Real Monsters

by Liam Brown

  I don’t know how far we’d walked. It was almost dusk, the light that sickly yellow it sometimes goes before a thunderstorm. There weren’t a cloud in the sky though. There weren’t nothin nowhere. We’d spread out again, Jett up front, me in the middle and Cal at the back. Cal. I had to admit I felt sorry for the kid. No one tells ya about this shit when you’re joinin up. Nah. Ya think you’re gonna be battlin Monsters with a machine gun or tossin grenades out the back of a helicopter. I wondered if Cal’d fired a gun since basic. I wondered if he’d ever killed anyone. Every time I glanced back over my shoulder he seemed a little smaller, as if he was shrinkin in the heat. Fadin away. I half wondered if I shouldn’t put him out of his misery. One quick pop in the back of the head and it’d all be over. The pain. The hunger. The thirst. He wouldn’t feel a thing. I mean, you’d do it for a dog. Or a cat for that matter ha.

  Jus’ then Jett gave a cry from the front. I raced to catch up with him, prayin to God he had somethin better to show me than a battered metal sign and a roll of chicken wire. When I got there Jett had dropped his pack on the floor and was stood perfectly still with his eyes closed. My first guess was sunstroke.

  ‘Okay soldier,’ I croaked as I stepped closer to him. ‘We all get it. You’re overheated is all. We’ll take a rest for a few minutes and… ’ Jett shook his head violently. ‘Shhhh!’ I smiled as nicely as I could. Poor kid was fuckin cooked. Instinctively I felt my hand move towards my gun. Maybe it would be for the best? Do them both and then myself. Right then and there. It was either that or wait till we all ended up as batshit crazy as Jett.

  ‘Listen!’ Jett said. ‘There it is again. Can you hear it?’ I smiled, my finger closin round the trigger. ‘I hear it, soldier. I hear… ’ I stopped. I really could hear somethin, a light, tinklin sound, like broken glass on the breeze.

  ‘Hey guys?’ Cal had finally caught up. ‘I think I need to get sick… ’ ‘Shhhh!’ I hissed at him. ‘Listen.’ We all stood and listened. The noise was definitely there, faint but gettin louder every second, high and familiar, almost exactly like a… bell. ‘Look!’ shouted Jett. We all watched in silence as a small white dot appeared on the horizon and started movin towards us. As the dot got bigger the sound got louder, until it was close enough for us to see that it was a bell. It was a bell tied around the neck of a goat. I shook my head, wonderin if the other two were seein what I was seein. ‘Now where in hell do you suppose…? ’ I started, but before I could finish Jett was crouched down and movin towards it, his rifle already drawn. ‘Come on,’ he whispered over his shoulder. ‘Dinner time!’

  Even though the goat was still a fair way off, it’d obviously caught our scent and as we moved closer it froze, lowerin its head uncertainly. ‘Shit! It’s seen us. I don’t want to risk scaring it off,’ Jett said, lowerin his gun and dartin off to the left. ‘Should I go after him Sir?’ Cal asked.

  I hesitated.

  Somethin about the animal didn’t seem right. I mean, I’d heard of wild goats before, but this one had a bell round its neck. Which meant somebody had to have put it there. But who? I took a couple of steps closer. Somehow Jett had already managed to get right behind the animal and was slowly creepin up on it, his rifle drawn, lookin for a clear shot. ‘Should I go after him Sir?’ Cal asked again. I cupped my hands to my eyes. The goat seemed to have some sort of saddle too, somethin black and bulky tied to its back. I took another coupla steps closer. And that’s when I realised. ‘Oh shi… ’ I started to say, but never got to finish.

  Oh shi…

  Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  I was on my way to meet Dustin, the sun stuttering through gaps in the bloated grey sky, like something good determined to push through the gloom. I rapped the steering wheel as I drove, trying to stay upbeat. Dustin had called the previous evening to tell me about a last minute protest that was being staged outside an air-base and I’d jumped at the chance to go – if only to distract myself from the circular thoughts that had been swilling around my skull since my trip to the doctors. The main one being:

  How the fuck can I be pregnant?

  There had only been that one time, the night Danny left. It didn’t make sense.

  Except of course it did make sense. The tiredness, nausea, stomach cramps – not to mention the fact I’d skipped my last three periods. In fact it seemed impossible I’d not known immediately. I thought back to my first biology lessons a million years ago, a crumpled textbook with a cartoon strip of Mr Sperm and Mrs Egg.

  How do you do and how do you do and how do you do again?

  Of course I’d known. I’d known all along. I just didn’t want to believe it was true. So instead I’d told myself I was run down, stressed out, overworked, while deep inside me a secret was growing. A secret that was now exactly fifteen weeks old and, at least according to the internet, about the size of an apple.

  That secret was you.

  But I didn’t want to think about any of that right then – couldn’t think about it. Not when there was so much else that needed to happen first. Since I’d watched Jeremy’s video I’d become convinced that what Dustin was doing was right. Whether or not there really were Monsters out there (and neither Dustin nor Jeremy had shown me any evidence that there weren’t) there was no denying people were being butchered in my name. In my dad’s name. I owed it to him to raise my voice above the TV and the radio and the newspapers and shout ‘No!’

  Even if nobody listened.

  Obviously I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Danny yet, and I knew it was going to be difficult for him to accept. But who knew – maybe he’d have seen things over there that had changed his mind? After all, Dustin had talked about veterans joining the movement. Either way, I’d finally found a place in the world I could make a difference, and not even the shock of finding out I was fifteen weeks pregnant was going to stop me.

  By the time I met Dustin the sun had burnt off nearly all the cloud, the temperature soaring so that as we trekked together to the meeting spot – yet another bar – I felt the tops of my arms starting to burn. Draping my shirt over my shoulders I turned to Dustin, noticing his worried expression. ‘So how many people are we expecting today? A thousand? More?’ I asked, forcing myself to stay focused on the task in hand. The medicine the doctor had prescribed had helped with the nausea but not the tiredness – not that I’d been able to get much sleep over the last week with everything that had gone on. Instead I’d stayed up until the early hours reading about the changes that my body was undergoing, looking in the mirror to see if I could spot the first signs of a tell-tale bump. Anything to make it seem real. ‘Er, probably a few less than that,’ Dustin mumbled, mopping his face with the edge of his t-shirt. ‘But for once I don’t think size is important. In fact in some ways it might be better if there’s less of us. What with the security issues… ’ I nodded, not really listening. Maybe I should just come out with it? Dustin, I’m pregnant. I’d cry for a couple of minutes then he’d make a bitchy joke and that would be that. Business as usual. Only I wouldn’t feel so terribly alone. I’d made up my mind, ready to speak. And then

  ‘Ah, we’re here!’

  I looked up, confused. Ahead was a small, wooden shack standing alone in a field – more of a shed than a pub. Above the door was a scruffy, hand painted sign that read: The Bumpkin. At the splintering wooden table out the front sat six or seven men and women who stood up to greet us. I was confused. Unlike Dustin or Jeremy, these people seemed to belong to another time, as if they had recently been dug out of a nineties time capsule. Two of the women had dreadlocks and at least three of them were wearing tie-dye. One of the men had his top off, and appeared to have a large CND symbol tattooed on his shoulder, right below a smudged dolphin jumping over a rainbow. I glanced down at my own plain t-shirt and jeans, feeling for perhaps the first time in my adult life completely overdressed for the occasion.

  Declining several kind offers of a can of Special Brew, I took my place with Dustin around the table
, desperately trying to catch his eye to gauge whether this was all part of some elaborate joke. A large technical drawing was spread in the centre, blue lines and grids criss-crossing the paper. Despite not having Jeremy’s fashion sense, these people nevertheless shared his enthusiasm for a good prop. ‘Just over this hill is an airbase,’ Dustin whispered, gesturing to a steep incline behind The Bumpkin. ‘The bastards are flying new recruits out on a weekly basis, shipping walking corpses to the front line from right under our noses. A couple of weeks ago Jeremy managed to get a copy of the blueprints for their generator so now we’re planning on paying them a little visit.’ As he said this a short, fat woman with green hair turned to me and grinned, reaching into her bag to show off a pair of wire cutters. ‘Should slow ’em down a bit, huh?’ she wheezed. I smiled politely.

  We’re doomed, I thought. Doomed.

  Getting into the base was surprisingly easy; it had taken maybe twenty minutes in total, including the long walk up to the unguarded security fence. ‘For once I guess we should be thankful for budget cuts. This should be easy,’ Dustin hissed, as the fat girl – who I’d found out was actually called Mossy – set to work with the wire cutters. Glancing up at a small yellow sign hanging from the fence I wasn’t so sure I agreed:

  All trespassers will be shot on sight

  Somewhere deep inside me I felt a spasm of fear.

  Or was it a kick?

  Minutes later Mossy had managed to cut a hole big enough for us all to clamber through, and then we were in. They appeared to be surprisingly organised for hippies, with the rainbow-dolphin guy – who answered to the name of Mango – producing a set of walkie-talkies. He handed one to Dustin. ‘I’ll stay as look out,’ he whispered, waving us on. ‘One blast for amber. Two for red.’ As we crept through the undergrowth towards a set of outbuildings I turned to Dustin. ‘What does he mean, amber and red?’ ‘Amber means someone’s coming. We need to freeze or hide.’ We carried on, the bush gradually thinning out. ‘And red?’ I asked.

  ‘Red means we’re fucked.’

  We carried on, pushing our way deeper into the base, losing people as we went until finally it was just me, Dustin and Mossy left. ‘Why do we need so many look-outs? There’s no one here,’ I asked as we paused for a moment behind a small Portakabin. ‘Shhhh!’ Mossy clamped a finger to her lips, gesturing across the courtyard. I scanned the windows of the buildings, confused about what I was supposed to be looking at. And then I saw them.

  Up ahead were about a dozen soldiers, their heavy boots glinting in the mid-day sun. Two of the soldiers were clinging onto leads. Leads that were connected to dogs. Big, drooling German shepherds – the kind that consider hippies a tasty source of nutrients. I turned to Dustin for advice but he wasn’t saying anything, the blood having leached from his face. Then I felt an urgent tug on my back as Mossy pulled me to my knees. ‘Go, go, go!’ she hissed, and next thing I knew the three of us were crawling through the scrubby grass, my heart pounding, my head pirouetting as I followed the gelatinous snake of Mossy’s enormous behind.

  Eventually we reached another fenced area, this one fringed with a serrated tinsel of razor wire, a cluster of yellow signs strung from the spikes. Danger of Death and Warning! Electricity! I suddenly decided this was a very bad idea. ‘This is the place,’ Mossy said, handing me the walkie-talkie. ‘If I’m not back in two minutes go back and meet the others.’ And with that she was gone, dipping round the side of the enclosure and out of sight.

  I looked over at Dustin. He still hadn’t said anything, his cheeks now flushed red from the exertion of the crawl. ‘Are you alright?’ I asked gently. He nodded once, not looking up. From somewhere beyond the fence there was a loud bang followed by a crunching of metal. I decided now was as good a time as any.

  ‘Hey guess what? I’m pregnant… ’

  This time Dustin did look up. I don’t know why I came out with it like that, but it worked. Dustin’s face crinkled with confusion as his mouth desperately tried to form an appropriate response.

  wooooooOOOOOOOoooow-woooooOOOOOOooooow

  An alarm started screaming from somewhere deep inside the enclosure, drowning out whatever Dustin had or hadn’t managed to say. The next moment Mossy appeared, sprinting towards us, no longer even bothering to whisper.

  ‘FUCKING RUN!’

  We didn’t need to be told twice. Still hanging onto the walkie-talkie – which by now was crackling with yells of ‘Red Alert!’ – I got my head down and started pumping my arms and legs, sprinting back in the direction we had crawled from. I thought I heard the snarl of angry dogs snapping in the distance, accompanied by the yells of even angrier men, but I didn’t look behind me to find out if I was right. I just kept running, desperate to keep going, to escape. The world disappeared in a blur of adrenaline until finally all I could hear was the pounding of my heart in my chest as I put one foot in front of another.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  We hung around at The Bumpkin for hours afterwards, swapping stories of the raid, laughing about how scared we had been, slapping each other on the back. The attack had been a resounding success – the base already besieged by the reporters we’d tipped off in advance, who were now gleefully interrogating Air Force executives live on TV about the lax security and showing close-ups of Mossy’s clumsily sprayed ‘Troops out!’ on the generator door. Everyone apart from me was drunk, with Dustin predictably hammered. But for once I didn’t care. We were all brothers and sisters now. Dustin, Mossy, Mango and the rest of them. We hugged each other, squeezed each other around the waist. We had done it. We had actually done it.

  I was still floating when I got back to my apartment later that evening, having finally waved goodbye to my new friends and left Dustin to sleep off the celebrations under a table at the back of The Bumpkin. As I made my way up the stairs, all I could think about was collapsing into bed. I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted, yet I couldn’t stop replaying the events of the day over and over again in my head. I still couldn’t believe we’d actually pulled it off. Sure it might only have been a tiny victory, but it was a victory nevertheless. For the first time in my life,

  I’d made a difference.

  Swinging open the door, I noticed a small brown envelope lying on the mat, out of place amongst the stack of bills and takeaway leaflets that were usually jammed through my letter box. I turned the letter over in my hands, noticing first the address, printed in a child-like scrawl, then the brightly coloured foreign stamps. My stomach lurched. I tore the envelope open:

  Hey Sugar Tits,

  You said to write so here it is.

  It’s hot here. The food’s bad and my feet are tired from all the walkin.

  It ain’t like on TV, I’ll tell ya that for nothin.

  I’m bad at writin and I ain’t got much to say so I’ll keep it short. I jus’ wanted to let ya know that I’m getting a promotion. They’re bumpin me up to Corporal already – I know, crazy huh? Apparently I show potential ha. It’s more responsibility for only a little more money, but I think it could be good. For us I mean.

  Anyway, I’m still not sure when I’m comin back. Could be a week, could be a month, they keep messin the date around. Who knows – I might even beat this letter back. The post out here’s a joke.

  Miss your sweet ass

  Danny

  I read the letter and re-read it. Danny’s writing was as coarse and careless as his speech. It was strange having that voice in the apartment again after so many months alone. I took a seat by the window, reading the letter for a third time, trying to work up some emotion; excitement, disappointment – anything other than numb indifference.

  I sat by the window a long time with the letter in my hand, not thinking, not feeling. Just sitting. When I finally moved I was surprised to find that it was night. I left the lights off as I made my way to the bedroom, climbing into bed fully dressed and pulling the blankets over my head, the darkness slowly swallowing me.

  Everythin was bl
ack. The sand, the sky. Day and night. Me. I couldn’t tell where things ended or began. In fact callin it black don’t really do it justice, son. It was like when you stare into the mouth of a cave and you don’t see nothin there – jus’ emptiness starin right back at ya. I kept expectin my eyes to adjust any minute, but they never did. I blinked once, twice. Nothin. After a while I realised the reason I couldn’t see nothin is because there weren’t nothin to see. I couldn’t tell ya how long I’d been waitin either. Might’ve been a coupla seconds. Could’ve been a coupla years. Shit, I didn’t even know what I was waitin for. All I knew was that I was waitin. I figured I might be a while, so to pass the time I started countin.

  1,2,3,4,5…

  Once when I was a kid I had a fever so bad my ma thought I was gonna die. It started out in the morning as an ear infection, but by evenin I was burnin up. They called the doctor but he said I was too far gone – that I would probably slip into a coma, and that even if by some miracle I woke, I’d be retarded. There was nothin to do but strip me down and wait it out. For two days I lay and writhed in my sheets while Ma dabbed my brow with ice water and Pops smoked cigars and rang through the phone book for the cheapest coffin. On the third mornin the fever broke, but when I finally managed to sit up I had no idea who I was. I mean it, I didn’t know my name, my age, nothin. Course it turned out the amnesia was only temporary, and by lunchtime I was back to my old self. Still, I remember how strange it felt for those few hours while I sat hunched at the edge of my bed, waitin to come back to life. I guess I felt the way a baby feels when it first arrives in the world. No past or future to fuck you up. Just one endless present, stretchin on and on and on and on and on…

  … 5026, 5027, 5028, 5029…

  At some point I became aware of a sound, a low buzzin, like a wasp trapped in a jar. I looked around for the source of the noise, but of course I couldn’t see nothin. I kept very still and tried to concentrate. It seemed that the sound was comin from somewhere high above my head – wherever my head was, ha. As I listened I realised the sound was gettin louder, getting closer. Suddenly I was afraid. I tried to block it out, to focus on the numbers, but it was no good.