Zephyr: Chapter 1

(Length: 4,020 words)

The twins were screaming behind him.

He felt a crunch deep inside his face, and knew that his nose was broken. Everything jarred slightly, as a sharp wave of nausea rippled through him. His right hip and elbow impacted hard on the asphalt, grinding off a deep gouge of skin there. The grimace of pain and fear on his face made him look like a possum cornered by a pack of dogs, and his feet and hands came up like claws, ready to fend off the next assault by instinct, while his head was still rattled.

The guy who had laid him out wasn't falling on him though. The thug stood there, right arm cocked back displaying the impressive meat of his biceps, an ugly bawl of triumph across his spittled mouth. Six of his friends stood behind him, calling encouragement and boxing off the only exit from the lane that Jase knew of. The only way out for him and his two siblings. 

And that's when Jase knew that he had beaten the man.

He came up from the ground with a rush of joyous hate blooming out from his belly, filling him with warmth and a kind of comfort. Somewhere behind him the twins, their shrill screams turning from alarm to wild fear, faded from existence - disappearing entirely from his life.

The thug showed a look of mild surprise, and even had a moment to sneer, before Jase was on him. No wild haymakers, or driving tackles - Jase didn't even throw a punch. With his hands taut and open he scrambled up the imposing front of the man like the guy was a tree. Claws out, Jase went straight for the man's face, who pushed him away with his left arm.

Jase's fingernails scrabbled at his face, and the thug shifted back, swatting at the hands. Jase kept coming, and the man planted his hand straight over the boy’s face, and forced him back.

Jase grabbed at the outstretched arm, now clinging to stay attached to the man. His feet kicked out at knees and midriff, making no solid connection. The man’s friends were shouting raucously, and Jase knew time was running out. He was screaming hoarsely, and as he desperately fought to get closer, the man’s pinkie finger slipped into his mouth.

Both of Jase’s hands clamped around the man’s wrist, and his teeth closed like a vice. His feet stopped their kicking, and he let himself drop like a stone. The man cried out in surprise, which suddenly swept up the register as Jase wrenched his head, snapping the man’s finger out sideways with a satisfying crunch that told him he had broken the knuckle.

He didn’t let go. Clamping his teeth harder while keeping his head angled below the man’s forearm, and his own left elbow high he managed to ride out the hail of desperate blows that his beefy opponent immediately rained down on him. Planting both his feet he began driving himself backward, and the thug screamed in pain and fear as he was forced to follow or have his finger ripped from his hand. Jase felt his heels slip on something and went down for the second time - this time the man who had punched him had no choice but to follow him to the pavement.

Jase began gnawing, and worrying his head from side to side. He could taste salty blood, and feel the finger getting looser as he worked at it. If only he could get his sharp front teeth into those tendons at the base of the finger, he was sure he could bite the whole thing off at the knuckle - but he didn’t want to risk losing his hold on the man by relaxing to re-position. Instead, looking into the man’s face up close now as he lay over him, Jase took his right hand and grabbed the side of his head. His thumb fumbled around till it found the soft wetness of the man’s eye, and started to push.

Screaming now in utter panic and abject fear, the man desperately grabbed at the thumb and tried to hold it back. No longer capable of thinking rationally the thug began scrambling backward, trying to get away from the snarling, blood and foam flecked boy that was attached to him. Jase found himself hauled up again, but remained steadfastly latched to the man in both places. His feet briefly left the ground, but still he didn’t let go. The man tripped now, and Jase found himself straddling his chest, and used the moment to get his left knee onto the man’s stomach. He pushed down with his right arm, into the eye socket feeling the delicate fleshy orb there deform under his thumb, but not quite pop. He worried his neck back and forth to try to get further progress on the finger, and at least cause more pain.

The man’s six fellows were all yelling now, and throwing themselves forward. One of them lashed out with a vicious boot, which by chance connected only with Jase’s hip. Pain grew through the bone there like a flower, and Jase knew that the next one would land firmly in his stomach, robbing him of all his power, and any advantage he now held. His eye locked with a laser focus onto the workboot with its reinforced toe, as it swung away, and then whistled back in. Forgetting his efforts at maiming, without releasing the man, Jase took that millisecond to concentrate all his will on grabbing the incoming leg around the ankle.

His fist closed around the leg, but his arm only had enough power to blunt the blow. Jase found himself slammed bodily off to the side, his shoulders colliding with a wall of the alley, his breath exploding out with a violent heave. His teeth lost grip, and the man beneath him pulled his hand back, its mauled and mangled finger sticking ridiculously out perpendicular to the rest of the hand. But Jase had maintained his hold on the man’s head, and still had his thumb in the eye socket. The man below him now gripped Jase’s wrist with his bloodied left hand, and started to pull the arm up desperately. He was screaming an almost incoherent plea for his friends to get Jase off him.

Knowing the savage joy of having broken his assailant sent a ragged howling laugh up out of Jase’s throat. Barking happily, he kept his vice-like grip on the ankle of the kicker, and looked up straight into that man’s eyes.

“You’re next!” he screamed at him, teeth all streaked with blood and bared in a violent rictus of a grin, then resumed laughing wildly, while trying to drive his thumb back down into the skull of the man beneath him. But he simply could not get enough purchase against the guy’s own frantic straining upward.

The man who had kicked him went white, his face drooping in appal. He began hopping backward, and shaking his leg to try to get free. He tripped, and ended up on his arse in the gutter. Jase knelt above the two men, torturing the screaming man on his right with one hand, and keeping the other from getting away. “You’re next! You’re fucking next, fucker! I’m gonna take your fucking eye too! I’m gonna take your eye! You’re next!”

The other five men were all hesitating, a pace or two behind. One of them vomited suddenly, another stepped back slightly, and Jase locked eyes with him. “Then you! I will follow you and I will find you and I will -”

Blue light splashed across the bricks, and the distinctive “whoop-whoop” sound rang out. Jase snarled, and for a moment something within him was angrily disappointed.

But the next thing he knew the twins were grabbing him around the waist, and shoulders, and head, and they were crying and begging him to let the man go, and he had to do it or give in to the impulse to hate them for asking it of him, and he couldn’t do that. He just couldn’t.

He let the men go.

The ambulance officer had let him keep the ice pack. He peeled it away from the swelling bruise on his cheek, and looked straight at the policeman.

“I want to press charges.”

The officer looked shocked. “Y- You want to? Son, you may have permanently maimed that man. He may lose that eye. He may not be able to use that finger.”

“I want to press charges. He hit me first.”

The policeman closed up his notebook, and stepped back. His eyes went over Jase, still standing in the alley, and the man being stretchered into the back of the ambulance, and the six men up at the main street. He looked back at Jase, then at the ten year old boy and girl clinging to his thighs.

“You’re Ika-a-Māui, right?”

“What’s that got to-”

“These your kids?”

“Brother and sister.”

The officer looked at him. “Parents?”

Jase shook his head.

The policeman sighed. “Come on.”

He took Jase by the elbow and led him and the twins down the alley, back out to the main street. The six friends of Jase’s assailant started to shout, crying out to the officer, who just waved them away. They quieted down as he took Jase over to his car. Jase found himself tensing up, but the officer muttered under his breath, “I’m not arresting you son, I’m getting all you kids to safety.”

The officer held his elbow only lightly, and Jase saw a look of tense warning in his eyes. “You run now, and they get what they want. Now get in the car. I haven’t cuffed you, have I?”

Jase couldn’t see a way out. The street ahead beckoned him, and every instinct in his blood told him to flee, but he knew he couldn’t get both him and the twins out safely. Those thugs would start baying for his blood, and the cop would have no choice but to hunt them down, and throw him in gaol. He looked at the officer’s eyes again.

The policeman stepped forward and opened the rear car door. “In you get, kids.” There was something familiar about the way he said it. A tone. Jase suddenly realised that this man had children of his own. That was a dad speaking. He nodded, and the kids clambered in. Jase held the officer’s eyes one last time, then he climbed in himself.

The door didn’t lock behind him, and the policeman stepped away, walking back to the six bully boys. Again, Jase wanted to flee, but held the urge down. There was the sound of the policeman’s voice for around a minute, then he returned, getting into the driver’s seat. He started the car, and pulled away. “Seatbelts on, kids.”

The three of them clicked up.

Jase looked at the man’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “What did you say to them?”

The cop looked up at him. “I told them they got off lightly. Not to be such damn idiots again.”

Jase knew then, that was all the justice he was going to get. Something turned sour in his belly, even as he knew that it was better than he had any right to expect.

“You kids hungry?” the officer asked. Both the twin’s faces went still, but they nodded, hardly daring to hope.

“Haven’t eaten since last night.” Jase told him.

The officer nodded, then returned his eyes to the road. After a minute, he commented, “You made a mess of that guy, mate. But there were seven of them. That was stupid.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Jase mumbled.

“Yes it does. You get hurt, who’s going to take care of these two?”

“They couldn’t take me.”

The officer stared back at him in the mirror. “You sound awfully sure about that.”

Jase nodded, and looked out the window. At last he said, “You don’t win a fight by starting it.”

“How do you, then?”

“By ending it.”

“Don’t bolt your food.”

That parent’s voice again. But Jase knew he was right, and told the kids to slow down as well.

Sergeant Davison had driven on, right through to the southern end of town, and pulled up at a mum-and-pop diner, a solitary glowing outpost on the last stretch of lit road. He had ordered a burger, chips and soft drink for each of them, and now sat on one side of the plastic table on a wobbly chair watching them eat.

The burgers were big, and greasy, and the chips had plenty of salt. It was as well as any of them had eaten in a month, but Jase made them stop before they had eaten more than half of it. He carefully re-wrapped the burgers, as well as the remaining chips, while the kids looked on silently. He knew they would like to devour them whole, but neither of them complained. He put the greasy parcels into a plastic bag from the shop, and then carefully tucked that into the bottom of their only bag: a beaten old backpack with a high school crest on it.

“So, what’s your story?” the officer asked.

Jase mumbled, and looked down. The officer persisted.

“Couldn’t find work?”

Jase nodded.

“Your parents are gone - you got any schooling?”

“Bill-eX.” Jase supplied.

“Ah.” the policeman sat back. One of the schools run by the Bill-eX-Spurling corporation, he guessed. So that meant that one if not both of his parents had worked for the multi-national. Fifteen years ago that would have been a prestigious job. Gated community, private day-cares for the little ones. Since then of course, the big companies like that one had just kept expanding. But as they out-competed each other, and sucked up more and more of the employable populace especially up on the north island, they soon became the only option for jobs. And in order to satisfy their shareholders’ demands for continually growing profits, they started to cut back on their community commitments.

The government had complained: part of the deals struck over the previous decades had made those companies responsible for many of the services in the areas they were so completely taking over. And as part of those agreements, certain standards were meant to be adhered to. But the big companies had challenged those sections of agreements in court, or brought up clauses and terms in the contracts that let them say they were sticking to the letter of their obligations. And in the end, they had simply threatened to emigrate and set up shop in other less developed countries. To let that happen would have caused the wholesale devastation of entire cities - where one third or even a half of the commerce would have simply vanished overnight; and taken its tax dollars with it.

And so now large sections of the north island of New Zealand were little better than slums, or even ghettoes. Sprawling, corporate-owned cities of industry, belted by corporate-owned housing, feeding indentured workers into their jobs on corporate-owned transit lines, while their children were herded into corporate-owned schools to be minded for the six-day working weeks. And all the services and institutions being allowed to run down, and deteriorate into a state of near incompetence. For once you had captured an entire town, or city, or state in your multi-fingered industrial fist, you didn’t need to provide them with opportunities, or effective living conditions. Or health care, or transport. In fact, it was better for you if improving their lot was unachievable, limiting their options in life to entering service to your company as soon as they were productively able.

Schools in those towns tended to only give the most basic vocational training, all narrowly focussed on the kinds of opportunities that the company (in this case, Bill-eX-Spurling) had on offer in the immediate locale.

But these companies had gone further than that. Integrating every aspect of life into their own giant hegemonic spheres was one of the most effective policies in their arsenal to wring increasing returns from a static population and resource base. So all the banking institutions, rental accommodation, building firms, entertainment complexes, restaurant chains, and other ancillary businesses to life in a big city, slowly became dominated by child companies and franchises, sister corporations, or parent firms where all the money eventually ended up in the one enormous pocket.

Today, the lot of a worker in an ordinary job in any big city was most likely to be slaving sixty or seventy hours a week to pay a mortgage that was owned by the company who paid their wage. Who also held their car loan, and issued their credit cards, and offered their health insurance. And took the government stipend for their children’s education, then levied fees onto them for before and after school care, and municipal services.

Such towns soon became bloated, sprawling barrens of decay and hopelessness - children growing up there could look forward to no more than working all their life for the same companies which employed their parents, as they would never be equipped with the skills or tools required to break free of the structures of debt and obligation that had been built up around them, like so many invisible walls.

But the resources that these companies were mining, or felling, or distilling, or synthesising, or smelting... weren’t limitless. It was a simple fact that even their poorly educated school children could have told you: profit cannot simply keep expanding on the material available in the one spot. It really was in the end a game of resource exploitation - getting every last scrap out of a food, or fuel, or process, or science, or industry - and then moving on to the next one. Large corporations could well predict when this would happen though: they had experts, with fine computers full of detailed data to handle the exit modelling.

Bill-eX-Spurling corporation had just recently closed down operations in New Zealand. And they had not been the first. And with each corporation's departure, another wave of tens - or hundreds - of thousands of people’s lives collapsed. Bill-eX had been the third such exit in a year and a half, and the economy of the whole nation was in tatters.

“When did your parents... die?” he had been going to be polite - use some euphemism - but realised the this boy in front of him would have viewed it as insincerity.

Jase looked up at him. “Six months ago.” he drew in a breath, then let it out slowly. The small boy and girl, to either side of him settled themselves down without fuss, and placed their heads in his lap. “Mum got cancer - two years ago. eX-Medical said they wouldn’t cover it. Some reason. Dunno. Dad had to pay the bills. He had to work fourteen, fifteen hours a day, seven days. He’d sleep in his forklift some nights. I stopped school. They didn’t care, anyway. Whole town could tell Bill-eX were gearing up to leave. Turns out even doing all the shifts, dad was going backward. Getting more and more in debt. There was the mortgage, and then they took the car...”

He let in another huge breath, then carried on, “It was in the last week. He was actually loading up transport containers, to go onto their mega-ship. Loading them up, to leave us all behind. There was an accident. An unsecured load. One of his mates came to tell us. Said it was quick.”

He looked up into the policeman’s eyes, and snarled “No compo, either. Some arsehole from the bank came and told us they were taking everything, and issued me with a debt notice, but the bloody company just fled the country, and stopped answering the phone. They’re out of New Zealand jurisdiction now, and they couldn’t give a shit. Not about what they owe us. But the bloody bank is still going round, screwing every bit of cash they can from all the poor bloody people they left behind.”

The kids were asleep by now. Jase told the story like it was history from an ancient book. Bitter, and cold. “So we hopped the ferry. I got enough cash together, and didn’t tell anyone, and we’re heading south.”

It was a common enough tale these days, for all its pitiably cruel specifics in this case.

“How old are you, kid?”

“Seventeen.”

“Got a plan?”

Jase regarded him for a while, then looked down, mumbling, “‘S meant to be this place in Otago. Near Palmerston.”

“Oh, kid. The Freeloaders?” Jase didn’t look up. “You hear a lot of things about those folks, mate. Like, they’re a cult, or something. It can’t be everything they claim. No money? How can that be true? How do they make that work?”

“I dunno.”

“Kid.  Are you sure? You wanna take the little ones to a place like that?”

Jase looked up at him. “You see I got much choice in the matter? You got a job to give me? ‘Cause I’ll work if I have to. Steal if I can’t. Fight if you make me.”

Davison held up his hands. “Settle down, fella. And don’t tell me your name. Think I don’t know how you got the money for the ferry? Got any left?”

Jase glowered, then shook his head slightly.

“Hmm. Well, you know damn well there won’t be a job for you, or likely anyone else around here for a long while now. I guess you could do worse than heading out into the country. The further south, probably the better for you.” He looked at the cuffs of his jacket for a while, then swore softly under his breath. “Come on.”

He marched out to the car, and the three of them followed. The kids came awake and into action like the little battle hardened things they were. They buckled in, and he drove them back north for a kilometre, till they came to a service station. He wheeled the car south again, and pulled in.

“Stay here.”

Jase watched Sergeant Davison walk over to the long bay near the diesel pumps, where four truckies had pulled up and were drinking cups of coffee, or eating pastries bought from the station counter. It was close to midnight now, and the twins went straight back to sleep on his lap, but he stayed sitting upright, staring out through the windscreen as the policeman ambled amongst the drivers, chatting.

Twenty minutes later, Davison opened the car car door, and looked in. Jase stared back at him alertly, with his hands hovering protectively on the shoulders of his brother and sister. The Sergeant frowned, as though just realising something.

“How old are you, kid?”

“Seventeen.”

“What the hell am I doing?” the man sighed, and shook his head. “Well, better turn eighteen before you get to where you’re going, eh?” He glanced at the sleeping children.

Jase’s eyes grew wide, then he nodded.

“Come on.”

Davison led them over to one of the larger trucks, and nodded to the driver. Before they climbed up, he took Jase aside. “You need to get to Oamaru. Apparently those people you’re talking about have taken over the old train line that used to shuttle freight back and forth up the coast there. There’s some sort of service running, that goes down to their communes.”

Jase nodded. Davison clapped him on the shoulder, and then quickly stuffed a fifty dollar note into his hand. He leaned in and murmered “Don’t use it to pay this guy. I just bought him his meal.”

Jase stared at him, frowning, the look of the animal back in his eyes. Davison sighed, and looked at the twins. “Ten years old?” Jase nodded. He grunted. “My two are thirteen. Little shits they are too. You two look after your big brother, eh?”

And with that he turned, and walked back to his car.