Kill All Enemies

  Philip’s car was there. I touched the bonnet and it was warm. I thought, He’s been out. I thought, He’s in there now, waiting for me.

  I opened the gate and walked up the garden to the front door. As I walked, I shrank. I started off nine feet tall at the gate but by the time I was fitting the key in the door I’d shrunk all the way down to the height of about your average piece of shit.

  Billie

  Cookie and me, we’re two of a kind. All he thinks about is having a laugh and where his next drink’s coming from. I can get that. He’s the kind of bloke Hannah would say isn’t good enough for me, but at least he doesn’t try and tell me how I ought to be living my life. And he’s willing to feed me and put me up. He gave me a key so I could let myself in and out, and a twenty to get some stuff in while he was out at work. Keep me out of sight while the police are looking for me. Who else is going to do that for me? Barbara and Hannah?

  I don’t think so. What are friends for? If you can’t do that for me, don’t bother.

  Cookie was working afternoons and evenings, so he slept late, but we had a couple of hours the next morning after I turned up. It was good. I felt OK for the first time in ages. I was tempted to go back and pick up some spare clothes and get my phone from Barbara’s. If I had the phone, maybe I’d have rung Hannah. But I didn’t dare. The local cops all know my face. I’d be picked up in a minute.

  I put my things in the washer. Cookie had Sky, so I watched a few old episodes of Gavin & Stacey and Friends, then I got bored so I started cleaning up the flat. Make myself useful. I can be proper domestic if I get the chance. I didn’t have a change of clothes, though, and I looked a right idiot running around dressed in a pair of Cookie’s boxers and a T-shirt. Still, by the time he came back about eight, I had it nice. He was pleased.

  ‘Look at me, pissing in a clean pan. Like a king, I am. This is the life,’ he was going.

  And I was going, ‘Get off, you moron,’ but I was pleased too. I wasn’t so pleased when his mate Jez turned up, with me in Cookie’s underpants. I had to borrow a pair of trackie bottoms to cover up. I felt like an idiot. They thought it was hilarious, especially Jez. Then he kept trying it on, like he always does – brushing past and offering to give me one and trying to touch me up. He does it like it’s a joke, right under Cookie’s nose. Cookie just ignores him, but he doesn’t like it. I can tell, the way he looks. He never dares say anything, though. He’s always going on about how him and Jez are these big mates, but that’s not being much of a mate. I reckon he’s scared of him. He’s a big bloke, Jez, and he gets funny when he doesn’t get things his own way. Like I said, I don’t do bullies. I said to Cookie ages ago, just pick a fight with him. Even if you lose, he won’t come round any more. Get it over with. That’s what I’d do. But it’s not my house and it’s not my mate, so I just have to put up with it.

  That kind of put a spoiler on the night. They stayed up for hours drinking. Cookie’s about the most thoughtless bloke in the world – but he makes me laugh. He doesn’t care about anything and I can’t stay cross with him for long. He came to bed and we made up. He gave me some more money in the morning to go and buy some pants and stuff the next day, and some trackies that fitted, so at least I had a change of clothes.

  I shouldn’t have bothered cleaning the flat, though. It gave him ideas. He came home a few days later wanting his tea.

  ‘What do you want tea for?’ I asked him. ‘You’ve been working in a restaurant all day.’

  ‘I’m sick of burgers,’ he said. ‘I want some proper tea.’

  ‘Get lost. I’ll boil you an egg, then.’

  ‘No, that’s breakfast.’

  ‘Like we’re married? You must be joking. What do you want?’

  ‘I dunno. Something that’s not burgers and chips. Go on, Billie.’

  ‘I can’t cook.’

  ‘You’re a girl.’

  ‘You noticed.’

  ‘You do domestic science at school, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t go to school. I hate domestic science.’

  ‘Go on. It’s fair. You’re staying here.’

  ‘I’m not your mum.’

  ‘I know. Go on.’

  He drove me mad. I went out and bought him some ready meals in the end. He moaned about how much it cost, but he liked it. It was stupid, but it was kind of fun once I got over the idea. I looked forward to him coming home from work. It was nice to make him welcome. I made a deal with him, that I’d get some food in for him if he had a shower when he got back. He stank of burgers. The sofa stank of burgers where he’d been sitting on it, the bed stank of burgers, everywhere stank of burgers. I stank of burgers. I’d just wash my stuff and he’d come back and be all over me and I’d smell as bad as he did.

  We got a nice little routine going after a while. He’d come home with something to drink, we’d open a can while I heated up his dinner. Then we’d eat, then I’d make him have a shower before he got anywhere near me. Then we’d watch a bit of telly.

  ‘This is great. Clean house, dinner in the oven, sex on the table,’ he said. ‘This must be what people have girlfriends for.’ He’s a laugh. I didn’t mind. One day a really nice fella’ll come along, I suppose, but meanwhile, I dunno. I don’t mind. Cookie’s not the brightest candle on the cake, but at least you know what you’re getting. He’s on my side. He was putting me up and paying my way. I knew it wasn’t going to last forever but for now, for a couple of weeks or something … it was OK.

  Chris

  ‘We made a deal with you, Chris,’ said my mother. ‘We dropped the charges against that girl on condition that you went to school.’

  ‘That wasn’t a deal, that was blackmail,’ I pointed out.

  ‘You lied to us,’ she seethed.

  ‘I’m sorry? You, a blackmailer, are trying to take the moral high ground here? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Chris …’

  ‘Do you realize that Billie’s been missing for over a week now? That’s how worried she is, and you were prepared to put her whole future at risk just because you want me to fall in with your plans for my future. What are you people on?’

  ‘Right, that’s it. I’m going to hit him now,’ said my dad. You see how these types turn to violence when they can’t get what they want through negotiation.

  My mother restrained him, but rather half-heartedly, I thought. Dad launched off on this huge list of prohibitions and no-nos and various other denials of my basic human rights. Stopping my money for the rest of the year, for instance (!!!???!). Or until I caught up on my homework. Mum had no problem with that. She couldn’t agree more with that. But how about removing all my best clothes from the cupboard … ?

  ‘Why?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘So he’s encouraged not to go out any more,’ said my dad.

  ‘I can go out without trousers if necessary,’ I told them.

  Dad looked at me and frowned. ‘Would he?’ he asked Mum.

  ‘He might,’ she replied.

  She overruled him on that one. But then this: removing my drums and giving them to charity in order to make sure there were no more unauthorized guests coming round to play them.

  She concurred with that without so much as a blink.

  ‘You’re going to take my property away from me?’ I asked them mildly. ‘That’s what’s usually known … now what’s the word, it’s on the tip of my tongue … ah yes! Theft, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not theft: you’re not sixteen – we’re your parents,’ snipped my mother.

  ‘Yeah, you’re not old enough to own anything, really,’ said my father.

  I didn’t even bother replying. I simply made up my mind, very quietly and without informing them, that none of the above was going to happen.

  So. Monday morning. I went about my business. School. Work. Wikes. After spending days away from it, it was even worse. The Chris Trent bored-omete
r was tested to its limits.

  I suffered it all without complaint.

  ‘What are you up to?’ said my mum at the end of the first day.

  ‘Nothing. I’ve decided to give up,’ I said.

  ‘It won’t work,’ said my dad.

  Part one of the plan was under way – lulling them into a sense of security. False, of course. Tuesday, more of the same. By Wednesday, they were both sufficiently lulled to go out. They thought they were safe because school was over. They were wrong.

  Mum was out with a friend, Dad was off doing a training course to try and improve his interview skills. Alex’s brother had a van. Perfect.

  I had to explain the whole thing very carefully to Alex. For some reason, he seemed to think he had some sort of a responsibility to tell his brother what was actually going on.

  ‘John doesn’t want to know what’s going on,’ I pointed out. ‘If he knows what’s going on, he might have to say no and then he’d have to do without the money which he very sorely needs. Correct?’

  ‘But it’s theft!’

  I might have been a little bitter at that point. You know how it is. You make friends in infant school when you don’t know what’s what, then by the time you grow up enough to make sense of things you realize you’ve befriended a pig’s pizzle in a monkey suit, and it’s too late to do anything about it.

  ‘We’ve already gone through this,’ I breathed to Alex. ‘You can’t steal your own things. Ergo, it’s not theft.’

  ‘But you’re still a minor. Everything you own belongs to your mum and dad. Technically, you don’t own anything. Ergo, it is theft.’

  The politics of cowardice. I should have learned by now. Me and Alex – it’s just history repeating itself, really. In the end, we made a deal. I needed access to his brother John and for Alex to keep quiet about the lack of parental cooperation in the matter. He needed me not to tell his mum about how he used to borrow her underwear for embarrassing purposes.

  ‘You wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Anyway, I was only looking.’

  ‘She doesn’t know that.’

  Yes, I know he was only eleven at the time, but, believe me, the embarrassment value had only grown over the years.

  It all went smoothly – right up to the end when Mum came back early. Her timing was immaculate. We had the kit loaded on to the van and John had just started the engine when she turned up in her Mini. Two more minutes and we would have got clean away, but instead I had to sit there and watch her drive up and pull over next to us.

  I wound down my window.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked curiously.

  I could see John looking anxiously over at me. The situation could go critical at any moment. I decided to go for broke. I leaned down and talked quietly to her.

  ‘I wouldn’t tell Dad if I was you. You know how stressed he gets. If he thinks it’s me, he’ll go round the twist. He has enough on his plate already.’

  ‘Chris, what are you talking about?’

  I left the awful scenario to her imagination and turned to John. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.

  ‘That’s your mum, isn’t it?’ said John. ‘Why’s she looking at you like that?’

  ‘Because she’s my mum,’ I answered, more or less truthfully.

  John didn’t look happy, but he waved to her, put the van into gear and we drove off. She just sat there and watched. Her expression was unreadable. I think I saw her cast a suspicious glance at the garage as we headed off down the road, but by that time it was too late. Even so, I turned off my mobile. Just in case.

  Later on, when Dad came home and discovered that some bastard had come in and nicked my drums, he was utterly and totally enraged out of all proportion. I pointed out to him that the unknown thief had only done what he had been planning to do himself, so what was his problem? And – can you believe this? – he actually found it in his black heart to blame me. I was furious. I mean, he didn’t know that, did he? It was sheer bias. He got so angry about it he punched the wall, really hard, and made a mess of his hand. Mum just looked at me, but she never said a word about it to him as far as I know.

  But that was for later. As I sat in the van and sped off into town, I was feeling on top of the world. I had achieved the impossible. I had stolen my own possessions.

  Rob

  We were in the hall in the Youth Centre rehearsing. I was on tambourine and it was making me so angry. There I was, in the middle of a fantastic heavy-metal band. I could have been the drummer, but instead – I was on heavy-metal tambourine.

  And it was all that prick Philip’s fault.

  It was like pure, unadulterated hatred and I was thinking, It’s wrong, feeling like this. It means he’s won. Philip has turned me into a hateful little toad just like him. Can you imagine that? Being turned into the thing you hate the most on this earth. That’s what monsters do to you. They don’t eat you – they turn you into one of them.

  Then this bloke turned up. I’d never seen him before. We all just stared at him, like, you know, who did he think he was, walking into our rehearsal without even knocking.

  ‘Rob Crier?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ I said. I thought it was trouble.

  He nodded behind him. ‘Delivery for you.’

  ‘It can’t be me.’

  ‘It’s for you all right. Out here.’ The guy turned and went out, and we all trooped after him.

  Get this.

  There’s a van backed up close to the door.

  There’s Chris standing next to the van.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  The other bloke flung open the van doors and Chris goes, ‘Da da!’

  It was the drums.

  ‘They’re yours,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re yours!’

  ‘What?’ I just stood there and stared. It wasn’t sinking in.

  ‘You talked your dad round?’

  ‘No. I’m giving them to you. Happy birthday.’

  ‘It’s not my birthday.’

  ‘Roly, I’m giving you the drums. Do you want them or not?’

  I stood there like a complete idiot. Everyone was looking at me waiting to see what I was going to say.

  ‘Why would you …’ I began, but I had to stop.

  ‘I don’t need them,’ said Chris. ‘You might as well have them.’

  Then Frankie suddenly yelled out, ‘We have drums! We’ve got a drummer! We’re a fucking band!’ And everyone was running about punching the air and hugging each other and shouting like maniacs.

  I was so gobsmacked I couldn’t move. I was still just stood there … Frankie went up to Chris and gave him a big hug. He said, ‘Total, total respect, for what you’ve done for Rob and us as well. Total. Total. Respect.’

  ‘No prob,’ said Chris.

  Then all the other lads crowded around him making a fuss, and I still hadn’t said a word. So I walked up and I pushed them out of the way, and I put my arms round him and I hugged him and I hugged him until my voice came back, and then I pulled back and I pointed at the tears that were on my face, and I said, ‘This is the only way I can show you how you’ve made me feel.’ Which was pretty wet, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. I couldn’t talk for a bit again after that, but when my voice came back, I took the biggest breath I ever took in my life and went – ‘YA-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!’

  Chris

  Once in a while, just once in a while, you can make someone’s dreams come true. It isn’t even always that hard.

  Suddenly, because of me, Kill All Enemies was a proper band, so of course they wanted to celebrate it by playing, a good old thrash, with a full drum kit. There was this big scramble to set it all up. Rob spent some quality time kissing them – at least it wasn’t me this time. Then he sat down and did a
quick roll. Then Frankie, the big bloke, gave out this terrible guttural croak, and off they went.

  Bum notes, jangled chords, mis-struck strings – it had them all. But the noise. I’d forgotten just how much noise they made. Every time I heard them, it took my breath away. They were howling and gnashing their teeth and beating up their kit like it had just spat on their girlfriends.

  They got to the end of the first track. They stopped. Frankie turned round to look at me, his eyes as wide as saucers.

  ‘Awesome,’ he said.

  ‘Amazing,’ said another one.

  ‘We are FANTASTIC!’ yelled Frankie. And Rob started crying again – he does a lot of that – and they all started dancing around and high-fiving, like they’d just won the lottery.

  Off they went into more songs. It was great. They did three and that was it. They didn’t have any more songs. Just the three. Then we had biscuits and things. The lads kept stopping and gazing wetly into the distance, and then turning round and saying …

  ‘Respect, man.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Total respect.’

  ‘What did your dad say?’ someone asked.

  ‘He said he was glad to get rid of them,’ I told them. No point in diluting my sainthood by pointing out to them it was also an act of petty vengeance, was there? I was just thinking of leaving them to it, when suddenly Frankie had this big announcement.

  ‘Listen, Chris, mate,’ he said. ‘We’ve got something to say.’ All the band were standing around looking at me and smiling shyly. It was obviously the big thank-you. I prepared myself for more manly hugs and tears.

  ‘We’ve been talking about it,’ said Frankie. ‘All of us, we’re agreed. What you’ve done, man, it’s amazing. Truly awesome. You are the man. You’re one of us. And the thing is, I can see you know how to get things done. I can see you like the sound. So the thing is – we want you to be a part of it.’

  I was about to object, but he waved me quiet.