The Petitioners Read Online Free PDF

entirely sure about Dan either, which was even more dispiriting.
    ‘Just make sure you are,’ said Declan.
    I didn’t have to be careful for very long. That night the little black communications device disappeared. I had left it in my jacket pocket when I went to bed. I had got into the way of wearing most of my clothes in bed, as a substitute for bedding, but I couldn’t sleep in my jacket, as I found it constricting. So the jacket was carelessly strewn across the old chair we had found somewhere and attempted to mend – not very successfully. There was a constant danger of being tipped into the fire if you leaned forward on it the wrong way.
    I was slightly annoyed at the time, and of course I blamed Declan, the obvious suspect, but we were too dependent on each other to be cross for very long. At least, that was how I felt. As time went on I became less and less sure of how the others felt about it.
    A few days went by. We had tried at first to keep track of the days of the week and so on, but had become lazy after a while. Like farmers we would soon only be aware of the changing seasons, the direction of the wind and the colour of the sunset, I mused one afternoon while I was working through some ephemera in the old stables. Things arrived randomly in haphazardly organised boxes, so that somebody’s holiday postcard collection sat on top of a collection of letters from the Scottish Government Revenue and Customs Service, an organisation which presumably didn’t exist any more, or at least not above the water-line. That thought should have cheered me up a bit, but I had a vaguely discontented feeling about me that day.
    When I paused in the middle of reading a postcard from Dubrovnik which claimed that the sender was painting the town pink – I puzzled for a moment over the significance of it – I analysed my discontent and found it was mostly to do with the disappearance of the black thing.
    What if I really had wanted help from Ms Fairfax and her mysterious company? Why should Declan decide something like that on behalf of all of us? Everybody here could benefit from more food, and better shelter. An army camp-bed and rations might after all be quite luxurious compared to our current facilities.
    I decided to look for the device among his things. At least then I would have the choice.
    It was easier than I thought. Fiona and Declan were both on a raiding party – or at least that was how I thought of what they were doing – down in Edinburgh. They were gradually liberating food supplies from a shop that had previously called itself the Last Tesco’s in Scotland. I used to worry that any remaining food would have been contaminated in some way by water or something, but they were very careful, and the Last Tesco’s was in one of the higher-up out of the way streets that led up towards Bonaly Tower. I suspected hardly anybody had ever gone in there even before the storm.
    It wasn’t all that far away, so they might be back soon, though I knew Declan had refused to take the jeep down because we were running low on fuel for it. It must actually have been about the last vehicle in Scotland still to be powered by fossil fuel. We had found a farmer’s secret underground supply of diesel, but that would run out some time soon and then if the jeep couldn’t be converted to run on some healthier form of power it would have to be dismantled for the parts. I had my eye on the back seat from it for our little home.
    I entered Declan and Fiona’s hut with some trepidation in case of amateurish booby-traps, but I made it to the corner where the bed was without being doused in flour, water or anything worse. Just as well Declan didn’t believe in wasting resources.
    If I hadn’t been careless enough to leave it in my pocket I thought I would probably have kept the device under my pillow, or the folded sweatshirt that passed for a pillow these days, but there was no sign of it under the spare jumper at the head of the