by G Mottram
‘What…?’ Jason began.
‘Ah, there you are my little gladiator,’ a rich voice rang through the still summer air.
Jason turned around to see Fast Eddie step out of the Brash hut a few dozen metres away.
Violet grabbed his arm. ‘I’m trying to help you. Leave the Brash, don’t get any more involved with my guardian… he’s not a nice man. He plays God. He’ll use you for whatever…’
‘Jason,’ Eddie shouted, walking towards them now, ‘shoe away your little admirer, we need to talk.’
Jason looked down at Violet. ‘You’d better go.’
She shook her head and for the first time, Jason saw her looking scared.
‘Look,’ he said, touching her lightly on the arm, ‘we can talk about this later, okay?’
‘I don’t think I’ll get the chance again.’ Violet said quietly, just as Eddie drew up close.
‘Take a walk, Violet,’ Eddie said, ‘you know Mr Brash doesn’t want you hanging around us.’
‘I’m sure you’ll let him know all about my crimes, Edward.’ Violet said, already starting to walk back towards the passage entrance.
‘Already have, sweetie.’ Eddie said, blowing a kiss to her back.
‘She’s all right, you know,’ Jason said. ‘She’s not doing anything wrong,’
Eddie turned to him. ‘She’s a spoiled little brat who’s never shown the proper gratitude to Mr Brash for taking her in.’
Jason watched Violet disappear into the tunnel. She’d never seemed the least bit spoiled to him. Still, what was the point in arguing?
Eddie patted Jason’s cheek playfully to bring his attention back. ‘You know Jason - I think you deserve a little reward after taking out so many of the baldies.’
Jason shrugged. He looked forward to the Pit fights now - the harder the odds, the better. However, he was constantly aching and hurting in some part of his body from the fights and the never-ending training. A reward would be good.
‘Surely you’re not going to cut me in on the betting profits, Eddie?’ Jason asked.
Eddie smiled, broad and charming. ‘I like you - but not that much, old boy. No, the reward is I’m moving you up to the next level. Meet me at the gates after training this evening.’
Chapter 14
Training went on late into the evening with a couple of breaks for food and stretching. It wasn’t until almost ten o’clock that Jason was freed from the hut.
Eddie’s black van was waiting for him at the school gates - nothing more than a silhouette in the fast fading light.
‘Jump in,’ Eddie called as his blacked out window hummed down smoothly.
Jason got in the passenger side. ‘I’m not late am I – they said you knew it was a late session?’
‘No, no old boy – we needed to wait for the dark.’ Eddie grinned across at him then pulled away from the school. ‘Now then, about tonight’s little adventure… you have seen who’s in the back of course? I hope you’d never get into a van without first knowing everyone who’s in there.’
Jason turned around to see who was with them. Erin Brock and a Brash member called Oliver Stone. They both leaned forward into the dim streetlight pulsing in through the windscreen and waved.
‘Not a clue, eh lad?’ Oliver grunted in his deep voice.
‘Jason, Jason, Jason,’ Eddie chided, ‘you have so much to learn if you’re ever going to survive. What if they’d been a couple of agents with a gun to my head? You would be splattered all over this expensively tinted windscreen by now.’
Jason shrugged apologetically at the other two passengers. He didn’t know Oliver very well. He was another year 13 like Eddie and Erin – only a little taller than Jason but very stocky with long straight brown hair and a big, somewhat pitted face like an old rock star. Jason had only seen him sparring once. It was against three good year 11s and Oliver had crushed them. Eddie had introduced them just after that but explained that Oliver spent a lot of time training in the abbey. He was going to join Brash security in August after his “A” levels.
‘Hi,’ Jason said and turned back around, swallowing quietly. Never mind gun-toting agents being in the back, he was in a van with the three best fighters in the Brash gang.
‘Quite august company for a new boy, wouldn’t you agree?’
Jason nodded. ‘Yes. What’s going on?’
‘Well,’ Eddie said, driving them passed the “Little Italy” pizza parlour now, ‘we need some fresh challenges to push you a little further – show you something of what you might face in the real world.’
‘Great…’ was about all Jason could manage.
‘So we are going on a mission, dear boy. You see, there is a certain… gentleman who has been denigrating our generous Mr Brash and, in fact, the whole order of things in Drunken Abbot. He’s just trying to stir up trouble really, mess about with the status quo as it were. The thing is, he’s starting to gather a little following of other losers and we can’t have that, can we?’
‘I guess not,’ Jason mumbled.
‘So we’re going to make a little surgical strike into the rotting heart of Drunken Abbot to see if we can’t take out this malignant little tumour.’
‘Oh.’ said Jason. ‘And why do you need me for this?’
Eddie smiled thinly and looked across at him. ‘We don’t exactly “need” you, old boy, but as I said earlier, it’s an ideal opportunity to bring you on a bit. Mr Brash is very pleased with you so far - your Jakra is coming on very well indeed. He wants to accelerate your training - begin developing other skills in you now.’
‘You’re talking about the Gift? I haven’t decided if I’ll learn…’
Eddie’s left hand flashed up for silence. ‘You owe it to yourself to learn everything you can do – one day your life, or that of someone close to you, may depend on it.’
‘I know all that and believe me, I want to learn them but my Dad is dead set against it… I kind of promised him I’d hold off… at least for a little while.’
‘And what happens if the Brethren find us here tomorrow?’ Eddie asked.
‘But we’re protected here.’
Eddie shook his head. ‘And maybe you should be doing your bit to keep it that way.’
‘I…’ Jason began but Eddie cut him off.
‘Anyway, it’s not an issue just yet. Tonight there’s lots of other things you need to work on… a bit of stealth, watching out for your team, fighting multiple opponents... all good stuff.’
Jason nodded. ‘This is all part of training to be in the Watch, isn’t it?’
Eddie glanced across. ‘It’s all part of training to stay alive, actually. You and yours are a bit of a hot target as you well know and if the Brethren ever managed to track you down here… well, living out in the Wick as you are…’
‘I thought the whole valley was protected?’
‘Enough now,’ Eddie said, ‘we’re about to head into enemy territory.’
He switched off the headlights as they pulled up in front of a small steel gate, just wide enough for the van to pass through. There were three nondescript garages to either side of them. A security man, dressed in the usual dark blue uniform and helmet stepped out from a brick watch-box to one side of the gate and strolled over.
‘Hello Eddie - out on the town again, then?’ the guard said as Eddie rolled down the window. The guard had small, hard looking eyes but he seemed to be genuinely glad to see Eddie.
‘Can’t keep a good man down, Mark. Any movement out there?’
‘Pretty quiet… but I guess that’s about to change.’
Eddie smiled. ‘Now that is a definite possibility. Usual swap, if you please.’
‘Certainly. Give ‘em what for, the scumbags deserve it.’
Mark unlocked one of the garages, pushed the door upwards and disappeared inside.
‘Time to leave the lap of luxury, I’m afraid.’ Eddie said, opening his door and stepping out. Jason followed him as Oliver and Erin jumped out of the
back. Like Eddie, Oliver and Erin were in loose fit jeans and dark tee shirts. Out of her fine blouses and skirts, Erin appeared lithe and hard and Oliver just looked huge. Even with his month of intensive training and fights Jason thought both of them were way out of his league.
An engine sputtered into clanking life and a moment later a rusting blue van reversed out of the garage. It was scratched and filthy and both small rear windows were cracked. It pulled up next to them and Mark jumped out, leaving the engine running.
‘Lovely,’ Eddie grinned at Jason as he jumped up into the driver’s seat. ‘Still, it does blend in a little better than the Merc',’ Erin indicated Jason should take the passenger’s side and she and Oliver climbed into the back again through the two rusting rear doors.
Mark winked at them as he settled in to Eddie’s pristine van and eased it into the now empty garage. A moment later there was a low whirr and the small steel gates into Drunken Abbot rolled back.
Eddie drove through and the gate immediately began shutting again behind them.
***
They pulled away into the dark streets of Drunken Abbot and left civilisation behind.
‘Right,’ Eddie began, his usual jaunty camaraderie dropping from his voice, ‘a couple of things to remember out here. Firstly – this is not any sort of organised training session. If you get cornered there is no one to stop them beating you to a pulp and maybe worse. Mr Brash cracks down heavily on guns and actual killing, but that is no guarantee of anything. The people we are going to play with tonight sometimes tool up with knives or bats – especially if they’ve got wind of some trouble coming their way. Players on both sides have… not come back from nights like these.’
Jason looked at him but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t ready for this; it seemed like he’d stumbled into some sort of Quentin Tarantino movie.
Eddie was driving slowly, navigating by their one working headlight and the occasional intact streetlamp. Jason heard a metallic clinking in the back. He twisted around to see Erin and Oliver keeping watch out of the small, cracked rear windows whilst checking and strapping indistinct glinting objects about themselves.
Jason breathed in slowly, trying to calm himself. That agent on Mawn would have killed him and Miranda. There was a good chance he would face being murdered again by agents hunting him down even if he didn’t decide to join the Watch. He needed to do this, to face real danger and do it now. Like Eddie said – “what happens if the Brethren find them tomorrow?” This was just the next step up from fighting in the Pit.
Eddie glanced across at him. ‘Don’t work yourself up about this – with a bit of luck, most of them will be half-cut on the ale by now. It’ll only get really sticky if we’re recognised by one of the Skins from school… then we can expect a mob to be whipped up from the local pubs in a matter of minutes. The three of us and now, to some extent your good self, would be quite a catch for these low-lives – we do keep beating up their kids, after all.
Jason’s throat was dry. Outside, the van’s shaky headlight beam crawled over dark doors and windows. Eddie was keeping to the back streets but every so often Jason glimpsed a corner pub with its small, yellow-lit windows playing host to menacing silhouettes like some shadow-puppet nightmare.
Suddenly a pub door burst open and three men stumbled out. They were all in jeans, trainers and dirty T-shirts. Two of them held bottles and the little laughing monk logo reflected brightly in Eddie’s headlight. The men squinted around in a daze but Eddie quickly turned down another alleyway so the men were lost from sight.
‘Mmm, adventurous ones… by this time they’ve normally settled into their favourite boozer for the rest of the evening,’ he said, peering out through the windscreen.
The van’s headlight seemed unable to push back the gloom for more than a few metres. They were in a narrow passage running between the backs of two long terraces. Small, black windows stared blindly down at them as the van crunched over rubbish and nudged passed overflowing metal dustbins.
‘Why would anyone want to live here?’ Jason mumbled, almost to himself but Eddie heard him.
‘Mr Brash shipped most of them in when he first took over the spring water plant here and began turning it into a brewery. He brought them in from the cities of the North and Midlands - homeless, petty criminals, the losers with no family or friends to… help them out.’
‘Or miss them,’ Erin said, sliding forward along the bench seat to join them. ‘Mr Brash gives them everything they want – a house, simple work, food tokens, cheap ale – if they left they’d have to walk out of the valley with no money, no home and a growing thirst for ale they can’t afford on the outside.’
Walk out of the valley? Jason scanned the street and alleyways around him. Erin was right – there were no cars, moving or parked. It dawned on Jason that he’d only ever seen a few cars in the town over the weeks he’d travelled to and from Silent Hill. There were a half dozen burnt out wrecks on the school route and from the rust on them it looked like they’d been there for years. Brash really had arranged things so no one ever left Drunken Abbot.
‘Why bother shipping in a whole town of workers in the first place?’ Jason asked, glad to be distracted from the thought of stopping and getting out of the van. ‘Why not just use machines?’
Erin smiled but she didn’t look at him. Her eyes were meticulously searching every alley and doorway they passed.
‘Skilled craftsmen lovingly brew and cask Drunken Abbot Ale by hand from the finest Yorkshire spring water and our merchandise is all hand-assembled.’ Erin said, as if quoting from some brochure.
‘And besides, we need people to practice on,’ Eddie said, shrugging. ‘Now, history lesson over for today - we’re here.’
Eddie pulled into another side street, shut off the headlight and free-wheeled silently into the deepest shadows.
This was it – they were going to walk into some pub and pick a fight. Jason breathed in slowly, trying to stay calm. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Simple really,’ Eddie said, switching off the engine, ‘Your only job is to stop anyone from reaching Erin. You’re going to be her protector or, as the Watch would put it, her shield, for the night.’
Jason twisted slightly to see Erin. Her face was very close. ‘So I just watch your back?’
Erin’s eyes were in deep shadow now but Jason could feel them staring at him. ‘As simple as that. Stick to me like glue and keep the buggers off me,’ her voice had a catch to it, almost a tremor. Jason nodded. He wouldn’t let her down, whatever hell hole Eddie led them in to.
‘Don’t worry about a thing, old boy,’ Eddie said. ‘The plan is we walk into the Abbot and Lashing pub where a gentleman by the name of Jack Delaney is always to be found by this time of the evening. He’s the chappie who’s been stirring up more trouble than usual - moaning on about not enough ale money and the odd unexplained disappearance or two.’
‘Disappearance or two?’ Jason asked.
Eddie’s voice hardened. ‘Nothing unusual in that - remember where these people came from – sometimes they cut loose, drift on. Now stay focussed on the plan.’
‘Right, sorry,’ Jason said. He pushed one hand back through his hair. People drifting on - hadn’t Erin just been explaining why no one ever left Drunken Abbot?
‘Now then,’ Eddie cut into his thoughts, ‘We’ll just give Jack a bit of a slapping in front of his mates and walk out - the trouble makers in this town need to know Mr Brash is watching and listening and nowhere is beyond his reach.’
‘What about his mates,’ Jason asked, ‘won’t they join in?’ .
‘Yes, possibly some of Jack’s drunken pals will take exception to his… warning, in which case Erin and I will likely have to do lots of damage to people and pub. That’s when you and Oliver make sure no one sneaks up behind us to interrupt our work. Then we leave, very quickly, before the word gets around to other pubs.’
Eddie was silent for a moment, his face just a silhoue
tte in the darkened van. ‘Remember, Jason, this is not a game. If it kicks off, don’t hold back with the Jakra or they will slaughter us. No fancy sparring here – break them in one strike or two then move on to the next. Above all, protect Erin - Oliver will be too busy watching my back to help out.’
‘They’ll know we’re up for trouble as soon as we walk in, won’t they?’ Jason asked.
‘Not necessarily. They’ll know we’re not locals – everyone knows everyone in their street here, but that’s okay. Men and occasionally women, from our lovely village sometimes step out into the town to sample a little of the rough life. Some of the pubs put on special… entertainment for the posh folks.’
Eddie smiled and slapped Jason’s leg. ‘We’ll give them a little entertainment of our own, eh?’
Jason attempted a grin but Eddie was already looking into the back of the van.
‘Clear?’ he asked.
‘Clear, Eddie.’ Oliver replied, his voice low and serious. Erin slid back over to him.
‘Let’s do it,’ Eddie said, switching the cab light to permanent off before he eased his door open.
Jason shuddered as he reached for the handle. Somehow, being in the van let him believe he was safe, just an observer watching the dangerous town pass by on three hundred and sixty degree television. Now he had to get out and be a part of it.
‘Snap to, Jason,’ Eddie hissed, quietly sliding his door shut.
Jason took one more, deep, calming breath and stepped out into the dark.
The alley was narrow with no lights at all. About 50 metres back the way they’d come was a larger street, lit in patches by its few remaining, non-smashed streetlamps. Eddie and Oliver Stone crossed to the other side of the alley, pulling slightly ahead. Oliver was tying back his long hair into a pony tail. Jason started to cross after them.
‘No, Jason - stay by me, remember.’ Erin whispered, laying a cool hand on his arm.
He moved back to Erin’s side. She curled one fist in his T-shirt.
‘Get it into your head - you’re my shield from now until we get out of here, okay? Stay a step behind me wherever I go and give it everything you’ve got to watch my back while I dish out some damage in front. D’you understand?’