The Truants

by Lee Markham

  Once bound, it’s a simple case of rounding up the stragglers. In times gone past I might have considered an omerta – join or die – but it is not necessary this time. This time all I need is a clean core group. And so assassination is the assignation. Find the last few, bleed them. Enjoy it. Savour every drop. It is an easy sell.

  So three weeks, nearly a month, and a semblance of order is created.

  I divide my time between the nest and Ricky’s battalion. The nest requires less attention. The rats there are fearful. Of the world. The sun. Me. They don’t want to leave. They want to go home, but they know they have no homes. Not any more. Danny functions as an exemplary left hand. He observes and reports. His obedience is matched only by his natural aptitude and commitment to the cause. He of course has his own obvious motivations for wanting the knife-bearer, indeed his murderer, too. The desire for vengeance is always strongest in the unjustly condemned.

  And so most of my time is spent with Ricky. The need for more constant, discrete manipulations is profound. These are caged pack-hunters. Itching at the leash. Scratching at the bars of their cage. All in good time, my faithful… just wait… be patient… too soon would be too small, I tell them. We must plan. We will explode across the cruel consciousness of the world that holds us in penury. Words to that effect – they don’t have the vocabulary. The wonder of radicalisation is its capacity for delayed gratification on the promise of prophesied glory. Not a permanent solution, but a decent enough holding pattern.

  All I need to do now is find the right location.

  Somewhere I can bring them all together – the weaklings from the nest, together with Ricky’s war party. And there I can let the massacre ensue and, as the numbers whittle away in that sealed abattoir, so my control over the remainder will reconstitute and increase exponentially. It will be glorious. And at the end of which I will be left standing with just one of them – I haven’t yet decided which, possibly Danny – and I can get back to that final loose end.

  The knife.

  The ever-fucking knife.

  3

  Danny went into the bedroom and quietly clicked the door shut behind him.

  The woman, the mother of his killer, looked up from her drugged sprawl on the bed and, after a moment’s hesitation while the gears groaned into motion, sprang up and back against the wall. Her eyes widened and the tears came quickly. She said nothing.

  Danny looked at her blankly as she adopted her terrified cower. Then he asked her: ‘Do you love him?’

  That threw her. Her eyes narrowed and her head tilted. A slight sneer, for just a second, as if a reflex action wanted to dismiss the question with some flavour of disdain – but her newly minted fear of this terrible child, with the monster living inside him, restrained her. ‘Huh?’ was all she could manage.

  The boy moved into the room, deposited the pile of clothes that had been discarded on the moulded plastic garden chair onto the floor, and took a seat. He pulled his legs up in front of himself and hugged them, rested his cheek on his knee and regarded her balefully. There were tears in his eyes, and his bottom lip trembled. ‘He’s not here. The bad thing inside us. He’s busy. He’ll know if we do anything silly. But we can talk. Do you love him?’ he said quietly.

  His voice was different. Local. Like he was from here. Unlike the voice of the other one. Their master.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your boy. The one that killed me. John.’

  ‘Of course I love him.’ Another reflex response.

  Danny tilted his head, and the corners of his mouth pinched in disbelief. ‘Really? What’s his favourite book?’

  She looked away from him, shrugged and fished through her clutter for something to smoke. ‘He doesn’t really like reading.’

  ‘His favourite film? TV programme? What does he like to do?’

  She snorted at that. ‘He likes being a little fucking shit is what he likes to do. That, and making my life even more difficult than it already is.’

  ‘So you don’t want him back?’

  She didn’t answer that. But she considered it, her body pausing momentarily from its usual twitch and fidget.

  ‘Do you know what happened to your other boy? How he died? He was still awake when this thing inside me made me saw his hands off. Peter helped. Your boy wasn’t in too much pain. Drugs. But he knew it was happening. I don’t think he was still there when we took his teeth. But he might have been. It’s hard to tell. I don’t really understand these things.’ The boy’s voice broke at the end of that, and the tears started to fall when he repeated, ‘I don’t really understand these things.’

  The woman looked across at him, her hand covered her mouth and she started to shake.

  The boy cleared his throat, sat upright and pulled himself together: ‘What do you suppose will happen to the other boy? To John? Do you think it will be so different? I try to imagine what it must have been like for your boy when we killed him. How confused he must have been. And scared. I think it must have been like when I died. When your other boy, John… when John killed me. I didn’t understand. I was just… I was just going home, y’know? To my mum…’

  He paused and shrugged and looked up into the corner of the room. He closed his eyes and the tears streamed freely. He made a low, awful keening sound.

  ‘Mum is probably really worried. I guess. I don’t know. See, I know she loves me. And I love her very much too.’ He shook his head, opened his eyes, looked up at the ceiling, clenched his fists and thumped his thighs. ‘This isn’t fair.’ He hissed.

  Then he looked back at the woman on the bed, his eyes alive with rage and sadness and confusion: ‘I want my mum,’ he sobbed.

  Something broke through with her then and she started to weep. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Does she love you?’

  She rocked gently back and forth, turned her head to the side and whispered, ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know where she is. I don’t really remember her.’

  Danny frowned and nodded. He hopped down from the chair, moved round the bed to the window and pulled the tar-stained corner of the curtain back and peeped blankly out into the darkness of the concrete walkway outside and beyond to grim twinkling of the night-time city skyline.

  ‘It’s different in here to before.’ He tapped his head. ‘I’m not alone in here. There are pathways. He uses them, but I don’t think he knows about all of them. He just knows the ones that join us to him. But there are paths everywhere. But they are like puzzles. Keyholes. You have to find combinations to open them up. It’s a bit like that. But different. I haven’t quite figured it out yet. The paths between all of us, his rats, are wide open. But the other paths need unlocking. I think when we’re taken the pathways just open up… but the paths are there already. Just closed off. The paths… the connections… aren’t made when we’re infected. They’re all already there. I don’t think we have to infect each other to unlock them. I think maybe we can hack them. But I’m not sure. I’ve found a few old paths that go places he went before. Old places. Other people. I’m not sure who they are. Where they are. And I’m scared that he’ll find out what I’ve found. I’m scared that he’ll find out that I’ve been looking around.’

  He turned back from the window and looked at her, his face open, asking her to be something she’d never been before. ‘You are his mother. Your boy’s mother. And he will die in the same way as your other boy. Probably in a worse way. And so will you. And me. All of us here. Even Peter. And Peter and I have already done that once. I don’t want to do it again.’

  ‘What can we do?’ she asked. ‘What can I do?’

  Danny glared at her, his eyes flashing an instant of pure rage, his face tightening. He looked old. So, so old. He shook his head again and hesitated before muttering, ‘I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe this will all just be what it will be. But I’m not going to just sit back and let it happen.’

  She said nothing. Just watched him pace back and forth at the foot of
the bed, his whole body locked in a posture of deep thought. The moment lasted for a minute or two, but it felt like hours to her. She didn’t know what the boy wanted. And she struggled with thoughts clouded now by the stirred-up silt of the long-settled sludge of her deepest emotions and hurts. Then he stopped and said, ‘I hate him, you know. What he’s done.’

  She nodded. ‘Do you think you can stop him?’

  Danny looked at her sharply then. ‘Not him. Your boy. I hate him,’ he growled.

  She recoiled at the viciousness of his tone because she knew it was directed at her too, and, with or without the other thing inside him, she knew he was dangerous. That he too had power now. And a rapidly burgeoning capacity for intent. ‘I don’t care about him.’ He tapped his head again. ‘I understand him. But your boys. You. I hate you. I don’t care what happens to you. If the same thing happens to you as happened to your other boy, fine. I don’t care. It’s just if it does, it will happen to me too. And I don’t want it to happen to me. Or Peter. Or some of these others here. It’s not fair. You… you deserve this. You have done this. I haven’t done anything. Nor has my mum. It’s not fucking fair.’ He was roaring his words by the end of his tirade, and he stopped suddenly and turned towards the door. ‘He hears me. I should go.’

  He reached for the door-handle, turned it and pulled the door open. Then he stopped again. ‘But you didn’t answer the question.’

  ‘What question?’ she quavered.

  ‘Do you love your boy?’

  She thought of him then. Of when he had been little and had reached for her with affection and how, every now and then, he had received affection in return. Of his smile. Of the light in his eyes. Of her jealousy of that light. Her resentment. Of how much he made her hate herself because he’d loved her and she hadn’t known how to love him back. And of how now, so late, too late, she realised that she’d loved him all along. And that she’d lost him. Long ago. And how much she missed him. How much she missed that light that she’d only seen fleetingly, like the passing of a comet, and whether she’d ever see it again. And then she thought of teeth bundled in ragged tissue and needles and sawn-off hands. She thought of all of these things and she crumbled into herself, and into her sadness, and she knew the awful answer to Danny’s terrible question.

  ‘Yes… yes… I love him… I do…’

  Danny lowered his head at that, said nothing and stepped quietly from the room, closing the door silently behind him, leaving her with her tears and her loss and confusion, a mother at last, with no children left to mother. Good.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SANCTUARY AND REJECTION

  1

  It was the smell of bread being baked that woke him. As it had done on a number of days since he’d come here. He opened his eyes and lay there, looking at the high ceiling with its decorative plasterwork bridging the corners where it met the walls. The small chandelier that hung above his large, soft bed was still dimly illuminated. He smiled.

  Late-afternoon winter sun washed in through the tall sash windows that looked out over the busy garden, giving the room a salmon-pinkish hue that made him feel even warmer than his cosy bedroom already was. He wasn’t tired. He felt good. In the weeks since the end of his old life and the beginning of this new one, he’d quickly learnt how it was to feel well.

  The first week had been tough. There was no TV in the house. And they wouldn’t let him smoke or drink. They let him have coffee with as much sugar as he wanted, but that was pretty much it. He’d wanted at first to go back to the block, but they’d told him it wasn’t safe. That the ones who had his mother would be looking for him. He hadn’t believed them. He didn’t know why they wanted to keep him, but he couldn’t conceive that anyone would be looking for him. He hadn’t done anything. That’s what he told them.

  But they’d known. And they’d looked at him sadly. Sadly, because he lied to them. Sadly, because of what he’d done. He’d stabbed the boy. The man with the scar had seen him do it. And at first he denied it and swore and kicked and screamed and threatened to leave. But he couldn’t. Because deep down he wasn’t really sure he wanted to.

  They started leaving newspapers out for him to see. He read with increasing concern as, over the weeks, the story of the boy he’d murdered – murdered! He simply couldn’t believe it, he’d hardly touched him – kept moving progressively deeper into the journals, to ever-decreasing patches of real estate squeezed in between stories about speed cameras and publicity advertising cheap Christmas presents. The story was pushed back by ever more brutal murders, starting with the slaughter at the flat, where his brother had been the unknown victim of a ritualistic murder. Not that the papers knew it was his brother – but he did. John did. They told him. And he believed them. Once he’d got over his initial habitual disrespect and disbelief of all things authoritative.

  So, the murder. Then murders. Then disappearing children.

  The newspapers went wild. There was talk of cults and the decline of civilisation, the collapse of all virtue, the devaluation of existence, the end of love, the deification of death, the demise of morality and the death of God. All of these things. Yet none of them knew how to pin the tail on the donkey, the scarred man, the one they called Rider (some jokingly called him Joyrider, but John didn’t get the joke) would say. Which was a good thing, for them. It was nothing more than Darwinian motion in action. A new top predator had evolved. But like over-aggressive, simple-minded viruses, it would burn itself out. And we will help it. And they will forget and they will all go back to their daily migrations from stable to workhouse and back. John wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. But he quickly started believing them when they said that they would be looking for him. That the knife that had fallen into his possession was at the root of all this.

  And they’d explained to him what it was they were. And they’d offered to let him join them. But he’d declined. For now. And they’d accepted that. Made no odds to them. He wouldn’t be the only one. He’d be the youngest, by quite some stretch, but needs demanded. He’d needed protection. They’d brought him in.

  Over the weeks his sleeping pattern had gradually drifted to align more with theirs. He’d awake every day, in his bed, in his room, to ever so slightly longer shadows running across the carpet from the treetops in the fields beyond. Not always to the smell of baking bread, but occasionally. More often it would be the smell of brewing coffee.

  He felt safe. And he felt well. And the thrashing anger and sense of abandonment that had until so very recently lived inside him, and had indeed very much wagged the dog, slept. It was still there, he was quite sure of it, and he felt sure it always would be. But it was still, for now. And he would be its master. With their help. He would be his own master.

  He swung his feet out from under the duvet and down onto the thickly piled carpet. He stood and scrunched his toes. It made him fizz all over. He walked across to the window and looked out across the garden. It was curious-looking. They’d explained that it was as it was for its smell. The colours that informed the landscaping of most gardens were of little interest to them. Night stripped the world of its colour. But not of its scent. And their sense of smell was keen. Which was why their garden was as it was. He’d not had much experience of gardens, and so wouldn’t have noticed if they hadn’t mentioned it to him. But now that it had been pointed out, it was a fact that he liked to chew over when he woke up and looked down on it. It intrigued him. That these things are thought about at all. That the geometry of the world would sometimes bend to accommodate such thought. He wondered where else this might be the case. If perhaps the geometry of the world wasn’t in fact bent out of shape everywhere mankind existed. The thought was as big as any thought he’d ever had. As were many of the thoughts he was having these days.

  Life was different now.

  Life was good.

  He smiled.

  He could see activity down by the barns where the pigs spent their nights. The day crew finishing u
p their chores. They said when everything had calmed down he might be able to help out down there too. But for now, it wasn’t worth the risk.

  He made his way down to the basement, to the huge communal kitchen and dining space that occupied the area between the foot of the basement stairs and their bedrooms. The radio was on quietly. Some old man talking about some history stuff with other old men and a younger-sounding woman. It was soothing to hear, just the sound of interested voices engaged in conversation. He took in none of what they were saying. No one was up other than the one who had brought him here, who was waiting for him.

  ‘Hello John. How did you sleep?’

  John smiled and nodded and pulled himself up onto a stool at the breakfast bar.

  ‘Bread will be ready soon. Would you like a coffee?’

  ‘Yep.’

  The man, Rider, raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Please,’ John finished.

  Rider took down a heavy mug from a hook above the kitchen counter and poured some coffee into it from a filter jug. He placed the cup down in front of John and looked at him seriously. ‘We need to start sorting things out.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘The things you’ve been reading about in the paper. The people who are looking for you.’

  John shrugged insolently. ‘Don’t see why.’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t. And I don’t really care if you see why or not. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s now time to act.’