by Haywood, RR
‘Nah,’ the boy says, mesmerised at the attention Lilly is paying to him, ‘S’like…nah.’
‘Oh well,’ Lilly rolls her eyes, ‘I’m sure we can find someone. Have we got some of our brave people guarding it now?’
‘Yeah, like…Sierra got someone on it.’
‘Great! You are very organised and that’s good. Where is Sierra now?’
‘In the pig office.’
‘I’m sorry, the what?’
‘The feds office, the pigs…’
‘Oh the old police offices, got it, right yes, sorry, not down with the street talk. You’ll have to teach me. Right, Pea, Sam. I shall go and see Sierra. Are you okay here getting some people organised to clear this mess away?’
‘Sure,’ Sam says, her head cocked to one side.
‘Billy, you stay here with Pea and Sam, Milly, you too. I’ll be right back.’
‘Want me to ask about for someone to fix the wall?’ Pea asks.
‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ Lilly says then looks at Zayden, ‘if that’s okay with you of course, Zayden.’
‘Whatever, s’fine innit.’
‘Zayden,’ Lilly says, lowering her voice a notch as they walk round the edge of the mess, ‘Is Sierra okay? I mean, she saw Darius killed right in front of her. That must be an awful shock for anyone. How is she coping?’
He shrugs, more interested in the smirks and nods from the other lads watching him with Lilly, ‘She’s good.’
‘Do you think so? Poor girl, she must be devastated. We must do what we can to take the burden from her. What do you think?’
‘Yeah, like…whatever.’
‘But we mustn’t be pushy,’ Lilly says as though thinking out loud, ‘No no, we must be decent and nice. Poor Sierra, I do hope she is okay.’
‘Yeah,’ Zayden nods, not giving a shit whether Sierra is okay or not, ‘So’s like, you got a boyfriend then or what?’
‘Me?’ Lilly asks, blinking at the unexpected question, ‘Gosh well, I mean…’ Think, Lilly. Think fast and tread carefully. ‘No, no I do not.’
‘What about that Nick then?’ Zayden asks, ‘Like, Mads said you’s was kissing.’
‘Oh that,’ Lilly says, forcing a tight chuckle, ‘Nick was just upset and I gave him a hug, that’s all.’
‘Ah yeah,’ Zayden says hopefully, ‘so’s like, he’s not your boyfriend then or sommit?’
‘Nick? Gosh no.’
‘S’good. I don’t like him.’
‘You don’t? Why ever not?’
‘He’s a cunt.’
‘Oh…oh right.’
‘They’s all cunts that lot. Sierra said they was. She said they’s put everyone in danger and it was them that killed Darius and made Mads get tazered by that cunt Lani’
Forewarned is forearmed. Swallow the shock and be prepared.
‘Yes, it has been an awfully confusing night, Poor Sierra.’
The police offices reek of tobacco smoke that hangs thick in the air. Choking Lilly as she walks in behind Zayden. The room full of youths leaning back on chairs, smoking with their feet up on desks. Like a classroom that’s gone very wrong. Sierra, at the end in the central position staring blankly at nothing with an assault rifle across her legs. Lilly swallows, realising it’s just girls in here. She recognises one of them as a girl called Skyla. The rest she doesn’t know but she spots the scraped back hair and faces full of spite.
‘What?’ Sierra mutters, blinking slowly as she adjusts her gaze from staring at nothing to staring at Zayden.
‘S’Lilly innit,’ Zayden says.
‘So?’ Sierra asks, her eyes now unblinking.
Cans of soda, bags of crisps and chocolate bar wrappers adorn the table tops. Ashtrays overflowing. Dirty mugs left unwashed.
‘What?’ Zayden grunts, confused at the response.
‘What’s she want?’ Sierra asks, refusing to look at Lilly but taking her in all the same. Blond haired, blue eyed, clean and healthy looking.
‘Dunno,’ Zayden says, shrugging.
‘Why bring her here then?’ Sierra demands, her voice quiet but full of malice.
‘I’m sorry, Sierra,’ Lilly speaks out politely, ‘I asked to come and see you, please, it was my fault.’
The new number one continues to stare at Zayden. A show of power that she will look where she wants when she wants. The shock has hit hard. The sight of Darius’s brains blowing out and his body slumping over. Maddox being tazered and everyone else made to kneel on the ground. Darius killed. Just like that. Dead. Shot. Never coming back.
‘What?’ She finally looks at Lilly, hating her, hating everyone, hating everything but too numb to action those emotions.
‘I wanted to talk about how we should…’
‘We?’ Sierra cuts her off with an icy low voice, ‘ain’t no we.’
‘Of course,’ Lilly says, acquiescing instantly, ‘I meant how we, the people out there, how we are to get cleaned up and fix the wall.’
Sierra goes blank, unfocussed, seeing only Darius’s brains bursting from his head. She blinks back to the now and stares full of hate at Lilly. ‘Just get it done.’
‘Yes we will, we most definitely will. May I ask, is it okay to…’
‘Don’t give a fuck,’ Sierra says, glaring at Lilly, ‘just get it done, you get me yeah?’
‘Of course.’
‘You’s speak like that all the time?’ Skyla asks, adopting the new number one’s cold expressionless manner.
‘I do, yes,’ Lilly says, sensing the tension rising.
‘So’s like, you go to private school yeah?’
‘I did for a while but then I went to a normal…’
Skyla tuts, and rolls her eyes, ‘Yeah whatever. Like don’t go on about it,’ she looks disdainfully away as the other girls snigger and glare. All apart from Sierra who’s unfocussed gaze goes through Lilly to something unseen by anyone else.
‘Get out,’ Sierra whispers, not watching, not caring, not listening.
‘Of course,’ Lilly dips her head, almost in a bow to show she concedes the authority of the girl barely a year older than her. Out the door in a second and the room behind her cackles with teenage girls delighted at the posh girl being brought down a peg.
Outside and the humidity hits her as hard as the impact of the confrontation inside. The savagery of it. The brutal non-compliance to order or thought for others. Young people with no education seizing power without any concept of what that means and suddenly the future looks bleak. Maddox has only been down a few hours and may wake up. Mr Howie only left this morning or late last night. If it’s this bad now what the hell will it be like in the days and weeks to come?
Thoughts whirl. Options that present to be considered and weighed with every variable given equal consideration.
Should she leave? Get Billy, maybe Pea and Sam and just get out. Take Milly and whoever else wants to go. Stay low and find somewhere close by to wait for Mr Howie to come back. She knows too well just how dangerous the world beyond these walls are and that’s the question right there. The offset by comparison to the danger inside against the danger outside.
Sierra is in shock. That is obvious. Shock and grief goes through stages. Denial. Anger. Numbness. Let those emotions work their course, keep your head down and hope Sierra comes back to being a decent human being. Was she a decent human being before this? Lilly doesn’t know the girl.
Holding that thought in her mind she then adds the next ingredient into the mix, that of the other girls in the room. Skyla and the others. They’ve obviously clustered around Sierra immediately on seeing Sierra as the new number one. They’ll feed her power. They will sycophant over everything she says. They’ll laugh when she jokes and test the boundaries with how far their own power extends. That just happened not a few seconds ago. Skyla was testing. She was seeing if Sierra would accept her passive insults to Lilly. Lenski’s words come to mind, number one, number two, number three. Who will be the next number two? The
power vacuum extends beyond Sierra. Every child carrying a gun will now be jockeying for position, and there’s less of them now too. Over half were either killed or injured enough to take them out of the running. What does that mean? More competition? Less competition? Crew chiefs trying to exert control over their youths who are intent on becoming crew chiefs? How did these kids get this way? How did society fail them so much that as soon as the imposed law and order was taken away they evolved so quickly into being like this?
Lilly’s awareness of the way Zayden watches her and responds is acute. If a boy was the new number one she might stand a much better chance at guiding him, manipulating him. That’s what it is. Manipulation. Cold and disgusting but necessary. You do what it takes to protect your own.
She looks round as though assessing the damage and spots Liam keeping watch with a few other youths at the broken wall to the old armoury. At the back she sees another cluster hanging about the stores where the ammunition and weapons are kept. Another group down by the gate, milling about talking, drinking cans of coke, eating crisps and smoking cigarettes. There must be another group outside on the narrow shore. Liam has only four with him. Three at the back guarding the ammunition. Four inside the gate. Maybe four or five on the shore. Zayden and his two younger boys. A few more dotted about the fort. Sierra and four girls in the police offices. Thirty at the most. She glances over to the stacked corpses dumped outside the hospital. Most of the civilians were at the far side of the fort and only a few got hurt from the explosions. The youths were all close and too slow to duck, run or take cover. So many of them were killed or seriously wounded.
Thirty then. Thirty armed kids now running the fort all under the control of Sierra. The adult survivors outnumber them vastly. They could take back control. No, these children have automatic weapons. They’d slaughter the survivors without blinking then laugh about it after. Lilly has seen the rate of fire from automatic weapons, their power and the ease of pulling a trigger to take someone’s life.
A new emotion joins the many already running through her heart as shock and guilt kick in. Shock that she’s even contemplating a course of action that will result in further loss of life. The guilt she feels is misplaced and mistaken for the initial belief that she is merely trying to take control and power to have it for herself but her intelligence soon dismisses and works that one through. The control wouldn’t be for her. It would be to protect Billy and the other children.
Thirty.
Zayden slips quietly next to her. His own face morphing as he tries to work out what just happened. He fancies Lilly but Skyla and the other girls were rude to her and he wanted to say something in the room and defend Lilly but he didn’t know what to say, and anyway, Sierra scares him. He wants to say something now, an observation on the behaviour and manner of his friends so she’ll think he’s nice but he lacks the education, emotional maturity and intelligence to translate those thoughts into words and it quickly becomes too confusing and too difficult. Instead he looks at Lilly. Uncaring and unbothered to the fact that she can feel the intensity of his gaze. The way he looks at her skin that is so smooth and unmarked, which is so different to the other girls he knows who have acne, pock-marks and scars. Her blue eyes too. Some of the other girls have blue eyes but Lilly’s are different. They’re expressive but Zayden doesn’t know what expressive means, just that Lilly looks different.
His eyes drop to her chest. Lingering again on the swell of her breasts, the narrowness of her waist, the gentle curve of her arse. Sixteen years old and his prick stiffens in response to the view his eyes take in.
‘Got a room,’ he grunts.
‘Pardon?’ Lilly flinches, absorbed in her own thoughts.
‘I got’s my own room now, you get me.’
She pauses, hiding her revulsion at the lust in his face, ‘I see, well…I am sure you will be glad of the privacy after…’
‘Wanna see it?’
‘Your room? Well yes of course I do but you know, I’m looking at this terrible mess right now, Zayden and thinking where the best place to start is. May I ask? How do we dispose of the bodies of the dead children? I mean, some of them must be your friends? Is that right?’
A mean but necessary manipulation to deflect his attention but it works and his expression transforms as he flicks his eyes over to the corpses nearby.
‘Yeah,’ he twitches, again unable to voice his feelings, ‘s’fucked up.’
‘Then we should prioritise the disposal of the deceased. Do you think so?’
He doesn’t know what prioritise means but he thinks she means they should get rid of his dead mates first. He nods, trying to look like he understands.
‘This must be very sad for you,’ she says softly, showing pity on the outside while feeling something else altogether on the inside. A hardening. A revulsion for all that he is. A wish to be away from him and his kind. A desire to repel him and get him as far away as possible. She saw the bulge in his trousers when he turned to look at the bodies and knows exactly what he is thinking. The reaction is so strong and for that briefest of seconds she wishes she had the skills of Dave or Mr Howie. She’s not the only young woman in the fort. There are plenty of teenage girls hiding down amongst the survivors. Girls in their early twenties too. Full breasted women that will soon get the eyes of the boys carrying guns and the cackling of the girls in the police office.
The Lord of the Flies and the primeval desire for power with youths driven by chemicals pumping through their immature bodies forcing them to grow into men and women. Testosterone. Oestrogen. Raging hormones that swing moods from buoyant and wild abandon to downright evil with an utter disregard for the needs of anyone else. Too immature to grasp the concept of having half their own group killed but mature enough to have erections and sexual desires.
‘We must stay busy,’ Lilly mutters, voicing her thoughts. ‘I mean, we should make a start and…and…’
‘See my room later then yeah?’ Zayden asks, giving warning of a dogged determination.
‘I er…I think…er yes, yes that would be lovely.’
Nick. You have to come back. You must come back. Please, come back.
Seven
‘Look at him,’ Sam mutters, stepping closer to Pea, ‘He’s like a dog on heat. How old is she?’
‘Fifteen,’ Pea says.
‘Where do you want us?’ A woman asks making both of them turn round.
‘Hi,’ Pea says, ‘you’ve had a drink?’
The woman nods as she casts a worried look to the two armed boys standing nearby, ‘Any food?’ She asks, dropping her voice for fear of being heard. ‘My lot are starving.’
Sam looks past the woman to her group standing a few feet back. Young children clinging to grandparents already frail and weak but doing their best to show resilience and a stiff upper lip.
‘Not yet,’ Sam says sadly.
‘Okay,’ the woman says dully, ‘Where do you want us? Someone said you’re organising the work parties?’
‘Er yes,’ Pea says, exchanging a glance with Sam, ‘you’ve got young children?’
‘Three.’
‘Can you start with the tents please?’ Pea asks. ‘We’ve got bodies to clear but…’
‘But we’ll ask people that don’t have children,’ Sam finishes her sentence, sensing Pea struggling to say the words.
‘Children?’ The woman asks, showing confusion.
‘The bodies,’ Sam says. ‘They’re mostly kids.’
‘All kids,’ Pea adds, dropping her gaze.
‘Oh,’ the woman sighs heavy and long, ‘tents then,’ she says with an air of resignation, ‘where are we putting them?’
‘Gates?’ Sam asks, nudging Pea.
‘I think so, get them stacked ready to take away.’
The woman moves off with her head bowed and heavy legs that trudge back to her group. Everyone is the same. Heads down. Eyes averted. Conversations muted and whispered.
‘She needs to be careful,
’ Sam says.
‘Careful?’ Pea asks, staring after the woman, ‘Why? What’s she done?’
‘Not her brainache,’ Sam says with a tut knowing Pea won’t take offence, ‘Lilly.’
‘Oh, that boy.’
‘Yes that boy and he’s not a boy. He’s a walking erection with a gun.’
Pea can’t help but snort a dry laugh and glance that quizzical look that Sam knows so well.
‘Well,’ Sam says pointedly, ‘He bloody is. Trust me, I’ve got boys…I know what they’re bloody like.’ Her own words reach her ears as they come out. The reminder of her family, of her sons and husband. Of the life she had before this.
‘Sam,’ Pea says, whispering the word sadly.
‘Forget it,’ Sam says darkly, ‘We need to keep an eye on her,’ she drops her voice as Lilly approaches with the walking erection at her side.
‘Hey,’ Pea says, forcing a bright tone, ‘Everything okay?’
‘Fine,’ Lilly says, mimicking the same bright everything is fine tone but her eyes translate the message, everything is not fine. Everything just got more shit.
‘Great,’ Pea smiles at Lilly then at Zayden. ‘We’ve got a few work parties moving the tents.’
‘I can see,’ Lilly says, stopping to look round, ‘Lenski back yet?’
‘Not seen her,’ Sam says, making herself not glare at Zayden and fighting the urge not to twist his ear from his head for staring at women’s boobs that way. If ever a boy needed a spanking.
‘But er,’ Pea hesitates, ‘the bodies…nearly everyone here has children and we were trying to find someone who doesn’t have kids…you know…’
‘Yes, yes of course,’ Lilly replies heavily wishing Zayden would bugger off for a few minutes. Pea is right. It’s unfair to ask people with children to shift the dead bodies of other children. ‘I’ll do it,’ Lilly adds.
‘No you won’t,’ Sam says.
‘Miss?’
They look round to an old man waiting patiently with his quavering hand shielding the glare of the sun from his eyes. ‘The deceased?’
‘Deceased?’ Sam asks.
‘Over yonder, deceased children. You need ‘em moved?’