The Scioneer (19 page)

‘I
am
looking. Maybe we should get
you to the walk-in, Roma. You’re getting worse.’

‘No
Zevon, I’m…. getting….
better
,’ and she rolled from the position she had lain in for ten
minutes when the back spasms and stomach cramps had left her
howling in pain. She looked neither wolf nor human. Her skin was
deathly pale and she was sweating profusely; her eyes were
blood-red and watering, and the veins in her neck and forehead were
standing out as though they might split apart at any
moment.

‘Stay
with me tonight,’ she whispered to
Zevon, and although he couldn’t tell whether she
meant for him to keep pace with her during the pack clash, or hold
her in his arms afterwards, he nodded his assent. He had no choice:
she was still the alpha of the pack. He stole a glance at Dahlia at
the end of the alley, and even at that distance, he knew her bright
eyes were staring back at him.

Roma
called them together and
without a word the five-strong pack moved as one down
Dolman Street, leapt the razor wire and shards of anti-vandal glass
cemented on the top of the wall, and rolled down the embankment to
the train tracks. It was the fastest way to get to the heart of the
rumble.

***

From the
side-streets and the high-rise underpasses, from the tenement
courtyards, public shelters and recyclotruck-passageways, gangs of
youths continued to appear, sliding around the corners of
building
s, crawling out
from under shop-front metal-shutters, shifty-eyed and grinning. As
they neared Falcon Park, their numbers swelled, and the trickling
streams of threes and fours gathering from every direction became
tens, twenties, hundreds. They pouted their lips and nodded at one
another. The high steel fences of Falcon Park Cage Fighting Forum
and Basketball Courts had been ripped apart, and in the light of
the full moon, Arid could see the wolves assembling on the other
side of the park. He felt a shiver of excitement. It came out as a
snigger at first, then a giggle, then rose to a wild laugh. Osaze
was right: if nothing else, it was an amazing sight. Yakuba stepped
through a hole in the fencing and held it apart so that Osake and
Arid could follow. Ulan and Fogo were already inside, stretching
out their muscles and play-fighting. Yakuba walked around the
crowd, paying his respects to those who outranked him in the
hyenarchy, and in turn being shown respect by those below him. He
touched fists with many, and gave a lazy salute to others. The
atmosphere was one of warm geniality and the reservations which
Arid had felt earlier that evening melted away. ‘It is going to be
a good evening,’ said Osaze, speaking as if he was a seasoned
professional of the pack-clash, when in fact he was as much a
rumble-virgin as Arid.

On the
far side of the cages, the wolves began to pour through the gaps in
the fencing and form a line. The hyenas jeered and shouted insults,
but their opponents only glowered back. There was menace in their
silence. They seemed to be a more organised crowd, more
militaristic than the hyenas, filing dispassionately into orderly
martial ranks behind one another, like a body of Ancient Roman
centurions. Suddenly, a single howl split the atmosphere in two,
and the hyenas fell silent. It was a short stocky male, his long
hair tied back in a pony-tail. When he turned to his troops, Arid
saw the huge perma-tatt on his broad back: a wolf, standing on top
of a mountain, silhouetted against the moon. The mood had changed
in an instant, and Arid saw that those around him were steeling
themselves for the bloodshed. The solitary howling of the lone wolf
was drowned out by the rest of the full pack as they raised their
voices in unison. The hyenas and jackals roared back, gnashing
their teeth and snarling, pushing each other forward towards the
fight, but as yet unwilling to break away from the invisible bounds
which tied them to the fencing on one side of the cages. The noise
was deafening and when it seemed like it had reached fever-pitch
and could only dissipate, something snapped instead and the gangs
of hyena and wolves rushed across the moss-covered clay court and
smashed together on the centre-line.

Above the
war-cries,
Arid could
still hear the painful crack of bones as fists met faces. The lines
of force spontaneously broke apart into smaller pockets of
violence, as pairs of fighters from both sides struggled to draw
first blood. From his standpoint at the back of the crowd, he saw a
she-wolf ruthlessly swing a baseball bat into the knees of a
jackal, who screamed in pain and rolled into a ball on the ground.
He watched in horror as she raised her bat high above her head to
strike him again, and then recoiled as a hyena pushed a smashed
bottle into her unguarded chest. He turned to run, but there was a
solid wall of hyena behind him, steadily moving forward into
battle, and nowhere for him to go. Flares and bottles sailed though
the air above him and he saw another jackal fall to the ground as
three wolves set upon him, kicking him in the head and stomach.
Something about the action lit a spark in him and his anger flared.
Arid ran from the cover of the boys in front to even the score. But
in a flash, the skirmishes dissolved, melted away and the battle
lines reformed, howling and cheering at one another from across the
court. The hyena danced and whirled, jumped on the tips of their
toes and laughed raucously. Of the three-hundred young men and
women gathered together, only twenty or so lay beaten on the
ground, dazed and bleeding, but none were dead. They limped or were
pulled back to the safety of their respective gangs and proudly
displayed their fresh wounds to those around them, raising their
own voices in defiance of the opposition’s best efforts. Yakuba
appeared at Arid’s side: he was breathing heavily and rubbing the
bruised knuckles of his fists, but he was smiling nonetheless. ‘It
will be a good night, brother. There will be no killing here. Just
a lot of huffing and puffing from the big bad scum, as usual. And
we will teach them a lesson!’ Osaze joined them, pushing through
the throng to clap his arm around Arid’s shoulders. He too was
panting from effort and excitement. ‘Did you see me? Did you see,
Arid? I knocked one to the ground! He came at me and I took him
down! Like that!’ and he mimed a stinging jab at an imaginary foe,
‘Bam!’

Arid felt
fire in his heart, laid his arm around his friend, and together
they added their voices to the hooting and hollering as the crowds
dispersed, back to the safety of their own kind, each claiming the
prelim victory.

Chapter
28

‘What was
that?’ Crystal croaked. They had heard the
fighting at Falcon Park from a mile away,
and around them the wolves had cheered and howled, as if energised
by the echoes of violence resounding in the air.

‘There
was a testimony in the paper recently – some gang member who had
found religion and wanted to repent – from what I read, the full
moon rumble isn’t just a single isolated event. There are rules
about exactly how, where and when they’re fought; unspoken
agreements, rumours that are passed down through the troops. Nobody
wants to get killed, sure as most of these lunatics don’t really
want to kill anybody. Look at this lot: most of them are just kids,
wearing fancy dress and playing war games. They don’t want to end
up in the juvenile clink. It’s a school night, after
all.’

In spite
of herself, Crystal sniggered and immediately she found herself
staring into the stern faces of two overgrown teenage
boys.

‘Something funny
, bitch?’ snarled the first, cocking his head to one side.
Only one of his irises glowed yellow in the moonlight.

‘There’s
no trouble here lads’, said Lek,
trying to keep his tone light.

‘What if
we wanted to make some trouble?’ said the second, his grimace
revealing the neon brace
s holding his canines in place.

‘What the fuck
you doing here anyway, square?’

‘Just
taking in the… atmosphere, you know?’

‘Well
fucking take it someplace else, dickhead
,’ snapped the first before turning away with a
shrug of his shoulders.

Lek
mouthed ‘Sorry,’ when Crystal glared at him, but he was right.
Although the threat was there beneath the surface, these were just
schoolkids, puffing out their chests and posturing for one another.
He tried not to think about the part he had played in ruining so
many young lives and the impact on his current
circumstances.

They sank back
into the crowd, allowing the steady stream of bodies to flow around
them as they made their way up North Street and on to Silverthorne
Road.

***

The night
air was alive, and as
Roma ran towards the epicentre of the rumble, she could
feel the call of the whole pack in her blood and bones. Her own
crew struggled to keep up as she set a dogged pace, moving fluidly
across the sleepers in the darkness of the railway tunnels, kicking
up ballast dust into the faces behind her. Even Dahlia, usually her
equal for speed, could not match her now. They had missed the
prelim at Falcon Park while Roma had been writhing in agony in the
alleyway, overdosing on rough-cut Bad Moon, and Dahlia knew that
she would be keen to make amends to her brethren for their absence.
She felt the bile rising in her throat at the thought of being
forced to kill. Deep down, she believed without any doubt that she
was capable of murder, but not just anybody. It would have to be a
righteous kill: either somebody who deserved to die or else
somebody whose death would benefit the pack. She thought again of
challenging Roma.

***

While
the wolves
moved through the park for the next meet-up, since they could not
deny their natural desire to run across grasslands under the light
of the moon, the jackals and hyenas stuck to the streets, since
they could not deny
their
natural
desire to scavenge and loot. And so it became over time one of the
unwritten laws of the rumble, and allowed the gangs to move freely
about the city without fear of too many unplanned attacks. The
shop- and store-owners of Battersea Park Road did their best to
protect their property, but on nights of a full moon, they resigned
themselves to the loss and damage, emptied their shelves, and left
the doors and windows open to protect their already extortionate
insurance premiums, if nothing else. Some even left unwanted goods
out on the pavement for the looters to rip apart. Osaze had
procured two soya-cream slices and a Chelsea bun from an unlocked
bakery and handed the bun to Yakuba as an offering to his new god.
Yakuba thanked him, before throwing it across the road in the style
of a baseball-pitcher, where its stale crust shattered on the head
of a wolf lying drunk and bleeding in a doorway. The hyenas laughed
hysterically: even Osaze, heartbroken at first, couldn’t help but
join in. Windows shattered and bins were set on fire. Ulan and Fogo
threw firecrackers at one another and sprayed a stolen can of
aerosol-cream into their own open mouths. ‘You’re about my
brother’s size, here…’ said a stunning jackal girl with emerald
eyes, stopping Arid in his tracks and holding a fur gillet against
his chest. ‘Perfect!’ she said, stuffing it in her bag. She kissed
Arid on the cheek and ran off. He thought the night couldn’t get
any better, even before another pack-leader slapped Yakuba on the
back, handed him a half dozen lotto-wraps of Joker and told him to
share it around, courtesy of the Tooting Dingoes. Arid Dysoned his
whole wrap, bump after bump, with the tip of his blade, which Osaze
said was the height of machismo. A car exploded behind them as the
gang made its woozy way to the Queen’s Circus to rumble
proper.

***

The crowd
of teenage w
olves had
begun to thin out, leaving only drunken stragglers behind, those
who never intended to fight and were only coming along for the
ride. Lek and Crystal held hands and for a moment, it seemed
everything would be fine. Nobody on the planet could ever have
guessed their location. Lek breathed deeply, and ignoring the pain
throbbing behind his eyes, pulled Crystal closer so that they could
kiss under the moonlight.

‘We’ve
never done this before,’ she said.

‘Which
part?’ asked Lek, and he kissed her again, while a couple of wolves
whistled their approval. Lek heard the bells of St George
Harrison’s Church toll nine.

***

Up the
embankment
at Ingate
Place, the claws of Roma Bruce’s bleeding hands and feet dug into
the soft earth as she pushed her heavyweight body through the
tangle of brambles and nettles and landed neatly on the other side
of the retaining wall in a quiet residential area which was taking
shelter from the storm raging on the streets. Her pack were still
five-hundred yards behind, but Roma couldn’t stop, couldn’t wait
for them, such was her desire to spill hyena blood. She thundered
around the corner into Queenstown Road and the smell of the foe was
thick in her nostrils. Up ahead, at the intersection with Battersea
Park Road, her newly-acquired crisp night-vision picked out a gang
of jackals who were waiting for the main event, taking digisnaps
with stolen cameras and laughing at one another. Roma closed the
distance in a matter of seconds and launched herself at the first
hyena within range.

Osaze
Mboku
may as well have
been hit by a speeding Lexus biorg. So powerful was the force of
Roma’s attack, he was lifted clean off his feet and sent flying
into the base of a streetlamp. His thick neck snapped on impact,
but that didn’t stop Roma from tearing at his throat and chest with
her bare hands and teeth, leaving his flesh tattered and the
panic-stricken onlookers spattered with his blood. Roma turned to
face them and instinctively the hyenas backed away, for they could
see that there was rabid madness in her eyes and too much poison in
her veins. She barked ferociously, raised her head to the skies and
howled, calling her pack to her side; but still she could not wait.
As the crowd came to their senses and began to form a circle, she
spun around, howled again and sprinted off towards Queen’s Circus
to rumble. A single scream split the ensuing silence as Arid Bomani
ran to kneel at the body of his fallen friend. In his heart he
already knew he was dead, but still he went through the motions of
feeling for a pulse in his wrist, looking into his eyes for any
flicker of life and telling him between sobs that ‘everything will
be alright’.