‘Peach and orange flavoured water,’ he said. ‘These people never hear of a tap?’
‘This is a pre-Party warehouse,’ said Jambit.
And the only one left, to help teach new commissars that a pure heart and steady aim always beat avarice and greed.
‘Then let’s see what food they ate,’ said Bastian, pulling Jambit to his feet.
‘This label says tinned lamb and duck,’ said Jambit.
The pallet was underneath the shelves with more piled high to the sky and he cut the shrink-wrap with his cutlass before handing Bastian a can.
‘This is cat food,’ shouted Bastian in disgust.
‘I feel sick,’ said Jambit.
‘Let’s try another aisle,’ said Bastian.
But it was full of poisonous soda pop.
‘You know I heard about this stuff in RH, never thought I’d see it with my own eyes,’ said Bastian.
‘I’m gonna get me some chocolate,’ said Jambit, scrambling onto a shelf. ‘We used to grow the best cocoa beans in the world back home.’
The ground floor pallet was empty but not the one above, crammed with boxes of candy.
‘You want some?’ asked Jambit, already chewing a bar.
‘No thanks,’ replied Bastian.
‘Suit yourself, but you don’t know what you’re missing, better than sugarcane.’
‘That’s banned.’
‘So it is.’
‘Let’s find some real food to eat.’
‘Try these,’ said Jambit, munching in the crisp aisle. ‘They ain’t too bad once you get used to the salt.’
‘There must be twenty different varieties,’ said Bastian opening his own box.
‘More like a hundred. How’d they ever make up their mind?’
They ate crisps from packets, tubes, and cartons until their stomachs were ready to burst and then looked for a place to rest. Bastian grabbed a hand-soap dispenser, apple and pear, and threw it across the warehouse. It hit a rack and the echo reverberated around the building.
‘This is a good as place as any,’ said Jambit.
They readied to sleep on the highest ground floor pallets with enough room between the one above, just in case there were deadly snakes slithering on the floor. Bastian looked at the cardboard boxes that cushioned his tired limbs. Curious, he opened a box.
‘Jambit, get this,’ he shouted across the aisle. ‘This shampoo has its own philosophy written on the label.’
‘You mean like the STP?’
‘You ever hear Edward say everyone deserves to look and feel gorgeous?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Irresistible?’
‘No.’
They got as comfortable as they could, each glad of the other’s company but with Bastian missing May more than he’d ever thought possible.
Chapter Thirty-Five
They were walking along the railway track for the third night in a row under a pantheon of stars with their flagons running low on peach flavoured mineral water and backpacks down to their last packets of crisps. There were lights in the distance, a checkpoint on the railway bridge.
‘That’s our turning point,’ said Jambit, as they crouched in the bushes. ‘Just as Holroyd said.’
Bastian knocked a large spider to the ground that had just fallen on his shoulder from the overhanging tree.
‘Then we head inland,’ he said. ‘Let’s just hope Holroyd was right, otherwise it’s a death sentence.’
‘I got news for you, Bastian. That’s all we ever had since Nabulus caught us in the University ice-cellar.’
‘The oasis is that way,’ said Bastian, pointing over the embankment and into the scorched earth. ‘If we make it there before sun-up we can wait.’
‘And fill our flagons,’ said Jambit.
The taskmasters used it as a makeshift camp in between assignments and on their way to the northeast and Angole. Unlike the commissars, they were rotated between chain-gangs to minimise nepotism and corruption.
Bastian stood wearily to his blistered feet as Jambit threw his chocolate bars into the bush, hoping to be long gone before the super-rats arrived for dinner.
‘I thought you loved chocolate,’ said Bastian.
‘It’s melted.’
* * *
The sun had been up for over an hour and the sand that squeezed in-between their open-toed sandals was already burning. They wore makeshift hats of palm tree leaves that draped over the back of their necks. They were on the old moor, now a desert.
‘Over there between them dunes, see those trees?’ shouted Jambit.
‘A hundred yards to the left,’ said Bastian.
‘That’s em.’
‘Looks like we made it,’ sighed Bastian.
‘You come far?’ asked a voice.
‘You know we have, Jambit,’ replied Bastian.
‘That ain’t my name.’
‘He’s got company,’ shouted another man with blackened teeth.
When Bastian came too he was inside a camel skin tent with live ones tethered outside to the palm trees. His legs and arms were bound and he was seated on the floor back to back with Jambit. In front of them on the floor was a pile of subversive snacks from the warehouse.
‘So, how’s it go from here boys?’ asked Bastian.
‘Can’t you guess?’ asked the man, all in red with rotting teeth.
He was Siberian like his friend and out here that meant only one thing, taskmasters. Both wore sunglasses.
‘Your hair’s so thick and shiny,’ said the other man, running his filthy fingers along Bastian’s head.
He’d washed it with bottled water and the warehouse shampoo that promised to make him irresistible. He was regretting his decision.
The tent flap opened and in walked a commissar wearing a long white robe and turban.
The two taskmasters bowed, before rotting teeth said, ‘Looters, Sir.’
‘Oh, they’re much more than that, these are sentenced men on the run,’ said the commissar smiling.
Bastian recognised his face from police training.
‘You disappoint me,’ he said looking at Bastian. ‘And what in God’s name is that foul smell?’
‘His hair, Sir.’
‘Cover their heads and throw them over the camels. We’re heading to the fort.’
‘In this heat?’
‘You question my judgement?’
‘My apologies, Sir, it was stupid.’
‘Indeed.’
They traipsed outside to the supply camels tethered to the palm tree and made room for their prisoners.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Bastian and Jambit were dehydrated and disorientated when they arrived at the old castle. They were pulled off the camels and the ropes that cut into their wrists and ankles were cut. Their hoods were pulled off and a bucket of cold water was thrown over their heads before they were pushed into a horse-drawn
