Aggy and the Dinos

Chapter 22

"The King of London is a fucking chav!" Aggy crowed. They were in their new house, and John was beginning to see the benefit of signing up to the new monarchy. They had a ground floor mansion flat, which the previous owners had decked out very nicely indeed. There was a garden, a little overgrown but safe for the dog – Geezer had been out and watered everything, just so there could be no dispute over ownership – but this wasn't all, oh no. The house worked, and it was safe to turn the heating and lighting on, and there was hot running water. From a power shower. The flat would have cost the best part of a million before the Dinos.

"Shhh," he chided, pouring them both a glass of wine. The state really did provide. "We can't guarantee we're not being listened to." She rolled a cigarette, smiling widely.

"I bet no one's ever sworn loyalty to a sovereign ring before," she said round her fag.

"Not one from Argos."

"Oooh, I miss Argos."

"Really?"

"Well, it was handy."

"I think we should be really careful to keep in with this lot," he said, enjoying the feeling of standing in a brightly lit warm kitchen, drinking rioja.

"What, coz they'll kill us if we don't?"

"Yeah that," he laughed. "And because this place knocks the socks off anywhere else we've stayed. We're safe, Babydoll."

"We're not safe," she said, shaking her head. "We're not safe. But we are comfortable, and I'll take that over unsafe and sleeping on the floor." She took a big slug of wine and made an appreciative noise.

"I'm going to be so trollied. I can feel that already."

"I can take advantage of you then."

"Like I need to be drunk for that."

"True enough." He took her glass off her and picked her up.

"Time for a shower."

A short distance away, Dean was having a much less pleasurable experience. He was in a very nice, very large house that also had all the mod cons that he had forgotten about during his time 'on the road.' The problem was that he had been lumped together in a house with Brian, Sean and Jordie. They were not happy with him, and quite frankly, neither was he. When he, Aggy and John had been about to abandon the others for reasons of survival, it had seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Now that he was sitting in a house with food, heating and an impressive DVD collection, with no genetically engineered killing machines trying to get at him, he didn't understand his own motivations quite so much. The other men were studiously not talking to him, apart from Jordie, who hadn't seemed to take it as personally.

"Quite honestly," he said while they were in the kitchen, awkwardly preparing dinner. "I would have done exactly the same thing in your situation."

"That's because you don't experience any human emotions," said Brian, who was chopping carrots in a very savage manner.

"That's not true," replied Jordie, completely unfazed. "I just completely understand why Aggy, John and Dean thought that they would be better off without us."

"And why is that?"

"Because we're fucking useless, Brian."

The sound of Jordie uttering an expletive was enough to bring the kitchen to silence. The man just didn't swear, ever.

"We survived in the lab on our own." Brian countered, after a brief pause in which he pushed his glasses further onto this nose.

"We hid in the lab. We didn't go out until we ate everything from the vending machines. We even rationed the last packet of Maltesers in order to remain inside. We are useless, frightened, incapable, little people. We couldn't even make a chemical weapon. I would leave us to, if I wasn't one of us."