it true you’re so greedy you’d eat your own shit?’ This last from Hector Junior, the snot-nosed ten-year-old grandson of the Mayor; he had the same narrow gaze and high, domed forehead.
Of all of them, he would be the only one to benefit directly from the farm. All fuel that wasn’t sent direct to Spight was supposed to be kept for emergency heating and to run the old fire truck and few remaining ambulances, but it was an open secret that it was also bestowed as ‘special grants’ of generator rations, as tractor fuel for favoured farmers, and to run Spight’s private fleet. She’d seen the Mayor and his family from the farm’s windows, driving past in one of the few cars in the village still running, and wondered if she was the one supplying the fat it ran on.
Mrs Prendaghast hadn’t been with the class; that day they were in the care of Mrs Harrow, the Doctor’s wife, leader of the Door Knockers, and the only person Primrose knew who resembled the women in old magazines, with shiny, stretched skin that failed to make her appear younger. Primrose had been sorry not to see the teacher’s friendly face, sure she would, at the very least, have sent Junior out of the room for asking that rude question. Someone told her later that Mrs Prendaghast had refused to come, saying she would not be party to such disgusting practices. It was the first time it had occurred to Primrose that what was happening to her wasn’t sanctioned by all the villagers.
‘I hear you gave Dorcas some trouble last night, hmmm?’ It wasn’t a real question, Dr Harrow never really spoke to any of his patients, just made these little pronouncements, so she didn’t bother to reply. He drew the trolley of instruments over to the bed, its wheels squealing and bumping over the uneven floor. Primrose’s gut contracted with fright, but at least there was a full hypodermic there, glinting on the green cloth next to the dull rubber of the hose attached to the much bigger needle he used for the liposuction. They weren’t going to punish her. Or at least not now.
Dr Harrow picked up her arm as if it was a side of beef, deftly swabbed inside her elbow and slid the hypodermic needle under her skin.
‘Count down from twenty,’ he instructed and, habituated to obedience, she began.
‘Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixtee … four...’ The room went dark.
*
The entrance to the bunker was so well disguised it took a while for Will to find it; someone must have rearranged the bramble bushes that hid the entrance when they went in or came out. Stumbling around in the soft grey light slowly permeating the woodland, he was so tired he could barely stand. As visibility improved, he recognised the shape of a fallen tree and turned himself slightly west. There, that darker hollow, that was it.
Ducking around the bramble screen, shivering as droplets of water shook free and fell inside his collar, he found the metal of the door under his hands and felt for the lock. The key was on a string around his neck and meant he had to stand awkwardly with his cheek pressed up against the cold, wet steel and fumble until he heard the lock click. Before he pushed the heavy door open he paused, looking and listening to check there was no one about that shouldn’t be. A few sleepy birds were calling and beginning the morning’s chorus, but otherwise the woods were quiet.
Beyond the door, a tunnel had been dug into the bank, extending about five metres and lined with rough concrete; the floor was packed dirt and covered with a drift of leaves. Crouching, as the roof was less than five and a half feet high and he’d recently had another growth spurt that took him to over six foot, Will rearranged the brambles before he closed the door behind him. When he heard it clunk he relocked it and shuffled along to the inner door. This also was locked. He rapped on its wooden surface with the code knock and waited.
The air that greeted him as the door swung open was warm and stale, tainted with the funk of unwashed males and fumes from the foul pipe the Major held in his hand. He insisted he be allowed to smoke it inside, pointing out that he couldn’t very well do so outside, in case someone smelled it and investigated.
The Major looked like he hadn’t slept either, his face lined with fatigue, and grey-streaked black hair standing up in tufts. He stepped back and gestured Will inside.
‘Come in, I’ve just boiled some water, you can make yourself useful and brew some tea before you turn in.’ The Major resumed his seat at the small table in the centre of the room as Will ducked through the low door.
Somebody must have been cooking recently because he could also smell hot fat. He hadn’t eaten anything except some dried apple since he started his shift and his stomach rumbled even though the reek was unappealing. He removed his jacket and the woolen hat he’d used to cover his pale hair, draping them over a chairback to dry.
‘What’s for breakfast?’
‘Eggs. Mal pinched ’em from the farm coop before he came off watch yesterday. Bit of bread left.’
Will crossed the cramped and windowless room to the camping stove, set on an old door propped on plastic crates. As he passed, he nodded a greeting to Mal, an agent a year or two younger than his own eighteen years, who was sitting on a foldaway bed in the corner. A plate with smears of egg yolk was held on his lap.
‘When’s the next supply run? We’re getting low if we’re down to stealing eggs.’
‘Nothing low about it, eggs is premium grub,’ Mal mumbled through a yawn. ‘Busy night?’
‘Nothing past one o’clock, except a girl did a runner from the farm. Primrose … used to know her from school, before.’ Maybe they had eggs, but they were down to the last few teabags. Will pulled one out of the box and dropped it in the stained teapot.
‘A runner eh?’ The Major looked interested. ‘She get out?’
‘Nah, Dorcas came and scooped her up before she got to the village. Poor cow could hardly walk she was so fat. Don’t know where she thought she was going.’
‘Back to her family?’
‘Doubt it, they’re the reason she’s there in the first place.’ Will hadn’t known the rest of the family well, but he did remember Primrose’s parents and siblings looking better fed, and wearing smarter clothes, after she was ‘selected’ for the fat farm; her dad had a promotion at the more conventional farm he laboured at, owned by Mayor Spight. Soon after that, Will’s own parents had taken him and his sisters away, crossing the Tamar to reach Cornwall by boat one night, seeking sanctuary with his mum’s sister and her family in Saltash.
They had been founder members of the radical Archimedes’ Society for the Creation of Renewable Energy for the West, a group of concerned citizens seeking to use Devon’s remaining solar, wind and hydro infrastructure to supply electricity direct to the populace. Tolerated by the County Council at their inception, tensions had grown as their project looked to be on the brink of successfully hooking up what remained of an old solar farm. Accusations were made in a heated Council meeting that SCREW could not be trusted, that they were in league with external forces to control Devon’s energy supplies. SCREW’s representative countered by saying they were dedicated to preventing the Mayor and his allies from using energy scarcity to control the population.
Incensed, Spight proposed that SCREW be disbanded; the motion was carried unanimously, and calls were made for mass arrests. Worried for their children, Will’s parents had decided to get out while they still could, along with many others. Once settled in Cornwall, and with the support of their new community, SCREW had reformed as an activist group dedicated to putting power in the hands of the people of Devon.
