Above the war-cries, Arid could still hear the painful crack of bones as fists met faces. The lines of force spontaneously broke apart into smaller pockets of violence, as pairs of fighters from both sides struggled to draw first blood. From his standpoint at the back of the crowd, he saw a she-wolf ruthlessly swing a baseball bat into the knees of a jackal, who screamed in pain and rolled into a ball on the ground. He watched in horror as she raised her bat high above her head to strike him again, and then recoiled as a hyena pushed a smashed bottle into her unguarded chest. He turned to run, but there was a solid wall of hyena behind him, steadily moving forward into battle, and nowhere for him to go. Flares and bottles sailed though the air above him and he saw another jackal fall to the ground as three wolves set upon him, kicking him in the head and stomach. Something about the action lit a spark in him and his anger flared. Arid ran from the cover of the boys in front to even the score. But in a flash, the skirmishes dissolved, melted away and the battle lines reformed, howling and cheering at one another from across the court. The hyena danced and whirled, jumped on the tips of their toes and laughed raucously. Of the three-hundred young men and women gathered together, only twenty or so lay beaten on the ground, dazed and bleeding, but none were dead. They limped or were pulled back to the safety of their respective gangs and proudly displayed their fresh wounds to those around them, raising their own voices in defiance of the opposition’s best efforts. Yakuba appeared at Arid’s side: he was breathing heavily and rubbing the bruised knuckles of his fists, but he was smiling nonetheless. ‘It will be a good night, brother. There will be no killing here. Just a lot of huffing and puffing from the big bad scum, as usual. And we will teach them a lesson!’ Osaze joined them, pushing through the throng to clap his arm around Arid’s shoulders. He too was panting from effort and excitement. ‘Did you see me? Did you see, Arid? I knocked one to the ground! He came at me and I took him down! Like that!’ and he mimed a stinging jab at an imaginary foe, ‘Bam!’
Arid felt fire in his heart, laid his arm around his friend, and together they added their voices to the hooting and hollering as the crowds dispersed, back to the safety of their own kind, each claiming the prelim victory.
Chapter 28
‘What was that?’ Crystal croaked. They had heard the fighting at Falcon Park from a mile away, and around them the wolves had cheered and howled, as if energised by the echoes of violence resounding in the air.
‘There was a testimony in the paper recently – some gang member who had found religion and wanted to repent – from what I read, the full moon rumble isn’t just a single isolated event. There are rules about exactly how, where and when they’re fought; unspoken agreements, rumours that are passed down through the troops. Nobody wants to get killed, sure as most of these lunatics don’t really want to kill anybody. Look at this lot: most of them are just kids, wearing fancy dress and playing war games. They don’t want to end up in the juvenile clink. It’s a school night, after all.’
In spite of herself, Crystal sniggered and immediately she found herself staring into the stern faces of two overgrown teenage boys.
‘Something funny, bitch?’ snarled the first, cocking his head to one side. Only one of his irises glowed yellow in the moonlight.
‘There’s no trouble here lads’, said Lek, trying to keep his tone light.
‘What if we wanted to make some trouble?’ said the second, his grimace revealing the neon braces holding his canines in place.
‘What the fuck you doing here anyway, square?’
‘Just taking in the… atmosphere, you know?’
‘Well fucking take it someplace else, dickhead,’ snapped the first before turning away with a shrug of his shoulders.
Lek mouthed ‘Sorry,’ when Crystal glared at him, but he was right. Although the threat was there beneath the surface, these were just schoolkids, puffing out their chests and posturing for one another. He tried not to think about the part he had played in ruining so many young lives and the impact on his current circumstances.
They sank back into the crowd, allowing the steady stream of bodies to flow around them as they made their way up North Street and on to Silverthorne Road.
***
The night air was alive, and as Roma ran towards the epicentre of the rumble, she could feel the call of the whole pack in her blood and bones. Her own crew struggled to keep up as she set a dogged pace, moving fluidly across the sleepers in the darkness of the railway tunnels, kicking up ballast dust into the faces behind her. Even Dahlia, usually her equal for speed, could not match her now. They had missed the prelim at Falcon Park while Roma had been writhing in agony in the alleyway, overdosing on rough-cut Bad Moon, and Dahlia knew that she would be keen to make amends to her brethren for their absence. She felt the bile rising in her throat at the thought of being forced to kill. Deep down, she believed without any doubt that she was capable of murder, but not just anybody. It would have to be a righteous kill: either somebody who deserved to die or else somebody whose death would benefit the pack. She thought again of challenging Roma.
***
While the wolves moved through the park for the next meet-up, since they could not deny their natural desire to run across grasslands under the light of the moon, the jackals and hyenas stuck to the streets, since they could not deny their natural desire to scavenge and loot. And so it became over time one of the unwritten laws of the rumble, and allowed the gangs to move freely about the city without fear of too many unplanned attacks. The shop- and store-owners of Battersea Park Road did their best to protect their property, but on nights of a full moon, they resigned themselves to the loss and damage, emptied their shelves, and left the doors and windows open to protect their already extortionate insurance premiums, if nothing else. Some even left unwanted goods out on the pavement for the looters to rip apart. Osaze had procured two soya-cream slices and a Chelsea bun from an unlocked bakery and handed the bun to Yakuba as an offering to his new god. Yakuba thanked him, before throwing it across the road in the style of a baseball-pitcher, where its stale crust shattered on the head of a wolf lying drunk and bleeding in a doorway. The hyenas laughed hysterically: even Osaze, heartbroken at first, couldn’t help but join in. Windows shattered and bins were set on fire. Ulan and Fogo threw firecrackers at one another and sprayed a stolen can of aerosol-cream into their own open mouths. ‘You’re about my brother’s size, here…’ said a stunning jackal girl with emerald eyes, stopping Arid in his tracks and holding a fur gillet against his chest. ‘Perfect!’ she said, stuffing it in her bag. She kissed Arid on the cheek and ran off. He thought the night couldn’t get any better, even before another pack-leader slapped Yakuba on the back, handed him a half dozen lotto-wraps of Joker and told him to share it around, courtesy of the Tooting Dingoes. Arid Dysoned his whole wrap, bump after bump, with the tip of his blade, which Osaze said was the height of machismo. A car exploded behind them as the gang made its woozy way to the Queen’s Circus to rumble proper.
***
The crowd of teenage wolves had begun to thin out, leaving only drunken stragglers behind, those who never intended to fight and were only coming along for the ride. Lek and Crystal held hands and for a moment, it seemed everything would be fine. Nobody on the planet could ever have guessed their location. Lek breathed deeply, and ignoring the pain throbbing behind his eyes, pulled Crystal closer so that they could kiss under the moonlight.
‘We’ve never done this before,’ she said.
‘Which part?’ asked Lek, and he kissed her again, while a couple of wolves whistled their approval. Lek heard the bells of St George Harrison’s Church toll nine.
***
Up the embankment at Ingate Place, the claws of Roma Bruce’s bleeding hands and feet dug into the soft earth as she pushed her heavyweight body through the tangle of brambles and nettles and landed neatly on the other side of the retaining wall in a quiet residential area which was taking shelter from the storm raging on the streets. Her pac
k were still five-hundred yards behind, but Roma couldn’t stop, couldn’t wait for them, such was her desire to spill hyena blood. She thundered around the corner into Queenstown Road and the smell of the foe was thick in her nostrils. Up ahead, at the intersection with Battersea Park Road, her newly-acquired crisp night-vision picked out a gang of jackals who were waiting for the main event, taking digisnaps with stolen cameras and laughing at one another. Roma closed the distance in a matter of seconds and launched herself at the first hyena within range.
Osaze Mboku may as well have been hit by a speeding Lexus biorg. So powerful was the force of Roma’s attack, he was lifted clean off his feet and sent flying into the base of a streetlamp. His thick neck snapped on impact, but that didn’t stop Roma from tearing at his throat and chest with her bare hands and teeth, leaving his flesh tattered and the panic-stricken onlookers spattered with his blood. Roma turned to face them and instinctively the hyenas backed away, for they could see that there was rabid madness in her eyes and too much poison in her veins. She barked ferociously, raised her head to the skies and howled, calling her pack to her side; but still she could not wait. As the crowd came to their senses and began to form a circle, she spun around, howled again and sprinted off towards Queen’s Circus to rumble. A single scream split the ensuing silence as Arid Bomani ran to kneel at the body of his fallen friend. In his heart he already knew he was dead, but still he went through the motions of feeling for a pulse in his wrist, looking into his eyes for any flicker of life and telling him between sobs that ‘everything will be alright’.
Yakuba came and knelt at his side, laying his hand on Arid’s back. His face studs sparkled in the moonlight. ‘Your brother has gone, my friend. True. He was a brave soldier. True again. Did he not say himself that he knocked a man down tonight? And now you will do the same. You must avenge his death. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’
The horrified screams and shouts from the hyenas standing on the nearby street corners reached a new pitch as four lean wolves, three males and a female, darted into the crossroads and stopped dead as they tried to make sense of the scene before them.
It was more than a killing. It was a slaughter, unlike anything they had seen before. Ronnie and Reggie were dumbstruck, and could only watch as Dahlia headed straight for Osaze’s body and Arid weeping next to him.
‘What happened here?’ she asked, staring at the mixture of emotions on the faces of the surrounding hyena.
‘One of your bitches went berserk,’ said Yakuba, ‘she killed an innocent.’
‘Nobody’s innocent, blud,’ replied Zevon smartly, and no sooner were there words out of his mouth, than Yakuba had grabbed him around the throat with a sinewy hand. In a move which he must have practiced a thousand times, Yakuba swept Zevon’s legs from under him, and slammed his body against the tarmac in the middle of the street. He pulled a knife from his back pocket and held it fast against Zevon’s windpipe. Ronnie and Reggie found themselves unable to make a move – they were surrounded by an angry mob of hyena, baying for their blood.
‘Stick him!’ somebody shouted.
‘Not I,’ said Yakuba and without taking his weight off Zevon, he flipped the blade and held it out to Arid.
‘A tooth for a tooth?’
Arid stared at the knife for what seemed like an eternity, then he shook his head wearily, as though there were simply no other course of action, and reached out for it.
‘Wait!’ said Dahlia, unsure of what she was about to do. She stood up, wiped Osaze’s blood on her shorts and found her voice.
‘My name is Dahlia Ortega. I run with the Brixton Wolves. I... understand that you are angry. Our alpha – the boy’s killer – will be challenged...’
‘What are you saying?’ croaked Zevon, and Yakuba squeezed his hand tighter around his throat.
‘Let the woman speak. What are you saying wolf?’
‘I am saying,’ Dahlia began, and the words almost choked her, ‘that we will punish our own.’
‘But what of our loss? What of our fallen brother?’
‘Accept this as a gesture of our good will and respect for your comrade,’ and she pulled Domino’s bag from her vest and threw it to Yakuba.
When he unzipped it, he was unable to hide his astonishment at the number of Hyenarc vials inside. He tipped them out on to the street so that everybody could see. ‘There must be two thousand creds’ worth....’ Yakuba said to nobody in particular. ‘What was your name again, wolf?’
‘Dahlia Ortega.’
‘Go well, Dahlia Ortega of the Brixton Wolves. Right the wrong within your pack. We have a truce until you do. You feel me?’ And with that, he took his weight off Zevon, pulled him upright and signalled to the rest of the hyenas on the corner of Battersea Park Road and Queenstown to let them pass.
Ronnie and Reggie, Zevon and Dahlia huddled together to discuss their options.
‘What have you done?’ said Zevon.
‘What have I done? I saved your life, shithead. You could start by thanking me. I saved all of our lives. What could I have done? The hyena are killers - they may not always seem it with their constant laughing – but make no mistake Zevon, they will kill to protect what’s theirs.’
‘Roma is out of line,’ said Reggie.
‘She’s out of control,’ said Ronnie, nodding in agreement. ‘That kid is only, what? Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Beatlemania,’ he whispered.
‘So what now?’
‘I’ve made a pact. I have to challenge her,’ said Dahlia.
‘It’s not your place to challenge.’
‘I just bought your life, Zevon, or have you forgotten? I own you now.’
Zevon bowed his head in reluctant acquiescence.
‘But it’s all moot anyway. We have to find her first.’
Chapter 29
Though the crowds had dispersed and Lek and Crystal had been left alone on the streets, they could tell that something had changed. As they moved further north, away from Clapham and nearer to Battersea, they became aware of the orange glow of fires burning in the darkness. The boisterous shouts and chanting of earlier had turned to screams and cries of pain, and they saw more young men and women retreating now from the action, many of them wounded and crying. The further they walked the more destruction they saw on the roads: smashed windows, overturned cars and recyclo-bins on fire. Crystal looked worried and asked Lek if it might be worth taking the back streets instead, but he didn’t like the idea of getting lost - or worse, cornered - in the tight network of dead end roads. ‘Plus,’ he said, ‘we’re heading straight for Chelsea Bridge – this is the most direct route.’
‘It just seems like we’re walking into the middle of it.’
‘Maybe we are, but the clock is ticking. The train leaves in forty five minutes and we’ve got to get the money before then.’
‘Fine. Whatever. Where are we anyway?’
‘I think we’re about five minutes’ from Queen’s Circus.’
***
The news of the killing had spread like wildfire through the gangs, and the entire mood of the night was changed within minutes. Banter and bravado became barbed insults and thrown punches. Violent scuffles had already begun to break out between the wolves and hyena gathering at Queen’s Circus, before the official commencement of the rumble. By the time the first gunshot echoed through the night, there were bodies from both armies lying face down in the gutter. Word had spread that Brixton Roma was on a killing spree, that she had already slaughtered a boy on the street and scattered a pack of jackals shooting-up in a looted pawn-shop. Outnumbered four to one, but tearing at them with her claws she had managed to rip the femoral artery of one before the others managed to beat her back with chains. She was overdosed, they said. She had ‘turned animal’.
It was all true and the hyena were incensed: just as Osaze had predicted earlier that day, they fought hard. If the prelim had been a relatively mild affair, this was an all-out street-war, the likes of which hadn’t
been seen in years. Here, now, knives were drawn, and the sound of shots and the smell of cordite filled the air. Roma had tasted blood and wanted more: she felt she could run forever as she bounded into the thick of it, slashing at any stray jackal separated from his pack. As the rumble began to take on a life of its own, her presence only served to fuel the fire. The former order of the wolves was split apart as she moved at random, knocking down and biting anybody in her path. A group of wild hyena rounded on her, slashing at her with flick-knives, but she smashed her way through them and continued unharmed on her rampage, pouncing on the back of a boy who was brandishing a machete. As he fell, the blade was forced into his own chest and tore its way out through his shoulder. His screams sounded like a sheet of metal being ripped in two. Roma did not hear them, but moved on pitilessly to her next victim – a young girl with emerald eyes, who was swinging a weighted bag to defend herself. Without breaking her stride, Roma barrelled into her flank, and before the girl had hit the ground, Roma had sunk her teeth into her scalp, and had pulled away a bloody chunk of flesh and hair.
Meanwhile, the hyena fought on bravely, redressing the balance against lesser wolves. Yakuba’s men, fresh on the scene, chased and cornered a pack-leader, beating him to death with their fists as he cried out for help from his gang. Arid was there too, in body, if not in spirit, watching without seeing, as they tore away the plastic seats from a Credibus shelter and flung them at a tight knot of wolves. He saw a jackal whirl a bleeding boy around by the wrist in a parody of a dance move, and heard the cheekbone smash when it connected with a hyena’s raised claw-hammer. He saw the hyena’s back explode as he was shot at point-blank range in the chest. He saw the horror in the shooter’s eyes as a knife was plunged into her neck.
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