All Roads End Here Page 9
The garbage truck crew stop near a patch of scrubland to catch their breath and rinse off. It’s relatively quiet out here on the very edge of the camp, like another world. There’s a stream here and they strip to their underwear and wash themselves down. It’s a relief to be free from the sweat and grime, and the icy water is refreshing. Apparently ready for anything, Smithy has a few spare T-shirts in his cab. He throws one across to Matt. “Bring a change of clothes if you’re coming out with me again tomorrow,” he says before adding under his breath, “frigging newbie.”
There’s no urgency to get back. Once they’ve cleaned up, the crew relax for a while. In this grubby little oasis they’re almost able to convince themselves nothing’s wrong and the world hasn’t fallen apart. It’s only the noise of frequent CDF excursions to hold back the Haters that shatters the illusion.
Smithy disappears back into the cab of his truck and emerges with a six-pack of beer and some half-hitched food.
“Fuck me, Smithy,” someone says. “You little beauty!”
The drinks are handed around and Matt drains his quick. Too quick. It’s weak, supermarket-brand lager but it’s the first alcohol he’s had in a long time and it goes straight to his head. It’s a warm, nostalgic feeling that’s as good as he remembers.
They doze and daydream for another hour or so before heading back to the depot. Smithy hands out work permits for tomorrow, then sends them off to collect their pay. As promised, the workers get their own queue. Matt feels like a conquering hero as he’s handed a bag of tins and packets of food. “Keep it safe,” he’s told. “Plenty of fuckers in here who’ll rip your arms off for that lot.”
11
East Kent Road is more crowded than when he left this morning, and Matt clutches his provisions close to his chest. He can’t wait to see Jen’s face when she sees what he’s brought home. He resists the temptation to look at his stash until he’s back, but the second he’s through the door he empties it out onto the kitchen table. “Look at this lot,” he says. She screws up her face.
“What’s that stink?”
“I’ve been shifting rubbish all day.” He moves toward her but she backs away. “It’s okay, I’ve had a wash.”
“Well, you need another one. You’re not coming anywhere near me smelling like that. Get those clothes off, Matt. You might as well throw them straight out.”
“But these are my best jeans.”
“You should have thought of that.”
“I didn’t know what I was going to be doing.”
“Not my problem. Get cleaned up, love. You can be such a dick at times.”
“That’s why you love me.”
“Is that right?”
The heat of the day is still strong. Matt stands at the door into the back garden and strips. “Anyway, did you see the stuff I got us? I left it on the table.”
Jen’s poking through the tins and boxes. She finds a packet of ginger nut biscuits. “Love these,” she says excitedly. She screws her nose up when she finds a can of caffeine-heavy energy drink. “This stuff’s bad for you. Rots your teeth and screws with your brain.”
“They gave it to me in a bag. I didn’t choose it.”
“Horrible nasty stuff.”
The floorboards in the spare room above the kitchen creak. Matt looks up. “Jason’s back?”
“He’s been back ages.”
“Did he get a lot of stuff?”
“Just a bit less than you did. He said you’d volunteered for work. Is it really worth the extra effort, love? The extra risk?”
“I think so.”
“Well, I don’t. You’ve got responsibilities, Matt. We need to make sure everything’s okay here before you start worrying about anything else.”
“It doesn’t work like that anymore, Jen.”
“Well maybe it should.”
Matt’s half-naked in the doorway still when Mrs. Walker enters. She’s embarrassed when she sees him and makes her excuses. “It’s okay,” he tells her. “My fault. I keep forgetting we’ve got company. I shouldn’t be getting changed in the kitchen.”
One of the children screams out from the lounge. Mrs. Walker grips the worktop and drops her head.
“Tough day with them?” Matt asks.
“Every day’s a tough day. I know it’s hard for all of us right now, but try explaining it to them.” There’s an awkward silence. An almost silence. The sounds of the kids bickering echo through the house. “Sorry about the noise.”
“It’s okay,” Jen reassures her.
“Wait, I got some food,” Matt says, covering himself up with a towel and moving back toward the table. “Do they like Red Bull?”
“They’re a bit young. I’ll have it, though, if it’s going spare.”
“Help yourself,” he says, and he hands her the drink then sorts through for more things the kids might like.
“Can you really spare all this? I didn’t come in here to scrounge.”
“It’s fine,” he answers quickly. “Honest, take it. Enjoy it.”
“Thank you,” she says. “This should keep them quiet for a few minutes at least.”
Once she’s left the room, Jen wraps her arms around Matt and kisses him on the cheek. “That was nice. You’re a good man.” Matt’s head is filled with images of battles and bodies, of the people he’s let die so that he could survive. He doesn’t feel like a good man. “You’ll still need a good hosing down before you even think about getting into bed, though,” she adds.
He’s about to say something when Jason appears. Matt’s starting to think he won’t get a second on his own with Jen tonight. He goes back outside to wash again and Jason follows. “So what did they have you doing then, boss?” he asks.
“Dumping rubbish.”
He shakes his head. “Mug’s game, mate.”
“I quite enjoyed it, to be honest.”
“Made a difference, did you? Are the streets sparkling clean in some corner of this magnificent city?”
“Don’t take the piss. Someone’s got to do it.”
“Yeah, but like I said earlier, it doesn’t have to be you. Let someone else take care of it.”
“If we all had that attitude, then—”
“Then what? You going to start lecturing me about how things would fall apart and society would crumble etcetera etcetera? I’ve got news for you, sunshine, it’s already gone and happened.”
“I get that. I’ve seen a hell of a lot more of it than you have, remember?”
“So you keep telling me, but it don’t make sense. I brought home almost as much stuff as you did today. If you know how shit it is out there, why d’you keep risking your neck?”
“Because I need to know what’s happening. I don’t want to get caught napping.”
“Bull.”
“It’s not. I don’t want to just stand in line, day after day. You don’t know how it felt being out there today and actually doing something positive. To be honest, I can’t wait to go back out again tomorrow. Yeah, so it’s a little more dangerous the way I do things, but it’s making a difference.”
“Who to? The masses out there or the people in this house?”
“Both. I keep telling you, we need to stay one step ahead.”
“And you reckon you can learn more about what’s happening from the back of a garbage truck at the end of some street or other than I can waiting in the food lines, right in the center of the camp?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t buy it.”
“I don’t care.”
“You need to consider where your priorities lie.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“No, but I’m the one who’ll have to explain it to your missus when you get yourself killed.”
And with that, he’s gone.
12
Matt reports for work again next day just the same. He doesn’t make it as far as Smithy’s crew this time, instead he’s diverted with about fifteen other v
olunteers to a line of three tatty flatbed trucks, a different kind of cleanup crew. Although not built for speed, they’re more maneuverable than Smithy’s garbage truck. Not that it matters, because he overhears someone saying they’re not going outside the city walls. Instead, they’re going to Catthorpe Park—a mile-square patch of green in an otherwise heavily built-up part of the city-camp, close to the eastern border.
The roads here are more congested than ever, and it’s stop-start all the way until the truck reaches the park. The entrance has been blocked off with just one way in and out as far as Matt can see. It’s being guarded by what appears to be a whole squadron of heavily armed CDF soldiers. There’s a solid line of them, all impervious in black with their faces hidden. On the orders of their commanding officer they break ranks to allow the vehicles through.
There are even more of the military inside the park, although there’s less uniformity about these fighters. As well as not being so well equipped, they also appear less physically fit. If there were minimum height, weight, and age restrictions for signing up before this war, then those rules have almost certainly been scrapped now because if this is a battalion, then it’s the most poorly regimented unit Matt’s ever seen. If it wasn’t for their ill-fitting fatigues, he wouldn’t have known they were soldiers at all. Jason said something about people volunteering to fight for food (or just for the hell of it)—these men and woman must be the new recruits. They put the civilian into the Civilian Defense Force. Untrained, part-time soldiers who’ve been drafted into a full-time war.
There’s plenty of work for the garbage crews here, of that there’s no doubt. Even from a distance Matt sees that there’s barely any grass visible through a layer of debris … what the hell happened? It’s like how he imagines the Glastonbury Festival farm used to look on the day after the music stopped playing: grass dead and churned, rubbish everywhere. Empty tents and shelters. Scattered sleeping bags and blankets. Discarded possessions. There’s no sign of civilian life, though. Everyone’s gone.
As the trucks queue to gain access, Matt overhears talk of another Hater attack on the border being successfully repelled, and he hears a group of CDF fighters enthusiastically and graphically recount last night’s battle in bloody detail. Hundreds of Haters killed, by all accounts. Hundreds.
The fighting has clearly had a profound effect on some of the volunteer fighters. For every regular soldier sharing bragging stories about the action they saw and the kills they scored, there are many others who are staring into space like the walking dead: vacant and lost, exhausted or traumatized, or both.
But if this place was as full of refugees as everywhere else, where are they? The park is empty save for the troops.
The trucks drive into the heart of the park, pulling up next to more soldiers. The camp boundary cuts across the space about a hundred meters farther from where they stop. The garbage crews unload and are handed facemasks and paper-thin hazmat suits. Matt takes his and puts it on alongside everyone else. The officer in charge looks exhausted, old beyond his years. “This whole area needs to be cleared,” he says. “Get everything dumped on the other side of the wall. We’ve got a couple of hours before this space is opened up to civilians again, so get moving.” As an afterthought, he adds a less than sincere “please.”
Simple, Matt thinks. He’s almost looking forward to the challenge. All around him white-suited figures start clearing the ground.
But here are the dead.
Once seen, they can’t be unseen. They’re everywhere, mixed with the detritus left behind. There are scores of them, and the harder Matt looks, the more he finds. Many have been crushed and trodden into the ground. One poor fucker has a caterpillar track imprint across the small of his back. Nearby, buried under a collapsed shelter, a young woman’s corpse is contorted, arms and legs everywhere like she’s still trying to fight off a long-gone attacker, her face frozen in an expression of wide-eyed terror. Other corpses appear remarkably unscathed, almost as if they’ve slept right through the chaos and simply failed to wake up.
It’s not the first time Matt’s had to deal with dead bodies. He finds it grim yet disarmingly easy. You just have to think about them as anything but human, he tells himself. This guy here, he looked Somali, and he has a kid of similar ethnicity tucked up alongside him. Doesn’t matter. Can’t think about who they were and what they meant to each other, they’re just meat to be moved. That dead lady there, she looks like Rachel Green, a girl he used to know from college. Can’t think about that, either. An old couple, wrapped in each other’s arms in a final embrace … they’re just cold neighbors now, no longer any other ties between them. After piling up the first few cadavers on the back of one of the flatbed trucks it all starts to feel routine, and Matt becomes disrespectfully dismissive. He opts to shift the thin ones before tackling the fat ones, leaving the bulk for someone else to deal with, and he avoids those that are particularly messed-up.
“You two, with me,” a soldier orders, pointing in Matt’s general direction. Matt looks around, but there’s no question it’s him and another guy nearby that the officer is talking to. “Come on, for fuck’s sake,” the soldier yells. “Get on the back of this truck. Now!”
Matt climbs up and perches on the edge of the flatbed piled high with the dead. The soldier gets behind the wheel and drives out toward the city wall, then exits the camp through a gap Matt hadn’t noticed until now. More rubbish-strewn parkland stretches out ahead of them, a space more than double the size of the area the volunteers are working to clear. On the far side of this second patch of land, another towering wall. The man sitting opposite Matt pulls down his facemask and shouts across to Matt. “I never knew there were two walls.”
Matt’s seen this before. “There aren’t,” he shouts back, and he gestures toward a ragged breach in the second barrier they’re approaching. “The Haters must have broken through again.”
“You think?”
“No question.” He nods back in the direction from which they’ve just come. “That’s a new wall. Those fuckers have taken another chunk out of the camp.”
Out beyond the camp’s original perimeter, the devastation continues for as far as they can see. A couple of rough tracks have been hewn through the chaos, but there’s otherwise been no obvious attempt to reclaim the land. The trucks go back and forth, transporting the bodies and dumping them in a pit that looks like it’s been blasted from the ground with munitions for this very purpose. Then they’re torched. Smoke, flames, and heat-haze billow up over the wasteland.
* * *
By the end of this day, Matt’s done. He’s seen enough to know what’s happening here. He’s spent a long, sweat- and blood-soaked afternoon shifting corpses, and he’s physically and emotionally beat. The guy he’s working alongside, however, is inappropriately chipper now the day’s work is done. “Earned our crust today, mate, eh?” he says as they strip out of their hazmat suits and burn them. They’re at the gates to the park which have just been reopened. Already people are flooding in, desperate to find a little more space than they had previously.
“Yeah,” Matt sighs, “but at what cost?”
“Hundreds of Haters must have been killed.”
“Hundreds of our people were killed.”
“Christ, you’re a proper ray of sunshine, ain’t you?”
Matt stops himself reacting. He walks away, then turns back, deciding the words sitting on the tip of his tongue can’t be left unspoken. “Don’t you see what’s happening here?”
“Yeah, we’re beating back the Haters again and again.”
“No, they’re taking chunk after chunk out of the camp, and they’ll keep doing it until we can’t move. Every last one of us will have our backs against the wall.”
“You credit them with too much intelligence, pal.”
“But they are intelligent. They’re like us. They are us. You don’t credit them with enough intelligence.”
“Sympathizer, are you?” he sneers.
“No, a realist.”
13
Each day there are more people in the camp, and more in East Kent Road and the surrounding streets. Matt uses their numbers as a tide mark, measuring the human flood levels. But what’s unclear is whether there are still more people coming in, or if it’s because the size of the camp is reducing? He knows what’s happening near the border, so now he needs to understand what his options are closer to home. Reluctantly he decides the only way he’ll be able to know for sure is by spending some time around the City Arena and he agrees to queue with Jason. Two birds, one stone. If nothing else, it’ll get Jason off his back for a while and stop him asking questions.
But Christ, it’s hard doing nothing.
Matt’s going out of his mind here. Inactivity, he’s discovered this morning, is worse than activity. He’s finding this harder than being on the other side of the city walls. Sure, one misstep out in the wilderness could have been the end of him, but while the danger’s nowhere near as immediate in here, there’s no question this is a similarly fragile and fractious environment. “What’s the matter with you?” Jason asks, picking up on Matt’s obvious unease. “Fuck’s sake, chill out.”
Matt bites his tongue and tries to focus on something pointless and insignificant to clear his mind. But in focusing on nothing, he momentarily forgets about everything, and when the queue shuffles forward, he doesn’t. A less than impressed guy behind gives him a gentle shove, and that causes him to trip into the back of the person standing in front.
“That’s what I can’t deal with,” he admits to Jason. “There’s no space. No escape.”