All The Lonely People

by David Owen

  Although it was only mid-morning, it was already busy. A ragged queue trailed from a row of tables. Other people sat on plastic chairs lined against the walls. Before she joined the queue, Mum carefully scanned the room, apparently deciding the coast was clear.

  ‘They’re taking Evie to the zoo today,’ said Mum as they waited their turn.

  ‘Who’s paying?’

  She gave him a knowing look. ‘They said it was their treat.’

  Every other Saturday, Evie spent the day with a friend she had made at nursery. Their family said they were glad to have her, and they usually just played at their house. Sometimes they took them out on more expensive trips, and it was always their treat. Evie would come home raving about it, a new toy clutched in her arms, before settling in for another long two weeks stuck at home. Wesley was glad she could have those experiences, but he wished it was he that could provide them.

  ‘You can’t tell Dave about this, okay?’ said Mum.

  Wesley blinked, taken by surprise. It hadn’t even occurred to him. He wasn’t in the habit of telling anybody about the food bank. ‘He must know we’re not rolling in it.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean he needs to know we take handouts.’

  The first time he had come here, Wesley had expected everybody to look homeless. To be queuing in dirty rags and loading their food into stolen shopping trolleys. Instead it was always mothers and fathers with prams, young people in their work uniforms, old men and women with walking sticks and hearing aids.

  ‘If he judges you for this then he’s no better than any of the others,’ said Wesley.

  ‘He won’t judge me. It’s just easier if . . .’ Mum trailed off. ‘He really does care about me. About us.’

  We don’t need him to, he thought. ‘You said the same thing about the others.’

  ‘And I can admit I was wrong. But I’m not wrong this time. I’m happy with Dave, and I think . . . can you please just do what I ask?’

  Behind the tables, the food and supplies were kept in colour-coded plastic boxes loaded into a rack of shelves, a few tins and larger packets stacked separately. Everything was offered in carrier bags, some already made up and others pieced together based on somebody’s needs. They usually took just enough to keep them going for a few days, to bolster the few things they already had. Thankfully Evie was the world’s number one fan of baked beans on toast.

  When it was their turn, Wesley accepted a couple of pre-made bags. The cans clanked against each other as he lifted them. Then he moved across the room so Mum could ask for some personal items in peace. An older lady smiled at him from the next seat, and he returned it, before discouraging any further contact by taking out his phone.

  It wasn’t long before he was due to meet Luke and Justin. They wouldn’t think much of this place, or of him for being there. It made him a failure – as a son and as a man. ‘Everything okay?’ said Mum, joining him with a third bag.

  Wesley stood. ‘Yeah. Of course.’

  ‘Not just here. With Dave, and everything.’

  ‘I told you, it’s fine.’ He took the bag from her. ‘Let’s go.’

  Outside, a beaten-up red Nissan Micra was waiting for them on the kerb. Jordan leaned against it, and when he spotted them he hurried over. Wesley gritted his teeth. There was no hiding where they had been. His brother tried to take the bags, but Wesley held tight.

  ‘I saw you going inside,’ Jordan said. ‘Thought I could give you a lift back?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Mum said uncertainly.

  Wesley released the bags suddenly. Cans spilled onto the pavement. Both boys dropped for them, racing to collect the most.

  ‘I didn’t know things were this bad,’ said Jordan as he returned the food to the bag.

  Under his mask of concern was an accusation. Two years had passed, and Wesley had failed to keep this from being necessary.

  After the bags were loaded in the boot, Mum got into the passenger seat. Wesley lingered on the kerb.

  ‘You coming?’ said Jordan.

  ‘I’m going to meet some friends.’

  The jokey smile that always meant an insult was coming hadn’t changed after two years away. ‘Since when did you have friends?’

  Wesley smouldered with anger. Without another word he turned away from the car and began the walk towards Luke’s house.

  Weekends had never really meant anything to Kat. The break between long blocks of duty and stress meant little when a Saturday morning began just as Friday had ended: alone in her room, a tenuous grip on existence. Days bled together.

  So it felt strange to be outside, staking out Luke’s house across town. Alongside everything else, Wesley had left Google Maps open with its location. It was a big place, on a block where every house was big and had more than one vehicle parked on its lengthy gravel driveway. This whole thing would have been cooler if she’d required an inconspicuous car and binoculars rather than standing across the road in what should have been plain sight, but she’d take what she could get.

  That morning’s selfie hadn’t seemed to show the fade growing any more severe. It was possible that the Lonely People’s information was wrong – but if nobody had ever been able to report back after experiencing the fade, that suggested they had never come back at all. Kat couldn’t be complacent about it. If nothing else, the fade gave her the ability to investigate where nobody else could.

  Shortly before the prearranged time, Wesley came along the road and stopped at the end of the driveway. He hesitated, like an alarm might sound if he put so much as a toe on the grounds. He took out his phone instead of making the trek to the front door. A few minutes later Luke and Justin crunched down to meet him, and after some needlessly aggressive back-slapping they set off.

  Kat could have walked beside them unnoticed, but decided to maintain what she assumed was a customary tailing distance ten paces behind. Somehow she knew that whatever they were saying now wouldn’t offer any detail on what they were planning. It was clear from Wesley’s emails that they enjoyed knowing more than he did, dangling the danger over his head as if it proved something about their ability to handle it. It reminded her of how when they were little Suzy used to listen at doors and pretend to have overheard something salacious from their parents. She would use it to make Kat trail her around for a whole day, begging to be let in on the secret.

  Luke and Justin walked tightly at Wesley’s sides. Luke lit a cigarette and blew smoke luxuriously up into the air so that it gusted back into Kat’s face. Away from the block of big houses the area changed rapidly, independent coffee houses and expensive-looking salons giving way to chicken shops and local cafes, the front line against the area’s creeping gentrification. They had walked for around twenty minutes before they reached a row of flats, and cut into a wide track of sandy-coloured gravel to some garages tucked behind. They were old, a few garage doors buckled or missing completely. Weeds grew freely in the cracks between bricks.

  As they approached a garage with its door still intact, Wesley glanced over his shoulder as if to check if anybody was following them. It could have been a reflex of nerves, or genuine expectation. Kat crept closer, knowing she might need to run to make it inside. The gravel under her feet sounded like a storm of hailstones, but none of them seemed to notice.

  When Luke knocked, she half-expected a secret code and not just a simple thud on the metal. A moment later the door creaked and began to open. As the three boys ducked inside, Kat steadied herself with a breath and ran, slipping under the door just as it rattled down closed behind her.

  14

  It’s Not the Horniness, It’s the Loneliness

  Most of the space was taken up by a car: an old Ford Mondeo, wheel arch rust stark against grey paint. A white strip light buzzed overhead, and the smell of oil clung to his nose. Wesley dismissed the idea that he was being taken prisoner, even as the garage door shrieking on its tracks and booming shut behind him seemed to reinforce it.

  There was no sign of Kat.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t there.

  ‘We’re here,’ Luke called into the garage.

  A man stood up sharply from behind the car, moving quickly around to meet them. It was strange to see TrumourPixel in the flesh. He was only a couple of years older than them, but he seemed much larger, almost too wide to fit comfortably between the car and the wall. Muscle and fat had combined to lend him a threatening bulk. He held out a hand, and Wesley grinned as he took it. It was like meeting a celebrity.

  ‘Glad you could come,’ he said, voice so familiar from his videos.

  ‘This is Wesley,’ said Justin.

  The man nodded as if he already knew. ‘Call me Tru.’

  ‘I watch all your videos,’ Wesley blurted, growing hot with embarrassment.

  ‘Thanks, man. These guys told me about you. Good work on that Kat girl. I had to take my video about her down or they were going to suspend my account. Censorship. Glad you guys could keep the torch burning.’

  Wesley couldn’t help but glow with the praise.

  Luke ran his hand lightly along the roof of the car, and then rubbed the dirt between his fingers. ‘This is a piece of shit.’

  ‘It’s inconspicuous,’ said Tru, turning away from Wesley. ‘More importantly, it can’t be traced back to any of us.’

  Luke moved around the car, checking the tyres and the lights. He didn’t know anything about cars, but it was a convincing performance. Justin hung back near the door. For all their swagger coming over here, they were both on edge now. Both uncertain how to behave. That meant there had to be something big at stake.

  ‘Relax,’ said Tru, patting him on the shoulder. Wesley realised his entire body was rigid. ‘Your friends here think you can help us out, so I wanted to meet you.’

  ‘I’m not really good for anything,’ said Wesley, automatically. He winced. Two minutes and he had already said the wrong thing.

  Tru perched on the edge of the bonnet, and his face changed, softened, as if he had switched to a different persona. ‘That’s the kind of thinking we need to fight against. Why do you put yourself down like that?’

  Wesley had never thought of it like that. He had always just thought there was no point in lying to himself.

  ‘When you think like that you make yourself weak,’ continued Tru. ‘You can’t reach an optimal state if you think you don’t deserve it, and that means you can’t go out and take what’s rightly yours. That’s why they make you think that way.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Wesley quietly.

  The corner of Tru’s mouth twitched into a smile. ‘Females.’

  It was a statement of fact, as if the answer should have been obvious. Wesley nodded, and nothing more. It was safer to stay quiet and let him talk.

  ‘I showed you the target last night,’ said Tru.

  Wesley glanced into the empty spaces of the garage, wondering if he would see a shadow lurking there. ‘Tinker?’

  Behind him, Luke thumped the roof of the car. ‘Bitch!’

  ‘You seen her videos? Anti-men propaganda. As if we needed more proof that feminists are coming for our balls.’ Tru’s voice rose with every word, and it rang around the garage’s walls. ‘Look at what happens when you take away a man’s rightful place: displaced, depressed, suicidal. You’re not useless. They’ve made you feel that way because they want men like us gone.’

  Men like us. He already thought of Wesley as somebody like him.

  ‘We’re going to do something to get Niko Denton’s attention,’ said Tru.

  The garage was beginning to grow hot, the air stifling. Sweat prickled around Wesley’s collar, and he swallowed hard. Tru must have noticed his reaction, because his eyes narrowed before he spoke again.

  ‘There’s this comic convention running near here all next week. Tinker’s speaking there,’ continued Tru. ‘There’ll be too much security for us to do anything inside, but there’s plenty we can do with a car before she ever makes it into the building.’

  The image of the car ploughing through a crowd of people flashed across Wesley’s mind. There would be no online campaign. This was something else completely. He turned to the others, wondering if they already knew about this.

  Luke smirked. ‘Think of it like a prank. No big deal.’

  ‘We’re actually going to attack her?’

  Tru studied him for a moment. ‘If we were . . . would you have a problem with that?’

  ‘I don’t know, I mean, uh—’ Wesley stammered.

  Tru pushed past him and threw open the front passenger door of the car. ‘Get inside.’

  Wesley tried to pull away, but Luke grabbed his neck and wrestled him down, shoving him into the seat and slamming the door shut. While Tru rounded the car, Wesley tugged on the door release. Luke laughed as he used his weight to hold it shut. The car lurched as Tru dropped into the driver’s seat. There was an electronic whir as he locked all the doors. Wesley banged on the glass, sweat now pouring down his face.

  ‘You don’t think I’m right?’ said Tru, voice eerily calm.

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘You think it’s fair you have to look after your little sister?’

  Wesley stopped, and slowly turned to face him. ‘You don’t know anything about that.’

  Tru shrugged. ‘Just what your friends told me. You can’t want to spend all your time babysitting, doing women’s work while your life goes nowhere.’

  ‘It’s not their fault.’

  ‘I’m just saying, I’ve seen it before. Females convince a boy like you that he has to accept being a beta. Your mum doesn’t respect you the way she should, especially after everything you’ve done for her. Girls at school won’t even look at you, let alone think about going anywhere near your cock. When you finish school you’ve got no idea what you’re going to do next. You can’t tell me you think that’s right?’

  Wesley had never thought there could be anybody as pathetic as him. If he was a specimen in a glass jar, he would be hidden at the back of a museum, too unremarkable for anybody to want to see.

  ‘How can it be their fault?’

  ‘If it’s not,’ said Tru, smiling like he could see victory three moves ahead in the conversation, ‘why did you go after Kat Waldgrave?’

  That caught Wesley off-guard, and he stammered, ‘I don’t know, I—’

  ‘You do know.’

  He remembered everything he’d poured out into Kat’s empty room last night, hoping some remnant of her was there to hear it. There was something wrong with him, and he had hoped that going after Kat might fix it. Nobody else was responsible for the way he was.

  Unless . . . it would be so much easier if they were.

  ‘Can’t we just make her take her channels down?’ Wesley said. ‘You know I’ve done it before, maybe if we—’

  Tru cut him off with a cold laugh, and used the driver controls to lower the window, allowing Luke to lean inside. ‘You said he was for real.’

  Luke eyed them both warily. ‘I thought he was.’

  Pinned between them, Wesley felt like a prey animal. Toyed with before the killing blow. The garage could have been another world, one where something terrible could happen to him and nobody outside it would ever know. He had no idea if Kat had taken the hint to follow him, but he hoped she would be here to see it.

  ‘I told you,’ said Tru. ‘It’s just going to be a prank video. Something to shake her up a little.’

  ‘What kind of prank?’

  ‘I can’t tell you until I know you’re with us.’

  Wesley looked to Luke for help, but the boy’s amusement had turned to something colder as he waited for the answer. All Wesley had wanted was for Luke and Justin to accept him. It would have been so easy to nod his head, tell them what they wanted to hear, just so they would let him be part of their group. All he had to say was . . .

  ‘I want to go.’

  Luke leaned into his face. ‘What?’

  ‘Whatever you’re planning, I just need some time to th
ink about it.’

  Tru watched him coldly. ‘If you’re not with us, you’ve already seen too much.’

  A chill ran down Wesley’s spine. He needed to get out of there. The door handle slipped in his sweaty palm.

  ‘I won’t tell anybody anything, just let me out!’

  The doors whirred again. Wesley shoved it hard, smashing it into Luke’s stomach. That gave him the space to wheel away towards the garage door. Justin had turned white as a sheet and seemed to have no intention of stopping him. The door was unlocked, and Wesley threw it open, blinking in the sharp daylight.

  ‘Next time I see you I’ll show you what happens to traitors!’ shouted Luke.

  Wesley didn’t look back, kicking up gravel as he ran.

  Kat pushed herself against the wall as Luke came around the car to heave the door closed again. She had to fight the urge to escape. She had heard enough to know that these men were dangerous, without learning any real information. If they were planning to attack Tinker, she wanted to have every chance to stop it.

  ‘Bravery is a beggar’s death,’ she muttered, a line from Doctor Backwash.

  ‘Why did you bring him here?’ roared Tru, voice booming around the garage. ‘Do you think we’re just fucking around?’

  Now Luke looked like he wished he had run while he had the chance. ‘It doesn’t matter, right? We’re still good to go next week without him.’

  Next week. Tinker had talked about it in one of her latest videos. WonderVerse comic convention was at a venue across town, and she was speaking on Tuesday’s headline panel about online abuse of women.

  ‘Females like Tinker are trying to destroy men,’ shouted Tru, thumping the roof of the car. ‘And all these little boys think they’re alpha because they shitpost on message boards. Nobody is doing anything. You think Niko Denton’s going to be impressed if we hit her social media with dank memes? Or a stupid prank?’