Will Self - The Book of Dave

— Stop! Carl shouted. Stop i! Then, groping for some new fact to dispel this sickening image, he asked, An ve baybee, wot appened 2 í?

— Ded, offcaws, stoan fukkin ded — an me, Eye aint got no fukkin woom no maw neevah. Vair woz no neewoman coz yaw nan woz ded inall, an U, U took Tone wiv U wen U went, diddun U!

Salli Brudi was wailing by now and clawing at her hollow cheeks. Carl reached for her — and once more she recoiled.

Wossup wiv U! she snarled. U go motoraj aw sumffing? U wanna ava krakkat me inall? Wel go on, ven. She tore at her cloakyfing, tore frantically until she ripped it apart to expose a breast lying slack on her corrugated ribcage. Go on! Fukkin av me! Fukkin av me!

Carl — appalled and repelled — shuffled backwards, rose, turned tail and ran away through the woods, plunging into dense patches of pricklebush and whippystalk. He ran along the margin of the Gayt field, then crashed on, tripping over crete rubble and brick piles, ripping the flesh from his knees and elbows. It wasn't until he'd floundered into the deepest portion of the Zön, where the ancient tumuli brooded beneath their bushy covering, that he collapsed to the ground. A crow, disturbed from its roost in an old crinkleleaf throttled by ivy, cawed once and, leisurely whipping the hot air with its oily wings, lifted into the screen. Carl registered neither this nor any other phenomena — he was lost. Lost in tears, lost in grief for Salli, for himself and for Ham.

Carl's robe was tattered and bloodied when he finally found his way back to Antonë and Tyga. He lay on the ground and babbled. Antonë gave him a shot of jack, then, after Tyga had thoroughly licked Carl's wounds, the one-time surgeon dressed them with poultices of selfheal. It wasn't until the third tariff was well advanced that the young dad had recovered himself enough to recount what had happened. Böm meditatively stroked the bum of his chin where his goatee used to be until he had heard everything, then he said:

— What is the matter here? Did Salli speak of the Driver or of the other Hamsters?

— Nah, Carl replied, she sed nuffing, but Eye tellya, maytë, iss bad wotevah í iz. Vey gotta awl B banged up in ve manna. . Vey gotta B.

They spent a fitful night in the clearing, Tyga rousing up many times and waking the two equally nervy humans. At lampon they took stock. Both were in agreement — there was nothing for it, they would have to see what was going down on their manor. After a few miserable spoonfuls of oatie and another slug of jack, they coaxed Tyga up and began their laborious progress; avoiding the easy tracks and keeping to the woodland, they worked their way round to where the dyke dividing the Gayt from the home field joined the Layn.

Fortunately mist had blown in off the lagoon during the night. Even so, as they crept along behind the dyke, they were painfully aware that only its earthen bulk separated them from the full glare of publicity. Carl urged Tyga to keep his belly pressed to the ground, while he and Antonë also went on all fours. It took them many units to reach the point of closest proximity to the manor. Then, with a final soothing caress of Tyga's jonckheeres, Carl instructed the moto to lie still in a furrow, while he and Antonë scrambled up the bank and peeked over.

The scene below impressed itself on Carl Dévúsh with nightmarish immediacy. The Hamsters' manor was gone. Gone like it had never been there before — every brick, flag, rope and thatch bundle of the ancient structures had been removed, leaving behind only seven pod-shaped depressions in the turf to show where the gaffs had once hunkered down. Some hundred paces away, lined up across the little headland that interrupted the smooth curve of Manna Ba, there was a new manor: ten sharp-cornered, four-square semis with gabled roofs. Their bottom halves were of the reddest brick, their tops rendered in white plaster between black beams. Bëfan semis, Carl gasped, Ees mayd em bild bëfan semis. The bëthan semis were laid out in two straight lines of five, divided not by the merry twinkle of running evian but by a severe brick wall that rose up taller than two dads.

It wasn't only bëthan semis that the Hamsters had been building — nor their old gaffs they'd been demolishing. With a shock Böm saw that his own little semi at Sid's Slick was gone — as was the old Shelter. In their stead was a new place of calling over, impossibly large and commanding for this isolate place. It was perhaps thirty paces long and three storeys high. It stood very near the shore, and beside its raw, unpainted sides the stands of blisterweed looked as small as burgerparsley.

There was an even more shocking piece of new construction a few paces beyond this: a huge stockade of rough-hewn crinkleleaf stakes had been hammered into the sod. Inside it the bristly backs of the island's entire moto population were ranked up. Carl counted twenty-three motos together with seventeen mopeds. The motos were restive — snorting and butting against their enclosure — yet, as was the creatures' way when afeared, they made no utterance. Alongside this vile pen there stood the stark rectangle of an elongated moto gibbet — far larger even than that which was customary for the autumn slaughter.

As the two returnees watched, a posse of Hamstermen emerged from one of the semis on the daddy side of the wall and, carefully skirting the mummies' side, made their way over to the Shelter. They carried slopping cans of green paint and were under the direction of:

— A Dryva! Carl blurted out.

However, it wasn't the Driver himself— this one was short and dumpy; his robes were cut in the London fashion, his trainers were high and his mirror dangled from a golden rod. As the work posse reached the new Shelter, it was met by more Drivers who came out from inside, together with a large gang of off-islanders — alien chavs, a posse of Chilmen, and the Lawyer of Chil's chaps. Such a swarm of dads Carl had never known to be on Ham before. It was no wonder Salli looked to be starving — they must be eating all the Hamsters' curried preserves.

Then the Hamsters' own Driver appeared. He limped from his semi leaning heavily upon a staff. Set beside the bustling incomers, he was a diminished figure — bent over, his white hair greasy and unkempt. Fred Ridmun, together with Mister Greaves, emerged from the doorway behind him, and, following the Driver towards the gibbet, Fred called out: Peet! Bert! Billi! The lads detached from the milling crowd and came over. Carl had grown up with these three, and, like him, they had suddenly reached dadhood. They carried themselves erect in a sharp jabber of knees and elbows yet from the way they also shuffled their bare feet and spat their gum juice in the dirt, it was clear that this was to be no welcome task.

Carl realized what was going to happen even before the first moto was prodded out from the pen and came waddling across to where the Guvnor, the Hack and the Driver stood. Awluvem, he groaned. Vare gonna slorta awluvem! For once speechless, Antonë gave Carl's shoulder a squeeze. Billi Brudi, who'd been guiding Lyttulmun by his jonckheeres, now kicked the beast on the back of his leading arm, so he sank down and rolled over on the ground. With no preamble Fred Ridmun unsheathed his blade — clearly, this was to be no ritual killing, no joyfully anticipated collision between men and motos. Billi did not kneel to caress the moto — nor did the Guvnor call over the slaughter run; instead he lunged down and plunged the knife in with a savage dig, as if to proclaim by action alone that this was guilty work. Lyttulmun, frightened and in pain, began to thrash about. Tyga, smelling his wallow mate's blood on the breeze, reared up from behind the dyke, and Carl had to tear himself away from the gory spectacle below so as to calm him and get him to lie down again.