by Peter Ackers
"THEY'RE OUT THERE, CLOSE…"
After a few minutes driving in complete silence, I said, "So are we nearly there yet?" I must have sounded like some kid who was getting impatient with the ride. Without looking at me, Coyote wound down his window and the air came in loud and cold, whipping up sweet wrappers on the floor and an air freshener dangling from my sun visor and everything else that wasn't fixed or sturdy. But Coyote's thick grey-black beard remained immobile, as if it were not a coarse tangle of facial hair but steel wool glued onto his chin.
Above the banshee-whistle of the wind being sucked into the fast-moving cab, I heard a steady beat of something like music. An image of bongo drums slapped in the jungle by cannibals entered my mind, then was gone as quickly as my logical head could oust it. An imagination I'd honed during drama classes at school - which I'd never really enjoyed, much preferring my own company - could still throw up the extreme, it seemed.
"What's that noise?" I asked. It really did sound like music, but couldn't be. Somehow, I knew it was remote; this wasn't a blaring radio belonging to one of the infrequent passes another vehicle made on the road. If that had been the case, then that music would have increased in volume as the vehicle approached, or, if the radio belonged to a car that had already whizzed past us, the sounds would have faded with distance, until there was only the wail of the wind again. But no, this beat was steady and constant, and my eyes roamed the countryside, seeking the source. Suddenly, cannibals were a likely culprit once more.
He pointed out my side window. Because the sound had come through his open window, I had assumed it was coming from that direction. Now I realized my error.
What I saw might have sent shivers down the spine of some Iraq War veteran. Lights way off in the dark, an explosion of green/red/blue, as if two factions battled with artillery out there on the moors. It might be November, but Bonfire Night was two weeks old. But I knew what this was. A rave. And soon after I saw a shape looming up from beyond the horizon, its size immeasurable because I couldn't fathom distance. It was a large marquee, but this wasn't some traveling circus. Certainly animals roamed within, but these animals would be my species, and drunk and wild and glad to be there.
Suddenly I hit the door with my shoulder as Coyote turned the truck. It veered off the motorway at such a sharp angle that I thought Coyote had spotted something in the road that he'd tried desperately to avoid. There was a screech of rubber, the radio-static-sound of loose stones and earth squashed under the wheels and bouncing off the underside of the chassis, and then a screech of brakes. My eyes had kept to the road, perhaps seeking the jaywalking deer or hedgehog that had forced Coyote to veer off the motorway, but now they faced forward again as I righted myself in my seat. The truck had stopped; the engine purred pleasantly, as if the lithe manoeuvre had been no test at all to the mammoth machine, and it was happy to have pleased its owner, like a dog that had performed a trick.
I saw what was illuminated in the headlights: a gate barring access to the land beside the road and a churned-earth path beyond that melted away into the night.
"Grab the gate while I use the phone, willya?" He began reaching under his seat for it. I wondered why he didn't just carry it in his pocket, like any sane person. Then I thought about the word SANE and figured that might be where the problem lay.
Of course, it wasn't an order to "grab the gate." But this guy was the owner of the truck and the guy doing the driving and while I wasn't that eager to get involved with whatever he was doing out here, I was his passenger and his guest and he was asking me to do a quick favour, and I did it.
He wasn't just finishing his call as I clambered back into the cab, wiping gate rust off my palms: he ended it because I had returned. The phone was dropped somewhat unloved back into the footwell and helped under the seat by a back kick of the heel. Either this guy didn't trust hitchhikers, or he didn't trust mobile phones. Who wanted to put a small microwave oven next to their head, anyway?
"Half an hour in here, tops, and I'm done. You're young. You can stay here, or I can drop you a few miles closer to home. I think they're putting on some vans to get people back to the city. You could ride along."
I didn't know what he was talking about and didn't care to find out. I would see him through his business here and we'd be off. I could hear the music and see the lights and that gave me my fill. Tonight was not about celebration.
The truck bounced along the earth road and the suspension in the seats kept our bones together but juggled our stomachs. I put my window down. The music was louder, too loud, and the smell of nature - cow shit, in other words, or maybe just a natural smell of the unmodernised world that cows unfortunately got the blame for - was a bit too much for my buzzing head, but at least I could be sure of not vomiting all over Coyote's interior and his respect.
The tent loomed closer. It was a of a thin material that showed the supporting scaffolding within like bones through the membrane of a bat's wing. The material fluttered in the breeze, almost giving the impression that the storm of lights pounded the tent from within - a ray gun battle from the future. The field the tent had been erected in was freshly-cut corn that glowed yellow in the moonlight, adding to the effect. I started to see vehicles parked around the perimeter of the field, including seven or eight black Transit vans that I guessed the organizers had put on as coaches for the Ravers, just as Coyote had said. I wondered what business he had here. I wondered what influence he had here, too. I wondered if my girl and me would be having sex right now if we hadn't argued - if she hadn't shown me that fucking tape.
The path curved around the field and terminated at an area cast into deeper shadow by a copse of trees that blocked the moon. Here there were parked two nondescript cars and a truck like Coyote's, minus trailer. Figures dressed in dark clothing stood around as if waiting for something. Some guy sat on top of the other tractor unit, playing solitaire or something. There was no gate leading into this open area, but two guys stood where the road abruptly ended and became grass and it was clear these guys were doormen of a sort. There were no Ravers here and these guys were probably the reason why. Whoever these guys were, all of them, they were waiting for something and it wasn't the right song to dance to. I didn't want to get involved.
I saw one of the "doormen" wave someone over. A guy came jogging into the glare of the headlights, waving at the truck in a gesture that I guessed meant cut the lights. Before the headlights flicked off as Coyote cut the engine, I saw that the waving guy was Chinese or Japanese - a Mongoloid for sure. I couldn't help but think something was dodgy here. Now I really didn't want to get involved. But I had this urge to know. It felt like the urge I might get to look down if I walked past a sitting woman in a low-cut top - not so much the desire to see the show, but the desire to avoid missing it.
Coyote slapped my shoulder. I looked at him. His eyes were dead serious, serious enough to get the message across without words - but he fortified that message vocally anyway:
"This might take some time, Avenger. You're young. Hot girls, loud music. You should go check out the rave. Right here I gotta see a man about a dog." He grinned. “Many dogs.”
I looked out the passenger window. Since my side was grimy, I leaned closer to Coyote, so I could look out his polished half of the windscreen at the tent. The wind ruffled its sides, while from within it pulsed with lights of green and red and blue, like a giant beating heart belonging to some netherworld monstrosity. Accordingly, that heart beat with the thud-thud-thud of dance music. Did I dare enter the belly of that beast?
Coyote opened the glove box and pulled out a half-bottle of whisky, which he thrust under my nose, waggling it as if he thought I could smell it through the glass container.
"Bit of ego, Avenger?"
No, I had had enough alcohol tonight. Besides, Surfer-dude's wonder drug was firing emotions I didn't know existed. I felt as if whole new cubicles and corridors of my brain had opened, and I didn't want to risk some kind of mental injur
y by assaulting my head with whisky. My fingertips and eyes were beginning to tingle a little; it was unnerving yet not cause for worry. I burned with static energy. It made me think of those fighting games where the character powers up and unleashes a temporary burst of super ass-kicking. I thought I might just be able to kick the door off its hinges, hop to the sodden ground like a ninja, and streak across the field as fast as any cheetah. But I also felt that, like the character who has powered up, my power would dissolve after a short burst, leaving me weakened beyond normal and vulnerable. Better save it, I figured, and opened the door with the handle, just like a mere mortal.
"If this finishes early, I'll wait for you," Coyote said. "Till two o'clock. That's half an hour. If you pull some wench, don't bring her here. The missus has a nose for pussy better'n mine. Okay?"
I nodded.
"Go have fun and don't care about what's happening here, okay? Do that and all will be fine. Go, Avenger. Go put another warm body between you and your girl, or something."
So out I got. I dropped onto the wet grass with a slap and aimed myself at the music and the lights. Even eighty metres out from the rave, people were grouped, drinking and dancing. They'd set up little islands of two, three, four and more. I got the urge to cross the soggy land and weigh anchor at one or more of these islands. I'd get to know the people, the worlds they inhabited, and then would move on. Of course, tonight I didn't really trust people, so I didn't bother. My body buzzed with an electricity that needed discharge. The music seemed to draw me closer like a germ to an antibody. I even started to jog as I got within ten metres and the music vibrated the ground, shivering water off the tops of grass blades.
Two doormen parted as I approached. I wondered if my face, contorted as it must be by the drug buzzing through me, unnerved them, making them decide to let me through rather than risk what I might unleash their way if refused. Or maybe they didn't give a shit until trouble started.
The tent was big. There was a DJ's station at the back; tables stocked with drinks and manned by staff ran round the inside perimeter. The rest of the floor, which was completely covered by polythene to protect against the mud, was where people danced.
This dancefloor was filled like the carcass of an animal attacked by maggots. Intensely sober and analytical, I watched unfolding this slice of life from a disorganised segment of ordered society. As the scene disintegrated, people started shouting, laughing, stumbling, groping; drinks fell, people fell, intelligence fell. Two girls in short skirts attempted to breakdance on the dance floor - which was just linoleum nailed or glued to wooden boards - much to the delight of four guys trying to jive to the music while lined up arms-over-shoulders like a team of rugby players in a scrum. When one of the girls tried to backspin and popped the zip on her tight top, displaying all, one of the guys fell laughing and dragged the other three down in a heap. Near me, a woman was shouting at her boyfriend who was so drunk he lay slumped over the table with an ashtray for a pillow. Two guys in another cubicle were betting money on their arm-wrestling match.
Suddenly a fight broke out. Two guys went down, tugging, elbowing, rolling. As if a bag of shit had dropped out of the sky, everyone close moved away in disgust, and a clear and vast space was accorded the combatants for their ungraceful duel. The music thumped to each grunt and punch, the lights washing them with green then red then blue. With Steven Spielberg to oversee, it might have been a powerful cinematic moment, instead of a scary and embarrassing event.
Fuelled by so long a wait for such an occurrence, two bouncers thundered across the club; they seemed to take the path of most resistance just so they could elbow people aside for added effect. These burly men in black tore apart the duellers and dragged them away. Seeing a toad snatching a fly with its long tongue is no more impressive than that display, and to me the faultless execution of the removal of those two idiots was proof of the superiority of a sober mind over one incapacitated.
Moments after, the cavity vacated by the fighters filled and the laughter continued, and the two guys were forgotten.
That was a terrifying moment for me, I must admit. Not the fight itself, but how the club as a whole seemed to discard the snafu mere moments after it was over. Here was one collective mind intent on getting back to its fun, like a reading man distracted from his book for a second by a rap at the study window by a wind-blown tree branch. The outside world was forgotten here; there was no outside world. I started to feel like a man who’d walked into a lion’s den. I felt as if these people with their alcohol had descended to a new level of consciousness that I floated above and as a result they would sense me, abhor and alienate me. I was an alien in this world of detachment; I was a spaceman still connected to his ship, not lost out in space. The music pounded and the lights pulsed between bright and dark, giving everyone the appearance of robot-like movements, like in a movie shot at 10 frames per second - although the freaky thing was this effect didn’t make these people look cumbersome but lithe, fast, like vampires. Flash, flash - a guy strolling to the bar was there in three flash strides. Dancers’ arms hammered and flailed as fast as anything I’d seen in a Bruce Lee film.
And that horrible whiteness. Under the ultra-violet lights, everything white gleamed as if a TV’s colour had been turned up way too high. White shirts stung my eyes; teeth seemed to hum like neon, turning the most beautiful smile into some evil cackle; exposed bra-straps lent girls a glamorous quality that instantly put them out of my reach, and a darkly seductive demeanour that made me distrust their intentions here tonight (I thought of that story about women who lure men to a house where they are drugged and later wake missing a kidney).
My fingertips began itching again. The power in me buzzed like a pylon in the rain. All the bouncers in the world couldn't control me if I unleashed. Knowing this, I relaxed, and the beating music took over me until I was sure my heart throbbed in tune to it.
I stopped as the music suddenly ended with a scratch as of a needle being yanked roughly off a vinyl disc. In fact, everyone froze.
"Power cut?" someone ventured.
"Lights're still on, twat," said his unforgiving friend. And he was right. Blue and green and red beams still cut through the air like giant light sabers from Star Wars.
"Cops," some girl said. "Lights will go in a mo." She seemed privy to info the rest of us didn't have. "Yeah," she continued, nodding like one of those plastic dogs people put in the back windows of cars to make the drivers behind fall asleep. "Sergeant Vinyl's never been caught."
Sergeant Vinyl. That sounded like the DJ, the prat up on stage. He was dressed like a soldier: combat fatigues, heavy black boots, and a black beret. He had a wireless microphone tucked into his belt. Currently, he and some pumped goon were trying to wire up a TV up there in the DJ's station.
The stage had been decorated to mirror the DJ's image: netting strewn with branches and leaves to create camouflage, hinting at speakers and a mixing desk hiding within. Around the interior of the tent were amplifiers also wrapped in netting. It was basic, but the charade worked. Though I didn't doubt that Sergeant Vinyl's closest encounter with the army and war might have involved hardware called a Playstation.
I pushed through the quiet crowd, almost gagging against the sickly smell of alcohol and sweat, trying to get up close to the stage to see what w as going on. The TV was hooked up now and static played. What was this shit? I wondered. Was sergeant Vinyl about to try communicating with ghosts through the white noise?
Some big guy blocked my path and I slapped him on the back. He turned.
"What cops?" I said to him, but it only earned me a puzzled look.
"Cops are coming," said some small girl engulfed in shadow down by his side. Sister or lover, I briefly wondered, and nearly asked her. "Got a van out there, ain't they? As a …"
"Decoy, innit?" the big guy said, obviously having realized what I was talking about. His accent was Liverpudlian thickened by alcohol into something almost alien. His early sneer had mel
ted into a cheesy grin, of the sort worn by a cartoon bad guy after a slug over the head. I looked above his curly pubic-like head of hair but saw no birds or stars. A gentle giant, maybe like Lenny from Of Mice and Men.
Sergeant Vinyl had the TV up and running, but still there was that static. But he seemed satisfied. The heavy he'd had help from was gone, off to patrol a door or something, and Vinyl had his left hand around his microphone and his right out over his head, palm flat, rather like a lazy Nazi salute. I figured he was calling for a silence he already had.
"Quiet as church mice, now," he whispered into the mike, which put his voice out through a bunch of speakers and thus voided the whispering. I wanted to laugh - this tough-looking soldier sounded as camp as any gay guy parodied in a Carry On film.
"Let there be dark!" he called, throwing both hands out now like a man calling to God. Whatever God-like power he might think he possessed was displayed now as, instantly, all the lights went out. Bar one, that was: the TV.
The image on the screen flickered and became recognizable as something shot by a small video camera: the wobbling picture and hissing sound were unmistakable. I was reminded of that forker the fucking forklift driver's camera, the one that cut me like a blade. My heart jumped. I almost expected my girl to appear on screen, fucking lord-knew-who next.
But the location shown onscreen was no bedroom, it was a field. Dark, obviously, since this feed was live. A voice said something nobody caught and the camera turned. There was a small open-backed truck parked in this field, with some guy sitting on the roof and smoking a cigar that burned brightly enough to clearly illuminate his face. When he saw the camera, this young, handsome fellow waved. The original speaker said something else, louder this time and probably directed at the guy on the roof, because he quickly spat on the glowing end of his cigar, tossed the cancer stick up and kicked it away into the field. In two seconds, he had slipped off the roof and into the cab, neatly passing himself through the open window.
The voice spoke again. I caught only three words: "time" and "cops" and "lesson", and when I added those to words such as "decoy" and "caught", I knew what was going on here.
The camera turned. It shakily showed two guys climbing onto dirt bikes, one guy doing so as he played on his mobile phone (based on his rapid key-pressing, I guessed he was sending a text message). In moments these guys were speeding away through the night, headlamps off, rear wheels tearing up the sodden earth.
Jerky-pan back to the van. The vehicle jumped closer as the cameraman jogged towards it. Then the screen filled with shapes and grunts as the guy climbed up into the open-back while still trying to film everything.
A large amplifier sat in the back of the truck, tied down with rope, sat on by another guy who held the back of the cab for support. The camera shifted to then show a cardboard box, about two-feet by two-feet. And another guy sitting by it. This guy was no more than a kid, with a nose that looked as if he had it routinely broken every day. He was dressed in dark colours like everyone else. They all wore black berets, I noticed - a uniform of sorts. This was Sergeant Vinyl's crew.
A crackle of roars and static as the truck came alive. Then it was shuffling unsteadily across the field, jostling its occupants. The guys sitting on boxes found it funny. One guy tried to stand and ride the truck's flat bed like a surfer, but as the vehicle gained speed and the ride became more unstable, he gave up in a fit of laughter and grabbed something to keep from being expelled.
Some guy was jostling me from behind, probably trying to get a better view. I turned and pushed him. Nobody saw him fall on his ass and no one helped him up; instead the space he'd vacated directly behind me was quickly filled.
When I looked at the screen again, new things were happening. The truck had found the road, which meant the picture was steady. The guy sitting on the amplifier was texting on his mobile phone, maybe conversing with the biker who also had a mobile phone. The guy by the other box was opening it. It was full of trays of eggs. And this played to a dance soundtrack that was very loud, so loud it made the TV hiss like a pit of snakes.
Nothing happened for a short time. Sergeant Vinyl kept a commentary going. He stood there by the TV with his arm laid across it like a man with an old friend and he told his audience that things were hotting up, shush now so they don't hear us, this should be fun, get ready, shush now. And the tent felt quiet. Two hundred drunken, stoned dickheads all crowding a TV, silent as mice.
Sergeant Vinyl put a finger in his ear. An earpiece, I realized. Now I saw a thin stick of grey by his mouth - a microphone, too. This guy had it all worked out, didn't he?
Now he put that same finger in the air, as if to say LISTEN! And we listened as, from afar, a cat's purr evolved into an engine's roar, and all heads turned in its direction for a moment, as if people could see right through the tent and way out across the land, to where the flat-bed truck was coming our way.
On screen, the camera panned to the open field. People cheered as they saw their own rave tent on screen, just a small shape at this distance of about two hundred metres. Vinyl silenced them again, cocked his ear, and put that finger up again. Two hundred heads leaned two inches closer, as if scared that some sounds might dissipate before covering those final few centimeters.
The wail of a police car's siren was clearly audible.
The car entered the shaky picture from the left, soaring into view with lights flashing, moving dangerously fast because night and open space dulled a person's sense of speed. It was behind the truck and catching up rapidly. Voices from off-camera grew agitated; there was an engine roar, and the police car stopped growing bigger in the picture as the truck accelerated, matching its speed.
A few Ravers in the crowd whooped with glee, but Sergeant Vinyl silenced them. "They're out there, close, passing by like an enemy U-boat in a World War Two Pacific battle. Ssshh."
I wanted to giggle at the man's silliness, but I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. I felt pulled towards it, as if the glass screen were actually a porthole between outer space and this world and a vacuum was dragging me closer. I put a foot out front, adopting a boxer's stance to aid balance. I still felt that weight on my front, as you might if you leaned forward almost to the point of overbalancing.
"Here's the bikers, here's the bikers," someone nearby chanted. I had the sudden feeling that this guy was talking about more members of that Yorkshire chapter of the Hells Angels, The Shepherds.
Two dots of light appeared, one each side of the road, way behind the cop car. Engine noises grew from faint to loud, and now the two off-road bikes were in the game. They caught up quickly The cop car beeped its horn at the bikes as they veered off the shoulder and onto the road, as if the driver didn't think they'd heard the siren or seen the flashing lights. The bikes cut in front of the cop car and slowed down, forcing another honk from the law-enforcement vehicle. The truck started to pull away again.
I found myself pushing through the crowd, headed for the stage and the TV, and the going was easy. I moved as if pulled by a traction beam, or was floating downstream, and when I tried to stop myself, it became as tough to do so as halting against a current pushing me from behind. The porthole pulled me.
Oi. Hey. Watch it. Bleeding Christ - I ignored those I pushed aside or whose toes I stood on. I ignored the big guy on stage who came towards me as I began climbing the mock-camouflage. I ignored everything except that TV, that other place on earth that it showed me, that it promised access to.
I was on stage, watching through the screen. I was remote viewing events outside the tent, and I felt special because of it. What a weapon, to be able to see the enemy despite walls and corners and distance. I knelt before the gateway, staring. The big guy in the beret had decided he was close enough, but he was casting his voice out like a fishing line, trying to hook my attention:
"Hey, pal, you can't come on stage. Get off, or I'll get you off. The Vinyl One sees you, and school's gonna be in, and it's lesson-time."
I could handle a few lines or the dunce cap, I figured. The gateway showed that the guy who'd been sitting on a box in the back of the truck had started lobbing eggs at the cop car. The bikers had cleared a space for the eggman, but it was dark and his balance was diluted by the movement of the truck and he was probably a bit drunk or stoned and he was just throwing far too hard, and some of the eggs were missing their target, flying overhead, disappearing underneath and off to the side, and even pelting the bikes, making them swerve and wobble. But enough of the unborn chicks
(- that thought was only in my head a moment, but it towed an image… not splattered yolks and placentas but maimed and crushed little yellow chicks all over the police car… malformed talons shrieking against the metal bonnet as the wind dragged them off into the night… fighting against the windscreen wipers as the blades arced like boxers' punches and repeatedly slammed their heads… popping their eyes as their bodies flattened between tarmac and spinning discs of treaded rubber -)
found their target that soon the cops had no visibility through the windscreen - eggman recoated the windscreen quicker than the wipers could scythe it clean - and were forced to slow down. The bikes slowed with it, but kept a safe distance ahead. One of the riders waved at the truck as the bigger vehicle pulled away. I put my hands on the sides of the TV, glaring at - through - the gateway. The camera jumped more wildly than before, and I figured the truck had left the road for bumpier ground. Eggman came sprawling across the screen, trailing a grunt and a lateral hail of eggs, which smashed all around him - a smear of yolk in the shape of a quaver was printed on the camera's lens. Laughter from off-screen - the cameraman, probably.
A few seconds later the camera stopped jumping and I knew the truck had stopped, lights and engine off. Hiding. Sure enough, here came the bikers behind moving wedges of light, leading the cop car onward, past the place where the truck had exited into the grass and mud. Engine noise faded and died, replaced by whispers from people around the camera. It was too dark to see much.
"Mission accomplished," someone said through the gateway from wherever they were. Someone else moaned about eggs, then the screen went blank as the camera was turned off.
"My boys will take the police far away," Sergeant Vinyl told his audience. Everyone cheered, except me. I fingered the screen, slapped the TV, trying to get the picture back. But how silly was I being - the doorway at the other end was closed. This marvel of earth-based wormhole technology was now switched off!
"Bedtime for you," the big guy standing over me said as the lightshow recommenced and the music blared once more. Oh, I'd forgotten about him. Now that things were back to normal and I was clearly visible to all, especially his boss, it was time for the bouncer to earn his keep.
The meathead came close, put a meathand on my shoulder and gave a little squeeze. Why do big guys do that sort of thing - squeeze your hand or arm or something to show their strength? I could see this guy's power in his thick shoulders, his overhanging brow that could keep the rain out of his mouth, and hear it in his steroid-deepened voice. But I had power, too. His was thunder, big and slow and rumbling like a truck, but mine was a flash of lightning in comparison. I stood, spun out of his grip, planted both hands on his twin-airbag chest and pushed. He danced backwards, trying to find his feet, not unbalanced but simply trying to cope with moving at a speed he wasn't used to. By the time he'd slowed (a good few metres' stopping distance, these big guys) and gotten his bearings, I was gone. As I moved through the gyrating crowd, I saw his head sweeping the throngs, seeking me. Rather than be conspicuous, I danced my way to the exit, head weaving like Mohammed Ali's, arms waving in alien sign language, just like everyone else.
