The Poison People

by Alex Makepeace

  I’m filled with despair—even with money and a new set of clothes, where can I go? What kind of life can I lead if my sole purpose is to contain this bug. Is all I have to look forward to a life on the run?

  I remember the bus down to London, full of quiet hopes and expectations. The happy days with Jane and the others. All that, gone.

  The one thing I know for sure is that I’m to be alone. I’ll take money from Ma, we’ll maybe see if there’s a way we can somehow stay in touch, but if I am to get through this, the only way I’ll do it will be by staying on my own.

  I need to get away, abroad, maybe. Somewhere third world where they don’t have the surveillance, the technology, they don’t ask too many questions. Money will go further too.

  I roll off the bed and wander through the flat. There are few possessions. Ma always travelled light.

  I make myself a cup of tea and go into the tiny front room. There’s not much—a dusty sofa, a few dodgy prints on the grey walls, a telly. Making sure the sound’s turned down, I switch it on.

  I flick through: BBC One, Two, Three . . . but then I hit a blank, or black, wall—I can’t get a signal for Channel Four, Five . . . I go to the diagnostics menu, run the test . . . wait . . . there: ITV One’s come up. Some kind of Big Brother thing, only black and white, or CCTV footage . . . I tune the next channel: ITV Two, a chat show; Three: cooking. I track back, through the channels, linger on the CCTV thing. It has switched to another empty room. Bedroom by the looks of things. I’m just about to click away when I pause—the view has changed again. But this room’s got someone in it. Sitting on the floor, toying with a television.

  Before my cognition, the me in me, kicks in, my senses have already done a double-take, had me roll my shoulders to make sure. I watch his shoulders roll too, with a fraction of a second’s delay.

  Like switching channels, my bug is in command. But were you watching, my watchers, as I am, the back of myself still fiddling with the telly, calmly moving the channels onward—would you guess?

  I pull myself up. Deliberately avoid looking for the hidden camera. With a yawn and a stretch—I’m in no hurry to go anywhere, remember?—I wander back through the flat to the hall where my clothes are hanging on a rack. I pull off my wet jeans and step into them as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I go into the kitchen, put on my trainers. I could just be popping out for a pack of ciggies, honestly. I think about what stuff I have, what stuff I don’t have. I don’t know where Ma would have left her money, if she hasn’t taken it with her.

  And I’m thinking—do I just step deliberately, casually, out of the front door? Or do I leave as I came in? And I’m thinking—did Ma betray me?

  NO.

  But they were following her.

  YES.

  And they do have her under surveillance. Then why haven’t they moved more quickly?

  Don’t worry about that, Vereesh. Worry about getting out of here.

  I’ve decided I’ll go out the front. It’s too late now, anyway. I’ll go out the front. But before I do, I pop into the kitchen. Trying to block the sightline of any hidden camera, I reach into the drawer and slide out the nastiest carving knife I can find.

  I hear a car pull up outside. I wander over to the front room, peek between the curtains. It’s a squad car, blue lights flashing. A pair of cops are hurrying out. One of them, at least, appears to be carrying a gun.

  Okay. Not the front then. The doorbell rings. Once, twice, insistently. I go back into the kitchen, climb on top of the draining board, and open the window. As I hear the police begin to kick at the downstairs door, I grab hold of the drainpipe and swing myself out of the window.

  But not so lucky this time; I hear the plastic strain. Before I can shin down, the drainpipe snaps, gives way.

  I fall hard onto the grass. Pain shears through me. My ankle, it’s my ankle. I drag myself up, nails clawing the ground.

  I stagger down the garden, towards the fence.

  A car is pulling up at the back. I can hear it skid on the gravel. Oh Jesus, oh Jesus. The sound of doors springing open. A cop trying the gate, kicks at it. Once, twice. It slams open.

  Here he comes, puffed up, red-faced, flabby even, no gun, mind. Just a nightstick. I keep coming on.

  “Roy!” he shouts. He fumbles for his pepper spray. “Stop! Police!” He sprays and swings at the same time. Despite my injury, I’m quicker. I duck down, and face-to-face for a moment, his piggy eyes full of alarm, I plunge the knife deep into his belly.

  The cop kind of hisses, deflates even. As I hold him there, his eyes roll to the back of his head, his tongue flickers around his fat wet lips and now I feel the weight of him going, going . . .

  He crumples to the ground. I wrench the blade out and stumble over the body without looking back. His partner is in my sights now—younger, more thuggish, but also relatively unarmed.

  “Stop!” This one moves fast, kicks out as I lunge at him with the knife. He takes away my knee.

  I’m on the floor. My eyes, my nostrils burning. He keeps at it—the spray—then crash, whacks me around the back of the head with his stick. I fall forward onto the ground, wipe my face against the grass in an attempt to relieve the stinging as he keeps belting me in the back with the baton.

  He pauses. I guess he’s reaching for his cuffs. I spin around, plunge the knife deep into his groin. His shriek as I twist. Blood sprays like butchery.

  He’s going down, a gruesome screaming thing, his liquid splashing my face, stinging my eyes. His taste on my lips.

  I roll away as he falls onto his side like a foetus, cries, “Mu-uhm . . . ”

  I pick myself up, I stagger away. Through the gate and into the lane.

  There’s the car, blue lights still flashing, doors swung open. But I can’t drive. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

  I’m limping up the lane. It’s just a matter of time before another car arrives, before I’m picked up—gunned down, more like—this blood-soaked maniac. I know that, I know—but what can I do? Just keep going, Vereesh.

  Live.

  I make it to the entrance of the lane. The sirens are converging, the helicopter coming down. I just have minutes now, moments.

  I retreat to a garden wall, crouch down. Dripping—my blood, their blood. A hunted, wounded animal. A wild beast.

  And I can still hear him. Jesus, I can still hear Roy, above the sirens, the rotor blades, calling for his mother.

  MUHM-MEEE.

  Your scream as I stuck the blade in. No beast, you—somebody’s father, somebody’s son. In somebody else’s story you might be the hero.

  EEEEEEE.

  And that’s when I see her.

  Running towards me, silently calling my name. She gestures—

  COME ON.

  Magda.

  31

  “Here.” She passes me the box of tissues. “That’s better,” she says. “You looked like that woman in that film. Kerry? Like someone had poured a bucket of blood over you.”

  I sit there in silence, waiting for the shaking to subside.

  “Poor baby,” she says, taking the motorway exit. “We’ll have you back to normal in no time.”

  “My ankle,” I say. “I think it’s broken.”

  “Kobro can take a look at it,” she says. “He is a doctor, after all. Supposedly.”

  “What . . . happened?”

  “What? When?”

  “Back at the house, when Akka said to go.”

  “Oh, well I guess she panicked. Kobro received a call that they had got hold of our location, said to scatter. I guess she took it too literally. You know, lost in translation? Anyway, we couldn’t believe it when she told us what she’d done. Poor baby! Has it been hard?”

  “And how did you find me?”

  “Ah, you have Kobro to thank for that. Of course, he knew the various leads they were following, so he asked me to take my pick. Naturally I guessed like before my baby boy would return to his mama, and just l
ike before I was right.” She grins. “Clever, huh?”

  “They were monitoring her. There was CCTV in the flat.”

  “Yep, they’re good at that—the electronic stuff. How did you find it?”

  “I was tuning the TV. Came on.”

  Magda nods. “A team was only about an hour away. I couldn’t believe it when the cops turned up.”

  “What do you mean? Wasn’t that for them? The Scientists?”

  “That was just the local constabulary. Rather than let you get away, they must have called the cops—told them where their pretty bio-terrorist was lurking. I guess they figured they would have plenty of time to spirit you away afterwards.”

  She begins to pull into some motorway services. “Better sort things out before we go any further,” she says. “Road blocks.”

  “Road blocks?”

  Magda doesn’t reply; she’s looking for a space. “There,” she says. She pulls over, reaches under the dashboard and I hear the boot spring open.

  I follow Magda out. She lifts the boot all the way up. “Ta-ra!” she says.

  Unconscious, her head resting on a bulging Tescos bag, is Ma.

  “What have you done to her?”

  Full of rage, I clench my fists. But it’s all human anger this, no bug.

  “Whoa, baby.” Magda holds up her hands. “She’s perfectly okay, alright? I basically just drugged her, that’s all.”

  “You fucking drugged her?”

  “I didn’t mean to, baby. I introduced myself as one of your friends, said I needed to meet you, but she was not co-operating at all. She tried to get away and I . . . well, I should just have let her, I know, but I suppose I . . . I panicked, baby. I gave her a shot. I was going to take her to you when I saw the police. I’m sorry.”

  Ma has begun to stir, blink into the light. Her whole body lurches and she throws up. I’m about to reach for her myself when I remember.

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” I tell Magda. “Help her.”

  It takes Ma a while to recover. She’s still sitting wan, listless in the back seat, when I notice Magda has taken the Norwich turnoff.

  “I thought we were going to London,” I say.

  “Nah,” says Magda. “London’s getting too hot. Don’t you read the news, baby? Bombs all over. Big security clamp down. England . . . your England’s up shit creek, as you say? I said to Kobro, I’m not missing the boat again. I want a fucking boat, got me? We’re getting out of here. Ah.”

  The traffic was coming to a halt up ahead. As we slowed I could see the desert brown of the trucks parked across the road.

  “Damn. I was hoping we would beat them to it,” says Magda. “Baby, open the glove compartment. Inside there’s an envelope. Go on,” she says. “Look inside.”

  Inside is a flat plastic card—an ID. An ID with my face on, but a different name. Matthew Brown.

  “I don’t have one for your mother, obviously,” says Magda, “but we’ll have to keep our fingers crossed they’re not looking for her. Also,” she adds, “I mean, it’s bullshit, okay? I didn’t have time to do all the computer stuff. If they’re hooked up then it’ll just say error or something. But hey, what’s new.”

  I turn around. “Ma—are you okay?”

  Ma smiles weakly, nods.

  “What the fuck did you give her?”

  “Sodium Penthanol,” says Magda. “It’s okay, is normal.” She’s concentrating on the check point up ahead. “She’ll be better by the evening.”

  “You sound like you’ve done this kind of thing before.”

  Magda doesn’t answer. A squaddie levels his gun and waves the car forward. “Wind down your window, baby.”

  The woman soldier leans in while her male counterpart stands back. She takes our IDs and has a cursory look around the car. Ma tries her best to smile.

  “Is she alright?” asks the squaddie, handing our cards to her colleague.

  “Just a bit carsick,” croaks Ma. But our eyes are on the other soldier, flicking through our IDs like he’s playing cards. But there’s no device I can see.

  “I always wear one of those bracelets,” says the squaddie. “The ones they use for seasickness.”

  “That’s an idea,” says Ma. The soldier straightens up. She takes back the cards and hands them to me.

  “Is there any trouble up ahead?” asks Magda.

  “No,” smiles the squaddie. “All quiet here, miss.”

  “Your soldiers,” says Magda as we drive off, “they’re still polite. That’s nice.”

  It takes us some time to find the cottage, standing alone at the far end of a coastal road.

  “Not bad, hey?” says Magda. “It’s some kind of holiday home for WHO bigwigs. All mod cons, apparently.”

  The building looks like it used to be a pub, but where the sign would have hung it now says ‘Smugglers Cottage’.

  “Kobro was saying all this area was for smugglers in the olden times. And . . . wreckers? Is that how you say it?”

  “Yes,” says Ma, who’s begun looking better. “They used lamps to lure ships into thinking it was a harbour, but instead the ships would wreck upon the rocks. The people would then row out and collect their cargo.”

  “But what about the sailors?” I ask.

  “They would kill them, Vereesh,” says Ma.

  “So your England hasn’t always been so civilised,” says Magda.

  “Where’s Akka?” I ask.

  “Akka, she’s gone ahead,” says Magda. “To Ostend.”

  “Ostend? Is that where we’re going?”

  “To begin with,” says Magda. “First we must get away from England. When we get to Belgium, we’ll decide. But first we must get you away from this place. It’s not safe.”

  While Magda prepares some food, I hobble outside after Ma.

  “How’s your ankle?” she asks.

  “Still hurts like hell.”

  “Maybe this doctor will be able to do something,” she says. She rests against the fence and looks out along the spit. In the distance is a small village—between it and us, the sea, divided along sandy channels. Sailing boats are moored along the length of the spit, though some are just sitting becalmed on sandy banks.

  “Is the tide in or out?” I ask.

  “Out, Vereesh,” she says.

  “So what happens to those boats then—the ones just sitting there?”

  “I suppose they’re anchored down. Maybe their owners have to row out to them.”

  “Oh,” I say, and for a moment we’re back to when I was wee and wouldn’t stop asking and she never stopped answering. And maybe she’s reminded too because she says, “I’m sorry, honey. I did my best. But it seems my best wasn’t enough.”

  I realise her face is wet with tears.

  “Oh come on now.” I would like to touch her, but daren’t. Not because I think I’m that infectious, but because if I did then I’m afraid I would want to hug her and that really would be too dangerous. “You did brilliant, Ma. What you taught me kept me going all this time. If it wasn’t for what you taught me we wouldn’t be together now, would we.”

  Ma shrugs. “I did it in your best interests, you know. My only thoughts were for you.”

  “I know.”

  “Even if sometimes you did think we—I—was a bit crazy?”

  “Ma,” I say, “maybe.” We both laugh.

  It’s after dinner and we’re settled down with a fake fire burning in the hearth and some quality wine from the cellar.

  “Do you think they’ll notice it’s missing?” I ask.

  “I doubt it,” says Magda. “These people, these internationalists, they take everything for granted.”

  “You seem to know a lot about them,” I say.

  She shrugs. “I guess I’ve been with Kobro too long.”

  “How long’s that?”

  She smiles, lights a cigarette. “Are you trying to catch me out, baby?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Trick me
into telling you my story?”

  “No.”

  “We all have secrets, don’t we—you two, too.” She winks at Ma, who glances at me. Magda exhales a long plume of smoke. Contemplates it.

  “I don’t tell you my story, baby, because it hurts. There’s no great mystery.”

  “Then don’t, it’s alright . . . ”

  “No,” she says. “I think maybe that’s part of the problem. All this holding it in. Carrying it with me. It’s a heavy load, you know?” She takes a long last drag from the butt of her cigarette, then pulls out another which she lights from it. When she’s done she says, “I was eighteen when the trouble started. Actually, I was having the time of my life. I’d finally fulfilled a dream to leave my hometown and come to London.”

  It was alright—I got lots of jobs, from handing out leaflets to working in Pret A Manger. I picked up the language. I told anyone who asked I was a Bosnian. It was easy in those days. Everybody was a Bosnian, nobody cared—not even the Bosnians. Hey—this wasn’t home, we were all in this together. United in our efforts to rip off Great British capitalism!

  I’d got my first ‘proper job’, working as a receptionist for a travel company when your Tony Blair declared war on me. Apparently, Kosovo, which had been part of Serbia for seven hundred years, was no longer ours and if we didn’t stop fighting the Albanian terrorists who were trying to drive our people from their land, then Britain would go to war against us.

  Of course, I knew the Serbs had done some bad things but had the world forgotten what the Croatians and the Muslims did to us in the Second World War? Had it forgotten how we Serbs sacrificed our nation against the Turk for Europe upon the Kosovar plain all those centuries ago? Yes, it seemed, or if it did remember, it didn’t care. Serbs, however, have long memories.

  But it’s a terrible thing, you know, walking the streets of a country that is at war with your own. Watching the triumphal television news as Belgrade burns and those dreadful, evil Serbs get what’s coming to them. Walking those peaceful streets with people laughing in the pubs or sitting outside cafes just getting on with their own lives while your people huddle in shelters from the missiles and bombs paid for by the taxes of these smug, self-righteous bastards. My taxes too, of course.