Meat

Twenty-four

He’d managed to suppress all emotions of panic on the journey out and then down into the tunnels. Returning was different, assailed by misgivings. Why wasn’t Collins where he was supposed to be? That was what worried him most.

Returning empty-handed to Magnus was the other thing that concerned him. Over the past few weeks – ever since the encounter with Collins and the blackout he’d suffered at the emaciated man’s hand – Magnus’s behaviour had worsened. He’d always been a man that ruled by violence. Everyone knew it and that was how he kept Abyrne in such an efficient stranglehold. But since the incident with Collins, Magnus had turned nasty even by Bruno’s standards. It had become hard to respect him.

It was obvious to everyone that Magnus was sick with the Shakes. Now was the time when a man like Collins really could wrest control from the ailing Meat Baron. If that happened, who knew what the future would hold for Bruno or the town?

Bruno had been Magnus’s personal bodyguard and the leader of his army of guards and enforcers for seven years. Magnus trusted him and he trusted Magnus. He didn’t always like the way his boss treated him, but at the end of each day he knew that he could not have been in a safer position – other than being Meat Baron himself.

Now, all that had changed. Magnus was sick enough and crazy enough to destroy any of his employees including his most trusted. When Bruno returned to the mansion without Collins and a man down for no good reason, Magnus was going to get very upset. For the first time in his career, Bruno was thinking about a change of allegiance. But to whom? The Welfare? He could never live that kind of life. He hated prayers and churches and rituals. He couldn’t see himself abstaining from sex or anything else for the sake of a God he neither understood nor believed in. Who did that leave? The lunatic prophet, John Collins, with his half starved crew of zealots?

There was nowhere else to go – except perhaps the grain bosses. Would they trust him, considering where he’d worked and the things he’d already done to keep power from their hands? He doubted it.

The blizzard of questions and fears assailed him as he led his men back across the Derelict Quarter. By now, most of them had fallen or stumbled badly enough to bruise or cut themselves on the uneven ground. They were tired from the running and let down by the unfulfilled adrenaline rush in the tunnels. If they were attacked now, he wasn’t sure he could even rely on them to hold their ranks.

Before they reached the tower blocks he saw a flash of red. In the next step it was gone behind broken masonry. He crested a small rise and saw it again. Beyond it there was more red. It was the gowns of Parsons he was seeing. At first he thought it was an ambush as all the figures were lying down. Then he noticed the discarded or dropped femur clubs and knew it could not be that. Closing on them cautiously he saw that every cassock was no more than that – just the shell of a Parson. The uniforms had been removed and laid out on the ground. They’d been arranged, and carefully so.

What the hell is this?

His men saw the uniforms too and tensed.

Then they were among the red gowns of the Welfare, positioned with care and imagination to look as though they’d fallen in battle. Whose trickery was this? The Welfare, pretending to have been attacked by some other force? John Collins leaving a message for him and his men?

For several minutes, Bruno believed it was some kind of a set up. He walked among the gowns and inspected them.

‘What’s going on, sir?’

Bruno held a gown in one hand and a femur club in the other.

‘I don’t know.’

If there’d been a battle, most of the clubs should have had fresh bloodstains on them. There was nothing. Had there even been a battle? Or was it simply that the Parsons had never landed a single blow? Bruno remembered how one starving peck of a man had bested the giant that was his boss and he knew to his core what was going on. This skirmish, if such it could be classed, had taken place long before they’d even stepped into the Derelict Quarter. Collins and his followers had hidden it from them until they were ready to let it be seen. That was why there’d been no one in the tunnels.

They were busy elsewhere.

‘This is nothing more than a message,’ he said. And to himself he added: and a warning. ‘We’ve got to get back to the mansion. Right now.’

He dropped the relics of the skirmish and began to run.

He hoped Collins and his people couldn’t run like Richard Shanti.

The girls lay in total darkness, their small thin bodies pressed tight together. They dared not speak but instead whispered, little more than a silent breath, into each other’s ears from time to time. As terrified as they were of the moment when they were discovered and the light blasted in to reveal them, they felt a sense of security in the cramped darkness.

In the old days there had only ever been one of them enclosed like this and it had always been a competition. Now, they were together, tighter than they’d ever been squeezed and staying brave for longer than ever before. If they wanted to win this game, they’d have to work together.

It was impossible in the darkness to tell how much time had passed. It seemed like hours but they knew it might only have been minutes since the shouting and wrenching of doors and the stomping, running footsteps of people searching for them. That had been the worst time, knowing that they might be exposed at any moment and listening, listening, listening for the faintest sign that their captors might be coming closer rather than getting further away.

And then there’d been a growling sound. At first they thought it was the hairy man coming back to get them but the growling sound went on and on and never moved. They could still hear it now. Someone was in there with them and there was no way they could creep out of their hiding place without being seen or caught. They had to wait. They knew that when they heard the growling noise stop and footsteps walking away; that would be their moment.

They had agreed what would happen next. It was very simple. They would run out of the house and into the grounds where the trees and bushes would hide them. And every time they hid and people didn’t find them, they would run to another bush and then another until they reached home. Home would be safe. And mama and papa would come home and love them again.

In utter blackness, they squeezed each other tight.

‘Soon,’ breathed Hema to Harsha.

‘Soon,’ replied her sister.

The cell in the mansion was far worse than the one the Welfare had provided.

He awoke to pain in many parts of his body and the smell of shit and urine. He tried to sit up and smacked his forehead against hard wood. Stars spread across his darkened vision. His head was exploding. He lay back and felt with his hands. The cell was more like a coffin than a room. It was about two feet deep, seven feet long – so he was able to stretch to his full body length – and about three feet wide. Whatever he did, there would be no way to stand.

He imagined the pressure sores that would erupt on the bony areas of his body while he waited for Magnus to do him in. Perhaps Magnus was so incensed at all that he’d done that his end – removal from the box, at least – might come swiftly. In the next moment he was ashamed that his first thoughts were of himself and not of Hema and Harsha for whom he knew it was already too late.

He’d done all he could do for them. Perhaps with more time, with the chance to liaise with others, it might have been different but there was no point hoping to change the past. In the box, little more than an oubliette – and perhaps that was how Magnus had decided to dispose of him – he was alone with his memories and his fears. Desperation grew despite the impossibility of escape. If only he could get out, he might have the opportunity to prevent the damage to his girls from being too scarring. With fewer guards around the house and grounds perhaps he’d have one more opportunity to finish Magnus himself.

The thoughts would drive him crazy.

He wasn’t prepared to give in to his mind yet. He was still alive, that meant there was still some kind of chance. At the very least perhaps he might see them again. Have the opportunity to say he loved them, to apologise and say goodbye. Such pitiful aspirations. How the town and everything in it had reduced him. How evil his life had been. No matter how he’d tried to absolve himself, no matter how he’d tried to stay pure, he had committed endless crimes and brought the very worst upon his family.

Again, he realised, such thoughts were deadly.

There was one good thing in the town. One good person that had wrought at least a little change – John Collins. Prophet John. The man who had shown him miracles were possible, that there were other ways to live for those compassionate and loving enough to try. It was crazy, what John Collins had been teaching, but Shanti believed it. In fact, belief didn’t fully define it; he knew in his body that it was true and possible. He knew it because he’d begun the same journey himself and it had not killed him. He had not eaten anything but light and air for many days and he was stronger and healthier than he’d ever been. He’d noticed in the mirror that, far from emaciating himself since he had stopped taking vegetables and rice, he had filled out. Not much, but enough to notice. His muscles were larger, his chest more expanded and able to hold more air. John Collins said that one day, when enough wisdom and love had been acquired, even the need to breathe would become a thing of the past. People would understand they were immortal, that they had always possessed the potential without realising it.

Of course, if Magnus knew that Shanti no longer needed to eat to stay alive, he might keep him in this stinking hole until he drove himself insane.

No.

He had to survive and to do that, he had to think right. He had to prepare.

First he checked out the painful places on his body. His nose was broken – he was fairly sure it shouldn’t be as mobile as it was. A couple of his front teeth were loose. His ribs were sore on both sides and he remembered being kicked a lot when he regained consciousness only to black out again. His legs were fine but his hands and elbows were cut and bleeding where he’d made contact with the teeth of some of Magnus’s men. There was a lump on the back of his head and that, more than any other injury, gave him cause for serious concern. It made his whole head hurt inside and out when he touched it. There was a swelling there and he didn’t know what it was filled with. His fear was that Magnus’s blow had cracked his skull and that his brain was exposed below the skin. If that was the case, he knew he could die at any moment. And if he didn’t, and if he made it out of this box, he might not live beyond standing up.

Instinct told him that he should try to heal himself. Was it instinct or was it something else? He felt a small pressure in his gut, right in the very centre of himself. He knew what it meant. He would try to be ready.

Lying on his back in the stinking filth of Magnus’s primitive cell, Shanti drew the light stored in his abdomen and sent it up to his skull. He prayed that it would fuse his broken cranium.

Bruno led his unfit brigade of guards up the long driveway praying, yes praying, that they were in time.

They rounded the final bend in the approach and he saw what he’d hoped not to. Ranged around the mansion in twos and threes were Collins’s raggle-taggle followers. They were dressed in clothes that might have been worn for decades at a stretch. Torn, faded, in some cases patched, in others not. They were no better than vagabonds. Scruffy urchins that had escaped the town’s attention for far too long. He would have laughed at them but for three things.

He was so winded he couldn’t spare the breath.

He had seen what they’d done to the Parsons.

And every man he’d left behind to guard the mansion had fallen.

As he came around that final curve in the driveway, the followers heard the stomping footsteps of nigh on seventy men in hobnailed boots and turned to face them. No matter what happened now, Bruno and his men were committed. There was no need for a command, every black-coat could see the enemy; a force they outnumbered more than two to one. Bruno let the machete drop into his right hand and raised it in the air.

With what breath they had left in their lungs, Magnus’s men released their war cry and fell upon the acolytes of the Prophet.

When the growling stopped, they tensed and dug their fingers into each other’s skin. They bit their lips against the fear. They heard grunts and felt movement. Heavy footsteps dragged past them. The footsteps stopped not very far away. In the background they could hear shouting; a crowd of men swearing and pushing each other. There was a sound like their mother opening a heavy drawer of cutlery in the kitchen and the uproar from far away became much louder.

Then they heard the voice, the terrifying voice that wheedled and cajoled and commanded. The voice of the man that wanted so much to hurt them. In the darkness, still safe, they didn’t know what to do. Was it time to run? Would he hear or see them?

‘What should we do?’ asked Harsha as quietly as she could.

‘Don’t know.’

‘Maybe we should just have a look.’

Harsha went to push the lid of their hiding place open and Hema grabbed her arm.

‘It’s okay,’ said Harsha. ‘We’re only looking. We don’t have to run yet.’

As silently as they could manage they shifted around until they could both peep over the lip of their secret place.

They saw the hairy man, naked and yelling, with his back to them at the window. They looked at each other. Words weren’t necessary now. This was their chance to escape. They crawled up and out as quietly as snakes but Harsha, believing Hema had hold of the coffer’s lid, let it go. The lid slammed shut hard. The hairy man jumped and began to turn.

A look passed between them and they both remembered the courage of the brothers in the story their father had told them. Instead of running away, they ran at the hairy man. Ran at him as hard as they could, arms outstretched in front of them, palms spread wide.

Magnus woke with a start to the sound of boots stomping gravel and the cries of men in battle.

He grunted and tried to get out of bed. Even simple movements like this were getting harder and harder. Finally he hauled his bulk upright and slid his legs over the side of the bed. The noise from outside was furious. Bodies and blades fell against the spiked railings that surrounded the main building. Right below his own bedroom window he could hear men cursing and roaring as blows landed and pain blossomed.

There were shouts of frustration and failure.

He pushed himself upright and staggered. Reaching out a hand he steadied himself against one of the bed’s four posts until the dizziness receded enough for him to walk. His legs were weak and unsteady as he shuffled to the great window.

Outside, his men were lashing themselves against the enemy like the sea against the rocks. He felt a brief swell of pride over them. These were his best and they were fighting for Magnus and everything he stood for. The pride faded quickly as the reality of the situation became clearer.

His men were tired. Their lunges and attacks were no longer crisp and sharp. They moved heavily, the more effort they put in, the slower they seemed to move. Great, wide, sweeping arcs of machetes missed their targets by inches or feet. Punches didn’t land or were ineffectual. Kicks were easily avoided. His guards outnumbered the opposition by more than double but already they were hitting the ground, felled by blows so swift they might have been imaginary but for the damage they inflicted.

And this enemy! They looked so thin and tattered they might have been beggars from the streets. But they didn’t behave like pitiful vagrants. He had seen this kind of movement before and he knew what it meant. These were Collins’s followers, his fighters. They were fast. They gave no quarter. As he watched, more of his men fell to their birdlike hands. The odds evened.

He had to do something. Struggling with the weight of it, Magnus pushed up the sash window. His men needed encouragement. They needed direction and he could see a way for them to land more telling hits if only he could speak to them. With the window fully open, he wedged it in position with a block of wood and leaned out.

‘Bruno! Timing, man! It’s all a matter of changing your rhythm.’

He saw that Bruno had heard him, but the man dared not look away from his opponent. He watched as Bruno backed out of range and then darted in with a light left jab. The man he was fighting took the bait and blocked but Bruno was already swinging his machete. Even with a head start and the ragged man off balance, the blade only caught his jaw and not his neck as Bruno had hoped. The machete opened the man’s face to the mandible and there was a brief flash of white bone before the blood flowed.

Unheeding of the wound and turning immediately into the attack, Bruno’s opponent hit back with strobing hands. Magnus wasn’t sure he saw the blows connect until Bruno stumbled backwards, his mouth a crimson grimace.

‘Don’t stop!’ shouted Magnus. ‘Take the initiative!’

The man did not close on Bruno, letting him regain his composure instead. Bruno’s pride was wounded worse than his face. He seemed not to notice that he’d been given a chance and he advanced as though upon a child he intended to whip. All around the gravelled driveway, men in long black coats were crumpling; their frustrated blades still clean.

‘Fucking imbeciles,’ Magnus muttered. He began to think ahead a little. What if they got into the house? How many men did he have left inside?

He heard a sound like a heavy wooden door slamming behind him and the patter of feet over carpet. He turned to face the intruders but never quite finished the manoeuvre. Instead he felt small hands pushing him back.

As he lost his balance, he heard giggles.

Then he was falling.