by Alex Kings
“Yeah.”
“And you're the one who made the choice?”
Jess stopped and sighed. Not wanting to talk about this, she rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“Why?” said Luke.
“It was a better choice,” said Jess. “It was closer and safer.”
Luke was about to reply, but stopped as if he'd heard something. A moment later, Jess heard it too – raised voices, shouting, coming from ahead of them. Not far from the loading bay. Jess got moving as fast as her side would let her.
Two people by the van. Mike on one side, and one of the loaders whose name Jess couldn't recall on the other.
Mike was in the middle of a rant: “Bullshit! You think it's just an accident, huh? That all my people are getting the shit jobs?”
The loader had his hands raised and spread in a clear attempt to calm Mike down. He was a big guy – bigger than Mike – but still looked a bit overwhelmed.
“I know what you're up to,” said Mike. He reached forward and pushed the loader one on the chest. “You want to get all the glory for yourselves. It'll be Mason's people who make friends with Ironbridge. It'll be Mason's people who find the salvage.”
There were a couple of other people coming up now. Luke stepped forward. “What's the problem, Mike?” he asked clearly.
Mike stepped back, his eyes skimmed the crowd around him – five people besides Jess and Luke – then turned to Luke. “You know,” he said.
“I really don't,” said Luke.
Mike pointed at him, then Jess. “I bet she's had a hand in it too.”
Someone else in the crowd spoke up: “Only Mason's supporters are getting assigned to the vans and the salvage teams. Why do you think that is?”
Mike turned back to the loader, and pushing him again, began the accusation: “So you … get … all … the credit!”
Luke strode forward. So did several other people. The guy who'd just spoken was heading to intercept Luke, rather than the two by the van. Jess looked from each of others and felt a chill. At least one had cheered for Dale before. Who were the others allied to? Who would be on Mike's side.
There came a thump. Her eyes went back to the centre of the crowd. Mike was half-lying, half-sitting on the ground with his hand over his nose and mouth. A dash of crimson dribbled from beneath. Over him, the loader stood with fists raised.
Silence, creeping into seconds. The loader lowered his fists and took a step back from Mike. Mike himself scrabbled backwards a metre or so before getting up.
Then he launched himself into the loader. The two went down. Luke broke into a run towards them. Several other people closed in on the fight. Someone – the guy who had cheered for Dale previously – reached the fighter first, and pulled Mike away. The second Dale supporter got between the two of them and Luke, but Luke, seeing the fight was stopping, came to a halt anyway.
Mike struggled against the guy holding him back, but gave up after a few moments. He looked like he'd come off worse from the fight.
“Don't worry!” the guy holding him said, “He struck first. We saw it.” He glanced at the loader, who was now also nursing a bleeding nose but looked otherwise unharmed, then looked around the crowd. “We saw it.”
It was an invitation – lie, and make yourselves the villain of the piece, or come clean and admit your guy was the attacker.
Your guy. And that made Jess realise the lines in the sand had been drawn. She wanted no part in this silly conflict, but now she'd been grouped under “Mason supporter” – and so, in a way, responsible for all their failures.
More people were coming now. Any chance of of a larger fight breaking out had gone. Or, at least, it had gone back to waiting.
The nine witnesses – Mike, the loader, plus Jess, Luke and the other five observers, clustered together. She tried, as questions came, to explain exactly what had played out. But through the questions, her answers got caught up in a tide of different explanations, accusation of guilt, and disagreements.
And in the end on a simple overview, all its important details eroded away, got out: Mike and the loader had got into a disagreement about how Dale supporters should be treated, and the loader, a Mason supporter, had hit Mike, a Dale supporter.
The crowd grew, fragmented, argued, agreed. Time for the next shift came, and most people filtered away. Luke had to leave to do some building work. Jess stayed a little longer because there wasn't much trading to work to do, and because she wanted to see how thing splayed out.
In the end, a few people got together and decided Mike and the loader should both skip their next shifts. Mike would be escorted to the infirmary, and the loader to Mason's offices. Everyone wanted to discuss – which Jess supposed really meant argue about – the issue the following morning.
Everyone agreed, meanwhile, that the van would leave on schedule. The trading crisis was, for the moment, big enough to unify everyone.
Eventually, Jess went off to her shift.
Chapter 11
For the rest of her shift, half went to administrative work. A quarter went to writing backup letters – to Goat's Head if Ironbridge failed, to Safe Haven if Goat's Head failed. The final quarter went to planning in her head a way to get hold of a demon.
Maybe if she summoned one to the front gate when the van came back. It would have a fair chance of getting through the gate, but would get easily shot by all the guards. At which point it would be easy – of if not easy, then possible – to sneak off a piece of it before it went to the incinerator
She thought back to the time a couple of weeks ago, just before she and Luke had left to visit the hospital, when a demon had hidden under the van and managed to kill one of the guards.
She didn't want to be responsible for that.
What else?
It seemed impossible that she'd be allowed to leave the compound on another emergency mission while the crisis in place.
Luke, however …
He was under consideration for a salvage team. Maybe if he got assigned to one, he could bring back something extra. It would difficult for him to do it without the rest of the salvage team noticing, of course, but not impossible.
That was in, then. She'd have to ask him.
When her shift finished, she headed down to get some dinner. There was no meat today – mild rationing in place. Instead, she had the possibility of an egg, plus the usual small selection vegetables – potatoes, string beans, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes.
Plate full, she sought out a free corner to wait for Luke. The dining room was alive with chatter. Walking across it, she caught snatched of conversation. Some names kept popping up over and over – “Mike” most of all, then “James”, who she guessed was the loader. In third and fourth place came “Dale” and “Mason”, plus words like “fight”, “failure”, and “coup”.
She wondered if she'd find a way not just to kill demons, but to defeat them all, forever – then get killed in the coup before she could share it with anyone.
The thought brought on a single, small choke of laughter as she settled down at the table.
A few minutes later, Luke arrived opposite her. She waved to him.
“I'm starting to worry,” he said, glancing around the hall, “that even if the crisis is solved, it won't fix anything.” He prodded at his wilted lettuce with his fork. “Perhaps we can get to Goat's Head compound soon.”
The thought seemed to remind him of their interrupted conversation earlier, and Jess didn't want to get caught up in that again, so she pushed towards her original topic:
“Well, if you don't mind, I have something else we might worry about. You know, to keep us entertained until the next disaster. Another … secret mission”
Luke looked up. His expression was unsure, but also curious.
Jess went on: “If I get you a place on the salvage team, do you think you could bring back a piece of a demon?”
There was a pause before Luke spoke. “What?”
“Not a whole de
mon! Just a limb or something.”
This time there was a longer pause. Luke turned his fork around in his hand. Jess busied herself with her food.
“Why do you want a piece of a demon?” Luke said.
“You know Patel got a piece of my parasite?” said Jess.
Luke nodded.
“And that I used it to kill the monster in the hospital?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I think the venom from the piece she extracted might hold the key to killing demons. If we're very, very lucky. But we need some demon flesh to experiment on.”
“I think we have they key to killing demons,” said Luke. “Guns. They have the advantage over venom that you don;t need to get within six feet of a demon to shoot it.”
“And the disadvantage that they're not guaranteed to kill in one shot,” said Jess. “But never mind that, I think this might be a step on the way to killing all of them. To poison them en-masse or something.”
“Right,” said Luke after a moment of thought. “So you want to go out there and get a piece of a demon, while we're still worrying out your infection, while the whole compound is in the middle of a crisis … so you can, without any idea of how to actually do it, figure out a way to kill demons.” His tone of voice didn't sound particularly positive.
“Yeah,” said Jess, putting on a casual voice. “That's the sort of thing we do all the time lately, isn't it?”
“How can even think of this?” hissed Luke. “Aren't we busy enough already? You said it yourself, didn't you? Let's deal with the crisis first. So why don't we deal with the crisis and your parasite first, before worrying about finding a way to save the Earth?
“Because this is important!”
“It's dangerous.”
“Just a limb, Luke. That can't be dangerous.”
“No,” said Luke. I'm not doing it. “You put your foot down on the issue with Goat's Head. I'm doing it for this. We're not going to worry about getting demon flesh until that parasite is out of you.”
By then, it might be too late, thought Jess, but she didn't say anything.
Luke sighed, and cut away a little white triangle of egg with the side of his fork. “We'll get through this,” he said, though whether this was meant to comfort her or himself wasn't clear.
From the front of the hall there came a clanging of a metal bell. As the conversation dropped, it was followed by voice, loud without devolving into a shout: “Excuse me, excuse me!”
Jess turned to see Mayor Mason standing by the front of the hall, bell in her left hand as she saw she'd got everyone's attention.
“Thank you,” she said. “I am calling a meeting tomorrow at ten o'clock to discuss today's incident. Attendance is voluntary. Thank you.” She gave everyone a formal nod, and headed out the door. There came a few spoken acknowledgements from the crowd, and a lone jeer as Mason vanished from sight. Within a few seconds the background noise of conversation had returned, even more animated.
Jess turned back to Luke. “I suppose you're right,” she said. “This crisis is going to be too much to handle.”
Chapter 12
That door again, rendered in shuddering angular shadows by a hanging lamp a few metres away. Jess's fist was raised and ready to knock, but she held back.
A soft glow crept from under the door. Richard was in his workroom still, then.
After dinner, in the fading sunlight, most people had gone back to sleep. Luke had too. Jess had considered it, but instead found herself walking across the compound aimlessly, until she turned up near her office – and Richard's office.
Jess lowered her fist and stepped back, considering the merits of just going back to her room and, like Luke had said, forgetting about the demon flesh.
But she couldn't.
She raised her fist again and knocked lightly.
After a few moments, she heard motion inside, followed by the lock clicking. Then the door opened. Richard didn't seem surprised to see her. He just smiled and said, “Hi Jess. Anything I can help you with?”
“Uh, yes, actually. Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
He locked the door behind them. Jess looked around. In the corner there was one of those wind-up LED lamps which had proved so useful after the fall. It cast a cold blue light over everything.
“I have a favour to ask you,” she said. “I'll warn you now, it's a big one, and I'm not actually entirely sure how you could help.”
He certainty wasn't likely to take a place on the salvage team.
Richard leaned against the edge of his desk. “Go on.”
“I need … some demon flesh. A piece of a demon. A limb or something.” She watched his face intently, waiting for any sign of rejection or revulsion.
“Can I ask what for?”
“To experiment on,” she said. “I was thinking … maybe Dr Patel could find a way for my parasite to poison demons. Maybe all of them.”
Richard nodded thoughtfully. His brow creased in thought. After a pause he said, “I might be able to do it. No guarantees, though. I have a few close friends who I might be able to ask, and a few favours I could call in.” He saw her face. “They don't know about you, and I won't tell them what I want it for.”
“Are you sure that'll work?”
“No,” said Richard. “I won't lie to you: It might not work. It might blow up in our faces. But I'm not stupid, and I have as much reason as you at this point to stop things from getting out. So if you trust me to go ahead with this.”
“Dangerous times,” Jess murmured.
“Dangerous times indeed.”
“Alright,” she said. “I trust you. And … thanks.”
“No problem.”
Jess made for the door, then paused, then turned back. Richard was writing in one of the notebooks on his desk. He looked up at her.
“I guess you got news about the fight today?”
“Yeah. And the meeting tomorrow.” Richard pressed his lips together. “It was my own fault. I see the duty roster – I should have noticed that none of Andrew Dale's supporters were in the high-profile jobs.”
“So it's true, then? What they said about being excluded?”
“Not deliberately, no,” said Richard. “The number of people who are vocal Dale supports is quite small – he has more supporters, of course, but we don't always know who they are. And the number of positions on the roster for things like salvage and driving is small compared to the more boring jobs.”
“Okay,” said Jess, “so it's possible they could all get excluded by accident.”
“Yeah. Or maybe someone writing the roster one day swapped out a Dale supporter because they didn't trust them. And if that person was the only Dale support on the roster in the first place, we'd be left with none.”
Jess sighed and leaned against the front of the little desk. “Luke doesn't think I should be working on getting demon flesh for an experiment. He said we already have too much to worry about with Dale. Maybe he's right.”
Richard considered this for a moment. “It's understandable.”
“You agree with him?”
“No. I understand where he's coming from, but I don't agree. I think you're right to go ahead with it. If you do have a chance of really … saving the world, then the political troubles of Paradise Compound are pretty unimportant by comparison. Besides, there's always going to be some crisis or other. If you wait for them to finish, you'll never get it done.”
Jess smiled faintly. “I guess that's true.”
“So, I suppose I shouldn't tell Luke?”
Jess shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Consider it done.”
“I guess I should go, then,” said Jess. She stood and stretched. “Thank you, really. You've done so much to help, and …”
“Jess?”
She stopped and looked at him.
“It's fine. I'm happy to help, so don't worry about it.”
“Yeah, alright. See you tomorrow.” Jes
s let herself out.
Chapter 13
After Jess had gone, Richard locked the door again, then sat behind his desk and stared at the shift planning work he had been doing.
So – she wanted to save the world from the demons? Utterly mad, of course, but interesting. He supposed she had some sort of need to be a martyr: Stubbornly fatalistic about the chance of saving her own life, but delusionally positive about saving everyone else.