“It’s a long story.”
“Forgive me Jenkin, but have you noticed a shortage of time around here?”
He hopped from foot to foot for a moment, desperate to get to work on the computer.
“There is, a bit, at the moment.” He waved the laptop. “I’m going to get some information for Guntrick. You know, about this attack? But. I suppose I realised that revenge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I went back to life, and that wasn’t so great either.” He paused for breath. “Does that help?”
“Not really.” She had, at least, unfolded her arms. Weirdly, Jenkin almost felt he needed her permission to leave.
“Oh, go on then. Go and do your computer thing. But mind, when this is all over, don’t think you’ll be spending hours on that thing.” He grinned, the last sixteen year old in the western world to be told to spend less time on a computer.
He turned and started to make his way to his favourite spot on the hill. The American girls were chatting excitedly to the side of Ron’s ‘office’, with a lot of fast clapping of hands. He decided to take a punt.
“Millie. I’m going to do some, er, stuff. Do you want to come.”
There was a cacophony of ‘ooohs’ and knowing looks. Jenkin blushed.
“Stacie’s gonna be assistant referee for the semi-finals” said Millie. This seemed a risk to Jenkin, given that Stacie was likely to punch anyone who objected to being flagged offside.
“Er, great. Coming?”
“Okay.” She said, and peeled herself from the community to accompany him up the hill.
Slaven hadn’t recovered, even now. He didn’t want to think about the lost fifteen hours, from the moment he took the first bite of whatever Mungo had cooked up to waking up on the sofa in the hotel room. The kid had been staring down at him with a look of utter disrespect, and now Satan was doing something very similar. He could take it from the kid; being dissed by the Antichrist had more serious connotations.
“You weren’t supposed to be going to a party. Most of all you weren’t supposed to be going to a party to celebrate the birth of my mortal enemy’s son, irrespective of disputes over the date.”
“But I behaved appallingly.” Said Slaven in mitigation.
“That’s the minimum, you dolt.” Satan was in full anti-religious form. Red face and body, black hair over the torso, horns, cloven hooves, trident. He’d been sitting for a portrait, but the effect of this physical representation was never wasted on supplicants, however advanced they may have thought they were.
God, it was hot. Slaven ran a finger around his saturated collar.
“The job got done, though. And it’s happening over there, too.” He cocked his chin as though the afterlife were just beyond the bleeding wall of the room. “I want that position with The Afternet. Do I get it?”
“You’ll just have to take the word of the incarnation of evil, won’t you? If this all falls into place, you’ll get the position. I have information that Marcel has been less nasty than we would have hoped, recently. I think familiarity might be breeding content.” Disconcertingly, the Devil turned into a ball of flame for a couple of seconds and then re-emerged in biped form, even redder.
“The next forty eight hours will tell, worm. How will you spend them?”
“I thought I might go and watch.” Said Slaven.
Satan flared again, as though he had hiccups.
“Me too.”
Twenty Four
There had been a sense of mounting excitement in the environs of the football pitch throughout the morning as the time for the semi-finals of the Afterworld Cup approached. It was a bright and clear day, at least in that vicinity, isobars and jet streams having nothing to do with the weather in the Afterlife. A few miles away, large numbers of individuals bent on destruction were marching through tippling rain, their feet sliding through muddy hillsides. The difference couldn’t be explained by conventional knowledge of weather systems, it was just the way things turned out.
The newly built stand had attracted a fair smattering of immortals, who to one degree or another had followed the rules about only being seen in public in disguise. There was a deputation of South American Gods, delighted to have the chance to adopt the blue and yellow of Brazil. Page-Abe and his daughter Abe Mango looked particularly splendid, he radiant, as you would expect from the Sun God, and she ready to burst into flames of pride at any moment. Sigu was there, fresh from saving the animals from the flood all those years ago (one of many claimants to this achievement). He got into a slight altercation with Iron-Crutch Li over whether it was valid for Li to save places for the other seven immortals, but they were distracted by the arrival of several Celtic Gods wearing ‘Anyone But England’ T-shirts. A truce reigned. The usual suspects were there, not least Ganesha, who had managed to get a seat next to the hot dog stall, and Aphrodite, halitosis and all.
All of them, and to be truthful, the Amish grandstand was only half full, avoided the trio who had sauntered in and taken up position at the rear. External disguise is one thing, but aura is not so easily dissipated, and it didn’t need an exorcist to divine that the tall, good-looking man with Nordic features was the incarnation of Hell. Satan was accompanied by Baron Samedi, who had taken minimal care over his appearance on the grounds that there were some pretty odd-looking types in the crowd anyway, and Dis Pater, lord of the underworld, whose corpulence was folded into a ‘Beckham’ number seven shirt.
They had swaggered into the viewing area, space opening around them, and surveyed the crowds with arrogant overbearing. Satan was in a state of high anticipation. He had not been to a football match for years, but more, he knew that even now his footsoldiers were nearing their positions. The semi-finals would be fun, but the entertainment tomorrow, the day of the final, could be an orgy of enjoyment.
“Dis.” He said, cheerfully. “Go and get us some chilli dogs.”
Slaven, who had obediently accompanied his master to the scene, was disbarred from entry to the undercover area, and was lurking off to the side of the amazing structure when he spotted the Afternet management team making their way through the crowd. He performed a double take, because at first he thought it may be a circus troupe from Eastern Europe with their dancing bear, but as they came closer he realised that the messy one was wearing some kind of animal suit. He stared at Marcel, who had a look of concern on his face. With some reason, he thought. After tomorrow, you’ll be back in the torment and I’ll be in your seat. I’ll have that woman too. And skin that bear.
The look of concern on Marcel’s face was there because he was truly concerned. Coming to the football was a diversion for him, really, because all he could think about was the coming attack by the reunited fiends and the likelihood of his demotion from the Afternet. Mary was snubbing him, and his longest lasting companion was dressed as a panda. The biggest crowd of people he had ever seen was gathered together in a convenient configuration for maximum destruction and infliction of pain. He couldn’t see a way this could possibly turn out well.
The gathered crowd had created a perpetual motion, a perpetual hubbub, and for all any of them knew, it would carry on in perpetuity. That latter point was disproved without wide knowledge on that morning when the German centre forward shimmered and disappeared, as the Afternet traced him, judged him and issued him forthwith to his Heaven or Hell. This caused a selection problem, but for the majority of those present any expectation of rapid sorting was a long way from their minds.
Brazil versus China wasn’t fair, really. China had progressed this far, essentially, by outlasting their opponents, who were constantly surprised at the sheer energy of the Oriental dead. It was subterfuge, of course, because in the main the Chinese players were small, malnourished (having died in their millions during the Cultural Revolution), and unfamiliar with the game.
They were, though, unbelievably organised, able to take instruction, and to the Western eye, identical. The smallest number of players they managed to get onto the pitch
was in a second round match against Peru, and this was four hundred and eighty three, although of course they could only have eleven at a time. They achieved this by the simple expedient of massing thousands of ‘coaching staff’ on the sideline, and when any of their players found themselves suffering diminishing energy levels they would fall into the morass to be replaced by another.
China had trailed by several goals throughout each of their games. As their opponents lack of skill, old age, or random limb placement began to take its’ toll, the ever-energetic Chinese had plundered goals and fought their way through.
Brazil were different, by the simple expedient of actually having a team of footballers available. This was a curious by-product of a skewed demographic. Whereas other countries in the afterworld generally had people who could play football but died old, or people who died young but didn’t play football, but not Brazil.
There were lots of dead young Brazilians, and a stupid amount who weren’t coughing, struggling to breathe, or fatally harmed by debilitating illnesses. Half of the young people who had died there in the previous fifty years were murdered, and when you fancy a kick-about, a gunshot or knife wound is much more debilitating than TB. Along with that, life expectancy in Brazil was halfway down a world list that featured places where any expectation of life was a miracle. They had a number of older people who had played football at the highest level, and then just keeled over whilst watching women at the Rio Carnival. The icing on the cake was that Brazilians just play football. The mobiles on baby’s cribs have the black and white footballs rotating, games at school is football, the streets and beaches are basically just football pitches with traffic and sunbathing allowed.
The substitution epidemic failed to cope. The Chinese team was willing, but in the end unable to counter the Brazilian skill. In desperation, with ten minutes to play, the Chinese team arranged for their entire entourage to jump, simultaneously, from a two feet high bench, having heard that this may create a tidal wave. In the absence of the other one point three billion, however, the thousand present caused only a minor tremor such that the ball flew into the net off the Brazilian striker’s shin rather than his foot. It made the score six-two, just the same.
The crowd had been in a transport of ecstasy watching the first semi-final. Like the first Isle of Wight Rock festival, or Woodstock, many of them were too far away to have anything but a basic grasp of what the ants in the distance might be up to. For them, it was equally likely to have been The Who, The What, as it was to be the Brazilian Dead Football Team, but they were caught up in the echo and sway of the event.
When the teams were led out for the second semi-final, the excitement was at such a peak that Ron’s paperwork seemed to lift from the desk as a roar rose from the half a million souls surrounding the pitch. When he looked down from his eyrie, it was as if he were viewing a field of corn, a zephyr riffling the stems. In pockets, groups of people stood and cheered, whilst in the copse to his left, the newly defensive Visigoths were jumping up and down with excitement, their faces painted in black, yellow, and red. They managed to start a vigorous chant of “Come on Germany (excluding the Sudetenland)!”
The German coach, a forensic scientist from Mainz, stood on the sidelines with a sheaf of papers five centimetres thick with the plans the Germans had been studying in between matches. The English Manager, a greengrocer from Heckmondwike who had lied about his background, had a single sheet of paper on which he had written the words ‘ATTACK’, ‘DEFEND’, and ‘NEITHER’. He held the sheet up periodically, obscuring the instructions he didn’t want the team to follow. There was no apparent correlation between the behaviour of the players and the displayed word. Behaviour after death, in this case, was no different whatsoever from that in life.
The performance of the teams in some ways echoed the disparity in their coaching. England were enthusiastic, somewhat under qualified, and random in their tactics. In the absence of a great depth of skill, they pursued an option of humping the ball forward to a beanpole attacker, who consistently won headers that fell to no one. Germany, on the other hand, were strong and athletic. They appeared to be taking the view that the game was based on territory and possession, rather than any meaningful connection of ball and goal rigging. They passed the ball with exaggerated care, particularly in defence, and strode confidently but with little purpose around the pitch pursued by panting English players.
The watching thousands were beginning to become restive when the stalemate was broken midway through the first half. There was, in the English midfield, one particular terrier-like player, short and stocky, who had spent most of the first twenty minutes watching the ball sail over his head in the general direction of the beanpole. In addition to his frustration with what his own players were doing, he was increasingly impatient at the sight of tall, healthy-looking Germans stroking the ball patiently between them, and so was quick to seize on the chance to pinch possession when one of the passes between the defenders was left short.
The audience sniffed a change in the pace of the game as the short man sped towards the German penalty area, the sauntering defence suddenly called in to more urgent action. A roar began to rise, and two hefty defenders converged on the attacker, who with no little skill turned inside and left them floundering. His shot was both powerful and the first the goalkeeper had to deal with, which perhaps explains his slow motion dive. He did get one hand to the ball and it bounced obligingly into the air for the beanpole to head towards the unguarded goal.
The crowd was on its feet, roaring a celebration the like of which had not been heard in this environment, as the ball thudded against the bar and down onto the line, skewing back into the grateful arms of the goalkeeper. The roar transmogrified into a deep moan of disappointment, and the England players had their heads in their hands. It was only after the goalkeeper, in a grateful panic, had leathered the ball into touch, that the referee noticed the linesman vigorously waving her flag.
It seemed inconceivable that such a large number of people could be so silent, but they held a hush as the referee ran over to Stacie, who had been generally assuaging her boredom by exchanging with a group of Italians behind her opinions about the attractiveness of her rear end. Two of the towering German defenders followed, and cocked ears to listen in on the conversation between the officials. After a moment, the referee nodded, turned and pointed to the centre circle, awarding a goal on the evidence of Stacie’s opinion that the ball had bounced from the bar over the goal line.
There was mayhem. Apart from those supporting the German team, the viewers went wild, leaping up and down, waving their arms and cheering as if they had all been judged worthy of Heaven. The German team were astounded (as were the English, although they were too busy hugging each other to show it), and the two muscle-bound defenders who had followed the referee venomously berated the slight American girl with the flag. They refused to stop under a hail of abuse from her Italian admirers and a warning from the girl herself that she would ‘stick this flag where the sun don’t shine’. She had learned to cope with this bullying from her six worthless brothers, and demonstrated the effectiveness of that education with a well-aimed kick at the centre-half’s scrotum, leaving him a whimpering heap on the floor.
The Italians took the opportunity to crowd over him and volubly inform him that they would have taken similar action themselves given the opportunity. They were led away by security, issuing a volley of retrospective threats.
When the action finally resumed, the German team began to play with more purpose, aided by the English adopting an increasingly defensive approach. Towards the end of the first half, a series of shots and headers on goal scraped the woodwork, drifted frustratingly wide, or were saved by the English goalkeeper, who had once had an unsuccessful trial for Torquay United, and was enjoying his day in the sun.
On the hill above the crowd, Jenkin had completed his work on the laptop just before the eruption of activity surrounding the scoring of the England
goal. He and Melinda sat with their shoulders touching, high up above the game and the seething crowd, watching what, from where they were, could have been happening on a computer screen.
They collapsed with laughter at Stacie’s intervention and particularly her method of imposing discipline, and then saw how the English team retreated further and further, allowing their opposition to first impose themselves territorially, and then begin to rain shots on the English goal.
“They’re gonna lose.” Said Melinda, a moment or two before the whistle blew for half time.
“They are.” He said, standing up and offering her his hand. “Come on. Let’s see if we can do something to help.”
The England squad were huddled by the sideline eating halved oranges, softly perspiring in the warm afternoon sunlight. The crowd had taken half time as a cue to perform some formation milling, and at every turn Millie and Jenkin had had to perform major looping manoeuvres in order to make forward progress. They arrived in the hotbed of afterlife befuddlement with only a couple of minutes before the players would be called back into action.
Millie said she was just going to talk to Stacie and veered away, leaving Jenkin to hear the end of the tactics talk which would ensure a path to The Afterworld Cup Final.
“It’s like yer fruit display,” the greengrocer was saying, earnestly, to a general glazing of expression. “shiny up the front. Hard at the back. That’s what we need to do.”
“How do I be ‘shiny’?” asked the beanpole.
“Nah. I don’t mean be shiny. It’s a eupherism, innit? It means somethin’ else.”
“What?” The greengrocer searched his brain for what it might be, but was saved from further eupherisms by Jenkin’s interruption.
“You’re being outnumbered in midfield. Because your wide man’s pushing up too far and never seeing the ball, it’s stretching your diamond. They’re just playing it through you.” Heads slowly turned to see the source of the advice.
The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet) Page 55
