by Liam Brown
Strewn across the table were the remains of a paltry evening meal consisting of a handful of raw potatoes, along with a few other tragic-looking vegetables. I reached for a carrot and bit into it. There was no crunch.
Tossing it aside, I began to head in the direction of my tent when a fragment of the men’s conversation drifted over to me from the fire, the unmistakable sneer of Butcher’s voice ringing out in the warm night air.
‘…tight arse on her. Little bitch looked like she was gagging for it.’
I froze, every molecule of my being suddenly alert.
‘So did you give her one then?’ Fingers was asking.
‘Nah. She looked like she was in a hurry.’
‘Probably off to go and meet a real man,’ Al laughed. ‘I can’t see a girl like that going anywhere near a scruffy finocchio like you.’
‘And you think she’d touch a wop like you?’ Butcher spat, jumping to his feet.
‘Hey!’ said Fingers. ‘Take it easy, girls. Now, why don’t you tell us more about this little cutie-pie again so we can all go to bed with sweet dreams.’
I swallowed hard as the men sniggered, already knowing what Butcher was about to say.
‘Well, alright then,’ he said, sitting back down and leaning in towards the men. ‘Just as long as the greaseball here keeps his mouth shut long enough for me to get to the juicy bits.’
Despite the darkness, I could hear the leer on his face.
‘So, like I said, I was out on patrol, looking for that boggle-eyed bastard. Not that I was likely to find anything, eh?’
‘Amen to that, brother.’
‘I’d been out there for hours. Bored shitless, I was. Anyway, I was thinking of calling it a day when I got a sniff of something on the breeze. Something sweet that I half recognised. Like sour honey it was. I haven’t smelled it for years, at least not round here…’ He paused to let a throaty gurgle escape from his mouth, more like a growl than a laugh. ‘Then I realised what it was. Pussy. I could smell pussy.’
The other two joined him then, letting out a low mechanical grunt of laughter, like a broken car straining to start.
‘I looked up and there she was,’ Butcher continued. ‘Little strip of a thing. Like Bambi. Big eyes, brown hair. No tits to talk about. But that arse. Looked like she’d been round the block a few times, if you know what I mean. She had this little skirt on…’
‘Yeah?’ breathed Al.
‘Yeah. It was so short you could see her white panties peaking out underneath.’
‘Fuck yeah!’ said Fingers.
‘Less than twenty feet away she was, but she couldn’t see me. Like I say, she was in a rush. Half running for the park gates. But before she disappeared she turned and looked back. That’s when I got a proper look at her. Little slut was all dressed up. Wearing this tight school uniform she was. Fuck me, I felt like bending over the bench and giving her one right then and there.’
As the men howled their approval, my fear bloomed into an all-consuming hatred for Butcher. I saw myself striding over to the fire and forcing the ball of my fist into his mouth. I would shatter those pointy yellow teeth, then tear out his tongue. And then I’d turn on the other two cackling morons and gut them like the pigs they were.
I saw myself doing it, and yet I didn’t move.
A second passed, an hour. I still didn’t move.
And then, through the seething fog of my rage, I once again caught the thread of Butcher’s voice.
‘…if she does come through this way again, I won’t make the same mistake. She’ll be getting exactly what she’s asking for. And once I’m done, I’ll bring her back to camp and I’ll pass her around so you can all get a turn. You mark my words, boys. They’ll be nothing left of her by the time we’ve finished.’
NINETEEN
That night it began to rain, a violent downpour that hammered my tent like the sticks on God’s snare, an endless drum roll with no punchline. I lay awake and stared up at the sagging membrane of canvas above me. My gut bubbled with anger, as all the things I should have said to Butcher echoed in my ears. I would leave, I told myself as I twisted my blanket into a thick rope between my thighs. I didn’t know where I would go, but I would leave. I would leave and I would never come back.
As the night wore on, however, my resolve began to dissipate, my rage giving way to fear and uncertainty. After all, it was my recklessness that had landed me here in the first place. Besides, just because Butcher was a bad apple, it didn’t make the rest rotten by association. No, I decided, the best thing to do was to wait. I would be calm and rational. I would bide my time until… Well, until I worked out what I was going to do.
By the time I began to drift off, the night had already cracked open, a thin grey light seeping through the gaps in my tent. Outside, the rain continued to bounce. My dreams were filled with hideous, disjointed visions of sinking boats and drowning men. I woke a few hours later to discover I was wet. The canvas had sprung a leak. As I wrung out my clothes, a blast of thunder detonated overhead. Moments later there was a cry from outside.
Time to get up and out. Time to find Sneed.
At first I assumed it was Rusty.
Then the cry came again.
This time I realised it wasn’t Rusty, but Marshall. What’s more there was something in his tone I recognised but couldn’t place. Something that sounded an awful lot like…
‘Help! Help!’
Fear.
Without pausing to dress, I rushed from my tent. The rain had turned the ground to slush, and as I slipped and skidded my way towards Marshall’s screams, thick, dark mud splashed up and coated my bare legs black. I kept running, my thoughts once again filled with lizard eyes and throttled swans.
‘Help! For the love of God, help!’
The closer I got the more desperate Marshall’s cries became. He was being murdered, of that I had no doubt. I ran faster, terrified that I would be too late. That he would already be dead.
When I finally found him, the sight that greeted me seemed to confirm my worst fears. Marshall was lying in the clearing, his jacket spread around him like a black puddle. He was no longer screaming. In fact, he wasn’t moving at all. Ox, Zebee and Butcher stood above him, each of them grey and brittle with shock.
Before I could ask what had happened – or where Sneed had escaped to – there was a rustling of branches behind me. I turned to see Rusty storming into the clearing, his face as red as the tip of his beard.
‘What the bleedin’ hell is goin’ on,’ he asked, his gaze settling on our fallen leader. ‘Boss? Boss? Why are you lot just standin’ there? Do somethin’!’
As he rushed to Marshall’s side, I watched in amazement as the crumpled figure on the floor groaned, and then sat up. As he did, I saw for the first time what he was concealing beneath his jacket. It was Tyrus, his big head twisted at an awkward angle, his lips drawn tight to reveal a pink slither of tongue poking from between his teeth.
Marshall let out a groan. It was so weak that it took me a moment to realise he was using words. ‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘It’s too late.’
I leant closer, spotting the small pool of blood around Tyrus’ snout, the white foam around his muzzle.
‘He’s fucking dead,’ Marshall cried, his voice ragged with emotion. For once, he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, and as he turned to look at us I saw his eyes were swollen and raw. ‘I found him here, shaking. Convulsing. His breath was shallow. I thought he was choking on a bone or something. But then he… he…’
As Marshall choked out another cry, I glanced down and saw the pool of brown beneath Tyrus, mingling with the rain and running in rivulets towards our feet. I took a step backwards.
‘How old was he?’ Zebee asked. ‘I remember when my wife’s golden retriever passed. Devastated we were. The vet said—’
‘Shut it, you old fool,’ Rusty snapped. ‘This weren’t no natural death.’ Leaning closer to the dog, he jammed one of his crinkled fingers towar
ds the dog’s muzzle and into Tyrus’ mouth, before retracting it and sniffing at the residue. A grim expression creased his face. ‘Just as I thought.’
‘What is it?’ Marshall demanded. ‘What’s happened to my dog, Rust?’
Rusty held his fingers out for Marshall to smell. He took one sniff and recoiled his head to spit on the floor. ‘Hemlock?’
Rusty nodded. ‘There’s no doubtin’ it. Poor Tyrus here wouldn’t have stood a chance. Your dog’s been poisoned, boss.’
He turned then, still talking to Marshall, but looking at us.
‘Or rather, someone’s poisoned your dog.’
*
Weeks passed, and still the rain didn’t stop. Tyrus’ death had been met with yet another round of defensive measures designed to put an end to Sneed’s reign of terror. All non-security related jobs – washing, farming, cooking, repairs – were suspended in favour of increased patrols, including a doubling of the number of night shifts we were each required to take. In practice this meant that twice a week I was now on my feet for over thirty-six hours without sleep.
To make things worse, I was almost permanently wet. No matter how much gaffer tape I used to seal the gaps in my threadbare poncho or the eyelets in my boots, the rain always found a way through. My toes shrivelled in my soaking socks, my hair clung limply to my face, water dripping endlessly from my beard. Our stores of dry firewood had been depleted weeks earlier, so at the end of the day I would peel off my clothes and wring them out as best I could. I would lie naked, shivering under my blankets until morning, when I would attempt to repair any leaks that had appeared overnight, stretch my wet clothes back over my body. Then I’d trudge back out into the rain and do it all again.
In addition to the extended patrols, Rusty announced the installation of a complex range of defence systems and booby traps around the perimeter of the camp. Marshall himself, he assured us, had personally designed these measures, although since the morning Tyrus had died, our leader had once again retreated from view, leaving Rusty to oversee our work.
Nevertheless, the devices we were asked to construct certainly bore our Marshall’s hallmarks: namely a mixture of ingenious bushcraft and extreme violence. Lengths of twine were twisted into tripwires and rigged at ankle height between trees, which Rusty explained would drive a wooden stake into the intruder’s leg if triggered. Elsewhere, deep pits were dug and filled with rows of sharp spikes, before being covered over with a layer of twigs and dead leaves. Hopper was particularly excited about these ‘bear traps’, explaining how he’d encountered something similar while serving overseas.
‘They were originally used by the Vietcong over in ’Nam. Back then, they used fire-hardened bamboo for the spikes. The gooks would smear the tips in shit too, so even if you only got a flesh wound, you’d wind up with blood poisoning. Else they’d chuck a bunch of scorpions or snakes in there too – like getting a shitty spear through your leg wasn’t bad enough. ’Course the modern version is a bit more sophisticated.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What do they use now?’
‘A bloody big bomb,’ he answered with a grin.
‘That what happened to your leg?’ Butcher asked once we’d all stopped laughing. ‘One of those IEDs, was it?’
‘Nah. As weird as it sounds, I wound up getting trench foot. All my toes went black. And the stink! Amputation was the only thing for it in the end. Snip-snip-snip.’
Each of us looked down at our rain sodden boots, suddenly acutely aware of the water squelching between our toes. This time, nobody laughed.
*
One unexpected benefit of the relentlessly bad weather was that, almost overnight, our supplies of drinking water were replenished. Although the lack of dry firewood meant we were unable to boil it, in practice we simply drank fresh from the sky, holding out our mugs until they were full. While I was initially relieved to be rid of the cottonmouth that had bothered me throughout the long hot summer, within days my gratitude was forgotten in the wake of my all-consuming hunger. With the bad weather, our already meagre rations had been reduced to almost nothing at all. Each night I came back to an empty dinner table, with not even a rotten carrot or putrid potato to stave off the stomach cramps. Not that there was anything we could do about it. The constant rain had turned the farm into a swamp. The last time I’d visited – secretly, in the vain hope there might be something worth scavenging – I’d found nothing but a torrent of mud. There was no sign of the turnips, salads, spinach or radishes we’d planted in the run up to the feast, nor of the sprouts and leeks we’d sown in the spring in preparation for the cold winter months that lay ahead. There was only ruin and neglect. Polytunnels lay crushed and deflated, the bamboo trellises either snapped or washed away. The only thing left standing was the old chicken coop, its wire fence shimmering under the downpour, silently mocking us all.
Occasionally I would strike lucky and find something edible while out on patrol: a small bunch of ripe rose hips or hawthorn berries that had somehow clung on during the storms. Once I found a small patch of poppies under the shelter of a fallen tree. I harvested the dry heads, crushing them open and swallowing down the coarse parcel of seeds as quickly as I could, ever paranoid I would be stumbled upon by one of the others and forced to share my prize. For the most part though, I went hungry.
While I did my best to ignore the pain – guzzling water until my belly groaned, or chewing on a blade of grass to trick my body into thinking I was eating – the endless drudgery of patrols meant there was little to occupy my mind other than the thought of food. I began fantasising about meals from my old life, recalling in forensic detail a roast lamb dinner, or the glisten of grease atop a Chinese takeaway, or the steam escaping from a freshly cooked casserole. More than once I was subject to olfactory hallucinations, a phantom aroma of curry creeping through the trees, so realistic that as I returned home that night I dared to believe I might find Rusty bent over a bubbling pot. Of course, I was always left disappointed, greeted by nothing but the drenched darkness of the deserted camp.
One time in particular stands out among that slur of starving days. I was walking in the woods, moving as slowly as possible so as to conserve energy, when I stumbled across a wide circle of mushrooms, their globular white helmets bursting through the carpet of twigs and dead leaves. I leapt on them, tearing off a cap and inspecting it between my thumb and forefinger. To my ravenous eye, the tender flesh resembled a chicken breast. Almost without thinking I brought it up to my lips. Then I hesitated. I had eaten fungus in the park dozens of times. Boiled in a stew or sliced thin and scattered through a wild leaf salad, they were a familiar sight on our dinner plates. Alone though, without Rusty’s culinary expertise, I was suddenly nervous. As a child, I had always been taught to stay clear of wild mushrooms, lest I accidentally pick a death cap or a destroying angel or a funeral bell, or any of the other terrifyingly named varieties that apparently haunted our innocent woodlands and parks. Indeed, as a father I had taught the lesson myself. I remembered well my panic when a just-toddling Olivia came back to us with an unclassified specimen clamped between her pudgy fingers, the prising of her jaws to check she hadn’t eaten any, the bucket of hand sanitiser smeared on her palms, the endless waiting to check she’d be okay, the silent, desperate prayers.
I held the mushroom under my nose and sniffed. Nothing. No burning sensation at the back of my throat. No telltale poisoned perfume. I knew there were things to look for. A ring or skirt around the stem. A milky residue. An easily peeled cap. But what did they mean? I simply didn’t know. As hungry as I was, I didn’t want to die. I tossed it to the floor, then fell to my knees, beating my chest in anger and self-loathing. How could I be so useless after all these months? So incapable of providing for myself? In anguish, I began burrowing in the dirt, though what I hoped to find I still don’t know. A worm? A pot of gold? I was delirious. As I dug, the deep black mud began to transform before me, looking suddenly as tempting as a rich chocolate cake. Before I kne
w what I was doing, I had shovelled an entire handful into my mouth. I chewed on the gritty soil, tasting nothing but clay as I swallowed it down. It was awful. Even so, I couldn’t help but take another fist of dirt and force it down, the sensation of eating something better than nothing at all. It was only when I reached down for the third that I finally got hold of myself.
I stood up quickly and staggered from the spot, ashamed of my weakness. I leant against a tree, bent over and forced two fingers down my throat, prompting a cascade of black vomit to splatter my already filthy boots. When I had finished, I tipped my head to the sky, letting my mouth fill with water. It was raining so heavily that it was a long while before I realised I was crying.
TWENTY
As bad as our physical suffering was, our mental health was in far worse shape. Since Tyrus’ death, morale among the men had slumped to an all-time low. Wherever possible we went out of our way to avoid each other. Without the gravity of regular meals or campfires to pull us together, this was easier than it sounds. Depending on my shifts, I was able to go up to two days without seeing anyone at all. Conversations, when they did occur, were clipped and to the point. Nobody was keen to expend any more energy than was strictly necessary. Besides, we were wary of each other. Though it was never openly acknowledged, the rules had changed. It was every man for himself now. Or at least, every mouth for itself. We became paranoid and suspicious, permanently convinced that everyone else was eating more than us, that they had somehow found a secret stash of supplies and were keeping it to themselves.
