Tank Girl

by Alan C. Martin

  It could be that I will never see my favourite Freddie and the Dreamers song ever again.

  I could go through the rest of my life and never laugh at Freddie Garrity holding a Banana and saying, “Narner.”

  That makes me very, very sad.

  It cuts so deep that I can hardly describe the despair and grief that my loss has caused me.

  To have something so special taken from you in your hour of need is the greatest pain on Earth.

  Every day is a holiday, believe me. It has been once and it shall be again.

  Stick with me, friends. We’ll find it.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE SIX MILL

  Jet Girl wanted in on the raid. Good news.

  We loaded Barney’s bike into the hold of the jet and strapped ourselves in for vertical take-off.

  Jet Girl’s jet looks pretty slick and normal on the outside, but the inside is kind of round and spacious, a bit like the Millennium Falcon. The cockpit is cramped and claustrophobic, with loads of wires and funny switches, bringing to mind the capsule interiors of the Apollo missions. Behind that is the large living area – a stripped down, unhygienic, metal and plastic shell that has the look and smell of a gent’s public lavatory.

  “Smells like a gent’s,” I quipped.

  “Smells like a gent’s what?” asked Barney.

  We started to rise up slowly, but something was holding us down – the wing tip was still wedged into the roof of the farmhouse. Jet Girl resolved the problem in a thrice by rotating her under-wing cannon towards the house and blowing the roof clean off. “Fuck it,” she said sedately, “it had a hole in it anyway.”

  The jet continued its ascent and the nose raised itself fractionally from the horizontal. Finally the giant engines kicked in with full force and we were momentarily immobilised with G-force as the plane powered forward at the speed of sound.

  “What’s the plan of action?” asked Jet Girl, holding the butt of a purple cocktail cigarette between her teeth and speaking without moving her jaw.

  “I thought we could just, y’know, play it by ear,” I replied

  “You mean you haven’t got a plan?” she cleverly observed.

  Barney injected her usual random five-cents worth: “Well I don’t know about you guys, but I’m gonna shoot my dad in the mouth with a flare gun and then I’m gonna push my mother under a bus.”

  “Cool,” I mooted, not wanting to invalidate Barney’s feelings towards her folks, “but that doesn’t really help us with the six mill.”

  “Hummmm,” we all sighed in a chorus.

  We sank into a deep contemplation of our next move as Jet Girl recklessly piloted us towards the unsuspecting town of Chankers.

  I started thinking out loud. “The six mill is paramount – I must have a new tank. Me without a tank is like... Batman without... er... anything to do with bats. I have become disempowered. Once I’ve got my tank back, then, anything will be possible.”

  “How’s about I just blow the roof off the bank and lower you two in on a rope?” suggested Jet Girl. “Seems to be a good day for blowing the roofs off of places to me. Why stop now?”

  That livened me up a bit, but it still wasn’t the genius escapade I had been hoping for. “Okay, that’s a good start,” I said, “we’ll call that Plan A. Now what have we got for Plan B?”

  “We could sell the jet,” said Barney, thoughtlessly.

  “Yeah,” I replied, “we could do that, but then we’d have a tank and no jet.”

  “Oh yeah,” Barney concluded, “I hadn’t thought of it in those terms.”

  Silence prevailed once more.

  Then inspiration struck. “Jet Girl,” I enthused, “put us down about ten miles south of Chankers. I’ve got an idea.”

  NINETEEN

  A POCKETFUL OF M16s

  Jet Girl parked behind a handy rocky out-crop and we waited until the midday sun had started to cool off.

  Barney and Jet Girl lined up their push-bikes next to mine. Barney had a Tomahawk, Jet Girl had a Grifter with the three-speed gear-changer on the handgrip, and I had a ten-speed racer with the handlebars turned up.

  Decked out in desert-storm camouflage, we merged invisibly into our sandy surroundings. Each of us had a backpack full of hardware. I distributed walkie-talkie headsets.

  “Okay men,” I barked, “it’s ten miles to Chankers and it’s downhill all the way. On my mark, start rolling. Stay in formation and watch your speed. If all goes to plan, we should be able to silently swoop into the bank, grab the booty, and be on our way back for tea before anyone realises what’s happened. And remember, anything over six million is surplus to requirements, so leave it, we don’t need the extra weight.”

  Jet Girl and Barney hunched their shoulders and poised themselves for the off, one foot on a pedal, one foot on the ground.

  “Let’s roll!” I shouted. We let out our brakes and began our long descent to Chankers.

  The speed a bike can pick up when left to freewheel for ten miles down a smooth track on a wind-free day is quite astonishing. By the time we were on the outskirts of the town my racer was travelling so fast I could hardly control it. Jet Girl was still with me, holding formation. Barney, on the smaller cycle, was lagging behind, although she was still belting along at a ridiculous rate for a thirty-year-old on a child’s bike.

  The rush of air past our unprotected heads rendered our walkietalkies unusable. Fuck it, I thought, we’d have to play the whole thing on gut instinct.

  Jet Girl gave me the nod as she applied slight pressure to her brakes. She fell back behind me as I streaked on forward into the town centre.

  We were moving at over sixty miles an hour – with an equal distance between the three of us and with a stealth-like smoothness to our approach – straight down the main drag of a sleepy-headed town.

  Chankers’ bank is situated on the northern side of the town square. The square is dominated by a statue of Daniel Chankers, the pioneering miner who ‘claimed’ the area from the aboriginals, way back in the bad old days.

  As luck would have it, we arrived at the bank just as a security truck was collecting a consignment of precious gemstones. I saw what was going on and acted on it immediately. I hoped that Jet Girl and Barney would clock it too and follow suit.

  I put my hand over my head and pulled an automatic assault rifle out of my pack. It still had a loaded grenade launcher attached to the end, so I fired it off, straight at Daniel Chankers’ knackers. I missed and hit his wrist instead. The stone-carved hand, which was pointing skywards, fell from the statue, its index finger embedding itself firmly in the dusty ground below.

  A split second later I pulled my bike down on its side, riding with my knee scraping the ground and my front wheel still steering – speedway style.

  With one hand firmly clutching the handlebars and the other on the grip of my rifle, I skidded past the front of the bank and shot the fuck out of the security guys; I blew their knees away first and anyone who went for a gun got a head shot. I was so fast they didn’t stand a chance.

  I winged the guy holding the case of gemstones and he threw it up in the air with a spasmodic reflex.

  That was me done – I couldn’t afford to lose any more speed – so I flicked my bike back up and headed on up the road.

  Jet Girl sped through moments later, grabbing the falling bag of swag with perfect timing and soaring away with a magnificent victory wheelie.

  Then came Barney on the Tomahawk. Riding no-hands with two assault rifles blasting away, she ripped the hell out of the town centre. Nothing was safe from her vicious and undiscerning blitzkrieg.

  I looked back to see her screaming her lungs out. “Come on mum, you fuckin’ bitch, come out here and I’ll blow your fuckin’ tits off!”

  Then WHUMP. She rode straight into Daniel Chankers’ giant stone hand.

  I watched in amazement as Barney left her saddle and flew gracefully through the air in perfect somersaults. She didn’t let her fingers off of
the rifle triggers for a moment; the blazing tips of the guns made incredible swirling orange patterns against the darkening blue sky. Every bullet she fired seemed to hit a significant target as shop windows, showroom dummies, car tyres, parking meters and surveillance cameras smashed, shattered, exploded and collapsed in her spiralling wake.

  Me and Jet Girl skidded to a halt; there was no way we were gonna leave Barney stranded back there. Plus it was really great to watch.

  Barney’s rifles emptied and she threw them away just before she hit the ground. She came down perfectly, rolled forward a dozen times like an Olympic gymnast, and stopped, upright, in a half kneeling position with one foot firmly on the ground.

  She instantly whipped two handguns out of her backpack and continued to discharge clip after clip into the motionless surroundings.

  It was absolutely fucking mental.

  We turned our bikes around and started pedalling like billy-o back down to the square.

  Barney stopped firing and scrabbled through her pockets for some more bullet clips. Then she caught sight of something that made her freeze up. Her eyes were fixed dead ahead, like a kid that’s been watching too much TV. She stood up and started moving slowly towards whatever it was that was still out of our sight. It was like one of those ’50s B-movies, where people get hypnotised by brain-beams and get drawn into flying saucers.

  Me and Jet Girl came flying into the square on our bikes. We pulled up behind Barney.

  Then we saw what was so captivating: about a hundred yards away, a woman, in her mid-fifties, dressed in an ill-fitting purple jogging suit with high heeled shoes and smoking a cheap brand of cigarette, was staring right back at Barney with unamused perplexity. At her side stood a younger guy, shorter by almost a foot, with a thinning, curly blond mane and a loud Hawaiian shirt that was left unbuttoned just enough to reveal his densely hairy chest.

  I kind of figured that they must’ve been Barney’s mother and father.

  Barney kept on moving towards them, walking like a toy robot with flat batteries.

  A wave of horrified realisation crashed across the woman’s face. Her hand went up to her mouth, then she screamed, “Oh, shit-my-god! It’s fucking Barnstable!”

  Me and Jet Girl threw each other a funny look. “Barnstable?” we both said, questioningly.

  Barney’s mum had turned tail and legged it, dragging her man, who didn’t seem to know what the fuck was going on, with her. Barney gave chase, running after them like the Terminator gone wrong.

  Jet Girl followed on her bike.

  I scooted along behind, humming the theme tune from The Benny Hill Show.

  TWENTY

  THE SAVAGE YOUNG BOOGA

  I’m gonna cut a long story short here. You don’t really want to know all of the gory details about the running, screaming, shooting, swearing and bitch fighting that ensued. Suffice to say that Barney’s mum got away. The guy she was with turned out not be the dad, but this fact was only discovered after Barney had scratched the hell out of his head and hairy patch.

  The main thing was that we had managed to get away with nearly seven million dollars’ worth of uncut diamonds. Zulu Dobson took the lot as payment for the job and went off to draw up some plans for the new tank.

  By that time the key to the cellar had passed through Booga’s digestive system and he was able to shit himself out. He came into the kitchen, squinting in the bright daylight. I was there alone, searching for something to eat in the cupboards.

  “I am exceptionally sorry,” he said, and I believed him. “I have been very irresponsible. However, I am no longer a man of that kidney and, moreover, you have my word that nothing untoward will befall your belongings ever again, so long as I have anything to do with it. And I hereby announce my abstinence from the evil world of pot smoking.”

  “Wow, Booga,” I declared, “you really have been thinking things through down there, haven’t you?” I leant across and kissed him daintily on the cheek. “You are wholly absolved of your sins and welcomed back into the fold with open arms. We shall kill the fatted calf and noshout on a feast fit for such a joyous occasion.”

  “Have we really got a fatty calf?” asked Booga. “I’m totally faminized.”

  “No,” I replied, apologetically, “but we have got a dozen tins of steamed chocolate puddin’ and a plenitude of custard.”

  Barney came in, rubbing her hands with a towel and muttering obscenities to herself. She looked up and realised that she had company. “Oh. Hi guys,” she said, turning her interest back to her hands, “I’m finding it very difficult to get this dried blood off. That short fuck bled all over me. And I found a lump of his hair under my fingernail. I thought he was wearing a fuckin’ wig.”

  “Short fuck?” questioned Booga, suddenly interested in Barney’s twitterings. “Who’s a short fuck?”

  “The guy my mum was with,” replied Barney, “a short, blond, curly fuck, with a horrible hairy chest.”

  Booga became intense and probing. “Where’s the lump of hair? Have you still got it?”

  “It’s in the sink outside,” said Barney, “I’ll fetch it in for you.” She went back out through the screen door.

  “Shit!” exclaimed Booga, running off up the stairs as fast as his funny legs could carry him.

  I stood there puzzling for a moment. Then I gave up trying to work out what the hell was going on and put the pan on for some lovely steamed chocky pud.

  Barney came back in holding a little bloody tuft of blond hair between the tips of her fingers. “Here it is,” she said, looking for Booga. “Oh, where’s he gone?”

  “He ran upstairs. I think he’s got something on his mind.”

  The screen door banged open and Jet Girl staggered in with a heavy box of groceries. “Here’s the shit!” she proclaimed.

  I peered into the box and found my packet of cornflakes. I couldn’t restrain myself from ripping the top off in a frenzy to get at the free gift.

  The girls began unloading the rest of the food.

  “Barnstable,” said Jet Girl, casually.

  “Yeah,” replied Barney without thinking.

  “Aha!” laughed Jet Girl. “Is that your fucking name... Barnstable?”

  “Okay. Yes, har fuckin’ har. It’s my full name in all of its stupid fuckin’ glory. Barnstable, Barnstable, Barnstable. So can we forget about it now please?”

  “So what happened,” continued Jet Girl, “were you born in a barn and then quickly taken to a stable?”

  “Drop it,” said Barney. Her eyeballs were starting to steam up.

  But Jet Girl couldn’t drop it, it was just too choice. “Jesus, no wonder you want to hang your folks. Fuckin’ Barnstable. I ask you. What in God’s name did they think...”

  “Fuckin’ shut it Jet Girl you cunt,” Barney exploded; she couldn’t take it any more. “Do you think I like the name Barnstable? Why the hell do you think I call myself Barney? Huh? The whole thing is totally representational of my parents’ lack of love and respect for me. They thought that they were being romantic, naming me after a little town in England where they reckon they’d conceived me, but the fuckers even got that wrong. I looked it up on a map – the town is in Devon and it’s called Barnstaple, not fuckin’ Barnstable. The cunts couldn’t even spell my name properly.”

  Barney’s tale was sad and heart-rending, but that didn’t stop me and Jet Girl from cracking up and falling about the place laughing. Barney stood and steamed for a few more seconds, then a smirk broke out on her face, followed by a chuckle, then a tidal wave of mirth smashed her to the ground. We all landed in a heap, laughing hysterically and screaming, “FUCKIN’ BARNSTABLE! WHAT A COUPLE OF STUPID TWATS! FOR FUCK SAKE!”

  Finally we regained a modicum of sense and gathered ourselves back together.

  “I’m still gonna murder the bastards,” concluded Barney, straightening her neckerchief and shaking her messy hair back.

  Booga came belting back down the stairs. “You still got that bi
t of hair there?” he asked Barney.

  “Yeah, I got the hair,” she replied, holding the tuft away from herself like it was a rotting, dead mouse, “take it, please.”

  Booga grabbed it out of her hand and stretched it out carefully on the table. Then he produced a tiny, handmade voodoo doll from his pocket. He lay the doll next to the curly lock and moved in close to study the objects.

  The three of us watched him as he pondered to himself. “Hmmm,” he mumbled. “Uh huh, okay...” Then he whispered under his breath, “Shit. I knew it. Yes. It is. It’s got to be. The little fuck. The little fucker.”

  I looked over his shoulder. “What’ve you got there, Booga?”

  He motioned to the stuff on the table. “Take a look at the hair that Barney brought back and then take a look at the hair on my voodoo doll. Do you see any similarity?”

  I checked it out; there was indeed a marked resemblance. “Yeah, looks like the same shit to me,” I declared.

  “This can only mean one thing,” said Booga, pacing thoughtfully. “Huckleberry is fuckleberrying Barney’s mum.”

  A stunned silence followed.

  “And an explanation of what the fuck you are talking about?” I requested.

  Booga sat down in a big old armchair and lit a cigarette with an ostentatious flourish. “Do you remember the story I told you about the time I spent a summer holiday in Chankers?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “vaguely.”

  “Well, Huckleberry was the guy who became leader of my gang,” Booga continued, “and he was a total and utter cunt to me. He bullied me and took the piss until I couldn’t handle it any more. And now he’s fucking Barney’s mum.”

  “Wow,” said Barney. “What did he do to you?”

  “It started off with just kiddy stuff, y’know, like calling me names and stealing my dinner money. Then it progressed to mind games and pushing me around. Finally it was nothing short of physical beatings and psychological torture.”

  I could see that Booga was talking himself into a dark place, a place where he seldom goes. “Then I spent what was left of the holiday – which was a couple of months – trying to avoid him. I’d only go out late at night. I lost touch with all of my friends for fear of giving my position away. I became paranoid and edgy. I started lying, stealing and beating people up. I started to become like him. I spent so much effort trying to shake him off that I almost turned into him. That was the one time in my life when I totally lost control. I was living right on the fuckin’ razor’s edge.”