Maggot Moon Read Free Page B

one, then the third . . . he stopped when he had shot seven of the buggers.
    Numbers mattered to Gramps. Seven dead rats was something the king of the rats would respect. Shoot one rat and all his relatives will come looking for you; shoot seven and they understand you mean business.

We took the Lushes through Cellar Street, back to our home. They stood in Gramps’s neat kitchen, amazed. He had his system for survival down to a fine art. Nothing was wasted, everything collected and stacked with the order of a librarian. I helped him lay the table, each item cracked, broken, mended, cracked, broken, and mended again until it had an originality all of its own.
    “Standish,” said Gramps, “the sloe gin.”
    The minute he said that I knew he trusted the Lushes. But he wasn’t going to say so and he never did.
    We all sat round the table. Both me and Gramps had finished our soup and were mopping our bowls with our homemade bread. When we looked up the Lushes hadn’t even started theirs.
    “It’s cold cucumber,” said Gramps. “I made the bread this morning. Eat up.”
    “Do you mean you will share this with us?” said Mrs. Lush, her face translucent, her eyes fishes, swimming in puddles of tears.
    “Yes,” said Gramps. “It will get you out of jail.”
    “What do you mean?” asked Mr. Lush.
    “Stop you starving to death,” he said. “There is a reason why you are in Zone Seven. I don’t need to know it. If we turn on each other and you all die, then they have won. If we stay together, we are strong.”
    “You know that not all from the Motherland agree with what is being done in her name,” said Mr. Lush.
    “Of course,” said Gramps.
    “We thought you would be suspicious of us, think we were informers.”
    “Eat up,” said Gramps. He raised his glass. “Let’s drink a toast: to new beginnings — and moon landings.”

That night the Lushes stayed in our house. For the first time since my parents left I slept in my old bedroom, Hector on a mattress on the floor.
    Only as I was falling asleep did I remember we still hadn’t tackled the raspberry-stained shirt.
    I hadn’t slept through the night once since my parents went. Gramps was exhausted. It was only because of Hector that I began to sleep properly. Mr. Lush and Gramps agreed the next night to knock the doorway through the wall that joined our two bedrooms so we might be together. I don’t remember anything being discussed about knocking more doorways between the two houses, it just happened. Gramps, me, Hector, and Mr. and Mrs. Lush all started to eat together, and bit by bit we stayed together. We were a good family.
    Mr. Lush told us he was an engineer. He had refused to work on a project in the Motherland but what it was, he wouldn’t say. Mrs. Lush was a doctor who had refused to eliminate the impure. Which was really very good for Gramps, me, and the impure, for they all ended up exiled to Zone Seven.

I rocketed off my seat when the bell rang. Slicked my hair down, took a deep breath, knocked on the door, and went in. Mr. Hellman was standing up. He clicked his heels together, although I couldn’t see his heels as they were under his desk.
    Then his arm shot out, scaffold-pole straight, and this glazed look came into his eyes as he said, “Glory to the Motherland.”
    I halfheartedly raised my arm — but didn’t — and then I heard a cough. This cough was not coming from Mr. Hellman. It was coming from a man sitting in the corner of the room, a man in a black leather coat. He looked as if he was made up out of a geometry set, all triangles and straight edges. His face was hidden by a hat. It wasn’t at a rakish angle, not like they wear them in the land of Croca-Colas. No, this hat was knife sharp with a brim that could slice a lie in half. He wore black-framed, eye-socket-fitting sunglasses. It was gloomy in the office. I wondered what he could see and what he couldn’t. Tell you this much: he stood out like a sore thumb in a