by H M Sealey
“He killed himself!”
Baraq shakes his head. “Oh Kit, no. He opted for Assisted Suicide, yes, but that was only an escape route. There’s another drug, the Juliet drug, if administered within forty-eight hours it revives the victim.” There are tears in Baraq’s eyes. “He’s alive Kit. He’s alive and he still loves you.”
Kit lowers the knife and stares at Baraq as though Baraq has just told him the secret of the universe.
“A – alive?”
“Kit, he knew you hated his faith. He knew you were ashamed and he couldn’t bear that.”
“Who -who else knows?”
“Nobody. Not even your grandfather. I only know because he’s my friend.”
“Where is he?”
“The BSI. He lives in one of the Christian settlements. It’s dangerous and tensions run high, but he always said he had more freedom there than in Old Britain.”
Kit looks genuinely shell-shocked. His face is ghost white and he’s trembling.
“No.” He says. “No, that can’t be right. He’s dead.”
“He isn’t dead.”
“He must be!” Kit’s face twists into a mask of anger. He throws me to the side, snatches up the knife again and advances on Baraq. “I’ve spent my life trying to clear up his mess so that nobody ever knows I’m the son of a traitor! But at least he had the decency to die! If he’s truly living in the BSI I’ll hunt him down. I’ll kill him. I swear I’ll kill him as the traitorous savage he is.”
Kit lunges at Baraq, meaning to bring the knife down into Baraq’s throat but Asim is there so suddenly it’s like watching a wolf pounce.
“Get off him!”
Asim manages to hit Kit hard enough to split his lip, but Kit doesn’t even seem to notice. Kit’s retaliation is the sort of punch a man would use to fell another man, not a boy. Asim falls onto the bed, blood exploding in his nose and mouth.
“Stop it Kit. Stop it now.”
Sylvester is in the doorway, Hajjah beside him holding a tray with a bottle of what I think might be wine and several glasses.
In Sylvester’s hand is a pistol. I’ve never seen a gun up close before. It’s a very dull, grey metal, and so small. It honestly doesn’t look like it could kill anyone.
Kit stares at the gun, then at his grandfather. He wipes away some of the blood from his lip.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Kit, I’ve done everything I can to try and curb your excesses and keep the people you’ve been hunting safe. I’ve had to do some damn shameful things in the course of that. But if I have to shoot, then I will, but I hope you’ll see sense and put the knife down.” He swallows. “Because I love you son.”
Kit doesn’t move. “This savage says dad is still alive.”
“I heard.” Sylvester nods towards Baraq, it’s only then I realise that he’s obviously crying. “And if that’s true then it’s the answer to a thousand prayers. And it means you have a second chance.”
“A second chance? What did I ever do that was wrong?”
The look of pain on Sylvester’s face is tangible. Hajjah openly weeps at his side.
“You really think that don’t you? You really believe you’re on the right side of history?”
“Of course I am.” He touches his split lip and winces. Hajjah moves towards him, full of compassion for her grandson, even now.
“Oh Kit, look at you. Let me get you a drink.”
She places the tray on the table by the bed and half fills a glass. Then she produces a handkerchief and approaches Kit. Kit stands stiffly while she dabs his mouth.
“Kit, we still love you. We always will.” She says softly. “See? Your favourite vintage.”
Kit takes the glass. It’s warm in this room and I realise I’m thirsty too.
“Uncle Zeb has a pretty good wine cellar. That’d be a more honest trade than slavery.”
“I know.” Hajjah strokes his arm. “I was always proud of how much you dislike slavery.”
“I don’t dislike slavery.” He says, swallowing his drink. “If the savages want to trade each-other then leave them too it. But it’s part of the past, along with gods and goddesses. Something we’re trying to leave behind. It shouldn’t go on anywhere that civilised man rules.”
Hajjah looks at him sadly. “And you consider yourself a civilised man, don’t you Kit?”
“Of course I do.”
“Yet NuTru enslaves everyone.”
“Rubbish.”
“No Kit, it’s not. Not all slavery comes with chains and brands.”
Kit runs his eyes around the room. “The kind that built this house did.”
Hajjah closes her hands over his as he drains the glass and gazes at him with a look of tender affection. The look of a mother aching for her son, or grandson. I almost remember my mother looking at me like that.
“Yet you happily take money from Zebedee’s business?”
Kit shrugs. “I can’t stop him doing what he does.”
“You could try?”
“You think a few placards would work in the Border? Don’t be stupid. I do what I can to help people.”
“Kit, my love, you don’t help people. You help a huge, bureaucratic monster completely control all thought, political opinion and beliefs. That’s what you do.”
Kit stiffens, as if he wants to hit Hajjah but daren’t.
“Well, what do you do?” He snaps with aggression. “You sit at home knitting and wasting water on your ridiculous plants.”
“Your father dug that well. He used to find water with a hazel twig, he swore it worked. Even when he became a Christian he still believed the earth and trees, God’s creation, would still help people if we treated them with respect.”
Kit snorts. “That well should have been given up to the government the moment it was found.”
“It was on our land.”
Kit stares at his grandmother with such unveiled hatred it shocks me. “You shouldn’t even have owned the land. It’s only because NuTru didn’t want to be seen taking property from your kind.”
“My kind is human Kit, and we shared our water with anyone who asked.”
“It shouldn’t be up to an individual to share an important resource. It should be the Government’s job…..”
Kit trails off and rubs his forehead, looking suddenly confused. Hajjah takes his arm.
“Sit down Kit.” She steers him to the end of Baraq’s bed. “It’s all right.”
Kit drops the wine glass, it shatters on the floor. “I feel…...weird.”
“I know.” Hajjah strokes his forehead and he somehow flops sideways, onto her knee, as if his energy has suddenly run out.
“You asked what I did Kit.” She whispers. “What I do is run Family Matters, Alistair and I do it together. Saving as many families as we can from you and the people who label anyone you don’t agree with as warped, yet all along, you celebrate your own warpedness.”
Kit opens his eyes wide and blinks at her. “Aunt Sally……?”
“No sweetheart. Aunt Sally isn’t a person, it’s a place. A safehouse. This safehouse.” Hajjah looks over her shoulder to Sylvester with a pained look on her face. “I’m sorry I never told you darling, but you worked with Kit. How could I tell you?”
Sylvester lowers the gun, stunned. “Hajjah…..I found out.” He admits. “Your name…..was in the Bible….”
Hajjah turns her attention back to Kit who is now gasping for breath.
“Try to relax Kit.” She says gently. “It’ll be over soon. I put a concentrated dose of the Assisted Suicide drug in the wine. It’s supposed to be a peaceful death.”
Kit, struggling to focus, grabs the loose top she wears.
“Why…?”
“Because I have to. Because you’re hounding the people your father loves.”
“He...he’s dead!”
“He’s alive. I spoke to him only last week.” Again she turns to Sylvester. “I couldn’t tell you about Alistair. We
couldn’t risk Kit finding out.”
Kit’s breathing is slowing down, Hajjah wraps her arms around him, there are tears in her eyes.
“Let it go Kit. I’m going to pray for you sweetheart. I pray that you’ll find the peace you’ve never had in this life, not from the first moment they told you that all men were evil at school.” She sweeps his hair from his forehead.
Sylvester, his expression wretched, staggers forward.
“Hajjah…?”
“I couldn’t let you kill him Sylvester. I knew when you decoded my name in the Bible you’d have to kill him. But you don’t deserve that on your conscience.”
Kit convulses, I see foam trickle down from his lips. Again he tries to pull himself up but he can’t. He can’t do anything but die.
“Juliet drug…..” He begs. Hajjah shakes her head. Her long, grey hair trails across his face like a shroud.
“No, no Juliet drug for you Kit. Hush, hush now. Go gently into that good night.” She plants another kiss on his forehead and doesn’t move her face. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”
We all watch, me and Baraq and Asim and Sylvester and Hajjah, as Kit takes his final, desperate breath. I’m crying too, although I think it’s Hajjah and Sylvester who deserve my tears, not Kit.
~
Dai
“Jesus Christ! Is she dead?”
Alaia was bleeding, her eyes were closed and her cotton clothing was scarlet. Dai held her in his arms. He wasn’t sure she was still breathing but he clung to the desperate hope that it was her heartbeat he could hear thundering in his ears, not his own.
“You shot her.” The man with the scruffy moustache still held the pistol. Right now Dai didn’t care if he fired again. The other man, the leaner one, pushed back his shaggy hair and looked to his companion in panic.
“Lenny, the BSI’ll go nuts if they find out we killed one of them. You know how careful Zeb is.”
Dai looked up sharply. “Maybe Zeb shouldn’t let you wave guns around then.”
“It was her fault.” Lenny said, his face noticeably pale.
Dai raised his head. “She tried to stop you shooting me.”
“You attacked us.”
“Because you were going to shoot my sister!” He fixed his small, dark gaze, a gaze that could be ferocious, on these man. These man in army fatigues, clothing left over from the days when Old Britain still had an army. Before NuTru had disbanded it claiming even the existence of the armed forces was too aggressive a symbol towards other nations.
“We’re soldiers.”
“You’re a joke!” Dai said suddenly. “You’re not soldiers. You’re thugs! Nasty little men with weapons shooting at women.”
“We were doing our jobs.”
“Your jobs?”
“Security. Sometimes they come and we have to be ready for them.”
“They?”
“Saboteurs. Protesters. Sure, they don’t come waving banners, but we do get people determined to blow us to kingdom come, just for running a legitimate business.”
“You get people disgusted by slavery. Good for them. I’d blow you up myself if I had a bomb.”
The man, Lenny, kept his gun on Dai, his hand trembled very slightly.
“You think I like this job?”
“I don’t care whether you like it.”
“It’s work. And if you don’t work in the Border, you don’t eat. Security enforcement’s one of the only jobs going. All the big houses need security.”
“So you get to shoot people?”
“Only if they’re a threat.”
Dai gazed down at Alaia in his arms. “What sort of threat was a seventeen-year-old girl?”
The man glanced at Alaia, then back at Dai. “You sure she’s a girl?”
Dai held her close, she felt cold. “Yes.” He said. “She’s a very, very brave girl who just wanted to be free.”
There was a moment of silence. The man lowered his gun. “I didn’t mean to kill her.” He admitted in a quiet voice. “I mean, they don’t teach us how to use these things. You jumped on my mate and I didn’t know what to do.”
“You panicked.” Dai told him, he had no sympathy for this man. “You panicked because you’re not a soldier. You’re exactly what I said you were. You shouldn’t have been given access to a pea-shooter, far less a gun.”
Dai lowered his head and kissed Alaia on her lips. They were cold, already turning blue except for the very vibrant red of the blood.
“She was so brave.” He whispered. “So kind. So clever. She wanted to walk around and feel the sun on her face. She wanted to study. That was all. She didn’t ask a lot.”
Lenny dropped the gun. It landed in the gravel by his feet.
“I didn’t…..I didn’t sign up to kill people.”
“Yes you did. What do you think security means here? It means shooting anyone who threatens this sick business. I’m amazed you haven’t killed anyone before.”
The man shook his head. “I just…..buy the girls from the Wolf captain and bring them back. Really I just drive the truck. That’s all.”
“You drive slaves. That makes you as bad as the Wolves.”
The man shuddered. “I’m nothing like the Wolves. I swear those guys aren’t human. They’re like wild animals.”
The second man was beginning to panic. “When Zeb realises we did more than just wound her he’ll go fucking apeshit with us. What do we do?”
The two men looked at each other.
“You think the BSI’ll care about a girl Trev?”
“Of course they’ll fucking care! They care about anything they see as an insult. They kill their own women all the time, but if a kafir kills one – man, there’s Hell to pay.” He reached down to grab Alaia.
“Get the truck. We need to dump her somewhere far away from here.”
Dai held her tightly. “You’re not dumping her anywhere. She deserves better than that.” He kissed her again. “I’m going to take her back to her family and I don’t care what happens to me – or you!”
“Look, I’m sorry, but we can’t let you do that.”
Dai glared at both men. “She cut her hair short and dressed as a boy you stupid idiots! She would have been in trouble enough for that. Her family aren’t going to push for an investigation which might lead to the authorities over there knowing her secret! They’ll just want to mourn her.”
The two men exchanged glances again, unsure. Then the thinner of the men raised his gun towards Dai very slowly.
“We can’t risk it.” He said. “And we can’t risk you telling anyone how she died.”
Lenny threw his companion a look of horror. “You’re kidding?”
“I’m not kidding, no. Two dead bodies are as easy to hide as one. And dead bodies can’t talk.”
Dai moved remarkably quickly. He snatched up Lenny’s fallen pistol, meaning to use it to defend himself. But the second man, Trev, kicked Dai so hard in the face with his heavy boot that he crumpled sideways, losing his grip on Alaia’s body.
He lay with his eyes closed. Let them kill him then. He’d let Missy down, he’d let Alaia down. He was useless. A pathetic excuse for a human being. Why did he ever leave his safe little job? There he could disaprove of all the evils he saw from the safety of his own flat and imagine how heroically he would behave if he truly faced danger.
It took him a few moments to realise the men were no longer focused on him. Instead they were looking towards the big gates in surprise.
“What the Hell’s that?” Lenny asked, scooping up his pistol from the ground and blinking in the half light. “Are those trucks?”
The roar of an explosion Jolted Dai back to full consciousness and he dragged himself into a sitting position. He could hear raised voices too, a lot of raised voices although the voices did not sound in the least bit pleasant. There were vehicles too, their engines revving like angry monsters. Something was happening at the gates.
“Shit.” He heard Lenny cu
rse under his breath. “It’s the Wolves.”
~
Josh
“Wait!”
It’s hard to run when your hands are bound together with zip ties, but I run anyway. I leave Aunt Sally to tend to Zeb’s injuries and I chase the girl up the steps and out of this concrete nightmare that seems to exist cut off from sunshine and normalcy. I don’t even know her name.
“Wait!” I shout again, trying to catch up with her. She reaches a side door, flings it open and tears outside, long black clothing swimming behind her.
“Please!” I run with caution. If I fall it’ll be hard to get up. “It’s about Elsie Kessler!” I shout, finding power in my lungs I never knew I possessed. “The girl you mentioned. Elsie Kessler!”
I overbalance and fall painfully onto the gravel, skinning my arms and face as I fall. For a moment I lie still, winded. The sun is setting and the brand on the back of my neck burns with a steady, painful heartbeat.
I hear feet crunching beside me and I look up. The girl stares down at me, her dark eyes slightly hostile but not without interest.
“How do you know her?” The girl asks.
I wriggle up into a sitting position.
“Elsie Kessler’s my sister – at least I think she is. We were separated when she was four.”
“There was a picture of a little boy in her locket.”
The girl doesn’t offer to help me get up, she just watches me struggle gracelessly in the gravel.
“That’s me. Probably. Where is she?” I ask. “I need to find her.”
The girl shrugs. “I don’t know. She as good as said she never wanted to see me again.”
“But she’s alive?”
“She was a slave, like me.” She glances at the back of my neck, I have no hair to cover my brand. “Like you.” Then she looks back in the direction we came. “I hope I didn’t blind him.”
“I’m Josh.” I say, still unable to pull myself back to my feet.
“Missy. Elsie was my best friend for….well, a long time.” She looks at my hands. “I can’t get those off for you without a pair of scissors and if you pull against them they just get tighter.”
Finally Missy bends and helps pull me to my feet.
“Thanks.”