Maggot Moon

by Sally Gardner

  The whole school was gathered in the gymnasium for this momentous occasion. The place smelled of overboiled cabbage, cigarettes, and corruption. The teachers had on their glad drags. Pathetic, the whole fricking lot of them.

  In that silence I wanted to scream at the top of my voice: Why is there no wolf among you to protect us? Teacher. Please note that word: teacher. You are supposed to teach, not beat your pupils’ fricking brains out.

  Bad news spreads fast, doesn’t need words. Even those who didn’t know Little Eric Owen knew he was dead.

  It was the school caretaker who had covered him in a dust sheet. They left his broken body lying abandoned in the playground. No one was allowed to miss this hiatus hernia of a historical day when the pitiless pure of the inhuman race sent a man to the moon.

  A huge flag of the Motherland smothered the back wall of the gym. There, on a makeshift stand, sat a make-do television. For this great event, every school in the whole of the occupied territory had been lent one working television for the day.

  Mr. Muller, the maths teacher, tried his best to make the fuzz go away. He held the aerial at different heights, his arms wildly thrashing.

  “There, just there,” shouted Mr. Hellman.

  “I can’t stay like this with my arms up, it’s preposterous!” Mr. Muller spat the words into his wirehair, flea-ridden moustache.

  A hat stand was utilized. A very technical way of solving the problem in this age of moon men and murders. The TV still didn’t quite work. The images splintered, came and went.

  “Can you all see?” asked Mr. Muller.

  No one said a word. They had seen too much already.

  Hector and me — or should that be Hector and I? — used to do puppet shows. We made a theater out of an old box. I think Mr. Muller might have been better off doing a puppet show than trying to conjure a picture from that broken thing. It could have been presented quite well. All he would have needed was one wobbly rocket pulled on a wire towards a wobbly moon where tinfoil astronauts walked on a surface made of wobbly cheese.

  You know, I didn’t care a blue parrot’s tutu if we saw this moment in history or not. I think that maybe — no, not maybe, there’s no maybe about it — I think the Greenflies and the leather-coat men, or Martians as Hector used to call them, shouldn’t be going anywhere except back to their frick-fracking planet. I don’t buy all this pure race chatty crap. There’s nothing pure about any one of those frickwits.

  It was kind of the president of the Motherland to address us. The leader of the moronic Martians. She always looked the same, never changed. Her hair a construction of steel wire, her eyes unblinking. She didn’t fool me, not one iota. Underneath that propaganda-perfect face paint she had red scaly skin and a hole for a mouth. Her words were worms that buried themselves into your worried mind, to rot all thoughts of freedom.

  “Today, we, the race of purity, will demonstrate our technical supremacy over the corrupt countries whose ambition is to destroy the great Motherland.”

  She made her usual non-stopping Olympic speech, at the end of which we all stood to attention, rows of nutcracker would-be soldiers. We saluted. I noticed it was the weakest Motherland salute I had ever seen this school give. Only Mr. Gunnell’s arm was out rod-stiff, his gobstopper eyes glazed.

  We sat down cross-legged on the floor again. Amazingly the picture became clear and we were shown photographs of each of the three astronauts. Their names flashed up on the screen. Names that were supposed to be hard to forget. Names that I couldn’t remember. To me they were one long, unreadable word that joined a whole bunch of other unreadable words.

  They appeared on each of the group photos that had been plastered round Zone Seven: ARO5 SOL3 ELD9. Only after the moon man arrived had I looked again at that word. Some of the letters were printed on his space suit. And here were the letters again on the television. Each astronaut’s photograph given a part of that meaningless word.

  ARO5 — clean-cut with a short, bristled head of hair. Next to him, as always, was SOL3. He looked as if his face had been polished white, so that it shone. I knew he was the Mothers for Purity’s golden hero. The last of the trio was ELD9. His head was shaven, his face well fed, pumped up, pumped out. But I knew what he really looked like.

  ELD9 was what was printed on the space suit of the moon man. ELD9 wasn’t in the Motherland. He was in our cellar.

  The camera turned its attention to the control room. Up to that point I had thought there might be a way out of all this stinking shit. Then I knew that there wasn’t. The control room was full of men in uniforms and white coats. I wanted to get up, throw caution to the mangle. I was stretched out good and proper anyway. I stood and walked to the very front. You see, I was certain that in among all those scientists I spied Mr. Lush. Wait — hold it — don’t change that picture.

  Frick-fracking hell, I was right. Lead stones in my shoes. Lead stones in my head. Lead stones in my heart. I knew then what the secret was, the secret that Hector had refused to tell me. That the moon man was unable to say.

  The rocket was launched into a pale-gray sky. Of course, we only saw this in black-and-white, it was the commentator who was doing the coloring in by numbers. The rocket was red, the sky was blue. It all looked pretty gray to me. Higher and higher it went until it was just a dot.

  There was a commotion outside the gym. The leather-coat man had returned, accompanied by an impressive array of Greenflies and detectives. The detectives were wearing square-framed sunglasses. I suppose they made it harder to see the evidence. The leather-coat man snapped one of his leather-gloved fingers, and the Greenflies marched into the gym. One of them turned off the television, and Mr. Gunnell was ushered outside. Mr. Hellman ordered us back to our classrooms. Hans Fielder, Head Perfect, was put in charge of our class.

  I was sitting next to the window, no longer daydreaming. There was too much reality, it shut out all daydreams. I could see the paint-spattered white dust sheet that lay over Little Eric’s body. It was stained red. A halo of flies hovered above him.

  Hans Fielder looked decidedly uncomfortable. He was seated in Mr. Gunnell’s chair. No one was speaking. Finally, a detective pushed the door half open and shouted out two names.

  I knew this was coming, and so did Hans Fielder. We followed the detective down the stairs to the bench outside Mr. Hellman’s office. Bet you two matching socks and one pair of long trousers that Hans Fielder had never had to sit there before. I had a feeling this was my last time. I hated to think what would happen to me and Gramps if they’d found the moon man in our cellar.

  Hans Fielder was called in. He rose from that bench like a flying saucer. The door closed behind him and one of the Greenflies, rifle across his chest, stood guard over the door. Or over me. I’m not sure which.

  I heard talking, then Mr. Hellman’s cane. Hans Fielder was spat back into the corridor. He had pissed his pants. Nearly everyone did after Mr. Hellman’s beatings. Bet that one was harder than his average. He had to impress the leather-coat man. Bet that was his only hope of clinging on to that cheap watch of his.

  Then it was my turn.

  The leather-coat man was seated in Mr. Hellman’s chair. Mr. Hellman was standing upright rubbing his wrist. His black hair dye ran down the back of his neck in dribbles of sweat.

  “We meet again, Standish Treadwell,” said the leather-coat man.

  I nodded. He had removed one of his gloves. His bare hand was large, dead-fish white. Before him on the desk was Mr. Hellman’s watch.

  “I didn’t notice it before,” he said. “You have different-colored eyes: one blue and the other, a light brown.”

  Was he being poetic or just stating the obvious? That I had two definite defects?

  I kept quiet.

  “Am I right in saying,” asked the leather-coat man, “that you were beaten up because you wouldn’t tell the other boys about our interview?”

  I answered that one. “Yes, sir.”

  “Why?”


  “Because it’s no one’s business but my own.”

  The leather-coat man was studying me very carefully indeed.

  I put on my best vacant face. If you are clever, know more than you should, you stand out like a green sky above a blue field, and, as we all know, the president of the Motherland believes that artists who do those sorts of paintings should be sterilized.

  I was waiting to be caned or taken away.

  “Standish Treadwell,” said the leather-coat man, “I don’t think for one moment you are as stupid as you would like us to believe.”

  My lips were sealed.

  “There is a lot going on in that head of yours,” he said. “Do you know ‘stupid’ is what Mother Nature intended all mere mortals to be? Stupid rises to the surface like shit and cream. Stupid means everyone does as they are told. Stupid wouldn’t break his teacher’s nose, even if that teacher was in the process of killing a fellow pupil. Stupid would stand and stare. You’re not stupid, Standish Treadwell, are you?”

  The leather-coat man suddenly brought his bare fist down hard on Mr. Hellman’s watch. It shattered with a satisfying ping as small wheels of time spun across the desk.

  Mr. Hellman was shaking.

  “I am waiting,” said the leather-coat man, as with one sweep of his hand the crumbs of time vanished into the wastepaper bin.

  I said, “I think a wise man would have turned a blind eye.”

  “Which eye, Treadwell, the blue or the brown?” He laughed, a rattatat of a laugh, then turned to Mr. Hellman. “What do you say?” he asked, the smile still on his face.

  “I say,” said Mr. Hellman, through steel-welded teeth, “I say that Standish Treadwell is expelled from this school.”

  “A pity that you didn’t think to do that a long time ago,” said the leather-coat man.

  I didn’t know what I was expected to do after that. So I walked unaccompanied back to my classroom, certain it was a trap of some sort. On the first-floor landing I stopped and looked out of the window at the playground. The leather-coat man was walking with Mr. Gunnell past the body of Little Eric. He stopped, and Mr. Gunnell looked surprised. The leather-coat man calmly took his pistol from his holster and placed the barrel against Mr. Gunnell’s temple. One shot rung out, ricocheting round the playground. Mr. Gunnell slumped to the ground.

  Do you know? I didn’t give a shit.

  In the classroom, Hans Fielder was standing in the dunce’s corner with a pair of scissors. He had Robinson Crusoed his trousers. Goodness knows how many lies Mrs. Fielder had to make up to be rewarded with those. I don’t think she is going to be too delighted to see she has a rebel on her hands. But that’s her problem, not mine. No, my problem is elephantine. How do you eat an elephant, sir? Bit by tiny bit.

  I told the Greenfly who was in charge of us that I had been expelled. He said nothing. I don’t think they cover what to do with uncooperative pupils in their manual. Every boy in the class had his head down. I was an undesirable among the sheep. I returned to my desk. I felt stupid and didn’t know what to do, so I lifted the lid. There was a note pinned inside. It was written in big words so that I, who can’t read, could read it.

  YOU AND YOUR GRANDFATHER ARE IN GRAVE DANGER. TONIGHT THE OBSTRUCTORS WILL COME FOR THE VISITOR.

  I got the gist of it. I put the piece of paper in my shorts pocket. There was nothing else in my desk. From the classroom window I saw a van drive onto the playground. Two orderlies, overseen by the Greenflies, gently picked up Little Eric Owen’s body and less gently, Mr. Gunnell’s, and placed them in the van.

  What that note told me was that this time there was no get-out-of-jail card.

  I was in the corridor when I saw Miss Phillips. She was still wearing that blood-soaked skirt. She walked right past me without a word and I nearly jumped out of myself when I felt a finger on my shoulder. Miss Phillips had darted back while the clockwork camera was turned the other way.

  She whispered in my ear, “Tell Harry they know,” then ran to the point in the corridor where the camera would next find her.

  I kept my face as dumb as possible which, considering what Miss Phillips had just said, wasn’t easy.

  There was blood on the pavement. One of Little Eric’s shoes, scuffed and worn, lay there abandoned. The sole of that shoe hollered, megaphone loud.

  “Standish, wake up, you fricking daydreaming bastard! Wake up! Wake up or you’ll be dead like me.”

  In the guardhouse, the school caretaker didn’t even look up from his paper. I was about to tell him I had been expelled when he pressed the button that electrically opened the school gates. I walked, snail-slow, out of the school, wondering why no one stopped me.

  Did you think I hadn’t seen cruelty like that before? We all had. Nothing like the unexpected, terrifying death to keep everyone calm and orderly.

  I was doing my best to imitate my old self, the one that looked as if he was lost in a dream. My plan was simple: go home.

  “Standish!”

  Coming down the road towards me was Gramps. We tried never to run, as that drew attention, and what both Gramps and me wanted most in Zone Seven was no attention whatsoever.

  When I reached him, I said, “Where were you?”

  “In the old church, watching the TV.”

  Only then did it strike me, lightning-bolt hard, that someone must have ordered Gramps to come and fetch me.

  “They said there had been some trouble at school.”

  “Yes. Mr. Gunnell killed Little Eric Owen, and I’ve been expelled.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. That squeeze said everything. It said, thank God you are all right.

  We carried on walking, intentionally slowly, up the street where once there were shops that sold things you might have wanted. Not now. All the shops were boarded up.

  Half under my breath and in the quietest of whispers, so Gramps had to lean towards me, I said, “This is a trap.”

  “I know,” replied Gramps.

  No matter how bad things looked, Gramps had always seemed a giant to me. He wasn’t made up of any monstrous parts.

  There were two men, plain-clothes policemen, following us in a car.

  Gramps smiled at me like it was a good summer afternoon, a day to be proud of.

  “Did you hear the president of the Motherland speak?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “No, not really. The TV set . . .”

  One of the men in the car had a pair of binoculars. He was lip-reading.

  I said, “Did you see the astronauts walking out to the rocket? Cripes, they are so brave.”

  “Very impressive,” replied Gramps. “Good to know about all the missiles they can launch from the moon. That will do it, put an end to the enemies of the Motherland.”

  “We missed that bit,” I said. “It must have happened while Mr. Gunnell was being shot.”

  Either we were just too boring for the detectives to bother with any longer, or they’d found something more important to do, for their car sped off.

  We carried on, past the disused bus shelter at the roundabout, and crossed the deserted road. It was then I told him about Little Eric, and about the note and Miss Phillips. He listened carefully, weighed it all up.

  At one end of our road were the grand, rooster-breasted houses. Those were where the good Families for Purity lived. They looked smart enough, but they were only stuck together with the glue of dead men’s bones.

  In the distance, at the very top of the road, you could see that hideous building which should have been left in ashes when it first burned down. I suppose it added to the stage effect that all was as it should be. But I’ll tell you this for nothing — it wasn’t.

  That huge ugly building was lit up. It shone brighter than the stars, even in the daytime. That was something. People in Zone Seven dared not ask why. We just wondered what was going on inside. Why did it need so much electricity when we were lucky to get an hour or two a day? You could hear the citizens of Zone Seve
n silently ask that question. It crept along the streets, oozed out of everyone you met.

  I wished I didn’t have even a hint of what the answer might be, but I did.

  Down the dip in the road where the tall trees hid the rest of our street, the houses were just rubble, destroyed for harboring terrorist cells or undesirables.

  That summer, in the wilderness of crumbling bricks and mortar, white roses had appeared in those derelict suburbs. Gramps said that if man was mad enough to destroy itself, at least the rats and cockroaches would have front-row seats, be able to enjoy the sight of Mother Nature reclaiming the earth.

  Outside our house, two black cars were waiting. We watched as the television set was carried away.

  “What if they find him?” I asked in a whisper.

  “They won’t, not even with their dogs. Neither will they find the hens.”

  “So why did you let them have the TV?”

  I knew that was the end of the plastic lady who had a ball of a time in the land of Croca-Colas.

  “Because if I didn’t, they would be even more suspicious that we are up to no good. Forfeiting the television is a lighter penalty than the alternative.”

  It was not much comfort.

  It was on my birthday in March, after the terrible winter, that Gramps had given me his present.

  So much had changed since Hector arrived eight months earlier that I’d forgotten all about the football. Gramps had mended it and gift-wrapped it in old newspaper.

  “Can we kick it, or do we just look at it?” Hector had asked.

  “You could play for the Home Country with that ball,” said Gramps.