On both sides the combatants clustered forward.
Was there blood? Was that a scent of…?
Lock stepped back, a courtesy to allow Riot to inspect the damage.
“Nice try arsehole. No good.”
Riot ducked low and came at Lock around waist-height. To his credit Lock managed to twist himself half out of the way, but the attack was swift and Riot’s aim was perfect. He scored a line down Lock’s thigh and a second later the khaki began blooming with dark spots.
A cry went up, assaulting the whole room with hollow echoes, as the cries of children playing and adults horseplaying must have done when the pool was a place of amusement. There was pleasure in this cry, but then there is pleasure in the howling of a pack of hounds as they descend on the fox. Figures jumped down over the sides. Suddenly, the pool was crowded. Riot and Lock were soon lost in the mêlée, and maybe they were carrying on their private fight and maybe they weren’t; Small couldn’t tell for sure. He was only watching and he was pressing himself against the wall to make himself as small as possible and covering his ears against the cry of dozens of hard men (and one hard woman) as they tore into each other under the pelting indoor rain of the Hope.
He had to watch. He might learn something by watching, that’s what Riot had said. But what was there to watch? Acid Cas coming up behind one of the enemy and clapping his ears. The guy’s eardrums bursting and trickles of blood seeping out. Delia shouting, “Come and get me! Try and stab me, you pricks!” Bateman gargling blood and groping for the slash in his neck as if that was going to staunch the flow. Billy, eyes narrowed, pushing his blade again and again into some guy’s guts, holding his shoulder all the while as if they were best of mates, and with every push and pull of the blade a little more of the guy’s insides turning out. When you stood outside of it all and watched, you couldn’t distinguish between one side and the other. The fighters only knew to stab someone if they didn’t recognise him. To the observer it was simply random slaughter and you felt about as much sympathy for the victims as you did for your fish lunch.
Finally Small tried shutting his eyes but he wasn’t able to keep out the screams, the yells, the swishing of water…
Don’t let me piss myself, he thought. Jesus! I’m scared. I’m scared.
He realised his clothes were soaked and clung coldly to his skin. It was possible he had been sweating too much, but when he opened his eyes his vision seemed hazy, the scrap in the pool somehow distant, and he knew it wasn’t sweat. It was raining, a monsoon from the ceiling. The puddles at his feet were growing and flowing into each other. The fighters in the deepest part of the pool were already wading knee-high. A corpse was covered, its eye-sockets drowned, its hands floating clumsily on the surface as if it was fumbling in the dark. The water was streaming, wheeling, sheeting down, gathering speed, gathering weight. The pipes and cracks in the ceiling gushed water. Water poured down over the lip of the pool in glossy, glassy, shimmering waves.
And Small was more scared than he’d ever been. He seemed to be the only person to have noticed what was going on. For the others, there were only notions of blood and battle occupying their heads. The water fell in cataracts.
Jesus, it hurts! he thought. It hurts my head and it hurts my eyes.
He made a blundering dash for the door and slipped and fell and found himself slithering towards the pool. He didn’t want to go in, he didn’t want to go in there! But his clutching fingers raked ineffectually across the slimy wet poolside tiles and his kicking legs got him nowhere, and then they were kicking over space and he felt the rim beneath his groin. Water – the enemy – tugged at his trousers playfully, teasing him into the pool: “Come on in! I’m fine, really, once you get used to me.” Small made a last, desperate grab for the side, knowing there was nothing really to hold on to, and then finally resigned himself to going over. He could get out. He could get out again, easy-peasy. Let’s fall, then.
Hands grabbed his waist and he was being pushed back.
He managed to turn his head as he floundered on to the poolside and he glimpsed Billy’s sailor’s hat and Billy with his blade clasped shut in his shirt pocket laughing and saying: “Back you go, shrimp. I always throw the little ones back.”
There was someone behind Billy – another helper?
Small tried to scream: No! Leave me, Billy! Get your blade out!
Billy was laughing.
“Don’t…! cried Small. Billy was laughing.
Billy was still laughing as the guy behind him grasped his face with one hand and drew a red grin across his throat with a knife. The image of Billy’s two laughing mouths scored itself into Small’s mind. The joke was on Billy.
Billy’s eyes weren’t twinkling any more and his real smile had gone all sad.
“Run,” said Billy, and fell backward to the bottom of the pool.
Small did not want to run. He only wanted the last ten seconds over again, so that he could warn Billy properly and save him. He wanted to see Billy laugh once more and say, “I always throw the little ones back.”
The water had risen to belt-height in the deep end and it was beginning to filter through to the fighters that another enemy had wandered into the scrap and joined in, even though it was against the rules. They carried on trying to stab one another but this was getting harder to do properly. They kept falling over, their legs splashing heavy.
Small crawled on all fours towards where he thought the doors were. He could only see the slick tiles on the floor. The rest was a fluid blur.
The pool was filling quickly now, water boiling up from its filters and drains and deluging down from the ceiling. People staggered, bowed under their soaking clothing, and groped for the sides and fell and tried to get up again. Their panic had a gaping mouth and a screaming tongue and streaming eyes. It was hard to tell which were swimmers and which were corpses.
Small found the doors and clung to the bar as water drenched down on him, trying to wash him away back into the jaws of the pool. He pulled at the bar, which was slippery in his hands and would not budge.
The pool was pink with blood and clogged with corpses and the water was up to its rim.
Small beat at the doors. Because he was still a kid, a snotnose kid, his fear became pure fury and he battered and battered until his fists ached.
The water welled up over the rim and spilled out. The living thrashed amongst the dead, old animosities thrown aside. Enemies gripped on to each other to survive. Acid Cas floated on his back, going, “Oh God, oh God.” He thought he was a corpse already.
The doors stood resolutely shut.
The water gulped at Small’s feet, engulfed his knees, swallowed his lower body.
Small thought: I am going to die after all, although I’m only small and young and a little tosser and a cheeky bugger and a snotnose kid.
The roar of the pool was punctuated with the screams of the drowning. Small was forced to let go of the bar and found he had to tread water to stay above the surface. It was rising so fast now that he was pulled this way and that by powerful currents. He swallowed water and sputtered and choked.
Was this dying?
He was sucked under in a gush of bubbles and could see the bright patterns of the surface.
Was it really so bad?
He wished he could speak, empty his lungs and tell the whole ship: “My name is Thomas but I am Small and I am beautiful.”
But the Hope knew anyway and didn’t much care. Small felt the current take his legs and guide him downward in a rush that made his head whirl so much he had to shut his eyes. His chest ached with the words he had to keep inside himself, but it would not be long before he screamed them out loud – such release! The current dragged him along with it, faster and deeper, and there was a rushing sound in his ears like a howling gale on a stormy sea.
Small wanted only to drift and flow, ebb and rise, but the water was rushing him along.
There’s plenty of time, he thought. No hurry.
But he was racing and rushing and the roar was increasing.
Air!
Small exhaled and sucked in. It was clean on his face and sweet in his lungs. This must be the afterlife. He had gone to heaven, as all kids did (snotnoses and cheeky buggers and little tossers alike). He was gliding, sliding, flying on a wave.
No, it wasn’t heaven, but the corridor that led to the pool. Flotsam, pieces of door and clothing and rubbish, rushed along with him, some fetching up against the walls and some rolling over and over. Small rolled over and over and fetched up with a bang against a bulkhead, which he grabbed and held fast while the wave carried on down the corridor to splash into the doors at the end and lap back, spent.
He clung there for a long time, breathing deeply and shivering.
The flood that had been trying to drown him had in the end proved his salvation. Its sheer weight had burst open the doors and sent him hurtling out. His legs and back were a tender mass of bruises and one arm didn’t like moving very much where he had banged it against the bulkhead, but this wasn’t heaven. No, sir. This was life.
Small got unsteadily to his feet, leaning against the wall for support, and shook sodden hair out of his face. The water had receded, leaving only a glaze on the tiles of the floor, and this was already drying in patches.
He heard voices coming from the pool. He wasn’t the only survivor. His shoes squelched as he approached the hole where the doors had been – jagged hinges peeling out from the frame to mark their passing – and then he could hear what was being said.
“…gone like they weren’t ever here.”
“Shit! All those corpses don’t just disappear! Shit! Thank God we got out when we did.”
“Where the buggery fuck are they then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they got washed away somewhere.”
“Like down that drain, eh? Grow a brain, Lock!”
Small hovered in the doorway. He could not believe anything he saw. Where were all the dead people? Where was Billy’s body? The pool was empty, its sides dripping and its tiles wet, and it no longer seemed like a hungry mouth. Not hungry. And there were Riot and Lock, standing at the poolside talking like mates. Riot was saying: “It’s a bit more drastic than planned but it’s done the trick. No one to challenge us. Christ only knows how it happened.”
“Leak, probably.”
“Yeah, big leak. I mean, look at the plumbing up there. Primitive, that’s what it is. We’ll tell them to seal this place off for safety’s sake. We don’t want the same thing happening to kids playing here.”
“Right. How’s your arm?”
“Fine, dickhead. You only cut my jacket.”
“My leg hurts like fuck. Couldn’t you have been a bit more careful?”
“It had to look good. I am the best knife man around, you know.”
“Second best.”
“After Eddy?”
“After me.”
“Piss off! You couldn’t cut a pilchard with that thing.”
“Want a fight about it?”
“What’s the point? We’ve got rid of all the competition.”
“Riot…” It was barely a whisper. Riot and Lock swung round in surprise. Riot’s jaw fell.
“Who is it?” asked Lock.
“Small. You’re alive,” said Riot, deadpan.
“Riot,” said Small, coming forward, “give me your blade.”
“Eh?”
“Your blade. You said I could have it.”
“I said you could have it when I was dead. As far as I can tell, I’m not dead yet.”
“Brain-dead,” muttered Lock.
“Yes, you are,” said Small. “You’re dead, like all of them, only they’ve gone to heaven, that’s why they’re not here any more and you are.”
“I don’t know where the fuck they’ve gone but it’s not heaven, I can tell you that for nothing. More likely to the bottom of the ocean.”
“No,” said Small with conviction.
“Look, sonny,” said Lock with a contemptuous leer, “this is none of your business, so sod off.”
“The blade, Riot.”
“Come and get it, Small,” jeered Riot, making Small’s beautiful name sound like an insult, and Lock laughed heartily like the little dog to see such fun.
Small ran at Riot, head down, fists out, and slammed into him. Startled, Riot lost his footing and fell backward. He grunted as his back connected with the rim of the pool and then Small was upon him, howling in fury.
“You killed them! You killed them all! You killed Billy!”
Riot pretended that they were just playing a game, a boys’ rough-and-tumble type of game, and was laughing.
“No, we didn’t. We wanted to, but the pool did it for us. The final solution, ha ha.”
“You fucker!” squealed Small, astride Riot’s chest, his fists impotent in Riot’s hands. “You fucker, you fucker, you fucker!”
“Can’t you handle him, wimp?” said Lock.
“He’s gone apeshit! Fucking apeshit!”
“You killed them! You killed them!” Small wrenched his hands free and tried to pummel Riot’s face. Riot was considerably more anxious now and raised his arms to protect himself. Small reached down between Riot’s legs.
“Jesus, Small, don’t…”
Riot jerked as if he had been given an electric shock and he screamed and Small rolled off him and Riot tumbled head first into the pool. The scream was cut off. Lock clutched his face in horror. Small rocked back on to his hindquarters at the rim of the pool, looking down at the acute angles of Riot’s body and the upturned eyes and the single droplet of phlegm oozing out of the nose. Riot’s scream still hung about the pool. Small crawled across, lowered himself carefully over the edge and rummaged around in Riot’s pockets until he found the blade. It was cool and sharp, crouched in its mother-of pearl casing. He hauled himself on to the side again. Lock, for all his muscle, backed off a few steps, turned and fled.
Small flicked the blade out, the hard man, leader of men, Big General.
LONELY THE RAT
Paolo had seen dead people before, millions of times. Killed four himself in scraps. Easy. It wasn’t Paolo killing them at all, it was the blade. Slip it in, twist, pull it out. Easy. The victim maybe chokes a bit and there’s always blood, but it’s no big deal. Death? Piece of piss. But when Longpole ran into the Trident and asked him if he wanted to come and see some “corpuses”, some real “corpuses”, Paolo jumped at the chance. Longpole was a bit dumb (that’s why he couldn’t say “corpses”) but he’d been hopping about like his bladder was ready to explode because these corpuses weren’t freshly dead corpuses – they were nearly a week old and beginning to rot. Paolo slammed his glass down and agreed to go with Longpole immediately. Although he was used to dead, this was real dead. When you killed someone in a scrap, they didn’t really look dead, they just looked … not very well, like something they’d eaten had disagreed with them. Usually their hands were clutched around their stomachs, which was Paolo’s favourite place to stab because it took them longer to die, and this added to the impression of illness. So that kind of dead wasn’t very interesting at all.
The corpuses, according to Longpole, had just sat in their cabin all this time waiting to be found. He wasn’t going to describe them to Paolo because it was more fun if he saw for himself. He didn’t want to ruin anything.
The two of them raced out of the Trident even though they were due for a council of war in an hour. Longpole had said it wouldn’t take long to get to the corpuses and they could make it back in time for the meeting, although everyone knew that it wasn’t a meeting as such, more of an excuse for Riot to make a speech and flick his knife a few times before they all marched off to the pool without anyone being asked if they had a better idea. Not that anyone would have. But Longpole said if they didn’t go now, they’d never get another chance like it. Someone was bound to take the corpuses away and do something crass like give them a burial.
&nbs
p; And so Paolo, who had seen dead bodies millions of times and thought that death was a piece of piss, stood beside Longpole at the door to some unidentified cabin way, way downstairs and let Longpole swing the door open theatrically and looked in at the four corpuses and was afraid.
It was dark in the cabin and only a bit brighter outside.
The bodies were not much more than human-shaped outlines until Paolo’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and then he could see them sitting or lying in there like bored people expecting something to happen. Death seemed to have been quite a surprise. One moment everything hunky dory, the next – Oops! Look, Ma, we’re all dead. Three of them were little kids. The adult was still cradling one of the kids on its lap, bony arms locked around bony body. There was a defunct candle on the table in front of them. The other two were in bed, and the only thing that told you they weren’t actually asleep was the stain on the bed-linen which spread where it touched their skin. The heads of the two seated corpuses were lolled back, as if they had been staring up waiting for death to descend and had been staring for so long that their eyes had misted over. The skin of their cheeks was pinched and rilled, pale as dust and flaking off in patches. The bodies were stick-thin. This gave Paolo the freaky idea that all the good bits had been emptied out into a bin or something and taken elsewhere.
The worst thing was the stench of the place, like all the most awful smells you could think of rolled into a nose-curdling, bowel-churning one. You noticed the stench before you got near the cabin. It came up on you as you were trotting along the walkway, tapped you on the shoulder, said, “Hello, you don’t know me, but I’m sure once you’ve met me properly and got to know me, you’ll never forget me. And one day we’ll become good, good friends.” And like all nodding acquaintances, it proved to be eager and irritatingly persistent.
Paolo, peering through the doorway at the four corpuses (as surprised to see him as he was to see them), pulled his T-shirt up over his face. It was just an ordinary cabin, he told himself, but he couldn’t get over the feeling that it was a tomb. Longpole hopped from foot to foot beside him.
The Hope Page 20