by Philip Webb
The soldiers are closing in. I can hear the crackle of their radios, the bark of Russian orders.
“Peyto, don’t look at them. Look at Wilbur. And let me do the talking.”
We kneel down to Wilbur, and I cradle his head to give him some water. At the last minute I dab a bit round my eyes.
The boots stop and shadows close over us.
“You there! Stand clear. Hands on heads.” Cocking of safety catches. “NOW!”
I stand up, giving it all shaky and lost. Actually the truth is, I am pretty shaky, cos all five guns are pointing at me.
“Please, sir, help us. My brother –”
“Hands on heads! Crew number?”
“He got caught in a cellar collapse. Please, you can take him! He ain’t gonna make it if you don’t. Please!”
The officer stares at me through his visor. I might as well be a wood louse, cos behind the dust and reflections, there ain’t one jot of mercy for me. He looks whacked and tensed up at the same time. Which is weird, cos most times the Vlad soldiers just look bored. I figure it’s touch and go whether he pulls the trigger to let off a bit of steam. But I’ve got to carry on playing the card I’m playing or we’re done for.
I crumple up my face and reach out to him. “You’ve got to help us. We carried him this far, but he ain’t breathing so good now –”
“Crew number! What zone?” Spit flies out of his gob with the shouting.
“Please.” I sink to my knees.
Some Russian commands come screeching out of his field radio. He swings up his gun and hoofs me out the way. He don’t even glance at Wilbur or Peyto. Then the patrol is past us.
Scavs who stopped to watch start picking up where they left off. Way too scared to come over. I’m so fried I can’t even move for a couple of minutes. Peyto comes to help me up, and he’s all goggle-eyed and shivery.
“They were going to kill us,” he breathes.
“Welcome to London.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“Fifty-fifty, I reckon. Bigger fish to fry. I don’t know.”
“They were looking for someone.”
We watch the patrol head back toward the river.
“Yeah,” I go at last. “Looks that way. Looters maybe. Man, they was pretty jumpy, though, eh?”
“Looters?”
“Unofficial scavving. If you’re over here, you’ve got to be under a gangmaster, numbered crew. Else you’re dead meat. Probably let us go cos we’re kids, and they figured Wilbur was on his way out anyhow, not worth the bullet.”
Talking of Wilbur, he’s still spark out.
“Hey, they’ve gone now, you numpty. Show’s over.”
Wilbur scrambles to his feet.
“What about those people?” Peyto nods toward the scavs still eyeing us over.
“They won’t dob us in, but we’d better get a lick on. Trouble for us is trouble for them if we hang about.”
We head on, eyes peeled for more patrols, past the edge of Parliament Square, where the main scav action’s taking place, crushers full swing and gangs swarming all over the roofs, picking the rafters clean. A quick shifty at the north end of Little Sanctuary and it’s as I thought – our crusher’s cranked up again, spewing fumes and chugging out a stream of brick slag into the road.
We swing round and approach from the quieter south end of the street. I still ain’t sure how this is gonna pan out. We can’t just waltz in there. There’ll be soldiers stationed somewhere near the crusher, and then there’s explanations I need to find for the gangmaster, not to mention the old man.
There’s a tunnel through the rubble to a little cobbled courtyard at this end of the street. We slip in. Inside, the old garden’s gone to jungle. Trees and vines are growing into the walls, brushing up against the second-floor windows. I start to clamber my way up the branches.
“What you doing, Cass?” goes Wilbur. He sounds worried, like I’ve lost the plot.
“Winging it. You two just gonna stand there like a couple of prize turkeys?”
I boot through one of the windows, and wait on the landing till they catch up. Then it’s up to the top floor, onto Peyto’s shoulders, and through the hatch into the loft. Flashlight on. Just a load of moldy junk and boxes. But as I was hoping, up here there ain’t no partitions between any of the loft spaces – it’s just one clear run across the rafters to the far house where the old man’ll be, slaving on his tod, cursing the day we was born, no doubt.
One quick sprint over the beams and we’re there. Except I can’t see no hatch for all the rolls of insulation. Ain’t nothing for it. I find a soft bit between the rafters and give it a good stamp. Actually, it’s a tad softer than I figured. We go through it like a horse ‘n’ cart through a cake. The whole ceiling. Plus chandelier, by the sounds of it.
When I look up through clouds of plaster and wads of yellow fiber, the old man is standing at the doorway.
And he don’t look best pleased.
A SCAV’S LIFE
For a while, as the dust settles, it looks like the old man ain’t got the words for how furious he is. But somehow he keeps a lid on it.
I start to say something. I ain’t sure what, except that it ain’t the truth. Cos how’s that gonna help things?
But he holds up one hand and he’s trembling with anger. The scav dust draws black marks in all the creases in his face. And there’s more of them creases than I remember even since this morning.
“No lies,” he warns. “Not this time.”
Then Wilbur steps forward. “It was my fault. I went to Big Ben. I thought it was there.”
The old man looks to one side, and I know it’s cos he can’t bear to look at us right then.
“For Lord’s sake, why, Wilbur? I mean, you know how dangerous it is to leave the crew. How many hundreds of times have I told you? How many?”
“I thought I could find it.”
“But you could’ve been killed!”
“I was sure!” insists Wilbur, but his voice is a whisper now.
Dad limps over and takes hold of Wilbur’s coat lapels. The grip is so tight I can see his knuckles shaking, but he only nudges Wilbur gently.
“You can’t do that. You can’t leave the crew. Promise me.”
Wilbur is set to cry, but he sticks to his guns. “I thought I’d found the artifact. For everyone. And then we wouldn’t have to look anymore. We could stay at Elephant and Castle. We wouldn’t have to come here again.”
“Wilbur, I can’t lose you. Do you hear me? I can’t lose you. Promise me.”
“We have to find it soon,” Wilbur sniffs. “We have to, Dad.”
Wilbur’s been in trouble for not listening about scav matters more times than I care to remember. But usually, when he’s in the doghouse, he clams up. I ain’t sure if he’s being brave or dense. It’s like finding the artifact has just become his personal mission. Like the rest of us just ain’t trying hard enough.
I squat down to face Wilbur. “You ain’t listening – you’ve got to promise us you ain’t gonna wander off just cos you get some fancy to.”
“It’s not a fancy!” he snaps. “Scavving the whole city isn’t the way to find it. It’s too slow! Don’t you see? You have to think to work out where it is.”
“Wilbur!” barks Dad. “I don’t care about the artifact! I care about you staying alive! Promise me!”
The lad flinches with each shout, but inside he ain’t budging. He sticks out his jaw.
Then he goes, “What for?”
I figure that’s torn it. Dad’s ready to blow. But then Peyto steps in.
“Wilbur, you don’t have to go alone. Why don’t you just tell someone next time?”
Wilbur drops his head. “Cos no one listens.”
Peyto looks at me. “Well, then, it’s easy. If people promise to listen, then you promise not to go off alone.”
Wilbur considers this. Then he closes his eyes and nods.
It’s simple and I feel that big fo
r not realizing it. He ain’t trying to be a hero. He don’t want to go it alone. He never did. All he wanted was for someone to listen to his nutty trail of comic clues.
“I’m sorry,” whispers Wilbur at last.
Dad drops his hands from Wilbur’s coat, then he gathers him into his arms and squeezes him.
I shuffle about during this bit, cos it ain’t so often that we Westerbys see eye to eye about anything, let alone reach the hugs-all-round stage, especially in front of a stranger. Peyto raises his eyebrows at me and I’ve gone that red it’s a good job I’m wearing most of the ceiling. But then I hear the slow stomp of hobnails up the stairs, which signals that loving times is over, cos that’s our charming gangmaster come to check on productivity. Which means I’ve got about ten seconds to win Dad over.
“This is Peyto.” I shove him forward. “He helped us, Dad. You don’t need to know the details right now, but let’s just say it was touch and go. He don’t belong to a crew right now – he ain’t got no one, except us.”
The old man looks at Peyto properly for the first time since we crashed through the ceiling. And just when I need him to be normal, Peyto only goes and plants his fist across his chest like he’s giving Dad a salute or something. Like he’s a flippin’ Vlad. Dad just stares at Peyto’s hand what ain’t seen a day’s graft in its life.
At last he turns to me, like he’s figured out already that it ain’t worth talking direct to Peyto. “Cass, what am I going to tell the gangmaster?”
“It’s just for this one shift, I swear. After that he takes his chances at getting picked like everyone else. Anyhow, we could really do with the extra muscle if we’re gonna catch up lost time. Just vouch for him. He ain’t looking for pay, just passage back with us …”
I guess Dad catches a look in my eye – the desperation after everything that’s happened already today. He nods just once and goes to head off the gangmaster. I hear them talking for a while one flight down, though I don’t hear the words.
They both come up at last, and there’s an awful smug look on the gangmaster’s jowly mug. He’s one sly operator. We all love the way he lords it over us. You can tell there ain’t no grafting for him with his clean trench coat and his pinky ring.
“All right, kit up!” he barks. “I want the place stripped and the roof off by sundown.”
There’s a smirk on his lips, and I just know it’s about earnings. We ain’t getting a bean on this shift. Still, I give Peyto a wink. Cos after what we’ve just been through, the rest of the day’s gonna be a doddle.
I haul him downstairs for his crash course in scavving. The crusher’s hammering at full pelt, gnashing up a bunch of concrete joists. A fountain of dust spews out the funnels.
First up, I take him onto the gantry by the blades. “Right, the main thing is, everything you bring down has to get scanned before it goes on them chutes into the crusher. See them tubes waving about? They’re the scanners.” One of them sways over to us and starts sniffing my face till I cuff it away. “When you’re up here, one of them’ll check out your bin. It’s what the boffins use to look for the artifact – it’s hooked up to a load of screens in the control deck. Chances are you’ll get a green light on the scanner head. That means you’ve just got common or garden scrap in your bin and it can all go down the chute. If you get a red light – the blades shut down and the alarm goes off. That means jackpot, rare poke that the boffins want to take a closer look at. Don’t get excited – it’s only happened three times my whole life. Chances are it ain’t the artifact anyhow.” I gawp at him then – he looks like a tourist all wide-eyed at his first scav shift.
He points at the cables that snake out the engines at the back. “What are those?”
“Power lines. The crushers run on ’lectric. Course there’s other gubbins like pylons ‘n’ that along the way, but if you go far enough, they all link up to the power stations by the Great Barrier.”
“The Great Barrier?”
“Blimey, it really is back to school for you, eh? Ain’t you heard of the big wall that pumps the river out and keeps the sea back?”
He just gawps at me.
“Most of London would be sitting in the drink without it. It’s on account of the sea levels rising, innit? Full-time job keeping this city dry – Vlad engineers are on the case 24/7; otherwise there ain’t no scavving to be done.”
Then the crusher starts really shuddering and screeching, and Peyto jumps out his skin.
“Don’t panic – that’s normal. It’s just straining on the metal rods inside them chunks of concrete that’s just gone in,” I yell. “The blades’ll chew up most stuff, but it ain’t so clever at steel. Anything solid metal is meant to go in there.”
I point at the molten glow of the furnace hatch. “Don’t get too close. It’s liable to blow nuggets of lava in your face.”
Right on cue, the crusher lurches forward and dumps a steaming block of fused metal on the road. It looks like a giant radioactive turd.
“Yeah, and watch out for them. They take about a week to cool down.”
I swing him past the control deck where the Vlad boffins check the screens for signs of artifact. I nudge Peyto along by there, cos they never check us out and we never check them out – it ain’t really the done thing. A case of we’re scavs and they’re boffins.
“Right, that’s the tour over. You know everything I know. Let’s get started.”
I kit him out with a spare bin, then we traipse up to join Dad and Wilbur. It’s good when the building’s fresh cos there’s pickings to be had, but it’s also the worst cos you’ve got to start at the top where we crashed in from the loft – six floors up. It’s a scav’s life. Still, at least it ain’t a skyscraper.
The look Dad gives his new recruit ain’t that promising. He changes the straps on his bin for him. “Start with all the loose stuff, son. I’m putting you on the floor down from here.”
That don’t register with Peyto, but I know Dad’s given him the fifth floor out of pity, cos he’s pegged him for a lubber. One extra flight of stairs don’t sound like much, but on an eleven-hour shift, it’s murder.
Peyto goes, “What if things are too big to go in my bin?”
“That’s what this is for, sunshine.” Dad chucks him a sledgehammer.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate scavving, but I always love a new building what’s been untouched for years, ’specially if it’s a residential. You get glimpses of the people that lived in London then, our ancestors. Well, sometimes you get more than glimpses. Sometimes you get a full-on view of their rotted mugs.
Sure enough, when Dad shoulders in the door to one of the fifth-floor flats, we get that lovely bottled-up mummified smell of the previous owner. Course, the meat’s long gone by now, but the bones ain’t exactly picked clean, neither. The black skin is all shriveled and tight on the skeleton, pulling the whole thing up like it’s hugging itself. Old dear, I’m guessing, by the necklace. Wilbur, being eight, gets spared this sight. Dad stands him out in the hall. But the truth is, it ain’t that gruesome, just a bit sad, that the old girl has been huddled up like that all this time with no one to bury her. You see them propped up on the khazi, or lying on sofas, or curled up in cupboards – the exact position they was in when they died. When the bioweapons fell. And you get to thinking about that moment, when they’re croaking their last – how their world’s just caving in round their ears.
Still, there ain’t no time to mope about.
I catch Peyto gawping at me as I crack the rib cage into my bin.
“Look, it ain’t your regular Christian send-off, but needs must. Everything goes in the crusher. They don’t let you bury the dead on this side of the river.”
“Why not?”
“That’s just the rules. Stiffs get scanned like any other poke. Olden-time Londoners had machines in them sometimes – metal bits and pieces. Maybe the Vlads reckon the artifact could be hidden inside a body.”
He just stands there while I cram the
leg bones in.
“Chop-chop, mate. We ain’t got time for a poetry reading. She won’t mind; she’s been dead a hundred years.”
I grab the skull by the eye sockets and hold out the white wisps of hair. “Least she had a decent innings, eh?”
THE NEXT BEST THING
The only way to handle a scav shift is to pace yourself. Too slow and the gangmaster gets on your back. Too fast and you crash before lunch. I tell Peyto to take it easy cos he’s going at it like ten men.
“Must show the gangmaster I can do it,” he wheezes. “Or he won’t hire me tomorrow.”
“Listen, mucker, there ain’t gonna be a tomorrow for you at this rate. One hour at a time, yeah? Snatch breathers when you can.”
He shrugs at me and carries on down the stairs with his bin way too full to manage. I’m peeved cos I know how to handle the work and I’m only trying to help him out.
Anyhow, sure enough, come noon he’s spent out. We sit on the top landing and divvy out our bread and gravy and apples. After twenty minutes he goes all shivery and spaced on us, and I figure he’s going to crash for sure. But then Dad gives him a nip of the old home-cooked gin and he perks up a bit.
Course, I’m full of questions now, like where on Earth has he racked up from? A place where they wear pajamas and ain’t heard of the artifact. I ain’t the only one with questions. Most times Wilbur sits in a corner with his head in a comic. But today he just gazes and gazes at Peyto. And I’m sure the old man’s just as curious as we are, but he’s of the thinking that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Anyway, as a rule, lunch is a proper serious affair – fueling up, no chat except for the scavving at hand. You don’t sit around long enough to seize up, and anyhow the clock’s always ticking. Twenty minutes is your lot.
Halfway through the afternoon, Dad tells me to go and gee up Peyto with clearing the fifth floor. The poor lad is really flagging by now. I catch him staring at a picture on the wall – a photograph of some princess in a flimsy dress, and paint on her face, and them spiky shoes that tilt your toes forward. She’s striding through olden-time Piccadilly Circus at night and it’s a pack-out in the streets with people and cars and double-deckers. Peyto looks like he’s under a spell.
