by Liam Brown
Anyway, the crowd instinctively started up with the jeerin and booin, even the lieutenants joinin in now, even me, while Big Bollocks stood quietly on the stage, his entire body seeming to pulsate with disgust. ‘Makes you wanna puke, don’t it? But the sad fact is that he, and hundreds more like him, are still out there, roaming the desert, probing for weaknesses, plotting our ultimate destruction. We might be winning the war… but the war is still a long way from won.’ He paused for effect, starin gravely out at us, before he allowed his face to soften slightly, raising an eyebrow, a crooked grin pullin at the corner of his lips. ‘That’s the bad news!’ A light ripple of laughter broke out. Gee, the Commander sure was a card. Yee-ha! He knew how to work the crowd alright, how to push our buttons. What a guy! Big Bollocks paused again, savourin the moment, his smile broadenin, showin almost as many teeth as the guy in the picture. ‘Now for the good news… ’
We waited, our breaths held, our bodies tinglin with anticipation. Because this was the moment we’d been waiting for. Our wise and charismatic leader was about to give the word, and by Christ we were ready! Ready to attack, to kill, to win – ready for war!
‘… You’re all going home!’
The silence that followed was the purest I’ve ever known. Nobody rattled their chairs or stamped their boots or cleared their throats or scratched their stubble. I could hear the blood hissin in my ears, as if I were deflatin, the air leakin outta me. And then the world exploded, not in anger or protest, but in fuckin jubilation. The bastards were actually dancin – clappin their hands, cheerin in delight. They were pleased to be going home. Me, I sat there numb. The Commander continued for another half hour or so, outlining the role of drones in the new strategy, emphasisin the fact this was a withdrawal and not a retreat. Eventually he passed over to a junior who briefed us on the logistical details. Apparently the withdrawal was to be staggered over the next six months, with the longest servin platoon to be shipped home first. Meanin I’m at the front of the queue, whoop-de-fuckin-doo.
The junior drawled on for a bit longer, explainin that for whatever reason the jump off point was an airstrip 100km to the north, which, naturally, we’d have to make our way to on foot. Then they wheeled Big Bollocks out one last time so he could pump his fist in the air again and call us all heroes and a credit to our country and promise us all medals when we got home. And then the meetin was over and they played the anthem and everyone stood up and clapped and cheered as we filed back to our barracks to pack up our things. Which is what I’m doin now.
So son, it looks like you’ll be seein me sooner than expected, not in five months but in five days. That’s the ‘good news’. In other words I’m bein made unemployed, sneakin off home like Larry Limp-dick to leave a bunch of toy planes to mop up what the politicians are too tight-fisted to finish.
But that was never the deal.
We got into this knowin it was grimy, horrible, back-breakin work; we knew it and we still jumped to sign on the dotted line. Couldn’t get over here quick enough. Because there’s a job to do out here. Monsters to kill. And jus’ because nobody’s happened to have seen ’em lately don’t make ’em any less real. Any less deadly. And the thing is they’re out there right now, son. I can feel ’em. Jaws open, arms wide, jus’ waitin for us to slip up and turn our backs. To shrug our shoulders and stop believin. To go home. And when we do… ?
Well, sleep tight son.
There were rumours of course. There had always been rumours. A field of mutilated sheep, a few kids missing on the same street – people loved to talk. But deep down everyone knew they were just stories. An attempt to explain the unexplainable, to make some sense of the merciless world. A bit of barstool banter for half-cut grown-ups, a chance to scare over-imaginative kids. Either that, or they were there to warn us; a handy metaphor used by filmmakers and storytellers to stand in for whatever evil they were keen to explore – cancer, Communists, consumerism. A clumsy parable designed to make us
Stop.
Think.
And then carry on.
Even when the stories leaked from the playgrounds and factory floors to the TVs and newsstands – vague intelligence alluding to dark plots or sinister forces, a journalist beheaded in some made-up country we could hardly pronounce – they were met with scepticism, or more commonly indifference. The pictures were always a little too blurry. The timing of each leak a touch too convenient. And so they were relegated to supermarket tabloids and daytime TV; titillation to sprinkle between the heaving cleavages and freak diet tips at the end of the checkout. Something to shift copy. There was no way any intelligent adult – or even a reasonably bright twelve-year-old girl for that matter – would react with anything other than a shake of the head and a knowing smile whenever they heard the word:
Monsters.
But then one day we woke up and found out they weren’t stories any more. There was fire in the air and bodies in the street and twenty-four hour looped news coverage to prove it. Apparently provoked by little more than our on-going existence, Monsters had launched a surprise attack on the capital city – my city – killing hundreds and leaving thousands more injured and disfigured.
My father was dead and the streets were burning.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
To say the summer that followed the attack was a wash-out would be to do a grave injustice to wash-outs the world over. For the first few weeks we all made a super-human effort at maintaining normality, especially Mum. After getting over her initial shock, our mother went into ultra-pragmatic mode. Her cubs were in danger. Her job was to protect and nourish. To help us move on. Or at least to provide suitable distractions from our grief.
Therefore, two days after the attack I woke to the noxious choke of fresh paint, and I emerged onto the landing to find Mum clad in white overalls, roller in hand, having apparently decided to redecorate the entire upstairs of our house. This was after she had already sorted and bagged all of Dad’s clothes, leaving them neatly lined up beside the door of a charity shop. I didn’t see her cry once during those first couple of weeks and, while we were not exactly barred from doing so, I got the impression that any show of emotion would be distinctly inappropriate. After all, this was officially a National Tragedy – the President had called it a ‘State of Emergency’. We were all in this together.
Except.
As the weeks wore on and the new reality of our splintered family began to hit home, it was difficult to imagine feeling less alone. Once the funeral was out of the way (Dad’s body was never recovered so we ended up burying an empty wooden box), Mum began to lose focus, and in the same amount of time it had taken for the Tributes to the Fallen to slip from the front page to a small box on page thirty-seven, Mum found herself running out of DIY projects to undertake. Or rather, she ran out of the motivation to finish them – leaving behind her a trail of half-painted walls, exposed floorboards and unassembled wardrobes. Instead she began to fold under the weight of despair, spending more and more time in bed on a diet of made-for-TV melodramas and repeat prescription tranquilisers. My sister, already sixteen at the time, quickly abandoned us for the relative stability of her boyfriend’s house, leaving me to single-handedly navigate our fast-sinking family ship. Naturally, things quickly spiralled out of control.
Post lay stacked on the mat, bills unopened, unpaid. Milk curdled in glasses on the living room floor and plates stacked up on the side, festering, unwashed, as I took to eating straight from the tin, carton, tub or whatever I could scavenge from our rapidly dwindling supplies. Some days I ate nothing but peanut butter and processed cheese. Others I would snack on cold soup and bacon sprinkles.
As far as I could tell, Mum didn’t eat anything at all.
The worst thing was the lack of escape. Living centrally, most of my friends had lost at least one family member in the attack, and it was as if a suffocating mourning shroud had been draped across my entire neighbourhood. The bowling alley, swimming pool, arcade and ice cr
eam parlour had all closed their doors as a mark of respect, and even the parks and public squares remained resolutely deserted. For all intents and purposes summer was cancelled, leaving me with little to do but skulk around the house, trying hopelessly to avoid the reminders of my normal life that had ended with a roar only a few weeks earlier. So I did what any grieving not-quite-adolescent with time on their hands and no discernible parental guidance would do – I tapped into Dad’s liquor cabinet (one of the few remaining souvenirs of Dad’s time on Earth that Mum hadn’t boxed up and shipped off to the oh-so-poor and needy), poured myself a glass of foul tasting single-malt and switched on the TV.
I tuned in.
Dropped out.
And so that summer, instead of heading to the beach or enjoying pyjama parties with my friends, I got loaded on premium brand spirits and, seeing as the news channels remained about the only things left on air worth watching, began taking an almost unnatural interest in World Affairs. And boy did I learn some interesting facts, sprawled out half-cut on our filthy sofa while Mum lay wasting away upstairs. For instance, in my previous incarnation as a bubbly, talkative, pop music-obsessed twelve-year-old girl I’d had no idea that only a short few thousand miles away across the sea there was an entire nation full of hideous, bloodthirsty Monsters just baying to tear us limb from limb. Now these freaks weren’t people in the conventional sense, but deformed savages; things, who despised us for our wholesomeness and democracy and prayed daily to their heathen gods for nothing short of our total annihilation. And that wasn’t all. Not content with lone acts of Monsterism abroad – no matter how spectacular the results – these repulsive beasts were also responsible for the enslavement and subjugation of their own people; the rightful indigenous inhabitants of the sandy, faraway places where they lived. They were nothing but a cowardly bunch of bandits and butchers. Marauding murderers.
And they had to be stopped.
One evening as I sat watching TV, a potent mix of expensive alcohol and political rhetoric coursing through my bloodstream, I suddenly found myself crying. Dabbing at my eyes with the edge of my week-old cardigan, I realised it wasn’t despair that had caused me to spill out over the edges, or even the Stolichnaya vodka I’d mixed thickly with blackcurrant cordial, but something altogether more unfamiliar and surprising. I was crying with hope. Because as the images of repressed villagers flashed up on the screen – each of them as miserable and wretched as the survivors in my own home town – I could finally see with clarity the entire story in primary colours, as simple as any fairy-tale: There were goodies and baddies. Dark and light. On one side stood me, my mum, my sister, my dad, the government and all of the poor oppressed people around the world. On the other side: the Monsters. Suddenly I had a narrative thread to seize on, something to root for, an enemy to despise, to boo and hiss. It was a bit like supporting a football team.
And even as I blew my nose and smudged my eyes and basked in this glorious revelation, the news report just kept wheeling on, the presenter looking even more breathless and excited than usual as he touched his ear and informed us that… sorry, news just coming in and… we are interrupting this broadcast for a very special announcement from…
The President himself.
And there he was, right in my living room, his face as grey and sombre as his suit, his eyes moist with emotion and auto-cue eyestrain. In a serious voice he explained all about the two or three distant countries that were sheltering these Monsters – a Pivot of Poison he called it – listing all of the terrible things the Monsters had done to the people who lived there, and what they would do to us if they ever got a chance. He used words like justice, safety and peace. All I heard was:
Revenge.
The President went on, loosening his tie, leaning forward, talking directly to me. ‘So what are we going to do about it, Lorna?’ he asked. ‘Are we going to let these bastards get away with murder?’ I shook my head, longing for the words I knew he was about to say. ‘Of course we ain’t!’ The president was all winks and smiles now, his accent growing stronger by the second. He was one of us after all, just as sickened and tired by the whole sorry story as every other right-thinking, god-fearing patriot.
And he weren’t gonna take this sheet lyin’ down!
‘Now, I have hard, tangible intelligence that these scumbuckets are capable of launching an attack within five minutes of someone giving the order. Five minutes! That’s hardly enough time for a mother to tuck up her sweet innocent baby in bed and kiss them goodnight… ’ The President paused for a moment to wallow in this image before stepping out from behind his lectern to welcome some Very Special Guests to the stage, the camera pulling back to reveal a host of world leaders, all nodding solemnly as the President resumed his speech. ‘That is why I am pleased to announce that, along with my coalition here, we have decided to commence with immediate effect a sustained and intense military operation in order to free all people currently oppressed by these Monsters and protect the world from this grave and imminent danger… ’
There was a rapturous round of applause. Or at least there was in my head. And I imagine there was in living rooms around the world too. Of course there was! Because the good guys were coming to the rescue. Daddy might be dead and Mummy might be mad and I might be dizzyingly, deliriously drunk, but none of that mattered. The world was safe again. The city would be re-built, better, stronger than before. Things could only get better.
And even as the President was wrapping up his address, promising a swift and decisive victory, calling on God to bless all the selfless heroes who were putting their lives on the line for our country – for freedom – I was tearing myself away from the screen, racing up the stairs to shake Mother from her pharmaceutical slumber to tell her the good news:
We were going to war.
You’ll never believe how much blood there is in a human body until you’ve scraped the insides of your buddy from the front of your shirt.
There was an accident last night, son. Or at least an incident. Because from where I’m sittin, huddled in the dirty dawn light, it don’t look like no accident. Nah. In fact it looks a whole lot like someone – or more likely somethin – did this on purpose. And what they’ve left behind, Jesus. Let’s jus’ say I hope you get this letter after breakfast.
I’ll paint you a picture: Of the thirty-four men who set out two days ago, you can now count those left on the fingers of one hand. The rest of ’em are lyin in piles, stacked like meat in a butcher’s truck. Bellies slit open, guts dangling in the dirt. Filleted. Steve, our medic, is lyin at my feet. His lungs are hangin from a tree a little down the path. This is the same Steve who nine hours ago was tellin me how he was gonna open up a little mechanics yard with his brother when he got home. The same Steve who’d jus’ found out he had a little baby on the way, who was savin up for a bigger place, who was finally gonna pop the question to his girl. Lookin down at him now, I notice he’s missin one of his eyes. Jus’ clean plucked from his skull, the hollow socket starin back at me. Yup, I guess you could say that Steve’s had a hell of a night one way or another. A hell of a night.
We’d got off to an early start. This was two days ago, the morning after Big Bollocks gave his song and dance on the stage. I hadn’t slept again, and when the Staff Sergeant burst in at 0430 and started yellin I was stood washed and shaved with my roll packed. By the time the sun finally decided to show its lazy ass we’d already covered twenty kilometres. The guys were all in high spirits, listin off all the things they was gonna do when they got home, singin stupid songs and clownin around. Even the Lieutenant seemed relaxed, jokin with the men, turnin a blind eye to us smokin and whatnot. I was rostered as point man, which to be honest suited me jus’ fine. I was happy to be out at the front of the pack and away from the rest of those fuckers. Anyway, bein on point out here ain’t exactly what you’d call a challenge. The terrain is so flat you’d spot anythin approachin at least an hour away. As long as you keep one eye on the horizon all ya have to
do is plod one foot in front of the other and zone out to the creep of your shadow across the sand. Besides, there ain’t been any attacks out here for months now, years probably.
Up until last night that is.
About an hour before the sun went down we stopped to set up camp. Like I said it was a real party atmosphere, and while the Lieutenant stopped short at passin round a bottle of Jack, there were extra rations and whatnot. Ok, so the food still tasted like shit, but it was a nice gesture at least. After that it was business as usual, the night patrol team settin up a watch on the perimeter, the rest of the guys sleepin in shifts, me not sleepin at all. As usual I’d volunteered to swap with one of the boys halfway through the night, but after a coupla hours starin at the ceiling of my tent I got bored and decided to relieve him early.
Outside was colder than normal, and that’s sayin somethin. It might be hotter than the burnin pits of hell durin the day here, but at night it drops colder than an eskimo’s nut sack. I seen boys lose the tips of their fingers in a bad winter. Frostbite in the desert, son – how’d ya like that? Anyhow, I kept it nice and brisk as I made my way towards the perimeter, rubbin my hands together to keep warm until I hit the curtain of darkness that was draped round the camp. Then I was forced to stop rubbin and take out my torch. That’s somethin else no one tells you about the desert. The darkness. On a moonless night there ain’t nothin like it. I’m talkin blacker than pitch black, son. It’s absolute – like you’ve been swallowed up or somethin. Your eyes don’t adjust to it neither. I’m tellin ya, a man spends too much time in the dark, he gets to seein things. Only out here, you can’t be 100% sure that the things you’ve seen ain’t real.
