Bloodtide

by Melvin Burgess

  N e goes, ‘Where’s my dinna?’ Oinky oinky.

  I jus says,

  ‘Greedy Alice ad a babe, Greedy Alice loved it,

  Greedy Alice made a pie an stuffed er baby in it!’

  That rhyme comes from old Alice who used to live round ere and never could keep er kids fer the hunger gnawing at er guts. Groink. She must’ve ate a classful fore they eard about it from further out n the doggymen comes and chops er up. Oh, poor ol Alice – she’d never ave done it if she ad enuff to eat!

  So ere e is – too ugly t’sell, ands like pliers. An the food e wants! Bit of old bread n e goes, ‘What’s this shit, I can’t eat this shit!’ Bloody old kings n queens, thinks the world’s made outta cheese pie!

  Now, see if I ad any sense I’d chop im oinky-up and throw open me doors and ave a party. Groink. But I can’t do it. You gets t’know em, see. You gets t’like em. At’s ow it is… oink-oink-oink, I could never eat anythin that thinks. Now I ad an uncle, e used to say, no eating anything that feels, either, but me, I’m not that fussy. You can’t be too fussy in these parts! No oinky-ow. But Siggy, my little man, my uman… thing is, e thinks too much fer is own good, and too much fer mine, and I jus could’n get me chops round him, not now, now I sung him t’sleep and made im better again.

  This uman, my Siggy, I’d ave t’say, I’m a fool, cause e’s a crap sorta bloke. E’s like a load of em, e thinks e’s number one. Groink. Oink. ‘Where’s my dinna?’ e goes. An I goes, ‘Ere, where’s mine, then?’ An he looks at me like I don know what unger is, like e’s the only ungry bloke in the wide world. E goes, ‘Yeah, you’ve been stuffing your face again, Mels, aven’t you?’

  N I goes, ‘Don be such a stoopid monkey, man!’ Oh, but e knows best. E sees everything that appens from down in is little hole, t’listen to im you’d think e did!

  This is no-one’s land! What’s e want, e wants me to cut me leg off to keep im in sausages? I does my best! E goes, ‘I ain’t goin to get better like this, Melanie, I ain’t gonna get up an rob things for you like this, Mels.’

  See? Full o promises, e is. I s’pose you could say I’m a sucker fer promises, but I always thinks, well, if I go oinky-outta my way fer im, e’ll go oinky-outta is way fer me, when e can. Groink. At’sa way the worl goes round – when it’s working, that is. Groink. E says, once e’s better e’ll go into town and rob and steal and keep us both like little lords. I ses,

  ‘Mrs Would an Mrs Could

  Met Mrs Might an Mrs Should.

  They all went up a Leafy Lane

  And then was never seen again.’

  Yeah, still – why not? E were a ganglord, e knows ow, I reckon. I got a liddle gun popped away, ad it fer years, showed it im the other day and e grins and e goes, ‘No, I can see it don fire, Mels, but that don matter. I can scare em to death!’

  An I thinks, ‘If yer could see yer face, pally, you’d know why. Jus my luck! Too ugly t’sell, too ungry t’work.

  Well, I jus needs to get im better so e can go out and do some robbing. I suppose it’s me best chance. If Piggy don get im first. Groink. If George or Amanda don get im first. Groink.

  39

  Melanie had many hiding places – empty drains and underground pipework, fallen-down houses and collapsed offices – which she used to hide her finds away on her rounds, until she could pick them up later on. The place she chose for Siggy was an old school, two or three miles out from the Wall. It was a two-storey building made of concrete beams and blue panels with a great many windows, all fallen down now, of course. There was ironwork and concrete here and there still in one piece, but all the panels had been taken off and used over the years as shelters, or slides for the halfmen children, among other things. The tiled floors were still intact, all slimy from the rain that poured or dripped down through the collapsed roof. Everything was covered in rubble and a crunchy gravel made of crushed glass.

  The one part of the school that was still largely intact was also the best hidden; the old boiler room. It was blockwork, tucked away out of sight underground. Best of all, the door was made of steel and was still in place. Melanie had a padlock for it to keep Siggy in and anyone else out, but who would think of looking for a wounded ganglord in an old school? It was isolated too. Houses were still up around the overgrown playing fields, all uninhabited. In a block of fallen flats lived a tribe of cats who might have had a dash of human in them, but that was the closest it got to neighbours.

  The old woman moved him a month after she’d picked him up. It was a breezy dark night, when the man’s strong smell would hopefully get blown away. She half coaxed, half bullied him up the stairs from the stinking basement and into an old supermarket trolley. Covered in a heap of rags, Siggy lay with his head back, trying not to groan as he was jolted and banged over the rough ground. His hands were still encased in great rolls of bandage, and he had no idea how ghastly he looked, but by this time the biggest danger to his life wasn’t from his wounds. It was from starvation.

  Conor had already turned his attention to the halfman lands. Trade was in ruins, transport hopeless. It was autumn, there ought to have been plenty of wheat and fruit harvested in the past months. But the food silos had been destroyed, the fields fired. Massacres were commonplace. It was Conor’s aim to commit genocide on the halfmen, before he moved on to the world beyond. Times were hard, and they were going to get harder. It was all Melanie could do to feed herself, let alone Siggy. With a war on, there was no chance of selling him and she was too fond of him to eat him, but Melanie never considered for a second abandoning her patient.

  But Siggy, still full of the old myths and stories about the halfmen, was convinced that she was fattening him up to eat. Half his waking hours were spent planning an escape, the others on promising her huge rewards once he got better. He had no idea at all of the realities of Melanie’s life. He had never had any choice but to live in palaces and so he believed that she lived in filth because she preferred it that way. He thought she talked about food all the time because she was greedy. It never occurred to him that she was the same as him – she thought about food because she was hungry. It was as simple as that.

  This was how the journey went, with Melanie gasping for breath behind the trolley handle, and Siggy groaning with pain and urging her on with promises of pies, cream, cheese, milk, plates of fishes, bread, cake, mountains of food, the softest beds – wealth she could hardly imagine.

  At last they arrived at the new hiding place, and she half tipped Siggy out of the trolley and watched him crawl on his belly down the stairs into the boiler room. She knew all his tales of wealth were just fantasy, but they still fascinated her. Well, you never knew. She’d rescued him, hadn’t she? Half starved herself to keep him alive. She deserved a reward. All she had ever known was the grind of poverty. She didn’t know what it was like to have enough, but she’d love the chance to try.

  The old pig woman followed her patient down the concrete steps and sat on the floor next to him, panting like a dog. Melanie was old, tired and unwell. Under her thick rags she was as thin as sticks. The journey from the slum where she lived to the new hiding place, pushing the heavy burden of the spoilt ganglord, had exhausted her.

  For a while, the only sound down there was their ragged breathing. Siggy was exhausted too, but he was also furious – a sure sign he was getting his strength back. If he hadn’t been tied to his bed in Melanie’s basement, he would have already been a great deal stronger than he was. Despite what he thought, he had been eating by far the better of the two. Melanie was still a heap on the floor, gasping for breath, by the time he had recovered and rooted around in her pinny pocket for food. Inside he found a lump of old bread, hard as wood.

  ‘I can’t live on this!’ he exclaimed. He gnawed at the crust. ‘What about that soup? You used to give me thick soup. Where’s that gone?’

  The old woman looked steadily at him. She had no idea what to do with him any more. Who was going to buy a human slave with the wars restarting? An
d look at him, poor dear! He still needed so much more caring for!

  ‘When you’re better you can go and help yourself…’ she began.

  ‘On this stuff? You expect me to get better on this? You’ll have to do better than this, darling.’

  Siggy sat with his bread, gnawing at it and trying to soften it with spit. In a few minutes, Melanie got to her feet and climbed up the stairs to her trolley to fetch a length of rope. She wanted to tie him up again, but Siggy brushed her aside. He wasn’t going to be treated like a dog by an old pig!

  Outside, pale grey was showing through the door to the boiler room: dawn. Melanie sighed and made her way back to the top of the stairs. Siggy was hissing with rage and fear. He watched her crawl slowly up the stairs and shouted after her, ‘You bring me some decent food next time if you want me to pay you properly. You hear?’

  Melanie nodded slowly, and disappeared into the darkness. Outside, he could hear her rattling at the door as she fixed the padlock to it. He crawled over to the heap of cushions and rags she left for a bed, and fell straight to sleep.

  He woke up hours later and lay there, trying to remember where he was. He was aching in every fibre. He lifted his arms. They were free. He sat up, then tried to stand. Took a couple of steps. The boiler room was cold and dark, but at least he was free to move about.

  Spatters and stripes of light dotted the darkness. There was the door, marked by lines of pale light around the frame. The sun must be shining outside; he could see a little sunbeam coming in through the keyhole, turning the dust into specks of gold. Painfully, Siggy crawled up the steps to try it, but the door was firmly locked.

  Over to one side were a few more cracks of light, and he crawled towards this on all fours, like a great pale beetle. This light was coming through a little door made of heavy metal. Feeling round he found a handle, stuck fast. He leaned on it, but his weight did nothing.

  Groping about the rubbly floor he soon found a brick. It was hard to hold it in his bandaged hands, but he lifted it up and banged down on the handle, which moved a fraction. Ten more blows and the lever shot free. Siggy heaved on the door and it swung open, and the light flooded in.

  He had to turn his head away at first, it was so bright. It was the first time he’d seen daylight in a month. As soon as his eyes could take it, he poked his head in and peered inside, twisting his head to look up. There was a smell of damp soot.

  Siggy had his head inside an old incinerator. Once, long ago, the school had burned rubbish here to help to heat the water. At the back of the fire chamber some bricks had fallen away, revealing the throat of a tall brick chimney. The light flooded down. Siggy lay on his back and looked up at a circle of free, open sky.

  It was a way out. The chimney was broken off halfway up. It was wide enough to allow a man to pass through it, but not so wide that he couldn’t brace his back and feet on the sides. If he’d had the strength, Siggy would certainly have been able to climb up it.

  If he had the strength…

  Siggy lay there for a long time, watching the blue sky overhead and smelling the fresh air, mixed in with the sooty smell. He had the freedom now to exercise and get his strength back. Old Melanie could be up to anything – who knew? – but with luck, the old sow would start bringing him food that would build his strength up.

  So there was a chance he could escape. Unlike Signy, Siggy never contemplated suicide. He knew Signy lived. He had to find out what had happened to her.

  Siggy crawled back into the boiler room. Melanie had left him a few bottles of water as well as the bread, and he ate and drank before he continued exploring his prison. He went right around the walls, and then began a curious crawl around the floor, patting the rubbish he found and rubbing it on the ground. After several pauses for rest, he found what he was looking for.

  A good deal of rubbish had been thrown or had fallen down the stairs over the years. Siggy couldn’t see in this light, and he couldn’t feel with his bandaged hands, so he had to rub the rubbish on the ground to hear what it was. Whenever he heard the rattle of glass he’d scoop it up and carry it to the light of the chimney to have a proper look. He had to do this nine or ten times before he found what he wanted: a broken fragment of mirror.

  It was dusty and cracked and spotted, but it was enough. Siggy lay on his stomach in the ancient ashes and rubbed at it and spat on it until it shone as well as it was ever going to. Then, awkwardly, in his big fat cotton hands, he held it so that he got a glimpse of his face.

  For over a minute he lay there, twisting the mirror and staring, before he dropped it and crawled back out. He made his way on all fours to the pile of rags Melanie had left him for a bed, and cried himself to sleep.

  40

  siggy

  When I woke up for the second time down in the old school, I got straight on with it. So I’d lost my face, so what? I’d lost everything else as well, that was the least of it. I just thought, so that’s the end of my sex life, and then I made myself crawl up and down the steps twice.

  It was only ten steps, but it was agony. Afterwards I just lay there gasping. Compared to what I’d been doing lately, going up and down the stairs was like a bloody marathon. And then the hunger came back, worse than ever.

  I kept thinking, Signy, Signy. I had to find out what had happened to Signy.

  It was that kept me going. I could have gone the other way when I thought about what had happened – my father, my brothers. To tell you the truth, if I’d had Conor down there with me, I’d have been capable of anything… anything. But what good would that do? Bring Val back to life? Get me Ben stamping the floor and clapping, or Hadrian turning up with some new plan for breaking out of London? You can call me weak if you like, but revenge never helped anyone.

  And I thought of other things in the long dark hours. I thought of the knife Odin gave me, hanging now by Conor’s side. Why had he given me such a present, only to let this happen? And that started me thinking that maybe this game wasn’t over yet.

  Meanwhile… food. I’d been hungry enough before and let’s face it, lying flat on your back doesn’t give you much of an appetite. Now that I was moving about I was ravenous. When I wasn’t exercising I lay on the rags dreaming about food. The banquets my father used to give! That roast camel! The mountains of potatoes, the custards like bathtubs! It was infuriating to be so weak that I had to depend on old Melanie. If only I had an ounce of strength back I’d be out there, doing it for myself.

  All I had to look forward to was her next visit. On the way here I’d been telling her how much money I had stashed away, and of course the greedy old sow was lapping it up – just lapping it up. Yeah, I knew what she wanted – me, on a plate, with a side dish of French fries. Of course, she was too greedy and stupid to team up with some of the other monsters out there. She had to have me all to herself. That was to my advantage. Now she didn’t know whether to eat me or believe me. Of course, I didn’t have a penny in the world, but she didn’t know that. Now she was certain to bring me more of that wonderful, thick, rich soup she used to bring me at first.

  But, would you believe it, she was so stupid with greed! When she came back she brought nothing but more stale old bread – filthy, dirty bread as well that’d been kicking about on the floor for the past week. I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘There’s nothing else,’ she told me, sulkily.

  ‘You’re lying, you old sow,’ I hissed. I’d have chucked her foul crust at her, if I wasn’t so famished. ‘What about the soup?’ I demanded. ‘You used to give me good soup. What about that? It’s a long way to where my money’s hidden. I need good food if I’m to get strong enough to fetch it. Don’t you want me to do that, Melanie? Don’t you?’

  She stared at me dully and stuck out her lip, like a pouty little girl. ‘I’ve got nothing…’ she complained.

  ‘Liar! Look at you! You’re fat. You’re fat while I’m thin. You bring me soup, Melanie, you hear me? Like you used to. Right?’

  She
looked sadly at the ground. I was furious! Hadn’t she got any sense? ‘Just a couple of decent meals and I’ll be strong enough to go and bring us back some gold, and you’re too stupid to go and get them for me,’ I raged.

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said.

  It was such an obvious load of balls. She was fat enough. She almost waddled when she walked. But she was so stupid and greedy she expected me to get better and go and bring home the bacon while she half starved me. Stupid!

  By the time she came back the next day, I was ready to eat anything. I’d crawled up the stairs three or four times, but it was obvious I had to get some food down me if I was going to get any strength. I was dreaming about the soup she was going to bring me – thick, steaming soup with fine lumps of fatty meat in it, and barley and big chunks of chopped vegetables. I even began to think quite fondly of poor old Melanie. Right at this very minute she was probably hobbling her way over the rubble with the soup cradled in her arms, carefully guarding the precious pot against armies of halfmen.

  And when she came, guess what? Well, there was the soup! I knew she had it, the lying old bitch. I was a bit disappointed at how small the pot was, though. In my dreams it’d been a vast, steaming cauldron that she had to carry on her back, with huge lumps of meat and vegetables practically jumping out of it. Instead, she handed over a small earthenware pot. ‘It’s cold,’ I complained. ‘It’s too small!’ I moaned. The old sow was so stupid! All she had to do was look after me properly and there would be plenty. Didn’t she understand?

  Melanie said nothing. She watched closely as I lifted the lid off.

  It was half full of dark, thin liquid. I lifted it up and looked in. There were precious few bits in it. I glared at her. I raised the bowl to my mouth and slurped up a lump floating on the top – meat, I thought! But it was just some pappy, overcooked vegetable. I sucked in a mouthful of liquid. The soup was thin, sour and rancid. Even to a starving man it was disgusting.