Till You Drop

by Mat Coward

  “The Fearful do not fear us in daylight,” Lanto agreed.

  “Why would they?” said Shrak. “That’s not when we’re supposed to be frightening.”

  “But then we’ve lost!” said Lanto. “We’ve lost before we’ve begun. We can’t protest because that means showing ourselves, and as soon as we do that, they don’t fear us. They fear the unseen, not the seen.”

  Orlandus shook his head. He lit a cigarette, though what he really wanted was coffee. “That can’t be true,” he insisted. “We haven’t worked it out properly, that’s all. These two things that seem contradictory – there has to be a way of moving beyond them to a third idea, in which the contradiction is resolved. After all,” he added, “the sight of nurses in daytime isn’t frightening to them - but they would fear a nurses’ strike.”

  It was the first time that word had been mentioned. It was a moment when history turned.

  Shrak, who had been sitting on a tuft behind Orlandus, stood and walked around to put his eyes in the eyes of the young bloodtaker. “You are suggesting we take infernal action, Cousin?”

  “Industrial action, Cousin,” Orlandus replied, his cigarette forgotten and his tone distracted. “It’s called industrial action.” He hadn’t realised he was suggesting that but, yes, perhaps he was. A strike? A monster strike?

  ***

  Chapter Four

  Josie watched her nephew shouting into a big, blue bucket, and felt like killing someone. Not necessarily herself. The buckets had sponsors' names on them, and that almost made it worse. It would have made it worse, except that it couldn't be worse.

  One of the Key Promises of the Fairness Manifesto had been “In place of Dole, we shall give them Work,” and that had turned out to mean that unemployment payments had been abolished, because it was unfair that people should get paid for doing nothing; the unemployed had to work, because it would be offensive to the working poor to see some people not having to work just because they hadn't got jobs.

  She’d arrived a bit early to take Brad for a pizza, a little treat, and looking at him now, she got the distinct feeling that he was doing the best job he could of the shouting; putting some pride into it, some craft. She wasn’t sure whether that should make her feel proud or horrified, or which it in fact did make her feel.

  There were fewer jobs than ever now, of course, a few weeks into the full Restart roll-out. Although, the “of course” was controversial. The government said there was nothing of course about it – no connection, in fact, between unemployment and Restart. The idea – put about by unions, oppositionists, revolutionaries and similar – that the rolling wave of job losses was due to a collapse in demand across the economy caused by having so many jobs occupied by unpaid labour could not be true, and the government knew this for a fact, because of who was saying it: unions, oppositionists, revolutionaries and similar.

  In search of a more convincing explanation, the government took advice from business – specifically, from the businesses who made their living from managing the unemployed. Because who could possibly know better than them? And they explained: the policies were right, but they weren't being pursued with sufficient determination. When you're in a hole you don’t stop digging – stopping digging is for the weak – what you do is, you hire a dirty great big excavator and you dig the holy shit out of the hole until the hole doesn't exist any more and therefore by definition you aren't in it. That’s what you do.

  The politicians loved that advice. It was so bloody manly, so unlike their whole lives so far, they loved it. They took it. They stripped naked and smeared it all over their pallid bodies and tried to howl.

  So now the buckets. Compulsory work, no pay, except that there wasn't any work, so they called it “occupation.” Compulsory occupation for the unemployed. In every town centre, private-finance-initiative companies set up great ranks of blue, chest-height buckets – with the names or logos of sponsoring companies on them, because every inch of existence must be marketised, and if you don't take that literally, you don't understand what’s going on - and the unemployed were required to spend twelve hours a day, not counting dorsalgia breaks, sticking their heads inside the buckets and shouting.

  Brad finished his shift at last, and he and his aunt went off in search of pizza. He told her about the government woman he’d heard on the radio that morning: people should be proud that UK plc was leading the world in shouting technology, exporting all over Europe and beyond, British ingenuity leading to British jobs for British workers.

  He laughed, and stuffed his face with pizza, loving eating and living, laughing, loving a treat with his auntie. How could he laugh, Josie wondered? How could he still laugh? And be so full of energy, and life? The strength of youth, of course, that’s how you are when you’re young, you can keep going nonstop. Young people were so strong – why did young people never get any credit for being so strong?

  ***

  As feared, the man-mades were hard work. The thing about man-mades – Frankies, as Orlandus was careful not to call them, even silently – was that they were dependent on their creators for spare parts. If you fell out with your mad scientist – for instance, by joining some half-formed scheme to bring about a monster general strike – and then you lost your entire face in a flaming-torch-related industrial accident, where were you going to get a new face from? Not from the Provisional Strike Committee, that’s for sure.

  Bloodtakers were no better. They slammed the door in the committee members’ faces, or cursed them, or – the ultimate sanction in the needle-feeding community – cut them, socially. (That latter only applied to Orlandus and Lanto, obviously; no respectable bloodtaker could ever socially cut a shitter or a shambler, because no respectable bloodtaker would ever have any social relationship with such creatures to begin with.)

  And still they pressed on – Orlandus and Lanto, Shrak and Ngggg – touring the country, seeking out groups of nightfolk, in all their varieties, and making their case to them. They didn't know what else to do. They were committed, now, the four of them, in their different ways. It was slow going; it was a slog.

  The four of them understood that the denial of death to the Fearful by their own rulers – no matter how limited in scope – was a Rubicon crossed. Things were not the same, and could never be the same again. On this, they found little disagreement; those Nighthood they encountered who hadn't heard of Restart were appalled – those who had, Orlandus noticed, were mostly despondent.

  But the monster general strike? That was a step too far for most. Or, as the ever-shrewd Shrak had pointed out, not so much a step too far, as a concept too far. It was something that had never happened, and therefore they could not imagine it happening.

  And then, very early one sunny winter morning, the provisional, unofficial, self-appointed, peripatetic strike committee arrived at an empty shopping centre in Devon to find that the roarers had started without them.

  There were no customers, and the few shops which survived were not yet open; it was so early in the morning, that even the shouting-buckets were as yet unattended by unemployed humans. The Cousins were not, at that hour, in search of Cousins, but rather of an empty shop in which to roost for the day. On a windless day, the noise was so forceful that even Ngggg heard it immediately.

  It is difficult to describe the sound a roarer makes, but it is also unnecessary: there is no Fearful alive who has never heard it. The unidentified scream in the urban night, that wakes you with your heart banging; the shriek piercing a moonless path, when you walk home late and alone, and perhaps even lost; the howl in a dark wood – you don’t know what animal it is, and you can’t tell whether it’s ahead or behind you. The roarer makes these, and more, and every Fearful has heard them all his life.

  “There must be dozens of them,” said Orlandus. “I’ve never heard anything like it!”

  “Dozens,” Lanto agreed. The shopping centre echoed to every frightful noise imaginable, bouncing off concrete and plate glass
, chasing each other around the walls, overlapping each other. “What the blood are they doing?”

  “Ask them,” said Ngggg, and Shrak added his own wolfish cackle of laughter to the storm.

  “Good Night! Goodnight, Cousins,” the moonhowler yelled into the air. “We wish you the night, we wish you all that, and we wish to know what you are doing!”

  Silence fell instantly. Roarers are not seen; they are only sound. They rarely speak – that is not, after all, their role – but when they do, their voices are surprisingly melodic. Screaming’s what they do, not necessarily what they are. “And all that is in it, Cousins,” said the air in front of Lanto. “You are here to join us? Two bloodtakers, a moonhowler, a greyman – you have received word?”

  “We have not received any word,” Lanto said, “of which we are aware – our presence here is chance - but if you have need of us, Cousin ... ?”

  “We shall not stand their screams!” screamed another voice. “We shall not stand it!”

  Other voices joined in agreement – angry, confused ... even, Orlandus thought, if such a thing was not ridiculous, frightened voices. And suddenly he saw it.

  “The buckets,” he said. “The buckets the unemployed have to shout into.”

  “They scream,” said the first roarer. “They scream, howl, yell - ”

  “They're doing your job,” said Orlandus.

  “Who will still fear the wail at night, when they hear it all the day?” demanded the roarer.

  “Of course,” said Lanto. “You are right. And this is why - ”

  “Yesterday,” the roarer continued, “when the Fearful screamers arrived, we were here. They screamed, and we screamed louder. We met every wail with a greater wail.”

  “How did they react?” Lanto asked.

  “Strangely,” said the roarer. “Their faces seemed ... happier.”

  “Not fearful?”

  “Happier. Less distressed. It was strange.”

  “And at night?” said Ngggg.

  “At night,” said the roarer, “we shall be silent.”

  “Cousins,” said Shrak, “you are what we call ‘on strike’.”

  “You and us,” said Orlandus, smiling fit to split his face as he saw the future opening up before them, “I think we need to talk. In depth, at length.”

  ***

  The prime minister had that horrible, burning feeling in his innards that came either from drinking too much sour coffee on an empty stomach, or else from the rushing realisation that he was nominally in charge during a crisis and that nothing in his character, abilities, or pre-parliamentary life as a marketing consultant made him even remotely fit for the job. Possibly both.

  Latest bad news, after a week of bad news: the ghosts had come out in sympathy. Businesses owned by known donors to the PM’s party were being picketed, which is to say that when you got home from shopping at certain supermarkets you were likely to find a translucent, severed head amid the ready-meals in your carrier bag. Unfamiliar item in the screaming area.

  Secondary industrial action had been illegal for decades, and sure enough the government had gone to court and won injunctions against the ghosts. “The trouble is,” the PM's expert on Restraint of Trade – a sharp young woman on permanent loan from, as it so happened, the supermarket with the severed heads –explained, “laws only exist as long as people acknowledge them. If enough people simply refuse to obey a law, it ceases to be a law.”

  “But they're not people!” said the PM. All the politicians around the big table nodded energetically at this brilliant debating point. All the policy advisers – the ones whose job was to manage politicians on behalf of their corporate lords – sighed impatiently.

  “People or not, Prime Minister, the ghosts show no signs of obeying court rulings.”

  Leading monster troublemakers were known to be touring the country - indeed, the world - speaking at monster rallies. Rebuilding their union from the grassroots – or, as they apparently put it, “From the grave upwards.”

  “If this thing spreads any further,” said the PM, in the firm but reasonable voice which went down so well on breakfast-time radio, “we are going to need a plan.”

  The advisers – amongst whose principle responsibilities in government was preventing politicians forming, let alone executing, plans – spoke reassuringly. “On the contrary, PM. The free market will provide the answer, as it always does and always has. By going on strike, these militant dinosaurs - ”

  “Oh Christ!” cried the PM. “The dinosaurs haven’t come out as well, have they?”

  “ - have cut their own throats. There is a need for fear; there is now a gap in the market for fear; therefore the free market shall provide fear.”

  The chancellor of the exchequer (the prime minister was still baffled by the thing about dinosaurs) held up an apologetic hand, to halt the adviser's flow. “You’re suggesting the commodification of fear?”

  Mass nodding from the advisers, and congratulatory smiles. “Precisely, Chancellor! Precisely. Commodification is central to our way of life. It built the free world. It lies at the root of the free market, the free society, of western democracy. We commodify water, sex, food, shelter – why not fear?”

  Another adviser leant across the table, smiling into the chancellor’s eyes. The body language in the room would be easily read by anyone who knew politics: the PM’s career had effectively ended with the dinosaur question. “Fear is necessary, Chancellor. Where there is a necessity, there is a profit. This strike is not a crisis – it is an unprecedented opportunity to create a market in fear, to unlock its imprisoned potential, to subject the terrors of the night to the liberating rigours of competition. The sole-provider model we have tolerated for centuries impoverishes the fear-consumer through suppression of choice. Choice is fairness, Chancellor: choice is fairness.”

  The home secretary was lost – and so far lost, furthermore, that she forgot to care who knew it. “Necessary?” she said. “Fear is necessary? I thought it was just horrid.”

  “It is necessary,” an adviser explained, “that the state maintains fear, because fear is what keeps people obedient; but in a modern economy, it is just as important that finance capital controls the exploitation of fear. The more people are afraid the more they will spend on fear-relieving goods and services.”

  The PM’s stomach was getting worse. Unfair, as he’d drunk nothing but water for the past hour. “Look,” he said, “I get it about the dinosaurs, OK fine, and all this commodities stuff, excellent – what I want to take to the House is a simple yes or no. Do we talk to these bastards or not?”

  “I believe it has always been the policy of your administration, PM,” said the public order policy adviser, her expression both sombre and encouraging, “that we never negotiate with terror.”

  ***

  And when things start which have been waiting a long time they spread, and sometimes you can be left gasping inside a wave.

  The monster strike was far from total yet; there were probably more monsters not on strike than on strike, worldwide. But Orlandus found himself gasping sometimes, all the same. Today he stood on the deck of a hired boat, his feet planted in a little tray of the soil of north London, and watched Shrak addressing the sea monsters. Not that he could actually see sod-all, due to the fog, but he could hear the audience blowing every now and then, in what he hoped was a supportive manner.

  “We declare the Monsters’ Union refounded!” Shrak yelled. He had been told that sea monsters can hear a finger dangled over the side of a dinghy from a distance of four miles, but Orlandus thought that yelling was probably what Shrak was, rather than what he did. “On what authority do we make this claim? On the only authority we recognise, Cousins! That of the thousands of monsters who have already joined the great strike. And if any others would lay claim to leadership of the union – to leadership of the Nighthood – let them step forward! Let them reveal themselves! No, Cousins: they confess their redundancy by their s
ilence.”

  The moonhowler was the rabble-rouser; the greyman’s role was different. And quieter. If the strike was lost, he told his audience, over and again, at home and abroad, on land and sea and some other elements, “you will end up on monster sanctuaries, being looked after by kindly Fearful, they will have flag days so they can afford your keep, instead of having heritage you will be heritage, tourist bait, for tourists who will pierce your hearts with their cameras.”

  And it grew. And sometimes as things grow, they grow faster as they grow. Even so, as humanity was left progressively monsterless, the result was gradual chaos. Fear was no longer contained, but generalised. That isn’t like turning the lights off; in a way, perhaps, it’s more like turning them on, permanently. A monster strike isn't an axe-blow. It’s a poisoning.

  ***

  Reynold had never been summoned to Downing Street before, and although he was doing his best to look supercilious, as befitted the nation’s most prominent bloodtaker, and chairman of the Council of Seven, the truth was, he was a bit impressed. It was, after all, a mark of recognition for his high birth, his breeding, his standing, that he found himself sitting here, in the Cabinet Room, the attention of the most powerful Fearful in the land respectfully focussed on his words. It was fitting; it really was.

  And now the prime minister of the Fearful himself was offering Reynold a peerage.

  “It’s economics,” an adviser explained. “It’s not politics. It’s simply this – the monster strike is affecting the economy, and this has to stop. Productivity and consumption are both falling, absenteeism is rising, as people are afraid to go out in daytime. Some workplaces are switching to night-shifts only. Riots are spreading, as people’s real fears take over from their fear of monsters. People are becoming afraid of poverty, unemployment, war – we want them afraid of noises, shadows, strangers. We want them – we need - them to be afraid of the night, not the day.”

  There had been monsters in the House of Lords before, of course, but they had been there by accidents of inheritance; to be proclaimed Lord Reynold of the Night, as a mark of honour by a grateful nation ... that was something else. A peerage for him, and (slightly confusingly) knighthoods for the other leaders of the International Brotherhood.