No More Heroes-#1 Dystopian Thriller Heroes Series

by Roo I MacLeod

  No smoking on surveillance, Jackie and the Projects preached. I never learnt that lesson.

  Another car crept along her lane, its lights illuminating the low brick wall hiding the trolley. I stepped back, keeping the wall and post between me and the car as cover. The driver made a right pig’s ear of turning the vehicle. He bumped the brick wall I’d been sitting on twice before running up onto the footpath and leaving the car at an odd angle. A black clad figure with his arm in a sling jumped from the passenger seat and opened the back door.

  Cooper climbed from the car, looking to the wall and glancing to the top of the street before entering Tilly’s house. The man in the sling took up the point position, standing at the open front door his good hand holding a gun at his side.

  A hand clapped me hard on the back.

  After a heart stopping moment, a stifled scream and a wee accident in my pants, Harry helped me from the telephone pole I’d tried to scale. ‘Hiya Ben,’ he said. ‘Did I scare yuh? Did, didn’t I?’

  I pulled his hood over his face and gave him a slap across the back of the head. ‘You little shit, what you doing creeping around in the dark?’

  We sat on the brick wall kicking our heels in time. ‘What’s in the trolley?’

  ‘Just stuff.’

  He jumped off the wall and pulled at the bags. I grabbed him back to the wall, afraid of his reaction to the bag stacked with guns.

  ‘It’s the bag that everyone’s been after. Did that bird have it?’

  Again he was at the bags. ‘Bags smell bad Ben.’

  ‘Yeah, they spent the night in a right shit hole and I reckon Blacky’s storing something dead in his loft. It’s been smelling bad up there for an age.’

  ‘So what do you reckon is in it, like? Guns?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s in it as it’s encased with serious metal work and padlocks, eh?’

  ‘So cut it.’ Harry pulled at the chains and gave them a vigorous shake.

  ‘Jesus Harry, keep the volume down, eh? And you need to stop jumping about. Jesus, you’re worse than a cat in heat. Sit back here. There’s a lot of guns in that house and I don’t want them pointing at me.’

  Harry sat himself back on the wall, but jumped to the ground and ferreted through the bags. ‘It’s got to be guns. Can I carry it? I won’t drop it, honest.’

  ‘It’s stupidly heavy. That’s why I got the trolley. Listen, we need to move away from here. There’s too many people hanging about in your house.’

  ‘It’s been like that for a while, like. Why are they hangin’ about here? Are they waiting for you?’

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I got back here and there was cars and people everywhere. Wynona dropped me off at the Poet and Ivan gave me a fruit drink, but mum wasn’t there. Sylvia’s is closed. She’s got the shutters down like and she isn’t answering her door, so I come back here. I been here forever like and spent last night next door. I was just thinkin’ of going inside and then you turned up, so I’m thinkin’ mum’s home, like. Do you think she knows those men?’

  I was thinking the same thing. Four cars, three to four Black Hats per car suggested a lot of Black Hats and way too many friends for Tilly to keep secret. ‘I don’t know. Have you seen them before?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Then I hope she’s not inside. You said she hasn’t got a phone?’

  ‘Nah, she don’t like ‘em and the phone company don’t like her.’

  ‘So she could be anywhere and she could be out looking for you.’

  ‘Maybe. I was supposed to be home for dinner, like yesterday. That’s a given every day. She gets real pissed if I miss dinner, like. No joke. I get solitary and hard labor cleaning an’ everything.’

  ‘My fear is your mum’s in there.’

  ‘We could go and check.’

  ‘Yeah, we could. Just not that keen on knocking on the door and asking those blokes if your mum can come out to play.’

  ‘We could go through the sewer, like.’

  ‘Yeah not too keen on wading through a river of shit either.’

  ‘Shit’s not the problem. I saw a crocodile down there once.’

  ‘Piss off. How many times have I heard someone say they know someone whose mate saw a croc in the sewers? It’s crap.’

  ‘Honest. It was a crocodile. All green and it had ridges and yellow eyes. And its tail was sooo long.’

  The boy’s insistence made me smile. ‘We need to get off the streets and the sooner we find out where Tilly is, the better, eh? Come on. Let’s go listen to Tick-Tock.’

  ‘Tick-Tock Croc. Good one. My mate saw it too, like. With a bloody dog in its jaws. Seriously.’

  Harry bent to pick the bag out of the trolley, his exertions loud in the quiet night. ‘It’s heavy.’

  I offered him the bag with the guns and money to carry, but after a feeble lift we both decided the bags should stay in the trolley.

  ‘We need a place to store it. I don’t want to be carrying it through the sewer. I don’t want Tick-Tock taking it.’

  ‘You can laugh, but I’ve seen it. Tyson reckons it was someone’s pet and it got flushed down a toilet when they decided it was getting too big and hungry.’

  ‘Who’s Tyson?’

  ‘You met Tyson the other day in the square. Tyson isn’t his real name. We all got Punkster names. They call me Brains.’

  I looked at him and laughed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m the smart one. Why else? Anyway, you met Tyson the night they bombed the town hall. Tyson owns a Glock. Tyson’s brother Spike, real name Leonard, reckons there’s sharks and all kinds of animals down there, like.’

  He waited for me to be impressed, but my thoughts centered on the bags and finding a safe place to store them. I needed to give the bag back to Cooper, but not until I’d spoken to Tilly.

  ‘We could hide the trolley in next door’s back yard,’ Harry said.

  ‘Okay, Brains, how do we get there?’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you? Brains is for when we’re on jobs and stuff and we don’t want people knowing who we are. I mean, at the Camps, I’m Harry, mostly.’

  ‘We’re on a job now. What can I be?’

  ‘You’re Street Boy. Everyone knows you as Street Boy.’

  ‘So that’s not a name is it? That’s a nick name. I want a work alias. I’d like to be the Butcher.’

  ‘Yeah, right like I don’t think you’re getting this name thing. But come on Butch.’

  ‘Fuck off Harry. I’m good with knives so I want to be Ben the Butcher. Cuts people up, eh?’

  Harry disappeared behind the wooden fence of the last house on Tilly’s lane. ‘There’s a back lane,’ he said with a beckoning wave. ‘Come on, Butch, Butch, Butchy Boy.’

  ‘You call me Butch one more time I’ll show you what I can do with a knife.’

  He waited for me at the overgrown track running behind the houses. The trolley struggled on the rough terrain, the wheels wobbling and turning at awkward angles. We crept along the dirt track, skirting piles of rubbish sacks and assorted household furniture, until we stopped outside Tilly’s back fence. He pointed and put his finger to his lips. The gate creaked as he pushed at the flimsy wood.

  ‘We could dump it here,’ he said. ‘They’re not gunna look out here, like.’

  I shook my head, but froze at the sight of Tilly’s stupid tea cozy hat showing in the window. I looked around the small yard for a means to climb up to the kitchen window.

  ‘Get on my shoulders, Harry.’ He didn’t question me. I stood with the lad’s legs wrapped about my neck and walked closer to the back window. ‘Can you see your mother in there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘She’s got her back to us, so I can’t see. I think she’s making coffee.’ Harry leant to the right so I stepped sideward. ‘There’s a bloke sitting on my stool. He’s got a gun. There’s a load of blokes in those stupi
d suits sitting at our table eating pizza.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘A lot.’

  I dropped him on the ground and walked back to the trolley in the laneway. Harry followed me, pulling the gate closed behind him.

  ‘We not going to rescue mum?’

  ‘Not yet. They won’t hurt her. At least we know she’s all right, eh? My guess is they’ll be happy to do a swap. Your mum for the bag.’

  I looked to the house next door. ‘So tell me about this house,’ I said. ‘Why’s it safe?’

  ‘It’s empty. She got locked up for dealin’ and Alex, her kid, was put in care, like and it hasn’t been found by squatters, so it’s good for us. Tyson wanted to burn it down, but I told him burning is stupid.’

  ‘Well yeah, especially when you and your mum live next door.’

  Harry stopped with the gate open and smiled. ‘Yeah, especially with us living next door.’

  He squeezed through the gate and held it open while I lifted the bag out of the trolley and dropped it on the turf. A load of rusted stuff decorated the left side of the backyard. The right side housed a mountain of fat black plastic sacks smelling of overcooked cabbage. Harry skipped to the back door and opened it before I’d closed the gate.

  ‘You’ve got a key?’

  ‘She keeps it under the mat.’

  ‘What’s with all the bin bags?’

  ‘Bin men don’t come down here. Haven’t for ages. Come on.’

  I left the trolley laden with the main bag by the back door and stacked a heap of refuse sacks on top. The scent of rotting waste gave way to the sewer crawling up the cellar stairs, until we hit the stale cigarette and body odor of the front room. Dust choked the black interior.

  ‘Is there no electric, Harry?’

  ‘No, it’s all been cut off. She didn’t like to pay bills. Or buy food. Alex was always over at ours or at the Camps lookin’ out for a feed, like. Alex’s mum was all right, but my mum reckons it was the drugs that got to her. Alex lives up at the Camps now coz she didn’t like her foster home. She’s Weismann’s best pickpocket.

  ‘Serious.’

  Harry offered me a look bordering on wonderment with his hands held up to empathize his respect for the girl. ‘She’s younger than me like by two years I reckon, but she’s quick and she’s smart. I’ve seen her have blokes arrested for touching her up when she’s got caught taking their stuff. Weismann likes little Alex.’

  ‘We can’t be leaving me mum with those men, Ben.’

  I worked on rolling a cigarette. ‘We won’t, but we got to be clever, eh Brains. He’s got lots of men and lots of guns. Attacking him here could end in tears big time.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘Draw them out.’

  ‘Blow up their cars. Tyson can help us with bombs.’

  ‘No, draw them away from the house. Get them to leave Tilly.’

  ‘So away from our house? Then we can attack them and kick the crap out of ‘em, like?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Cool.’

  We didn’t have the firepower to attack the house. They wanted their bag and I needed to find a way of giving it back. But the deal had to guarantee Tilly’s safety and the Black Hats gone from Ostere without my scalp in their pockets. Cooper sat in Tilly’s house waiting for me to walk into his trap, so we needed to set our own ambush.

  I took another small sip from my flask and peered out the window as a car crawled past the window heading for the main road.

  ‘It smells like someone died in here Harry.’

  ‘Yeah, I got real sick like, sleeping in here last night.’

  He pointed through the dusty windows. It’s gone real quiet, like. Do you think they’ve gone?’

  I pushed his fat head out of my way to see the action on the street. ‘No, I can’t imagine they have as there are two cars parked outside the house.’

  ‘What’s the plan, Ben? How are we going to take the bad guys down and save me mum? You don’t’ think they’re hurting her, do you?’

  ‘No way. She’ll be okay.’ Harry and I knelt on the sofa by the front window, looking out into the street. ‘But we have to give the bag back before they change their minds, otherwise they might hurt your mum.’

  ‘But Wynona wants the bag. And Weismann.’

  ‘And Jackie John and the bloody vicar and everyone else who’s heard about the damn bag, but we want your mother back.’

  Harry turned and sat on the edge of the windowsill, scratching at his head. ‘It’s a difficult situation, like, isn’t it? It’s a conundrum, like?’

  ‘I think so. My problem… Well, our problem is how to give the bag back. Handing it back don’t guarantee Tilly’s release or my right to walk the streets without a Black Hat emptying a gun’s worth of lead in me gut. It don’t give you your house back, eh? Folk have died because of that bag. I don’t want you, me, or Tilly joining the queue outside God’s waiting room.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Trouble is Cooper isn’t a man you can reason with and will want blood for the bag.’

  ‘I could take it. They don’t know me.’

  Give me credit here as I didn’t give his offer any credence. He should’ve been in bed and not standing up to guns.

  ‘Or I could get the gang together, like and we could give them a right beating. Tyson’s got a load of petrol bombs stockpiled. And we got a stack of rocks and stuff. And while they’re attacking the front you and me could get me mum out through the cellar. Or the attic. We can get in through the attic.’

  He’d jumped from the window and stood before me, ducking his head and shadow punching, waiting for me to give him the green light.

  ‘Slow down. I’m not letting you or your mates loose with guns. That’d be wrong. And we’ve already decided to draw them away from here.’

  Harry’s idea had promise. We needed to draw the Black Hats out into the open, away from the suburbs, away from the police and the army.

  I lifted my backpack and shopping bag from my shoulders and dropped them on the floor. A heavy clunk followed as a gun slipped out of the bag.

  ‘You got more guns’ He jumped onto the floor and sat cross legged between my backpack and the bag. ‘This is a Glock 17. Ugliest gun ever made but shoots itself. You been keeping secrets on me.’

  He tipped the bag over, his mouth agape as four wedges of money hit the floor and the guns slithered from the bag. He smoothed the bag out and displayed the weapons on the cloth. I packed the money inside my pockets.

  ‘You got a Glock. Cool and two Browning’s. Not so cool. He picked up the next gun and laughed. ‘This is a Sig Saur 226 Equinox. I’ve never shot one of these, like, but Tyson reckons they’re good.’

  He held the gun as if it were precious, breakable. ‘Ever so reliable the Sig,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t have a safety, but deadly and solid, but a bit heavy.’

  He threw the gun and I juggled catching it. ‘Feel how heavy it is.’

  He pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped the Glock before dropping the magazine into his lap. He removed the bullets counting aloud before replacing them and clicked the magazine back and arranged the gun at the top edge of the cloth. The Browning received the same treatment before he moved onto the other guns. I’d never been interested in guns. The Projects taught gun use, but my love centered on knives. I wondered if his mother knew about her child’s proficiency in gun handling.

  ‘This Browning’s fully loaded. Glock’s missing two, but Tyson’s got ammo we can use. The Browning’s got thirteen rounds, like, but this one’s missing a load.’

  ‘Good. Now put them back in the bag.’ I passed the Sig and watched him drop the magazine, count the rounds before pushing it back in place.

  The last car in front of Tilly’s pulled away, the back doors slamming shut as the black sleek vehicle slunk off into the night. The street stood empty, but the man with the sling remained outside standing guard by the front door. I needed to act as I didn’t tr
ust the Black Hats to treat Tilly right forever.

  I picked up the phone and searched for Cooper’s number. ‘Tyson up for a fight, you say?’ I asked Harry.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘How many bodies could he get together?’

  ‘Shed loads, like. I mean on a good night we’re thirty, forty strong. This is a good night. Wolf Girl’s gone missing and Weismann is sat in his counting house happy counting all his money. We’re all sitting about waiting for a gig, like.’

  ‘So Weismann will be okay with this?’

  ‘If there’s cash going spare, Weismann will be okay,’ he said pointing at my coat pocket. ‘Weismann wants that bag bad, like.’

  Harry jumped up to the window pointing the gun. ‘Bang-bang. So you want me to call him?’ He blew imaginary smoke from the muzzle of the gun.

  ‘No,’ I said. I wasn’t ready. ‘We need a meeting place?’ I reached for the phone in my pocket. ‘Somewhere Cooper won’t feel threatened and near here, but also near the Camps.’

  ‘The school.’ Harry smiled. ‘Like any of us want to be going there. Mum’s still pissed about me getting suspended. She don’t like teachers. Worse than the social workers, she says and she hates them.’

  ‘It’s late, Harry. And it’s the weekend, isn’t it?’ He nodded. ‘You’ll be fine. There’s no chance you might accidentally learn something.’

  I liked the school idea. A wood bordered the playing fields. The camps to the school took five minutes by pushbike. Cooper might go for the school. I pressed the green button and waited for Cooper to answer.

  ‘Who you calling?’ Harry said.

  I held up my hand for quiet.

  ‘We going to school? Tyson will be sooo pissed about us going to school.’

  I tried to kick him, but he jumped clear of my boot.

  ‘What?’ Cooper said.

  ‘Listen Cooper, this is how I see the events have gone down right.’

  Cooper sighed, but he didn’t interrupt.

  ‘I thought I could get you mongrels off my back by giving you the money, but the monkeys you employ got killed. I’m not responsible for the bloodbath in the house in Lower Ostere and I’m pissed my old girlfriend took a couple of bullets tonight. I once had affections for that sour cow and she didn’t deserve the madness your men caused.’