Wild Life

by Liam Brown

  ‘What does surveillance duty entail?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, nothin’ worth worryin’ about,’ he said. ‘The gaffer likes a couple of people patrollin’ the park. Just to keep an eye on who’s comin’ in, and make sure no civvies come sniffin’ around too close.’

  ‘And what happens if they do?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Other people. What happens if they accidentally stumble across you. What do you do then?’

  Rusty let out a long laugh and shook his head. ‘Well, let’s just say it’ll be the last bit of stumblin’ they ever do, eh?’

  Before I could question him any further, Marshall interrupted. ‘Hey! That means you too, soldier,’ he said, flinging one of my shoes at me. ‘There aren’t any free rides here!’

  I snapped into life, scurrying forward to retrieve the rest of my clothes. ‘Sorry, I’m just a little tired.’

  Marshall began to laugh, quietly at first, but growing steadily louder. He bent over, clutching his knees so that his glasses slipped down his nose and his temples throbbed purple with amusement. The remaining men stopped what they were doing and joined in, until finally Marshall straightened up and wiped the spittle from his beard. ‘Tired? But we haven’t started yet…’

  *

  I spent the rest of the day on my hands and knees next to Fingers, who helped point out the weeds from the newly sprouting vegetables. While my clumsy hands burrowed beneath the hard soil to search out the stringy roots, he rabbited on about his days as a high-functioning meth addict, his stories punctuated by accounts of OD’d prostitutes and loan shark-shattered kneecaps. Considering how much he claimed to regret his old life, he certainly seemed to relish telling me about it, becoming particularly animated whenever describing moments of either sex or violence.

  Meanwhile, Ox spent the morning digging irrigation trenches, his shovel a metallic blur that only stopped while he sprinted across the field with a soil-laden wheelbarrow. He worked with a ferocious intensity, his vest sodden with a dark Rorschach test of sweat, and hardly spoke other than to tell Fingers to ‘shut the fuck up’ whenever his stories became too loud or colourful.

  As the day wore on, I was surprised to hear the occasional snatch of music drifting over the field. I was so absorbed in my work that I initially forgot about the lack of electricity and assumed it was a radio. It was only later that I realised it was Ox, crooning to himself while he worked, classic rock standards delivered in a surprisingly tender baritone.

  Sneed meanwhile kept to himself. Skulking at the very edge of the farm, it was difficult to see what he was actually doing, other than avoiding us. As the hours passed, my fingers and back began to cramp painfully, and I found myself increasingly resentful of him. Part of me longed for Ox to lash out, to send a well-timed insult, or even a boot, in his direction. The others seemed infuriatingly oblivious to his lack of work, however. Realising no one was going to say anything, I turned my attention back to my own patch of dirt, making a point of working twice as hard as before.

  When the sun reached the centre of the sky, Rusty and Hopper appeared, dropping off a large jerry can filled with fresh water and a couple of flasks of tepid soup. Once they’d left, Fingers and Ox slurped greedily at the grey mush. On the other hand, I found I was almost too tired to eat, struggling through only a few spoonfuls before I gave up, though I drank deeply from the can. While the others finished eating, I took the opportunity to grab a short rest, lying on my back and closing my eyes. As my spine settled into the earth, my entire body seemed to vibrate slightly, my muscles struggling to adapt to the strain of manual labour. I lay there for perhaps a minute or two, aching in places I hadn’t thought about since I was a child, before Ox stood up and clapped his enormous hands together, signalling the break was over. It was only much later that I realised Sneed hadn’t joined us to eat.

  *

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a haze of soil and sweat. When we’d eventually finished weeding, we switched to planting, dropping partially sprouted seed potatoes into carefully spaced holes before raking over a fine layer of compost. For a former actuarial investment analyst, Fingers seemed remarkably knowledgeable about potatoes, explaining in detail about the importance of keeping the soil slightly acidic and bemoaning the misery of ring rot, powder scab and blight. For my part, I kept quiet and concentrated on digging the holes. It had been a long day.

  It was getting dark when we finally downed our tools. Sneed had disappeared hours earlier, and so the three of us traipsed back to the camp without him. We arrived to find a roaring fire, the other men already sitting around the rickety table in the dining area. A huge pot of food lay before them, which Rusty proudly declared to be a broad bean risotto, accompanied by a salad of wild herbs. While it was certainly better than lunch, I again found I was too tired to eat much. Thankfully, the other men were more concerned with their own gripes – the lack of meat or the size of the portions – to pay me much attention, and after half an hour or so I was able to shuffle off to bed without anyone noticing.

  As I collapsed into the dank sanctuary of my tent, I realised just how broken I was. My limbs cramped in painful revolt. Too exhausted to move, I sank into the pain, grateful to sense sleep already sucking at the edges of my consciousness. Slipping deeper into the darkness, I was subjected to a tumble of nightmarish visions. At first I saw the disembodied heads of Lydia, Olivia and Flynn, swooping above me like bats, strafing me with a machine-gun fire of demonic laughter. After that, I saw my body like a rusting car, stripped for scrap metal by unseen hands. My breastbone was cracked and parted as one by one my ribs were wrenched from my chest. My kneecaps and elbows were prised away, my ligaments pulled and severed, my organs plucked from their cavities, until finally there was nothing left of me, and for a split second I experience the sheer bliss of oblivion…

  Until a rumble of thunder brought me thrashing back into existence.

  I opened my eyes and waited.

  Then it came again.

  ‘Right, you good-for-nothing maggots! Time to rise and shine…’

  ELEVEN

  For six days our routine didn’t falter. We woke in darkness, practiced yoga until sunrise, ran – or in my case, stumbled – around a circuit of the park, before stripping naked and being doused with freezing water. Breakfast consisted of a single potato fritter and a boiled egg, before our chores for the day were handed out. While the other men seemed to enjoy some variation, for me this inevitably meant being put to work on the farm.

  Most days were spent weeding beds, or sowing and planting new crops, though occasionally other jobs took precedence. One day I spent an entire morning with Hopper performing ‘pest control’. As we were forbidden by Marshall from using any artificial chemicals, this consisted of scouring the strawberry patch for flies, squashing them between my thumb and forefinger and scraping the residue onto my vest. Another afternoon I worked alongside Butcher and Al Pacino, digging out an old tree root that Ox had uncovered a few days earlier. We each took turns to attack it with a pickaxe, sliding a fork underneath it and working it to and fro as we attempted to lever it out. It was dark by the time we eventually managed to wrench the ancient stump free, leaving behind a ragged, knee-deep abscess in the earth.

  Towards the end of the week, I was woken not by Marshall’s usual insults, but by the sound of a fierce storm lashing my tent. Marshall’s only concession to the increasingly inhospitable conditions, however, was to distribute faded waterproof ponchos ahead of our run, as well as allowing us to forgo our usual morning ‘shower’ before we started work on the farm. The rain refused to let up all that day, so by the time I squelched back to the camp at dusk, my fingers were numb and my arms were caked in a thick, clay-like sludge up to the elbow.

  In the evenings we sat together and ate whatever combination of vegetables Rusty had prepared for us. Before each meal commenced, Marshall would make a speech, extolling the virtues of our home-grown fare.

  ‘Back in th
e bad old days,’ he began one evening, ‘when I used to read the newspapers, I read a report from a scientist who’d analysed a frozen pizza and found it contained ingredients from over sixty countries. Sixty! Across five continents! There was cheese from China, salt from Siberia, pepperoni from Poland. You wouldn’t believe the sheer number of people who’d had a hand in constructing this Franken-snack. It must have been in the hundreds when all was said and done. Yet the thing that that really stuck in my mind was that it was on sale for less than two quid. Two quid! It doesn’t make sense. Even if they sold a million of the fuckers, there’s no real profit for anyone once you take into account the time and cost of producing and shipping each component. Unless’ – and here Marshall paused theatrically – ‘unless of course they used the cheapest, nastiest, laboratory-engineered ingredients they could lay their money-grabbing hands on. Unless they used illegally irradiated tomatoes that you could leave out in the sun for a month without them ever going soft. Unless they used mechanically harvested herbs which included traces of arsenic, mercury and lead. Unless they used festering factory-farmed poultry, diced and bleached to hide the pus-filled tumours on their rotting underbellies. Unless they pumped it full of all manner of chemical fillers and firmers and flavours, until that final “oven fresh” extra value pizza has more in common with a rubber car mat than anything you might want to actually put inside your body. Then, and only then, might there be few coins for somebody in the whole sorry enterprise.’

  There was a loud cheer from the men, though Marshall held his hands aloft. He wasn’t finished yet.

  ‘But it’s not just pizzas, is it?’ he continued. ‘We live in a world where eight out of ten children can’t draw the line between the cow and the milk. The pig and the ham. The chicken and the nuggets. A world where fish have fingers and potato comes powdered in a packet. And yet this is the very stuff we are made of! Our blood cells, our bone marrow, our brain matter, all of it is literally manufactured from what we shovel into our gobs. So is it any wonder then that we have become a nation of wheezing, obese, diabetic slobs? It’s a goddamn tragedy is what it is… Though one that, thankfully, we no longer have to worry about.’

  He spread his fingers towards the food on the table, the venom draining from him as he reached out to pluck a slither of courgette from one of the dishes.

  ‘No, boys, I think it’s safe to say that we’re building our bodies on strong foundations. While those suckers on civvy street might be content to fill themselves up with a chemical slurry, we’ve got the real deal. And thanks to Rusty here, it doesn’t taste too bad either. So enjoy the fruits of your labours. And remember – you are what you eat!’

  Despite Marshall’s sermons, in those early days I would give up after a few mouthfuls, my eyes so heavy I could hardly keep them focused. After the plates were cleared away, a fire would be teased into life and the men would sit around, talking and telling stories. Although I enjoyed the warmth, I tended to slip away at the earliest available opportunity, collapsing into an exhausted coma before the whole thing started again the next day.

  At the end of the sixth day, Rusty cornered me on my way back to my tent. ‘You shootin’ off early again, sonny?’

  I felt my cheeks flush with guilt. ‘Just a little worn out,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Ah, but that’s to be expected,’ he said, placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday, so it should be better.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t keep track of the days?’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said with a mischievous wink, ‘but the gaffer does, and if he says it’s Sunday, then that’s alright by me. Day of recreation, innit? Says so in the Bible.’

  ‘Isn’t it the day of rest?’

  ‘Ah, same thing, more or less. Anyway, you’ll have a good time tomorrow. Trust me!’

  I nodded and turned to leave, when I felt a tug at the back of my jacket.

  ‘Oh, Adam, there was one other thing. Sneed. You’ve been workin’ with him down on the farm, haven’t you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know if you’d call it working. He pretty much keeps to himself.’

  Rusty took a step towards me. He wasn’t smiling anymore. ‘Yeah, well, you just make sure it stays that way. I’d give him a wider berth if I was you. No good’ll ever come of gettin’ mixed up with a man like that. You mark my words.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think there’s any danger of me getting mixed up with him. Like I say, he pretty much keeps himself to himself. I’ve never even heard him speak. What’s his story anyway?’

  Rusty leant closer still. ‘All you need to know is that he’s trouble,’ he said, before quickly straightening up, the storm having apparently passed. ‘Right-o, I’ll let you get off, shall I? You’ll want to get some kip. Especially once you see what we’ve planned for you in the mornin’!’

  *

  The next day I again woke to the sound of Marshall yelling. After yoga, we ran and washed as usual. Rather than being allocated jobs however, we were divided into two teams – blue and red. I was in the blue team, which meant that, along with Marshall, Fingers, Ox and Butcher, I was to spend the morning practicing hand-to-hand combat. This turned out to be a particularly aggressive derivative of ju-jitsu, of which Marshall claimed to be both the founder and highest-ranking practitioner. Within ten minutes I was nursing a nosebleed, having fallen prey to a vicious roundhouse kick from Ox during my first sparring session. As I sat with my head between my legs, pinching my sticky nostrils together, Marshall left the men and squatted down beside me.

  ‘You don’t look like you’ve done that many times before,’ he said, leaning forward to inspect my injury.

  ‘What, get kicked in the face? Can’t say I make a habit of it, no.’

  ‘Fighting,’ Marshall continued, ignoring my sarcasm. ‘Then again I don’t suppose there was much call for it in your old life. Tucked away in your private office with its security cameras and burglar alarms. Probably had a couple of guards on the doors downstairs to keep the wolves out, right? Then you’d jump into your car at the end of the day and drive away in your hermetically sealed, climatically controlled bubble-mobile. You’d do your shopping online, get your groceries delivered, only ever view the world through the pixelated window of your TV or smartphone. Am I ringing any bells?’

  ‘I used to go to the gym sometimes,’ I protested. ‘There was a boxercise class I signed up to a few years ago.’

  Marshall’s laughter was like a dog choking on a chicken bone. ‘Boxercise? That’s a good one. Goddamn it, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have left that stupid fucking world behind me. Did it ever occur to you how ridiculous it is that we live in a world where gyms need to exist? All those guys in their tight vests and shorts, lifting things and putting them back down again. Sweating over their rowing machines and treadmills. Treadmills! Running fast and getting nowhere. And for what? So you can kid your body that it’s being used for what it was designed to do? So you can keep guzzling refined sugar and saturated fat and sit stationary behind a fucking desk all day? It’s not even funny. It’s just sad. We are living, breathing miracles, each and every one of us. We are the apex predators on this planet. Top of the food chain. And yet this is what we’ve been reduced to. Bloody gyms.’ He paused to spit in disgust.

  ‘And the way they make you look! Not like a human being, that’s for sure. Six-pack abs and over-defined traps? Could someone please tell me what activity on earth would ever give rise to a physique like that? Hunting? Gathering? Do you really think our caveman ancestors were equipped with roaring glutes and killer pecs? Their biceps so bulbous and distended that their arms looked like the permatanned shaft of some prehistoric hippopotamus’ cock. Brother, save me from the bronzed he-models, for they know not what they do!’

  I sniffed hard, my mouth filled with the salted-rust of fresh blood. ‘At least boxercise you don’t get walloped by guys twice your size…’

  ‘Ah-ha!’ Marshall cried. ‘So that’s what you’re bitching about. You did
n’t think it was a fair fight? Well, let me tell you something. It’s got nothing to with size. Jesus, when I was in the forces I put down guys far bigger than Ox. Not that I’m particularly proud of it. If you actually listen, you’ll see that fighting should only ever be a last resort. That’s what I teach all the guys. You should always try and resolve conflicts with psychology first. Detect and de-escalate. That’s my motto. Only when all else fails should you fight. And even then, you’ll want to get in and out as quickly as possible. Hollywood would have you believe that most guys can go more rounds than Mike Tyson. Well, that’s a load of crap I’m afraid. Most fights last as long as it takes to throw the first punch. Or kick in your case…’

  I gave a resentful sniff. ‘So what, I should have just decked Ox? Because I might not know much about physics, but I’m pretty sure I’d come off significantly worse.’

  ‘God, you like to whine, don’t you? This is just training. Sure you’re going to take a knock now and then. But out there?’ He nodded vaguely in the direction of the bushes. ‘You need to understand it’s a matter of life and death. No one’s going to give you a cosy couple of minutes to mop up your nose. You need to get in and out. Anyway, who said anything about punching?’ He paused to shoot me a conspiratorial grin. ‘There are plenty of other areas you can target. Genitals are there to be yanked, eyes gouged, ears bitten or twisted.’ He reached up and pinched my earlobes between his thumb and forefingers. ‘They’re not as well attached as you might think. All it takes is a quick tug and…’

  ‘Ow!’ I recoiled, a searing pain shooting through both ears.

  ‘Ah, grow up. I barely touched you,’ Marshall grinned. ‘Besides, this is self-defence. It’s worth hurting for. I teach all the men this stuff. You were the one who wanted to live in the wild. Well, the first thing you need to learn is that there are no rules out here. Survive, no matter what. Even if it means fighting dirty. Hell, even if it means fighting filthy. And I’m telling you, if you tear a guy’s ears off and hand them back to him, you won’t have to worry about him chasing you anymore. I don’t care how big he is.’