Blighted Land: Book two of the Northumbrian Western Series (Northumbrian Westerns 2) Read Free

As ever it was damp and the drains smelled of rotting food. Beyond the yard was the overgrown garden that belonged to the Tommy, the owner who lived downstairs. Gardening wasn’t really his thing. Sounds came from his place, muted guitar playing. A gruff voice singing along. He was trying to play some old pop song. Drunk as usual.
    Before I went up I checked on the bike, pulling the tarpaulin off, putting a hand to the fins on the engine, tapping the tank just below the word Triumph. There was a ding from the tank with its tiny quantity of fuel, the bootleg juice I’d scrounged. Chips marked the paintwork on this forty-year-old machine, 2013 vintage. Even the replacement forks were tarnished, one seal seeping fluid. The carbs were missing, now sitting up in the flat awaiting my attention. I’d pulled them off yesterday evening after getting back, giving me something to tinker on with. Take my mind off the events. Even though it had once been fitted with injectors and all that electronic stuff, I’d converted it last July after the cheap bio-eth got the better of the original setup. That and the loom rotting away. Now even the carbs were playing up. Age caught up with everything.  
    I locked the gate and made my way up the steps. The wood creaked under my weight. As I fumbled with my keys there was a noise from Tommy’s flat. A dull thud. Then he swore and started singing again.
    My living room smelled of petrol and damp. The carbs lay on the table, parts scattered around them. There was a service manual on the arm of my one armchair, left open partway through. A hole in the carpet marked a path from door to armchair.  
    I needed the bike back on the road for later. But first I needed to eat. I pulled together what almost resembled a chilli using some mince, onion and spices I’d bought at the quayside. I ate sitting with the bowl on my knee, facing the window. I read the service manual as I spooned the food into my mouth. Forkful after forkful until it was finished. Then I sat back and stared out at the mist that rolled up from the quayside and hung over the houses and disused park opposite. For a moment the fog cleared and I could see over the park and down onto Faeston: the roofs that sloped off towards the river and harbour that split the town in two. The town was built around the harbour and river that ran down to it. South Side was across the bridges, a hotchpotch of run down hotels and shops and offices that sloped upwards towards the distant moors. That was where the track was, where I went racing.
      To my left were the wind turbines, just ticking over, and beyond them the sea. The freezing North Sea. Framing the harbour was High Town, the best part of Faeston with its tidy buildings and clean streets.  
    The mist closed in again. All that was visible were the ghosts of the houses opposite.
    I went through into the kitchen, dumped the bowl in the sink and rinsed it. Tommy’s singing got louder.  
    There were plenty of home comforts here. After being on the road it was luxury. Occasionally there was even hot water: there were solar panels that had been fitted by Tommy’s parents when he was a kid. They’d been forward-thinkers his folks, also putting in wood-burning stoves and planting the garden with saplings to provide fuel.  
    Some people had done that back in the twenties, as the economy unravelled, as The Collapse started to fall on the so-called civilised world. There were business failures and runs on banks, power cuts. Fuel prices that shot up. Hospitals and schools run by volunteers.  
    When gangs started to assert themselves there was mention of martial law but the military were bogged down in the Middle East trying to hang onto a share of dwindling oil supplies. Every army in the world was camped out there until it became clear there was no point. That the game was over.
    After the coalition fell apart in 2034, that was it. Neither depleted army nor the crackpot political parties with their