X-Isle (4 page)

A steep tarmacked pathway ran down the hillside, and at the end of the pathway, extending out into the water, was a bank of rubble. On top of the rubble stood a small group of boys, three or four of them, watching the boat as it edged its way in. The boys were all dressed in T-shirts and khaki shorts, and they each had a wheelbarrow. Black wheelbarrows with red wheels. It looked as though the stone bank was a work in progress, the beginnings of a jetty. A row of old car tires had been fixed at water level, wired into the stone blocks, and the boat bumped gently against these as it finally came to land.

“Steiner!” Isaac threw a rope to a big lanky youth who was ready and waiting to catch it, and the rope was made fast to an iron stanchion. Then three younger boys came scrambling down the slope carrying a makeshift gangway between them – a couple of builders’ planks roped together. They laid this across the gunwales, and Isaac stepped ashore.

The big lad appeared confused. He looked at the empty crates that lay about the deck. “Er... what’s to unload, Skip?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“I said 
nothing
, cloth-ears! Get out of my sight. Clear up the deck, and then go and find that lard-arse Cookie. Tell him we’ll eat early tonight.”

As Isaac heaved himself up the slope, the skies broke in earnest. Down came the rain at last, an instant deluge that hammered on wood and stone and bare heads alike. The other three men were already ashore and hurrying up the tarmacked path behind Isaac, shoulders hunched against the storm, arms raised for protection.

“Pick up those crates!” yelled the big lad, Steiner. The younger ones were already hopping across the gangplank and down into the boat. They scrabbled about the streaming deck, gathering up the empty plastic crates, the bottles and the tins – whatever bits of rubbish came to hand.

Baz and Ray joined in, slithering and sliding on the greasy planking as the rain lashed at their bent backs. The job didn’t take long. A last look around the deck and Steiner shouted, “OK! Get it shifted! Come on, you bum-rags – I’m chuffin’ soaked here.” His voice was almost lost in the roar and hiss of tumbling water.

Baz stuffed his backpack into one of the plastic crates, balanced two more crates on top of that, and stepped up onto the wobbly gangplank. He made it across OK, but then heard a scuffle and clatter behind him. Ray had slipped and tumbled – fallen from the gangplank down onto the rubble.

“You 
stupid
 little git! Now I’ve got to hang around waiting for you. Pick it all up – idiot!” Steiner stood on the planks, water pouring from his long ugly chin as Ray struggled to gather his crates and tins together below. Baz hesitated, wondering whether he should try and help.

“What are you looking at? Get after the others and quit gawping!” Steiner made a threatening move towards him.

Baz clambered up the rubble bank and onto the tarmac pathway. He began to climb the hill – not an easy exercise in such a torrent and with three big crates to carry. By the time he reached level ground his arms were aching, he was soaked to the skin and he felt that he’d gulped in almost as much water as he had air.

Before him stood the remains of a big modern building, the one they had seen from the boat. A broad flight of steps led up to a covered entranceway, a set of glass doors. Baz could see the knot of boys huddled in the entranceway, and he made his way towards them. 
TAB HILL HIGH SCHOOL.
 Red painted letters danced in and out of watery focus. They were carved into a big tablet of stone, a pale monolith that stood upright in the ground to one side of the overgrown driveway. Baz staggered past the sign and climbed the flight of steps. He dumped his crates on the top step, as the other boys had done, and scuttled for shelter.

Then he remembered his backpack, and had to run out into the rain again in order to retrieve it.

“Got any food in there?” One of the boys spoke as Baz ducked beneath the entranceway once more.

Baz pushed back his streaming wet hair and shook his head. “Just clothes.”

“Maybe we should check, eh?” The same boy, a shaven-headed Asian lad, his expression cool, mouth unsmiling.

Baz wiped the water away from his face and stared back at the group. They hung close together, shoulder to shoulder, like a pack of bedraggled hyenas. None of them were any bigger than he was, but there were three of them – three sets of hungry eyes weighing him up, testing him. And they weren’t just skinny. These boys were wiry, tough looking, their arms and bodies sharply detailed, as though layers of skin had been stripped away to leave just muscle and bone.

Baz let the dripping backpack slide gently to his feet. “Go ahead, then.”

He kept his voice flat, no challenge, no aggression. But if they wanted the backpack they were going to have to come and take it from him. He looked from one to the other and waited. The rain bounced and splattered on the entranceway steps.

“Nah, it’s OK.” The Asian boy again. “We’ll believe you. What’s your name?”

“Baz.”

The trio relaxed into general movement, spread themselves out a little.

“Baz. All right. Well, this here’s Robbie... and this other kid’s Enoch. And I’m Amit. OK?”

“Yeah.” Baz let his shoulders drop. “I can remember that...”

The attention of the three boys had already shifted away from him. Baz turned to see what they were looking at.

It was Ray. And the lanky older boy, Steiner.

Half hidden behind his stack of crates, Ray was making unsteady progress along the driveway towards the school building. From left to right he staggered, obviously exhausted. And Steiner was right beside him, bending down, bawling in his ear.

“That the best you can do? That it? You’ll not last five minutes here, kid, if you can’t even manage a few empty boxes. What’s gonna happen when they’re full o’ tins? Come on, get those weedy little legs working properly! Gaaah! You’re all over t’ chuffin’ place...”

Right to the very bottom of the steps Steiner kept goading Ray. “What’s your chuffin’ problem? Got one leg shorter than t’ other, is that it? Try walkin’ bloody straight, then! Come on – keep moving. Pick ’em up! Pick ’em up!”

Ray got as far as the fourth step. Then he turned and with a final effort he heaved the crates towards Steiner. “Pick ’em up yourself, dickhead.”

The crates bounced and clattered down the steps, empty plastic bottles, tins, bits of rubbish rolling everywhere. Steiner jumped as he tried to avoid the avalanche, but he missed his footing and tumbled towards the steps, arms outstretched. He landed heavily, his palms making a loud slap on the wet stone. With one knee forward and the other straight back, he looked for a moment like a sprinter about to come out of the starting blocks.

It took him a couple of seconds to recover, and then he was up. “Come ’ere, you little bleeder...”

As Steiner lunged towards him, Ray managed one kick at the older boy’s shins, but it was a feeble effort and he was already off-balance. Steiner grabbed him by the hair, swung him violently to the ground, and immediately began punching him.

“I’ll bloody kill you for that!”

Ray curled himself up into a ball and lay unresisting, abandoned to the kicks and blows that rained upon him. His utter defenselessness jolted Baz into action.

“Hey! Leave him alone!” Baz ran down the streaming steps, no thought in his head as to what he would do next, but knowing that he had to do something.

He threw himself half across the prostrate form of Ray, and did his best to keep Steiner away.

“Stop, OK?” Baz lifted an arm, half in defense, half in an attempt to push Steiner back. “He’s had enough!”

“Has he?” Steiner’s mouth bubbled with spit. “Then what about...
you
.”

Baz had a glimpse of Steiner’s twisted red face, a raised fist, and then a jagged explosion went off in his head. 
Wow-wow-wow-wow...
the world went scooting away...

Darkness. A confusion of sound. Angry voices. Baz was on his knees, and everything around him was being shaken. No, someone was shaking him. He was being hauled to his feet, effortlessly lifted up, as though by a crane. He blinked and saw a big black beard...

Everything wobbled back into focus, and there was Isaac. Shouting at Steiner.

“... you do as you’re damn well told, 
boy
, and keep your hands off ’em till I’m through.”

“But look what they did!” Steiner’s voice honked and squeaked. “They can’t just attack me—”

Isaac’s great arm lashed out, and Steiner fell back against the steps.

“Attack you? 
I’ll
 dam’ well attack you if I catch you damaging our goods again! Now get this mess cleared away, and then shut ’em in for the night. And send Cookie to me like I asked you to twenty minutes ago. You better sharpen up, Steiner. I can find plenty more in the same gutter you came from.”

Isaac splashed up the steps, heading for the entrance to the building. The three boys shrank to one side as he passed by.

Baz’s jaw hurt, and his vision was still a bit blurry, but he was starting to get his bearings once more. Something had changed – something to do with his hearing – and it took him a moment to figure out what it was: the rain had stopped.

Ray was sitting on the puddled steps, not far from Steiner. His face was bruised and bleeding. He looked terrible.

“You OK?” said Baz.

Ray nodded. He got to his feet and stood there for a moment, as if making sure that he wasn’t going to fall back down again.

“All right? Come on, then. I’ll help you with this stuff.”

Slowly, painfully, Baz and Ray picked up the fallen crates. They gathered Ray’s belongings together, retrieved the plastic bottles and tins, put them all back in the crates. Nobody came to help them. The other boys remained in the entranceway, looking down on them, just watching.

Steiner was watching them as well, still sitting on the steps, his cold blue eyes following their every move. He had pale, almost invisible lashes, and a face so massively freckled – freckles upon freckles – that it looked as though someone had drawn them in with a brown marker pen. There was an angry swelling on his cheek where Isaac had struck him, and both his bare gingery knees were grazed and bloodied.

“That the lot?” Baz and Ray stacked their crates and began to climb the steps once more. As they drew level with Steiner, he stood up.

“You’re dead.” His voice was low and quiet for once, a husky whisper. “Hear me? You’re both chuffin’ dead.”

The two boys kept on going. But Steiner was at their heels, chanting in time with each step they took, “Dead... dead... dead... dead...”

CHAPTER
 
THREE

Amit and the other two boys had picked up their crates again. They waited for a few moments, perhaps for some signal from Steiner, then began to shuffle into the school building. Baz and Ray followed.

A long dim corridor straight ahead. Keep walking? No, the group came to a halt almost immediately, lining themselves up beside a fire door on the left. Steiner walked to the head of the line and grabbed the door handle.

“Take ’em in and empty ’em out.” Steiner swung the heavy door towards him and stood holding it open as the boys filed past.

Baz was the last one through. He instinctively flinched away from Steiner, expecting a kick or a blow of some sort. But nothing happened.

The room they entered was large, and at first sight chaotic: scattered crates and pallets, bits of machinery, bicycles, furniture, pots and pans... and there were more boys working here – another three or four maybe.

Baz looked around in wonder, but was then jolted forward, his crates tumbling to the floor. Steiner had shoved him in the back.

“Don’t just stand there gawping, you little twerp. Get this stuff sorted. Tins back into their right crates – rubbish in t’ big wheelie bins over in the corner. Hutch! We’re knocking off early.”

As Baz began to scramble about for the fallen tins, another lad appeared – a big solidly built boy of about Steiner’s age, dark hair on his upper lip, quite spotty. He wore a grubby white lab coat and carried a clipboard.

“Knockin’ off? Why?” He stopped. “Hey – what happened to your face?”

“Huh. I’ll tell you later,” Steiner muttered. “But I’ll tell you summat right now – there’ll be payback.”

Baz did as those around him were doing, sorting tins into plastic crates according to how they were marked – 
BB, T/SOUP, G/PEAS –
 then hefting the crates onto wooden pallets. It was only a few minutes’ work, but it gave him a chance to try and make sense of what was going on.

The room seemed to be both packing area and workshop, a place where salvage was brought and made ready for trading. The corner nearest the door was piled high with plastic containers, a tumbling mountain of soap and shampoo dispensers, medicines, bottled water, soft drinks – all covered in the smeary grey film that was X-Isle’s trademark. These were goods that had been dredged up from the devastated world below, and it was a world that clung to them still. The sickly odor of rot and decay hung in the air.

At the far end of the room stood a long workbench stretching from wall to wall, and as the boys finished what they were doing, they began to gather in this area. Baz joined them, seeking out a space next to Ray. An upside-down bicycle stood on the oily bench, its rear wheel missing. And there were other bits of machinery: part of an engine, a woodburner stove, several paraffin lamps, all apparently in the process of being dismantled or restored. Beneath the bench lay a nameless jumble of scrap metal.

“OK, Steiner – we’re done!” The bigger boy, Hutch, approached the workbench, making notes on his clipboard. The base of his neck was so thick that his head seemed to taper upwards. On top of his otherwise shaven scalp was a flattened-down patch of greasy hair. It looked like a bit of wet seaweed clinging to a rock. In fact Hutch could almost have been made of rock. When he turned towards Steiner, his head and shoulders moved as though locked together.

“Check this,” he said.

“Give it here, then.” Steiner took the clipboard, glanced at it and handed it back. “OK. We’re heavy on the usual then. Beans and spaghetti. Oi, you – Jubo.” Steiner gave one of the boys a shove, a broad-shouldered kid with dreadlocks. West Indian maybe. His naked torso was streaked with grey dried-on mud. “Hook out nine tins from the pallets and put ’em on t’ floor. I want to see three meat, two beans, two spaghetti, two tomatoes.”