Three Bullets

by Melvin Burgess

  The internet was in really good nick, that was the best thing. I downloaded some games and some new songs, locked myself in my room, played my games and my music. It was a Beyoncé day. I didn’t let Rowan anywhere near me for the first day; he was still moaning away about his finger and pooing through the eye of a needle to be exactly entertaining. Besides, a girl needs her space – then after that me and him spent a few hours playing on a borrowed laptop. Shoot ’em ups. I’ve always loved shoot ’em ups – they make you feel so empowered. I’d never do anything like it in real life, but online you can be who you like. Rowan couldn’t get the hang of it at all, so I had to put it away and play some miserable kid’s thing, finding honey for the bears or something. He was pretty good for a three-year-old kid. I think he must have found it empowering too. I let him win most of the time in return for letting me have some time on my own. Well, it couldn’t have got any less boring if I’d won, so why not?

  Then, ‘Marti time, Rowan.’ And he’d kick up a fuss, but he let me have it.

  We were there for three days and I spent nearly all of it in my room. That’s where I’m at my happiest. Outside, everything was frantic. Inside, it was just me, my games, my music and the odd dollop of Rowan.

  Maude made me come out from time to time just to be polite. Poor Tariq was in a real mess because of his wife and kids.

  ‘They only took them because I’m an active communist,’ he said. ‘You know how the Christians hate us. They’ll have been sent to the ERAC as soon as they found out they were related to me. It’s all about me.’

  It’s all about me. He actually said that.

  ‘But your wife is an activist as well, isn’t she?’ said Maude.

  Exactly. ‘You’re being macho and self-centred,’ I told him. ‘And sexist. It’s not all about you, you know.’

  Poor Tariq blushed.

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered.

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said.

  The funny things is, just a week or so ago I’d never have spoken to anyone like that. I’d have thought it, but I’d never have said anything. Things were changing. My life was changing, I suppose. That’s the way it is. Life changes, you change with it. You have no choice.

  Three days. Three lovely days. I could tell it to you in real detail, but why would you be interested in someone doing the ordinary kinds of things, things that you probably do every day, that you think are boring probably. Hot baths and showers. Proper food. Egg and chips! We had egg and chips. That sort of thing. I got myself in the kitchen and made a pasta bake like my mum used to, macaroni cheese, with strong cheddar and parmesan on the top. I charged my phone and ironed my clothes. I’d lost so much weight, most of them were hanging off me like a flag on a beanpole. I know! Boring boring boring for people like you, posh people who have everything they want and think they know it all. Which they don’t.

  Then we finally set off on the next leg of our journey. The guys in Nottingham had contacts with the resistance down there, so praise the Lord! We didn’t have to actually go all the way into Blood territory. We were to meet this Bobby Rose guy at Ely, which was kind of the borderlands. Which suited me fine. All I wanted to do was drop off the software and then... well. That depended, didn’t it? I wanted to get news of my dad, that was the thing. Ideal scenario, we could actually pick him up and take him away with us.

  Imagine! Imagine that! Me and my dad together again. That would be a dream come true. Not that I supposed it would be as easy as that. They’d have to implement the software, which might not work anyway, and who knows how long that would take? It was probably just me dreaming away as usual. I knew I shouldn’t do that – dream, I mean. I’ve learned from bitter experience that dreams like that are just the prelude to more disappointment. When did even one single one of my dreams ever come true? Never, that’s when. I couldn’t help it though, because even though he always let me down and disappeared on me whenever I needed him, and even though I always felt that he would have preferred a son – that’s just how it was between my dad and me.

  We needed to hurry, though. No one knew exactly when the Bloods were going to launch their next big push forward, but when it came it was going to make travel impossible. A lot of the refugees turning up were coming from down that way.

  But we had yet another turn of luck! There was some kind of arms deal going on with the Nottingham lot and the resistance around Ely. They wanted ammunition. Well, everyone wanted ammo, and of course the FNA were very reluctant to part with any, especially with the Bloods on the move. And yet they were doing it. Nottingham was sending down a couple of truckloads of shells and bullets and Ely was sending back... something. What exactly, no one was saying. Even Tariq had no idea. But hey, who cares? The point was, we had a lift.

  So. Bonus points for Marti and Maude for being a pair of dead lucky bitches. We got ourselves all ready... and then we had this stupid argument. As usual, it was an argument about me. Worse, it was an argument about clothes. You remember this stuff – combats versus dress, dress versus combats. She wanted me to go as a boy. Well, I had been doing that, on and off. And the thing is, I didn’t like it one little bit.

  All my life I had to fight to be myself. There was always a lot of pressure for me to be something I’m not, and now, what with the war and the Blood of Jesus and so on, there was even more pressure. And even though I am a complete piece of chickenshit, the most cowardly yellow-bellied person you’re ever likely to meet – even so, on this particular thing I was digging my heels in. I mean, what difference would it make? I was a mixed race kid with tits going down among the most heavily armed transphobic racists this side of the Atlantic. In my own self, I’m just about everything they hate rolled up into one person. What difference was it going to make what clothes I wore?

  While I was in Nottingham, I’d bought myself this really nice dress. Long narrow blue thing, bit of patchwork, bit of lace, couple of slashes around the midriff, swinging above my ankles, slit up one side, deep V down the front. Well, I put it on for the trip to Ely, and both of them were going bonkers at me for wearing it.

  ‘What’s wrong with trousers?’ demanded Maude. ‘Everyone wears trousers.’

  ‘No, why should I? I want to wear my new dress. It’s not even any of your business,’ I said.

  ‘Marti! As soon as they see you they’ll fling all four of us into prison.’

  ‘What is your problem, Maude? As soon as they see me they’ll fling all four of us into prison anyway. As soon as they see Tariq they’ll fling us all into prison anyway. As soon as they find us hiding in a truck loaded with ammo. What difference is a dress going to make?’

  ‘But a dress!’ said Tariq.

  ‘It’s just clothes, Marti,’ said Maude.

  ‘It might just be clothes to you, but to me it’s identity. If I’m going to die because of this stupid mission, I’m going to die as me, not some dream Marti you keep trying to force me to be.’

  ‘God’s sake!’ hissed Maude.

  ‘Twowsers, Marti, twowsers,’ said Rowan.

  But I was like, Why are you all suppressing me? Why can’t I wear what I want? It didn’t make any difference what I was wearing, that was my point.

  ‘I was wearing ordinary combats when we ran into the Very Evil Gang, and that didn’t help much, did it?’ I pointed out. ‘And anyway’ – I only said this to wind them up – ‘I haven’t got any decent trousers that fit me.’ Which was an utter transparent lie.

  ‘It’s not just about you, Marti. It’s about all of us. You’re making our situation even more dangerous than it has to be,’ said Tariq.

  You may think I was being stupid. I wouldn’t blame you. I think I was being stupid, actually, I don’t know why I dug my heels in so much, but it felt really important at the time. But they went on and on and on and in the end, as per usual, I gave in and wore a pair of twowsers instead. But when I was done, Maude was still glaring at me.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘W
hat sort of underwear have you got on?’ she demanded, the cheeky cow.

  ‘None of your bloody business,’ I snapped.

  So we had the argument all over again. I have to say I felt different about it later on when we were sitting silent as the grave going through the first checkpoint on the way to Ely. But it was too late by then. No way was I going to change my pants in front of Tariq.

  Next thing you know, me, Maude, Rowan and Tariq were sitting in the dark surrounded by crates full of ammo and weaponry, on the road to Ely. And I was pooing myself again. Big time.

  It wasn’t a fast journey. They warned us beforehand about that. The roads were stuffed with people fleeing from the south, their cars and vans loaded up with everything they could get in there, or else gearing up their local town for the onslaught. Fighters, refugees, supplies. Roadblocks, of course. There’s always roadblocks.

  Not that we saw any of it, surrounded by crates. All we knew was it took hours – hours and hours and hours. Crawling along. Stopping and starting, starting and stopping. Blocked road. Roadblock. Pull over for no reason we knew of and listen to voices outside and wonder if they were going to come and search for spies wearing the wrong underpants. That sort of thing. It took a whole day.

  Plenty of time. Plenty of time to think, to reflect and to crap yourself silly with fear.

  After about 200 hours, Maude whispered, ‘If you had to choose, what would you pick? Being tortured to death or getting sent to Huntingdon and turned into a c**t?’

  She can be very crude sometimes, Maude. But oddly enough, that was exactly what was on my mind, too.

  I hissed, ‘Rowan?’ because we’d decided not to talk bad stuff when he was around.

  ‘Asleep,’ whispered Maude.

  ‘I’d do the ERAC, any day,’ whispered Tariq. ‘If they torture you, no matter how hard you try, they’ll break you eventually and you end up betraying everything you hold dear. Everyone does, sooner or later. I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘The ERAC for me, too,’ whispered Maude. Which surprised me. She’s a tough cookie, Maude.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Pain,’ she said. ‘I really hate pain. You?’

  I guess they expected me to say the same thing, but actually, the truth is that the one thing I truly could not bear is being made into another person. I’ve fought so hard to be myself, maybe that’s why. White people never liked me, Black people never liked me. Girls never liked me, boys never liked me. Everyone wanted me to be someone else. Even my dad didn’t want me to be who I am at first, although he got there in the end. My mum was better, but even she used to have a weep over her lost little boy from time to time.

  So it took me a long time to become the real me, the real Marti. Even I didn’t know who I was for a long time, but now that I knew I was going to hang on to it no matter what.

  ‘Wow,’ said Tariq, after I’d explained why. ‘You’re a bundle of surprises, aren’t you? You’d be quite a piece of work if you weren’t so selfish.’

  ‘That’s my Marti,’ said Maude, in such a way that I turned to look at her, although you couldn’t see a thing in the darkness. ‘That’s my Marti – blue silk knickers and all.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ I said, getting out my earphones. And I was like, How did she even know that, anyway?

  I was playing hip-hop, in honour of my dad. Not my favourite as such, but I liked it because it reminded me of him. As the music played, I sang to myself under my breath ‘I’m Coming Home’ by Diddy Dirty Money and Skylar Grey, over and over and over again. Because as you know, home is where the heart is. And as you also know, I loved my dad.

  17

  Hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. We had to sedate Rowan, poor little mite. On the other hand, he did look much prettier asleep than he did awake. So cute, like a puppy. I definitely preferred him like that.

  And the further south we got, the slower we got. Slower and slower. Stop. Roadblock. Start. Slow, slower, slower; stop. Every time we stopped I got scared that enemy guards were going to search the truck and get us. Then we got more slow. More bored. Stop: scared. Slow: bored. Scared, bored. Bored, bored, bored, scared. Bored, bored, bored. Terrified. Hungry. That’s war for you.

  Eventually the truck turned off the main road and we went faster for a bit. Then we got onto a bumpy bit. None of us had any idea where we were. It felt like a country track. And... finally, we stopped. We all sat there in the darkness holding our breaths, listening, trying to work it out, until the doors opened and they began unloading the empty crates. Scared. We all kept quiet, but it turned out to be the FNA blokes who’d driven us. It was all OK.

  We stepped out into the open air. We were surrounded by trees, which I didn’t like one little bit. I don’t trust the countryside. You know? I mean, I’m happy enough looking at it, but I don’t actually want to be in it. The only sign of civilisation was some low, old red-brick buildings with corrugated roofs. God knows what they were. Something industrial that no one had used for ages, except that the roofs were new.

  ‘Where’s the cathedral?’ I said, and everyone laughed like it was a joke, but actually, I was being genuinely stupid. Someone at Nottingham had told us about the cathedral at Ely, sticking up like the finger of God out of the fields, which were flat for miles and miles around, they said.

  ‘It’s not Ely, Marti,’ said Tariq.

  A very serious-looking white man in some kind of black uniform came out of the building. He was giving me that look – you know that look? Maybe you don’t. A look like he’d been waiting for ages, even though he was so mighty important, to meet some other really important people. And finally they had got here – and Lo! It turned out it was me.

  ‘Ely’s dangerous,’ he said. ‘We’re expecting an attack imminently. Imminently,’ he repeated, just in case we hadn’t got the message. He nodded his head towards... wherever it was the attack was coming from.

  ‘Right,’ said Maude.

  ‘So,’ he went on. ‘The software.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ I said, glancing sideways at Tariq. I was already getting fed up with this. We’d come all this way, put our lives in danger, and the Twat in Black was treating us like some kind of personal annoyance.

  ‘What’s my name?’ he repeated, like he could hardly believe the cheek of me asking.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s Bobby,’ said Tariq, giving me an I-told-you-so look. I dug in my bag and got my phone out and I held it up. He put his hand out, but now that it came to it, I didn’t want to part with it. That phone – I loved that phone. It had been my constant companion ever since my dad went away. It was like, my only link to him – and my mum, for that matter.

  ‘You’re really going to try it out?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Bobby Rose. ‘We’re going to teach it to fly.’ He rolled his eyes at his men gathered around, who laughed uncomfortably.

  Yes. It was just like Tariq had said. Bobby Rose was a... you-know-what.

  The man stretched out his hand even more, but I was still hesitating.

  ‘It’s OK, Marti, give it to him,’ said Tariq. I thought, We’d come this far, all the way for this. So I handed it over.

  ‘Good,’ he said, and he turned away.

  ‘So, what about my dad?’ I said.

  The guy sort of chuckled and shook his head – like, Are you kidding. He didn’t bother answering, he just nodded at the truck. ‘Get back in,’ he said. ‘They’ll drive you back to Nottingham. You’ll be safe there.’

  ‘Hey, no,’ I said. Because – my dad! I don’t know what I was expecting. Not this. Maybe I was thinking it would be my dad here to meet us, although I knew really that wasn’t going to happen. Or someone saying, Hey, you! Look what you did! OK, maybe that’s naive. But some news. I deserved at least some news of him after coming all this way.

  ‘But what about him? Is he still alive?’ I said.

  ‘We’ve come all this way,’ said Maude. She was
standing holding Rowan who was still all drugged up, lolling in her arms.

  The man shrugged. ‘Last we heard.’ He turned away again but I took a few steps to him and grabbed him by his shoulder.

  ‘No,’ I said. Because that wasn’t good enough. ‘Come on! What’s going on? You must have more information than that.’

  He stared at me, hard. I stared back, head up, like it was a breeze dealing with the likes of him.

  ‘I don’t know about your dad.’

  ‘Ring someone up who does,’ I said.

  ‘No one gets in or out of that place,’ he said, trying to stare me down. ‘People in there, they don’t know their own minds from one day to the next. Now, act like a good boy and fuck off home, OK?’ He looked me up down, like, You better do as I say.

  ‘But my dad...’

  ‘Fuck you and your dad,’ he said, and he showed me his back. ‘Get ’em out of here,’ he called over his shoulder to the men, and headed back into the red-brick building.

  ‘Excuse me. Excuse me, sir.’ That was Tariq. ‘You know I’m staying, right?’ The guy gave him a quick glance and a quick nod. Well, I looked at Tariq and he looked at me. ‘Helping organise things,’ he muttered. But I knew what that really meant. He meant, Staying to try to find his family.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK. If he stays, I’m staying too. I can help, too,’ I said.

  There was a pause. Everyone had stopped and was looking at me. The Twat in Black paused. Didn’t even turn around. ‘I’ve had enough of you. You get the fuck in the truck, freak, or you’ll have me to deal with.’