The turnpike narrowed at the Old Dudden Bridge, which crossed an overgrown gully that had been a railway line in the Public Era. From there the land gently sloped down across a couple of miles towards Brent Cross. The view was superficially charming; autumn-tattered woods, towering redwood groves—presumably too distant from sovereign privacy to challenge Naclaski—and brick castles of gangsters spiked with turrets streaming banners. In contrast, Brent Cross asylum was a jammed-up heap of immense sheds like beached wrecks, all bound together with rusty gantries. Chimneys clustered like quills, belching dark smoke. Amongst this foul industry were dinky terracotta rooftops, folded and crushed together as if they had been swept up by a giant. The damage from the shelling appeared trivial at this distance. There were just a few glimmers of fire here and there. As they closed on Brent Cross asylum, the harm done became more disturbing. The shells had blasted craters in the jostle of workers’ terraces. Tiny houses were blown in half, clothes and beds hung out like entrails. Others had the roofs blasted off leaving bedrooms open to the blue sky.
He saw vultures on the turnpike ahead, pecking and tugging at bundles, shoving their heads deep inside and withdrawing greasy with gore. The first whiff reached him…
“It’s a bad day,” called Bartram. He waved a ball peen hammer. “Make them respect!”
Donald squeezed his nose shut with one hand and kept the Webley at the ready in his pocket. Ahead was a jam of wagons, amongst which milled gaunt, empty-faced people towing huddles of kids. To both sides of the turnpike dead bodies lay in banks. Vultures strutted about, men swore and kicked at them, the vultures jumped out of harm’s way and then nipped back in for a quick lunge. The racket was unlike anything Donald had experienced. The ultramarine drivers on the wagons yelled and lashed to all sides with their whips, whilst their side-kicks jabbed with sawn-off shotguns. Children wailed. Men howled. Mothers cried and screamed. He saw one woman clubbed in the face with a sawn-off and stagger away pouring blood from a broken nose. Bartram exploded into a terrifying war cry, whirling the ball peen hammer, hacking at two young men who failed to leap aside.
“Out of the way! Riff-raff and sub-humanity!” Sprays of saliva flew from his mouth. The Newman troop dove in through the aimless mass. Donald guessed this was pooled surplus from the public drains. It fascinated more than scared him. Why did it not use its great number? But it did not. Some of it had given up and sat with the banks of dead, faces in hands. The same expression was in all their eyes, of a pained consternation. In his tourism, he nearly got lost off the back of the group and run down by a team of Night and Fog haulers. The driver cursed him and took a snap with his whip, which Donald dodged. To deter a second try, he glared and waved the Webley.
The Brent Cross customs barrier was manned by giants in leather and bamboo armour. They let the whole group through on Bartram’s passport, after which the Newmans clustered to take stock. None commented on the melée they had just broken through. They were standing at one end of a vast gravel plaza, surrounded by towering chimneys. Rumbles and tremors shook the air. The top end of the plaza was filled by a multitude of marquee tents and advertising banners. The largest billboard of all pictured a beaming young man under the caption: “Get spayed and get paid!” It had been disfigured by graffiti: “Get paid and get laid!” The place swirled with people. More decanted from the labyrinth of streets leading into the workers’ districts. These streets were like ravines, countless, creating the impression of a sponge. Apart from the brown haze overhead, there was nothing to indicate artillery shells had landed nearby and killed people.
“If we find the National Party conference, we find her,” Donald said.
“It could be fucking anywhere, including inside one of these sheds Some of the factories have become quite close to the nationalists; they can smell who’s going to win.” Bartram turned to Donald. “You’d better keep that pretty townie accent to yourself here.”
It did not do to loiter on this plaza. An ultramarine driver yelled at them to get out of the way. Then they were almost flattened by a gang carrying planks between them, running towards the area of houses from which the smoke was rising.
“Let’s follow them,” said Bartram. They dived into one of the ravines amongst the toy houses, passing doorways leading straight into little kitchens full of children and steam. They tripped over more children in the shadows under the overhanging upper floors and the parades of washing. They crossed little squares where locals queued for water and the common latrines. At one point they had to press their backs to the wall to allow an open ‘honey wagon’ of sewage to pass the other way, lurching horribly. A burned-hair reek intensified. They rounded a sharp corner and were there, looking across a
