Harkness pulled an envelope from his dirty, leather satchel. It was quite remarkable that envelopes – being paper, and all – had survived The Event, but so had stamps and those little yellow notes you could stick on things, proving that you should never underestimate office supplies. “We’ve got half of this month’s,” he said, dropping the envelope onto Kellerman’s desk. “It’s fucking scorching out there. We thought we’d pop back for a glass of filthy water before continuing our rounds.”
Kellerman peeled open the envelope and emptied its contents onto the desk. Coins clattered, and so did a few of the notes, which were so thick with grime you could have used them to wedge doors open. “Who’s left to pay?” he said as he began to count the grotty cash.
“A couple of the miners,” Smalling said. “Oh, and Abigail. And Lou.”
Kellerman sucked in air through his teeth, which were in need of exigent attention. That was the thing about the apocalypse; never any dentists around when you need them. “The miners shouldn’t be too problematic,” he said, shoving the half-chewed cigar into the thin slit of his mouth. “I hear they’ve uncovered some good stuff this month.” By good stuff, he meant quality dirt and a handful of indiscernible objects. Abigail, on the other hand, would be tricky. She was the only whore in Oilhaven, and since everyone had either gone off sex, or chose to take care of themselves, she had about as much income as a used tampon salesman.
“The whore has some money,” Harkness said, glancing sheepishly at his buddy. Smalling rolled his eyes.
“Do you mean to tell me, young Harkness, that you put your winky in the whore’s kitchen sinky? Not only that, but you paid for the privilege?” Kellerman looked about ready to upchuck.
Harkness shrugged. “Needs must, sir.”
“Yes,” Kellerman said, shaking his head with disgust. “Well, I hope you have since given your member a damn good wash in the radioactive well-water, and don’t come crying to me when it decides to leave your body completely.”
Smalling laughed. Harkness, for perfectly good reasons, did not.
“And that just leaves Lou Decker,” Kellerman said, stuffing the crispy notes back into the envelope. Lou always did well, which meant that Kellerman always did well. He didn’t trust the store’s proprietor as far as he could throw him, and he knew very well that the fat prick was hiding goods in his basement, but that was none of his concern.
At least, not yet.
“Do you want us to baseball bat him, sir?” Harkness said, somewhat eagerly.
Kellerman frowned. “Has he displayed any reluctance to pay this month’s tax?” he asked.
Harkness shook his head. “Not that I know of, sir.”
“Then why would I want you to bat him?”
“I’m not rightly sure,” Harkness said, scratching his bald pate. “To make an example of him?”
Kellerman stood and walked around the desk; Harkness shrunk a little, but despite that he still towered over his boss. “And when Lou’s lying crippled on his store floor?” said he, “who would run the place? Who would bring in the money? Who, my dear friend, would provide this tumbledown shithole of ours with the necessary goods to survive, thusly lining our pockets by proxy?”
Harkness shrugged, for there were an awful lot of long words in there he didn’t understand.
Sensing his underling didn’t quite comprehend the question, Kellerman slapped him gently across the face and smiled. “If you are intent on batting anyone, might I suggest you start with the whore? Not the face, though. She’s ugly enough.”
Harkness perked up.
“Is there anything else, sir,” Smalling asked, for he was the brains of the group, and his bladder was giving him some right gyp. If he didn’t piss soon, he was pretty sure he would never piss again.
“As a matter of fact,” Kellerman said, retaking his seat at the desk, “there is.” He smiled and sucked hungrily on his cigar. Once the room was back up to what he considered to be an acceptable fogginess, he said, “How old is that Fox girl, now?”
“Zee?” Smalling said, as if there were any other daughters belonging to the Foxes. Kellerman nodded. “I’d say…she must be…if I had to venture a guess…well—”
“Was it not her birthday last week?” Kellerman impatiently said. “And did you not attend?”
Smalling nodded. “We both did, yes. Rita Fox made a wonderful cake, albeit a little dusty…”
“And how many candles would you hazard were planted in this cake?”
“Seventeen,” Harkness said. “I remember counting them, because I thought it was an awful shame we didn’t have anything to light them with.”
“So she’s seventeen?” Kellerman said.
Smalling and Harkness nodded in unison.
“In that case,” Kellerman said. “I would like for you to bring her here. I have some jobs that need taking care of, and she is in need of employment.”
“These jobs, sir?” Smalling said. “They wouldn’t be of the ‘blow’ and ‘hand’ variety, would they? Only Roger and Rita Fox might not be best pleased with that situation.”
“These jobs,” Kellerman said, the irritation palpable upon his face, “are of the ‘cleaning out the aquarium, emptying my ashtray, pouring me a large glass of gin and tonic’ variety, not that it’s any of your concern. If Miss Fox does, in fact, fall in love with me as a result, then that is entirely up to her. I’m not in the business of forcing women’s hands, or mouths, for that matter.”
Smalling nodded, for he quite liked Zee Fox and would have hated for anything bad to happen to her. Turned out that the worst she could expect was a cigar-burn, a couple of fish bites, and perhaps a pinch from the hinges of Kellerman’s drinks cabinet as it shut.
“We’ll bring her by this afternoon,” Harkness said. “If that’s okay with you, sir?”
Kellerman was already working himself up for a rematch with the angelfish, but he could easily make time for the arrival of Zee Fox. “Yes, that’ll be fine,” he said. “And if Lou does give you any grief over this month’s payment, do feel free to clobber him once, but nothing to grievous. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, but the occasional slap is often necessary.”
And there was, not even by Shakespeare or Keats or David Bowie, never a truer word spoken.
3
Lou emerged, flustered but ultimately satisfied, from the back room to his store to the sound of frenzied knocks upon the door. It always amazed him how impatient the people of Oilhaven were, given that many of them didn’t have jobs or things of import to be getting on with. The Event had caused more unemployment than Margaret Thatcher.
The incessant pounding upon the door continued, and as Lou pulled his fly up and re-shelved Susie, he said, “Yes, alright, I’m coming. Honestly, it’s like you’ve never seen a convenience store before.” Of course, if the person knocking was a drifter, then the chances were that they hadn’t.
Lou reached the door and unlocked it. The person/s on the other side must have sensed imminent openings, for the knocking died down ever-so-slightly.
The door opened to reveal a young girl with whom Lou was well acquainted. Her long, red hair was so dazzling that Lou had to avert his eyes momentarily, by which time Zee Fox had already blurted out something about her younger brother, Clint.
“Slow down,” Lou said. “Start from the beginning, and try to enunciate.” The girl was clearly agitated, for she had forgotten to include a lot of vowels in her original tirade.
“It’s Clint,” she said.
“Go on.”
“He’s been throwing up all morning, and it’s a terrible colour. Almost black. Mom sent me to see if you had anything that could help him.” She moved past Lou and began to examine the shelves, where she found a length of hosepipe, a cheese-grater, and a box of watch batteries.
Lou allowed the door to shut. “Can you be more specific?” he asked the girl. “I mean, was the vomit chunky or runny? Did it smell of cheese? Is your brother allergic to anything? Can
you put that hosepipe down? We’re not in the business of colonoscopies.”
Zee placed the hosepipe back from whence it came and turned to face the shopkeeper. She grimaced. “I’d say it was the consistency of tar,” she said. “Yes, tar with bits of Lego in it.”
Lou frowned. “Were there bits of Lego in it?” he said. If there were, he had a feeling his diagnosis would be a speedy one.
“Not real bits of Lego,” Zee said, smiling slightly, as if Lou was the densest person in the room. “But there were chunks, and he hasn’t eaten anything with chunks in for a good few months.”
“Hm.” Lou wandered the length of the store and took up position behind his counter. “I’m going to assume he’s been drinking the well-water and that something has perhaps died down there again.”
“That’s one hell of an assumption,” Zee said.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Lou said, reaching below his counter. “Get him to take a spoonful of this twice a day,” he said, slamming a large bottle of golden fluid onto the counter. “You may have to restrain him, because I’m not going to lie to you, it tastes like the devil’s shit.”
“What is it?” Zee said, picking up the bottle and examining its barely discernible label.
“Have you ever heard of something called paracetamol?” He articulated the last word as if he was talking to a monkey, and not a young adult.
For a moment, Zee bore the expression of someone whose sole method of travel was the short bus. “Pa-ra-cee-ta-mol,” she said, slowly and deliberately. Lou had to hand it to her; for her first time, she’d really nailed it.
“That’s right,” he said. “Once upon a time, a long time ago—”
“Is this going to take long?” Zee said, clearly concerned about her bilious brother.
“It’ll take a lot less if you don’t interrupt,” Lou said, forcing a smile. Kids, he thought. Who’d have them? And the answer, thankfully, was hardly anybody nowadays… “Now, where was I?”
“At the beginning I think,” Zee said.
“Oh, yes. Well, a long time ago, before The Event, before you and your brothers were even born, there were places of medicine, places filled with decades-old magazines and calming fish-tanks. Places where people went to seek advice for their ailments.”
“Magic?” Zee asked, hopefully.
“No, not magic,” Lou said. “Science. You see, when these diseased people arrived at these magnificent monuments, most of which looked just like houses or office buildings, they were sent through to rooms where men and women of knowledge sat waiting, usually crunching on an apple or scribbling on bits of paper that could be swapped for pills and lotions.”
“Sounds amazing,” Zee said, checking her wrist for the time, even though she didn’t own a watch. “Do go on.”
And so Lou went on. “These doctors – that’s what they were called – would listen to the infected, the diseased, the people with the bones jutting from their bodies, and do you know what they would say?”
Zee shook her head.
“They would say take two paracetamol every four hours with a glass of water and get the hell out of my office.” Lou shrugged. “They were very busy people, you see, and back then, a lot of people were simply trying to get out of work. Paracetamol did the trick on most things, and that’s what is in this bottle. I’m pretty sure that your little brother will get better if he takes it.”
The girl removed the bottle from the counter and tucked it beneath her arm. “What do I owe you?” she said, reaching into her pocket and coming out with a handful of silver buttons.
Now, under normal circumstances, Lou would have counted the buttons in her palm and told her, “How strange! That’s the exact amount I was going to ask for!” But not today. Today he was feeling generous. Today he was feeling…charitable. The wank he’d just had might have had something to do with it. “Just make sure Clint takes the medicine twice a day,” he said. “And put those buttons away before anyone sees you. I’ve already had a bandit in here this morning.”
“Oh, thank you, Lou!” Zee said, pocketing the silver buttons. Her mother would be ever so pleased with her. “You’re a saint to this town. A gen-u-ine saint.”
Lou had been called many things – tosser, cheat, buffoon, tubby, halitosis-head, cock-knocker, among others – but he’d never been called a saint before. It felt, he had to admit, quite nice. Not as nice as the thing he’d done in the back room five minutes ago, but nice, nonetheless.
As Zee skipped toward the door with a childlike innocence, Lou thought it was only right to say, “Don’t go telling anyone about this. I might be a saint, but we don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Larry coming in here expecting free paracetamol.”
Zee turned and smiled. “Your secret’s safe with me, Lou,” she said, and with that, off she went, carrying with her a bottle of ultra-diluted painkiller that wouldn’t cure a gnat’s haemorrhoids.
Still, that was all he’d had to offer, and at a fair price, he thought. “Nice girl,” he mumbled. She was the only real girl in Oilhaven. There were, he hoped, others like her out there in the world, but that was something he might never know.
For fifteen minutes, Lou set about cleaning his store, removing the thin film of grime that coated everything, and would continue to coat everything, for no apparent reason. Post-apocalyptic Oilhaven was no place for people suffering from OCD, for they would never have time to catch their breath.
“And how is business treating you, mister Decker?” said a deep, and not altogether welcome voice.
Lou stood, forgetting, for a moment, the half-polished shovel he’d been working on. When he saw the two men standing there, like a pair of bald bulldogs, he visibly shuddered. It wasn’t that they frightened him; he always got like that when he was about to be relieved of his takings.
“Business is piss-poor,” Lou said. “I’m starting to think someone’s opened up a Walmart out in the sticks.” He was, of course, lying. Business was great. Not exactly booming, but he was making enough to get by on, and the stuff coming in was in good condition, too; a veritable mish-mash of oddities and consumables.
Harkness – at least, Lou thought it was Harkness, for they were very much interchangeable, as far as he was concerned – did a thing with his mouth that wasn’t quite a sneer and wasn’t quite a smile, but something inbetween. It was the look that cats get when stricken with wind. “Now now, Lou,” he said. “You know what day it is, and you know that Kellerman won’t be too pleased if we go back there lighter than usual.”
Kellerman, Lou thought, and now it was his turn to use the windy-cat face. Who did he think he was? Setting himself up as mayor, taking people’s hard-earned wages for himself, beating those that didn’t pay up (or at least getting his follically-challenged goons to do the beating) like some sort of middle-eastern despot.
“Well, as you know,” Lou said, leading the men toward the counter. Slowly; what was the point in rushing? “There have been a lot of deaths around here recently. Some of my most valuable customers have, how can I put it? Ceased to exist.”
Smalling reached into his jacket pocket and came out with a set of brass knuckles, which he proceeded to force over his stumpy, tattooed digits. When he was done, his hand looked like someone had dressed a bunch of sausages in elastic bands. “You don’t want this to get messy, Lou,” he said. “Trust me.”
And Lou, who didn’t trust Smalling as far as he could throw him (not very far at all), had to agree with the bald giant. He didn’t want things to get messy. Messy meant blood; messy meant broken bones. Worst of all, messy meant that Smalling and Harkness would ransack the store. There was a chance, during said ransacking, that they would stumble upon his hidden stash, and that…well that simply wouldn’t do.
Lou sighed and reached down below his counter. As well as bottled medicine and the pair of pistols that might or might not work, below the counter was where Lou kept Kellerman’s seventy-five percent. As his hand hovered over the bag, he had the sudden urge to go
for the pistols. Why the fuck not? If they work, they work. If they don’t, I’ll be dragged out to the desert and… yes, that was why the fuck not.
“Attaboy,” Harkness said as Lou dropped the bag onto the counter. “What is it this month?”
“A bit of everything,” Lou said. “Some cash, a couple of rings, a jewel-encrusted music-box.” Not to mention a jar of toenail clippings, some dead guy’s cock-ring, and a fine selection of silver cheese-knives. Trading after the apocalypse was nothing if not interesting.
“Kellerman will be pleased,” Smalling (or was it Harkness?) said. “And you, my friend, get to run your store on his land for another month. Why the long face? You look like you want to have a pop at me. Look at that face, Harkness. Is that the face of someone who looks like he wants to have a pop?”
“That’s a very angry face,” Harkness concurred. “It would look ridiculous peppered with bruises.”
Lou allowed his features to soften and took a deep breath. If the men standing before him hadn’t been built like Roman towers, he might have had a go, but they were, and so he swallowed his pride (and a little bit of sick) and kept his mouth shut.
“That’s better,” Smalling said. “Now. While we’re being civilised, and whatnot, I was wondering if you’d seen that young Fox girl about the place?”
Yes, you just missed her. She’s a lovely girl, so it’s no wonder you’re seeking her out for what, I assume, are insidious purposes, was what Lou should have said. What he did say, however, was nothing like that. It was more like, “No, I haven’t seen her,” and judging by the expressions on the glabrous gorillas’ faces, that wasn’t what they wanted to hear.
“Well, let us be frank,” Harkness said, though Lou was quite happy being Lou. “If you see her, you are to contact Kellerman. I know she’s something of an outdoorsy girl, so if she comes this way, we need to know about it.”
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