The Hope (26 page)

“Brain-dead,” muttered Lock.

“Yes, you are,” said Small. “You’re dead, like all of them, only they’ve gone to heaven, that’s why they’re not here any more and you are.”

“I don’t know where the fuck they’ve gone but it’s not heaven, I can tell you that for nothing. More likely to the bottom of the ocean.”

“No,” said Small with conviction.

“Look, sonny,” said Lock with a contemptuous leer, “this is none of your business, so sod off.”

“The blade, Riot.”

“Come and get it, Small,” jeered Riot, making Small’s beautiful name sound like an insult, and Lock laughed heartily like the little dog to see such fun.

Small ran at Riot, head down, fists out, and slammed into him. Startled, Riot lost his footing and fell backward. He grunted as his back connected with the rim of the pool and then Small was upon him, howling in fury.

“You killed them! You killed them all! You killed Billy!”

Riot pretended that they were just playing a game, a boys’ rough-and-tumble type of game, and was laughing.

“No, we didn’t. We wanted to, but the pool did it for us. The final solution, ha ha.”

“You fucker!” squealed Small, astride Riot’s chest, his fists impotent in Riot’s hands. “You fucker, you fucker, you fucker!”

“Can’t you handle him, wimp?” said Lock.

“He’s gone apeshit! Fucking apeshit!”

“You killed them! You killed them!” Small wrenched his hands free and tried to pummel Riot’s face. Riot was considerably more anxious now and raised his arms to protect himself. Small reached down between Riot’s legs.

“Jesus, Small, don’t…”

Riot jerked as if he had been given an electric shock and he screamed and Small rolled off him and Riot tumbled head first into the pool. The scream was cut off. Lock clutched his face in horror. Small rocked back on to his hindquarters at the rim of the pool, looking down at the acute angles of Riot’s body and the upturned eyes and the single droplet of phlegm oozing out of the nose. Riot’s scream still hung about the pool. Small crawled across, lowered himself carefully over the edge and rummaged around in Riot’s pockets until he found the blade. It was cool and sharp, crouched in its mother-of pearl casing. He hauled himself on to the side again. Lock, for all his muscle, backed off a few steps, turned and fled.

Small flicked the blade out, the hard man, leader of men, Big General.

LONELY THE RAT

Paolo had seen dead people before, millions of times. Killed four himself in scraps. Easy. It wasn’t Paolo killing them at all, it was the blade. Slip it in, twist, pull it out. Easy. The victim maybe chokes a bit and there’s always blood, but it’s no big deal. Death? Piece of piss. But when Longpole ran into the Trident and asked him if he wanted to come and see some “corpuses”, some real “corpuses”, Paolo jumped at the chance. Longpole was a bit dumb (that’s why he couldn’t say “corpses”) but he’d been hopping about like his bladder was ready to explode because these corpuses weren’t freshly dead corpuses – they were nearly a week old and beginning to rot. Paolo slammed his glass down and agreed to go with Longpole immediately. Although he was used to dead, this was real dead. When you killed someone in a scrap, they didn’t really look dead, they just looked … not very well, like something they’d eaten had disagreed with them. Usually their hands were clutched around their stomachs, which was Paolo’s favourite place to stab because it took them longer to die, and this added to the impression of illness. So that kind of dead wasn’t very interesting at all.

The corpuses, according to Longpole, had just sat in their cabin all this time waiting to be found. He wasn’t going to describe them to Paolo because it was more fun if he saw for himself. He didn’t want to ruin anything.

The two of them raced out of the Trident even though they were due for a council of war in an hour. Longpole had said it wouldn’t take long to get to the corpuses and they could make it back in time for the meeting, although everyone knew that it wasn’t a meeting as such, more of an excuse for Riot to make a speech and flick his knife a few times before they all marched off to the pool without anyone being asked if they had a better idea. Not that anyone would have. But Longpole said if they didn’t go now, they’d never get another chance like it. Someone was bound to take the corpuses away and do something crass like give them a burial.

And so Paolo, who had seen dead bodies millions of times and thought that death was a piece of piss, stood beside Longpole at the door to some unidentified cabin way, way downstairs and let Longpole swing the door open theatrically and looked in at the four corpuses and was afraid.

It was dark in the cabin and only a bit brighter outside.

The bodies were not much more than human-shaped outlines until Paolo’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and then he could see them sitting or lying in there like bored people expecting something to happen. Death seemed to have been quite a surprise. One moment everything hunky dory, the next – Oops! Look, Ma, we’re all dead. Three of them were little kids. The adult was still cradling one of the kids on its lap, bony arms locked around bony body. There was a defunct candle on the table in front of them. The other two were in bed, and the only thing that told you they weren’t actually asleep was the stain on the bed-linen which spread where it touched their skin. The heads of the two seated corpuses were lolled back, as if they had been staring up waiting for death to descend and had been staring for so long that their eyes had misted over. The skin of their cheeks was pinched and rilled, pale as dust and flaking off in patches. The bodies were stick-thin. This gave Paolo the freaky idea that all the good bits had been emptied out into a bin or something and taken elsewhere.

The worst thing was the stench of the place, like all the most awful smells you could think of rolled into a nose-curdling, bowel-churning one. You noticed the stench before you got near the cabin. It came up on you as you were trotting along the walkway, tapped you on the shoulder, said, “Hello, you don’t know me, but I’m sure once you’ve met me properly and got to know me, you’ll never forget me. And one day we’ll become good, good friends.” And like all nodding acquaintances, it proved to be eager and irritatingly persistent.

Paolo, peering through the doorway at the four corpuses (as surprised to see him as he was to see them), pulled his T-shirt up over his face. It was just an ordinary cabin, he told himself, but he couldn’t get over the feeling that it was a tomb. Longpole hopped from foot to foot beside him.

“Isn’t it great? Real corpuses, straight up, no shit. Soon as word got around, I came down here to have a look. Knew you’d be interested.”

“I am,” said Paolo through the cotton. “But I’ve seen worse. Who found ’em?”

“Lil. Said she was paying a social call and the door wasn’t locked, so she went in and there they were. Yeuch! Can you imagine it? I mean, they were friends of hers. Yeuch!”

“Lil doesn’t pay social calls,” said Paolo. “Bet she wanted something. Bet it was one of her customers.”

“Naah, it’s a woman, can’t you see? Look, she got tits.” Longpole scampered into the cabin and went right up to the adult corpse. He put out a finger and prodded the corpse’s chest, but poked so hard that his finger went through the fabric of the dress and sank two joints deep into the flesh. He screeched and pulled his finger out, which made a sucking noise Paolo would have preferred never to have heard, and then Longpole was wiping his hand in a frenzy on the nearest available set of bedclothes.

“Eurgh, eurrr…! Oh, Christ! Shitshitshitshitshit!”

Paolo was trying to smother his laughter under his facemask but Longpole could see the creases around his eyes.

“Shut up, you fucker! It’s not funny.”

The adult corpse now had a gimlet-hole in its left breast, edged with an ooze of gore. That looked pretty funny, too. But Paolo was still scared even as he laughed at Longpole. That corpse, dead for days, seemed as if it could turn its head right now and raise its mildewed finger and point at him, stare with blanked eyes, open its mouth until the hinges cracked under the strain and the jaw fell away in a soundless scream of condemnation framed by yellow rotted teeth.

“OK, joke’s over,” said Paolo. “Let’s go back.”

“Why?” asked Longpole coming back out into the daylight, wiping his finger on his shirt as if he was determined to remove every last scrap of his own skin. “Scared? Don’t you want to go in and have a closer look? You chicken?”

“No, just don’t think we should be late, that’s all.”

“They’re well nasty, aren’t they?”

“Why hasn’t someone come to take them away yet?”

“Would
you
want to?”

“No, but hasn’t someone reported it to the Captain or something?”

“Probably. Who cares? People die all the time.”

“Hey, you! You kids!” It was Lil, hurrying towards them along the walkway, accompanied by three men. “Get away from there!”

“Only having a quick look,” said Longpole with a shrug. “No harm in that.”

“Leave poor Mary alone! She had a hard enough life without little brats like you making it hard for her when she’s dead.”

“Friend of yours, then?” jeered Longpole. Paolo kept a tactful silence.

Lil reached them with her entourage in tow and made to clip Longpole around the side of the head, but he was too quick for her bulbous, flabby arm and ducked out of the way.

“Come on, Paolo, let’s get out of here.”

“Little brats!” screamed Lil after them as they showed her their heels. “No respect for the dead.”

“Want us to get them, pussywillow?” asked one of the entourage.

“No, love, you and your mates just deal with the bodies like I asked you.” Covering her nose with her hand Lil strode into the cabin and took a quick but thorough mental inventory. It wasn’t a bad place. Bit of cleaning, bit of decoration, and it could be quite nice. At last the useless bitch had proved useful for something.

Paolo and Longpole ran and giggled as they ran. Somehow, close scrapes with adults were ten times more exciting than scraps with other kids or even close encounters with week-old corpuses. Paolo followed Longpole, who was as lanky as his name suggested and had a strange way of running like a speeded-up impression of a long-legged stalking bird, a method that kept him well ahead of his companion. When he turned corners, he leaned into them and his legs shot out centrifugally. Every so often he would look over his shoulder at Paolo and give a manic leer and pour on the speed.

“Look out, you daft bugger!” panted Paolo. “You’ll run into somebody!”

“My arse!” replied Longpole, looking round, and a moment later ran into somebody. He turned round to launch a volley of insults at the dumbfuck dickhead who had been stupid enough to get in his way, and the insults died unformed in his throat. Paolo skidded to a halt behind Longpole. He couldn’t see the other guy at all because it had got dark all of a sudden; maybe the smoke from the funnels had thickened or a cloud had passed over the sun. Then he heard the other guy speak in a voice that was the last gasp of a victim on the rack: “Do you know?”

And he heard Longpole say: “Holy Jesus, shit!” Longpole turned his head round to look at Paolo and he wasn’t grinning any more. He turned his head a bit further. Paolo thought that wasn’t natural, you couldn’t twist your neck that far, before he saw a pair of hands either side of Longpole’s face and there came a sound from Longpole’s neck that reminded him of the sound dice make when they’re thrown down. Longpole was looking over his shoulder now, Longpole’s tongue was pushing itself out between his lips, Longpole’s pupils were drifting upwards into his head, Longpole’s neck was a twisted rope, Longpole’s long legs were kicking at the walkway. Paolo spurted urine into the front of his jeans. Then Longpole was dropped to the deck like a full sack and his killer, hands held forward, had this look on his face that wasn’t mad but sad.

“Sorry,” he said, but Paolo wasn’t listening because he was trying to figure out what those patterns were on the man’s chest and stomach. The man was naked from the waist up and so emaciated that his veins were like lengths of string wrapped around his skeleton and his muscles no more than tumorous swellings trying to scratch a living from their owner. The corners of his mouth were tilted downward.

He said, “Do you know?” His scars were a wide, imperfect circle crossed half a dozen times diametrically to form the spokes of a crude wheel. The lines were shaded with angry red inflammation, and here and there black scabs hung grimly on. Who the hell had done that to him?

Paolo clawed for his back pocket and found it and slipped his hand in and drew out his blade. The thin man took a step forward over Longpole.

“Do you know?”

Paolo groped for his voice and found that, too: “I know you’re in big trouble if you come an inch closer.” He slid his thumb up the knife handle to find the stud. He wished there was someone else around, even a stopper. Where had everybody gone? The lower decks were usually crowded at this time of day. But Paolo was alone with Longpole bent and dead and a madman coming towards him. His thumb tried to press the stud but didn’t really want to, had changed its mind about this fighting business, you can look after yourself, Paolo, me old mucker.

No, I can’t, thought Paolo, and wished his father, the great
signor
, had never thrown him out into this cruel nightmare to make his own way and fend for himself. He didn’t want to end up like those corpuses, loathsome and rotten and perpetually startled by what the
Hope
had held in store for them, the big surprise that had been kept until last, crouching to spring when you least wanted it or expected it.

“Do you know?”

Paolo knew death, knew what dead was, knew he was looking at death’s little helper right now, coming at him, hands reaching out in a pitying embrace.

“Yes, I know all right,” he said. The thin man stopped a yard in front of him, perplexed. The hands that had twisted Longpole’s head round as easy as a bottle-top faltered and fell. Paolo’s thumb at last did a nervous spasm on the knife handle and the knife responded with a familiar click and jerk in his fingers. Without pausing Paolo’s blade flashed out to the thin man’s mutilated chest, not stopping when it met the weak resistance of skin or flesh, glancing upward inside the thin man’s chest as it grated off a rib. The thin man coughed politely and an apologetic dribble of blood abseiled down his front, making diversions around scar tissue, with two more dribbles in hot pursuit.