‘Get rid of it, James,’ Viv ordered.
The truth dawned on James almost too late: amidst the smoke and noise, he hadn’t realised that the firecracker in his hand was alight. James flung it hard and it sailed over the cars, exploding in midair a few metres in front of the cop.
‘You nutter,’ Viv screamed happily. ‘You threw it at the piggy!’
‘I just got rid of it,’ James said, squinting anxiously through the smoke and relieved to see that only the cop’s pride – and possibly his Y-fronts – had been damaged. James had had a few run-ins with the police and wasn’t exactly their biggest fan, but he drew the line at blowing them up.
‘Better get out of here, kid,’ Viv said, grabbing James’ shirt and tugging him towards the fields. ‘They’ll murder us if they catch us now.’
Kyle and Tom had already set off into the fields, after demolishing a custody van and two cars and abandoning their sprayers and mallets the instant they’d heard the explosion inside the van.
‘Lose the gloves and headgear,’ Viv ordered, removing his own as they jogged across the open field. ‘You’re the man, James. A bona fide crazy cracker after my own heart – a cop-killing
lunatic
.’
James managed to half smile at Viv, but he’d just come within a few seconds of getting his fingers blown off and was seriously shaken up.
Viv Carter was the kind of nutcase who was going to end up killing someone.
…two senior Zebra Alliance officials were arrested following the attacks, but released without charge. In total thirty-three cars were damaged and twenty-five of these declared total write-offs. Police sources estimate that the bill for damages could exceed half a million pounds.
Avon Chief Constable Derek Miller admitted that he now faced a shortage of vehicles, but denied that it would seriously undermine police operations in the area. Miller refused to comment upon rumours that an attempt to feed misleading information to the animal rights activists had dramatically backfired. But he did admit that three senior officers have been suspended from duty pending a full enquiry …
BBC Radio Bristol
Lauren had always enjoyed tearing into the cellophane-wrapped perfection of something she’d never worn before. Stripping off the tissue paper, peeling the stickers and snapping the plastic label tags. But not this time.
It was Monday morning and the packets contained a grey skirt, knee socks and a white blouse. She could hear James and Kyle fighting over the bathroom upstairs and Ryan was on the phone in the kitchen, raving to someone about
bloody Madeline Laing
this and
bloody Madeline Laing
that.
As Lauren pulled the adult sized Gorillaz T-shirt she’d slept in over her head and started getting dressed, she tried consoling herself with the fact that the summer holidays were only a month away and so she wouldn’t have to keep going to school if the mission dragged on. But that wasn’t much of a relief because it still left her facing the thing she hated most: settling in.
Cherubs are supposed to act like ordinary kids, so they have to go to school. And while Lauren could run ten kilometres with a heavy pack, speak three languages and cook a squirrel in five different ways, she still dreaded being the new kid in Year Seven.
She hated the boys who took the mickey and told you that their mate fancied you, the girls who snubbed you because you weren’t part of their clique and the teachers who didn’t give a damn so long as nothing bothered them.
As Lauren pulled up her knee socks, she tried cheering herself up by imagining that it might all be OK this time. She’d arrive in class, her form teacher would be friendly and she’d find one or two girls who were a good laugh and easy to get on with.
Then she looked down at the weird shoes she had to wear and realised that it wasn’t going to happen. Zara had ordered them out of a vegan shoe catalogue and they’d looked OK in the picture, but the reality wasn’t quite right. The uppers were made from thick, shiny plastic and the soles were made from
…
Lauren held one of the shoes up for inspection, poked the bottom and decided that the only thing it resembled was one of the crispbreads that her mum used to eat when she was on a diet. And there was no way around the fact that wearing shiny plastic shoes that resembled a high-fibre snack was going to mark her out as a freak.
But she slid them on, gritted her teeth and stepped out of her room to go get breakfast. She told herself that there were people with no arms and legs and starving babies in the world, and that compared to them a pair of crap shoes really wasn’t much to complain about. Then she saw James rounding the bottom of the stairs in his school uniform and a pair of black leather trainers.
‘Where’s your vegan school shoes?’ Lauren asked.
James burst out laughing. ‘Me and Kyle both took them out of their boxes and decided that it wasn’t gonna happen. If anyone asks, we’ll say we only went vegan when we moved in with Ryan and our mum couldn’t afford new shoes for all of us.’
‘What if you’re not allowed to wear trainers?’ Lauren asked.
James shrugged. ‘Most schools let you, as long as they’re black. If not, the worst they’ll do is tell us to wear something else tomorrow.’
Suddenly feeling a lot happier, Lauren spun back into her room. She dived under her bed to grab her black trainers, but only saw her white canvas Nikes and a pair of dark blue Converse. She realised that she’d left her black trainers at campus, as well as a pair of black canvas slip-ons that would have been absolutely perfect
…
Lauren pounded wrathfully on her mattress as she stood up, then jumped out of her skin as the leaded window behind her shattered. A half brick bounced energetically across the carpet before hitting the radiator with a clang.
‘Scum,’ a boy’s shrill voice yelled from the field out back, less than twenty metres away. ‘Get out of our village.’
Lauren caught a brief glance of the boy’s grey uniform as Zara burst through the door and stared in shock at the shards of glass covering the carpet.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Fine,’ Lauren gasped, as she ducked under Zara’s arm and opened the door leading out to the back garden. ‘I saw him. He looks about my age.’
The crispbread soles made running uncomfortable, but Lauren spotted the lad belting through the overgrown field and set off at full pelt.
‘You’re
so
dead,’ she shouted, as the long grass flicked against her legs.
Lauren didn’t gain any ground over the first couple of hundred metres, but she was fitter than her target, who began tiring after he’d vaulted over a metal gate and turned on to a straight road that led towards the modern houses on the northern outskirts of the village. By the time she’d finally closed the young lad down, he’d cut into an expanse of lawn sandwiched between two houses.
‘Gotcha,’ Lauren yelled triumphantly, as she wrapped her arm around the boy’s chest and bundled him into the side wall of a house.
But she didn’t get her grip right and he spun out and threw a wild punch. Lauren ducked it, hooked her foot around his right ankle and swept his feet from under him. She dived on top, rolled the lad on to his back and pinned his arms under her knees. The boy was taller than Lauren and visibly shocked at how easily he’d been taken down.
‘You could have had my eye out with that glass,’ Lauren growled.
The boy jerked his head and spat in her face. ‘Good. That’s what you’d deserve.’
Lauren was furious at being spat on, but fought off the urge to punch him out. ‘What did I ever do to you?’ she asked.
‘When you let me up you’ll be sorry.’
Lauren grabbed the boy’s nose between her thumb and finger and gave it an almighty twist. ‘So I’m gonna be sorry am I?’
‘Let go,
bitch
,’ the kid yelled.
The chase had happened so quickly, Lauren hadn’t had a chance to consider what she’d do when she caught up. She could drag the boy back to the house and call the police, but that would turn into a whole massive thing and Ryan wouldn’t appreciate having the cops sniffing around. Her combat training gave her a range of abilities, from knocking the lad out to breaking his arms or even killing him. They were all too extreme, but he’d thrown a brick through her bedroom window and spat in her face, so there was no way she was just going to let him go with a warning.
‘Get up, turd,’ Lauren ordered as she released the boy from the pin.
He had no way of knowing that Lauren had done two years of advanced combat training and thought his opponent was nothing more than a girl, who was smaller than him and had got lucky. So as Lauren stood up, he lashed out again and his Timberland boot thumped painfully against her shin.
Lauren countered ruthlessly, snatching the boy’s wrist, jamming her heel between his shoulder blades and twisting his arm into an agonising lock.
‘Think you’re tough, do you?’ Lauren asked, as she glowered down at her opponent. ‘One more twist and you’ll have to explain to all your mates how your arm got broken by a girl.’
‘Please,’ the boy begged, as Lauren notched up the pain until the shoulder was close to popping out of its socket.
‘No funny business when I let go this time, OK?’
‘
Yeah
,’ the boy gasped.
The instant Lauren let go, he rolled on to his back and glanced up submissively as he rubbed his painful shoulder.
‘Nice boots,’ Lauren said, looking at the almost new Timberlands on her opponent’s feet. ‘What size are you?’
‘Two and a half.’
‘Close enough. Pass ’em over, and your trousers.’
The boy hesitated for a moment and Lauren broke into a confident smile.
‘Look dude, the choice is yours: take them off, or I beat the living crap out of you and pull them off myself.’
The boy leaned forwards and began to unlace his boots. Once they were off, he unbuckled his belt and stood up to wriggle out of his trousers.
‘Give us,’ Lauren said, snatching the black trousers and beginning to inspect the pockets.
She threw his door keys to the ground and used one of his clean tissues to wipe the spit off her face. Then she unbuttoned the back pocket and slid out a nylon wallet.
‘Well, well, well,’ Lauren said, ripping the Velcro apart and studying the sports centre membership and bus pass inside. ‘Stuart Pierce, born eighth of May 1994, number twenty-one Nicholson Villas, Corbyn Copse, Avon. Picture doesn’t flatter you, does it?’
Lauren flung the wallet at Stuart’s head. He looked close to blubbing as he stood helplessly in his socks and underpants. She scrunched the trousers into a ball and lobbed them high into the nearest tree. They snagged on a branch and unravelled, leaving the legs flapping in the wind several metres out of reach.
‘If you or any of your mates come near my house again, I’ll smash every bone in your body,’ Lauren snarled, as she bent down and picked up the boots. ‘And thanks for these, kid. They’re exactly what I was looking for.’
*
Lauren gave the boots a good blast of deodorant and wore two pairs of socks because they were a bit big. They had to get a bus to school and James was still giggling as they headed for the stop with Kyle.
‘Imagine having to run home in your undies,’ James smirked. ‘You’re
so
bad, Lauren.’
‘Yeah, well he could have done me an injury throwing that brick in my window –
and
the dirty git spat in my face. Mind you, I reckon I enjoyed myself a bit too much. It’s true what they say about power going to your head.’
‘Might be trouble if he grasses,’ James said.
Lauren tutted. ‘It won’t happen, James. If he grasses me up for nicking his boots, he’ll get done for bricking the window which is ten times worse.’
‘I know who he is,’ Kyle said triumphantly.
‘Who?’ Lauren asked.
‘That name, Stuart Pierce,’ Kyle said. ‘It was bugging me all through breakfast. I read a report about the AFM attacking a woman named Christine Pierce. She lived in Corbyn Copse and had two sons, Stuart and Andy. I bet that’s why he bricked us.’
‘I read that,’ James nodded. ‘They threw enamel paint in her face and blinded her.’
Lauren stopped walking and looked guiltily down at her boots. ‘Poor kid,’ she gasped. ‘I can’t wear these, everyone’s gonna hate me. I’d better dive home and put the veggie shoes on.’
James looked at his watch. ‘Not if you want to catch the school bus you won’t.’
The stop was on the road between the old and new parts of the village, not far from the alleyway where Lauren had humiliated Stuart. There were about a dozen secondary-school kids waiting at the stop. Three of the bigger ones steamed forward, blocking James, Kyle and Lauren’s path.
‘We’re not looking for trouble,’ Kyle said. ‘Just the bus.’
Lauren caught a glimpse of Stuart sitting on a wall about twenty metres away. He’d sneaked home for another pair of shoes and trousers, but held his shoulder like it was still hurting and his eyes had red rings that suggested tears.
‘You don’t want trouble?’ a tough-looking lad smirked, as he squared up to Kyle.
He was a bigger version of Stuart with zits and Lauren realised it had to be his older brother, Andy.
‘Well you’re getting trouble,’ another lad said, facing off James.
‘Start then,’ James said cockily, giving the boy a shove. ‘See where it gets you.’
Kyle knew James had a temper and pulled him back.
‘Peace, man,’ Kyle said, raising his hands. ‘I know you’re Andy Pierce. I read what happened to your mum in the paper and I’m sorry. But we’ve all gotta live here together and—’
‘Don’t you talk about my mum,’ Andy Pierce spat. ‘She’s blind. She’s lost her job and we’re gonna lose our house ’cos of scum like you.’
A few other boys, including some chunky-looking sixth formers, murmured their support for Andy.
‘Our mum’s shacked up with some guy and we got dragged down here to live,’ Kyle said. ‘It’s not our fight.’
While Kyle and Andy argued, the lad James pushed had closed in again and silently mouthed,
Your mum
.
‘What was that, penis head?’ James asked.
‘I said,
your mum
.’