Forgotness: Book 1: 200m

“Bacon roll?” a voice shouted.

The whole trip had been very soothing. Or we were very tired. But when we woke up we could see daylight round the edges of the canvas.

And there was no sign of Jane. There was a sign of Jane in that there was flattened earth in Jane’s corner of the trailer. But no sign of Jane herself.

“Oh freak.”

The bacon roll conversation continued outside. Various options were mentioned: ketchup, brown sauce, sausage, egg, white or brown. It sounded like the first speaker opted for everything. Oh, and chips with that. We never found out what ‘that’ was.

There was rustling at the end of the trailer and before we could do anything Jane rolled under the tarpaulin clutching a paper bag that smelled far far beyond fantastic.

“Sorry, some truckers were blathering forever just outside.” Explained Jane and then paused in her crawl across the soil. “You all right?”

“Er, yeah,” we said, “thought you’d gone.”

“Ah, did you miss me? Get your chops round this.”

Jane handed me a paper bag.

“It’s a bacon roll.”

We peered inside. We recognised bacon, it was inside some bread that had been sliced in half and had kind of bled really thick blood everywhere. We were not sure about this.

“Is there a problem?” Asked Jane.

“What’s um...” We began, not wanting to sound rude, or stupid for that matter. “What’s the blood stuff? Do you need to tell us something about Toplanders?”

We stopped.

“Oh my freak! You’re cannibals!” It came out before we could stop it. Some jokes are just irresistible. We looked at Jane. Jane smiled back and sighed.

“You’ve got to stop this: ‘We’ve had nothing but shit wrapped in shit and then we go to bed in shit’, you know. I mean it’s sad, it’s funny and then it’s boring and then it’s annoying.

“This,” Jane continued, waving a bacon roll and licking the red stuff, “is delicious tomato ketchup. Made from tomatoes, a fruit, or possibly a veg, I’m not sure, that is normal, safe, nice. And not the blood of our babies. Eat it.”

We did. It was great and we wished we hadn’t made quite such an arse of ourself about it.

“Thank you.” We said when we had finished. “That was unbelievably good.”

“You’re welcome.” Jane bowed a head. “Lucky I had a bit of money left.”

“Money?” We asked. But we laughed before Jane could react. “Don’t worry, we know what it is, we’ve got loads of it.”

“Really? That seems unlikely?”

“Stacks of it, everywhere. Coins mainly, with a king on. We use it for weighting fishing nets and lines, some folks make it into jewellery.”

“Oh I see,” said Jane, “but you can’t spend this money? No, sorry, silly question.”

There was a bit of a silence then. We picked our teeth and rolled up the hammock.

“So,” we started, “what’s happening now? Are we getting off this? Going somewhere?”

“Well,” began Jane, “I reckon this is going to a farm supplies place in Buxton that probably opens at eight or nine, so we’ve got an hour at least before the driver gets his fat arse out of the cafe.

“We’re in Buxton,” Jane continued, “well, we’re just outside Buxton in a big roadside cafe. Our best bet is to see if we can change trucks and get a bit further north.”

“How far have we got to go?”

“It’s four or five hundred miles from here to Aviemore and we have to cross a few seas to get there.”

“Can’t we just steal a boat and sail up there? We’re pretty good at sailing you know.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are. But it’s too dangerous to sail around here, for you and for me.”

“Why?”

“Well you know the Scientologists are in Wales yeah? To the west, pretty well straight west of here? You know what they’re like, especially what with us kind of being young, we’ll be swallowed up into the cult before you can say sod off. We want to avoid them.”

We nodded.

“And out to the east is the Moors Monasteries, it’s covered in Priests, loads of ’em and I want to sort of avoid them, a lot, at the moment, if possible. So I think it would be safer, to get further north, quite a lot further north before we try a boat.”

“OK,” we agreed, “so what now?”

“Well, if you come down here.”

We crawled to the back of the trailer. Very slowly we lifted the tarpaulin and looked out. There were more big lorries lined up and beyond them was a building with a lot of windows. Beside that was a smaller structure which people went in and out of. They always came out adjusting their trousers so we reckoned it was a loo. Quite a grand one for just a hole in the ground, unless...

“Jane, what happens in Topland loos?”

Jane banged her head a few times on the wall of the trailer. We thought it best not to ask again.

“So that van there, the small lorry, three away from us, white, muddy. You can’t see but it’s pulling a small trailer filled with building stuff. I overheard the driver talking, it’s going north to New Huddersfield and the M62.”

“How are we going to get to it without being spotted?”

“I think we should climb out of this trailer, back at the top behind the cab. We’ll disguise you a bit so folk can’t see you so much, and we’ll walk past the van and see if there’s a hiding place in the trailer. You get in. I’ll walk on by, see if anyone noticed. Then I’ll come back and jump in after you.”

“That’s it?” We asked. “That’s the plan? Just get in?”

“It’ll work,“ said Jane, “honestly, if you move slowly and normally no one will take any notice of you.”

“But the driver will.”

“Yes, so we have to hope he’s not looking. That’s why I’m going to walk past, just to see.”

“This isn’t going to work.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Jane, “just... wrap your baggy thing round your neck and er... your top, like it’s raining and it’s some kind of scarf. So people can’t see your...”

“The eyes, you’re on about our eyes again aren’t you?”

“Yes, your eyes. Sorry.” Jane paused. “So, look, I’m going to climb down, take a look around and when I give you a wave, just come out sharp-ish and we’ll get you hidden.”

And that’s what happened. In broad daylight. Jane climbed out and jumped off the end of the trailer. There was some traffic on the road but they didn’t seem bothered by this, they just drove past. Then Jane gave us a wave and we clambered out and dropped down with our hammock all wrapped round our head.

Jane reached out to touch it.

“That’s some crazy material.” Jane muttered. We pulled away from the touch. “Sorry, just wanted to... well never mind, later maybe, hey?”

“Sorry,” we muttered, “it’s not really mine.”

We walked down the line of lorries and past the trailer so we could get a look at where it might be possible to hide. Then we walked back, Jane tried the van’s back doors without luck. We peered over the high walls of the trailer.

“We reckon we could get into the back of this and not been seen.”

So we walked off again at Jane’s insistence and then walked back and jumped over the trailer gate and scrambled to the back. There was a big blue barrel with the top cut off, filled with long tools and bits of wood. This was tied to the side of the van but there was enough space behind it for one person to squeeze in and sit down. We sat there while Jane sat opposite arranging various bits and pieces of what she called plasterboard and other stuff around her. It was not the greatest hiding place but it would have to do.

We wanted to talk but Jane told us to shush, at least until we were on the move.

Time went rather slowly. We wondered quite how many bacon rolls the driver was having. Or if they were calling the soldiers, or plotting something horrible, or just asleep.

We were already very uncomfortable by the time we felt the trailer dip as the driver got into the van (we guessed a lot of bacon rolls had been eaten) and heard the door slam. After a minute the engine started and it was difficult not to cough as the blue-black fumes clouded around us. Then the trailer jolted forward and stopped and jolted again and then we were moving.

It was not a comfortable ride. Lying asleep on topsoil seemed quite luxurious now.

“Where do you get all this oil?” We asked. “We haven’t seen many dandelions, let alone fields of them. Is it bark oil?”

“Sorry,” shouted Jane back, “did you say dandelions?”

“Yes, that’s how we make oil for engines.”

“That’s nuts!” We weren’t sure if Jane was joking now or not. “Dandelions?”

“Yes we use dandelions. How do you make it?” I shouted. If Jane could shout then we guessed it was OK to shout too.

“We’ve got oil rigs. In the north sea. They pump it up.”

“Hang on, aren’t they what caused the problem in the first place, you know oil and stuff?” We asked.

“Yes.”

“But you’re covered in wind mills.”

“Yes, but they’re owned by the wrong people.”

“The wrong people? What does that mean?”

“Well some windmills, a lot really, are owned by the local towns and villages, or the farmers. Some are owned by the big families. But Prince John and that lot, they make a lot of money by keeping the oil rigs pumping.”

“So they don’t care about the sea levels and that?”

“Well, no, not really, the oil rigs float, kind of on legs.”

“No, we mean the people, us, the folk who are drowning.”

“Look, they could not give a flying fuck about you. In fact the sooner you were all dead the better.” Jane looked cross though we felt that we were the ones who should have been cross at this point.

“Why, what have we done?”

“You,” Jane stopped and looked a bit less cross, “remind them of something they did wrong and on top of that you’re different. Most people don’t like different. Especially if they think it’s getting in the way of their money and making them feel bad about it too.”

We didn’t say anything for a bit.

“But if the seas keep rising they won’t have anywhere to go either. One day. Can’t they see that?”

“I know,” said Jane, “but they just don’t see it like that. It’s like they’re ill. With money.”

After that we just drove. At first the road was smooth but there was a lot of stopping and turning and we caught glimpses of houses. They seemed normal, like in the picture books we read when we were young. They looked so solid and secure, permanent, built of brick and stone, with heavy slate roofs. They looked warm and dry and safe. In fact, we hadn’t seen any shacks or tents, any crowds of the homeless and hungry since we had arrived north. Was this a sign of the success of the Topland world, its system of care for its people and a sign that they could, if they wanted to, help many more people, maybe all of us Wetlanders? It was something to ask Jane about.

Eventually we got out of Buxton.

“So,” we shouted over to Jane, “why were you running away from Tissington?”

Jane pointed at a spot closer to us, I nodded and Jane crawled over, squeezing in.

“Do you know music?” Jane began.

“Doh. Of course, we know all music.”

“All music?” asked Jane raising an eyebrow.

We thought about that for a second and answered: “OK maybe not all music but we’ve heard a lot. There’s a pub, with electricity and everyone brings along the CDs they find in the water. We’ve heard a lot of music there.”

“Who do you like?”

Even we knew that was a dangerous question. To get it wrong was to risk ridicule or even loss of friendship and now was not the time for that. Goodbye Brenda, as the Darts would sing. We were not going to mention them, safest to start on the outer edges and come in gently.

Though there was the problem of the death of music: we found so few CDs dated after 2020. Bill and Ben said music moved ‘online’ and got lost. We could have missed some incredible stuff.

“Oh you know, Sister Sledge, DJ Shadow, Jean Knight, Pixies, Princess Superstar,” How could we forget Phyllis? “Phyllis Dillon, ELO.”

“ELO!” Laughed Jane. Freak’n freaks, who knew? Backtrack or attack?

“Yeah, Time, their electronic album. 1981. Really good.”

Jane seemed taken aback by this.

“Oh, OK. I don’t know that one.”

“What about you?” Now the boot was on the other foot.

“Oh, Bowie, Hole, Japan, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees” Ah, we had Jane pegged now.

“Ah,” we said. “The Raincoats: No One’s Little Girl.”

Jane laughed.

“Yes, exactly. How do know them? You must spend a lot of time in this bar.”

“Well, suppose we do. It’s the only place to go. Electricity, booze, music, grass. It’s fun. And there isn’t much of that normally. We all go.” We said. Which made me think of our friends. Who were now dead, or lost, or maybe hiding somewhere here in Topland?

“Yeah, well I know somewhere similar: The Cat and Fiddle Inn. Not much grass sadly but music. I was,” Jane paused, “I was in a band.”

“No way!” now we laughed, “freak sake, really? With drums and guitars and keyboards and things? What did you play? We mean what instrument? Did you play an instrument? What sort of music was it?”

“I... er sang and... er played a bit of guitar.” Jane smiled.

“Wow. What sort of music?”

“It was a Goth band, playing covers of Beatles songs mainly. Or at first anyway. We were called the Sisters of Mersey.”

“That’s freak’n genius.”

“Yeah but...”

“But what?”

“Well, we wanted to play other stuff, you know, proper stuff.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“It’s illegal. You get arrested.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I was arrested. The Priests got me. I was being taken to the Monasteries. I escaped.”

“From Tissington?”

Jane nodded.

“Yeah.”

“And the others?” We asked.

“Dunno,” Jane said, “they’re... I don’t know. They’ve gone on without me?”

Jane sounded sad. We wanted to leave it at that but wasn’t really able to.

“You can’t play other music, or you can’t listen to other music?”

“Both. Most folks have a computer.” Jane stopped and looked at us.

We nodded: “Yes, the Smithy had one. It’s a box that does stuff that you control. It thinks.”

“That’ll do. But they are all connected and they are all connected to the government and the government controls the library of music that we’re allowed to listen to and they don’t allow much. Sixties stuff is pretty well it.”

“Freak’n hell! But CDs?”

“Yeah, well we have them, but they’re not allowed really, and a CD player that is not connected to a computer is pretty hard to come by.”

“So they know everything you listen to?”

“Yeah, what you listen to, what you say, where you go, what you buy, who you meet. Everything.”

“Are we being watched now?”

“The driver is.”

“Freak! How?”

“His phone’ll be on. He’ll be a dot moving on a map somewhere.”

It had started to rain. We pulled out our hammock and dragged it over the two of us.

After an hour the van slowed down as the road narrowed to single track. Sometimes it would stop to let other traffic go the other way.

Then the driver stopped for a pee. It was hard not to giggle about that until we had set off again. Though we had similar problems so we decided that we would take it in turns to crawl down to the end of the trailer and relieve ourselves without the other watching.

Also, we were getting hungry again, so we swapped stories of our favourite foods. Jane was disgusted by our recent meal of raw cauliflower and snails and what, when we left the trailer, we said we could find for us to eat. By the sounds of it Jane was going to go hungry until we found a shop or a pub.

Jane explained that we were travelling up the west side of the Pennines close to the coast. Often, we had to drive through water, though most of the time the roads were rebuilt above sea level. These new bits of road could be very rough, often just a layer of crushed rock.

Sometimes we glimpsed road signs over the back of the trailer: Chinley, Hayfield, Chunal. We did feel like we were making real progress north though Jane said we had a long way to go yet. At Crowden we got on to a fast road again, the A628 to Penistone and we got really worried that the driver would hear us both laughing at that.

Then we turned off and began climbing up the A6024, higher and higher, as it started to get dark.

By the time the van started to head downhill it was night and we were getting really cold.

The rain stopped and as the sky cleared we saw millions of stars. We had seen stars before but this was the first time we had seen so many.

Jane was just starting to tell us about The Plough when the van slowed down, pulled over and stopped.

“He needs another pee,” whispered Jane. We tried not to laugh.

Then the tailgate fell down with a crash and a torch was shone in our faces.

“Come on you two, out yer come.” The torch was shining straight at us so we could not see who it was. Presumably the driver.

Neither of us moved.

“I can see yer both now come on, out of it.” The torch shone down the trailer to show us the route. It stopped at the tailgate. “Oh you bleeding messy fucks. You’ve pissed in me trailer. Come on, get out!”

Jane reached round and arranged the hammock over our head again. Then we stood up and rather sheepishly made our way down the trailer. The driver stood back as we jumped down.

It was then that we noticed we were not alone. There were three other cars parked up on the bank under some trees, their drivers were leaning against the cars watching us and we felt that this had gone from embarrassing to bad, in fact, dangerous. Jane noticed the others too.

“Look, we’re sorry, we just wanted a lift. We’ve got family up New Huddersfield way. Our Mum’s ill. We’re just trying to get home.” Jane lied.

“Aah,” said a voice from the dark, “family, that’s sweet. No harm then hey?”

“Where’s your family then?” Asked the driver, pointing the torch in Jane’s face

“Colcar,” said Jane quickly, “Colcar. Just off the M62.”

“Oh, I know where Colcar is. I’m the bleeding driver. But tell me, what’s the name of the butchers in Colcar then?”

“Um,” said Jane, “I wouldn’t know. We’re vegetarians see. After that whole Phages thing my parents stopped eating meat.”

“Fucking hippy,” someone said. They were circled round us.

“Enough of this shit,” said a voice and a man grabbed Jane from behind. Someone else grabbed us. We had been expecting it.

“You got a lift from Des here. It’s time you two paid the fare by giving us a ride.”

“Yeah!” whooped the third man.

“Now then, I think it’s time we saw what your sister looks like, hey?” More cheers. They were drinking and passing a bottle around.

A hand came up and pulled the hammock off our face.

“Wow, Jesus!” The man who held us let go. “It’s a freak.”

“It’s a Wetter!”

“Will you fucking look at that,” said Des the driver. Jane was struggling. We stood still, waiting. We had been in this sort of situation before with Mugs. They were the same the world over it seemed.

“What is it? A boy or a girl?”

“Looks like we’re going to get our freak on tonight!”

“I’ve never had me a fucking freak before.”

“Haha a fuck’n freak, a freak fuck’n. That’s what’s happening, a freak fuck’n.”

“We’d better take a look-see then. See what the package is.”

“Well I’m not having some rag covered freak, I want the sister.”

The first person to try to pull on our clothes lost a hand. We always kept the bayonet sharp and it sliced through the wrist just as the fingers touched us.

Then it all happened very quickly.

The man was clutching the wrist as we put the knife up through their chin. The next man took a swing with a bottle, missed and lost their balance, we pushed the bayonet into the armpit, then we got a foot up to the torso and kicked the body off the blade. The man went down as we spun in midair to face the third as they came up behind us. We swapped the grip on the bayonet and stabbed backwards into the gut. The man stopped and reached down to the stomach. We caught the look of surprise on their face as we turned round, dragging the knife sideways and the man collapsed.

A car started and screeched away up the road. We turned and saw that there were still two men left. Des was holding Jane in front like a shield, the other stood behind but then turned and ran off across the moor.

“Fucking coward Jack!” Shouted Des, gripping Jane tighter round the neck. Keeping Jane between us. “One step closer and I’ll fucking break your sister’s neck.”

Fishing and hunting birds is an art. Some Wetters use long spears for fish or flick stones in a sling at birds. Some even have working crossbows or bows and arrows. But you need to be prepared, ready to fire and often the moment is lost. A heavy, sharp pointed thing, like our hairpin for instance, can be, with a lot of practice, very effective, very fast, and very accurate.

We pulled the pin from our hair and flicked it. It went through Des’ eye and into the brain. The hand slipped from Jane’s neck as the man folded down to the ground in a kneeling position. Jane stepped away from the body on tip toes.

“You killed them,” she whispered.

“They would have killed us after they raped us. There’s probably bodies buried all around here.”

“But they might not have killed us. You don’t know that.” Jane’s voice was louder now.

“How else could we stop them?” We tried to put an arm round Jane but we were pushed away.

“We’d better get going.”

“Can you drive?”

“Yes,” said Jane and bent down and got Des’ keys out of a pocket. “Fuck it, let’s go.”

We unhitched the trailer and pulled it off the road. Jane opened the bonnets of the two remaining cars and yanked handfuls of cables off the engines and threw them into the woods. Then we got into the van and drove off.

“Clever, about the cars,” we said, watching the sheeps’ eyes flashing red in the darkness.

“Goth bands,” replied Jane.

“So,” Jane went on, “we began removing lines from the songs. Made ‘She Loves You’ very sarcastic. And louder. And slower.”

“Nice.”

“Then we noticed that if we introduced a song as, say, the B side of How Do You Do It? By Gerry and the Pacemakers, we could play almost anything. So we claimed A Forest was by the Swinging Blue Jeans, In Between Days was an Elvis song, we had to throw in a few Uh-Huhs to keep the adults happy, if they cared. Well, until...”

“Don’t tell me, a Priest showed up.”

“How did you know?” Jane snorted quietly.

“Oh, they just love finding ways to stop the fun. So, what did the Priest do? Did they actually know all their Elvis?”

“No. He began looking up the songs on the internet.”

“Well, we’re not really clear on what the internet is, but we thought you said it was totally controlled.”

“Yes, for us, but not for them. They can look at anything.”

“Of course.”

“Of course. Actually, I’ve just got to stop.” Jane stopped the van, ran round the back. We could hear the sounds of retching. We got out and leant against the van so we couldn’t quite see Jane.

“You all right?” We asked after a bit.

“No,” Jane replied, “yes. I don’t know. Are we murderers now?”

“You’re not,” we said, “but for us it was self-defence. Bad things were going to happen and... How did they know? Is this the internet thing again?”

“It’s mobile phones. Telephones. Des, the driver, must have seen us get in and phoned ahead.”

“Oh OK, we’ve found phones in the water. Just didn’t realise they still worked.”

“Probably aren’t that many masts in the Wetlands. We’ve got lots. The Linux bunch fixed it all up and got it working again.”

“So are we still trying for them then? This Linux lot?”

“Guess so. If we can. It’s a long way to go and I think the cops’ll be after us now. Though I’m not sure how those men’ll explain it,” said Jane. “But perhaps they don’t need to. They just mention mutants and that’s all the explanation they need.”

“Better get a wriggle on then, hey?”

“OK.” Jane spat a few times and got back in the van.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“I mentioned Colcar. So I would expect them to look that way first. I guess we had better get over the other side of the Pennines and see if we can head north from there.

We drove on. We pointed to the signpost that read Upperthong but said nothing.

Later we saw signs to Diggle, Dobcross, Delph and Denshaw before we fell asleep.