Another knock, this one more impatient than the last.
“Well, that nothing’s making a helluva racket,” Rita said. “I don’t trust it, and at this time of night.” She looked at her wrist and, lo and behold, she didn’t have a watch, but the moon was high in the sky, and that was good enough for her.
Now Roger was uneasy. Rita was right; they weren’t expecting anyone, and there was a certain I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down vibe about the knocking. Maybe they were overthinking it, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe there were bandits at the door. Big ugly bandits that rode motorcycles and had silly names. Maybe…
“We know you’re in there,” said a voice, and it was a voice they all recognised. It belonged to Smalling, one of Kellerman’s turds, though quite what it was doing hammering on their door in the middle of the night was anyone’s guess. “We can see the candles flickering beyond your curtains. What’s that smell? Cinnamon?”
“Go out through the back window,” Rita told Zee. “Take Tom with you, and stick to the shadows.”
“But Mo—”
“Do as your mother says,” Roger interrupted, keeping his voice as low as humanly possible. “They’re probably only here for this month’s taxes.”
Then why am I being tossed out the back? Zee thought. Still, there was no point in arguing. She climbed to her feet and took Tom’s hand in her own. “How will I know if it’s safe to come back?” she said.
Roger considered it, then said, “I’ll put one of these smelly candles on the back windowsill.”
Zee rolled her eyes, for it was a code that Alan Turning would surely laugh at. “Okay then,” she said, and to Tom, “Come on. We’re going to have a little walk in the dark. Let’s just hope we don’t get attacked and buggered by bandits.”
“Don’t be such a drama queen,” Rita hissed, though the thought had already crossed her mind. “Take your machete with you, and if anyone tries to bugger you or your little brother, you have my permission to lop off their buggering tools.”
At that, Zee brightened. She picked up her machete from the corner of the room and dragged Tom out through the rear window, which wasn’t difficult as there was no glass in it.
There came more banging upon the door, to which Roger Fox said, “Alright, alright! I’m coming! Honestly!”
The banging stopped and was replaced by conspiratorial whispering. Roger didn’t waste any time in opening the door after that, as there was nothing more dangerous than conspiratorial whispering.
“Ah, Harkness, Smalling,” he said cheerily as the candlelight from within reflected on their bald pates.
“Actually, I’m Harkness,” Harkness said. “He’s Smalling.”
“That’s very interesting,” Roger said, though it really wasn’t. “I take it Kellerman has spent last month’s tax and would like some more?” It wasn’t funny, but neither was turning up at one’s door in the middle of the night, unannounced.
The one called Smalling climbed into a pair of brass knuckles and grinned. “Please, Mr Fox, give me a reason to use these. It’s been a very boring day so far, and I’ve got all this pent-up aggression.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Roger considered sending him to LOU’S LOOT, where he knew for certain the knucklehead could find himself a reasonably-priced painkiller.
“That won’t be necessary,” Roger said. Across his shoulder, he called, “Rita! Could you bring the envelope from the bureau? The one with the picture of the sad face on it?”
A few seconds later, Rita Fox stood at the door, wielding a small brown envelope with considerable skill. “Is this the one?” she said, gesturing to the envelope. “I only ask because there’s a picture of a sad face in one corner, and in the other, a rather nifty sketch of a pair of tits.”
“That’s not a pair of tits,” Roger said, accepting the envelope from his wife with a smile. “That’s a picture of Smalling and Harkness here. Our friendly local bruisers. Granted, it’s rudimentary, but I think I captured the essence of them both.”
“Give me that,” Smalling said, snatching the envelope from Roger with so much force, the corner tore away. “It looks nothing like us. It looks like a pair of tits.”
Roger Fox nonchalantly shrugged. “Will there be anything else?”
“Actually,” Harkness said, peering past the Foxes into the candlelit room. “We came by earlier today, but there was no-one home.”
That made sense. Roger had worked a twelve hour shift at the mine, and Rita had been too busy tending to their sick son to answer the door. “And what was it that you came by for earlier?” Rita said, suddenly apprehensive. Roger reached down and took her hand, which was clammier than a jogger’s butt-crack.
“Oh, nothing to worry about,” Harkness said, with a grin that suggested it was something to worry about a lot. “Kellerman has a proposal for your daughter, that’s all.”
“He can fuck off!” Rita snapped. Roger squeezed her hand, and her next words were a little cooler. “I mean, why would he want anything with Zee? She’s about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.”
“Is she here?” Smalling said.
“She’s never here,” Roger said. “Spends more time outdoors than the stars, that one.”
“Do you know when she’ll be back?” Harkness said, clearly growing impatient. He was already thinking about what they might tell Kellerman upon returning to his office with the collected money…and no girl.
Rita Fox huffed and crossed her arms. “Have either of you ever met a seventeen-year-old girl before, other than Zee?”
They shook their bald heads in unison.
“Well, seventeen year-old girls,” Rita continued, “are like volcanoes. Entirely unpredictable and liable to erupt at any moment.”
“But at least you always know where a volcano is,” Smalling said, rather cleverly for him.
“Indeed you do,” Roger said, “but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous.”
Harkness frowned and lit a roll-up. “I have no idea how we got onto the subject of volcanoes, but I’d rather we didn’t continue,” he said. “If you could send Zee to Kellerman as soon as she returns…”
“Of course,” Roger said. “Send her straight to Mayor Kellerman, gotcha!” Behind his back, both hands were possessed of crossed fingers.
“Mommy!” a tiny voice whined from the room behind. Then there was retching and groaning, and then a splat, which meant that Clint had managed to miss the sick-pan and had, once again, upchucked on the floor.
“You’ll have to excuse us,” Rita said, tugging her husband back by the arm and easing the door shut. “We’ve got a very sick boy at the moment, and…” That was as far as she got before the door closed in the henchmen’s faces. “Shit, Roger, what does Kellerman want with Zee?”
Roger seemed to be staring past her. “I have no idea,” he said. “But one thing’s for sure.”
Rita clutched at the pendant hanging around her neck. “What? What is it, Roger?”
“We need to get a bigger sick-pan.”
6
Lou locked up the store when the moon was directly overhead. It wasn’t the most accurate way of telling the time, but you worked with what you had. He took the leads off the charger which powered his neon sign (currently reading LOU’S LOO due to a broken T) and gave the place a once over, just to make sure everything was just so. After deciding there were no ninja bandits hiding out in the shadows, he made his way upstairs, to where his mother lay dying.
“Good day?” she asked as he tried to slip by her room unnoticed, a feat he hadn’t managed in over twenty years. Dying or not, there was sod all wrong with her hearing.
“Didn’t get killed,” he told her, easing the door open just a little, just enough to see her partially mummified face by the candle in his hand.
“That’s nice,” said she. “Did we sell much?”
We? That never ceased to amaze Lou. “Couple of things,” he said, yawning. “How are
you feeling today?” He hated to ask but, as her only son and confidant, he felt obliged.
“Like shit warmed up,” she said, which made a change from ‘Like a sack of turds in a tumble-drier’. One of these days she would surprise him. One of these days she would answer the question with, ‘I feel much better today, thank you, son,’ and he would drop down dead where he stood, for portly men are known for their inability to handle sudden shocks. “Can you bring the fan closer?”
Lou sighed and entered the room proper. The fan sitting in the corner of the room hadn’t worked for fifteen years, but she liked to lie there and imagine the blades going round. “Is that better?” he said, setting it at the bottom of her bed.
“You’re a good boy,” she told him. Her gummy grin would have unsettled most people, but not Lou. “I don’t think I have long left, son—”
“Mother,” he said, anything to stop her from going off on another ‘I don’t have long left’ speech. “You were saying that twenty years ago, and look. You’re still here. And twenty years from now” – God, I hope not – “you’ll still be saying it.”
Her inelastic bones creaked as she clambered up onto her elbows. She weighed no more than six stone, which was five and a half stone more than she would have weighed had she succumbed, as promised, and made her way into the urn Lou had been polishing for the last two decades. “No, you go on to bed,” she said. “Don’t worry about your silly old mother.”
And there was the guilt trip she liked to slather him in just before bed, which made it almost impossible for him to sleep. And if the guilt wasn’t enough, her muffled sobs usually did the trick. On the bright side – Lou was an optimist, except when it came to wild mushrooms – if she was crying, then she wasn’t dying.
“Can I get you anything before I go?” he asked. “I’ve got a half-gallon of purified water in my room. Are you thirsty?”
She was thirsty, and she knew all about her son’s basement stash. She often went down there on the days he went out. In fact, she was the most active bedridden person she knew. “Do you have any of that brandy left?” she said, knowing full well that he did, and that he was intent on bartering with it in the near future. For some reason, bandits loved a nip of brandy. “The stuff that pulls your lips back over your gums?”
Lou sighed. She was talking about his apricot brandy moonshine, the most potent drink he’d ever managed to brew. “I’ve only got a little bit left,” he said.
“That’s okay,” she said, grinning gums once again. “I only want a little bit.”
And so Lou headed down to the basement, and when he returned, Freda Decker was sat up in bed with a glass in one hand and a cigarette going in the other. “You never know,” she said, pushing the empty glass toward her son. “This might be my last drink.”
Somehow, Lou thought, I highly doubt it.
With his mother placated, for now, Lou headed through to his room and collapsed onto the bed, which in turn collapsed onto the floor. He was too tired to do anything about it now, though, and was soon slipping into a deep, deep sleep, where he hoped to dream of a world without bandits, a world without corrupt mayors and bald-headed goons, a world without an ailing mother who wasn’t ailing quite as badly as she liked to make out. A world in which The Event had never happened.
And then he heard it. His mother’s melodramatic sobs from the other end of the hallway. He pulled the pillow over his head and closed his eyes.
7
Kellerman chewed upon his cigar as he counted the month’s takings out on his desk. It wasn’t a bad haul considering, and yet the one thing he’d been looking forward to all day remained absent.
Zee Fox. Not too shabby to look at, and not too far gone to be disciplined. She was what Oilhaven needed; what he needed. A matriarch. Someone to point the finger at when things went wrong. Someone to bring him tea and cigars while he settled down after a long day of unethical dealings.
Every gangster had one – a Frances Kray, a Mae Capone, a Hilary Clinton – and was he not a gangster? Was he not running Oilhaven as he saw fit; with an iron fist and a pair of tit-headed maniacs? Was he not the boss? And didn’t the boss deserve a woman, one that hadn’t been dragged kicking and screaming through the apocalypse?
Why yes, Kellerman thought. He certainly did…
He wasn’t looking for love, or someone to fornicate with on those cold nights (which cold nights?). As far as he was concerned, love was just a word now. It was no longer ‘all around’ as one long-dead band had put it. Nor was it ‘all you need’ or something that you should tell Laura. It was a four-letter-word, and Kellerman knew plenty of those.
No, Zee wasn’t going to fill a space in his heart; she was going to fill the space in his cupboards, hopefully with cleaning products. She was going to do all the running around, for he wasn’t as young as he used to be, and anyone that was should make an appointment with a doctor, if they could find one that hadn’t been evaporated by the apocalypse.
There was only so much time one could spend discussing current affairs with tropical fish – eighteen minutes and thirty-six seconds, to be exact. But Zee Fox could be educated, taught everything he knew, and they could play chess and draughts and, if she was really in the mood, Clue, and they would rule Oilhaven (80-20 in Kellerman’s favour, of course) like a couple of British monarchs, only without all that hoity-toity crown and throne nonsense.
“We could change its name,” he said, forgetting for a moment that he was utterly alone. And they could. They could change the name of the town to one of those annoying portmanteaus that the old people used to favour so much on their cottages and caravans.
KellerZee?
Zellerman?
Kellermanzee?
“Yes, we could do that,” he said, once again out loud. Or they could stick with Oilhaven and not be known as ‘that irritating pair of cunts who think they run the bleeding place’.
Either way, things were looking up for Kellerman, and for Oilhaven (Zellerkee?).
If only, he thought, we knew where she’d pissed off to…
*
“It won’t be for much longer,” Zee said, stroking Tom’s sweat-drenched head. Her brother was tired, and ready for bed, but she knew they had to wait. To go back now was insane. Her parents had sent them out to the desert for a reason, though what that reason was, she didn’t quite know.
“Do you think they’re okay?” Tom said. “It’s been a long time since we left.”
“It has been a long time,” Zee said. “A really long time, but we promised that we wouldn’t return until we saw the candle in the window, and we’re going to keep that promise.” She drew her brother in close, and then pushed him away just as fast, for he was sweatier than a gypsy with a mortgage.
“What if something terrible has happened?” Tom asked, glaring up at her with sad, puppy-dog eyes. She knew exactly what he was saying. What if Mom, Dad, and Clint have been butchered and are currently dripping down the living-room walls? She preferred his understated question more than her own translation.
“Dad wouldn’t let anything bad happen to the family,” she said. “And I don’t think Smalling or Harkness would do anything to hurt them, or anyone for that matter.” They were, she thought, like a couple of castrated pitbulls. Sure, they looked nasty, but you were more likely to be attacked by a clique of meandering kittens.
“He likes you, you know?” Tom said, far more knowingly than any eight-year-old boy had the right to.
“Who?”
“The bald one?” Tom said.
“They’re both bald,” she said.
“The one who always stands on the right.”
“Oh!” Zee said, suddenly realising which one he meant. “Smalling! No, he doesn’t, and don’t say things like that out here in the dark. It’s creepy as hell.”
Tom smiled. “He does. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Like he wants to sex you.”
“Thomas Edgar Fox, you take that back right now!” Zee couldn’t believe
what she was hearing. “And anyway. What do you know about sexing? You’re barely old enough to know about walking.”
“I’ve heard Mom and Dad sexing,” he said. “I know what it is. It’s when a man climbs onto a woman and…”
“Can we not do this?” Zee said, looking anywhere but at her brother, who seemed to know more about sexing than she did. “Mom and Dad don’t sex, and they never have. Sexing’s something people used to do before the world fell apart.” It had crossed her mind, on more than one occasion, that the world had fallen apart because of sexing. The Event, from what she’d heard about it, was like a big explosion, and sexing, from what she’d also heard, was pretty much the same. Maybe too many people had been sexing at the same time, thusly blowing the world to kingdom come. It was a theory, anyway.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, which suited Zee just fine, and stared out into the darkness, toward the house that they called home.
It was very dark over there…
Almost as if…
*
“Shit!” Rita Fox said, lurching forward in the marital bed.
“What?” Roger said, following suit.
There was something they’d forgotten, but Rita couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “Did you empty Clint’s sick-pan?” she said into the darkness.
“Twice,” Roger replied. “There was a lot less on the second one. I think he’s going to be alright.”
Rita relaxed back into her pillows. “Good, good,” she said, closing her eyes. No, there was something else…something of utmost import that they’d forgotten. “Have you set an alarm?” she whispered.
“Not since two-thousand and twenty-five,” Roger replied, slapping his lips noisily together. “But if it makes you feel better, I can wake up a little bit earlier than you and do some beeping.”
Rita shook her head. “No, that’s fine, but I’m sure there was something we needed to OH MY FUCKING GOD WE FORGOT ABOU ZEE!”
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