A naked girl was cradling him in her lap.
Jesus.
The room reeked of shit; overpowering, like a faecal force field. The room was sprayed with splatter dots of blood. But the girl . . . the girl looked like something out of the boys’ collection of horror DVDs; her legs and belly and hands coated with the boy’s blood. The pallid skin of hers that wasn’t coated with blood was mottled with purples and browns, and her face . . . her jaw was a swollen grapefruit, one eye puffy and almost completely shut beneath a bulging eyelid that looked as full and glossy as a plum.
‘Fuck’s been going on here?’
Deejay shrugged. ‘Dizz-ee’s girl. He been working on her a while.’
Snoop stepped into the room and squatted down. A fucking mess. Dizz-ee was supposed to be in charge of the shed; the number two’s responsibility. The girls, some of them needed tempting a little, some of them needed a bit of gentle coercion; a little dope, just enough to set up an appetite, usually did the trick. But this . . . the stupid violent bastard looked like he’d been systematically beating the crap out of her.
‘Hey,’ he said to the girl.
She didn’t respond. He reached out, cupped her chin and lifted her face to get a better look at it. ‘What the fuck happened here?’
She stared silently at him.
‘They fight over you? That it?’
Her eyes locked on his. It could have been a defiant glare, it could have been that her mind was off elsewhere.
He turned to Deejay. ‘Are there any other girls this fucked up?’
‘No, Snoop. They all upstairs.’
It looked like this sorry thing had been a personal project.
‘Go get her some clothes from one of the other rooms, and then take her out to the infirmary. She’s all done here.’
Deejay disappeared.
He turned to look at her. ‘This ain’t right. The shit down here works on privileges,’ he said, studying the bruising on her face. Some of it looked a week or two old, some of it looked today-fresh. ‘That’s the fucking system. Not . . . not this.’
He could’ve sworn there was a faint flicker of reaction in her one good eye.
Deejay was back with a fistful of clothes.
‘Okay, clean her up, Deej, and dress her and get her out.’
He stood up and stepped back out of the room into the narrow hallway, relieved to breathe air less pungent. Now he had to figure out the mess with the dead boy. Like Maxwell said, if they were planning to approach those rigs as friendlies, they needed Nathan and Jacob to vouch for them.
Well one of them was fucking well dead, courtesy of that stupid asshole, Dizz-ee.
Great.
Chapter 60
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
Nathan stirred on his cot feeling like his head had been wedged in a metal worker’s vice overnight and something in his stomach was churning and flopping like a landed trout. Once upon a time, when he was eight, he’d gotten drunk slurping the slops out of glasses at a family wedding. He’d spent the night perched over a toilet bowl and the next day thinking he was going to die, his mum scolding him way too loudly, wagging a finger in his face; no sympathy whatsoever.
He’d felt very much then like he felt now.
He opened his eyes and saw the camouflage netting above him. It was a bright sunny morning outside, he could tell from the filtered light coming through the far-off canvas lid of their world.
The place was quieter than normal. Nothing more than the faint sounds of the workers outside the arena - the odd raised voice, the clatter of things being wheeled on trolleys, carried by the odd echoing acoustics of the dome.
With an unbelievable amount of effort he turned on his side to look out of the netting down at the stage below. By day, not a particularly impressive sight. Nothing more than a mess of black cabinets and a rats’ nest of snaking power cables. In amongst them he noticed a couple of the boys sprawled amongst the arcade cabinets, curled up like pale foetuses. Clearly far too hammered from last night to find a way back to their cots.
‘Oh, man,’ groaned Nathan.
He eased himself onto his back again, gazing through bleary eyes at the silhouetted pattern of webbing against the bland brightness beyond. He remembered the first couple of hours of the evening; supper, then the whole stage powering up spectacularly. Playing the games, both he and Jacob running from one cabinet to the next like children in an adventure playground.
Then the booze and the dope clouded things a bit.
He remembered the pair of them separating. To be honest, he was finding Jacob a bit clingy, uncomfortable with all the attention and preferring to shy away and stay on the periphery. Whereas Nathan wanted so badly to party, to make up for too many lost teenage years. To have a complete blast. He wanted to chat to the girls, to enjoy the celebrity-like status of being the new-lad-in-the-hood, being the centre of attention.
It was a sad fact but Jacob was turning out to be a bit of a drag. Here they were, having found something that was, in all honesty, even better than Nathan could have hoped for, but instead of enjoying it, Jacob seemed to be hiding away from it. Withdrawing, not mixing and talking with the other boys. And shit . . . the boys, even though they were mostly younger, they were a laugh. It reminded him of the camaraderie he, Jay, and the other younger boys had enjoyed back home. Only it was even better; the booze . . . the smokes.
Oh, God, the music. It was a thousand miles away from singing along to an out-of-tune acoustic guitar; singing ‘kumbaya’ with the other children on the rigs - the height of an evening’s entertainment.
Nathan didn’t get it. Didn’t understand what the hell was up with Jacob. The boys here may be a year or two younger than them but they had all the same interests . . . games and stuff. Shit, some of them even had Yu-Gi-Oh decks that Jacob could have traded with. And them being that little bit older and having come from some other place, the boys sort of looked up to them as wise and worldly travellers.
Like celebrities.
He just didn’t get it. The pair of them were praetorians now. The elite. Getting every perk available. It just didn’t get any better than that. And if what Snoop had been telling him earlier last night was true, that he was thinking of making them both his second-in-commands, then for fuck’s sake what the hell did Jake have to sulk about?
Nathan wanted to shake Jacob by the shoulders and tell him to snap out of whatever had got into him. After wishing for something like this for so long, he wanted to remind his oldest friend that this was it.
And not to bloody well go and ruin it.
Sinking back into a head-pounding half sleep, he resolved to pull Jacob aside today, somewhere quiet, and warn him that if he kept this sulking up the other boys were going to notice it, maybe even start playing on it. And before long they’d be taking the piss out of him. There was no way Snoop could afford to let Jacob continue being a second-in-command if, behind his back, the rank and file were all razzing him.
‘He’s what?’
‘Dead.’
Maxwell stared at Snoop. ‘Dead?’ His tone of voice demanded further explanation. Immediately.
‘It looks like they had a fight, Chief. Had a fight over one of the girls. There was a new girl Dizz-ee was breaking in.’
‘New girl?’
‘I didn’t recognise her, but then she was beat up quite bad. I suppose the white kid, Jacob, took a liking to her and Dizz got jealous.’
Maxwell shook his head angrily. ‘You were meant to look after the pair of them.’
Snoop shuffled uncomfortably. ‘I was. I was taking care of Nathan and . . .’
‘And what? You decided to put that stupid moron Dizz-ee in charge of Jacob?’
Snoop could only nod.
‘What the fuck were you thinking?’
He could have been honest; could have told Maxwell that he was up for a laugh last night and that Nathan seemed a whole lot more the party type than Jacob
did. So, he delegated the boring one of the two to that fuckhead, Dizz-ee. But the old man would probably throw a hissy fit if he did.
Instead he lowered his gaze to the floor. ‘Okay, I messed up.’
‘Jesus Christ, not fucking half! Of the two of them,’ said Maxwell softening his voice. ‘Of the two of them, Jacob Sutherland was the one who could have given us the most leverage.’
‘I know that, Chief,’ Snoop mumbled.
Alan Maxwell ground his teeth with irritation. ‘Well, it’s done now. No point crying over spilled milk. Here’s what you’re going to have to do. Tell the other lad . . . Nathan . . . tell him that Dizz-ee got a little too out of his head and for some reason took a disliking to his friend. I’m sure you can come up with some plausible reason. Maybe he found out somehow that I wanted to make these two new lads second-in-commands and he didn’t like the idea.’
Snoop nodded.
‘You tell Nathan you found out what happened. In your anger you went down there and killed that moron, Dizz-ee. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hopefully Nathan will be grateful to you for that.’
Snoop nodded.
‘Help yourself to a joint and a bottle of booze. You go and bond with him, commiserate with him, get pissed together and tell him you’re really cut up about what happened. Tell him he’s in our family now and we look after each other. Got it?’
‘A’ight, Chief.’
‘Now, what about the girl?’
‘The girl?’
‘Yes, the one they were fighting over.’
‘Oh, yeah. She was worked over pretty bad. Dizz-ee was breaking her in personal. Not a pretty sight.’
‘Could she tell a different story?’
Snoop could see what Maxwell was thinking; kick her out of the dome, or silence her.
‘No, she was all beat up and stoned on some of our shit. Don’t think she knows what planet she’s on any more.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Out of the cattle shed now. I put her back with the workers.’
‘Okay.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Okay, that’s that little crisis sorted then.’ He turned to Snoop. ‘You go keep Nathan on our side, all right? You and him are going to be like blood brothers from now on. And you’re going to assure him that when we leave in a few days’ time, it’s a fucking peace envoy; a meeting of minds . . . a pooling of resources.’
‘Okay.’
‘You charm the fuck out of him, Edward. Because if he’s not onside, then we may have to fight our way on. Do you understand?’
‘Sure.’
‘And I’d rather not have to. If there’s a load of fuel-making going on there, we do not want to damage those rigs any more than is necessary to take them.’
Snoop bit down on his lip and balled his fists inside the pouch pocket of his hoodie.
‘I know.’
‘Right then, Edward, you know what you’ve got to do.’ Maxwell dismissed him with an angry waft of his hand. Snoop turned to go, then stopped.
‘Chief?’
‘What now?’
‘We still going soon?’
Maxwell looked up from a pad of paper on which he was scribbling. ‘Yes, of course. The sooner the better. I’m going to assemble the boys this evening.’
‘What you goin’ to tell ’em?’
‘New beginning, Edward. A new home with enough electricity that every night they can watch their DVDs, play their games.’ Maxwell smirked. ‘Think they’ll like the sound of that?’
Snoop nodded. He was certain the boys would love the sound of that. That was pretty much the level their minds operated on. ‘Sure.’
‘Right, well piss off and do what you’ve got to do.’
Snoop nodded and headed back towards the small north entrance. Maxwell watched him go before turning back to his pad and the list of supplies they needed to stow aboard those barges before they were ready to go.
The sooner we leave, the better.
The storage floor beneath the stadium might still contain enough stores of food to pad out their daily broth for another year, but it was the dwindling supply of twenty-litre jerrycans of diesel that concerned him. They went through two of those each time the boys had their party night. Maxwell had already experimented with reducing the nights to once every month, but the boys had begun to play up, taking their frustrations, their boredom, out on the workers. Instead, over the last few months, Maxwell had been starting up only one of the R16Cs instead of the normal two. It had meant losing some of the floodlights outside the arena, it had meant disabling some of the lighting system, it had meant pulling the plug on some of the least used arcade booths, but the boys, so far, hadn’t noticed. Most of them were usually too pissed and too stoned to care.
His recurring nightmare, the one that woke him at least every other night in a cold sweat, was the one where he was standing on the stage in the middle of the boys and saying ‘Sorry, lads, I’m afraid that’s it. There’s no more booze left, no more drugs, no more power for the arcade machines.’
Every time he had that nightmare it ended, for some reason, with him being tied to a hastily cobbled together crucifix and paraded along the boulevard outside the central arena, carried through the workers, screaming and spitting at him before being taken out of the dome and planted amidst a pyre of firewood. Why his nightmare took on a bizarre medieval theme he couldn’t figure out; why young Edward Tindall seemed to be dressed like a member of the Inquisition, why the boys all looked like monks, baying for his blood as he squirmed on the cross and his skin bubbled and blistered in the flames . . . it really didn’t matter. It scared the crap out of him.
The sooner they were settled in on that gas rig and up and running again, the better.
Maxwell sucked in a deep breath to settle his nerves. If those little thugs knew how much they actually frightened him . . .
Chapter 61
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
She opened her eyes at the sound of the voice. Soft and friendly. A man’s voice. She saw a lean face half lost behind a dark beard.
‘They made a mess of you, didn’t they?’
She said nothing; her mouth was dry and sticky.
‘Here,’ he said, gently sliding a hand under her head and holding a plastic beaker to her lips. She sipped a mouthful and swallowed.
‘They brought you in early this morning. You’ve come from the cattle shed, haven’t you?’
She wasn’t entirely sure where she’d come from. Just a room, somewhere. A room without a window.
‘When they started up their brothel, there were quite a few girls ended up like you. Girls who weren’t ready to play.’ He studied her face a moment. ‘They really went to town on you, didn’t they?’
She sipped some more water.
‘I’m Adam, by the way. Adam Brooks.’
Her lips were still too sore to try saying much, but she managed to croak her name.
‘Fiona or Leona?’
She nodded at the second name.
His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re the girl that arrived at the gate several weeks ago, aren’t you?’ He seemed certain of that. ‘Yeah, that’s you. That little thug Dizz-ee let you in.’
She nodded. ‘Dizz-ee . . . thash him.’ Her top lip felt like a bloated slug lying across her teeth - slothful and heavy.
‘He’s a nasty piece of work, that boy.’
She could have told the man that the nasty piece of work was dead, but quite honestly it was too much work for her sore face, and there were a roomful of raw memories that would come with that effort.
Adam let her head gently back against the pillow. ‘You rest. I’ll go and get the duty nurse - there may still be some ibuprofen lying around.’ She closed her eyes and remembered nothing else.
A couple of days later she felt recovered enough to make her way to the soup kitchen and join the sombre queue of workers waiting in line to be served. She was given a bowl filled with a w
atery and tasteless mush of cabbage and onions. She thought she spotted several baked beans floating in amongst the muddy liquid and a small sliver of something grey that might possibly have been meat.
Tasteless, but all the same she spooned it in automatically after she’d found an empty table on the edge of the seating area.
‘Mind if I join you?’
She looked up and recognised the man she’d spoken to. Adam.
She nodded at him.
‘How are you feeling, Leona?’
She shrugged. She felt nothing. Empty; just a human frame going through the necessary rotations of life: eating, shitting, sleeping.
‘You’re up already, though. That’s good.’
There was something else, though. Something that was keeping her going. ‘It’s ’cause I want . . .’ she held a hand to her jaw, feeling a painful twinge. One of her back teeth had been split when that bastard had backhanded her. The hot soup had found a way down to the tender root. ‘I want to go . . . home.’
Adam looked up at her. ‘Home?’ He sat down at the table. ‘Do you mind if I ask where the hell you came from? Because as far as I’ve seen, there’s no one out there. No one, that is, apart from wild people in rags.’
She continued eating in silence, carefully spooning the hot broth into the side of her mouth less battered and bruised. ‘A community,’ she replied eventually.
‘We patrolled all the way down the Thames estuary on a barge. All the way down to Canvey Island. That was a few years ago.’ He shot a glance at a couple of boys standing watch over the queue, wearing their orange vests. ‘Before Maxwell’s coup. Never saw anything that came close to being called a community. We even took one of the trucks and half the platoon through London and out into the Sussex countryside. I suppose we were hoping to see something - woodsmoke, a tilled field, a horse and cart. You know? Something. Some eco-village, some government enclave still holding out. Somebody we could join with and leave this place behind. Not that I told Maxwell that’s what we were hoping to do. But the lads and I found absolutely nothing.’ He shook his head. ‘Just fucking wilderness.’