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24 |
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Only a furlong from the
“I can’t
believe the Truth is here!” Beta exclaimed. “I can’t imagine anywhere less
likely.”
This was
difficult to dispute. It was, after all, this very assumption which had
originally persuaded me to leave the Suburbs and seek the Truth elsewhere. “It is where the Truth is supposed to be
though!”
“Where do
you suppose we ought to start looking?” Beta wondered, regarding a cat dozing
idly on the doorstep of a semi-detached house. “Should we knock on people’s
doors and ask?”
I shrugged
my shoulders.
Song birds
tweeted in the tall trees above our heads, and swallows glid through the air.
Then we heard a rumbling thundering noise which gradually became louder and
louder, heralding a centaur in a jacket, suit and tie, galloping along the road
and right past us without pausing to glance. Beta watched him disappear down a
road distinguished by a red post box at the corner.
“What was
that?”
“A commuter
returning home,” I surmised.
“He seemed to
be in an awful hurry!” Beta said, frowning. “You don’t think he was running
away from something?”
“Why would
he be doing that? This is the Suburbs. Nothing ever happens here. If anything happens it’s somewhere else. Not
here. The most dramatic thing to happen here is when a bus is late or there’s a
power cut.”
Beta
nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. It seems very
quiet, I must admit.”
We strolled
along, occasionally attracting stares from elderly women twitching lace
curtains who had probably never seen anyone dressed like Beta in their streets.
A pig in a three piece suit wandered by, carrying a newspaper and umbrella in
one trotter, and a briefcase in the other. He stared at Beta from the corner of
his eye, trying hard to disguise his curiosity.
Every road
seemed much the same as every other, and we were soon lost in a maze of
identical streets, cars parked in the drives of semi-detached houses and
numbers on the doors, just above the vertical slit of the letter box, for the
postmen’s benefit. It was in one street much the same as the others we first
saw signs that the Suburbs might not be quite as peaceful as we imagined. A few
cars had smashed windscreens and the entrails of radios strewn over the seats
and onto the pavement where the doors had been wrenched open. Dustbins were lying on their sides, with cereal packets, empty detergent
bottles and discarded newspapers spilling out onto the pavement. We stepped
over the rubbish, and past the crystal fragments of a car window. A newspaper
raised itself up from the ground in a sudden gust, and billowed against a
hedge. The pages divided themselves and scattered their separate ways on the
herbaceous borders and heathers of a front lawn.
“Help me!
Help me!” cried a voice from an upstairs window in one of the houses. We
glanced up to see a child in a school uniform waving at us. “Call the police!
Get help!”
“What’s
wrong?” shouted Beta, standing by the gate.
“We’ve been
attacked! Robbed! It’s horrible! My hands have been tied! I don’t where Mummy
and Daddy are!”
“We’ll
help!” said Beta determinedly, pushing open the gate and running up the drive
to the front door, which we could see now had been forced open on its hinges.
I followed
her, and into the hallway where clothes were lying scattered about and a
picture of a countryside scene had been violently thrown to the ground and
broken across the back. An ugly red patch was smeared on the pale floral
wallpaper and jagged fragments of a hall mirror lay splintered on the floor. I
dashed up the stairs to where Beta was opening doors and looking inside. She
disappeared into a bedroom marked by a tiny floral name-plate, and I followed.
Inside was the child, her hands tied behind her back, a hanky tied loosely
around her throat where it had presumably been used as a gag and a fresh red
and blue bruise beginning to swell under her eye. Her face was a mess of tears
and her legs were tied together at the ankles and knees by sheets that had been
ripped off the bed and torn into strips. The bedroom had all the paraphernalia
of childhood - toys, videos, cassettes, clothes and comics - thrown all around
the place. The doors of her cupboards were open and boxes of more toys
threatened to fall out. A large poster of four young men carrying guitars and
signed by each was torn across the middle.
“It was
horrid! Beastly!” sobbed the girl as we undid her bindings. “These horrid
people burst into the house while I was watching telly...” She pointed at a
screen which had been thrown onto the floor, its wires pulled out and the glass
shattered. “They hit me. They threw things around. They destroyed my teddy.
Then they tied me up.”
“Who were
they?” Beta asked.
“I don’t
know! They all wore black leather. One was a horrid black hog with horrible horrible big fangs and a black beret. I don’t know where
Mummy and Daddy are. Why didn’t they help me? Why didn’t they stop them?”
“I’ll ring
the police!” I announced, doing what I believed was
the best thing.
I strode
out of the bedroom into the hallway, wondering where the telephone might be. I
pushed open a door on the opposite side of the landing and looked at another
ruined bedroom. I saw a telephone sure enough, but smashed to pieces, the bare
wire of its leads stretched across the room. This room was ruined just as much
as the other. A wardrobe had been pulled over, framed photographs lay shattered
about on the carpet and another television was destroyed. I heard a small moan
from behind the bed. I strode round to find a middle-aged woman, half of her
clothes ripped off, with bloodstains on her bared breast and a nasty gash
across her face. Like her daughter, her hands and arms had been tied together,
and her mouth was gagged by a silk scarf stuffed into it and trailing over her
chin.
I pulled
the scarf out. “Are you all right?” I asked pointlessly, as it was obvious she
wasn’t. “Is there anything I can do?”
The woman
looked through me with a wild stare. “They raped me,” she moaned. “They raped
me!”
I bent over
to pick her up, but with a sudden spasm of violent energy she angrily pushed
herself off. She collapsed back onto the side of the bed, a trickle of blood
dripping from a reddened mouth. “They raped me. Raped me.
Why? Why?”
“Can I help
in any way?”
“They raped
me. Me! Raped...”
I backed
out of the bedroom. The best course of action was clearly to get help. I ran
down the stairs to look for another telephone: there must be more than one! And
indeed there was. In the living room, but similarly destroyed and by the
sprawled body of a man in a cardigan, slippers and polyester trousers, whose
face lay in a puddle of blood studded with small white pebbles which I
recognised with shock as being his own teeth. He hadn’t been tied up like his
wife and daughter, as presumably there hadn’t been any need. I rushed out of
the living room, too frightened to determine whether he was alive, and charged
up the staircase to rejoin Beta who was comforting the school-girl.
“What’s
wrong?” Beta asked as I entered. “You look terribly pale.”
I didn’t
know how to answer. The image of the blood on the pile carpet amidst the
smashed ornaments and furniture and loose scraps of paper were too clear in my
mind. “The phones have been smashed!” I at last said. “We’ll have to use a
public telephone!”
The child
nodded her head. “There’s one just round the corner.”
“We’ll go
there,” I said with some determination. “All of us. Together!”
“Why all of
us?” queried Beta with a frown.
I swallowed
the bolus of spittle that was rising in my throat. “It’s better if we all go!”
I said with conviction. “We’ll get the police. And an
ambulance. They can sort it out.”
“An ambulance? Why? What’s happened?” Beta
asked.
“We’d
better go!” I repeated with urgency. “Now!”
“I don’t
want to go!” said the child. “I want to stay here! With Mummy
and Daddy!”
I felt hopeless
in my dilemma, but thankfully Beta assessed the horror of the situation with
more clarity than the child. “We’ll come back straight away. Don’t worry!
You’ll be alright.”
Reluctantly,
the child agreed, and so we walked out of the house through the scattered ruin
of her family’s possessions, past the wreckage of the car and along the road,
where we could now see that other houses had been attacked. I felt extremely
disorientated. This could not be happening! This was the Suburbs. This was not
right.
Inevitably,
we found that the telephone box had been vandalised. The telephone had been
wrenched off the wall, the glass windows of the red kiosk were smashed and a
pool of loose change was scattered along the edge of the pavement.
When the
child saw the damage she burst into a fresh torrent of tears. “We’ll never get the police! Why did they do
it? What are they doing? And where’s Mummy and Daddy?”
“We’ll find
another telephone box,” said Beta soothingly.
“We won’t!
They’ll all be smashed! It’s not fair! I’m going back home! I want my Mummy and
Daddy!”
She then
dashed off, her thin white legs flicking back and forth as she ran.
Beta looked
startled. “We ought to chase after her!” she said, staring at me. “She can’t be
just abandoned!”
I couldn’t
deny the moral urgency of Beta’s assertion, but I wasn’t at all sure I knew
what we could do. I was frightened of returning into the girl’s home where her
parents were in such a bloody state. However, I left such thoughts behind me as
I dashed after Beta back where we’d come. We ran round the corner of the avenue
where her home was, to see her screaming and running off at a tangent down a cul de sac to one side. She was soon out of sight, her
sandaled feet pacing along a path between houses, and we saw what had frightened
her.
I had never
seen such ugly gargoyles before in my life, and certainly not in the Suburbs.
And there were so many of them. Cruel faces, with vicious
fangs and horns, wings protruding from the backs of some of them, destroying
cars, smashing windows and shouting at each other. Most of the gargoyles
were no more than three or four feet high, but one particularly ugly specimen,
with the face of an eagle and savage long claws towered high above the others,
whooping with joy at the destruction meted about him. Beta and I similarly
turned about and dashed down the pathway, marked by a sign featuring the
silhouette of a walking man.
We ran and
ran through a maze of paths running alongside and behind the gardens of
deceptively peaceful streets, having lost all sight of the child, and now much
more concerned about our own safety and survival. At last the paths emerged
into another avenue, much the same as the ones we’d left but thankfully lacking
in any evidence of vandalism or violence. We paused by a telephone pole, leaned
against a garden wall, and panted in short urgent breaths.
“Who were they?” Beta asked.
I shook my
head. “I don’t know. They don’t come from the Suburbs. They must have come here
looking for the Truth.”
“They don’t
look like they were particularly interested in the Truth. Whatever they’re here
for, it’s not to find the Truth. The only thing they seemed interested in was
destruction!”
We walked
on, unsure which direction to go and in any case totally lost in the grid of
streets. It seemed here at least there was nothing to worry about, although
when we tried to use a public telephone box to alert the police we found the
lines were uncharacteristically dead. I put down the receiver with disgust.
“Surely,
they must know what’s going on!” Beta remarked. “All that couldn’t be going on
without the police knowing!”
My Suburban
faith in the police persuaded me to agree with her, although I was troubled
that an institution that normally cleared away the evidence of car accidents
and suicides in the Suburbs with commendable haste and efficiency should be so
absent when most needed. I nodded, and walked along with Beta, squeezing her
hand tight as much to comfort myself as her.
It was then
that we saw the figure of the Artist approach us, unsteadily wandering from
side to side along a road that was mysteriously free of traffic. As he came
closer we could see a bloody gash disfiguring his chin, caked blood on his
upper lip beneath his nostrils and his smock badly ripped and revealing much of
his hairless chest. When he saw us, he ran his fingers through his blood-soaked
hair, and smiled weakly.
“They set
fire to the
“Are you alright?” asked Beta with some
concern. “We were terribly afraid they might have killed you.”
The Artist
bent his head down and despairingly clasped his forehead in his
paint-splattered fingers. “I’m alright. I think. But the
“How did
you escape?” I wondered.
“I don’t
know. I don’t know at all. They were distracted I suppose: the vandals. They
found something else to do. Perhaps it was some other thing they wanted to
destroy. I was just left. On the floor. By the foot of
what was left of Pork’s Monument to
Eternity. I just lay there, with my tongue on what used to be a tooth.” He
opened his mouth to show a gap in the front of his mouth where an incisor
should have been. “I was in such pain. There was blood in my mouth. And my eyes. Seeping through my hair.
I don’t know where my beret is. I just lay there. I could hear all the
destruction. It was horrible! Humiliating! And then I smelt smoke. I didn’t
know what it was at first. My nose was so caked with blood I couldn’t smell
very well. Then I saw a cloud of smoke waft over the
“But you’re
alright,” said Beta soothingly. “You’re alive. They didn’t kill you.”
“I wish they
had. My life is nothing now. Much of my own work must have been destroyed in
the fire. I got up. There were still globules of blood dripping on the floor in
front of me. But I got up. Somehow. I couldn’t stand
very well. I had ... I have such a
horrible headache. But I crawled through the gallery. I don’t know how. Over all the ruins of great Art. The
Culture. The essence of civilisation. And then
out of the
“Were many
Illicit Party people there?” I asked.
“I don’t
know. I didn’t look. There might have been. If they were, they weren’t
interested in me any more. I just ran and ran. And then I just fell on the
grass and lay there. I was sick. So sick. I just lay
in blood and vomit, with the smell of smoke from the
“As I lay
there consumed by misery and despair, I felt someone’s hands on my back. I drew
back, thinking it was another Illicit bastard. Or worse. But it was a centauress. She had come from the
Country and had galloped to the
“That must
have been the fire we saw!” Beta exclaimed. “Did she know what had caused it?”
“She didn’t
say. All she knew was that there had been a fire. But she said that she had
seen many many of these people, Illicit Party, Black
Party, and others who were not in any political grouping. There were dragons,
wyverns, gargoyles, minotaurs, all sorts rampaging
through the Country. People she had never seen before. She had no idea where
they came from, but she told me that it was certain that they were en route to
the Suburbs on this damnable quest for the Truth. She was terribly worried for
the health of her foals who had been at school during
the fire. She had no idea where she might find them, as their school is a long
way from her home. Schools are scattered about thinly in the Country, and they
travel there each day by bus. She said she had seen hundreds of these monsters
and political activists descending on the Suburbs from all directions. They’re
all converging here and causing havoc wherever they go.”
“Did she
actually see any evidence of this?” I wondered.
“Oh yes!
Yes, she had. Although she said that what they had done to the
I reflected
on the destruction we had just seen and had to agree that that was exactly what
had happened.
“Even here?
In the Suburbs? How can this be?”
the Artist bewailed. “The centauress said she had seen houses ransacked,
farms attacked by gangs of grotesque monsters who were devouring all the
livestock. She saw a pack of manticores attack a herd of sheep and tear them
apart limb from limb. A smilodon was tearing at the throat of a young mastodon.
And she even saw a tyrannosaurus swallow a pig whole in a few short gulps. She
was understandably worried about her family and, of course, herself. Normally
centaurs have no natural enemies except alcohol and mange, but even they can’t
cope with carnosaurs or dragons.”
“Nor can
anyone else!” Beta said, with a shiver.
“The
centauress had galloped a long way before she came to the Art Gallery. She said
she had no idea where she ought to go. Everywhere was full of gangs of these
people. Not all of them were violent, she said. Some were like pilgrims looking
for the Truth as if they were heading for
The Artist
paused, and wiped his nose from which a fresh trickle of blood was emerging. He
glanced quizzically at the red stain on the back of his hand. “The centauress was
no doctor. She really couldn’t do more than talk to me. And then she galloped
off. Probably back to the Country. I decided to come to the Suburbs. This
seemed the safest possible place to come. But before she left, she told me more
about the foul things she had seen.”
“What sort
of things?” I wondered.
“Like this
car she saw being attacked in a village. It was an enormous car. Totally unsuited for Country roads. How it had ever got
there, she couldn’t say. Perhaps with so much traffic on the roads and all the
police diversions it had simply got lost. All these Black Party people... At
least I think they were Black Party from how she described them. All dressed in
black leather, she said. They were all piling on top of the car. They were
shaking the vehicle from side to side. And then the people inside got out.
There was a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros and some others she said...”
“I think we
know the car you mean!” Beta remarked. “Was there a dog as well and a fat man?”
The Artist
frowned. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I can’t remember whether she mentioned
any other people. But it’s not often you see such large pachyderms driving
around in the Country. Most cars aren’t big enough! But I remember she said
there was a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros. And they
were probably foreigners too, she said. They didn’t seem at all sure what to
do. Anyway, she didn’t say very much. She simply said she had seen them come
out of the car and try to fight off the vicious leopards and coyotes who were besieging it. Of course, that wasn’t too difficult
for big animals like them. At least not individually.
And then she saw two allosauruses appear and the fight was a lot less even. The
car was totally destroyed. I think she said that the people attacking it just
pulled it completely to pieces.”
“And what
happened to Wilma and Wayne? The two people in the car?”
Beta asked anxiously.
“I don’t
know. The centauress didn’t say. Perhaps she didn’t know. They may have got
away for all I know. But without their car: that’s for certain!”
We mused on
the news for a few moments. Beta was clearly very upset by it, and squeezed my
arm tightly to her side. “How can there be so
many horrible things happening in one day? What’s happening?”
The Artist
sat down by the side of a wall, behind which could be seen the twitching
curtain of a nervous occupant, distressed either by the sight of the Artist’s
wounds or the fear that he might inconveniently demand assistance. “I don’t
know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I’ve stood at a bus stop for ages
waiting for a bus, but none arrived. I don’t know how I can find my way home.
And I am trepidatious regarding any encounter with these monsters that have
been unleashed into our midst.”
We sat by
the Artist who had become uncharacteristically silent, while nursing the
unpleasant gash on his forehead.
Beta
squeezed my hand. “All these horrible horrible
things!”
While we
sat there, we saw another familiar figure approach us, carrying a baby in a
kind of pouch around her chest. It was Una walking along the street, looking
nervously from side to side as if expecting to see some more horrors emerge.
Beta stood up and walked into the middle of the empty road waving her arms from
side to side. Una saw us, waved back and without increasing her stride headed
towards us.
“How are
you? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you still recuperating at the
Embassy?”
Una looked
sadly into Beta’s eyes, clutching her baby close to her breast. “I thought the
Suburbs might be the place to come. Everyone else is coming here. They might be
coming to find the Truth, but I thought I might come here, find a job, find
somewhere to live, start a new life for me and my baby.” She was wearing a long
dress that was really a little large for her and came almost down to her ankles.
“How did
you get here?” I wondered.
“Oh, I hitch-hiked. I went to
this motorway junction carrying my baby and stuck my thumb out into the road. I
didn’t really care where anyone was going, but since most people were going to
the Suburbs I thought it was the place to go. I didn’t wait long. Less than half an hour, anyway. A van stopped. It was
spray-painted all sorts of colours with lots of slogans on the outside,
including ‘THE TRUTH’. There
were plenty of young people inside. They weren’t from any particular political
party or religious group, though they were mostly sympathetic to the Red Party.
They were very glad anyway that they had won the Election. There was a girl
with very long hair wearing a colourful thin cotton dress. Another girl with
her head shaved wearing only a pair of black leather shorts. A man with short
spiky hair, covered in earrings and studs who kept smoking all the time. There
was a pig driving who also had ear-rings and a woolly hat over his head. They
had heard about the search for the Truth, and decided to join the flow of
people heading to the Suburbs.”
“Why were
they doing that?” Beta asked. “I thought it was mostly just Illicit Party
people coming here.”
“Oh, everyone’s
coming. Not just Illicit Party. I suppose it’s something that appeals to a lot
of different people: the Truth, that is. They said that in different ways
they’d each been searching for the Truth already in the City commune they lived
in. They’d sought for it through religion, mysticism and meditation with the
assistance of gurus and paperbacks. It seemed right to them that they should be
in the midst of all the excitement.”
“And where
are they now?” I asked, looking down the empty street.
“I don’t
know. I lost them. It took a long time to get to the Suburbs. There were a lot
of cars on the road. It was a very slow long journey. A number of different
vehicles are heading here: carriages, vans, cars, coaches, anything with
wheels. I’ve never seen anything like it. When we got here, it was not at all
obvious where to go. The pig drove us all around the place. The streets were
very full, and almost all of them were full of cars parking in all the
available spaces, blocking people’s drives and on the pavement. There were all
sorts of people wandering about. Some like the people in the van I was in. Some
dressed in Rupert suits. Some in the sort of clothes that people in the Suburbs
wear: I suppose they must have been ordinary Suburbanites. And then we saw
these horrid monsters loom up in the street ahead of us!”
“Monsters?”
asked Beta.
“I don’t
know what else to call them. Dwarves with faces on their
chests. Things a bit like vultures and a bit like rats. Things with long cruel fangs and vicious claws. I’ve never
seen things like that before in my life. And neither had the
others in the van. These monsters chased after the van, and there really
wasn’t space to turn round. The driver reversed the van backwards, but there
were cars behind us and we couldn’t go back further. As the monsters
approached, they were smashing other cars and really looked very dangerous. I
don’t know when the decision was made or whether it was wise, but the doors of
the van were thrown open and we all ran out. The pig jumped out as well, but he
was suddenly descended on by all these winged monkeys. I didn’t want to look
back. All I was interested in was my baby. I didn’t want him to get hurt! I just run and run. Past all the damage that’s been done in
the Suburbs and the fires that have been started, and then I got here. It
seemed nice and quiet. No cars. No chaos. And I’ve been wandering around here
ever since.”
“But why
are you here at all?” Beta asked. “Why aren’t you still in the Embassy?”
“The Cat Embassy? No. Haven’t you heard the
news?”
“The News?” I asked. “No. Why? What’s
happened?”
“The
“So what
did you do?” Beta wondered.
“I didn’t
know what to do when I was first told the news. I hoped that maybe my plight
would have made it easier for me. But a Cat came into my room and told me that
they were abandoning the building. They’d heard that there was a likelihood that the Embassy might be attacked. In some of
the other Cat embassies round the world, especially those in countries who are
uncertain in their support for the
“That’s why
I left the Embassy, while all the Cats and the staff were shredding papers and
erasing computer disks. There was an awful amount of panic amongst the staff,
many of whom had already abandoned the building, and those left were worried
about their jobs and probably their very lives. I was given this dress to wear
- it was the best fit they could find - and this pouch for my baby, and then I
had to go into the street again. It wasn’t easy. I had to make my way through a
crowd of desperate-looking Cats who were pressed against the gates and
clamouring for information and advice, and some Mice and Dogs who were shouting
abuse and throwing beer cans and stones at the Embassy and at the Cats. I was
terribly frightened for my baby. I clutched him so close to my breast I thought
he might suffocate.”
“And that’s
why you decided to come to the Suburbs?” Beta surmised.
“Exactly. Where else could I go? The
City’s totally failed me. I can’t return to Unity. I thought a borough famous
for its peace, calm and stability was by far the best place to come. I’m not in
the slightest bit interested in finding the Truth.”
The Artist
coughed weakly. His hand was cupped over the wound on his cheek which had
started to seep a small trickle of blood. “I ought to be taken to a hospital,”
he remarked softly. “I could get lockjaw or gangrene if I’m untreated.”
“Of course
you should!” said Beta with alarm. “We should have thought.” She glanced at me.
“Where shall we go?”
I shrugged
a shoulder helplessly. “I don’t know. This part of the Suburbs is as unknown to
me as it is to you.”
“Well,
we’ll have to go somewhere,” said Beta determinedly.
Una pointed
back in the direction she’d come: “There’s some shops and a post office I
passed on the way here. Perhaps there’ll be a hospital or something near
there.”
I nodded.
“It’s possible.”
On that
flimsy advice, we walked in the direction Una indicated, under a sky that was
gradually filling with the first substantial clouds I had seen for several
days, but occasionally let our shadows stretch to our side as we walked. Beta
looked at Una’s baby who was fortunately fast asleep and wholly unaware of his
surroundings.
“Were there
any awful things happening in the City like we’ve seen and heard about here in
the Suburbs?” she asked.
Una stroked
her baby’s head and reflected. “Not as bad as here, I think. Not as far as I
know, anyway. I think everyone’s been leaving the City and coming here. Mind
you, when I left the Ambassadorial district, I did pass by the Academy and
there seemed to be some trouble there.”
“What sort
of trouble?” I asked. “Like at the
“Art Gallery?”
“It’s been
ransacked, firebombed, vandalised, ruined!” the Artist bewailed. “Masterpieces
lost forever! A cultural heritage in smoke!”
“No, not as bad as that!” Una said with
some concern. “Did they really do all that to the
“And
worse!” emphasised the Artist.
Una raised
her eyes in horror, but restrained herself to an account of what she’d seen of
the Academy. “There was a demonstration outside. All sorts of
people. Some throwing stones and books at the building. The police were
guarding it, in riot gear. They were obviously prepared for things to get very
disagreeable. Some academics were being led out of the building, their heads
down and with police plastic shields over them to protect them from the
missiles. I don’t know why they were being attacked like that. Perhaps it was
for their political views. I heard that a lot of academics came out openly on
one side or another of the political spectrum during the Election. Perhaps
that’s what was upsetting the demonstrators. I didn’t really want to find out
more. I just headed for the nearest motorway junction.”
The way
ahead soon lost the deceptive calm we’d been enjoying. The road became full of
disconsolately wandering people, carrying bags and suitcases, while all around
them were the battered ruins of abandoned cars and vans. Most of the houses
remained intact, although they had broken windows, damaged hedges and garbage
spilt over their drives. Some of the houses, however, had suffered considerably
worse than others: trails of smoke still rising through blackened and charred
roofs and smashed possessions scattered over neatly mown lawns and tangling in
the geraniums in the flower beds.
There was
no particular direction in which the mass of people were heading. Some were
wandering towards us. Some in the same direction as us.
Some had abandoned any pretence of going anywhere at all, and sat in huddled
groups on their luggage by the roadside, their eyes wide open and their faces
pale in disbelief and shock. Beta grabbed both my hand and that of Una, who
seemed as much in need of comfort as either of us. We soon came to the grounds
of a community centre, in comforting red brick and white painted railings. It
hadn’t escaped unscathed from the violence and destruction: many windows were
smashed, a van marked Suburbs Community Project was lying on its side, wheels still spinning in the breeze which had
noticeably picked up strength, and the walls were sprayed with graffiti which,
amongst other things, declared that this was a Black Party Republic.
In the
grounds of the community centre was a huddled mass of dispossessed and
miserable, sitting in groups on the grass, with cups of hot tea grasped in
their hands and many with blankets around their shoulders. Presiding over all
of this misery was the bearded gentleman whom we had met the day before in the
City and who had advised us to come to the Suburbs in our pursuit of the Truth.
He looked up when he saw us, and strode towards us over the legs of the
homeless Suburbanites and their children. He handed the stack of paper cups and
the tea urn he was carrying to a centaur who was
helping him in his charitable work.
“Oh dear me! Dear me!” he said with
sympathy, looking at the Artist and Una. “What a nasty gash! And such a
helpless baby! Come inside the both of you!” He indicated the entrance to the
community centre where a nurse was standing by a piglet who
was playing with the remnants of a Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted sign. He put his arms around both Una and the Artist, and eased them in
that direction.
Before
leaving, he smiled at us again with his infectious smile. “I’m so glad you were able to bring these
poor unfortunates here. There are so many victims of this quest for the Truth.
So many who’ve lost their homes or been maliciously and randomly attacked! I
just hope that I can be of some small assistance to them in this their most
urgent hour of need. I take it that you have come here to pursue your great
idealistic quest.”
Beta
nodded. “But it seems so irrelevant now with all the awful things that are
happening here. There hardly seems any point now to looking for the Truth any
more.”
The
gentleman nodded, still smiling but with a concerned frown on his face. “I
doubt that very many of those supposedly seeking the Truth are really here for
any other purpose than to cause mischief. And a mischief which is inflicting so
many casualties! But your pursuit of the Truth is an altogether more noble endeavour. It is not my place to advise you to do
anything, but do not be unnecessarily disheartened by those who pervert a
worthwhile cause. If it is something worth doing, then it is worth continuing
despite the evils visited on so many in its name.”
With that
the gentleman led the Artist, Una and her baby up the small concrete staircase
to the community centre entrance, where the nurse took the Artist from him and
scrutinised his cheek with professional care and attention. They then
disappeared inside the building, leaving us by the kerbside in front of several
hundred miserable people, many in distressing silence broken by the muffled
tears of the younger children.
In amongst
all the people were others who were wandering amongst them, doling out comfort,
sympathy and practical help. The centaur was bending down awkwardly to pass
down cups of tea, a small dragon was distributing sleeping bags and a woman in
denim shorts and tee-shirt was doing much the same with heavy grey woollen
blankets. She saw us, and wandered towards us. It was the Actress whom we’d met
in the City, sweating profusely from her exertions and with a dirty smudge
across a cheek.
“Well!
Fancy meeting you here!” she said, grinning broadly. “Well, not that
surprising, I suppose, knowing about your search for the Truth. I don’t suppose
you’ve found it yet, have you?”
I shook my
head. “We’ve not really given much thought to it since we arrived.”
“Pity. It might end all this
flipping senseless violence if someone were to find it! But I don’t blame you
for not thinking about it much. It’s flipping grotesque, what’s happening here.
You wouldn’t believe that the General Election would result in so much blooming
chaos. It’s a real crisis. I wonder if the government has yet declared a State
of
She turned
around to view the people huddled on the grass.
“These
aren’t the worst cases. They’re all inside. Babies and children orphaned.
People nearly dead from the vicious attacks they’ve suffered. Some people
who’ve been nearly burned alive. Some who have lost their minds totally. That Rupert bastard certainly was inspired when he
directed his thuggish followers to come to the Suburbs. The place is utterly
unprepared and incapable of handling this kind of chaos. I didn’t believe it
was nearly as bad as this when I heard about in on the News, but then you don’t
do you? You hear of all these flipping awful things that happen in the world,
but until you actually see it, you just don’t flipping know the half of it.”
“Why are
you here?” Beta wondered. “Shouldn’t you be performing in the theatre?”
“In The Lion of
She stared
across at the ruined semi-detached houses, the church with the weather-vane
dropping by a wire down its steeple, the shops with smashed windows and mostly
totally gutted of its stock, the shells of previously well-polished automobiles
and the garbage and rubbish being blown by the strengthening wind over the
road. The evening sun was hidden behind the darkening clouds, and no electric
lights shone from the windows of the surrounding houses.
“Are the
Suburbs the only place which has suffered?” I wondered, feeling for the
desolation that marked my home.
“Mostly
yes, I believe. Mind you, it’s only what I’ve seen on television and heard on
the radio. Most of the worst of it is here. But there are other places that
have got it quite bad. There’s been an eruption of gang violence in some of the
poorer parts of the City, for instance. That’s not too unusual, of course. It
has to be jolly bad for that kind of thing to be newsworthy, and with all this
happening in the Suburbs and that invasion in the
“Are there
very many people from the City here?” I asked.
“Not just
the City, of course, but since more people live in the City than in the rest of
the country put together, I suppose, yes, there must be. Some areas of the City
are apparently almost like ghost towns; so many people have left for here. Particularly those parts of the City where the Illicit Party is
particularly powerful. Inevitable I suppose, given that bastard Rupert’s
call for all his followers to come here. Although, as you probably have already
noticed, there are a lot of people here who have absolutely nothing to do with
the Illicit Party, supposedly looking for the Truth...”
“Yes,”
agreed Beta. “We’ve seen some very strange people. Monsters,
gargoyles, all sorts. I’ve never seen people like that before!”
“I don’t
know where they’ve come from,” mused the Actress. “I’ve not seen them myself,
but I’ve heard about them from these poor blinking unfortunate survivors. They
really do sound like something out of the ordinary, don’t they?”
The Actress
looked back at her wards, and then glanced down at the blankets over her arm.
She puffed some air through her cheeks. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you.
But I’ve got work to get on with! Best of luck with your
quest.”
With that,
she turned round and waded back through the kneeling and sitting crowds of
Suburbanites distributing blankets to those who seemed most at need. Beta
looked at me, with a troubled frown. She ran her fingers through her hair to
clear it off her face, and pushed it over her shoulders. “I suppose we ought to
carry on with our search?” she said with a faint hint of doubt.
I shared her
doubt, but I couldn’t think of any real alternative. I nodded, gently squeezed
her hand, and then we walked away from the community centre in the direction
which seemed least damaged and vandalised. The crowds of people gradually
thinned. Families carrying their baggage trudged by, looking neither left nor
right, immersed in their own misery. It was probably best that they kept their
eyes distracted from the ruins of homes and motor vehicles they were passing
by.
Some people
just stood or sat by the roadside, abandoning any pretence of going somewhere.
It was by a bus shelter, on the plastic seats provided, that we saw another
familiar figure, still naked but shivering in the cooler evening air and with a
distinct blueness about her shaved head.
“Xenana!” exclaimed
Beta, running up to her childhood friend. “Xenana!
What are you doing here?”
A brief gap
in the deepening cloud let in a shaft of weakening sunlight, illuminating a
face with smudged mascara and fading lipstick gazing sadly up at us. “I could
ask the same of you, Beta,” she said, unable to prevent a smile creeping over
her face as the shaft of sunlight disappeared leaving her again in the shadows.
“Still with your boyfriend, I see. Did you come here for the fun as well?”
She laughed
haltingly and slightly hysterically.
“Fun? We didn’t expect any fun!”
“I did! Or we did, anyway. We thought it’d be fun.
Not that it’s been any flipping fun at all!” She laughed bitterly. “We thought:
the Suburbs, the Truth, all these thousands of people... Let’s party! We all
loaded into this car one of us had. We had some absolutely brilliant drugs, and
we drove here in real party mood. Though it was no flipping
party getting here. All that traffic! One long
blinking traffic jam from the City to the Suburbs.” She laughed again,
caught herself and stopped abruptly. “And here we all arrived: all in the mood
to party. I’d never been to the Suburbs before. None of us had! We’d no idea
what to expect. We thought it’d be at worst boring, at best a good laugh. But
it’s turned out to be a real bad trip, and none of us had dropped any blooming
acid!”
As Xenana
launched into another badly tuned laugh, Beta sat down next to her friend, and
put a comforting arm around her shoulder.
“Where are your friends, Xenana? Shouldn’t you be
with them?”
“I’d love
to be!” she exclaimed with another short bitter laugh. “They’ve got all the flipping drugs, if there’s any
left by now! But when we arrived there was just flipping nowhere to park. We
crawled around the Suburbs for flipping hours - or what seemed like hours. We
were getting really teed off. And then it was a flipping nightmare! I couldn’t believe it!” She laughed again.
“Out of flipping nowhere they came! Blinking dozens of them! Two dozen at
least! I’d never seen people like them before. Real ugly things they were! Real
monsters! Just like you see in flipping nightmares.
Horrible horrible faces. Cruel
fangs. Enormous claws. And laughing and
shouting and cawing. We thought it might’ve been the drugs, at first. This
can’t be real! Have you seen these repulsive things?”
Beta
nodded.
Xenana
looked around her hopelessly. “I’ve lost my handbag. The worst of it I’ve also
lost my ciggies. And all the reefers I’d rolled for the occasion!” She laughed
again in a tone that was dangerously close to crying. “Hamid was the most
blitzed. He must have taken something he’d not shared with the rest of us. In
retrospect it’s probably a blinking good thing he hadn’t. He got out of the
limo in a sort of stoned good-natured way. He stood there in front of all these
dreadful things, like as if they were just naughty primary school children.
‘Couldn’t you like let me and my friends like just pass by?’ he said. They
looked a bit bemused themselves. They didn’t expect people to talk to them like
that. ‘Hey, you guys. You can let us pass, can’t you?’“
Xenana
paused. She wrapped her arms around her as a gust of wind blew by raising
Beta’s hair up into the air and rustling through the dark foliage of the hedge
behind us. Her eyes were wide open and a dark tear of mascara trailed down her
cheek.
“They
didn’t say anything. One of them - a cross between a pig, a horse and a spider
- suddenly punched Hamid on the face. From inside the car I saw blood burst out
of his nose, and smear down the windscreen as his head slid down. We just
screamed. This wasn’t a flipping joke any more! This was no blinking fun! We
piled out of the car as fast as we could. I started running and running. I
didn’t flipping care about my handbag or my purse or any flipping thing. I just
ran and ran! The monsters didn’t stop. One of them grabbed Maria and I could
hear her screaming and screaming while I ran. Their scales, feathers and claws
made unbearable grating noises just like their hideous cackling laughs.” She
let loose a breathless winded bark of a laugh herself. “I don’t know what
happened to the others. As I ran all I could hear were the echoes of Maria’s
screams. They pierced through the air like the jagged edge of a saw. My stomach
was churning, my chest was pounding and I was feeling jolly ill!”
“But you’re
alright now!” Beta said comfortingly.
“I can
still hear Maria’s screams. I can still see Hamid’s crushed nose on the
windscreen and all that blood and snot smeared there. It was a bad dream! The worst trip imaginable. But a real one! Not one in the
flipping head!”
Beta
sighed. “This has really been a ghastly day!”
“It has been! Everything bad is happening on
one day. I blame the Election. It was alright before! Now, it’s chaos. No
flipping fun at all! Why are all the bad things happening at once? The News
broadcasts we heard on the radio were jolly depressing: we just had to turn it
off and listen to cassettes. The siege of the Academy.
The theatres closing down. The war
in the