Banquet of the Beasts

Tim Cowen

Description

What if Margaret Thatcher was not dead?Foodbanks were a deadly experiment?And a badger, a fox and a starling our only hope?Banquet of the Beasts is an eco-thriller about the nature of power and the power of nature. Set on Scotland's West Coast, it's a darkly funny tale of food, love and resistance. Of running away and becoming something different.Monday 8th April 2013, the day they told us that Margaret Thatcher had died. The same day a covert animal research laboratory is deliberately burnt down. There are just four survivors from the fire: Marek Dogovsky a badger who knows no fear, Logan the poet fox, a starling named Raven who can hear voices and Walinska the weasel.On the same day as Thatcher's funeral, the mysterious Lynton Chilcoat launches a national chain of Nobler Age Foodbanks. It's all part of a plan so grotesque, that it will take someone - or something - special to stop him.

Sujets

• Political
• Contemporary fantasy
• Politics

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800469938
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 Tim Cowen

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 978 1800469 938

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For

Maggie

the beasts

and the resistance


Contents
Part One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine

Part Two
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Fifty-Two
Fifty-Three
Fifty-Four
Fifty-Five
Fifty-Six
Fifty-Seven
Fifty-Eight
Fifty-Nine
Sixty
Sixty-One
Sixty-Two
Sixty-Three
Sixty-Four
Sixty-Five
Sixty-Six
Sixty-Seven
Sixty-Eight
Sixty-Nine
Seventy
Seventy-One
Seventy-Two
Seventy-Three
Seventy-Four
Seventy-Five
Seventy-Six
Seventy-Seven
Seventy-Eight
Seventy-Nine


Part One
Fire


One
The beginning of the end
The starling is a small bird. Many people would consider it a drab bird. But catch their feathers in the right light and you will be surprised. At the greens, the purples and the flashes of mother of pearl. Shining with a luminescence that belies a reputation for being a dull bird.
The starling is a sociable bird. They dance across the sky at dusk. Forming shapes, forming patterns, forming waves. The murmuration, a swirling mass of bodies moving as one.
The starling is a wise bird, a special bird. Their call is like no other. There is a reason for that. They can hear voices. All sorts of voices. Both real and imaginary. Both past and present.
Separate a starling from their roost though, and they become something else. Someone else. Separate a starling from their roost, and a little bit of them dies. Their body and mind wither with loneliness.
However, there are birds that don’t fly in formation, that can form different patterns.
Monday, 8th April 2013. The day they told us that Margaret Thatcher had died.
A starling, separated from her roost, hears a voice she had not expected to hear. And the voice said just one word: ‘Fire.’

His lips graze her forehead. A gentle kiss. He can smell the coconut from the face cream he had bought her yesterday. Lynton Chilcoat stood. His emotions and thoughts were clattering inside him. Reverberating, echoing, gnawing. He needed to remain calm. Rational. Logical.
Was her skin getting colder? He kissed her again, this time allowing his lips to linger. Imperceptibly at first, but yes, her skin was colder, drier. Her eyes too, had started to shrink further back. Could this be the final day of waiting?
The room was very familiar to him. He had spent many hours here. The Ritz Hotel. Her final resting place. He too lived in the Ritz. Initially on the floor above, but for the last month in a suite in the same corridor, just two doors down. He poured himself another whisky and stood back. Taking it all in. The silver curtains, the maroon ottoman, the blue cushions, the intricately-woven rug. The splashes of colour sporadic and indulgent. His suite was a mirror image, everything identical but on the other side.
Not long now until she could rest properly. Not long before her real hibernation could begin.
His thoughts were interrupted by a noise. A strangled, guttural clicking noise. He returned to the bed and leant over her, seeking out her eyes, her brilliant blue eyes, and then her hair, still holding echoes of the stiff curves that he so much loved.
Another noise. The same deep clicking. Rasping. Puncturing. Releasing.
And then, and then. Silence. Her chest was no longer moving. Her eyes, they held a colour, an opaqueness that seemed different from just a moment ago.
This was it.
Chilcoat grasped her left hand between his outstretched palms. He rubbed, like a father warming his child’s hands after a winter’s walk. As if waiting for a spark, for something to be lit. Margaret Thatcher’s hand held a residue of warmth. A degree of suppleness he was not expecting.
He kissed her palm. This time with more abandon. An almost disdainful relish. And then he let it fall. Lifeless. Awkward. Hanging. A trickle of his saliva forming a tiny pool in the bony cup of her hand. He didn’t cry. He wouldn’t cry. After all, this was a moment of release, a moment of relief rather than sadness.
She would be freed from the tired shell of her body and rejuvenated. She would be freed from all the baggage that had grown around her and restored. She would be freed from this era of tedium and mundanity. And she would be welcomed back to her rightful glory.
The Iron Lady was for returning and Lynton Chilcoat would be at her side forevermore.


Two
Cells of resistance
Three years old. Green eyes. White tail. Black-tipped ears. Ginger fur. Fox 118 the label on the cell said. His cell. Twelve foxtails long. Twelve foxtails wide and although he hadn’t measured it, twelve foxtails high. His name was Logan. Logan Fox.
He was watching the badger, Badger 33 . Watching him pace. Walking in circles around the cell next to his. Clockwise at first and then, after twenty laps, anti-clockwise. He’d lost count of how many times he had been round now.
‘Hey,’ Logan called.
The glass panel between them was thick, and sound didn’t carry well. It was difficult to hear unless you yelped at full volume, with your mouth right up at the glass. And even then, the badger would have to be looking, be lip-reading, to grasp his fox dialect. Logan noticed that although his own food bowl was empty, Badger 33’s remained full.
Still walking anti-clockwise. Snout down, but not sniffing. There would have been nothing to smell except for the sickly lavender substance they used for cleaning, and the strange metallic scent of the food. And now the badger changed direction, clockwise again. Giving Logan a better view of his face. This didn’t look good. There was something about his demeanour. His eyes.
‘Hey,’ Logan called again. ‘Hey, my badger friend. Are you OK?’
‘HEY!’ Louder this time, patting at the glass with his front left paw as he called. He jumped back. ‘Sweet mother of Reynard.’
Electrified. The wire frame to the glass gave out a shock. He knew that. Of course, he knew that. After all, he had been here for over one hundred moons. Logan retreated to the far side of his cell and licked his paw.
On the other side of the glass Badger 33 continued to circle.
A rumbling noise. Getting louder. Logan looked up. A man in a white coat pushing a trolley. On it, cardboard boxes. Seven or eight boxes. Another rumble. A second man. Also in white. Pushing another trolley. This time with fewer, but larger boxes. The two men had stopped pushing. Logan stepped to the front of his cell and tilted his head so he could hear better.
‘We need to get it all out before lunch,’ said the first man.
‘They should’ve given us more notice. I’m pure building up a sweat with this lot,’ replied the second. And then they moved off.
Logan looked at his paw and then scratched at his ear. These last few days he had been hearing more human voices. No, he had always been hearing them. These last few days he felt he had begun to understand.
Three more trolleys, then no more. He glanced at Badger 33. Still he circled.
Logan’s cell was identical to the badger’s. Two walls and the floor were solid, painted white. The ceiling, front wall and panel between cells were mainly glass. Each cell contained a water bowl, a food bowl, a litter tray and a small area of bedding. The bedding, in Logan’s case, an old blanket, was at the back of the cell.
Once, sometimes twice a day, a guard would enter the cell either to clean it or top up the food. The Red Cross Moment, Logan called it. For as they came in he would have to sit on a cross painted in the rear left quarter of the cell. If he moved, or didn’t sit in the right place, the guard would take out his metallic stick which emitted a poisonous ray. ‘Taser.’ That’s what Logan had heard them call it. Yet today, nobody at all had been in his cell.
Logan was hungry. His neighbour, Badger 33, was still circling, but his bowl was full, so he couldn’t have been protesting about the lack of food. Another thing. Where had the humans gone? Normally, there would be men with clipboards, with handheld computers, going from cell to cell, checking on t