The first hurdle felt like it would be the hardest. Kasia spent an hour delaying, scrolling mindless content on her feed, until she found the courage to do it and called in sick. Natasha acted as HR people always did, full of second guesses and passive aggressive consolation. The call ended with a question mark. Kasia prepared to join the search party with an uneasy sense that if the vagrants didn’t do her in, her managers would.
The second hurdle was outside her front door, folding laundry.
“I thought you were workin’ today?”
“I’ve got a day off actually.”
“Goin’ for a trip down the Jubilee Line?” Imany’s gaze pierced Kasia, “why you would join that idiot’s rescue mission-”
“What other choice is there!?” Kasia held her arms up, “should we wait for Joey get pimped online so we can buy him back? Misha’s in hospital and -”
“I know exactly what’s goin’ on! Don’t tell me I dunno what losin’ a loved one’s like.”
“Should we sit here and wait for the police to start giving a shit!?”
“I’m gonna give them that shit today Kasia.”
“Is that who you wanted to become? Waiting in line to bribe some officer?”
“As opposed to who, the Reds!? They’ll ‘ave Joey singin’ Rule Britannia on a live stream!”
“We don’t need them either we can do it ourselves! You’re the one who misses the ‘spirit of the local community’ Imany, here’s your chance to get it.”
Imany straightened up, and went still, “why’d you start carin’ now girl?”
Kasia became stuck, threatened by the more powerful woman in her way. But something got between them. Her eyes flicked over Imany’s shoulder, and she started glaring. Eva was creeping upstairs with a guilty face.
“Mama? I thought you were workin’ today?”
The act of ignorance angered Kasia even more. She switched languages to block Imany out.
“Why aren’t you at school?”
“I...I always school at home on Thursdays,” Eva shrunk, sensing trouble, “what’s going on down the stairs Mamusia?”
“Where have you been girl.”
“I told you I was visiting friends!”
“In the club?”
“No!”
“Have you been hooking up in the club? Do you want to spend your birthday at the clinic? Do you think we can afford it!?”
“No!” Eva’s voice wobbled. Kasia swore at her through a violent hiss.
“Leave it out you stupid tart!” Imany yanked Kasia back, tripping her over, “Eva stay at in my place, your mum’s joinin’ your prat of an uncle on a suicide mission. Probably so she can get attention online.”
Eva dashed through Imany’s door sobbing. Kasia tried to follow her but was blocked. Imany grabbed the front of Kasia’s hoodie, twisting it into a fist, and pulled her upwards.
“Do you wanna know what those pikeys will do to you? They will take turns raping you against a sewer grate while you starve in a pool of their jizz. Or maybe a pimp will buy you. Then you’re in the hands of the audience behind the camera. Is that how you wanna end it?”
Kasia tried to struggle free, dangling on tiptoes, eyes watering.
“Who the fuck would even care Imany!?”
“Your family! Your friends!”
“Family… if I died someone else would give her a better life than I ever had. And I got 5000 friends! I wouldn’t recognise a single one of them on the street. If I even asked to see their face I’d be blocked for harassment...”
“So what’s the point of them then!?” Imany lowered Kasia down and rested a hand on her shoulder, “trust me, for once just trust me. If you take the violent path, you’ll never come out of it. It doesn’t have to be this way if you’d just accept-”
“I’ll need help whenever the fuck I say I do!” Kasia yelled in Imany’s face until her throat tore. Imany refused to flinch, denying Kasia an outlet for her rage. With nothing else to punish her neighbour with, she stormed off.
July’s sun was beaming enough heat into the streets to empty them. Sermon led his group to the deserted petrol station - nicknamed Little Kendi by the locals - to shelter under the canopy.
The turnout did not reassure him. His contacts beyond the estate remained absent, and the feeble band he did have looked reluctant to step away from the shade.
He heard Kasia shouting. One glance at her stomping across the road told him not to pry. He nodded to greet her and got nothing back.
Kasia skimmed over the group, counting around thirty residents. Each had a crude weapon in their hand; air pistols, tools, a few poorly concealed knives. She had never bothered with them before, and expected the vagrants would break them up pretty quickly.
She was too angry to care.
“This all of us?”
“Yea... but I’m expectin’ more,” Sermon handed her a cricket bat wrapped in duct tape, “the negotiator.”
Kasia snatched it from his hands and made for the vagrants. He swallowed, and whistled for everyone to head out.
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The Thames had for years been a festering bog, and only a single landmark remained: a rusted battleship, formerly a museum, listing sideways and half sunken. The riverside was buried in so much trash that, as the old memes joked, it looked from a distance like crowded beaches. Litter that could float, did, creating atop the waterline a starry night of forgotten refuse; a timeline of brands - American, Arabic, Chinese. During the rainy season the river distributed these offerings back to the public without prejudice.
Now, in summer, the stench was putrid and suffocating. Such sensory assaults left the streets eery and deserted, lined with dilapidated restaurants and tourist spots; a graveyard with the hint of a buzzing riverside life decades before, whilst the uproar of the still-living city echoed against ruined walls.
Once Sermon’s group committed to heading off a few earlier doubters trickled in. The zeal Sermon had once felt, however, was threatened. None of his online contacts had shown up, despite their likes and messages calling for solidarity. The upcoming trial was thus undermined by an embarrassing insecurity: he had boasted of his well-connected African roots to these offline locals too often. Now, when it mattered, his image was in jeopardy.
Trying to appear in charge, he asked two of the group to run ahead and watch for vagrants who might raise the alarm. The rest of the party traipsed up the empty riverside street, jumping from one area of shade to another, burying noses and taking turns to moan about the smell. He led the pack from the front with his sulking schoolmate in tow. Kasia briefly looked through him, and grumbled.
“Why you so sure they did this then?”
“They’re addicts,” said Sermon, “the only thing that unites them is jobs with a big payoff; traffickin’ for fightin’ pits and… and that.”
Kasia said nothing. She knew what ‘and that’ referred to - predators on the street targetting the attractive and vulnerable for later kidnapping. Tag and Bag. Another thing to fear for Eva and herself. She crushed a piece of litter with her cricket bat.
“You feelin’ alright sista? About comin’ with us,” Sermon kicked an empty bento box before her so she could squash it. She kept quiet and batted it aside.
“You’re doin’ the right thing bein’ ‘ere,” he said, “but if you wanna go back-”
“No I do not want to go back. Let’s smack a few heads in and get some answers. I need a scratching post anyway.”
Sermon chuckled and kicked a beer can down the street. A skyscraper across the river changed its advert to the same brand. He took in the view and sighed.
“It’s in the air ain’t it? Shit keeps happenin’ and people try to ignore it but… times have to change eventually, there has to be more than this, right?”
“Maybe it has to get worse first,” said Kasia, “maybe we deserved this future.”
“Don’t you want a better country for Eva?”
“Yea, Poland.”
“And when she goes what you gonna do?”
“If she has a kid over there I can get a visa.”
“If…”
“She can do whatever she wants,” Kasia batted Sermon's beer can with force, arcing it through the air to ricochet off a cracked window, “if she stays here and drowns on this ship… at least I pointed it the right way.”
“And all without anyone else’s help yea?”
“I haven’t raised her to be a victim.”
“Like your mum?”
“Like those pikeys,” Kasia took a sharp breath, filling her nose with foetid air, “you can bang on about helping people all you like Serms, have you ever been on the other side? The last time I asked for money Leah helped, then she told my story to her followers online. I was her ‘good deed for the day’... I felt less than human…”
“Oi!” Sermon ran forward. The two locals ahead of them had seen something and taken a side street home, shaking their heads and cupping their mouths. Sermon jogged up to where they had been, caught the smell, and pulled himself over the flood barrier. It took him a second of staring to realise what he was looking at.
Crowning through the trash heaps, the stretched and jaundiced face of a bloated corpse stared back at him.
Kasia dropped to her knees, hacking lines of saliva. The group fell to panic, wanting someone to give them an answer. Sermon held his breath and leant over the barrier again. Reeling back with a harsh exhale, he declared the body was female. The search for Joey, to the disappointment of many, had to go on.
One man stepped forward, pinching his permanent frown lines and squinting in the distance through the suns glare. Jason was amongst the few residents with mechanical skills, often playing the role of handyman when the landlord shrugged. He was bigger than Sermon, with forever greasy t-shirts failing to contain his gut, and ginger hair retreating from the advancing tide of grey.
In situations like this, he was Sermon’s challenge to authority.
“Found it.”
The group followed Jason’s finger to the vagrant lair in the distance - a door-shaped maintenance hole in the the flood barrier with surrounding trash pushed into piles. The hole was the colour of midnight; the only place no sunlight was reaching.
Everyone wavered. A gust of hot air wafted a sour, fruity stench from the river, and they knew what it was. The idea of going on became too much.
“Fuck this bruv...” Jason shook his head at Sermon, “let’s just take a photo and share it.”
“Seriously!? There’s a kid in there mate! One of ours! And you come all this way for a selfie!?”
“We’ll tell the detectives he’s there!” said another, weaker voice.
“They already know he's there you cunts!” Sermon pulled his head back and sneered, “why’d you think they fuckin’ left it in the first place! Don’t wanna get their ‘ands dirty.”
The residents muttered with dissent. Some turned to leave. A perpetually coughing woman lit up a cigarette, and suggested going back for more people. Sermon groaned with exhaustion and spun around on the spot.
“Why don’t we wait for some o’ them to come out and capture ‘em?” said Jason, “We can push ‘em for answers and do a hostage trade or summat.”
“Nah we’ll be waitin’ for ages and we’ll stick out standin’ around ‘ere,” Sermon produced his vape and puffed, “as if they’d trade a kid for one of their own anyway.”
“We could steal a drone and fly it in, get a visual on camera.” Jason settled on the idea as he said it, standing akimbo. The rest of the group gathered around him, though a few more left.
“You are such a muppet…” Sermon frowned and rubbed his temples, “you’re too much of a pussy-hole to fight squatters but you’re down to nick a drone!? What're you gonna do, stand on my shoulders and pick one outta the sky!?”
“It doesn’t have to be an active one!”
“Where the fuck else you gonna find one, a food bank!?”
“I can fix us one up! We can look for a trashed one!”
“Oh sure! Let’s search through all this shit on the river, ‘ere!” Sermon pointed over the barrier to the corpse, “I’ll make a start between that bird’s legs!”
“Well I ain’t fackin’ endin’ up next to ‘er,” the wheezing woman at the back pointed her cigarette skywards, “’ow ‘bout you get them Roadmen o’ yours to do it – ah fawt we were goin’ for a few pikeys near the block not their fackin’ embassy.”
“Who sells you them fags Chanel?! Chanel!” Sermon appealed to the woman's back hopelessly as she lumbered away.
“Mate she’s right,” said Jason, “your activist mates are meant to ‘ave your back, what’s the point in bein’ ‘wiv ‘em in the first place!?”
At last it came up. Sermon’s nerve started to go. He breathed in.
“They ain’t around right now they’re busy!”
“Where they at then, Wakanda? Bull-shit are they busy!”
Sermon puffed his chest out squared up against the bigger man, sending a ripple of shock through the party. Jason calmed him down, and held his palm up at what was left of them.
“Mate, look at us.”
A dozen remaining souls huddled in the nearby shade. With nothing else to do they were starting to browse their phones. Sermon saw a mob not far removed from homelessness themselves. Kasia stood with them. She gripped her upper arm and offered him a pursed, sympathetic smile, then looked away to the floor.
Sermon’s ambition evaporated.
“Alright alright alright!” he rubbed his face and breathed in, “We go and ‘ave a look right? A peek. Joey might be right there, the pikeys might be prangin’ out and we can walk right past ‘em. We see anythin’ sketchy, we leg it, alright?”
“Oh there you are…” a strange voice appeared from behind, easy and full of confidence. The group spun around, and gasped.
“Sermon Mkenda is it? You fit the profile of your post. We were just about to go in and take those vagrants out. Are you coming with us?”
Jason shifted behind Sermon, who held a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. His hand dropped when he realised who had spoken.
The new host marched around the bewildered Kendi residents, until all they could see was Revolution Britannia.