WIP // CAPITOL // 'BADLANDS' JACK HODGES

At six years old, Jack stands with his face towards the city, and watches the shadow three times his height but just as skinny convulse as the bonfire flickers behind him. The moon dangles like a conch pearl on a pendant of dewy stars, its redness rinsed by the brown glow seeping from the tall buildings below. The forbidden city – a place he’s never been, and a place his father says he’ll never be welcome. "We're different to them." Jack knows that sin hangs thick in the city air like a miasma, and he'll be infected by it if he breathes too deeply.

Jack's father is a pair of fists, onto which a person is fastened. He has a voice like a landslide, the slurred, rumbling pieces of counsel or insults beating down endlessly on the people around him. He and the son have the same face, waxy hair the colour of brown leather, round chin jutting forwards, deep, inquisitive eyes – Jack's mother could have been anyone, not that it matters. But while the man is wide and towering, Jack is so small that he sometimes worries that, if it weren't for the steel caps in his boots, he'd float away into the sky like a hot air balloon.

"Turn around, boy," the avalanche voice rumbles, and those same fists spread into palms and come clapping down on Jack's shoulders. He's not afraid, but there's a certain caution as he glances sideways at the new weight pressing on the joint of his long arm. The knuckles are scabbed and the fingertips blackened from feeding the bonfire, and illuminating the whole hand are ink words and drawings, prayers and poems and names and symbols. Jack knows that, one day, he'll have engravings to match his father's, and all the other men in their community. It's supposed to show solidarity, but to Jack it just seems like one more sign that he'll never be able to leave. "I said turn around, son," the words ooze from the man's mouth full of impatience, the word 'son' whistling between his gritted teeth, and Jack drags his feet robotically around to face the fire. "Now, come join the celebrations," the next command comes sharply, causing Jack to flinch, anticipating the smack that usually follows his disobedience. But tonight there'll be no punishment.

Although the heat hits him first, the crackle of water-sodden logs drowned out by the whooping of the other red-faced men dancing round the fire, it's not that which causes Jack to freeze, much to his father's irritation. The warning "Jack..." doesn't even make the boy snap out of it. Flames reflect in his narrow brown eyes, and his two wide nostrils flare as he inhales. It's that smell - the eucalyptus and hyssop incense which the wood was saturated with - which catches Jack like a web and consumes his mind. Someone put that smell there, someone used those herbs to declare this wood pile as their own. This was a home, and now it's a beacon to destruction.

Jack knows it's their duty. The tribe who lived here weren't clean, weren't holy, with their mud-coloured skin and ungodly foreign tongue. By burning these settlements (as his father always called them - just settlements, that's all they were. Temporary. Disposable) Jack's community were doing right for the land. This people was a vermin, and they were simply flushing them out. But still, the swells of incensed air that waft out towards him, rising on the warm air, fill Jack with an altogether different feeling from the one of heroicism and responsibility that his father claims. He feels sick at the act his family have carried out. He feels angry that the men could be so delighted by it, dancing round the burning bungalow, cackling and spitting and singing. But above all, as his father finally manages to get a grip around Jack's arm, and he complies and staggers blindly away with the old man, head hanging limp, tears quickly blinked away, what he feels for never speaking out or refusing to help or even deciding it might be better to run away to the City than live in this wilderness, is Guilt.


When Jack is eight, he forgets what love is. He kneels in the damp, peaty earth with four other boys, all members of his Family - what the community have taken to calling themselves, excusing it with some inane saying: "the blood of the Covenant is thicker" . The air is moist and warm, thick with the damp smell of peat, and along with the stale pink light that sprawls over the landscape, it feels to the five children like they are pressed under the tongue of the morning. Sweat forms in oily droplets the size of poppy seeds, which congregate in the shallow crease that's become a permanent feature between Jack's eyebrows. He longs to raise his arm and wipe it away, but even the tiniest action could give their position away - through the unwelcome rustle of the dry, leather-coloured leaves on the branches around them, or the cooing of the small, tattered birds that watch them curiously overhead. His pale calves, with their light, wispy hair covering the dark bruises from other strike operations like foam covering water, ache to Hell. His fingers tremble.

Then, all at once, comes the sign they've been waiting for. Shadows in the yellow canvas tent ahead of them. There's a murmuring voice - high and soft, beseeching some spirit guardian to protect them through the day - and the clatter of a wooden chime. The largest of the five boys hacks and spits a wad of phlegm in disgust. All their lives, Jack and his companions have been taught that these people are the enemy, and their Satanic, iconoclastic rituals are not for their own sustenance, but for The Family's downfall. They are a plague, and plagues need to be smothered before they become a pandemic.

The girl who emerges from the tent is small and angular, and her skin is dark and glossy; sepia-toned, sun-washed. Her upper lip protrudes over the lower one, curling at the edges into a serene smile. In the crooks of her bony elbows, she secures two rope-handled buckets, ready to make the long walk to the springs to collect water for the day. Behind him, Jack's associates begin to unpack their equipment - a small wooden rattle, a bottle of sugar water, long, stinking strips of rag and, finally, five, tarnished, bone-handled knives. But Jack himself is mesmerised by her as she stands, wide-eyed in wonderment, watching the dawn.

"Hawdge, you fuckin' moron, snap out of it," drawls the beefiest of the gang in a stinking whisper, and thrusts a knife hilt into Jack's palm. It's so different to his father's threats, which keep Jack on edge because it always feels as if violence is only a caught heartbeat away. This kid's words are wrapped in intimidation in the way a peach is wrapped in its skin - you can feel and taste it, but when you take a bite and look beneath it's just another part of the soft, sweet fruit. Jack's not afraid of him, but that doesn't stop him submitting by closing his fist shakily around the hilt and averting his eyes from their target.

The smallest of the boys shakes the rattle in a gentle, mellifluous rhythm, and the girls eyes refocus as she turns towards the source of the noise - the large, sandy boulder that shields the gang from her direct line of vision. Jack lies prone with his left hand pressed over his nose and mouth, biting down on the flesh between the knuckles of his little finger, in order to stop his breathing making a noise. Slowly, she approaches, and catches sight of the little wooden bowl which had been filled with the sweetened water, resting in a nook on the side of the boulder. A tentative finger reaches out, makes contact with the surface of the liquid, sending tiny ripples folding lazily towards the event horizon of the bowl. Then, hastily, it retreats, and lightly touches to the tongue of its owner. Just as they predicted, the greedy digits are soon back for more - arm extending, hand stretching out-

The boys leap to action all at once. Jack springs up and tugs his strip of oily rag around the girls eyes, suppressing the throb of regret he feels at his clavicle for binding eyes that were so full of awe for the world around her. Another boy crams a mouthful of fabric between her teeth, sufficiently muffling her shriek of surprise at the ambush. The beefy boy grumbles into her ear: "make another fuckin' noise an' we'll cut out your tongue here an' now, so the City don't have to." Jack prays that, for her own sake, she speaks the same language that they do. It's only a rumour, the idea that the City takes out the tongues of its slaves, but still the thought of it makes Jack's abdomen throb in disgust. They march the girl, stumbling blindly, back towards the Family's settlements, Jack clutching the leftovers of their operation. It's just a game, Jack promises himself, trying to avoid looking at the knives pressed to the girl's jaw and lower back, and feeling the one now dangling from his cord belt. It's just a silly war game that the Family Elders have got us playing to keep us busy. However, if that could have ever persuaded Jack when he was much younger, there is no obliviousness left now to how real, how hate-fuelled and brutal, this battle is becoming.


He is a small man. A small man with a small mouth that holds its small, bright teeth like peas when he smiles. Nine year-old Jack doesn't like the look of him at all, but his father is so enraptured that the "Mister Buchanan"s and "Sir"s spill from his tongue like dribble. It's grimacingly funny to see his father like this - usually so fierce and impenetrable, now laid open like a water lily for this timid gentleman's pocketfuls of paper money. A small man - but how large his purse. Jack resists the urge to spit on Mr Buchanan's shining shoes, for fear of receiving an equally shining bruise on his cheekbone as thanks from his father. Jack has been taught to smell the sin of people, and this man reeks of it; how can the old man be so anosmic to that?

The way Sir Mister Buchanan explains it, as he dabs his brow with a cotton handkerchief, clearly not used to the beating desert sun, they wouldn't have to leave the land - at least, not just yet. "This meeting is just a registration of my interest. And, of course, a payment up front for your time." Jack stands silently, gazing up beyond his father's eager leer to the clear blue sky above them. Several large birds swooped and circled, surveying the scene below with, Jack was sure, amusement at the strange was of human beings. This time yesterday, those same birds had just finished feeding on the fetid flesh of the Family's most recent intruder. They remind Jack somewhat of people in this manner - always waiting around after a treat, greedy for more.

The stake still stands, in the centre of their settlement, but the bones and remaining chunks of flesh and gristle had been cleared away as soon as the Family saw Mister Buchanan approaching. In the bright sunlight, the rouge-tinted dirt around the stake has already begun to fade - like the memories that most of the Family have of the event itself. It's easier to force yourself to forget, than to risk forever keeping that guilt. But Jack's memory is ripe. He can clearly recall every crack of the bullwhip, the wet noise of contact with the man's raw back, once a dark brown, but turned a deep, oozing crimson.  He wasn't the first to come looking for their tribe's missing children, but he was the only one that the Family had captured. And the punishment he received wasn't weighted just for his own crime, but was also heavy with the Family's personal resentment for all the others who had slipped away.

Jack hides his grimace from his father and the businessman, remembering how the women had turned the other children away, but his father had, as he always did, made Jack stand and watch like a man. "This is the righteous way, boy." The boy's mouth tastes like ash and iron as he remembers his father's words. These acts of righteousness stay with him - he hasn't forgotten a single one. In his nightmares, he sees them over and over again: terrified children, taken from their families; runaways shot dead; the first of what will likely be many whippings - all in the name of his father's "greater good". It may seem like pure good to them, but Jack knows that they're all wicked creatures, and this evil was going to rot them all away inside.


At ten, Jack taught himself that there's nothing in the world worth being afraid of. Both his hands wrap tightly around the grip of the cocked-and-loaded percussion revolver, which points, trembling, at the three figures in front of him. His right eye twitches slightly, a nervous tick he's developed as one of the few outward signs that his brain works with the chaos of a hurricane. His left shoulder aches, still swollen from his first tattoo - the greenish-grey outline of a cluster of roses, a perfect match to his father's. "Remember why the rose grows thorns, son," the man had said, with something that almost sounded like tenderness in his voice, as Jack lay on the stained mattress and held ice to his deltoid to numb it before the older boy stuck the needle in. They had no high-technology equipment, like Jack had heard some of the other children musing they must have in the City, just a set of needles, a candle and the ink. He showed no outwards signs of his discomfort, but still his father urged him away from fear by reminding him that the design was a credo for protection.

If Jack wasn't so focussed on keeping the damn gun aimed straight, he could try harder to block out that throbbing, and the bitter thought of if only that protection actually manifested itself, and wasn't just a metaphor. Under the course black robe he's wearing, his prominent ribs rise and fall quickly and his underarms and back are sticky with sweat. From outside the tent, he hears the cacophony of the raid - the wall of noise created by crackle of fire, wailing of hostages, cussing of captors. He knows that he should be imitating the rest of the Family, acting with zeal, shoving, shouting, and shooting. But he can't do anything but stare at the adult and two children in front of him.

They all look eerily familiar - a woman and two girls with dark skin, a flush just glowing underneath like red light through smog, their matching black hair hanging loose in separate strands and braids. Their faces are so angular, with prominent bones, signs of the famine which came upon them without warning. Jack's father didn't give them any, when he and his men silently invaded their farmland and slaughtered every animal they could find, bringing the largest home and leaving the others to rot in the sun. Six huge, brown eyes stare at him unblinkingly, begging without words to just be left alone. Jack's merciful, terrified heart reaches for them, but his brain is too full of fear to agree with it. "Let your gun be your thorn, son," his father's words marches through his head in heavy boots, stamping out the sparks of pity which threatened to ignite there.

When Jack himself speaks, his drawling words are thick with tears that cannot find their way into his focussed eyes. "I'm so sorry..." he shakes his head slowly, slick locks of hair heavy with sweat swinging like jungle vines from the top of his head. The mother begins to speak in a hurried undertone to her young ones, and braces her ringed fingers protectively in front of their chests. Finally, Jack begins to sob, apologising again for what he knows he has to do. His bony fingers lock together tightly over the