This Machine Kills (29 page)

   “If you’re not willing to do it for us,” he said, when Christopher had retreated, “then do it for yourself.”

   Taylor’s voice was calm again, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

   “I understand that Milton has wronged you.”

   Again Milton’s name made his teeth clench.

   “How would you know?” he asked.

   “I make it my business to know what’s happening on your side of the wall. How do you think we knew where to find you?”

   Jacob left a sufficiently long pause before speaking again, “If you can get us in to the City, I’ll make sure you get Freddie Milton. What you do with him is entirely up to you.”

   Taylor mulled the proposition over in his aching head.

   “There may be a way,” he finally said.

   Jacob stared at him for a long time before giving his response.

   “You must be tired,” he said, without any hint of satisfaction, “why don’t you get some sleep and we’ll talk about it in the morning.” 

   He nodded at Christopher then turned and slowly made his way to the door.

   “Jacob,” Taylor called out, stopping the man in his tracks, “I’ve just realised where I know you from.”

   Jacob swallowed hard, “Really?”

   “Yes,” Taylor said, “you’re Billy Nothing.”

Chapter 23

   Taylor slept through the next day and most of the following morning too. It was only the faint smell of food that finally awoke him from his epic slumber. His ribs still hurt like a bitch, but he felt infinitely better than when he first became Jacob’s guest. The growling sound he heard coming from his stomach indicated to him that that his body was on the mend. After slowly prising himself off the rock hard bed that had done nothing to impede his sleep, Taylor pushed at the door of the tiny, bare room. It was open. Whether this made him a free man or a prisoner he was unsure. With the aroma of food growing stronger, he followed his nose to more fertile ground.

   At the other end of the decrepit building, he walked into a spacious, run-down hall that was being used as a canteen. Opposite him, a white haired woman dished out a bowl of soup to a grateful young man. A large wooden table with benches on either side was situated in the centre of the room with a dozen or so surly looking men seated around it. They momentarily looked up at him from their meals, then just as quickly, lowered their eyes back to the food without the slightest acknowledgement of his presence.

   Even without their weapons, Taylor instantly recognised them; these men were Jacob’s soldiers. They may have been lacking the muscle and firepower of his own team, but he had no doubt that the gaunt, serious-looking men in front of him would follow Jacob to hell and back.

   When the young man who had just received his soup turned and saw him, his face lit up.

   “Hey Taylor,” he said, beckoning him over, “come and get some food, you must be starving.”

   Grateful for the invitation, Taylor walked over to his new ally, who had turned his attention to the woman brandishing the large metal ladle like it was a deadly weapon.

   “Maggie, give Taylor a bowl of the good stuff will you?”

   The woman filled a bowl with what looked like a watery version of vegetable soup and handed it over.

   “The best soup in the whole of the Old-Town,” the smiling man said, winking at the blushing woman.

   As they walked to the free seats at the end of the table, the man leant across and whispered into Taylor’s ear,

   “Shame the same can’t be said for these,” he held his bread roll up for inspection, “it’s like eating rocks.”

   After putting their food on the table, he offered his hand to Taylor, “I’m Tom, good to meet you.”

   They ate in silence, with Taylor returning for two extra bowls. The soup may have been thin and only very lightly seasoned, but the vegetables were exquisite. The problem of the rock-hard bread
had been solved by soaking it in his soup until it was completely saturated. He hadn’t tasted anything so good since his mother had returned from her shopping trips on Jubilee Street. There was a gritty, earthy texture to the food that had long since been eradicated from the products served in the City. The taste evoked feelings in him he couldn’t even begin to explain.

   Tom’s eyes searched Taylor’s face for signs of contentment, “Good, wasn’t it?”

   Taylor nodded enthusiastically.

   “And all grown right here,” Tom pointed at the floor, “in the heart of the Old-Town.”

   “If SecForce haven’t already found the co-op that grew them,” Taylor said indifferently, “it will soon.”

   Tom responded with a mischievous grin, “Your bosses don’t know as much about this place as they think they do.”

   “Really?”

   “Oh yeah… and that’s just the way we like it.”

   Taylor laughed. He wasn’t used to seeing such cockiness in the Old-Towners. He liked the boy’s attitude.

   “Taylor!” a voice behind him called out.

   It was Christopher, standing in the doorway with a grim look on his face,

   “Jacob wants to see you. Now!”

   Taylor turned to Tom, “Is this guy always such an asshole?” he asked, loud enough for Christopher to hear.

   As he got up, he patted the smiling man on the back, “Thanks for making me welcome, I’ll see you around.”

   When they got to the room Jacob was residing in, Christopher let Taylor pass, then grabbed his arm and pulled him back,

   “Jacob may trust you,” he said quietly, “but I don’t. You try anything and I’ll be waiting for you. Understand?”

   Taylor looked down at Christopher’s hand until he relaxed his grip,  “Touch me again and I’ll rip your arm off. Understand?”

   “Come in,” Jacob said from inside the room, bringing an end to the confrontation.

   The men shared a last stare before Taylor did as he was asked.

   Jacob was kneeling on the floor with his back to the wall. His body was leaning towards a small statue that Taylor couldn’t quite see. As he entered the room, Jacob slowly rose to his feet in the strained, uneasy fashion of an arthritic elderly man. Knowing that he was only a few years older than himself, Taylor could only imagine the pain he must have been in. It was hard for him to believe this was the same lithe young man, full of boundless energy he had watched thrash around the stage on the first night of the Uprisings.

   “How was your lunch?” Jacob asked, still managing to smile despite his discomfort.

   Taylor patted his stomach, “Better than I’d imagined.”

   “Unfortunately we have to keep our gardens small, otherwise they get discovered by your satellites. If it wasn’t for that, we could feed everyone in the Old-Town.”

   Taylor nodded, without really listening to anything that had been said.

   “Listen Jacob, I need to speak to Lennox. I want to see how much he knows about what happened to me.”

   Jacob sighed, “Unfortunately that’s impossible.”

   “Really?” Taylor said, then looked back to the door he had just entered, “If you want me to help you, I think you’d better start helping me first. If not, I can leave.”

   “Your man is dead,” Jacob said, “he died in the night.”

   “Shit,” Taylor muttered, “did he say anything to you?”

   Jacob shook his head; “He was in an awful lot of pain. He just kept repeating a name over and over again. Skinner, I believe it was.”

   “He was the one your men killed,” Taylor informed him, “the two of them were very close.”  

   He didn’t want to say too much about their relationship, he didn’t think it appropriate to gossip about the dead.

   “Warfare often does that to men,” Jacob said, needing no further explanation, “it brings about the strongest of emotions.”

   Taylor resented being told about the effects of war by a man who had never fought one.

   “Did you know,” he continued, “that it was compulsory for Spartan warriors to take a male lover? They reasoned that a man would fight to protect someone he loved with every last breath in his body. Whether it’s true or not I couldn’t say, but there are few who would argue what an effective fighting force they were.”

   “You should have told me before,” Taylor said, again ignoring Jacob’s words, “I could have spoken to him first.”

   “There was no waking you, I thought you were dead too at one point.”

   Taylor looked down to the floor at the statue Jacob had been staring at. He saw a small, wooden cross next to a picture of a caring-looking woman in a long, blue gown, fondly gazing at the baby she cradled in her arms.

   “I never had you down as the religious type,” he said, resisting the temptation to pick up the cross with the emaciated man nailed to it.

   “I wasn’t,” Jacob replied, “I used to be your old-fashioned
anarchist, atheist punk rocker back in the day.”

    Taylor could relate to this part of Jacob’s history, at least the atheist bit anyway. When the depression hit, many people who’d had no interest in God were suddenly turning to whichever religion they felt offered them an answer to their problems. Some even started their own religions, or cults as his father had called them, if the organised ones could not provide them with the desired solutions. His father was having none of it. He had been vaguely religious before his mother died but after they lost her, the man had forsaken what little faith he’d once had.

   ‘How can there be a god,’ he had calmly told his son at his mother’s funeral, ‘when fucked-up shit like this happens?’

   He may have been a hard drinker but it was the only time his father ever swore in front of him. Taylor had seen nothing since to convince him the man was wrong.

   “Yes, I suppose you could say I was about as far from God as anyone was going to get,” Jacob went on, “but that was before the fire. The fire helped me to find him.”

   Taylor knew he shouldn’t have said what he was thinking but couldn’t help letting it out.

   “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I would have thought what happened to you would only have confirmed your views on religion.”

   If Jacob was shocked by his comments, he didn’t show it.

   “No. Whilst I was laying there; trapped in that building in the worst pain you could ever imagine, I was ready to give up. I would have rather died than endure any more. But just when I’d lost all hope, that’s when he came to me. That’s when he spoke to me and said that I would make it, that he’d keep me alive until they found me. I didn’t realise what it was at the time but he said he still had work for me to do and that I couldn’t die until I’d done it.”

   Taylor tried to hide his cynicism but Jacob must have seen it.

   “I know you probably think I was hallucinating; that it was the pain that made me think I’d seen something but it’s true. I saw him; he spoke to me… He saved me.”

   “And you think this is what he wanted you to do?”

   Jacob nodded, “Yes I do. I think that my job was to help the people get back into the City. It’s your job now too.”

   “Maybe. But I’ll be doing it for my own reasons,” Taylor looked down at the cross, “definitely not for him.”

   Jacob smiled, “It’s doesn’t matter who you’re doing it for. What matters is that you’re helping us.”

   “And what exactly are you going to do if you get into the City?” Taylor asked, “What’s the big picture here Jacob?”

   The scarred man laughed, “And that’s the million dollar question isn’t it? They have some truly wonderful things in the City, they really do. The buildings, the technology, the medicine that the children born out here have never had access to. But there’s so much wrong with it too. All that waste and the compulsion to own anything people can get their hands on, regardless of the consequences. I know they look at us and think we’re savages and they’re right, some of us are, unfortunately that’s what happens when there’s not enough to go round… But the thing is Taylor, there’s so much good here too. I’ve seen the way people help each other, how they’re willing to give to others even though they’ve got nothing themselves. Poverty breeds cruelty, but it also breeds goodness, and an ingenuity that far surpasses anything used to create that shiny world you live in. I’ve seen the way people here waste absolutely nothing, the way that everything they have has a use and a meaning.”

   The speech had triggered something off in Jacob. He began pacing the room like he was preparing to go back on stage once more.

   “What I envisage is a world where we can take the best of the Old-Town and combine it with the best of the City. Somewhere we can turn our backs on the greed and ignorance that has held us all back for so long. I just want to live in a place that puts as much value on our neighbour’s wellbeing as it does on our own. After all, it’s in everyone’s interests.”

   Taylor raised a cynical eyebrow, “You try telling that to the people on the other side of the wall.”

   “It’s true. People in the City are brought up to be unhappy, to be constantly striving for a better life. If they were happy the whole system would collapse in an instant.”