Floodworld

by Tom Huddleston

  Kara could feel the crowd’s anger shifting, turning away from Remick and back towards the Mariners. She saw one man spit on the concrete, a young woman balling her fists.

  “Now I’m not going to tell you to go home,” Remick said. “Stay if you want. Voice your frustration. But do it calmly. Peaceful protest is the right of any free society. And that’s what we have here, isn’t it? It’s why the Mariners hate us so much. Mudfoots, they call us. Like it’s an insult. I don’t know about you, but I’m proud to feel solid ground under my feet. I’m proud of my MetCo family. And most of all, I’m proud to live in the greatest city on Earth.”

  To Kara’s amazement some of the demonstrators began to clap – moments ago they’d been screaming with rage, now they were on Remick’s side. He’d made them feel safe, she realised, like their concerns were being listened to. He’d given them nothing but words, but it seemed to be enough. She wondered where he’d learned to do that, and if anyone could pick it up.

  As the mob dispersed they headed for Deepcut Dock, the cluster of stone jetties where the Pavilion narrowed into the neon-lit Boardwalk. A wide wooden walkway jutting just above the waterline, the Boardwalk ran right round the Wall from the Pavilion in the north to the Badlands in the south. Along it the crowds moved both ways, the majority of them heading home while others were just setting out for the night. Kara saw security guards and haulage crews, and others on less respectable errands. The food stalls were doing a roaring trade, the air filled with the greasy stink of fried fish. She felt her stomach rumble, but they had no food and no money to buy any.

  Joe yawned, dead on his feet. A pair of heavily tattooed Shore Boys came barrelling towards them, machine guns slung, driftwood necklaces rattling. Kara held her course, avoiding eye contact but refusing to step aside. One of them slammed past and she took the impact, feeling a flush of pride. She hadn’t given an inch, and that counted for a lot in the Shanties.

  “Mariners on our doorstep!” a voice cried, a news vendor bellowing the headlines from the doorway of his tarpaulin shack. “Are MetCo doing enough to prevent more attacks? Get all the latest from the City’s most reputable sources!” A chem-generator rattled and inside Kara could see screens flickering, the broadcasts relayed from within the Wall to a crowd of eager punters. Joe tried to peer in but the vendor shooed him away. “Cough up or get lost.”

  Kara glowered. “We saw it already, anyway.”

  They reached Euston Lock and turned north, the crowds thinning as the walkways divided and divided again, tributaries branching from the river of people. The sun brushed the horizon and light slanted between the crumbling concrete towers, dappling the water with streaks of pale gold. The air was hazy with smoke from countless cook-fires and communal braziers, and Kara heard snatches of laughter, shouts of anger and the shrieks of children.

  Colpeper stalked behind them muttering to himself. He hadn’t said a word about what had happened, but Kara suspected it was only because he didn’t want to lose his temper in public.

  In front of Osborne House a young busker with tall black hair stood plucking his guitar, a rolling march for the walk home. He called himself the Pompadour, and sometimes when he played Kara got a tingling feeling down in her stomach. But tonight he was almost drowned out by Mr Shoji the soup vendor, bellowing his teatime bargains to the half-empty courtyard.

  “That smells so good,” Joe said, smiling sleepily. “Can we get some, Mr Colpeper?”

  The big man stopped and Kara felt her stomach tighten. Colpeper’s black eye gleamed in the lamplight. “After everything that happened today, you think I’m going to buy you soup?”

  Joe flushed. “But … they let us go.”

  “No thanks to you.” Colpeper’s voice was hard as stone. “What were you thinking, Joe? When that ski crashed why didn’t you swim the other way? When that Mariner got smashed up why did you try and help him? They questioned me for an hour. They did this to my face.”

  “I … I’m sorry,” Joe said, his lip trembling.

  “Sorry won’t cut it.” Colpeper poked him in the chest. “You don’t seem to get how this works. I’m not your friend. I’m not your dad. I’m your boss. You work because I let you. And if I change my mind, what happens? You starve.”

  “Hey,” Kara said, stepping between them with her heart racing, “Joe couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”

  Colpeper’s face turned crimson. “Who do you think you’re talking to, girl?” The square had fallen silent; Kara could see the soup vendor watching them, and the Pompadour too. His eyes met hers and she squared her shoulders.

  “I’m talking to a bully,” she said, standing on her tiptoes. “You know it wasn’t Joe’s fault. You’re just angry because MetCo made you feel small, so you’re taking it out on him.”

  Colpeper growled, deep in his throat. She could almost see steam rising behind his eyes.

  “Look, I’ll help with your … project,” she said, lowering her voice. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do. But leave Joe alone. And give us some money for soup.”

  She held out her wrist, and for a moment she thought she’d pushed too far. But Colpeper sank back, shaking his head and touching his wrist to hers until she felt the chip pulse beneath her skin.

  “You drive a hard bargain, Kara Jordan.”

  Kara frowned. “But that’s a good thing, right?”

  Colpeper smiled wearily. “I suppose it is. See me tomorrow and we’ll talk. Until then, stay out of trouble.” He lumbered away, his broad back soon lost among the shadows.

  Kara spent half the money on a san-sal tablet and a bowl of meat soup – she hoped it was cat, but rat was more likely. Then she filled her bottle, straining the water with the sleeve of her shirt. She popped in the pill and shook, watching it turn from salty brown to murky grey.

  “I would have stepped in, you know.”

  She looked up to see the young busker standing over her, his guitar on his back. His hair was midnight black and his accent was as thick as sugar. “If he had tried to hurt you, or the boy.”

  Kara stood slowly. “I … I know how to handle guys like him.”

  The Pompadour nodded. “I believe it. I see you every day. You are a fighter.”

  “Th-thank you,” Kara stammered. “I see you too. You play, um, well.”

  His eyes twinkled. “Is there something you would like to hear? A song to soothe you after a tense encounter?”

  Kara laughed despite her nerves. “I like them all. I don’t have any money, though.”

  The Pompadour swivelled his guitar and strummed a dramatic chord. “It is my gift,” he said. Then he threw his head back and began to sing a lilting ballad in his native tongue, somehow desperately sad and swooningly joyful at the same time. His voice reverberated from the enclosing walls and Kara felt her knees weaken. Perhaps she was more tired than she thought.

  She took the bowl from Joe, draining the last drops and returning it to the vendor. The Pompadour’s response had been typical of the Shanties, she reflected – no one ever wanted to get involved, but if things got serious they’d intervene. Life here was dangerous, hectic and often bewildering. But people looked out for each other.

  Kara glanced back but the singer had become distracted, pursuing two blushing women across the courtyard, batting his lashes and strumming flirtatiously. So she took Joe’s hand, leading him through the shattered window and into Osborne House.

  The stairwell was cluttered with people huddled like rags in the shadows. But the access corridor on Floor 13 was deserted, so Kara pulled out her screwdriver and knelt to open the ventilation grate.

  Hearing a clang, she paused. A woman rounded the corner hauling a sloshing pail, smiling as she saw them. “Kara and Joe,” she sang, her voice made squeaky by the wooden peg on her nose. “Got anything for me this evening, lovely children?”

  “I’ve barely eaten all day, Mrs Davies,” Kara told her. “Sorry.”

  “And what about you?” she asked, reaching
to pat Joe on the stomach. “Anything in there for my spinach and my runner beans?”

  Joe shook his head. “Maybe in the morning before school. We just had soup.”

  Mrs Davies eyed them with concern. “You’re so thin. I worry.”

  Kara couldn’t help thinking that if she was that concerned she could always give them the run of her rooftop garden. But it wasn’t fair – Mrs Davies had thirty square feet and seven mouths to feed. And she could be generous when it suited her – last Christmas she’d given them a gull’s leg and a hot bowl of beans, the best meal they’d had all year. To thank them for all they’d donated, she’d said.

  She shuffled off, her bucket slopping, and Kara tugged the grate free, following Joe into the narrow shaft. Moonlight filtered through empty windows as they scrambled into the disused bathroom that had been their home for the past two years.

  Kara shrugged out of her smelly overalls, selecting the least filthy T-shirt from her urinal. Then she unblocked the outflow pipe, retrieving the metal box that contained everything that was precious to either of them – a broken comwatch that had belonged to Joe’s dad, a scrap of paper Kara had torn from a magazine and an ancient electronic chip reader. She pressed it to her wrist and numbers flashed on the readout, ticking upward. They were getting closer.

  “Do you think that Mariner’s gone to heaven?” Joe asked, sinking into the nest of rags they called a bed.

  “I don’t think they believe in heaven,” Kara said, stashing the chip reader. “I don’t either.”

  “Well I hope he’s gone somewhere. Not just the bottom of the sea.”

  “What do you care? He was a terrorist.”

  Joe frowned. “He could’ve run me over but he didn’t. If I hadn’t been there, he’d still be alive. So it’s almost like I k—”

  “Don’t,” Kara said. “Don’t even think that. He was the one who shouldn’t have been there.”

  Joe yawned. “Can I look at the picture before I go to sleep? I don’t want to dream about men on fire. I want to dream about the picture.”

  She handed him the magazine page and he gazed at the image printed there. It showed a white-capped mountain with a log cabin in the foreground, and a family sitting round a table heaped with pancakes. The article was about a country called Canada far across the sea. Their borders were closely guarded, but the magazine said they had an open-door policy to children, promising food and education until you came of age. But time was running out – next year Kara would be sixteen, and those doors would close forever.

  Joe began to snore, clutching his plastic bear. Kara spread the picture on the rice-sack pillow by his head, then she crossed to the window, looking down into the watery streets. The Pompadour had packed up, and so had the soup stand. All was silent.

  The Shanties stretched out under the dark sky, a raft of slanting lights and silhouetted towers. She wondered what must be happening down there: cops and crooks going about their business; mothers feeding their kids and knowing there wasn’t enough left to feed themselves; girls her age grubbing for scraps and boys no bigger than Joe running errands for gangsters and thieves. Refugees paddling in under the cover of darkness, roping their rafts to some far-flung pier and hurrying towards the lights, swelling the population of the Shanties by five, or ten, or a hundred.

  Yes, it was a rough place, but when she thought about leaving, Kara felt a pang of doubt. This was the only home she’d ever known. There was hardship and cruelty, of course there was. But there was decency too, and opportunity. You had to be tough to survive in the Shanties, and she was.

  But deep down she knew that what she wanted wasn’t really important. Turning back, she could see Joe sprawled on the bed, his chest rising in fast, shallow breaths. She remembered the day she’d found him. Or had he found her? She’d been fleeing from the Sisterhood; he was halfway to being flattened by a riot squad attack line. They’d scrambled free of that churning mob and she’d known, the moment she looked into his fearful, excited eyes – she’d known he was worth more than all of it. She might not deserve any better than this place, but Joe did. He deserved a chance to make something of his life, even if it meant that one day he’d leave her behind.

  Yes, Kara thought. It was time to make as much money as they could and get out, before they ran into more trouble like today, the kind Joe wouldn’t come back from. Before the boy she loved was gone and a tough little stranger took his place.

  5

  Redeye

  Kara watched Joe’s back as he hurried along the bustling walkway into King’s Community School, the soles of his sneakers flapping. The sun was already high, heat haze rippling from the water. She’d barely slept, haunted by visions of exploding jetskis and angry mobs, and a nagging feeling that none of this was over, that there was more to come.

  She pushed away through the crowd of parents milling around the school gates, trying to ignore the contempt in their eyes as they looked at her ripped shorts and greasy hair. They were all Shanty folk, she reminded herself, no better or worse than she was. But they were workers, strivers. She bet none of them let their kids go diving for scrap.

  Hunger gnawed as she hastened past a row of barbecue barrels, charcoal smoking. An activist stood on a crate, lecturing through a megaphone. “Join the ANTIs!” he shouted, pushing steel-rimmed spectacles up his nose. “Fight against exploitation and child labour. Fight for decent wages and affordable healthcare. Join the ANTIs and fight for the Shanties!”

  Kara ignored him. Those promises always sounded good, but the same groups had been saying the same stuff for years, and life in the Shanties showed no sign of improving.

  Sensing movement she turned. There was a dark figure on the far side of the walkway slipping through the crowd. Keeping pace? Kara slowed and, yes, the figure slowed too.

  She picked up speed, fear gnawing in her gut. She’d known that yesterday’s events would have consequences, that someone would come asking questions. She was so distracted that she walked face first into a spongy wall of electric-pink stretch-cloth.

  There was a shriek and Kara sprang back. A large woman stood over her, spitting on her arm and rubbing hard. “It touched me!” she cried. “The little rat touched me. I’ll have to get shots.”

  Faces crowded in, watching Kara with horrified fascination – a tourist party from inside the Wall, judging by their clothes. And here was their escort, a MetCo corporal with red spikes in her hair. “No need to panic, madam. I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm.”

  “She?” the woman spat. “You mean it’s a girl? Good grief.”

  Kara felt a surge of anger, a curse forming in her mouth. But before she could speak the corporal took her arm and steered her away. “Run along, child.”

  “But she…” Kara spluttered. “But they’re a bunch of—”

  “I know,” the young woman whispered. “But, trust me, the best thing you can do is leave before one of them tells me to arrest you.”

  Kara glared at the tourists, feeling ashamed and furious and bitterly hurt all at the same time. She wanted to yell at them, tell them she was a person too. But they’d already moved on, gazing in wonder at a heaped garbage skiff poled by a bargeman with a beard down to his knees. One of the men pretended to push his friend towards the water, provoking howls of laughter.

  Kara broke into a run, suddenly desperate to put as much distance as possible between herself and those judging, superior eyes. Her rage gave her speed, pigeons scattering as she hurtled through an empty square. She could run all day if she wanted to, blazing a trail right across the Shanties. No one would be able to stop her, not the cops, not the Mariners, not those City tourists with their stupid clothes. They’d all just watch open-mouthed as she flew by, the fastest, freest thing in all the world.

  Then, as suddenly as it had come, the mood left her. She staggered back, sinking on to a jutting windowsill. She drew a ragged breath and squeezed her eyes tight. The world spun around her.

  After a while, Kara took her be
arings. She was on a shadowed walkway between two high blocks. Water lapped at the concrete and from inside she could hear a baby crying, followed by a voice yelling at it to shut up for one second. She took a long, deep breath, clenching her fists to steady her nerves. She’d go to Colpeper and sign up to his ridiculous gun-smuggling scheme, then she’d weasel some money out of him and buy Joe a sugar donut.

  She felt the presence before she saw it, just a shadow in her peripheral vision. She whipped round, goosebumps prickling her arms. A man stood a short distance away, motionless on the narrow catwalk. He was tall and slender, and dressed in a long coat of dark, leathery sealskin. His black hair fell forward over a face as pale as crab meat, but through the strands Kara could see something glowing, a flicker of red where his left eye should be.

  “Don’t run,” he said, the accent unfamiliar. “I’ve chased you far enough for one day.” And he smiled, his teeth gleaming. Those weren’t Shanty teeth.

  With a start she realised. “You’re a Mariner.” Even if it weren’t for the clothes and the teeth, she could smell the sea all over him.

  The stranger nodded. “Clever girl. They call me Redeye. I know, not very imaginative.” He gestured at the crimson gleam beneath the curtain of his hair. Then he tugged back his sleeve, revealing a tattoo on his wrist – a sea-blue circle with a green oval inside it, like an upturned eye. The symbol of the Mariners. “I’m head of security on an Ark called Neptune. Her captain’s name is John Cortez; you may have heard of him.”

  Kara’s lip curled. “Of course. He’s a pirate and a terrorist.”

  “So your mudfoot media claims. But one man’s terrorist is another’s… How does it go?” The Mariner took a step closer, raising both hands. “I mean you no harm, I promise. I just want to talk.”

  Kara glanced aside, measuring the distance to the water. “You want to know about the dead guy, right?”