Opus Veda

The first hurdle threatened to be hardest. Kasia procrastinated, scrolling her feed's mindless content, until she could wait no longer. She called in sick. Natasha behaved true to HR, peppering Kasia with second guesses and passive-aggressive consolation. Their chat ended with a question mark. Kasia left for the search party feeling uneasy. If the vagrants didn't do her in today, her managers might tomorrow.

The second hurdle was outside her front door, folding laundry.

"Thought you were workin' today?"

"I've got a day off actually."

"Goin' for a trip down the Jubilee Line?" Imany's gaze pierced Kasia, "why you would join that idiot's rescue mission-"

"What other choice is there!?" Kasia held her arms up, "should we wait for Joey get pimped online so we can buy him back? Misha's in hospital-"

"I know exactly what's goin' on! Don't tell me I dunno what losin' a loved one's like."

"Should we sit here and wait for the police to start giving a shit!?"

"I'm gonna give them that shit today Kasia."

"Is that who you wanted to become? Waiting in line to bribe some officer?"

"As opposed to who, the Reds!? They'll 'ave Joey singin' Rule Britannia on a live stream!"

"We don't need them either we can do it ourselves! You're the one who misses the 'spirit of the local community' Imany, here's your chance to get it."

Imany straightened up, "why'd you start carin' now girl?"

Kasia stuttered, threatened by the more powerful woman in her way. But someone else appeared, making Kasia scowl over Imany's shoulder. Eva crept upstairs with a guilty face.

"Mama? I thought you were workin' today?"

Her ignorance angered Kasia even more. She switched languages to block Imany out.

"Why are you not at school?"

"I always school at home on Thursdays..." Eva shrunk, sensing trouble, "what's going on down the stairs Mamusia?"

"Where have you been girl."

"I told you I was visiting friends!"

"In the club?"

"No!"

"Have you been hooking up in the club? Do you want to spend your birthday at the clinic? Do you think we can afford it!?"

"No!" Eva's voice wobbled. Kasia swore at her through a violent hiss.

"Leave it out you stupid tart!" Imany yanked Kasia back, tipping her over, "Eva stay at mine; your mum's joinin' that prat Sermon on a suicide mission. Probably so she can get attention online."

Eva dashed through Imany's door sobbing. Kasia tried to follow. Imany grabbed the front of her hoodie, twisting it into a fist, and pulled her up.

"Do you wanna know what those pikeys will do to you? They will rape you in turns against a sewer grate while you starve in a pool of their jizz. Or maybe a pimp will buy you. Then you're in the hands of the audience behind the camera. Is that how you wanna end it?"

Kasia struggled, dangling on tiptoes, eyes watering.

"Who the fuck would even care Imany!?"

"Your family! Your friends!"

"Family!? if I died someone else would give her a better life than I ever will. And I got 5000 friends! I wouldn't recognise any of them on the street. If I asked to see their face I'd be blocked for harassment-"

"So what's the point of them!?" Imany released Kasia and rested a hand on her shoulder, "trust me - for once just trust me. If you take the violent path you'll never come out of it. It doesn't have to be this way if you'd just accept-"

"I'll need help whenever the fuck I say I do!" Kasia yelled in Imany's face, but Imany refused to flinch, denying her an outlet for her rage. With nothing else to punish her neighbour with, she stormed off.

July's sun beamed enough heat into the streets to empty them. Sermon led his group to the deserted petrol station - named Little Kendi by the locals - to shelter under its canopy.

The turnout did not reassure him. His contacts beyond the estate remained absent; the feeble band he did have looked reluctant to leave the shade.

He heard Kasia scream. One glance at her stomping across the road told him not to pry. He nodded to greet her and got nothing back.

Kasia skimmed over the group, around thirty residents. Each had a crude weapon in their hand - air pistols, tools, a few poorly concealed knives. She had never bothered with them before, and expected vagrants would break them up pretty quickly. She was too angry to care.

"This all of us?"

"Yea... but I'm expectin' more," Sermon handed her a cricket bat wrapped in duct tape, "the negotiator."

She snatched it from his hands and made for the vagrants. He swallowed, and whistled for everyone to head out.

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The Thames was a festering bog, with only a single landmark remaining: a rusted battleship, formerly a museum, listing sideways and half sunken. The riverside was buried in so much trash that, as the old memes joked, it looked from a distance like crowded beaches. Litter that could float, did, creating atop the waterline a starry night of forgotten refuse, a timeline of brands - American, Arabic, Chinese. During rainy season the river distributed these offerings back to the public without prejudice.

Now, in summer, the stench was putrid. Such sensory assaults left the streets eerily empty, lined with dilapidated restaurants and tourist spots; a graveyard hinting at the buzzing riverside life decades before, as the uproar of the present-day city echoed against ruined walls.

Once Sermon's group committed to heading off a few extra doubters trickled in. The zeal Sermon had felt, however, was threatened. None of his online contacts had shown, despite their likes and messages calling for solidarity. The upcoming trial was thus undermined by an embarrassing insecurity: he boasted often of his well-connected roots to these offline locals too often. Now, when it mattered, his image was in jeopardy.

Trying to appear in charge, he asked two allies to run ahead and watch for vagrants who might raise the alarm. The rest of the party traipsed up the riverside street, jumping from one area of shade to another, burying noses and moaning about the smell. He led the pack from the front with his sulking schoolmate in tow. Kasia briefly looked through him, and grumbled.

"Why you so sure they did this then?"

"They're addicts," said Sermon, "the only thing that unites them is jobs with a big payoff. Traffickin' for fightin' pits and… and that."

Kasia said nothing. She knew what 'and that' referred to - predators on the street targetting the attractive and vulnerable for later kidnapping. Tag and Bag. Another thing to fear for Eva and herself. She crushed a piece of litter with her cricket bat.

"You feelin' alright sista? About comin' with us," Sermon kicked an empty bento box before her so she could squash it, "you're doin' the right thing bein' 'ere, but if you wanna go back-"

"No I do not wanna go back. Let's smack a few heads in and get some answers. I need a scratchin' post anyway."

Sermon chuckled and kicked a beer can down the street. A skyscraper across the river changed its advert to the same brand. He took in the view and sighed.

"It's in the air ain't it? Shit keeps happenin' and people try to ignore it but… times have to change eventually. There has to be more than this, right?"

"Maybe it has to get worse first. Maybe we deserved this future."

"Don't you want a better country for Eva?"

"Yea, Poland."

"And when she goes what you gonna do?"

"If she has a kid over there I can get a visa."

"If…"

"She can do whatever she wants," Kasia batted Sermon's beer can, arcing it through the air to ricochet off a cracked window, "if she stays here and drowns on this ship… at least I pointed it the right way."

"And all without anyone else's help yea?"

"I haven't raised her to be a victim."

"Like your mum?"

"Like those pikeys," Kasia took a sharp breath, filling her nose with foetid air, "you can bang on about helpin' people all you like Sermon have you been on the other side? The last time I asked for money my workmate Leah helped; then she told my story to her followers. I was her 'good deed for the day'. I felt less than human…"

"Oi!" Sermon ran forward. The two scouting locals had seen something and taken a side street home, shaking their heads and cupping their mouths. Sermon jogged up to where they had been, caught the smell, and pulled himself over the flood barrier.

It took him a second to realise what he was staring at.

Crowning through the trash heaps, the stretched and jaundiced face of a bloated corpse stared back.

Kasia dropped to her knees, hacking lines of saliva. The group fell in panic, wanting someone to give them an answer. Sermon held his breath and leant over the barrier again. Reeling back with a harsh exhale, he declared the body was female. The search for Joey had to go on.

One man stepped forward, pinching his permanent frown lines and squinting ahead through the suns glare. Jason was amongst the few residents with mechanical skills, often playing handyman when the landlord shrugged. He was bigger than Sermon, forever in greasy t-shirts barely containing his gut, and ginger hair retreating from an advancing grey.

In situations like this, he was Sermon's challenge to authority.

"Found it."

The group followed his finger. In the distance: a door-shaped maintenance hole in the the flood barrier; surrounding trash pushed into piles. The hole was the colour of midnight, the only place no sunlight reached.

Everyone wavered. A gust of hot air wafted a sour, fruity stench from the river, and they knew what it was. The idea of going on became too much.

"Fuck this bruv," Jason shook his head at Sermon, "let's just take a photo and share it."

"Seriously!? There's a kid in there mate! One of ours! You've come all this way for a selfie!?"

"We'll tell the police he's there!" said another, weaker voice.

"They already know he's there you cunts!" Sermon pulled his head back and sneered, "why'd you think they fuckin' left it in the first place!? Don't wanna get their 'ands dirty..."

The residents muttered with dissent. Some left. A perpetually coughing woman lit a cigarette, and suggested going back for more people. Sermon groaned with exhaustion and spun around.

"Why don't we wait for some o' them to come out and capture 'em?" said Jason, "We can push 'em for answers and do a hostage trade or summat."

"Nah we'll be waitin' for ages and we'll stick out standin' around 'ere," Sermon puffed his vape, "as if they'd trade a kid for one of their own anyway."

"We could steal a drone and fly it in. Get a visual on camera," Jason settled on the idea as he said it, standing akimbo. The others gathered around him, though another turned to leave.

"You are such a muppet…" Sermon rubbed his temples, "you're too much of a pussy to fight squatters but you're down to nick a drone? What you gonna do, stand on my shoulders and pick one outta the sky!?"

"It doesn't 'ave to be an active one!"

"Where the fuck else you gonna find one a food bank!?"

"I can fix us one up! We can look for a trashed one!"

"Oh sure! Let's search through all this shit on the river! 'Ere!" Sermon pointed over the barrier, "I'll make a start between that bird's legs!"

"Well I ain't fackin' endin' up next to 'er," the wheezing woman pointed her cigarette skywards, "'ow 'bout you get them Roadmen o' yours to do it – ah fawt we were goin' after a few pikeys near the block not their fackin' embassy."

"Who sells you them fags Chanel?! Chanel!" Sermon appealed to the woman's back hopelessly as she lumbered away. Jason scoffed.

"Mate she's right. Your activist mates are meant to 'ave your back. What's the point in bein' 'wiv 'em in the first place?"

At last it came up. Sermon's nerve started to go. He composed himself.

"They ain't around right now they're busy!"

"Where they at then? Wakanda? Bullshit are they busy!"

Sermon puffed his chest and squared up to the bigger man, sending a ripple of shock through the party. Jason calmed him down and held his palm up to everyone else.

"Mate look at us."

A dozen surviving souls huddled in the shade. With nothing to do they were starting to browse their phones. Sermon saw a mob not far removed from homelessness themselves. Kasia stood with them, gripping her upper arm. She offered him a pursed, sympathetic smile, then looked away to the floor.

His ambition evaporated.

"Alright! Alright... We go and 'ave a look, right? A peek. Joey might be right there, the pikeys might be prangin' out and we can walk right on by. We see anythin' sketchy, we leg it, alright?"

"Oh there you are," a strange voice appeared from behind, easy and confident. The group spun around and gasped.

"Sermon Mkenda is it? You fit the profile of your post. We were just about to go in and take those vagrants out. Are you coming with us?"

Jason shifted behind Sermon, who held a hand up to shield his eyes from sunlight. His hand dropped when he realised who had spoken.

The new host marched around the bewildered Kendi residents, until all they could see was Revolution Britannia.