The Battle Ground Series: Books 1-3

by Rachel Churcher

  I start with Brown. She’s more likely to talk.

  We sit in her room, facing each other across the table. The guards have taken her rucksack and her boots, and she’s still handcuffed, hands resting in her lap. She’s crying. Her eyes are red and puffy, and the neck of her T-shirt is damp with tears at the collar.

  I sit in silence, and let her worry about what I’m here to do. She sobs quietly, looking down at the table.

  “So.”

  She looks up at me, startled.

  “Recruit Brown.”

  “S… Sir!” She manages, between sobs.

  “There seems to have been some excitement this morning. Care to tell me about it?”

  She chokes back more tears, and closes her eyes. Shakes her head, slowly.

  My fists are balled in my lap. If I could use them, this would be so much easier.

  You don’t know how lucky you are that Commander Bracken has a conscience when it comes to his precious recruits.

  “We’ll try some easy questions, then. Who was in charge of your little gang this morning?”

  More sobbing.

  “Whose idea was it to drive away with the prisoner?”

  Tears. Head shaking. I punch a fist into the palm of my hand under the table. She looks up at the sound, the colour draining out of her cheeks.

  “Whose idea?”

  She stares blankly at me.

  “Was it Ellman?”

  There’s a pause, and then she nods.

  “Thank you, Amy. This will be so much easier if you just tell me what I need to know.”

  She nods again, fighting back more tears. Getting somewhere.

  “Let’s try another question. Who was the prisoner?”

  She shrugs.

  “Some friend of Bex and Dan,” she whispers. I have to lean forward to hear her.

  I shift forward in my seat. This is interesting.

  “So Bex and Dan knew the prisoner from before?”

  “Yes.”

  The posh kids know each other. Could they have come from the same place?

  “From school?”

  She nods. “Maybe.”

  “Amy, how did Bex and Dan know she was here?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Do you know how they made contact?”

  She takes a few deep breaths, and calms herself.

  “I think Bex snuck into her room.”

  Ellman did what? I can’t help shaking my head in surprise.

  “You’re saying that Bex came in here, past the guards, and talked to the prisoner?”

  “I think so.”

  “When was this, Amy?”

  “I don’t know”, she says, and the sobbing starts again.

  I’m trying to think this through. The prisoner arrived on Sunday night. When did Ellman have the chance to break into the dorm, past the guard and the Welfare Officer, and talk to her?

  “Amy – did Bex have help from someone? Someone at camp?”

  She takes a moment to answer.

  “I think maybe her friend from the kitchen.” She’s whispering again.

  “Ellman’s friend?”

  She nods, slowly, and dashes tears away from her face with the back of one handcuffed hand.

  This makes no sense. How did Ellman make a friend in the kitchen? She’s the last person I’d expect to go partying with the staff. Was she playing mother to someone on the camp staff as well?

  Or has she found someone to mother her?

  “Amy. This is very important. Is Ellman’s friend the kitchen supervisor? The older woman?”

  The one who was driving the truck.

  She’s nodding quickly.

  “They meet up in the evenings. They sit outside. By the kitchen.”

  Ellman’s evening walks. That’s where she was going, after visiting Sleepy.

  “So she helped Bex get in here, and she’s the one who drove the truck this morning?”

  “Yes.” She’s whispering again.

  “So what was the plan? You were supposed to go with them?”

  And the tears come flooding back.

  Of course you were supposed to go with them. You weren’t expecting to be sitting here, talking to me. You were expecting to be out there – what? Joining the rebels? Getting the prisoner home safely? Earning good behaviour points with Mummy Ellman?

  “What was the plan, Amy?”

  I don’t have time for more tears. I smack my fist into the table to attract her attention. She looks up, a look of terror spreading across her tear-streaked face.

  “What. Was. The. Plan?” I thump the table with every word.

  She shakes her head, aggressively.

  “I don’t know!” She shouts at me, her voice raw. “I don’t know! OK?”

  “You were helping, and you were planning to leave with them, and you don’t know where you were going?”

  “No.” Her voice is quiet again.

  Mummy Ellman cast her spell over you, didn’t she?

  “So let me make sure I understand this. Ellman came to you, and said ‘My friend is being held prisoner, and my other friend is going to help us escape. Can you distract the gate guards for us? Don’t worry – we’ll stop on our way out and take you with us.’ And you said ‘yes’. You didn’t say ‘Where are we going, Bex?’ You didn’t say ‘Who is the prisoner?’ You didn’t even say ‘Why are we doing this?’ You said ‘Yes, Bex – and can I lick your boots while I’m here?’”

  The sarcasm might be obvious, but it feels good, and it’s having an effect.

  She puts her elbows on the table, and her head in her handcuffed hands.

  I can’t help myself.

  “What is it? What is it about Ellman that makes you all follow her around like puppies?”

  She shakes her head again.

  “What is it?” I shout, banging the table with both fists.

  Brown whispers something into her hands, too quietly for me to hear it.

  “Speak up!”

  She drops her hands to the table and lifts her head to look at me. She meets my gaze.

  “She’s kind, and she’s good, and she cares about us. She’s my friend.”

  I stare at her. I feel as if she’s winded me. She watches me, waiting for a response.

  All this power, all this authority, and all this respect, and I can’t even begin to compete with ‘kind’ and ‘good’ and ‘caring’.

  This shouldn’t be possible.

  I realise I’m staring back at her, and I don’t know what to say.

  Yes I do.

  “If she’s so kind and good and caring, then how come she left you at the gate?”

  Now it’s her turn to look winded.

  “Where is she now?” I shout, waving my hands at the room we’re sitting in, enjoying the weapon that Ellman has handed me. Good, kind, Ellman, who left her friends to face the consequences of her plan in her place.

  “She left you here! She used you, and she left you here. She doesn’t care about you at all!”

  “Saunders does”, she says, still meeting my gaze.

  “Saunders? What’s Saunders got to do with this?” I’m trying to understand what she means. What the connection might be.

  “Wait – was Saunders in the truck?”

  She nods, still watching me.

  “Amy, who was in the truck?”

  “Bex, Dan, Saunders, the prisoner, and the lady from the kitchen.”

  Of course they were. Ellman and her gang, busting out through the gates in a truck full of supplies.

  She’s looking defiant, now. As if she’s realised that I’m not allowed to touch her. As if she’s happy that her friends got away.

  And I can’t help laughing. It all seems so funny, suddenly. Our Mother Complex, our Whipping Boy, Mr Posh, and the prisoner, all smuggled out by the woman who runs the kitchen. All our problem recruits, vanished at once, stolen by the person who does our washing up. And two of her devoted followers left behind to learn what it means to be
abandoned by their mother.

  I laugh so hard that I have tears running down my cheeks when I finally stand up and leave the room.

  Brown is still sitting behind the table, hands handcuffed in front of her, staring at me. But she’s not crying any more.

  She’s angry.

  Good.

  *****

  Taylor is next.

  I’ve calmed down, splashed cold water on my face, and been shown into his room. We’re sitting across the table from each other, but it’s clear that he’s not going to cooperate.

  “Recruit Taylor!”

  He stares at his handcuffed wrists on the table in front of him.

  “Recruit Taylor!”

  This time I punch the tabletop, but he doesn’t respond.

  There’s an unpleasant smell in the room, and I realise that he’s been throwing up. Someone has brought him a bucket, and it sits next to his chair, within reach.

  “Final chance, recruit”, I say, quietly. “Are you going to talk to me?”

  Slowly, he shakes his head. I lean forward, and rest my elbows on the table. He doesn’t look up.

  Let’s see how upset you really are.

  “In that case, you can listen.

  “Earlier today, Bex Ellman told you that she was breaking out of camp with her friend, the prisoner. She asked for your help. She gave you the job of opening the gates, while Amy Brown distracted the guards.

  “For reasons that I am struggling to understand, given how this little adventure ended for you, you said yes.”

  He sits, motionless.

  “Based on what Recruit Brown has already told me, you didn’t know anything else about this plan. And you didn’t ask. Ellman said ‘jump’, and you said ‘how high?’”

  He lowers his head. His black hair falls forward over his face. He doesn’t make a sound.

  “You conspired with Ellman, Pearce, Saunders, and Brown to smuggle a member of a terrorist group out of this camp. You broke … I can’t even count how many regulations. You broke the trust of the commander, and of your fellow recruits. You let a terrorist go free.”

  I keep my voice calm and even.

  “And here’s the part I don’t understand. You opened the gate. You let them get away. You waited for them to stop, so you could climb into the truck and go with them. And what did they do, your so-called friends? Did they stop? Did they risk life and limb to take you with them? Did they come back for you?

  “Or did they drive away as fast as they could, even though they knew the commander had a gun to your head?”

  I thump the table again. Taylor makes a small groaning sound.

  “Bex Ellman, your friend, left you to die today. You’d played your part. She had no further use for you. She and her loyal gang drove away and left you to the commander’s mercy.

  “Do you know how angry he is? Do you know how close you came to ending your life today with a bullet in your head?”

  In one fluid movement, he pushes his chair back, leans over the bucket, and vomits again.

  You do know. I can use that. Keep pushing, Ketty.

  He sits still, doubled over; his head over the bucket, and one elbow still resting on the table.

  “Jake,” I start again, more gently. “I’m here because the commander needs to know what happened. Whose idea this break-out was. Who was in charge. What, exactly, happened this morning.

  “I think you can tell me.”

  He coughs, and shakes his head, still leaning over.

  “There’s no point protecting Ellman. She’s gone. She left you behind, and she’s gone. Pearce and Saunders, too.

  “Who is left to protect? Other than yourself?”

  Maybe you’ll learn that that’s the person you should always be protecting. No more Mummy Ellman to make everything better. Learn to stand up for yourself.

  “Things are never going to be the same here for you. You screwed up. Might as well give the commander a reason to keep you alive.”

  No response.

  “I think you understand what I’m saying. I think you can see how much trouble you’re in here. So, is there anything else you can tell me?”

  He sits up a little straighter in his chair, head still bowed.

  “You can tell the commander …” he says, his voice rasping, “you can tell him that I don’t care.”

  I sit back in my chair.

  “Oh?”

  He turns his head to look at me.

  “You can tell him I want to see Bex and Dan burn in hell. Tell him that all of you can go to hell. The terrorists can take this place and shake it to the ground.

  “I. Don’t. Care.”

  He spits his words at me. His voice is quiet, but the hatred he projects is real.

  I can’t help smiling. Mummy Ellman has lost one of her faithful followers.

  Lost

  The commander looks relieved when I walk into his office. He waves me to the seat in front of his desk. I can’t help noticing that the bottles have gone from the shelf behind him. Part of me wonders where he’s hiding them now.

  “HQ is waiting for a full report. What have you got for me?”

  “I’ve got names. We’ve lost Ellman, Pearce, Saunders, and the prisoner. Plus the kitchen woman.”

  He shakes his head. “Anything else?”

  “I’ve got two upset recruits who had no idea what Ellman was planning, but somehow they were expecting to be miles away in a promised land of rebellion by now.”

  I can’t keep the smug tone out of my voice as I lean back in my chair.

  “They were planning to jump into the truck at the gates?”

  “That’s what they were told. Beyond that, they seem to know nothing.”

  “And the prisoner?”

  “Brown thinks the prisoner was a school friend of Ellman and Pearce. I’m guessing she left to join the terrorists before the recruiters turned up on their posh boarding-school doorstep.”

  “Do we have a name?”

  I shake my head.

  “Nothing so useful. These two really have no clue. They took the whole plan on trust from Ellman. They did what they were told, and now they’re both struggling to get their heads round the fact that they’re still here.”

  “Any idea how they made contact with the prisoner?”

  “That’s the interesting part. Ellman seems to have made friends with the kitchen supervisor. She used her contact in the kitchen to get into the dorm and talk to her friend. I haven’t worked out the timeline yet, but the kitchen woman was definitely involved.”

  The commander swears.

  “How did this happen? How did we let this happen? How did we not notice what they were doing?”

  I shrug. “We were busy. We were looking at the stuff going on in town, at the patrol in Birmingham. We weren’t looking at our own staff.”

  He nods.

  I think about HQ’s base in the field. About the drones and the cameras. Could they have tracked the truck, and used it to find the terrorists? I sit up in my seat.

  “Does HQ know where they are?”

  “Not that they’ve told me.”

  “But you reported it?”

  He sees what I’m hoping for. “Too late for them to track the vehicle. We lost them.”

  “But the drones …”

  He shakes his head. “We were too late. Too busy with the kids at the gate. We didn’t get the report to them in time.”

  “There must be a way …”

  “We screwed this one up, Ketty. They’ve gone. Our recruits and our prisoner.”

  “We must be able to find them.” I can’t let this go so easily.

  He waves his hand, dismissively.

  “It’s all up to HQ, now. I’ll report what we know, and I’ll wait for their instructions. For now, we’re on lockdown. We’ve got no one in charge in the kitchen. We’ve lost three recruits, and there are two more we can’t trust. No one goes in or out of the gates until HQ gives permission. We can’t send any recruits to
the army, and we can’t take in anyone new.”

  He’s given up. He’s letting HQ decide how to handle this, while we get to sit around looking weak.

  “What happened to showing them we can handle the tough situations? What happened to exceeding their expectations? Making ourselves indispensable?”

  He sighs. “Let me talk to HQ. Let’s see what they decide to do with us first.”

  I clench my fists and force myself to say nothing, but I’m struggling to keep my frustration under control.

  This could be our chance to show what we’re capable of. This could be our way out.

  *****

  “What are we going to do without them?”

  Jackson and I have our feet up, facing each other across a table in the senior dorm. We’ve just finished planning the lockdown training schedule, now that we can’t leave camp.

  “Mummy Ellman and the Whipping Boy?”

  “And the kitchen supervisor! Who’s going to cook for me now?” Jackson pats his stomach. “We could starve!”

  I laugh. “We could. This could be it for all of us. HQ might just lock the gates and turn the lights off.”

  They could certainly keep us working here forever.

  “So what’s the story? What’s HQ going to do?”

  I shrug. “Don’t know yet. We’re waiting for them to get back to Bracken with a plan.”

  I’m hoping the plan involves letting us handle the chase. Lets me get my hands on Ellman again.

  “I can’t believe they just drove out of the gates! Did they plan that in advance, or did they just steal a truck and run?”

  “I think they planned it, but they must have planned it in a hurry. Brown and Taylor weren’t in on the details, and they can’t have had more than an hour or so to pull an escape together. I think the news this morning is what pushed them to make a move.”

  “Blaming the terrorists for the weapons test?”

  I nod, thinking this through. “I think so. I think they realised what might happen to the prisoner if she stayed. They’ll be executing even more of them now that they’ve gone to Martial Law.”

  “Couldn’t face seeing their friend on the evening news?”

  “I guess.”

  Jackson frowns. “Why did the prisoner turn up just when the weapons test was scheduled? Do you think she knew something?”

  “Bracken said there were terrorists in town. That’s why we got chosen for the test. Maybe she was trying to find out what we knew.”