Kill All Enemies

by Melvin Burgess

  Bliss.

  I took out a big slab of cheese and a pint of milk and I waded on upstairs, through the sea of sound. I got myself settled down at the PC and found myself my favourite heavy-metal site, Dead Friends. Dead friends are the best friends. A skeleton never calls you fat. He never slaps you round the face and makes you say thank you. He is most definitely not a chav. Best of all, he likes the same music I do.

  I looked at the pictures and started to rap out the drums on my desk. It felt sooooooo good. That’s my dream – to be a proper metalhead in a heavy-metal band playing my heavy-metal drums. It might have come true, once upon a time, when I still had my drums. It was so cool – I was so cool, back in the day. I played every day, every spare moment I had I was on the kit, banging away the pain, drumming in the light. I even had the beginnings of a band with my mate Frankie. I was on drums, he played guitar and sang. It was the coolest thing in my life, playing death metal with Frankie back in the day.

  Not any more.

  There’s a reason why I don’t have any drums. That reason is called Philip. He’s the stinking pile of dog turds who took my drums away. Philip’s done some bad things to me, but that was the worst. I’ll never forgive him for that. He didn’t just take away my drums – he took away my dreams. No one should ever be allowed to do that to you. Now I have no drums and no dreams – but I still have the music. I’ll always have the music.

  That’ll do for now. It’ll have to.

  There was a noise far in the distance behind me. I turned round; it was Davey. My heart sank. His mouth was opening and closing. I couldn’t hear a thing, but I knew exactly what he was saying.

  I jumped up, grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him round and marched him out of the room. He was twisting and pushing but Roly Poly had a grip on him. He was still yelling, but I was yelling and so were Metallica so I couldn’t hear a word.

  ‘Out!’ I was bawling. ‘No! No! Out …’

  ‘GGGRRRRRRRRXXXXXXXOWWWWW,’ roared Metallica.

  ‘ ’ said Davey. ‘ , Rob!’

  I had him out into the corridor and nearly at his door when he managed to pull one of the earphones out.

  In came the world. Screaming and shouting and yelling and tears. Philip and my mum.

  ‘Can we have a game, please, Rob? Can we? Rob, please … no, don’t, Rob …’ Blub blub blub, the little shit.

  ‘What can I do? What can I do?’ I roared. ‘What can I do? What can I do?’

  I shoved him away and he went down on his bum in his room. I stuck the earplug back in and ran back to my own room. I turned the sound up and tried to concentrate, but it was ruined. I sat there for a few minutes longer, but it was no good.

  I got up and went back down the landing.

  He was on his bed, bawling his little eyes out. No, that’s not fair. He doesn’t do that any more – he’s too old. He holds it in better now.

  ‘Come on, then. Game on,’ I said.

  He didn’t look at me, but he turned up in my room a few minutes later. I have Metallica. He has me. That’s the way it is.

  I got out the Xbox and hooked it up to the TV. Davey sat on the bed. He found my iPod and stuck one of the earphones in.

  ‘You are going to get so battered one day listening to this stuff,’ he told me.

  He’s right. If Martin Riley and the chavpack find out I listen to Metallica, I am dead. For them, listening to metal is one step down from being a nonce.

  ‘No one will ever know,’ I told him. I sat down next to him. The screen came on. ‘Kill All Enemies,’ I said, and we started to play.

  Chris

  So I get off the bus and I walk home and there’s my mum waiting for me in the hall.

  ‘We need a word with you, Chris. In here, please.’

  My dad was in the living room with his face set like cement. Wikes had got in touch after all, the sneaky little get.

  ‘Not this again,’ I said.

  ‘This again,’ said my dad. He whipped out a piece of paper, as if my crimes were too numerous to remember. Maybe they were – for him. ‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?’ he said in a tired voice, as if he could hardly be bothered. In fact, of course, he loves it. Exercising power over things that are none of his business is one of his hobbies.

  ‘Getting sent out of lessons. Science.’

  ‘He picks on me.’

  ‘I wonder why?’ He glanced at the paper again. ‘Rudeness.’

  ‘I’m never rude!’ I was offended. I have my principles. ‘I always misbehave with the maximum of good manners. It’s a rule of mine.’

  ‘You’re being rude now,’ said my dad.

  ‘That’s not being rude – that’s being clever. Different thing entirely.’

  ‘Chris, stop it,’ said Mum, as my dad bulged with rage, like a mating bullfrog – something that I was going to have to point out to him if this went on much longer.

  ‘Not doing the work is rudeness enough when the teachers are going to the trouble.’

  ‘Of being paid,’ I pointed out. I mean, no one’s paying me, are they? But I’d said the wrong thing again. I could see it.

  ‘Chris, stop answering back and listen,’ begged my mum. But Dad was beginning to wind me up. I can be reasonable, why can’t he? I sighed and gestured for him to carry on.

  There was a pause while they both glared at me.

  That was a danger sign, them both glaring. I should have picked up on that. Dad paced a couple of times across the floor while Mum watched him anxiously.

  ‘Homework, not done,’ he said, when he had regained control. ‘Homework not done for four years!’ You could see him turning red as he spoke.

  ‘Is it four years now? Wow,’ I heard myself saying. I hadn’t realized. I was impressed. ‘Is that a school record?’

  ‘It’s not funny,’ bawled my dad. ‘You know what’s next, don’t you? Exclusion. Is that what you want – to be an excluded boy?’

  I sighed again. Quite loudly, I admit. I mean, who’s being rude here, him or me? I leave you to judge for yourself. ‘I’ve already told you my views on this one,’ I said.

  Dad turned purple. I know, I know! I could see it coming. It’s my mouth – I can’t help it. It just says things. But, be fair, he was asking for it.

  ‘Chris …’ warned my mum.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said loftily. ‘But I haven’t heard anything here today to make me consider changing my position.’

  Dad charged. Suddenly he had me by the neck up against the wall, breathing baked beans into my face.

  ‘We’ve had you tested – there’s nothing wrong. We’ve grounded you, we’ve stopped your money – that doesn’t work. We’ve had private tutors – that doesn’t work. The only thing left is to hit you. And, Chris, I don’t want to hit you.’

  He dropped me and turned away. There was a long, embarrassed silence.

  I brushed myself down. ‘If you do that again,’ I said, ‘I’m going to do it back.’ My voice was shaking.

  ‘This is a nice middle-class family,’ hissed Mum, glaring at Dad. ‘We talk things over. We don’t hit one another.’

  ‘I can feel my working-class roots rising to the surface,’ muttered my dad.

  I’d had enough. ‘You can shout all you like – I’m not doing it. It’s stupid. You try it. See how you like it.’

  ‘I have tried it,’ said my dad. ‘I tried it for fourteen years. So did your mother. So has everyone else. Now it’s your turn.’

  Mum stepped in – the business end, you know?

  ‘Chris. Something has to change. Even the nice teachers, the ones who like you, are fed up. They want to exclude you and send you to the Pupil Referral Unit. It’s not a joke. It’s happening.’

  ‘A son of mine, expelled,’ groaned my dad.

  ‘But we’ve done a deal,’ said Mum.

  And a mighty crap deal it turned out to b
e.

  I had to stay in every night and do a piece of homework.

  ‘Just one piece,’ said my mum encouragingly. ‘It’s not much.’

  ‘No, not much,’ I said. ‘So long as you don’t count the fact that I’ve actually spent the whole day at school doing exactly the same thing. The whole day. And the day before that. And the day before that. And the day before that … And the day …’

  ‘Except when you’re not there,’ said my dad, and I didn’t reply to that, because, if I had, I’d have pointed out I wouldn’t be there rather more in future, after this.

  In order to make sure I stayed in and did said piece of homework, I was going to be locked in my room. Yes, you heard correctly. Locked in my room, like some sort of terror suspect.

  For not doing my homework.

  ‘And one thing you can count on, fella,’ said Dad. ‘You won’t be coming out of there until that piece of work is done.’

  ‘That’s, like, prison,’ I said. ‘I haven’t robbed anyone. I haven’t mugged anyone. You’re being ridiculous. What’s the point?’

  ‘The point is the future, Chris,’ he snapped.

  ‘The future’s tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I don’t want the future tomorrow. I want it NOW.’

  ‘Well, you can’t have it,’ he sneered, and he closed the door and turned the key, leaving me with – you guessed it. Wikes’s frog skin. You know? Last thing in the day you have to do frog skin. Then you go home and you get locked in your room to do more frog skin.

  ‘You just have to meet us halfway,’ yelled my mum up the stairs.

  You see how far gone these people are? Someone must have changed the rules of maths since she went to school, because, what they taught me, halves means two equal parts, right? But what they mean is I spend one half of my life doing school work at school, then I come home and spend the other half of my life doing school work at home. Halfway? Don’t make me laugh.

  You might have gathered that this evening was the end result of a long and dreadful power struggle between me and the forces of evil – a struggle that they were bound to lose in the end. I’d lost count of how many meetings me and Mum and Dad have had with various members of staff, experts, counsellors and so on.

  At first they thought there must be something wrong. I had tests. Dyslexia, eyesight, IQ. I must be the most tested person in Leeds. Results – everything is just fine. Then, when they ran out of ‘issues’, they turned to that old standby, measures. Or, to call it by its proper name, punishments.

  What they can’t get their heads round is – it’s not that I can’t do the work. It’s that I disagree with doing the work.

  So I don’t do it.

  It’s not like I’m unwilling to negotiate. I accept that school exists. It’s boring, but we have to go. I understand that. I go. I work – so long as they don’t take the piss. But when I get home, that’s my time. It’s called the work/life balance. Look it up. What I do at school, that’s their business. What I do at home – that’s mine. And I never go to detentions, either. They want to punish me, OK, they have that right – so long as they do it in their own time.

  They hate it. It drives them mad. They just cannot understand that I’m acting out of principle. It has to be laziness or stupidity or plain old naughty Chris. The teachers go ape shit about it. My grades, they say. Yeah, right. THEIR grades, they mean. Did you know they get paid on how good their class grades are? They don’t get enough A to Cs – down goes their money. I’m hitting them where it hurts – right in the wallet.

  Well, sod them. They want me to spend a hundred hours a week helping them crawl up the income pole? No thanks. It isn’t even necessary. Even if you are stupid enough to want to go to uni and run up massive debts, why not wait until you’re nineteen or twenty? You don’t even have to do all these stupid A levels, then. You can do a nice, easy one-year access course and get in almost for free just because you’re a grown-up. Why bust a gut doing it the hard way now, when you can do it the easy way just by waiting a few years?

  No one, but no one, has given me a sensible answer yet to that one.

  I had a look at the work and I knew in about two seconds there was no way I was going to do this stuff. It was so boring I felt faint just looking at it. Boredom is for old people. They like being bored. They have to like it – they lack the energy to enjoy themselves.

  I texted Alex. He’s one of the lucky ones. He likes work.

  I texted, ‘Mate! I need some homework.’

  Outside my room, the boards creaked. My dad, the warder, on his rounds.

  Gently, I got on to a game while I waited for a reply – Nothing House – you know that thing where you have to demolish everything by working out where the weak point is? It’s like school or family life in that way. I put it on quiet – I had headphones, but I needed to be on the alert.

  I got through two streets and the town museum before Dad was at the door. I could hear the key going round.

  ‘Leave me alone! I’m doing it, aren’t I?’ I yelled.

  ‘Just checking …’ The door opening … him coming in. Hurriedly I flicked on the screen back to the frog skin.

  ‘Mum!’ I screeched. ‘Mum, he’s checking up on me! Why can’t I be left alone to do it my way?’

  We both paused and waited for the response.

  ‘Show him what you’ve done, Chris. Just do it!’ she yelled up. Dad smirked and walked in, snorting like a pig walking into a rubbish tip.

  ‘Give me that.’ We had a brief tussle as he pulled the laptop out of my grip and checked my tabs.

  ‘Gaming. I thought so. Right. I’m disconnecting the wireless.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘Can.’

  ‘But I need online resources …’

  ‘You were in the lesson. Just do it.’

  Stuffed. I sat and racked my brains for ages, but it was no good. I was going to have to break my principles of four years.

  I was going to have to do some homework.

  It took hours. Hours and hours. Well, one hour at least – but that’s not the point. They had caused me to violate my principles.

  Mum let me out. Dad was at the supermarket – she must have sent him away to stop him pestering me.

  ‘Chris, this is wonderful,’ she breathed, giving me the full positive-reinforcement job. ‘Marvellous! You see how easy it is for you once you get down to it? It could be a little longer perhaps …’

  ‘Taken me hours,’ I pointed out.

  ‘It’s wonderful. Here.’ She took out her purse and handed me a fiver. ‘And there’s more where that came from if you can just keep up this standard of work. OK?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, dripping with sarcasm. She pretended not to notice. I crammed the fiver in my pocket and ran out of the front door. I was a free man. They’d be playing footie down the rec. I was that happy I almost skipped. As I got close to the rec I broke into a run. I couldn’t help it. I thought … I love this, I just love this. I ran on to the grass and into the game.

  I was still angry, though. I’d actually had to do some homework. It had made my brain go all floppy and horrible, working that late in the day.

  One thing I was sure of. This. Is not. Ever. Happening. Again.

  Billie

  I was that upset on the bus I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t work it out till I was nearly home. How come my mum wasn’t doing that washing? That’s her job. Katie should have been doing her homework or out playing with her mates, not standing in the yard hanging up the washing while Mum stayed in bed drinking with her new bloke.

  That’s what it’s all about. I know. The washing’s just the start of it. When she’s done that, Katie’ll be straight inside doing the hoovering and then getting the dinner on and feeding everyone and then washing up, then getting Sammy off to bed. Mum feeling tired, was she? I bet she was. I bet she was feeling so tired she had to lie in bed
upstairs with some bloke getting pissed while my little sister ran the whole house for her. The whole mess starting again. Katie not getting her homework done. Katie getting into trouble at school. Mucking up her whole life trying to solve Mum’s problems for her.

  No way was I going to let our Katie end up like me.

  I nearly went straight back to sort it out there and then. That bloke was there, but I wasn’t scared of him. There was no point going down the Social. I tried that before. You know what they said? Told me to stay away. Can you get that? My own family, and now suddenly it’s none of my business because that drunken cow wants to get pissed in peace? And no one is there for you, and no one, no one, no one is willing to help you sort it out. Even Hannah.

  ‘You have to leave it to the Social now, Billie,’ she said. She said that to me, and she knows exactly how crap they are.

  No way. Even if I have to go down for it. I’m going down anyway, for something – everyone knows that. She’s ruined my life, but Katie doesn’t have to end up like me, does she? Not if I have a say in it.

  I was too upset to deal with it right then. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t want to go home to Barbara and Dan. I tried ringing Hannah, but she never picks up at this time of day. It’s her time with her kid.

  Cookie’d be in work … Nah. I really wasn’t in the mood for that. There was nothing for it. I had to go home.

  I was praying, just praying they hadn’t found out about that fight in the car park. I could have done with a break right then. But I should have known. I opened the front door and there he was, Dan, waiting for me. She always pushes him out first to do the dirty work.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We … we need to see you, Billie. In here. Please?’ he added, trying to be nice.

  We went through. There she was, Queen Barbara, sitting in her armchair psyching herself up.

  ‘Here we are again, then,’ she sniffed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fighting, Billie,’ said Dan. ‘You agreed. No more fights.’

  I knew it! ‘Who says?’ I demanded.