Bully

by A. J. Kirby

  I moved into the shadow of one of the buildings and weighed up my next move. I listened, as I’d been trained to do. I made calculations based on the noises that I heard. The majority of the buildings sounded empty, but I’d heard faint sounds from two of the buildings close to the main gateway through the fence. These were not, I decided, the sounds of more vermin, but were made by something bigger - human beings. There was bound to be somebody keeping watch. Only problem was, where were they?

  Most likely they’d be keeping watch over the key strategic elements of the camp, I decided. And that didn’t mean wounded soldiers; that meant something else. Outside the fence, underneath tarpaulins, I could see the obvious shapes of vehicles; Land Rover Wolves and Defenders, probably. Perhaps there’d be a Warrior in there too. Because of the nature of the terrain, these vehicles were a lifeline. Without them, we might as well have been buried in a sandpit.

  What I had to try and work out was how this night watchman would react if they were to see me emerging out of the gloom. Would they shoot me on sight or would they know me as one of the patients and hence use caution? In the end, I decided that whatever happened, even if I happened to be mown down in a rain of bullets like Butch Cassidy as I stepped into the open, it was still preferable to what awaited me with Tommy.

  I took a deep breath and stepped into the shaft of moonlight which intersected the first two of the buildings. The crunch of gravel as my feet touched the floor made me wince. But I needed to move quickly, while I still had the element of surprise on my side, so I pressed on. Still nothing moved. I kept imagining that at any moment, I was going to trip some heretofore unseen wire and alert the whole hospital camp to my escape, but it seemed that camp security within the perimeter fence wasn’t a high priority. I was pretty much allowed to move wherever I chose. Perhaps they didn’t really expect any of the patients, and especially the ones that had survived the blast, to be making any such bold moves.

  Grimly, I clutched onto the strap on my pack and tried to stop it from rubbing on my shoulder, where Tommy had touched me. His fingernail-claws had left deep scores in my flesh there, but there’d been no blood, strangely enough. It was as though his deathly touch had started the decomposition process within me. The constant thought of Tommy kept me going. It guided me over the marshy ground behind the second of the buildings and over the broken pipes which crashed out of the third as though they were a knot of dead snakes. I felt my booted feet sinking into years and years of animal droppings, although where all the animals were now, I could barely even contemplate. The smell was almost unbearable.

  As I approached the last of the buildings, I began to discern signs of the humanity contained within; the low buzz of a radio, the slight tang of cigarette smoke in the air, and the flickering light which shone out from the gap underneath the door. Part of me longed to step inside, to feel warmth and companionship again, but they’d only send me back to my own building, wouldn’t they? They’d think my sudden panic a sign of madness and probably subject me to all kinds of psychological testing. They’d find out about Tommy and what we did to him…

  I slunk past the windows keeping low to the ground. Retching at the smell, at the fact that my bare hands were now wallowing in the years of sewage, I crawled towards the gate and my freedom. Every creaking, stinking, filthy bit of progress that I made was accompanied by a throb of pain from my shoulders and chest. On all-fours like a dog, I crept towards my destiny.

  Suddenly, just as I began to believe that my hands were about to touch the wire of the fence, two dazzling lights fizzed into life. They were perched like sentry birds on top of the gate and had clearly sensed my approach; so much for my theories of no security detail. I was frozen in the glare of the spotlights, like road-kill. I kept expecting the exploding pain of a Browning bullet, ripping into my back. I kept expecting the enraged shout of the night watchman or sniper. Nothing happened.

  Finally, I allowed myself to climb to my feet. Despite the pain in my shoulder, I lifted both hands above my head in surrender and still nothing happened.

  ‘What the fuck?’ I heard myself ask.

  There hadn’t been the slightest movement from the nearest building. There hadn’t been even a crackle of gunfire. I edged towards the building, keeping my head bowed in submission and my arms aloft. Still nothing happened. I placed my hand on the gnarled wood of the door. I felt the reality of it, so strangely juxtaposed alongside the dreamlike quality of the whole situation; the emptiness.

  I opened the door, not quite daring to wonder what I’d see within. But there was nobody there, not even Nurse Thomas. I let out a breath that I’d clearly been holding for some time and scanned the room. Four beds; medical equipment stacked neatly over to one side; a lopsided shelf containing weighty tomes which were probably medical textbooks; a gaslight burning away on the wall. Otherwise, it was decorated much like our ward; only the briefest personal touches made me believe that there’d been anyone in here at all. Above one of the unmade beds, there was tacked a picture of cows and green fields and rising hills in the background; England. On one of the bedside tables, there was a picture of a small red-haired boy. I wondered if this might be Nurse Thomas’s son. The portable radio that I’d heard was hanging from a hook in the ceiling, as though it could achieve better reception up there. Where was everybody?

  Suddenly, I became aware of the smell of cigarettes. In an ashtray on an old desk which had been pushed against the back wall, a lone cigarette end burned away into nothing. Whoever had left it there had only left it there a matter of minutes ago, perhaps as I was stalking the perimeter. I had the sinking feeling that as well as Bolton, Tommy might have visited the doctors and nurses. Perhaps he’d pied-pipered them all out of there… What other reasonable explanation was there for the Mary Celeste-like state of their room? Where else could they have gone?

  Madly, I dashed from bed to bed, stripping back the sheets to look for bloodstains. I pulled down curtains, kicked away rugs and trampled through piles of dirty clothes but I found none. Where was everybody?

  I thought back to the moment I’d first stepped out of our building. I’d listened to the sounds of the night then; I was sure that I’d heard people. But now they’d simply disappeared into thin air. Or not into thin air at all; into the thick fish-smelling air of Tommy’s afterlife, perhaps.

  ‘Help me,’ I croaked, to nobody in particular. I had never believed in God or in some divine creator, but if I believed in Tommy and the hellish afterlife that he advertised, then surely I could believe in Him?

  My voice echoed back off the bare walls. It echoed back off the salt-flats and the desert. It echoed back off the lonely rocks and the deserted buildings. It felt as though I was the last person alive on the planet. Not for the first time, I asked my favourite question; why me? Nobody in this post-apocalyptic world could give me an answer, but I did strain to hear whether the creaking of the corrugated iron roof was actually Tommy’s laughter.

  Do-Nowt! I remembered Do-Nowt, and finally I had a purpose again. I had to get him out of there and maybe somehow, in doing so, I’d redeem myself a little. I crashed out of the building and back into the shit-heap central courtyard. I ran headlong through the middle of it, no longer caring that I’d be seen. In fact, I was hoping that I’d be seen. Hell, the smash of a bullet rifling into my back would be welcome compared to the lonely agony I felt. Like the broken man’s old dog act, I was now pleading to be put out of my misery.

  I ran so fast that my breath burned in my throat and my legs wheezed and buckled in complaint.

  ‘Dean!’ I yelled, choking back snot and vomit and fear. ‘Do-Nowt!’

  I don’t quite know what I expected him to do if he heard my cries. In his state, he couldn’t exactly make ready to leave, could he? He was bed-ridden, legless; another broken man. But then so was I, wasn’t I?

  It took me a moment to remember that I’d had to wedge the front door to our building shut with a large stone. In that moment, I pulled at the door
handle as though none other than Tommy Peaker were on the other side, pulling against me. Cursing, I kicked the stone away and entered my worst nightmare. Not only was the body of Bolton now gone, but Do-Nowt was now nowhere to be seen. It felt like the cruellest practical joke in the world. Even then, I believed that everybody was going to jump out of some concealed door and burst out laughing. Do-Nowt would be back on two-legs, the broken man holding some kind of mask that he’d been wearing to fool me. Even Tommy would be there, holding up some stilts and a wad of tissues that he’d stuffed down his jumper to make himself seem bulkier.

  I started to laugh; quietly at first, but rising into a crescendo which could best be described as a howl. Why was this happening to me? Why was I being tormented so? Ah, who was I kidding? I knew exactly why, didn’t I? It was a little dead boy’s sick revenge fantasy and I’d blundered straight into it. I laughed again, and cried, and laughed again. I slumped down onto the stone floor and rested my forehead against its coldness. I waited for death to come take me. I gave up. Now I really was that wildebeest on the African plain. I felt death’s teeth start to clamp around my ankle, ripping into the flesh. I carried on laughing hysterically.

  I came to with a nagging coldness around my groin area. It felt like an old familiar friend, that clammy wetness, so it took me a while to figure out just what it was. When I did, I was disgusted; I’d pissed myself. Somewhere amid all the laugh-crying and the wailing and the giving up, I’d just let my bladder give way and then I’d slept in it. I wrinkled my nose and took in the smell. The hospital now smelled like Tommy’s house back in Newton Mills. It reeked of piss, as though not only had I pissed in my combat trousers, I’d also showered all of the empty beds with it, and the blue medical curtains. Some awful voice in the back of my head reminded me that this was exactly the sort of humiliation we’d heaped upon Tommy that day in the playground when Twinnie had kept kicking and kicking until we feared there’d be nothing of the lad left. Absently, I wondered whether Tommy had pissed himself in the grave that we’d put him in and I concluded that he probably had. There was nowhere else that he could have gone.

  I felt something start to nibble at my ankle again as though my awakening had reminded death that it still had a job to do. It gnawed at my cartilage and sinew. I heard the screech of sharp teeth against bone. I felt fresh blood starting to seep out, beginning to take consciousness with it. I hardly dared look down for fear that I’d see Tommy’s new bright eyes staring glassily back at me. But then something crawled across my face; a rat. And it didn’t crawl quickly as though it was scared. In fact, it stopped to wash its blood-coated paws right on my chin. Flecks of the thing’s saliva flew into my open mouth. Summoning energy that I never knew I possessed, I flung out an arm and knocked it onto the floor where it scurried away giving a prolonged indignant squeak. It would come back, it told me. It would come back and with greater numbers.

  Finally I looked down at my leg and saw the one remaining rat still chewing at my flesh. It had now removed a good portion of the top half of my boot, sock and foot. Underneath all of the blood, I could see either the tongue of the boot or a large flap of skin within the rat’s jaws. He was pulling and pulling at it; trying to tear it loose. I looked at it with vaguely confused eyes. Was that really my foot dribbling through the shiny black leather? It certainly didn’t feel as though any damage had been done and yet veins spilled out of the mess and mixed with the shoelaces to form a bloody portion of overcooked spaghetti.

  All I could feel was a slight tingle, like pins and needles. When I tried to kick the rat away, something snapped and my foot started to hang loose like the front door on its one hinge. The rat darted back away from me but not too far. Not far enough to convince me that he wouldn’t be back for more too. And I swear that as I looked at him, his chops collapsed into this deathly grin. His bared teeth were covered in my blood.

  Then I decided that I’d probably seen enough to warrant a scream. Then I decided that it didn’t matter if I screamed so loud that I made my head explode. Mine was the scream of a victim, of somebody that is constantly and consistently tortured until they cannot bear it any more. Mine was the scream of somebody that has been bullied to within an inch of their life.

  ‘Kill me!’ I screamed. ‘Or let me die!’

  This time when the corrugated iron creaked in response, I knew that it was Tommy’s laughter, Tommy’s revenge. All I could think about was his not-quite-all-there gap-toothed grin; his freckly face and pathetic floppy ears. I felt the anger starting to creep up within me. Suddenly, I wanted to smash his face in. Suddenly, I wanted to inflict great pain.

  I used the anger to crawl over to the bed. It wasn’t easy, not with one leg trailing behind me like a piece of heavy wood, but I made it through gritted-teeth- perseverance and anger. I smashed one hand down onto the bed head and tried to pull myself up with it. In the corner of my eye, I saw rats streaming through the crack in the wall. Some rats were even plucking up the courage to follow my trail of blood, and once they had that taste, courage became secondary. Blood-lust was all for them.

  Sweat pissed down my forehead. My arm threatened to give up the ghost entirely, but somehow, I managed to drag myself upright. I loomed over the rats and sneered. Some started to back away from me, but when they saw my near-collapse when I tried to put weight on my mangled foot, when they saw the spray of blood that erupted from within me, they came back at me.

  And then I saw it; the piece of metal that Tommy had been using as a cane was leaning against the wall by the door. If I could just make it to the cane, I could somehow limp my way out of there.

  Slowly, I started to move. I longed for a weapon with which I could hold back this accumulating black tide of rats; a flame-thrower perhaps, or a carefully-flighted grenade. Goddamn it, I would have taken an A-Bomb right then, if it meant that those fucking rats would get a taste of their own medicine. In my final moments, I would have seen their paws and furry limbs being ripped to shreds as well as my own.

  The tidal wave of my own anger was the thing that carried me through those terrible moments. It numbed me against the pain in my foot. It allowed me to finally gain the door and to grab at the metal cane. Sure, it made me linger longer than I should have done at the door as I beat the cane down onto the heads of the nearest rats, but eventually it dragged me out of there and into the open air.

  I was surprised to see that it had become light during my time back in our building. It was as though, upon seeing myself being eaten alive, I’d automatically assumed that I’d never see sunlight again. But anger had seen me through, and it continued to be my friend as I crossed the centre of the courtyard and made directly for the gate.

  Only after I’d thrown off the tarpaulin and gunned the engine of the Red Cross jeep did I allow that little whimper to escape from the knot of sustained terror which gripped my heart. Only then did I understand that Tommy’s revenge was not some terrible practical joke, but was actually something which looked a lot like hell on earth.

  Chapter Five

  “Can you teach me how to dance real slow?”

  Dr. Montaffian told me, in that typically forthright manner of his, that when they found me they virtually had to peel what was left of my ruined foot off the accelerator pedal of the Red Cross jeep. Apparently, I’d driven straight into the barrier at the military check-point. I’d lost so much blood that they thought I hadn’t even seen the thing. I knew better. Even though I couldn’t remember any of it, I knew that with death on my tail, I wouldn’t have wanted to wait until the barrier lifted. Taking my foot off the pedal would have been tantamount to allowing Tommy in through the back door.

  Yet again, I found myself in hospital, only this time it was a proper hospital; one run with military precision by the Americans. It had to be the Americans. Even accounting for my grogginess during my first meeting with the doctor - hell, even before then - I’d known. For this was a place which stunk of money, sparkled with efficiency and oozed confidence. Instead of t
he commandeered farm buildings of the British hospital, the Americans had built their own space and it was all gunmetal grey walls and proper sterility. Full of hushed voices reverberating along corridors and blazing lights on every ceiling, night and day. Like a proper hospital should be, if they ever expect any of the patients to survive.

  Despite the fact that I was rigged up to all kinds of bleeping electronic equipment and had tubes sticking out of every available vein, I should have felt a strange kind of reassurance. And the fact that it looked like an episode of ER, rather than the goddamn Texas Chainsaw Massacre slaughterhouse I’d escaped from, should have had me thinking: ‘Nothing but the best for a Kingsman.’ But it didn’t.

  I cracked open my eyes, feeling the build-up of the mucus that mothers like to tell their children is called ‘sleep’ weighing heavily on the lids. I took another look around the small room which they had installed me in. There was no corrugated iron to be seen; no other patients either. Just me, the big comfortable bed and the machines that were arranged around me ready to take care of my every bodily need. But what about my mental needs?

  Almost without knowing I was doing it, I took furtive glances for shadows lurking in the corners of the room, but it was too light for that. I should have felt reassured… But I didn’t. I felt my heart marching along far too quickly. It would stumble and fall like poor Selly if it continued like that.

  I felt heaviness around my head like water. Pressing, pressing. Like there were hands there, forceful as a vice but soft too, so the fingers didn’t even make an impression on my head. And now, as I looked back at the machinery, I realised that it actually looked like praying relatives collected around a death-bed. Waiting. Just waiting.