Meadowside (3 page)

Britney picked up her Spongebob Squarepants backpack and shuffled to the exit, closely followed by Mike.

Kylie frowned. “But I want to watch the rest of the movie,” she said to Tom. “Don’t you want to see how it finishes?”

“Nah, it’s boring. I’ll download it for you later, you can watch it on my laptop.”

Kylie sighed. She didn’t really want to go, but it seemed like everyone else had already made their mind up. And she
had
always wanted a laptop of her own, so maybe she could get one from the riot?

“Well okay, if you’re sure it’ll be safe?”

Tom smiled. “Yeah, we’ll be fine. We’ll just go down there, get some stuff, then get fucked off out of there before the coppers change their mind and start laying into everyone.” He stood up and looked down at Kylie. “Come on then, let’s get going.”

Kylie took a final look at the cinema screen and made her way to the exit door, where Mike and Britney were waiting. They pushed through into the lobby and headed for the main exit. Tom stepped through first, and collided with a man running past outside. He was knocked off his feet and sprawled to the ground. The man continued running without looking back.

“Are you okay?” Kylie asked. She reached down to help Tom up.

“Yeah. Some people have just got no fucking manners.” Tom glared after the running man and shook his head. “Fucking wanker.”

They set off in the same direction as the running man, past the food hall where delicatessens and salad bars competed with burger joints and tea rooms, and back into the main shopping centre. More people ran by. Someone screamed in the distance. Kylie cast a worried glance at Tom, but he just shrugged and led the way to Meadowside’s train station exit.

A young woman, her hair and clothes drenched from the rain, staggered toward them swinging her arms. A small baby strapped to her chest in a harness made an odd rasping sound and raised its tiny arms. Its eyes were wide and staring, its face screwed up in hate. Its mouth opened and closed, making the gurgling, hissing sound undulate. As the woman stumbled closer she bared her teeth and hissed too. She raised both hands and reached out, her fingers grasping like claws.

Kylie stepped back out of the way just as the woman lunged for her. The woman spun around with a snarl, and made a grab for Britney’s tracksuit top. Britney cried out and swung a fist at the woman’s mouth. The woman’s bottom lip burst and blood dripped down her chin, spattering onto the baby’s head. The baby thrashed wildly against its restraining harness, seemingly desperate to get at Britney itself, but its arms weren’t long enough to reach her. It hissed in frustration.

Mike tried to wrestle Britney from the woman’s grip, but she clung on tight, her fist clenched around Britney’s tracksuit top. He struck the woman’s arm with the blade of his hand, but all that did was drag Britney closer to the woman’s gnashing teeth. Britney yelled and pushed out with both hands, kicked out at the woman’s legs. The woman snarled and jerked her head forward, clamped her teeth over Britney’s arm. Britney screamed. Blood gushed from between the woman’s jaws.

Tom rushed forward and grabbed a handful of the woman’s hair, then yanked her head back. She came away with a lump of Britney’s flesh in her mouth and thrashed her head from side to side trying to free herself. Britney fell to her knees, clutching her arm, blood pumping between her fingers from a gaping wound. Her face was deathly white as she stared at the struggling woman wide-eyed in shock and fear.

Tom dragged the woman away by her hair while Mike knelt down and reached into Britney’s backpack. He pulled out one of the designer shirts she had stolen from Sportswear Direct and tied it around her arm, wrapping it around several times in a makeshift bandage.

Tom dragged the woman up to a shop window and smacked her forehead into it a few times, then spun her around and shoved her in the back. She stumbled a few steps, then toppled forward with a sickening crunch. Almost immediately the woman rolled over and sat up. The baby hung limp from its harness, its head flopped to one side, blood dripping from its ears. The woman bared her teeth and hissed. Tom stared down at her and backed away, horrified at what had happened to the baby. The woman leaned forward and dropped onto her hands and knees, then started to crawl toward him with the baby’s limbs dangling lifelessly beneath her.

Tom looked at Mike, his eyes wide and staring. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he shouted, and ran.

4

Smiffy lounged against Meadowside’s bronze war memorial statue with his mate Stonker, both of them posing with cans of Special Brew while Johnno took a photo with his phone. Stonker gurned at the camera, displaying his missing front teeth with pride. Smiffy held up the red and yellow football scarf tied around his wrist and clenched his fist.

“Skumfuckers!” he yelled, just as the phone’s camera flashed.

Several passers by glanced in his direction, then looked away quickly and walked on. Smiffy didn’t care what they thought of him. They were nothing. Worse than nothing. Just mindless sheep going about their mundane lives in pointless obscurity, destined to be forgotten the minute they died. Smiffy was a
someone
. He’d built his Skumfuckers firm up from nothing, organised disjointed football yobs and louts into a force to be reckoned with. One to strike fear into the hearts of rival firms. Smiffy had no doubt the Skumfuckers would go down in history one day.

Shefferham United had done them proud that day, winning three-nil against arch-enemies Chelterton FC. The Chelterton Boot Boys, despite all their threats on the Skumfuckers’ Facebook page, had been a no-show inside the stadium. Even outside on the streets they hid behind the skirts of an army of coppers like a bunch of frightened schoolgirls as they skipped off back to the train station and went on their way back to their rat-infested home town.

The chant had gone out – CBeebies, who the fuck are you? – but none of the Chelterton Boot Boys took the bait. No doubt they would come up with some lame excuse, but Smiffy knew the truth. The CBeebies had bottled it. And as soon as Smiffy got home he would update the Skumfuckers’ Facebook page to let the whole world know about it. But for now he was content to just drink a toast to Shefferham United and celebrate the sound thrashing Chelterton FC had received. The other Skumfuckers had gone home to their wives and kids, but for Smiffy, Stonker and Johnno it was the start of a twelve hour drinking session that wouldn’t end until the early hours of the following morning.

Johnno swaggered over, holding his phone out so Smiffy and Stonker could see the photo he had taken of them. Smiffy grunted his approval. Both his and Stonker’s huge, bright red pupils made them look like demonic warriors. Stonker drained his Special Brew and crushed the can in one hand. He lobbed it at the war memorial statue and cheered when it bounced off a soldier’s head and clattered to the ground. An old woman glared and tutted as she passed.

“Fuck off, you old bag,” Stonker shouted.

He took a step toward her with his fist raised. The woman hobbled away muttering something about damn hooligans with no respect for anything.

“Respect is fucking earned,” Stonker shouted after her. He cracked open another can of Special Brew and took a long swig.

Smiffy smiled and shook his head. He knew Stonker was only teasing the old woman, but it had certainly put a spring in her step. He took another gulp of his own Special Brew and watched her lose herself in the crowd of shoppers.

Something caught Smiffy’s eye, a quick flash of movement in the distance. Someone screamed. Shoppers plodded to a halt and grew silent, looked at each other. Another scream. People craned their necks to see what was happening, then scattered in all directions.

Smiffy climbed onto the war memorial and stretched himself up to see what the fuss was about. People ran by on both sides, wide-eyed and terrified. One woman dragged a young child behind her, the child stumbling as it tried to keep up with her fast pace.

There was some sort of commotion outside the off-license, a lot of pushing and shoving going on. Smiffy saw someone pinned up against the shop window by three men. A woman, judging by her hysterical screams. A young man went to her aid and got dragged to the ground for his troubles. They pounced on him, no doubt for a quick bit of facial reconstruction for interfering with their fun with the woman.

“It’s the fucking CBeebies,” Smiffy said, pointing. “They must have sneaked off the fucking train at Meadowside.”

“The fucking cunts,” Johnno said, shaking his head. “That’s bang out of fucking order.”

Smiffy nodded. Attacking innocent civvies brought hooliganism into disrepute, gave everyone a bad name once the TV news got hold of the story. The Skumfuckers would never do anything like that. The Skumfuckers had honour. They had class. They didn’t fight women and kids.

There were five of them as far as Smiffy could tell, and they showed no colours. Not one single football scarf or replica kit amongst them, as if they were ashamed to be associated with Chelterton FC. Unlike Smiffy and his mates, who wore their Shefferham United colours with pride. Yellow replica football shirts, yellow and red Shefferham United scarves around their wrists, and the regulation Skumfuckers camouflage shorts with the secret pockets that were perfect for hiding weapons in.

Two of the Chelterton Boot Boys had a young woman between them. One at the back yanked at her hair and she stumbled back, her arms flailing as she cried out. He pulled her down to her knees, then onto her back, and ripped a handful of hair from her scalp. The one at the front dropped down and copped a feel of her tits while she screamed in agony.

Smiffy’s blood boiled. He wasn’t having that. Not on his fucking manor.

“Oi, Chelterton!” Smiffy shouted. He held his arms before his chest in a Celtic cross, his fists clenched, knuckles facing the enemy. “Let’s fucking have it then, you cunts!”

“Let’s just fucking
do
the bastards,” Johnno snarled. He raised his arms and held the same Celtic cross pose as Smiffy. “Oi, you fucking Chelterton cunts!” he yelled. “Skumfuckers are going to fuck you up!”

Stonker steamed into action without a word, his football scarf trailing behind him as he ran. Smiffy knew better than that. He untied the scarf from his wrist and draped it over the outstretched arms of a bronze soldier for safekeeping. Johnno placed his scarf next to it. He looked at Smiffy and grinned. Smiffy grinned back and nodded.

“Skumfuckers!” they shouted in unison, and following Stonker’s lead they ran straight for the two men molesting the young woman.

Stonker had already caught one of them square in the face with his cherry-red Doc Martens and had him on the ground. He straddled him and dropped down to his knees, then leaned forward as his calloused fists went to work on the man’s face.

Johnno launched a steel-toe-capped boot at the back of the other man’s head. It landed with a loud crack and the man slumped forward over the woman’s body. Smiffy bent down and grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt. He pulled him off the woman and looked down at her. She was unconscious, her dress torn open, her bra pulled down. Her breasts were bloody, covered in bites and scratches.

“You fucking dirty cunt,” Smiffy shouted, and lay into the man’s face with his boots.

He kicked and stamped, continued venting his rage long after the man lost consciousness. He dropped a Skumfuckers calling card next to the man’s pulverised face and took out his phone. He bent over the man and lined up the viewfinder in his phone’s camera to include both the man’s mashed up face and the
You’ve been Skumfucked
gold embossed lettering on the calling card.

This was one to go in the Trophy album on the Skumfuckers’ Facebook page, and it had to be perfect. He straightened up and examined the photo, zoomed in to check everything was in focus. He left the calling card where it lay, so it would be the first thing the man saw when he regained consciousness. So there would be no doubt who was responsible for the scars he would carry for the rest of his life.

Johnno and Stonker were gone when Smiffy looked up. He put his phone away and wheeled around to locate them, worried they might be swamped by the remaining Chelterton Boot Boys. But they were both handling themselves well enough, holding up the Skumfucker honour in good style.

Johnno had hold of a man’s long, wet, straggly hair and was swinging him around by it. The man stumbled and fell, rolled onto his stomach. Johnno was on him in an instant. He raised his boot and stamped down on the back of the man’s head, crushing his nose against the wooden flooring. Smiffy could hear the resulting crunch of cartilage from where he was standing. That was another Chelterton Boot Boy who wouldn’t forget this day in a hurry.

Stonker had another of them backed up against a shop window, his fists pummelling the man’s face. The man just stood there and took it. He didn’t flinch, didn’t even try to fight back. Smiffy had a bit of grudging respect for that. If it had been Smiffy dishing out the punishment he would’ve let it go at a few slaps and a bloody nose, then sent the man on his way with his tail between his legs. But Stonker wasn’t like that. Once Stonker got the bull by the horns he never let go until the bull was either bloody and unconscious, or the coppers dragged him off. Even then Stonker would go down fighting, take a few coppers with him.