‘Where’d they go?’ I asked.
‘Not here. It went bang,’ he said. Jesus! I must have missed them by moments.
‘Why are you here?’
‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t go. Wouldn’t go, Marti.’
You know? You see? What a brave kid! Three years old and he wouldn’t go. How many kids would be like that? As far as he knew, I was never coming back. But he waited anyway, bless him.
I kneeled down and I held him tightly. He was shaking like a leaf. So was I. Then I realised I had to go back. I really did have to go and see, just in case... just in case there was anything left, you know? Or if she was just injured? It wasn’t a huge bang, but it blew the door off its hinges, I noticed that. And there was a noise that might have been a scream or a groan or something or other when I was running off.
It was so stupid. Such an old trick! A crying baby. They’d done it pretty well. It must have been sound-activated, it was a long recording, and I reckon the baby they recorded was dying. What kind of sicko records a dying baby like that?
But we should have known better. The only thing, when you hear a baby cry it goes right through your spine and into your heart, you know what I mean? Right into your heart, and it bypasses your brain altogether. You just want to help. You can’t help it.
Oh, Maude, you were always so smart! Why’d you have to be stupid then?
I started to get up, but Rowan flung himself at me. Wrapped his arms around me and pressed his face right into mine.
‘Marti, Marti, Marti,’ he kept saying. He was panting and gasping at the same time, but he managed to get it out about six or seven times before he closed his eyes tight and started to leak tears.
I knew what the little shit was up to. It was that transparent. He needed me, I was all he had left and he was binding me to him, binding me to him with his baby magic. He was getting his tears all over my face, which was wet anyway. But it worked, you know? If I hadn’t already been bound to him, it would have worked anyway.
I held him for awhile, but I was thinking of Maude. I waited for him to calm down a bit.
‘You don’t need to do that,’ I told him. ‘You know I love you anyway.’
‘Don’ go,’ he said.
‘What about Maudie?’ I said. ‘I have to see to Maudie, Rowan.’
It took a while to convince him, but in the end he said, ‘ ’K.’
So I went to see Maudie.
I really thought I’d heard a voice as I was running away. Maybe it was Maude, maybe I was wrong. I checked the gun. Made sure the bullets were in the right place.
Crept in like a ghost.
She was in there all right, lying on her back in the rubble under the door. That’s a sight I’ll never forget. Her eyes flicked over to me when I came in.
‘You came back,’ she whispered.
‘Course I came back.’
‘That was stupid.’
‘Seems to be the theme for the day.’
She looked at me and I looked at her. She was panting away, trying not to pant too hard as it hurt so much. There was a beam across her pelvis. She wasn’t anything like so pretty any more. Some of her insides were on the outside.
She nodded at the gun. ‘Two bullets.’
‘Yeah.’
‘One of them for me.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘You have to do it, Marti.’
‘That’s not sticking together, Maudie.’
‘It’s not always about sticking together,’ she said, and I said, ‘Never thought I’d hear you say that.’
Then I looked around the place. ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘look on the wall over there, that looks just like Mum.’
And she turned her head away to look.
I got out of there quick and I walked back to the rhododendron thicket where I’d left Rowan, but he wasn’t there. I had a panic – a proper panic attack. I thought the Hamiltons maybe came back and took him away, or someone else, and for a while I was running about screaming, which was also pretty stupid. When I’d done running around calling and calling to him, I had a thought, so I went back to where we started and I had another little look, quieter this time. I heard him then, his breathing. He was in the same thicket, he’d barely moved at all. He was just hiding from me, because – well, work it out for yourself. He’d heard the shot. Frankly, I wished I could hide from myself.
I found a log and sat down on it.
‘I know you’re there, Rowan, I can hear you,’ I said. And immediately he held his breath, the little toad.
I waited a bit. I so much didn’t want to talk about it. I so much didn’t want it to have ever happened. Or think about it or talk about it.
‘She was so sick, Rowan,’ I said. ‘Because she was so badly hurt...’
That was as far as I got. I cried. Man, I cried. I cried and cried and cried. I was bawling. All the rotten things that had happened! My mum, my dad, my friends. But losing Maude was the worst of them all because she was supposed to be there for ever. I sat there and put my face in my hands and I cried and I cried. All the tears – for me and for Mum and Dad and for Maude, my lovely Maude, who would never leave me, who put up with me being such a dick, who loved me and loved me until I finally had to love her back. And then she went and got herself killed, the fucking stupid bloody cunting cow.
After a while a pair of little arms came around my neck. And of course that set me off even more. Sitting here in the woods, the two of us, bawling our eyes out. Bawling, bawling, bawling our eyes out.
And that’s how we were when they found us.
24
There were three of them, a boy and a girl about my age and an older one who was in charge. They were wearing uniforms with the double red cross on a white background. Bloods. My worst nightmare. It had to happen. To make matters worse – to make them as bad as they could possibly be – I had my blue dress on and the daisy DMs. I’d dressed up to tease the Hamilton boy. And make-up. With stubble. Perfect. The only accessory I was missing was my handbag, which was hanging around the neck of the girl. They hadn’t bothered searching it so far. Inside was my gun. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
The young ones were so excited at catching someone, it’d’ve been sweet if they weren’t actually evil. The boy kept prodding me with his gun – one of those nasty-looking stubby automatics. American weapons. Both him and the girl kept holding them up to their faces and aiming, like on the cop shows.
‘I thought you guys were supposed to be retreating down south,’ I said, trying to keep my voice as steady as I could. I was speaking to the older one, on the grounds that he might be the nice one, if such a thing exists with this crowd. He had this matchstick sticking out of the corner of his mouth, which he now slowly reached up for, took out and spat.
‘Had to stay up here to help keep the place clear of vermin for when the boys get here,’ he said. And Lo! My wishful hopes of mercy came crashing to the ground.
So they weren’t exactly official Bloods, but they were armed by the Bloods. They kept bawling at me. The boy called me a gay poof wog.
‘That’s not factually correct,’ I told them.
‘Put your hands in the air, bitch. Hands up, or I will shoot!’ yelled the girl. Just like the movies.
I’d picked Rowan up when they got us – which I wasn’t sure was the right thing because I was the one they had those guns trained on – so now I had to put him down again to put my hands up, and of course he started pawing at me to be picked up again. I looked at the older one, the one they called Sarge, and I raised my eyebrows.
‘Pick him up,’ the older guy said.
‘Not while they’ve got those things on me,’ I said.
He looked at me and I looked at him. I had a really nasty feeling I’d seen him before. He walked up and patted me down to make sure I was unarmed, during which it became apparent that my person was not all it seemed – as if it wasn’t a
lready apparent. He stood up, smirked, looked me in the eye and nodded a couple of times. What’s the next stage of fear that comes after pooing yourself? Whatever it is, that’s what I was doing then.
They marched us back to their camp like that, the kids behind me with their guns up by their faces, and me clutching Rowan because otherwise those guys would have been beating me to a pulp. Human shield! But for how long would it work? I was going to get beaten to a pulp sooner or later, that’s all I knew. Or killed. Probably the sooner, the better. They were making all these disgusting comments about me and Rowan. You know how it is, once people decide you’re a pervert, they like to think that you’re capable of all imaginable perversions, even the ones that genuinely are perverted. The sergeant was walking quietly, whistling through his teeth and smiling weirdly at me whenever I looked back and caught his eye. I was whispering sweet things to Rowan – nursery rhymes, mainly. My mum used to sing me endless nursery rhymes, she knew ’em all. Suddenly I could almost hear her singing those silly songs in her sweet low voice. Isn’t it funny how the mind works? Then, of all times!
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Oh no! This is the actual worst thing that could possibly happen. That’s what I was thinking all right. I was thinking, This is it now, Marti, you’ve finally been caught and it’s a bullet in the head for you – if you’re lucky. Yep, that’s it – dead. You know? Or maybe the ERAC, which was as good as being dead. I mean, I had so much going on in me they’d want to cure, I might actually break the machine.
You might well be thinking that. But we’d both be wrong. That was just me being uncharacteristically optimistic. I was thinking that all I had to worry about was making sure that Rowan got through this. Maybe I could convince them he was white, and that I was looking after him for some neighbours or something, so he’d get sent off and adopted by some nice white supremacist parents. I was also wondering if actually he was better off dead, but in the end I decided I had no right to act on that, and that I’d just have to hope that one day he might remember me. Because if I had to meet him at some point when he had actually turned into the enemy...
‘I’d rather be dead,’ I said out loud.
‘You soon will be,’ said one of the kids, taking the chance to stick me in the ribs with his weapon.
‘Maybe not as soon as he likes,’ said the older one.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ he said. And Lo! So it came to pass.
They marched us back past the hamlet where Maude fell and a couple of miles past to their camp. It was a proper Army thing. Big camouflaged tents, trucks, Jeeps. Everyone had a nice new gun. They even had some of the big stuff, rocket launchers and the like – you know, like a load of big guns mounted on the back of a vehicle, all pointed up at the sky, but really, they were probably trained on a school or a hospital or something fifty miles away. You could do a lot of damage with that sort of thing. I remember thinking, How much does it cost to set one of those off? A hundred thousand a pop? Two hundred? Who knows?
‘What are you guys, Bloods?’ I asked, because it all looked new and American and sort of proper, with uniforms and all that, but the soldiers didn’t act right. The kids with their guns in my ribs didn’t know how to take an order. We walked past a field with people training in it, and some of them were so bad, I reckon even I could have handled it better than them.
‘Affiliates,’ said the older guy, the sergeant.
It was just after that that things took a turn for the worse. The kids were about to take us to a stockade where they had other prisoners, but the sergeant waved his gun and said, ‘Over there.’
The kids hesitated. ‘HQ?’ said one of them. ‘Is he important?’
‘We’ll let Major Tom decide that,’ said the sergeant. And he gave me the evil eye. And I gave him the scared eye back, because – Major Tom? The Major Tom? I’m not talking Bowie here. Because... Not him. Of all people, not him. Please, please, please don’t let it be true...
Then the man himself put any remaining doubt out of my mind, when he came out of his tent.
The thing is, I’d never really known how truthful Maude was being when she told me I’d shot his dick off. She has been known to exaggerate. I’d never got round to asking her what it was she’d kicked into the bushes that day – I was too shy. And it felt stupid. Maybe she was just complaining that I’d shot him in the groin, which would be bad enough. So now I had a chance to check him out and... it was hard to say. Last time he had a face full of ugly stubble, but he was clean shaven now, so I couldn’t tell if he’d lost any facial hair. He didn’t look as muscly, though, and maybe his beer gut had moved a little down to his hips. Difficult to say. But he had a baggy T-shirt on and just then a gust blew it flat against his chest.
Now then. Were those tits, or were they moobs? Again... difficult to say. They were only little, not much more than an A cup, I’d say. Mits? Toobs? Either way, it wasn’t looking good.
‘What d’ya think, Major?’ asked the sergeant. ‘Without the beard?’
‘Could be.’
‘How many of them do you get wandering around the place? It has to be him,’ said the sarge.
Major Tom looked at him, then he looked at me.
‘Strip it down,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how it looks.’
The two kids looked at each other – they clearly didn’t want to get anywhere near me. But it wasn’t their job. This was a dirty job, a nasty job. A Black job. Not the sort of job you want white hands to sully themselves with.
No problem. They had a man for the job. Yes, Major Tom still had his personal slave. Sebastian, remember him? He came over now to undress me, complaining away just like he did last time.
‘Why’s it me has to handle the Blacks all the time? Why me, always me?’ Etc, etc. Everyone around was watching. I was the entertainment now. But then – miracle! He came up close so his head was blocking anyone’s view, glanced at me in the eye for a second, and said, ‘Sister.’
I think I may have died for a moment. ‘Put the kiddie down, fam,’ he murmured. Which I did. He kneeled down at my feet and carefully undid my bootlaces and pulled my DMs off. Then he stood up again. ‘Now I’m gonna push you down, OK,’ he said quietly. He put his foot out and pushed me over, but not too hard.
‘Brother,’ I said.
‘You have to get through this now,’ he said.
‘Please,’ I said.
‘I can’t help you now, fam. You have to get through this,’ he repeated.
‘Take care of Rowan for me. I don’t want him to watch it,’ I said.
He nodded and then he bent down and pulled my dress off. I didn’t resist – what was the point? And then he removed my pants and my bra, which he did gently, so that was good, because if it had been any of those white soldiers, it wouldn’t have been like that. But even if they had done that, I don’t think I could have hated it any more.
I’d not had my meds, I’d not had enough to eat, I’d been doing far too much exercise. I wanted a nice plump female body and what I had now was a skinny boy’s one, with tits. A sort of cross between moobs and boobs, whatever that is. I was a mess. My beard had grown and so had most of my other body hair. I had body hair in places I swear I never used to have. And to crown it all there was Mr Knobby and the Heartbreakers hanging down like some kind of monster hanging out of a big, untidy, ugly crow’s nest.
When I was finally naked, the Black man held out his hand to Rowan, who had been watching the whole thing with his mouth open. Christ knows what he thought was going on, but who knows what kids think anyway? They’re like a different species.
‘Go with the nice man, Rowan. I have some business here,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said.
I closed my eyes. He’d always been so good. Please, Rowan – don’t pick now to throw a wobbler!
‘Rowan, you need to go. It’s dangerous here,’ I said. He p
aused – I held my breath. But he knew well enough that when I said it was dangerous, it was dangerous. He took Sebastian’s hand, and let him lead him away.
There was quite a crowd gathered round now. All through it, Major Tom had been staring at me with his narrow beady little eyes. His face had gone as white as a pint of milk. Now he began to walk towards me, eyes fixed on me like gimlets.
I didn’t look at him. I ignored him as he closed in. I watched Rowan instead, and when he turned to look, I gave him a cheeky smile and a little wave. Then Sebastian pushed his face into his shoulder. Major Tom was bending down, looking into my face, but I still didn’t look back.
Then he started on me.
It was just me and him for maybe five minutes? Who knows? I wasn’t counting. Five minutes that changed my life. Not a word was said throughout, like we had some kind of a pact together. I remember the crowd cheering and wincing and going, Whoooooah! Ooooohhh... when it was something particularly sadistic or nasty. No details.
When he’d done, they picked me up and carried me, or what was left of me, to a container, a lorry container. They flung me in there with a crowd of other prisoners and an overflowing bucket and banged the door shut.
And that was me, folks. It was dark, pitch dark, in there. The others had to feel out where I was hurt, and bathe me with a little water, which was all the medicine they had.
And that was my home for the next couple of months.
25
Yes, that was my home, me and forty to fifty other people all packed into that container with one bucket and nothing else. We didn’t have the whole of the container either. It was divided in two. Our part, the prison part, the Tank we called it, was maybe two thirds of it, and the other part, divided off by a steel wall, was the torture chamber. Several times a day, they would take someone out, always announcing it with an electronic tone, for some reason. Bing, bong, you know? Like an electric doorbell. Then you’d hear the bolts and the padlock being undone, the door in the steel wall would open, letting in a flood of light, which was the only light which ever got into the Tank. And each one of us would be praying it’d be someone else and not us. And the soldiers would walk in and one of us would go out with them for ‘treatment’, as they liked to call it.
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