The Grief Team

by Collins, David

  “FuknCathy!” sneered Mutt, his freckles glowing, and he broke wind derisively. “Fuknknowall!” He turned to looked at Jason, hands-on-his-hips, waiting for the pale, solemn boy to intervene. This stupid MallKid wanted to get them all caught and if her Daddy really was on the Outside searching, he was the Grief Team and that meant nofuknway Mutt was going to help. It didn’t help the rift between the two children that Cathy’s use of the word conjured up an entirely different image for her than it did for Mutt. His reaction to this was in language that was not-of-the-Malls and, using abrupt waving and chopping motions to adjectify and punctuate, he reiterated exactly what he, Mutt WildKid thought about her Daddy.

  Cathy, who thought that Mutt’s manners were the worst she had ever seen in her entire life, was outraged. “You’re not even a Stage Two, Mutt-no-last-name! You have no Stage!” Mutt’s response was to turn and fart at her.

  Such a gross violation of etiquette demanded an elegant riposte, but Cathy was so angry that all she could think of was to call him a truth-twister, a word she had heard Daddy use, and then…and then she surprised herself by saying the fuck word out loud. Such was her education that for several moments afterwards, she thought she might be in trouble. But at least Mutt had stopped yelling at her, so she followed his lead and turned to Jason, waiting for him to adjudicate.

  Jason seemed reluctant to get involved, even as it became clear that neither Mutt nor Cathy would speak until he did. His thin frame imparted a sense of weightlessness and grace to his movements as he stood up in Mutt’s ‘kitchen’ and prepared to speak. Wracked as he was by coughing fits that, for the time being at least had subsided, and with every rib visibly wrapped in his undersized red T-shirt, his voice was low and his speech slow.

  “Cathy doesn’t know what Outside really is,” he said, his tone neutral, not looking directly at either one of combatants, resting his gaze between them on a point in the distance. “Mutt doesn’t know what the Malls really are. SkyDome is in between. Who runs SkyDome? The Grief Team. Are Wildkids well treated in SkyDome? Mutt knows no, but not why. Cathy doesn’t know what or why. So both of you don’t know something.”

  “Why-Muttsays?” said Mutt out loud to himself, working on it, freckles in motion, brow furrowed in concentration. His radburns were open wounds because of his picking, vivid red crescents embedded in dark freckled cheeks. Jason always spoke slowly and carefully because of his wheeze, and so it was easier for Mutt to understand. Part of the problem was Cathy’s high-pitched flute out of which, when excited, she piped words too quickly for Mutt to understand.

  “Tell us, Jason,” said Cathy. “Please?” Although she had lost the exact count of the days that she had been on the Outside, those that Cathy Latimer had spent with Jason-no-last-name had been, for the most part, good days. She gave no thought to Slide ‘n Glide anymore and Jason was always very generous with his tuna sandwiches, plucking them from his pack whenever she asked and she was always careful to ask politely.

  Jason was nicer than Mutt would ever be and Cathy wished that she could do something to help his cough. Water from the lake never seemed to help and only made Jason cough more violently. As she watched him struggle to master his breathing, preparing to speak again, she had the unusual sensation that Jason was becoming transparent, but when her eyes blinked, he was still there.

  “Cathy knows that the Grief Team keeps Mall children safe. It protects them and makes life in the malls happy, but Outside, the Grief Team doesn’t love children. It does not Honour The Child. Instead it takes Wildkids to SkyDome and makes them unhappy.”

  “Wildkids killed my mother!” said Cathy, her lower lip trembling.

  Jason nodded. “Wildkids did that. That’s true. And Wildkids are killed too. Death comes whenever Wildkids and Toronto Nation meet, that is how it is. But you and Mutt are meeting without death. You eat Mutt’s salmon and sleep in his homeplace.”

  “Goodfuk’nsam’on!” said Mutt, glowering at Cathy.

  “It was very nice of him to share,” allowed Cathy, “but I only want my Daddy to find me and Mutt doesn’t care about that!”

  Mutt’s freckles were standing to attention again.“fuknDad…” but Jason stopped him, raising a slender, sculpted hand.

  “Cathy doesn’t know…in SkyDome…there is a man called ‘Father’. He speaks to all Wildkids in the pens. He is the man who hurts them and sends the Grief Team.”

  “Not my Father!” shouted Cathy. “My Daddy would never do that!”

  Mutt began to bristle immediately, but Jason continued as if Cathy had not spoken. “Mutt knows Father, but he doesn’t know what a Daddy is. Maybe he thinks your Daddy is like Father in SkyDome.”

  You could tell from Mutt’s grimaces that he was still working out what Jason had said, but Cathy had quickly seen the problem. She looked at Mutt and then at Jason. “Mutt doesn’t have a Daddy or a Father?”

  “Every child, even a WildKid, has a Father,” replied Jason. “Mutt just doesn’t know that. He has never seen his Mother or his Daddy.”

  Mutt’s features began to glow as he sorted out what Jason was saying. “WrongfuknFather!” he announced, beaming first at Jason and then at Cathy. Then the shine began to ebb as another realization dawned in his mind. “StillnogoSkyDome! NoGriefTeam!”

  “Then what do I do?” cried Cathy, stamping her foot. “I just can’t stay here and eat salmon! I don’t want to live here! I want to go home!”

  “Stayhomeplace! NoGriefTeam!” Mutt crossed his arms and spit on the rocks. It was his final offer.

  “Mutt will take us to SkyDome…” said Jason slowly, raising his hand to ward off Mutt’s sputtering protest, “…and then we will see what happens.”

  “Fuknuts!” blurted Mutt. “Nofuk’nway!”

  “Yes,” said Jason, his voice sterner now, “Mutt will take us to SkyDome.

  Mutt was still shaking his head vigorously.

  “Why not…why not give him something to take us?” said Cathy. But as soon as she said it she knew she had nothing to give.

  But Jason wasn’t listening, he was now looking directly at Mutt, his bright blue eyes fixed on the two fiery crescents that radburns had etched into the tops of Mutt’s cheeks. He crossed the short space between them and placed his palms on top of them.

  Mutt was transfixed, unable to object to Jason’s touch and, after a few moments, Jason took his hands away. The colour had drained from his face and, as he turned to sit down on the rocks, he stumbled and only just managed to recover. The effort made him gasp and he was quickly overcome by a fit of coughing that continued for several minutes.

  Mutt’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t sure where he was. He had a warm, luxurious feeling in his head and he was having difficulty summoning the right thoughts to get his eyes open. When they finally obeyed, he found himself looking at Cathy, who was staring at him, her mouth agape.

  “They’re gone,” she said, her words hushed in amazement. “Mutt’s burns are gone.”

  Mutt’s dirty fingers flew to his cheeks. No scabs! No pain! In an instant, Mutt vanished inside his homeplace, returning moments later with one of his treasures, a small, cracked mirror. As he held it up to see what Jason had done, he began to crow in delight.

  “Now…,” Jason was gasping, his palms squeezed wide and flat against his chest, holding in the spasms, “…Mutt must take us…to SkyDome!”

  Mutt was dancing, his feet moving to and fro in a jump-skip rotation. He was hooting and cackling, stopping several times to look in the mirror again before he began to dance once more.

  “Mutt!” It was Cathy’s voice that brought the little whirling dervish to a standstill. “You have to do what Jason says now! You have to take us to SkyDome!”

  Mutt touched his cheeks once more and rubbed against tanned, smooth skin. “Mutt-will,” he agreed. “GofuknSkyDome, morrow! Gowith Jason,” and he grinned and stuck his tongue out at her. “fuk’nCathytoo!”

  Cathy smiled.

  If you were a WildKid,
getting into SkyDome was pretty easy. You simply sat out in the middle of the open wasteground between the Dome and the remains of the Tower and waited for the nets. That was definitely not what Mutt, Jason and Cathy had in mind. For one thing, as Mutt repeated yet again to the other two, he had no intention of taking them any further than the two massive concrete boulders which marked his secret entrance, about forty yards away from the southwest corner of the stadium. From there, Cathy and Jason could slip into the maze of cracks and crevices which eventually followed on through into the sub-sub-basement of the Dome and then higher, up to the main level where, over forty years before, the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club had celebrated two back-to-back World Series Championships.

  Cathy had just about reached the limit again with Mutt. Yesterday had been bad enough with all his arguing and yelling and swearing and spitting about not going to SkyDome. He could be so nice when he shared his sa’mon or let them watch Mall TV in his strange little house, but when she heard him complain, now that they were finally on their way to the secret entrance, for what had to be the hundredth time and right in the middle of negotiating a particularly difficult route which Mutt had carved through walls of thorn and metal, she had stopped and shouted at him.

  “You’re not coming inside, Mutt! You’re only a baby! Babies can’t go into SkyDome!”

  That had stopped Mutt’s more audible protests, but she could still hear him muttering to himself as he led them ever closer to the Dome. She distinctly heard the word baybee several times. At one point, when they were sneaking along the dark shadows in the lee of a section of the Tower, Cathy stopped and waited for Jason to come up beside her. He was wheezing hard, but hadn’t suffered another coughing fit since yesterday. What he had done to Mutt’s burns had amazed her but Jason was obviously sick and asking him questions about what he had done only prompted more coughing.

  “What will we do when we get inside, Jason?” Cathy waited for an answer, knowing that Jason needed time to settle his breathing. As she waited, Mutt came scrambling back to find out where they were. There was a virtual warren of routes, some made by Mutt, some made by Fate, and he thought they had taken a wrong turn. Relieved to see them just resting, Mutt grunted, made a show of feigned indifference, and hunkered down five feet away.

  Jason was still panting. In the shadows, he looked like a different person, older, with penetrating eyes, and a mouth set on grim. What he had done yesterday to Mutt’s radburns had been the most amazing thing that Mutt and Cathy had ever seen. For Mutt’s part, his brain had been working furiously after Jason’s healing. If Jason could make his burns go away, his brain wondered, why couldn’t his new friend cure his own coughing and wheezing? Mutt’s brain was equally stymied by the ceaseless flow of tuna fish sandwiches out of Jason’s backpack. This morning, before they set out for the Dome, he had peeked inside Jason’s pack while Jason was off in Mutt’s pee-room behind the rocks. The pack was utterly empty, puzzling Mutt’s brain at a level which was, considering, quite beyond its capacity.

  “We’ll find someone who will take care of you,” said Jason, his voice a loud whisper. Cathy thought about what he said. “You’ll come too, right?” she asked, hoping he would, worried he wouldn’t. “Fath...,” Cathy stole a glance at Mutt, “…Daddy will take you to the Health Store in the E.C.! We can get you some medicine!”

  Jason smiled wanly. “When we’re inside I have some things that I must do but we’re going to meet again. I’m pretty sure. Just remember that Mutt may not be very nice sometimes, but in his own way he does help.”

  At the mention of his name, Mutt’s cogitations clicked back to more comfortable matters, and he was instantly up on his feet and urging them on, desperate not to stay out of his homeplace any longer than necessary. Any second now he expected the hear the whup-whup of the Grief Team buses and then they’d really be in fukntrub’l.

  Cathy grimaced and began to move. She had wanted to ask Jason a lot more about the things he said he had to do, but that darn Mutt was so panicky. He thought the Grief Team was going to jump out from behind every chunk of concrete-and-bush along the route. She almost wished they would but, as much as she wanted to be rescued, Cathy had agreed to Jason’s wishes that they use Mutt’s secret route. “Even if the Grief Team is happy to see you,” Jason had said, “Mutt and I are different and will be treated differently.”

  So, even though she didn’t really believe what the others said about the Grief Team, Cathy had agreed. She knew that Jason had saved her from starving to death after Slide ‘n Glide abandoned her and he was her friend. All the same, she hoped that climbing up through the Dome wasn’t as bad as Mutt had dolefully acted it out to be, purely for her benefit of course she thought. On she went, following Mutt, leading Jason through dense gorse, over cars and crumbling concrete, in and out of the shadows; sometimes through long thorny tunnels where the vegetation had soared and linked with its neighbours. All the while the sun did its best to warm a cool late September day.

  Thirty minutes later, at the end of one dark tunnel, Cathy stopped again and waited for the familiar wheezing sound to come up behind her. After a few minutes, she called Jason’s name as Mutt came scrambling past her back into the tunnel. When he didn’t return, Cathy’s fears multiplied and she felt tears and helplessness welling up inside her. But this time, she resisted the urge to simply sag into misery and wait for Daddy or someone else to help her. Instead, timorously, yet with some spark of self-determination, Cathy began to inch her way back into the darkness.

  It was to her credit that she didn’t scream hysterically when a heavy, smelly net dropped over her and she was lifted by powerful hands up into the sunlight. The first thing she saw was Mutt, biting a mouthful of net like he actually thought he could eat his way out. She saw the six men cocooned in blue-biosuits with two wide bright yellow stripes running horizontally at the chest and waist. Their weapons, made of shiny metal that glinted and mirrored the red sun, were out and ready. In her shock and amazement, she was still aware that Jason wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  Ferria had sent Roy Glyn to get Mutt the WildKid. Mutt, Ferria had determined, would lead Roy to the boy who had appeared in her dreams. Roy didn’t know why but, when he saw what he saw yesterday—when this silent, skinny Kid with the dark circles under his eyes had actually healed Mutt’s radburns—Roy had almost jumped out of the bushes where he was hiding. No wonder Ferria was interested in someone who could do that!

  Roy’s mastery of the old ways, the tricks -of-the-trade when he had been a feral Outsider himself, quietly seeped back into him. He had cottoned on to Mutt’s fire hours before and then Roy had been able to do something that a vidkam couldn’t—he had a sense of smell and he knew sa’mon when it was being fried just the way he liked it. It had taken quite a while but he had found Mutt’s homeplace and then he had waited, hungry, sleeping when they slept, and then quietly following after in the morning on their journey. He had been very surprised when Mutt had led the others to the Dome.

  Roy knew that he had to concede Mutt’s mastery of the terrain. As it was, leaping forward to grab the pale boy by his hair, and then pulling him out of the tunnel and banging him hard on the head with a flat rock was a near thing. Until that moment, Mutt had given Roy no opportunity to get close; only the sudden appearance of the Yellowbands had allowed Roy time to get him out of the tunnel and into a side crevice that Roy himself was hiding in. The pale boy had been stunned by the blow from the rock but he was conscious and had allowed Roy to push him along as quickly as he could. His wheezing was harsh and Roy had a hard time listening above it to see if they were being followed.

  As the two boys moved away from the scene of Mutt and Cathy’s capture, Roy Glyn was patting himself on the back for a fine piece of work. Admittedly he’d been lucky to notice that the Grief Team had silently arrived and to steer clear of them. Ferria had warned him that any Team sweeps were out of her control and he must avoid them at all costs. He’d been lucky all right and now Roy k
ept Jason moving. He knew that he could also make a report on the little girl they called Cathy. Ferria might be interested in what she had said about being a Mallchild.

  Yes, he was bringing Ferria d’Mont what she’d asked for. He was bringing a Kid who could make radburns vanish! She was bound to be pleased…would want to show her affection for him on completion of such a successful mission…

  Roy missed a step, stumbled, and caught his stride again. A sudden intense throb in his groin reminded him of his impending reward.

  FIFTEEN

  His daughter had what I believe we might refer to as a dysfunction, perhaps an Electra complex, if you will.” Gabriel paused and smiled at the assembly. He was dealing with business at hand. “She chose to drive her new step-father away by competing with her mother for his love and affection. She attempted to dominate and intrude even in the presence of her mother and, with step-daddy alone, she advanced her physical affections until he was unable to resist. For this, he has been accused and removed from the scene. In brief, the seduction and submission of this Stage Four Father was a…forgive me…foregone conclusion. Under the Rules, it is a violation of the species. Step-daddy most certainly had at least one occasion when his brain clearly advised him to stop and report the matter. He did not, he proceeded, he is guilty. Crematoria today.

  “The little girl’s health is my prime concern. See that she is well-looked-after and include counselling for a minimum of five hours, then remove her to SkyDome for export. Designate the Mother as Crone and open her lodgings. Let Grief Team Removals do the usual, and transmit one copy of this order to the Mayor.” Gabriel relaxed and leaned back into his chair.

  “New business?” He suppressed a sigh of impatience as one familiar hand shot into the air.

  “Quentin?”