Tank Girl

by Alan C. Martin

  I knew damn well where he’d gone, too – he’d gone back to Chankers to sort out that Fuckleberry bloke. I could tell that the whole issue had been plaguing him from the moment that Barney had brought it up. Booga had a big problem with that little guy, a problem that could’ve cast an oppressive, hairy shadow across the rest of his life.

  Better out than in, I ‘spose.

  So much for my fuckin’ well-earned break from stress.

  Barney was sitting on the sand, flicking through her crummy little diary that she got free with a teenage-type magazine. “Do you guys know whose birthday it is today?” she asked, smirking sheepishly.

  We all called out our random guesses:

  “Bob Hoskins.”

  “David Essex.”

  “Mork.”

  “You.”

  “Nope,” said Barney, “you’re all wrong. The answer is Jesus.”

  “It’s Christmas?” I exclaimed.

  “Is it fuckin’ Christmas?” asked Jet Girl with a worried tremor.

  “Why the hell didn’t somebody tell us?” shouted Sub Girl.

  Jet Girl sighed and I detected a faint sob as she whispered, “But I didn’t get any presents.”

  I turned to the sea and smiled. “No, but I did,” I muttered to myself. “I got a new fuckin’ tank!”

  TWENTY-NINE

  BOOGA’S MASTURBATION INTO ADULTHOOD

  Earlier that day, as we were lying on the beach, me and Booga had got into a rambling conversation about adolescent rites of passage and how they seem to be all-but extinct from modern cultures. We discussed that, although some religions continue to instil a sense of change in their teenagers with bar mitzvahs, confirmations etc., the majority of western youths have nothing but prom nights and trips to the mall to help them realise themselves as responsible grown-ups. This obviously doesn’t work. And Booga is a prime example of a child trapped in an adult’s body.

  So I had to laugh when he declared, in a very serious tone, that his little self-wardened prison sentence in Jet Girl’s cellar had brought about a sudden “masturbation into adulthood.”

  “But Booga,” I said, “surely you mean ‘maturation’ into adulthood?” trying my darndest to keep a straight face.

  “Oh. Yeah,” he replied pensively.

  He thought about it for a few seconds, then he said, “No, I think I was right the first time.”

  THIRTY

  THE POWER OF THE SAUSAGE ROLL

  Exactly how much power would you say there was in a single 10cm sausage roll? What do you mean, you’ve never really thought about it? Well, have a think about it now and I’ll reveal the answer in a short while.

  Thank God we’d taken Zulu Dobson along with us. The man was an absolute miracle worker.

  “We’re fucked!” I said, after discovering Booga’s desertion.

  “Shut up and enjoy your holiday,” said Dobson, rooting through our camping equipment and provisions. “Okay,” he said in his easy and assured way, “I’ve got it sussed. You don’t need to worry about getting back to the mainland any more. Relax and enjoy the sun for a few days and leave it all to me. Just make sure that nobody eats the sausage rolls. We’re gonna need ’em... all of ’em.”

  We did as we were told and kicked back ’til Dobson said he was ready. I managed to relax a bit, but I couldn’t help fretting about Booga, the selfish bastard, settling his old scores at the expense of my hols.

  Still, after four days spent doing nothing but sunbathing, swimming, eating, and drinking, I started to feel like I was definitely on the mend. Some of the weight of responsibility had been lifted; I was feeling looser for sure.

  Zulu Dobson called us all to the beach at noon on the fourth day. He showed us what he had been working on – a ‘craft’, for want of a more descriptive word, made of three airbeds sewn together with twine. On one end of it was a ‘motor’, built from our camping stove, a snorkel, four flip-flops fashioned into a propeller, a torch, and some other shit.

  “Ready for a ride?” Dobson asked enthusiastically.

  “How does it work?” I enquired, peering into a small opening at the front of the ‘motor’. “And what the fuck is it?”

  “It’s a sausage roll boat, of course,” replied Zulu, proudly. “Let’s get it in the water and I’ll show you how it goes.”

  So we pushed it into the sea and all piled on.

  “Take one ordinary sausage roll,” said Zulu, holding up one ordinary sausage roll, “and insert it into the pastry chamber.” He inserted it into the hole at the front of the contraption. The funny machine started to rattle and buzz. Then, all of a sudden, we were moving off, slowly picking up speed, until we were chugging along at a steady rate of knots and the island was fast disappearing behind us. Zulu steered the boat with a single battered oar that we had found on the beach and almost used as firewood.

  “Only eleven more miles to the mainland,” said Zulu, “and according to my calculations, we’ve got just enough sausage rolls to get us there.”

  “That’s only a rough calculation though, isn’t it?” said Barney nervously. “I mean that’s not an exact figure.”

  “Girl,” he replied, “I am never rough and I am always exact. Especially where sausage rolls are concerned.” He looked across to where I was sitting and gave me a cheeky wink. I could feel that my resistance to Dobson’s charming advances was starting to crumble, especially with Booga acting like such a prat.

  Two miles off the coast we ran out of power. We were a couple of sausage rolls short. We made Barney paddle us back to shore, the greedy bitch.

  THIRTY-ONE

  SOME CUNT’S BROTHER

  It was midnight by the time we all got back to Jet Girl’s. We were tired and hungry, but I felt kind of half refreshed from the trip. Booga was nowhere to be seen. I was right in my assumption; he had definitely gone to sort out Fuckleberry.

  There was a guy on the porch, swinging away merrily in the hanging chair and drinking a large bottle of pear wine. None of us had ever seen him before. He was young-ish, with a rockabilly style about him. I guessed that the armoured car parked by the fence was his.

  “What do you want?” I asked aggressively.

  “Just bringing ya some news, ladies,” he replied in a cocksure tone.

  I stopped in front of him and fixed him with one of my untrusting, sarcastic stares. “So tell us the news and then fuck off. We’ve got a lot of shit to be getting on with here.”

  He slumped back into the swinging seat, letting his body language tell me that he wasn’t scared in the slightest and he wasn’t about to fuck off until he felt like it. “No need to talk to me funny, lady,” he sighed, “I’m on your side. I’m just here to tell you what’s happened to your young friend, Boogie.”

  “Boogie?” questioned Barney. “Who the fuck is Boogie?”

  “He obviously means Booga, you twat,” I said, focusing my attention back on the guy. “What do you know?”

  “He came to Chankers looking for an old friend,” he said, getting a perverse enjoyment out of watching my responses. “Seems a lot of townfolk had unfinished business with him. He must’a had quite a reputation to bring out such a bad reaction.”

  “Oh shit,” I said, a sense of dread building up inside me, “what’s happened to him?”

  “Oh, y’know, some of the guys have gotten hold of him and they’re teachin’ him the ways of righteousness and purity and all. They’d all like to meet you, too.”

  I started to panic. “What? Who are the ‘guys’? And what do you mean by ‘teachin’ him purity’ and all that shit?”

  “It’s just my brother and some guys, y’know,” he rambled, “they’re just trying to knock a little sense into him.”

  I had no more interest in what that smug moron had to say – except for one thing: “Who’s your brother?”

  “Stevens. Sheriff Stevens of Chankers town,” he declared proudly.

  I left him swinging in the chair with a small bullet hole in his right te
mple and the left side of his head scattered across the dusty yard.

  THIRTY-TWO

  TANK GIRL vs. EVEN STEVENS

  Knock knock.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Tank Girl.”

  “Tank Girl who?”

  Whump!

  “Get your face on the floor and don’t even try to breathe, brotherfucker!”

  “No, I won’t. And what’s a ‘brotherfucker’?”

  “Me! I just fucked your brother... but not in the way you’re thinking. So are you gonna get on the fuckin’ floor,” my voice was escalating in pitch with every word, my anger was acting like a lung-full of helium, “or am I gonna have to burst your brain open like a sack of shit with a p...” I trailed off, I was speaking so high that only a dog could’ve heard me.

  Sheriff Stevens was mildly put out by the huge hand-cannon I was pointing at his brow. He sniffed and wiggled his big ol’ sheriff nose. He was a well-built guy, in his mid-thirties, with a definite air of trustworthiness about him. I took a quick ten-millisecond look at the office wall behind him; he had loads of sustificates and awards and shit.

  “Okay lady,” he said gruffly as he shuffled in his seat, “there are three points I would like to raise with you: One – you are being squeaky, not scary. Two – I haven’t got a brother. And Three – what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I’m talkin’ about...” I was still very squeaky. I tried to lower my voice a few octaves. “Ahem...” It sounded like my balls had dropped through the floor. “...I’m talkin’ about me blowing your brother’s brains out with a Magnum and you and your red-neck, hilly-billy, brotherfucking friends torturing the love of my life because he was once really shit at cleaning up jacket potato skins.”

  When I put it like that, it sounded like I was a complete headcase. Still, I had to stick to my guns and proceed with the rescue mission.

  “Are you mad?” asked Stevens, frowning as he slowly stood up, his arms outstretched in a ‘see how friendly I’m being’ kind of way.

  “WherethefuckisBooga?!” I hollered.

  “Idon’tfuckingknow!” he hollered back.

  “You’ve got ten seconds to tell me or I’m gonna shoot you in the fuckin’ brain.”

  I was momentarily dazzled by the 100% pass he had achieved on the Cycling Proficiency sustificate he had framed on the wall behind his head. Then, suddenly, in a lightning-fast, invisible movement, he pulled a revolver on me. We stood apart at arm’s length, the barrels of our guns pushed into each other’s faces.

  “You gonna tell me?” I asked.

  “I can’t – I don’t know anything,” he replied, his chilled demeanour rapidly melting away.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing – no brothers, no fuckers, no friends, no Boogas – nothing.”

  I could feel the tension of the situation running up my arm to the end of my gun, into his head, back down his arm, through his gun, and back into my head. It was a situation that could’ve easily spiralled out of control. I had to retain my cool and get to the bottom of things.

  “So who have I just killed?” I wondered. “If he’s not yours, then he’s got to be some cunt’s brother.”

  “Well what did he look like?” he asked.

  “Well he was kinda funny looking,” I replied.

  “Well most people around here are ‘kinda funny looking’,” he said.

  “Well I already know that,” I said, “you’re all a bunch of cousinfuckers. And I don’t care what Elvis sang – ‘kissin’ cousins’ definitely does not ‘make it alright’. It makes for biological complications and genetic abnormalities.”

  “So how was he funny looking?” asked Stevens.

  “He was kinda like you – hillbilly-ish in a rock ‘n’ roll sort of way,” I said.

  “Rockabilly?”

  “That’s the word.”

  “And did he look like me physically? I mean if he’s supposed to be my brother...”

  “He was kinda goofy and lanky,” I replied. “In fact, apart from the clothes, he didn’t resemble you in any way, shape or form.” I pondered the possibilities for a moment. “Did your mum screw around? Was your milkman an Elvis fan?”

  I could tell that he wasn’t at all impressed with my shit sense of humour. And his gun was starting to vibrate against my skull.

  “My trigger finger is falling asleep,” he said. “I can’t guarantee that I won’t shoot you by accident. Is there any way that we can conclude this little quarrel before it ends prematurely?”

  “How about you go out and find a guy called Fuckleberry and lock him up for being a complete shit-cake?” I proposed.

  The Sheriff lowered his gun.

  “If you’re talking about Huckleberry Jones,” he sighed, “then I don’t think that I can oblige. He’s a very influential man around here... he owns half this town for Christ’s sake.”

  “So what if he owns half the fuckin’ town,” I replied angrily, “I own half of a cheesecake, but that doesn’t stop me from acting like a total idiot and...”

  “That’s for damn sure,” said the Sheriff, butting in.

  I cocked my gun and pushed it deeper into his flesh. “I may be an idiot,” I said meanly, “but I’m no pussy. I can hold this gun up for another twelve hours, if that’s what it’s gonna take to make you do your job right. Now there’s a man out there, running riot around this little town, doing what the fuck he wants and pissing people off. He’s gotten hold of my boyfriend and he’s fucking him up. And now he’s trying to trick me into killing you. Don’t you see that?”

  “Huh?”

  “Look at it this way, mister... some guy turns up out of nowhere and tells me that you and some other guys are torturing my man. So I come down here, burst in unannounced and impulsively blow your brains out. That is what was meant to happen. Fuckleberry wants you dead. Okay? It’s that fuckin’ simple. He wants you out of the way so he can be an even bigger cunt than he already is. Lucky for you I went all squeaky and started talkin’ about Elvis.”

  I’d puzzled the hell out of the poor ol’ Sheriff. “Is that all for real, what you’ve just told me there? Huckleberry Jones wants me dead? But... why?”

  “He’s a little tosser. He probably wants to get someone under his control to take over your job. Having me kill you was a convenient way of achieving that, whilst getting every law man in the land after my butt in the same stroke.”

  His face went blank. There was a lot of activity going on in that bequiffed hillbilly head. I lowered my gun. The penny was finally dropping – like a brick falling into a gateaux.

  “That little brotherfucker,” he said.

  “Now you’re talkin’ my kind of language!”

  “I need a drink,” he said, “a big one. And in some other town.”

  “Damn fine idea,” I agreed, “we’ll get shit-faced, formulate a plan, and come back and bust Booga out. Let’s take my tank.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  1973

  Alone in the outback

  Christmas Day and Boxing Day

  I was just a little girl

  not old enough to look after myself

  stumblin’ around

  tripping over snakes

  sitting down on spiders

  throwing crumbs to the vultures

  I could’ve perished in the heat

  could’ve died of thirst

  could’ve been bitten by a poisonous creature

  no one gave a shit

  they were all too drunk and stupid

  It was a Christmas gift that saved me

  a book

  second-hand

  an annual

  they only have annuals in Britain

  it’s an item peculiar to those islands

  a book that only comes out once a year

  a book that can last you the whole year through

  a book with stories and comics and puzzles and random information

  sometimes my auntie in England would send one ov
er for me

  as a special treat

  My annual from 1973

  had a four page feature on survival

  how to make a camp how to find roots and bugs to eat

  how to find water

  how to make traps and weapons

  how to stay alive in a hostile environment

  Spelt out in simple diagrams and monosyllabic vocabulary

  And a funny cartoon about a kangaroo

  Just what a three year old needs

  when she’s waiting for her mummy to sober up

  THIRTY-FOUR

  PUB QUIZ

  We drove for fifty miles so that we could have a beer in peace. We stopped at a little village called The Grottings and found a quiet country pub with a beer garden.

  Stevens started to loosen up after a couple of jars. He told me that his first name was Evan but people preferred to call him Even, because he was such a straight-up, fair-dealing kind of chap. I told him that I was called Tank Girl because I drove around in a tank and had tits.

  Soon we were laughing and getting good and drunk. I apologised for threatening to blow his brains out – he told me to forget about it and went inside to get another round of booze.

  I was thinking that Even Stevens could be a very powerful ally. I had to get that guy on my team.

  He came out of the pub with another tray of beer and announced that there was a Boxing Day Quiz just about to start inside. We scurried in, found a table, and paid our entry fee.

  We thought it was gonna be a cinch, what with our combined brain powers and all, how could we lose? As far as we were concerned, the prize money was already in the bag.

  But the first question was a real stumper: “True or false – Rodney Trotter and Mickey Pearson from TV’s Only Fools and Horses were first seen together on the screen as background-mods in the film Quadrophenia.”