agentblack

"What do you want to do today?"

Davey was whining through the bathroom door. Davey always got up first in the mornings. Once he figured out where I was sleeping he'd start up, nasal voice curling with it's pleading inflection.

I'd given up hiding from him now, took to barricading myself in the bathroom, the only room with a lock. In there, I could ignore him for a little longer. The whiskey helped.

If the lock wasn't on that door, Davey would push his way in, still trying to look unobtrusive as he forced the door past the towels shoved under to provide insulation against his voice.

He'd stand for a little while, trying to look nonchalant leaning against the chipped and mildewed tiles, watching me stare at him.

Davey. Those puny arms and sunken chest. Permanently with his head ducked down, his shoulders hitched up, his eyes always peering off to the sides. The postural relic of a childhood spent ducking pen lids and tin cans.

"Are you awake? What are we doing today?"

Davey. So grateful to stand in your company it made you ashamed. That shy little grin, his top lip hitched up just enough to show you a glimpse of peg like teeth.
Swaying from foot to foot, breathy giggles to himself, soft snorting through his nose.
Davey.

Good for sending into wreckage. That skinny frame ideal for crawling through rubble and collapsed buildings to hook out the contraband that makes life a little easier. Contraband like whiskey.

There's an inch left in my bottle. Not enough to knock me out and give me another couple of hours sans Davey, but enough to give me a gentle buzz for the next hour or so.

I slug it down. Savour the taste though. Ain't no one making stuff like this anymore. Every drop is the last of a dwindling supply. That's what history is now. This is civillisation. A few bottles of spirit, slowly evaporating. You'll never hang onto it, so you might as well gorge yourself on it as much as you can, weep a few tears for it's passing.

Ice Cream. That was the first. The first always breaks your heart the hardest.

I remember three of us solemnly passing a cartoon of chocolate chip around, joint ettiquette extended to dessert. Two hits, pass to the left.

I smeared my fingers around the bottom of the cartoon, getting the last of the thick sugary soup, and remember the last time I had a Mr Whippy. the Last Time I'd ever have a Mr Whippy. Fifteen years old, mortally embarassed by my mother flirting badly with the guy in the van.

I found two cartons of fags back last winter, spent the next sixmonths living like a king. Traded them for firewood, bread, potatoes, even meat.

The trick is knowing where to look, and having the guts to look for it. Most of the big warehouse are ruins now, after the bombing, they're lost in the rubble. The only people who hang around there are the broken types, twisted from the war and the riots and the black outs. Lot of the religious ended that way.

No one knows what they last on out in the ruins, in all that broken concrete. Nothing to eat out there but pigeon and crow, maybe beetles or rats. That's the sort of diet to drive a body desperate.

Davey dances away from the door as I stumble through. Breakfast is a couple of wrinkled apples and a strip of dried brown bacon. I don't mind too much, it'll make the booze fuzz last longer.
We'll need to score this foray. I'm not the type to suit famring, and I'm too late in the year to start besides.

Maybe next year, I'll get hold of some cans of something, maybe get some cigars, trade it up for some seed and a good plot. can't carry on like this. Law of diminishing returns.

I think even Davey knows it. He looks more nervous everytime we go out. I'll send him down a promising hole and he'll glance up at me as he goes, as if he's not sure I'll still be there.

Davey and I head out on horse (A case of Stella each.) It makes it easier carting back loot, now there's no petrol.

We take the low road to town, pass a few homesteads on the way. Sturdy low crofts, out houses and lean-to's cobbled on the outside from twine and pallets. Thatch held in place with mail sacks and binliners.
Early morning, and folks are out feeding chickens or milking goats.

There a few kids here and there, playing in the mud or hanging on their mam's legs. They look peaceful enough. I wonder if their world looks as strange as it does to me. I wonder how many of them can read.

I nod to a couple of fellas on their way back from watching the herds over night.
Feral dogs will try their luck once or twice a night with the cows. They shout out to me, ask me to bring back something special for them.
We all laugh it up, but they know the score. I bring back what I can find, and you have to trade for it.

We reach town just before noon.

The roads are clear. The first couple of years, all the burnt out and bombed out cars that filled the roads got scavenged, ripped up and carted off, rough crafted into junk blades, spear tips and home made machetes. That was back when everything went a bit Lord of the Flies, before people worked out it being king of the trash heap counted for shit if you couldn't eat.

Now all the cars get torn up and reforged as ploughs, shovels, hoes, axe heads for chopping firewood.

Now the only way you can tell there were cars at all is the foam seats pilled up by the sides of roads.

The only types trying to make it on their muscle now are a dying breed. You might have been top bovver boy back when we still had 'leccy, but you can't just go find a burger van now when you get hungry.
I've heard of gangs roaming the 'steads, threatening food out of people, but I've seen enough heads nailed to fenceposts to have figured out that shit ain't paying off as well as you might think it does.

Davey's smart enough to keep quiet. I lead the way, tracing our steps back to our last good find.
A warehouse with one side collapsed, the roof having fallen with it. but the dark triangular tunnel that remains, cardboard boxes of no brand gin. There's enough of a gap that both of us can get under there.
We organise a ragged sort of chain, Davey humping boxes half way, whilst I grab 'em and pack as best I can on the horses.

They're a tough pair, used to ploughing, and it's no hardship for them. The trick is arranging the boxes as best I can in the deep baskets slung either side of them. I can tell we'll be walking back today, there'll no space on the horses.

Davey lets out a yell I hear echo inside the warehouse remains. I duck inside, certain he's gotten himself stuck or trapped. I bump into him coming out, eyes shining. He's clutching five long white cardboard tubes. The print is faded and the tubes stained with mildew, but I can still make out the legend on them through the gloom. Laphroaig. 10 year old.

This is history. It'll evaporate away sooner or later, till eventually no one will remember it. The best thing you can do is drink it down as much as you can stand, and shed a tear at it's passing.

This'll buy me farmland. This'll buy me a pretty wife. This'll buy me favours and respect that'll set me up and last me long enough to raise fat boisterous children.

The trick is to trade right, gauging how much leverage you've got; judging how much you can push, what your goods at your disposal let you get away with.

With this gear here, I'm set. I don't trust Davey with the tubes of Laphroaig. I jam three in my bag, clutch the last two in my fists. I want out of here now. We've pushed our luck as far as it'll go. No sense in sticking around further.

Davey scampers out in front, so it's him that catches a crowbar to the face. He screams and curls foetal, keening like a trapped animal. I step out fast, catch a heavy looking dude, holding the crowbar in his fist like a fat kid holds a crayon.

Whilst davey moans and sobs, Crowbar and me, we size each other up. He's a big fucker, smells like he's been living rough for a couple of weeks. Probably hasn't eaten that good. I've got a blade in one coat pocket and a hammer in the other. I could fuck him up good if I had too, but he'd pay it back just as handy.

Neither of us want that. Things don't look that rosy nowadays for a man with open wounds. Accident and Emergency, antibiotics, these things are happy memories.

Boys like Crowbar usually travel in packs. I chance a quick look round, but don't see anyone. The rest of his boys are probably decorating fence posts somewhere I reckon.

We circle each other a bit longer before we step back. Neither of us is going to fight, but you can't look like a weak sister in a situation like this. Davey's quieter now.

Crowbar nods at the horses all laden down with the no mark gin. "That yours?"

I nod back. I can see where this is going. I think about catching him off guard, getting him in the neck with the blade, but he's too far off to risk tagging, and with my hands full I'd probably smash a bottle of Leapfrog trying. I'm not ready to do that, not yet.

"Gizza a horse and it's gear and I'll let youze piss off."

I shake my head. No way. That's too much loss to absorb. I won't stand on it.
Crowbar get's angry. He shows me the crowbar, shakes that fat kid fist at me.

"You fahkin' want some then?"

I stand my ground. He's bluffing. He backs down, get's quiet, starts thinking. His eye's dart in his head. I have another look at Crowbar.

He looks a lump, but he backed down easy enough. Probably used to getting his own way when he's backed up and looks tough. I wonder if he's ever had to go to the wall. I wonder again about stabbing out his neck, but he's too far away still, and my hands are still full.

Crowbar looks at me too. Eyes flick between the tubes in my hand.
"Wossat?"

No. No No No. This is History. This is precious. This is My Future.
I shrug, act nonchalant.
"Whiskey."

"Gimme them and one of the hosses"
"Fuck Off"

Crowbar gets ugly and comes forward. I step forward. If I have to, I will break these bottles over his head before I stab out his fucking eyes.
Crowbar backs off. He's greedy, but not enough of a fighter to back it up.

But regardless, I'm not getting out of here without it costing me.

"Gissa whiskey an' the hoss"
"No."

I could be here hours. Neither of us are in a position of strength. Lying between us, Davey moans.

Crowbars eyes flick down at Davey.

Davey. Poor skinny Davey. always apologising. Hunched over likes he's always hiding from someone, with laughing through his nose in those breathy little snorts. When everyone was dressing in looted designer gear, he still looked like shit.

Crowbar looks at Davey, then back at me. He's thinking. I can see where this is going. But I want him to suggest it, make it some thing he wants, rather than something I'm offering.

Crowbar looks at me, then the tubes of whiskey. Davey on the ground.
Crowbar pulls at his lip, thinking as he speaks.

"Ow about..." He tails off and looks at Davey.

I play dumb.
"What?"

He's embarrassed. Crowbar points at Davey with his crowbar.
"And the whiskey."

I let him sweat it out for a few seconds, keep him on the back foot before I nod and put the two tubes next to Davey.
I make eye contact with him for a second, before I back off and lead the horses away, toot sweet.

Poor skinny davey, nose smashed across his face, curled up on the rubble. I wonder if he realised just how much he was worth, in the end?

The three remaining bottles of Laphroaig clink in my bag as I make my way back to the 'steads. Still enough history to buy myself a future.