Abandonati

by Garry Kilworth

Genres: Horror; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

Quasi-SF post-apocalyptic novel of Britain after the rich have abandoned the world to the poor. This humorous fable charts the odyssey of down-and-out Guppy and his companions - the "abandonati" - who are looking for the rich people and their affluent lifestyles. It is a forceful reminder of the need for a greater humanity and sense of social responsibility towards the poor. Garry Kilworth is also author of "Cloudrock", "The Songbirds of Pain" and "Hunter's Moon".

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 166

Sample

Hey sizzle-diddle

The cat’s on the griddle –

Little dog’s better,

If you can get ‘er.

A feral cat glided out of an alley and into the sunlight. It stopped, looked about it cautiously for a few moments, then navigated a hill of rubble. A pile of rags beside the broken bricks and plaster suddenly came to life. A hand flashed out and grabbed the cat by its tail. The cat screeched, whirled and used its claws and teeth, sinking them into the hand, which released its grip instantly. Then the creature streaked away, down another alley, and out of sight.

Guppy sat up abruptly and sucked at the wound the cat had inflicted. He cursed the cat, and himself, with a parched throat, knowing that he should have caught the animal by the neck. Breakfast would have to wait now.

Dawn was always late in the streets. It had trouble driving away the cold shadows: the more lethargic ones that lay heavy in the alleys and under the overhangs of rubble. Guppy looked about him, blinking rapidly. He scratched his grizzled chin, realising that he had not had a decent drink in three days: not since that can of cleaner he had found under the stairs of some building.

He ran his fingers through his matted, greasy hair, wondering what to do. His head was muzzy and his thoughts frayed and worn. Drink. He needed booze of some kind.

He could see a group of people huddled around a fire at the bottom of the street and decided to ask them if they had any spare water. It was coming to something when he had to drink water, but they sure as hell weren’t going to give him liquor.

He stumbled to his feet, hitching up his baggy trousers, the crotch of which hung almost to his knees. He needed a piss. He relieved himself against the wall. Then he carefully folded his ragged blanket, his only possession, and tied it with a piece of string around his waist. Then he staggered towards the circle around the fire.

Like himself, they were dressed in rags and most of them clutched some form of blanket. They watched him coming towards them with blank eyes. One of them, a young boy, threw some fuel on the fire: an old book or something. Guppy approached them slowly, warily, and then stood there while he considered what to say. The words were difficult to form.

Finally, he blurted out, ‘Got any drink? Anythin’? This terrible thirst, see.’

No one replied. There were some open mouths, but little comprehension showed in the eyes. Only the boy seemed to grasp at his meaning.

‘Park’s over there,’ said the kid. ‘Over behind.’

‘Thanks,’ said Guppy. There was usually some kind of water in a park: a pond or canal. Last time he had drunk such water it had made him sick for two days, but he could get some and boil it first, on their fire, if they let him.

He staggered to the corner, then remembered that he hadn’t got anything to carry the water in. He went into the first doorway he saw, stepping over the rubbish that had collected in the opening. Inside it was damp and smelled of cats and rotting plaster. There were people lying in the hall and in the side rooms. It took even longer for the dawn to reach indoors. Someone had been sick at the end of the hall and it reeked, offending even Guppy’s insensitive nostrils.

He found what used to be the kitchen, when the place had functioned as an apartment. There was a pile of empty cans in one corner. He took one.

On an impulse he tried one of the taps, twisting it back and forth. It was hard to turn and squeaked. No water came out and Guppy moved away from this useless device to the more reliable source in the park outside.

It was a canal and though full of trash, it looked a bit cleaner than most. Guppy was so thirsty he decided to risk it. They might chase him away from the fire anyway, and it took a while to boil the water and let it cool. He wanted a drink now.

He gulped down the cold water, filling his belly, which immediately churned, noisily. Then he took something which looked like putty out of his pocket and though it was grey with dirt, crammed it into his mouth and swallowed it quickly. It tasted good. He stared around him then, wondering whether or not to go back to sleep.

Suddenly, as he stared through the trees and down the long streets, a dim but interesting thought came into his mind. He stared at the murky water running through the reeds. He looked up and around him, at the tall buildings, some of them still having unbroken windows here and there. He glanced with distaste at the scabby cats and lean dogs that roamed well out of his reach.

‘Place is a mess,’ he told himself, as if noticing it for the first time. ‘Whole place is a goddamn mess.’

He inspected his footwear: boots wrapped around with rags. They were a good pair. He’d found them only three days ago. Too big, but that was better than too small. He might get a few blisters as they slopped around, but that was all right. Blisters were nothing when you had sores up your legs that wept continually.

He pulled himself up, to a near military posture, and then, setting his eyes on the middle distance, began to walk. He went out of the jungle of the small park and into the potholed street. He started off, down the middle of the road, intending to stop for nothing. He was going to walk out of the city.

As he began his journey his aches slipped away from him, and his head began to clear a little. He found less need to cough. His penis still stung, after that piss, but he still felt pretty good. He felt okay. This was an adventure. He was going to walk out of the city. He was going to walk and walk, day and night, until he came to … to … to something – something that wasn’t the city any more. He knew that the city was big, but it couldn’t go on forever. There had to be something – an edge – another side – something more than just crumbling buildings and pitted streets, with grass tufts growing like hair from the cracks in the concrete.

As he trudged through the dilapidated brick world, he passed many groups of people, some standing around street fires, others sitting on the steps of buildings which were their homes. Guppy knew there wasn’t much inside these places, but at least they provided some sort of shelter from the coldness of the night. These groups tended to live in pockets. Most of the areas were uninhabited.

Guppy had some vague idea that it might be spring, and that hotter weather would be coming soon, but he’d been wrong about that before. The trouble was, if he could find something to drink, he would, and it almost always made him forget things. That’s one of the reasons why he drank it. Once, he had found a whole bottle of pure, amber whisky and he had to hide in a cellar before opening it. Otherwise people would have smelled it and come from all directions.

He passed the remains of a dead baby, lying in the gutter-There was not much left of it, but he noticed the tiny bones. The dogs had been at it. Guppy was not fond of dogs. They could get pretty nasty if you tried to take something away from them. Anyway, it was best to let them eat. They would get fat on the meat and with a rod and snare you could catch one of them. Dogs made a delicious meal. It was one vicious circle. When had it been any different?

‘Everything’s broken,’ he said to himself.

It seemed that it was all coming to a head. There was so little food around and soon … soon … he didn’t know what to think next. People would die, he supposed. But they were already dying or dead. Lots of them.

There had to be a place somewhere, where people were better off. It hadn’t always been like this. He could remember when the streets had cars in them and people were dressed in good clothes and carried packages bought at shops. Now all that was gone. He didn’t know where it had gone, but wherever it was, lots of the people had gone with it. He was just one of those that had been left behind, abandoned because he was useless.

Oh yes, there had been a better time than this. Of course, there had been street people then. Guppy had been one of them. He had been brought to the city as a boy of six from a place they called … called … he couldn’t remember, but it was a bad place anyhow. That’s why his aunt had come to the city. But at the time about two-thirds of the population were already on the streets and all that happened was that Guppy and his aunt joined them.

Still, there had been markets that sold vegetables, and you could get cabbage stalks that had been thrown into the gutter at the end of the day. You could make a soup with that. And you could stop rich people and ask them for money. You could even join a gang and steal things. You could live quite well.

But gradually, there came to be more people on the streets than in the houses. And those who had houses were no better off, in the end, because there was no work to do and they had to sell all their things. The time came when nobody wanted those any more. All they wanted was food. Money was no good. You couldn’t buy anything with it.

Then all the rich people must have left. Guppy didn’t know where they had gone, but the street people, the abandonati, talked about this betrayal all the time. They were bitter about it, savage in their condemnation, as they huddled around plasterwood fires, spitting into the flames. No one seemed to know precisely when the abandonment took place, but they were all sure it happened. The ones in the know had up and left, taking their possessions with them, and had spared not a thought for those that remained behind.

Guppy didn’t know where they had gone. He had been drinking hard around that period, and nothing seemed to make sense anyway. He just knew that he woke up one morning and realised that all the wealthy people were missing. He’d sort of noticed that the cars were becoming fewer, but he didn’t exactly remember when they had all gone. Seemed like it happened just one morning.

Broken glass crunched under his feet as he walked. The sun glinted on old cans and glanced off shattered shops, the broken panes like huge, jagged – toothed mouths. It was no use looking inside. There was never anything in them these days.

At one place he saw someone with a wooden box, the front of which had a grey glass screen and some buttons with numbers on them. The woman with the box smashed the glass, kicked the innards – a mass of wires and bits of plastic – out from inside. Then she threw the box onto a fire. It burned brightly but with a stink. It was made of plastic, obviously. Guppy stopped to watch it melt into globules spurting colourful flames and noxious gases. He could see the woman was disappointed.

That night, Guppy killed a rat by kicking it against a wall when it ran past him. He was good at that. He joined some people and cooked it over their fire, giving away the front legs. One of the men asked him where he was going.

‘Walk.’ said Guppy.

‘Where though?’

‘Out of the city. Gonna walk ’til I can’t walk no more, that’s what. Must be something there.’

The people around the fire nodded thoughtfully.

‘Why don’t you all come?’ said Guppy.

There were some looks exchanged then shakes of the heads. He could see he had frightened them. They didn’t want to go out, into the unknown. At least where they were was familiar to them. They knew places to forage. They knew where to find water. These things were important and could not be given up lightly.

‘Trouble with you is,’ said one of the women, ‘you don’t belong to no street tribe. This tribe here, see – us –’, she pointed to the people around the fire, ‘we look after each other. You – you’re just a oncer, on your own, with nobody else. We got responsibilities. We got to protect our places and when the kids grow, we got to tell them where to find water an’ how to cook nettles an’ grass roots.’ She paused. ‘See, if we move off, someone else – another street tribe – they’ll move in. We’ll lose our watering places and have to fight to get ’em back. Up here,’ she tapped her head, ‘is where it’s all kept these days. You got to know where to look for things, ‘cause if you forget, you die of thirst or worse. I got little stories I make up to tell my kids where the watering places is – to help ’em remember.’

‘Like what?’ asked Guppy, interested. This was the first time he had heard the word ‘tribe’ applied to groups of people, but then he didn’t go near many groups and when he did they often wouldn’t talk to him.

‘Like I might say to them, there was once a giant, bigger’n the tallest building, who slipped an’ cracked his head just where the redbrick meets the yellow. This giant’s brains spilled down a drain nearto, and into the water underneath the street. There they growed into mushrooms, each little bitty part of brain. That’s where you’ll find water and mushrooms, there, under the place where the redbrick meets the yellow … then I go out and show them where, an’ they know an’ remember, so’s to pass it on to their kids, see.’

Guppy nodded thoughtfully. He was trying to recall where he had seen redbrick buildings converging with yellowbrick, so that he could go tomorrow and get some mushrooms for his churning gut. But probably she had made that up.

‘Okay,’ said Guppy, ‘but I’m going to find out what’s going on. Where the people have all gone to. I bet they’re living in big houses on the edge of the city, with lots of food and whisky and stuff. I bet.’

‘What people?’ asked the woman, whose eyes seemed to be burning inside her skull. Guppy noticed that her gums were swollen and bleeding and she had spots of dried skin on her face.

‘Why, all those people that were here before.’

‘Before what?’

Guppy started to get angry. She was making him think about things he had no answer to. There was a sort of bleak, black cloud in his head when he thought too hard about such things.

‘I don’t know before what,’ he grumbled. ‘I just know I saw people, driving around in swanky cars and wearing fancy clothes …’he did not mention that he still saw them sometimes,’ … and now they’re gone. They just disappeared and they must have gone somewhere. You tell me before what.’

The woman snorted, hunching closer to the fire.

‘They got poor like us.’

‘No, they didn’t, they couldn’t have done,’ shouted Guppy, ‘because there’s not enough.’

‘Not enough what?’ asked a man.

‘People. There should be more around. They just up and left somewhere. I’m going to find them.’

He kicked at the fire in protest at this tribe, who had forgotten that they had all been abandoned. Some sparks flew and there were some growls from one or two of the tough-looking men. Although he was not afraid of them, Guppy decided to behave himself.

The next morning he was up early and walking. One of the women had told him he would soon come to a district where the buildings were taller and reached right up into the clouds. She was right. Guppy found it a pretty scary place, because the woman said the buildings were haunted by the spirits of gods or something. Whether she was right or wrong, it didn’t matter. They were scary enough: just the sheer hei. . .