by Jon Cronshaw
“Can’t believe you’re cooking it like that, man. You can use that fat.”
Abel frowns. “I’m hungry. I don’t have time to make a pot.”
Pip lies straight, crunching on a bone with her back teeth while she holds it steady with her paws. Abel wraps his hands with a strip of cloth, takes the tins from the fire and lets them cool to one side. He squats over the beans, stirring them with a steel dessert spoon. The wizard sits with his back against a tree.
“You get much trouble on the roads?” Abel asks, turning to the wizard.
“Sometimes. Things are worse than they used to be. People are okay in the most part. It's the dogs, you know?”
“Yep.” Abel looks at Pip. “They aren't all like this one.”
“Man, that's for sure. I got a nice long spike. They're usually so stupid, they just run into it.”
“Where is it?” Abel pushes himself to his feet.
“The spike?” The wizard gestures through the trees, up the slope towards the highway. “In the cart.”
“Can I see?”
The wizard frowns. “Good idea. If anything comes, it's good to be ready.” He stands, and ambles up the slope to his cart. After a minute or so, he returns brandishing a steel rod, four-feet-long and sharpened to a point at one end. He turns it over then drives it into the earth.
Abel looks at the rod but doesn't touch it. Instead, he takes a tin of beans and hands it to the wizard. He turns the rabbit over the fire and then sits cross-legged with his back to the flames, picking up his own tin to eat.
The food is warm and satisfying. He smiles as the beans break up in his mouth, combining with the sauce. “There's a truck,” he says, between mouthfuls. “About a mile or so back that way.” He makes a vague gesture with his spoon. The wizard looks up from his beans. “It's got a sealed trailer. I tried to get into it earlier. I think we might be able to lever it open with that.” He makes a nod towards the rod.
The wizard glances over his shoulder. “I'm not leaving the cart, man. And, no offence, but I'm not letting you take my best weapon.”
“What if I help fix your cart? That way you can come with me and split whatever we find.”
“I can do that.”
Abel waits as the wizard ties the mule to a tree away from the highway. A sharp chill in the air makes the trees around them sigh. Pip runs on ahead, zigzagging when she picks up a scent.
“You think your mule's going to be alright?” Abel asks when the wizard joins him.
“Hope so.” The wizard looks back along the road to his cart hidden behind a bush at the roadside. He grips the metal rod in his right hand, using it as a walking stick.
“It's not too far. It's a bit of an awkward climb down though.”
“How long you had the dog?”
Abel shrugs. “A year, I guess. We met when I left Trinity.”
“About the same with the mule. He's slow, but he'll keep going, you know?”
“Yep,” Abel says. “Better to keep steady.”
They follow the gentle slope up along the road. Pip stops at the edge of the embankment overlooking the truck. “We're here,” Abel says, looking back at the wizard. “Take it easy climbing down.”
He crabs his way down the slope, gripping an exposed root when a clump of earth shifts beneath him.
“You okay, man?” the wizard asks, calling down to him.
“Yep, just watch your footing.” He scrambles the rest of the way down, taking each step with care, testing the ground before committing his weight. He lets out a relieved sigh when he reaches flat ground, takes off his cap, and wipes his forehead with his sleeve. Pip circles him for a few moments and runs off, disappearing into the bushes.
Above, the wizard struggles to find a safe route. “I can't get down,” he calls.
“You're doing okay, just take it slow.” Abel scans the embankment and points to a rocky outcrop. “Head to those rocks. There's roots poking through. You should be able to get a good grip.”
The wizard moves along to the left, his feet slipping against the falling soil. He tumbles and falls, landing flat on his back with a thud. The metal rod clangs against a stone and rolls along the ground.
Abel runs over to the wizard and extends a hand. “You okay?”
The wizard gives a breathless groan. “Knocked...wind...out...” he manages.
Abel steps back, looking around. “Just take deep breaths.”
The wizard gasps, his fingers groping for the metal rod.
“Don't worry about that.” Abel crouches, hooks an arm under the wizard's neck, and strains to lift him to a sitting position.
“Thanks, man,” the wizard says.
“Anything hurt?”
The wizard rolls his right shoulder and something pops. He makes a grasping motion with his fingers, tilting his neck, bones cracking. “I'll be fine,” he says. “I'll have some bruises.”
“You okay to move?”
The wizard nods. “Yeah. Help me up.”
Abel offers a shoulder as the wizard staggers to his feet. They look at the truck.
“Any idea what's in there?” the wizard asks, still gasping for breath.
“Nope. Let's find out.” Abel leans down, takes the metal rod in his right hand, and walks over to the truck's rear. He slides the spike beneath the shutters and pushes, levering it up and down, trying to force it open. He moves the rod along the crack and signals to the wizard for help. “You okay to grab this?”
The wizard joins him, gripping the rod tightly. Together, they force it down until something snaps inside the lock.
Abel smiles at the wizard and raises the shutters, a cloud of dust spilling from within. The stench of death and decay fills the air. A rat darts past them and disappears beneath the truck.
“I don't like the look of this, man,” the wizard says, scowling.
“I've seen worse.” Abel flaps his arms to clear the dust. “Trust me, it will be fine.”
Pip joins them. She sniffs along the trailer's edge before returning to explore the bushes.
Abel heaves himself inside. The suspension springs call out in protest as cockroach husks crack beneath his boots. He reaches a hand out for the wizard, but the wizard gives a dismissive wave. “I'll wait here,” he says. “I'll keep a lookout.”
Inside, there’s an upturned crate, a pile of rotten clothes, a few pots and pans, scattered rat faeces, and the former occupant's browned bones. Abel looks back at the wizard, wrinkling his nose.
“What is it?” the wizard asks.
“We’ve got remains, long dead,” Abel says, crouching over the bones but not daring to touch.
The wizard's eyes widen. “We should go, man.”
Abel shakes his head. His eyes catch something to the body's right. He leans down and picks up a thin length of steel pipe, scorched black at one end. “Damn it,” he mutters.
“What is it?”
“Whoever this was,” he says, shaking his head, “was using.”
“Is there any still around? We could trade it.”
Abel leans from the trailer, meeting the wizard with an icy glare. “I'm having no part in that,” he snaps. “You understand me? No part.”
The wizard's eyes narrow for a moment, and then he shrugs. “Okay, man.”
Abel turns back inside the truck and checks under the crate. There's a box of matches, a couple of candles, and something unrecognisable, soft and decayed. He picks up the matches and the candles, dropping them into his backpack. “I think there's a couple of things we can trade,” he says, picking up a saucepan. He turns the pan in his hand. It’s heavy and encrusted with dried dirt. A second pan rests farther into the trailer, just as filthy. He scoops them both up and picks up a fork and spoon. “We should get something for these.”
Jumping down, he examines the pans in the daylight. “They look pretty solid. They'll need cleaning up.”
“People trade this stuff?” the wizard asks.
“People need to cook. We can get
back to Trinity before night, get some more food.”
The wizard scoffs. “You think they'll welcome me back there?”
“They're good people. They're into all that God stuff, but they're good for trade.”
“Can't we go somewhere else?”
“Where?”
“There are loads of settlements along the roads. I'm sure we'll find someone to trade with.”
“What if they don't want what we're offering? At least Trinity takes anything they can get a decent trade for.”
The wizard gives a confused look. “Why bother?”
“So they can get more stuff, I guess. They get traders from miles around.”
“Man, they didn't exactly welcome me,” the wizard says, bitterly.
“True enough, but what were you actually offering to trade?”
The wizard goes to speak, his mouth gaping for a second before closing.
“Shall we see what we can do about your cart?”
The wizard nods, looks up at the opened shutters and then inside towards the pile of bones. “What about that?”
“Nothing we can do about him now,” Abel says with wry smile. “Just close it up. It's already a tomb.”
They climb onto the trailer and pull the shutters down with a rattling clunk. Abel pats his thigh, looking around for Pip. “Come on, girl,” he calls.
After a few moments, Pip emerges from the bushes, padding along, her tail wagging in the air and a dead rat drooping from her jaws.
“Looks like we've got a snack,” Abel says.
The wizard curls his lip.
ABEL WINDS THE TORCH’S handle, lies down on the ground, and shuffles his way beneath the wizard's cart. He grips the torch between his chin and collarbone, groping around the wheel. “Here's your problem.”
The wizard's face appears to his right, leaning on one side. “Yeah?”
“There's something wrapped around that’s making it stick.” He pulls on the strands wrapped around the wheel. “It's too tight.” He shuffles out from under the cart, staggers to his feet, and dusts himself down with his hands. He pockets his torch, looking at the sky. “We're going to be cutting it fine if we're going to get to Trinity by nightfall.”
“What about my wheel?”
Abel walks over to his backpack, leaning against the cart, and takes out his hunting knife. Stepping over to the tangled wheel, he lies on the ground, slides underneath the cart, and digs the knife between the strands. His arms ache against the pressure as he tries to cut at the awkward angle, his knuckles scraping against the axle when the knife-point slips. The first strand snaps and then a second.
“What is this stuff?” he asks, moving from under the cart. He pushes himself to his feet, holding up the thin lengths of thread, turning it to catch the light.
The wizard takes them, examining them for several seconds. “It's plastic. It's tough.” He tries biting through the line with his teeth and flinches. “Definitely tough.”
“It's blunted my knife. I'll have to find a stone to sharpen it.” Abel stops and frowns, his arms dropping to his sides. “What the hell?”
Four kids, with chains secured around their waists, shoulders, and necks, stagger forward, their arms bound by the wrists, twisted into prayer. Tattered clothes hang from their gaunt frames, their eyes rimmed with purple. The chains extend to a campervan they pull along behind them.
Two men with rifles walk at the van’s side, barking orders at the kids. A woman dressed in leathers brandishes a tyre iron and gestures to one of the boys.
Abel tugs at the wizard's wrist, pulling him behind a thorn bush. They hide and watch.
“Who are they?”
“The Family,” Abel says.
The campervan stretches longer than the wizard's cart and rolls along on four inflated tyres. Its bodywork, once white, is patched with exposed areas of rust and caked-on mud along its lower half. Small grubby handprints streak along its side-door. Nailed-down sheets of wood and plastic obscure the windows along the side. The windows surrounding the front cabin remain intact and clear. An empty space gapes mouth-like where the engine would have been. A man goes over to the kids, signalling for them to stop.
The kids stagger to a halt. A boy tumbles to his knees. The woman yanks the kid to his feet, slapping him across the face.
Abel jerks up, fists clenched.
“Get down.” The wizard grabs him, yanking him back. “You want to get me killed?”
“They just hit that kid.”
“They'll do worse to us.”
The woman paces before the kids, saying something to them in a raised voice. The men release the chains from around the kids' waists, shoulders, and necks but leave their wrists still bound. The woman opens the side-door to the van and leans inside. A few moments later, four more kids emerge. They look around, squinting, confused, their watery eyes rimmed with purple. The woman ushers the new kids to the front of the van and fastens the chains around their waists and shoulders while a man prods the other kids inside with his rifle, slamming the door shut behind them.
“What the hell?” Abel asks, tugging at his beard.
“Shut up,” the wizard snarls. He looks over to his cart. “I hope they don't see my stuff.”
Abel turns to the wizard, his lips contorting with disgust. “You're worried about your damn stuff?” He makes a wild gesture. “Look what's happening.”
The wizard shakes his head. “Yeah. It's bad. What can we do?”
“We can help them.”
“You're crazy, man. They're just plez kids.”
The woman shouts an order, and the kids take up the chains' tension. They lean forward as the van’s wheels start to roll, their slow, strained movement half the speed of the wizard's mule.
“They're kids. Plez or not.”
“You see those rifles?” the wizard says. “You see them, right?”
“Yep.”
“What do you think will happen if we go up to them and say 'excuse me, Mister Family person, can you release those kids, please?'”
Abel shakes his head, helpless as the van passes them. “We need to help them.”
The wizard scoffs. “What can we do, man?”
“We could use your magic.”
3. Town
ABEL KEEPS ONE EYE on the dirt track ahead and another on the slow-moving procession on the highway below. The thin track winds northwards along the hillside through a tangled mess of twisted sycamore and chestnut trees and the brick foundations of long-flattened buildings. The mule struggles to pull the cart along the track, its wheels snagging as they roll over potholes and trailing nettles. Abel walks at the cart's side and keeps looking back towards the highway. Pip runs ahead, sniffing around some fern bushes.
“Town's not too far, man,” the wizard says. He gestures along the trail, bouncing on his seat as the cart hits an exposed tree root.
“Which town?” Abel asks. “I didn't know there was a town this way.”
“The place is called Town. They like me there.”
Abel sweeps his gaze along the highway as propeller-like seed casings crunch beneath his boots. The campervan seems slower from this distance, almost still. He looks back up the trail and runs ahead of the cart to drag a fallen sycamore out of the cart’s path. Damp tree bark breaks up against his grip, crumbling to rot. “What sort of a name is Town?” he mutters, rolling the trunk into a muddy ditch at the trail's edge.
The wizard gives a confused look. “What?”
“Just thinking aloud.” Abel re-joins the trail and matches pace with the cart. “Town, it's a bit of an odd name.”
The wizard nods, adjusting his reins. “Yeah. Town's a bit odd. You got that right.”
After ten minutes, the trail turns flat and dusty, levelling out to a plateau. Brittle grasses poke through the ground at the trail's edge. The pine trees around them stand dead, greyed, and coated in a black tar-like fungus. Pip stays on the trail, her tail high and stiff, her ears pointing upwards, twitching.
>
“What is it, girl?” Abel asks. Pip looks back for a second and then keeps walking, her legs close together, as if walking on a tightrope. “I don’t like this. She’s not happy.”
The wizard smirks. “It’s fine. No one really comes this way.”
Wrecked cars lie on their sides, creating a wall around the small settlement ahead. Beyond, a cluster of twenty or so huts huddle together in a haphazard arrangement — squat, single-storey constructions built from untreated pine and draped with polythene sheets. The wizard reaches behind him, puts on his pointy hat, and smiles. “It's show time.”
“What should I do?”
The wizard frowns for a moment and shrugs. “Just play along.”
As they pass the rusted cars, they come to a chicken-wire fence. A young man with bright red hair and wild green eyes looks up from his whittling. “Pa,” he calls. The young man jumps to his feet, runs over to the fence, and moves it across, welcoming the wizard inside. “You going to have to leave your dog outside, mister.”
“You have nothing to fear from my assistant's faithful hound,” the wizard says in a booming voice.
Abel stifles a laugh.
“Pa say dogs is all bad.”
The wizard climbs down from his cart, closes his eyes and wiggles his fingers towards Pip. “Second Bob— it is Second Bob, right?”
Second Bob nods. His tattered blue polythene poncho flaps against the wind. Animal skins wrap around his torso, his hard flesh marked with freckles and acne.
“My good sir, haven't you grown?” the wizard says, tussling Second Bob’s hair. “Whatever your family are feeding you is turning you into a big strong man.”
“Thanks, mister. But the dog got to go.”
“Using ancient magic, I have cast a spell upon this dog to make her good and friendly. She will not attack you or your family.” He pauses, glancing at Pip. “Unless provoked.”
“I don’t know, mister.”
“What would your Pa say if you provoked a dog?”
Second Bob looks at the ground, rubbing the back of his neck. “He'd be none too pleased, mister.”
