OK, lucky everyone, two posts in a day! Whoo! My first one was quite short, so I am posting this to make my first contribution longer. If you have QQC, please say them!
"The world of their day is pretty much the same as ours. Between generations, despite the technological changes, things haven't changed that much - The human heart is still the same."
Accredited to Knight Grand Cross (Justice) Destin
Joshua Horn had been stealing all morning. So had his sister, Jericho, but she was in a different part of the city. Josh knew it was better that way. He said that Jericho isn't safe to be with at the moment; not here. Josh was casually thinking about this when he felt something shove across his side, and knocked him backwards onto the pavement, still holding the duffel bag he had been carrying.
"Shove off, rat", said a women, towering over him. By her overalls, Josh guessed she was working in one of the few shops nearby. I was shoving off, thought Josh. I was minding my own business. But he didn't say anything. He stayed crouching on the pavement. He was kicked in the small of his back. It hurt, but he twisted his neck to see the woman holding a little girl by the hand.
"Go on," the woman said, "shift, you rat."
People were stopping to see the commotion.
Too many people, Josh thought, too many watching me.
Josh was frightened. Somebody kicked his right arm, just above the elbow. Jericho would have known what to do, but Josh just cowered, clutching the bag. A gobbet of spit hit him under his left eye. He wanted to strike back, to pick up a brick and hit it on her head, again and again and again… but that would just draw more attention.
A needle of fear stabbed at his chest. He didn't want the Heralds to come.
Josh sprang to his feet as quickly as he could and started running. Running from the throng of citizens. They shouted after him, but he did not look back. Never turn around, he thought; not when you're running.
He darted through a creaking side-passage, through a fire escape, and around a broken down building to Canary Wharf.
The Wharf was ramshackle remains of pre-war skyscrapers and destroyed heaps of wreckage from when the bombs fell. Joshua started his slow ascent up the decrepit floors of the ancient Canada One Tower; a wreck of a building that used to dominate the landscape of the Pre-War London area. Its massive staircases has collapsed over years of neglect – a small wonder how it remains up at all, Josh pondered, as he slowly but surely slipped through the doors and attempted to reach the top. Not before, of course, going to Devil's Elbow to collect some water. One had to, of course, be extremely careful of the mirelurks, but Joshua knew the area well; after all, it was the home of the rats.
Here, black tongues of water lapped at slime green quays and slid into dank tunnels where boats and barges had long since ceased to dock. Shrouded in mist and stinking of filth was a place for tramps and bag ladies, for booze drinkers and jet addicts, for thieves and murderers. Devil's elbow was where things came when they had nowhere else to go; when they had sunk below the jagged spread of the city and slipped through the sprawling slums of the favelas. Her shifting mud banks and sluice gates draped in weed became the final resting place for broken bottles, mangled metal, knives, clubs, and the swollen dead, washing up by the dark waters of the Elbow.
The wharf was also a place for the rats; the children with no homes, no families, and no fear about stealing today what they'll never get tomorrow. Hundreds of them lived in poverty; working together in gangs, slipping out of the tunnels and up to the intrusive noise and meagre wealth of Fort Hope, steal what they need, and vanish back into the dark, wet places below.
In their world of rotting wood and crumbling brick where time was measured by the constant slapping of cold, dirty water, they were safe. Safe from rain, safe from snow, safe from the hateful stares of city dwellers, but most of all, safe from the Heralds.
The Heralds came in white boots, military crosses, dogs and cattle prods, to track and trap the street rats. They came whenever an infestation of rats had been located. They were part of the police.
The special part. The part with their own detention units and unusual methods of interrogation. A street rat caught by a Herald knew they he or she would never see the light of day again. The Heralds were very efficient.
Joshua was better at fighting than anyone else in his gang, while Jericho was the cleverest, so they had won themselves a deep ledge built inside one of the higher floors. The lip of the ledge jutted out over Devil's Elbow and there was a recess at the rear where empty wooden barrels and boxes had been stacked, piled with rust stained rope. The ledge was as smelly and gloomy and filthy as the rest of The Wharf, but because it was so high up - it was reached by a gantry about thirty feet above the water - it was much drier. Here lived Joshua and Jericho. It was here they would meet to take the morning's takings.
Josh eventually reached the crevasse that served as their meeting place. He did not look out of place, despite his appearance. Sweat trickled down his clothes; even though the day was another hot one, he wore a thick Merc outfit; narrow black trousers and a tatty but firm jacket protected him from the ground, even though the trousers and sleeves had deteriorated over months of use, crawling about in the harsh world of Hope.
Underneath the jacket was a shirt that a long time ago had been white, but turned perfectly grey. The clothes were stiff with dirt. Josh's hair was thick yet straight, and stuck to his forehead.
His eyes were as brown as his hair and were very big; he kept them on the rubble over which his bare feet slapped. Some of the street rats watched him pass, eyes lingering on the bag that he was carrying. He wasn't frightened of the other gangs as much as getting back without anything to show for the morning's graft. He gripped the bag more tightly.
Joshua slowed to a walk, but even when a cluster of bigger, older rats unfolded themselves from the innards of a burnt-out car they had scavenged to try and fix up, hopelessly, they turned and grinned at Josh, and said hello. He kept his eyes down and said nothing in reply. After all, he was Joshua; of course they were nice to him.
There were more than a hundred rats in his gang, but the only person that Josh looked for as he edged his way into the tunnel where they lived was Gemma - he had some 'lurk meat for her - but he couldn't see Gemma anywhere.
Joshua stepped over legs and pushed round bands of squatting children. He walked past Matt, Luc and Jonah. They were his sister's friends, which meant that they spent less time fighting with her and argue with him as they did fight and argue with everyone else. He heard them greet him, and Josh mumbled a reply, but he didn't look up until he came to the iron ladder that led to the ledge. Up there, he and Jericho sat, above all the other street rats.
Josh climbed the ladder, and found Jericho inspecting her loot. Jericho, tall and thin, was holding up a ring. She studied it in the flickering light of the river water for impurities. Her narrow blackened jeans and tatty long-tailed morning coat that she recovered from a bin contained a variety of useful tools; string, matches, marbles, skeleton keys, switchblades, pencils, and, which is now out of its home, a Jeweller's loupe. Whatever that was thought Josh. Her short brown hair was stiff with months of collected grime (no-one entered the river to clean; the place was infested with mirelurks). Josh then saw Jericho turn her head to face him.
"Good work" Jericho said quietly. "Did anyone see you?"
"Don't think so", replied Josh, who walked across to the edge of the building and sat down, legs dangling over the edge, thinking about everything that happened and trying to think whether he was followed or not. It was a huge problem if he wasn't.
Josh dropped his duffel bag by Jericho's bare feet and sat down in the corner of the room, on the rugged mattress and took a few deep breaths. Neither of them wore shoes for years, and the soles of their feet had grown leathery and hard.
Josh lifted Jericho's bag onto the table in the middle of the room, and looked inside, scowling. "RadAway," he muttered, "and bread rolls. And two apples. What use are two apples?" His hard voice reverberated against the tunnel walls.
Jericho said nothing but lazily took one of the apples and starting eating it.
"More use than one," she eventually said. "And anyway, Joshy, food's food."
"All you ever do is stuff your mash. It's like your half-girl, half-pig. And stop calling me Joshy." Spouted back Josh. He was starving, and they were going to run on empty. Again.
"Yeah, well, you're a cretin." Replied Jericho, taking another bite out of the apple, casually. To most onlookers this would look like a fight, but this was the midday ritual of ridicule before lunch.
After a long, uncomfortable pause - at least for Josh, who couldn't read Jericho's poker face – Josh attempted to make conversation.
"I spent that broken combat knife for the news leaflet," Josh said, "You want the headline?"
"..The London Times? Not that shitty Herald Inquirer?"
"Yes, obviously." The London Times was an independent newspaper, which, while having its credibility knocked back by the masses of Herald newspapers, and The Dark, or the Devil's Advocate media has managed to hold its idea of success, being known to tell the more truthful side of The City. "I don't even know what you want with this. You can't even read."
"I can!" Jericho said defensively. "A bit."
Josh tossed the newspaper in the air, and the pages started to flutter down like birds, before absently drifting into the water. One page floated back to the ledge, and Jericho clutched it, and casted her eyes over the headline. She read aloud, "MORE CHILDREN VANISH". Then, she scrumpled up the sheet of paper and threw it into the air. "Nice children, I suppose."
"Bad things can happen to nice children." Said Josh.
"Bad things happen to bad children," Said Jericho, "but nobody speaks about that. Nobody cares." Josh coughed sharply and spat, pausing to watch the fleck of phlegm trace the same arc as the ball, before landing in the water below, silently.
"Nice shot, Josh." Said Jericho, the reply was a thoughtful nod.
"Anything can happen to us and it doesn't matter," continued Josh, still looking down at the river, "but the moment anything bad happens to a norm, it's big news. It matters."
Josh never said anything good about the norms, but Jericho wasn't so sure. She thought it must be hard to work around the place, to have to get a job, to look after money. But, then again, these people like that couldn't slip through crowds like oil, couldn't spirit up walls as silent as fog, nor knew how to claw their way out of corners, or how to use drains to vanish when danger came near. They were soft; if they were hurt, they cried. And they hated the rats.
Jericho turned to Josh, quickly. "Were you followed?"
Josh shrugged. "No. You're just paranoid."
"I'm not," protested Jericho, "Someone's been watching me for days and I've seen heralds and they've seen me and they haven't tried to catch me."
"Well, that doesn't make any sense. Heralds hunt us and catch us; that's what they do." Josh then reached out to grab the second apple. "That's what they're there for." He crunched the apple, his teeth gnawing on the apple's precious meat.
"Unless," considered Jericho, "they have followed us so they can find us."
Jericho suddenly and sharply looked at Josh.
"You shouldn't have stolen that pistol, Josh."
"You shouldn't have burnt down that house."
"Perhaps it's me they're after"
"What would they want with you?"
Josh shrugged again. "Someone has been watching me. Or something."
Josh crunched the apple, and Jericho put the ring inside one of her pockets before disappearing into the shadows at the back of the ledge. Josh looked at the grey crescents of the dirt between his toenails and wish Jericho would believe him. He knew that someone – or something – had been watching him for weeks. There had been all the signs; footfalls close behind, a stranger's reflection from the water, a figure slipping into a doorway as he approached. He hadn't always been able to see who or what it was, but he could tell that he was being watched. Like the same way a hunter watched a wild animal.
But this morning had been different. It was different because no-one had been watching him. What happened outside the shop didn't count; it wasn't very nice, but it was what happened to the rats. What unsettled Josh was that the watching had stopped.
If the watching has stopped, realised Josh, Something is going to happen.
Ooh! Dramatic Ending! :D