When she wasn’t obsessing about revenge, Barboza was busy entertaining herself with the vintage record player that she’d taken from the old lady’s house across the street. At Walker’s insistence, she played the music – mostly classical – at low volume so it wouldn’t attract unwanted attention and because music had a way of tapping at Walker’s memory like a crow’s beak. It was making him think too much, opening doors that he didn’t want to look inside.
Barboza had also tried to teach Walker a little capoeira. They’d stood in the middle of the street, while she demonstrated kicks with exotic sounding names such as meia lua de frente and martelo de negative. But the moves required a level of flexibility that Walker simply didn’t possess. Barboza however, moved with the grace of a dancer, showing off a variety of techniques that demonstrated her impressive agility. For Walker, it was like watching someone in a martial arts movie. But when he tried to get his leg up to perform even the most basic of manoeuvres, it often ended with him falling onto his backside in the middle of the street.
“Nice try Walker,” she’d said, laughing into the back of her hand.
“Hey,” he said, feeling the hot road on his backside. “Who needs this when you’ve got a butcher’s knife in your hand, right?”
But physical exercise was kept to a minimum. Walker held back with his regular push-ups too, as there wasn’t enough food to sustain their need for fuel. Generally they stayed as inactive as possible from one day to the next, like two snakes waiting out the long winter.
Then Drop Day came at last
It was a warm morning as they travelled towards the New River to pick up their supplies. Walker pushed the wheelbarrow and Barboza walked behind him. She was wearing a blue sleeveless t-shirt and a fresh pair of denim shorts. It surprised Walker to see how many different t-shirts and other items of clothing that Barboza had in her collection – he wondered if she’d collected these over the last nine years on her travels across London.
For his part, Walker didn’t care much for clothes. He wore a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans – the same thing he always seemed to have on these days. These were the clothes that his father had worn and thank God he’d grown up to be a similar size and shape as Archie Walker.
They’d heard the helicopters buzzing around London early that morning. That meant the supply parcels had been delivered along the New River and Walker wanted to get there and back as quickly as possible. Despite everything else that had happened, he hadn’t forgotten about the rogue attack on the last Drop Day. And there was always the real possibility that Barboza’s rogues might still be in the area. To make him feel a little better, Walker had tossed a kitchen knife into the wheelbarrow. If something happened this time, he’d be ready.
They took Walker’s familiar route to the New River – cutting through Ducketts Common and out onto Hampden Road, walking past the abandoned houses, the church and the hair salon. Further down, they crossed the intersection with Wightman Road, passing alongside the impressive mosque on their right. Then they approached the fence. Behind that was the grassy hill that led down to the river.
Walker dropped the wheelbarrow at the fence. Then he took the knife out of the tray and clutched it tightly to his chest, as if making a silent pact with the weapon that they would stand by each other no matter what. As he did this, Barboza was already climbing the fence, hauling her legs over and dropping down onto grassy slope.
Walker passed the knife to her though a gap in the steel bars. Then he climbed the fence and landed on the grass. She handed him the kitchen knife and they walked rapidly down towards the river path.
Walker kept his eyes open for signs of anything unusual.
“I hope those bastards show up,” Barboza growled, keeping pace with Walker’s hurried stride. “It’s with great pleasure that I’m going to drown them one by one in the river. No police here, right? No such thing as murder in the new London.”
Walker didn’t want to talk about it. Truth was he didn’t want to talk at all. What he really wanted to do was pick up the parcel, be it one or two, and get away from the river, unharmed and in one piece. Drop Day was no longer what it had been. It felt like he was walking in a different place since the attack last week. There was an underlying sense of danger, something unwelcoming about the New River now. There were other people on the scene. Barboza had been coming there for months. The rogues were there too. It was no longer his place.
“How far along do you usually go?” Walker asked.
“Not far,” Barboza said. “I come here super early. Sometimes even before the helicopter.”
“Aye,” Walker said. “You’ve been taking the first parcel. No wonder I’ve been walking so far along this bloody path lately. I must have been picking up the second parcel all along.”
“Aye,” Barboza said, teasing him.
Walker managed a smile. “You know something?” he said. “I’ve heard some terrible impressions in my time. But that was actually – the worst ever.”
It was about a five-minute walk to the first parcel. It had been dropped safely at the far edge of the winding path that ran alongside the river. Upon seeing it, Walker grabbed it, hurried back to the wheelbarrow and dropped it there. He insisted that Barboza came back with him to the fence, although she had wanted to stay on the path and wait for him to return.
Now Walker and Barboza were back where they started. They stood with their backs to the fence, looking along the river path. From somewhere nearby, Walker heard the familiar whirr and click. But he didn’t say anything.
“We need that second parcel,” Barboza said. It was as if she sensed his desire to go back.
Walker squeezed the knife handle. He knew that the extra food rations would be crucial but damn it, he just wanted to call it a day and go home. Get a successful Drop Day under his belt and then he wouldn’t be so jittery next time. But of course Barboza was right – two parcels were better than one. There was no getting around that. They might even be comfortable for a little while if they could get that second parcel, if not quite swimming in luxury.
“Let’s get it over with,” Walker said.
“Vamos,” Barboza said.
They left the wheelbarrow with the first parcel inside. Then they made their way back down towards the river path. With each step, Walker felt increasingly nervous. He could see nothing up ahead and there was no noise to indicate that anything was out of the ordinary. All he could hear was the gentle flow of the river and the occasional burst of bird song. If he hadn’t been so anxious, Walker might have been able to enjoy the surroundings. Nature seemed so benign sometimes, but there was always the threat of something terrible lurking around the corner.
Whirr-click.
“Can you see the parcel yet?” Barboza asked.
“No,” he said, looking up at the trees. “Keep an eye on the other side of the river too.”
“Relax Walker,” she said. “You’re making me nervous.”
Walker paid no attention to her. Instead, he held the knife out, his arm extended and ready for the rogues. They travelled further along the river path. The blue sky reflected off the water surface, transforming the New River into an endless sheet of icy mirror glass. The leaves on the trees were bright green and sometimes yellow, basking in mid-summer bloom. Occasionally a perching bird would leap off the rattling branches, and it sounded like cannon fire in Walker’s head.
They approached a gradual turn that veered to the right. Out of nowhere, Walker heard Paul McCartney’s voice in his head singing ‘The Long and Winding Road’. And so it was. None of this terrain was familiar. Walker realised that this was the furthest he’d been from Stanmore Road since 2011. His eyes went back and forth, looking for a hint of something comfortable. He saw a row of wooden fences on both sides of the river, beyond which he could see the roofs of houses in the distance. But he didn’t know them. He didn’t know where they were.
He stopped walking all of a sudden.
Barboza slowed down and t
urned back to him. “Are you alright?” she said.
Walker shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Do you want to keep going?” she said.
“Something’s not right,” Walker said. “I feel like we’re wading into deep water. It’s all wrong.”
She touched him gently on the arm.
“Just a little longer, okay?” she said. “We need that parcel Walker – if it’s here. And screw those rogue bastards – if we find them, we kill them. Right?”
Walker nodded. How could she be so nonchalant about killing? It had to be all the things she’d seen on her journey from one end of the city to the other. It had hardened her. Toughened her up in a way that Walker – who’d been hiding out for the past nine years and who’d just killed a man one week ago – couldn’t imagine.
“Okay,” he said, sounding less than convinced.
They followed the path as it veered towards the right. Walker lapsed into a daydream. He thought of Alba and how much he wanted to get back to her. Back to Stanmore Road. He heard Barboza’s classical music playing in his head, showing him faces that he’d forgotten from the past. Walker didn’t need anything outside the boundaries of his neighbourhood. It was all there – from Stanmore Road to the New River. That was his life, his universe. But how could it ever be the same again? With Barboza, the rogues, and whatever else was drifting north invading his territory.
His thoughts wandered from the path, away from the parcel and the rogues.
Then Barboza screamed. Walker snapped out of his daydream and returned to the New River in a heartbeat.
There was a tiger on the riverbank, no more than a few feet away.
When Barboza screamed, the big cat jumped and turned towards them. Its lithe, muscular body twitched slightly and then froze like a statue. It held them in his eyes, casting a spell of enchantment that rendered them unable to move.
Walker couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was a tiger. A real fucking tiger. He’d been so wary of running into other people, into the rogues, that this sort of threat hadn’t even entered his mind. How could it have? Once again, the New River had got the better of him.
The tiger’s yellowy-gold eyes never left Walker and Barboza. It was creeping towards them now, or at least it appeared to be.
Walker felt his body trembling. He looked quickly at the fence to their right. If they could reach it, they could jump over and it would lead them into a residential area. They could come back for the wheelbarrow and the parcel. But there was no time to run. It was too much of a risk to even move – it was at least twenty feet to the fence. And if they ran, which they’d have to do to in order to stand a chance – the creature would be on them, or at least one of them, before they’d cleared the fence.
Barboza spat out a few words, repeating them over and over again like a demented mantra.
“Jump. Jump in the river. Jump.”
Her voice sounded different, like it was somebody else talking. Probably she was just as shit scared as he was.
“Jump in the river,” she said. “Walker?”
“No,” Walker hissed. He kept his eyes on the silent monster in front of them. “Tigers can swim,” he said. “If it follows us into the river then we’re fucked. It’s not even that deep anyway. It’ll probably slow us down more than him.”
“Oh Christ Walker.”
The tiger crept forward. Its ears were pinned back against its head and unless Walker was mistaken, it looked pissed off. As the two human invaders had done nothing to suggest that they were a threat, it grew bolder. Now it was stalking them, edging its way forwards as if through some unseen tall grass in the jungle. Walker had seen Alba do the same thing in the long grass of the neighbourhood gardens on multiple occasions – stalking birds and getting ready to pounce. Getting ready to kill. But this big cat, unlike Alba, had the power to crush human bones in its jaws.
The tiger leapt at Barboza.
Walker acted out of pure instinct. He didn’t think, he just did. As the tiger sprang at Barboza he shoved her off the edge and sent her crashing down into the water. She didn’t even have time to scream.
The tiger came down and its claws raked into the flesh on Walker’s arm. Walker howled in pain and instinctively brought his other hand up, slamming the knife down upon the tiger’s back with every ounce of strength he could muster. The blow didn’t land clean, but he felt the blade cut through the hard muscle. This was confirmed when the tiger roared in pain.
Walker hurried backwards, creating space between himself and the tiger. Distance, distance, distance. As he did so, he showed the tip of the knife to the creature. The top half of the blade was now covered in blood – the purest red that Walker had ever seen. The tiger, perhaps sensing its own vulnerability backed off a little. There was no longer a meal standing in front of it, but rather a threat had emerged from the thing on two legs. The tiger’s ears were down and it continued to display its sharp upper canines, two massive daggers growing out of its mouth, pointing at Walker.
The golden eyes of the beast shone in rage. Walker knew that he had to stand tall and from somewhere deep down, he felt an unexpected surge of strength. It was the same sort of feeling he’d experienced when charging at the rogues outside Barboza’s house. He was winning. He had hurt the tiger worse that it had hurt him. There would be no running – he would stand his ground or die. This was his river after all. No more rogues and no more fucking tigers allowed.
“Jump Walker!”
Barboza’s voice came floating up from the water. But there was only the tiger and the knife in Walker’s hand. These were the things that mattered. He kept his blade raised, ready to anticipate every move that the creature might use to get past the knife. He took a step forward, knowing that he could die at any moment. But somehow he knew – he was getting the better of this creature. He could see it. He could feel it. He was the one with the upper hand.
Walker came forward, increasing the pace and holding his arms out to make himself look big. The tiger went backwards.
Walker jabbed viciously at the creature with the weapon – the tiger didn’t like that and both blinked and snarled with each thrust of the blade. Those yellow eyes seemed to curse Walker’s courage and it was both a terrible and wonderful sight to behold, such a magnificent creature shrinking before him, hovering on the brink of defeat.
Walker chose that moment to halt his advance. It was time to let the tiger back off to a safe distance, which it did. It continued its retreat back along the river path at a steady pace. Staring and growling. Moments later, it sent one last snarl Walker’s way and then turned and took off, trotting down river path, following the bend to the right until it was out of sight.
Walker watched the tiger go. He stood rigid, with his knife arm pointing outward like a signpost. He didn’t dare blink. Gradually, he became aware of a sharp pain eating into his left arm. His heart was thudding in his chest and a gallon of sweat was dripping down his face. It felt like the adrenaline was wearing off quickly.
“Walker!” Barboza yelled. Her voice was shrill. “Are you there?”
Slowly, he lowered the knife. The tiger was gone, at least for now. With his entire body shaking like a leaf, he staggered over to the edge of the river and looked down. Barboza was standing in the water, which went up to her shoulders. She was looking up at him and her face lit up with relief when she saw him.
“Filho da puta!” she yelled. “Are you okay?”
“It’s gone,” he said, barely getting the words out.
Barboza trudged through the shallow water to the edge of the river. She reached her arm up towards him on the path.
“Help me up Walker,” she said. “Please.”
Walker got onto his belly and reached down for her with his good arm. He pulled her up out of the water and she dropped down onto the warm concrete path beside him. Barboza was breathing frantically, but Walker was eerily still.
She put her arms around him and squeezed tightly. “Thank you,”
she said.
“Ouch!” Walker said, feeling a hot stinging sensation in his arm.
She let go of him.
“Give me your arm,” she said, looking at his wound.
Walker reluctantly raised his sore arm and Barboza took a closer look. He forced himself to take a quick glance at the damage. The fabric of the t-shirt above the wound had been torn to shreds, but there was only one laceration in the skin. It was long but it wasn’t deep. Nonetheless, it stung like a bitch.
Barboza was looking at him. Her eyes were peculiar, almost unrecognisable. They were pleading and apologetic. He got the feeling that she was trying to say something to him, something profound that went beyond words.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry Walker.”
Walker shook his head. “What do you mean?”
Barboza hesitated. She appeared to be on the brink of saying something, but then stopped.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I meant – sorry for hurting your arm just there.”
“Am I dreaming?” Walker said, looking back at her. “Or did we just see a tiger roaming around north London like it was the middle of the fucking jungle.”
Barboza pushed a clump of damp hair away from her face. “From the zoos,” she said. “They come from the zoos.”
Walker sat down on the path, exposing his wound to the great fiery orb in the sky.
“You mean they escaped?” he said.
“More likely they were let out,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
“I suppose,” he said. “But what do I know?”
Walker noticed that Barboza was staring at him again. Not just looking, but staring. It was uncomfortable to say the least. She seemed unaware of it but there it was, that same intense look in her eyes. Like two brown lasers penetrating his soul.
“You saved my life Walker,” she said. “That’s the second time you’ve done that.”
The Future of London Box Set Page 32
