Read Online Split Second by Sophie McKenzie - Free Book Online

meeting was for those ‘seeking answers’. I had assumed he’d meant answers to questions about the League of
Iron’s terrorist activities. Had I misunderstood? It looked like it, as most of the other people in the room were nodding approvingly at Saxon66’s words.
    Saxon66 pointed to a young man in the front row with a shaved head and a clenched fist. ‘Why don’t you start, Inquisitor?’
    The young man nodded. ‘We should get the Government, and everyone in a religion. We should have village squares and public executions like they used to. I’d do it myself. Cut their
freakin’ heads off.’
    The two women opposite me nodded.
    ‘The real problem’s all the immigration,’ one of the woman called out, her sallow-skinned forehead screwed into an angry frown.
    ‘Yeah, we should gas them, all of them,’ added the other. She was wearing a black dress, with heavy Goth make-up and a white streak in her long dark hair.
    I wriggled further back against the boxes that lined the wall.
    ‘One at a time,’ Saxon66 said. ‘Go on, Inquisitor.’
    Inquisitor stared around the room. ‘They’re taking our jobs: blacks, Pakis, that lot from Poland, too.’
    ‘And the Government let it happen,’ shouted another voice. ‘We should bomb Parliament.’
    ‘
And
gas the foreigners,’ Inquisitor insisted.
    ‘
And
put all the freakin’ bankers in with them,’ snarled the Goth woman.
    Everyone cheered.
    I looked down at the floor, my head spinning. After spending so much time on the League of Iron forum I’d been expecting some extreme views, but not all this incoherent hatred. These
people weren’t interested in organised attacks, they just wanted a place to vent their anger and resentment. Clearly I’d been totally naive thinking it would be easy to bring up either
Lucas or the bombing.
    ‘Another view?’ Saxon66 roared. ‘What about you?’
    A girl near me with mousy blonde hair shuffled nervously from foot to foot.
    ‘I’d like us to make the politicians do more,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘They say a bunch of stuff, make everyone think they care, but nothing ever
happens.’
    A murmur of agreement ran around the room.
    ‘Sometimes I think all Roman Riley does is talk,’ the girl went on.
    ‘Yeah.’ Saxon66 snorted with contempt. ‘Riley’s good at
talking
.’
    Everyone apart from me grunted in agreement.
    I frowned, trying to make sense of what I was hearing. These were Lucas’s contacts, responsible for organising the market bombing. Their blind rage fitted with the ugly violence of the
explosion, though I still didn’t understand why they thought bombing people queuing for food would get rid of the Government or black people or any of the other groups they hated.
    ‘What about you?’ Saxon66 was pointing into the audience again.
    Oh,
no
. He was pointing at me. Everyone looked in my direction. What the hell did I say now?

Charlie
    If I’d stopped to think about it, I don’t know what I would have expected to find on Nat’s laptop: maybe a football website or one showing pictures of girls
or perhaps something relevant to his homework. Instead, I found myself on a forum thread with the title:
Who should we bomb?
    Forgetting Jas downstairs, I scanned the posts. The top few consisted of an argument between two users debating whether black people generally or just Muslims should be blown up.
    What was Nat doing looking at this horrible conversation? The language – and the hate behind it – made me feel sick.
    Beneath this were similarly ugly comments about death camps and how immigrants were stealing English people’s jobs. And then I saw an entry from another forum member with the user name
AngelOfFire . . . it had been made just twenty minutes ago:
    People need to see how POWERFUL we are. Bombing ordinary people causes PANIC and makes them realise they need strong leadership. Like in the Canal St market bomb. Iron
     Will FOREVER.
    I froze. The lettering on the