Runners

by Ann Kelley

  ‘Dunno, Miss. Seagulls?’

  The boys fell about laughing.

  ‘Water, Crow, we have fresh water. Without fresh water everything dies. Cornwall, I mean Fortress Kernow, has always had a high rainfall, and luckily that hasn’t changed much over the years, in spite of The Warming.’

  ‘But shouldn’t we look after starving people, Miss? And people with no water?’

  ‘Unfortunately, Sparrow, in order to survive we can no longer allow more people in.’

  The class murmured and fidgeted in the hot and airless room. Ms Thrush fanned herself with her notes and frowned.

  ‘If I leave Fort Kernow, can I come back again?’ asked Finch, slapping at a mosquito on his leg.

  ‘Not until The Emergency is over. Travel is forbidden.’

  A boy at the back raised his hand. ‘Does that mean the starving will die, Miss?’

  ‘There was plenty of warning of what was in store for the world’s populations, Swan. Scientists had told governments, but people didn’t want to believe in the coming hardships for the human race.

  ‘Droughts caused grain crops to fail. Civil wars broke out when food stocks fell and prices rose. Many bad things happened, but in spite of low-lying countries disappearing under the waves, many countries are still capable of supporting life: large parts of Russia, Siberia, Canada, Tibet, China, the Yukon, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Finland, Norway and Sweden.’ She sighed, turned away and rubbed off the map from the blackboard. ‘Wales, Ireland and Scotland. the Arctic, the Antarctic,’ she hesitated, searching for more names. ‘Lots of places.’ She coughed and raised her hand. ‘Class dismissed.’ She shuffled her papers and shoved them into a briefcase, then wiped the perspiration from her brow.

  The boys all started talking at once. How were survivors going to get to habitable zones, thought Sid, if no one’s allowed to fly or sail or drive any more? Walk? Well, he and Lo had.

  After lessons the boys ran around the graveyard, kicking footballs, wrestling, the younger ones swapping glass marbles. One boy was trying to catch a butterfly in a net on a pole. He chased the small blue butterfly across graves. Sid tried to help by waving his arms at the insect as it flew close to him. He tripped on a flat gravestone and fell heavily, scraping his hands and elbows. When he sat up he saw the inscription:

  JOSEPH SIDNEY JENKYN

  BORN JUNE 2024

  FELL ASLEEP SEP 2089

  RIP

  What RIP meant he had no idea. He stared at the black stone with the jar of dead flowers at its head. He had died last year. The evidence had been under Sid’s nose all this time and he hadn’t seen it.

  He sat down by the grave. This was a disaster. It meant that he had nowhere to take Lo. He couldn’t imagine his grumpy grandmother wanting to hide and look after a five-year-old. He sat for a while thinking about Gramps. His hairy ears and nostrils. He liked a snooze in the afternoon. He snored, coughed a lot, sucked peardrops. Sid could hardly remember him really. He squeezed out a few tears, but they were for himself. He tried to remember what his mam had said about her parents. They’d worked in a mycoculture production factory for years – glorified mushroom farm, Dad had called it – and then ran a recycling unit. Perhaps if he could find an antique telephone directory, he could look up recycling units in Fort Kernow. Maybe that was the way to find them – her. If he wanted to. And maybe Grumps would come to visit the grave? People did that. He could watch out for her. If he really wanted to find her… but did he?

  ‘Come on Star, race you to the harbour.’

  Sid rose and ran after Buzz to the harbour wall, where they sat and counted the coastguard vessels patrolling the coast, rowed by teams of muscled men and women, and breathed in the salt air.

  At least here there was a cool breeze.

  ‘What do you want to be when you grow up, Star?’ Buzz asked.

  ‘Dunno.’ Most of his boyhood he had wanted to be the next Isambard Kingdom Brunel. But now maybe he could be a coastguard or a border guard, a policeman or a fire-fighter? Yeah, a fire-fighter would be exciting. He would have to join the TA first of course; they would teach him how to be a fireman.

  ‘Fire-fighter,’ he announced.

  ‘Reducer, me.’

  ‘You told me, yeah. You want to kill people do you?’

  The boy giggled in embarrassment. ‘They get to drive fast motorbikes; they got guns, man.’

  ‘Yeah, and they get to kill mothers and fathers and little kids.’

  ‘No they don’t. They get to round them up so they can be taken to Sunshine Camps.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘There are no Sunshine Camps, Buzz. There’s only us and them – Repops and the TA. Reducers are part of the TA.’

  ‘Don’t believe you. I’ll ask Fat Ass.’

  ‘What do you think Reducer means?’

  ‘A bloke what finds people and sends them to Sunshine Camps where they get to eat less so that they become thinner.’

  ‘Have you ever seen a Sunshine Camp?’

  Buzz shook his head.

  Sid sighed. ‘To reduce is to make smaller. Population Reduction is about cutting down the numbers of the population – the people who live here. That’s what Runners are running from.’

  ‘But, isn’t that murder?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s murder.’

  ‘But they get paid to do it?’

  ‘Yeah, they get paid to do it.’ He thought about Mal, the glossy Harley motorbike, the leathers, the tattoos. Part of Sid admired the Reducer.

  ‘I know a secret,’ said the younger boy.

  ‘What secret?’

  ‘Let me have your T-shirt and I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Joking aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, man, joking.’ Buzz punched him lightly on the arm and they began to play fight. When they had had enough rough and tumble, Sid removed the khaki T. ‘ Here, you can have a go of it for today if you like.’

  ‘Really? Thanks, Star.’ He tore off his own shirt and pulled the Reducer’s T-shirt over his head. It came down to his knees, hiding his shorts completely. They both laughed.

  Running back to Newlyn North Repop Camp Buzz told his secret.

  ‘I heard Fat Ass talking to Ms Gull about an island. Scilly, it’s called, off Land’s End. She said there are loads of Runners there, and no one bothers about them.’

  ‘How do they live?’

  ‘Like smugglers, wreckers, like in the old days.’

  ‘No ships to wreck,’ sneered Sid. ‘Anyway, I thought all islands were flooded.’

  ‘Most are. Not that one though.’

  ‘How did they get there?’

  ‘Lived there before The Emergency? Stole a boat and sailed there?’

  That night before he slept, Sid surrounded himself in a new fantasy. His parents had escaped the Reducers and found their way to the safe island, where they waited for him and Lo. They grew all their own food and had a farm like Old MacDonald. Dad had miraculously recovered the use of his legs or grown some new ones. His mam was happy and pretty again, like she used to be. They all lived in a stone cottage overlooking the sea. He had a red dog and Lo had a white kitten. They stayed on the beach all day. He woke and for a brief moment thought it was true. Then he cried silently.

  Weeks passed without Sid having decided what to do about Lo, or looking for his grandmother. Maybe he would stay here forever, be looked after and fed. He had friends, he was learning new skills – how to sow seed and prick out seedlings, how to ride a horse and drive it between the shafts of a plough, how to gather crops and sort them, how to store them so they wouldn’t rot.

  Some days he made a point of visiting the grave of Joseph Sidney Jenkyn, in case his grandmother had come to pay her respects. He even went as far as (when no one was watching) to place some cowslips on the grave. But he never saw her, and, in fact, was quite relieved.

  One day there was a football match between his camp and Penzance East. It was played on an old car p
ark by the harbour, the tarmac split by grass and rose-bay willow-herb. The other boys cheered and shouted encouragement. Rook, the captain, was a speedy and accurate right-winger, and with his help Sid scored two goals. Five minutes before the final whistle the scores were even. Sid took a cunning cross from Rook, performed a brilliant dribble past the big, red-faced defender, did a clever back-flip and scored, winning the game for Newlyn North.

  The captain of Penzance East, a heavy-set boy with big hands and feet and bad acne, came up to Sid and whispered in his ear – ‘I’ll get you for that, Smiler.’

  ‘Well played, people. Well done, Star,’ said Rook, slapping him on the back. Sid’s heart swelled with pride. Rook had called him Star, not Starling. Lifted onto two boys’ shoulders Sid was carried off, man of the match.

  The best lessons were in fighting skills. Recently each boy had been issued with his own wooden lance, longer and as nearly as thick as the handle of a broom, sharpened at both ends, and each boy had customised his lance, some with string or ribbon, some with colour. Sid had carved his name in full along the length of his – Sidney Kingdom Freeman – followed by a five-pointed star. He kept it by his side always. He was also taught how to fight with his feet and hands.

  One rest period, instead of lying around doing nothing, roof-running, or playing football, Sid went off on his own looking for the house with the monkey puzzle tree. Just in case he ever needed to know where it was. His search took him to a part of town he hadn’t been to before in the east of the town. He was climbing a hill, balancing one point of his fighting lance on the palm of one hand, about to give up the search, and thinking that it was time to get back to camp, when a gang of boys, all carrying sharpened lances, appeared from a side alley. They surrounded him.

  ‘Well, well, well! It’s Smiler!’ The big boy with acne announced with satisfaction. Sid’s heart beat fast. He could have run away. He stood his ground.

  ‘So what?’ he said.

  ‘So, where’s the rest of your team now?’

  ‘You’re a bad loser, Bigfoot.’

  The object of Sid’s remark stood with his large feet wide apart and twirled his lance aggressively. The gang drew back to give him room. Sid prepared himself for action.

  Although his opponent was physically more powerful, Sid was lighter on his feet. He ducked and weaved, springing backwards and sideways as the bully advanced, meeting lance with lance.

  ‘Got you now,’ Bigfoot gloated.

  Cornered in the alley, Sid leapt onto a garden wall and cracked his adversary on the head. In retaliation he jabbed the spike at Sid’s legs.

  ‘Kill him, kill him,’ the boys yelled at their leader. But Sid had the edge on him, and was above him. He took aim and threw the lance. It found its target: the upper arm took the blow. Bigfoot dropped his own weapon and fell, grunting in agony. Sid jumped down, pushed down on the injured boy’s shoulder with one foot, drew out the lance and quickly climbed onto the wall again. Blood oozed out of Bigfoot’s arm. The point had hit muscle. He writhed around on the pavement, his pals around him. One of them lunged at Sid, taking him by surprise and Sid’s lance clattered out of his hands. He sprang down from the wall and performed several quick karate chops, felling his attacker and two other boys who had tried to restrain him. Retrieving his weapon he slipped away, dashing along walls and balancing along fences, running through alleys and back lanes, leaping over invisible mines and dodging an imaginary foe. Striding, chest out, head held high, he became in quick succession a Samurai warrior, a pirate, a musketeer, a spaceman, Spiderman, a saviour of mothers and fathers and small children who would have been reduced but for his courage; loved forever by the girl with daisies in her hair; loved by all Runners, everywhere; until he was back safe in Newlyn North Repop territory, bruised but jubilant, triumphant.

  Next day Sid was put in charge of a team of five younger boys and given the task of clearing rocks and boulders from a field so it could be ploughed and used for growing food crops. They worked well in the early morning before it became too hot, shifting the smaller stones to the edges. There was one large boulder that they were having trouble with. It was covered in lichens: green hairy ones, yellow ones like gold flakes, and white ones like splashes of paint. They had managed to lever it up on one side but it was still stuck fast in the earth. Buzz, being one of the more skinny boys, offered to get under it and dig it out while the others held it up. He was digging away with a small spade, trying to loosen the base of the boulder, which had sat there for a thousand years and didn’t want to be moved. Two earthworms wriggled out of the sudden blinding light where they had been thrust, back into the dark soil. No birds sang in the humid heat. No breeze blew, even on the high moor. Only gnats and midges hovered around the boys’ heads. Bluebottles drank the sweat on their arms and legs.

  ‘Can’t hold it much longer,’ said Sparra, and promptly slid over, letting go his leverage pole. The others couldn’t hang on without him and the boulder fell on top of Buzz, who screamed, and didn’t stop. With strength he didn’t know he had, Sid hefted the boulder up on his own, then ordered the scared boys to hold it up while he dragged the injured boy out.

  One leg stuck out at an odd angle and the foot seemed to have turned the wrong way round. They were a mile or so from their camp and there were no adults around. Sid remembered how long the boy with the broken back had had to wait.

  ‘Go tell them that I’m bringing in an injured man, go, run!’ The little boys ran, leaving Sid to lift Buzz. He practically ran with him down across the fields to the town, Buzz screaming most of the way, until he passed out with the pain.

  Later, the TA officer called all the boys to attention in the camp. She called Sid’s name, or rather, she called out ‘Repop Cadet Starling!’ He stood there for a moment, forgetting that he was now Starling, until pushed forward by the boy behind him.

  ‘Cadet Starling, having considered your exemplary service and attitude, I am promoting you to Corporal.’ She leaned over him and pinned a red stripe to his sand coloured shirt. He saluted, smiling broadly and stepped back to loud cheers.

  Valerian grew in thick clumps from the dry-stone hedge. Sid watched a pair of adders writhe in a knot in a patch of sun. It was a rare day off and earlier he had visited Buzz in the hospital and taken him a cast-off slow-worm skin he had found in the graveyard. Buzz’s broken leg was in plaster and held up at an angle from the bed by a hoist. Hot and uncomfortable, pale and tearful, he was allergic to the antibiotic he had been given to stop infection. He moaned quietly and didn’t even seem to recognise his friend. The nurse had told Sid that he mustn’t come again. Sparrow was too ill to receive visitors.

  ‘He’ll get better, though, won’t he? It’s only a broken leg.’

  The nurse shrugged.

  Sid left the fascinating mating of the snakes and wandered off over the hill, thinking about Buzz, what a good little mate he’d always been.

  ‘Kill, kill, kill,’ he heard a chorus of small boys yelling. There was the sound of yelping and whining. He ran to where a group of eight-year-old Repops stood in a circle, brandishing sticks, whooping madly. A skinny young dog cowered on the ground as they beat it. It had been dark brown but was now red with blood.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted and they stopped briefly to look up, their eyes wide. He tore the stick from one, then another boy, who angrily tried to get it back. Sid lashed out at him in fury.

  ‘Rook said we could reduce it. It’s illegal. Not allowed.’

  ‘Bloody barbarians,’ Sid conjured up one of his father’s expressions. He took off his shirt and wrapped the injured puppy in it.

  ‘We’ll tell on you,’ a boy shouted after him. He carried the dog back to the church where his backpack was, and bathed its wounds in disinfectant from the first-aid kit. It whined pitifully.

  ‘What are you doing, Sergeant?’ It was Rook. ‘That dog’s illegal. It must be culled.’

  Sid ignored him.

  ‘Repops are chosen survivors.
We follow orders or we’re out. That means you too, Corporal Starling. I shall have to report you to the Commander.’

  ‘Yeah, you do that.’ Sid carried on bathing the dog’s cuts. It trembled, looking up at him with trusting eyes.

  ‘You’ll be stripped of your stripe, Starling. Head shaved.’

  ‘Oh, piss off, Rook. What’s the point of being alive if you’re inhuman?’ He gathered his few belongings, regretting again the loss of the one and only photograph of his parents, and made a sling out of his bloody Repop shirt in which to carry the puppy.

  ‘You lost your mam too, eh?’ he whispered to it.

  Rook had stomped off to report Starling to his superiors. Sid made for the kitchen, his lance resting on one shoulder, and took some apples and a packet of Kworn, soy biscuits, and a bottle of water. Looking in a drawer he found a metal meat skewer.

  He opened the padlock with the point of the skewer. As he thought, his rifle was there still, in the cupboard, with various other confiscated treasures: penknives, catapults, a flick-knife, Buzz’s Spiderman comic, and a red model car. He picked up the car and stroked it, admiring the rubber wheels and the opening doors, and put it back regretfully. He took his rifle, the box of lead shot and the flick-knife, feeling very wicked: his mother hated flick-knives, and his father disapproved of boys who carried them. No sign of the photo, though. Before leaving he looked up at a side wall to the only piece of church decoration that had survived the various changes the building had undergone – a carved wooden angel grieving over a list of local war dead.

  As soon as he had left the churchyard a fierce looking woman in her early sixties entered with a bunch of wild flowers clutched in her huge red hands. She sucked at her few remaining teeth as she laid the wilting primroses on a grave and squeezed out a few tears. She wondered at the cowslips dying in a dried out jar. Had she put them there? She couldn’t remember.

  ‘Joe boy,’ she whispered, ‘Miss you lots, you old bugger. No news of Janey or the littl’uns. Should have come two years ago when you asked her, shouldn’t she? Anyway, I’m praying for them.’ She sniffed and scratched her arm where a scabies rash had spread. ‘Anyway, got to get back to work.’ She put a grubby finger to her lips and blew a kiss. Boys ran about the gravestones, ignoring the woman. After she left, two boys wrestled on the grave scattering the flowers.