Eat Local

by King, Danny

  No further shots followed, just screaming and pleading. 18 couldn’t make out the words but he recognised the tone. It sounded the same in every language.

  As it happened Thomas was speaking English but in his anguish he’d slipped into her native dialect, a version of English not spoken since before the Armada had set sail. “… náwiht… hámsócn… álynian… mildheortnes… liss…”

  Henry was of a different time so the words meant nothing to him but like 18 he recognised the vernacular. “Please don’t kill me.” It didn’t make any difference. Thomas’s time had come. His sentence had been passed. Now it was time to carry it out.

  Angel and Chen had Thomas by the arms. The shot had knocked him into his chair and the Duke’s lieutenants kept him pinned him in place, defenceless and begging for mercy – just as Thomas’s young victims no doubt had.

  Henry looked around for an implement to finish the job but found only iron pokers, horse brasses, egg cartons, some forgotten dusty booze and a smattering of pictures of Granny Thatcher. Not too much to bother Thomas with, so Henry improvised and snapped a leg off of a nearby chair with his inhuman strength.

  “This isn’t right!” Boniface objected, confronting the Duke in one last attempt to save his underling.

  “Maybe not,” the Duke conceded, the stress of the decision etched across his face, “but it is official.” He pulled a parchment of paper from his pocket and handed it to Boniface. There it was in black & white (and some red), an official sanction of execution from the High Council in Budapest. Nothing could be done for Thomas once it had been signed. All the Coven could do was cut their own throats if they refused to comply. “Do it quick!” the Duke told Henry. “Finish this!”

  The chair leg hadn’t snapped well. It was practically blunt. But Angel and Chen couldn’t hold Thomas there while Henry went off to sharpen it. It would have to do. Thomas would have to suffer the agonies of a blunt death. There were no other choices.

  Thomas switched back to modern English for one last plea and appealed directly to his former friend. “Please Henry, don’t do it!”

  But Henry just gritted his teeth and told him, “Sorry Thomas, you did it to yourself,” before plunging the makeshift stake into his chest and through his racing heart.

  18 heard the scream from way up on the hill, almost as if it had been hollered into his ear. He’d never heard anything like it in his life. From either man nor beast.

  Each soldier in the Synod’s private army had been issued with a little silver crucifix instead of dogtags. The guys had thought of them as a joke and refused to wear them except for inspection. 18 now dug his from his tunic pocket and put it on.

  This joke was no longer funny.

  Once his life force had ceased it didn’t take long for Thomas’s body to crumble. A grey hue sapped the colour from his face, his hair fluttered to the ground and his clothes fell in on themselves. Within a few short minutes of the stake being plunged no trace of Thomas’s unnatural time on earth remained.

  Angel swept his vestiges into a bag while the Duke bowed his head and recited the Coven eulogy.

  “His journey done, his race now run, the thread that stitched his life unspun… go quietly into the wind our brother, and may your ashes find absolution.”

  “Amen,” echoed Henry somewhat inappropriately as he threw the dusty bundle that had once been his comrade into the Thatchers’ filthy cellar without so much as a backwards glance.

  Boniface seethed. He’d come here with a purpose only to discover that he’d not been the only one. Once again the Duke had won the day.

  He didn’t condone what Thomas had done. He’d violated Coven rules. There was no coming back from that. Boniface liked to talk about going it alone but he would’ve never really done it. Not really. It was just a negotiating position: something to force the Duke and the Council’s hand. Why hadn’t they let him intercede? He could’ve spoken to Thomas. Brought him back into the fold.

  Well Boniface wasn’t about to let this go. As he watched his treacherous cohorts right the furniture and straighten the tablecloth to continue with their pissy little meeting, he swore to himself that he would avenge his friend. It didn’t matter if he lived another 3000 years, he would hold them to account for what they had done.

  As it turned out, Boniface wouldn’t have quite so long to wait.

  *

  “Your mates a farmer then or something?” Sebastian asked, as their headlights finally reached the end of the bumpy dirt track to illuminate the Thatchers’ rusty sign above their rusty gate.

  “We’re just here for the night,” she told him, once more giving nothing away that she didn’t have to.

  The drive from the station had been much the same. Vanessa hadn’t even mentioned they’d be meeting anyone else until they’d turned off the main road and into the wilds. Sebastian wondered if he could find his way back to civilisation if he needed to and concluded he probably couldn’t. In fact he wasn’t even sure where the main road was any more. Left, right, left, right, down winding narrow tracks and through a bubbling ford. The trees crowded in from all sides to shut out the stars, making the night seem impenetrably black, at least until they reached the farm. Then the track opened up, the fields rolled out before him and the moon glistened from on high to douse the distant gothic farmhouse in an eerie silvery light.

  “This ain’t nothing kinky is it?” he asked warily.

  “Describe kinky,” Vanessa replied, less than reassuringly.

  “I’m not looking to cross the streams if you know what I mean.”

  Vanessa didn’t. She hadn’t grown up in an orphanage with few board games and no telly where one of the few available pastimes was seeing how many boys could piss into the same toilet at once, which invariably ended in extra washing for the orphanage.

  “I’m just saying, you know, that I like you,” Sebastian said, emphasising the “you” in the hope of swaying her into turning around and heading back to this mythical flashy hotel as promised.

  “I like you too Sebastian,” Vanessa replied, adding, “And I’m sure my friends will too.”

  “I just thought, when you asked me away for the weekend, that it would be just the two of us, you know?”

  “Aren’t you just the cutest when you’re being shy,” Vanessa giggled.

  “Slightly patronising, but okay,” Sebastian shrugged, scratching his head in absence of anything better to say.

  “We won’t stay for too long. Just a quick bite and then off to bed. I promise,” Vanessa said, for once being entirely honest with Sebastian.

  Sebastian felt partially reassured and conceded, “Okay, I can live with that.”

  Vanessa smiled intriguingly. “We’ll see.”

  Waiting for them as they pulled up in front of the farmhouse was Chen, still wearing his sunglasses but no longer sporting his shotgun. Sebastian felt Chen’s eyes on him as he climbed from the car despite not being able to see them. Chen didn’t smile but he looked like he might do at any minute. But at what, Sebastian wasn’t sure.

  “Hey Chen. So wonderful to see you again,” Vanessa said, smothering Chen in a warm embrace. Or at least as warm as they could manage between them. “Everybody here?” she asked.

  “Everybody was,” he replied codedly, telling her all she needed to know.

  “This is Sebastian,” Vanessa said, introducing her old and new friends to each other.

  “Hey Sebastian. Glad you could make it,” Chen said, giving Sebastian a sense that he knew about him already.

  “You took the words right out of my mouth, mate,” Sebastian half-heartedly replied.

  “You go inside. They’re all waiting. I’ll take care of this,” Chen said, jumping in the driver’s seat and valet parking Vanessa’s Jag around the back and out of sight of prying eyes.

  “Come on,” Vanessa said, leading Sebastian up the garden path – literally.

  “But he’s got my bag!” Sebastian objected. Vanessa disappeared through the front door wi
thout waiting for Sebastian. As much as he wanted to go back to the station, go back to London and go back to the pub, he was going nowhere without a lift and his train ticket and he knew it. “Fuck’s sake!” he muttered to himself, reluctantly following his date out of the freezer and into the frying pan.

  18 had seen the car arrive but not who’d got out. His vantage point was all wrong and view was trained on the rear of the property, as had been his approach through the woods. He contemplated moving but decided against it. He was happy where he was. If Colonel Bingham wanted someone to reconnoitre the front door he could go up and knock on the fucking thing himself. 18 was sitting tight tonight. He’d seen and had enough. It was time to do something different, be a carpet fitter or open a fish & chip shop, and tomorrow that was precisely what he was going to do.

  All he had to do was finish tonight’s shift and retire with honour.

  CHAPTER 7

  Sebastian stared around the room he now found himself in. It was just about as far away from the room he’d pictured himself standing in this weekend as it was possible to be. Dilapidated, dirty, dim and dusty, the place would’ve sent a shiver down Doris Stokes’s spine had she not been plying her trade from the other side these days.

  Six faces stared up at him, awaiting his verdict. Sebastian gave them all the once over and although he didn’t know their names just yet, he sized them up all the same. There was Vanessa – sweet Vanessa – whose face Sebastian had been hoping to get better acquainted with this weekend; Angel, a girl closer to his own age of undefined mixed race but clearly define beauty (would it be impolitic to part-exchange Vanessa for a crack at her tonight?); Henry,a beardy tree-hugger he suspected swung every way possible including a few ways he’d invented just for this evening; the Duke, a headmaster-a-like who looked like he was on the run from one of those Panorama paedo programmes; Alice, a sweet-looking white-haired old lady who looked like she’d sucked more Werther’s Originals than he’d had hot dinners; and finally, lurking in the shadows, the ginger whinger to end all ginger whingers, Boniface, a joyless blackhole of doom who glared at Sebastian in open-mouthed consternation as if he’d just walked dog shit into the house and had started tap-dancing across the room.

  “Hello everyone, I hope we’re not too late,” Vanessa said by way of a greeting.

  “Not at all. Your timing could not be better,” the Duke replied with a smile.

  Boniface was still staring at Sebastian. He hadn’t blinked in almost thirty seconds and it was making Sebastian’s eyes run just trying to keep pace with him.

  “I don’t fucking believe this,” was all he could finally say.

  “You know the rules, Peter, one out, one in,” the Duke declared, standing an upturned chair back onto its legs as he made his way across to greet their half-expected guest.

  “So nice to be consulted,” Boniface growled.

  “If there’s a problem, I can always piss off to the boozer,” Sebastian selflessly volunteered. Just say the word, he secretly prayed. He was just about ready to run all the way back to London Bridge.

  “Oh no no, not at all, er… ?” the Duke said, suddenly realising he didn’t know this young man’s name.

  Sebastian didn’t guess what the Duke’s “er” indicated so he just replied with one of his own. “Er…?”

  “Your name?” the Duke finally clarified.

  “What about it?” Sebastian asked in confusion.

  “This is Sebastian,” Vanessa introduced before adding ominously. “He’s the one I told you about.”

  “Fine name, Sebastian,” was the Duke’s considered verdict. Everything about Sebastian was to be judged tonight, even his name, which was something he’d had no control over. That had been left to the Policeman who’d driven him to the orphanage as a baby after he’d been found abandoned in a shopping centre toilet. The Policeman had always longed for a son of his own, so that he could call him after his Olympic hero, Sebastian Coe. As fate would have it, he and his wife were to only have daughters, all of them no doubt called Sally Gunnell.

  “Thanks. Always hated it myself,” Sebastian frowned, annoyed that despite having loads of Steves he could’ve chosen from (Steve Ovett, Cram, Redgrave & Backley etc) the copper had still named him fucking Sebastian.

  “What do your friends call you then?” the Duke asked in the hope of making him feel more at ease.

  Sebastian thought about that one and concluded, “Sebastian”.

  “Very telling,” was Boniface’s equally considered verdict.

  “I’m the Duke,” the Duke said, giving Sebastian a little aristocratic bow.

  “You’re a duke?” Sebastian replied, not quite understanding if that was his name or title.

  “He’s the Duke,” Boniface corrected, directing the little upstart to mind his place.

  “Why not? I’m game,” Sebastian shrugged, deciding not to question anything again. In and out, that’s all he wanted to do. Hello, goodbye, right we’re off.

  “Don’t mind him, he’s harmless,” Vanessa told Sebastian, which wasn’t entirely truth. “He is—”

  “Nothing to you!” Boniface snapped, turning away from Sebastian to give him the cold shoulder.

  Henry took a different approach and offered Sebastian a smile and his hand. “Hello, I’m Henry. So you’re the gypsy boy we’ve heard so much about?”

  Sebastian didn’t think of himself as a gypsy. He may have been by blood but his roots were firmly planted in the concrete jungles of Tower Hamlets. What did it matter who his parents were when they’d left him to the world with nothing more than a grubby blanket and a grubby plea for forgiveness scrawled upon the toilet paper all those years ago?

  But Sebastian conceded the point, albeit with one small caveat. “Romani,” he said.

  “I meant no offence,” Henry reassured him, then he gave him a little wink. “I hail from the East myself.”

  Sebastian accepted his hand and almost recoiled at how cold Henry’s clasp was. “Cor dear, yeah, Siberia was it?” he said, snatching his hand back only to have it yanked from him once again but Angel and then Alice in quick succession, each of them warding fingers of ice. Sebastian finally got it. This must’ve been some sort of bad circulation club or ice holding society. There was no other possible explanation.

  “Get some gloves you lot,” he advised as they drifted back to their seats and retook their places at the table.

  “Shall we begin?” the Duke suggested, glancing between Sebastian and the final vacant chair to prompt him to join them.

  Sebastian dithered for a moment, wondering what they were about to start and concluding he didn’t want to know. Why did they need him? He didn’t know anyone here. Couldn’t they just get on and play strip poker or whatever it was they had in mind without him? There were already more blokes than birds anyway and he had no desire to see Alice drop her knitting anytime tonight.

  “Come,” Vanessa urged him, pulling him to the table with her eyes.

  Sebastian knew there was no way around it, he had to hear them out, so he took a seat and had barely rested a buttock when the room tumbled sideways and he found himself on the floor looking up.

  The underside of the table was even filthier than the rest of the room. Bits of old food and indiscernible nastiness festered down here to give it a slightly repellent subterranean vibe. Sebastian jumped to his feet as quickly as he could and looked around for the cause of his tumble.

  “What the fuck! One of the leg’s been snapped off,” Sebastian said, turning the three-legged chair he’d been invited to take upside down and doing a quick count. The fourth had been buried into the heart of the last person to sit in that chair but it been forgotten in the heat of the moment and Henry reprimanded himself for the oversight.

  “Here, have mine,” he offered in an effort to make amends.

  “No, take mine,” Angel echoed, wanting to laugh but knowing she ought not to.

  “Oh no, you’re alright. Don’t worry about it,” Sebastian said,
tossing his chair aside and wondering his he’d found himself a loophole out of the forthcoming debate.

  “Take it Sebastian,” Vanessa told him.

  “No no seriously, I’ll wait in the car,” he volunteered, already heading towards the door.

  “SIT DOWN!” the Duke commanded before softening his approach with a “please.”

  Once again, Sebastian took a deep breath and joined these oddballs at the table, having first double-checked his next chair had a full complement of legs in case it turned out this was some sort of running joke.

  “We have a proposal for you,” the Duke told him solemnly.

  “I thought you might,” Sebastian said, bracing himself for the worst.

  “We are eight in number,” the Duke began.

  “We have always been eight,” Angel said from the other side of the table.

  “Since before the times of Upir,” Alice chipped in.

  “The Council decrees it,” Henry said.

  “Do they?” Sebastian said. “Yeah my council’s a bit like that. Drives me mad, bleeding jobsworths hey. Mind if I smoke?” He pulled a cigarette from the packet in his pocket and lit it without waiting for permission. Not only did he need it, he also figured they might asked him to smoke it outside, giving him the perfect opportunity to sit this initiation shit out and slip off to the pub. The Station Master might not have thought there were any boozers around here but Sebastian was confident he could find one with enough of a head start.

  “But this night, Sebastian, we are seven,” the Duke declared.

  “There is a space,” Angel said.

  “If not a chair, hey? Hey?” Sebastian guffawed, looking around for laughs but finding only stony faces. “Fucking nora!”

  “Sebastian, please, this is important. Just listen to what the Duke has to say,” Vanessa implored him.

  The temperature in the room plunged a couple of degrees despite the filthy black AGA smoking away in the fireplace. Nobody said anything for a moment except the grandfather clock to Sebastian’s right. It chimed with a dull brassy clunk to let Sebastian know it was ten o’clock. The night was passing swiftly but this moment seemed to linger on forever.