 
### Eat A Banker

### Peter Bailey

Copyright © 2011 Peter Bailey

Smashwords Edition

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David lives in the world created by the bank bailouts and the credit squeeze. It's not a good place to be. The cities are battlegrounds, those with jobs fight those without and the young fight the old. Fear hangs in the air like a fog, and violence is a way of life. If outside is bad, then inside is worse, forced to share with the tattooed and pierced squatters. He has to get out. All he has to do is find a way past the armed guards, the landmines and the heavy machine guns at the border.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Certain locations discussed in the story are fictional or used in a fictional context.
As soon as he saw the old man steal the apple, he immediately had him arrested.

It was the right thing to do.

Until the theft, he had been successfully ignoring the TV in the corner of the diner.

The headlines for today - 21 November 2013 – said that things were worse than yesterday, and that tomorrow would probably be even worse...

"Euro collapses as Italy defaults on its debits"

"Global financial system in crisis, FTSE 100 new record low"

"UK unemployment drops by 5%"

David laughed –inside where no one could report it – at the last headline. Government figures said that unemployment had been dropping by 5% a month, every month. By now, 150% of the population should have jobs.

He ignored the rest of the news. The financial crisis and the bank bailouts had been part of life in Swindon for so long, that its reports had just become another part of his daily life.

He had just sat down with the meagre lunch that he had swapped his food vouchers for, when he saw the old man.

He looked like just another pensioner, trying to get by on a pension that had been so badly reduced by inflation that it was nearly worthless. But the moment David saw him take the apple, he instantly reported him to the peace officer standing in the corner. It only took a few steps to cross the canteen but as soon as the other diners saw where he was headed, the room fell silent.

The armed and armoured figure of the peace officer had been the unspoken presence in the room, and he watched David carefully as he grew close. He looked old and tired, as if the weight of so many arrests had worn him down, but under the plexi glass visor his eyes were very sharp.

"The old man over there" he didn't need to point, the only people in the room that were not looking at David were looking at him" stole an apple" in the sudden quiet of the room his voice sounded far too loud.

The firm gaze from under the visor found a new target as the guard thanked him for doing his duty, and he moved implacably across the room to secure the old man.

As David took his seat and continued to eat, he could feel the hatred of everyone in the room directed at him, but the old man said nothing as he was dragged away.

"Good afternoon, British internal security, David speaking, how can I help you" the buzz of conversation was loud in the large open plan call centre, and he had to concentrate to hear the caller as he reported the odd behaviour of a neighbour

While he took the details of the call, a detached observer might have thought that David looked less like a real human being, with all of their dreams and plans, but much more like some biological extension of the desk. Just past middle age, he was one of those people you sometimes meet who only seem at home behind a desk. Average height, average weight and so nondescript that if you met him in the street, he would be forgotten before you had taken another step.

Until the scientists create a worker drone that they can grow in a vat he was the next-best thing. He was his job, and his job was his life.

Finishing the call, he sent off his report to 'processing' to be investigated. He marked the call as CT - 'concerned tenant' - but everyone knew that it stood for 'Curtain Twitchier'. The noisy neighbour, trying to win this week's prize for being a good citizen.

There was an icon on his desktop, to run the report 'offences reported from this address'. He was sure that this would show a long list of the other times that this same 'concerned tenant' had phoned in a report. But he was also sure that if he ran this report without a 'request for history' form fully authorized. It would be less than an hour before he was invited for a discussion on correct working practises. The best possible outcome of this 'discussion' would be him being ejected from the building by security, and at worst he would be scheduled for a 'social re-education' the same day.

It was easy to see the people that had completed SR. There were no physical marks on them, but the effects of sleep deprivation and drug regime turned them into happy smiling zombies. Unless they were led by the hand everywhere, they would either forget to eat, or soil themselves in public. He left the icon alone.

Hs computer flashed up a 'break time' notice, along with a countdown until he should be back at his desk, he could use a drink and a visit to the toilet.

He stood up very carefully; His back hurt where the first punch had hit him.

Just across the street from the diner, was the entrance to a small alley. It was there they got him. No one had followed him from the diner - he was sure about that - but while security had been dealing with the old man, some of the other diners must have left and waited for him. The shock of being dragged from the street had stunned him for a moment, and then they had got to work with their fists. It was only when he saw the man with the baseball bat approaching that he managed to speak.

"SLT, it was a SLT" under the noise of the group beating him his voice was hard to hear, but some of them must have heard. The group reluctantly stopped its fun. Most of them had been the target of a Standard Loyalty Test and knew all about the little tests the government created for them. Where the only way to avoid arrest, was prove themselves a good little citizen.

"The lady in the corner, she had a video camera under her paper. I saw it when she turned it on. The old man looked right at it before he took the apple, and the video had a perfect view of both of us. If the recording showed me failing to report a crime, then I would be in re-education before the end of the day"

"You expect us to believe that?" it was the man with the baseball bat. He wanted his turn, but the man holding his arms released his grip a little. Just enough for David to be able to see out into the world beyond this alley

"Over there," the group looked 'over there' where they could just see the police van stopped by the side of the road. They could also see the man from the diner being saluted by the uniformed police. In the diner he had looked just like any other nice old man trying to get by, now he looked like what he really was. A small part of the government machine.

One of the group managed a muttered 'sorry' as they left him on the floor of the alley, but David could see that they had been looking forward to a really good beating and were disappointed, still he was sure they would find another target for their fun.

The clock was still showing three minutes left of his break when he sat down and took the next call from someone reporting a crime for the reward it might bring...

It was dark by the time he left work. The official finishing time was five, but with so many people chasing so few jobs, everyone wanted to show that they were really dedicated to the job. He was lucky to leave only two hours late.

Tonight, he left the building by the back entrance where the Lorries had once made their deliveries. Normally, he used the side entrance that led directly on to a side road, but when he had left last night, someone had shouted out 'geek' and thrown a brick at him. The brick had missed, but he did not want to run the risk of a welcoming committee by the door tonight.

He grasped the door handle that would open to the street and took a deep breath, before he could change his mind, he opened the door.

For years afterwards, he would tell his stories of his escape from the armed camp that Britain had become. He would let people buy him drinks while he told them about the route he took, the people he met, and finally, the awful price, he paid to cross the border. But he could never tell them what his life was like before he left.

The words would never come that would really describe the fear that hung in the air like a fog, its metallic taste filling your throat. How to describe the stomach tightening anxiety of being watched by any of the groups that did not need a reason to attack him, they just needed an opportunity. The unemployed would hate him because he had a job. The women would hate him because he was a man. The young because he was old, and the old because he was young. In this strange new Britain, everyone had a reason to hate everyone else, and the streets were their battleground.

As he turned the corner on to the street, he checked his appearance in one of the few unbroken windows. The things on his feet were just a mass of string and tape holding them together. His trousers were so covered with dirt that they were shiny. They were an excellent disguise.

But it was his face and hair that worried him. His face was far too clean, and he had not rubbed enough water into his hair to make it look convincing matted. Still it was dark and he should get away with it.

Across the road, he saw Mike from the next desk to his. A slight (and almost imperceptible) nod of the head was the only greeting that passed between them. David thought to himself that Mike had made a much better job of his street clothes. His hair and face seemed to have been dipped in mud, while his jacket and trousers were stained and worn. The perfect outfit to merge into the background and become one of the crowd.

But as Mike stepped around the corner and disappeared, David saw with horror that he had forgotten to change his shoes. He still had on the worn but smart office shoes. They would be noticed in minutes.

For a moment, he had the wild idea of running after him, but already it was too late. Around the corner, there was the sudden roar of shouting, and the sound of running feet. From his position across the road, he could only make out a few words "selfish bastard" "think you are better than us" and the old favourite "office drone." It was too late to help him now. In the morning, he would tell those bastards in management what had happened (after checking his desk to make sure that there were no useful items he could borrow)

They had bought their house because it was close to the town centre, and the schools and the nurseries that were going to be so important to them. They had been sure that the area was going to be the next area to be gentrified by the upper-middle classes moving in, and that house prices would soar. But the recession had stopped all that. The area was still border line slum, and now its only merit was that it was just a few minutes walk from his office to the single room that was all he had left.

As the streets grew poorer so the level of graffiti increased, until it covered every possible surface. Some of it was just letting everyone know that 'they wos here', but most of it demanded that they eat a banker.

' _Eat the bankers' had started out as a joke on some trendy late-night show, but had spread rapidly. First, it had been a joke, but fuelled by the anger against the bankers who had caused the great recession. Soon it started to sound like a promise._

The general election of 2012 had looked to be fairly evenly balanced between the failed economic policies of the coalition and the tax and spend history of the labour party. In the face of widespread public disillusion with both parties, the opportunely for something new and different in politics was overwhelming.

The 'Eat the bankers' party filled that gap perfectly.

It actually took him two hours to get home. Walking anyway in a quick purposeful way would have been suicide. On every corner were the little groups that were on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary to break their boredom. So instead of the firm positive step of someone with somewhere to go, you had to shuffle along head down, as if you had all the time in the world. While making sure he took every opportunity to sit down, as if moving was such hard work.

As he shuffled his way along, he had plenty of time to read the headlines on the papers that were littering the floor.

"Three more shop owners arrested for charging excessive prices"

Last week the headline had been.

"Five more shops go bankrupt and close"

Reading between the lines–you learnt to do this quickly or go under – David guessed that the true rate of inflation had jumped again, and it was much easier to blame the shops than fix the problem. The approved rate of 8% had remained the same since the government took power, but daily life told him it had to be at least three times that. Doing anything about inflation seemed to be either beyond the power of the government to change, or maybe it was part of their policy.

When he finally turned the corner, it was obvious which his house was. Every light in the house was lit and even from here he could hear the heavy bass line of whatever it was the squatters were playing.

Technically, he should call them 'guests' as set out in the _'optimum use of housing space act, 2013'_. But since the two of them – both dreadlocked and pierced - had just moved into his house immediately the act had passed, and helped themselves to whatever room they wanted, he thought that 'guests' was a bit much. The policeman who was with them, 'to enforce the rule of law', had been very sympathetic, but also very clear that the law was on their side.

The word and letter of the law was something his 'guests' were very clear on, and would quote exactly what the act had to say about their rights and his responsibilities at the slightest sign that he had not 'provided his guests with a welcoming and comfortable habitation'. Oddly enough they seemed very vague on what the act had to say about his rights and their responsibilities.

As he opened the front door, he could feel the building vibrating slightly to their music, and he knew he would need both the ear plugs and cushions to get any sleep tonight. The hallway was filled with their rubbish - but it had been like this for weeks (picking things up was 'not their way') - but the nasty smell that greeted him was new.

The note pinned to the wall explained the smell "upstairs toilet blocked, fix it" there was no please or thank you. Considering how keen they were to promote a world free from imposed status values or class, they seemed very happy to treat him as their servant. He thought that this was payback for his only minor triumph over them.

It was a month after they had moved in when the lights went out, and the radiators started to get cold. MarX had banged on his door and lectured him about the 'financial penalties that could be imposed for non-compliance with the law' (he got quite excited about how the law could punish the cruel landlord who did not look after his poor unfortunate guests, and his voice started to sound less 'street' and more 'expensive public school'). David let him carry on until he started to run out of threats, before pointing out that the gas and electric had been turned off because he could not afford to pay the bills. They could fine him as much as they liked. But since he had no money they would get exactly 100% of nothing at all, and closed the door in his face.

There was a lot of shouting and cursing downstairs (and a very quiet phone call to mummy) and less than an hour later both the gas and electric were back on.

The fact that his 'poor unfortunate guests' could afford the bills that he could not did not really surprise him. He had overheard enough phone calls to know that MarX and his girlfriend Wail were Tarquin and Cressida to Mummy, and that their occasional weekends away were spent at her villa in France.

In the cupboard under the stairs, he found the rubber gloves and the plunger that he would need. Blocking up the toilet was a frequent problem. They seemed to believe that a two gallon flush would carry away everything from another burnt meal to the masses of tin foil scraps that used to hold their supplies. At least, they had not broken something important this time. Perhaps they had finally learnt that breaking up the place they lived in was stupid, even by their standards.

David left the cleaning supplies outside the door to his room while he got changed and opened a can of beans to eat (it was not worth calling it 'tea' and certainly not 'dinner'), but it should be enough to stop him feeling too hungry tonight.

His room looked exactly as he had left it, small cramped, but least somewhere that he could call his own, a little place he could shut out the madness outside.

While he got changed out of the rags that he wore to get him safely between here and work, he checked his room to see if his 'guests' had been in here again. When they had first moved in, it had been plain that they had helped themselves to anything bright and shiny while he was out. But today there was no sign of the mess and disruption they left behind when they were 'liberating the things stolen from the poor'.

When his 'guests' had moved in they had also moved him into the smallest bedroom in the house, but this had not turned out to be so bad after all. Party because this was an extension, it was slightly away from the permanent party they were having and give him just a little peace.

He was still idly checking the room while he changed when he realized that he had been wrong, someone had been in here.

He had soon found out that anything he left in the kitchen quickly disappeared (he had complained about this but had just been told not to be so precious about possessions), and anything in his room was apparently 'public property as it had been stolen by force from the deserving poor' (pointing out that he _was_ the deserving poor had cut no ice with them). The floor board by the window was already loose -it was one of those jobs he had meant to 'get round to' one day-, and the roar of their music had covered the noise it had made as he lifted it. The space inside was only really private space he had in the house, and it held nearly everything that he cared about.

Someone must have searched very carefully to find his hiding place. If they had just been a little more careful, they would have noticed that they had creased the carpet as they replaced it.

Finding out that someone knew about his secret space was bad, but when he opened the space and checked inside it became much worse.

Everything inside was exactly as he had left it. The few cans of food were there. His passport was still there, and even the photographs of happier times were just as they had been.

He sat on the floor and watched the space carefully as if this would change what he could see. If any of his 'guests' had found the food, it would have vanished in a second. There would have been no attempt to hide that they had been here, and probably he would have come back to a lecture on sharing the profits of growth. So, someone else must have been in here. Someone who wanted to check very carefully what he had, but did not want him to know that he was under investigation.

He leant back against the wall, and tried to recall every moment of the last few weeks. Had he said something out of place, something suspicious? Had he spent too long looking at the wrong sites on his carefully monitored internet connection?

Now he looked at the situation in the diner this morning in a completely different light. Perhaps it had not been just an accident that he had been selected for SLT and that the camera had been pointing at him. Maybe he was reading something into nothing, and it was only that he had not put the carpet back properly last night. But there was an old saying that seemed to fit "It's only paranoia if they're not out to get you"

In the corner of the room was the other reason he had been almost happy when he had been shoved into this room. The pipes that fed the kitchen and bathroom filled the back of the built in cupboard, and these looked untouched since the day they had been installed. Only the person who had plumbed in the new kitchen sink, would know that some of the pipes were now empty and unused.

In the light of the single bulb in the room, the hexagonal nut that connected two lengths of pipe looked untouched. The side of the nut that he had carefully marked with a scratch still faced into the room. Exactly as he had left it.

The nut unscrewed easily, and revealed that the pipe was completely dry and empty, with only the very end of a piece of string visible. A gentle pull on this dragged a small packet into sight.

It was still there. His escape was still possible.

It had been a very long time since their honeymoon in Las Vegas. David thought he had taken more than enough money, but the 24-hour party of Vegas had emptied his wallet very efficiently. All they had left when they got home was 100 dollars (mainly in fives and ones) and some happy memories.

At the time, that amount of dollars converted back into pounds might have bought them a nice meal or a tank full of petrol, and the money had lain forgotten in a drawer.

It was only after his wife left him, and he searched the house from top to bottom in a vain attempt to find out where she had gone, that he had found the money. The distance between the happy honeymoon and separation had been filled with bank crises and the collapse of the UK exchange rate. Now 100 dollars was a small fortune, and could give him both an escape and a good life on the other side of the border. If only he could get to it, and then over it.

Outside only two of the street lights in the road were still working and the huge graffiti scrawl of EAT THE BANKERS was still readable. Also visible was a battered transit van. He watched it for a long time, trying to decide if it was watching him back.

Fuelled by the anger against the bankers, the slogan "Eat the bankers" was taken up first by a few, then by the many

Everyone wanted two things. First, the bankers who had caused the recession by gambling with peoples hard-earned money must be punished, and second the wealth of the super rich was obscene. They must shoulder their fair share of the costs of creating a more equal society where none were held back by their position in society.

At first, the big two parties saw the "Eat the bankers" as a joke, and they poured scorn on the 'incoherent rage of the young inexperienced Marxists, "who don't know what they want, only what they were against"

The pro tem leader of the "Eat the bankers" (a gap year student) pointed out that the party had just as many young conservatives as young Marxists' (the candidate for Oxingham was an anarchist who believed that 'property was theft' while the candidate for Sayinford was a Tory, who believed in hanging for speeding offences)

As for 'inexperienced', they liked to point out just how perfectly the current old guard had managed things, what with the 12% interest rate and millions unemployed.

At the election, the 'eat' party's manifesto was the shortest ever written.

The bank bailouts have been a massive theft of wealth from the working and middle classes to the rich. We refuse to pay for the problems that the banks created with their reckless behaviour. We didn't create this crisis, and so it is the rich, the tax evaders, the corrupt politicians and their cronies who should pay for it.

There needs to be a fundamental restructuring of Britain's political systems where economy can be leveraged to engage with equality via radical redistribution of wealth.

We do not believe that the cuts imposed by the coalition are either necessary or inevitable. Money should enter the economy, not as debt owed with interest to bankers, but as a benefit to society. We are furious at the government for implementing cuts, which will destroy ordinary people lives, while the elite few live in opulent luxury.

We will form a grass roots democratic egalitarian civilized government that will do the following to achieve balance in our economy.

(1) Tax any assets of the super rich at 99.5%

(2) Tax anyone in the banking / financial services industry at 99.4% (it was later explained that the .1% difference was to promote growth)

So that we can create a more perfect society, we will protect public-sector jobs, abolish student fees, and enhance and enlarge the welfare state.

By the time the big two parties started to take the "Eat the bankers"seriously, it was too late, the resulting landslide victory for them, was the biggest ever recorded.

Sleep did not come easily to David, even after his guests had stopped shaking the building with what they claimed to be music. He dreamed of the door being broken down, and the faceless men dragging him away. He shouted that the 100 dollars was just for one last spin of the roulette wheel, but it was all too late.

By the time that dawn lit up his small window, and the birds started to greet the new day, he was both exhausted and a nervous wreak. The transit van had vanished at some point in the night and had left him with a problem. If he left the 100 dollars here, and they searched again, the slightest contact with the pipe would show that it was empty. If he took it with him, then a random search would be the end of all of his plans.

But then he admitted to himself that he had no plans. He had no contacts to a shadowy underground organisation that could smuggle him over the border. All he had was a 100 dollars and the need to escape this horror show of daily abuse, and the constant threat that someone would hate him enough to really hurt him. Just because he was not a member of the right group, at the right time. He had to get out.

For the first time –in a long time- he was doing something constructive. For day after day, month after month, he had come home from work, and checked that the money was still there. Every day he promised himself that tomorrow he would find a way to escape, and then he would sink into the comfortable sleep of routine, and another day would pass. If he had not noticed the creased carpet, then he would still have been dreaming when they came to take him away. Now his hand had been forced, now he had to do something.

As he left the house, he made sure to slam the door behind him as hard as possible. This might be the last time he would ever have the chance to upset the scum that had forced them on him, and he wanted to make it as uncomfortable for them as they had made it for him.

Normally, it was an effort to walk so slowly and listlessly to make sure that he did not stand out as having a job, but this morning walking so slowly seemed much more natural. It was all rather uncomfortable.

Work seemed much more difficult than normal, and he felt half asleep as he dealt with the flow of phone calls reporting what their neighbours were doing. What they thought they were doing and of course, the constant favourite 'next door is spying on me' (which of course; they were).

During the morning, he ran through the options. Steal a car and crash the barrier around Swindon? Most of the cars that littered the street had run out of petrol months ago, and for those that were still mobile - hotwiring' a car was only something that happened in the films. Climb over the barrier? and be instantly arrested.

By eleven, he had decided that the right thing to do would be to go home, burn the money and live as a nice regular citizen. Perhaps if they took too long to arrest him, he would come to welcome the inevitable knife in the back, or the skull crushed by a concrete block when the mob finally turned on him.

The phone rang.

The voice on the other end of the call sounded old and irritable. David could easily visualise the sad old woman spending her days working off some ill defined grudge against the world by reporting every minor offence that that she could. In fact the call was so familiar, that he had recorded most of the details of the complaint before he started to pay any attention to what she was saying.

"...and there are visitors all hours of the day and night, never the same people either. I see the same faces turn up once maybe twice and then never see them again. "The old grumpy voice carried on complaining about the noise and the litter around the local shops while David absorbed what she had just said.

Getting this job, any job, had been a stroke of luck that he badly needed. But the reality of the induction meeting was so boring that he tried for an out of body experience to escape for a few minutes. But it seemed that some of the 'important types of offence' briefing had managed to evade the force field of his lack of interest, because now he had a moment of perfect recall.

"Watch out for calls that seem to be just run of the mill complaints about neighbours, that is really something much more important. Take, for example, a call about a residence that seems to be getting lots of visitors at all times of the day. This could be a flag for you to log the call as a suspected black market or drugs operation. "David's interest was equally split between the instructor's voice and the pattern of cracks in the back of the chair in front "but what could it mean if the visitors to a house are only ever seen one or twice and never again?" the silence in the room was deafening "it could mean a people smuggling operation, malcontents wanting to return to the societies that have not thrown off the shackles of class and status. One or two meeting to arrange the price and payment, and then another citizen disappears toward the border that maintains our security"

The thin whiney voice was still unfolding its endless of grievances through his headphones, but David had stopped typing. Perhaps he could be another citizen on his way to the border.

His fingers started typing again, but now he was thinking very quickly indeed. He had written up most of the complaint before he had woken up to what was really happening. Change the damming details of the call, and the computer would flag up a 'possible malicious form update', and then it would be a matter of minutes before the call monitors would check the recording of this call. But then he looked at the screen and the answer was obvious

"Excuse me caller, what is the address that you are calling about?"

Perhaps the old women had forgotten he was here, and that she was not just talking to herself. There was a pause before she replied.

"217 Murray Street, West Swindon"

He dutifully repeated the address back to her, at the same time his fingers were typing "217 _Marie_ Street, Swindon" Just close enough to be confusing without being obvious as a lie.

It took another few minutes before he could get rid of the daft old women, but already there was a clock ticking.

He took another call, but now there was only a direct connection between his ears and his fingers. The brain was not involved at all. He had not flagged the call as 'urgent' so it would be at least two, maybe three, hours before it was checked. If Marie Street Swindon existed, then a raid there would add at least another hour to the time he had, before they checked the call log with the on-line form.

The clock on the wall of the call centre, told him it was 11:30, He had until three, maybe four at the latest before the information was useless. The earliest he could get of here was five. It was too late.

Until 1848, Swindon was a small-market town, but then the Industrial Revolution and the choice of Swindon for the Great Western Railways depot was responsible for a massive acceleration of Swindon's growth, and it became one of the fastest growing towns in the South of England. West Swindon is the most-recent expansion of the town. It is also more than four miles away from the center of town, and the office where David should have been. He wasn't even half way there, and already it was more than his feet were hurting.

Looking up the address 'Murray Street, West Swindon' on his very closely monitored internet connection would have been possibly the second most stupid thing he had ever done (the first was getting married). So he had no idea if he was only a few minutes away from it, or another hour of walking.

In the days when he had been married, they had sometimes used the supermarket in West Swindon that was now his goal. He just hoped that the map just inside the entrance was still intact and that its proud boast "Everything there is to know about your local area" was true.

He tired to avoid the unblinking gaze of the CCTV cameras that hung from every lamppost, by keeping his head down as if bowed down by the weight of his troubles. But if the rumours about face recognition software were true, then the moment they realized that something was wrong it would be a simple matter for then to trace his path through the town. They would know exactly where he was, and where the peace service should arrest him.

When the CCTV cameras had been introduced, the government had promised them a new era free of crime - where the streets would be safe and secure, and the threat of violence would be a thing of the past. It was certainly worth the minor fears that the country would sleep-walk its way into a surveillance society, where personal privacy would be a distant memory.

In the end, the fears about sleep walking were massively over stated. As soon as the riots had started, the demand to install CCTV on every corner had been deafening.

The country hadn't sleep walked; it had stampeded into the comforting arms of the government that promised to protect them. By the time they realized exactly what they had traded their privacy for, it was too late.

The day after the overwhelming election victory of the 'eat the bankers' party, the fleets of Rolls Royce's headed towards Heathrow as the exodus of the super rich took place. The strip of road between the M4 and the airport became one long party and was lined with balloons, home-made decorations and camp fires for the leaving party for the super rich. As each expensive car went by the crowd would clap and cheer while waving their placards.

" _Good-bye and good riddance" was popular, and so was "Don't let the door hit you on the way out", but the most common was simply "scum"_

Later, the papers would calculate that in the first week the number of super rich in the country went from 5,000 to 1500. In the second week it became 200, after that they were extinct.

The free party on the approach to Heathrow changed its roll from 'good bye to the rich' to a celebration of a more equal society freed from the stultifying influence of such obscene amounts of money.

It took another month before the party finished, when they realised that the super rich had taken more than expensive luggage. They had also taken their money.

While the protestors having a good time, accountants in anonymous corporate entities had been very busy as they removed the maximum possible capital from the assets owned by the super rich, leaving just zombie business. These were swapped for shares in offshore companies in a shell game that would have made any con man proud. Pension funds were raided for the maximum possible amount and replaced with ownership of shares in the worthless shell companies. Massive amounts of money were being extracted from the system, leaving behind a façade that only had to look good for a short time. By the time anyone realised what was going on it was too late.

Literally overnight major factories and high street stores closed their doors and the number of unemployed tripled.

In desperation, the government passed a new law that required a licence to remove large amounts of money from the country. The law was passed in a record time of only three days. It was simply unfortunate, that with the new computerized banking systems, it took the super rich less than a second to remove the rest of their money.

The number of unemployed tripled again.

' _super rich' was re-defined to be those earning over £70,000, but most of these turned out to be upper and middle management, and they soon proved that the internet access from Switzerland was more than adequate to provide management by video link_

In the end, the permanent under secretary at the Treasury had to explain to the new Chancellor that the country was bankrupt.

" _Sir it's like this. The state doesn't earn anything. It confiscates its money from people in the form of tax, and we have to spend that on roads, schools, police, welfare, the NHS. Getting rid of the (cough) 'parasitic super rich' also reduced the amount of tax we are getting by 60%. We are now spending nearly a billion pounds a day that we do not have. We cannot borrow money, because the banks do not believe that we can pay it back. By the end of next week we will be unable to pay our bills. Hospitals will close. Welfare checks will not be sent out. The country will stop working."_

This far out of the town centre, the streets were quiet with only the infrequent roar of a truck on the road to disturb David's thoughts. So it came as a surprise to both of them when a turn in the path brought him face to face with another pedestrian.

She looked like a middle aged women heading into town in the vain hope of finding anything that she could afford. She got as far as saying "sorry, I didn't..." but then she saw his face. There was a sharp intake of breath that very nearly became a scream and she ran.

David watched her go with amusement. The blood on his face was certainly very striking and when he had seen himself in the mirror - while the company nurse clucked like a startled hen - he had thought that he would have been a perfect as an extra in a 'B' Zombie film. All he would have needed was a vacant expression and a moaned 'brains'

His 'accident' had been a lot more impressive that he had planned.

It had only been a few minutes after the phone call that had given him a possible link to an escape when the computer had flashed up a 'break time' notice. He had carefully checked the path to the toilets and picked exactly where he would trip over the carelessly left umbrella. He had worked out just how much he should hold his wrist while claiming, "it hurts so much." A quick trip to the nurses and then he would be free to see if 217 Murray Street could be his escape from this snake pit of fear by arranging his trip to the border.

It was an excellent plan, well thought out and carefully considered.

Clausewitz once said 'no plan survives contact with the enemy', but David's plan did not survive the contact of his left foot with the chair that was abruptly pushed into his path by a co-worker that was thinking more of 'visit to the toilet' and less of 'what's behind me'

The moment that his feet tangled with the base of the chair was also the same moment that everything became slow motion. David had all the time in the world to be a witness to his inevitable descent to the floor. Except that between him and the floor was a desk, and after his head bounced from its corner David was no longer a witless to anything. He was unconscious.

The period between regaining consciousness in the First Aid room and being helped out of the building was surprising quick. At first, he had thought how helpful his manager was being, but then he had heard him outside the first aid room "get him out of here as soon as possible, if this gets officially recorded, then it will ruin our 'days without accident' statistics"

The crude bandage around his head did little to stop the slow trickle of blood as it ran down his face, but the two small white pills the nurse had given him ("avoid alcohol and using heavy machinery") made the pain a distant bright object that had nothing to do with him. The bandage and the blood, proved to be the perfect disguise for the street, the small groups of men that hung around waiting for something to happen (and if it didn't happen soon then they would make it happen) patted him gently on the back and claimed him as one of their own in 'their fight against the ruthless authority of the employers"

By the time he reached the supermarket the pills were starting to wear off, and his head was starting to hurt. Between the pain in his feet from walking, the pain in his head from his fall and the unpleasant ache somewhere in the middle David thought that this was not one of his better days.

When he turned the corner, and saw that the supermarket had not been burned to the ground made things feel better. Seeing the steady flow of people to and from the building said that it was still open, made him feel positively good.

Entrance to the supermarket, was only possible via the small number of access points the army had opened up in the ring of steel that surrounded the building. But the heroic image that the blood and bandage conjured up worked their magic, and his passage through the nearest choke point was greeted with nods of respect from the soldiers who manned the entrance.

Inside, the nice open plan image of the supermarket had been carefully ruined by a crude brick wall that permanently closed most of the tills, and forced the queues through the few that remained opened. The queues at each till were huge and snaked out of sight, but they were very calm and orderly (although that might have had less to do with the British love of queuing and more to do with the armed guards that watched the queues).

Even if he had wanted to endure the queues, the only English money David had on him would not have bought him a tin of beans - official retail price £1.50, price in any store £7.20. The 100 dollars he had concealed could have bought most of the store, it would also have bought him a great deal of very pointed questions in the nearest peace station. To his right was the only thing he needed from here.

Someone had tried to strike a blow against global capitalism by spray painting "eat the bankers" across the map of the local area (the lettering was very neat. It was a shame that the 'b' of bankers had dripped and looked more like a 'w')

The blood on his face (and that fact that most people seemed to think that this made him a heroically wounded soldier of the struggle for equality) attracted far too much attention as he drifted across the floor in the vague direction of the map.

Leaning on his wall as he pretended to adjust his shoes, gave him plenty of time to scan the map. Even under the spray-painted letters '217 Murray Street' was easy to find.

In the end, only the International Monetary Fund would lend us any money, but they wanted to see 'a sensible fiscal policy' that would pay off the countries' debits in a responsible manner. It had to be explained to the government that this would mean massive austerity cuts that would make the cutbacks seen in Greece look tiny by comparison.

It was a magnificent plan. It was a shame that the chancellor (a 23 year old media studies graduate) was overheard that same night discussing the loans in an expensive restaurant. His answer made to the question "but how are you going to manage such savage and ruthless cuts?" made the front-page news.

" _We will just ignore the IMF's repayment schedule. Of course, we will pay it back, one day, but only when we can. The IMF will just have to wait until we are ready. What are they going to do? Spank us?"_

It was next day when the country found out exactly 'what are they going to do' when the IMF refused the loans. Desperate offers for loans that the country would pay back at 50% had no takers. The only offer to lend money came from Cuba, but they wanted 60% interest and ownership to the county of Berkshire. This offer only fell through when it was pointed out to the government that this would mean Cuba would own the Queen's home, Winsor Castle (not that this would bother the Royal family. They had seen the writing on the wall a long time ago, and found Canada much more hospitable)

With no one to lend them money, the government had to try something that no government had tried since the war. Spend less than the massively reduced amount of tax they now collected.

In line with the government policy of equality every government department had its budget cut by 70%,

The cuts started well enough. When they cut the army by 70% retired generals wrote polite notes to 'The Times' complaining about the ruination of this jewel set in a silver sea. When they cut 70% of teachers, no one noticed for a week.

There were protests and marches when they cut 70% of the NHS, but the marches were well-behaved, and everyone had a good day out.

The problem came when they cut the welfare budget by 70%, and millions of people found their unemployment benefit or pension cut by 70%.

Every city in England exploded in riots.

The first night they looted the shops. The next night the shops were burnt to the ground. The next night they started burning anything near the shops.

The government did what anyone would when faced with a situation completely outside their control and beyond their experience.

They panicked

The army was sent into every city with orders to restore order using all non lethal methods. The 'none lethal' part of that lasted exactly two hours, and the parks became funeral pyres.

" _The problem is that we have thousand of angry people who will do anything to punish us" The prime minister looked old and tired, but then everyone in the cabinet office looked as if they had seen their own private hell in the last few weeks, "the army is maintaining an uneasy peace by use of deadly force, but this will not continue. Supplies for the army are running short and in a few days, perhaps a week at most, they will be unable to maintain any sort of order. ." The sound of shots as the army tried to keep a lid on the latest riot reminded them exactly what would happen then "We have to fact the fact that..."_

But his audience never found out what they needed to face, because it was then that the home Secretary (a 23-year-old Sociology student) spoke up.

" _No, that's not the problem"_

The prime Minster was so surprised to be interrupted that he did an excellent fish imitation.

" _The problem is not that they are_ _angry_ _. The problem is that they are angry with_ _us_ _" he was not looking at them. He was gazing into the smooth polished surface of the cabinet desk as if he could see everything there_

His finger started to trace complex patterns on the table.

" _But who else should they be angry with?" it was the minister for schools who asked the question, but only because she was quicker than the rest._

Now the home Secretary looked at his audience. His expression was unreadable.

" _Each other"_

The home Secretary spoke for a long time as he laid out his ideas, notes were taken and urgent phone calls made.

The first changes appeared in a few days.

_Benefit checks for the unemployed now had a note attached that pointed out that the money available for claimants had to be reduced_ **'because the privileged few with jobs are unwilling to share their good fortune'**

At the same time that a note was sent to everyone who worked in benefit offices, reporting several violent attacks that had taken place in other offices (oddly it was always an office that was always located some distance away) . So now the customer friendly windows through which they could see each other were to be replaced by perforated metal sheets, tazers became standard issue.

_Pension checks came with a note regretting out little much someone that had worked hard all their life was getting compared with '_ _the life of comfort the feral youth in the council house sink estates enjoyed._ _'_

_At the same time, there was a large-scale cutback of youth clubs, after-school activates and financial support for education. It was helpfully pointed out that this was '_ _to maintain the pensions of the older generation who had got the country into such a mess._ _'_

_The pay checks of the lucky few who had jobs now came complete with a breakdown that helpfully showed just how much of their hard-earned money was going '_ _straight into the pockets of the work shy who spend every day watching daytime TV while drinking and smoking_ _'_

_All employers were hit with a new law '_ _to support and maintain the important work of the unions in their struggle for a fair minimum wage, for all union members in the company_ _. The FMW was to be set at a, very reasonable, 25% of the salary of the highest paid person in the business, payable to every union member employed by the company_

Every union member was sent a neat little booklet that allowed them to see their own wage in comparison with that of anyone else in the same business, and also their wage in comparison to the salary that the union leaders paid themselves.

_A law was passed that allowed a victim of a crime to see'_ **the full police report on any possible suspects, along with their home addresses, car registration and photographs** _. While the few that actually went to prison were greeted with posters apologizing for the intolerance of society for those with alternate life styles._

The results were instant.

The cities became battlegrounds as those with jobs fought those without. Union strikes became common as they blockaded the businesses that had gotten rid of every union member. The young fought the old, and the old fought back surprisingly well \- when they realised just how much damage a mobility scooter could do when it rammed someone doing 15 MPH. The police force was renamed 'the peace service' and their only job was to stop the disparate groups from slaughtering each other

The home Secretary later got a sociology award for his work into the real life uses of the politics of 'divide and conquer' and the party to celebrate this went on all weekend. No one noticed that the government had taken the weekend off, they were all far too busy fighting each other.

The distance between the shopping centre and 217 Murray Street turned out to be just a few streets, and even shuffling along - like the people around him - it would only take a few minutes to get there.

Before they had been banned as being 'reactionary' he had been a fan of spy film and books, and images from them played across the widescreen high-definition screen that of his imagination.

He knew what 217 Murray Street' would look like. He could visualize its smoke-filled rooms, and knew the sort of hard faced men that he would meet there. He braced himself for the threats of violence if they did not believe what he had done for them with his confusion of 'Murray' and ' _Marie_ ' . The slightest slip would mean that his next destination would not be the border but a shallow hole in the ground.

Number 217 turned out to be nothing like the films had promised him. It was a small modern house, identical to all the others in its street. Only the neat numbers on the door told him that he had reached his goal.

If number 217 had been unsatisfactory (none of the spy dramas had featured houses with neat flowered curtains, and the distant sound of a radio tuned to easy listening), then the response to his hesitant knock on the door was positively disappointing.

The door was opened, not by some tall thin faced man, but by a grey-haired woman of at least sixty. In any spy film, she would have been 'customer #2' or 'woman on the bus'. Certainly not the contact he hoped would get him to the border.

She was looking at him expectantly, and he realised that he had been so surprised to see her that he had completed missed her 'hello' (she had a distinct Wiltshire accent)

He had practiced what he would say at this point so many times (the subtle "perhaps you might be able to help me with some travel plans". The brisk "can you help me get out of here" or the to-the-point "can you get me to the border). But in the end he was so surprised by his greeting that his reply was just gabble.

"Offence reported - changed address - 100 dollars - get me to the border"

Amazing enough this did not seem to confuse her at all,

"Please come in young man, I've been expecting you"

Inside the house was worn old-fashioned shabbiness, but also had the pin sharp neatness of someone with far too much time on their hands. It was nothing like he had expected. Every flat surface in the living room had its own covering of China figurines, and a selection of miniature owls watched him very carefully as he sat down. The sofa had far too many cushions on it.

"Cup of tea?"

A cup of tea appeared in his hand, ferried there by a practiced manoeuvre.

"Take your time young man and tell me how you come to be here"

He started to talk, and then he carried on talking for some time. He told her about his marriage, he told her about the guests he had to share his house with. He told her everything. Partly, it was because it had been a very long time since he had anyone he could talk to (that would not immediately report the conversation). But mainly it was because, while the grey-haired women opposite did not look like his mum, she certainly looked like 'a' Mum.

At the right points, she made all the correct noises of sympathy. But it was when he told her of the phone call that had given him her address that she added more than background noises to the conversation

"That would be Mrs. Trotter down the road, always been envious of us ever since we got our conservatory. Always been a mean sort she has"

David looked at her with surprise, trying to work out if he had fallen into some alternate dimension where possession of a fancy greenhouse was a reason to hate someone.

"But we always knew that our little underground railroad would not last forever. If it wasn't her, it would just be someone else" the words were spoken without bitterness or anger.

In a neat magic trick a carving knife appeared in her hand, it looked very sharp.

"Slice of cake dear?"

The fruit cake tasted delicious.

David carried on talking (and talking around a substantial slab of fruit cake is not easy) "I've got money, 100 American dollars; I can pay you to get me across the border" he paused. She was only a little old lady but why take chances "of course I've not got it all with me here... But I can get to it easily"

"I expect you've got it hidden up your bum dear. A lot of my men do that"

David just stared at her. This was not how little old ladies should talk.

"Most of the women who come to me hide their money in their bra or knickers, but lots of the men hide it where you have. I think some of them have seen far too many spy films. You can use the bathroom to retrieve it later "she patted his arm, carefully "just make sure you wash your hands properly afterwards"

She decided to interpret the strange gurgling noise from David as a question.

"it was the way you sat down. It looked uncomfortable, but anyway, we charge a lot more for our services" there was a pause while David's heart (and face) sank into his shoes "normally"

"Normally" such an ordinary work, three brief syllables, and everything changes

"Its expensive work getting someone to the border. Even more to get over it. There are people to bribe, papers to be bought. It all costs money, but since you have been so _helpful_ " the word was even pronounced in italics "and this will be our last operation. I think we can arrange a special going out of business fee of only 50 dollars"

The look on his face must have said much more than he thought.

"When they split with us, and the border that separates was built, they made a clean break. They formed their own currency that did not follow our insane politics of greed and envy. 50 dollars is still a great deal of money there. You will be quite...."

A voice behind him "I really think we should be going grandma, David here said that he got the phone call about eleven. Even with the confusion over the name of the road (nice work there young man) they will be getting to us soon"

When he had come into the neat living room, he had thought how small it was. Now it looked even smaller.

The man who stood behind the sofa might have only been six feet high, but he was also the largest person he had ever seen. The shirt that loomed over him had to be XXXXXL (and perhaps a few extra Xs as well) and what it was hiding did not look like fat. The ruddy face at the top of the mountain said that here was a man who had spent a lot of time turning the earth or feeding the cows (whatever it is that farmers do), and the work had made him strong.

"This is my grandson Paul. He looks after any heavy jobs that need doing"

When Maggie had said that his 100 dollars was not enough, he had briefly wondered what would have happened if she had not added 'normaly'. Now he had his answer. The man behind him not only looked strong enough to deal with anything. He also looked as if he loved his Grandmother enough to do anything.

"You are right Paul, its time to go." As she stood up, Paul moved to her side and took her arm. For someone so big, he moved with unsettling speed.

"Paul if you could get my bag please it's just behind the sofa" David was closer than Paul, and he reached down to the grey canvas holdall. It was much heavier than he thought it should be, and it made sounds of metal on metal as he handed to Paul "We always knew that this day would come. Some old nosy parker would figure out what we were doing and report us. I guess we were just lucky that daft old Mrs. Trotter didn't figure out what we were really up to here"

Back in the small hall (even smaller now that Paul was there) David moved toward the front door.

The hand on his shoulder was very large "not that way David, Mrs. Trotter will be watching this place like an old scabby vulture" Paul steered him towards the back of the house.

An estate agent would have probably described the back garden of 217 as 'compact and easy to manage' David described it as a postage stamp, with delusions of grandeur,

There was no rear exit here, and the only thing that could hide here was very small wildlife. He was just about to point this out, when Paul took one step to the wooden fence at the back of the postage stamp, and with a flourish worthy of any magician, swung it open like a hidden door.

On the other side of the fence (or the door, or whatever it was) was another postage stamp garden, and a woman hanging out her washing.

She didn't look surprised to see them suddenly appear in her garden.

"Oh hello Maggie, haven't seen you for ages, how's the arm?"

While Paul and David stood around like spare parts, the two old women (for they were both well passed 'middle' and into 'old' age) discussed medical complaints that David had not only never heard of, but could not believe that they were compatible with the two healthy looking women in front of him.

It seemed to take a very long time before the conversation turned to why the three of them were here.

"So they finally caught up with you?" the question was so casual that it took David a few seconds to realize that it was about them.

"Yes, this young man works in security, and took a phone call from that old battle axe Mrs. Trotter. He managed to confuse some of the details, but I expect they will be here soon. David this is Mrs. Coren" He shook hands very carefully. Mrs. Coren was very thin, and her face watched him with the predatory look of a bird sizing up a nice worm.

There was a small regular sound. Behind them Paul was carefully screwing the fence permanently closed. Its days of opening like a door were over

Tea and biscuits were promised, and they moved inside

The flowers looked more real than any flowers David had ever seen, an image of some hyper real landscape, but what was important was the fingers of the clock that hung in front of them. They said it was now four thirty, and no matter how much they watched, there was still no sign of any interest from the authorities in the house they had left so quickly.

A few times he had tried to make light of the lack of a raid, but comments, like "I must have really confused them with the change of address" dropped into the silence of the room and vanished without trace. He could feel the suspicion radiating from them that he was either a con man or working for the authorities.

Sometime in the last hour the mobile mountain that was Paul had taken up position behind him, and now his neck itched just where he expected that giant pair of hands to grab him. He was very sure that Paul would make his death quick and as painless as possible, and that he would be very sorry to do it. But that would be of little help to him.

The clock, with its picture of the more real than real flowers, clicked off another five minutes, and the absence of anything happening carried on.

If he claimed he needed the toilet, they might let his out of their sight just long enough for him to escape through the bathroom window, but what, then? He was sure that Paul would see it as a matter of family pride that he be found and dealt with as soon as possible.

There was a noise outside.

All four of them leaned forward so that they would not miss a single second of what was happening to the house just over the fence. But what was happening there was still nothing.

Now the room shook with the noise that was coming from...well nothing really. There was no activity in the house they watched. No vehicles were screeching to a halt across the road.

The noise was deafening now.

David looked up.

Seen in the air,, the Clancy EK315 helicopter looks like a noisy little insect making its way across the sky. Seen hovering twenty feet over your head it's bloody terrifying. Its noise so loud now that their ears can no longer deal with it, and there is just a stunned silence.

In the short time that they have been watching it, the house over the fence has changed. Before, nothing was happening there. Now everything is happening there.

Inhuman looking figures in gas masks and goggles can be seen at every window, and behind them is the half seen suggestion of frantic activity as the building is searched, very thoroughly.

The little bedroom at the front of the house is much smaller than the kitchen they have just left downstairs, but its smaller window faces away from the house being torn apart behind them. The three of them sit, very quietly, as far away from the window as possible.

The remainder of the afternoon takes a long time to pass. Even after the early darkness of November has fallen, they can still hear the sounds of a very thorough search taking place.

The roar of the helicopter went away as suddenly as it had arrived, and then they could hear the small sounds that told them so much more. The slamming noises of doors being closed with far too much anger. The dragging noises of heavy furniture being moved, and finally, the expensive sound of best China being broken.

At some point during the endless evening, there is a noise that is both much more important, and far too close.

The little bedroom turns out to be just over the front door of their safe house, and the sudden knocking might as well have been in the same room. The front door catches slightly as it opens and they can hear the thin high voice of Mrs. Coren. They listen very carefully to the hum of conversation, which seems to go on for a long time.

The silence in the little bedroom is almost perfect, as they try to pull any meaning from the flow of words taking place under their feet.

The noise of the sneeze is very loud in the room.

Instantly, David's attention is equally split between the almost comical look of horror on Maggie's face and the voices beneath them.

Time becomes elastic, and stretches until the tension in the room is almost physical. The front door catching slightly as it closes. Footsteps on the stairs as the security forces close in on them. There is no rush, no hurry as the foot steps grow ever closer. There is just time for everyone to look at everyone else, perhaps to say 'goodbye' before the door opens.

Buss Service No 74K

Swindon Bus Station

The Outlet Village

Link Centre

Lydiard Millicent

Greatfield

Purton

Cricklade

When David spent the long evenings in his little room in his house, he used to try and distract himself from the thudding beat of his guest's music by imagining how he could break through the security cordon around Swindon. He dreamt of a fast car breaking through the barricades or the silent passage of a hang glider through the night sky above their heads. The reality was very different.

"There are three layers of security around the bus station. To begin with, each of the approach roads is very closely monitored by CCTV _don't look around!_ Then there is a check point at each entrance where they will verify your travel authorization. Why are you going to Cricklade?"

There was a brief pause before he understood that it had been a question.

"I'm going to see my Grandmother Mrs. Leery, she's been very poorly"The bus station was at the top of a hill, and David was working hard to keep with up with Maggie, but he was the one carrying her bag. Paul had said his 'goodbyes' several streets ago (well he had said goodbye to his grandma, to David, he had said 'make sure you look after her')

"What's her address?"

David slowed up a little to catch his breath. Maggie tutted at him, but slowed down as well.

"217 Potts street Cricklade"

"Its 427 Potts street. It's this sort of detail they will try to catch you out with. The main document check comes when you buy your ticket, but that shouldn't be a problem for us"

They rehearsed their lies all the way to the bus station.

It was good to be out in the open air and away from the cramped little house. Mrs . Coren had reassured them that the peace officer at the door had seemed quite happy with her noncommittal answers, and there had not even been a threat to search the house.

When she had opened the door to the small front bedroom, to find three faces staring back at her in horror, it was difficult to know who was most frightened. The sound of the sneeze had not been audible downstairs at all.

After much discussion, they left the house together and then walked towards the town centre. Paul had left them at the bottom of the hill that leads to the bus station, before they got too close to the enhanced security around it.

The checks at the entrance to the bus station turned out to be satisfactorily brief. Little more than scanning their papers passed the bar code reader, and waiting an endless time for 'approved' to flash up, and then they were through the check point.

Inside the bus station was a mass of people, all moving from point A to point B. Only to find that they needed to be back at point A. The sense of mingled fear and anger in the air was almost tangible. Only the presence of the peace officers stopped it becoming a riot.

The queue for the ticket office started only a few feet away from it, but from there the queue snaked its way around the closed and burnt-out shops, around the corner before finally returning to approach the counter where they could buy a ticket. They joined the end of the queue trying to keep their faces away from the CCTV cameras. While simultaneously trying to make it look like they were doing nothing of the sort.

It took a long time to inch their way to the counter, and they spent the time making the inane sort of conversation that people make only in queues. 'The weather' took up three feet of queue. 'The price of food in the shops', another four feet. But the all-time prize winner was 'our Mable and her useless husband'. This lasted all the way to the counter.(David hoped that this was just some story that Maggie had made up. Otherwise he felt sorry for the 'useless lump of a husband' if she ever got her hands on him

"Travel warrant!"

Both forms were pushed through the narrow slot that was the only connection between the two of them, and the face behind the wired glass. He took the forms and very carefully did not study them at all.

"Letter of purpose"

The neatly forged letters joined the other documents. The face behind the glass drank his tea and read the paper.

"27.40"

David checked the remaining forms he held tightly, 'authorization', identity card', 'social entitlement'. There was no form 2740, he was still thumbing through the handful of papers as Maggie collected her change from the £30 he had handed over.

David decided that he had lost another point to her. He had known her for less than 24 hours, and by now he was sure that she thought of him as some bumbling office drone with an anal fixation, and the inability to understand that tickets needed paying for.

As they headed away from the ticket office, he put the clues together very carefully. The slight family similarity, too old for a Grandson, too young for a son

"Your nephew worked here long then?" his voice was a study in casualness.

From the corner of his eye, he saw her swift glance towards him. He also saw the expression that could only be summed up as 'cleverer than you look'

"bout five years now, used to be a driver but when they cut back the bus routes, he managed to get a job in the office"

They walked on in silence looking for the boarding point stamped on their tickets, while he decided that he had gained a point against a very good player. If the conversational score was not two each, it was at least two points Maggie vs one point to him.

David had lived in Swindon nearly all his life, but the view of the town center from the upper floor of a red double-decker bus made it seem somehow strange and new.

As the streets and the looted shops slid by, he watched all the places that held memory disappear behind him. Here was the graffiti scrawled boards that covered the restaurant, where he had proposed on bended knee. Here was the mass of rubble that had been the bank that had given him his first mortgage, and finally here was the corner where he had received the text that told him that five years of marriage had just ended.

It must have started raining; suddenly, the streets were misty and hazy and his last view of Swindon was streaked with tears.

When he had found out that the first step of their escape across the border was a bus to Cricklade, he had tried to remember as much as he could about it. He knew that it was a small town a few miles outside Swindon, and that they had driven through it a few times - when they had been diverted from the main roads, but that was all he knew about their destination.

As soon as they arrived - after six stops and seven security checks –(At the link center, they got the seat count wrong and did the whole bus again) David understood his lack of recollection about Cricklade. There wasn't enough of it to remember.

There was the main street that the bus used, there was another street that crossed it at right angles and there was .. well nothing else really.

Seen from the air, the small town must have looked like the cross hairs on a telescopic sight, and as the 74K bus left the two of them alone on the deserted main street. David had never felt more like a target.

The bus had been gone from sight for less than thirty seconds, but already he could feel the twitching of curtains, and the low cries of "strangers,". He thought they might have as long as five more minutes, before his colleagues at the call centre started getting 'suspicious behaviour' reports, and another ten before they were invited into a peace service van to explain exactly what they were doing here.

He was so busy plotting the failure of their great escape that he did not notice the battered car stopping just a few feet away from them. If Maggie had not pulled him across the pavement and pushed him towards the back door of the car, he might still have been there twenty minutes later when the security sweep checked the area.

The battered car turned out to have equally battered shock absorbers, and in the back seat David was bounced around from side to side - and more importantly, and more painfully \- up and down until he grabbed hold of the seat back and hung on like a sailor in a storm. Now that the world outside had stopped moving around so violently he had his first chance to take in his new surrounding since he had been shoved into the car.

The first thing he saw did not come as a surprise. The driver of the car was a large well built man, and even with his restricted view from the back seat, he could see a definite resemblance to both the mountainous Paul, and the half seen face behind the wired glass of the ticket office. The second thing did come as a surprise, and an unpleasant one as well.

To judge from the rate at which the outside was moving, the engine must have been in a much better condition than the outside of the car. A sign whipped by warning them that the speed limit on this road was 50MPH, but according to the speedometer, that limit was just theoretical.

"You're late" even over the roar of the engine, he recognised the same the broad Wiltshire accent he had been listening to all day.

"They checked the bus twice at the shopping center"

This seemed to worry their driver, because he whipped his head around so he could look directly at Maggie (the car negotiated two corners under no control at all)

"Additional security checks?"

"No, they just lost the count half way through the bus"

The driver snorted, and (thankfully) turned back to look at the road.

They drove on in silence for a few more minutes (well if you count the roar of an engine at maximum revs as 'silence') while David finally managed to get his seat belt on. The belt became very important a few seconds later when there was a squeal of tyre on road, and the car shuddered to a halt.

"gone; he's gone" their driver was scanning the empty piece of road in front of them as if shear power of observation would find , well what it was that was missing. David had been careful not to ask too many questions on how they would make it to the border (Paul had made it clear that he did not agree with questions), but even he could guess that this bit of road should have contained their transport for the next leg of their trip.

Only the small noises of the car as it cooled down broke the silence, there was a pause for a few more seconds and then the headlong flight of the car resumed. If they had been travelling fast before, now they were travelling ludicrously fast.

"We have about five miles to catch up with him before he gets to the motorway, once he gets there it's all over. There is a chance we can still make it"

The last sentence even sounded desperate, but somehow the car got even faster. The next few minutes had a sound track of complaining tyres while the car lurched violently from side to side. Corners resulted in the sound of metal on hedge (but it was metal on fence that resulted in David being showered in broken glass). Through the broken window, he could see the motorway as their road started to parallel it, ready for the junction a few miles away where they would either have to join the motorway or admit defeat and limp home.

When the car slowed suddenly, David thought that the engine had finally failed under the abuse that it had suffered, but then he saw the lorry they were now following. He could see the reflections of their headlights, as they flashed over and over.

There was a brief period of time when it looked like the lorry was going to ignore the urgent summons in his rear-view mirror, but then its brake lights glowed red, and the lorry slowed to a halt.

Driver out of his cab now as the back door is pulled open, and he is dragged out of the car towards the lorry where the driver seems to be trying to look in all directions at once. So close to the motorway now that he has to shout over its roar.

"Get in, get in" his voice is tight with panic

David starts to climb into the cab, but hands grab him before he can take a single step and guides him to the space between the front and back wheels.

"Under here, go, go, go" the driver knees down and extends his arm under the lorry, and a trap door swings open in the darkness.

Getting into the space under the lorry, that the door has revealed turned out to be easy, mainly because he was being shoved into the space like an oversized bag into the overhead locker on a budget airline. The space turned out to be quite big, and he had plenty of room, for about five seconds. David had just got as far as thinking that he would roll around on corners, when he realized that he was going to share that space. Either the driver of the car was wearing a strong floral perfume (always a possible these days) or more likely he was being joined by Maggie.

"What are you doing" even as he said it he knew he was a stupid question

"If I stay here, then they will catch up with me sooner or later, and I don't want to spend my days looking over my shoulder or waiting for the knock on the door. I've got family over the border, and they will look after me"

David might have made some joke that she had family everywhere, but the idling throb of the engine turned into a roar and removed any possibility of conversation.

High up over their heads the driver was probably comfortable in his padded seat with air conditioning set to a nice cool temperature, while the radio played the latest tunes. But down here in their tiny space hung under a lorry doing 55MPH on the motorway it was very different.

When he was young, he had read a story about someone that had been buried alive, and he had had nightmares for a week, but now the story had become real for him, His coffin was not only suffocating in its pitch darkness, but it was also in constant motion. One moment throwing him against Maggie and then back to the lightly padded walls (he found out just how lightly padded the walls were the first time the lorry braked and he slid head first toward the front of their space). The noise of the engine was an immense physical thing that filled his head to the point that he thought it would burst.

Something else was starting to bother him.

As soon as he had been pushed into the space under the lorry, he had smelt the thick heavy smell of Diesel, but then it had been a distant thing. No more troubling than walking past an idling lorry. But as soon they had started to move the smell became instantly much stronger, and with each breath he could feel the slimy choking taste of oil coating his throat and filling his lungs.

For the first few minutes, he was close to being sick, and he could feel his body tensing to rid itself of something so insidious, but the idea of spending the next few hours lying in his own vomit was just enough to make him fight the need to be sick. He knew that as soon as he could, he would take a shower to wash away the stench of the fuel, but he knew its smell would always be with him.

It was less than an hour later when something happened that made him forget all about the smell.

He found out where it was coming from.

The lorry had been hurtling along for what seemed like forever (but was probably about an hour) when it suddenly came to a halt. David had found some belt-like loops on one wall, and he had wrapped one around his arm and another around one leg to hold him in place, and so this time his head did not test just how thin the padding was. There was the distant sound of voices, and he guess that this must be either a random documents check or someone had seen the lorry stop to take them on board.

He could hear the voices, but not clearly enough to make out what they were saying; when he realized that he could hear something else. For a moment, the sound was the lapping of waves on a beach, and he smiled as it reminded him of days at the seaside, and then he thought about what this meant as he touched the side wall of their coffin. With each sound of a wave on a beach, he could feel the wall flex and move. In a moment of perfect recollection, he remembers the phrase 'his bowels turned to water' in a Stephen King book. At the time, he had thought it just a nice phrase to explain just how the hero was feeling, but now he understood this phrase perfectly.

His bladder was suddenly far too full and a little dribble of urine escaped, he needed the toilet urgently. Now he knew how they had made the space they were hiding in, and what was waiting for them just the other side of a thin metal wall.

It must have seemed like such a clever plan at the time. Create a metal shell large enough to hide two people, join it to the fuel tank and hide the join with mud from the road. The perfect hiding space, any checks would show just a large tank for a large vehicle. But now the crude wields that connected the two units was starting to fail, and the frail barrier that separated them was breaking down.

For now only the throat closing smell of diesel was leaking through, but soon fuel would leak and then pour into this sealed space. All that it needed was for the most minor jolt, and then they would drown as the fuel flooded in. If they were lucky, they might burn to death as the fuel exploded.

He needed to get out of here; he had to get out of here. He could feel the walls of their coffin closing in around them, trapping them, waiting for the icily rush as the fuel poured in. He could feel the panic seize him like an elemental force as his feet and fists punched out against the confining walls that were holding him in. He could hear his voice shouting, screaming to let him out, but this was swallowed by the noise of the lorry as it pulled away.

Bit by bit the panic receded like a wave that had nearly drowned him. He became aware of the arms that held him, like a mother holds her child, and the voice that told him that everything was going to be alright.

She held him for what seemed to be a very long time as logic pushed back the fear. Like a mantra, he repeated over and over that the wielding would hold out for one more trip, and that the small noises were not the sounds of metal bonds breaking down.

Gradually, the arms that had held him tightly relaxed their grip, and he told her that he was sorry for panicking (actually he shouted this over the noise of the engine) He told her about his fear of the diesel flooding their hiding space or that a spark would just blow them to hell. He waited for a reply - and then he waited some more time. In the distance, there was a new noise, a regular grinding sound that somehow sounded familiar and yet out of place. It took him a while to recognise the familiar sound of snoring

It was biting cold in the truck stop car park, and they wrapped their arms around themselves to try and keep warm as they walked off the cramp in their legs. David knew he had lain there listening to Maggie snoring a few inches away from his ear, but at some point the boredom and the regular motion of the truck had worked its magic and he must have fallen asleep.

As the lorry had slowed down and pulled off the motorway, the change in motion had been enough to partly wake him, and he had spent a few minutes trying to work out where he was. When they had opened the trap door into their hiding space the shock as the cold air replaced the warm diesel smell had woken him up completely.

The truck stop was an expanse of tarmac, a few hundred feet away from the motorway. Its only facility a stained and decaying toilet block and an even more stained van that boasted it sold the best kebabs anywhere (the van was closed). The paved area was big enough for twenty or thirty Lorries, but they were sharing it with a transit van that had three flat tyres, a burned-out caravan and an unpleasant smell that seemed to be coming from the toilet block.

David held his breath while he urinated, leaving the toilet block as soon as he could, but as soon as he stepped outside he knew that some of the smell had mingled with the sweetness of the diesel, giving him a truly unique body odour.

He was still trying to find the right angle into the wind so that he could not smell himself, when Maggie joined him (David could instantly tell that the lady's side of the toilets had its own au de Toilette). Together they set off back towards their hiding space in the lorry. He made two paces before Maggie caught up with him

"No, we are done with that transport "she saw the look on his face and added, "at least try to look disappointed!"

She held his arm, and tried to make out that he was just helping a poor old lady, but he could tell that it was really to steer him in the right direction. Behind them the lorry bellowed and moaned as it carried on its way without them.

"I know that the lorry was uncomfortable "he helped her on to the grass bank that surrounded the truck stop "but I think our transport for the final leg of our trip will come as a pleasant surprise"

In the end, the transport was no surprise at all.

After they had watched the canal - from a safe distance, for half an hour - and Maggie had carefully checked the name of each barge as it appeared in the distance. Her announcement of "This is ours" was completely expected.

The slowly approaching barge, was so laden down by a large mound of coal, that its pilot had plenty of time to see them as they left the cover of the sheltering trees and waited at the edge of the canal.

David knew that the canal system had become more popular than ever (the government liked to say that this was because they were more environmentally friendly, but the reality was that they were just cheaper than maintaining the roads) The papers were full of the progress of the prison gangs building the Manchester to Leeds heavy freight waterways, but as a means of escape, they lacked the thrill of a high-octane sports car racing towards the border.

The barge did not seem to slow very much as it grew closer to them, and for a few minutes, it looked like it was not going to stop for them. But he realized that not stopping was exactly was what it was going to do. Before it came level to them, Maggie started briskly walking in the same direction down the tow path until they were matching its speed and then, with the aid of a helping hand, the two of them were on board.

The open deck space on the barge was limited to a small area at the rear of the barge, just big enough for the pilot, and the large ships wheel that he was using to steer the barge. The space was far too crowded with three people, but this turned out not to be a problem for very long.

"pullout bed here, kitchen area here and bathroom here" parts of the wall that David had thought were busy holding back the cold water of the canal turned out to be hiding a kitchen area, roughly the same size as his sink at home. The seating area converted into a bed by pulling 'here' pushing 'there' swearing at 'this' and hitting 'that'.

The pilot disappeared back up the stairs to the deck area while David tried to work out what you could cook in a kitchen this small, and how three people would share the sleeping area the seat converted into.

"hiding space here and here when we get checked at the check points" the two separate spaces were hidden by yet more pieces of the wall that looked as if they were permanent features, unless you knew where to press. Each of the spaces was only just large enough to hold a person, but after the mobile coffin under the lorry, David didn't think he would have a problem with them.

The pilot reappeared from the deck area "There s always the chance of spot checks, but they are pretty rare and even then we get at least five minutes warning while they catch up with us" the pilot headed back up the ladder.

David had just decided that the pilot was either suffering from some attention-deficit disorder or was very shy, because he was constantly on the move. The thought suddenly occurred to him that if the pilot was here, then who was driving the boat? Peering past the receding figure on the ladder showed that at the moment the barge was being piloted by a length of rope attached to the ships wheel.

Over the next few days, they soon got used to the pilot scrambling down the ladder. Putting the kettle on, and reappearing a few minutes later to actually make the tea. The barge seemed to continue on its way untroubled by the guidance of the length of rope, and David learnt to relax and not expect the bow of another ship to smash through the walls of their new home the moment the pilot appeared.

They had a lot of time to pass, and watching the river bank slip by through their restricted view through a ventilation grille soon became boring, then it became tedious and then mind numbing.

"Do you mind if I ask you a question that has been bothering me?" Maggie turned from the monotony of the view to face him "when I first met you I decided you were the most unlikely person ever to be running an escape route, how did you get into this line of work?"

Maggie watched him carefully, for what seemed a very long time, before she unzipped the bag that David had carried for her. The frame looked like silver, and the photo inside it showed a very young man in a police uniform smiling at the camera

"This is my Earnest. He was in the year below me at school, and he took three weeks before he plucked up the nerve to ask me out. We walked out together for three years, and in that time the only other thing in his life besides me was the police force he wanted so much to join. When he went for his assessment, I waited for him outside, and the day he got the letter saying he had been accepted was the same day that he told me that he wanted me at his side for the rest of his life, and he asked me to marry him. On our wedding day, he wore his new police uniform, and he looked so very smart. We had two days in Scotland as a honeymoon, before he took up his first post.

I travelled with him from station to station, as he made his way up through the ranks and we started a family. He was the happiest man in the world."

Maggie took a drink of water from the tiny kitchen "The job, was his world you see, when he was not working he was reading about the new police techniques. We had a good life.

But then there was the new government with its 70% cuts in the police force. Earnest could have retired then on nearly a full pension, I told him we would manage, but they said that his experience would be essential in 'building a new police that would replace raw numbers with smart technology to proactively manage crime', and for a short time, it looked like it might just work. Until the riots"

From the bag Maggie, produced a dull silver vase. She held it to her like a baby.

"The moment I saw his watch commander at the door, I knew what had happened. Earnest had been on riot duty in Swindon when his squad had been attacked by an armed gang.

He had been stabbed more than twenty times.

My world came to an end that day, and the commander held me for what seemed like hours as I cried. He was very sympathetic.

On the day of his funeral, the commander escorted me to the church, and he spoke movingly of my husband's heroism and his commitment to the profession that he loved so much."

The silver vase turned slightly as Maggie stroked it, now David could see the engraved words "Earnest; Beloved Husband and Father"

"On the day of the inquest the watch commander was most concerned the experience would be too much for me and begged me not to attend, but I wanted to make sure that the scum that attacked him were brought to justice.

The moment the inquest started, I realized that everything I had been told about my husband's death had been a lie. The looters had been armed only with sticks, and they were running from armed response officers. The whole thing would have just passed off without incident. Except the police team leader had spent far too long behind a desk, and when some kids started throwing stones at them he panicked and started firing wildly into the crowd"

Maggie looked at David, and he saw someone that lived in Hell.

"I'm married to a police officer" David decided not to correct 'am' into 'was'" and I knew all about Authorised Firearms Officers. They carry 9mm Heckler & Koch MP5 rifles that hold 60 rounds and can fire them at over 800 rounds a minute. I worked out the numbers, four seconds, that all it took to empty the rife. That's how long it took my husband to die. He had been in the crowd doing his job, calming down the situation until twenty of those bullets hit him. He died instantly.

The inquest heard a great deal about the riots and the 'fluid unpredictable situation' in the streets, and ruled his death an accident. Of course, the watch commander who had been so kind to me and so concerned about my welfare" her words dripped with irony "had been team leader that night, and he walked away from killing the man I had been married to for 32 years as if it was nothing at all. He smiled as he left the room. He murdered my husband, and he was smiling.

Something died in me that day. Everything I had believed in had been smashed, and all that I had left was hate, and it filled me up. I wanted to shout, scream and wrap my hands around the smug gits throat, but I knew that this would only have hurt him a little, and I wanted – I needed - to hurt the people that had allowed him to get away with it.

I found my way. I have family all across the country and all of them wanted to help.

It was a week later that we got our first refuge across the border, and we have been doing at least one every week for the last three years. The paying customers allow us to take the protesters, and the dissidents from under their noses. I like to think that each person we smuggle hurts them just a little bit more. Six months ago the watch commander lost his job, because of his lack of success in stopping our underground railroad" she held the silver container to her cheek and kissed it gently "I told Earnest all about it, I think he would have been very pleased with what we have done"

She stopped talking and rocked Earnest like a baby, very quietly she sang to his remains that he was her sunshine, and he would never know how much she loved him.

They spent another two days on the barge. They played a lot of scrabble and watched the landscape slide past, but they did not talk very much.

The border had been built to stop the 'theft of our world-class welfare services by those who refused to pay for them' and was a 'humane barrier to preserve our national identify'. This close, they could see the reality of those fine words. Some parts of the border were made of roughly mortared breeze blocks topped with broken glass while other parts were just a mass of builder's rubble and telegraph poles, but all of it was over ten feet high and festooned in razor wire. The guard towers stalked the rolling hills like some H.G.Wells war machines, and they could easily see the heavy machine guns and search lights in each of them. The border ran across the landscape, like a livid scar. It took them several more minutes to notice that it had other hidden surprises.

"See how long and lush the grass is between the towers, and the well used paths that lead to the towers? Makes you think that stepping off the path would be a very bad idea"

"Most of the landmines are the latest M25 type 'R', fun things that arm as you pass over them...and then wait for five seconds, before firing a high-explosive charge a few feet into the air. Anything within five feet gets shredded by supersonic razor-sharp fragments. Even the sheep have learnt to avoid this area"

"Well thank you for the tour of the area" Maggie seemed to be employing all of her patience "but how do we get across the border from here?"

James grunted and pointed to a sole soldier, several hundred meters away to their right, who seemed to be guarding a small bump in the ground.

"See him, he's guarding the entrance to the main sewer line that runs under the border" he must have seen the look of distaste on their faces "bit smelly but big enough to stand upright, so as long as you don't mind getting your feet wet. You can just walk under the security fence. And over there "he pointed "is the entrance into the drain that does not show on the plans the authorities have, perfect for us.

Until they found it yesterday.

It had all seemed so simple this morning. They had left the barge in the same way that they had boarded it and had been met by James, who turned out to be the first member of the group that was not a member of her family. After a quick lunch under a sheltering tree, they had been at the border in minutes.

"They found it!"

"Yes, standard patrol must have wandered far enough off the path to see the man hole cover. First thing we knew about it was the explosion when one of them must have stepped just a little too far off the path. Look you can see most of him there, some there and just a little bit over there" James seemed to be enjoying their reaction to the gore.

"So what do we do now?" the back room of the pub was filled with empty crates that came in handy to sit on. Through the door, they could hear the sounds of people having a good time, but there was none of that here.

"Really you have only two choices. We have safe houses all over this area that will be able to hide you - until they finish the tunnel under the border"

"and how long will that be"

"Six to eight months, I know it sounds like a long time, but we should be able to keep you safe for that long. Of course, we would move you from house to house every week or so, and the rest of the time you would have to stay inside"

"What's the other option" The look on Maggie's face said that the idea of six months of being shuffled from house to house, and spending all day every day inside was not one she liked.

"Or there is this" he unfolded a map he produced from a pocket "here there is thick tree and bush cover to within 500 meters of the border. The view of the nearest guard tower is restricted by the rise of the land here" he pointed to where the contour lines clustered "and we have people on the other side that can open a hole in the border here. So all you would have to do" David recalled the 'all' later on and laughed slightly hysterically "is crawl across the 500 meters from cover to border, and you would be home free"

They talked through the options again and again until the noise from the bar died away. Either of the options open to them seemed bleak. They could spend six to nine months being ferried from one safe house - where they could not look out of the window, to another safe house where they could not look out of the window. Or they could crawl across 500 meters of open space, hoping that they would not trigger a land mine, or be caught by a search light from the guard tower.

In the end, the discussion became too much for David, and he did something alien to him. He put his foot down.

"Another nine months of hiding and jumping every time there's a noise in the house! No way would we be able to make that. We'd be nervous wrecks by the end of the first month and at the end of nine months we'd be climbing the walls. Every noise would be their footsteps on the stairs as they came for us, every twitch of a curtain would be a spy ready to report us. A few months of that and we would be glad when they finally caught us. We have to go, now" He saw Maggie's slow nod of agreement, and the deed was done.

When James had said the space they had to cover was 500 meters, David had instantly visualised the distance from his office to the library. For some unknown reason, he remembered that this was exactly 500 meters. Almost fondly he saw the short trip, a quick walk down the nice level pavement to the crossing point, where the cars would obediently stop for him. Then the smooth level steps into the air conditioned library.

The 500 meters they had to cross was very different.

The long lush grass that they had seen before, now seemed to glow in the dim moonlight, but the wet sounds their feet made as they moved through the trees told them that the grass was soaking wet. Which was exactly what they would be after a few seconds crawling through it. Already, they could feel the child wind cutting through the water proof jackets that they had been given. James had described it as a lazy wind – to lazy to go around you, so it went straight through you instead.

In the distance, they could just see a flicking spark that could just have been a refection of the constantly moving search, but this was their target. This was where the opening in the border would be ready for them.

"Most of your trip will be easy, no problem at all. The hill will hide you from the tower, but you see the tree stump they left when they cleared the area?" Not only could they see the stump. They could see the problem.

Across most of the route they would take, they could see the deep puddles of shadow that the hill left when the searchlights passed over, but by the tree stump the shadow was the only the thinnest sliver of darkness.

"You will have to keep as low as you possibly can around there. Forget hands and knees around there it will have to be head down and chest on the ground"

David caught Maggie's eye. It had all seemed such a good idea in the back room of the pub, but now he was starting to have second thoughts.

Perhaps his change of mind was plain to see, because it was only a few seconds later that James shook their hands, wished them luck, and sent them both on their way.

David took James's 'suggestion' and went first into the darkness of no mans land that would lead them to freedom. Behind him, he could hear the small sounds as Maggie followed him. They were on their way.

After the first few feet, his gloves and trousers were soaked by the wet grass, and he ached from the frigid wind, but soon a rhythm developed. Crawl for a count of ten, stop for a count of two and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. Over and over, until its dull monotony became everything.

The 'count of two' breaks became 'count of three' and then four, as the ache in his arms and legs made it harder and harder to move, behind him the desperate panting of lungs told him that Maggie was suffering as well.

Behind him a voice

He will replay the scene over and over in the nightmares that will eject him from sleep. Leaving him sweating, his stomach tight with tension, until he gives up trying to sleep, lying there until the morning.

When he had first met Maggie, he had seen a proud strong woman. A warrior who would fight for what she believed in, but now in the glare of the searchlight, he could only see an old woman sat upright. So bone tired that you just knew that she could not carry on.

"Get down, the light, you are out of the shadow. They will be able to see you"

The thunder of am amplified voice washes over them.

"PUT YOUR HANDS UP AND WALK TOWARDS THE LIGHT, OBEY, AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED"

For a vanishing short space of time, there was a glimpse of the proud warrior, and then it was gone. She smiled at him.

"Have a good life David, remember us"

From the back pack, she produced the silver vase that held the ashes of her husband, and a large handgun.

"Come on Earnest, time we were together again, I have so much to tell you"

From sitting to standing she unfolded like some ancient mechanism, looked down at David and stepped up the hill towards the light.

In the nightmares that will come later, he lies there in the shadows long enough to feel the motion of the planet beneath him. Long enough to feel the deep soul sickness inside him as slow understanding drops on him.

But here in this moment he runs, no attempt at stealth now, arms and legs pumping as he runs as hard and fast as he can. Lungs roaring now, as they feed the frantically working muscles. Under his running feet, the ground twists and turns.. Behind him, there are several small pops, answered by the brief thunder of a heavy machine gun. There are no more pops. The night is silent again.

The flicking spark that marks the hole in the border gets closer, and now he can see the faces behind the light waving him on. A swift glance behind him and he can see the pools of light moving faster now as the searchlights look for another target for the machine guns. He runs faster.

Now the hole in the border is a tunnel at ground level, just wide enough for a crawling man. With no attempt to slow down, he throws himself head first at the gap, and feels his back being torn by the barbed wire as he slides through on the muddy ground.

He feels hands grab him and roll him over, while his back screams in agony. There are voices around him.

"Welcome to the land of freedom, welcome to Wales"

* * *

Thank you for reading this, I hope you enjoyed it.

The seed for this story is of course the constant and on going crisis in the financial markets. In fact it all seems to have been going on so long that its starting to look less like 'crisis' and more like 'normality'

The divide in the arguments over the problems, seems to be between those who seem to be saying

'The old model of capitalism has failed, we need to scrap it completely and start from day zero'

And on the other side are those that seem to be saying

'Steady as she goes, there have been problem, but that is no reason to change how we are working'

I suspect the solution is somewhere in the middle, if only the two sides can come to some agreement.

Please visit my Smashwords page for my other stories:

<http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/peterbailey11>

at the time of writing, my home page contains the following

Las Vegas – AcciDental

A short but comically dark tale of how a dental abscess destroys a routine smuggling operation to Vegas. Pausing only to kill his toilet the courier escapes into the strip where between the emergency room, Tania the stripper, prostitutes and their blackberries he plots his salvation using his in depth knowledge of handbags.

Tort Street

A short story about Pete and Alex. Two very private people who have a special interest in old chapels, where they stage some very unusual performances. Together they are all-powerful and enjoy doing things that lesser people would think of as cruel, wrong or just pain evil. But today they will discover that actions have repercussions, and that they are about to have their worst day ever

This is a lie

When Mark lost his job, he also lost his mind, and he descends into a fantasy world of H.P.Lovecraft and Nazi aliens at the North pole. While the shadows on the walls tell him that, everything is false. Of course, this is all the product of a broken mind, isn't it?

Enjoy ( ? )
