The Unjudged_The battle for Cromer

by Phil Hurst

  Paige looked for a way to open the grate and then stood back as she realised that the whole thing might be booby-trapped. She had no idea if there were a safe way to pass the reckoners’ signs. Then she watched as Sam ran to the edge of the damaged pier. He shouted something into the water below.

  “Sam,” she screamed. “Sam! Over here!”

  She shook the metal grating to get his attention. He didn’t hear her. Instead, he took off his shoes and jumped into the water below.

  “No!” Another man ran to the edge of the pier and looked down. Paige didn’t recognise him.

  “Hey,” she shouted. “Help him!”

  The man looked up at Paige, and they made eye contact for a second. There was something about his gaze that made her freeze. He tilted his head to the side in a strange, animalistic gesture. His blond fringe fell across his eyes, but he made no effort to move it. He just stood perfectly still, staring at her.

  “Help him,” she screamed. The man didn’t move. She repeated her order, but he continued to stare. She decided something was very wrong with him and that she needed to find another way to get to Sam. Looking to the side of the ticket office, she found some steps that ran down to the beach and bounded down them two at a time.

  The beach was no longer dark as parts of the pier continued to burn. The light seemed to sway back and forth across the wet sand, breaking into gently twisting shadows when it met the metal supports the rest of the pier was resting on.

  She reached the water and kept going. Her feet splashed into it, and the sea lapped her ankles. She didn’t know what to do. In front of her, pieces of wood bobbed up and down, moved by the waves. A few still burned. With the water up to her shins, she stopped. There was no sign of human movement, and if she started to swim, she had no guarantee of finding the woman or Sam. Her chest felt tight as she tried to decide on a plan of action. Her feet started to numb in the cold of the sea.

  “Sam,” she shouted. “Sam! Where are you?”

  The splashing of the waves was her only answer. Then Paige noticed another person had joined her in the swell. Then another person joined. Someone put his or her hand on her shoulder. Soon, she was in the middle of a small group of people, some of whom had torches and were using them to scan the water in front of them.

  “Who is in there?” one of them asked.

  “My brother,” Paige whimpered.

  The question was asked again and again. She gave the same answer again and again. Still, no one did anything but illuminate parts of the water with their torches and explain how dangerous it was to be in such cold water at night. Paige didn’t need telling. She knew. She just wanted her brother.

  A glaring white light shone across the water, turning the debris field into circle of daylight. The man at the top of the pier had hooked up some high-powered lights. Two other silhouettes were helping, standing behind the lights and swinging them across the water.

  One of the people next to Paige shouted and waded into the sea.

  Someone else pushed past her—they must have seen something else.

  And then a third person followed them into the deeper water, in a different direction.

  Paige stood still. The three people (two men and a woman) were up to chest height, about 20 yards from the damaged section. The first man reached down and picked something up. He turned it over in his hands, recoiled and then turned back towards them, holding the object out in front of him. It was about the size of a human head, but whatever it was didn’t interest Paige.

  The woman started dragging back a floating body. Whether the person was alive was unclear. But she was strong, and her charge was floating, so that made things easier. As they got closer to the crowd on the beach, they left the light cast from the pier. Paige couldn’t see enough detail to identify the victim. She pushed further into the water, desperate to know whether it was her brother.

  The woman pulling the body from the water had used almost all of her energy, so Paige and two others took on the task of getting it to the beach. It was only when the waves calmed for a moment that Paige saw it wasn’t Sam. It was a woman, missing an arm and unconscious. When they got her to the shore, people gathered around. One checked for a pulse. One took off his belt and tied it around the top of her arm stump. One shouted something to someone higher up the beach.

  Paige returned to the sea to find Sam. She heard someone shout, “She’s alive,” behind her and the resulting cheer from the crowd.

  The man carrying the head-shaped object got himself to the beach and walked past her. She pulled him around and saw it was indeed a head he was holding. The skin had rotted away, and the rest of it was covered in seaweed. She couldn’t tell whether it was a man’s or a woman’s, but she knew Sam hadn’t been in the water long enough for that process to begin.

  How many bodies were there in the North Sea?

  The last swimmer was in the centre of the circle of light. He was waving to a splashing shape near the other side of the pier. The shape stopped moving, and Paige recognised her brother. Sam!

  Then a megaphone boomed a voice across the sea.

  “You are trespassing on the property of the United Reckoner Cooperative.” Both Sam and the other swimmer stopped and looked up at the light. “Withdraw to the beach, and you will not be harmed.”

  Everyone on the beach was silent. The only sound was the lapping of the waves.

  Sam’s voice carried across the water: “…to help.”

  The person with the megaphone repeated his warning, and the would-be rescuer began to move backwards slowly. But Sam started to swim back and forth, looking for something.

  Something clicked in Paige’s mind. He was looking for the woman.

  “Sam,” Paige shouted. “She’s here! She’s alive!”

  He looked towards shore and waved. Then a series of small fountains appeared about six feet from Sam as bullets struck the water. The sound of automatic gunfire echoed towards the beach. Each fountain appeared closer to Sam. Then they reached him and changed to red. The fountains didn’t stop after hitting her brother.

  Sam convulsed in the water and then lay still.

  Paige screamed as her little brother slipped beneath the waves. In Sam’s place, a pool of blood appeared in the floodlit area like an oil slick after a shipwreck. Paige dropped, with wet sand sticking to her knees. Only the hands of other people stopped her from falling face down.

  Memories consumed her. She could remember them all, and they were suddenly poisonous.

  Playing in the park.

  Clambering over rocks.

  And skimming stones into the never-ending sea.

  Marcus and Kamar

  T he water lapped around them. There was commotion, but they were busy understanding what they were.

  - Who are you?

  - Kamar. Am I dead?

  - I don’t know. Are you?

  - Who are you?

  - I’m Marcus.

  - Where are we?

  - We’re in the sea.

  - The sea? Is this heaven?

  - No.

  - Shit. I thought I’d at least go to heaven.

  But Marcus knew already. He saw a man and a woman in dirty businesswear kicking down the door to the family home after Kamar had refused to open the door. The man was armed with an old-fashioned musket, and the woman had two long cutlasses in her hands. She shouted to Kamar to move back from the door.

  Marcus realised he was an Asian man, about 50 years old. Then he realised he knew he was Kamar, a 53-year-old loner from some tiny little town called Cromer. He knew he’d been living in Cromer for 30 years after his parents had died and left the house to his older brother, who had no interest in moving back from New York.

  Living rent-free, he only left the house to buy cigarettes, alcohol and food, in that order of importance. For the first five years, he designed websites freelance. That had given him enough money to keep his habits going. Then one of the websites he designed had offered him the opportunity to
buy shares, and he did. The website floated, and Kamar had become a millionaire. It hadn’t happened overnight, but it was not far off. After selling his stocks, creative accountancy and sensible investments had allowed him to avoid tax and also receive a monthly income from the lump sum.

  Days of playing computer games turned into weeks of playing computer games turned into months of playing computer games turned into years of playing computer games. The trips to the shops became fewer with the growth of home-delivery services. Before the end, he had been marking the time between showers on a calendar.

  He saw the reckoning happen online. He lived on the rumours of wrongdoing and suspect morality of the reckoners. He tried his hand at hacking but couldn’t get into the United Reckoner Cooperative database. He had managed to hack a few of The Churches, though, and found out about some interesting habits of church officials thanks to their private email accounts.

  And now Marcus knew it all as well. Only he wasn’t Marcus anymore. He was Marcus and Kamar. He didn’t know why.

  Kamar had been happy for the most part. He was rich, and he had his computer games. Once a month, he would head to the local strip club (Marcus could see the front door, the darkened bar, the private rooms) and spend a few hundred pounds on private dances and blowjobs. He could do what he wanted, and he could do it when he wanted. He was happy.

  Then the knock at his door had arrived, and he had looked through the peephole and refused to answer. The knock had been repeated and voices on the other side of the door kept threatening him and telling to open the door. He didn’t, and then the door had been broken open, wooden splinters from the lock peppering the carpet.

  - Who are you?

  - I’m Marcus.

  - Oh my God! You’re that Marcus.

  - I’m that Marcus.

  - I knew you were dead.

  - People don’t know?

  - People thought you were in rehab.

  - I’m dead.

  - And Maximus did it!

  - Yep.

  - Pretty cool way to go.

  - Why are you in my head?

  - I don’t know.

  The man with the musket had told him to back away. Kamar asked him whether he could put a shirt on. He was nervous in front of the woman, whom he found quite attractive. It was the first time a woman not paid to deliver something had been in the flat in years. Kamar was nervous, and not because of the cutlasses in her hand.

  The man asked him whether he had a Tumi implant, and Kamar responded negatively.

  “This place is a shithole,” the man said.

  “I’m going to report you to the police,” Kamar said. “Will you leave my house?”

  “No,” the man said before he put the gun down and walked over to Kamar’s computer. Kamar started to lean forward to stop him from getting to it, but the woman with the cutlasses brought one up to his throat. “Who do you work for?”

  “No one.”

  “No one? Not the reckoners?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Do you know who we are?” the woman snarled.

  “The Unjudged.”

  “That’s right. And we’re taking the town.”

  The man hit a key on the keyboard. The lock screen came up.

  “Unlock it,” the man ordered.

  “First, why not go into the bathroom and fuck yourself?”

  The cutlass by his throat waved back and forth, inching closer. The woman looked at him with a horrible excitement in her eyes. “Behave,” she warned him. “Or Bob, here, will have to blow your head off. And I’ll have to chop you up into tiny, little pieces.”

  “Get out of my flat,” Kamar heard his voice wobbling. The woman actually licked her lips.

  Bob was still tapping at the keyboard to no effect. “Unlock the computer.”

  “I have client data on that. I’ll lose business.”

  The woman stood close to him. She drew the cutlass back and held the blade inches from his face. “The client data belongs to the Unjudged now. Unlock it.”

  “No.”

  The woman’s top lip began to quiver with excitement.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” Kamar said.

  “Me neither,” Bob said.

  “Then please call your little attack dog off.”

  “He doesn’t tell me what to do,” the woman said. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

  “Emma, calm down.”

  Bob tapped some keys and moved the mouse, through frustration more than anything else. He leaned on the desk and faced Kamar, knocking an old takeaway soft drink cup on to the floor.

  “We’re not here to hurt people, Mr…” he said.

  “You’ve just destroyed my front door,” Kamar replied.

  “Property can be replaced,” Emma said.

  - That was it?

  - That was it.

  - I thought she was going to chop you up.

  - So did I.

  - So why didn’t you let them on the computer?

  - Client data.

  - What client data is worth risking your life for?

  - None really. But it wasn’t just that. I knew the reckoners would eventually fight back. The Unjudged wouldn’t be there forever.

  - So you risked you life?

  - She wasn’t going to kill me.

  - But she did.

  Marcus was Kamar again. He couldn’t feel the blade on his neck anymore. For the first time, he was breathing really heavily. Really heavily. He needed some water.

  “I need to go,” he said. His breath started coming in short, sharp gasps.

  “You stay here,” Emma said. She grinned and tilted the blade.

  Bob looked around. “Shit,” he said. “Emma, let him go.”

  - Oh no.

  - Pathetic, isn’t it?

  His left arm was tingling. His fingers went numb before he reached the kitchen, and he had to use his right hand to turn the tap on. He found a dirty glass and filled it with water. By the time he’d brought the glass to his lips, the numbness had spread to his arm. His legs gave way underneath him. He held on to the glass as he fell, but the water fell over him, drenching his chest. He was cold. He couldn’t feel his legs.

  Then darkness.

  Then footsteps, running from him.

  The bastard Unjudged had scared him to death. He didn’t like real conflict, fighting with people in the real world. He found harassing people online far more civilised. There, he could be anyone; he could be untouchable. But they were in his house. How dare they. When he got better, believing his affliction wasn’t terminal, he would chase those bastards down and shoot them in the head and skull-fuck their remains.

  Then light.

  Then he was Marcus. And Marcus was him.

  - Shit.

  - Is this because of what your Dad did?

  - It must be.

  - But why me?

  - I want to get my father. You want to get the Unjudged woman.

  - So I came to you.

  - Must have.

  - I’ve changed my mind. Can I just die?

  - I don’t know.

  - Let me go.

  - I don’t know how.

  - Shit.

  - What’s that?

  Outside of their head there was a bright light close to them. They had been so busy talking they hadn’t seen the lights of Cromer getting closer. But the light from the explosion was hard to miss. Their attention was drawn to it, and they tried to understand what it was. They concentrated on it and slowly realised it was getting closer.

  - We can move.

  - We are moving.

  - I couldn’t do fuck all on my own.

  - But if we work together…

  - Kamar, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

  Kamar and Marcus thought back to their best friends growing up. Kamar thought his brother was his best friend until he had refused to return home following their parents’ deaths. Marcus had never really had many friends. His father
had shuttled him from school to school. Neither of them had a confidant for most of his adult life. They had both been surrounded by people, whether that was online or for real, but neither had ever connected with anyone in a real, emotional sense. They felt this gap in their life acutely.

  - I’m sorry.

  - I’m sorry.

  - We’re sorry.

  They stopped being Kamar and Marcus. Events moved around them, and they watched as a woman, missing an arm, was pulled from the water and revived. They watched as the reckoners on the pier shot the swimmer in the water and slip beneath the waves, and they felt his desire for revenge on the man he thought was his friend.

  This time it was no accident. This wasn’t Kamar floating away into space before accidently being caught. This time, they could offer something. This time, they wanted something. They wanted more power. As the man’s soul left his body, they reached out to him.

  - I’m Sam.

  - We know.

  Part two

  Paige

  S he hadn’t realised she’d been sleeping. She didn’t remember anything after watching Sam…

  Sam vanish under the waves.

  She expected to be crying, but nothing came out. She remembered bad dreams in the past in which her mother called her to tell her Sam had died and worse dreams wherein she had heard about his death. But the reality of watching her brother die in front of her had sent her into a state of shock.

  She opened her eyes and saw an unfamiliar ceiling. There was a circular decoration painted on to the roof, spoiled somewhat by various brown-yellow stains that spanned it. She reached out and found an unfamiliar bed. She rolled on to her side and saw a small leather-bound menu on the bedside table. It was daylight outside, and enough light was creeping around the edges of the curtains to allow her to read “Hotel de Paris” on the fake leather.