Toxic Treacle (5 page)

‘Look at this.' Angel was holding up a piece of paper she'd found in one of the drawers in Tragic's desk. It had a drawing of a baboon hanging by its tail in the top corner and the words: King of Kongs in the centre. King of Kongs was a name Tragic called Monkey sometimes as a joke. He stared at the sheet of paper in her hand. A series of numbers were written in the form of a mathematical equation. The bottom of the paper was torn so that it appeared that the last line was incomplete.

98499 x 9952 = 1258554398

57 x 54 = 5882933

69697 ÷ 8984 = 7979

7366 ÷ 0188 = 995

7298 - 343 = 3509

4

¬9769 + 75

Angel looked at the paper and shook her head. ‘Either your mate's rubbish at maths, or that's some sort of secret message,' she commented.

But, before Monkey had the chance to say more, he heard a sound that filled him with dread. A yelp; distant but distinct. Monkey's heart sank: they'd brought in a dog unit already.

He looked at Angel. ‘You reckon you're good at gymnastics?' She nodded. ‘Well, you're gonna have to be!'

She stuffed the paper into her pocket as Monkey grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room. He ran, half dragging her, down the stairs and out of the back door. Monkey jumped over the fence at the back and Angel followed. Together, they ran across the grounds of the pre-school and neighbouring sustenance patches, vaulting fence after fence. Monkey was surprised that Angel's agility made her a match for his superior speed. He'd assumed that having her in tow would slow him down but, on the contrary, she was easily able to keep up with him and in no way jeopardised their escape. Finally, they slowed to a walk and, once more, adopted the swagger of the hood as they reached the bottom of Angel's road. Outside her gate, Monkey nodded, as he would have done to any other member of the Mooners.

‘Check you later,' he said.

Angel held him with a glare. ‘If there are any repercussions from this, you'd better be ready to take the rap.' She walked down the path towards the house.

He watched her slip into the outbuilding that had once been a garage and emerge in the normal skirt and top of a pre-nurturer. She pressed her eye against the scanner on the door and went in without looking back.

The street lights clunked into darkness and Monkey wandered home, feeling heavy and very much alone.

Angel or Devil in Disguise?

The next day, Monkey was keen to speak to Angel about the previous evening but a curt nod as she pressed the scrap of paper bearing the code into his hand was the only indication that she even knew him, let alone had been huddled in a freezer with him, squeezing his hand for reassurance. If he caught her eye, she looked away; if he approached her in the corridor, she changed direction. She was making it very clear that she wanted to put as much distance between herself and Monkey as possible. Much as he'd expected her to give him a wide berth at school, he was, nevertheless, disappointed and frustrated that she did so.

The code itself had been simple enough to break. He and Tragic had devised a system of communication when they were younger so that they could send secret but innocent messages in school; where to meet up, what time they would play football, whose house they would go to. They used mathematical base ten, starting the alphabet with their favourite number. Monkey's favourite number was nine, but Tragic's was five; therefore, in all his notes, A went under five, B under six; C under seven - right up to Z under zero. Of course, this also meant that K and U were also under number five, so a certain degree of reasoning needed to be applied. Mathematical signs were the spaces between words so that, to anyone finding the notes, they looked like obscure mathematical equations.

When he'd got home, Monkey had lost no time in sitting down and working out what Tragic had written to him.

Enjoy your graduation.

am
at address

below don't come

will find you

when it's safe

t

ombe
mag

Monkey stared at the deciphered code. It made little sense and it certainly didn't answer any of the questions that were running through his head; in fact, it posed more questions than it answered. What did Tragic mean:
will find you when it's
safe
? What address below? And what was the last line that had been torn at both ends? He ran through the alphabet for possibilities: bombe, combe, dombe, fombe - tombe, perhaps? And what was this
mag
? Magazine? Magnum? Magnet? Could that
be the ‘address below' that Tragic referred to? And, if so, was it a house, an estate or a town? And where was it?

He was preoccupied with the meaning behind the message and could think of nothing else, spending as much time as he could, without arousing suspicion, on the school info-web and, after school, going into town to the Central Resource Centre. He desperately wanted to talk to Angel but, as the week rolled on, she became even cooler. Instruction after instruction, he sat at the back of room, watching her from behind and silently cursing himself for blowing it.

Both at home and at school, he was quizzed about his missing friend. He'd been interrogated by Security as to his whereabouts on the night and whether or not he knew one Marlon Griffiths - the false name he'd given old Mov Bailey - but they'd seemed satisfied with his answers. He knew Professor Reed suspected that he knew more about the whereabouts of the Pattersons than he was letting on, but he couldn't prove anything.

The other Mooners also plied him with questions about their mate, to which Monkey could, in all honesty, shrug and say, ‘Dunno.' But, outside school, they were becoming increasingly irritated with his lack of participation in their forays into other hoods.

‘We're storming Eastway tonight. You up?' Kraze asked him on the Friday evening as they walked home from school.

Monkey gave a casual shrug. ‘Neh. I'm fridge.'

‘So, what's happenin' with you, Monk?' the hood leader challenged. ‘This has been, like, every night for a week you've bottled.'

Monkey eyeballed him, affronted. ‘I haven't
bottled
,' he said evenly, determined not to show that he was rattled by the inference that he was afraid to accompany them into enemy hoods. ‘I have other stuff to deal with.'

‘What
other
stuff
?' Kraze was smirking but Monkey knew that, inside, he would be bricking it. He wasn't confident as leader and needed Monkey's backing when they went out of their zone. ‘You still frettin' over Tradge?' He gave a laugh and turned round to the rest of the hood, ridiculing Monkey to gain their respect.

‘Just stuff,' Monkey stated firmly, standing his ground; aware that a small crowd had gathered. The tension was almost palpable.

‘You snakin' on us?' Kraze had his hands in his pockets and was fumbling with something - possibly a blade, Monkey thought. He needed to be careful: the last thing he wanted was to alienate his own and, if Kraze convinced the others that Monkey was a turncoat, he'd be watching his back even on his own turf. The rest of the Mooners moved closer. Monkey looked round. With less than eight weeks until he turned sixteen, he was easily the eldest. Some of them, like Angel's brother, Alex, were still practically bubs. But he also knew that there was strength in numbers: he knew he had to play it fridge.

Monkey held out both hands as a gesture of openness showing that he had no weapon. He spoke lightly, almost teasingly. ‘Hey, cuz, what's with the screw face? This is me you're scanting. I don't
do
snakin', you know that. I'm a Mooner till I grad. But, right now, I've got some anguish going on that's personal - sav?' He forced himself to breathe evenly as he waited for Kraze's response, never lowering his stare.

Kraze drew the blade from his pocket and spun it in his fingers, watching it glint in the pale afternoon sunlight. He nodded slowly, as though mulling over Monkey's words. ‘That's good, cuz - ‘cos I'd hate to think you'd been raggin' me. You know what I mean?'

Still maintaining eye contact, Monkey nodded. ‘I'm glad we understand each other.' He held out his hand and Kraze brushed it briefly. ‘Take it easy, all right?'

With a nonchalance belying the anxiety he was feeling, Monkey turned and walked away. No sooner had he left the rest of the hood, than his ring-cam flashed on and Angel's face appeared on the screen.

‘That was impressive,' she said.

Monkey was puzzled. ‘Where are you?' He looked round but could see no sign of her.

‘By the wall.'

Again Monkey looked round but could only see someone in Mooners' garb leaning against a high wall at the other side of the road, hood pulled low and scarf high to obscure any facial features.

Looking back to the face on the ring-cam, he saw that she had covered her face. ‘Nice touch. How d'you get away with it?' he said.

‘Where do you hide an elephant?' Angel replied.

‘Huh?'

‘In a jungle,' she said, answering her own riddle. ‘So, how did I infiltrate the hood? Dress like them.'

Monkey smiled to himself. ‘But Alex is here.' He looked back to where the rest of the hood had congregated.

Angel shook her head. ‘Even my brother has a change of clothes, you know.' Then her voice turned serious. ‘Follow me. I've got some information for you. I think I've cracked the code.'

Monkey followed her at a discreet distance to the disused loco bridge. They went to the far end and climbed up the embankment so that they were in a blind spot, obscured from both the road and the security cameras.

‘Go on,' Monkey said, wanting to find out how much she'd discovered before he disclosed his hand.

‘Well,' Angel began, ‘it's a code that uses base ten but starts at number five...'

‘I know what the code says,' Monkey interrupted; irritated that she should have cracked it so easily. ‘What else do you know?'

Angel seemed disappointed that he wasn't more grateful, but went on, ‘I'm pretty sure that the last line, ombe mag, is a reference to a small hamlet about fifteen K out of town called Combe Magna.'

‘And?' Monkey asked.

‘Well, before the fossil fuels ran out, it was a satellite village for commuters. Prior to that, at the beginning of the last century, it was a rural community of smallholders and arable farmers.'

Angel gave Monkey a potted history of rural life before the revolution. When farming was no longer viable, the farmers moved out and the commuters moved in, travelling into town daily in their motor vehicles to go to work. With the abolition of private ownership of cars after the Oil Wars, the commuters moved back into town, and the villages, including Combe Magna, fell into disrepair. With the exception of a few seniors who were too able-bodied for The Pastures and who preferred to run their own self-sufficient communes rather than move into the towns, many of the houses in the once thriving rural communities were almost derelict.

‘So, why would Tragic and Jane have gone there?' Monkey asked. ‘And how did you find out all this?'

Angel shrugged. ‘In answer to question one: I have no idea. But I got all the other stuff from Sally's info-web. Don't forget, she's a solicitor so she has a higher level clearance than the school or even the CRC. She went downstairs yesterday and I snuck into her room while she was logged on.' Monkey raised an eyebrow. So much for Angel being a good girl! ‘Apparently, Combe Magna was one of the villages in contention for a Farm development, but The Assembly decided against it.'

‘Why?'

‘It was too close to town and there was always a danger of escape. Look.' She drew a printout of an old map from her pocket. ‘See, it's just north of here. We could walk it in two and a half hours - or cycle in less.'

‘We?' Monkey looked at her and shook his head. ‘No way!'

‘Fine!' she said, purposefully folding up the map and putting it back in her pocket. She stood up to leave. ‘Let me know how you get on.'

‘Wait!' Monkey put out a hand and grabbed her arm to stop her leaving. ‘Why're you doing this?'

Angel smiled. ‘Because it's exciting.' She sat down again. ‘You have no idea how boring it is just studying and going to gym club and chatting about nurturing and clothes and cooking and stuff.' She groaned and dropped her head forwards, then sat up and looked Monkey in the eye. ‘I got a real buzz the other night. OK, so I was terrified but, once my heart rate slowed down again, I'd enjoyed doing something un-nurturey. And, I agree with you: I do think there's something sinister going on and I want to find out what.'

Monkey thought for a moment - but only for a moment. In fact, it was a no-brainer really: she was clever, athletic, brave - and hot as hell. ‘When shall we go?' he asked.

‘No time like the present,' replied Angel.

Into the Rurals

They had both gone home to eat and collect some food to take with them. Angel fabricated a story of staying over at her friend, Moni Morrison's, house, while Monkey and Vivian went through their usual evening routine: Vivian banning him from leaving, Monkey swearing at her, Vivian shouting, Grand-mov intervening, Vivian turning on her own nurturer, and Monkey taking the opportunity to walk out.

As he pulled up his scarf to cover his face, he sighed in relief to be out of the house. Vivian never used to be like this. When he was a bub, she was fine; you never heard her so much as raise her voice. She played with him and Penny; took them places; they laughed more and she would even sit with him on her lap and cuddle him - not that he wanted that now. But some sort of respect would be nice. The last couple of years, she'd turned into psycho-mov. Most nurturers went that way, from what he could see - except Jane. She seemed to be the exception as far as the nurturers in his hood were concerned. In fact, he felt sorry for the younger Mooners like Alex; they didn't know what they were in for! As for himself, he was just counting the days until all this would be history.

Then he stopped himself: living in the Breeders' Zone wouldn't be the same without Tragic. They'd known each other since alpha-school; grown up together. Tragic might act like an oversensitive wuzzle, but Monkey was nothing without his sidekick. A heaviness descended on him with this realisation. His friend was in danger and he was not going to stop until he found out what was going on.

He met Angel under the bridge at 19:00. It was already dark but the infrared cameras would still be able to make out their presence, so, once again, they climbed up the embankment out of view.

‘Look,' Angel said, unfolding the map and frantically winding the handle on the side of her torch until it shone a pinprick beam on to the crumpled paper. ‘I've been thinking, this loco line used to go to Mercia and it runs within about a couple of Ks of Combe Magna.'

‘Too exposed,' Monkey said quickly, knowing immediately what she was going to suggest. ‘The roads'll be safer.'

‘Well, it would be more direct to go along the line so it would be quicker and there'll be less chance of being spotted by stealth patrols.'

Monkey was uneasy. ‘I dunno. What about cameras? If we're spotted on the track, we're like sitting ducks.'

‘No, it's OK. I asked Sally about that...'

‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!' Monkey was shocked. He couldn't believe she'd discussed this with her nurturer. ‘You talked to Sally about this? What the fegg do you think you were doing?'

Angel stood up. ‘Hey! I might be dressed like one of your hood but I'm not one of them - OK! So don't even start with me like that.' She tossed the map at him. ‘You want to do this on your own, then go ahead.'

‘OK. OK.' Monkey capitulated. He was beginning to think that, hot or not, she was going to be hard work. ‘I just don't want any of this getting out.'

‘I'm not stupid, you know.' Angel sat back down on the bank. Then muttered, just loud enough so that Monkey could hear, ‘I cracked your code easily enough.' Monkey eyed her but said nothing. Right now, it wasn't so much that he needed her, although he must admit, he was impressed with the amount of information she'd discovered, but he
wanted
her company. ‘Anyway,' she went on, ‘I was asking Sal about her work...subtly,' she said pointedly, giving Monkey a sideways glance. ‘You know, as if I was thinking about my own future career.'

‘Go on,' Monkey said.

‘Well, turns out, she had a client who was accused of stealing from the house of this post-nurturer who's in The Assembly. She lives in a massive mansion about three Ks east of Beauchamp Park, outside town, and Security claimed that they had footage of Sal's client entering and leaving the property. But Sal discovered that it was a fit up. And she proved it because none of the cameras work once you get out of the street light zone.'

‘What?'

‘It's true. The cameras outside town are dummies; the cost of electricity would be too much to run them, so they're just there as a deterrent.'

Monkey's mind went into overdrive. ‘Have you any idea what this information would do if it got out?'

‘Exactly,' Angel said. ‘It mustn't get out. As a solicitor, Sal had to sign an Official Confidentiality Order. She only let it slip because we were talking one night after Alex had gone to bed and she'd had a couple of kegs. She'd lose her job if they knew.' Angel looked at him anxiously. ‘Promise me, this is between you and me. You won't tell the hood?'

Monkey nodded slowly, taking in the information she'd just told him. ‘So, it doesn't matter whether we go on the roads or the track.' He smiled. ‘Whaled! Let's take the direct route, then.'

Most of the sleepers and train tracks had long since been removed from the embankment, leaving it overgrown and stony but, nevertheless, straight. Angel and Monkey kept up a brisk pace, sometimes chatting about people at school; staff and students, and their hopes for their futures, sometimes maintaining an easy silence. It was cold but the constant movement kept them warm. Monkey found it eerily quiet once they left the street-lit suburbs of town. From their elevated position, they could look down on the largely overgrown roads. There was no street lighting out in the rurals and they saw no State vehicles, either Security or official Assembly limos, to cast their headlights on the roads and offer some illumination. The moonless night afforded them plenty of cover but also made their progress slower than they'd hoped. It was pitch-dark but it was too risky to use the torch out in the open and they both stumbled on stones and potholes along the way.

They'd been walking for just over half an hour when Angel's ring-cam lit up; it was her nurturer. Angel dodged down into one of the bushes that had sprouted up along the track and answered.

‘Sorry, darling, I'm going to need you to come home tonight,' Sally said. ‘I've got a big case that's in court on Monday and I need to work late tonight.'

‘Sal!' Angel couldn't hide her disappointment. ‘Alex is twelve now, he doesn't need me to be there.'

‘Yes, he does. Now, don't argue. You can stay over at Moni's tomorrow night. Make sure you're home by nine.' The dial went blank.

Angel kicked at a stone in frustration. Monkey felt sorry for her; that was the difference between being a pre-breeder and a pre-nurturer he supposed. There was no way he'd go home just because Vivian told him to but, then, his nurturer had no jurisdiction over him; in a few weeks he'd be a free agent and she knew it. Angel, on the other hand would be under Sal's thumb for years, probably decades. Even when Angel was a nurturer in her own right, Sal would still be the head of the family, just as his grand-mov was (in theory, anyway) the matriarch in Vivian's little kingdom.

‘Come on, let's go back,' he said with resignation.

Angel shook her head. ‘No, you go on. Take the torch and the map.' She opened the paper and shone the thin beam of light onto it. ‘See this bridge here?' She pointed to a spot where the loco line went over the road next to a disused smallholding. ‘When you get to that, you need to come down and follow the road. Take a left at the first junction and that'll bring you into Combe Magna.' She checked her ring-cam. ‘You should do it in about an hour.'

Monkey tried to argue but Angel was adamant. It would be a waste of time and energy, she said, if neither of them went. ‘Good luck. Let me know how you get on.' Then, she did the unthinkable: she leant forward and gave him a peck on the cheek.

Physical contact between pres was a crime more heinous than breaking curfew
and
drinking illegal keg - at the same time. In fact, fraternising with the opposite gender outside school hours was worse than almost anything else, apart from murder. Yet, Angel had done it. Her lips had actually made contact with his skin. And his mind was in turmoil. What had she meant by it? Was she letting him know that she would select him for breeding? And if so, shouldn't he go after her?

His mind went round and round while his feet stayed put until Angel merged with the night and her kiss was no more than a shadow on his memory.

How long he'd remained still he didn't know, but it was long enough for the cold to penetrate the soles of his shoes and seep up the muscles in his calves. He was startled back to consciousness by a crunching noise below and the sudden awareness that an armoured stealth was driving along the road that ran alongside the loco track. Monkey dodged down into the bushes and watched it rumble silently back towards town, squashing any fallen branches or broken concrete that lay in its path. A routine patrol no doubt but, nevertheless, a timely reminder to stay on his guard. He gave one last look along the track the way Angel had headed, then turned and walked in the other direction, out towards the rurals.

By the time he reached the village, Monkey's fingers were so numb with cold that they could barely turn the handle of the clockwork torch. He fumbled with his ring-cam to flash up the time: 22:15. It had taken far longer than Angel had anticipated. He wandered along the deserted street looking for... Looking for what? A sign saying,
Tragic is here
? Like that was going to happen! He shivered as he walked slowly through the silence. A jumble of cottages huddled round a dark, open space. He had a distant memory of learning about the feudal system at alpha-school and thought it was probably a village green. It was clear that the place was inhabited from the lights glowing through the curtains of some of the houses, but by whom? And, if Tragic was here, which one was his? Now Monkey had found the place, how the hell did he go about finding his friend? He could hardly just knock on doors, asking. And that was even supposing that Angel had correctly guessed at the missing letters on the note. What if she'd been wrong? And, even if she'd been correct, perhaps Jane had told Tragic that they were going to Combe Magna as a decoy.

Then another, more sinister, doubt bore its way into his mind, multiplying until it consumed everything else: what if he'd been set up? Wasn't it just too convenient that she hadn't spoken to him for days, then suddenly turned up the whereabouts of Tragic with reasoning powers bordering on genius? And, there was nothing weird about accompanying him halfway there, then suddenly having to turn back, was there? A pre-nurturer, daughter of a solicitor, friend of an assistant T.R.E.A.C.L.E. trainer, destined for The Assembly if she played her cards right, risking her entire future to mix with a hood, steal information and break curfew? He felt sick!

His eyes flashed round the ramshackle houses, no longer warm and welcoming with their flickering glow but, now, potential traps. He scoured the hazy outlines of the cottages looking for signs of Security. Every dark shadow between them seemed to be filled with lurking terror. Standing in the road, Monkey felt exposed; vulnerable, yet afraid to seek refuge. There were no street lights here, even though it was two hours before Shut Down. It was quiet too; scarily quiet - as though no humans inhabited the place. Although some lights were on, he could hear no chatter from the cottages; no laughter, no doors closing, or info-screens blaring out. He didn't like it. He was beginning to wish he hadn't come.

There was a rustle behind him. He jumped, then froze; waiting. He breathed again as a fox leapt over a gate and loped down the middle of the street, dragging a dead chicken in its jaws. Monkey's heart was beating rapidly and his tongue felt as though it was stuck to the roof of his mouth with fear. Funny how brave he could be in the face of an enemy hood but, here he was, crapping himself over a fox! He tried to smile at the irony but it felt as though his mouth was set in concrete. This was stupid, he told himself. He needed to get out of here. He didn't know why he'd come in the first place. If Tragic wanted to disappear, that was his lookout.

At that moment, the door of a cottage, slightly ahead of him on the other side of the street, opened and a group of nurturers came out of the house. He moved away from the road, into the shadows of a gateway and watched. There were four of them and, as they stood in the doorway, the yellow light from the cottage lit up their faces. They were nodding. The one facing him looked very serious. As the door closed, one nurturer went back inside while two walked off towards the village green, but the one who had had her back to Monkey turned and headed towards him. He gasped when he saw her. It was Jane.