The following short story is a prequel to my debut novel, The Messiah Caravan, which is available on Amazon for only £2.99!
Baptism of Fire
‘Mama. Mama. Do you believe in god, mama?’
‘No, little one.’
‘Why not?’
Mama Blossom put down her pen and massaged her eyes.
‘You don’t need a reason not to believe in god, Plum. You only need a reason if you do.’
‘Why?’
‘Just because.’
‘Why?’
‘Asking someone why they don’t believe in god is like asking, Why don’t you smell of onions? I don’t smell of onions because I don’t smell of onions.
‘But, mama, sometimes you do smell of onions.’
Mama Blossom stuck her tongue in her cheek and looked down at her daughter.
‘Why don’t you go bother your pappy?’ she said.
‘He told me to come bother you.’
‘Course he did, the layabout.’
‘Mama.’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s a layabout?’
‘What do you think it is?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Break it down, little one. Take your time.’
‘Someone who lays about?’
‘Bingo!’
Mama Blossom turned back to her desk and picked up her pen. Sweeping away a pile of pistachio shells that had accumulated on her desk, she pretended to focus on the blank piece of paper before her.
‘Mama. Mama!’
‘What!’
‘What’s a bingo?’
Mama Blossom turned to face her with maniac eyes.
‘What?’ said Plum.
‘Come here.’
‘No,’ said Plum, backing up. She started to giggle.
‘Come here!’
Mama Blossom’s chair went screeching backwards, tipped and toppled, clattering against the floor. Plum turned and hightailed it out of her mama’s office, screeching with demented joy. Her mama caught up with her on the landing and picked her up slantwards. Dragging up her top, she commenced a torrent of raspberries on her belly and Plum wriggled and hollered but tried nothing to escape. In her mama’s arms, she played out the happiest of deaths.
‘Come on, let’s check on your pappy.’ said Mama Blossom, throwing Plum up on her shoulders. ‘I best be getting to work.’
Plum rode her mama’s shoulders down the landing of their cold-water flat, the old-world wallpaper peeling away like the bark of silver birch all about them. Plum had her fingers in her mama’s ears and her mama was laughing and screwing her head this way and that trying to evade those little earwiggy menaces. At the end of the landing, her mama pummelled her pappy’s door with the ball of her fist and entered before he could request an embargo of such an action.
You don't need a reason not to believe in god, Plum. You only need a reason if you do.
Inside, there was not one man, but two. Whilst Cherry Blossom remained on the bed, lying on his side with his manhood jabbing up against his belly button, another man was hopping up and down trying to don his skinny jeans.
‘God sake, Cherry,’ said Mama Blossom, reaching up to seal a hand around her daughter's eyes. ‘I got to get to work.’
‘And what do you think I’m doing?’
‘Being a selfish… Cover your ears, little Blossom. Being a selfish cunt is what you’re being. You know I have my keynote today. Turn this trick and get your daughter some breakfast.’
Cherry’s client sidled by Mama Blossom and made his way down the landing.
‘Courtney!’ shouted Mama Blossom.
‘Yes, miss,’ said the client, turning. He was a young, pretty man with a lip ring and his eyes were blacked with mascara.
‘I expect your essay on Luther and the Edict of Worms to be on my desk by the end of the day.’
‘Yes miss.’
He bowed his head and left, pulling on his T-shirt as he went. As soon as they heard the door close, Mama Blossom turned to Cherry and said, ‘Don’t fuck my students.’
‘Mama, what’s fuck mean?’ said Plum.
‘Who said you could uncover your ears?’
‘I had to so that I could hear when it was safe to listen again.’
‘Is that so?’
Mama Blossom swung Plum off her shoulders and set her down on the floor of her pappy’s bedroom beside his strewn clothes. Cherry was still sprawled on the bed, naked as you like. The new sunshine was streaming through the rotted blinds, rendering him part-zebra. Mama sighed.
‘I need you to take care of things whilst I’m gone,’ she whispered to Plum.
‘I can hear you!’ was Cherry’s boorish response.
Mama spat cobra venom out her eyes.
‘Don’t worry, mama,’ said Plum. ‘You can count on me.’
‘Good girl,’ she said. Then she kissed her face once, twice, and left.
Plum idled, toeing the skirting boards with her boot. She could hear her mama bustling about, packing her bag, scrubbing her teeth. Then came the jangle of keys and the door swung shut on their apartment and she and her father were pitched into silence.
In her mother's arms she played out the happiest of deaths.
‘So, what do you want to do?’ said Cherry.
‘Why don’t you put some clothes on, papa.’ said Plum, and she walked from the room.
Plum was frying up a storm when Cherry finally emerged from his room. She was on her tiptoes, watching the eggs spit and pop, when he came flouncing into the kitchen like a petulant teenager dressed in drainpipes and a black, old-world T-shirt that had the word KISS printed across it in bold red letters. Plum could tell he had oiled his long, auburn hair because it was shimmering in the window light and it flowed across his face over one eye so that he had to keep flicking his head to clear his vision.
Cherry dropped himself into his chair and crossed his arms. A black coffee was steaming in front of him. He reached and took a sip and cursed under his breath.
‘Careful, it’s hot,’ said Plum, without taking her eyes off the eggs.
Plum could hear the strain on the chair as he slouched back in it, huffing and puffing. Her heart started drumming in her chest. She recognised that she was starting to get angry, so she closed her eyes and breathed through her nose, just as her mama had showed her. Cool, she picked up the frying pan with both hands and carried it to the chipped Formica dining table in the middle of their little kitchen. She spatulated three fried eggs onto Cherry’s plate and then four onto her own.
‘Excuse me!’
‘What?’
‘Why do you get an extra one?’
‘When you cook, papa, you can do yourself as many as you want.’
‘Give it to me.’
‘No.’
Cherry shoved his plate away from him and looked out the window. His displaced fork teetered over the edge of the table, dropped and jingled against the floor. Shaking her head, Plum returned her attentions to her breakfast. She took a pinch from the pot and rained down that salt from on high. Then she reached and got herself a triangle of bread from the plate in the centre of the table and started wiping up some yolk onto it. Taking a bite, she closed her eyes and gave an animated, Mmmmmm. Cherry looked at his daughter and down at his plate. He looked like he was about to start blubbing. Instead, he raked his plate back towards him, picked his fork off the floor, and started shovelling those eggs down his gullet.
‘What a glorious day. These disastrous towers we call home have never looked lovelier.’
Cherry was reclining on his chair, gazing out the window at the stacked tenements of New Sodom. The plate before him was all but licked clean and he had a nice little bread-belly going on. His skin-tight T-shirt rode up high above his belly button.
‘Someone’s feeling better,’ said Plum.
‘There’s nothing like a full belly to restore one’s faith in the world. I’ve always said that. Be a darling and get papa’s cigarettes.’
Clutching her own swollen belly, Plum waddled on over and retrieved her pappy’s smokables from the windowsill where Mama Blossom made him stand when she was in and he insisted on smoking. As she dropped them before him, he caught her about the wrist. His hands were delicate as lace.
‘You’re a good girl.’
‘It’s okay, papa.’
He let her go and she returned to her seat. She goggled at him as he drew one of those slender cigs from the packet and kissed it between his lips. Papa’s starlet cigarettes, that’s what Mama Blossom called them. When Plum had asked her what a starlet was, her mama had thought for a moment and said, ‘A false woman.’
Striking a match, Cherry held it before him and let it burn a full five seconds before deciding it was the right time to lean in and share of its fire. He removed the cigarette and blew a kiss at the match to put it out.
‘You want one?’
Plum snapped back to reality, blinking, as though she’d been hypnotised.
‘No,’ she said.’
‘You sure? You’re eyeballing mine pretty hard.’
‘I’m ten, papa.’
He stuck out his bottom lip and nodded. Then he said:
‘You’re right. If you’ve made it this far, why start now.’
After breakfast, Cherry took them both to a dive bar that just so happened to sit opposite the University of New Sodom, where Plum’s mama worked. It was the only reason Plum didn’t mind going. It was an excuse to look upon those high university walls that encircled the campus like a prison and imagine all the cool things her mama was doing within: making big finds, giving lectures, saying really clever things over coffee.
The university never used to be here, in the city. Back in the old world the campus was a sprawling little village on the outskirts of town, by where the canal runs. But now that place had been eaten by the desert; or so her mama said. The devil of New Sodom didn’t like them being so far away. Smart people needed to be watched. Her mama didn’t like to talk about it.
On the walk to the dive bar, the streets were lined with junkies who sat in a line against the shuttered shops with their hoods up like a queue of hobo friars. The heady scent of the bazooka whiskey, which was the staple of the unfortunates at this time, rolled up off the sidewalk like gasoline fumes.
Other dandies might find cause for concern in such a place, but not Cherry. These were his people. Indeed, it was not uncommon for him to blow a kiss at some toothless joe all balled up in his rags and for the joe to say something like, Oh! Bless you, Cherry Blossom. For he had been just another face in the line at one time, until he shagged his way into higher society.
They turned down a back alley. Ahead, a neon sign shivered in the gloom. BAR. The sign’s arrow pointed down a concealed staircase, out of which rose the smell of alcohol, alcohol that had already passed through the human conduit.
They were welcomed by a kid wearing a green paisley neckerchief. He could barely see over the high bar; so when he heard their footsteps resounding down the stairwell, he hopped atop his box.
‘Cherry! Good to have you back.’
‘Mac, it’s good to be back.’
They held each other’s fingertips briefly.
‘This is my daughter.’
‘An honour!’ he said, placing a hand over his heart. He was not three summers her senior, but he regarded Plum with doting eyes, like she were an infant and he a bonafide adult. Turning back to Cherry, he said, ‘Are you looking for a game?’
‘Mac, it’s a shame they don’t let you play, because you just read my mind.’
Mac put his slender fingers to his temples.
‘Something else is coming to me.’
He jumped down off his box and went rummaging down below the bar. He popped up a moment later with a curvy glass filled with a cloudy yellow drink. The rim of the glass glittered with pink salt. Beside the glass he set a saucer with a peeled lime in its entirety.
‘One margarita, made with corn whiskey instead of tequila, rimmed with old-world Himalayan rock salt, served with a whole lime.’
‘Mac, you truly are a prodigy,’ said Cherry. Then, turning to Plum and presenting the order, he said, ‘This is what got me through my time on the streets. Not that...’ He dismissed the booze with a flutter of his hand. ‘This!’ He picked up the lime and took a bite. He sighed and shook his head when that sharp citrus shivered up his tongue, as though it had activated a memory long dormant. Seeing the look of perplexity on his daughter’s face, he said, ‘Keeps away the scurvy. A gigolo needs his pearly whites.’
A poker game was operating in the corner, the table decorated with a mountain range of rainbow coloured chips, some participants commanding veritable Everests, others with piddly hillocks. Cherry went and pulled up a chair. The players greeted him with grunts and nods as they were on the tail end of a sixteen-hour session. The only player truly woke among them was a colossal woman dressed all in black like a frontier priest. She wore a fedora atop her head with a buckle trim wound about the crown. The wide brim cast her face in shadow and her eyes glittered out of the darkness. As Cherry sat, there was a heavy pause. Then she addressed him.
‘You’ve got some nerve, Cherry Blossom.’
‘A pleasure as always, Saint Helga.’
‘How much is it you owe me?’
‘More than what I’ve got in my pocket, I can tell you that much.’
Saint Helga sucked her teeth. Cherry noticed her hand gliding towards the silver magnum holstered at her hip.
‘Look! Helga. Baby. I’m here to play. By the time I’m done, I’ll have your money. Trust me! What have you got to lose?’
She flared her nostrils. All watched only her. Awaiting her decision like she were a Roman emperor deciding the fate of a gladiator. It was then that Plum took a step forwards out of the gloom and Cherry raised a hand to stay her. Saint Helga’s eyes flicked to the girl and then back to the man. Then she took a deep breath and set her hands back atop the table. She regarded the old boy to her right who, in trembling hands, clutched the deck of cards to his heart.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she spat. ‘Deal.’
Plum sipped a grape soda and watched the game from a bench that ran against the far wall. To her right, a line of people sat along the same bench. None looked to be with another; they all sat a little apart. After a while, Plum noticed a young man in a pink dressing gown mince in from a side door and lead away she who sat at the furthest end of the bench. At that, Plum decided to go sit at the bar instead.
As she crossed the floor, her pappy was scraping in a massive pot. On top of the mound of chips sat a pair of dark grey revolvers, the losing party having gambled away his guns.
The loser spat on the floor.
‘Don’t be bitter, sweetheart,’ said Cherry, furrowing his brow and smiling sadly.
‘You’re lucky you have my iron. I’d shoot you dead.’
‘For why, pray tell?’
‘You’re a goddamn cheat.’
‘Oh really?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Present your evidence.’
The loser shuffled in his seat and wrinkled up his face.
‘No one can make that call straight up,’ he said. ‘That little bitch of yours is peeping for you.’
Chairs screeched as all at the table turned to regard Plum. Caught off guard, she froze in the middle of the drinking hall. The silence was so profound, she could hear the fizzing of her soda.
‘That’s not evidence,’ said Cherry. ‘That is the opinion of one who lacks imagination.’
The loser stood and raised his fists. Cherry fumbled with one of his newly won revolvers. Before anything stupid could happen, Saint Helga slammed her fist down on the table. Everything jumped. Drinks, chips, players. Everything.
All remained in a tableau of their game gone wrong. They waited for Helga to speak. When she didn’t, the loser lowered his guard and wiped his sleeve across his nose.
‘Sorry, Helga,’ he said.
Then he sat back down.
Saint Helga took a deep breath through her nose and cracked her knuckles against the palm of her other hand.
‘Cherry,’ she said, learning back on her chair. ‘That sure was a nice call. But perhaps your daughter wouldn't mind waiting for you outside until you’re finished.’
Cherry coughed in this throat. Then he looked at Plum and jutted his chin at the exit.
Plum left them to their silly game.
Plum rattled around the alley, kicking the dirt. Refuse was stacked in a pyramid at the far end, reeking in the summer heat. For kicks she launched a moonshine bottle at it and watched as the whole stack of garbage erupted into life as the rats went scarpering.
She was quickly bored with the rank alleyway and strolled up to the street to take a peek at the University of New Sodom over the way. A vagabond man was sat at the mouth of the alley, huddled in his tatters, and he begged her for something, anything. For what did people even carry in this brave new world? Plum went fishing in her pockets and found a stick of gum she had robbed from her pappy long ago. Sometimes she liked to fetch it out and smell it when she was lying in her bed on nights when the pungency of the city denied her sleep. She weighed the little oblong of foil in her palm. Then she sighed and handed it down to the vagabond. He received it with tears in his eyes. Unwrapping the foil, he broke off half and inserted it into his toothless, boil-ridden mouth. The other half he stowed in his rags. Plum watched him a moment as he gummed his gift. Then she said, ‘Don’t swallow it. It will stick in your belly,’ and she walked on down the street.
She crossed the road and walked beside the university, tracing a finger along the high walls that towered above her and which were crowned with coils of barbed wire. Why did her mama agree to work in such a place? She always said it was because it once stood for something; and would perhaps one day stand for it again. When she’d asked her mama what that thing was, her mama had said freedom. Freedom of thought.
‘I don’t understand,’ Plum had said. ‘How will you ever think of a way to be free if you are not free to think?’
‘That is what I’m trying to figure out.’
‘Why bother? Why don’t you come play with me instead?’
At that her mama had dropped her face into her hands and couldn’t stop crying.
‘Don’t cry, mama,’ Plum had said. ‘It’s okay. We can play later.’
As she approached the university gates, she could hear a commotion. Sprinting the last of the way, she reached the wrought iron gates. Locked. She hung off them like a monkey in a cage and watched the scene unfolding on the other side. A crowd of hundreds of academics were being harangued by armed men dressed all in black. They were being jostled and shoved, shepherded into one big frightened mass. She searched frantically for her mama but the melee was too dense. A line of black 4x4s were pulled up along the verge. Plum knew to whom they belonged. Everyone did. The homeless called them the angels of death. For they would come rolling by at night, the passengers unloading their machine guns out of their windows to a chorus of hysterical laughter. It was the devil. Plain and simple.
The door went on one of those black 4x4s and out stepped a reed of a man dressed all in gold like an idol. His yellow three-piece suit reflected the sun, creating a scintillating haze, making him hard to look at. His incandescence was such that sundogs sat either side of him, joined by a thin halo of light. He wore so much grease in his black hair that it broiled like tar atop his head. And above his lip was a moustache made of two slanting black lines, so refined it looked drawn on.
In his childlike hands he clutched a pencil and a little pad, like an old-world journalist. He paced, tapping the pencil against the pad; something was annoying him. Then he unscrewed his face and said, ‘Travesty, that’s it,’ and scribbled something in his pad. After this, he nodded to one of his guards who fired his machine gun into the air to achieve silence. It was achieved.
It was the devil. Plain and simple.
‘My dear sweet brainy boffins,’ said the yellow devil, reading from his notepad, addressing the crowd of academics. He was shaking his head as though he regretted his being there. ‘What a time we have had together! We have achieved so much. So much! For a moment, I truly thought we had learned to co-exist. But, alas, I am sure you know why I am here. Several among you are making a… how to put it… travesty of my organisation. I know the recent protests that have dogged our fair city are being organised by turncoats in your ranks. I just don’t know who. Seeing as none of you have seen fit to identify these conspirators, I must do away with you all. I thank you for your service. Goodbye.’
The academics began to beg and plead. Please! Please! No! If we knew we would tell you! The devil beckoned to his men and they raised their weapons. Then a mighty cry came from within the group of academics that stalled proceedings.
‘Wait! Wait! Damn you, Lucifer!’
The yellow devil held up his hand to stay his men. Like the Red Sea in those tales of old, the academics parted, and there was Plum’s mama, striding to the fore. Plum pressed her face to the bars of the gate. She wanted to call out. To tell her mama to take her home. But it was like there was a clenched fist in her throat that refused to let go.
‘And who might you be?’ said the yellow devil.
‘You know who I am. I am why you are here.’
‘I see.’
‘Quit this nonsense. You have what you want. Let them go.’
‘What I want? Oh no. None of this is what I want. What I want is for people to do as they are told. What I want is for people to listen.’
‘Look. I’m standing here, aren’t I? I have listened.’
‘Only because you had to.’
Mama Blossom shook her head. He was right.
‘Let them go, Lucifer. You need them.’
‘No. I don’t think so. How can I trust any of you now? How do I know you’re not just some patsy?’
‘Because… I…’
‘It’s just easier this way.’
Plum never could recall what happened next. All she could remember was running, her hands over her ears, the vagabonds that lined the street dispersing like a flock of raggedy pigeons before her. Turning down the alley, she took the stairs down to the bar in great leaping bounds so that when she reached the bottom she ran into the far wall and knocked herself dizzy. She dredged herself up off the ground and stumbled into the bar. When the heavy door closed behind her, she marvelled at how quiet it was in here compared to outside. It was as though her ears needed popping.
All turned as she entered. All except her father and the loser, who were locked in another hand together.
‘Papa!’
‘Not now,’ said Cherry, holding up a finger. ‘Okay, I call. One pair. Go on, show me your nothing.’
Blood flooded the loser’s face and he stood and made to draw his guns but his hands danced over nothing for his holsters were empty. Cherry picked up one of the loser’s revolvers out of his lap and aimed it at him.
‘Poor thing. Did you forget?’
The loser held up his hands.
‘I’m done,’ he said. And he stormed past Plum and out of the bar.
As Cherry was laughing and raking in his chips, Saint Helga left the table and went to Plum’s side. Kneeling, she pushed the brim of her hat up with her thumb. Though her face was mean, her eyes were kind. Plum was both sweating and shivering and her brown skin was turning grey before Saint Helga’s eyes.
‘Hello, little Blossom, do you need some help?’
Plum had her eyes on the floor. She pursed her lips and nodded, tears pooling in her eyelids.
‘Okay. I’m going to help you. But first, will you come and sit with me at the bar?’
Plum nodded.
‘Good girl.’
Saint Helga took up the child’s hand in her own and led her to the bar.
‘Do us a water, Mac,’ she said, as she gently lifted the girl onto the barstool.
At this point, Cherry had cottoned that something was going on and he came over in a bustle.
‘Plum, what’s hap—’ he began, but Saint Helga raised a finger at him and he fell back without another word.
Mac the bar boy set a glass of water down and retreated also.
‘Here. Try to drink a little of this.’
Saint Helga handed Plum the glass and she held it in both hands but she did not drink it. Her eyes remained downcast. The glass vibrated in her hands.
‘How can I help?’
Plum started to sob.
‘That’s okay. Take your time.’
‘I lost my mama.’
‘Can you remember where you last saw her?’
‘Right now.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know. She just disappeared.’
Saint Helga and Cherry exchanged glances.
‘Okay. What we’re going do is this: you’re going to have a few sips of that water and then we’re going to find out where your mama went. Does that sound like a good plan?’
Plum nodded and touched the glass to her lips.
‘Good girl.’
Saint Helga left Plum crying in her father’s arms and went to speak to one of the players at the table. He was reclining on his chair, head back, his silver dreadlocks so long that they reached to the floor and coiled around like rope. Snores rolled in and out of his nose. On the table before him sat a rusted, old-world kazoo that he had fashioned into a makeshift marijuana pipe and a strand of aromatic, white-grey smoke pirouetted up out of the bowl.
‘Banjo.’
Nothing.
Saint Helga kicked a table leg. He jumped awake, snorting.
‘Banjo, can I have a word?’
He blinked and licked his lips. Then he nodded and rose from his chair. She led him over to a dark corner of the bar.
‘You still a caretaker over at the uni?’
‘Yeah. Biosciences. Why? They haven’t been chasing after me, have they? I’m meant to be there now.’
Saint Helga shook her head.
‘Something’s not right. We need you to get us in there.’
... it was as if they were risen into hell.
The four of them left the bar together. Banjo leading the way; Cherry carrying Plum, her arms around his neck; Saint Helga bringing up the rear. As soon as they broke the seal of the heavy bar door, they knew something was wrong. All knew a searing heat and a dense, acrid stench, like that of a tyre fire. When they reached the top of the staircase, it was as if they were risen into hell.
Inside the walls of the university, all was a raging inferno. Colossal funnels of black smoke stood against the sky, obscuring the sun. All about was a tiger patterned haze and white-hot embers danced in the vortexes of heat. Plum turned to look and the flames shuddered in her black eyes.
None said anything. All just watched the fire burn. Then Saint Helga stepped forwards, putting herself between they and the fire.
‘Follow me,’ she said.
Saint Helga led them out of the alley and along the road, which was now deserted and wavered in the orange heat like a mirage. She kept her hand rested on the handle of her silver magnum and her sharp eyes monitored every inch of that waking fever dream. Leading them down a series of backstreets, they eventually came to a line of forgotten garages set back from the road. All had their doors missing and looked to have been ransacked long ago. But as they neared, one stood out as peculiar. As they closed in on this particular garage the image of its interior grew more and more granulated until it became apparent that some talented graffiti artist had decorated it to look as such. Saint Helga knelt down and undid a padlock that hid in a clump of weeds at the base of the garage door. Raising the shutter, therein was a motorcycle and sidecar.
‘Quickly,’ she said.
They hurried inside and she pulled the shutter back down, pitching them into total darkness, their heavy breathing the only sound. A match flared and the rest watched as Saint Helga lit an oil lamp and hung it from a nail overhead.
‘Look, you three,’ she said. ‘You need to leave town. I don’t imagine this purge is over and you are all affiliated with that place. If you stay, you won’t be safe. Considering what we’ve witnessed today, I don’t think I’m being overdramatic.’
No one replied. In the gloom they resembled a ragtag of solemn ghosts. Saint Helga knelt before Plum.
‘I’m sorry, little Blossom, it looks like we aren’t going to find your mama. Nod your head if you understand.’
Plum hesitated. When she blinked, a tear cut a greasy trail through the ash that had settled on her face. She nodded.
‘Good girl. There will come a time to think about what that means. But right now, all I want you to focus on is getting out of the city. Can you do that for me?’
This time, Plum nodded straight away. Saint Helga gripped her shoulder.
‘You are very brave.’
Saint Helga stood. Getting out her keyring from her pocket, she started to unwind one off of it.
‘Here,’ she said, dropping the motorcycle key into Cherry’s hand.
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ said Cherry.
‘You can thank me by returning it in one piece.’ She turned to the motorcycle and sighed. ‘I do love that bike.’
They arranged themselves on the motorcycle. Cherry driving with Plum hugging him about the waist. Banjo rode sidecar, the revolvers Cherry had won from the loser down by his feet.
‘Take the road to New Gomorrah. After a few miles you’ll see a farmhouse on your right. You won’t miss it. There ain’t nothing else out there to confuse it with. A woman by the name of Martha Biobaku lives there. Say I sent you. She owes me.’
Saint Helga went and threw up the shutter. The sky beyond the buildings was an orange blaze. A trio of flashlights were strobing on the smoke-filled street and at their sudden appearance the lights converged on the garage.
‘Go!’ yelled Saint Helga, sallying forth and drawing her magnum. She spent all six rounds and two of the flashlights fell to the floor. Throwing herself behind an abandoned refrigerator, she started feeding fresh rounds into the cylinder. A flurry of machine gun fire dinted off the refrigerator and kicked up the hardcore.
Cherry kickstarted the motorcycle and roared forwards. The last gunman adjusted his aim and sent a volley of machine gun fire after them. That is when Saint Helga rose from behind her cover and shot him down.
Plum looked back and watched as Saint Helga approached the gunmen where they lay in their blood and shot them each once more through the head. Then the motorcycle rounded a corner and she disappeared from sight.
The engine popped and sputtered on that old-word motorcycle as they rode through the desolate streets beside a great wall of fire. Ash drifted across the road like a black blizzard and had already settled several inches deep on the macadam. It was as though they were the raggedy last of humanity sent forth to navigate the burning wastes of perdition.
As they turned a corner, they passed two black 4x4s pulled up on the side of the road. Beside which, a group of the devil’s men were loitering, laughing, and watching the inferno as though it were nought but a bonfire. They were all of them totally gonzo on moonshine and when the motorcycle whined past they cheered, grateful for a bit of sport, and they clambered into their cars and set off after them.
Cherry and Banjo exchanged agitated glances and Banjo reached down to collect the revolvers that lay by his feet. Fetching them up, he lay the cold barrels against his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose, trying to pacify his hostile heart.
The 4x4s were upon them now. Against the firestorm they looked like demonic hellriders loosed from the very fires of the holocaust. Cherry swung them down a side street, the sidecar leaving the ground as they made the corner. The side street was narrower and the 4x4s rode abreast, jostling with each other for superiority, the occupants of the cars howling with deranged laughter.
Banjo turned and fired off the first revolver, aiming for the tyres, but the bullets pinged off the grill.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
He dropped the empty revolver down into the footwell and turned with the second. It rattled in his hands. He shut his eyes and turned back, beating his head with his fist.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘I’m going to miss.’
‘Damn it, Banjo!’ screamed Cherry.
Without thinking, Plum let go of her pappy’s waist and span on the seat so that she was facing backwards. She could see the occupants of the cars were drunkenly trying to ready their weapons.
‘Banjo!’ she shouted. ‘Pass me the gun!’
Banjo looked in her direction, his eyes unfocused, then he leant over with the revolver.
‘Right turn!’ called Cherry.
Plum gripped the seat and leant into the turn. Banjo dangled half out of the sidecar as they veered around the bend. Back on the straight, Plum caught up the revolver out of Banjo’s hand and pushed herself against her father’s back to brace herself. As the 4x4s came around the corner at speed, sparks flying as the one ground against a building, a gunman rose out of the sunroof of each car.
Plum took aim at the driver of the right hand 4x4 and fired. She wasn’t prepared for the kickback and the bullet went flying skywards. The gunmen standing out of the sunroofs started crying with laughter and banging the roofs with the flats of their hands. It was all just so funny.
It was as though they were the raggedy last of humanity sent forth to navigate the burning wastes of perdition.
Plum took aim again and all found her effort hilarious; save for the driver at which her gun was pointed, who was calling for his colleagues to put a stop to this nonsense. The driver was ignored. The rest of the gunmen slapped their chins, which at that time, in that part of the world, meant: I am right here. Do your worst!
Plum fired and the windscreen frosted over. The 4x4 banked hard and sideswiped the other and they each pitched into a roll and tumbled over each other in a chorus of exploding glass and metal. The motorcycle drew further away and Cherry called out another turn and then once again they were alone.
They rode out of New Sodom in the light of the evening sun. Plum had her head on her father’s back and he could feel her tears seeping through his T-shirt. He started to hum a nursery rhyme. What one, she couldn’t hear. But she was grateful for the vibrations the humming made against her eyes.
After a couple of miles, the motorcycle sputtered and died and rolled to a stop. They alighted and walked on together without saying a word.
They were wretched and weary and covered head to toe in soot when they arrived at Martha Biobaku’s farmhouse. She was sitting on her porch swing with a boy about Plum’s age, reading him a kid’s book by the light of an oil lamp. Both wore silly grins on their faces. On seeing them, she rose and collected the shotgun propped against the wall behind her. Straddling the boards before her home, she raised the shotgun and hailed them. She was a big woman.
‘State your business.’
‘Saint Helga sent us.’
‘For why?’
‘For help.’
Martha nodded.
‘I saw the fire,’ she said, looking towards the city. The sun had dipped below the earth and now drew a golden bead along the horizon. Plum, Cherry and Banjo just stood there and waited for her to finish her thoughts. ‘I suppose you best come in.’
She stood aside and they sauntered past her into the house. Before crossing the threshold, Plum stopped and addressed Martha.
‘Excuse me.’
‘Yes?’
‘About a mile down the road is a broke down motorbike. It’s Helga’s. She asked us to return it to her and I aim to. But I could use your help.’
Martha smiled at her.
‘You go rest, little one. I'll take care of it.’
Plum nodded and disappeared inside the house.
‘There you are. Everyone’s looking for you.’
It was the following morning. Martha’s boy was pushing his way through the towering corn. Ahead of him, in a little clearing, sat Plum.
‘How did you find me?’
‘I saw the smoke.’
He pointed to the slender cigarette she held between her fingers; it was one of her pappy’s starlet cigarettes.
‘Ma says those things’ll kill you.’
‘Good.’
She took a pull on the cigarette and breathed the smoke out through her nose. Martha’s boy sat himself down.
‘What are you doing?’ said Plum.
‘Just sitting. That okay by you?’
Plum shrugged. Douting out her cigarette, she set it aside for later. In the distance, voices were calling her name. A long time passed where neither child said anything. Martha’s boy lay back on his elbows, watching the sky. Plum lay down on her side, facing away from him, and hugged her knees up to her chest. At long last, without looking at him, she said:
‘What’s your name?’
‘Bo. You’re Plum, right?’
A lengthy silence followed that was eventually broken by the sound of Bo cracking open a nut. Plum’s curiosity got the better of her and she sat up to see what was going on.
‘Pistachio?’ said Bo, offering out a handful of the nuts.
Plum shook her head.
‘Suit yourself.’
Silence fell once more. She watched him grazing on those little green nuts, prizing apart the flimsy shells with his thumbs.
‘My mama loved those,’ she said, after a while. ‘She would eat hundreds of them when she was doing her research or trying to write a paper. I’d find the shells all over the house. She didn’t care; she had more important things on her mind. My mama used to get real tense when she worked. My papa would say we had to walk on pistachio shells around her. Y’know, instead of egg shells. Why you smiling?’
‘You paint a pretty picture.’
Plum returned a brief, faltering smile.
‘Actually, can I have one?’
‘Sure.’
He offered out his hand and she pinched a pistachio out of his palm.
‘Thanks.’
She broke open the nut and pushed it between her lips. It was soft and a little sweet; warm, having been carried in Bo’s pocket. Never before had such a mild flavour activated such a response. Her whole face began to tingle. She knelt over into the dusty, red farmland and began to cry.
‘Mama! Please come back, mama!’
Bo shimmied forwards on his knees and embraced Plum like a shell does the turtle. As he held her, a white butterfly came dancing through the canes. It fluttered by his face and then up, disappearing into the sun. He would realise its significance later that night and tell Plum as they lay top and tail in his bed. She would thank him and go on to dream of butterflies and the following morning she would wake with her mother's love filling her heart and she would cry with happiness.
Right now, Plum continued to scream her bargains at the indifferent earth; begged it to send back what was hers; that which it had no right to take. Bo hugged her the whole time and sometimes he cried with her. The children stayed like this a long, long time.
Eventually, Plum stopped crying. Bo let her go and she unfurled like a metamorphosed animal. She picked up the cigarette half and struck a match and coughed as she inhaled it. Bo handed her his handkerchief and she wiped her face. Handing it back, their fingers touched a moment and she looked up. For the first time she truly saw him and was embarrassed by how pretty he was with his heart-shaped face and his eyes big as saucers.
'I've got loads of hideaways... They'll never find us.'
‘I got no idea what you are going through, Plum. But if you want to talk, I’m here.’
She nodded and took a drag on the cigarette, blowing the black ash off the hot cherry. It didn’t seem like she wanted to speak. But then she did.
‘Saint Helga said I wouldn’t be able to find my mama and that there would come a time to think about what that means. I reckon now is that time. So here goes. My mama is dead. She’s not coming back. It’s as simple and as sad as that.’
Bo was nodding. A tear rolled out of his eye and down his cheek.
‘That is really sad,’ he said, blotting the tear with his hanky.
They both sat in silence and thought about what that meant. When Cherry and Martha shouted their names nearby, they both jumped.
‘I don’t want to go back yet, Bo.’
‘That’s okay. I’ve got loads of hideaways,’ he said, clambering to his feet and holding out a hand to her. ‘They’ll never find us.’
THE END
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