Home

  something changed your mind.’ Sami looked down at her boots, ‘Have you ever seen the Disney movie, The Fox and the Hound?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘When I was little’ I was a bit surprised Sami even knew what a Disney film was. ‘You frown like the cute fox when the big dog gets angry,’ she said. ‘I felt sorry for you.’ I cracked up laughing. Sami looked furious and booted the two empty cans towards me. ‘If that barrel’s not full whenever I come here, I’ll make Don beat you.’ I went back and got my trainers. Don and Amin weren’t around, thank God. My feet hurt, but at least with trainers on I didn’t get any new cuts. I tried carrying two cans together, but I wasn’t used to the heat and I was weak from all the blood I’d lost. Once the barrel was full, I stumbled around to the shady side of the main building and collapsed in a heap. Nobody stayed indoors in the daytime, it was too hot. Beck found me after a bit. ‘I hung Don’s clothes out to dry,’ he said. ‘You better not lay around in here. You’ll get pounded if

  Don sees you.’ I sat up, ‘My head hurts.’ ‘You can come hunting with me if you want,’ Beck said. ‘It’s cooler under the trees, but I’ll have to kill

  you if you run away.’ I laughed, Beck was about half my size. ‘I wouldn’t know which way to run,’ I said. ‘But just out of interest, how would you plan to kill me?’ Beck pulled a big knife out of a pouch over his shoulder. His eyes scanned a tree about ten meters away. ‘Red parrot,’ Beck said, pointing. ‘Longest branch, second bird from the end. See it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Beck hurled the knife into the tree. It thudded the wood. A cloud of birds erupted into the air, all

  except the dead one pinned to the longest branch by the knife. Beck grabbed branches and clambered into the tree. He twisted and pulled his way deep into the leaves until I couldn’t even see him. He emerged at the thick end of the long branch, shuffled along with his legs wrapped round it and retrieved his knife. Then he dropped about four metres to the ground, landing in a cloud of dust and standing straight up. His grin was even wider than usual.

  ‘Fancy your chances?’ Beck grinned, holding the knife in my face, before wiping the bird blood onto his shorts.

  We walked deep into the trees. It seemed every fly in the world wanted a piece of me. God knows how Beck knew his way amongst thousands of identical looking trees. ‘What are we looking for?’ I asked. ‘Mostly monkey,’ Beck said. ‘Everyone is my friend if I bring back a monkey.’ He stopped by a palm and raised a leaf. The underside was crawling with featureless white blobs, like

  giant maggots. ‘Hold the sack open for me.’ Beck snipped off the palm, folded the white blobs inside the leaf and dropped it into the sack. ‘Do you eat those?’ I asked, shocked. ‘What are they?’ ‘Palm grubs,’ Beck laughed, ‘You ate loads last night.’ I made the connection between the white sausages on my plate and the blobs wriggling around inside the sack. I was a bit grossed out, but they’d tasted really good. As we walked, Beck scoffed green caterpillars and a cracked open giant beetles before sucking out the insides. A few yards further on, Beck grabbed a beetle the size of a kids fist off a tree trunk. He held it upside

  down with the legs flipping about. ‘Try,’ Beck said, shoving it in my face. ‘These are the best ones.’ I don’t know why I agreed. Curiosity I guess. Beck handed it across to me. ‘Pull the legs off first.’ I plucked out the first hairy leg and the others started flickering like mad. It freaked me out and I dropped it. Beck managed to scoop it up before it ran away. He pulled off the five remaining legs, cracked away the hard black shell and snapped off the head. ‘There,’ Beck said, handing it across to me. It looked like a waxy marshmallow. I stuffed the whole thing in my mouth. The insides were still warm,

  and the blood trickled out when I bit into it. I chewed quickly and swallowed, resisting the urge to gag. ‘Good eh?’ Beck said. The white goo was stuck all round my teeth. ‘I suppose you’d get used to it,’ I said. We walked for over an hour, moving slow and quiet; keeping our throats moist with fruit. Beck

  searched the trees for monkeys. He had a small bow and arrow specially for killing them. ‘We just hit monkey central,’ Beck said, pointing up in the trees. There were about twenty monkeys messing in the branches around us. Beck strung out his bow. The first arrow silently hit it’s mark. The monkey crashed through the leaves and thumped the ground. The second monkey managed a dying screech, which made all the others scatter. Beck was annoyed that he’d only got two before the other monkeys noticed. He told me a good hunter can pick 3 or 4 monkeys from the edge of a pack before the others realise what’s going on. Beck recovered the bodies and cut their throats to drain off the blood.

  We headed back to camp. The sack was full of grubs and fruit. Beck had the dripping monkeys tied on a pole over his shoulder. ‘Sami told me you’re useless,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got all this stuff.’ Beck looked a bit offended, ‘Sami doesn’t like me much. I’m not a soldier like she is.’ ‘But you’re providing all this food. Isn’t that as important?’ ‘We don’t need to hunt,’ Beck said. ‘We steal all the food we need on raids and ambushes. I just pick

  up luxury stuff like grubs and monkeys. Everyone would be happier if I was a fighter.’ I laughed, ‘But you’re only 12.’ ‘That’s old enough. They took me on my first raid a year ago. I was supposed to be covering Sami and her brother while they unloaded an army truck. A soldier came up behind them. I hesitated and Sami’s brother got shot in the back.’ ‘How old was Sami’s brother?’ ‘Edo was thirteen. He was my best friend. Captain went crazy. He whipped me until I passed out and

  said I wasn’t to fight again.’ ‘That’s so bad… Does Captain whip people all the time?’ ‘Only if they really deserve it,’ Beck said. ‘It was my fault Edo died. I think I got less than what I

  deserved. Captain’s OK about it now, but Sami still hates me.’ ‘That’s Captain’s fault really though,’ I said ‘Twelve is too young to fight in a war.’ ‘This is a rebel army,’ Beck said. ‘If you’re old enough to carry a gun, you fight.’

  7. DEATH

  The second night a massive thunderstorm broke just after dark. Don tied me up again. He’d found some nylon cord and pulled it hard so it tore into me. Amo had made me a pillow by sewing an old scrap of cloth and stuffing it with rice. Don grabbed it off me, just for the sake of being mean; so I ended up on the bare earth, listening to the rain and watching blue lightening flashes through the cracks in the walls.

  . . .

  Everyone washed in the pool. Waded in with mud on their boots. The little kids peed in it and so did half the local wildlife. Then they drank the water. Over a lifetime you build up resistance to the parasites and bacteria in untreated water, but I’d only ever drank out of a tap; so when the polluted water hit my stomach, my body wasn’t trained to fight the nasties.

  Halfway through the night I started feeling cramps, like my guts were squashed down to a tiny ball. I was afraid to wake Don up, but I’d never needed to crap so badly my whole life. There was no way I could hold myself until morning. ‘Don.’

  He never budged. The second time I shouted. ‘Don.’

  I ended up having to wriggle over the floor and nudge into him. Don’s eyes rolled open; angry white balls. ‘I need to go to the toilet.’ Don shoved me away, ‘If you wake me again, I’ll gag your mouth.’ ‘You’ve got to untie me. I can’t hold it.’ ‘Maybe this will persuade you,’ Don said, bunching his fist in my face. I let out a massive fart. It had the worst smell ever. Don jumped off his sleeping mat. ‘Dirty, dirty animal,’ He screamed. ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘It’s gonna be all over the floor in a minute.’ He rummaged in the dark for his knife and cut the bindings. I ran out into the trees, pulled down my shorts and let out a blast of diarrhoea that practically launched me off the ground. It was the most unbelievable relief. I stumbled back to the hut, but Don shoved me out. ‘Stay out there,’ he shouted. ‘You’re not coming in here with that foul arse.’ It was an awful night. The rain gushed over the baked earth. I sheltered under the trees as best as I could. Ever
y few minutes the cramps returned and I had to crap again. Morning took forever to come. When it finally started getting light, I stumbled to Amo’s hut. As soon as Amo saw me, she wrapped me up in her arms. I rested my face on her sweaty neck and broke into tears.

  . . .

  I spent two days curled up on the ground, moving only when I crawled into the trees to shit or puke. I had fits of the shivers, even though it was 40C. Amo purified water for me by boiling it over a wood fire, then she added sugar and salt to make rehydration solution. The cramps left my stomach muscles in agony. My legs quivered when I tried to walk. I could only manage a few steps at a time.

  Whenever I woke up, it seemed to be from some nightmare about Adam. Watching him choke on a walnut. Trapped in a burning barn. Getting hit by a red London bus. The worst dreams were the ones where I couldn’t find him but his voice called out for me. Dad kept telling me to go back and look properly.

  Little Becky was sweet. She’d sit beside me, patting my arm and saying she wanted me to take her swimming when I got better. Amo gave me bits of whatever she cooked. I usually managed a few bites and puked them up soon afterwards. I got really depressed. How can your life get any worse than laying on bare earth, covered in flies and your own dry puke?

  The third morning I felt slightly better. I drank two cups of water and kept down a couple of fried banana slices. I wasn’t so tired and the sun felt hot again. Amo helped me down to the pool. I sat in the shallow run off and lathered up with soap flakes. Amo perched on a rock bathing her feet. She asked me loads of questions about London, and told me a bit of her life story.

  She’d worked in a clinic run by a French charity and was studying for nursing qualifications. Seven years earlier, when the civil war started, the clinic treated injured soldiers from both sides. The government didn’t like them helping the rebels, so their soldiers smashed up the hospital, killed the rebel patients and sent the nurses and doctors back to France. Beck’s Dad and older brother went to fight for the rebels. Amo reckoned they were dead, but there was no way to be sure. A couple of small rocks tumbled down the embankment. Sami yelled out: ‘Amo, we need you.’ Sami had bloody hands and face. Her camouflage glistened with red stains. ‘Who is it?’ Amo asked.

  ‘Ben.’ ‘I’ll come back for you,’ Amo said, looking at me. The women dashed over the rocks towards camp. I laid back and let the water dribble through my hair and rush over my shoulders. After fifteen minutes, my curiosity got the better of me. I still felt shaky, but I reckoned I’d get back to camp if I took it slow.

  Amo had washed my only set of clothes and laid them on the rocks. The sun had already baked them dry. The cloth was warm to touch. I had to stop a couple of times, leaning against a tree while I caught my breath.

  Camp was dead quiet. Everyone crouched in a semi-circle around the flap at the front of Amo’s hut. Beck realised I was a bit unsteady and ran over to help me walk the last few meters. ‘How is he?’ I asked. ‘He’ll die soon,’ Beck said. ‘The bullets almost cut him in two.’ I didn’t want to see it, but sometimes you can’t not look at something. Ben’s eyes were like pools of milk, staring at nothing. Amo had stuffed him with morphine to kill the pain. The empty syringes laid around him on the earth. You could hardly see his wounds for the mass of flies feasting on the blood.

  The only time I’d heard Ben speak was the first day, when he offered to take Sami’s pistol and kill me, but he stopped the pickup, so there must have been part of him that cared. The thing that hit me hard, was that Ben was only a bit older than me. If he was born in England, he’d have been learning to drive and doing his A-levels.

  I crawled into Amo’s hut and drank some of the purified water. Captain told Don, Amin and a couple of others to get shovels and start digging Ben’s grave. He wasn’t even dead yet, but in the tropics it doesn’t take long for a body to start rotting.

  . . .

  ‘This bloody watch!’ Sami said. ‘It wakes me up before the sun comes up. Diddle de dee, diddle de dee.’

  Her camouflage was drying on a stick standing in the ground outside her hut. All she had on was a t shirt and a set of men’s boxers. ‘That’s what it does,’ I said. ‘I’ll have it back if you don’t want it.’ ‘You think I’m stupid, traitor?’ Sami asked. ‘Do you see me walking around with a clay pot on my

  head? I’m not a bloody peasant. Just tell me what button I press to switch off the alarm.’ She unbuckled the watch and put it in my hand. While I fiddled with the buttons, she scratched her leg

  with her foot. ‘Top left button,’ I said, handing back my watch. ‘Hold it for five seconds to turn the alarm on or off.’ ‘It’s a good watch,’ Sami said. ‘I can press the light and see the time in the night.’ ‘I know it’s a good watch,’ I said bitterly. ‘That’s why I bought it.’ Sami smiled, ‘So how are you feeling anyway?’ ‘I started eating this morning. So far I’ve kept everything down.’ ‘What about your head?’ ‘It’s mostly better,’ I said. ‘It’s still a bit sore and it breaks open sometimes.’ She was still scratching her legs and her tits were jigging up and down in time with the scratching. I was getting quite turned on watching them. It never occurred that Sami might have something going on underneath the baggy camouflage. ‘It’s good you’re better,’ Sami said. ‘You’ll be ready to fight soon.’ ‘I don’t want to fight,’ I said. ‘I want to go home.’ Sami laughed, ‘You’re living in our camp and you’re eating our food. You’re going to fight if you like it

  or not.’ ‘Beck doesn’t fight.’ Sami raised her hand between us. ‘Don’t mention his name around me. My brother died because he’s got no guts.’ ‘What if I refuse to fight? Will you kill me?’ ‘In two seconds flat,’ Sami shrugged, ‘I’ll kill you myself. We all fight.’ ‘What about you and Ben, were you close?’ ‘We weren’t humping, if that’s what you mean.’ I laughed, ‘No, I mean… Were you friends?’ ‘He joined us about a year ago. He was a good guy to be alongside. I liked him a lot.’ ‘So, what happened out there?’ ‘Mercenaries,’ Sami said.

  ‘What?’ ‘The government soldiers are crap. They’re conscripts who don’t want to be in a war. They’re usually drunk. They never get paid their wages and half the time they have to steal food because they don’t get enough to eat. So, the government started sending in some real soldiers to catch us rebels: mercenaries.’ ‘So who are the mercenaries exactly?’ ‘Foreigners,’ Sami said. ‘Serbians, Israelis, Yanks. Trained to fight in their own countries armies and tough as hell. They don’t care what they fight for or who they kill, as long as they get a nice fat wad of dollars for their trouble.’ ‘So what are you fighting for?’ I asked. ‘The rebels control the east of the country, the government controls the west and in-between there’s

  this.’ Sami spread her arms out wide. ‘Jungle,’ I said. Sami nodded, ‘Exactly. Half a million square kilometres of trees to fight over. Whoever controls the

  river and the roads through the jungle can send an army into the other part of the country.’ ‘So who’s winning?’ ‘Nobody really. The war reached a stalemate after a few months. Ever since, we’ve been fighting each other in the jungle and not really got anywhere.’ ‘Sounds pointless.’

  ‘It is,’ Sami said. ‘Except the government has ten times as many men as us, and they’ve got artillery, helicopters and tanks. If they can get an army through the jungle, they won’t have any problem retaking the east of the country.’ ‘So, what actually happened to Ben?’ ‘We ambushed a truck,’ Sami said. ‘Me Ben and Desi. You know Desi?’ I nodded. I’d never spoken to Desi, but I’d seen him around. He was 16 year old beanpole, way taller

  than anyone else at camp. ‘Well normally, you put a log or something in the road to stop a truck getting through. There’s two or three soldiers up front. They get out to move the log, we kill the soldiers and either steal the truck or blow it up so it blocks the road. But this time it was a trap. We shot up the driver, but there were about six mercenaries hiding in the back. They all jumped out and started blasting at us. I’
ve never seen so many bullets. We ran into the trees, shot a couple of the mercenaries, then walked about ten kilometres and made camp for the night.

  ‘It seemed safe, but two of the bastards tracked us the whole way. They tried to take us alive. They wanted information before they killed us. It was pure good luck that Ben’s gun jammed. He’d just fixed it and had it in his hand when we spotted them. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be dead or getting tortured right now. Ben killed one of the mercenaries, but the other one shot him. It gave me and Desi enough time to grab our guns. I doubled back behind the mercenary, came out of the bushes and shot him from behind.’ ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ I said. ‘I’d be so scared.’ ‘I thought the same once. But if the other guy is pointing a gun at you, your survival instinct kicks in.

  Oh, I’ve got something you can have if you want.’ Sami went in her hut and came out with a watch. ‘It came off that mercenary I killed,’ Sami said. The watch was an Omega chronometer. It must have cost a couple of grand, but Sami had no idea. ‘Don’t you want this one?’ I asked. ‘I’m keeping yours,’ Sami said. ‘The blue light is cool.’

  8. MOTIVATION

  The grave was shallow. Amin rolled Ben’s body into the hole with his boot and stepped back quickly to avoid the cloud of dust and insects. Captain told everyone how Ben a good fighter and would be missed, but nobody seemed that upset. I’d never seen a body before, but it wasn’t a huge deal to the others. Death is like anything else, you get numb if you see enough of it.

  Amo had found a couple of photos and a bible in Ben’s hut. She chucked them in the hole, then everyone took a turn throwing a shovel load of earth onto the body. Captain was the last one. When he finished, he handed the shovel to me. I don’t know if he meant it as a gesture, but it felt like a signal of acceptance: I was one of them now.