Kill All Enemies

by Melvin Burgess

  I got out in the morning once the cars started up outside. I didn’t see any of the drunks. I just pushed open the front door and ran out. I wasn’t planning on spending another night like that. No way, but I wasn’t ready to go back to Barbara’s, either. They want to lock me up, let them catch me.

  I went round to see Cookie instead.

  It was early. He was still in bed, I had to go round and rap on the window. And rap. And rap and rap and rap.

  ‘Come on, you bastard, wake up,’ I was hissing. Then his face loomed up in the window and he staggered off to open the door.

  Cookie, he’s an ugly bugger at the best of times. He stood there at the door in his boxers like something that had just crawled out of the dog’s nose.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  He hobbled to one side. I went to the kitchen. He shut the door and followed me through.

  ‘What?’ he said again.

  ‘Can you put me up for a few days?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just a few days. I got a spot of bother. I put this lad in hospital.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Just for a few days.’

  Cookie shook his head. ‘… Back to bed,’ he muttered. He staggered off, leaving me standing there.

  ‘Thanks – thanks!’ I called after him. He waved a hand and disappeared towards the bedroom.

  Somewhere to stay.

  I went straight to the fridge. Nothing there, but I found burgers in the freezer and a load of buns he’d nicked from work. Burgers and Cookie. He works with them, he eats them, he smells like them, he even tastes like them. I got a couple out and stuck them in the microwave. I looked around while I waited. It was a shithole. Grease everywhere, sink clogged up with paper plates – he nicks them from work too – and fag ends and beer cans. It smelled of rotting meat. He’d had a heavy night.

  Cookie called out from the bedroom.

  ‘Billie!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, come here.’

  I went through. He was lying under the duvet, no cover on it, just this cheap duvet.

  He didn’t look good. He didn’t smell good, either.

  He lifted up the duvet.

  ‘I got …’

  ‘Gerrin!’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Gerrin!’

  Yeah, well. You got to pay your rent. I got in, but it wasn’t that. He lay on his stomach and turned his face away, maybe so I wouldn’t have to smell his breath, and he put an arm round my neck and hoiked me up to him. That was all. I put my arm over his shoulders and my leg over his bum and closed my eyes. I was starving. I heard the burgers ping in the microwave, but I didn’t move. I just lay there, feeling his warmth, until I fell asleep.

  Hannah

  She hasn’t even got her phone on her – can you believe that? She always has her phone on her. Barbara’s left it out on the kitchen table and I was sure she’d drop back to pick it up, but no. I said I’d be there for her – but how can you be there for someone if you don’t know where they are? I am so going to kill that girl when I get my hands on her. If someone else hasn’t done it for me first, that is.

  You think I’m joking? We haven’t had any murders among the young people who come here – so far. We’ve had everything else, though. Rape, GBH, abduction, prostitution, drug addiction, suicide attempts – suicide successes. Which one do you think Billie is most likely to fall for?

  None of them would surprise me. They all happen, and they all happen to girls like Billie.

  But … What can you do? Only your best. And life goes on, with or without Billie Trevors. I have other people to worry about apart from her. I’m not the only one obsessing about her, either. I had Rob in here the other day in a state about her. I’d asked everyone at the Brant to keep an eye out for her, and he was in my office straight off. I thought he was just scared she was going to kill him for pulling down her trousers – with good reason. And he is. But … it’s a little more than that.

  Once he’d found out she doesn’t even know the charges have been dropped, that was it, he was on a mission. She had to be found and he was going to find her. It was Rob on the job. Before school, after school. Lunch break, weekends …

  ‘Rob,’ I said. ‘Any help I can get looking for Billie is great – but get on with your own life as well, OK? It’s good that you’ve made friends with Chris. Hang out with him a bit. You can’t spend your whole time looking for Billie.’

  ‘But she needs our help,’ he said.

  Not content with rescuing his mum, he wants to rescue Billie as well. A knight in shining armour, that’s our Rob. All wide eyes and optimism and full of hope. God only knows what he’s been through, and there he is, still expecting the world to come out right. How do you tell them that it’s not always like that without turning them into cynics? Plan for the worst, hope for the best, that’s what I try to get across. But it’s a hard lesson to get right.

  ‘I’m not saying don’t look for her, Rob. I’m just saying you don’t know how it’ll work out. Don’t put too much hope into rescuing someone. You can’t always do it and, sometimes, they don’t even want it.’

  He looked at me and scowled. ‘But you’ve been out looking for her too, haven’t you?’ he said. And I thought, Yeah, you know what, Hannah? When are you going to learn to take your own advice?

  Get a life.

  No chance. How do you think I’ve time for anything like that when I have this lot to think about?

  ‘Just do your own thing as well, Rob. Look, have you been down to the Corn Exchange yet on a Saturday afternoon? That’s where all the kids hang out. I think you should go. Take Chris. Ask Ruth about it. She goes. You might find some kindred spirits there.’

  ‘But you will tell me if there’s any news about Billie, won’t you?’

  ‘I will. Now scram. I have work to do.’

  I’m happy with progress with Rob. He’s doing really well – looks a lot happier than when he first came, anyway. I’m not at the bottom of it yet, not by a long way. But we’re getting there. Which is more than I can say about his mate. What is going on with Chris Trent? I can’t get any kind of handle on him at all. And clever? He’s like a psychological version of Muhammad bloody Ali. You can’t get near him. We had a call from his school on Wednesday morning, when they cottoned on he was still with us. So that was going to be our last day with him. I decided to try something out. I got him after lunch as he was coming back into lessons.

  ‘A word, Chris.’

  ‘I’ve got Mrs Robbins for cookery.’

  ‘You can make your biscuits later.’

  We went up to my office. I took out a small wodge of paper and spread the pages out on the desk in front of me.

  ‘This is your work, Chris. Your entire output in three days here at the Brant.’

  We sat and looked at them. There were about seven sheets of paper. Five of them just had his name written neatly in the top right-hand corner. One of them had the word ‘Twelve’ written on the top line. The last sheet had the word ‘Arse’ written in capitals filled in with blue biro about halfway down.

  Chris smiled fondly at it. ‘That’s my favourite,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I expect you need the context to get the joke,’ I said. ‘What I want to know is – you explained to me why you don’t do homework. How come you’re not doing anything in class either?’

  ‘No point, is there?’ he said. ‘I’m not planning on getting any qualifications. You don’t need them in my line.’

  ‘I see. So, tell me. If you had your choice, what would you be doing in school?’

  ‘If I had a choice? Dream on! But I guess, really, I’d like to be doing some work on my eBay shop.’

  I got him set up. Stan, who does our tech, opened up eBay for him – it’s off-limit
s normally, same as Face-book and so on – and I put him to work.

  Impressive, I have to say. Posting images from his phone, checking prices with other traders, doing a few sums. Cutting and pasting. I’ve no doubt he’s going to make a lot of money one day.

  ‘How about writing up some ads about the products, then, Chris?’ I said.

  ‘No point. No assets. They froze my account.’

  ‘Do it anyway. Just for me.’

  ‘No! I don’t like people looking over my shoulder.’

  ‘You didn’t mind with the pictures and so on.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  Yeah, isn’t it? I looked at him and he looked at me. I gave him my sweetest smile.

  ‘OK, Chris, thanks for that. Now then, I’ve got a little test I want you to do, and then you can go.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh, just for our records. It won’t take long. Half an hour.’

  He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it even more when I sat down opposite him and got on with my work while he did it. He was writhing around like a cauldron full of snakes. It took him ages. I thought he was going to walk out at one point, but he got through it in the end. Most of it anyway.

  ‘Right, thanks. You can go now.’

  He got up and slouched off. ‘See you later,’ I called.

  ‘Yeah.’ He was watching me suspiciously. Well he might. I had a quick look through his papers after and then went back to his online shop. The shop was beautifully done. Attractive to look at, easy to use. I’ll buy something myself off it when it’s up and running again. Word perfect too. No spelling mistakes, no repetitions. Grammar. Everything right. Unlike the papers he’d just filled in for me.

  Gotcha.

  Chris

  I managed to last a whole week at home after coming out of hospital. It still amazes me that it worked at all, actually. The way my mum and dad just fell into my pocket. Maybe it was because they were making a deal. They so badly wanted to get the cuffs on Billie they must have felt I owed it to them to tell the truth for dropping the charges. Yes, Mum and Dad – I’ll go to school. Yes, I’ll get on with the homework. Yes, I’ll never run away and live in a tent again, not even the two-man tent you don’t know about, hidden in the garage. Promise.

  You’d have thought even a half-wit would have realized that at least a part of that was bound to be not true, if not all. But no. They swallowed the lot.

  I had another day off at home, which was crazy because I was fine really. I spent the time usefully though, smuggling out the two-man tent to a top-secret location. I was going up the wall by the evening, so they let me get back to school on Friday. Of course I didn’t stay there. It took some planning, mind.

  I went to school for registration, creating the illusion of attendance. Then I left before lessons and went down the Brant to give Jim and Hannah the glad news about Billie, where I was greeted like a hero. Much better than school, thanks. I followed up on Monday morning by ringing the school, as my dad, saying how poor Chris had gone back to hospital for more tests. The receptionist was very sweet about it – wished poor Chris luck and said how much they were all missing him and hoped to see him soon.

  Yeah, right.

  It lasted till Wednesday. Jim had tipped me off that the school had cottoned on, and I knew Mum and Dad had been told as soon as I got home after my last day. They were waiting for me, both of ’em at the kitchen table. I peered in through the window. You could tell from their faces. They were disappointed. They were angry. They were … out of their depth.

  Dad caught sight of me peering in, and if I hadn’t have known I soon would have done by the way he reacted.

  ‘There he is now!’ he yelled. They both jumped up and ran out of the back door, Dad shouting and yelling at me, Mum shouting and yelling at Dad. Me? I was on my bike. Literally. They’d both been so pleased when I started cycling to school. They should have known better. I simply turned the bike round and swooshed off. They rushed into the street behind me as I sailed away like an eagle towards the main road.

  ‘That’s why he was riding the bike – he’s been planning this all along!’ my dad yelled.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ hissed my mother – who, despite all the evidence, refused to believe just how cunning I was prepared to be.

  Once I was sure I was safe, I stopped and turned round to look. They were standing in the road, the losers, watching their only hope of passing on their ridiculous genes to another generation disappear beyond their eyes.

  ‘Ah am prepared to follow you to the ends of time,’ I called back, in a heavy cod-American accent. ‘In ma efforts to ensure that you and your progeny do not continue to pollute God’s good earth.’

  They just stood there and stared. Then I lifted my foot off the ground and wheeled off into the sunset.

  Rob

  Get on this.

  I lied.

  It’s so easy to say those two little words. I. Lied. Simple. We do it all the time. We don’t even think about it. But not for me, not to him. Not about something like that.

  I didn’t have the courage to face him down and just say no. I don’t think I’ll ever be that brave. But I lied. Him and his mate stood there looking at me while I stared at that map. I could see the street, I could almost see the house in my mind. I put my finger out – and I plumped it down on another street miles away.

  ‘Number five,’ I said.

  It was the bravest thing I’ve ever done. Bar none. And ever since that day I have been living in fear. Every time I come back from the Brant, I’m thinking, Has he been there? Every time he goes out and starts up the car, I’m thinking, Is he going there now?

  He will find out. I know that. He’ll go looking for her, all the way to Manchester, and he’ll find the street that I pointed to and he’ll knock on the door and someone he’s never seen is going to open that door to him. And then he’ll get back in the car, drive all the way home and he’ll kick my brains in. And then – then I’m going to tell him the truth.

  I know that too. Those facts – he’s going to find out that I lied and he’s going to kick my brains in and he’s going to make me tell the truth. That’s my world. All I’ve done is put it off. I am going to betray the woman who gave birth to me. It’s just a matter of when.

  So – what’s new? Philip’s going to kick my head in. So what? He always was. It’s going to happen whether I lie or whether I say nothing or whether I tell him the truth. There’s no point in worrying about stuff that’s going to happen anyway. But today – today it’s Saturday. Right now, I’m on my way to meet Chris. Not getting my head kicked in by Philip, or Martin Riley, or anyone else. We’re going to look for Billie and then we’re off into Leeds to meet the freaks. When I get home tonight, Philip will probably have gone to Manchester, and he’ll have found out, and he’ll kick my head in. Then, I’ll be a piece of shit. But right now, right this minute, just for a few hours, I’m not a piece of shit. For once, I’m just me.

  Right?

  Right.

  I’ve been thinking about things lately and do you know what I’ve realized? I am actually one lucky guy. I’ve been going on about how crap my life is, but there’s plenty of people have it worse than me. What about Billie? Did you know her mother doesn’t even want to live with her? When Hannah told me that, I could not believe my ears.

  ‘Her mum?’ I kept saying. How can your mum not want you? I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like to have a mother who doesn’t love you – who doesn’t even want you in the same house! Now that is bad.

  There she is, on the run, all on her own, no one to love her, still thinking Chris is pressing charges … and no mother to turn to when she needs her.

  No matter what else happens to me in this world, I know my mother loves me. Whether she gets it right or wrong, she will always love me and I will always love and honour her for everything she’s done for me
.

  I told Hannah right then I’m going to do everything I can to find her. I’ve been out every evening. That’s no hardship; it keeps me away from Philip. And lunch times and mornings. I’ve been asking around. It turns out Chris lives just round the corner to where she used to hang out. I’ve seen her in that park a few times. So me and Chris, we’ve been round there a few times together, seeing if she still is.

  And just in case you’re wondering – no, I don’t fancy her. Even if I did, she wouldn’t go out with me, would she? She’s got enough on her plate. I just like her, that’s all.

  And if I did – I wouldn’t tell you anyway, would I?

  I asked Ruth about the Corn Exchange in Leeds, like Hannah said.

  ‘You want to meet the freaks, eh?’ said Ruth.

  ‘I don’t know if I want to be a freak,’ I told her.

  She lifted up my top and pointed to the T-shirt. ‘Too late, you are one,’ she told me.

  It was the second T-shirt, not the really sacred one. But she’s right. I am a freak. My music is freak music, my tastes are freak tastes. Like Ruth says, if you’re gonna be a freak you might as well do it in company. And you never know – maybe we’d see Billie there as well. Because, let’s face it – she’s a freak too.

  I met up with Chris in the park. He didn’t want to meet at his house. Can you believe he’s actually camping out rather than live at home? His dad must be a real monster. He has this two-man tent put up on an old building site they stopped work at, up on the second floor of a half-finished car park or something. He showed me. It was so cool. He had everything there – even a little camping stove and a camping table and two chairs and everything. You got to hand it to him, Chris, he really knows how to do things properly.

  We met in the park to look out for Billie, but she wasn’t there. Then we caught the bus into Leeds. It was great. Me and a mate – just like the old days. Ruth was waiting for us at the bus station. She looked the pair of us up and down and smiled.

  ‘Cool,’ she said. ‘So – let’s meet the freaks.’ And she led the way out of the station and on to the street.