Rat Catchers

Red Block

Chapter Text

Rose and James were sitting on the wall by the canal, waiting for Helen and Alice to emerge from the shop with whatever sweets their combined funds would buy.

"My brother says the mad fella from the red block's after making a chicken coup up on the roof," James said.

"Won't they fall off?" Rose asked.

"My brother says he's got more contraband in it than birds." James brother worked as a delivery boy and allegedly knew everything that was going on.

"What sort of contraband?" Rose was pleased she didn't stumble over the unfamiliar word.

"Cigarettes," James said casually. "And guns, probably. And drink."

"Ours is full of all of that," Rose said unimpressed.

"Yea, right. But you don't get to touch it, do you?"

"No..." Rose admitted.

Across the road Alice and Helen came flying out of the shop, nearly getting run down by a passing cart.

"On the red block, he reckons?" Rose chewed her thumbnail pensively.

The tenement at Artillery Square, which didn't owe its name to a fancy paint job but rather the fact that no one had been arsed to paint the red bricks once they'd finished building it, was well within her boundaries.

They didn't discuss it any further, but as the afternoon went on, they drifted nearer and nearer the red block until they were somehow on the fourth floor and so close to the roof that it'd been pure laziness not to make it all the way.

The chicken coup was a rather impressive structure made from all sorts of scavenged garbage.

"You know," Alice announced once she'd walked around it a couple of times, "we could make one like that for a hide out on our roof, easy. D'you reckon your uncle Charlie will let us have scrap metal from the yard, Rosie?"

"Curly will," Rose said, playing with the latch of the coup absentmindedly.

It sprung open nearly by accident.

"Dare you to look inside," said James.

Rose looked over to the door, where Helen stood as look out, keeping an ear and eye on the stairs, and slipped into the coup.

"Those birds 've seen better days," she said drily, surveying the listless, mangy chickens scratching the bare floor.

"Aw, the poor fuckers." Alice was peeking through the open hatch. "Should we liberate them?"

"How'll we get them down?" James asked.

"There's boxes in here," Rose called out, already levering up a lid. "Oh, good shite!"

"What?" James was squeezing through the hatch now. "Bloody hell. See, I told you."

Alice was in the coup as well now and all three looked down at the three small handguns, cosy in their bed of straw.

"Are they loaded?" James asked.

"How should I know?" Rose whispered.

"You're the one going on about how yours is full of guns," James said pointedly.

Rose rolled her eyes and reached carefully into the crate, pulling out one of the weapons slowly, trying to remember what exactly the men did when they flipped the chambers out. Having a reputation to uphold could be arduous at times. She drew back the hammer and whacked the side of the revolver a bit.