Christ, I felt so guilty. Now it seemed so shitty and mean. I should have let them have the stupid food.
‘How many of you are there?’ Stephen asked.
‘Almost three hundred.’
‘Three hundred?’ he echoed, shocked. ‘And you’ve no food?’
‘We’ve found turnips at a farm. There’s wheat in a field. It’s not ripe but if you chew enough grains it helps ease hunger pains; oh, and then there’s the odd wild bird egg or rabbit.’
‘But there’s a lot of us dying every day now,’ said the kid bluntly. ‘They get blood in their shit…sorry, blood in their faeces. Then they die.’
‘But there must have been tons and tons of food in homes and supermarkets.’
‘There was,’ the girl said, dabbing at the cut where I’d punched her. ‘But armed gangs go round and take food from people who don’t have guns. They take all of it and we’re left to starve.’
‘This is complete madness.’ Stephen rubbed his forehead. ‘That means civilization really has come apart at the seams. There’s millions of people out there. But there’s no food being produced, no food imported.’
‘Then we’re done for,’ Dean said heavily.
‘No, we’re not,’ Stephen said. ‘We’ll make it.’
‘But what are we going to eat? Heather? Stones? Soil?’
A spark of determination came into Stephen’s eye. ‘We are going to survive this. And we’ll come out of it on two feet, like civilized human beings. Not animals.’
‘What are we going to do with these three?’ Dean asked.
‘We’re going to give them the food they took. Do you need anything else?’
‘Soap would be nice,’ the girl said.
‘And could you spare any medical supplies?’ the man asked. ‘Nothing much, maybe a bottle of aspirin and antiseptic cream if you can spare any. Some of our children are developing skin sores.’
Stephen took me to one side, speaking so the three outsiders couldn’t hear. ‘Can you go to the camp? Find a spare backpack. Fill it with food, a couple of aspirin packs, bottle of Calpol, antiseptic cream. Oh, and a couple of ventilators—make it one of Ventalin and one of Pulmicort; some of their children must have asthma. Ask Kate Robinson, she knows where it all is.’
‘You’re sure about this? I mean, you know we can’t really spare it?’
‘We can, kiddo.’ Stephen was back on charismatic form, eyes twinkling, hands rubbing together. ‘Then we’ll get everyone packing.’
‘Packing? We’re moving on?’
‘Afraid so, Kid K. Much as I like the place, as soon as these people return to their own camp they’ll sing their praises about our generosity and before you know it we’ll have three hundred hungry folk tramping over the hill towards us.’
‘But where will we go?’
‘Trust me, kiddo. I’ve got plans—great plans,’
The rest of us walked back to the camp. We left Dean, Stephen and Victoria helping to pack the food back into the sacks for our three guests—I guess you could describe them as that now.
Caroline was waiting for me at the lip of the gully. Below I saw all the tents pitched in neat rows; the stream, a strand of sparkling silver, ran alongside them.
It was as we headed down the steep path that I heard the gunshots.
Crack-crack.
Pause.
Crack-crack.
Pause.
Crack-crack.
One second later I was running back across the heather. I knew the gunshots had come from the direction of where Stephen sat with the others. There was a low mound between me and them. I could see nothing. I ran faster. And I dreaded what I would find.
Chapter 34
Heart thumping wildly, I ran, drawing back the bolt of the rifle as I did so. My head whirled with possibilities. Maybe one of the armed gangs we’d heard so much about had stumbled across Stephen as he waited there with the others for me to return with the food and medicines.
I’d get there and find Stephen and the rest dead. What would I do then—what the hell would I do?
Then came more shots. Three loud cracking reports. Those had been fired from a rifle, I decided. Then three muffled booms. That would be a shotgun. Stephen had a pump-action shotgun. They might be fighting for their lives back there.
If I could reach the top of the hill I’d have the advantage. I’d be able to lie flat out on the ground and snipe at the armed gang.
If only I could reach the brow of the mound. Come on, legs, come on, legs! I panted and swore under my breath, my legs felt like lumps of dead iron. Faster! Run faster!
I saw a figure walking towards me over the brow of the hill. I wiped the sweat from my eyes, then put the rifle butt to my shoulder, aimed and—
Thank Christ for that.
Stephen walked slowly towards me, the shotgun held in one hand trailing down.
‘Stephen…you all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘I heard shooting; did—’
‘Rick.’ He took a deep breath. He was shaking, sweat beaded from his face, and I noticed a strange look in his eye. ‘Rick. Will you go to the camp and bring back a couple of shovels?’
The need for the shovels sank in quickly. ‘Christ. Who’s…?’
‘We’re all fine.’ He looked across the moor; others from our camp were streaming across the heather towards us. ‘It was the three we’d caught stealing. The blond haired guy snatched the automatic from Dean’s belt. He’d have used it.’
The guy’s dead?’
‘All three are.’
‘But how did they—’
‘They tried to grab my shotgun. They were wild. They’d have killed us.’
‘But even the kid?’
‘Listen, Rick. Please listen, OK? All three jumped us. We had to fight for our lives. They’re dead. Now I’m going to bury them. No, Rick…please, brother. Please don’t ask me any more questions. I don’t feel up to it, really I don’t.’
I nodded.
He said he was grateful, and put his hand on my shoulder before returning to the other side of the hill where the bodies must have lain. It’s the expression on his face that I can’t shift from my head. That look of horror all twisted up with self-disgust. It was the first time he’d killed. And he was so deeply ashamed that right at that moment I believe he would have given anything not to have been Stephen Kennedy.
It was the evening of the same day the three refugees died. The sun still shone. The guys and gals of Stephen’s Ark high up there on the moor were ligged out around the tents. And I was sitting on the bank of the stream, flicking little pebbles from the palm of my hand into the sparkling water. And I felt like shit.
A military transporter droned high overhead. All the aircraft flew from west to east now.
Flocks of birds were flying, too. It wasn’t the season for migration. But there they were. Great flying Vs of geese and ducks. They flew east, too. Animals and humans were escaping from Armageddon.
And, Christ, I felt like shit.
Half of Planet Earth was on fire. Millions of people were refugees. Hundreds of thousands of those were starving. And I remembered the squalid little drama way over there across the hill. Yeah, big Rick Kennedy, nineteen years and six months of age, spends the morning fucking attractive thirty-seven-year-old mother of one, namely the oh-so-shapely Caroline Lucas. Then I stroll back to tent city here in its butt-like cleft between the sides of the gulley. My cock still hot and sticky with sweet Caroline’s body fluids. Then, hey presto, mother dear, I beat up an undernourished twenty-year-old girl who’s probably been raped, battered, ripped off, forced to sell her cunt for a breadcrust more times in the last ten days than I’ve had pizza takeaways.
Yes, Christ, watch my lips: No frigging doubt about it. I felt like a great steaming fistful of that stuff that pops fresh from your backside every morning.
If, when I’d seen those three starving wretches making a run for it, I’d have just given a philosophical shru
g and let them go with those few cans of food, they’d still have been alive. I knew that. I knew that as clearly as if the Almighty Himself had aerosoled across the sky in day-glo green paint: ‘Hey, Rick shit-for-brains Kennedy. Yep, I’m talking to you down there. You know, you good as killed those three. Come on, Rick, show me you feel guilty; just give me a sign; anything, just so I know you feel that teeny-weeny bit of guilt.’
‘Fancy a walk, kiddo?’
I looked up at my brother standing there with the shotgun hanging by its strap from his shoulder; in one hand he held a pair of binoculars. The fingers that held it were clean. The fingernails were not. I’d seen him scrubbing his hands with washing-up liquid and disinfectant in the stream. He’d not been able to shift all the blood. Imagine if you take a felt-tip pen, its colour halfway between red and brown. Then draw a line where your fingernails meet skin. Now look at your fingernails. You have a reddish-brown line round each nail that looks like, if your fingers are pointing upward, four letter U shapes; like so: UUUU. The blood of three innocent people whose only crime it was to starve.
I felt sick.
‘A walk,’ Stephen was prompting. ‘It’s important, Rick. There’s something you have to see.’
Chapter 35
Before we set off from the camp Stephen said, ‘Best bring your rifle.’ He shrugged. ‘You never know what we’ll find out there.’
We climbed up the steep slope of the gorge and out onto the moor. The sky was blue, birds were singing. Back down there in the camp with the tents laid out in neat lines those sixty people were slipping back into their old routines of making meals, talking, listening to the radio; I saw Caroline sitting side by side with Kate Robinson and I wondered what they were talking about. Do women boast about sexual conquests? If they did, what would Caroline have to tell?
Sitting alone on a rock, well away from the camp, was Victoria. Her lush hair, the same shade as the dried blood around Stephen’s fingernails, hung in heavy waves across her shoulders. She sat staring into the palm of her hand like she’d never seen skin before. Then she began curling her fingers experimentally. Studying the way they moved. You’ve seen someone climb into the driver’s seat of an unfamiliar car? This was like that—I mean exactly like that. As if she’d been dropped into that body yesterday and the whole mechanics and skin upholstery of the thing were still unfamiliar.
It was the shock. A few days ago she’d been plucked from a burning graveyard. Today, she’d witnessed three people being blown to kingdom come.
Shock, trauma, stress—stick any description you like on it. It was beginning to bite deep.
Here, I was, tramping across the moor with my brother and, Christ Almighty, did I feel like a piece of living shit.
And there was my brother. Every so often he’d shoot me a kind, encouraging smile. But you could see the tension pulling the muscles in his face so tight an eyebrow twitched. Naturally, like all of us, he’d never killed a human being before. I guess he felt as if he’d undergone some transformation today. The experience had changed him forever.
‘It’ll take about an hour,’ he said as we walked downhill. ‘There’s plenty of daylight left so we’ll make it back before dark.’
As we walked across the springy clumps of heather I couldn’t help but think Stephen wanted to tell me something. No, it was more than that. He looked as if he wanted to make a confession.
After a while, I had the disconcerting sensation that any moment he’d turn to me and say, ‘Rick. It’s time for me to unmask.’ Then he’d stand there in front of me, reach up, grip the skin on his chin and rip it upwards, up over his eyes and back over his skull.
And there would be a grey face. With eyes that would be almost oriental in shape. Only they would be red. As if the eyes themselves had been removed and the sockets filled to the brim with blood. Red, wet, shining blood eyes.
I rubbed my face to shift the image. My subconscious was telling me that my brother was hiding something ugly. Something about the killing of the three starving refugees back there. The story he’d told me, how they made a grab for the guns, didn’t only just sound not watertight. It oozed doubt from every orifice. Why would three unarmed people, who seemed totally unaggressive, suddenly make a lunge at people packing a shotgun, pistols and an automatic rifle?
‘Rick,’ Stephen said, making eye contact with me. ‘You should think about hooking up with a girl. I’m in a relationship with Ruth Sparkman. You’ll know about that.’
I smiled. ‘Everyone does. Those tents aren’t soundproof, you know?’
He looked away, then snapped his eyes keenly back at me. ‘You’ve got no one yet?’
‘No.’ A big lie. And, surely, hadn’t there been some gossip around the camp yet about Caroline and yours truly?
He’d been thinking long and hard about this. He went on, his face serious. ‘You should, you know. I’m not talking about marriage…babies. But it helps if you’ve got someone to…’ He shrugged. ‘To care about, and someone to care about you. You feel better psychologically. The sex is a help, too; it relieves tensions and makes you forget about, you know…shit like today.’
I shot him a look. At first I thought he was doing the light-hearted sex banter you’d normally hear in the locker room. But his face was deadly serious.
‘I hadn’t thought about it.’ I kept the lies coming. ‘I suppose I haven’t had time to think who—’
‘Kate Robinson. She seems a nice girl.’
Nice girl? Yeah, no doubt about it. Christ, I’d fancied her for weeks but here was my big brother matchmaking like he was my mother.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Kate’s all right.’
‘Well, take my advice, kid. Do something about her before Dean Skilton steams in.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Do it, Rick.’ He stopped suddenly and gripped me by the arm. ‘If things don’t work out with Kate there’s plenty of other girls. But listen to me…no, stand still for a minute, Rick, and listen to me. This is important. Whatever happens don’t…don’t try anything with Victoria.’
That did it. Matchmaking, then patronizing. Now warning me off other women while he no doubt built a harem. ‘OK, Stephen. You’re my big brother. I don’t know what rights big brothers have over younger brothers, only I think you lost yours ten years ago when you went to—’
‘Rick. It’s nothing to do with—Rick, listen to me. Please. It’s nothing to do with me wanting a piece of Victoria. Christ, nothing could be further from the truth.’
‘What’s wrong with Victoria?’
‘Nothing.’
‘But you know something about her?’
‘I know nothing about her.’
‘So?’
‘So, just leave her alone.’
I shook my head, bewildered. ‘Why the heavy warning about Victoria? She acts a bit…out to lunch sometimes. As if she’s just landed from Planet Mars.’
‘Maybe that’s it. The shock might have unbalanced her.’
‘You found out how she came to be in the graveyard?’
Stephen shook his head. ‘She claims she remembers nothing.’
‘I still don’t get it, Stephen. She looks great, she’s got a great figure, amazing hair; she was kindness itself this morning with those three. She gave them something to eat, she was sympathetic. Now I get the feeling you’re trying to tell me she’s—’
‘Rick. Call it instinct. All I’m asking you to do is don’t become involved with her. Talk to her if you need to but keep your distance. Come on, we’ve still a fair walk ahead of us.’
Stephen moved on, striding across the heather, the shotgun across his back. I followed. But I couldn’t get out of my head the idea that just for a moment back there he had wanted to share a secret with me. A dark, dark secret that was eating him up inside.
For the next twenty minutes we walked without speaking. It was hard enough going anyway, with a lot of hills so steep-sided you’d swear they were heather-covered pyramids. This w
as the kind of place no one ever visited unless they got their kicks hiking across bleak wilderness with no hotels, houses, no roads, no nothing. But miles of moor, the occasional outcrop of rocks and one or two hawks hovering in the sky.
It was only then that I began to wonder what was so important out here that Stephen wanted to show me. Then, without any warning, he started talking about the deaths that morning. He didn’t repeat the circumstances, but the words describing the poor bastards’ last few seconds came out of his mouth with so much pressure I don’t think he could have held them in if he’d wanted to.
‘It just happened so quickly. Bang, bang. We had to fire at them. We had to. It’s not like the movies. One shot and down they go holding their chest and it’s all over. Hell, it’s dirtier than that. That’s what I can’t get out of my mind. The dirt. You put your finger round the trigger and you’re pulling, pulling, pulling, blasting away until the poor shit’s no longer on their feet. Christ, the mess…’
His eyes were fixed in front as we walked. But I knew as sure as Hell he wasn’t seeing the heather spread out before us. He was seeing those butchered people again.
‘You shoot someone,’ he said, ‘they don’t just bleed. They vomit, they piss themselves, the boy even shat himself. Then they’re writhing about like snakes in the dirt, mixing it all in with the piss and blood. And the girl’s crying, "Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad…" Her T-shirt was ripped. And I saw she’d been shot here.’ He touched his chest. ‘It just looked like another nipple. It wasn’t even bleeding at first. Just another red nipple next to the real one. I froze. Because…because the poor bastards weren’t even dead. They were squirming there on the ground like it was some fucking dance show…and they were just gasping…just gasping for breath. They couldn’t scream. It was like they’d got something stuck in their throats. And they just couldn’t breathe.’
He laughed. It was a sudden, harsh sound. I looked at him, wondering whether he was going to break down there and then on the side of the hill. ‘You know something?’ Again the hard laugh. But his eyes bled sheer horror. ‘You know something, Rick? I looked down at the boy. He was holding his stomach and he was looking up at me, his eyes all big and shocked-looking, his tongue was slopping about his lips like he was licking ice cream off his lips…only it was blood…only it was blood. All that blood. And he was holding his stomach. There was blood, just squeezing through his ringers. And he was holding his stomach like this.’