For some reason I thought of Annie Risk and I felt a little kick in my stomach. I didn’t know how long I’d been in the City but it must have been at least a couple of days and she was bound to have tried to call me. Unable to get me at home she would have tried the shop and there would have been no answer there either. She would be worried and there was nothing I could do. For the time being I had to go along with Stella’s advice in order to give myself a chance merely of surviving in the City. Stella had said there was no way out but given that I’d found the place — I’d begun to suspect partly because I’d been so convinced it did actually exist — I had to believe there was a route out of it. My belief would help me find one. Perhaps the day I gave up believing it was possible would be the day I became a true citizen of the benighted place.
‘What?’ said Stella, looking at me.
‘Nothing.’
We entered a large square. A cluster of taxi cabs dozed by a small section of railing, their engines switched off and lumpy figures slumped over in the driving seats. An articulated bus bent almost double waited for daylight to come. A few bits of newsprint, damp old cigarette packets bearing the same spiral design as Stella’s and plastic drinks bottles whispered under our feet as we crossed the wide road and headed for a narrow bridge.
‘It must be near curfew,’ I said.
‘We’ll just make it,’ Stella answered without looking back. ‘We’re in Eyshall now.’
I didn’t know how she was able to be so accurate without a watch but I didn’t question her. As we walked across the little bridge I looked over the parapet and at first it was too dark to see anything. I heard Stella’s shoes on the road and knew I should catch up with her but I wanted to know all there was to know about my surroundings. As I concentrated and shielded my eyes from the bleak street lighting either side of the bridge I could make out the black, treacly canal beneath. It moved slowly, bearing a patina of litter and patches of scum. The banks were reinforced with stone slabs. It was narrow and there was very little room beneath the bridge, yet despite its unwelcoming aspect I felt reassured by the mere presence of another element in this restrictive landscape.
I heard Stella’s voice hissing in the distance. Looking up the road I saw her a good fifty yards away beckoning me from beneath a broken street lamp.
Chapter Eleven
Maxi’s place was an old dentist’s surgery. She had the reclining chair, the pull-down light, wall-mounted cabinets with mirrored fronts, little instrument trolleys from which she served drinks. She even still had the drill, one of the old, slow motor-driven kind with long extendible arms and strings. I shuddered in recollection.
‘What would you like, Carl?’ Maxi asked. ‘To drink?’
I had a small glass of the City’s fruit brandy. Although clearly made from tinned fruit, it was less vile than the cigarettes. Since we were inside and Stella had indicated Maxi’s place was quite safe, I took out my Camels and offered the pack around. Both women smoked but preferred their own brand. I lit up and at Maxi’s invitation sat down in the reclining chair.
Maxi was a tiny woman, more like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes, and she wore exaggerated make-up which made her look slightly clownish. I assumed she changed before going out, like Stella swopping her skating tutu for a baggy jumper and leggings.
‘How come you’ve got this place?’ I asked Maxi.
She looked at Stella who replied for her. ‘Dental care is not a priority in the City. Most people don’t live long enough to lose their teeth. We perform our own extractions if necessary.’
I winced.
‘There are lots of squats like this,’ Stella said. ‘We might be able to find you something similar.’
‘I’m not planning to stick around long enough to put down roots, but thanks for the offer.’
Maxi spoke to me. ‘Stella says you need a new look.’
I shrugged. ‘What do you think?’
‘I’m surprised you’re still walking around.’ She jumped to her feet. ‘So let’s get started.’
I sat back in the chair and Maxi came up behind me, taking a handful of my hair. I wanted to wriggle out of her grasp and run away. I was attached to my hair. But before I realised what she was doing she was sawing through it with a huge pair of dressmaker’s scissors. In dismay I watched my magnificent mane hit the floor. Let go, I told myself. It’ll grow back.
Maxi continued cutting. My impression was that she was more enthusiastic than proficient. Her scissors tugged at my scalp. It seemed to me she wasn’t taking a lot of care to layer the cut and I would more than likely have to pay a visit to Jerry’s Gentlemen’s Barbers when I got back to London. I suddenly felt overwhelmingly homesick. When I’d started to let my hair grow I still went back to see Jerry and watch him do his stuff on a couple of customers. It only ever took him the time it took to smoke one cigarette. He’d stick a Raffles between his lips, light up and start working his magic scissors. He never took the cigarette out of his mouth but instead let the ash droop until inevitably it fell into your hair and he dealt with it in his next stroke.
‘That’s enough, surely,’ I said sharply, coming back to my senses as Maxi yanked too hard again.
‘Not really,’ said Stella, who must have been watching from behind.
‘Let me see,’ I insisted. ‘Give me a mirror.’
Stella handed Maxi a mirror and she held it behind my head. I sat up to see myself reflected in one of the cabinet doors and there was only a split second in it: I saw Maxi’s eyes sliding away from a door in the far corner of the room and knew I’d been set up. For some reason I felt Stella wasn’t part of it so I shouted, ‘Stella, get out of here now,’ as I launched myself from the chair, batting a hand backwards to ward off Maxi’s scissors just in case. Even as I was still turning, the door in the far corner burst inward and a spitting, frenzied ball of vicious flesh and teeth spun into the room.
Stella had gone for the door we’d come in by but already my way was cut off by the intruders. I whirled around as they came for me. There were windows — my only hope. In one fluid movement I yanked the overhead light from above the chair and had enough leverage on it to smash it into the nearest attacker’s face. Maxi clutched the scissors to her chest, clearly hoping her stillness and twisted loyalty would stand her in good stead with them. I didn’t much care. OK, she’d double-crossed me and Stella, but that was nothing compared to what she’d done to my hair. I plucked the scissors from her hand and as the second creature leapt I thrust them out in front of me. It gored itself spectacularly, spraying Maxi and me with steaming hot blood.
They were like the things that had come for me in the record shop.
The other one was already regaining its stance and I sensed more creatures or shock troops about to emerge from the far door, so I picked up the instrument trolley, bottles of fruit brandy toppling and smashing on the tiled surgery floor, and hurled it at the biggest window. I followed it, shielding my face with my arm, and fell into the street in a roll. I picked myself up and ran. I knew that more of them would be after me within seconds.
I ran over the little bridge over the canal, thought about jumping down onto the tow path but before I’d had chance to consider it I was halfway across the big square. I could hear faint cries behind me. I hoped Stella was safe. There was no sign of her and no evidence of anyone else. Just to add to my problems it was obviously curfew now as well. The thought of forcing open the concertina doors and hiding in the articulated bus occurred to me as well but as an idea it was only marginally better than shinning up a street lamp and hoping to stay up there until my pursuers got bored and slunk away, tails, if they had them, between their legs. Creatures like these didn’t get bored. They were perfect machines.