Chapter 1: Cat in a Sack

The hessian sack hung from a tatty rope over the deserted street, slowly rotating as it was lowered to the ground. It came to rest next to one in a uneven line of long abandoned cars that littered the street. With the ground now taking the weight of the sack, the cord around its neck loosened and flopped open. For a moment nothing more happened. The sack lay on the cracked tarmac, the abandoned cars remained slumped on rotting tyres. And the small airship that had lowered the sack held position above the roofs of the nearby houses.

A head poked over the airship’s gondola, a grandiose term for what was a small wooden row boat erratically tied to three large thermal balloons. Splashed on the side of the gondola in lurid green paint were the words “Jacoby and Son”, but the head poking over the side casting a sceptical gaze of the still intert bag was not Jacoby or, indeed, any son. Rather it was an elderly lady, complete with curly white hair, thick horn rimmed spectacles, gaudy dangling earrings and a curious looking pair of goggles pushed up on top of her head.

She was known as Granny Plum, although the term “granny” was more reference to her advanced years than anyone having dared to ask her about lines of offspring. Indeed, few were even sure if the “Plum” part was fully correct or just some nickname the origins of which were long forgotten. What was more certain was that she was not an easy lady to get along with. However, she was not aboard this airship purely to make its owners uncomfortable - that was just a byproduct - rather she was there to provide a service. A service related to the curious goggles on her head rather than the  - now moving - sack on the ground.

“What’s it doing?” Granny demanded without averting her gaze

Another head peeked over the side, although about as far away down the gondola as it was feasible to get from the irritable Granny Plum in such a small space. “He’s getting his bearings I suspect” the second head, the aforementioned Mr Jacoby, replied.   

“It’s in a sack what more bearing does it want? Maybe you want to go down and give it a map?” Granny turned from the side, then “Ere’ get away from that you little brat” this with a surprisingly quick back handed slap around the younger Jacoby’s head.

“Ouch” he said, jumping back from the small pile of Granny’s belongings that he had been poking suspiciously, the sudden motion rocking the gondola. Jacoby junior (unimaginatively called Jack) was large and burly for his thirteen years, but also wise enough not to protest any further.

“You leave my kit be, you hear?”

“Yes Granny, er Missus, er Plum” Jack rubbed his head, turning from Granny to look pleadingly towards his father, the elder Jacoby frowning but saying nothing, instead busying himself with a harness and coil of nylon climbing rope.  

“So then fatty” Granny addressed the older man “When you going down?” she nodded at the harness “Or you gonna make your kid do the hard work?”

Jacoby pretended not to have heard. He was a man who obviously didn’t enjoy confrontation, which was an unfortunate trait for anyone stuck in a small space with Granny Plum. Instead he put the harness down and looked back over the side, desperate for a distraction from his undesirable companion. Down below them all he found his distraction. Not a good distraction, but something.

A small, scraggy looking, cat emerged from the sack.

“The, er, early warning system is in place” Jacoby said nervously.

Granny followed his gaze to the sack and coughed out a hoarse laugh in response “Normally they get called something like Tiddles, but if you want to call that flea bag Early Warning System, be my guest” another laugh, this time at her own humour.

“Well let’s see if your warning system is any better” said Jack, finding more courage than his father in talking back to Granny. The elderly lady gave him a caustic glance, but then turned to her small pile of kit shoved underneath the one seat in the gondola with a smile starting to emerge.

“A deal is a deal” she said, shuffling over to her kit “50:50 providing I keep your dad’s lardy arse safe”

“70:30 in our favour, I’m the one taking the risk here” Jacoby had much more of a voice when money was at stake “You’re unproven, I know I’m not the first Scrounger you’ve come to try your new venture”

“Maybe not the first, but the most desperate” she continued to busy herself at the rear of the gondola, not deigning to look at the man she was negotiating with “I hear the Steering Committee was less than impressed with your last haul”.

Jacoby retreated a little, as best he could in the confines “That wasn’t my fault”

“But you need a good run now, lest you deplete the rest of your meagre Bouyancy allotment. And that means more time on the ground, which I can get you with…...this” she turned around, a quad-rotor drone in her hand, sleek carbon fibre body glinting in the pale autumnal sunlight.

“Cool” murmured Jack, but his father looked less impressed.

“That is going to buy me more time groundside? Looks like a kid’s toy” the older man said.

“It’ll survey half the street in the time it take Tiddles down there to wash his arse” Granny replied, looking almost nurturingly at her drone.

“Cats can sense things” Jacoby sounded defensive.

“Mumbo jumbo” Granny dismissed him with a wave of the non drone holding hand “They can’t sense squat. My technology on the other hand….”

“Ok” Jacoby said “70:30 if I’m down five minutes or less, 50:50 if longer. Jack times it” a nod towards his son.

Granny frowned, she didn’t trust the kid to time the run accurately, but truth be told even 70:30 would be worth it; it wasn’t only Jacoby with the Buoyancy deficit back on their habitat. “Deal” she said after a moment.

With the terms agreed Jacoby and Jack set about getting the harness onto the older man, double and triple checking the buckles, then securing the rope to a rusty winch at the bow of the gondola. Granny went through her own checks at the same time, powering up the drone, checking its responsiveness to her input on the controls. Satisfied that was working she pulled down the goggles that had been adorning her head, flicking a small switch at their base. To an outsider the front of the goggles were an opaque white, with the look of a boxy blindfold, but to Granny inside screens in front of her eyes blinked on, linking her view to that of a camera on the nose of the drone. Again, she ran through a series of checks and with everything behaving as intended she cautiously sat down at the rear of the gondola, drone humming slightly at her feet as the motors idled.

“You ready?” Jacoby asked as he sat on the edge of the gondola, his weight causing it to lean over a little.

Granny smiled “Sure am” and with a flick of the controller the drone darted agiley into the air. She initially took the machine in a high arc over the thermal balloons, enjoying the sensation in her stomach as her brain struggled to make sense of what her eyes were seeing from the drone’s perspective. Banking and rolling she brought it back down and around the gondola, stopping it in position next to where Jacoby was perched. “Time to make your leap big boy” she said with a sense of joviality neither of the Jacoby’s had previously encountered in her.

“Er, sure” Jacoby replied then turning to his son next to the winch “Start unwinding then”. Jack jerked back a lever on the winch and initially nothing happened, but then with a whine the drum of the winch began to turn. Pulling out the slack, Jacoby swung his chunky legs out over the edge before letting go of the gondola and descending. With the winch now taking his full weight the pitch of its whine intensified, but the drum maintained its pace and its load was deposited on the ground below next to the sack.

The cat hissed from its new position underneath one of the cars. “What’s the matter, er, Tiddles?” Jacoby bent over to try and see his cat, Granny’s sarcastic name for it somehow sticking in his mind. “You sense something?”

“Give over you big lump” the drone had tracked Jacoby down to the ground and the staticy voice of Granny emanating from a speaker on it caused Jacoby to jump “Time to get moving” and with that the drone shot off down the street, weaving amongst the old cars. Granny could have flown above them, but where was the fun in that?

Jacoby gave a resigned shrug and set off at a slow trot, looking about him as he did, then back to the car where the cat was resolutely encamped. “Let’s hope Granny is more use than Tiddles” he muttered to no one in particular.

About 200 metres down the road Jacoby came to a junction, panting “You are a sweaty mess” came the rebuke from the drone hovering a little way above him, camera tilted down. Back on the gondola Granny smirked.

“It’s...been….a while” he said, bending at the waist in a vain effort to force more air into his straining lungs. “Though my…..days as….a scrounger….were behind…..me”.

“Thought you were heading for a place on the Steering Committee?” the drone wobbled a little in the air, back at the controls Granny frowned, made an adjustment to one of the dials then continued “They made promises, right? Do this do that and you’ll triple your Buoyancy?”

“Uh-huh”

“Only to screw you over when push came to shove?”

“Sounds like….you’re….familiar?” Jacoby straightened a little, but still breathing hard.

“I know their tricks. But I can adapt quicker than they can”

“Hence the….er….new drone...venture?”

“Partly. Now we gotta get moving, this way” the drone tilted left, then shot off down the turning.

“But the supermarket….is the other way” Jacoby called out in its wake, unmoving, unwilling to expend energy he didn’t really have on a wrong turn.

Back on the gondola Granny hadn’t heard him, the mic on the drone wasn’t that sensitive and the whir of the rotors got in the way of any voice more than a metre or two away. Instead it was when she flew a quick circle of her intended target that she noticed Jacoby was still at the junction. Her face pulled into a snarl, the Jack still near her on board the airship retreating a step unconsciously at the sight. “We ain’t got time for this” she muttered, urging the drone back the way it had come with deft pushes of the sticks on the controller. Then once back close to Jacoby “Come on fat boy, get moving”

“But the supermarket is…” he had started to repeat himself before Granny cut in

“Change of plan” Granny barked, and the drone moved off again, but this time backwards to keep the camera on Jacoby “Come on!”. With a shrug he set off in pursuit once again.

Granny had changed the plan for two reasons. Firstly an initial survey by the drone showed that the supermarket had already been ransacked. There was probably still stuff there, Scroungers tended to move in small numbers with little carrying capability, but the issue was more that the supermarket hadn’t been hit a day earlier when they first surveyed it. That meant people, or something worse, could still be around. The second issue was more technical in nature, interference between her position and the drone increased the closer it was to the supermarket. What was a slight wobble in the controls at the junction was a staticy obstruction of her viewing goggles 20 metres from the supermarket and a near complete loss of control.

So, new target, a small convenience store nestled within a run of terraced houses. It was largely untouched, aside from cracked window, and no interference was detected in Granny’s goggles. Far enough away from the airship to avoid bringing unwanted attention, but close enough to pick Jacoby up in a hurry should, as Granny half suspected, he suffer a heart attack from the unaccustomed exercise.

“It’s...locked” Jacoby had caught up to the drone and then rattled the door of the shop.

“You must be the worst Scorunger ever to have set foot on the cursed Earth” Granny’s exasperation was clear, even on the tinny speaker on the drone.

“I can get in, it’s just….I still think the...supermarket would have been...easier” he produced a crowbar from the folds of his long jacket and set to work, the effort of forcing the door lock piling itself on top of the exhaustion from his plodding journey to get there.

Granny took the drone back up, over and around the line of houses the shop was between. The resolution of the drone’s camera was not high definition by any stretch, but it was enough to spot any potential threats moving in. All clear on the threat front, but the clearness of her display was eroded by a patch of static flashing over.

Down below the gondola Tiddles began to meow.

“You nearly in?” Granny said

“Just...a….sec” then the tinkle of glass, splintering of wood and creak of a long closed door swinging open. Jacoby hurried inside.

Granny continued her circle of the buildings, but the flash of static had become a persistent interruption on the eastmost periphery. She’d tried fiddling with the headset, but the static remained whenever the drone got close to that area. Furthermore, the area that caused the headset to suffer interference was increasing. Granny frowned.

Tiddles hissed.

The souring mood in and below the airship was notably different to that inside the shop, from which even the drone’s paltry microphone could pick up what sounded alarmingly like singing; “WE’RE RICH, WE’RE RICH, WE’RE RICH” not a catchy song, granted, but Jacoby was clearly elated. His head popped out the front door. “We’re made Granny”

“We’ve got to go” Granny replied via the drone, but she also briefly pulled up the goggles to address Jack “Us too, get this heap going” the young man frowning, but also moving to the gondola’s motor housing for the propulsion fan.

Back at the shop Jacoby was not as compliant as his son “Just a sec Granny, I got to pack this stuff” he disappeared back into the building.

Granny piloted the drone down towards the doorway, but it was wobbling unnervingly, static starting to creep into her view from this position as well. She instructed the drone forwards and into the shop, bumping off the doorway then a shelf as she did so, but the interference lessened a little. She turned the machine around to look back out of the doorway, then gasped.

Outside the shop a swirling wind had begun to pick up, nothing too strange for a suburban street other than the fact that this wind was, well, visible. Grey-blue currents swirled and danced in the air, electricity fizzed about and within them.

“Haemorrhage” Granny first muttered, then shouted the word

Jacoby turned round then jumped in surprise, first to see the drone inside the shop with him, then the vision outside. Self preservation met self enrichment as Jacoby first picked up the two bin liners he had been filling, then on realising that he couldn’t quickly maneuver them both down the narrow aisle, dropping one. With the remaining bag slung over his shoulder he ran toward the rear of the shop, the drone erratically following as Granny wrestled with the worsening controls.

“Kid, bring the airship over” Granny instructed Jack without either removing the headset or stopping her fingers’ wrestle with the drone controls

“How far down the turning?” Jack had followed his father’s route down the road but lost sight of him at the junction.

“Bout 100 metres, but come round to the left, er, port side. There’s a haemorrhage outside the front”

Jack briefly froze at the word. Too young to have participated in his Dad’s previous ground runs, the concept of reality haemorrhages had always been a sort of abstract concept to him up in the habitat. Something you learn about, but never have to face. Well, never if you’re a kid of a Steering Committee member, which his family currently didn’t look like ever being.

“Come on kid, get us moving quicker” Granny urged, and although Jack was caught between dimly remembered school lessons on haemorrhages and the wrath of Granny Plum, he moved to comply with the old lady. The fan on the gondola sped up, at the same time he increased the thermal input to the balloons, causing them to gain enough height to go over the nearby rooftops.

Back in the shop Jacoby was battering through a rear window, safety glass cracking and slowly deforming into a moderately sized hole. “Stop there a second” Granny commanded from the drone. Jacoby paused and pulled back from his efforts with the crowbar. This allowed Granny to pilot through the hole, one of the rear rotors emitting an unpleasant crunching sound as a small shard of glass fell into it. Granny cursed as lift from that rotor reduced, causing the drone to take on a lean that she couldn’t fully compensate for with the other three rotors.

Back in the open she lopsidedly flew back up to the roof of the shop. The interference in her vision was again getting bad, but she could see two important things. One was positive in that the airship was closing in on them, but the other was less encouraging; the disintegration of the whole front face of the shop as the haemorrhage expanded. No explosions, fancy fireworks or rumbling collapse, just the wall’s utter annihilation from this plane of existence.

“Kid, take a wider route round, the haemorrhage is expanding” an obvious enough demand, but airships, even one this small, take time to adjust course. She brought the drone limping round on the opposite course to meet them, the device clattering to the floor of the gondola as she shut down its power and lifted the headset. It took a little while for her eyes to adjust, then make sense of the growing haemorrhage below and to the side of them. “Harder to the side!” she demanded.

“I know what I’m doing” Jack said curtly, losing his fear of the old woman in the face of the one thing more scary than her. The airship turned a little more, but the changing momentum saw the rope and harness swing into the growing, glowing mass of the haemorrhage. All that emerged on the back swing was a slight blackening of the part of the rope that had been at the very edge, everything below it gone. Including the harness. Jack was quicker than Granny to realise the implication of this “We need to set down to get Dad back on board”

“Dumb idea kid” Granny had her head over the side, watching the now quickly expanding haemorrhage. About three quarters of the building was gone as Jacoby finally squeezed through the rear window and began to run down the alleyway at the rear of the shop’s small back yard.  “Hey, fatty, get up the hill” she shouted, pointing to up the road that the alley led on to. Jacoby looked up at her, then the hill, with a scowl. If there was running to be involved, downhill was the definite preference. That is when downhill doesn’t lead you back towards the haemorrhage. Jacoby set off again, more a brisk trot than sprint, but that was the out of shape man could manage.

Jack adjusted the airship so it was almost dead overhead his father, the slope of the hill meant that their relative distance was coming down, but not especially quickly. Granny looked around the gondola for inspiration, and found it in the form of a tatty rope and cat wee stained sack. She threw it over the side and shouted “Catch hold of this” then assuming that Jacoby would be unable to hold his own weight by his arms alone “Put a foot in the sack”. The man did as instructed, Granny turned back to Jack “Hard away” nodding back towards the haemorrhage, which now blotted much of the row of terraced houses and the street running parallel to them. Jack was quick to comply, swinging the airship round in as tight an ark as it could manage, the gondola and man suspended below the gondola swinging outwards, Jacoby grazing a tree with a muffled cry.

Granny looked out behind them as the airship gained height. The haemorrhage was starting to fall back in on itself, leaving a blackened crater behind, at least 15 houses no longer existing. From this grim site she looked down to another, the pitiful Jacoby dangling a few metres below them. However, there was yet hope for the man, she figured, seeing that he still had hold of the bin-bag and whatever treasures he had liberated from the small shop. Granny smilled, then said to Jack “How long?”

To start with Jack didn’t follow her question, so she nodded at the stopwatch around his neck. “Oh, er….” he held the watch up to eye level “Six minutes forty-three”

Granny rubbed her hands together, “50:50, lovely” then over the side “What did I tell you fatso? Granny Plum will keep you safe!” She laughed loudly.

The laugh echoed around the empty streets below, before fading much like the waning sun. Silence, well, apart from the sound of a small scraggy looking cat meowing gently, almost as if in celebration of its new found freedom under a car a few streets away.