Arthur Quinn and Hell's Keeper (12 page)

As he continued to explore the camp, a numbness surged through him. He felt disconnected from the world, as if he was viewing himself on a cinema screen – just a character in a movie. A horror movie. He wondered if Joe was here somewhere, or the Barry family. He didn't know which fate would be worse: to have been killed in the house explosion or to end up at this camp. And what about the Lavenders? He hoped that in this world Ellie and Ex might be safe with their parents in some other country, away from the horror all around him. Although there was no way to be certain that the terrible things that had happened were restricted to Ireland.

Arthur wandered around for hours, feeling more lost and more lonely than he ever had in his life. The night didn't get any colder. More and more people fell asleep, but he couldn't. Not yet. He knew he wouldn't be able to drift off in this dreadful and strange environment. So he kept on walking, picking his way around the people back and forth across the pitch, just to keep moving. Anything to pass the time.

At one stage he remembered the hammer – and how it had come to him every time he was in mortal danger. He held his open palm in the direction of the door he'd come through, hoping to see the weapon crash through and soar straight into his grasp. But it didn't. He supposed he wasn't in mortal danger right now. Not really. He wasn't about to die. This place – whatever it was – was a place of slow, torturous death.

Arthur passed a small grouping by one of the pitch's goalposts. Between twenty and thirty people were laid out on the ground, lying on torn pieces of plastic sheeting in order to keep dry, arranged in a three-rowed grid system. Most of them were asleep but some were awake, gazing up at the sky or at him as he walked past. The majority had eyes full of sadness but, as hard as those were to bear, Arthur preferred them to the second group, whose eyes were totally devoid of emotion. Those eyes told him that their owners had given up. A handful of people were moving through the lines of those lying down, bending to talk to them, checking their temperature with the backs of their hands, tending to their every need. It's a makeshift hospital, he realised as one woman on the ground hacked a throaty cough. They've made a hospital for the sickest people. Right here, under the goalposts.

‘Hello, pet,' said a plump woman in her sixties. Despite her size, the skin was loose on her frame, evidence of just how unhealthy she was. She was holding the bottom half of a plastic bottle that had been cut in two, filled with water, and a small rag. This woman, Arthur realised, must be one of the nurses. She was the first person who had spoken to him since he'd got there. ‘Can I help you at all?' she asked.

Arthur shook his head. He couldn't find the words to speak to her; he just didn't know what to say.

The nurse nodded slowly. ‘OK, then. If you need anything, if you feel ill at all, just come on back. My name's Ann. If I'm not here, someone else will be.'

‘Thanks,' he uttered, not knowing what else to say. The woman read his confused expression.

‘You're new here, aren't you, pet?'

He nodded silently.

‘Thought so. You can always tell. Who took your shoes?'

‘Some kid.'

‘Hmm. Be careful of your clothes, now, pet. They're currency around this place.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Some of the guards will trade extra rations for items of clothing. And then they'll just rip up the clothes in front of your eyes.'

‘Why would they do that?'

‘Humiliation, I suppose. I'm guessing you weren't in one of the other camps either, were you, pet?'

‘I was hiding … in my old home …'

‘Oh. Well, one other piece of advice for you: don't cross the Wolfsguard. Some of them have terrible tempers.'

‘The Wolfsguard?'

Nurse Ann pointed at the men in the stands. ‘Those terrible men are the Wolfsguard, pet. They're Loki's police force. You've heard of Loki, right?'

‘Yes … yes … I've heard of him. There must be a way out of here, though.'

‘If there was, don't you think we'd all be gone? Although, I suppose it is difficult for a few hundred weak prisoners to just sneak out. No,' she added with finality, ‘we're stuck here, I'm afraid.'

Lost for words, he started to move on again, but the woman reached out and took him by the arm.

‘Hold on a second, pet,' she said. ‘Wait there.' She hurried off, returning a few moments later. She held a ragged piece of plastic sheeting out to him. ‘You'll need this to sleep on. I'd give you some shoes if I had any spare but I don't.'

‘Thank you.' He took the sheet and turned to go once more. ‘But I don't think I'll be able to sleep.'

‘Oh,' Ann said knowingly, turning back to her charges, ‘you'd be surprised, pet.'

The nurse had been right. Arthur was surprised the next morning when he found that he had managed to catch a few hours' sleep.

After the nurse had given him the sheeting, he'd wandered the muddy field for another while, gazing with ever-growing apprehension at the terrible sights around him. Eventually most of the camp grew quiet and all he had to look at was thousands of sleeping prisoners. He felt like an intruder – stepping over a snorer here, past a cuddling couple there. It was as if he was invading their privacy – although he supposed that no one had any real privacy in a place like this. It had been taken from them, along with their freedom. The only things they still had were their lives. That said, Arthur realised hopelessly while looking back in the direction of the makeshift hospital, it probably wasn't long before they started to lose those too.

His legs were soon aching from all the walking. He found an empty spot on the ground by the edge of the pitch. Only a handful of sleepers had chosen the perimeter to make their bed for the night and he quickly saw why. Most of the moisture and water had seeped to the declined verge around the camp and it was a soggier mess here than anywhere else. He didn't relish the thought of lying there, but since the rest of the pitch was tightly packed body-to-body, and since the Wolfsguard were on patrol keeping humans out of the tiered seating, he didn't have any other option.

Arthur laid the plastic sheeting over the ground. Brown water bubbled up through a couple of rips in the material but, aside from that, it seemed to be doing a fairly good job. He sat down on it, making more droplets of the coffee-coloured ooze drizzle through, then leaned his head back against an advertisement board that separated the pitch from the stand and thought of Ash, Joe and everyone else. He was still thinking of them when he woke up.

Somebody bumped into him, knocking him out of his dream-ravaged sleep. Although the sky was as gloomy and green as it had been the previous day, he still had to squint against the brightness, waiting for his eye to adjust. When it did, he took in the scene around him.

Nearly everyone was moving forward, heading towards the opposite corner to the hospital. They all wore determined, fixed gazes, staring straight ahead of them. What was most disconcerting was that almost no one spoke as they walked.

He pushed himself to his feet. His legs, he found, were still shaky, but not as weak as they had been the previous night. He picked up his sheeting (he thought of it as his now, he noticed with worry), shook off any excess clumps of sludge, folded it and stuffed it into his pocket.

‘Excuse me,' he said to a passing man, who he guessed was in his early forties. ‘Can you tell me where everyone's going?'

‘Not been here long, have you?' replied the man, noting the relative cleanliness of Arthur's garb. ‘It's breakfast-time. The Wolfsguard are never what you'd call generous, so you should make a move if you want to eat today.'

Arthur began to thank him for the advice but the man was already moving away, surging forward to get a good spot. He looked around, hoping to see a familiar face – even the plump woman from the hospital. Seeing no one he knew, he joined the breakfast throng.

He was astounded by how quickly swarms of people squeezed into the corner where the guards would allocate the breakfast. It was anything but an orderly line; it was just a mob thrusting forward. Only the very old and very young stayed away, probably hoping that their friends and relatives would bring some food back to them. As he moved forward himself, he looked at their faces, their eyes hungry and their bellies rumbling. Arthur made a mental note to get enough food for himself and some of these weaker, famished folk.

A group of guards without helmets was coming out of one of the doors at the top of the lowest tier. One of them was wearing a tall chef's hat and matching apron, both stained liberally with food spillages. He was carrying a large pot with some indeterminable green-brown sludge sloshing over the rim as he walked. The others had black bin-bags or plastic crates full of half-eaten breakfast rolls, mouldy pizza slices and dried-up pieces of meat. The crowd surged forward frantically, waving tin bowls that Arthur recognised from the many camping trips he'd gone on with Joe. He was hustled along by the heaving horde, shoved to and fro as people jostled past him, so eager were they to get their ration of leftovers.

His legs collapsed unexpectedly. He couldn't tell whether he'd slipped or his limbs were still weak or – worse still – if someone had tripped him up. Either way, he got his hands out in front of him just in time to cushion his fall. He expected people would stop and help, but instead their feet pummelled the ground by his face as they ran around him, rushing forward impatiently. He attempted to stand up, but every time he got to his knees someone would knock him to the ground once more. Eventually he gave up, wrapping his arms around his head in the hopes of protecting his skull. Just then, someone grabbed the back of his mud-encrusted T-shirt and wrenched him backwards out of the flocking mob. He didn't even see who had pulled him out as he landed on the ground a few feet away with a thud; his saviour had disappeared into the crowd.

Arthur stepped away from the throng, relieved to be out of it, and watched as the chef guard poured the brown slop into a steel trough at the edge of the pitch, similar to one pigs would eat from. The mob grew more violent, jostling each other out of the way to get at the vile-looking ‘food'. He was shocked to see that a couple of people had fainted and were being trampled underfoot; he'd been lucky to get away unhurt. Arthur turned away in distaste, but he could still hear the appalling sounds: pleading, screaming, sobbing.

The feeding frenzy lasted for almost an hour. The Wolfsguard amused themselves by flinging food high over the crowd and cackling as the starving prisoners rolled around in the mud, fighting for any scraps they could find. By the end, guards from all around the stadium had moved around to where the chef was standing, to watch the throng and join in the fun. When all the leftovers had been distributed, the crowd dispersed. Some of them were hobbling on injured limbs and some were still chewing what little food they'd caught. But none of them looked satisfied.

Arthur returned to his spot by the advertisement and sat down in the mud; he didn't bother with the sheeting this time, feeling too discouraged to care about this basic comfort. A woman was walking from person to person, handing out rations of the food she'd managed to catch. Arthur recognised her though it took him a moment to recall where from: it was Ann the nurse. She spotted him and squeezed through the crowds to him.

‘There you are again, pet,' she said. The faint sun shining behind her head forced Arthur to squint up at her. ‘Did you get anything?'

‘No. I fell.'

‘Well, in that case, here you go,' said Ann, picking a half-chewed crust from a slice of pizza out of the tin and offering it to Arthur. Mould was peppering one end of it and it felt hard and stale in Arthur's hand, but he was still grateful for it.

‘Thanks.' He rolled it around in his palm. ‘I'll save it for later.'

‘Good idea. How'd you sleep, pet?'

‘As well as can be expected.' His eyes strayed to where the mob had been, to the ground that had been churned up by hundreds of feet. Ann caught his anxious expression and rested a hand on the side of his face.

‘Listen, pet,' she said, ‘don't let that scare you.' She nodded at the aftermath of the riot. ‘People are starving and they're desperate to get what little food there is. But most of us share. All we have is each other.'

‘Thanks.'

The nurse peered at the darkening sky above.

‘Looks like it's going to rain today.' She turned back to Arthur. ‘Take care of yourself and, like I said before, pet, if you need anything I'm usually in our little makeshift hospital.' And with that, she was gone.

Nurse Ann was right. It did rain later that day. It began suddenly; there was a roll of thunder directly overhead, followed straight away by the torrent.

It wasn't just any drizzle or any shower; it was a supernatural rain that Arthur had only seen once before. Arthur was surprised that, as soon as it began, the wolves actually permitted the prisoners to stand among the tiered seating. This was one dispensation he supposed the Wolfsguard had to give them. Drops the size of basketballs fell from the emerald clouds, which shot out bolts of lightning with them. Within minutes, the pitch was flooded and the water was seeping halfway up the tier towards the huddled crowds.

Now would be a good time to escape, Arthur thought, looking around him. Except that there were at least two guards at every exit.

The shower only lasted twenty minutes or so and, though the clouds didn't disperse as normal, they were certainly a shade lighter than they'd been during the storm. What happens now, Arthur wondered, staring at the flooded sports pitch. He got his answer almost immediately as members of the Wolfsguard marched through the prisoners, handing out buckets and waterproof sacks. One of them thrust a rusty coffee tin into Arthur's hands.

‘You know what to do,' he barked before moving on. Arthur opened his mouth to say that actually he didn't have a clue what he was supposed to do since he'd only been here a day, but then wisely shut up when he noticed that the other prisoners were already following orders. He watched as they dipped their buckets or water-carriers into the edge of the flood, filling them up. Then they carried them back up to the top of the tier and poured the water down drainage holes he hadn't noticed previously, before going back for more. By the sound the water made drizzling down the pipes, Arthur could tell they went very deep, probably leading outside the stadium.

‘We can't possibly drain this whole pitch,' he murmured to himself, looking at the flood. It easily reached halfway up the bottom tier, which made it about ten feet deep. And yet people kept filling their buckets and pouring them out.

‘Of course we can,' muttered an elderly woman who was passing to refill her own sack. ‘We've done it before, we'll do it again.'

Arthur stood there for a moment, watching the work. So that was why the pitch wasn't flooded like outside. The prisoners had to drain it every time it rained. He let the realisation sink in for a moment before walking down to the edge of the flood and joining in with the other detainees.

They worked right through the day and through most of the night without a break. If any of the prisoners did risk sitting down to rest, the guards would shout a warning to get back to work. If that didn't encourage them enough, they'd take out their batons. One swift clout around the ear was usually enough to remind the prisoner of their work ethic.

As exhausted as Arthur's legs had been the day before while swimming down Henry Street, his upper arms and shoulders were twice as fatigued now. Yet his coffee can was tiny compared to some of the water carriers others had been left to deal with, so he couldn't imagine how worn out those poor souls were. As the day grew darker, he was tempted to take the pizza crust out of his pocket and devour it whole. Two things stopped him. First, he knew he'd be gladder to have it when the work was finished and, second, he was worried that if he did take it out the guards would simply confiscate it.