yeah. She was worked over pretty bad. Dizz-ee was breaking her in personal. Not a pretty sight.’
‘Could she tell a different story?’
Snoop could see what Maxwell was thinking; kick her out of the dome, or silence her.
‘No, she was all beat up and stoned on some of our shit. Don’t think she knows what planet she’s on any more.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Out of the cattle shed now. I put her back with the workers.’
‘Okay.’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Okay, that’s that little crisis sorted then.’ He turned to Snoop. ‘You go keep Nathan on our side, all right? You and him are going to be like blood brothers from now on. And you’re going to assure him that when we leave in a few days’ time, it’s a fucking peace envoy; a meeting of minds . . . a pooling of resources.’
‘Okay.’
‘You charm the fuck out of him, Edward. Because if he’s not onside, then we may have to fight our way on. Do you understand?’
‘Sure.’
‘And I’d rather not have to. If there’s a load of fuel-making going on there, we do not want to damage those rigs any more than is necessary to take them.’
Snoop bit down on his lip and balled his fists inside the pouch pocket of his hoodie.
‘I know.’
‘Right then, Edward, you know what you’ve got to do.’ Maxwell dismissed him with an angry waft of his hand. Snoop turned to go, then stopped.
‘Chief?’
‘What now?’
‘We still going soon?’
Maxwell looked up from a pad of paper on which he was scribbling. ‘Yes, of course. The sooner the better. I’m going to assemble the boys this evening.’
‘What you goin’ to tell ’em?’
‘New beginning, Edward. A new home with enough electricity that every night they can watch their DVDs, play their games.’ Maxwell smirked. ‘Think they’ll like the sound of that?’
Snoop nodded. He was certain the boys would love the sound of that. That was pretty much the level their minds operated on. ‘Sure.’
‘Right, well piss off and do what you’ve got to do.’
Snoop nodded and headed back towards the small north entrance. Maxwell watched him go before turning back to his pad and the list of supplies they needed to stow aboard those barges before they were ready to go.
The sooner we leave, the better.
The storage floor beneath the stadium might still contain enough stores of food to pad out their daily broth for another year, but it was the dwindling supply of twenty-litre jerrycans of diesel that concerned him. They went through two of those each time the boys had their party night. Maxwell had already experimented with reducing the nights to once every month, but the boys had begun to play up, taking their frustrations, their boredom, out on the workers. Instead, over the last few months, Maxwell had been starting up only one of the R16Cs instead of the normal two. It had meant losing some of the floodlights outside the arena, it had meant disabling some of the lighting system, it had meant pulling the plug on some of the least used arcade booths, but the boys, so far, hadn’t noticed. Most of them were usually too pissed and too stoned to care.
His recurring nightmare, the one that woke him at least every other night in a cold sweat, was the one where he was standing on the stage in the middle of the boys and saying ‘Sorry, lads, I’m afraid that’s it. There’s no more booze left, no more drugs, no more power for the arcade machines.’
Every time he had that nightmare it ended, for some reason, with him being tied to a hastily cobbled together crucifix and paraded along the boulevard outside the central arena, carried through the workers, screaming and spitting at him before being taken out of the dome and planted amidst a pyre of firewood. Why his nightmare took on a bizarre medieval theme he couldn’t figure out; why young Edward Tindall seemed to be dressed like a member of the Inquisition, why the boys all looked like monks, baying for his blood as he squirmed on the cross and his skin bubbled and blistered in the flames . . . it really didn’t matter. It scared the crap out of him.
The sooner they were settled in on that gas rig and up and running again, the better.
Maxwell sucked in a deep breath to settle his nerves. If those little thugs knew how much they actually frightened him . . .
Chapter 61
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
She opened her