. “It’s possible.”

  On that flimsy advice, we walked in the direction Una indicated, under a sky that was gradually filling with the first substantial clouds I had seen for several days, but occasionally let our shadows stretch to our side as we walked. Beta looked at Una’s baby who was fortunately fast asleep and wholly unaware of his surroundings.

  “Were there any awful things happening in the City like we’ve seen and heard about here in the Suburbs?” she asked.

  Una stroked her baby’s head and reflected. “Not as bad as here, I think. Not as far as I know, anyway. I think everyone’s been leaving the City and coming here. Mind you, when I left the Ambassadorial district, I did pass by the Academy and there seemed to be some trouble there.”

  “What sort of trouble?” I asked. “Like at the Art Gallery?”

  “Art Gallery?”

  “It’s been ransacked, firebombed, vandalised, ruined!” the Artist bewailed. “Masterpieces lost forever! A cultural heritage in smoke!”

  “No, not as bad as that!” Una said with some concern. “Did they really do all that to the Art Gallery?”

  “And worse!” emphasised the Artist.

  Una raised her eyes in horror, but restrained herself to an account of what she’d seen of the Academy. “There was a demonstration outside. All sorts of people. Some throwing stones and books at the building. The police were guarding it, in riot gear. They were obviously prepared for things to get very disagreeable. Some academics were being led out of the building, their heads down and with police plastic shields over them to protect them from the missiles. I don’t know why they were being attacked like that. Perhaps it was for their political views. I heard that a lot of academics came out openly on one side or another of the political spectrum during the Election. Perhaps that’s what was upsetting the demonstrators. I didn’t really want to find out more. I just headed for the nearest motorway junction.”

  The way ahead soon lost the deceptive calm we’d been enjoying. The road became full of disconsolately wandering people, carrying bags and suitcases, while all around them were the battered ruins of abandoned cars and vans. Most of the houses remained intact, although they had broken windows, damaged hedges and garbage spilt over their drives. Some of the houses, however, had suffered considerably worse than others: trails of
smoke still rising through blackened and charred roofs and smashed possessions scattered over neatly mown lawns and tangling in the geraniums in the flower beds.

  There was no particular direction in which the mass of people were heading. Some were wandering towards us. Some in the same direction as us. Some had abandoned any pretence of going anywhere at all, and sat in huddled groups on their luggage by the roadside, their eyes wide open and their faces pale in disbelief and shock. Beta grabbed both my hand and that of Una, who seemed as much in need of comfort as either of us. We soon came to the grounds of a community centre, in comforting red brick and white painted railings. It hadn’t escaped unscathed from the violence and destruction: many windows were smashed, a van marked Suburbs Community Project was lying on its side, wheels still spinning in the breeze which had noticeably picked up strength, and the walls were sprayed with graffiti which, amongst other things, declared that this was a Black Party Republic.

  In the grounds of the community centre was a huddled mass of dispossessed and miserable, sitting in groups on the grass, with cups of hot tea grasped in their hands and many with blankets around their shoulders. Presiding over all of this misery was the bearded gentleman whom we had met the day before in the City and who had advised us to come to the Suburbs in our pursuit of the Truth. He looked up when he saw us, and strode towards us over the legs of the homeless Suburbanites and their children. He handed the stack of paper cups and the tea urn he was carrying to a centaur who was helping him in his charitable work.

  “Oh dear me! Dear me!” he said with sympathy, looking at the Artist and Una. “What a nasty gash! And such a helpless baby! Come inside the both of you!” He indicated the entrance to the community centre where a nurse was standing by a piglet who was playing with the remnants of a Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted sign. He put his arms around both Una and the Artist, and eased them in that direction.

  Before leaving, he smiled at us again with his infectious smile. “I’m so glad you were able to bring these poor unfortunates here. There are so many victims of this quest for the Truth. So many who’ve lost their homes or been maliciously and randomly attacked! I just hope that I can be of some small assistance to them in this their most urgent hour of need. I take it that you have come here to pursue your great idealistic quest.”

  Beta nodded. “But it seems so irrelevant now with all the awful things that are happening here. There hardly seems any point now to looking for the Truth any more.”

  The gentleman nodded, still smiling but with a concerned frown on his face. “I doubt that very many of those supposedly seeking the Truth are really here for any other purpose than to cause mischief. And a mischief which is inflicting so many casualties! But your pursuit of the Truth is an altogether more noble endeavour. It is not my place to advise you to do anything, but do not be unnecessarily disheartened by those who pervert a worthwhile cause. If it is something worth doing, then it is worth continuing despite the evils visited on so many in its name.”

  With that the gentleman led the Artist, Una and her baby up the small concrete staircase to the community centre entrance, where the nurse took the Artist from him and scrutinised his cheek with professional care and attention. They then disappeared inside the building, leaving us by the kerbside in front of several hundred miserable people, many in distressing silence broken by the muffled tears of the younger children.

  In amongst all the people were others who were wandering amongst them, doling out comfort, sympathy and practical help. The centaur was bending down awkwardly to pass down cups of tea, a small dragon was distributing sleeping bags and a woman in denim shorts and tee-shirt was doing much the same with heavy grey woollen blankets. She saw us, and wandered towards us. It was the Actress whom we’d met in the City, sweating profusely from her exertions and with a dirty smudge across a cheek.

  “Well! Fancy meeting you here!” she said, grinning broadly. “Well, not that surprising, I suppose, knowing about your search for the Truth. I don’t suppose you’ve found it yet, have you?”

  I shook my head. “We’ve not really given much thought to it since we arrived.”

  “Pity. It might end all this flipping senseless violence if someone were to find it! But I don’t blame you for not thinking about it much. It’s flipping grotesque, what’s happening here. You wouldn’t believe that the General Election would result in so much blooming chaos. It’s a real crisis. I wonder if the government has yet declared a State of Emergency. They blinking well ought to! Look at all this! It’s flipping disgusting, that’s what it is!”

  She turned around to view the people huddled on the grass.

  “These aren’t the worst cases. They’re all inside. Babies and children orphaned. People nearly dead from the vicious attacks they’ve suffered. Some people who’ve been nearly burned alive. Some who have lost their minds totally. That Rupert bastard certainly was inspired when he directed his thuggish followers to come to the Suburbs. The place is utterly unprepared and incapable of handling this kind of chaos. I didn’t believe it was nearly as bad as this when I heard about in on the News, but then you don’t do you? You hear of all these flipping awful things that happen in the world, but until you actually see it, you just don’t flipping know the half of it.”

  “Why are you here?” Beta wondered. “Shouldn’t you be performing in the theatre?”

  “In The Lion of Naples? I suppose I would if I could. My theatrical career does usually come first, I must admit. But all the theatres are closed down, those that survived the fire-bombing yesterday, that is. I think only the cinemas are open, and not all of those. No, I saw the news about all the awful things that are happening in the Suburbs and immediately volunteered to help. It’s only right, isn’t it? I can’t claim to be a socialist if I’m not prepared to help my fellow compatriot when I can. And anyway, I’d never been to the Suburbs before. From what I’ve seen of it, it can’t always be like this. Most of the time, it must be jolly peaceful. Dead, in fact. And now look at it! Blinking awful!”

  She stared across at the ruined semi-detached houses, the church with the weather-vane dropping by a wire down its steeple, the shops with smashed windows and mostly totally gutted of its stock, the shells of previously well-polished automobiles and the garbage and rubbish being blown by the strengthening wind over the road. The evening sun was hidden behind the darkening clouds, and no electric lights shone from the windows of the surrounding houses.

  “Are the Suburbs the only place which has suffered?” I wondered, feeling for the desolation that marked my home.

  “Mostly yes, I believe. Mind you, it’s only what I’ve seen on television and heard on the radio. Most of the worst of it is here. But there are other places that have got it quite bad. There’s been an eruption of gang violence in some of the poorer parts of the City, for instance. That’s not too unusual, of course. It has to be jolly bad for that kind of thing to be newsworthy, and with all this happening in the Suburbs and that invasion in the Cat Kingdom, it must be absolutely dreadful for it to even warrant a small mention. There are pitched battles between gangs of youths of different political and cultural affiliations all over the place. Housing estates have been burnt down, schools ransacked, shops looted. All that sort of thing. Almost normal in some parts of the City, I suppose. It’s just the scale of it that’s unusual. People have been machine-gunned. Grenades have been thrown. It really does sound gross. And I daresay it’d be worse still, if so many people from the City hadn’t left and headed here to the Suburbs.”

  “Are there very many people from the City here?” I asked.

  “Not just the City, of course, but since more people live in the City than in the rest of the country put together, I suppose, yes, there must be. Some areas of the City are apparently almost like ghost towns; so many people have left for here. Particularly those parts of the City where the Illicit Party is particularly powerful. Inevitable I suppose, given that bastard Rupert’s call for all his followers to come here. Alt
hough, as you probably have already noticed, there are a lot of people here who have absolutely nothing to do with the Illicit Party, supposedly looking for the Truth...”

  “Yes,” agreed Beta. “We’ve seen some very strange people. Monsters, gargoyles, all sorts. I’ve never seen people like that before!”

  “I don’t know where they’ve come from,” mused the Actress. “I’ve not seen them myself, but I’ve heard about them from these poor blinking unfortunate survivors. They really do sound like something out of the ordinary, don’t they?”

  The Actress looked back at her wards, and then glanced down at the blankets over her arm. She puffed some air through her cheeks. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you. But I’ve got work to get on with! Best of luck with your quest.”

  With that, she turned round and waded back through the kneeling and sitting crowds of Suburbanites distributing blankets to those who seemed most at need. Beta looked at me, with a troubled frown. She ran her fingers through her hair to clear it off her face, and pushed it over her shoulders. “I suppose we ought to carry on with our search?” she said with a faint hint of doubt.

  I shared her doubt, but I couldn’t think of any real alternative. I nodded, gently squeezed her hand, and then we walked away from the community centre in the direction which seemed least damaged and vandalised. The crowds of people gradually thinned. Families carrying their baggage trudged by, looking neither left nor right, immersed in their own misery. It was probably best that they kept their eyes distracted from the ruins of homes and motor vehicles they were passing by.

  Some people just stood or sat by the roadside, abandoning any pretence of going somewhere. It was by a bus shelter, on the plastic seats provided, that we saw another familiar figure, still naked but shivering in the cooler evening air and with a distinct blueness about her shaved head.

  “Xenana!” exclaimed Beta, running up to her childhood friend. “Xenana! What are you doing here?”

  A brief gap in the deepening cloud let in a shaft of weakening sunlight, illuminating a face with smudged mascara and fading lipstick gazing sadly up at us. “I could ask the same of you, Beta,” she said, unable to prevent a smile creeping over her face as the shaft of sunlight disappeared leaving her again in the shadows. “Still with your boyfriend, I see. Did you come here for the fun as well?”

  She laughed haltingly and slightly hysterically.

  “Fun? We didn’t expect any fun!”

  “I did! Or we did, anyway. We thought it’d be fun. Not that it’s been any flipping fun at all!” She laughed bitterly. “We thought: the Suburbs, the Truth, all these thousands of people... Let’s party! We all loaded into this car one of us had. We had some absolutely brilliant drugs, and we drove here in real party mood. Though it was no flipping party getting here. All that traffic! One long blinking traffic jam from the City to the Suburbs.” She laughed again, caught herself and stopped abruptly. “And here we all arrived: all in the mood to party. I’d never been to the Suburbs before. None of us had! We’d no idea what to expect. We thought it’d be at worst boring, at best a good laugh. But it’s turned out to be a real bad trip, and none of us had dropped any blooming acid!”

  As Xenana launched into another badly tuned laugh, Beta sat down next to her friend, and put a comforting arm around her shoulder.

  “Where are your friends, Xenana? Shouldn’t you be with them?”

  “I’d love to be!” she exclaimed with another short bitter laugh. “They’ve got all the flipping drugs, if there’s any left by now! But when we arrived there was just flipping nowhere to park. We crawled around the Suburbs for flipping hours - or what seemed like hours. We were getting really teed off. And then it was a flipping nightmare! I couldn’t believe it!” She laughed again. “Out of flipping nowhere they came! Blinking dozens of them! Two dozen at least! I’d never seen people like them before. Real ugly things they were! Real monsters! Just like you see in flipping nightmares. Horrible horrible faces. Cruel fangs. Enormous claws. And laughing and shouting and cawing. We thought it might’ve been the drugs, at first. This can’t be real! Have you seen these repulsive things?”

  Beta nodded.

  Xenana looked around her hopelessly. “I’ve lost my handbag. The worst of it I’ve also lost my ciggies. And all the reefers I’d rolled for the occasion!” She laughed again in a tone that was dangerously close to crying. “Hamid was the most blitzed. He must have taken something he’d not shared with the rest of us. In retrospect it’s probably a blinking good thing he hadn’t. He got out of the limo in a sort of stoned good-natured way. He stood there in front of all these dreadful things, like as if they were just naughty primary school children. ‘Couldn’t you like let me and my friends like just pass by?’ he said. They looked a bit bemused themselves. They didn’t expect people to talk to them like that. ‘Hey, you guys. You can let us pass, can’t you?’“

  Xenana paused. She wrapped her arms around her as a gust of wind blew by raising Beta’s hair up into the air and rustling through the dark foliage of the hedge behind us. Her eyes were wide open and a dark tear of mascara trailed down her cheek.

  “They didn’t say anything. One of them - a cross between a pig, a horse and a spider - suddenly punched Hamid on the face. From inside the car I saw blood burst out of his nose, and smear down the windscreen as his head slid down. We just screamed. This wasn’t a flipping joke any more! This was no blinking fun! We piled out of the car as fast as we could. I started running and running. I didn’t flipping care about my handbag or my purse or any flipping thing. I just ran and ran! The monsters didn’t stop. One of them grabbed Maria and I could hear her screaming and screaming while I ran. Their scales, feathers and claws made unbearable grating noises just like their hideous cackling laughs.” She let loose a breathless winded bark of a laugh herself. “I don’t know what happened to the others. As I ran all I could hear were the echoes of Maria’s screams. They pierced through the air like the jagged edge of a saw. My stomach was churning, my chest was pounding and I was feeling jolly ill!”

  “But you’re alright now!” Beta said comfortingly.

  “I can still hear Maria’s screams. I can still see Hamid’s crushed nose on the windscreen and all that blood and snot smeared there. It was a bad dream! The worst trip imaginable. But a real one! Not one in the flipping head!”

  Beta sighed. “This has really been a ghastly day!”

  “It has been! Everything bad is happening on one day. I blame the Election. It was alright before! Now, it’s chaos. No flipping fun at all! Why are all the bad things happening at once? The News broadcasts we heard on the radio were jolly depressing: we just had to turn it off and listen to cassettes. The siege of the Academy. The theatres closing down. The war in the Cat Kingdom. There was even the news that the famous businessperson, Lord Arthur, had been shot...”

  “Lord Arthur?” gasped Beta. “Shot? We only saw him yesterday, didn’t we?”

  “You know him, do you?” Xenana asked looking at us both. “Or knew him, I should say. I didn’t know you moved in such illustrious circles! Well, he’s dead now. It wasn’t much of a news story really, coming after all the other things. It seems to be connected with his flipping enormous debts.”

  “How did it happen?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask me for details. I can’t remember everything the flipping newsreader said. It seems that the lion mixed in some dodgy company. Some of his debtors were criminals of some sort. They’re not the sort I suppose to accept it if you tell them you’re flipping skint! They found him lying dead in some disreputable part of the City. He’d been shot, they said, but not before he’d been tortured or something: I don’t know. As I say, he had some jolly dodgy friends!”

  “Tortured!” gasped Beta, wide eyed with disbelief. “Tortured? How was he tortured? Did they say?”

  “Probably. I don’t know. I wasn’t really listening. As I say, it was just one of the many flipping dreadful things happening today. I didn’t know he wa
s a friend of yours’, or I might have listened with more interest!”

  “Well, you can’t stay here forever!” said Beta. “Shall we walk on?”

  Xenana nodded, stood up and accompanied us along the Suburban streets on her absurdly high platform boots. The wind picked up and it was becoming prematurely dark for this early in the evening. A strong gust blew dirt into our faces, and I screwed up my eyes.

  “Uurrgh!” exclaimed Xenana. “What was that?” She glanced at a small drop of moisture that had landed on her arm. “Oh flipping no! It’s not blinking raining, is it?”

  The pavement became speckled with dark spots on its otherwise dry surface. The drops became heavier and larger, and soon the ground was more damp than dry.

  “Oh no! Oh no!” gasped Xenana with horror. “We’re going to get soaked! And I’ve got flipping nothing to put on!”

  I was the only one of us at all covered, but this was totally inadequate as the rain picked up intensity and lashed into our faces. My clothes got more and more damp.

  “Where can we shelter?” I wondered in alarm, seeing all the available dry spaces being crowded out by the bedraggled refugees. Only the especially stoical or too despairing to care stayed in the open air.

  Beta broke into a trot. “We’ve got to find somewhere!” she announced, as Xenana and I tried running in step with her.

  “Perhaps in one of these houses!” suggested Xenana, pointing at the ruined shells of houses on either side of us: gardens scattered with rubbish beaten down by the rain, sodden newspapers pasted to the pavement and water beating against the carcasses of deserted cars. Without waiting for our assent, she dashed down the drive of a house, chosen merely for its proximity, and straight through the splintered timber of its front door. Beta and I veered after her, as the rain became even more intense, battering and bruising us as we ran, and penetrating my sodden clothes.

  We stood in the shelter of the hallway, amongst the detritus of recent destruction, looking through the curtain of rain beating insistently on the driveway, further battering down the broken stalks of flowers bordering the lawn, and dripping off a porch into a sodden puddle on the WELCOME mat. Another gust of wind drove us from the house’s entrance and into its dark, unwelcoming interior. My feet crushed on broken glass and fragments of porcelain scattered around an upturned coat-stand. Beta and Xenana huddled together in the shadows by a smashed doorway, only the whiteness of their skin making them at all visible. I pressed the hall light-switch, but no lights came on. This was probably just as well, I reflected, as I didn’t wish to know whether the dark smears near where a hall mirror had once stood were bloodstains.

  “Your clothes are absolutely saturated!” Beta remarked. “You better take them off to dry!”

  “What here? With Xenana here?”

  “Don’t mind me,” she sniffed. “I can’t imagine you’ve got anything that I’ve not seen before.”

  Beta approached me, carefully treading around the shards of glass, and took my hand. “Shall we sit in the living room? It’s very gloomy, but there’s a sofa.”

  We pushed open the damaged door. Xenana hurriedly leapt onto the sofa which was about the only item of furniture not thrown over, but whose upholstery had a deep gash through which we could see a pale welling of foam. A television set trailed across the room, glass scattered from its smashed screen. A standard lamp was wrenched nearly in half over the remains of an audio system. The keyboard of a home computer lay amongst the fragments of ornaments and books scattered about the floor. A gust of wind blew against the lace curtains which was all that protected the room from the torrential rain beating against the shattered uPVC double-glazing.

  Beta carefully removed my clothes which damply clung to my skin and placed them on a dining room chair around the splinters of a dining table. I sat on an armchair by the wreckage of an array of book-shelves. “I’ll see if I can find a towel,” she said, walking towards the door.

  “You’re not going to blinking walk round the house by yourself!” exclaimed Xenana incredulously. “There’s no saying what you might flipping find!”

  Beta hesitated, and then smiled at me. “We can’t just shiver like this. We might catch pneumonia. I’m sure it’s no more dangerous here than anywhere else. Do you want to come with me, Xenana?”

  Her friend shook her head. She lay back on the sofa and sighed. “Not now! I’ve only just made myself comfortable. Perhaps your boyfriend might be more foolhardy?”

  Beta frowned at me. I was shivering in the cool evening air, the dampness on my skin spreading through my limbs.

  “I don’t think so. We need a towel, and I’m sure I’ll find one.”

  With that she determinedly strode out, leaving me alone with Xenana, who yawned as she sprawled along the contours of the sofa.

  “I can’t be flipping bothered!” confided Xenana, when Beta had gone. “I’d rather just rest. Mind you!” She glanced around at the shattered furniture. “You don’t think there mightn’t be some ciggies left behind. I could flipping kill for a smoke! Perhaps they’ve got some dope!”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” I remarked through my shivers. “Drugs aren’t very popular in the Suburbs.”

  “Tuh! Typical. You Suburbanites aren’t famous for your sense of fun.” She scrutinised the devastation strewn about the room. “Still, I bet there’s absolutely tons of decent stuff here, if we could only take it away with us. I’m sure whoever used to live here wouldn’t flipping miss it. If they’re still alive, that is!”

  “You don’t think they’ve been killed, do you?” I remarked, reflecting on the motionless, blood-stained body of the young girl’s father.

  “After what they flipping did to Maria and Hamid I wouldn’t be at all blinking well surprised. And I bet some of this stuff’s worth a lot. The bits that aren’t broken that is! Perhaps we ought to just take as much as we can.”

  “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “Nothing’s flipping right today, if you ask me. Ah! Here’s our fearless explorer.”

  Beta came in carrying three large towels, one she handed to me and one to Xenana. She rubbed herself down with the last one. “There’s definitely no one here,” she announced. “Whoever did all this damage were very thorough. Every room’s in a terrible state. There are traces of blood in the kitchen, and knives and things thrown all over the place. It’s horrifying.” She glanced upstairs. “There’s a bathroom here. And the water’s still pretty hot. They must have had a full hot water tank before the electricity was cut off.” She rubbed the top of her thighs with the towel, and remarked thoughtfully. “It seems a shame to waste it. I think I’ll have a quick shower. Maybe that’ll wash off some of the horror from all the gruesome things we’ve seen today!”

  “Yes, you do that, Beta,” Xenana agreed. “Just keep the door open so we can warn you if any of those horrid monsters come in!”

  “I’ll have to keep the door open to let some light in. It’s terribly dark. And I’m sure it’s not nightfall for an hour or more. It’s the rain! And it’s still pelting down.”

  We looked at the lace curtains, flapping in the wind, a puddle of water expanding just underneath the window. Beta sighed, and left us for a second time.

  Xenana continued her survey of the room, her eyes becoming more accustomed to the dimness. “You Suburban people are so rich. All this space and furniture. It makes my bedsit look so tiny. They say it’s the City where all the wealth is, but I reckon it must be here in the Suburbs. You Suburbanites commute to the City every day, get paid City incomes but pay far less for anything than I ever have to. This is where the real luxury is. It makes you feel sick!”

  She buried her face in the white towel, rubbing off the last vestiges of make-up into a dark smeary wound. I patted my chest with my towel, discreetly holding most of it over the top of my thighs. Through the sound of beating rain, I distinctly heard another rush of water emanating from the shower.

  “Mind you, I’d never dream of livi
ng in the Suburbs. What sort of flipping life can it be? All these semi-detached houses! All the hedges, lawns and bowling greens: it’s so flipping boring! I’d much rather live in the City. We’ve got everything there! It’s the real world. Not some kind of sleepy backwater. I couldn’t cope with the flipping tedium. I guess that’s why you chose to leave the Suburbs yourself and go to the City. God only knows what possessed you and Beta to leave it again and come back here!”

  She took the towel and pushed it hard against her crotch. “God! That feels flipping better!” She smiled at me. “I know what you’re looking at,” she said lasciviously. “You Suburban people think that nudity and sex are the same thing, don’t you?” She blatantly squeezed her crotch, while grinning at my attempts to avert my gaze. “Not that you get much sex here I imagine. You people just don’t have a sexual appetite at all. Mind you, you’re with Beta now. Is she still a flipping virgin, eh? Or have you had your evil way with her? What about it? Have you had sex with Beta?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “That means yes, doesn’t it? She’s a good looking girl, don’t you think? I don’t know how she managed to keep her chastity for so long! And what about me? I bet you think I look good too. I’ve got a good pair of breasts, haven’t I?” She glanced down at her crotch while idly stroking it. “I’m in full working order, I can tell you.”

  I drew in a deep breath, to suffocate the percussion of my heart, and discreetly piled more of the now damp towel over my groin. Xenana stood up, and sauntered lecherously towards me. “If you like, sweetest, I can show you just how well I’m functioning. I’m sure Beta won’t mind. She’s an open-minded modern ms!”

  I shook my head, feeling sure that she would mind very much. Xenana came right up to me, and placed her hands on my shoulders and looked me directly in the eyes with an expression that was both inviting and unnerving. I stared back, my powers of resistance crumbling like a towering edifice built on sand.

  “Xenana! Just what do you think you’re doing?” suddenly demanded Beta’s voice in a strident burst of wrath. “I only have a shower for a few minutes and you’re already trying to seduce him. You’ve not changed at all, have you! No wonder so many people were pleased when you left the Village!”

  Xenana took her hands off me, and glared angrily at her friend. “Don’t you flipping well preach to me! Don’t impose blinking Village morality on me! I do what I do because I like it, and I don’t blooming care what people might think!”

  “Just keep your hands off him!”

  “I can put my flipping hands wherever I jolly well like!”

  I anxiously stood up, clutching the towel to my middle, and spread out my palm in a conciliatory gesture. “We really mustn’t argue! We’ve got more pressing worries.” I glanced at my clothes, which were still quite damp, and wondered whether to put them back on.

  “He’s right, Xenana!” agreed Beta. “I’m sure you only behaved the way you did because of all the stress we’re under. However, I came back in to say I found plenty of food in the kitchen. We might as well eat it before its goes off!”

  “Food!” Xenana gasped. “Why didn’t you say? I’m famished! Let’s go eat! To the kitchen!”

  “I’ll fetch it in here. I don’t think it’s safe in there with all the knives all over the place. And there are some nasty stains on the fridge.”

  We were soon tucking into the remnants of the larder. Fruit, cakes, biscuits, sandwiches filled with exotic spreads reminiscent of their supposed origins and breakfast cereals smothered in rich full-cream milk. Xenana crammed as much as she could into her mouth, barely pausing between mouthfuls before stuffing her cheeks with more. “I didn’t know I was so (munch!) hungry!” she exclaimed, a dribble of mayonnaise and soy sauce dripping down her chin.

  We rested for a while in the ravaged living room, becoming shadows in the encroaching dark, listening to the rain and wind beating against the house. This became gradually less intense, descending to the tempo of drizzle and finally ceasing altogether. My clothes weren’t fully dry, but I had enough of sitting naked with Beta and Xenana, however naked they were themselves, and was glad to put them on again, shivering in their dampness. Beta wandered to the front door, and stood silhouetted against the dark cloudy sky, dark puddles interspersed along the pavement and streams of rain water gushing in torrents along the gutter towards the grilled openings of the drains, occasionally dividing in its course around scattered obstacles of garbage.

  “I think we ought to look somewhere else,” Beta remarked. “I don’t like the atmosphere here. All the vandalism! It’s distressing.”

  “And what makes you think it’s any better elsewhere?” snapped Xenana, but nonetheless agreeing to leave the house we’d sheltered in for the last few hours and to emerge again into the eerie emptiness and dark of the Suburban streets, unlit by street-lamps, and illuminated by a distant aura of flame. One of the buildings that had been set alight appeared to be a church, although it was too far away to be certain.

  We walked along the Suburban avenues, Beta and I avoiding puddles, but Xenana barely aware of their existence from the heights of her platform soles. There was a general calmness that had descended after the rainstorm, and only the evidence of detritus and destruction to remind us that there was still much to be afraid of. Others were emerging from their shelter, including a family of centaurs and a pig still in his work suit.

  Along the middle of the road, unworried by any likelihood of traffic, of which there was no evidence at all, we saw a strange white figure. As it came closer, it became clear that it was Anna wearing a simple long sleeveless white dress, from neck to ankle, who had now shaved her head rather like Xenana, and wore rather less extravagant platform boots. She saw us, and smiled. Xenana also smiled, although she had never met Anna before. Presumably she recognised a kindred spirit.

  “Still on your search for the Truth, I see!” said Anna, apparently unflustered by the chaos around her.

  “Yes,” I admitted. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “In a way. In a way. I thought it might be interesting. Everyone descending on the Suburbs like this. I hadn’t thought - I don’t suppose anyone thought - it would result in so much grief. It’s really jolly frightening! I’ve seen so much devastation. This really isn’t the Suburbs I was visiting a week ago. Such a short period of time, and so much has changed. But that, I suppose, is how things do change. Everything goes along in its sweet untroubled way and then, - quelle catastrophe! - it all comes tumbling down!”

  “What have you seen while you’ve been in the Suburbs?” I asked.

  “Oh! Many things! So many different depressing things!” Anna remarked, running a hand over her shaved scalp. “I came here alone. I always prefer travelling alone. You see much more that way. More open to opportunity, I guess. It’s been absolutely flipping horrible. I’ve spent most of my time here with a Gryphon I met. I was really jolly frightened of him at first. I thought he might be one of these ghastly monsters that have turned up here. After all, gryphons are a bit like monsters themselves, - composed of bits and pieces of other animals, - but he was a school teacher. Goodness knows why he should be here, but then everybody’s here, so why not him? I imagine he might have flown here. He was in a dreadful state when I met him. Absolutely dreadful!”

  “How was that?” wondered Beta.

  “He’d been in a fight, though it’s a mystery to me why anyone would ever choose to fight with a gryphon. They’re beasts quite capable of looking after themselves. Those beaks and claws! Gracious! Anyway, he’d found these monsters molesting a little girl. Quite grossly, I gathered. Being a school teacher, he felt honour-bound to defend her, but of course these monsters just turned on him. They must have outnumbered him quite badly, because he was very much the worst for it. He’d lost absolutely loads of feathers! He had a nasty cut over one of his eyes. And one of his ears had been very badly cut! But when I met him, he seemed to be recovering well enough.”


  “Where is he now?” I wondered.

  “Oh, I don’t know at all. We met some Illicit Party supporters with guns, and ran for our lives. These people were just shooting at everything and everyone. The Gryphon took off into the sky and flew off - although with all those feathers missing, he really wasn’t flying that well or confidently. But he’d been good company until then. I felt much safer with someone like him as company than I might have done otherwise. As I said, there aren’t many people who’d pick a fight with a gryphon. On the other hand, some of the monsters I’ve seen today are probably more than his equal!”

  “Monsters! What kind of monsters?” asked Xenana.

  “Oh! The usual kind. A few tyrannosaurs. Velociraptors. Dragons. Manticores. And a whole lot I don’t know the names of. Centaurs with the heads of beetles. Things like pigs with wings and enormous horns. An enormous giant with half his body missing walking on tree trunks. The sort of things you have nightmares about, and certainly don’t expect to meet in the Suburbs! Goodness knows what they’re jolly well doing here. My theory is that they’ve been bussed in by the Illicit Party, but some of these brutes just need an excuse, any excuse, to go on an orgy of violence, destruction and death. It really is flipping awful!”

  We turned a corner of the road and wandered down another street much the same as the others. On all sides were ruined homes, shattered cars and dampened-down rubbish. Anna shared Beta’s skill in avoiding puddles, her dress remaining remarkably unstained, which was not a good fortune shared by my dirt-splattered trousers. Xenana chatted to Anna about the City, and they reminisced on places they’d been to and even shared acquaintances. Beta took my hand with a smile, and our wanderings came to seem almost normal and peaceful in the deceptive calm of the dark Suburban streets.

  This calm was very rudely shattered by the sound of repeated bangs followed by shouts and screams. We froze, not at all sure where the sounds were coming from. This was repeated by more bangs which sounded very much like machine gun fire. There then came some running, and more spasmodic bangs, louder and more emphatic. Anna glanced at us with fear and urgency.

  “We better get off the street. No point running away. They’ll only shoot at us if they see us.”

  “Who are they?” Beta asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to find out. Down this drive. Into that house!” Anna indicated a semi-detached house, with a shattered door pulled off its hinges and lying on the drive, behind the high shadow of a hedge cut into the shape of some peculiar birds. We all followed her instructions, and huddled in the doorway while the running, shouting and shooting became louder and more distinct. I glimpsed sparks from a small automatic gun as it sprayed into the street. It was responded to by more gunfire.

  Then figures came running into the street, just shadows in the dark but carrying banners and flags. Over the dark bulk of the hedge, I saw President Chairman Rupert’s face on the white back of a flag with the single word TRUTH emblazoned on it. “Illicit Party!” hissed Anna softly. “Those flipping bastards are everywhere!” Beta gripped my hand tightly and eased me back into the dark recesses of the hallway.

  We didn’t dare look out at the commotion going on in the street, but there was more shouting, more gunfire, some very guttural cries of agony and more frantic running about. We heard a large figure collapse against the hedge and the smashing of glass, whether the window of a house or a car it was impossible to tell. It could not have been very many minutes that we were imprisoned by this alarming soundscape, but every second of it seemed too long. The running, shouting and shooting passed by the house and soon receded into the distance.

  We didn’t emerge for some time after that. There was just too much likelihood that there would be stragglers looking for unarmed people such as ourselves, but eventually, and on a hushed sign from Anna, we crept out into the open air. We gingerly peered over the hedge. It had become calm again. There was a flag lying on the ground, broken in half with the word RUPERT on an otherwise unadorned green background. Its cloth fluttered ferociously in the evening wind, soaking in moisture from the water running by along the gutter.

  “We’d better move on,” Anna said determinedly, pushing open the metal gate to the garden, and cautiously looking up and down the street. Then she stepped back.

  “Oh God!” she exclaimed.

  “What’s wrong?” Xenana asked.

  “Don’t ask! Let’s just leave quickly! And don’t look at the hedge!”

  “The hedge?” Beta asked.

  “Just don’t look!”

  We dashed out into the street and ran down in the direction away from where the Illicitists had gone. Anna’s advice was wasted on me, as my curiosity impelled me to look at the hedge. A pig in black leather clothes was slumped at its foot, a pool of blood seeping from his skull and mixing in the puddles on the pavement. His face had been totally destroyed and grey, spongy mass lay in the sorry mess of his ruined face. A large flick knife was still gripped tightly in his trotter.

  I turned my face away with horror to glimpse another figure I hadn’t noticed before, just by the flag and slumped between two cars. Only his legs and a pool of blood were distinguishable, but I recognised his Rupert suit.

  We soon encountered the silhouetted forms of a body of people gathered by a large range rover that had somehow escaped from all the chaos. At first it was difficult to establish who or what these shadows could belong to, and we approached gingerly. It was possible they might be more Illicitists or even monsters, but as we came closer it was clear that there was nothing at all threatening about them. They were incongruous for the Suburbs, particularly as it would normally be: dressed in finery and ornamentation, no ostentation avoided, and chatting rather noisily and cheerfully. It was as if they were on a day out in the Country, rather than in the midst of the catastrophic annihilation of the Suburbs.

  A pig leaned against the hood of the range rover, holding a champagne glass in a trotter fringed by a lace cuff, a large hat with an ostrich feather dipped over his face. Next to him, sitting on the actual bonnet of the vehicle, and amiably chatting to him, was Zitha whom I’d met at the Eternal Party. Other figures stood by, presumably associated with the other intact vehicles parked around in the dark. The only hint of fear in the company was the presence of two tall gorilla bodyguards clasping small automatic fire-arms, who glared at us suspiciously as we approached, but made no attempt to stop us. They had presumably concluded that we were unlikely to cause trouble.

  One of the partying figures emerged out of the shadows in a tall conical hat, brandishing a cane. It was the Philosopher whom I’d met at Tudor’s house.

  “Well, I never!” he exclaimed. “I’d never have thought it possible. So, you came all the way back to the Suburbs in your pursuit of the Truth. Truly a strange place to come for such a quest. And accompanied by a coterie of charming young ladies.”

  “Hello,” I said in greeting. “Are you also searching for the Truth?”

  “Only inasmuch as it is my habitual pursuit. I have come with these splendid fellows whom I met at a Party to which I was invited. My curiosity was sparked, as indeed was theirs, but we have seen no evidence of the Truth. Not that I really expected to. The Truth is not to be found in such idle tourism. But amongst the frivolity of play can sometimes be found great wisdom. A lighted candle may be found in the darkest shadows. We may not have found the Truth, but I have been much impressed by the folly pursued in your country. It has resulted not in enlightenment but great misery and anarchy.”

  He growled slightly. “However, all is not well with me. I have lost my slave. In all this anarchy and distraction, he has absconded and left me. The last I saw of him was his back as he ran down the dark depths of one of your streets. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

  “No,” I confessed. “I haven’t seen him anywhere.”

  “And your friends? They haven’t seen a runaway slave have they?”

  Anna shook her head. “There have been so many people
running about I wouldn’t know whether they were slaves or whatever.”

  “No matter,” the dog snorted. “I believe the supplier’s warranty may still be valid. But what of you, young man? It is several days now since I met you at the home of my good friend, Tudor.”

  “Tudor!” exclaimed Beta. “Is it the same Tudor I know?”

  I nodded my head. “It is. This gentleman was a guest at Tudor’s castle when I was there.”

  “Do you know Tudor?” asked the Philosopher. “Truly, he has some very sundry friends.”

  “How is he? How has the General Election affected him? Do you know?”

  The Philosopher growled slightly. “Alas, the results have not accorded at all well with his wishes. I haven’t seen him since we met a few days ago, but I have heard about him from people I have met at the Party. There has been a revolt against him by his staff and he has lost a great deal of money in some investments he had made. There’s some connection in his business affairs with those of the late Lord Arthur. When the mighty fall from the heights of a tall tree, they break the branches supporting them.”

  “Revolt?” wondered Beta.

  “Yes,” the Philosopher said. “It’s something to do with the employment legislation that your Red Government intends to institute. It apparently does away with the discrepancies between the different districts. Employees now have considerably more rights than they had before. Tudor wasn’t very happy about it, but his staff have come out in some sort of industrial action. He’s now alone in his castle with no servants to care for him and his material wealth vanishing as more and more businesses collapse in the wake of Lord Arthur’s demise. It seems his affairs were more complex than anyone had imagined! That in itself would have precipitated a crisis on the financial markets, but the additional chaos here in the Suburbs has caused a startling lack of confidence in the stock markets. I’m just happy that I never invested in any of your country’s businesses, otherwise I might also be contemplating suicide now. Never build on a quicksand. It might well be the end of our good friend’s wealth and security: the only glimmer of hope on his horizon being the good news regarding the Cat Kingdom...”

  “Why hello again!” interrupted Zitha, who had spotted us and jumped off the bonnet of the range rover to chat. She was wearing a wax jacket and green wellington boots. Her hair was stuffed inside a chequered cloth cap. “Still looking for the Truth? How jolly! That’s what we’re here for. You haven’t seen it, have you?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But then, we haven’t really been looking very hard. We’ve been more worried about avoiding trouble.”

  “Don’t blame you! Don’t blame you! And there’s a lot of jolly trouble here. We’ve seen some absolutely dreadful things. If it weren’t for our bodyguards I don’t know where we’d be!” She indicated the two gorillas. “Some frightful monsters tried to attack us! Very badly bred! But our bodyguards shot at them - killed one or two I think - and they scattered very sharply. No monster can withstand a cartridge of hot lead. But since we’ve been here, we’ve not seen this flipping Truth at all! And some of our company’s got lost. We don’t know where they’ve got to! One of them was Sir George. You’ve not seen him have you?”

  “Sir George? The giant grasshopper?” asked Anna.

  “The same. Friend of yours, is he? I don’t know where he is! He got jolly upset when the Red Party won the General Election. He just wouldn’t stir for hours. He just sat in the opium room, moaning about how much it would affect his shares. Not that it’s helped my father’s investments any, either. And now we don’t know where he is. He came with us to the Suburbs for the diversion. I don’t think he was bothered about finding the Truth. I take it you’ve not seen him yourselves?”

  We shook our heads. Zitha regarded my companions.

  “Well, you do have some absolutely wonderful friends, I must say! Are you from the City?”

  Xenana nodded her head. “I wish I was there now.”

  “And don’t we all! Coming to the Suburbs has been a ghastly mistake! It’s vile here! No jolly fun at all! I don’t think we’ve got enough ’poo to keep us going for much longer.” She looked at Xenana and Anna approvingly. “Hey. Do you want to stick around? We’ll be setting off soon. You can come with us if you like.”

  “That sounds an excellent idea!” said Anna. “I don’t mind if we do! What do you say? Shall we stay here?”

  Xenana nodded eagerly. “You don’t have anything stronger than champagne, do you? And has anyone got any ciggies? I’m just dying for a puff! I don’t think I’ve ever needed a smoke more in my life!”

  “‘Course we have, my dear! We’ve got everything! And if we’ve not got it here, then we’ll have it back at the Party!”

  Beta and I left Anna and Xenana with the relative security of Zitha and her friends by the range rover, and pursued our quest along the dark forbidding Suburban streets. The sun had fully set, but none of the lamp-posts had come on. Neither were there any lights coming from the houses on either side of the road, although a menacing orange aura emanated from far off. The devastation and chaos meted out in this district surpassed all that we had seen before. Hedges were pulled down, windows and doors were ripped out of the semi-detached houses, cars had been upturned and a trail of water-logged garbage was blown along the streets by the persistently strong gusts of wind.

  I shivered in the evening chill, and grasped Beta’s hand as much for my own comfort as for hers. There were no people wandering about the streets now: it was eerily and uneasily quiet and empty. Occasionally, we passed dark mounds slumped out on the ground which could have been garbage, but could just have easily been people’s bodies. We were disinclined to find out for sure, principally from overwhelming helplessness. What could we do if they were corpses?

  When we heard the sound of clicking mandibles and raised voices, we dashed behind the shadow of a garden wall, in amidst a pile of torn and sodden magazines, with such titles as My Knitting Weekly, New Car Review and The Suburbs Advertiser and Courier. We saw a group of ants and termites, each about two foot long, like those I had seen in Endon. In amongst them was a couple of giant earwigs and buzzing menacingly overhead were a few flies, each as large as myself. They were shouting and bawling at each other, more in a state of drunkenness than organised malice, and those words we caught were more to do with just how drunk they were and how annoyed they were that no pubs were open. The procession took a tortuously long time to pass by, and we were terrified that one of the flies that buzzed backwards and forwards would examine the shadows behind the garden walls and distressed hedges with more attention. A bottle shattered against the windscreen of a car, one ant paused opposite to vomit loudly into the gutter and an empty beer can was thrown over our heads to bounce off the double-glazing of an upstairs window.

  Eventually, the sounds receded enough for Beta and I to re-emerge, which we did with caution, and walked on, keeping to the shadows in case there should be more stragglers. Our caution was justified as we came to the smashed windows and discarded wares of a small row of shops. There was a chaotic mess of broken television sets; scattered, damp and now inedible chocolate bars; neon tubes torn loose from the windows; cans of beans and plastic bottles of washing-up liquid; and torn open cardboard boxes. In amongst all this were two or three ants sitting on the ruins of a freezer drinking from the bottles of cider and wine they had taken from the smashed wreck of an off-license. From their boisterous, incoherent ramblings it was obvious that they were far too drunk to concern themselves with us, but, nonetheless, we crept by stealthily.

  We hadn’t walked very far from these shops until we came to the grounds of a small chapel, where extraordinary damage had been wrought on the small tombstones in the cemetery and the weather-cock, shaped like a pig with large wings, was dangling down the cracked steeple. Whoever had expended their wrath on the building had clearly relished doing so. I spotted a strange cylindrical object lying on one side in one of the deeper puddles left by the downpour. It
was a green top hat now much darker where the water had soaked itself into the fabric.

  “I think I know who that belongs to,” I remarked to Beta.

  “You do?” asked Beta. “Who could that be?”

  “Someone I met a few days ago. Someone that Zitha said was lost in the Suburbs somewhere. Perhaps he’s around here.”

  “Who’s around here?”

  “Sir George. A giant grasshopper.”

  “Oh! Another monster!” exclaimed Beta. “Everything you could ever imagine is loose in the Suburbs. Giant flies! Hideous termites! Did you see those horrid mouths of theirs? Just like shears. And now a giant grasshopper!”

  “He’s a very wealthy businessman. Perhaps we’ll see him here. I hope he’s alright!”

  I wandered off the road, through a great gash torn into the hedge enclosing the church, and searched about the toppled and defaced tombstones. Many had graffiti sprayed over them: some of a political nature, but just as many of a vulgar or obscene character. There had certainly been an exhaustive outbreak of desecration.

  My hope, or more accurately fear, of finding Sir George proved to be true. He was lying in the shadow of a tomb, above which was the statue of an angel’s torso, her wings and head lying in fragments all about the ground, and graffiti reading, amongst other things, BEES SUCK! and RED

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