Fall of the Cities: Putting Down Roots

by Vance Huxley

  Her eyes went to the dark study, lit only by moonlight, and she scowled. “You were spying! What did you think we were doing? Alfie brought me home to keep me safe, that’s all.” The next bit came out more of an embarrassed mutter. “It wasn’t a real kiss.” Then indignant won again. “Alfie isn’t like that, he walks us home ever since, ever since…” Hazel stormed over to the stairs and up, her parting shot being “now he’s going to walk Veronica home so you’d better run or you’ll miss it.”

  Harold sat on his bed, and decided he should start talking to the people in the same house, at least.

  *   *   *

  The radio switched from BBC to Barbie Radio which meant Daisy had left for school, and Harold braced himself. He’d no idea what sort of reception he’d get, or even if Sharyn would talk to him after yesterday. The tune changed, and Harold smiled and stood up. He opened the door. “Hey, did I ever tell you I met her, Morgana? Oh.” Oh because a startled Hazel stood alone in the living room.

  “Um, good morning Harold.” Hazel blushed and ducked her head. “About last night?” Her head came up. “You know her, Morgana?” Hazel glanced at the radio. “But she’s in the charts, was, you know, she’s young?”

  “Not quite know her. We met though, out in Iraq when she toured with Dragonspawn. I’ve even got a souvenir, a signed one.” Harold smiled. “I’m really quite modern and all that despite my long grey beard.”

  Hazel smiled as well. “You act old so I forget.” Her smile wavered just a bit. “Alfie just keeps us safe, and I am fifteen. That wasn’t even a level one and Holly told me to never go to level three or even two unless I’m sixteen and really, really, like him, the boy. Oh, sorry, we’re not supposed to say Holly.” Hazel almost whispered the last bit.

  “It’s all right Hazel.” It wasn’t but the whole world couldn’t stop saying a name just for him. “I’m pleased Alfie has been watching out for you, and after all a kiss is supposed to be the reward and a rite of passage.”

  Hazel sniggered. “You are weird. Rite of passage?” She frowned and glanced at the radio. “So you didn’t really meet Morgana, just got a signature.”

  Harold sat down. “I met her twice but the same day. Once because the officers brought me to meet her because of the medal, then later I met Morgana in the mess when she had a drink with the squaddies. She recognised me so I got to sit with her and the rest, and that’s when I got the souvenir.”

  “Wow. Wait until I tell the rest. All because of a medal.” Hazel glanced towards the kitchen. “Sharyn told me your medal was for being really stupid and surviving. Berry says you’re some sort of deadly maniac and Liz says…”

  “Whoa. Sharyn is right, sort of. I know what Liz says.”

  “Well you were reassuring. You are again, but Alfie is as well, at the other end of the street.” Hazel giggled. “He’ll have heart failure when I tell him you were watching.”

  “Well go and do that because I’ve found work for my lazy brother now he’s got up.” Two mugs of tea preceded Sharyn out of the kitchen and she put one on the coffee table near Harold. “Now scat because no school today means rat trap duty.”

  “Yeuk, yes.” Hazel pulled a face. “That’s worse now we’ve gone non-lethal though that’s better than another one of our cats being snared. I had a lot of trouble killing the trapped rats at first.”

  Sharyn sat and sipped tea, not speaking until Hazel left. “She’s already had a long talk or two about boys but not to me. Holly was near enough her age for Hazel to get over being embarrassed, and be inquisitive.” Sharyn gave Harold a critical once-over. “Welcome back.” At Harold’s quizzical look she pointed. “Today is the first time you’ve cleaned your boots properly, and you’re talking as well. Our soldier is finally ready for duty so you’d best get started.”

  “Cripes, let me finish my tea.”

  “Okay, and while we do, just how well did you know this Morgana? Is she the woman in the photo with the garter?”

  “What? No! Have you been in my box?”

  “Of course I have and Liz looked as well.” Sharyn sighed. “I remembered about Freddy’s clothes, about sorting them out and how I couldn’t. Liz and I cleared your room, but we wanted to make sure you had something, for memory.” Sharyn sighed again. “Liz said the stocking would do it.”

  “Is everything else gone? Who took them?” Now Harold worried he’d see Holly’s clothes out there in the street, because nice clothes were too valuable to throw away.

  “We dressed her up properly, in her prettiest things, and yes the rest have been shared out. You might think something looks familiar but it won’t be quite the same. Do you want to move back in there?”

  “No thanks, sis. I’ll stay down here.”

  “I thought so. What about Hazel? She’s a bit old to have Daisy as a roomy. Would you mind?”

  Harold sat and thought about that and no he didn’t mind, because he wasn’t going back in there. “No, I’m okay with that. Tell her she can move in.”

  “You tell her. Hazel hasn’t asked so she might need a bit of persuading and will need to know you agree, really agree. She needs a room of her own for practice anyway, before she moves out.”

  “What! Moves out? Why?” Harold stared, then dropped his eyes. “Me and my foul moods I suppose.”

  “No, or maybe a bit. Hazel will be sixteen next year and she’ll move into the girl club because we really aren’t her parents, which makes staying here wrong. Some of her friends, from her block of flats, are in there.” Sharyn frowned. “Hazel needs this, Harold. First because yes, you and your moods aren’t helping her get over Holly. Holly was her friend as well, and before you met either of them. On top of that Hazel needs time to be a young woman who doesn’t have the dreaded Soldier Boy lurking behind her.”

  “What!” Harold managed a little smile. “I need a better vocabulary. Cripes? Dreaded Soldier Boy?”

  “You are a bit intimidating for any boy wanting to walk her home.” Sharyn smirked. “Those yobs walk round me as if I’m radioactive just because I’m your sister. That fell off for a bit but now they scamper out of the way. A few are scampering away from Patty now, as well as Emmy and Casper. You did good, little brother.” She shrugged. “Even if I know it was because you finally lost your temper.”

  Harold wanted to object but if intimidating worked on the gangsters, he’d do intimidating. “All right, I’ll park my Uncle-Harold persona and smile at Hazel. Now what’s this work?”

  “Not yet. What did you get from Morgana? We didn’t look properly and now I’m intrigued about what souvenir you got from a woman who sings ‘Dark and dirty, under cover, come and be my Dragon lover’ and dresses like that.”

  “She doesn’t dress like that. Well she does, and when I met her with the officers Morgana was all lycra and heels and attitude. In the mess she’d got rid of the make-up, the scales, cut about five inches off her heels and put on a dress. A rock singer dress but not like the stage stuff.” Harold laughed. “I did meet them all and got a beermat. Dragonspawn are really quite ordinary and a lot shorter in normal shoes.”

  “Typical, a beermat. Who got the garter that time?”

  “Just so you know, the beermat has all of Dragonspawn’s signatures on one side, and Morgana’s and a lipstick kiss on the other. That would have been worth a fortune in my dotage.” Harold stopped smiling. “Crap. The BBC have banned all that music so I don’t suppose she was on the happy list.”

  “Happy list?”

  “The ones who are happy because a bus or a message came for them, and they are now sat with their feet up laughing at us.” Harold shrugged. “You know I think this was at least partly planned. It had to be but what worries me is I can’t see where it’s going. We’re penned up, but now what?”

  “Maybe gradual starvation because while you were having a timeout the TV kept banging on about shortages. Creeping lurgy hits this, waffle-bugs of some sort eat that, the rain comes the wrong day. Curtis has been going crazy, runnin
g around looking for signs of the latest infestation. He’s getting just a bit disillusioned since our plants don’t have the same problems.” Sharyn waved a hand to include all the gardens outside the walls. “Curtis has warned us that despite all the digging and planting, those crops might not be enough. We’ve stopped selling rabbit burgers which is a pity, ours fetch premium price because there’s some suspicion about rat and cat in others. We let the customers see our kitchen.”

  Harold finished his tea. “What do I do first, since I’ll bet the Coven have a solution to something with my name on it?”

  “For starters go out there and talk to people, our people. Wander about and let them see the gangsters go shifty-eyed and move aside. Stop and have a natter with the gardeners, throw sticks for the dogs.” Sharyn’s voice hardened. “Then go on the next shopping trip and deal with the harassment, before staggering back with your pack stuffed full. That’s in three days’ time. Go mob-handed and take Alfie and Emmy so they can point out the stroppy ones at the mart and you can deal with the little scroats.” Sharyn relaxed again, a bit. “Bring lots of those chews, spam and tubes of paste and plenty of fruit, potatoes and pasta, Harold, so we can save them for winter. It’ll be a long one.”

  *   *   *

  A sharp rap on the table cut across the babble in the bunker, and the meeting came to order. “What went wrong this time? We are supposed to have the acreage to feed the current population, or should have with what Gerard brought from Europe before the last ports closed. That surplus should last long enough for us to solve the problem of London at least and then we can cut down consumption elsewhere. Grace, Henry, why aren’t we producing enough food?” Owen leant back in his seat as the two named people looked at each other. Beyond them, for once, the screen showed gentle rolling countryside instead of violence.

  Henry, a portly man with thick black hair and a thick beard to match held up his files. “The farms with farmers and machinery are producing well enough. Where we are using work camps because the work is manual, or where we don’t want mechanical methods seen, there’s a problem.”

  Grace brandished her file, her thin face wearing a sneer. “My work camps have supplied the numbers. It’s up to your people to give them the right jobs.”

  Henry waved her protest aside. “But the people are useless. They can’t do the simplest jobs, even picking fruit that really is ripe and leaving the rest to ripen.”

  “Shoot a few to encourage the rest. That lot are scum anyway.” A murmur of agreement went around the table.

  “We shot a few. They’re trying, but most of them are from cities.” Henry looked around the table. “Which of you knows what is ready to harvest and what isn’t? The workers from the camps are city bred and think food grows in bags in supermarkets.” He glared across the gleaming expanse of wood. “Unfortunately someone decided that immigrant agricultural workers were a disposable minority.”

  “Let’s not get personal, because we all signed off on the plan.” Owen shrugged. “And in that plan we gave B level passes to horticultural specialists and farmers. Why aren’t there enough?”

  “Firstly, wastage because those people are from lower echelons and have their own ideas about who runs the world. A large number ended up in Grace’s work camps or were sent to Vanna’s facilities because they knew too much by then. What’s left are capable of sorting out when to plant or reap, what to sow where, and the time and type for treating with fertilisers and pesticides. There aren’t enough to actually supervise the work.”

  “If they had the pesticides organised, what about these losses?” A woman jabbed a finger at her file.

  “Let me finish, please. That was what showed us the real problem. Our experts say administer this, here, and the local supervisor gives the job to a work gang. Unfortunately the scum would rather sniff the damn stuff than put it on the plants, that or they use too much, or too little. We need a lower level of supervision on some jobs.” Henry sat back and spread his hands. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “We can’t issue B passes to everybody who had a greenhouse or allotment. There are too many Bs already.”

  “Too many old people were given passes of some sort, and they aren’t productive in any way.”

  “Easy to see your parents are dead.”

  “Why can’t the whole crop be lifted at once, using the machines? That’s how it was done before.”

  “We need the rest to ripen, not be wasted.”

  “Back then the farmers also ploughed fields under because a ship full of cheap cauliflowers or whatever had just landed. Now we need every bit of food.”

  “We can’t use machines for these jobs anyway, Henry said so.”

  “Trustees.”

  Owen, the chairman, had been sat back letting everyone talk but now he rapped the table with his small gavel. “Trustees? Explain please.”

  The tall middle-aged Asian woman, Vanna, smiled. “The Germans used trustees, put some prisoners in charge of others to make sure they worked properly.”

  “We aren’t Nazis!”

  “Calm down Henry. We aren’t Nazis, though we have killed more people than the Third Reich ever managed.” Owen smiled and turned back to Vanna. “I’m sure many others used this type of system, our own prisons for instance. Go on Vanna.”

  “Some versions are more proactive. Put someone in charge of a small group and treat them a little better. Give them some authority and back that up ruthlessly, but if the group doesn’t produce the trustee is punished.” Vanna nodded towards Grace. “Find the gardeners, those who know when a cauliflower or an apple is ripe, and give them a dozen scum. The first of the scum to object becomes fertiliser.”

  “That might work. That’s exactly the level of supervision needed, and will be cheap. Then, when we can finally go mechanised, all the workforce are still disposable. After all, this is only short-term until the population centres are dealt with.” Henry turned to Grace. “Can you do it?”

  “Maybe. We tend to get the scum, as has been noted, so not too many will be gardeners. Perhaps the soldiers around the cities could keep their eyes open and find a few? Arrest them for something, anything, and send them to me.” Grace smiled. “We will find them an incentive or a control.”

  “Excellent. If we are too late to rescue enough of the harvest this year, we’ll stop the food to another city. I’m sure there’s enough soldiers for that?” Owen looked enquiringly at Joshua, the Army man.

  “Just about. When we discussed personnel levels, nobody factored in starving any cities this early. There are too many people and too much ammunition still in there.”

  “Fair enough. Now onto your other problem, Joshua. Newcastle. Your reports state that one gang leader has subdued a third of the city and has a small army. How small?” Owen leant forward. “Or more to the point, is it too large?”

  “Too large, numerically they could break out easily enough and might get to Middlesbrough and break the cordon there. Once we brought in air and armour they’d break but then scatter all over the Yorkshire Dales or the Scottish Borders. That is all broken country so they’d be difficult to hunt down.” Joshua clicked a controller and the screen showed a map of Newcastle with about a third highlighted. “At the moment the river and sea confine him better than we do, but our intelligence states that he will take over the rest of the city first. That’s the extent of his ambition, but he will succeed within six months at the present rate and then?” Joshua shrugged and many of those present nodded slowly. They knew all about ambition.

  “Can you stop him? Give guns to the other gangs or use artillery to help them?” The youngest man, Gerard, frowned. “Why not use air power now?”

  “Economy. We still have to be careful with refined fuel. That’s why helicopters are used instead of jets and they drop crude oil with only enough napalm to ignite the rest. Joshua can’t openly use the artillery or hand out weapons because we are not involved.” A ripple of laughter ran round the table at Owen’s words.
“Unless there is no other way. Joshua?”

  Joshua hesitated. “I’d like to use the Army, but not openly. To be honest I’d rather use the private groups that Vanna and others utilise, the private security contractors, but they aren’t up to it.” He took a breath. “I want to use Special Forces.”

  “SAS, that sort of thing? Do we want them seeing what’s happening in there?” Ivy, the redhead, looked worried. “Surely we are trying to keep the troops from seeing too much, to avoid fostering any sympathy.”

  “Special Forces are highly trained, and not prone to getting weepy over the plight of the scenery. They also tend to keep clear of the rest of the soldiers and aren’t loose-lipped. Best of all they’ll go in there, kill this man and all his top people, blow the hell out of the place with something improvised and won’t leave Army boot-prints.” Joshua shrugged. “If the worst comes to worst we can send the team on a secret mission they don’t return from.”

  Owen looked around the table. “Any real dissention? No? In that case Joshua, we’ll leave you to it.”

  “There is another problem, Owen.” Joshua hesitated much longer this time. “A severe shortage of eligible young women. The British Army were late integrating women into active service and the A list, and many of the B list, don’t want a soldier dating their daughters. Especially since, to be delicate, the soldiers won’t be intending marriage.”

  “Not more brothels!”

  “You have another solution, Nate? Are you volunteering your daughters to date a soldier?” Owen looked steadily at the glowering black man until he subsided. “If the women are already prostitutes, perhaps brothels are acceptable? After all we’ve had to accommodate the European personnel who expect such facilities. Grace, can you find volunteers?”