Bully

by A. J. Kirby

  Bully

  By

  A J Kirby

  A Wild Wolf Publication

  Published by Wild Wolf Publishing in 2009

  Copyright © 2009 A J Kirby

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  First print

  All Characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9562114-5-3

  www.wildwolfpublishing.com

  Cover Art by Nick Button

  www.nickbutton.co.uk

  "For John,

  The spirit of Elvis lived in you,

  You'll be sorely missed."

  Chapter One

  “Singin’, this’ll be the day that I die.”

  Books and film tell me that at this very moment I should be enveloped in a great shining white light. They tell me that I’ll kind of mellow out the pain and simply settle into being guided down that conveyor belt into nothingness. Maybe books and film tell us this so we don’t simply scream the place down in rage and fear. Maybe they don’t want to turn us into dribbling wrecks at the thought of what death really is…

  I can’t see any white light. I don’t feel mellow. Instead, my sensory perception is almost overwhelmed by the agonising pain in my chest. And it is represented by the colour purple. Angry, hopeless purple. It feels as though I’ve had a spear driven into the very folds of my heart and some mischievous demon is wiggling it about, tearing at the wound. I don’t think that I’ve blacked out at any point in the last few moments since it happened. My body won’t let me. It won’t let me surrender or enjoy any of it.

  Some people around me look as though they’re enjoying it. The guy next to me has this big shit-eating grin on his face as he revels in the loss of control and responsibility. I think he could be Sergeant Davis, a man I’d once thought too serious to be taken seriously. And now look at him. Despite my own pain, I feel Davis’s shit seeping out of his fatigue pants; hell, its being sieved out of his pants so I get the pure unadulterated core of it, right on my face. I can’t move my arms to shield myself.

  Someone’s murmuring something somewhere. Somebody else is screaming. They could be privates that were under my command, but I can’t tell any more. My own throat feels as though it has been cut. I can’t gulp back the swimming pool of saliva which is in my mouth, and for a moment, I really believe that spit is going to be the ultimate cause of my death.

  But spit is just a bi-product. The real cause of the excruciating last chapter of my life is the damn explosion which ripped through the supposedly secured building; the explosion which is still ringing in my ears.

  It feels as though the explosion is still in progress. Metal and concrete tear and whine against each other. The floor I’m lying on feels insecure; as though at any moment, it will give way. I’ve experienced earthquakes before, and this feels like an aftershock.

  But it hasn’t been caused naturally. The still-sane part of me knows that. Us grunts knew this place was a Taliban hideaway before we set foot in here; they always look like this; a typically low-slung grey building which would be hard to pick out from the air on fly-bys, and easy to mistake for an agricultural building even if it was spotted. It’s the tyre tracks in the dust that really give these places away though, like they’ve been goddamn parking lots in a former life. There’d been reports of miscellaneous activity – training perhaps – radioed through to our unit. Whispers from the Comms Zone that large lorries were coming in the dead of night and loading up with suspiciously-shaped objects. But, as with all such reports, we always seemed too far behind the action. When we arrived there, all we expected to find was an abandoned building, the Taliban long gone.

  The low-slung building was set in a gully about five or six clicks away from a small, dilapidated town which seemed to be pretty much carved out of the lunar landscape. We all asked ourselves how the hell the locals could stand it to live in a place like that. On arrival, we handed out the odd bit of scran to them, doing our humanitarian duty like good little boys before asking them about their friendly neighbours down in the gully. And, of course, we were met with that shifty-eyed look and sudden inability to speak English, despite the fact that seconds earlier, they’d been practically climbing up our packs, shouting ‘chocolate, chocolate’ or ‘water’.

  It was always the same in Helmand – or Mayo as we called it, in homage to the most famous manufacturers of that particular foodstuff - always this uneasiness between us and the locals. Lots of the other grunts found it difficult to cope with situations like that, but I knew all about inward-looking towns and I knew all about how communicating with outsiders wasn’t so much frowned upon but a hanging offence. So I suppose that’s why the CO’s had my lads and I stay down in the town for a while, just to see whether I could find out anything else, while Sergeant Davis and his lot went down to the gully to act as the recon squad. Apparently there’d be some men from another regiment already there waiting for them waiting to fill them in on the latest intelligence on the site.

  So there were five of us that remained in the town, and everywhere we went, we were followed at a safe distance by teems of small children. They looked so helpless that we had to keep reminding ourselves of how dangerous they actually were. Hell, some of the little bastards had probably been trained right up at the gully and had remained behind as some kind of intelligence operative or something.

  Nothing moved in the town apart from our little Pied Piper procession. Most of the windows were boarded up, most of the vehicles looked to have been so overcome by dust and rubble of destroyed buildings that they’d never move again. It was like a version of one of those old American Wild West towns in the films where some bandit-group has come in and killed the sheriff and made off with the loot. We were stepping into the aftermath.

  As our boots crunched across the loose gravel, we didn’t see many males over the age of about sixteen, but those we did – those wrinkled old specimens that sat mournfully on the roadsides – looked so immobile that they’d become a part of the landscape. And it may sound funny, but some of these men’s faces were so stained by war that they’d turned purple, or so it seemed in the harsh sunlight. Some of them practically radiated purple so that it seemed a kind of aura around their heads. Of course, I said nothing of my strange visions to any of my men. It doesn’t pay to sound like a glophead when you’re Lance Corporal in the Kingsmen; it’s the kind of thing that could end up as a permanent, if unspoken, destroyer of trust. And we were nothing if not a tight unit… So instead, we walked in silence – you get used to it here, you really do – and performed our hopeless task. Eventually, we were called up to the gully-building and we couldn’t get out of that dead end town fast enough.

  We’re known as one of the most mobile of all of the infantry units, trained in dealing with the most demanding environments, but Mayo, Afghanistan, the heart of opium country sometimes asked us too much. Two of the younger grunts that I looked after were already struggling on our walk around town; now, in the open land where there was no shield from the blazing sun, they were starting to miss beats. I saw one of the lads – Selly from Preston – almost go down. Only his SA80, which he held in a trembling hand, stopped him from going over.

  But I pushed them, despite the aching of my own legs. I pushed them because we were the Kingsmen, with over three hundred years of tradition behind us. I pushed them because Sergeant Davis would most likely complain if I took any longer than the time he thought necessary to cross the open land. Most of all I pushed them beca
use it was part of me now, this machine-like intensity. And by pushing to the physical limits, I didn’t ever have to go to the mental limits. I didn’t have to think about why the hell I was in the arsehole of the world in the first place.

  Occasionally, I did think, but only to vaguely wonder what the other men thought about when we trouped through the dustbowl. Were they, like me, staring off into the distance searching for single points of reference which were not tinted with the same sepia tones as everything else seemed to be; something that was not doused in the same dishwater brown-grey used in the credits of old episodes of The Waltons.

  What was Reynolds possibly thinking about? With his wiry frame and his dead-shot eyes he was destined to be a good soldier, but at only a year my junior, was he frustrated by his lack of progress up the chain of command? Was he plotting, cursing his luck or simply not thinking at all? And what about Smith, the young lad with the archetypal British name; a name which should have brought him the obvious nickname of Smit or Smitty, but who, because of his Chinese heritage was known as ‘28’ after the number of a dish on a takeaway menu? Was Smith disappointed or angry with his lot? He certainly never seemed to be. In fact he never seemed to be much of anything. Most of the time I wasn’t even sure if he ever listened to what anybody said. Certainly, he never made much of a response, save his oddly Mancunian grunt of ‘yessir’ or ‘can I have a snout?’

  How about Delaney, the only one of us that was married with children; did he spend his time thinking about when he’d next see them again or did he block them out of his mind completely? I knew he carried their photographs around with him, but that was common. Some men were so determined to have someone back home that I suspected their photos were downloaded from websites or cut out from magazines. Delaney was known as Diva because he was always moaning; he even moaned about the nickname that had been dished out to him, which of course simply reinforced the fact that the rest of the grunts had chosen wisely.

  And then there was Selly, the youngster that I’d had no bones about making my favourite. Did he realise how much he relied upon the rest of us? Did he realise that even as he walked, Reynolds and Smith often mocked him? Poor Selly reminded everyone of a puppy-dog. He had huge feet and hands which he looked as though he still needed to grow into properly; sandy hair which became mop-like when he didn't shave it. Selly had the most nicknames of anyone I knew. Reynolds liked to call him ‘Dulux’; Delaney liked to call him ‘Chubs’; Smith, when he could bring himself to speak to the big daft lump, referred to him as ‘Forrest’, as in Gump.

  But bullying like this was par for the course and I let it go, even joined in if the mood took me. The powers-that-be in the forces actively encouraged it; it was their stock in trade to belittle the shit out of a man and then build him back up into the machine that they wanted him to be. That I’d actually been promoted in my time meant that I was already on the way to being half-Terminator.

  To my left, Selly had started to whine again: ‘Why couldn’t they leave one of the Landies for us to take? Why do we always have to walk everywhere?’

  ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ mocked Reynolds.

  Delaney snorted with laughter.

  Smith plodded.

  ‘Shut up Selly,’ I said, letting him walk past and then planting a gentle kick up his arse. Just to be friendly, like. He staggered forward a little. For a moment I thought he was going arse –over-tit, but he managed to correct himself. Then he started to walk on a little ahead of the rest of us, sulking.

  ‘The little arse-wipe,’ sneered Reynolds, ‘he’s just like a little rug-rat.’ And for one dangerous moment, he reminded me of someone in my past. Another shark that could scent the blood of a weaker animal from so many miles away. I had to bite back the urge to crack him one, but I also had to bite back the urge to join in with him. Because although Selly was my favourite, I also hated him for his weakness. And sometimes it paid to let people know that you knew exactly how weak they were.

  ‘This dust gets everywhere,’ moaned Delaney, and then all of us launched into him instead, knowing that he could take it.

  Presently, Selly returned to the main group. He already looked to have got over his sulk; even looked excited about something.

  ‘I can see where they are,’ he panted, ‘the sarge and them…’ He paused to get his breath, gesturing towards a slight ridge in the distance. I shielded my eyes and peered off into the nothingness and then finally saw what looked to be a collection of medium-sized vehicles and a large group of men.

  ‘Nice one, Sells,’ I said, by way of thanks, apology and whatever else he wanted it to be. And there was a new spring to our step as we picked our way across the shit-tip towards Davis and whatever other regiment were there to offer reinforcements.

  Now we could actually see our destination, the going was better. It seemed somehow less hot. But something was still concerning me. When Selly had first pointed out the camp on top of the ridge, all I’d seen at first was a mass of dazzling purple light, flickering like a fire shot through a purple lens on a camera. Only after screwing up my eyes had I picked out the individual figures and vehicles. Only after I’d convinced myself that it was a trick of the light or of the desert or of dehydration. Nevertheless, it worried me. It seemed like some kind of a sign that things were not as they seemed; not easy. The whole thing was making me uneasy, especially after I’d seen virtually the same light display in the faces of the old men by the roadside in the town. I gave an involuntary shudder and then furtively looked around the grunts to check whether they’d noticed. It wouldn’t do to be caught shivering out here in the scorched desert; it was a sign of weakness.

  As we approached, I saw that there were about fifty men, arranged haphazardly across the ridge at the top of the gully in between five or six Wolf Land Rovers and a Challenger. Sergeant Davis and the man I took to be the sarge from the other regiment were the only ones standing; they were having an animated discussion. I didn’t envy the other sarge; Davis was one boring fucker at the best of times. The worst of times was generally when you first got to meet him; when he was trying to impress his iron will upon you like it was a job interview or something.

  ‘Look at them lounging about like they’re catching some rays,’ said Delaney. ‘They’re worse than the Septics, this lot.’

  It always riled our boys that whenever we were engaged in some heavy menial task or other, Davis’s men or the Yanks or men in other regiments weren’t. He took it as a personal affront. What he didn’t ever seem to get through his thick skull was the fact that when we were on a bit of R & R, generally it would be Davis’s men or the Yanks or men in other regiments that were working, or policing the war-torn streets, or dealing with the civilians. Still, Davis’s grunts were resting. Leaning against their packs and smoking snouts. Looking for all the world as though they were in the middle of enjoying a nice, comfortable walk in the British countryside and they’d only stopped for a bite to eat. Only the fact that each man still wore their helmet and had one hand clamped on his SA80 told me that they were in any way concerned; but that, I suppose, is the monotony of fear. Something you get more than used to in the Kingsmen.

  ‘Have a rest yourselves boys,’ I said, ‘I need to go over and talk to the sarge and see what the plan is.’

  My lads jumped at the opportunity and moved over to lean against one of the three Wolf Land Rovers and regain their breath. I noticed that they stood as a four, slightly away from the other grunts. Despite their personal differences, they still recognised the importance of standing tight as a group, especially when other eyes were on us.

  ‘Anything from the town?’ Davis barked over at me as he saw me approach.

  ‘Nothing, sarge’ I confirmed. ‘As per usual.’

  I waited patiently for Davis to introduce me to the other sergeant, wondering whether he’d bother; wondering whether he’d yet again try to reinforce his own position by undermining everyone else’s.

  ‘So are we all set to go now, Davis
?’ asked the other man. ‘The Second Yorkshire’s have been ready for twenty minutes now…’

  They really were two peas in a pod. Apparently my duty was done and neither of them had thought it necessary to tell a grunt like me what we were planning to do. As I walked away, I heard them start to talk again. Something about the building being abandoned as suspected. Something about being on the lookout for trip-wires. Something about there being no need for snipers.

  I walked back to my lads and nodded to them. I took a pull of water offered by Smith – which tasted overwhelmingly of cigarettes of course, but anything was better than the taste of the water purifier tablets - and wiped some sweat off my brow.

  ‘So what’s the plan, Lance Corporal Bull?’ asked Selly. And in that moment, he became my favourite again. He had seemed to sense the need to reassert my authority after the shambolic chat with the two sergeants, and yet he was as thick as two short planks which had been gradually whittled down into ashtrays. Through pure, numb luck rather than judgement, he always seemed to pull me right out of my bad moods. But then, whatever life you walk, it’s always comforting to know that there’s someone, somewhere that’s far, far worse off than you.

  ‘Fuck off, Selly,’ I said, already feeling back to my best. ‘You don’t need to know that at this stage of the game.’

  I watched him flop back down by the Wolf and start to fiddle with the cap of his water bottle. Sand and dust would get in there if he continued the way he was going, but he didn’t seem to care. Reynolds flicked a bit of cigarette ash onto the lad’s lowered head, but Selly didn’t even notice because of the helmet. But there was something else too; he was lost in his own world; probably one in which big Dulux dogs like him frolicked in the sun and were rubbed on the stomach once in a while by their owners and betters; people like me.