After The Riots
By Paul Seaton
James looked at his clothes. The tracksuit bottoms looked right, the boots looked right. But the hoody looked out of place. He pulled it back down and flipped it up again, over the baseball cap. The peak hid his eyes well this time, and the thin black scarf he’d borrowed from his Dad (not like he’d need it, he wasn’t going out tonight) doubled up around his head to cover his mouth and nose. He grabbed his keys off the hook, slipped the short, wooden rounders bat into his loose-fitting trousers, and caught his reflection in the hallway mirror next to the front door.
It was his Dad’s bat – he’d used it as a boy for games at school. Now it was sticking out of the top of his trousers. James remembered sitting at his Dad’s knee when he was young, listening to the story he used to tell. The bat had connected with a ball so hard that he’d almost run round all four bases before it hit the ground; that was the tale. The game was won with that hit, and his Dad had been allowed to keep the bat because it was the end of term. James smiled slyly at the mirror, and patted the bat. Tonight it would be put to different use.
The first thing to hit him was the smoke. It had hung like a cloud over this part of London for nearly two days now since the first serious night of rioting, since this so-called Copycat Civil War began. But tonight it wasn’t like a loose cloud, drifting higher, leaving a trail of bitterness in the nostrils whenever you ventured outside. Tonight it was fresh smoke, with flames visible over the top of the houses opposite. It was happening right now, and James knew he had waited long enough. He had been waiting for the right moment to join in. That was now.
He ran like a child, his arms flailing, and the rounders bat shifting against his thighs as he searched for the right people. The people he wanted to be with. He cut through the massed looters, many of them smashing the large door at the front of a chemists. He wasn’t interested in small business like that. There were a number of gangs circling a large electronics store on the corner, and he looked among them. He was smaller than some but bigger than others, and he moved his eyes quickly through the crowd. It was important which gang he was a part of as they mad the attack. The sirens sounded distantly, but they were getting closer. The adrenaline really was something. He didn’t think he’d feel it quite so much, but it was there, hammering round his veins and filling his body with an urgent energy he’d never felt before.
Looking around, James saw one lad who was barely a teenager – his hood hanging down loosely over his forehead as he clumsily threw a bottle of whisky looted from an off-licence onto the rapidly-growing pyre of the last shop that had been raided, a branch of WH Smith. Flames licked the glass front to the store, while smoked billowed from the top of the building into the grey night sky. That was what they did, the looters, once the shop was barren, it was a husk, to be destroyed, burned from the inside as they left and from the outside as the loot was counted in the street. There were no police in this area at the moment. They’d been there last night for several hours, but right now the time was right.
Finally, James saw the other members of the gang he wanted to be a part of. He’d watched them last night, staring out at their activity from his bedroom window, his eyes red-ringed with exhaustion, but compelled to watch everything unfold. Every attack, every thrown brick, every harried bystander. It was the fuel behind him tonight, pushing him on, drawing him towards them, and he had to push past a couple of others to get to them.
“Take the doors!!” The cry erupted from the ringleader. He was tall, wearing a grey tracksuit, the hood pulled tight around his face. Only the milky-white eyes stared blankly out at the scene as it unfolded to his decree. Twenty or thirty of the youths surged forward, wrenching the metal bars open, and clawing their way into the building like animals. They piled in like flies on a dead dog, and James joined the rush as they made their way inside. The guy in the grey tracksuit remained outside, conducting the madness and waiting for the squeal of tires on the approach to the road that would herald the police arriving at the scene.
It was a large shop, with one floor set out openly displaying iPads, iPhones, televisions, computers, hi-fis and other electrical goods. Everything had a value, and James took part, swiping items from the shelves, pushing his hands into his pockets frantically, and helping one guy pull a mounted television from the wall.
“Get it down, get it down, yeahhhh!” yelled the man. He was a bit older than James, maybe in his early twenties. James braced his right foot against the floor, grinning with the boy as they shouted and growled and cheered as finally the 50” screen wobbled, and then came free. They pulled it down gradually, as if to protect it, then caught each other’s eye and threw it gracelessly against the display surface, smashing the plasma screen in several places and crushing a dozen or so display digital cameras. The man helped James down to the ground, and pulled him clear of the broken glass that was scattered across the floor.
“James, safe. Cheers for the help.” James said, offering his hand. The man pulled his thumb towards him and gripped him like James had seen them all grip the night before. He reciprocated the motion and they bumped chests.
“Ariol. Let’s get the fucking…”
But Ariol was interrupted by the jamming of brakes and the brayed cry from others inside the trashed shop.
“Leg it!!!”
“I know where we can go. Follow me.” Said James, and they both ducked back under the makeshift exit and back into the street. All around them were red and blue lights, and riot police coming at them. There were ten, twenty, maybe more. They looked organised and most had weapons or shields readied. The man in the grey tracksuit had disappeared, and the youths that had electrical goods had either pocketed them or dropped them as they ran, like cockroaches.
James led his new friend through the streets, taking the back way. They ran fast and hard, their breath hot in their throats as they first evaded the riot teams at the precinct and then dodged the regular police patrolling the side-streets. James approached his house via the back door, and booted the door open violently. He held open the door for Ariol, and Ariol raced inside.
“Shut the fucking door, shut it!” he shouted, and ran further into the kitchen, which was at the back of the property. James shut the door and pulled the kitchen table across the floor, knocking a bowl and cup onto the floor. They smashed on the tiles, the china skittering around the room as James barricaded the entrance. They huddled against the wall as the noise and smoke raged outside, waiting to know if the coast was clear. The house was in darkness, save for the light coming from outside, which with streetlights and the flashing blue and red light, was enough to see quite clearly. They waited, tense, and Ariol withdrew a hunting knife. He held it flat to his leg and smiled at James as he withdrew the rounders bat.
“Fucking old school, blood. Like it.”
They waited for what seemed like hours but in reality were just a few minutes. Staring at the door, imagining the first shadow of a policeman, the shout for back-up, the rush towards the door and pulling the table away before the attack, the relentless attack, because this wouldn’t work without that. James snapped out of it, and guided Ariol into the living room.
“They ain’t coming here. We’re clear, mate.”
Ariol grinned, that same smile, his eyes shining in the streaks of yellow light that came through the crack in the curtain. James’s Dad was always telling him to pull them properly, but he never listened.
“Wha’d you get?” asked Ariol, pulling cameras and a couple of memory storage devices out of his pockets. He sheathed the knife into a full pocket. James pushed him into the living room, happy to get out of the kitchen with its glass door. Anyone could see in if they were walking – no, running, they would be running he taught as the sound of another bottle of alcohol exploded out in the street – past his house. And it was his now, he owned this place. It was an odd feeling, that. Powerful? Was that what it felt like?
Ariol was sat at the living room table, hunched over his spoils, flicking through the goods like a market trader searches for stock in boxes, quick and easy, familiar fingers dancing over well-used products. Ariol had done this before.
“I got a few bits, you know.” James answered belatedly, entering the living room himself and feeling for the light-switch. He kept his other hand, his swinging hand, on the bat the whole time.
“Wish we hadn’t got interrupted, we would have burned that place, man. Burned it to the ground. Fucking pigs.”
“Yeah.” James said absently, but he was already thinking about other things, his mind not focused on what Ariol was saying. It was a dimmer switch, and he brought the lights up slowly. Easy, he thought, nice and easy.
“First night was the best, for real. Such a rush, man, we ran this way as well. Shit, I think it might have been this house…probably why there’s no-one here. We cased the joint, took the jewellery, TV, box, everything. Was easy once we…”
And then he saw him. Ariol looked up from the cameras and USB keys that lay on the table in front of him and saw the man he’d killed on Monday night. James’ Dad.
“Once you’d dealt with things.” James said quietly, and before Ariol could go for the knife, he swung the rounders bat swiftly and brutally towards his quarry. Ariol lost both front teeth before he lost consciousness, and his head whammed back, cracking the back of the dining chair he’d grabbed. He slumped to the ground, out cold.
***
When Ariol woke, he was looking at James’ Dad again. Only this time his hands and feet were securely tied to the dining chair and that in turn was bound with rope to the table. James was just looking for the loose end of masking tape when Ariol spoke.
“Whaf…you fu…” Ariol tailed off, his mouth in agony from the anaesthetic-free dentistry he’d recently experienced. He’d been unconsciousness for twenty minutes, and coming round hurt. But he struggle impotently against his bonds with ferocious anger. James looked up from the masking tape, frustrated. He didn’t say anything.
“You know, it isn’t me you got to worry about, it’s my ends. They’ll be here and when they find me, they will kill you, you get me? They’ll take you apart piece by piece little boy.”
Finally, James broke his silence. He tried to stay calm. What was coming was going to be difficult, but he had made his mind up long ago. He had come to several resolutions whilst standing at the window of his bedroom on Monday. It was a night he would never forget. The realisation that his Dad had been stabbed to death in front of his eyes was bad enough, but to have to lie there, under his Dad’s bed, cowering while his idol and protector died at the hands of such animals was unbearable. It had changed him, not over great time but with profound effect. He was simply not the same person any more.
“Don’t struggle. My Dad struggled, look what happened to him.”
And of course Ariol still was looking at it. The rictus grin, the head, tilted grotesquely on the left shoulder, as if to say ‘I’ve travelled to the next life – won’t you join me.’ Ariol looked away, at the light coming through the curtains. There was no crack in them now. They were closed tight.
“Look, you were there, right, what, in the cupboard?”
“Wardrobe…but no. I was under the bed, holding onto the slats, looking at my knuckles as they turned into hot coals. I think you’ve said enough.”
“Yeah, right. What you gonna do, kill me?”
But James wasn’t shocked by the word. He had put a lot of thought into what it meant to take someone’s life and although it meant nothing to some people, it was something that was beyond him. He wanted to take the rounders bat and beat Ariol to a bloody death. He wanted to wreak personal and bloody vengeance on him for what they had done. What they had all done. But he knew he wasn’t capable of it.
“I’m not going to kill you. You’ll be killed by your own, I would have thought.”
Ariol started shouting, but James was quick, and got the tape on with the minimum of fuss. One more swipe of the bat and Ariol was out for a little longer, giving him plenty of time to make himself and Ariol (and Dad of course, he would never forget Dad) comfortable.
When Ariol woke, some of the glare in those milky eyes was gone. His head sported two lumps, but his eyes were crying out like a feral wolf. He didn’t evoke terror, or power or anger. He was cowed by fear. And it looked natural to James.
“My Dad was the best, you know? I know everyone says that but he was. What did you want to know about him? Oh…right, you can’t tell me. Well never mind. I’ll tell you. I checked the news while you were asleep. Apparently the riots are moving on, but they’ll be back tomorrow night, won’t they?”
Ariol closed his eyes, blinking slowly, and reluctantly opening them again. He shifted his weight, but the chair might as well have been soldiered to a steel floor. He tried to focus on James. Listen to the kid, don’t look at the Dad, he thought. Never look at him. He’ll take you with him if you look at him.
“I think most people round here will be pretty scared for days. Most curtains closed, I reckon, yes. Anyway, I want to tell you everything, give you a chance to get to know my Dad.”
Ariol struggled again against his bonds, shouting through the tape. It was a squeal, like the tires on the tarmac outside the electrical store. It barely made it to James’ ears.
“OK, before I do that, let me tell you what’s going to happen. I was vague before, and I apologise, but it’s been a very hard few days. Do you know how long you can survive without food?”
Ariol shook his head slowly. His eyes darted around the room, looking for something to give him hope. He could see the telephone, which ran to a wire that had been cut.
“Three weeks – that’s the good news. The television says the riots are going to go on for days. Your friends.”
This time, the head-shake was quick, urgent.
“They’re not your friends? It don’t…matter…now…does it blood?” James said, the voice just a little off-kilter. It would have felt like madness, a little screwy perhaps, but no-one really steps back from anger to see it for what it really is, do they? Certainly James didn’t. He was almost too calm.
“It’s three days without water. Three days, Ariol. I’m going to try to keep you safe during that time of course. I’ve barricaded the doors and I’ll be here to look after you. Me and Dad. I wonder how long these riots will go on.”
Ariol tried not to look at the Dad. Really tried. But it was no good.
“Did I ever tell you about my father’s bat? What makes it so special?”
Ariol didn’t move. He was fixed on the Dad’s face now, the eyes. How long would it be before…?
“Of course I didn’t. Well, it’s a great story. You’re going to enjoy it.”
