your chance and I want you to take it.’ Captain got up and went in one of the drawers of his filing cabinet. He put three big piles of banknotes
on the desk and a stack of papers. ‘What are these?’ Sami asked. ‘I’ve been working on notes for your journey,’ Captain said. ‘I’ve not got a map of your whole route, but I’ve written up everything I can remember. I’ve made a map, with most of the big towns and roads drawn on. Most importantly, you need these:’ Captain pulled three sheets of A5 paper out of the bottom of the pile of notes. ‘Identity papers,’ Captain said. ‘Casino got them off one of his sources for me, before he was killed. They’re the latest design. The only thing is, Adam’s one is for a boy of twelve. It was either that or one for a baby. They’ll help if you get stopped by the army, but they won’t explain what you’re doing out here in bandit country. If you hand them over with a few dollars, you should get through most road blocks and checkpoints.’ Sami put her chin in her hands and let out a loud sob. ‘When should we go?’ Sami asked. ‘Tonight,’ Captain said. ‘Or stay here overnight and leave in the morning. The rest of us will get
moving as soon as everyone gets back.’ ‘I’ll never see you again,’ Sami sobbed. Captain walked around the table and put his arm across his daughter’s back. ‘We’re on separate paths now,’ Captain said. ‘It’s better for all of us.’ ‘Tell Jake about the blood,’ Sami said. ‘What blood?’ Captain asked. ‘On the floor.’ Captain smiled at me, he had a tear down his face. ‘It’s not human blood,’ Captain said. ‘We cut a chicken’s head off and let it run around so the place
looked a bit sinister.’ ‘It’s just to scare people,’ Sami said. ‘Nobody ever died in here.’ I smiled a tiny bit, ‘Certainly worked on me.’ Captain went in his drawer, unrolled the pouch of torture stuff and pulled out the tooth. He lifted his
top lip and held the tooth up to a gap in his jaw. ‘Used to slot in there,’ Captain explained. ‘Have it Jake. Something to remind you of your beloved
father in law.’ ‘Great,’ I said, staring at the brown tooth and feeling sad. ‘In England, your in laws usually get you a
waffle maker or something, but I’m sure this will come in handy.’ ‘Well,’ Captain said. ‘No use standing here getting all slushy. There’s too much to do.’ ‘I’ll give you my phone number in England,’ I said. ‘You never know, you might be able to give us a
call some day.’ I read Catcher In The Rye at school the term before summer holidays. It was OK: miles shorter than the book we did the term before. There was a bit where the mopey kid is going on about how you don’t know you’re going to miss stuff until you’re about to leave. I understood it when I walked around camp.
Beck, Amo, Becky, Desi, Jesus, David, Grandma, Joseph, Ghina and the others: I asked myself questions about them. Would Amo ever find her husband? When would Beck get his first girlfriend? What would Desi get up to if the war ended? But the worst part was, I knew most of them wouldn’t see the end of the war. Mostly, I wondered when they would die.
The road’s weren’t safe with all the tanks and mercenaries around. Everyone could only take what they could carry on their backs: food and drinking water, pistols, guns, grenades and ammunition. The store room had quite a few sets of new boots and camouflage. It was too much to carry spares, so most of us threw our old sets away. The shining boots and clean camouflage looked like everyone was getting ready for a parade.
Captain sent me and Sami down to perform our final duty for the unit. The path was no longer safe, so we stood guard while Desi and Jesus packed the trucks and 4x4s with explosives and ammunition. They rigged it up so they would blow up if anyone touched them.
When we got back to the top everyone was waiting to leave. It doesn’t take much time to fill a pack with and every minute we stuck around was another minute when some bad guys might turn up.
I think Captain had a plan for the unit, though it was best for everyone if me and Sami didn’t know. Sami reckoned he’d take them to a temporary camp deep in the jungle and go to ground for a month. Then they’d move again, to a camp nearer to a road. They’d start doing small ambushes. Get hold of a truck or a four wheel drive, build up a stock of heavy weapons and hopefully make a few recruits out of army deserters. In a few months, Captain’s unit would probably be back to full strength, with some new faces holding the guns.
We all got upset saying goodbye. Adam was crying and hugging Beck and David. I melted when I picked Becky up. She asked if I could take her swimming tomorrow. She was too little to understand I was going away. She smiled and smudged out my tear with her tiny thumb. Sami went along the line hugging everyone. I couldn’t even look when she got to her Dad. Finally Captain came over to me. His face was a wet mess. He reached out to shake my hand. ‘You’ll always be good to Sami, won’t you?’ Captain asked. I nodded, ‘You know how much I love her.’ ‘Have a safe journey. I’ll pray for all three of you, every day.’ ‘You can come and visit us when the war’s over,’ I said. ‘You can baby sit all our kids.’ I realised I hadn’t given him the phone number. He opened up his backpack and jotted it on a corner
of his folded up map. Captain smiled, ‘Do you know, I haven’t used a phone for nearly seven years?’ ‘I’m sure you’ll manage.’ Grandma walked over and looked at Captain. ‘I’m not coming,’ Grandma said. ‘I’ll slow all of you down.’ Amo overheard and came rushing over. Now I think about it, Amo must be the kindest person I’ve ever
met. She did everything for everyone and never asked for anything back. ‘Of course you’re coming,’ Amo said gently. ‘We’ll help with your things. You’re no slower than some
of the children.’ ‘You’ve given me some nice days,’ Grandma said. ‘I’ve enjoyed watching the children. I’ll wander down
to the road and see where it takes me.’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ Amo said. Grandma picked up her pack. All she had was a few pieces of fruit and a bottle of water, but she still
had a struggle getting it over her shoulder. ‘I was here when the war started,’ Grandma said. ‘I’ll do my best to be here when it ends.’ She began taking tiny steps towards the little guard shelter at the top of the path. Amo wanted to plead with her, but Captain held her back. You could tell Grandma’s mind was set.
24. BREAK
Once everyone was gone, we walked to our spot. It was far enough from camp to be safe and both of us wanted to go back for a final peek. ‘You better not start shagging again,’ Adam said. ‘I don’t want to be a Granddad at my age.’ ‘You mean an Uncle, midget.’ I picked some of the yellow flowers and stuck them in Sami’s hair. She laughed, but you could tell she was still sad after saying goodbye to her Dad. Adam got hundreds of flowers and turned his scruffy hair into a bouquet. We sorted out the packs so Sami had the heaviest load. It was a bit shameful that she was stronger, but pride wasn’t going to get me home.
We looked at Captain’s hand drawn maps. He must have spent hours tracing pages off his own maps, filling in missing sections from memory and adding notes in tiny handwriting at the bottom of each sheet of exercise paper. ‘How far is the capital?’ Adam asked, looking over my shoulder. I flicked through the pages and added together Captain’s estimated distances. ‘About 2300 Kilometres,’ I said. ‘It’s like driving from London to Italy.’ ‘You’d need about a million years to walk that far,’ Adam said. ‘We’ll have to hitch a lift or steal a truck,’ Sami said. ‘I agree with Dad about us not going too far until
things calm down.’ ‘Billy Mango’s?’ I asked. Adam hadn’t been in the office when I mentioned it before. He looked pleased. ‘It’s as good a place to stay as any,’ Sami said. ‘It’s away from all the roads. We’ll be safe once we get
there.’ ‘It’s sixty kilometres’ I said. ‘Can we make that in one go?’ Sami shook her head, ‘I don’t want to be on the road in daylight at the moment, but if we don’t stick to the roads, we’ll get lost. We’ll rest now and set off when the sun drops. We should manage five or six kilometres an hour through the
night. When day breaks, we’ll decide whether to rest or carry on, based on how many soldiers we’ve seen.’
. . .
After four hours walking, Adam broke down in the road and started to cough from all the dust. We’d taken his pack and all his stuff off him, but he still couldn’t hack it. ‘It hurts,’ he whined. ‘Where does it hurt this time?’ Sami asked fiercely.
‘Everywhere.’ Sami had run out of patience. She picked Adam off the floor and dumped him on his feet. ‘Come on, Sami,’ I said. ‘He’s only got little legs.’ ‘He’s got to learn to take pain,’ Sami said. ‘Or we’ll never get anywhere.’ In England, Adam moaned about his legs aching when we went shopping and Dad would carry him to
the car. In Africa, kids walked everywhere and got clobbered if they dragged their feet. Me and Sami grabbed one wrist each and marched Adam between us. ‘Captain used to play games with me and Edo on long walks,’ Sami said. ‘It makes time go faster.’ Adam didn’t look enthusiastic. ‘What games?’ I asked. ‘Take it in turns to name stuff. Or do times tables,’ Sami said. ‘We all have to say a boys name starting
with the next letter of the alphabet. I’ll start with A, for Adam.’ ‘B for Boris,’ I said. ‘Your go Adam.’ ‘I dunno,’ Adam moaned. ‘There’s one in your class at school,’ I said. ‘C is for Charlie,’ Adam said, grudgingly. ‘D is for Desi,’ Sami said. Adam walked better once he started getting into the games. We did girls names, makes of cars, TV
shows, pop groups. Adam even tried to teach Sami to play I spy, but it was pitch black, so it didn’t really work. We’d got about two thirds of the way when the sun started coming up. We hadn’t seen a roadblock, but there was loads of army traffic. At night, you can crouch at the side of the road and let it pass. Even if the conscripts driving the trucks did see us, they wouldn’t stop and investigate in case it was an ambush. It was different in daylight. You’d be seen from further away and you had to hide deep in the bushes.
We found an overgrown trail leading to an abandoned village. We checked out the rotting buildings, making sure they were empty. There was a stream nearby. The banks were all muddy, but it was clean enough to wash our sweat off and scoop drinking water. I made a fire and purified me and Adam’s water by boiling it. Sami’s guts were like cast iron, she could drink anything. I still got the shits half the time if I drank unboiled. Adam wasn’t as sensitive as me, but I made him drink purified. The last thing I wanted was a sick kid on my hands.
Sami found some fruit and a nest of birds eggs, which we cracked open and ate raw. We had a lightweight tent that was stolen off a mercenary. We put it up in the shade, but it was still roasting inside. Laying in the open would have been cooler, but then we’d be fighting off snakes, scorpions, leopards and a zillion bugs and insects. I could never normally sleep in the daytime, specially not inside a tent, but I’d been up more than fifty hours. I stripped down to my boxers, rolled my sweaty t-shirt under my head and dropped off in about three seconds. We had to go eighteen kilometres the second night. Adam’s feet were all scabby and his ankles were puffed up. Sami popped his blisters with a needle and squirted out the pus. She tightly wrapped a length of bandage around his ankles for support and reduced the poor kid to tears when she forced his trainers on. It wasn’t nice to watch, but Sami was right to be tough: the longer we were out here, the higher our chance of getting captured.
We passed a couple of roadblocks on the last stretch. They were designed to stop vehicles, not pedestrians. As long as you spotted them in time you could creep through the trees behind, keeping your eyes open for a mine or a trip wire. We went by where Sami found me and decided to rest at Grandma’s burned out house. Going off road in the dark was hopeless.
We set the tent in the trees behind what was left of the house and grabbed some rest before it got light. Adam cuddled up between me and Sami and had a bit of a cry about his feet before he fell asleep.
Next morning, I crunched over the blackened wood and rubble to our wasted Subaru pickup. It felt sad, like visiting a sick friend in hospital. I stuck my head in the cab and choked on burned plastic fumes. The fire in the back had melted the pistols into a single lump that looked like something out of a modern art gallery.
Adam led the way through the forest. The prospect of seeing Billy again made him quite cheerful. Sami checked up with a compass, but she needn’t have worried, Adam remembered the route. We approached Billy’s hut cautiously, just in case. I thought he was out, but he was balled up in a corner with about ten animal skins over his head. Sami peeled a couple of them back. Billy was pissing sweat and shaking all over. He sat up and opened his eyes to check us out, but he could barely keep them open.
I knew it was malaria. Dad had an attack once after a business trip. Almost everyone in central Africa got it sometime. I’d seen a couple of people at camp get struck down, even though Amo gave us an anti-malaria tablets every week ‘Make yourselves at home,’ Billy shuddered. He managed a little smile for Adam, but he drooped back down and pulled the skins over his head. It
must have been sixty degrees under there, but Billy still shivered. ‘Can we catch malaria off him?’ Adam asked. ‘Not from Billy,’ Sami said. ‘You get it off mosquito bites.’ Adam had been looking forward to messing around with Billy. He was a bit miffed that Billy was ill. ‘Want to go spear fishing?’ Adam asked. ‘We’ll need food.’ Adam stripped to his shorts and led me to the lakeside. It was an ideal spot. The clear water was less
than a metre deep and there were more fish than you could count. ‘Watch for snakes,’ Adam said. ‘And move gently. The fish all leg it if they feel a strong current.’ We waded in. Billy left his spears wedged into the bottom of the lake. There were a couple of plastic
tubs hooked in the reeds. ‘Take a spear,’ Adam said. I plucked one out of the sand. Adam grabbed a tub. He liked being the boss for once. ‘Aim a bit in front of the fish. They’ll fly off when they feel the spear coming.’ I looked into the water. There were plenty of targets to choose from, but they all moved fast and kept
changing direction. ‘Come on,’ Adam said sarcastically. ‘It’ll get dark in ten hours.’ I made a couple of hopeless thrusts into the mud. ‘You would have got that one if it was five feet long,’ Adam giggled. I spotted this fat fish, forty centimetres long. It was drifting towards me, almost like it daring me. I stabbed at it once, missing completely. The second time the spear glanced off the side of the fish, making it charge away. ‘Mind your toes,’ Adam shouted. I’d been concentrating on the fish and only missed my toes by a few centimetres. Adam handed over
the tub and snatched the spear off me. ‘Now, watch the master at work,’ Adam said. He spread his legs wide apart and stared down intently, keeping the tip of the spear in the water and holding the shaft with both hands. He moved fast, narrowly missing on his first attempt. Before I had time to crow, he stabbed an absolute beauty and held the thrashing fish in my face. The sun reflecting off it’s silver skin blinded me. A stream of blood dripped off the pole, staining the clear water. I dragged the fish off the pole with one hand. It thrashed about inside the plastic tub, drumming against the sides. ‘Pin it until it stops wriggling or it’ll escape,’ Adam said. The fish had plenty of fight, despite the spear almost tearing it in two. While it suffocated, Adam got
another. He pushed the blunt end of the spear into the sand, with the fish flapping in agony over the water. When I had four dead fish in the tub, Adam offered me a second chance with the spear. He was all puffed, but he’d enjoyed showing off his skills. I didn’t try hard. I played it for laughs, pretending to loose my temper and crashing into the water. Adam had been through a rough time and needed cheering up. ‘You know how to gut them?’ Adam asked, knowing I didn’t. He crouched in the mud at the edge of the water, opened up the fish with a sharp knife and rammed
his hands inside. They came out covered in strings of guts and blood. I didn’t need to fake my disgust. ‘Want to do the next one? Adam laughed.
‘No ta.’ ‘It’
s only some guts,’ Adam said. ‘You’re such a pussy.’ He chopped of the head and tail, peeled out the backbone and dipped the fish in the lake to wash out
the last traces of blood. Then he flicked his wrist, splattering me with the bloody water. I jumped backwards. ‘I’ll get you for that, midget.’ ‘You can’t come near me,’ Adam giggled. ‘I’ll rub guts all over you.’ Adam slept with Billy in the hut. There was room for all of us in there, but me and Sami preferred the tent where we had more privacy. It was our fourth morning at chez Mango. Billy was on the mend. He’d eaten some fish and walked around a bit the day before, though he hadn’t shaved and still looked weak. Sami rolled on top of me and gave me a kiss. ‘Feel like some sex, Killer?’ ‘Always,’ I grinned. We got about three seconds of snogging in before the zip on our tent cracked open. ‘Leave us alone midget,’ I shouted. Billy cleared his throat, ‘Ahem.’ Sami clambered off me and pulled on her shirt ‘Sorry Billy,’ I said. ‘I thought you were Adam. He always butts in if were snogging or anything.’ ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Billy said. ‘I need to speak with the pair of you.’ We got dressed and sat outside the hut. Billy spoke while he cooked us fish and banana over his wood
burning stove. ‘A man used to go outside the TV studio and pick three girls from the crowd,’ Billy said, stirring the food. ‘I’d take the prettiest one back to my flat for a night of passion and kick her out of bed the next morning.’ I laughed. Sami gave us a killer look. ‘I had more cousins and relatives than I could count,’ Billy continued. ‘I never knew half of them existed until I got rich. Then there was my wife’s family. Total parasites. When the money dried up, they all vanished. Even my wife.’ Sami tutted, ‘I’m not surprised she left you if you were out humping one of your fans every night.’ ‘So I wasn’t a perfect husband,’ Billy said. ‘Who is? No man’s gonna turn it down when there’s twenty
girls jigging their goodies up and down in front of you.’ I laughed, ‘I could live with that.’ Sami punched my thigh. ‘Pig,’ she snarled. ‘You ever even sniff another woman and I’ll have two penises in my jar.’ ‘The people in the army were even worse,’ Billy said. ‘So I bunked out of camp and walked until I found the lake. I taught myself to fish and hunt, built the hut and I was happy with my own company.