by Liam Brown
What do you eat for breakfast?
Now that’s an easy one. Ain’t no Coco Pops or Weetabix neither. Nah. We got our MREs, see. Our Meals Ready-to-Eat, or Meals Rejected by Everyone as I like to call ’em ha. Little brown packets of misery; freeze dried bacon and eggs or waffles and maple syrup or sausage and beans – all of it tastin more or less the same. Like wood shavings and dog shit. Only somehow less appealin. Now these things are scientifically engineered by the powers that be to balance nutritional requirements against portability and endurance. Apparently you could fire them in a rocket to the moon and they’d still be edible fifty years from now. And I do use the word edible lightly. So yeah, we got our MREs for breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus freeze dried coffee and dessert for afters. Just add water for instant satisfaction ha. Christ, we’ve even got little sachets of freeze dried water they make us carry round with us – go figure.
Have you killed anyone yet?
Well son, that’s a funny one…
The biggest days of your life begin like any other. The morning you fall in love, the afternoon you find out you’re pregnant. The evening the world ends. They all start the same way. Maybe it’s the birds that wake you. Maybe the bin men. Whatever – the important thing to remember is that there will be no drum roll, no fireworks, no sign that your universe is about to be irrevocably rocked for richer or poorer, for better or worse.
There will be no four-minute warning.
And so on That Morning you do as you’ve always done. You open your eyes. You say hello to the world. You get out of bed. You think about breakfast. You worry about what to wear. You fill your head and the air around you with urgent trivialities, all those non-conversations that on any other day would simply bounce off the walls and disappear into the ether. But not today. Because today is about to lurch so dramatically away from all of your expectations that months later – decades from now – you will still be waking in the middle of the night, straining to remember the tiniest, most-insignificant details of this otherwise ordinary morning to see if there was perhaps some sliver of a clue that would have given you an inkling of what was about to occur, some clumsy foreshadowing that you somehow managed to miss. The tap-tap-total obliteration of your father’s teaspoon on an egg top; the breezy cadence of your mother’s meteorological observations:
It’s going to be a hot one.
And of course, the deafening silence of all the things you forgot to say. That is what will keep you awake most often. That is what will hurt the most later on. Because you have no idea this will be your last chance to explain how blissfully happy you are at this precise blink in time, how thankful you are for this imperfectly perfect moment. And even if on some vague level you do understand that the status quo cannot be maintained indefinitely, that things will inevitably change, rupture – fall apart – you are too young to put these feelings into words. And so you just sit around and eat your Sugar Puffs and worry about your hair and talk and talk and talk.
And say nothing.
It was the alarm that woke me that morning, each of Mickey’s malformed arms reaching for six. ‘Oh boy! It’s time to rise and shine!’ It was Friday, the last day before the summer break, and even as I lay groaning and opening my eyes and fumbling for the snooze button, I was remembering all of the fun that awaited me at school: the end of term party, the last chance to see my friends for six impossibly long weeks. The cakes! And so it was in a glitzy pink party dress rather than my usual regulation grey skirt and blazer that I descended the stairs and made my way to the kitchen table, where my older sister, mother and father were already busily buzzing, bobbing and weaving around each other, eating toast, ironing shirts, straightening ties, boiling and re-boiling the kettle, all of them with one eye on the clock.
Tick-tock-tick-tock.
Looking back now, through the warped windows of tragedy and time, my tendency is to elevate that breakfast to almost mythical status, to see it as a picture perfect tableau of 1950’s manners and domesticity. And nobody bickered or shouted or swore or spilt scalding coffee down their top. But of course in reality we were just a regular family and it was just a regular breakfast. My sister sulked and Mum burnt the toast and Dad rushed from one end of the house to the other looking for his keys while the whole time I just went on and on and on about the stupid goddamned party until just about everybody felt like beating me around the head.
Probably.
But one thing I do remember, and this isn’t just pink-tinted historical revisionism, is that as just as the breakfast melee was nearing its inevitably messy climax – Mum sending yet more innocent slices of bread to the crematorium and giving up on breakfast altogether; my sister singeing her arm on the still-hot iron and recklessly howling four forbidden letters – Dad, already running perilously late for work, unexpectedly rushing back into the house and dazedly declaring: I forgot to say goodbye. Before stooping to land a stubbly kiss on each of our cheeks.
And then he was gone.
By the time I got to school it was already all over the playground, the hiss of hushed rumours like a punctured beach ball slowly deflating. Someone said the headmistress had been seen in tears. Somebody else mentioned the caretaker swearing loudly at the very top of his voice. Parents, their ears glued to blaring car radios, screeched to a halt outside the school gates only to bundle their children back into their cars mid-drop, while an ever-growing gaggle of sixth-formers congregated around the jungle gym, frantically relaying news from the screens of their mobile phones to the lower years gathered around them, the hiss becoming a roar as the phrase tragic accident was replaced by catastrophic attack. And still nobody seemed to know exactly what had happened, the panic growing and growing until eventually our teacher shepherded us into the hall and announced in a shaking voice that the school was to be closed with immediate effect due to the morning’s shocking ‘events’.
As for me – stupid, childish Lorna – I was more devastated by the cancellation of the end of term party than by the images and video footage that had begun to emerge, flashing up on billboards and shop windows as I sullenly made my way back home.
Videos of skyscrapers reduced to rubble.
Whole neighbourhoods engulfed in flames.
People screaming.
Blood.
Smoke.
It wasn’t until I opened my front door and found my sister raw-eyed in front of the television that I started to realise that this was something big. Something bigger than I had vocabulary to digest. I sat down and started trying to follow the news footage, doing my best to grow up, to stop acting like such a baby. But it was no good. No matter how hard I focused on the TV screen I couldn’t seem to convince myself I was watching anything other than some cheesy monster-budget summer blockbuster; the CGI fireballs so obviously fake, the buildings tumbling in slow-motion, rewind and again, rewind and again. And then the picture switched to a LIVE report and I started to recognise the neighbourhood, an intrepid female reporter ducking under police tape and battling dust and flames to show the blackened remains of an office block in the city centre.
Dad’s office.
And just like a movie the phone started screeching and my sister got up without a word. I reached for the remote and tried to switch over but it was no good, the news was on every channel, the reporter’s brow expertly furrowed as she approached my father’s place of work, the doorway charred and gaping like a mouthful of rotten teeth.
My sister picked up the phone and said hello.
The police were trying to turn the reporter back, telling her it wasn’t safe to be there. But she didn’t care and instead started moving round the side of the building, the camera panning up towards the burnt-out windows, flames still licking out from the demolished panes.
My sister put down the phone.
The reporter was shaking her head and clutching her earpiece. Her editor was speaking to her, right now, LIVE on-air and she was relaying the information.
No survivors.
&n
bsp; Rewind and again.
My sister started screaming.
And at that moment I finally understood what was happening, what all of this meant. It meant I didn’t need to worry about acting like a baby anymore. It meant I wouldn’t act like a baby ever again. Because as the news reporter signed off with a grim nod and my sister’s face dissolved into a torrent of snot and tears, I felt something harden inside me, deep beneath my stupid pink party dress. There was no time for crying, I realised, for maudlin self-pity. Because it was about survival now.
About Us versus Them.
We were under attack.
I was twelve years old.
Son if anyone ever asks ya if ya want the good news or the bad news first, save yourself a whole world of bother and shoot them in the fuckin face right then and there. I’m serious. Whenever someone asks you a question like that, ya know for a fact that there ain’t no good news at all – they’re just sprinklin a spoonful of sugar on a shovelful of shit. And boy, did I get a shovel of shit flung my direction this mornin. More like a whole fuckin cartload, I’d say. And believe me, it’s gonna take a whole lot more than soap and water to get the stink out. A whole lot more.
We reached the F.O.B. – our Forward Operating Base – early yesterday evening. Even though I must’ve been here a half-dozen times over the last two years, I still never get over the size of the place. It’s like an entire city they’ve built out here in the desert; shops, hospitals, cinemas, chapels, mosques, temples – a fuckin Pizza Hut – bars and a prison (which is normally full of good ol’ boys who’ve had one too many in the bars ha), all of it linked by real, honest-to-goodness gravel roads. In fact it’s only when ya get up close ya notice that all the buildings are either giant tents or breeze block, with sheets of corrugated roofing angled this and thataway, like a shantytown or somethin. There’s impermanence to the place, as if it was thrown up overnight. Looks like it could be torn down jus’ as quickly too.
Anyhow as soon as we got in I hit the barracks for the three S’s – a shower, a shit and a shave. Ya don’t know what it is to take a dump in a real toilet until you’ve spent twelve weeks squatting over a hole you’ve dug in the dirt. Feels like sittin on a goddamned throne when you first get on there, like you’re the Queen of England or somethin. Once I’d finished I met up with a couple of the guys from my unit and got to drinkin. Like I said, they’ve got a few bars set up for us to blow off steam. They even got a girly show down here, some big-tittied southern piece shootin ping-pong balls out her whatsit. Real trashy like – I half wondered if she might know your mother, ha.
For whatever reason though, none of us really enjoyed it as much as we was pretendin to, so mostly we jus’ ignored the poontang and stuck to the drinkin. Christ, we musta put away nearly a case of bourbon between us. The good stuff too. Imported. Still, it was quiet for a first night back at base. For once the liquor never really got to us. If anythin it made us quieter, morose even, each of us sat there mullin our thoughts, thinkin about the meetin in the mornin. Thinkin about war.
At around a half past one I decided enough was enough and cut out. Halfway back to the barracks though, I changed my mind and took a trip out to the shootin range instead. Now sometimes the safety officers can get a little pissy when they know you’ve had a few, but and as luck would have it I recognised the guy on the desk from my first tour – Harry somethin-or-other, from 35th – and after chewin my ear for ten minutes he signed me out a semi-automatic and waved me through. I picked a lane at the far end of the range, slipped on my goggles and ear defenders and started blastin away.
It sounds funny, but as a soldier I don’t get to fire off a weapon nearly as often as I’d like. From the pictures they show on TV, you’d think we spend pretty much every other day shootin at bad guys and blowin up shit. The truth is the only time I ever really get to let off a few rounds is out on the range.
Unless I’m shootin up goat herders that is ha.
But seriously, out in the desert they’ve got every fuckin bullet numbered and accounted for. All that health and safety and bureaucracy and whatnot, it fucks up every good thing left in the world. I mean, we’ve even had memos reminding us to consider the financial burden of ammunition. I’m not kiddin! Apparently we’re supposed to think before we shoot now to see whether the money could be better spent buldin an orphanage for dune-coons or somethin – like the price of bullets is gonna enter your head when you’re lying in a puddle of your best friend’s blood, surrounded by you-know-whats. Like you can put a cost on a life.
But I guess that’s politicians for ya – rich fucks who’ve never seen a day’s service in their lives. I swear to god one of these days someone’s gonna send ’em a wakeup call they’ll never forget. We’ll see if they’re still considerin the financial burden of ammunition when they’re staring down the wrong end of a barrel.
I don’t know how long I stayed there, firin expensive bullets at cheap card targets, but by the time I finished up it was almost light, the sky that special bruised-eye purple that you only get out here in the desert. I looked around for Harry but his desk was empty. I guessed his shift was finished, but there was no sign of a replacement safety officer, which kinda pissed me off to be honest. I mean, I ain’t much one for paperwork but still, there had to be at least a coupla hundred grand’s worth of fireworks locked up behind that two-bit safe. I’d hate to think what could happen if the wrong person got in there. We’d be in for a right ol’ show, ha.
Anyhow, I wasn’t interested in landin Harry in the shit, so I signed the gun back in myself and started on the walk back to the barracks, figurin I’d get myself a shower and freshen up before the meetin. I wasn’t sleepy at all by that point, and it felt pretty good to be out alone in the early mornin air with my boots pressin into that proper road beneath me, the endless sky bleedin pink and red over east. You ever watched the sun rise in the desert son? Don’t matter how many times I seen it, it always manages to catch me off guard. The speed of it. And the colours, Jesus. It’s like you’re bearin witness to somethin holy. The birth of the day my ol’ man used to call it – that big ball of flame like a baby’s head crownin, cleavin the sky in two. It’s somethin to see, I’ll tell ya that for nothin. It’s somethin to see.
By the time I got back onto the main drag the world had begun to stir, people scuttlin like bugs, puttin up banners, assemblin a makeshift stage in the middle of the street, ready for Commander Big Bollocks to give his speech. I nodded to a few guys I recognised but most were too busy to wave back, draggin things from one side of the road to the other, puttin up and takin down scaffoldin, fiddlin with electrical cable and lightin rigs. It was great to watch actually, everyone workin together like that, back-to-back, shoulder-to-shoulder. Like a machine. Nobody complainin or mitherin or questionin nothing. Jus’ followin orders until the job was done. It’s the way any good army has to be – whether you’re puttin up a stage or flattenin a village – and standin there, bathed in the warmth of the new day while I watched my buddies work, well I don’t mind tellin you that the whole fuckin world looked golden. Of course, I didn’t know then how badly I was about to get fucked over.
A coupla hours later I was sat with my platoon on a fold-out steel chair, about forty rows back from the stage. There must’ve been twenty thousand of us there, sweatin our backsides off in full uniform, slowly losin the will to live. There’d been a couple of delays already – technical hitches with the sound, plus what felt like months of administrative bullshit – and by the time Commander BB finally took to the stage we near enough fuckin evaporated with relief, whoopin and hoopin so loud that our Lieutenant had to stand up and tell us to simmer down. Big Bollocks though, he jus’ lapped it up, standin there with his hands in the air like he were the goddamned Holy Pope absolvin us of our fuckin sins or somethin. He must’ve stood there like that for a whole five minutes before he finally stepped forward to the microphone and gave a triumphant: ‘Hell yeah!’
Well that started us off all over aga
in, and we spent another five minutes whistlin and hollerin before he raised his hands to address us properly. ‘Men… and ladies.’ We had a good laugh at that. Whilst the brochures would have you believe that the modern army is some sort of omni-gendered-multicultural-homo-lovin-rainbow-tribe, the reality is that women only make up about ten or eleven percent of the entire forces, and out here in the desert that number drops to virtually nil, other than the cooks, cleaners and dancin girls, plus a handful of wasp chompin bull-dykes who you wouldn’t fuck with your worst enemy’s dick ha.
After the laughter died down, the Commander continued. ‘As I’m sure you’re all aware, next January will represent the eleventh anniversary of our invasion and, well I don’t know how to say this other than… We. Are. Winning!’ Well the whole fuckin place jus’ went off – men up off their seats chest bumpin, Mexican wavin, a fuckin carnival dancin all around me. Course Big Bollocks carried on milkin it for a while, roarin like some sheriff from the old west, his carefully scripted asides like cubes of steak to a pack of starvin dogs. ‘Those scum suckin sons of bitches are on the back foot! We’re kickin their asses!’ he yelled, on and on and on.
Eventually, when the men had been whipped up to a rapturous climax not even our lieutenants could silence, the Commander once again raised his hands in the air and appealed for silence. ‘Now, I’ve got some good news and some bad news…’ He paused, leaning forward slightly and gesturing to someone off-stage. Immediately a large projection sprang up on a screen behind him, a familiar artist’s impression of the enemy leader; a snarlin, six-armed son-of-a-bitch towerin over a pile of eviscerated human torsos, a string of black drool hangin from a thousand serrated teeth, a single red eye planted in the middle of his ugly fuckin forehead – maybe you’ve seen him before? I think they used a model of him on one of the high school promotional drives a way back. Sort of looks like your mother first thing in the mornin ha.
