Six Days (4 page)

T
he only way to handle a scav shift is to pace yourself. Too slow and the gangmaster gets on your back. Too fast and you crash before lunch. I tell Peyto to take it easy cos he’s going at it like ten men.

“Must show the gangmaster I can do it,” he wheezes. “Or he won’t hire me tomorrow.”

“Listen, mucker, there ain’t gonna be a tomorrow for you at this rate. One hour at a time, yeah? Snatch breathers when you can.”

He shrugs at me and carries on down the stairs with his bin way too full to manage. I’m peeved cos I know how to handle the work and I’m only trying to help him out.

Anyhow, sure enough, come noon he’s spent out. We sit on the top landing and divvy out our bread and gravy and apples. After twenty minutes he goes all shivery and spaced on us, and I figure he’s going to crash for sure. But then Dad gives him a nip of the old home-cooked gin and he perks up a bit.

Course, I’m full of questions now, like where on Earth has he racked up from? A place where they wear pajamas and ain’t heard of the artifact. I ain’t the only one with questions. Most times Wilbur sits in a corner with his head in a comic. But today he just gazes and gazes at Peyto. And I’m sure the old man’s just as curious as we are, but he’s of the thinking that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Anyway, as a rule, lunch is a proper serious affair – fueling up, no chat except for the scavving at hand. You don’t sit around long enough to seize up, and anyhow the clock’s always ticking. Twenty minutes is your lot.

Halfway through the afternoon, Dad tells me to go and gee up Peyto with clearing the fifth floor. The poor lad is really flagging by now. I catch him staring at a picture on the wall – a photograph of some princess in a flimsy dress, and paint on her face, and them spiky shoes that tilt your toes forward. She’s striding through olden-time Piccadilly Circus at night and it’s a pack-out in the streets with people and cars and double-deckers. Peyto looks like he’s under a spell.

“What happened here?” he asks at last. “I mean, these bioweapons – how did they …”

“You really don’t know, do you?”

He shakes his head.

“Germs,” I go. “It was over dead quick. Enemy planes over London dropped all these canisters loaded with disease and that. There was a few survivors on
the outskirts, but most folks died in the first wave.”

“What was it about – the war?”

“Look, how come all this is news to you? Ain’t it time for you to come clean with me?”

“What?”

“Where you’re from, what you was doing skulking about in Big Ben.”

“I … can’t tell you.”

“Hey, that ain’t good enough. I bailed you out, remember? Least you can do is cut the mystery cobblers and get to the point.”

“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”

“Shut up. There ain’t no secrets between scavs.”

“So I’m a scav now, am I?”

“Well, I’m sticking my neck out to make you into one.”

“I’m sorry, Cass. It’s best if you don’t know.”

“Oh, yeah? I reckon I’ll be the judge of that.”

“You don’t understand!” he goes. “I’m grateful you helped me, but then I helped you and Wilbur, so that makes us even –”

He stops mid-flow, cos Wilbur’s suddenly popped up out of nowhere. “Dad said to come down and hurry you up, that’s all.”

Time to change the subject. “So anyhow,” I go to Peyto. “How come you ain’t got yourself any decent threads yet? First thing I’d do if I was chattering me teeth out on the job.”

“Huh?”

They both follow me into the bedroom as I start emptying cupboards.

“But I thought we had to put it all in the crusher,” goes Peyto.

“Nope. You can take what you like as long as you can carry it.”

“I like books,” says Wilbur, all helpful-like.

“You think we’d do this just for the measly moola?” I show him my chunky watch. “Cost thousands back when London was capital of the free world. Rollicks.”

“Rolex,” goes Wilbur.

“But the soldiers –”

“Vlads ain’t interested in this old junk. Course, you’ve got to stand on the belt and get scanned at the end of the shift just so they know you ain’t got the artifact, but if you get the all-clear, then it’s yours.”

Peyto has gone paler than at any time in the whole day. He slumps onto the edge of the bed.

“You OK?” I go.

He looks at me like I’ve just dealt him the Death card. “I’m just tired.”

I collar Wilbur and we go in search of old-school threads. Ten minutes later we’ve kitted Peyto out in a rain jacket, neck warmer, knitted hat, water-resistant kecks, and an unused pair of them rubber shoes with the tread.

I dust him down a bit. “You won’t freeze your bits off now.”

“We’re definitely coming back here tomorrow, aren’t we?”

“If you get the nod at crew pickings, yeah. Blimey, there’s no stopping you, is there?”

“And nobody else will come here while we’re gone?”

“No. Why? You worried someone’s gonna walk off with your poke? Forget it – all our lot’s done places like Dulwich. That’s what you call quality pickings.”

“What about those boffin people?”

“Nah, they ain’t fussed about any of this old clobber. They never come on site – it’s back to a fancy Vlad compound for them come the end of the shift.”

He don’t say nothing to that, but I can tell he ain’t sure whether to believe me.

“Look, you’ve got your eye on something you can’t carry today, just stash it, but you want to start getting choosy. Unless it’s proper useful, don’t bother. Scavs what hoard stuff for the sake of it tend to get a bit of stick.”

We crack on and the day passes without further drama. Come six o’clock, we’re all done and dusted. Literally. Peyto takes his turn to get scanned on the crusher belt, and he looks proper guilty clutching a bag he’s stuffed with extra clothes. Anyhow we get the all-clear, then it’s down to the truck for the off.

There’s a holdup on Blackfriars, some kerfuffle with Vlad troops searching one of the lorries up front. As we’re waiting, I clock Dad gazing upriver. Whenever we get to water, he always gets this faraway look, probably dreaming about boats or something. He ain’t from scav stock originally. His family are fishermen and traders, sea people, from up past the Great Barrier. Something happened for him to leave them little places up the coast, though he’s never said what. When Mum was alive, he used to go on about scraping the pennies together to go back to that life, but he ain’t brought it up in a long time. Scavs is what we are now – that’s what you hear from him these days.

Back on the south bank, the journey home is always more lively. A couple of the old ‘uns sing songs, and everyone’s thinking of the hot nose-bag waiting for us back at Elephant and Castle. Wilbur gets press-ganged into reading out loud from an old magazine – something about a girl who’s worried she’s too fat to bag a mate.

“Week’s scavving would sort her out,” mutters some toothless codger.

I go, “Why don’t you write in, gumbo? Tell her she ain’t never gonna be too fat to land you!”

They all start chipping in then. I don’t know – it’s easy to make everyone laugh about the old-school Londoners. They just seemed so pampered, like everyone was royal.
But they had their worries, too, I suppose.

I catch Peyto looking at me then. His face is knackered and serious, all lit up in the last rusty glow of the sun.

“Thank you,” he goes. “For looking after me today.”

“No bother. Like you say, we’re quits now.”

He looks like he’s about to say something else, but Wilbur butts in and lands a comic on his lap.

Peyto holds up the front cover – an olden-time sailor swinging from the rigging, staring out at the ocean. “So is this Captain Jameson?”

The way Wilbur beams at Peyto right then gives me the shivers. Cos my kid brother might not have landed the artifact at Big Ben, but you can tell that finding Peyto might be the next best thing …

“And his ship travels through time?” asks Peyto.

“Yeah, see, he’s sailing in the Indies and it’s 1709, and there’s this storm and next thing, all his crew’s drowned and he’s the only one left alive, and he has to sail single-handed, but when he gets to the Americas, it’s not 1709 anymore. It’s 3709! He’s washed up into the future!”

“Two thousand years,” goes Peyto, and there’s this weird look on his face that I can’t quite read. Like Captain Jameson has hit a nerve. “Then what happens?”

“Well, it’s a comic; he has different adventures. He helps people out, but even if a lady goes soppy for him,
he never sticks around. He always gets on board the
Vanguard
and sails off with his latest crew. But the thing is, every time he sets sail, he goes back in time a hundred years, so he can’t change his mind and head back to the last port, cos everyone he knows there won’t even be born yet. He has to keep going.”

“But one day he’ll make it back to 1709?”

“I suppose. I just haven’t found that comic yet. But I’ve got loads. My favorite’s 2009.”

Peyto leafs through the comic, then he asks, “Have you ever heard of a character called Halina?” It’s odd cos his voice catches on the name, like it means something to him.

“No, who’s she? Have you found any Captain Jameson comics, then?” Wilbur goes, getting all wound up. “There’s a few ladies in it – the best one’s a pirate who can’t decide whether to love him or kill him …”

Peyto smiles. “No, she’s not a pirate. At least, I don’t think so.”

Wilbur blathers on fit to bore a statue to death. But it ain’t boring to Peyto. And just like he promised Wilbur this morning, he listens.

It’s dark by the time the truck gets us back to the hiring point. We all off-load, and Dad mumbles at Peyto to join us for some grub at the Elephant and Castle meeting house.

“Thank you, but I should be getting back.”

He jumps off the truck and turns to me to do this crazy half bow – the prince of ponce again. “Thank you, Cass.”

He glances away toward a girl who’s hanging back from the crowds at the hiring point. She’s about my age, tall and skinny. She looks proper lost, shading her eyes from the glare of the truck headlights. And guess what? She’s wearing pajamas. My heart sinks a notch to see her, cos even from here I can see she’s a looker. But then she’s got the same bonkers hair as Peyto – shining black and sticking up all over the place. So maybe she’s his sister.

“Your mate’s welcome, too, ain’t she, Dad?” I pipe up.

But Peyto is already backing away. “Maybe another time.”

He jogs over to the girl and starts yanking out the clobber from his bag. It’s sweet cos he’s gone for enough layers to truss her up for Pass the Parcel. The tartan fleece ain’t a bad option, cos it’s got detachable sleeves. But what she’s gonna do with them fluffy earmuffs, I ain’t so sure. Typical lubber choice. Still, the way he greets her and helps her into the gear, it gives me a feeling. Just of loneliness. Like they’re gonna slip into the byways and I won’t be seeing Peyto no more.

“You could’ve invited him like you meant it,” I go to Dad.

“Leave them be. They’re not our kind anyhow.”

“What kind of talk is that? He did his graft! For nothing. He’s got every right to tuck in same as us.”

“Enough of your lip, Cass. I offered and he said no. You want me to go on my bended knees?”

I give him the daggers he deserves. “Scavs don’t cold-shoulder people. He binned up till his hands bled, and that
makes
him one of us. He just don’t know the score, that’s all.”

I’m all hot under the collar as I storm off toward Peyto. But as I get closer, I can hear they’re having a right old to-do – all hissing under their breath and looking over their shoulders. Peyto starts to point but drops his arm. I figure he’s looking over at me. But he ain’t. He’s looking at Wilbur.

“What do you mean, you left it there?” The girl’s nearly in tears. She rips off her earmuffs.

“I told you, I had no choice. I can find it again tomorrow.”

“And then what? Hide it again the next day and the next and the next?”

“What do you suggest, then? I couldn’t have brought it back with the soldiers there! They’d have found it for certain!”

“But what if we lose it? We can’t afford to! What if I lost mine, too? We’d never get back to the ship then.”

I’m thinking,
Ship? What ship?
There ain’t no ships in the Thames, ‘less you count the Vlad ones …

Peyto holds his hand out to steady her down a bit cos she looks set to lose it big-time. “Look, it’s fine. We’ll think of something, I promise.”

“It’s not fine and you know it!”

At last they spot me hovering and they clam right up.

“Sorry,” I go, like I ain’t heard a sausage. “But I ain’t gonna let you miss out. Wednesday’s meeting night and the grub’s free. You’re both welcome.”

I put my hand out to the girl, and she just holds it like she’s never shaken no one’s hand before.

“You’re Cass.”

“Hey, word gets round –”

“Cass,” she blurts out. “We need your help.”

Peyto grits his teeth. He looks set to blow his top. “Erin, we don’t even know for sure if he’s the …” He trails off, reining in his anger.

“He was there, wasn’t he?” goes Erin. “Where he was supposed to be?”

“Yes, but we can’t involve other people till we’re sure. It’s not safe!”

She turns on him then. “Safe? In case you’ve forgotten, we don’t have any time for playing it safe! How are we ever going to be sure if we don’t take a chance and ask?”

I’ve got a million questions, but out the corner of my eye I see Wilbur running over, and it’s time to wind things up before they get out of hand.

“Whatever you want to ask me, be my guest,” I go.
“Straight talking never did no harm. But it’s got to wait just one hour cos there ain’t nothing as important right now as some good scoff.”

The two of them look set to take lumps out of each other, but good old Wilbur puts paid to all that.

“Come on,” he pipes up. “Mabel’s done pork and we’ve got to be quick to get first dibs.”

O
ur little settlement at Elephant and Castle ain’t much more than forty huts, a patchwork of allotments, the mill with its flour stones and mule team, a few sheds for the livestock, and, in the middle, the meeting house. The closest proper settlement is Greenwich, but there’s dozens of places, mainly scavs and farmers, as far east as Dartford and as far south as Purley.

The meeting house don’t look much from the outside – just a stockade of railway sleepers dug into the clay, then a pitched roof with a hole in the top to let the smoke out, no windows. But inside, on a wintry night, with everyone in there, it’s my favorite place in all the world. The walls are lined with straw and clay, and there’s all nice old-school paintings hanging up. Gramps says they’re priceless, which means they’ve got the biggest price of all. Some of them are a bit manky now, what with the steam and the smoke, but there’s loads of museums north of the Thames we ain’t even reached yet, so
no one’s that fussed. By the flickering light of the main fire you can see the ring of tables and benches, and the cauldrons and the spit, and the old dears who knock up the grub. Today, it’s honey-roast hog with an apple in its gob.

I’m right curious about Erin’s plea for help, but there ain’t no time to chat in private cos it’s a pack-out already, and the world and his wife want to say hello.

The shout goes up for first sittings, so I get the two of them in line, but when their turn comes, they shake their heads.

Mabel’s a feisty old mare and she takes it personal.

“Been slaving over this porker all day. What’s the matter? My cooking ain’t up to scratch, huh?”

“I can’t,” says Erin firmly. “It’s a dead animal.”

Mabel pokes her carving fork in the pig’s snout. “Well, I hope it’s dead, girl. It’s been turning over this fire for the best part of six hours.”

“Is there anything else?” goes Peyto.

I slap a couple of slabs of bread and a wodge of honey on their plates instead. “There you go – no dead animals in that. Unless you get a weevil. In which case it’s probably alive, so best spit it out.”

“All right, move your fussy mates along, will you? I got a hundred-odd mouths to feed and I ain’t got all night to do it.”

I nudge Erin. “So, what, you ain’t partial to meat, then?”

“It’s not
about
the taste …”

I think she’s about to explain, but then she looks at Mabel hacking away at the hog and she clams up.

Back at the bench, they both get serious about tucking in. Erin sets to like she ain’t eaten in a week. I get them both to go back for seconds. Mabel loves that.

After the grub is done and the pig’s just a charred backbone and ribs, it’s time for the meeting. Our Elephant and Castle chief, Gus Turnley, stands up on a barrel and calls for hush. There’s general groans all round cos Gus is a stickler for meetings, and everyone knows he’s just in love with the sound of his own voice. Still, rules is rules, and Turnleys, over the years, have made decent enough chiefs, so people put up with the meetings even if they do break into everyone’s drinking time.

“I’d just like to thank Mabel and all her fine helpers for putting together such a grand Wednesday feast –”

“Get on with it, Gus, you old windbag!” someone shouts from the back.

It’s pretty funny watching Gus looking for the culprit as he clatters a spoon against his flagon for silence. Half cut, he teeters on his barrel, his bleary eyes scanning the crowd, his top lip plastered with beer foam.

“First item of the evening is the urgent and ongoing matter of latrine maintenance. What’s the point of having a rota if no one is going to adhere to it?”

“How come you’re not on the rota, then, Gus?” someone pipes up.

“’Specially when you spend the most time filling them pits up!”

That kicks off an uproar that flusters Gus so much, he nearly topples off his perch.

Right at that moment, there’s a blast of cold air as the door slams open and in marches Elephant and Castle’s resident maverick and doom-monger. There he is – all wild-eyed and nutty, his hunched back jutting higher than his white-whiskered face. He bounds in with that strange sideways loping, and everyone hushes up in a way they never do for Gus Turnley.

“Who’s that?” whispers Peyto.

“That,” I go, with a touch of pride, “is my gramps.”

“Still banging on about the state of the bogs, Turnley?” growls Gramps. “How come no one ever talks about what
matters
at these meetings?”

He rounds on everyone then, taking center stage. “As long as there’s meat ‘n’ beer, you lot don’t give a stuff, do you? Well, how much longer are you going to bury your heads in the mud?”

“Give it a rest, grandad! We been graftin’ all day …,” cries a voice from the back.

“Just like I did for fifty years or more, and my father before me, and his father before that!” snaps Gramps. “And for what? A crippled back and a handful of olden-time coppers.”

Dad walks stiffly over to face Gramps. “It puts food on
the table, doesn’t it? You know, same as everyone else, we need the money for trading out of England.”

“Slave wages! Before the Vlads, we had a whole city full of treasures for trading with the Gallics – now we’ve just got half of one. And soon we’ll have nothing!”

“That’s right!” cries Dad. “You’ve got the answers, eh? Chasing your dreams and your rumors! That won’t keep the fire stoked!”

Dad is proper riled now. But Gramps ain’t never one to back off from a scrap, certainly not in public, and certainly not with my dad. As far as he’s concerned, Dad, being from Gravesend, is an outsider – not a proper scav. Must have caused a few ructions when Dad tied the knot with his precious daughter. Plus there’s the small matter that Dad wasn’t on the shift when Mum died …

Gramps flobs a greenie onto the floor. “I know about the day-to-day like nobody else under this roof. That’s how these Russians keep us down – paying us just enough not to rebel, never enough to get ahead. But this was our city once. We should reclaim it. Those bones north of the river are our dead!”

Dad goes, “Still peddling the same old lines. Might be news to youngsters, but the rest of us have heard it all before. Think we’re stupid? Vlads have got all the guns and power. Reckon they’re gonna take notice of a rabble of scavs armed with kitchen knives and rocks?”

Dad and Gramps stand face-to-face for a few moments,
breathless and seething. That silence says plenty – the bad blood between them ain’t exactly a secret. Wednesday meetings ain’t never been this riveting, ever.

Dad is the first to blink. He chucks his hands up and turns to the crowd. “What choice have we got? We can’t exactly down tools, can we? How do you think that would pan out? Reckon that’ll just give them the excuse they need to turn really nasty.”

“But what if we find the artifact before they do?” Gramps says. “We’d have the upper hand then. They’d have to settle with us. And we
can
find it, if we organize, if we’re clever, if we use our brains instead of our strength. We’re scavs, aren’t we? Rooting through this city is what we do best. But grinding every building down piece by piece isn’t the way to do it! There aren’t enough Vlads to police us if the men take to the tunnels and buildings north of the river. Send the women and children into the Wilds …”

“You’re crazy, old man!” cries Mabel. “We won’t survive five minutes up north! Berserker tribes, Blue-faces, Ferals!”

Gramps fixes her with a furious eye. “Those are just fireside stories. None of us really knows what’s outside of London …”

“I ain’t going nowhere Vlads are scared of going to!” another woman shouts.

“What about west, in the Waste Mountains?” goes one of Turnley’s sons. “I’ve heard the people there are like us, like scavs …”

“Mutants, more like!” puts in Mabel. “The dumping grounds of the world. Who’d want to scrape out a living there in all that filth? I’ll take my chances in London, thanks very much! Least the soil ain’t poison here.”

Fred Cowan the pigherd steps into the fray, and this is pretty strange, cos old Fred don’t say much to no one except his pigs. I never heard him pipe up at a meeting before. The hall goes quiet for him. He looks nervous as he speaks.

“We got to do something.”

Everyone waits.

“I saw things. Two nights back. Late, when folks was kippin’.”

“Prob’ly on the drink!” shouts someone. But there ain’t no one laughing.

Fred shakes his head slowly. “Light in the sky. Not copter or an airplane. Like furnace sparks comin’ fast. It went into the water ‘cross from Tower walls.
Sploosh
.”

“What was you doing up there?” goes Jacob Armitage, our preacher. “That’s miles away!”

Couple of folks snicker, but you can tell they ain’t that tickled.

Fred shrugs. “I just go where them pigs go.”

People start gabbling, but Jacob hushes them up. “Go on, Fred.”

“There’s bubblin’ and steam off the river. I wait a bit, but nothin’ comes up again. But then, on the north stump
of the Tower Bridge, I see these soldiers comin’. They got search flashlights, but they ain’t no soldiers I seen before.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re machine-men.”

“What?”

“They come out of Vlad trucks, but they was made of machines. Legs and arms like … scaffold. I don’t know.”

He hangs his head, and a few folks start laughing for proper now.

Gramps holds up his hand. “This is what I mean. The Vlads are losing patience, sending in new weapons. We’ve got to find the artifact a different way, then hand it over while we’ve still got the chance to salvage something of our lives.”

Mabel pipes up. “Come on! You just fed him that claptrap to back you up!”

A few murmurs of agreement.

Gramps whirls to face her and points a shaking finger. “Fred Cowan’s his own man. He’s got no reason to lie for me or anyone. I promise you, scavving will be the death of us. The sooner the Vlads get what they want, the sooner they’ll be gone from here. Think about it!” The sight of him hopping up onto a table hushes the crowd. “The artifact must have knowledge. Secrets from another age. And they won’t leave us in peace till it’s found.”

“Stories and rumors!” cries Dad. “You’ve looked for it so long you’re believing in your own made-up dreams!
You don’t have any idea what this artifact is. No one does.”

“I know this much – it’s got a
soul
.”

Gramps lets that hang and no one breathes a word. But next to me, Wilbur begins to fidget.

Gramps looks around at us all, milking the moment. “It’s
alive
and it
watches
us.”

Gus takes center stage for the first time since the barney started. “Whatever the artifact is, I don’t care.” His voice is all shaky with feeling as he stares at Gramps. “We’ve survived as scavs for a hundred years – all this talk of change is madness. The Vlads will crush us if we throw down our tools and go looking for it alone.”

Nobody speaks for a few moments. Gus Turnley might be a coward, but he sums up the feelings of most people.

Gramps rounds on him in a fury. “Well, you’re a fool, Gus Turnley!” he spits. “Don’t you want to be free? We need to find the artifact before the Vlads, and there’s clues in this city, for those who care to look.”

Everyone starts putting in their two-pennyworth then, and crowding toward the chief’s barrel.

And that’s when Peyto stands up. I can’t believe it, cos youngsters ain’t supposed to do speaking at meetings.

He just walks into the center of the room and, in a clear voice, speaks out to everyone. “So, if the Vlads had the artifact,” he asks, “wouldn’t that just make them even more dangerous?”

A gobsmacked silence drops over the meeting house. It
ain’t something I reckon anyone’s thought about. We’re so busy scavving all day every day, no one really thinks they’ll live to see the day it gets found.

Gramps leaps down from the table, his rags all flapping like crows’ wings.

“And who are you, young sir?” He jabs at Peyto. “Who are you – in our meeting hall? A stranger. Asking questions about the artifact …”

A few nasty murmurs bubble up from the crowd.

“A Vlad messenger maybe. Or a spy?”

I feel Erin start forward and I snatch her arm.

I keep my voice low. “Go to the well. It’s at the far end of the street.”

“But –”

“I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

She tries to read me, wanting to trust. But she ain’t sure.

“Go!” I hiss.

As soon as she turns for the door, I break toward the middle of the hall. It ain’t even like I’ve got a clear idea what I’m gonna do. All I know is, I’ve got to mix up some kind of trouble. Right now.

I leap onto the serving table, hurdle the hog spit, and charge toward the fire. At the far end of the table is a whopping great cauldron of water for the washing-up. I jump into the slide, feeling plates and knives skid out from under my buttocks. And wallop! Feetfirst into the cauldron. It takes about ten years to tip over, then a great wave of soapy
water heaves into the flames. Steam rushes into the dark.

Just before it goes totally black, I eyeball Peyto, so I know exactly where he is as I grab hold of his hand – soft like no scav hand ever would be.

And I yank him through a circus of yelling and shoving. Through the door and out into the night.