by Tom Fletcher
He rolled to one side, and something was holding the Clawbaby back and its blow landed too late. Alan saw that it had been Spider clinging on to the beast’s bladed arm, and he saw the Clawbaby turn to face its new opponent and bring its right arm around and plunge its rusty bunched knives right through Spider’s middle, lifting Spider from his feet and holding him up in the air as blood ran from him and down into the metal claws, a steady flow, a tide of blood, running into the Clawbaby like – like a Bleeding.
Spider’s mouth was open wide, but no noise was coming from it. His eyes were perfect circles. Blood soaked through his red shirt, making it even darker.
Alan knew the Clawbaby was laughing or crying or both at the same time, but he couldn’t really hear it; all he was conscious of was Spider’s face: his old friend, dying to save his life.
There was a flash of silver at the Clawbaby’s neck and Nora was at work, sawing with something serrated. Alan jumped up and grabbed hold of the back of its head, pulling it backwards, opening up the wound that Nora was creating. It couldn’t get at either of them, couldn’t reach back far enough with its spare arm. It flung Spider away and his body fell and landed amongst the others on the ground below.
Then it stabbed upwards, at where Nora was, but Nora was too quick for it; she leaped directly upwards and the blow pierced only the air beneath her feet. Then she landed in the same place and resumed her work, and with Alan’s help, the Clawbaby’s head was soon hanging off. Then it was torn free and she held it aloft triumphantly.
The Clawbaby fell to all fours and cried and Alan jumped away from it. It looked defeated, but then its crying turned to laughter.
‘You can take my head,’ it said, its voice coming from the ashy bundle Nora held, ‘but I’ll keep on coming.’ It crawled around, clearly sightless, laughing. It looked like a gigantic demonic dog, with ropes of dark dust trailing from it instead of long fur. ‘You can cut me limb from limb,’ it said, ‘but you killed me long ago and you cannot kill me again. I’ll find you, friend Alan, and I’ll keep finding you.’
‘We must kill the baby,’ Nora said as the two of them hurried down to Spider’s body. ‘The baby inside it.’
‘No,’ Alan said, ‘I can’t. No.’
‘Then I will.’
‘No.’
‘Alan,’ Nora said, looking around, ‘the Pilgrims are regrouping out there. Spider and I, we could not reach this beast for them. They have not gone, and we are their enemy, not that laughing thing. We have destroyed everything they held dear. You must take the Benedictions and go. I will remain, and I will finish the Clawbaby.’
‘No. No more killing.’
‘It is not a real living thing.’
‘I said no.’
‘I want to persuade you,’ Nora said, ‘but I see that we do not have time for that. You must understand, though: I’m not requesting your permission. I am informing you of my immediate actions. Now you go.’
‘I don’t need your permission to stay. I want to stay and – and – Spider—’
Nora placed one of her many knives at Alan’s throat. ‘You do need my permission,’ she hissed. ‘I am more powerful than you. Green damn it, Alan! You are usually so good at running. Now, you’d better run. There will be no mercy here.’ She withdrew her blade and pushed him.
‘What about Spider?’ came a voice, and Eyes emerged from the doorway in the trunk. ‘What about Spider, lad, eh?’
The door was no longer there; the drastic movements of the Sanctuary must have destroyed it. Eyes was walking with a stick. Behind him, the liftshaft, or pantry, or whatever it was, was jammed full of broken jars and shattered wood.
‘Eyes,’ Alan said, ‘Eyes, thank fuck! How did you get in there?’
‘Churr,’ Eyes said. ‘Churr got me out of my gill when it all started going wrong. She got me this’ – he waved his stick – ‘and packed me away in that cupboard. She’s a good lass, that one.’
‘Eyes,’ Alan said again, then he stopped. He thought about how to break the news. ‘Spider is dead,’ he said. ‘The Clawbaby got him.’
Eyes walked over towards where Alan and Nora stood and Alan took his hand and helped him kneel. They knelt together, and Alan guided Eyes’ hands to Spider’s face. Tears ran from beneath the blindfold.
‘A damned shame,’ the older man muttered. ‘A damned shame.’
‘You two need to go,’ Nora said. ‘Let us meet at Market Top.’
‘Market Top it is,’ Alan said.
‘I’m too slow,’ Eyes said. ‘I’ll make me own way back.’
‘The Discard is not kind to the disadvantaged,’ Alan said. ‘We all know that. You’re coming with me. But don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.’
Alan closed Spider’s eyes and kissed him softly on the forehead. Then he stood, smiled wryly at Nora, and led Eyes from that place.
*
They picked up a pair of grey cloaks on the way and put them on over their clothes, drawing up the hoods and making their way slowly to the Giving Beast’s curtain. They found a rip that they could slip through without disturbing it too much – they didn’t want to cause any ripples that might draw attention. Once outside of the Sanctuary, they found groups of Pilgrims bustling around still, but most of them were focused on finding and helping the afflicted. There were gangs of guardians assembling, ready to head back into the Sanctuary, presumably to attack both him and the Clawbaby. There were many dead.
Alan resisted the urge to move quickly; anybody who was looking for him specifically would be watching for somebody who appeared to be running.
The damaged and dying were being treated in the kitchen. The wounded were laid out on the long tables and Pilgrims were busy cutting and cleaning and stitching. Still holding Eyes by the arm, Alan slipped all the way through the room, winding his way between tables, making their way right through to the back and behind the row of huge heated food bowls, now being used to boil water. Alan took the opportunity to fill up their wineskins, like other Pilgrims, then they carried on through an archway into the storerooms.
This was where Daunt’s caravans deposited supplies. Shelves groaned beneath the weight of potatoes and turnips and carrots. Joints of smoked and cured pig and cat and dog overflowed from woven baskets. There were jars of salted crickets and bird tongues. Spicy red sausages hung from hooks in the wall, along with ropes of garlic and bunches of dried herbs. It all smelled divine, but they kept going. The storerooms extended quite a way back and Alan started to think that this had been a bad idea, or that he’d led them the wrong way, but then he spotted a black archway with a dumbwaiter system inside it. He looked up the shaft. There was light at the top –not bright light, not the kind of natural daylight that he was really craving, but swamplight. It was a way to the outside.
‘Get in here,’ he said, guiding Eyes through. ‘We’re going up.’
He found the rope and started pulling. The platform was sturdy; it had to be, to transport the volume it did, but it was heavy, too, and progress was slow.
At the top, a small archway opened out onto a large courtyard. He took a deep breath, and Eyes did the same. The air smelled foul, but it was a change from the mushroomy scent inside. A wispy-bearded man with a topknot and a mushroom symbol on his forehead stepped forward from the wall next to the door, where he’d been leaning beneath a lit paraffin torch.
‘Business?’ he said.
‘Do you know what’s been going on in there?’ Alan asked.
‘No.’ He was chewing on some kind of leaf.
Alan grabbed him and smacked his head into the wall before he’d a chance to react. He toppled sideways, out cold.
‘Where are we, lad?’ Eyes asked.
‘We’re at the caravan unloading station,’ Alan said. ‘This is where Daunt’s caravans drop off their loads, and where the caravans … feed.’
‘Feed? What are they?’
‘Snails,’ Alan said. ‘Great big snails.’
He surveyed the animals before him.
They were nearly as big as the one that had appeared on the rooftop so many nights ago. Their shells were dull and scratched, but white mushrooms had been painted on them. They had lots of satchels and boxes screwed into them, and saddles, too, with straps and harnesses to keep the rider secured when the snails were on the vertical.
‘We’re going to ride snails back up?’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ Alan replied.
Eyes snorted. ‘They’re not the quickest of rides, lad, and we’ll be sitting ducks up on them shells.’
‘They’re slow, but steady, and the main thing is that they can go straight up. there’ll be no messing about with stairs – or even having to find the stairs. And we won’t be up on the shells. We’ll be inside them. Nobody’s going to see us – or look for us – there.’
‘I—What?’
‘It’s not going to be a very pleasant journey,’ he admitted.
‘You’re not fucking kidding.’ Eyes pinched the bridge of his nose and then let out a huge sob. ‘Green damn it,’ he said, ‘Green damn it all. Poor Spider.’
Alan didn’t know what to say. He pulled Eyes into a hug. After a moment he said, ‘We have to go. The Pilgrims will want retribution.’
Eyes wiped his cheeks. ‘Are you crying, lad? I can’t hear any tears.’
‘No, not yet. But I will, Eyes. You can trust me on that.’ He walked over to a snail and patted its shell. Its horns retracted. ‘We’ll have to grab the reins and pull them up inside with us.’
‘I’m not listening any more.’
‘We crawl inside the shell from behind. That way they can’t bite us.’
‘There’s room in there, is there?’
‘I don’t know for sure. I imagine it’ll be a bit of a squash.’
‘What are we going to eat?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think if we’re going to spend the next few days together inside a snail shell I’m going to go and have a quick dump. And I suggest you do, too.’
‘Very well,’ Alan said. ‘You go over there, and I’ll go this way. But look—’ Alan pulled a much smaller snail from the wall in order to examine it. ‘You can lift the back up,’ he said, ‘but not the front. It looks like – oh.’ The shell broke beneath his thumb with a crunch. ‘Whoops.’ He picked pieces of shell away from the snail’s flesh. ‘It looks like under the shell is where they keep their organs and stuff.’ He flicked the remains away and wiped his fingers on his robe. ‘But you never know. There might be a nice comfy air pocket or something in the big ones.’
But as they found after emptying their bowels, there wasn’t.
*
The next three days were, Alan was certain, the most physically uncomfortable and disgusting of their lives. They’d chosen the largest snail and found themselves stuck between the ridged shell that was pressing into their backs and a soft, wet, slimy bag of guts pressing into their faces. It smelled bad, and if they weren’t careful, it leaked into their mouths. They were in pitch black darkness. They had to urinate where they lay, but thankfully fear helped both to suppress bowel movements. There was no space to move their heads, no space to recoil, even. It took them hours to work their hands – and wineskins – up into a position they could sip from, and once they’d done so, they kept them there, even though the resulting cramps were like nothing Alan had ever known. He knew Eyes had experienced far worse, but perhaps that meant that all of this was even more painful for him. Occasionally one or other couldn’t hold in a whimper.
Their presence on the snail’s back had been enough to galvanise it into movement. Alan’s plan had been to use the reins to guide the snail onto the vertical axis and then keep it there – he thought they’d be able to tell when they were heading directly upwards, and he was right. But that was when their ride got really bad, when gravity pulled the snail’s insides down on top of them and they suffered a curious and thoroughly unpleasant combination of intense claustrophobia and dizzying exposure, because there wasn’t much between them and the ground below, which was getting further and further away.
Alan occupied himself by trying to work out where on the topside they’d emerge – ideally he wanted to be able to scoot around the Oversight, not traverse the top of it, which would be an unnecessarily long journey, given their current mode of transport.
But before that they’d have to pass through Glasstown, and that would be very difficult to navigate. He’d made small holes in the shell before they’d forced themselves inside, not just for ventilation, but so he could see a bit. Every now and again he tilted his head backwards and stuck it through the hole to get an idea of where they were and which way they were going. The hole was masked by a flap of leather that had rested between the shell and the saddle, but he’d removed the saddle so that it didn’t block his view, just leaving the leather pad buckled on. He’d also strapped Snapper on to the side, amongst the baskets and boxes.
They got hungry, but never hungry enough to start taking bites out of the raw snail offal that was all that was available. They eked out their water and wine. They didn’t speak. Sometimes they heard noises from outside the shell: running water, the cries of strange birds, animal sounds – grunting, snuffling, yelping – and the distant howling of scavengers. Once, they heard music that sounded like it was coming from an amplifier, but there was no other indication of human presence and Alan didn’t dare stick his head out to look. The greatest threat to them both was somebody attacking the snail for food, but this was one of Daunt’s, covered with her symbols, and he didn’t think anybody would dare.
Generally, nobody in the Discard was stupid enough to anger the Mushroom Queen.
Alan closed his eyes. But he couldn’t sleep.
28
The Exchange
The light coming from outside was orange and softened by a cloud of dust hanging in the sky. The sun was at the skyline, burning crimson. Satis and Corval were just two hazy glowing discs. The vast Discard architecture was red-lit and looked like the bloody ruins of some gigantic broken creature.
‘You bring Billy out,’ Alan said, ‘and my man over there will come up with the goods.’
Tromo’s head turned to face the shadows to which Alan had gestured. This was in the direction of Archway Gardens: the huge, rusting metal frames webbed with vines and beans, with orchards planted along the top. Archway Gardens had once kept Modest Mills fed and watered; it had been farmed by Modest Millers and protected by the community. Since the massacre, control of the strings, nets and topside beds had passed to a gang who were good at growing, but kept putting the prices up. No wonder, if they were Daunt’s people. Maggie sometimes spoke about moving in to take control, but she hadn’t yet, as far as Alan knew. It was a good job, too: a running war between the Safe Houses and the Mushroom Queen would not be good for anybody.
He’d have to get a message to Maggie.
So the road between what had once been Modest Mills and Archway Gardens was now a grey and desolate affair: a long, flat avenue descending down the blasted hillside into shadow, smothered in sticky ash. Grand white columns lined either side, for this had not just been the road to Modest Mills, but the road to the Pyramid’s now defunct main entrance, where Alan and Tromo now stood. The columns rose from the darkness into the red light. They were all broken and jagged at the top.
Tromo looked down the road into the shadows between the columns, where Eyes, standing with a stick, his blindfold on, was just visible.
Then he looked back at Alan. ‘Why haven’t you come alone?’
‘Because then you could just kill me.’
‘We could just kill both of you anyway.’
‘There are more than two of us. Anything goes wrong, our companions will take the mushrooms from my blind friend over there and disappear back into the Discard.’
‘The goods, then,’ Tromo said, flatly. ‘You mean the mushrooms, I presume, and not an arrow in the neck.’
‘Look at him,’ Alan said. ‘He’s wearing a b
lindfold. That’s why he’s the one carrying. He’s not a threat. He’s not going to shoot you.’
Tromo inhaled, held his breath, sighed.
‘Take off that mask,’ Alan said. ‘Let me see your face. If this is going to be the beginning of a new professional relationship, we may as well try to trust each other.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘No, not trust each other – that’s too much. But you wearing a mask and me not, well, it’s not fair.’
Tromo undid the strap beneath his chin and removed his helmet. The metal of his armour was tarnished and the fine chain of the mask was missing a few links. His expression was as blank as the mask had been.
‘So,’ Alan said, breathing out smoke, ‘come on then. Where is he? Where’s Billy? Show me that he’s safe.’ He was tapping his foot and kept running a hand along Snapper’s strap, as if to reassure himself that the guitar was still there. Above the Discard flocks of birds turned and wheeled in the bloody sky. The Pyramid loomed above, so close and big that Alan could not see all of it. It was the night made solid. ‘Show me that he’s safe and you can have your damn mushrooms and I can get the fuck out of here.’
‘You’re not thinking of abducting him, are you?’ Tromo asked with a smirk. ‘Because, obviously, if you took him with you, you wouldn’t have to worry about keeping the supply going. It must be quite an appealing course of action.’
‘Well, obviously,’ Alan said with a roll of his eyes, ‘but I know you’re not stupid, and I know you would have prepared for that eventuality, and besides,’ – he smiled – ‘now we’ve got a supply route set up, you are not our only customer. So this operation could become quite a nice little earner for me out here in the Discard, if I keep it going. Delivering to you each month will not be a problem.’