Chapter 6: Joshua (6312)
By the time December
rolled around, Johnny Frost was back at his flat. His money had run
out again and he was working at a hotel in Langwood called The Fechy.
It had once been a decent enough hotel that had catered to summer
tourists, but it was now used as a place to dump displaced people and
refugees while they were found better places to live. There was no
luxury here, but the beds were clean, and the food was edible, a far
sight better than anything down on the Delta. It was not far from
Johnny’s flat, so he usually walked to work. His job was to sweep
and mop the floors, move deliveries down to the stock room, and help
serve the meals. He stole as much food and toilet paper as he thought
he could get away with.
As the year ended,
Evermarch had a quietude about it, a familiar feeling to everyone
that had been in the city at this time the year before. Six months
after the reditus there had been a period of fear and
confusion that had led to months of rioting and killings. Nobody
wanted a Christmas like last year, with everyone huddling indoors as
the police and the muta roamed the streets trying to restore
order and the Splinter Viruses ravaged the hospitals and care homes.
The city waited, quiet
but tense, waiting to see what was going to happen. The world had
changed, but now there was a new normal. Things had been calm since
the summer, it was safe to walk the streets again and people were
returning to what was left of their old lives. Johnny spent his time
between the college, his flat and the hotel.
He was the only one
left in his second-story four-bedroom flat. The other students that
had once lived there had not returned to their studies this term and
Johnny imagined that two of them were probably dead of drug overdoses
somewhere and the other more sensible one had gone home to his
parents. He was now the only one living there, and he found this
greatly to his liking. He had cleaned the kitchen, the living room,
and the bathroom, and aired all the upstairs bedrooms. There had been
a cat once, but it seemed to have gone as well, so he had thrown out
the foul litter tray that had stunk out the kitchen as well. If he
could ever persuade Stiffy to come this far into Evermarch it was now
a dwelling fit to take girls back to, if nothing else.
Paying the rent wasn’t
a problem as the landlady had not been to collect it since the
reditus. God only knew where she was now. He could just about
live off food stolen from the hotel and the antiquated telephone
landline was free. His only expense related to the flat was the
ever-hungry electricity meter. When he ran out of money, he had to
switch off the heating upstairs and sit in the dark by the fireplace
in the living room until pay day. He regularly thanked God for the
fireplaces as it meant that whatever the weather, he could always at
least keep one room warm. He burnt anything he could find that was
flammable and he gathered fallen wood from a nearby park. He was far
from the only person that went there for that purpose.
As it sleeted
outside, Johnny sipped at a cup of tea and looked out of his window,
down to the narrow street below. Across the way was a small yard with
its gate kicked in where couples would occasionally have sex and
there was a kebab shop below him that occasionally opened, but that
was mostly closed. The flat opposite had hung up Christmas
decorations. Johnny was surprised at that. There had been a lot of
confusion last year about whether people should have been celebrating
the birth of Christ or not, considering that God was here now. There
had been a lot of talk about it being a date that was essentially
meaningless, a hangover from pagan deities and all that. The muta
had tried to stop it and had succeeded, but largely because most
people were more concerned about where their next meal was coming
from that buying presents and hanging up stockings. Johnny himself
had had beans on toast for Christmas dinner last year. He knew that
the flat across from him had children in it and he assumed that the
family had decided to risk it. Maybe there had been a leaflet that
had gone round saying it was OK that he had missed.
With a sigh, he
returned to his chair and turned on the TV. He had no shifts today;
he had the whole day to himself. It was perfectly acceptable to go
about Evermarch at any time of day or night now, but he preferred to
stay in the flat, watching DVDs, reading books, playing computer
games, or having long conversations with Stiffy on the phone. He
tried to call his family a couple of times a week, but the service
was patchy out west of the city and he could not always get through.
In theory the recently created Evermarch Intranet was available for
his education and entertainment, but like most people he had heard
the stories of the muta monitoring it and kept his PC
resolutely offline. Johnny had been raised in the world of mobile
phones and global communication and as a result the world that he now
lived in felt claustrophobic. With communication beyond about thirty
miles all but impossible because of the Transition Zones and
piss-poor infrastructure beyond the city, like everyone else in
Evermarch he was experiencing only fragments of his former life.
He finished his tea
and sat down on the sofa. He then reached for a stack of DVDs and
started sorting through them. One of his flat mates had left behind a
large collection and Johnny had been working his way through them.
With a film selected he pulled a blanket over his legs and settled in
for the afternoon. He glanced over at the phone. He’d not heard
from Joe in days now and felt he was overdue for a summons. Meet
me at Adam’s, pick me up at Ellie’s or whatever and
Johnny would have to get dressed and go out in the ice-cold rain to
drive around until he found Joe and took him to whatever shady
rendezvous he had to keep. Johnny did not drink, smoke or take drugs
when he was by himself or with Stiffy, but he enjoyed visiting that
world, he was an art student after all, and he certainly partook when
in the company of his peers. Driving Joe around his dealers was not
much fun in any weather though, and no fun at all without Ellie or
Wasp along for the ride. Joe’s company was best when diluted.
There was a pile of art
materials in the living room, but he planned to move it upstairs. He
didn’t think Rab would ever come back to the flat so he could use
his room as a studio. The college had only opened for two weeks
before it had been closed down again due to an outbreak of Blue
Tongue. The students had been sent home with enough supplies to last
them until Christmas, the idea being that they had until the start of
next term to finish all their course work. Johnny hadn’t even made
a start yet; he was more tempted to use all the sketchbooks and paper
pads he’d been given as firelighters.
With no enthusiasm for
work, he watched films instead and after watching three back-to-back
and now that it was too dark to watch out the window, he called up
his girlfriend.
‘Yeah, the College is
closed down again, another outbreak,’ he explained. ‘So, I’m
finishing off my final submissions at home.’
‘Do you think you’ll
get it all done?’ she asked.
‘Yeah yeah,’ he
replied. ‘Without Rab or Chris here, there are no distractions.’
‘Oh yeah!’ she
said. ‘Your all alone, I forgot. Don’t let Joe find out or he’ll
want to move in!’
‘God aye, I’ve not
told any of them. Joe would have his bags packed and calling me for a
lift over in a heartbeat.’
‘Is he still living
at Mr Tucker’s place?’
‘As far as I know,’
replied Johnny, stretching out on the sofa.
Stephanie laughed. ‘Do
you think he…?’
‘With Joe anything is
possible,’ he interrupted. ‘To be honest I don’t know, and I
don’t want to know. Tucker is an old man that lives alone and
smells of patchouli oil. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility
that Joe is a rent boy as well as everything else.’
Stephanie giggled.
‘Hey Stiffy old girl,
when do you want to meet up next?’
Johnny liked Stiffy a
lot. They had been going out now for nearly two years. When they had
first met, she had been clingy and needy. He knew that his friends
saw her as plain and on the plump side and that combined with her
constant need for attention and reassurance had meant that just prior
to the time of the reditus he had been considering breaking up
with her. But then the world had changed and having someone to cling
onto had seemed like a pretty good deal. Johnny was twenty and Stiffy
was eighteen. When they had started going out, she had been a
rosy-cheeked sixteen-year-old. Their relationship centred around
arranging times and places to meet for sex, and while Johnny
suspected he still meant more to her than she did to him, he never
felt the urge to talk about his feelings or plan for their future and
for whatever reason, neither did she.
‘We can’t do it
here,’ she said. ‘Mum and Enya are still here. They are feeling
better, but they are just loafing around watching TV. They’d watch
us like hawks if you showed up.’
Johnny was silent while
he thought about meeting places. He knew that Stiffy hated coming
into Evermarch and it had been long established no matter how strong
the desire and the requirements of a secluded place for a liaison,
this would never involved her coming north of the river.
‘How about Bluevale?’
he asked.
‘Are you kidding?’
she said with a gasp. ‘That’s haunted!’
Johnny sighed. ‘It’s
the nearest place to both of us on the Zone line though. What about
Fowker Tower? I know people there.’
‘Oh, aye, well, OK
then,’ said Stephanie.
Johnny laughed. ‘I
don’t get you! You think Bluevale is haunted because it sprung out
of the ground, but you are happy with Fowker? You know its two
buildings merged into one now? How is that not more spookier?’
‘It just is,’ said
Stephanie. ‘They say angels live in Bluevale.’
‘And that’s bad?’
‘I dinnae ken do I?
That’s what they say. Better just to leave them, honestly Johnny.’
And so, they
arranged to meet up at Fowker, a building that was the warped
combination of the Gilbert Scott Building of Glasgow and the
Fourmerkland Tower of Dumfries, cities that no longer existed. It was
situated right on the Transition Zone-line and had been a refuge of
sorts for persecuted people during last year’s pogroms. Now it was
a commune of a hundred or so free-thinking types and every teenager
in Evermarch had heard of it. It was a common meeting place for young
clansmen and women from Evermarch and the Delta Projects.
With the
arrangements made, Johnny picked up Stephanie the next day at the end
of her road, not wanting to take his car (the old behemoth Beryl)
down one of the narrow Project lanes, and then they drove out to
Fowker. It was only a mile or so back towards the city and sat in the
middle of the Zone. Where the Zone started and ended was not easily
defined, but it was no broader than one hundred metres. To the south
the hot humid air of the Delta met the cold winter chill of the
Evermarch climate to the north. In the middle there was always a
steady breeze, but to the bafflement of local meteorologists there
was no hurricane force winds rushing from the north to displace the
warm air of the south.
There were no
checkpoints on the way, only a single police car that sat at the side
of the road watching the traffic. As they entered the Zone, Johnny
popped his ears and wound up the driver’s side window against the
wind. A dirt track ducked down off the road and into the trees which
then took them along a hundred yards or so to a field that was used
as Fowker’s car-park. There were a dozen vehicles here, five of
which never moved and two of which were being lived in.
The air temperature at
Fowker was cool and Stephanie reached over to the back seat to get
her coat. Johnny looked up at the tower. In the fading afternoon
light, it looked like the result of an architect’s acid trip, two
buildings literally merged into one, spiralling and twisting, the
gothic sandstone balconies and turrets knitting together with the
older mortared red brick walls of Fourmerkland. Seeming to defy
gravity it reached up above the forest like the jutting horn of a
giant beast.
They got out of the car
and after letting their eyes wander the twisted stone of the tower,
they walked along one of the overgrown paths that lead around it.
There was music and chatter coming from the upper floors.
‘You don’t want to go in do you?’ asked Stephanie from inside
her thick goose-down jacket. She had grown used to the heat in the
Projects and felt the cold whenever she was out of the Delta.
‘Eh?’ said Johnny.
‘It’s fine, no one ever bothers you in there.’
‘It’s dirty and
full of junkies.’
‘It’s not that bad.
I thought you wanted to come here so we could… you know…’
Stephanie held him
tightly by the arm. ‘Not in there though.’
Johnny shrugged and
smiled. He wanted to go in and see what was going on. He knew a few
of the tower’s denizens and they were always interesting to talk
to, but he knew it wasn’t her scene, so they took a turn around the
weed-choked formal gardens and returned to the car.
He moved Beryl into the
trees and after they had done the business on the spacious back seat
they lay together under the blankets and fell asleep in each other’s
arms. It was dark when they woke up. As they dressed they chatted
about what to do for dinner.
‘McDonalds?’ asked
Johnny, trying to tempt her further into Evermarch.
‘Oh, we had one the
other night. Mum can’t be bothered cooking,’ replied Stephanie as
she tied her headscarf.
‘What then?’
‘Let’s just eat at
one of warungs on the Delta.’
Johnny was not a huge
fan of the Delta street-vendor food, but he had just had sex, so was
prepared to go along with whatever she wanted. The settled on getting
drive-through coffees from the nearest Evermarch McDonalds and going
back to the Delta to eat.
The police car they had
passed on the way up had gone when the returned to the Delta, but it
had been replaced by a checkpoint. Johnny felt his stomach tense up
as he slowed down. It was the muta, not one of the more
amiable police detachments. A group of half a dozen Committee
enforcers checking vehicles passing through the Zone.
They had not set up a
roadblock, but there were no other cars on the road so Beryl, the big
old Splinter that she was, was an irresistible target and he was
waved down with torches into a lay-by.
A light was shone in
his face, he grimaced and wound down the window. A stern looking
woman in a black headscarf addressed him. ‘Papers please.’
Johnny glanced at
Stiffy, who was cowering in the passenger seat, then said, ‘we
don’t have any. We came from the Delta this afternoon and you
weren’t here.’
‘Are you related?’
Johnny considered lying
but knew that wouldn’t fly. Stiffy had long red hair and was
covered in freckles while he was dark. They were very obviously not
related.
The woman moved to
shine her light onto the back seat. The beam lingered on the
crumpled-up blankets.
‘Have you been having
sex?’
‘No!’ Johnny lied.
‘We were up at McDonalds getting a coffee.’
‘Please get out of
the vehicle.’
Johnny sighed and got
out. One of the other muta opened the passenger door and
hauled Stiffy out by the arm. The lay-by was only lit by Beryl’s
headlamps and the torches of the Committee enforcers, but he could
see there were six of them, all female, dressed in black and carrying
bamboo canes.
‘Put her across the
bonnet,’ commanded the oldest one that had been doing all the
talking. Stiffy was completely silent as two of the other women held
her down across the front of the car, her head turned towards the
road in shame.
The commander walked
over to where Stiffy was spread out and raised her cane high above
her head. The swing never came down though as Johnny leapt between
them.
‘Oi!’ he yelled,
pulling the woman’s hand away. ‘No, you fucking don’t!’
One of the other women
went to strike him, but he batted her cane out of the way. She raised
it again, but he swiftly grabbed it, yanked it from her grasp and
then threw it off into the bushes.
The commander stepped
up and looked him in the eye. Johnny’s heart was racing, he wasn’t
strong, but the commander could see he was ready to take them all on.
‘Now then,’ she
said. ‘That’s enough.’
He sensed a hesitation
in her tone. He didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he
had a sudden chivalrous urge to protect Stiffy no matter what. While
the muta hesitated, he tried to pull the two holding her off.
‘Young man, just stop
now,’ said the commander as she pulled a paper pad out of her bag.
‘No more of this. We’ll write you up a ticket. Lucky for you we
are not in the Delta, or you’d be in much worse trouble.’
Johnny turned to look
at her. He sensed that she was offering him an out. Take the ticket
and walk away. It looked like they knew they had overstepped their
authority out here in the Zone. Either that or they had thought he
was a Project clansman and not a Evermarcher, who were altogether a
lot more bother.
‘Right,’ he said.
‘Give me the ticket then.’
Back out on the road,
with the adrenaline still coursing through his blood, Johnny ranted,
slapping the steering wheel in agitation.
‘Who do they think
they are?’ he almost yelled. ‘We’re clansmen, they can’t
treat us like that! Jumped up Delta muta. There are laws about
harassing people like that these days.’
He glanced at Stiffy,
then looked back at the road.
‘I mean, we had
trouble enough last year until the church stepped in. If those
wankers are back out in force, then something needs to be done! Get
the bloody army in again. I think... hey… hey…’
Johnny stopped ranting
when he saw that Stiffy was in tears, quietly sobbing to herself,
with her head turned towards the window.
‘Hey,’ he repeated.
‘Don’t worry about it. It was me they gave the ticket to, not
even me really, they issued the ticket to Beryl. They never took our
names, did they? It’ll be fine.’
He laughed. ‘Did you
see the look on their faces when I… Well anyway.’ He trailed off
when he remembered that Stiffy had been face down on the bonnet of
the car for most of the encounter.
Johnny spent the rest
of the short trip home talking gently about trivial things and by the
time they were at her road-end she was much calmer and reading the
ticket by the dashboard light.
‘You have fourteen
days to make a Sin Offering at the Temple. After that they come with
the canes.’
‘They can get tae
fuck,’ grumbled Johnny. ‘I’m packing up and going to mum and
dad’s.’
‘Can’t they still
get you out there?’
‘Maybe, but there is
no way I’m doing an Offering,’ he replied. ‘I’m not paying to
have any animals killed on my behalf. I’m a vegan for fuck’s
sake.’
‘You have to, or they
come after you,’ she insisted.
‘Maybe in the Delta,
but not out in the hills. I’m going to get all my gear together and
stay at my parents over Christmas. Want to come? They love you.’
‘I’ve got mum and
Enya…’
They both got out of
the car, then hugged and kissed in the light of a streetlamp.
‘Listen, I’ll call
you tonight,’ Johnny murmured, his chin resting on her shoulder.
‘Take care babe, it’ll be fine.’
When he got back in the
car, she leaned back in the window to kiss him again. ‘I love you,’
she said before turning and walking down the road.
Johnny sighed, wound up
his window and turned the car in the middle of the deserted road. He
was careful to take a different road back to Evermarch.
The next day, having
packed up most of his stuff into Beryl and locking up the flat,
Johnny headed west, following the old A74 up into the hills. The
western side of the Transition Zone lay much further out than its
southern edge that hugged the city. The village where his parents
lived was thirty miles away and the Zone was ten miles beyond that,
or so he was told. There were plenty of back-roads in this area and
he used these to avoid the checkpoints. He had lived his entire life
in these hills and had travelled these roads from his parent’s
village to the city every weekend. When the Splintering had
rearranged the entire planet, it had only managed to add a single
mile onto his commute. The villages he passed through mainly
consisted of old cottages that hugged the road, while newer houses
were built further back, with the newest on the furthest edges. It
was all still the same, nothing had been changed by the reditus
up here, and it showed. The people were largely untroubled by the
muta. This was the land of the Covenanters and there was a
racial memory of resistance against religious persecution. Many of
the villages still had monuments standing in honour of those that had
resisted the English kings and their religious policies.
As he drove passed one,
he read the inscription:
"Why seeks he,
with unwearied toil,
Through death's dim walls to urge his way,
Reclaim his long-arrested spoil,
And lead oblivion into
day."
Johnny pictured a group
of farmers reading it before turning and standing in the road with
loaded shotguns and thunderous scowls. Enough to see off any but the
most determined contingent of Committee enforcers, he was sure. The
muta were not welcome here and had learned to stay away.
With every mile he felt
the oppression of Evermarch lift off his shoulders. It was almost as
if, in the Lowland glens of what remained of Galloway, the reditus
had simply never happened. Almost. People didn’t go into the city
for their shopping any longer and the ministers got more business,
but that was about it. In the first month of the reditus
Johnny had spent three months up here with his parents and had missed
the worst of it in the city. He had heard the stories from Joe and
from Stiffy, but these were all other people’s tales, tales that
were so outlandish that he had hardly taken them in and had yet to
process them. He was stoned most of the time in Evermarch, which
didn’t help. He had heard that thousands of people had died in the
city back at the start, but mainly because they were in the wrong
place at the wrong time or had pissed off the wrong people. The fact
that he was now back at college indicated some return to normalcy.
Johnny was only ten
miles away from home when, much to his surprise given the isolated
nature of the area, he was stopped by his first police roadblock. A
T-junction had been closed off and traffic was waiting in a queue at
the turning. The main road was closed off. He was about a dozen cars
back and despite the cold weather some of the locals were standing at
the front of the line talking. He wound down his window to try and
catch what they were saying.
‘Just wait,’ said
the copper to some of the drivers. ‘The army is coming through.
Shouldn’t be long now.’
They waited. More cars
pulled up and joined the line. A tractor trundled up and diverted
into a field to avoid waiting, noisily throwing out clouds of smoke
as it climbed up the muddy hillside.
Eventually a deep low
rumbling sound heralded the arrival of the army, and a line of trucks
came into view. Like a few of the others, Johnny got out of his car
and went up to the roadblock to get a better view. One by one the
army trucks rolled past, engines roaring as they changed gear for the
hill. Dozens went past. Some had the rear flaps lifted up, with the
tired looking soldiers peering out. A few returned the waves and
salutes of the locals, but most did not.
Next came the flat beds
carrying tanks and armoured cars, taking up the whole road.
‘Jesus,’ muttered
Johnny as he watched them pass.
Finally, a mixture of
cattle trucks, pickups, tractors pulling wooden trailers, all manner
of vehicles, came up. Each of them was packed with slaves, a
multitude of forlorn and dirty people, cold and shivering in the
winter air.
‘Fucking Hell,’
said Johnny several times as they passed. As he watched agape, he
began to catch the eyes of people as they passed, each of them eyeing
him with a look of hungry despair. Help us, their eyes said, and to
his shame Johnny cast down his eyes and looked only at the wheels of
the trucks as they thundered past.
After what felt like an
age, the final rear-guard arrived, following the convoy of slaves,
then after the final armoured car had gone by the cops got back into
their cars and drove off, not even bothering to sort out all the cars
and tractors that they had stacked up at the junction.
‘Fuck me,’ swore
Johnny after he had returned to Beryl and starred her up. ‘It’s
going to go down in Evermarch once that lot arrives.’
It was dark by the time
he got to his parent’s road-end. He was anxious to tell them about
what he had seen. As he slowly rolled into the farmyard, he saw that
all the light in the barn were on. He wondered why that could be.
***
Jack was not a
talkative person at work. Bunn and the others were used to him
keeping his own council, which suited old blowhards like Bunn. They
knew his brother was back and they had lots of questions about the
army and what had been happening up north, but Jack generally give
very short answers and they soon found easier sources of information.
Jack didn’t mind
talking about what he knew, he just didn’t want to talk about his
brother. Whatever had happened, it had clearly left a mark on Randy.
Jack hadn’t thought about it deeply, he just assumed that Randy
would bounce back in his own time, he was too much of an optimist to
think otherwise. If he dwelt on it at all, he ended up missing his
father so he would force himself to think about something else
instead. You got good at that when you spent most of your day just
standing about.
The Temple Guards had
an hourly shift pattern at the gates. There was always two of them
there, whatever time of day or night it was, in full uniform and
armed with MP5s. Jack was generally paired with Bunn, as none of the
others could endure his company for an entire shift. Jack just let it
all wash over him, like listening to a radio in the background.
Occasionally he would tune in, but most of the time he would let Bunn
ramble on, nodding occasionally so as not to appear rude.
Bunn was shorter than
Jack and a good deal fatter. He was nearly sixty and had the red face
and strawberry nose of man that liked to drink. He was constantly
smoking and would sneak cigarettes, cupped in the palm of his hand
while on gate duty. A former policeman he had been drawn to the
Temple Guards as a perceived softer option, or so he said.
It was nine in the
morning; the gates had been opened and people were drifting in.
Mostly folk making offerings before work. Jack and Bunn stood
together beside the guard hut, chatting.
‘Have you heard
anything about the new Tabernacle?’ asked Bunn.
Jack shrugged. He waved
through a group of four penitent women with the muzzle of his
sub-machine-gun.
‘No?’ asked Bunn.
‘Fuck knows where though. It’s whacky if you ask me. Curtains,
ringlets, tent poles, all measured precisely to match all the others.
It’ll be a show piece though. The operation here is too big to move
into a fucking circus tent.’
Their radio’s
crackled. A far-away voice informed them that the days deliveries
wear an hour late.
‘And I heard they are
opening up the stadium again,’ said Bunn.
Jack glanced over at
Bunn with alarm.
‘Nah, not like last
time, dinnae worry,’ said Bunn. ‘Temporary shelter for a bunch of
slaves they are bringing up from Goldengreens I heard.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Nah,’ rumbled
Bunn, ‘I got it off one of the drivers.’
A man, bearded and
wearing tassels on his coat like all the other men, approached the
gate. In his left hand he carried a cage that had two pigeons in it
and under his right arm he carried a turtle.
‘Hey mate, where you
are going with that lot?’ enquired Bunn.
The man stopped and
looked up, seemingly startled to have been addressed.
‘I err,’ said the
man. ‘I got a fixed penalty notice to do an atonement. Sin Offering
and a Burnt Offering.’
‘I can see that,’
nodded Bunn, with a heavy sarcasm only achievable by old coppers.
‘You didn’t read the FPN properly though, did you? You’ve need
to go home and shave your head.’
‘Fuck’s sake!’
groaned the man. ‘I took two buses to get here!’
Bun leaned back and
laughed. ‘Them’s the rules buddy.’
Jack laughed too, but
it was in his nature to help people. “Look, you can leave the
beasts in the guard hut and go down to the showers by the Sin
Offerings. See if you can beg a razor off an acolyte, then come back
here.”
‘Bless you son!’
exclaimed the man handing over his burden. Jack took the cage and the
turtle and put them in the hut.
‘You are too soft,’
remarked Bunn as the man jogged off and entered the Temple.
Jack smiled and said
nothing.
Nathan Jack’s shift
pattern had changed so he was now walking home in the evening. He
liked this less than his morning walks. Wormwood rose in the south at
night, and he hated it lurking over his left shoulder as he walked.
He was grateful to get indoors.
As he entered the flat,
he looked for Randolph. His brother had been out of town for a couple
of days, reporting back to Headquarters. He was due back today and
there he was sat on the sofa playing video games.
‘He bro!’ said
Randolph glancing up at Nathan.
‘Where is everyone
else?’
‘At a neighbour’s,
dunno. Let’s play a game.’ Randolph quit the game he was playing
and began to load up a two player one.
There was a bottle of
cola on the table and Nathan poured himself a glass as the game
loaded. Neither of them drank alcohol, there father was Scottish, but
had never drank in front of them.
‘Just like old
times,’ remarked Randolph as his brother sat down beside him.
As they played, they
talked. Randolph soon got onto the subject of his recent experiences
in the army.
‘City after city we
went to, all this land jumbled up together up north. Must have
crossed a dozen zone lines. Forest, town, desert, frozen lands, back
to forest. It was like going through different biomes in Minecraft.’
Nathan laughed at that.
Randy laughed too. ‘Yeah, that was the best bit, not knowing what
we were going to see next. But it never ended well. Anyone that
resisted, and they usually did, we had to fight. The mullahs just
didn’t know when to stop. The army hated it, but the mullahs took
off the prisoners and killed them in secret places. The women and
children were taken as slaves.’
‘Jeez,’ said Nathan
in a whisper.
‘And the giants too.
The mullahs called them Nephilim, the fallen ones, and wanted
all of them killed. Our hearts weren’t in it at all though. That’s
when the mutinies started.’
‘But giants?’ asked
Nathan. ‘Are the not, like, really strong?’
‘Yeah, they are,’
conceded Randolph. ‘But they are also really big, which makes them
really easy to shoot.’
‘How big?’
‘Like, as tall as
trees. Tall as this flat. They are slow and ungainly. Honestly, it
was like shooting giraffes. They were harmless.’
‘I never know if you
are telling me the truth or not,’ commented Nathan.
‘It’s right there
in the bible though, innit bro? Thou shalt not kill. Those
mullahs just wanted to kill everybody. Not that I care about what the
bible says.’
‘You should talk like
that anywhere near the muta, you’ll get arrested.’
‘I give a shit what
they think?’ asked Randolph. ‘We’re the fucking army and we’re
here now. Things are going to change around here.’
Nathan was alarmed, not
at what his brother was saying, but how he was saying it. His little
brother didn’t talk like this. Even when they had been Temple
Guards together Randolph was always acting the clown, he was always
joking about and bantering with the other guards. He never swore
either, even when others around him were doing it. He had a new
seriousness about him that Nathan didn’t recognise and army life
had evidently cured him of his aversion to bad language.
‘It’s done now
though,’ sighed Randolph. ‘No one left up north worth killing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The people up there,
you know, they were all mixed in. Hard to tell where they had come
from before, just the sweepings of the planet. The mullahs designated
one lot Canaanites, another lot Hittites. Those guys over there are
Amorties, those are Girgashites, those are Perizzites, Hivites,
Jebusites. At first it seemed sort of sensible. A way of grouping
people, you may as well call them something since they were all from
different places. They had all just banded together after the
reditus. But what the mullahs were doing was giving them names
of enemies from the bible so that we could be justified in killing
them or taking them slaves with a clear conscious. What we were doing
was a crusade in all but name.’
Nathan was speechless.
Randolph looked over at him as the next level of their game loaded.
‘I’m still a
Muslim, Nate,’ said Randolph. ‘You know. I used to think – if
bad things are happening then that's Allah punishing you and if good
stuff happens then that's Allah rewarding you. Now I don’t know.
It’s like now that God is here, we don’t have that personal
relationship with him any more, you know what I mean? It’s not
about just you. People are rewarded or punished in groups. God
doesn’t deal in individuals any longer.’
‘Come on Randy…’
‘Any work at the
Temple?’ asked Randolph suddenly brightening and changing the
subject. ‘Ah forget it, they’d never discharge me anyway. I’m
one of the few ones that hasn’t gone crazy.’
‘They’d take you
back,’ said Nathan. ‘It’s all old men and lazy coppers now.’
They played for a while
longer. Randolph glanced up at the clock on the wall. ‘When are
they due back?’
‘They are at Mala’s
house. Probably about nine. We should make our own dinner.’
‘Is Evaline with
them?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well,’ said
Randolph. ‘There is this other thing. I’ve got two new wives now.
They both hate me. I don’t blame them. I didn’t want them that’s
for sure, but we all had to do it. I don’t know what to do with
them, they are still back at HQ.’
‘Oh my God!’
exclaimed Nathan. ‘Evaline is going to absolutely flip!’
‘I know,’ shrugged
Randolph. He had lost the game. He put down the controller and leaned
back on the sofa. ‘The other married men are the same. We’ve all
got letters to show to our wives – our first wives. If Evaline
starts yelling, she can take it up with the church.’
‘If?’ laughed
Nathan. ‘Oh my God, bro. She’s going to go mental.’
‘Anyway,’ sighed
Randolph. ‘It can keep for a bit longer. Old coppers you say?
That’s what they used to replace all the lads that joined the army?
Any good?’
‘They’re OK.’
Randolph knew the worst
that Nathan could ever say about anyone was that they were “OK”.
It was the closest he ever got to describing someone as an arsehole.
‘I heard today that
they are opening up the Stadium again,’ went on Nathan. ‘Not like
last time though. There are three hundred slaves coming up from the
jungle. They are going to put them there.’
‘How do they plan to
do that?’
‘God knows. It’s
going to be a big deal though.’
Randolph made a
dismissive ‘pftt’ sound.
‘Maybe not a big deal
to the army, but a big deal for us,’ conceded Nathan.
Randolph was distant
for a moment, then said, ‘those places we went to, where we killed
everyone that resisted us. I told you we took the women and children
as slaves. You think you have problems with three hundred? There are
thirty-two thousand in army camps all the way back along out supply
line for fifty miles. There are five thousand in a camp just five
miles away. The spoils of war. I dunno bro, I dunno. And those
mullahs, every one of them madder than the last. When Fred Tandy gets
here… Mashallah…’
‘Whose Fed Tandy?’
‘He was the worst of
them. A butcher with the blood of thousands on his hands, bro. I
can’t even… I can’t even put it into words the things he did,
and the things he had us do. I can’t...’
Randolph got up and
went to lie down in his mother’s room. A little later Nathan went
to the kitchen to made dinner.
