2184

by Martin Parish

“No, I'm not one of the Ascension cults,” Kamal said with distaste. “I mean, I am part of – there's a small church we have where I live and alk about that kind of thing. I guess you could call us Heavenward, but it's not like an Ascension cult.”

  “That's good, I can't stand those people.”

  “I agree with you on that.” Yes, he is one of those Heavenward people, I thought silently. Well, I'm not going to bother debating something like that. I remembered my mother reading to me from the book of Revelation with an air of quiet resolution, as if the answer to all the world's sorrows were woven into the soothing opiate of the words.

  "Well, if you'll pray that God will knock down the walls of the woodshed, you know, give us a little fire from heaven or something, perhaps we can get moving."

  "I think we're better off here for the night."

  I put my eye to a chink in the wall. Through it I could see the field with the colourless greenrows. "I just don't like that idea you had about the wolvo. I wonder what time it is."

  "Must be at least fifteen or sixteen hundred."

  "Better try and sit down. Watch out - there could be tools all over the place, or something. Actually, maybe there are, that'd be a good thing." I waved my hands around in the darkness, trying to discover my surroundings. After brushing away several cobwebs I found a pile of logs at one end of the shed; I could lean against that. Atop it my hand discovered a small smooth object four or five inches long. Intrigued, I held it to the light that spilled through a chink.

  "I think this is a pocketknife," I said. "I'm not going to unfold it until I can see what I'm doing, but that's what it looks like." A valuable find. I'd left the kitchen knife I'd used in the camp near the borehole.

  "Wonderful." Kamal had to raise his voice to make himself heard. The rain intensified to a fast-paced drumbeat that drowned our words.

  The rain fell in torrents all that afternoon and into the night; and the wind shrieked through the chinks like the cries of a lost soul. I tried - and occasionally managed - to sleep. In my waking moments my mind strayed restlessly. I was wretchedly hungry and thirsty again, and I didn't want to wait for the morning and our jailer. We'd obviously been mistaken for someone else, and without knowing what crimes our double had committed, we wouldn't know what the villagers would decide to do with us. As long as the rain kept up, we were better off inside, but once it abated we'd try to break out.

  But with what? The door was padlocked. The shed was too sturdy for us to to smash through the walls. We might be able to use a piece of firewood as a battering ram, but the noise would alert our captor. The flowing water seeped beneath the walls and pooled across the dirt floor, and at last I stood up to stout of the mud.

  Looking for another place to stand or sit, I felt my way along the edge of the woodpile and discovered a vertical beam in the wall on the side facing the field, a little like a doorpost. I pushed on it and it gave way - only very slightly, but enough to give me hope.

  "Kamal." I shouted to be heard over the rainfall. "There's a door in the other side of the wall. Behind the woodpile."

  "What? Here, hang on." He came over to my side of the shed and I repeated myself. "So you think we can break out of it then?"

  "We'll just have to try. I'm not waiting for him to come back."

  "Wait for sunrise. There's no point stumbling across that field in the dark."

  "All right." The minutes passed with excruciating slowness. At least the rain slowed until it was only a slow steady patter on the roof.

  "I don't want to wait any more," I told Kamal; "the longer we wait, the more likely it gets he'll come back."

  "It might be light enough to see now. OK, let's do it."

  "Just wait a minute, will you, I'll do it." I climbed onto the woodpile. It was only about half the height of the shed. I picked up a piece of firewood and, packing my weight behind it, I smashed it into the door. The upper plywood panel on the door sagged but didn't give way completely.

  I threw myself into it again and again with increasing desperation. On the seventh blow the panel splintered and came free from the door frame, the nails protruding from the plywood. The dim light of dawn streamed in to illuminate the interior of our prison. I dropped the firewood and pushed on the panel to break it loose completely.

  "Quick." It was still dark. I squeezed through the opening in the upper half of the door and out into the field. Behind us the wolvo barked the alarm in the yard. Rain had transformed the field into a quagmire. I slipped and fell into the muck and picked myself up again, Kamal running behind me.

  "You OK, Mark?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine.” Skirting the greenrows, we made for the copse of trees at the far end of the field. There were no signs of pursuit; but the trees gave scant shelter.

  "At this rate it'll rain all day,” Kamal said. “You know how it goes, it'll stop for ten minutes then start again.”

  "We'd better go back to that other village," I said.

  "All right." I was miserably hungry and thirsty and I assumed Kamal was even worse off. We dashed through the trees and clambered over the crumbling stone wall into the road, half afraid we'd be followed; but we saw no one. Perhaps the wolvo had given up barking and the rain had disged the sound of wood splintering.

  "Here, we're going to have to run," I said. "Otherwise we're going to get absolutely soaked." The asphalt was slick but not so slick as the muddy fields. I ran slowly to give Kamal a chance to keep up, and as it turned out afterwards it was a lucky thing I did, because it took us at least half an hour to return to the deserted village. By that time we were drenched and streaming with water.

  "Look," I shouted out to Kamal as we approached the village through the trees, "it's smoke." The deserted village was no longer deserted. A translucent haze dampened by the rain hung about one of the chimneys.

  "I don't like it," he shouted back.

  "What are you talking about? It's a fire, somebody's got a fire going. Come on."

  Chapter 6

  I sprinted up the walk to the terrace, Kamal close on my heels. The house was very similar to the one we raided the day before. A stream of water showered from a leak in the roof, and I hurried through the mildewed hall into a carpeted living room with brown wallpaper, screened from outside view by a curtain of ivy where the window used to be; but there I stopped.

  Three people stood around a blaze they'd built in the fireplace, using shutters and furniture for fuel. Their fire produced more smoke than heat and tainted the air with a chemical scent of burning paint. Two of them held a cut of meat each on a skewer over the flames; the juices dribbled into the fire and spat. The shape of the cuts was reminiscent of something I couldn't quite remember, as if you saw a familiar object in the wrong setting. I hadn't seen meat – real meat, not insects - in several years.

  "Mind if we join you?" I said. They were even more ragged than we were, yet they seemed plump and well-fed. Two of them were men in their early twenties; their companion was a young woman, dark-haired with sunken, brooding eyes that receded into her angular face. Both of the two men were bearded, one of them with blood dribbling down his dark beard from the meat he'd been eating, and the other blond with wild, unkempt hair. Their patched coats, their matted beards and hair told of months spent on the run. The effect was alarming. I felt as if I'd disturbed a group of animals at a kill. If I'd met them under a bridge I'd have felt for my knife in my pocket. As it was, even in the dingy remains of a living room they seemed misplaced.

  "What do you want?" the girl said.

  "Just a place by the fire out of the rain, until it stops." They all eyed us coldly, and the dark-haired man whispered to the girl.

  "You can stay," she said out loud. "But you're not getting any of our m than heatquot;

  "I didn't ask for any," I said, annoyed. Kamal and I took our places a short distance from the fire. A disquieting instinct warned me to keep at arm's reach. I rubbed my hands - several of my fingers had gone numb - and the shadows danced merrily in the flicke
ring firelight like mad laughter.

  "We've come from up north by Doncaster," Kamal said at length, using the same story I'd invented the afternoon before. "Any idea where around here we can find any food? if there's any towns near here?" His question caused the three strangers some consternation. The blond haired man watched us in silence. His gaze wandered over each of us in turn, as if he were sizing us up.

  "There's a dump over by the railway tracks; the Mods have a dump there,” the girl said. “It's about a couple miles east by the railway station. There's all kinds of things there. And then if you poke around a bit you can find something." I'd never heard of the Mods keeping a dump anywhere before.

  "We might do that," I said, "once the rain lets up." All of a sudden the blond haired man leaned towards the other man and whispered something again. It was insignificant and yet ill-omened as well.

  "You said you came from Doncaster?" the girl asked.

  "Well, actually it's Moorends, it's a town near Doncaster," Kamal explained, rubbing his hands.

  "From Doncaster," she said dubiously. I didn't know where we were, so the story I'd contrived might be implausible – Doncaster is in the north of England. "How'd you get caught out in the rain?"

  "Well, we've been walking, so we didn't know it was going to rain today, worse luck."

  "And where are you going?"

  "London." After that she didn't say anything else. She watched me listlessly for a moment, then turned and stared into the flames. I wondered whether they were on drugs, and if so, where they'd found them. The Mods had strangled the global drug trade many years ago; synthetic liquor was easy enough to get in the cities, because Mongrel-owned businesses manufactured it, but anything more potent than synthetic liquor was hard to find unless you made or grew it yourself.

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Kamal growing increasingly restless, as if he had a bad fidget. At last he nudged me and cast a glance towards a door on the far side of the room. If this house was built on the same floor plan as the other, the door would lead into the kitchen. A finger of thick liquid had seeped into the carpet beneath the frame - water, I assumed. I didn't know why it was frightening; but I felt as if I had only moments left to act.

  "Looks like I dropped my wallet outside," I said, and all three of the strangers watched me silently as I spoke. "We'll pop outside and have a look, we'll be back in a minute." I crossed the room, Kamal ahead of me. One of the two men made a sudden movement and the other shook his head. We walked into the hallway - where Kamalment, then my amazement, turned left instead of right through a short passage. The floor plan was identical to the other house, because the passage led under the stairs into the kitchen - and then I understood what Kamal had astutely guessed. He gripped my shoulder.

  The kitchen was dimly lit by a window at the farther end. The naked body of an old man lay atop the kitchen counter, the arm hanging limply down towards the floor - the body had been crudely gouged with a kitchen knife, hunks of flesh torn away from the leg-bones by an unskilled hand. A stream of blood had trickled down the counter, and the floor was gaudy with blood like the floor of an abattoir. It had pooled and flowed towards the far doorway leading into the living room. The blood must be the liquid we'd seen creeping beneath the door. I stood still for a moment, listening to the drumbeat of the rain.

  "That meat - over the fire -" Kamal whispered; and now I understood.

  "Let's go," I murmured. I turned around in time to see the two hollow-eyed men appear in the kitchen doorway, grim-faced, the dark-haired one in the lead wielding a rusting ax and the other behind him with an iron poker.

  "Trying to steal our meat?" the dark-haired one said quietly. As if I wanted to steal human flesh! They advanced on me inexorably. The sole line of retreat led into the living room, and the girl might still be there. Even if we did try that way, they could cut off our escape. I drew the knife from my pocket and unfolded it as I stepped backwards. But what good is a knife against an axe?

  "You fucking swine," I taunted them bitterly as they approached. The dark-haired man laughed. In a few minutes they'd carve us up too; in a few minutes our blood would mingle with the old man's across the kitchen floor. I struggled to think clearly. I remembered the other house, the one we'd raided. In the kitchen cupboard at the back of the kitchen, by the refrigerator, we'd found the tinned food, an empty bottle of bleach, and - a fire extinguisher. A fire extinguisher.

  In a flash I passed the knife to Kamal and raced for the back of the kitchen, taking care to leap across the sticky bloodstains. If Kamal could hold them off for even just a minute - I threw the cupboard door open and grabbed the extinguisher. Would it work? I had no idea what the lifespan is on a fire extinguisher. It was ancient, maybe a couple decades old. The handle had bubbled with rust. I heard a blow from the axe land on the counter, a explosive sound followed by shards of counter tile scattering like shrapnel. Kamal stumbled. Swiftly I turned and, with a violent effort, depressed the handle.

  A seething jet punched the dark-haired man in the face. Blinded, he staggered backwards, dropping the axe as his hands flew to his eyes. I turned the jet to the blond-haired man. It was one of those dry-chemical extinguishers that leave a pale-yellow corrosive residue, and he reeled away from us, swearing. I turned the jet back to the dark-haired man.

  "Quick, quick," Kamal called out. I dropped the extinguisher to follow him through the living room door. The fire burned unattended; there was no sign of the girl with the strange eyes. Following his lead I raced after him out into the high street of that godforsaken little town, the shops and houses still as picturesque as before, the gutters and streets flded. We couldn't go along the road towards the other village. We didn't want to go back towards the work camp. Which way could we go?

  "Kamal. Take the next right," I bellowed hoarsely. One of the roads - the sign on the corner read Victoria Street - led out of town and east, probably towards the railroad tracks. We'd agreed to avoid the railroad tracks the day before, but I was numb with horror and I barely paused to think. I could easily outrun Kamal, so I slowed down to let him keep up. Occasionally I glanced back over my shoulder; the road back to the village was empty.

  We paused to catch our breath a mile or so away from the village. The road crossed a ditch by way of a stone and brick bridge. Beneath it, a muddy torrent churned its way into the field beyond. A sign pointed the way to a railway station. It was one of the few road signs I'd seen; the others must have been uprooted for scrap.

  We climbed down the short slope and took refuge under the bridge; it was just tall enough that we could stand. Across the stream we had a companion. The body of a man, half rotted away so that the skull was nearly clean of flesh, lay grinning at us. It did happen occasionally that you'd come across bodies in dark or quiet places, in the same way as when you cross a woodland you sometimes find the skeleton of a forest animal and don't think anything of it. I'd encountered skeletons or corpses in alleys in the deserted parts of Central London before. But it was uncanny to find these remains here after what we'd just left behind.

  "That explains it," Kamal said after a moment. In spite of the steady rain, it was quiet enough in the shelter of the bridge that I could hear him clearly. "Those people must have killed the old man the same night we broke out from the camp. So then when we got to the village the man with the gun thought we were the-the- We look pretty tatty, we must look like them. So it was an easy mistake to make.”

  "The bastards," I repeated hollowly.

  "Thought I was going to end up as cold cuts there for a minute," Kamal joked, although I could tell from the look in his eyes that he felt the same sense of frozen horror. Perhaps he, too, hoped that cracking a joke would dispel the jarring image - the corpse mauled with a kitchen knife. I shut my eyes and opened them again.

  "They'd have eaten me first, I've got more on me," I said.

  "It's funny, for a moment when you gave me the knife I didn't know what you were doing. I was like, what's going on? I thoug
ht maybe you were going to run for it and leave me there." Kamal laughed.

  "No, I'd never have done anything like that," I said, shaking my head. “I may not be much, but I'm honest.”

  "I know, I know. But I was worried for a sec, I just couldn't figure out what you were thinking until you did it. Thank God you thought of that fire extinguisher."

  "Thank God it worked.”

  "Now you've saved my bacon twice; that's two you and one me. I owe you one."

  "Didn't know you were keeping score," I said. My mind fled elsewhere. The water ran down from my hair across my face and into my eyes; I tried to brush it away with my hands but it was no good. I thought of the Mods again and hated them. They were the children of humans, determined to devour their parents. By genetically enhancing the progeny of the wealthy, we had accelerated evolution, and evolution is merciless to the losers. The Species War was natural selection in action – the stronger species mastering the weaker to secure its resources and its future.

  And now that they had won - The Mods used us when they needed us, they paid us to do their manual labour and their dirty work, they deprived us of telephones, computers, central electricity to keep us from conspiring, they gave us cheap supplies to keep us quiet, and all the while they despised us. Sometimes they expected us to follow their rules without even telling us what they were; at other times they shouted at us through loudspeakers like riot police ordering around an unruly crowd. It often seemed they even encouraged us to prey on each other. It was our business, wasn't it, so long as we only murdered or robbed each other. The lesser race will do that, they might think to themselves. It's how the inferior race are, they're only Mongrels...

  "Fuck, fuck, fuck them," I said out loud, my voice shaking because I was shivering.

  Kamal glanced at me in surprise. "Keep your hair on, will you? Don't go crackers on me or anything."

  "I won't." Think of what you've got to do. Think of what's waiting for you. Hang on to things like that. You know what's important; don't get distracted. Externally I might appear no different from any other member of the lesser species, but it was the deadly knowledge I took with me that set me apart, a courier carrying a message from a woman now dead. We had the power to devastate the Mods with their favourite weapon. If we could make it back.