Robert Swindells - Daz 4 Zoe

‘Coming back tonight?’

‘Ah-ha.’

‘Time?’

Ned shrugged. ‘Eleven. Eleven-thirty. Depends.’

‘Use this gate so we can check you in.’

‘Right.’

The guy nodded to his friend in the gatehouse, the pole went up and we were out, whooping and slapping one another on the back as Ned went up through the gears. We headed west till we were clear of Silverdale, then found a cop route going south.

its 2 days after i com 15 i tork 2 Mick my mate. Wot do i do abowt joining Dred, i arst.

i fought you’d never arst, he sez. Mick’s in already, see.

Well i’m arsting now, i sez.

See Cal, he sez. Cal’ll put you strait.

Wears he hang owt, i arst. This is friday morning rite, and we’re off up the school. i reckon its my last time cos i’m jacking it in wen i get in Dred. Our mam wont like it but that’s how it gos. I can rite and reckon and Mister James sez i’d hav no chance in the Veeza-Teeza so wot’s the point? The Veeza-Teeza’s this exam, rite? Once a year exam. If you pass you get a veeza to go to Subby school. You do gud ther and Zap! you’re a Subby. About 2 kids pass each year. If that many.

Once Mister James fought i mite go in 4 it but it dint workout. Aniway who wants to be a Subby when you can be a Dred?

Blue Moon, sez Mick. Tonite. Blue Moon’s this club. Nite club. Bands and strippers and pool and that. Yor spos to be 16 but no 1 bovvers. i bin in lotsa times.

Wot’s he luck like, i arst. Mick larfs. i’ll be wiv you, he sez. i’ll introdooce you. He sez this in a Subby-type voice. Introdooce. He’s a bit of a pillock old Mick, but hes alrite.

Aniway that’s how com i’m in the Blue Moon that nite when these Subby kids com in and screw me up. i mean 1 of them dos. i’ll fill you in later, rite?

I’d never seen a city before, except on telly. You see them sometimes on the news. Glimpses shot from fans or moving vehicles when there’s been a big robbery or a riot. Fan’s helicopter in Chippy talk. Helicopter has four syllables and they can’t handle it. That’s what Dad says, anyway.

You get these glimpses and you can see they’re a mess. And that’s how Rawhampton looked as we approached it. Derelict houses, some burned out. Cracks in the road with weeds poking through. Piles of brick and glass and cement everywhere, all smashed up. It was hard to imagine what it must’ve been like in the old days, with cars and crowds and big stores and a million lights, like cities you see in ancient movies. Gran says she remembers the city that way but it’s hard to imagine.

Anyway, there we were, cruising in through the outskirts and it was like dusk and you couldn’t see too well. None of the street lights was working and Ned had to slow right down to keep from ramming piles of trash or driving into a hole or something. There were holes everywhere. Deep ones, full of slimy water. Ned switched on the headlamps, but it was that weird time halfway between daylight and dark when headlamps aren’t much help.

There didn’t seem to be any people about at first. Just dogs. You hear about the dogs on telly, how they hunt in packs through the streets, killing Chippy kids and eating them. You might have heard this sick joke:

Why did the dog eat the Chippy?

‘Cause he was its Pal.

Pal – geddit?

They weren’t in packs, the ones we saw. They were loners, dashing across in front of us with their tails between their legs. Some were pretty big, though, and they were all thin, and you could easily imagine them going for you if you didn’t have the car.

As we drove further in we passed through a so-called residential development – multi-storey apartment blocks scattered across a wilderness of long grass and overgrown pathways. Most of the blocks were doorless and glassless and there was rubbish everywhere. Cans and bottles, plastic bags, filthy mattresses, the skeletons of baby-buggies, you name it.

And people. People leaning in doorways, shuffling along broken paths, framed in unglazed windows. Ragged men with their hands in their pockets and stubble on their cheeks. Slag-bag women with greasy hair and shapeless legs. Thin kids with bare feet and vacant expressions, watching our car go by. I shivered, wondering how people could bear to live like this.

As we left the residential area behind and approached the old commercial centre, I began to wonder how the Chippies could possibly have anything to offer us which was worth the awful risk of being here. If you want to know the truth I was scared. I mean, I knew the city wasn’t going to be Disneyland or anything. I knew that before I came. And everybody knows chippying’s dangerous. They run videos on telly about seven hundred times a night, warning you. One of them shows a car with all four doors open and a shoe lying in the road. Just a shoe. But it was worse than I’d expected and that was because of the eyes. Chippy eyes. What they should do is, they should show a video of Chippies looking at the camera like they looked at us that night. That cold, dead look with something behind it like waiting.

I said to nobody in particular, ‘These clubs. What’re they like?’

Tabby tittered. ‘Dark. They’re dark.’

‘And noisy,’ said Larry, twisting his stringy neck to look around at us. ‘Fantastically noisy.’

‘They’re usually full of smoke, too,’ Ned added. ‘Your eyes start streaming after a bit.’

‘So what’s good about them?’ I pursued. ‘I mean, it seems a lot of hassle just to get deafened, choked and blinded. You could fall in a cement mixer and have all the same stuff going for you.’

Ned laughed. ‘I like it.’ He looked at Tabby through his mirror. ‘Your friend’s a real wit, Tab.’

Tabby nodded. ‘I know. That’s why she’s along.’

‘Anyway.’ The reflected eyes switched to me. ‘You’re about to find out for yourself, Zoe. We’re here.’

Ned steered the car into the curb and stopped. I looked out and saw what looked like a poky old shop in a dilapidated row. Its window was boarded up and somebody had daubed ‘Blue Moon’ across the boards with blue paint. The paint had run down in lines so that the words seemed propped on spindly legs. Beside the window a door stood open and the strip of brickwork between supported a man in dark glasses who was chewing a match.

The man watched us get out of the car. As we approached the door he pushed himself upright and stood with his hands in his pockets, blocking our way.

‘Two bucks,’ he mumbled. ‘Each.’

Ned produced a handful of coins and began counting them into the man’s palm. The guy rolled the match from one corner of his mouth to the other and said, ‘Been saving up, kid?’ Ned was unloading small change on him and I guess he’d have preferred notes. With his shades and thin moustache he looked sort of sinister. I wouldn’t have risked answering back, but Ned said, ‘It’s money isn’t it?’ and the guy just shrugged.

All the time Ned was counting, people kept going in the door. Larry noticed this and said, ‘Hey!’ The man’s eyes flicked up.

‘Whassamarra, kid?’

‘Them.’ Larry pointed at two guys just walking in.

‘What about them?’

‘What about ’em?’

‘They haven’t paid. Why do we have to pay and not them?’

The guy sneered. ‘What they gonna pay with kid – foodstamps? Subbies got all the peanuts.’

Chippies hardly ever get cash. Even I know that, for pete’s sake. For all that he’s the son of a Selectman, Larry can be very dumb sometimes.

When the guy finally let us in we followed Ned along a short passage into a large, crowded room. People sat hunched over little tables with drinks in front of them, and most of the space between was filled with people standing. There was a bar along one wall and an alcove in another, stacked with sound equipment. A DJ was feeding an ancient twindeck. He had the volume so high you felt it through your feet. Near the alcove some people were trying to dance on a raised platform the size of a Kleenex. The atmosphere was ninety percent smoke and there was a nauseating smell whose cause I didn’t want to think about.