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some broken glass with his cloak and sitting on the wooden ledge.
He didn’t reply but heard the scrape of stick against stone followed by the flare of a flame as Rafe lit a cigarette. He heard the exhale, knew he would’ve got a lot more smoke directed his way if it wasn’t for the gentle breeze that sent it away from him instead. Still, the smell of burning mint and herbs was strong, so strong it almost masked the more familiar hint of tobacco that he detected beneath it.
Where it had come from would be less easy to detect; certainly he’d not found any at the landfill.
He picked up several nails from the floor, began hammering the plastic sheet in place. Only when he paused to retrieve more nails did Rafe speak. ‘Jacob, can I have a word before you go on?’
He ran through his options before deciding he would only face more trouble if he refused. The request, though undoubtedly brimming with personal motive, was at least politely made. He put down the mallet.
‘Will you sit?’ Rafe asked, gesturing to the ledge beside him.
‘I’m good here, thanks.’
Blowing out a cloud of smoke, Rafe crushed the butt beneath his boot before flipping it out the window. Running a hand along his dark beard, he sent the black armor across his arm quivering.
‘I realize, brother, things haven’t been easy for you lately.’
‘In what way?’
‘I only want to make sure that all our members are well.’
Jacob clamped his teeth together to resist the urge to point out that Daniel and Aaron weren’t so kindly treated.
‘The doctrine, as you know, brother, states that conflict destroys the male character—’
‘As does judgement,’ he shot back, and Rafe could no longer hide the smile nudging the edge of his lips, though he did his best to disguise it as something more friendly.
‘Course,’ he said, and nodded. ‘Just that, if you think something’s not right within our Tribe, Jacob, it would probably be better for everyone if you raise your concerns before they... Well, before they make themselves known in other ways.’
Jacob glared at him. ‘You’re right, Rafe. And I’d like to suggest the same goes for you. You’ve not been yourself lately. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.’ He watched that fixed smile falter a little. They both knew who Michael would choose if he was forced to. Hadn’t he already done so? Shouldn’t he be gone by now and not still standing here, building for their future?
Rafe nodded and rose from the ledge, walking with slow, deliberate steps to the door. But when he reached it he hesitated and turned back.
‘You know, brother,’ he said, leaning a hand against the wooden door frame. ‘I once heard that doubt signals the beginning of the end of all relationships. Once it gets in, it can’t be so easily removed. Like woodworm.’ He glanced to the frame, broke off a piece with ease. ‘Even the strongest of wood isn’t resistant to it.’ He crumbled the wood between his fingers, letting the splinters fall to the floor. Then with a slight nod of the head, he left Jacob alone.
*
They say an addict can never remove that label regardless of how long he’s been clean. No matter the process, the fight, the physical torment, mental pain, conditioning and tolerance, one hit is all that’s needed to take him back there to the shell of a living thing his drug of choice once turned him into.
After five years of recovery, that never made more sense to Jacob than it did right now. Even the hint of Rafe’s tobacco had taunted him with the promise of something intoxicating, brain-numbing, momentarily relieving, so that he’d forced himself to resist inhaling the second-hand smoke his lungs cried out for.
As they walked back from the factory that evening, his desire to get away burned in his empty chest. He dropped out of the group under the precept of looking for nails in a disused manufacturer’s on the other side of the estate. Ignoring Rafe’s curious stare, he split from them, making sure before he headed toward the city that he was not being followed.
It was a warm night despite the approach of winter and he walked with his hood thrown back, grateful to feel the fresh air ruffle his hair and catch the back of his neck. He hoped it would help to wash away Rafe’s words, his thinly veiled threat and the niggling concern that he was probably right. Commitment was one thing but it only ran so deep. It was never entirely unconditional. Already Michael spoke with him less now than he used to, and when they did speak it was with care as though one or other or both were treading across a very thin shard of glass that could cut deeply or shatter beneath them at any moment. Was he nạve to think that in time all this would just pass over and things would return the way they were?
That a change of setting alone would be enough to repair the cracks that had splintered his belief in the Tribe’s purpose?
He walked quick, his feet already knowing where he wanted to go before he’d allowed himself to consciously think it. Though he’d not come this way in at least five years, it seemed he hadn’t forgotten the route. He marched with purpose,
certain of his path as the familiar sights of the old downtown came into view, but less certain with each step of his reasons for being there. He had nothing on him of course, hadn’t carried money or needed a wallet for some time. But that’s not really what he was coming for. Was it?
Forty-five minutes later, his confident pace slowed as he neared the alleyway where it had all begun. And as he rounded the corner, he stopped, his heart slamming into his chest. The old building was still standing, its black exterior rundown and rotten now but otherwise almost exactly as it was all those years before. Even its sign, ‘The Alleycat’, was still daubed in its gold lettering above the frosted windows. But there were no lights on behind the glass, the double doors were chained and bolted, no one hung around its doors trying to get in or fighting to get out.
All the same, he hadn’t been prepared for the sight of it. He assumed they’d have pulled it down by now, made room for something more palatable. It would have made it easier to imagine the life he’d had then had never really existed at all. But not even Prosperity wanted to touch this part of town just yet it seemed.
His legs trembled and he took a step back to lean against the wall. Memories were coming back, more than he could handle. Images of The Doctor putting an arm around his younger self – too young to be in there, too young for all that had happened and all that came after – buying him a drink, taking him under his wing.
Or so his broken, vulnerable mind had thought.
Sinking to the damp stone floor, he fought the nausea welling up in his gut, but still he couldn’t take his eyes from the old place. It had been all he had once, the only place he’d felt safe. It was only now he recognized that he couldn’t have been less safe.
Despite the years in between, he remembered The Doctor’s face well. The ear-to-ear smile and clear-to-ear blue eyes, promising to take care of him, promising to give him everything he wanted and take away all that he didn’t. And he hadn’t reneged on that score. At sixteen, beer and whiskey. Pills and coke by seventeen. Nineteen, heroin. Twenty-four, anything he could cook and shoot into any last vein he could find, anywhere on his dying body.
It had taken away everything he’d wanted to forget. And a hell of a lot more besides.
He dropped his head to his hands, curled his fingers in his hair, taking a long deep breath to fight the sickness threatening to flood into his throat. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d lain in this alleyway choking on vomit or sleeping off an overload. By the time Michael had found him thirteen years after that first
encounter with The Doctor, he’d already lost eight of his nine lives. But back then living or dying wasn’t his concern. Just scoring.
So what was his concern now?
His vision blurred. He’d believed The Doctor would take care of him. Had believed The Doctor’s friends were his friends too, his new family. But in reality he’d had no one. No one who was willing to help him when he’d gone too far. No one who picked him up off the floor and made sure he could make it through another day. No one who cared enough to tell him he needed help.
No one until Michael.
Jacob lowered his hands to his wet face. With his eyes still closed, it wasn’t those heady, foggy days of drink and needles and oblivion he thought of now, but the man who’d saved him from them. The man who hadn’t known anything about him or where he came from. Hadn’t known what he was capable of or how troubled he was. And none of that had mattered. Unconditionally Michael had offered a helping hand. More than that, he’d taken charge of his recovery when he wasn’t able to make that decision himself. Michael was the only one who had helped. Was still helping.
He wiped his face with his hand, looked one last time to the place that had been set on destroying him, then got to his feet and began the long walk back to the warehouse and the Tribe he owed his life to.