This Broken Land

by H M Sealey

  River makes a face. “That’s disgusting.”

  “Not that disgusting considering I’ve been using him to move girls out of Old Britain for a decade. I can hide anyone amongst a batch of Slaves, if I’m careful.”

  “It’s still disgusting that Slave Trading even exists.”

  “Yes, well, I don’t have your idealism. I do my best but if I start letting myself get overwhelmed by the suffering I see then I’m no use to anybody.”

  She lights up her next cigarette. “Anyway, get used to it, because the only way we can legally wipe your identity is if you become a slave yourself. Once a girl’s sold, they can’t be traced.”

  “Sold? You said it was a cover. I’m not a slave!”

  “All the girls who come here say that. They soon learn otherwise.”

  “Seriously? You’re seriously suggesting selling me?”

  “It’s a bad solution but it’s better than anything else. You’ll have to be branded of course, and pretend to be one of the new girls.”

  River holds herself stiffly. “I think I’d prefer a gun to the head.”

  “Hear me out River. Zeb, that’s my husband, won’t notice one girl more or less, he never does. Once branded I can have you sent north, we’ve got people there, they’ll be briefed to buy you.”

  “And then what?”

  “You wait. A couple of years maybe.”

  River drops back down onto the chair. “This world is sick!” She whispers. “Why is it the more they chase equality in Old Britain the more divided and unequal the world becomes?”

  I think that’s a genuine question. Aunt Sally just shrugs. “I can’t let myself ponder on the whys River. I don’t have the luxury of being a philosopher.”

  “But we’re so disdainful about the past.” River continues, tears in her eyes. “Yet I don’t think the past could have been as bad as the present.”

  “It wasn’t.” Aunt Sally answers. “It wasn’t perfect. Far as I can see the problem comes when one generation wants the fruit of the generations that came before, but rejects the attitudes. Thinks they can do better. This country was built when it was still a Christian patriarchy, but NuTru detests both Christians and men. Then they’re surprised when what was built by values they hate falls apart.” She shrugs. “That’s my take anyway.”

  “I don’t want to be a slave.” River says in a quiet voice.

  “And I don’t want to be married to a Slave Trader. Life’s a bitch honey.”

  “What about Josh?” River asks.

  Aunt Sally stares at me for some seconds before replying. “I can’t risk sending him back to the Rainbow Centre.” She says. “He’s here now, so he’ll have to adopt the same sort of cover. I’ll take you over to where Zeb keeps the male stock as soon as I can.”

  My heart feels suddenly cold.

  “But it is only cover, right?”

  Aunt Sally stubs grinds the end of her cigarette onto the table and doesn’t meet my eyes.

  “Yes.” She pauses. “And no.”

  “No?”

  “To hide as a slave you’ll have to be a slave, at least for a while. Zeb’s not an idiot. He’ll notice if you’re given preferential treatment.”

  She opens the cardboard box with red-taloned fingers. “Cheer up, there are factories up North that help me move people through the country. I can’t promise you’ll go to the same one as each-other, but I can promise that factory work is like a holiday compared to a Rainbow Centre.” She shudders. “You wouldn’t be political prisoners so nobody will be policing your thoughts. Nobody will care about your thoughts. Say something too insulting and they’ll beat the crap out of you, but they won’t try and change the way you think.”

  Inside the package is a small machine with a long wire attached to a metal box. Aunt Sally stands up and plugs it into the wall. Then she picks up what looks like a pen connected by the wires with a fat, square end. Looking more closely I can see it’s more like a pad with changeable numbers, rather like the sort of thing they used to stamp books in libraries years and years ago.

  “Turn round River.” Aunt Sally commands. River stares at the implement in her hand. “That’s a branding pen right?”

  “Right. I had to borrow it from Doctor Lewis and it needs to go back into her office before she notices it’s missing.”

  “There has got to be a better way than this.”

  “Listen honey, right now Zeb has a policeman staying with him determined to investigate Family Matters. He doesn’t know much thankfully, but he’s clever and tenacious. Having you on these premises is a massive risk. I want you both moved as quickly and smoothly as possible. Now let me get this done.”

  River, biting her lip with hidden frustration, tips her head forward and Aunt Sally lines up the white-hot pad with the numbers against her neck.

  She doesn’t even flinch when Aunt Sally presses the metal against her skin though she catches her breath at the pain. I hear it sizzle as it burns the skin.

  “Your turn Josh. Quickly.” Aunt Sally tells me and I have no choice but to allow her to mark me the same way.

  I steel myself against the pain, refusing to cry out. But my God, it hurts and it doesn’t stop hurting, especially when Aunt Sally swabs it none-too-gently with disinfectant afterwards.

  “All right.” She says, packing the machine back into the box and putting the box in a shoulderbag. She takes two plastic zip ties from the same bag and slips them around our wrists, pulling them tight so we’re both restrained. “Now I need to put you with the others. Then Kit fucking Summerday can hunt all he wants. Nobody’s going to find you hidden amongst the slaves. His type won’t even look you in the face, he’s too ashamed.”

  Aunt Sally opens the door and steps out into a concrete passage. It smells out here, it smells of damp and mildew and cleaning fluid.

  “I’ll put River in with the girls, then take you to the men on the other side of the building.” Aunt Sally tells us. “It’s a big complex, built during the Cold War by Zeb’s great grandfather, back when they still thought the only way to destroy society was the nuclear bomb.” She sniffs. “Can’t build a bomb shelter to protect us against idiot ideas.”

  We turn the corner only to find a dark, scruffy man dragging a girl behind him. She’s pretty, Chinese maybe, with long, black hair tangled from fighting.

  The man stops and stares at us.

  “What’s this Nicky?” He asks, regarding all of us with suspicion.

  Aunt Sally’s expression changes and she smiles up at him. “Just organising some of the latest batch Zeb.”

  Zeb’s dark eyes fall on me.

  “What the hell’s a man doing in with them? What’re you playing at Nicky?”

  Aunt Sally looks marginally concerned. I swallow.

  “I…..I identify as a woman.” I say suddenly. I don’t know why I said that, but I’ve heard enough people say it at the Rainbow Centre, sometimes with sincerity, sometimes just to get privileges offered to any minority group.

  Zeb stares at me for what feels like eternity, then his lips twitch and he roars with laughter.

  “Jesus Christ! They put you with the girls didn’t they, back in Old Britain? Just because you feel like one! Those morons, are they still pushing the gender-fluid idiocy?” He clips me around the ear. “Sorry son, but here were don’t bother with what you feel. If you’ve got a dick, you’re a man. You can forget about anything else.”

  He continues to chuckle, then stops. “We’d better not have paid them for a girl.” He says.

  Nicky shakes her head. “I don’t think so, but I’ll check.”

  “Yeah, make sure of that.” He shoves the other girl in the back to push her along. “This little bitch bit me.” He shakes his bloody hand. “She’s been more trouble than she’s worth. I’m giving her to the Doctor to be cut.”

  Aunt Sally winces. “Not another one Zeb.”

  “Don’t lecture me Nicky.”

  “Fine. I won’t, but I think you’re stupid to
damage your own merchandise.”

  ~

  Missy

  That was the moment Missy attacked Zeb. The threat of being cut after heating the poor girl screaming in agony behind a closed door only an hour before was too much. She managed to turn around and throw herself against him bodily; Missy was not heavy but she was heavy enough to knock him off balance, and once off-balance, he fell against the wall. Missy made a grab for his head and thrust both thumbs into his eyes. Zeb let out a yell and toppled backwards completely, Missy on top of him, her thumbs pressing down into the soft flesh of his eyes.

  “Get the Hell of me!” Zeb seized her wrists but Missy just pushed her thumbs deeper into his eye sockets, determined to do as much damage as possible before he threw her off. She felt her nails pierce something and she saw blood begin to bubble up around her thumbs. She pushed even harder, fuelled by the image of Alaia falling into the dirt.

  “This is for Alaia!” Missy cried, tears choking her and softening the edges of her fury. “This is for Elsie Kessler and all the other girls you’ve enslaved!”

  Zeb’s grip weakened.

  “Nicky, for fuck’s sake, get this mad bitch off me.”

  “I’m trying Zeb!” Nicky called without moving. Zeb hit out at Missy but, blinded and in agony, it was hard for him to know where to aim.

  Finally, Nicky placed a hand on Missy’s shoulder.

  “Please.” She whispered. “That’s enough.”

  Missy, realising that Zeb had stopped struggling so violently and her thumbs were buried deeply in his face, pulled away, both digits left his flesh with a horrible plop of raw meat that made Zeb howl again. There was blood on Zeb’s face and he thrashed around on the floor. screaming obscenities.

  “Get the fucking doctor! The little bitch has blinded me! I want her cut without anaesthetic!”

  Nicky held onto Missy, then pulled her close.

  “You need to run.” She hissed in her ear. Then, realising Zeb could see nothing, called out. “I’ll get the doctor Zeb.”

  She pulled Missy over her husband’s body and to the steps.

  “Go upstairs.” She kept her voice to a whisper. “Get out of the house if you can. Or find somewhere to hide.”

  “His people shot someone!”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “Don’t you care?”

  “Honey, if I didn’t care I wouldn’t be getting you out of here.”

  Missy glanced down at her bloodied hands. “I think I hurt him. I felt something pop.”

  Nicky glanced back at her husband, squirming like a newborn mouse, blood on his face.

  “Good.” She said.

  ~

  ~ Twenty-Nine ~

  Elsie

  Eventually Asim falls asleep in the chair beside Baraq, his face resting on his uncle’s arm. I watch him for a while and try to forget the hatred I saw in his eyes for Kit. Asim is no older than the students in my own class, hatred shouldn’t exist in the eyes of a child.

  And yet I’ve seen hatred in the eyes of my class before. I even nurtured it without realising it. I taught my children to hate Christianity. I taught them to hate white males. I taught them to hate England and its colonial past. I taught them to chant their hatred for Capitalism. When the Islamic State marched across Europe, wiping out Christianity, I taught the children to approve.

  Suddenly I feel very, very ashamed of myself. At least Asim’s hatred is based on something real.

  I stand up and stretch. The sun is beginning to go down now and outside the shadows are lengthening. I’m tired too, and my brand still aches.

  I slip to the door. I wonder where Hajjah is? I’d quite like to talk to her. I don’t want to leave this room though, I feel safe here. I can pretend this is quite a different house to the one with the cellars full of slaves. This is the pretty surface of something deeply, deeply ugly, and, like the coward I’ve always been, I keep my eyes on the pretty surface and prefer to ignore the rest.

  I stand by the window and watch the shadows darken the rocks and patterns in the garden. Pressing my nose against the glass I long to be back in my own bedroom, with Gran pottering around in the garden, trying to make her plants grow despite the lack of water.

  I see his reflection in the window the instant before his hand closes around my throat. I can’t run, I can’t push him away.

  Kit slams me against the wall, fingers tight around my neck. I’m too surprised even to cry out.

  “This is your last chance Elsie.” Kit hisses. “You’re going to tell me everything you know about your grandmother, about her friends and her contacts.”

  Suddenly there’s a knife touching my cheek.

  “Otherwise I’m going to start removing body parts Elsie. Just the little ones at first, the ones you don’t really need.”

  I feel the knife move to the side, then up until it’s touching my ear. He slices upwards and a chunk of my hair floats to the floor.

  “Knife’s sharp.” He comments, hacking another piece of my hair off. “It’s take your ear off in one slice.” Now I can feet the blade pressing against my skin. “Your fingers will take a little more work to remove, but I will Elsie.”

  I stare into those dark, unpleasant eyes, and suddenly I see something new. I see every little boy in our school. I see the way they’re taught that they’re somehow inherently bad, I see them taught to hate their instincts, teased when they want to play with cars or soldiers. I see how they’re told gender and race are just social constructs and don’t exist, but perversely, also told that white men are the source of everything evil. I see the way boys grow up twisted, just like Kit. He’s all twisted inside. Anything toxic has been hidden away, his strength hasn’t been directed into anything good.

  And I think about what Sylvester told me about him. About his father. I remember the contempt I felt when I found out my family were Christians. I’d been conditioned to find the very idea disgusting, so I understand how he felt.

  “I’m…..I’m sorry about your father.” I tell him with sincerity. I’m not sure whether I’m sorry his father was a Christian, or whether I’m sorry his father is dead or both.

  “My father?”

  “Sylvester told me about him. And you.”

  Kit doesn’t look pleased. “Sounds like Grandpa’s been salving his guilty conscience again. What’s he doing now? Trying to save you? Trying to save the whole of Family Matters just to spite me?”

  “He – he’s not doing anything to spite you.”

  “I’m not stupid Elsie. He married a savage so I’d remind you his judgement is seriously flawed.”

  “Hajjah’s not a savage. She’s lovely.”

  “Anyone who believes in any sort of God is a savage! That sort of thing should be stamped out of humanity by now. What Grandpa was doing marrying someone with those sort of ideas I have no idea. She’s infected the family. It’s her fault my father lost his mind and started believing in crap from the dark ages! Her whole filthy breed needs stamping out.”

  I’ve never heard someone so openly antagonistic towards Muslims. That’s a dangerous opinion to hold.

  “If I had my way,” Kit snarls, “I’d bomb the whole of the ESI off the map and any Christian communities with them. If people won’t give up their primitive, hateful beliefs then they need to be forced to do so.”

  I swallow. “So...so you would spread your philosophy by force?”

  “My philosophy is one of peace and tolerance.”

  “No it’s not. It’s the exact opposite. You’re no different to those people who perpetuated the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the belief they were spreading civilisation. Why is your way the only right way? Have you ever considered that your father was ashamed of you rather than the other way round?”

  I feet a burning pain in my ear and I almost scream, only Kit shifts his hand until it’s over my mouth just in time. The pain in my ear doesn’t disappear and I try desperately to wriggle away, to escape the agonising, pulling sensation.

&nb
sp; It’s only when I whole chunk of my flesh flops onto my shoulder, and then to the floor leaving a bloody trail behind it that I realise Kit’s cut off some of my ear. My face is wet with my own blood but I don’t leave his eyes.

  “Who’s the savage right now Kit?” I ask, pulling my mouth free of his hand.

  Kit brings his face so close to mine I can see the veins in his eyes.

  “If I’m a savage it’s only because my Grandfather married a savage and polluted my bloodline.”

  “Polluted….?” I can barely believe he’s just said that. People are arrested for less. Well, white people are.

  “Tell me about your grandmother Elsie.” I feel the knife touch my butchered ear and I squeal, it hurts. My whole face throbs and I can feel a steady flow of blood down my face, soaking my shirt. “Tell me about your Aunt Sally.”

  “I told you. I don’t know anything. I don’t have any sort of Aunt.”

  “You’re lying Elsie. Lying to protect that savage behind you.”

  “My mother loved him.”

  “Your mother loved Jesus too apparently. She was warped.”

  “So are you. Your father would have been really, really ashamed!”

  “I knew your father.” Another voice joins the conversation. Not that’s it’s a conversation at all, more an interrogation.

  Kit turns, we both do, to see Baraq gazing towards us with compassion in his eyes. Beside him Asim sleeps on in the sort of deep sleep of sheer exhaustion.

  “Alistair Jourdete was one of the finest men I ever knew. He saved my life twice. He loved you and your sister with all his heart and he was devastated to see how the philosophy of NuTru damaged you. His one desire was to take you both to America.”

  “Well, why didn’t he then, if he loved us so much?”

  “Because he also loved the people of Old Britain and he loved God. His love for God made that love for people boundless, even the ones who hated and slandered him. The more you persecuted him, the more he loved you. He was a true Christian.”