by Luke Kondor
They would not know of the rot’s return for a few hours at least. They would not know of the mortal danger that accompanied the presence of the scavvies currently making themselves familiar with the camp under Patrick’s orders. Dozens of tattooed menaces with guns and knives. It would only be as they stepped out into the morning air, and made their way down to the Kingpin Alley for breakfast, that they’d see the poor man, bloodied, beaten and bruised, carried through the centre of town. Some would point. Some would stare. Some might even run and hide.
But no one would help Colin Bolton.
*
Iggy – Hope’s great patchwork maker and repairer of clothes – was already awake, stretching, doing his pilates in the town centre. He’d already clocked the strange men strolling up and down the town, but wasn’t too concerned. Henry often had new arrivals turn up at the gates. Some by themselves, some in pairs, often large groups would find Hope from the wilderness and seek succour. It wasn’t Iggy’s business to question Henry’s motives, nor to let change break his routine. It was all about positive thinking, that’s how you survived this world, by not letting the negative creep in and drag you down, no matter what happened.
No sir-ee.
He had climbed out of his bed, nude of course, and greeted the morning with an exhalation and a smile. The view from his window was little more than silver birches, a little slice of overgrown grass with a rusty bin sunken a good few inches into the ground, and then, just through the gap between his cabin and the next, was a view of that red dawn sky reflecting over the lake.
“Good morning, Iggy,” he had said, turning to address his reflection in the mirror, idly stroking his dreadlocks tied in a scruffy little knot at the back of his head. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and began his morning affirmations. Something he’d learned from his holistic mentor way back when the yoga halls and fro-yo courts hadn’t perished with the population. “You are wonderful, Iggy. You are in charge of your surroundings. You have agency. You have purpose. You are magical. You are surrounded by absolute wonders and the God-given world you live in is one of creation.” His eyes narrowed, his fists clenched. “That bad stuff… the rot… only happened because He intended. And now you are the shining beacon of light who brings joy and positivity and strength to all those around you. Be the example you wish to see.”
Moments later and Iggy had glided down the boarded walkway towards the lake’s edge. He had been one of the first to wake, sauntering over the red bridge until he arrived at the admin office.
Inside he had caught sight of Henry, locked in the middle of some type of deep discussion with a group of tattooed men. He looked careworn, tired, as though he hadn’t managed to sleep that night at all. The men around him seemed energised, but Iggy could tell from outside that their aura was cloudy. There was a lot on all their minds.
Maybe I’ll find them all later and give them a class in positive thinking and feeding the soul.
And that’s when Iggy had wandered over to his favourite spot beside the lake, sat his buttocks on the cold stone floor, and crossed his legs.
He closed his eyes and focused only on his breathing.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
His mind turned to stone. Rejuvenating, relaxing, stone.
*
There were four children of Hope, but one of them didn’t speak or belong. He was an outsider before he arrived and he was still an outsider now. That child’s name was Sunny and that was all the other three knew of him.
The other three children – Ed, Gareth, and Ruby – weren’t siblings, but acted as though they might have been. They had all arrived together in the same caravan of travellers that marched west when RotSpots were reported in Margate. They were all orphans now. The rot had not been kind to them. And they thought they might never find a kindness in the world again until they found a man called Henry and a lady named Veronica.
Ed awoke when Veronica closed the door behind her. He peered out the front window to see her running across the bridge. Not a rare occurrence for someone who works in medicine, but still….
He tapped Gareth and Ruby awake and pointed out the window.
“Maybe she needed a poo,” Ruby said, stretching and yawning.
They got themselves dressed – mismatched clothes, of course – and headed into the play area outside. They would wait until Veronica was back, then she’d take them over to the dining hall for a breakfast of oats and maybe, just maybe, a sprinkle of sugar if they were lucky. Ed had already complained about his empty stomach twice but Ruby had insisted they stay put. Gareth wrapped his arms around his body and shivered.
“It’s cold today,” he said as Ed kicked the ball over to him.
“It’s cold every day,” Ruby said, putting on some old-person’s matter-of-fact voice. “It’s called being in England.”
Gareth tutted, then skilfully dribbled the ball towards Ed and chanted the words, “Eng-ur-land, Eng-ur-land… And it’s Rooney, coming in with the ball…”
“Who’s Rooney?”
“He’s heading towards the Brazilian defence line…”
“Why am I Brazil? Can I be France?” Ed said, taking stance in the goal.
Gareth feigned right, then skilfully tapped the ball between Ed’s open legs and shouted, “And he’s nutmegged him!” He ran around the play area with his shirt over his head, making faux crowd cheering noises.
Ruby erupted into applause. Ed dropped dramatically to the floor and buried his face into his hands.
“Why?!” he cried comically, raising arms to the sky. “One day you will teach me your ways old susserer. One day you will—”
They all stopped laughing abruptly as a small man approached the waist-high fence. He leant over, grabbed the ball in both hands, and stood back, looking at the three of them.
“Who are you?” Gareth asked, taking the responsibility of the adult amongst the three.
The man chuckled and dropped the ball, letting it roll to Gareth’s feet. “Never you mind,” he said. “Pick up your ball.”
The man spoke with a strange accent. Ed barely understood the words. A series of lines were drawn into the man’s face, difficult to see at first, but as Ed climbed to his feet he could see them all the more. Strange little pictures that traced over his eyebrows and around the back of the man’s neck. His hair was dark and short, and his eyes were a piercing green.
“I said: pick… up… yer… ball.”
Gareth looked uncertainly at the others, a hush falling over them all. He slowly began to bend at the knees—
“Don’t do it,” Ruby shouted, then clapped a hand to her mouth as the small man’s eyes fixed on her own. His jawline clenched, reminding Ed of the people from before. The bad folks his parents warned him about.
Ed squeezed the little rock tight in his hands. A small thing he’d instinctively taken from the ground as he’d risen to his feet.
“Fuckin’ pick it up. Now!” the man exploded, face growing red in an instant. A vein appeared on his forehead like some worm beneath the skin was working its way out.
Gareth gingerly stepped forward and bent down and picked up the ball. Ed didn’t have to see his face to know that he was crying.
As he was bent to the floor, the man hopped the fence and pulled something out of his pocket. A grubby little grey thing. As short as his finger but not as wide. It wasn’t a knife but it looked just as sharp to poke into something. He grabbed Gareth around the neck and pressed the not-knife against Gareth’s face.
Ed felt anger welling up within. His skin shook. His heart ached. He stepped forward. He barely felt the pain of the rock burrowing itself into his palm from squeezing too tight.
The man then leaned in and whispered something to Gareth, eyes seeming to flash red. The grey thing pressing hard enough to force another cry out of his friend.
“Jackie-Boy?!”
Another man appeared, looking around until he saw the small man kneel
ing on the ground with the kid in his arms. He was taller and older but not quite as stocky. He caught Jackie-Boy’s eyes and rolled his own.
“Come on, man. Leave the kids alone. Patrick wants us out front. They’re nearly ready.”
A moment later and Jackie-Boy hopped the fence, cast one last wicked look back, then disappeared around the corner.
The three children stood in frozen silence for a moment. Gareth turned to look at Ed and Ruby, tears now pouring down his face.
Ruby ran to him, throwing arms around his neck. “Are you okay? What did he say to you?”
Gareth blubbered incomprehensibly for a moment, then told them. Their eyes widened and Ruby let her own tears fall.
There were no tears from Ed, though. Ed only caught the first part, before shifting the rock in his palm, and promising himself that the next time he saw that awful man, he was going to put that rock through his face.
*
“Bloody hell, Janet. Are you getting out of bed or what?”
Craig Martelle was up and had been up for an hour by then. He was as fresh as the morning of his twenty-first birthday. Albeit minus the freshly shaven face with the aftershave that smelled of sandalwood. Oh, and minus the mint fresh Colgate toothpaste. And there sure as hell wasn’t any Teatree shampoo doing the rounds in Hope. Nope, all Craig had to wash himself was a bucket of room temperature water that he’d brought up from the lake. He’d filtered it, of course. He’d ran it through a folded over pillow case to remove any bits of twig and moss.
Pushing open the bedroom door he saw the dark brown matt of hair being pulled back by Janet and bunched up into a ponytail. She wasn’t where he thought she’d be, face down and becoming one with the bedsheets. She was sat at her makeup table, fully dressed in her stripy pink and white top and the trousers that Iggy had made for her.
She gave him a wry smile. “What you staring at?”
“Thought you were having a bone-idle day.”
“I know what you were thinking, Craig. You don’t give me enough credit. Give me a second and I’ll rinse m’teeth and we can get on with it.”
He thought of the bucket of water he’d used to clean himself down, and the unused one that would be hers sat next to it in the bathtub. His and hers buckets. How romantic.
Once she was all washed up and in her shoes, they picked up Craig’s toolbox by the door and headed out.
Janet kissed him on the cheek and asked: “What’s the plan, Stan?” Craig chuckled. They both knew already. Henry had caught them early the evening before, detailing plans of his new annexe through a tipsy slur.
“We need somewhere to store the moonshine. A-ha-ha-ha!”
And, of course, Craig was more than happy to volunteer. Henry had done more for Craig and his wife than he could ever imagine.
They walked towards town, Craig holding the toolbox, Janet holding his free hand. It wasn’t until they crossed the bridge and were near enough the old wishing well that they saw Colin – or at least it looked like him beneath the swollen flesh and bloodied clothes. He was being carried between two… no other word for it but scavvies. They were sure as hell scavvies.
“Erm… Craig?”
Colin’s feet dragged along the floor as the scavvies approached the Martelles. They looked up and locked eyes for a moment, before one of them gruffly mumbled something that sounded like “move”, and the two parted to allow them to pass.
They were gone just a few moments later.
“Craig? Was that…”
“I don’t know, pet.” They stood a moment longer in studied silence. Now that their minds were working, they saw more of the tattooed folks, emerging from the woodwork like insects writhing beneath a lifted rock. In the distance, three could be seen making their way towards the bowling alley. Over by the lake, they saw Iggy sat cross-legged with his eyes closed and his back straight, presumably finishing off his pilates session with some light meditation. A scavvie approaching from behind with a wicked grin on his face as he cast his eyes back at his two compadres who were standing and waiting some twenty feet behind with folded arms.
And there, emerging from the admin cabin, was Henry LeShard accompanied by two of his very own scavvie security guards.
Craig’s eyes lit up at the sight of their fearless leader. He only managed to take a couple steps forward before Henry looked up at him with weary eyes and slowly shook his head.
*
It was only as he felt the shadow behind him that he opened his eyes. Iggy half-turned to see the scavvie standing over him. All inked up and horrid. Teardrops on his cheek, camouflage trousers, and that air about them, redolent of something Iggy would have once crossed the street to avoid back when he lived in the big smoke teaching seminars and workshops on how to be a healthy and productive human being.
“What te feck de yer tink yer doin’ fairy boy?”
His aura was an angry red with black splotches. A horrific thing that instantly made Iggy feel nervous. Iggy climbed to his feet and repeated his morning mantras inside his head.
Water off a duck’s back.
Just water off a duck’s back.
Without a word he held his chin high and walked past the scavvie who had turned and was laughing loudly with the two others standing not far behind. Iggy gave the pair a quick nod (it never hurts to be nice) before turning and heading towards his workshop. Mr Gallanders had been hounding him for a new second-layer shirt to keep him warm on his mornings out in the allotments, and Iggy wasn’t the type to let a fellow Hopeful down.
Iggy didn’t get too far before he saw Henry crossing the centre of town with two more of those scavvies on either side of him. One was bald with the shadows of bruises by his eyes, the other seemed considerably younger, with no artwork on his face at all and dark hair.
Iggy thought for a moment, then skipped over to them. He almost sang the name as he clocked the Martelles and waved. “Henryy, Henryy.”
Henry didn’t want to stop, but Iggy took no notice, his curiosity and social awareness very much on the same level as the children of Hope.
Iggy patted Henry’s shoulder. Henry turned and Iggy was taken aback to see that he’d been crying. His eyes were red and puffy, his shoulders slumped. More than that, his aura was a mix of clashing colours that made no sense to him.
Someone needs to spend a morning with Iggy to do some cleansing. Stat!
“What is it, Iggy?” Henry said without a trace of emotion.
“Well, Henry-baby, it’s just that…” His eyes went to the two scavvies who had both stopped but didn’t seem too pleased about it. Iggy leant in conspiratorially and whispered – though the scavvies could still hear every word. “These newcomers… I mean, I know you like to bring in outsiders, and I’m not judging… well, I wasn’t especially over the moon with the beardy guy your Dutchman brought back or the strange kid who doesn’t talk… like some toddler bodhisattva… but, anyway…” and here he leaned even closer, his voice barely audible at all, “I’m not too sure about these other folk. Who are they and when are they leaving?”
Henry forced a smile. Barely.
“These are our new friends,” he said, loud enough for a few eyes of folks passing through town to hear.
“Are you okay?” Iggy asked.
Henry looked uncertainly at the scavvies on either side. One of them gave Henry a violent nudge forward.
“Henry?” Iggy asked.
“Yer don’t need ter worry,” the bald man said, keen eyes fixed on Iggy. “We won’t be staying. We’re just under a few… negotiations is all. Think of us as… passing royalty. Yeah, why the fuck not. Call me King Paddy if it helps you get through the day. I don’t really care. Come on, LeShard. Say bye-bye to the lovely queer.”
Henry surprised Iggy by reaching forward and hugging him. He whispered in his ear, “Don’t worry, Iggy. Everything’s going to be fine. I promise you. We just have to bear with this a little bit. We just have to make do until it’s over.”
And then they w
ere gone.
Iggy arrived at his camper van shortly after, his breathing short from running. Whoever those men were, they were bad for his centre. They were bad for the town, and Iggy was afraid. He sat and picked up his needle and thread, but soon found that his hands were shaking too much to get the needle anywhere near where it need to be to begin work on Mr Gallanders’ shirt.
Suddenly the room seemed too small for him. He burst outside and sat on the grass, facing a copse of trees.
Deep breaths, Iggy. Find your centre. Cleanse your aura.
Iggy wiped his eyes and focused.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
~ 25 ~
By late morning news of the arrivals had spread. If they hadn’t been noticed by those that had already made their way to the dining hall, then they had been shaken awake and informed by close friends, family members, the gossiping elders that spent most of their evenings knitting materials for Iggy to assemble and clothe the town.
Rumours started, as they so often do through whispers that twisted and contorted with each telling, and before long there was a varying angle of the story from every corner of Hope. In a conversation with a disgruntled group of Hopefuls sat outside their cabins bordering the edge of the woods, the Martelles had been informed that the people they had seen were operational workers employed by the last remaining strands of government, here to protect their borders and ensure that all signs of the rot had faded into the past. According to Glenn Ely – former Data Analyst in a pre-rot world, now a gardener of all things juicy and ripe – the Millers presented themselves as scavvies in order to survive whilst travelling the nation looking for stragglers to bring back to, what promises to be, the largest remaining city in England.