On Deadly Ground

by Simon Clark

  I shook my head. I didn’t stop walking.

  ‘You do.’ She smiled warmly, but her brown eyes were as hard as flint. ‘You live at number nine; the one with the white door.’

  I shook my head puzzled. ‘Why do you—’

  ‘You do, don’t you?’ She didn’t give me a chance to reply but surged on. ‘My name’s Caroline, Caroline Lucas; this is my daughter, Portia. She’s sixteen.’

  I noticed the girl shoot her mother a surprised look, as if mummy dear had just claimed her daughter was a two-hundred-pound Eskimo chieftain. Mum then shook hands with me, talking all the time. She and daughter Portia were clearly part of the exodus from Leeds. Although their clothes and faces were clean, their shoulder-length hair neatly brushed, they wore the now distinctive refugee look. That look was stamped into their body posture and the way that, although they might look you in the eye at first, their eyes would always drop away as if they’d done something they were ashamed of. I wished they wouldn’t do that. I really wished they wouldn’t. But we’d split into two races. Those with homes and those without. And you could tell the two apart as clearly as if you’d marked the refugees across the forehead with green aerosol paint.

  The woman, in her late thirties, attractive and athletic from no doubt lengthy work-outs in some exclusive fitness suite, introduced me to her daughter again, prompting the girl to shake hands with me. The daughter looked out of her depth and repeatedly looked to her mother for prompts.

  ‘It’s a wicked mess, isn’t it?’ the woman said with an inappropriately broad smile. ‘I’ve heard that some people tried returning to their homes yesterday but the gas came back in the middle of the night and drove them back out. Have you heard where the gas came from?’

  I said I hadn’t.

  ‘Nor me. But I think it’s more serious than they make out.’

  I tried to sound reassuring in a woolly kind of way, saying that they’d soon be home.

  ‘That would be wonderful. To sleep in a bed again. With clean sheets. And a real bath. Not a cold-water shower in a canvas cubicle.’

  I sympathized.

  ‘You’re lucky to still have your house. It looks huge.’ She caught my arm as I started to walk. ‘You live alone there, don’t you?’

  ‘But why—’

  ‘You do, don’t you?’

  ‘No, with my brother.’

  ‘Is he home?’

  ‘No, he’s in the village. We’ve just come back from picking up food for the camp.’

  ‘You know, you really have astonishing eyes. I’ve never seen a shade of blue like that. Portia was just telling me that—wait.’

  I’d really made up my mind to walk away from the pair.

  ‘Wait.’ The woman, smiling prettily, had caught me by the forearm, but then she slid her fingers down lightly over my bare skin to hold my hand. I should have gritted my teeth, walked on without an au revoir or anything. But her eyes looked so trusting; her voice sounded so small. She could have been a helpless child standing there.

  ‘You’ve no idea what it’s like to sleep in that field. We’ve one blanket between us.’

  I softened. ‘OK. If you follow me I’ve a couple of spare blankets you can have…’ She looked up at me, the smile so hopeful that I found myself tagging more items onto the list. ‘I might be able to find some spare clothes.’ Christ, I sounded so high-and-mighty that I despised what was coming out of my mouth. Like I was some knight in shining armour dishing out a few crumbs to the hungry peasants. ‘I’ll make you something to eat…you can have a hot bath.’

  ‘Look.’ Smiling tenderly, she squeezed my hand. ‘I’m not going to beat about the bush. You’ve got a big house. Allow us to stay. We’ll cook and clean for you.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts, please. Let us move in. Just for a couple of days.’ She smiled, kissed the back of my hand and held it to her cheek, her eyes shining brightly. ‘Look, I really want to go to bed with you. I’ll be in your hands entirely. You can do what you want; I’ll do—’

  ‘There’s no need for this.’ I looked up and down the street. There were clumps of people sitting on the grass verges but they paid us no attention. ‘You’ll be home in a few days, then—’

  ‘Hush. Please hush.’ She spoke in a low, husky voice. ‘This is what I really want. I want to go to bed with you.’

  I noticed her wedding ring. ‘But your husband won’t—’

  ‘I’m not married.’

  The daughter looked sharply at her mother again. The look of astonishment in her wide eyes could have been funny. But after what I’d seen that morning there wasn’t a laugh inside me. Anywhere.

  ‘Portia will sleep with you, too. She’s talked about nothing else.’

  Portia looked bewildered and frightened, but she still nodded as if someone jerked her head up and down for her.

  ‘Only you must use a condom with Portia. I don’t mind either way.’

  ‘No.’ I tried to pull away.

  ‘I’m extremely accommodating. Either way. I don’t mind.’

  ‘I’m not interested.’

  ‘Please. I’ll—’

  I tugged my hand from her grasp and walked away. I heard her shout behind me: ‘All right, then. You don’t need to wear a condom for Portia. She’ll have sex without one, won’t you, Portia? Portia, tell him you’ll let him do it without a condom. Tell him, Portia, tell him!

  I heard the daughter’s frightened voice. ‘Yes. You can do it without one. Please! You can do it without one!’

  All I could think of were those two children lying dead beneath the bushes. The poor dead children. I’d puked on them before I even realized what they were. Then we’d left them there under the bushes, their bird-pecked eyes oozing blood like terrible tear drops down their cheeks. My brain felt overloaded; it couldn’t process any more. I just cut and ran, leaving the two behind on the path calling after me.

  Chapter 16

  It was a shit day. Every ten seconds or so the mental video in my head would replay what I’d seen that morning: the old folk lying dead and bloated in their Shackleton high chairs; the bare-arsed woman lying half in and half out of the hearse; the dead children; the jetliner falling out of the sky. Then we’d returned with the supplies of baby food. One of S Group breaking into a shop in Pudsey had been mistaken for a looter and been shot dead by the army. I didn’t know the dead guy’s name. And I was already too overloaded with the sights and odours of death for it to have much impact on me at that moment.

  Stenno had been in the garage. He was changing the tyre on an ambulance. He looked like a toy robot whose batteries were almost flat. He still worked, but in a peculiar slow-motion kind of way. When he looked at me his eyes were deadened. He didn’t show any sign he’d even recognized me.

  I doubled back along the field behind the houses, in the hope that mother and daughter wouldn’t follow me. All I wanted was a drink and a hot bath. As far as I knew Stephen wouldn’t be far behind me.

  I used the gate that led through into the back garden, then walked up along the lawn by the garden loungers and ornamental pond.

  The first thing I noticed was an empty orange juice carton outside the back door. Then I saw the back door itself was open by a hand’s breadth. I pushed it open.

  I stood and stared, not believing my eyes.

  The kitchen was heaving with people. All strangers. All refugees. They were almost climbing over each other to pull open cupboard doors and drawers, or to yank boxes from the pantry.

  A middle-aged man in silver-rimmed spectacles looked back over his shoulder at me; before Friday night he could have been an accountant with a comfortable house, a comfortable life-style, in a comfortable suburb of Leeds. ‘Sod off,’ he shouted at me. ‘We were here first.’

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ I yelled, feeling a fury erupt inside me. ‘I was here first. I live here.’

  ‘No one’s stopping you living here, mate,’ another man said as he stuffed apples into a bin liner. ‘But
you’re not keeping all this stuff for yourself.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ I screamed. ‘Do you know where I’ve just been? And do you know what I saw? Of course you fucking don’t. There’s dead children down there; they’ve— hey, put that fucking back. You! Yes, I’m talking to you—put that back.’ Someone had picked up a glass jar where my mother kept the dried spaghetti. I’d bought it for her that first Christmas after Dad and Stephen had left home. She’d opened it as she sat by the Christmas tree. Then she’d put her head in her hands and cried silently for ten minutes solid, I’d sat there in a wounded silence, not knowing what the Hell I could do about it. Now some bastard was dumping the thing into his swag bag; all it meant to him was the handful of spaghetti inside.

  ‘Give me that,’ I shouted.

  The man looked up at me. He had dyed black hair which at one time I imagined was combed into an Elvis quiff. Now it hung like rats’ tails over his eyes. ‘Go on, then. Take it from me, why don’t ya?’

  I had to force my way through the pack of men looting the house. I’d had enough. I was yelling at the man, shaking my fist in his face. If I’d a gun, so help me, I would have slammed a whole magazine full of slugs into that greasy rat-tail hair.

  ‘Give it back to me,’ I snarled.

  Ratman just jeered. ‘You’re nowt but a little boy…nowt but a little boy. Go find your mother.’

  I lunged at him. I’d picked on the wrong man. He must have had muscles in his piss. He picked me up easily and threw me back toward the door.

  ‘Try that again,’ he said, pointing a stubby finger at me, ‘and I’ll take yer fucken head off.’

  ‘Go easy on him,’ said one of the men uneasily.

  ‘You’re not the one he’s having a go at, is it?’

  ‘He’s only a kid.’

  ‘He’s going to end up with a thrashing if he tries that trick again.’

  It wasn’t a case of me showing no fear; I was showing no common sense. What I’d seen that morning had made me so angry that I was determined to take it out on someone.

  I pushed by the guy with the silver spectacles and swung my fist at Ratman’s head. My aim was lousy but sheer anger pumped some force into it.

  The blow connected with his forehead. It did no damage worth mentioning but the man glared murderously up through the rat-tails of hair. ‘I warned you, you stupid idiot. After I’ve got through with you, don’t you ever say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘Well, what you fucking waiting for? Shit sucker!’

  I made little ‘come on’ motions with my ringers. There was no room for a fight. That kitchen was crammed with men filling sacks and boxes, but all I saw was red. Red-hot fury. It didn’t matter that Ratman would beat my face to the colour and texture of strawberry jam. All I wanted was to expel the rage that filled my gut to bursting: the sheer rage at seeing the poor dead bastards in Leeds; the rage at the mother wanting to give me her daughter (who couldn’t have been a day over fourteen whatever mummy dear said); and the sheer raging fury at seeing my home being ransacked in front of me and knowing I could do damn-all about it.

  The man pushed the others aside; his chest was puffing in and out like that of a boxer ready to go into overdrive. ‘You asked for this!’ he roared.

  One second he was coming at me, the next his expression had changed and he was swinging sideways to crash against the freezer door.

  ‘Hey, take it easy.’

  I looked to see Stephen at my side; obviously he’d come through the door, sussed the situation, and swung the man into the freezer as he launched himself at me.

  ‘So there’s two of you, is there?’ the man snarled. ‘I don’t mind, I’ll take the pair of you apart.’

  ‘Listen, hey listen, bud. I’ve no intention of fighting you. Me and my brother are going outside now. We won’t interfere again, all right?’

  Ratman was having none of it. ‘So you can shove me around and get away with it? No one shoves me around, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Stephen held up his hands soothingly. ‘OK, I’m sorry. I’m just looking out for my brother, OK? I don’t want to see him get hurt.’

  ‘Sorry isn’t enough. The pair of you are going to pay.’

  I was ready to wade in. Only Stephen held me back by a fistful of my T-shirt.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry: what more can I say?’

  ‘Sorry isn’t enough, I said. I’m going to teach you pair of faggots that—’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, Les.’ The man with silver spectacles spoke quietly but with enough authority to catch Ratman’s attention. ‘Leave it, will you? We came here to get food for our families, not pick a fight.’

  ‘But they—’

  ‘He’s apologized, hasn’t he?’

  ‘They’ll get the end of my boot before I leave here.’

  The man in spectacles was loosing his patience. ‘Go on, then, go fight them. But if you do, you’ll lose your share of the food, and you’re out of our team. Do you really want that?’

  I thought Ratman would argue the toss about this. But being part of the team, whatever that was, must have been of importance to him because he shrugged, contented himself with giving the pair of us a dirty look, then returned to filling his sack from one of the food cupboards.

  ‘Stephen. He’s got the spaghetti jar. I’m taking that back.’

  ‘No, you’re not, Rick.’ Stephen caught me off balance and pulled me. ‘You’re coming outside to cool off.’

  ‘No, I’m—’

  ‘It’s not worth fighting over.’

  Half guiding, half pulling, he managed to get me outside into the back garden where he sat me on one of the loungers.

  ‘Rick. Don’t ever try pulling a stunt like that again. OK?’

  ‘They’re ransacking the house!’

  ‘Right. And you can take on ten grown men, I suppose?’

  ‘I’d have—’

  ‘You’d have got yourself pasted.’

  Grinding my fist into my palm, I stood up, then paced the lawn beneath that hot afternoon sun. I hated the idea of letting the bastards get away with just walking into my home and taking what they wanted. For all I knew they might be upstairs pissing all over the carpets.

  ‘Talk about biting the hand that feeds you…’

  ‘Let it go, Rick,’ Stephen said calmly.

  ‘But we helped these people! We risked being gassed by going into Leeds. That guy from our team got a bullet in the head because he was mistaken for a looter. All the poor bastard was doing was finding baby food for their bloody children. Is that fair?’

  ‘I know. But these people are grateful. You’re saving their babies’ lives. You went—’

  ‘And this is the thanks we get?’

  Stephen kept his voice calm and low. ‘There are forty thousand people camped out there. Did you see forty thousand people in your kitchen? No. You saw ten men who are so frightened at losing their homes—and their dignity—that they’re trying to claw something back. Even if it’s just going back to their wives and children with a few chocolate cookies and a can of ham. Rick, it’s human nature. They need to show they can still provide for their families. That they haven’t been reduced to the status of beggars.’

  ‘Only thieves.’

  ‘Sure. But they feel as if they can do something positive to put food in their children’s bellies.’

  ‘The feeding stations are—’

  ‘The feeding stations are providing two meals a day. One of those is porridge. The other’s a small bowl of stew.’

  My brother was right. Basically I was so angry with the whole human race right then I just wanted a whipping boy on whom I could piss my rage. I realized there and then that this whole situation was turning me into nothing more than a ranting fascist.

  Sighing, I nodded and managed a smile. ‘Message received and understood.’

  ‘So I can trust you not to rush round beating up any more refugees?’

  ‘You can.’

  He gave a grin. ‘Once they’ve
finished in there we’ll clear up and I’ll cook you one of my famous pasta and pesto sauce feasts.’

  ‘You might have a struggle to find the ingredients.’

  With his forefinger he touched the side of the nose and smiled. ‘Your wily old brother’s learned a trick or two. I stashed some food in the attic yesterday.’

  As we talked I let my gaze wander towards Leeds, shimmering in the heat haze in the distance. The smoke from the crashed airliner still rose into the air. With no fire service on hand the flames were probably spreading unchecked.

  Stephen’s powers of persuasion bordered on the hypnotic. Within twenty minutes he had me believing that today would be nothing more than an unpleasant blip in what would be a thrilling and rewarding life. He started talking about the band, and the songs I’d written. And did I have an acoustic guitar so I could play them to him? It didn’t even seem so bad when the looters left. Most of them walked out with their heads down, ashamed of what they’d done. One carried a bottle of red wine.

  Stephen quipped, ‘You’ll find that goes best with a red meat dish or cheese. Oh, and be sure to open it an hour before dinner and serve at room temperature.’ The man blushed with embarrassment and hurried out of the garden.

  I knew with absolute conviction that Stephen Kennedy, Seattle video jock, was a tower of strength.

  What I didn’t know was that soon lives would depend on it.

  Chapter 17

  A week to the day after the mysterious gas drifted into Leeds I left the house and walked down towards the woods. It was dusk. The sky formed a deep blue ceiling above my head; Venus twinkled above the horizon; before me the path led downhill through the meadow.

  With no food in the house I was eating at Ben Cavellero’s now. Dinner was in an hour.

  You see, I’d recently got into the habit of this evening walk. It was an oasis of peace and solitude away from the refugee camp, which lately crackled with hundreds of arguments as those forty thousand people became fed up to the back teeth of living within an arm’s length of their neighbours.

  A rabbit scampered away in front of me. I wondered how long it could keep a couple of steps away from those ever-simmering cooking pots. No animal was safe from the hungry stomachs back on King Elmet’s Mile.