Blighted Land: Book two of the Northumbrian Western Series (Northumbrian Westerns 2) (2 page)

I fired the Scrambler up and rode off. I was so used to their violence it hardly even bothered me anymore.
 

Hardly.

O
N
T
UESDAY
I
KEPT
out of Nico and Will’s way. As usual I walked the streets, kept my eyes open for trouble. Threatened several street kids. The same pattern as the last eighteen months, even since I’d joined Round Up, come to Faeston. This place I’d drifted into after wandering the roads, facing the gangs of bikers, neo-reivers and other scavengers. Trying to make a living trading, couriering. After a year of that I’d had enough. It had been different in the past, when I’d had partners. A car. Alone on a bike in the Borders was tough. Too tough, it seemed.
 

It hadn’t been something I’d chosen or wanted. Things should have gone better but after Setmarch, well that had been such a fuck up. Losing the car and what had happened to Jamie. And Laura. Jesus.

So I came here and joined Round Up. If I didn’t think about it, it wasn’t such a bad life but it got exhausting trying not to think all the time. Keeping out of the way of my employers made life better, avoiding Will’s snide comments, Gregg’s digs: Nico’s power-games.
 

Nico hadn’t been running the show when I arrived. He’d pushed his way up shortly afterwards. I’d had my doubts about him. Now I knew he was a rotten apple. Rotten in lots of ways. But my head was too full of the night before, The Incident, as people were calling it, to worry about Nico and his cronies.
 

And it really had been an incident. I’d not seen anything like that since my twenties. Military vehicles had been relatively commonplace decades ago, mostly in newspapers and on the TV but even in toy sets for kids. Models that people made. In the Oil Wars the real ones had pushed their way across the desert. Hundreds of them, on our side and the other. As the fighting advanced newer and more deadly versions of them came out. The name never seemed to do justice to their true purpose: tank. It sounded so mundane, harmless. Maybe that made it worse. An invasion of tanks. They’d all been wiped out in the wars, apart from some that came back and were used by Murgatroyd in his last gasp as Prime Minister. They’d been deployed in Birmingham and London but they’d never made it this far north, not for use, at least. Despite sticking them on the streets he’d still failed. After his downfall they’d been scrapped, dumped in remote places with all their weapons striped, neutered. That had been the only time they’d come near here: as carcasses to be abandoned in woods and on the moors, like the so-called Graveyard near the Border Forest.
 

Now there was one here, back from the dead.

And they had it. Round Up had a tank.

At four o'clock I sloped off, heading home. Although there were some kids making a racket on Back Road I didn’t respond. They were running around in the mist. Kicking a turnip against a door. Being part of Round Up wasn’t something I’d picked or enjoyed so once off duty I turned a blind eye. Anyway, compared to Nico and his pals having an armoured vehicle, a few lads mucking around didn’t seem important.

I headed across town with the damp settling on my jacket as the sounds from the harbour drifted over the building: shouts from workers and the clatter of ropes and pulleys. The occasional thud as something fell. I came to Clubb Road and walked up, past the ancient Victorian houses and stumps of trees that had once lined the road. I came to the place I rented and went round the back, unlocked the wooden gate and went into the yard. As ever it was damp and the drains smelled of rotting food. Beyond the yard was the overgrown garden that belonged to the Tommy, the owner who lived downstairs. Gardening wasn’t really his thing. Sounds came from his place, muted guitar playing. A gruff voice singing along. He was trying to play some old pop song. Drunk as usual.

Before I went up I checked on the bike, pulling the tarpaulin off, putting a hand to the fins on the engine, tapping the tank just below the word Triumph. There was a ding from the tank with its tiny quantity of fuel, the bootleg juice I’d scrounged. Chips marked the paintwork on this forty-year-old machine, 2013 vintage. Even the replacement forks were tarnished, one seal seeping fluid. The carbs were missing, now sitting up in the flat awaiting my attention. I’d pulled them off yesterday evening after getting back, giving me something to tinker on with. Take my mind off the events. Even though it had once been fitted with injectors and all that electronic stuff, I’d converted it last July after the cheap bio-eth got the better of the original setup. That and the loom rotting away. Now even the carbs were playing up. Age caught up with everything.
 

I locked the gate and made my way up the steps. The wood creaked under my weight. As I fumbled with my keys there was a noise from Tommy’s flat. A dull thud. Then he swore and started singing again.

My living room smelled of petrol and damp. The carbs lay on the table, parts scattered around them. There was a service manual on the arm of my one armchair, left open partway through. A hole in the carpet marked a path from door to armchair.
 

I needed the bike back on the road for later. But first I needed to eat. I pulled together what almost resembled a chilli using some mince, onion and spices I’d bought at the quayside. I ate sitting with the bowl on my knee, facing the window. I read the service manual as I spooned the food into my mouth. Forkful after forkful until it was finished. Then I sat back and stared out at the mist that rolled up from the quayside and hung over the houses and disused park opposite. For a moment the fog cleared and I could see over the park and down onto Faeston: the roofs that sloped off towards the river and harbour that split the town in two. The town was built around the harbour and river that ran down to it. South Side was across the bridges, a hotchpotch of run down hotels and shops and offices that sloped upwards towards the distant moors. That was where the track was, where I went racing.

 
To my left were the wind turbines, just ticking over, and beyond them the sea. The freezing North Sea. Framing the harbour was High Town, the best part of Faeston with its tidy buildings and clean streets.
 

The mist closed in again. All that was visible were the ghosts of the houses opposite.

I went through into the kitchen, dumped the bowl in the sink and rinsed it. Tommy’s singing got louder.
 

There were plenty of home comforts here. After being on the road it was luxury. Occasionally there was even hot water: there were solar panels that had been fitted by Tommy’s parents when he was a kid. They’d been forward-thinkers his folks, also putting in wood-burning stoves and planting the garden with saplings to provide fuel.
 

Some people had done that back in the twenties, as the economy unravelled, as The Collapse started to fall on the so-called civilised world. There were business failures and runs on banks, power cuts. Fuel prices that shot up. Hospitals and schools run by volunteers.
 

When gangs started to assert themselves there was mention of martial law but the military were bogged down in the Middle East trying to hang onto a share of dwindling oil supplies. Every army in the world was camped out there until it became clear there was no point. That the game was over.

After the coalition fell apart in 2034, that was it. Neither depleted army nor the crackpot political parties with their quick fixes were up to running the country. For a while it was chaos then it settled down. Towns like Faeston went for committees, making their own rules, establishing some semblance of order. Getting thugs like Round Up to do their dirty work.

Tommy’s folks had tried to see him through all this. They’d probably thought they were setting him up all right, not guessing how far things would fall apart. That he’d lose most of the cash when his bank folded. Spend the rest on booze. That was why he needed me as a lodger, as he’d told me the day I moved in.
 

I finished the washing up and started work on the carbs. Bit by bit I reassembled them, setting then up according the notes I’d taken when I’d striped them. On the last few runs out the Triumph had stalled and misfired. Backfiring on the overrun. Not good. Maybe a clean was all that was needed.

At last they sat reassembled on the table.
 

I went to get ready for the evening. For the race.

In the bedroom I opened the wardrobe, pulling out my spare boots and trousers. At the bottom was the hatch. The hatch with all the bad stuff.

For a minute I stood there, immobile.

Maybe this time I’d let myself ignore it. Not go through the ritual.

Then I lifted the hatch, drawing out two bags. One clinked as I slid it out.
 

I lay them on the bed and opened the lighter one first, flattening out the paper that was inside, all those documents I’d hung onto. There were the charts and maps. The plans and cross-sections of HMS Gehenna, the last sub the UK had made. The one loaded up with weapons that still was out there now, somewhere waiting to be found.
 

All I had were bits of paper but they'd cost so much. A lot of people.
 

After staring at them for some time I opened the second bag and took out the shotgun, its sawn-off barrel rough and scratched. Without thinking I knelt on the floor, sliding it into my mouth. The end of the gun tasted of metal. The sawn-off barrels rough on my tongue, sulphurous. I closed my eyes and pulled the triggers.
 

The gun clicked once, then again. I held onto it, staying there for a moment.
 

This was something I did. Something that happened. It didn’t mean anything. It was just something.

I eased the gun out of my mouth, felt its weight, swung it around. Then slid it away. I bundled the Gehenna stuff up as well and dropped both bags into the hatch.

With the ritual over I grabbed my leather jacket and helmet. Shut the wardrobe.

That was enough messing around for tonight.

As I picked up the carbs from the living room I heard a piece of furniture fall over downstairs. Shouting.

The carbs took a while to fit, as I struggled in the fading light, lining them up, getting the cable in place, slipping on the race filters. Once I’d run fuel through them I thumbed the starter. It churned over, slow then faster, a cough from the exhaust before it chimed into life, the revs rising up as smoke billowed around me, off into the low vegetation of the garden: the stumps of trees Tommy had clear-felled. I held onto the choke until it settled into a rough idle. It picked up on the throttle, dropped down again. Rose and fell in line with the twist grip.

It seemed to run all right so I picked up the helmet stashed with the bike, unlocked the gate and rode round to the front of the house. I parked it with the engine running, as it wobbled on its side-stand. I pulled on the lid then locked the gate. One of the few rules of the race was that we had to wear helmets.

The fog had drifted away and been replaced by a cold breeze. I rode off across down, over West Bridge, the one untouched by the tank, but rather than go into town I went up Hill Road at the other side of the river, to the track. The lane where we raced. The bike’s engine ran all right. There was a flat spot at low revs. Some hesitance picking up. But it revved through clean enough, pulling strongly at the top end as I made my way up the hill. Hopefully enough for tonight.
 

I went to the start line at the western end of the track. It shrank off into the distance, to a pine tree whitewashed to mark the finish line. Beyond it, in the distance, were the wind turbines, stilled now. Beneath them lights lit houses, row up row that led down to the quayside with the motionless ships and their forest of masts.
 

There were several bikes waiting: two big Japanese machines and an Italian. The thirteen-hundred Suzuki was a regular. At its prime this bike would have been unbeatable, but thirty years of poor servicing had taken its toll. It rattled and hunted, giving off a stream of smoke as it misfired. Next to it was a Kawasaki. Similar capacity, similar condition. And there was the Ducati, tidy but only an eight-hundred. There were rules on capacity but they were quite vague. The Scrambler was a shade over eight-fifty so that meant it could go in the middleweight class. If I was daft enough I could go against the bigger bikes. That was my choice. The two big machines that were here tonight were ropy but still would knock out a lot of power. I’d always avoided them in the past. There were easier ones to beat.
 

I waved to Starter Lad, dressed in his usual trainers and T-shirt from a long-gone football team. Against the fence was a rough blackboard. He chalked my name on the list, recognising me as a regular. I was down for race two against the Ducati.

As the two big Japs lined up I parked at the side. Several others bikes rode up, seedy lightweights too small for me to race: Honda and Daelim singles. There were a few people hanging around, spectators. There’d be more at the other end, where the bets were made.

Starter Lad went over to a funnel attached to a fencepost. It was connected to a piece of metal tubing that ran along the top of the fence to the far end. A whistle on a piece of string hung down beside it. He blew the whistle into the funnel and twisted his head round to listen. There was a muffled voice as the fella at the finish line acknowledged him.