Toxic Treacle

by Echo Freer

  ‘You’ll need a good lawyer for her defence.’

  ‘You offering?’ Monkey challenged.

  ‘Come and see me again tomorrow at 19:00. By then, I’ll know where she’s been taken and with what she’s been charged. Now, you’d better go out the back way so that your sister doesn’t see you.’

  ***

  Monkey made his way back through the drain to the underground chamber, only to find the others packing up.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked Daz.

  Without stopping what he was doing, Daz replied, ‘She knows where we are. We gotta move out.’

  ‘Angel won’t snake!’ Monkey was offended.

  ‘Course she will.’ Daz’s voice was cold and matter of fact. ‘They all do.’

  ‘Where’re we going?’ Monkey’s breath was so shallow as to be barely perceptible. He rubbed his hands together anxiously. They couldn’t move on - not now. Not when he’d got Eric to agree to defend Angel. And it would only be a matter of time before he took on the others’ cases as well.

  Daz turned to look at Monkey; his features heavy with contempt. ‘Dunno where you’re going, Monk. But we’re outta here.’

  ‘You can’t go without me.’ His eyes darted round the cavernous space. Bedrolls were being tied up, boxes and bags stacked in the centre of the underground room. But in the place where he and Angel had slept, nothing had been moved. ‘I got him to agree,’ he blurted, desperately. ‘Eric’s gonna take on the case.’

  Daz shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘It’s what you wanted.’

  ‘What I wanted,’ Daz said, ‘was to be safe - for all of us to be safe. But you and your little mate have put paid to that.’

  ‘Why is that my fault?’ Monkey gasped. ‘What the fegg were you doing letting her go into The Plaza in the first place?’

  ‘She was looking for you, you brick-brain!’ Monkey felt his stomach lurch. He felt sick. ‘One hour I said! One fegging hour! But you couldn’t even manage that simple instruction, could you?’

  ‘Eric was late,’ Monkey offered, lamely.

  ‘So you get outta there and make another appointment. You don’t endanger everyone else with your self-indulgent fantasies about playing happy families. We’re working for a bigger cause here.’ He shook his head. ‘You are bad news, man. Bad fegging news.’

  ‘Let me come with you,’ Monkey pleaded.

  Daz dropped his voice and adopted the speech of the hood. ‘It ain’t happenin’, cuz! All right? An’ I get so much as a whiff of you stalkin’ and you gonna wish you ain’t never set eyes on me. Ya get me?’ He turned his back on Monkey, indicating that the conversation was closed and that there would be no further discussion on the matter.

  Monkey went over to the bedroll where he and Angel had rested. Their bags had not been touched. He changed out of the female clothes he’d been wearing and slumped on the mattress, watching as the rest of them filed down the metal ladder into the storm drain. Daz was the last to leave.

  He pointed a finger in Monkey’s direction. ‘You listen up good, Monk. You stay here until 20:30 before you so much as move a muscle. Or, so help me...’

  ‘Fegg off, Daz!’ Monkey spat contemptuously. He lay down with his hands behind his head then rolled with his face to the wall. ‘I ain’t goin’ nowhere,’ he muttered, picking up the ring-cams that he and Angel had been issued and gazing at them with an air of despondency.

  He listened to the receding footsteps of the group as they headed out of the storm drain in the direction of the river. When he could hear no sound other than the intermittent dripping of water, he sat up. The fire was still burning under the furnace, giving a soft glow to the chamber. Monkey shuffled across to it, rubbing his hands and holding them out to keep warm. It felt as though his entire being was filled with lead. He stared into the fire, trying to think of a plan but his brain wouldn’t function. It was as though all the energy had been sucked from his body. He had never felt so desolate. Tragic, Fuse, now Angel - all gone from his life. There was no one left.

  No one except... Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? Monkey had a variety of IDs and disguises to get him across town, now all he had to do was find his way to the Riverside Apartments, in Socio-economic Group One Providers’ Zone, and locate Eric. His father had said he’d defend Angel, now he wanted to see if the great barrister was as good as his word.

  ***

  Monkey was almost disappointed. For years, he’d craned to see over the walls of the Providers’ Zone and catch a glimpse of the hallowed interior, when all he’d needed was the ID of an engineering student and the excuse of a game of squash!

  ‘How come security’s so crap in this place?’ he asked as he wandered around Eric’s penthouse apartment.

  ‘The Assembly’s not interested in who comes in here,’ his father replied. ‘It’s keeping them in that’s the problem.’

  Monkey was standing before a plate glass window with views across the river and the town. He’d seen the building many times in the distance from Moonstone Park, never guessing that his own breeder lived there.

  ‘So, what happens next?’

  Eric looked him up and down and raised an eyebrow. ‘Clearly, you can’t stay here.’ A shadow of disappointment passed across Monkey’s face. ‘You are quite obviously neither a provider nor SE One.’ It was Monkey’s turn to raise his eyebrows. ‘I’ll have to find you accommodation in the Breeders’ Zone for the time being. You’ll be fairly inconspicuous over there.’

  While his father made several calls on his ring-cam, Monkey showered and changed into some of Eric’s sweats. When he emerged from the bathroom, Eric had sent out to a restaurant in town for food to be delivered.

  ‘I didn’t know your taste,’ Eric said, ‘so I ordered English. I hope that’s all right for you.’

  He served the homemade pie, potatoes and beans onto two plates and handed one to Monkey. As Monkey went to sit down at the table, Eric took his food and sat on to the enormous settee that dominated the penthouse.

  A grin spread across Monkey’s face. ‘We don’t have to eat at the table? Fridge!’ And he flopped down next to his father.

  ‘Do you like sport?’ Eric asked.

  Monkey made a gesture as if to say, who doesn’t?

  ‘Football!’ Eric ordered, and the enormous plasma-screen on the wall adjacent to the window flickered on.

  ‘Whaled!’

  They ate their food in silence as they watched the exhibition match until an election broadcast interrupted the game. Eric directed the laser-remote to the archives and brought up an old-fashioned boxing match for his son to watch. ‘There are advantages to being a barrister,’ he explained. ‘Sometimes, one is required to defend a client who’s been accused of illegally supplying contact sport vids.’ He shot a wry smile at his son. ‘And, occasionally, one forgets to delete them from one’s system.’

  Monkey nestled into the folds of the sumptuous sofa, replete and content. This wasn’t as bad as Tom and those other escapees had made out. In fact, he could get used to this. All the tension of the past week began to ease from his shoulders. His eyelids were heavy, drooping under the weight of a full stomach and last night’s lack of sleep. ‘In the blue corner, the Light-middleweight Champion of Europe...’ Images of the boxers on the screen merged with Angel waving to him from under the loco bridge. Gradually, the match commentary, the lingering smell of the pie and the panoramic view across town, all faded from his consciousness and he sank into a deep, and long overdue, sleep.

  ***

  Monkey awoke to an irresistible force pressing on his head. His face was being pushed into the fabric of the sofa. He tried to wriggle free. His hands were clasped tight by some unseen power. Suddenly, an agonising pain shot through his shoulder and his arms were wrenched backwards. Cold metal snapped round his
wrists. He couldn’t breathe. His chest was burning with the effort of trying to draw in breath. Wildly he lashed out with his feet but a solid weight landed hard across his knee. Monkey tried to scream but the force on the back of his head pressed him harder into the rough upholstery. He was struggling for air; suffocating.

  The hand that had been at the back of his head, released its grip, grabbed a handful of hair and jerked his head up. He gulped in air, filling his lungs, trying to focus his mind and work out what was happening. Frantically, he looked round the flat. The front door was standing wide open. Where was Eric? Had they got him too? Or had he managed to escape?

  Two male Security officers held him, one on each arm, while six others, mainly female, stood by watching as he was frogmarched out of the apartment into the lift.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Monkey asked, desperately. ‘Eric!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Dad! Where are you?’ There was no reply.

  The interior of the elevator was mirrored and, as the Security officers bundled him inside, Monkey saw his own reflection - barely recognisable as the fifteen year-old he’d been a few weeks ago, carefree and eager to graduate. Now, he was gaunt; his eyes dull and heavy. Eric’s sweats hung off his slight frame. He was a bub in man’s clothing. He stretched out his foot to try and stop the closing doors in a last bid to resist arrest. One of the officers kicked it away, hard. Not before the doors had opened again, though, allowing Monkey one last view of his father’s home. The door of the apartment was still open and an election broadcast was playing on the screen - a repeat of the one Eric had turned off earlier. As the lift doors ground shut again, Monkey saw a reflection of someone in the enormous picture window. He craned his neck to try and make out the figure - was it a Security officer going through Eric’s things for evidence that he’d harboured a wanted traitor? His mind raced trying to think of anything incriminating he might have left there. Daz was right - he brought disaster to everyone he met. He must have been spotted and followed. What an idiot he’d been. In the split second before the elevator closed on his liberty, Monkey saw the face of the person in the penthouse. It was Eric - and he was showing no sign of distress at the arrest of his son.

  As the lift began to descend, the cold reality hit him: he’d been set up.

  Down on the Farm

  The Farm complex was stark. Kilometres from anywhere, it was equipped with only the bare minimum of requirements: hard beds, even harder food and no hot water. The uniform was coarse, pink serge and Monkey had had to make his own before he was even allowed to integrate with the other ‘farmers’. The regime was harsh: up at O-5:00 hours, washed, dressed and in the refectory by O-5:15 and out into the fields by O-5:30. They worked a twelve-hour day, had to cook their own meals, wash their own uniforms and every worker was electronically tagged around the ankle. Because he was not yet sixteen, Monkey was housed in the junior wing so, as a pre-breeder, he had to attend evening classes to keep up with his education - which, as far as he could make out, was little more than brainwashing with a heavy T.R.E.A.C.L.E. emphasis.

  On his fourth day, Monkey had been assigned to a muck-spreading detail. He was one of two pres scattering the foul- smelling slurry from the back of a horse-drawn rulley while a provider drove two enormous shire horses. An officer walked with them back and forth across the furrowed field, ensuring that there was no talking and certainly no slacking off. Monkey’s arms and back ached from the relentless shovelling. His head throbbed from the lack of food and the stench of the manure. And his knee still hurt from where the Security officer had hit him on the night of his arrest. He could think of nothing but trying to escape. The high razor-wire fences, however, were prohibitive.

  He craved information about Angel but, when he had tried to ask for news, he had met a wall of silence. In what little time there was for socialising, he found he was ostracised - or worse - by the other pres. Monkey’s reputation, it seemed, had gone before him; he was bad news, not to be trusted. Other than a cursory ‘shove up’ in the refectory, no one spoke to him - not even the hoods - some of whom he recognised by face from his days on the street. The normal pushing and shoving of the shower room or the supper queue became noticeably more targeted when Monkey appeared and, twice in his first three days, his towel had gone missing only to turn up again stinking and caked in slurry. And the warders seemed blind to his plight: he was just another ‘revolting misfit’ who didn’t know what was good for him and deserved all he got. Monkey felt utterly alone.

  The midday meal was a rock of bread with a finger of cheese brought out to the fields by one of the kitchen detail. And, on the fourth day, it was delivered by Tragic. Monkey could barely contain his jubilation.

  ‘Tradge!’ He leapt to his feet, the pain in his body momentarily forgotten.

  Tragic nodded in silent recognition. ‘Keep it down,’ he said, under his breath as he rummaged around in his basket. ‘We’re not supposed to speak.’

  ‘Quiet!’ yelled the guard.

  Tragic held out a lump of grey bread. ‘Meet me behind the education block at 18:30,’ he mumbled, pulling out a sliver of cheese with an electronic key hidden under it. ‘Use this to undo your tag and leave it somewhere you’re supposed to be.’ Then he added, ‘Angel’s OK.’ Monkey’s heart missed a beat. His mouth opened but Tragic gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head and handed him a paper cup of water from an enormous tank that was strapped to his back. ‘I’ll fill you in tonight. Don’t forget to take off your tag.’

  Monkey slipped the key into his pocket and fingered it frequently as he walked the field throughout the long afternoon, barely able to contain his excitement about the meet. Supper was from 18:15 and education began at 19:00, so Tragic’s timing could not have been better. Monkey ate very little, washed up his dishes in the slimy cold water of the kitchen, left his tag under his pillow in the dormitory, then took advantage of two female guards chatting to sneak out in the direction of the education block.

  True to his word, Tragic was waiting for him. Monkey flung his arms round his friend and hugged him to his chest, but backed off when it was clear that Tragic was not reciprocating.

  ‘Wazzup, cuz?’ Monkey tried to keep the hurt from his voice.

  ‘Cut the street-speak, Mickey. And I’m Trevor now.’

  Monkey swallowed back his irritation at being spoken to like a bub. ‘OK - Trevor. What’s happening?’

  ‘Your rep’s not good, Mickey,’ Trevor explained. ‘Word is, it’s down to you that the village was raided.’

  Monkey sighed, exasperated. ‘I didn’t... It wasn’t...’ His voice trailed off. What was the point?

  ‘I don’t care,’ Trevor said. ‘What’s done is done. But I’m putting my neck on the line even talking to you, so let’s just keep this brief.’

  Monkey was taken aback at the turnabout in their relationship. Less than a month ago, he had been the one calling the shots: Tragic had been happy to tag along. Now it was reversed and it stuck in his craw. He lowered his eyes and listened as Trevor filled him in.

  Angel, Trevor told him, was in a Sanctuary in town and she was bearing up fine. Her nurturer, Sally Ellison, was the solicitor representing all of the rebels and a special court had been convened to hear their cases. They had been fast-tracked through the legal system to get them safely out of the way before the election: citizens being re-educated were denied the vote, so the hearing would be in two weeks’ time.

  ‘Sally will be in to interview you either tomorrow or the day after. And, Mickey...’ Trevor slapped him on the arm and Monkey was grateful for the first semblance of friendship he’d had since arriving. ‘...keep your nose clean and try not to do anything stupid.’ Monkey opened his mouth to protest but Trevor went on, ‘Darren Bates and some of the others from the underground community are in.’ Monkey’s shoulders slumped. That was all he needed, Daz and his cronies bad-mouthing him all round The Farm. ‘Bel
ieve me, you are not their favourite person. So, just lay low until the trial - OK? I’ll arrange to be on your lunch detail tomorrow - you can give me the key back then.’

  With that, Trevor left and Monkey sank to the ground. He’d wanted to know more about Angel - where she was, how she was doing, whether or not she’d asked about him. But, before he could wallow in the mire of self-pity that was threatening to overwhelm him, the siren sounded for the start of education followed by an announcement: ‘Michael Gibbon to the interview hall immediately.’

  Monkey started to panic. He wasn’t wearing his tag and this sounded as though Sally Ellison was here to speak to him already. He knew that if he entered the interview hall without his electronic ID, the alarm would go off, so he quickly returned to the dormitory, slipping a lie to the warder, that he’d forgotten his plasma-pen. The female officer was either too distracted or too lazy to check and Monkey replaced the tag on his ankle without incident. But, when he was shown to the small interview booth where Farm detainees spoke to their visitors and legal representatives, it was not Sally Ellison who greeted him; it was Eric Randall.

  ‘You proud of yourself?’ Monkey almost spat through the unbreakable glass screen.

  ‘Sit down, Michael. I owe you an explanation.’

  Monkey indicated his pink jumpsuit, with a facetious expression. ‘You think?’

  ‘You made quite an impression on me the other evening.’

  ‘So I see,’ Monkey’s hostility was palpable.

  ‘And here we are again,’ Eric spoke quietly but with authority. ‘A father asking his son to be seated, yet his son - the one who is trying to convince The Assembly that the re-introduction of fathers into families will return some sort of intrinsic discipline to society - refusing.’

  ‘You’re no father of mine! Fathers don’t dob in their own!’

  ‘First of all, how would you know what fathers do or don’t do? And secondly, would you have felt differently had I ensured that you were placed in a safe house where I could have access to you whenever I wanted?’