Fenn Halflin and the Fearzero

by Francesca Armour-Chelu

  “They’ve got yer scent now. Gotta get off their patch!” the boy hollered over his shoulder. “Hurry!”

  Together they scrambled down until they were deep in the alleyways again, but still the boy kept running, falling over his own legs as he galloped away. He headed off through a gap between two barges, using his spiked stick as a staff to speed himself along.

  Dawn had broken and the Shanties were waking up. At this lowest level damp hung in the air like a blanket. Fumes of burning tar permeated the sky as fires were lit. In the alleyways between the barges, mantles of smog enveloped the gangplanks, only broken up by the silhouettes of people as they went about their business in the gloom, wading through piles of debris.

  “Duck!” the boy shouted over his shoulder, bending double to keep low as they passed under beams that dripped with rusty seawater and reeked of stagnant fish.

  “What were they?” Fenn gasped.

  “Roustabouts!” the boy shouted.

  Fenn was unable to make sense of the labyrinth of narrow streets. Tiny, half-starved children with filthy faces and hair in matted clumps wandered listlessly searching the ground for dropped scraps, or huddled in threes and fours with begging bowls at their feet. In other alleys, red lanterns dangled overhead as murky figures slipped soundlessly in or out of pokey windowless barges. As the boy ran ahead, Fenn noticed that everyone made way for him.

  The boy slowed to a steady trot as they reached the decaying heart of the Shanties – the epicentre underneath the central fort. They passed the oldest-looking barge of all – which had a red cross on a white background painted on its side.

  “You new here?” the boy asked.

  Fenn nodded.

  “You’ll soon get the hang of it. That’s the Mercy-Ship. One of the first dolin’ aid after the last Rising,” the boy said as they ran by.

  “Why’s it still here?” Fenn asked.

  “Stuck. Ran out of fuel. Sick ’ouse now. Captain’s a sawbone called Ancient.” The boy nodded his head approvingly. “Good at stitchin’ and choppin’ is Ancient. Fast. Needs ter be. Can take a leg off in thirty seconds!”

  In front of the ship and beneath the four concrete struts of the central fort was a platform, a kind of raft made from plastic barrels lashed together. In the centre stood a massive mast; at the top was a crow’s nest with a hand-cranked siren. Above that a star-shaped finial of beaten copper shone like a Christmas tree decoration.

  “What’s that?” Fenn asked as they scurried past.

  “Watchtower for the Peepers,” the boy replied. Seeing Fenn’s blank look, he continued, “Young’uns, who ain’t got scurve-eye yet. On the squint for Fearzeros an’ rogues.”

  “Rogues?”

  “Waves. The big’uns.”

  Directly in front of the mast was a small square hole covered by a wire mesh grille, and flanking this were two long benches made of ornate cast iron. A couple of women nursing wailing infants filled one bench, their life’s belongings strewn around them. The boy and Fenn fell on to the other bench exhausted. The boy swung his arm over Fenn’s shoulders. For someone so scrawny his arms were as heavy as lead piping.

  “We made it!” The boy grinned, swallowing hard. “I’m Gulper,” he said, proudly jabbing his thumb towards his chest. He put his blood and grime-stained hand out and shook Fenn’s hand. “You got funny lookin’ eyes!” Gulper remarked cheerfully, peering curiously at Fenn’s different coloured pupils. “When d’you get here?” he asked, his breath raking from his efforts.

  “Last night.” Fenn replied. “I’m Fenn.”

  “Last night?” Gulper asked suspiciously. “Where d’you sleep then?”

  Fenn, still out of breath, pointed up into the shadowy network of rafters over his head. Gulper raised his eyebrows and let out a long, slow whistle through the holes where his teeth should have been. The few teeth that were left were black, like he’d been chewing coal.

  “You…” Gulper tried to say, but couldn’t get the word out. He took a gulp of air, making his eyes pop out, wider and shouted in a rush. “You mad? No one sleeps up in the Sticks! Lucky you weren’t eaten alive!”

  “A rat bit me.” Fenn nodded.

  “Vermin are the least of your problems up there! I’m talkin’ about Roustabouts – or Roosters as I call ’em.’ Call ’em wha’ yer like, yer taste the same to them wha’ever.”

  A bleak peal of laughter spewed out of his mouth, making one of the babies cry out in fear.

  “Used to feel sorry for them, before they got Coral.”

  “Coral…?” Fenn asked.

  “My sister,” Gulper said, momentarily frowning. “In the old days they worked the Rigs. Blind as bats and deaf as doorknobs they are. Guess that’s why they do what they do, can’t get no other livin’!”

  “So how could they tell where I was?”

  Gulper banged his stick hard on the iron struts of Fenn’s bench. The hammering reverberated through Fenn’s skin.

  “Vibrations!” he said, then suddenly grabbed Fenn’s arm and lifted it up, taking a deep, long sniff of his armpit. He nodded sagely, like a connoisseur of a fine wine. “Or maybe the stink?” He shrugged. “Who knows? Out at night sniffin’ fer food. Nasty things!”

  He tutted, like he was describing an everyday household pest, the way Halflin talked about the bloated mosquitoes that pestered the pigs on hot summer nights.

  “You’d better use this,” he said, untying his plastic hood and giving it to Fenn. “Don’t wan’ that gettin’ any worse.”

  Fenn tied the plastic around his bare foot.

  But before Fenn had finished tying it up, Gulper was up and off. Uninvited, Fenn limped after him; he was the only person here who’d shown him any kindness so far.

  “Did they get Old Tizer then?” Gulper asked over his shoulder. “I sometimes wonder how he’s doin’. Don’t go up that way much these days, but when me an’ Coral was kids he were all right to us, Old Tizer. Used to share his food an’ that. People round ’ere were nicer, but there was more food then.”

  Fenn guessed he must mean the old man and felt a pang of shame. Old Tizer had probably been living there safely until Fenn had started crashing around.

  A Waker-Upper passed by, hollering and rattling his stick on the portholes of a small tug, waking the occupants to get to Market in time. Gulper watched idly, then spat between the planks at his feet. He smiled reassuringly.

  “They probably wouldn’t bother wiv ’im. Skin an’ bone!”

  “We should go back!” Fenn blurted out.

  “So they did take ’im?” Gulper asked.

  Fenn bit his lip and looked back into the rigging.

  “Then forget it. At least it was quick!” Gulper shrugged, scratching his armpit thoughtfully. “Go back if you want, I ain’t comin’.”

  He gave Fenn a friendly punch, then ducked beneath a fallen mast and squeezed through a dank crawl space smothered in barnacles, where the water glugged up between two barges. Fenn hesitated for a moment and looked back up at the way he’d come, wondering what to do. In the distant gloom he could see people slipping in and out of the walkways above. He felt his heart constrict first with fear, then shame; he was too afraid to find out for certain what happened to Old Tizer. He turned to follow Gulper.

  Crawling after him, Fenn noticed graffiti scrawled in different languages on the sides of the barges, but none of it meant anything to him. Eventually he caught up with Gulper, carefully edging his way around the skeleton of a dredger’s hull. Next to it was the collapsing hulk of a huge barge, its stern still in the water but its bow submerged. On its side the faded shape of a gilded key was just discernible beneath a Sunkmark.

  “Was that a Resistance boat?” Fenn asked as he hopped across the ribs of the old ship. Fenn realised they were now underneath the furthest fort, the one that stuck out on its own. Gulper nodded.

  “Used to be strong here; Shanties were a good stopover for Seaborns on the run. But after they tried to kill Chilstone…” Gulper
stopped talking like he’d already said too much and narrowed his eyes. “Anyway it’s all done now, innit? Careless talk … don’t want to give spies anythin’ to snitch wiv.”

  He looked mistrustfully around him, his gaze eventually fixing on Fenn. He stared him square in the face for a moment.

  “Yer know, I saved yer without askin’ an’ I’ll kill yer just as quick if I find out yer spyin’ for ’em. No hard feelings or nuffin’ but that’s just the way it is.” He smiled genially.

  “Course I’m not,” Fenn said angrily, stepping back.

  As they were talking the Not-an-otter had worked its way up the rucksack and suddenly squirmed its head out through the top. Gulper jumped back in shock.

  “You got a rat in your bag!” he shouted, grabbing a little club hanging from his belt and raising it to strike.

  “No!” Fenn shouted, his face ashy-white with anger. “It’s not a rat! It’s a Not-an-otter!” He pushed Gulper back.

  “You’ve got some fight in yer then!” Gulper said admiringly. He leant in for a closer look and then said, “Definitely not a rat,” as if Fenn had said it was. “What is it then?” The Not-an-otter and Gulper continued to stare at each other beadily.

  “I don’t know,” said Fenn. “I’ve never seen one before either but…”

  “But you let it live in your bag anyway?”

  “I think it’s thirsty,” Fenn said, looking hopefully at Gulper. “So am I.”

  “Water costs here,” Gulper snapped, but seeing the Not-an-otter stare so hard at him, he softened. “I can get some though.”

  He put out his hand to stroke it, but the animal bared its teeth and flinched away. Gulper looked Fenn up and down then rubbed his hands together.

  “Don’t think spies keep pets… You can come up,” he said after some consideration.

  Fenn looked up at the iron fort high above. Barely visible through the swathes of sea mist, it looked like a floating island. On one of its concrete legs were iron struts, almost like staples, making a ladder and Gulper had already grabbed its sides. He hesitated; it looked a long way up and he didn’t know Gulper, but then Gulper had saved his life. What more did he need to know?

  “Don’t know why you’re stallin’…” Gulper said as he climbed upwards. “Safest place in the Shanties!”

  11

  Gulper climbed swiftly, unafraid and sure-footed. After fleeing from the Roustabouts, Fenn’s legs were jelly-loose and he couldn’t trust them. He clamped his hands on the struts but they had been rubbed smooth as satin and it was hard to get a grip. The iron was so cold that every time Fenn wrapped his fist around the bars it felt like he was being sliced to the bone. A couple of times he looked down by mistake and felt so dizzy at the sickening height that he had to stop climbing and hook a leg through the strut, taking deep yet un-nourishing breaths. As they approached the top, Fenn realised there was a steel platform beneath the fort, just like the one Tizer had lived on, and above it he saw the same kind of hole the Roustabouts had winched Tizer up through. He shuddered. Gulper reached down and helped him up.

  The platform was small and seemed completely empty. Fenn was puzzled; why had they come up here? There was no way to go higher. But then Gulper took down a long wooden pole, which had been was concealed along the top of a girder. He raised it up through the hole above them until it touched against a hatch hidden in the dark. He jerked the pole up, thumping three times on the heavy metal hatch. From behind it whistled notes sounded; the first part of a song, Fenn thought. Gulper whistled back the remaining bar.

  “There’s always someone home. Gotta keep it guarded,” Gulper explained. Fenn heard the sound of many bolts being drawn back and the hatch opened.

  “Who is it?”

  It was a girl’s voice. The words clicked sharply without warmth, like her mouth was full of nails.

  “Amber, it’s me,” Gulper called up.

  There was a moment’s silence, then a rickety wooden ladder came shooting down from the hatch, crashing onto the steel platform. Gulper bowed graciously.

  “After you.”

  Amber stood at the top looking down at them with her arms folded across her skinny body, and as Fenn crawled through the hatch he couldn’t help but stare, transfixed by her ugliness. Her tufty red hair was cut so badly that there were grazes all over her scalp, and she wore a stained hooded top, a pair of rolled up men’s combat trousers and outsized hob-nailed boots. Her sullen face was covered in streaks of dirt. Her right ear lobe shone with a brass earring, roughly cut to look like a four-leafed clover.

  “Newbie,” Gulper said as he pushed Fenn up, following quickly behind.

  “Sure he’s safe?” Amber asked. Gulper nodded.

  Amber looked unconvinced, staring frostily at Fenn as she slammed the hatch shut, slid the bolts across and hooked over an old piece of tarpaulin to stop the draughts. Meanwhile Gulper propped his spiked stick against a wall hanging with buckets, wire traps, nets and three seagulls hanging lifelessly from a nail.

  Amber pushed aside some sacking. They were in a shadowy, low-ceilinged room, apparently windowless, although Fenn had seen windows from the outside. The walls were covered in bright red and yellow wallpaper, but when he peered closer, he realised it was made up of hundreds of plastic packets; a yellow “M” was emblazoned on a faded scarlet background and some of them bore the words “Happy Meal”. Each had been opened out and pinned over the next, like tiles on a roof, but being so light they lifted and fell with every single draught, making a noise like a rattlesnake.

  In the middle of the large room stood an oil drum with a square hacked out, on which a huge pot bubbled. The steam from this belched up into a massive upturned funnel that had a long loop of piping attached to the end of it, strung across the entire length of the fort and disappearing into a hole in the ceiling. To the right of the funnel there was another drum, cut in half and set on its side, in which embers were glowing, sending off a trickle of smoke. Above this hung a wooden laundry rack with what looked like dozens of stiff socks pegged on it with pieces of split wood. A metal grid was laid over the fire with something cooking and a pungent smell filled the room. Standing next to it was a girl, about nine years old, carefully turning several skewers laden with some kind of meat. Her thick black hair was tied in a snake-like plait that reached her waist, where it was looped onto a belt made of faded woven fabric that held a sarong in place. Her face was delicate, with long, almond-shaped eyes tilting upwards. Fenn wondered if she could be Chinese; his encyclopaedia had a bit about a place called China and pictures of the people who once lived there. She didn’t even look up at their footfall.

  As Fenn’s eyes grew accustomed to the murkiness he realised there were others in the room and that in one corner tyres had been put together to make a chair, which had been raised on a few wooden pallets. A man was slumped on the chair, watching Fenn lazily, and next to him a woman with her head on his shoulder was snoring loudly. Amber clomped over to a corner, threw herself on the ground and picked up a book.

  Gulper shoved Fenn nearer to the fire. As Fenn walked he felt the floor bounce slightly; this too had been covered with strips of tyres crudely stitched together to make a vast mat. It made the whole place even darker, but cosy.

  “Dry off,” Gulper ordered. “We’ll see about gettin’ yer another boot.”

  At the sound of his voice came a loud shriek and a flurry of movement from the woman in the chair.

  “Thweetheart! You’re back!”

  She jumped down from the dais and ran to Gulper, squeezing him hard. Her dress was made out of bright red and white striped plastic and it crinkled and rustled as she moved. Her orange hair fluffed around her head like mashed swede and she had rubbed some kind of blue powder over the lids of her bright, sad eyes.

  “Poor dear! Poor dear! You’re half frothe to death!” she exclaimed, briskly rubbing Gulper’s arms and shoulders.

  “Teeth! Mrs Leach! Teeth!” said the man, now standing. “We have company!”


  The woman let out a cry of embarrassed horror and clapped her hand over her mouth, then pulled out a set of shiny porcelain teeth from one of her pockets. She picked the fluff off, polished them up on her cuff, then clamped them in her mouth, champing on them until they settled.

  “Sorry ’bout that darlin’!” she simpered. “Oh, I was worried about you. It’s a grismal day to be out!” she said, turning back to Gulper, helping him get his wet things off like he was a toddler and flapping his coat to shake the damp off. She barely seemed to notice Fenn as she fussed.

  Fenn edged closer to the embers, rubbing his hands in the heat while Gulper went over to the man and whispered in his ear. At last the man stepped slowly out of the shadows. He was wearing a kimono made from a patchwork of fine fur in different shades of drab brown, so long it dragged at the back like a coronation cloak. Over his bald patch he had combed a few strands of hair, twice as long as the rest to cover the soft pink scalp. He was slightly plump and with his scrubbed skin he had the look of a big baby. When he came into the light, Fenn noticed a little web of wrinkles fanned out from his deep-set, piggy eyes.

  Fenn felt a shiver run down his back. It reminded him of the feeling he’d had once when he’d gone out to the woodshed, and without even seeing or hearing it, Fenn had known there was a rat in the rafters overhead, looking up in time to see its tail slither into the shadows. Gulper continued to whisper while the man listened attentively; now and then tilting back his head to look through gold-rimmed glasses perched in the dent of his puggy nose. When he did this, Fenn noticed he only seemed to have one cavernous nostril, a hole in the middle of his face. As Gulper spoke, the man gently stroked his top lip. His mouth was too pretty for a man; berry red, with a cupid’s bow like it had been painted on. Eventually the man nodded.

  “Yes, yes; just introduce us,” he said, pouting.

  “Fenn. Mr Leach. He’s the boss round here,” said Gulper grandly.