I closed the door and ran for the bedroom. Seemed I would be donning my Brandon persona sooner than planned.
Mother caught me half way across the room. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I have to go with them. As Brandon. Otherwise they’ll find out and I won’t be able to go to work tomorrow.”
“I don’t like this, not one little bit,” she growled.
“I’ll be careful. Can you please help me change?”
“If you want to break the law, don’t expect me to–”
“Come on, I’ll help,” Karen said.
I didn’t see that coming.
* * *
“Come on, little buddy. This is your night, so live it up!” Jack beamed. He opened the door to the Forager’s Club and gestured me inside. Even Con and Matt deferred to me. I was way out of my depth and I knew it, but it was too late to back out now. The charade had to continue for my family’s sake.
The club was nothing like I expected after hearing my brother’s stories about what went on here. I’d always envisioned a brightly lit room with neat rows of tables and benches with the foragers sitting and occasionally chatting politely with each other.
The reality was a large, poorly lit room with dark grey walls, black ceiling, and white-flecked black marble floor. Black netting hung from the ceiling and all sorts of memorabilia from pre-Apocalypse days adorned the walls, brought in from the ruins. Wooden wagon wheels, rusted and pristine hubcaps, shredded tyres, exhaust pipes, engine blocks, defunct computers and plasma-screen TVs, and on it went. Entertainment was three pool tables, a selection of painstakingly restored pinball machines, and of course, a bar at the back.
Round, knotted wooden tables were spaced haphazardly around the room. These were frequented by rowdy men of all ages who laughed raucously while engaging in animated conversations. Without exception, every forager present, which had to be just about all of them, had a stubbie – a glass beer bottle – in his hand.
An old jukebox in the centre of the room pumped out songs from the late twentieth century – those with lyrics approved by the Custodians, of course. Songs that promoted sex, drugs, or seditious messages were banned.
I was impressed, and mightily jealous. All the men in Newhome frequented clubs like this pretty much every evening after work, while we women had to sit at home twiddling our thumbs, doing cross-stitch, or watching TV. This so wasn’t fair. All the same, even with these freedoms, the men were still just as trapped here as the women were at home.
I glanced about quickly to see if Ryan was here, but couldn’t locate him. That was no surprise, considering he preferred to be alone.
Jack moved to put his arm around my back, intending to shepherd me towards an empty table.
“No touchy! Sore back! Had a tussle with Skel today, remember?” I blocked his arm and stepped forward. If he put his arm around me, there was no way he’d miss my narrow waist hidden beneath my brother’s baggy windcheater.
Con grabbed my shoulder. “Thought it was only your leg that got hurt?”
Didn’t that guy miss a thing? “Okay, so I downplayed my injuries a bit.”
“It’s ‘injuries’ now?” He stuck his chubby face closer.
“Seriously, Con, you need to chill out. I got a couple of bruises, that’s it. And before you say more, yes, I had them checked out. No broken bones.” Which was true, after a fashion, because Karen applied a herbal balm on the bruises when she helped me don my Brandon disguise earlier.
“Come on, Con, what’s with the third degree? He’s fine.” Jack pulled Con’s hand from my shoulder.
Con complied with a scowl, but couldn’t resist leaving one last barb. “Next time you get hurt, you tell it like it is. You may be a pain in the neck, but you’re one of my team. My responsibility. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“I think that’s Con’s way of saying he cares about you, but don’t quote me on it.” Jack whispered just loud enough for us all to hear. Con rose his eyebrows.
“First round’s on me,” Matt said when we got to a table. He disappeared towards the bar and returned with five chilled stubbies. Officially, I’d never had beer before, but Brandon had slipped the occasional bottle to me when no one was looking, which was lucky. If I didn’t drink tonight or couldn’t hold my liquor, they’d ask too many questions.
All the same, the other three went through several stubbies each in the time I consumed just the one. Fortunately, they were too busy yabbering and laughing to notice. Many other foragers dropped by our table and congratulated me for owning that Skel today. I played along as though I knew them, and no one caught on.
My friends were tipsy or well on the path to getting drunk when Con suddenly straightened up. “Here’s trouble,” he said.
We looked over to the door and saw four neatly dressed men enter the club and check it out.
“What the blazes are they doing here?” Matt snarled.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“The tall, bald one is Richardson; he’s the supervisor of one of the appliance manufactories.”
The men split up, approached four different tables, and started chatting up foragers. Something was up, though, for they spoke furtively, often glancing towards the door.
Our table was the second one Richardson visited. He was probably around fifty, like my father, though the aging process had been kinder to him except for the lack of hair.
Three foragers followed him over and gathered around our table. One looked thoughtful, the other two sceptical.
“Hiya, lads. Like what you’ve done with the place,” Richardson said. He was all smiles and sunshine, as though he was our life-long best friend.
“This ain’t the Workers Club, Richardson.” Con spoke without warmth or welcome, though he nodded amicably at the foragers who came with the newcomer. “Gerry, Anton, Bird.” They nodded in reply.
“Nice to see you again too, Dimitriou.” Richardson laughed, a little too forced.
“Why are you here?” Con asked.
“I need a reason to be?”
“This is the Forager’s Club.”
“Good point.” Richardson laughed again, and then leaned closer, suddenly serious. “Look, Dimitriou, lads, the reason my friends and I are here is to let you know that a group of us are coordinating a stop-work protest next Wednesday to demand certain concessions from the Chancellor and councillors–”
“What group?” Matt asked.
“A group of concerned citizens like us. Primarily from the manufacturies, but we’re reaching out to other groups, like you lot tonight.”
“What concessions?” Con demanded gruffly.
“I’m glad you asked. For starters, we want all citizens to have access to the privileges enjoyed by the residents of North End. This includes the option to apply for jobs there, our apartments renovated to the same standard, a cinema and more playgrounds for the children, a public swimming pool, access to North End shops, and the curfew lifted. Oh, and for weapons permits for foragers when they’re out in the ruins.”
Hearing Richardson talk about taking action to set us free from our society’s oppressive constraints caused hope to spring up within me. If Newhome were to change into a better place, there’d be no reason for me to escape.
“Like that last point,” Jack said, his eyes sparkling. I didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what he was imagining right now. Him, with a gun, blowing away Skel.
“You’re going overboard if you think they’ll make that many concessions at the same time – especially concessions regarding North End. You should begin with just one or two minor requests and if they grant those, go for more later,” Matt said.
“The way we see it, if we demand only a couple of things, they’ll ignore us. If we demand the world, they’ll try to meet us half-way and grant some concessions,” Richardson said.
“What about women’s rights?” I asked.
“What?” He appeared completely stumped.
“You know, equality for women and girls. Surely that’s a bigger issue than the ones you’ve mentioned so far. You should request the right for girls to attend school, to apply for jobs alongside men, to walk freely about town without a chaperone, to be able to frequent restaurants.”
All the foragers at the table, my teammates included, looked at me with their mouths wide open.
“Where's this coming from?” Matt whispered to Jack.
“No idea. You ever heard Brandon talk like this before?” Jack asked.
“Never.”
“Me neither.”
“What’s happened to him?” Matt seemed most perplexed.
“No idea, man.”
“Young man – sorry, I didn’t catch your name?” Richard said.
“Brandon.”
“Thank you. Well Brandon, let me say that that we need people like you. People who are thinkers, people that question the status quo rather than following it blindly like sheep. Why don’t you join our stop-work protest, and bring as many of your foraging friends as you can. If the Chancellor and councillors see men from all walks of life united in solidarity as we make our demands, they will have no choice but to listen.”
“Does this mean you’ll add women’s rights to your list of demands?” I asked. He didn’t respond to my suggestions, just skirted around them.
“The agenda for the stop-work protest has already been tabled, and as I’m sure you can see, the concessions we will demand are crucial for the wellbeing of all.”
“Really? Concessions to apply for jobs in North End, cinemas, a public swimming pool, and removal of the curfew. Only men will benefit from those,” I said.
“Knock it off, Brandon,” Con said.
“Knock off what?” I snapped.
“You want women to compete with men in applying for jobs?” A look of smug superiority dominated his corpulent features.
“You think they can’t do it?”
“Come on, Brandon. Can you see either of your sisters owning a Skel like you did today?”
I clenched my fists and fought back the urge to scream. If they only knew. “Karen, no. Chelsea, most definitely.”
“Chelsea? That feminine, delicate thing couldn’t hurt a fly,” Con said.
“Actually, I’m with Brandon,” Jack said. “From what he’s told me about Chelsea, I reckon she’d excel at anything she put her hand to, even foraging. And if she can do it, so can other women. Besides, we’ve all see the books, magazines, and DVDs out in the ruins. Before the Apocalypse, women worked alongside men in every type of profession. Factory work, office jobs, the police force, even the army. There was no male/female segregation like we have.”
Brandon told his friends about me? Without bagging me? And Jack believed I could do anything they could do? I felt my heart warming towards him.
“Be careful, guys, you’re spreading subversive ideas and corrupting our innocent young minds.” The forager Gerry said between laughs. He was a solidly built guy around my height, with a pale face dominated by freckles.
Jack stuck out his wrists. “Arrest me now, officer.”
That brought a round of laughter.
“If I may interrupt and ask that we get back to the reason I’m here. Can we count on you foragers and your families to support the stop-work protest?” Richardson said. He frowned at me for derailing his attempt to get us on side.
“Actually, let’s backtrack a bit,” Matt said. He stared at me intently, but not critically like Con had. “Brandon, you mentioned you’d like to remove the requirement for young women to be chaperoned.”
“That’s right.”
“I understand you’re looking for equality for women. But aren’t you concerned about what will happen if young women are permitted to wander around the town, dine at restaurants, and attend clubs, without a chaperone?”
“No, why would I be?” I had an inkling of where he was going with this, but I wanted to hear him say it.
“Well, not that it worries me none, if you get my meaning, but think of what could happen when a town full of men suddenly find themselves confronted with temptations they’ve never had to deal with before. We could see a dramatic increase in sexual immorality and even instances of rape.”
“Wow, Matt, if men are that incapable of controlling their sexual urges, I think they're the ones who need to be chaperoned, not the women,” I replied. I was flabbergasted to hear him put the onus of men’s bad behaviour back onto the women.
“Well said, Brandon. Maybe our society’s got it backwards,” Jack said, nodding thoughtfully. He turned to Matt. “Do you truly think all men are so woefully pathetic they can't control their sexual urges?”
“Some of them–”
“Including you?” Jack winked at me as he asked the question.
“No!” Matt rocked back in his chair, as though mortally offended.
“My friends, please–” Richardson said. If he was frustrated before, he looked downright annoyed now.
Con held up his hands, and we all fell silent. “Look, Richardson, sorry to be so blunt, but we’re not interested. If you want to start a little rebellion, that’s your prerogative, but leave us out of it.”
“But–”
“This isn’t a debate.”
“Fine, but if any of you change your mind, it’s next Wednesday. You turn up at your workplace, but you refuse to work.”
“You’re wasting your breath,” Con said.
Richardson frowned but took the hint. He and his buddies quit the club. Off to look for supporters in other clubs, no doubt.
Chapter Thirteen
“Why did you turn him down, Con?” I was profoundly disappointed. If the entire town got behind the stop-work protest, even if it didn’t address women’s rights at this stage, surely the Chancellor and councillors would have to make some concessions. And if they made some, they would have to make more in the future.
“It’s gonna end badly, that’s why.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Actually, we do,” Matt said. “From what we’ve been able to learn on the sly, there have been protests staged in the past, just not in this generation. The Custodians put them all down ruthlessly and without a single demand met. The Chancellor knows very well he can’t allow that ball to start rolling.”
“Matt’s right,” Con said. “But there’s more to it than that. Not only will it end badly for the protestors who participate in this stop-work rally, but should the foragers join in, we’ll lose all of the freedoms and fringe benefits that come with the job.”
I was confused. What freedoms and fringe benefits was he referring to? It had to be something I hadn’t seen yet, something my brother neglected to tell me. Just what did these guys get up to out there away from the Custodians’ prying eyes?
Con stood and told us to spread his reason for not joining the protest to everyone present.
* * *
In spite of my misgivings, the next day saw me back in the truck with the boys, rattling through the town gates and into the ruins. Con didn’t even ask me to drive the truck. I was no longer in his bad books for (Brandon) going AWOL for a week. Besides, I was still limping, something he noticed as soon as I walked through the door.
He drove us to the administrative office of an insurance company, a multistorey building that towered above the neighbouring businesses and train station. I climbed out of the truck and tried to massage some life back into my left leg, grimacing from the pain. At the same time I glanced about our surroundings apprehensively, bouncing flash sonar off everything and searching the shadows, half-expecting to find Skel hiding in ambush. I couldn’t see any, but that didn’t make me feel better.
Ryan clambered out after me but refused to meet my gaze, looking everywhere but at me. Great, he still had his doubts about me.
“You okay, Bud?” Jack asked, looking at my leg.
“I’ll live.”
“Can you work?”
“Can you?” I asked. T
o be honest, I didn’t know how much I could do today. Even breathing hurt my stomach, and every twist of my torso and movement of my arms sent pain shooting through my back. If we had any painkillers at home, I would have taken them, but we ran out weeks ago.
“Ha-ha.”
“Brandon, a word,” Con said. He walked a few steps from the truck and gestured me to him.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“We’re rostered on for the lab today, but we can hardly drag Ryan along. He’ll freak when he sees what we make there, and with him being an informant–” he began.
“He’s not an informant.” I wanted to say more, though. What was this lab? It was obviously making something illegal, but why did it require a roster of foragers to attend it?
Con glared at me for interrupting. “–nor can we leave him here by himself, he’ll get suspicious. And since you’re in no condition to help at the lab, you’ve drawn the short straw to stay here and babysit him.”
I dipped my head so the brim of my cap hid my eyes as they popped out of my head. “You’re gonna leave us here – alone?” By ourselves – after what happened yesterday? I wasn’t just thinking of the Skel. If it was just the two of us and Ryan told me to back off again, it would be a most unpleasant day.
“Man up, kid!” he snapped. Then, suddenly clapping his hands, called out, “Right! Brandon, Ryan, strip this office of books, newspapers, magazines, reports – any paper you can find – and dump it on the road. We'll hit another office block a couple of streets across and do the same.” He grabbed a couple of high-powered torches from the truck and threw them to us.
“You’re splitting up the team?” Ryan asked. By his expression, he was even more worried by the prospect than I was.
“Dividing the team will double its output – it’s standard procedure,” Matt explained as he climbed back into the truck.
“We’ll be back at five.” Con hoisted himself into the cab and slammed the door shut.
“And if we get jumped by Skel?” Ryan stepped closer to the truck. He furrowed his brow and his eyes flashed with anger.
“You won’t. We’re miles from where we saw them yesterday.”
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 80
