Kill All Enemies

by Melvin Burgess

  I never realized about the Corn Exchange. There’s just a few people hanging about outside, but once you got round the back of it there were hundreds of them. Emos, punks, goths, gender-benders, mods, bikers, you name it. I didn’t see any metalheads, though. I had on my new Metallica T-shirt that Mum got me in Manchester, but I had the original in my bag just to show anyone who wanted to see what a REAL T-shirt looked like. Even the new one usually stuck out a mile, but here it didn’t make any difference. I actually looked normal.

  Ruth didn’t stick around long; she had her own freaks to hang out with. She pointed out where to go – around the back along the canal where people hung out. Chris and I went off on our own.

  His eyes were falling out of his head.

  ‘I’ve never seen so many freaks,’ he kept muttering.

  ‘No chavs, though,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re the real freaks.’

  Chris reckoned that since everyone else was there, there must be chavs too, so we started a chav count – and there were a few. But only the hardcore ones, the dressed-up ones, not the half-baked kind.

  Put it like this – no Rileys.

  Then we found them – the metalheads. There was a group of them, studded jackets, torn jeans, standing around drinking beers by the canal. One of them caught my eye – big bloke like me but a good foot taller than I was. He had long straight blond hair down to his waist and a denim waistcoat.

  ‘It’s Hell’s Fairies,’ breathed Chris in my ear. Then the big bloke turned round and saw us. Maybe he heard. His eyebrows come beetling down. He stared me straight in the face. Then he handed his can to a mate and he came walking over to us, hair waving in the wind, glaring at me and my T-shirt. I thought, No! Not again. Please. Can’t I be here too?

  Chris

  This bloke, he wasn’t built like a brick shit-house, he was a brick shit-house. If you could make bricks out of muscles, he’s what you’d have. There were quite a few fat bricks mixed up among the muscle bricks, but no one, no one, was ever going to tell this guy he was fat. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, he was Mr Slim. Big staring eyes rolling around in his head, hair down to his waist, beard – completely mad; you could tell that at once. He stuck out his belly, glared down at Rob’s T-shirt and he bellowed –

  ‘Metallica?’

  Just our luck. A metalhead who hates Metallica. How many of them can there be?

  And Rob, instead of begging for mercy or running or screaming or something sensible, sticks his belly right back out at the big bloke and shouts back. ‘Yeah! Metallica!’

  The man-mountain bloke bulged. His head swivelled on his fat neck. Veins stuck out like crocodiles.

  ‘Metallica?’ he bawled, spraying us both with bits of recently eaten people.

  Rob didn’t hesitate. ‘Metallica!’ he bawled back, stepping in so close he was almost wiping his nose on the monster’s beard.

  The monster swelled – I mean, literally, you could see him swelling. He swung his huge meaty fist in the air and waved it around under Rob’s nose. ‘Metallica!’ he screamed epileptically. Vocab wasn’t his thing, I guess.

  ‘Yeah! Metallica!’ bawled Rob back, and he yelled so loudly, right in his face, that his feet left the ground.

  I was beginning to understand why he got bullied so badly at school. At this point Ruth came running over and I thought, Oh, good, she can sort it out. Even this monster wouldn’t hit a girl. But evidently he would because as soon as she saw who it was she turned round and backed off rapidly into the crowd.

  It was up to me.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ I dreebled. ‘Yeah, Metallica, love ’em or hate ’em, eh? They’re soooo like Marmite. We’re all friends here, eh? Ha ha ha ha ha!’

  I was going to have to rethink being Rob’s mate after all. It was too life-threatening.

  No one took any notice of me.

  ‘Metallica!’ bawled the big bloke.

  ‘Metallica!’ bawled Rob back.

  ‘Metallica? Metallica?’

  ‘Yeah! Metallica!’

  ‘Fucking Metallica?’

  ‘Yeah! Metallica!’

  You get the picture. The other heavy-metallers lounged around by the rails shouting – you guessed it – ‘Metallica!’ from time to time. I was just thinking, This is going on a bit, when Rob stopped yelling and beamed at the monster.

  ‘Mate!’

  ‘Robbie!’

  ‘Frankie!’

  ‘Robbie! Mate!’

  And they flung their arms round each other and did a big, huggy dance round one another. It wasn’t aggression at all. It was heavy-metal man love.

  It turned out they used to know one another years ago when they both lived in Manchester.

  ‘This is Frankie,’ rasped Rob. ‘He’s my mate. We used to play together.’

  ‘Yeah … and look at you, man – you turned into a Metallica fan. How cool is that?’

  ‘Yeah – and you! Amazing.’

  ‘Yeah, man. In a band, man,’ said Frankie, raising his eyebrows significantly.

  ‘In a band? How cool is that?’

  ‘Pretty cool, man, pretty cool.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘You’ll never guess, man.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Kill All Enemies, man. KAE.’

  ‘That’s, like, our band!’

  ‘Yeah. The real thing. Living the dream, man. Just getting going,’ said Frankie. ‘I’m the songwriter and I’m on rhythm, and this is Jamie – he plays a meeeean lead.’

  ‘Drums?’ asked Rob.

  ‘To be appointed,’ said Frankie.

  And Rob, his face just fell. I never saw someone go from high to low so fast. A second ago he looked like he’d just discovered the secret of eternal life. Now, suddenly, he looked as if it involved eating a pound of shit a day.

  It didn’t take much working out. He meets up with his old mate. There’s a band! It’s the exact same band him and his mate used to dream about! Whoa! The band needs a drummer. Hey! Rob can drum. All he ever wanted was to be in a band. Perfect!

  Except he has no drums.

  He told me about his stepdad pinching them off him. How low can you get? I thought my parents were bad, but they’d never stoop that low. It made me wonder. Maybe my old pair weren’t so bad after all.

  You couldn’t help feeling sorry for Rob, but I must admit my main feeling was one of relief. He told me all about his evil stepdad getting rid of his drum set a couple of days ago, and I was so outraged on his behalf that I almost told him about my drums, the eBay ones.

  That was a narrow escape, eh? my brain said. If you’d told him about those drums, you’d have to invite this band of hairy monsters round to our place to try them out.

  And at exactly the same moment, I heard my mouth going, ‘Hi! I’m Chris’s mouth and I just happen to have some drums at home that I never use.’

  What? No – no! Stop! begged my brain. In silence, unfortunately.

  ‘We could go there right now,’ my mouth added. ‘You can bring your instruments along and rehearse in my garage, if you like.’

  It was bound to happen. My mouth had been going blab blab blab guff guff guff for years. So far, we’d got away with it. Now it comes out with this one stupid thing and everything unravels so fast I was on another planet in seconds.

  Turned out Frankie had a van. Turned out they’d just been doing a gig at a youth project in a club round the corner, so they not only had a van with them – they had their instruments as well. How convenient.

  The van was only ten minutes away. We set off at once.

  There were only two of them actually in the band, but they all had to come, of course – all six of them. I can tell you, it was a weird sensation walking through the streets of Leeds with that lot. I mean, Frankie was enormous, but even the lit
tle ones were all dressed up in leathers, manky old jeans, badges, T-shirts covered in bad plastic pictures of motorbikes and road-kill. Long hair, dark glasses. It was like going for a stroll down the high street with a selection of Pleistocene mega-fauna. People quailed and stalled in the street as we approached. Body-builders, even big ones, stepped into the gutter and cringed as we passed.

  My brain was furious with me. What are you doing? it was yelling inside my skull. Aren’t you in enough shit already? What happens when your parents find out? And how long anyway do you think it’s gonna be before these freaks turn on you and break you up into little pieces? These people are ANIMALS! They’re going to break into the house and destroy everything – the furniture, the fridge, the lot. Run now before it’s too late!

  You know what brains are like. Always looking for the worst possible scenario.

  Rob was off his head with excitement. He must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven. One minute he’s Billy No Mates, the next he’s walking along with a bunch of fellow monsters going to play in a band. He didn’t know who to talk to first – me or Frankie or the other guys. So he just talked to us all at the same time instead.

  On the way, we passed this woman, quite an old lady she was, packing a massive load of shopping into this car. The car was parked on the main road and her husband was sitting inside, nagging at her to get a move on before they got nicked. He kept leaning out of the window and shouting at her.

  So Frankie holds up his hand, they all stop and, next thing, they’re helping her get the shopping in the boot. It was hilarious. The woman was standing there while the mega-fauna were passing the bags to each other going, ‘Thanks, man. Hey, watch out for those crisps – they’re going to get crushed under all that fruit you’re putting on top.’ And, ‘Oh, Tropicana with the juicy bits. Good choice.’ Surreal.

  I was thinking, Maybe I’m going to like this lot after all.

  The poor woman didn’t know whether to be grateful or scared or just embarrassed. She stood there quivering, while her husband cringed behind the wheel, looking up and down the road and trying not to be there.

  When they’d done, Frankie bends down to the window.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ he says to the hubby. ‘I think your behaviour here was really pretty selfish, man.’

  The man clutched the steering wheel and stared up at him. Frankie patted the lady on the head and off we went, snorting with laughter at the look on the old guy’s face.

  I’m, like, Wow! How cool are these guys.

  You know what I think? I think brains aren’t right nearly as often as they think they are.

  The coast was clear as far as I knew. It was my nan’s birthday that weekend and Mum and Dad were off to see her. The car was gone, but I left the lads outside while I went inside to double-check. Empty. I went into the garage, dug out the drums and opened up.

  They all bundled in and started setting up the amps and the guitar. Rob got behind the drums and rattled away nervously. I was a bit embarrassed for him, because, be honest, he wasn’t very good. Once the amps were going, Frankie came and did the guitar thing with Rob where you play to each other. Then they flung into a few chords – relief! They were ALL rubbish. Nothing to worry about. It was all crap together.

  They faffed about a bit, tuning up. Then they launched into it. Apparently Rob was being crap in a wrong sort of way. Frankie took him over to where a big old mirror was leaning up against the wall and they both stood there, side by side, staring into the mirror, breathing deeply.

  ‘What are they doing?’ I asked the other guitarist.

  ‘Frankie’ll be visualizing one of his stepdads,’ whispered Jamie reverentially. ‘It’s his pre-gig preparation. I expect he’s getting Rob to do the same.’

  It went on for about five minutes. They stood there side by side, breathing harder and harder, shoulders heaving, faces twisting up like some kind of Japanese B movie …

  ‘YAAAAAAH!’ screamed Frankie suddenly.

  ‘GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’ bawled Rob. They both dashed over to their instruments and started thrashing at them like they were tearing a dead cow apart limb from limb.

  Energy! You know what? I began to get it. They couldn’t play all that well, sure – but the energy was terrific. One of the other lads turned the volume up full and off they went.

  Yea! Those guys were lifting the roof off. Ferocious. I sat and enjoyed the scenario, sipping a can of beer. I was feeling pretty good about things, I have to admit. I was the good guy. I’d got Billie off her charges – maybe even got her back in the Brant, once they found out where she was. I’d made friends with a lad I thought was a monster but who turned out to be a good mate, and I’d been able to give the mega-fauna a good time. Not bad for a week’s work, when you think about it.

  Gradually, I became aware of another noise in the background – a sort of soft, screaming gibber. It might have been a loud screaming gibber, actually, but it had no chance of getting itself heard above Kill All Enemies. Those guys were doing some seriously professional bawling and yelling. I turned round to see what it was and there was this red-faced dwarf jumping up and down and screeching and howling and waving its little fists in the air. It was horrible. It was barely human. It looked so … so out of place. Then it charged.

  It was my dad.

  I’ve never seen anyone so angry. He came rushing up to me so fast he practically knocked me over. He grabbed hold of me by the shirt front and started shaking me and shrieking. He was so close by now I could actually make out what he was shouting above the noise of the band.

  ‘Who gave you permission to turn up with this lot! Who gave you permission, who gave you the right! How dare you? GraaaAhhhhaaaah!’

  His shouting got louder as the band died down until it was just him screaming. He ran out of words and stood there, clutching my shirt and panting hoarsely.

  Frankie put down his guitar and came across.

  ‘Man,’ he said to my dad. ‘You really need to do some work on that anger problem you have.’

  ‘What? How dare you? Get out! Get out of my house!’ He shoved his weight up against Frankie to try to shift him. He might as well have been pushing a house.

  Frankie leaned across and whispered loudly to me, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s my dad.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Dunno. He’s always like this.’

  ‘Get out, get out! Get out of my house or I’ll call the police!’ screamed my dad again. Of course he was pretty well unable to do anything against six blokes, all of them two or three times bigger than he was. All he could do was stand and shout while they all looked at him shaking their heads sadly.

  ‘Is he safe?’ asked Frankie.

  ‘Yeah, harmless really,’ I sighed. ‘But you better go now anyway. Sorry,’ I said.

  Frankie sighed and turned to Dad. ‘Since we’ve been asked nicely,’ he said, ‘we’re going to leave now. But it would’ve made it a lot easier if you’d just been polite in the first place.’

  ‘That’s it. I’m calling the police,’ he snarled.

  ‘What for? Don’t be daft! Excess politeness? We’re going,’ I said. I started to help the band pack up their stuff.

  I was furious. Humiliated. The guys might look tough but they were nice people, while my dad, he looked nice enough but here he was behaving like a complete delinquent. Strange, eh? You know your parents all your life; you just take them for granted. You think they’re decent people. And then one day something like this happens and you realize that, all along, they’re just thugs.

  ‘You – over here. Over here!’ screamed my dad at me.

  ‘Won’t be a minute,’ I said. ‘I’m helping.’

  ‘Gaaahhhhrrrrgh!’ he howled. But there was nothing he could do so he stormed out. I helped the lads pack up. They were just leaving when Dad popped his head back in.
<
br />   ‘And don’t let me see you here again!’ he bawled.

  ‘Someone,’ said Frankie, ‘needs to have a little think about their manners, if you ask me.’ He wagged his finger at my dad, who turned white with … I dunno, fear? Rage? The band said their goodbyes to me and turned to leave. I was about to follow on but Dad grabbed hold of me.

  ‘You bastard,’ he breathed. ‘But I’ve got you now. I’ve bloody got you now, haven’t I?’

  He jerked his head to the house. We went inside and he began the whole miserable argument all over again from scratch. School, homework. All that. I just sat there and listened to him going on and on and on, thinking, Do I really have to put up with this? Do I? I mean – really?

  Rob

  Can you believe it? Yesterday I was nothing, and today look at me! I am in a band! Yeah, yeah – you heard. I am the official drummer in KAE.

  ‘But I’ve got no drums,’ I said.

  ‘Drums will come, man,’ Frankie said. ‘You have to improvise. Sometimes the best music comes out of having to improvise. And stay angry! That’s the main thing. That’s your instrument, man – anger.’

  That is so true. That is so, so true. It goes to show that even a tosspot like Philip can be useful for some things.

  ‘This is my brother,’ said Frankie to the other guys. ‘And I christen him the Juggernaut, because nothing stops our kid here from going forward.’

  Juggernaut – yeah! That’s me.

  It was the best day in my entire life.

  And what about Chris? How cool is he – taking us round to let us play on his drums? I have so much respect for that guy. But now I understand why he doesn’t want to live at home. Psychodad! It just shows – you can’t ever tell. That man should be so proud of his son, and all he can do is shout and rage at him. What’s wrong with the world? We were worried about him. Frankie drove round the block a few times while we tried to decide if we should go in and sort it out.

  ‘Let us know if he comes into the Brant on Monday, see if he’s got any bruises,’ said Frankie in the end. He drove me back to my place and parked up, and we all swore an oath to be brothers together. Then I got out and the guys drove off. I walked up to the gate.