Beneath the Darkening Sky (9 page)

I don’t know what to say to this. ‘I don’t think I snore either. My brother’s never complained.’

‘Yeah, but I heard the Captain —’ He suddenly stops.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Step back.’

‘What?’

‘Take a few steps back.’

‘Hey!’ a soldier yells. ‘Move it!’

‘Step back!’ the boy yells.

I glance at the soldier. He’s not going for his gun, so I step back, bumping into the boy behind me.

‘What’s the matter?’ I already know the answer.

‘I heard a click,’ he says. ‘I think I found one.’

I step back, pushing the others behind me. They don’t push back, they just move with me.

‘Damn Captain,’ he says.
Boom!

The ground explodes in front of me. No fire, no flash of light. Just brown-grey dirt splintering up, a hundred thousand pebbles in a grey cloud. The boy is covered in the cloud. The pebbles fly
so fast they gouge into his skin, then exit the other side. My heart jumps and beats fast. As the blood trails after the pebbles, the pale dust swallows it up, makes it dark grey. I see the cuffs
of his shorts cut a dozen times, each pebble clutching fibres and pulling them up. The blast’s wind catches each strip of cloth, curling it like a flag. More pebbles cut into his leg, under
his thigh and out the top. His knee rises, more pebbles rip through it. His leg flings up faster than the rest of him, too fast, and he begins to spin around. The other foot rises off the
ground.

Shreds of cloth turn dark, the skin at his hip tears. Shreds of dusty skin at the end of his leg – the foot is gone.

White dust wraps around him as the pebbles dig and dig. The back of his head opens, and it’s red for less than a moment before the pieces are painted grey. Each little stone takes a piece
of him with it, less and less and less. Landmines don’t kill you, they eat you.

All this in an instant.
Boom!
The cloud and pebbles are huge and high, taking up all the air in front of me. Out of the cloud flies a grey dust-painted half-person. One leg and his
stomach fly off the road. His left arm sails over my head. The wind from the mine kicks me backwards and I land on another boy.

It’s loud. So loud. Then, ringing in my ears. I lie on my back, looking up at the cloud. It hangs in the air and slowly fades. He’s gone. My nameless friend who didn’t snore is
gone. I’m just breathing. Behind me, others have fallen over too. It feels like I’m on the ground for a long time, but then I’m on my feet. I don’t remember standing, but
here I am.

There’s a voice, but it’s really far away. One high sound rings in my ears. Something hits me in the back. I turn and see a soldier, right behind me. He’s shouting something,
or it looks like he’s shouting, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. He hits me in the shoulder with the end of his gun. Then I realise – I’m the leader now. I have to
walk now, I have to go first.

I have only the image of the boy’s death to play in my head over and over again.

Another boy recruit has the boy who didn’t snore’s arm. He’s just looking at the bloody part like a dog trying to decide if it wants to eat a bone or not.

‘Move!’ I hear, and it makes me jump. ‘We can’t stay here all day. Go!’

I turn, and I can feel tears starting up under my eyes. I limp forward, right to the edge of the hole the mine made, but I don’t look down, not at the softness beneath my feet. That
softness is a dead thing. So I step into the grass, dragging my foot a little to clean it. No one says anything, I just walk into the grass and they follow. They have to, they have to step where I
stepped. Or
boom!

I’m feeling again. A great field opens up before me. It’s wide and clear, a perfect place to run, except for the mines. It’s so beautiful, but it isn’t a free place. The
mines are just like the bars on a prison window. I think if I ran, the soldiers wouldn’t shoot. They’d just make the next kid lead and watch me until I blew up.

I don’t want to die. Or maybe I do. I step forward and no, I don’t. I don’t want to die, but if I don’t walk they’ll shoot me. I look at the grass – would I
know a mine if I saw it? I go in a big semicircle and we are back on the road, back on the hard ground. I think it’ll be easier to see the mine here than under the grass. But I’m still
not sure if I know the difference between the top of a mine and a rock.

I’ve decided that losing feeling is good. If I lose all feeling, there will be nothing to fear. Fear is the only thing that keeps me from walking. Without fear, I stay alive. Fear is
death. Soft is death. I want to live, so I will be neither. I am not soft. I am not afraid. I am alive and so I walk. Now I can smile, because I am in front and I am not afraid. The Captain walks
where I walk, he stands in my footprints. He is afraid to step where I have not. He is afraid and I am not. So, I can smile.

My name is Baboon’s Ass.

It is the name they gave me. In the camp, you have what you are given and what you have taken. Taking usually means that someone’s dead. I’ve taken a few things while I’ve been
here. I don’t know how long that is. Some recruits count days, or try to. For a while, I woke up every morning and told myself that this was my first day in the camp. These days I tell myself
it’s my second day. The first day meant that I had to learn from the start each morning, with the memories of my village still fresh. The second day means I can remember some of what’s
happened, enough to know how to get by in the camp, but not too much.

Everyone calls me Baboon. The soldiers, the women, the big, the small, the living, the almost dead. Only the Captain calls me Baboon’s Ass. Then there’s Priest. He usually calls me
Baboon, but sometimes he whispers another name, one that hasn’t been mine in a long time. It’s only been a few days since I was taken from my village, but they’ve been very long
days. I’m taller now and my uniform is starting to fit. It’s been a very long few days.

When I arrived at the camp, I was shocked to see so many people. I’d only ever seen two or three dozen rebels before, and I thought that was all there were. Children think the world they
know is the whole world. The first step in growing up is discovering just how much remains to be discovered.

The camp looked like a great ant colony. Other children, not much older than me but carrying guns, were riding motorbikes and blasting rap from an old stereo. Their uniforms were green or brown
camos, mostly too big for them. Adults wandered about, doing what, I couldn’t tell. Then there were the other trainees. Recruits, like me, who had arrived days or weeks before my class. A lot
of them were bone-skinny with big bellies and would sit and stare at you with big empty eyes.

Those ones didn’t last very long.

In the barracks, it was two to a cot, all down the rows. When I arrived they told us that cousins, brothers, any blood-related people were not allowed to stay in the same building. We’re
not even allowed to talk to each other outside. They say it’s every man for himself. Even if you’re not yet a man. A lot of people here in the camp are not, even Akot, but because he
likes to think he is, he was happy when the officers said that. He saluted me and strolled along with his group, grinning like it was a feast day. He is the strong one. Maybe he likes it here.

In the barracks, they introduced me to my bunkmate.

‘So, you’re called Baboon?’ he said.

I stared at the floor. The bunk we were meant to share was half the size of my mat back home. At least my bunkmate was skinny.

‘Hey, Baboon, you ever do anyone?’ He smiled with half his mouth and licked his lips.

I knew he wasn’t going to give up. ‘What do you mean?’

He slammed his fists on the edge of the cot. ‘Have you ever killed anyone, man?’

I felt sick. ‘I’ve never even held a gun.’

‘Oh, ho! We got a virgin!’ He smiled huge, like he’d just found his lost goat or something. I wondered whether he had killed anyone before coming here. The thought that he had
by now made me freeze up inside. Maybe he was just pretending.

‘I’m Parasite,’ he said.

‘Paradise?’ I asked. He had a weird accent.

‘What? Are you deaf?’ He jumped to his feet and grabbed my ear, yanking it to his mouth. ‘Par-a-site!’ He yelled each syllable straight into my head.

I cringed away.

‘Parasite. Parasite. Parasite.’ I said it over, backing further away, against the next cot.

‘Hey, the baboon got it right this time.’ He smiled again and threw an arm around my neck, pulling me down to sit on our cot. Suddenly it was like we were best buddies. I just wanted
to get as far away from this madman as I could.

‘See that?’ He pointed out the door to the big sign at the camp entrance. It read
Welcome to the City of Angels
. ‘We’re all in paradise, man.’

He cackled so hard he rolled back onto the cot.

The day after we reach camp, the Captain pulls me out of bed before the sun is up. He’s wearing a nice clean uniform but carries his uniform from the day on the truck,
the one with my vomit on the trousers. As I get to my feet he shoves the uniform into my arms. And not just the uniform, but his undershirt, socks and underwear. With his laundry in my hands, the
Captain leads me out to the stream.

My legs shake so much I almost can’t walk. The path is worn, but rocks still jut out unevenly. Even if I had shoes, there’s been no time to put them on. Down to the stream we march,
my legs wobbly, my feet slipping and the Captain’s dirty clothes right under my nose.

We reach the creek and the Captain makes me stand in the icy water. I wonder what he’s going to do to me, alone here. Holding his clothes, I remember what the soldiers did to the women in
our village, what the men did to the men.

‘Baboon’s Ass,’ he says. ‘Do you know why you’re being punished?’

I nod my head.

‘What was that?’ he shouts. ‘I couldn’t hear you!’

I don’t know what the right words are, I don’t know how all this is meant to work. ‘Yes!’ Digging in my memory through what I’ve heard. ‘Sir.’

‘Good, Baboon’s Ass. Tell me, what have you done?’

‘I’ve never been on a truck before.’

‘Did I ask if you’d been on a truck?’ He stares at me. ‘Answer, you shit-throwing baboon! Did I ask if you had been on a truck?’

‘No, sir.’ I shrink as much as I can.

His pistol seems to fly from his hip into his hand and he smacks me with it on the shoulder. ‘You have no idea where you are, you corpse-breathed maggot.’

The water is up to my thighs and the feeling is draining away from my legs. They shake so much that when he hits me I almost fall over.

‘Do you know where I slept last night? In a shed! I had to sleep like some little lost pig. When we arrived I was so excited, I was going to see my wife for the first time in weeks. I was
going to get a great big hug from her. But as soon as I open my arms she jumps back. She jumped back from me! She said I smelled like I’d been out dancing with monkeys. Monkeys like
you!’

For half a second I think he’s telling a joke, before he pistol-whips me again, this time in the head. Everything goes black and then the ice cold swallows me. Under the water I feel his
hand on my throat, and he yanks me back up.

I’m soaking and freezing and still holding his dirty clothes in a big wad in front of me. After the dip in the water they smell less. Maybe that’s funny too.

‘Listen up, Baboon’s Ass,’ he shouts into my face, centimetres between us, his mouth moving fast. ‘That scrawny little ass you sit on now belongs to me, and every twig
bone of yours is mine to command. Do you understand? You are now my own personal private property. You will run when I say, and if I say you aren’t running you will go faster even if all of
the skin has been ripped off your feet. You will eat when I tell you to eat and you will eat only as much as I tell you to eat. If I say you are not hungry, then you do not need food. If I say you
aren’t thirsty, then you do not need water. You will not shit or piss until I say so, and if I tell you to hold it for a week you will do so and not feel the pain. If I tell you to stand
taller, you will grow if you have to.

‘We are the revolution and we are taking this country back from the corrupt government that steals right out of the hands of the people. We are the voice of the people. We are the strength
of the people. We are the will of the people. Anyone who opposes us is a traitor to their own nation, their own blood. You will do what I say because I am the voice of the people. You don’t
have a family or a home because you belong to this nation now, and I am the head of that nation. Do you understand?’

My entire body is quivering. I’m standing as tall as I can, willing my body to stretch higher. I think I hear my bones popping. My mind is empty, what should I say?

‘Maggot, this camp is your world now, and in this world I am God. When I tell you something, you will say, “Yes, sir.”
Do
you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I squeak.

‘What?’

‘Yes, sir.’ My voice rises, but only just.

‘What?’ he shouts again, right in my ear.

‘Yes, sir!’
I screech.