I celebrated my sixteenth birthday by crashing a plane, fighting for my life, and facing execution. Again.
I'd rather have just blown out some candles and got pissed.
"Hello? Is anybody there? Hello?"
"Lee? Oh thank God."
"Dad? Dad is that you? I can hardly hear you. Where are you?"
"Still in Basra, but we're shipping out soon. Listen, I don't know how much time I have. Is your mother there?"
"Er, yeah."
"Put her on, son."
I'd been scanning the terrain for about ten minutes, looking for a decent place to land, when small-arms fire raked the fuselage.
Stupid, careless idiot; I'd been flying in circles, just asking to be shot at.
The problem was that I couldn't find the airport. I could see the river snaking to the sea, the city straddling it and blending into desert at the edges. I could see the columns of smoke rising high off to the north, and the boats bobbing in the long abandoned harbour. But I couldn't see the bloody airport. So I had to get closer and look for somewhere to land.
I'd managed to fly thousands of miles, refuel twice without incident (if you didn't count that psycho in Cyprus, but he wasn't that much trouble) and make it to my destination unscathed. Then, on arrival, I descend to within shooting distance and wave my wings at anyone who fancies a potshot.
I bloody deserved to be shot down.
I pulled hard on the control column, trying to raise the plane's nose and climb out of range, but it didn't respond.
"Oh shit," I said.
I was at 500 feet and descending, nose first, towards a suburban street littered with abandoned cars and a single burned-out tank. I tried to shimmy the plane left or right, pumped the pedals, heaved and wrenched the control column, anything to get some fraction of control.
Nothing.
Too low to bail out, nothing to do but ride the plane into the ground and hope I was able to walk away.
My arrival in Iraq was going to be bumpy.
"Jesus Dad, what did you say to her? Dad, you still there?"
"Yeah, just… I, um… listen, Lee, there's something I have to tell you."
"Ok."
"The plague, from what we've been hearing here, it's sort of specific."
"Eh?"
"You only get it if you've got a particular blood type. No, that's not right. You don't get it if you've got a particular blood type. Everyone who's O Negative is immune, that's what the doc here told us."
"And everyone else…"
"Is going to die."
I was coming in clean towards the road, lined up by pure chance. If the road had been clear, and if I could've got the nose up, I'd maybe have had a chance. But I was heading straight for the fucking tank, and no matter what I did the plane was just a hunk of unresponsive metal.
There was another burst of gunfire, and this time I could see the muzzle flash of the machine gun on a rooftop to my left. His aim was true and the plane shuddered as the bullets hit the tail, sending fragments of ailerons flying into the tailwind. I yelled something obscene, furious, defiant, then pulled the control column again, more in frustration than hope.
And, hallelujah, it responded. That second burst of fire must have knocked something loose. I never thought I'd be grateful that someone was shooting at me.
Of course, at twenty feet and however many knots, there wasn't that much I could actually do.
The nose came up a fraction, just enough to change the angle of attack from suicidal to survivable. Not enough to actually stop my descent, though.
I'm pretty sure I was yelling when the tail of the plane slammed into the turret of the tank, snapped off, and pitched the plane nose first into the hard-packed earth.
The world spun and tumbled as I screamed in tune with the crash and wrench of twisting metal. The plane somersaulted, over and over, down the road, bouncing off cars and buildings, losing its wings, being whittled away with every revolution, until it seemed there was just a ball of warped metal and shattered plastic cocooning me as it gouged the ground, ricocheting like some kind of fucked-up pinball.
Eventually, just as the darkness crept into my vision and I felt myself starting to black out, the world stopped spinning.
My head was swimming, there was blood in my mouth, I was upside down, the straps of my harness digging into my knotted shoulders, but I was alive.
"One more life used up, Nine Lives," whispered a familiar, sarcastic voice in my head. I told it to piss off.
Then I realised that I was wet. I reached up and wiped the slick liquid from my face. When my eyes could focus and my dizzy brain began to accept input, I realised that I was soaked from head to toe in fuel.
I heard gunfire in the distance, as someone started taking shots at what was left of my plane.
And I couldn't move.
"All of them?"
"All. Lee, you're O Neg. So am I."
"And mum? Dad, you there? I said what about Mum?"
"No."
"Oh. Right."
"Now listen, she might be safe if you can just quarantine yourselves. Don't leave the house, at all. For any reason."
"But what about food? The water's been switched off, we've got no power. There's these gangs going around attacking houses, Dad, they've got guns and knives and…"
"Lee calm down. Calm down. You mustn't panic, son. Breathe… You okay now?"
"Not really."
"I know. But you're going to be strong, Lee. For your mum."
"She's going to die isn't she… Dad?"
"Yes. Yes, she probably is."
"But there's no doctors, you know that right? The hospital's been closed for a week. They put these signs up saying to wait for the army to set up field hospitals, but they haven't shown up. They're not going to, are they?"
"No, I don't think so, not now. I know it's hard, but it's all up to you, son. You're going to have to nurse her. Until I can get there. I'm coming home, Lee. As fast as I can. You've got to hang on, understand?"
"But what if you're not fast enough? What if something goes wrong? What if I'm left here, alone, with… with… Oh God."
I reached across and unclasped my harness. It snapped free and I slumped, shoulder first, into a mess of tangled metal. I screamed as my left shoulder ground into a sharp metal edge. Something felt wrong about the way it was lying. I tried to move my left arm but all I felt was an awful grinding of flesh and bone.
It was dislocated.
Add that to the disorientation, which would probably give way to concussion, and the numerous possible wounds that I'd yet to discover, not to mention the chunk of my lower lip that I'd bitten out with what remained of my teeth…
Actually, I'd got off pretty lightly all things considered. If I could just avoid getting burned to death, this might even qualify as a good day. I squirmed in the wreckage, trying to find a gap through which I could wriggle, some way to gain purchase. It was agony; every move ground my shoulder joint against the slack, useless muscles, causing shooting pains so intense that they made my vision blur.
I could hear cries from nearby streets, and more gunfire, as men closed in on my position. I really needed to move.
Finding nothing that offered any chance of escape, I braced myself as best I could and pushed hard, using my full body strength to try and force my way out, like a bird kicking its way out of a metal egg. My spine cracked like a rifle, and my legs burned with effort. My shoulder joint minced the flesh that surrounded it, and I screamed in impotent fury until finally I felt something near my feet give ever so slightly. I redoubled my efforts, taking every ounce of strength I had in my small, wiry frame, and concentrating it in my feet. Oh so slowly, I forced a metal strut backwards and it groaned in protest.
Eventually it bent far enough to let in a small circle of sunlight. I squirmed again, rotating inside my shell, until my head and shoulder were positioned beneath the opening.
I gritted my teeth. This was really going to hurt. I closed my eyes, and pushed myself upwards, squeezing my agonised shoulder through the tiny gap. I felt something rip inside my arm and I screamed again. Once my shoulders were clear I was able to pull my right arm through and use it to push myself free.
Just as my feet emerged, the mass of wreckage beneath me shifted under my redistributed weight, pitching me forward. I lost my balance and tumbled to the ground.
I lay there on the hot, baked earth and I smiled through the pain.
This dirt was Basra.
I'd made it.
"Lee, focus, you've got things to do."
"Right. Yes. Okay."
"Now we're shipping out of here before the week's out."
"Back to England."
"Yeah."
"So, what, I should see you in ten days or so?"
"I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. They're not just letting us go home. I'm still a soldier and I still have to obey orders. If I try to just come home, I'll be shot as a deserter. They executed one of my mates yesterday. He wanted to stay here, got a local girlfriend, kid on the way. Tried to slip away, got caught. They shot him at dawn."
"Bloody hell."
"Apparently there's some big thing planned for when we all get home, but nobody's saying what."
"So what do I do?"
"You go back to school, to St Mark's."
Before I could gather my wits and rise to my feet, someone started kicking the crap out of me.
I tried to roll away from the kicks, raise my good arm to protect my head, find some space in between the blows to reach down and grab my Browning, which was tucked into my waistband. But with one arm useless, and my head woozy with shock and pain, I ended up just curling into a ball and letting the blows come. My attacker was shouting and firing his gun in the air, laughing as he kicked me to death. Luckily he was wearing trainers, not hobnail boots. So it was going to take him a while.
Then, what was left of the plane exploded. The shockwave actually rolled me along the ground a bit, like a balled-up hedgehog. My mouth and eyes filled with dust and sand. The kicking stopped. I cautiously removed my arm and saw my assailant sprawled on the floor beside me. There was a short metal stanchion protruding from his forehead. I uncurled myself, lurched upright, reached down and took the AK-47 from his still twitching hands.
He looked younger than me. Dreadful acne, dark skin, khaki combats, plain white t-shirt. He lay there on the sandy ground, staring sightlessly into the sky. My first victim of the day. I hoped he would be the last, but I didn't think it likely.
A yell from the far end of the street reminded me that he had friends. I had to move. I staggered as fast as I could in the opposite direction. I had no idea of the layout of this town, but it was their home turf. I was one wounded boy with a useless arm, a half-empty machine gun and pistol with a couple of clips; there were probably loads of them, armed to the teeth. I had salvaged no water from the crash, the midday sun was beating down on me hotter than anything I'd ever experienced before, I was losing blood, sweating as I ran, and had no idea how to come by safe drinking water.
I was so screwed.
I wished I had some of Matron's homebrew drugs on me. Just a shot of that had kept me fighting in the battle for St Mark's despite shattered teeth, a broken arm and more blows to the head than I could count. But I'd left without saying goodbye. I regretted that now; I'd almost certainly never see her again. Still, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I'd probably have ended up blubbing or, worse, trying to snog her, and that would have been excruciating.
A bullet pinged off a brittle brick wall next to my head as I dodged down an alleyway, weaving in between burned-out cars and abandoned barricades. This was pointless. If I could get far enough ahead of them I had a chance, but I just wasn't capable of any kind of speed. I'd never outrun them.
I had to go to ground.
"Back to school, seriously?"
"Listen, some of the teachers stayed behind didn't they? And some of the boys?"
"Yeah, but…"
"No buts. It's the only safe place I can think of. They've got weapons there, in that bloody armoury, haven't they?"
"Uh huh."
"Then get back there, join up with anyone who's left, arm yourselves and wait for me."
"You promise you'll come?"
"No matter what happens, Lee, I'll be there. It may take a while, that's all. If you're at St Mark's you'll be as safe as houses and I'll know where to find you. Promise me."
"I promise."
I emerged from the alleyway into a housing estate. Residential tower blocks rose up in front of me, some burnt out, some with great gaping holes punched in them by depleted uranium shells, one reduced to nothing but rubble. Their balconies were festooned with clothes, bedding and the occasional skeleton. This desolate, abandoned maze of passages, flats and stairwells was my best chance of eluding my pursuers.
I stumbled across the churned up paving stones, heading for the doorway of the block that seemed most intact. The sound of pursuit echoed eerily around the empty estate, making it impossible for me to know how many pursuers there were, or how close.
The blue metal door to the block lay half open. I shoved it, using my good shoulder. Something inside was blocking my way, so I had to shimmy through the narrow gap into the musty, foetid darkness of the stairwell. My foot sank into something soft and yielding. I felt something pop beneath my boot, and a pocket of evil smelling gas was released that made me gag and choke. I tried to free my foot, but it was caught on something hard. I looked down to find that I was ankle deep in a bloated corpse, my lace end snagged on a protruding edge of fractured ribcage.
After I'd dry heaved for a minute or two I slung the machine gun over my shoulder, reached down and gingerly unsnagged the lace, smearing my fingers in vile black ichor as I did so. I limped away from the unfortunate wretch, wiping my fingers on the wall as I went.
That man (had it been a man? I couldn't be sure) had been dead for some time, but he'd outlived the plague. He still had a gun in his hand, so I assumed he'd died fighting. On the evidence so far, it looked like Basra was still as violent and deadly a place as it had been before The Cull.
And I'd come here by choice. Bloody moron, Keegan.
The stairs were littered with junk. It was all the stuff I'd have expected: toys, prams, CDs, DVDs, clothes, a bike, some chairs, computers, TV sets. But the CDs and DVDs had Arabic titles and lurid cover pictures; the computer keyboard had a strange alphabet; the TV sets were old square cathode ray boxes, not widescreen or flat. The big picture was the same, but the details were different. It was disorientating.
This place had been taken to pieces, but it seemed like most of the stuff had just been thrown around for a laugh rather than salvaged and squirreled away.
I negotiated the wreckage and made it to the third floor without stumbling across any other recent casualties. I risked a glance through a shattered windowpane, and could see a group of three young men, machine guns at the ready, cautiously moving through the car park below. It wouldn't take much for them to realise I'd come into this block; one whiff of the doorway should do it.
I needed a hiding place, fast. I ran down the corridor, trying to decide which flat to hide in. Some still had their armour plated doors firmly locked shut from the inside, entombing anyone who'd sheltered there.
One door was decorated with a collection of human skulls, hanging from hooks in the shape of a love heart. I gave that one a miss. Eventually I just ducked inside a random door and pushed it closed behind me. I was about to slide the large metal bolts home when I realised that the bolt housings had been ripped from the wall when someone had kicked their way inside.
I turned to explore the flat, and found two long-dead bodies lying sprawled on the sofa. The one in the dress, with the long red hair, had a bullet hole in the middle of its skull. The other, presumably her boyfriend or husband, still held a pistol in his boney fingers, the muzzle clasped between yellow teeth. The flesh was long gone; all that remained were tattered clothes and bones, picked clean by rats that had long since moved elsewhere in search of food. I imagined that most of the locked doors in this block concealed similar tableaux.
It was the kind of thing I'd seen many times before, but again, the details were different. The sofa was a bright orange with the kind of swirling patterns that my gran used to like, and it was hard to tell which was more grotesque: the corpses or the wallpaper pattern. It was like some awful seventies throwback. But in the corner there was the first widescreen telly I'd seen here. New technology, old furniture; it was plain that Iraq had been changing when The Cull hit, caught between a brutal past and an uncertain future that at least promised shinier toys.
But Iraq hadn't moved forward into a bright new day of flat-screen HD tellies, democratic freedom and plush modern furnishings. It had bled out in a slow parade of mercy killings and suicide pacts.
Just like everywhere else.
"And Lee, listen, your mother…"
"Yes?"
"I've seen what this disease does. And I want…"
"No."
"Lee, I wouldn't ask…"
"Dad, no. Please. Don't ask me to do that."
"But…"
"No. I'm not like you. I couldn't do something like that. I just couldn't. I won't give up hope."
Right. First things first. I needed to sort out my shoulder. I took a quick walk through the flat but found only the abandoned fragments of other people's lives. I looked out the bedroom window at an expanse of sandy scrubland. It took me a minute to realise what I was looking at, but when I did it was all I could do to stop myself throwing up.
Lined up on the ground were three rows of impaled corpses. Maybe fifteen or more people, all with their hands tied behind their backs, lying with their faces skywards, sharpened wooden stakes protruding from their shattered ribcages. The stakes had been dug into the ground and then the victims must have been flung on to them. And pushed down. Recently, too; the flies were still buzzing.
I'd seen some pretty horrible deaths in recent months. I'd been responsible for a few of them. But this was far and away the most awful thing I'd seen.
I stood at the window for a minute or two, feeling the first stirrings of panic.
After all that had happened to me in the last hour, it took a field of impaled sacrifices to make me start panicking. That's a good indication of how fucked in the head I was at this point. Running, hiding, fighting for my life, killing people who were trying to kill me; all this had become part of an ordinary day. A year ago I'd have been a shuddering, stammering wreck. But now that stuff barely even touched the sides. I just got on with it.
A few weeks previously I'd stopped looking at myself in mirrors, started actively avoiding my own reflection, scared of what I'd see. I just kept telling myself to get on with it. Things to do. Sort it all out later. I think I imagined some sort of quiet solitude, a retreat or something, where I'd go and try to get my head straight once I'd got everything done, ticked the final item on my list of jobs (take out milk bottles, finish geography homework, defeat army of cannibals, iron shirts, fly to war zone and rescue Dad from enemy combatants who like impaling people).
I suspected that if I allowed myself too many moments of introspection I'd go mad.
I shook my head, impatient with myself.
Stop being maudlin.
Things to do.
Fix my shoulder. I was pretty sure it was only dislocated, not broken, and I knew how to sort that. You just grit your teeth and shove your shoulder really, really hard against a wall or something and it just snaps back in. Simple. I'd seen it in countless films.
It'd most likely hurt a lot, so I picked up a piece of wood from the floor, part of a smashed doorframe, and shoved it into my mouth. I didn't want any screams bringing my pursuers right to me. Then I stood before the bathroom wall and calmed my breathing, focused, and slammed my dislocated shoulder into the wall as hard as I possibly could.
The pain blinded me and I was unconscious before I hit the floor.
"All right, Lee. Look, I gotta go. Look after your mother. I love you."
"I love you too. And make sure you come find me, 'cause if you're not back in a year I'm going to come find you!"
"Don't joke. If I'm not back in a year, I'm-"
Click.
"Dad? Dad, you there? Dad?"
When you've been unconscious as many times as I have, you learn a few tricks. The most important is not to open your eyes until you're fully awake and have learned all you can about where you are and who's there with you.
I was bleeding, hungry and thirsty, and I ached all over from the crash and the kicking, but I was still alive.
The most obvious thing was that I wasn't lying on a tiled bathroom floor. I was sitting up, with cold metal cuffs binding my hands to the chair back. Someone had captured me, then. I'd probably screamed as I passed out and they found me where I dropped.
The second thing was that my shoulder hurt like hell and I still couldn't move my arm, so I hadn't managed to relocate it. Thanks a bunch, Hollywood.
The air was still and dry and there was no wind, so I was indoors. I listened carefully, but I couldn't hear anybody talking or breathing. I risked opening my eyes and found myself staring down the lens of a handy cam.
It took a minute for me to realise the implications. I craned around to look behind me, and saw that I was sitting in front of a blue sheet backdrop with Arabic script on it. That's when I really started to panic. Could I really have flown halfway round the world just to end up in a snuff video?
It took a lot of effort to regain my composure, but I calmed myself down, got my breathing under control, forced down the panic and concentrated on the details of the room. Dun, mud brick walls, sand floor. Single window, shuttered. Old, tatty blue sofa to my left, sideboard to my right. Lying on the sideboard was a big hunting knife, its razor sharp edge glinting at me like a promise. The handy cam was shiny and new, like it was fresh out of the box. Behind it there was a metal frame chair with canvas seat and back, the same as the one I now occupied. Next to that was an old coffee table on which were piled small video tapes. The last thing I noticed, which made the panic rise again, was the dark red stain on the floor, which formed a semi circle around my feet. There was a splash of the same stain across the floor in a straight line and on to the wall beside the sofa. That would be the first gush of arterial blood from the last poor bastard who'd sat in this chair.
I remembered the siege of St Mark's, two months earlier; walking into the Blood Hunters' camp, all cocky bravado, baiting the madman in his lair. I remembered the plan going horribly wrong, and the moment when they forced me to kill one of my own men. I remembered holding the knife as I slit Heathcote's throat, and felt the blood bubble and gush over my hands as I whispered pleas for forgiveness into the ear of my dying friend. I remembered the hollow ache that had sat in my stomach as I'd done that awful thing, the ache that had never left me, which still jolted me awake most nights, sweating and crying, reliving his murder over and over. He had not died easily or well. When the siege was over, and the school was a smoking ruin, I had found Heathcote's body in amongst the mass of slaughtered, and dug his grave myself. I had broken my arm so it took me two days, but I wouldn't let anyone else lift a shovel to help me.
It was as I placed the plain white cross on his grave that I realised I could not stay. All my decisions, all my plots and schemes and plans had just brought the school to ruin. It would be better for everyone if I left Matron in charge and gave the school a fresh start. I was cursed. I stayed long enough to heal the arm, and then I just walked away.
Dad hadn't shown up, and it had been nearly a year. Time for me to come good on my promise. Time to fly to Iraq and find out what had become of him. I had little expectation that he was still alive, but I had to try. I had to have something to keep going for, to stop me just ending it all. So I found myself a little Grob Tutor plane, the one I'd been taught to fly by the RAF contingent of the school's County Cadet Force, plotted a route via various RAF bases where I thought I'd be able to find fuel, and set off.
All that distance from Heathcote's grave, all that effort just to put myself in a place where I could suffer exactly the same fate. It seemed only fair. Inevitable, even.
"Poetic justice, Nine Lives," said the voice in my head. I couldn't really argue with that.
I heard footsteps approaching and low, murmuring voices. The door opened and two men stepped inside. They wore khaki jackets and trousers with tatty, worn out trainers. Both had their faces swathed in cloth, with only their dark eyes visible. They stopped talking and stood in the doorway for a moment, just staring at me. Not long ago I'd have wracked my brain for a quip or putdown, but there'd come a point some months back where I'd heard myself saying something flippant to a psychopath and I'd realised that it didn't make me cool; it just made me sound like an immature dick who'd seen too many bad action movies. So I just told the truth.
"I have no idea who you think I am," I said, trying to keep my voice level. "But I'm not your enemy."
They ignored me. The taller one moved to the handy cam and hunched over it, preparing to record. I wondered how he'd charged the battery. The shorter one checked the sheet behind me before picking up the knife and taking his place at my side, still and silent like a sentry.
"I'm just a boy from England looking for my dad," I went on hopelessly. "Just let me find him and I'll fuck off out of it, back home. I promise."
No response, just a red light on the handy cam, and the whirr of tiny motors as it opened to receive the tape.
Of course, it could be that they didn't even speak English.
"Look, there's no media any more anyway. There's no Internet or telly. So what's the point of cutting my head off on video? Who's going to see it?" I thought this was a pretty good point, but they didn't seem to care.
The cameraman slid the tape into place and snapped the handy cam closed. A moment's pause, then he nodded to his companion.
I tried to calm my nerves, tell myself that I'd been in situations like this before, that there was still a way out. But no-one knew I was here. There were no friends looking for me, no Matron to come riding to my rescue. I was thousands of miles from home, in a country where I couldn't make myself understood, and I was about to be executed as part of a war that was long since over.
I supposed it made as much sense as any other violent death.
I felt a tear trickle down my cheek, but I refused to give them the satisfaction of sobbing. The weird thing is, I wasn't sad for myself. I'd faced death many times, and I'd got to know this feeling pretty well. I was ready for it. I just felt guilty about my dad. He'd never know what had happened to me after that phone call. I'd been looking forward to that conversation. I missed him.
The man standing beside me began to talk to the camera in Arabic. I made out occasional words (Yankee, martyr) but that was all. At one point I gabbled an explanation to the camera, drowning out his monologue. At least that way anyone watching it would know who I was. I had no idea where this video would end up so it was worth a shot, I supposed. Nothing else I could do.
"My name is Lee Keegan," I shouted. "It's my sixteenth birthday today, and I'm English. I flew here to find my dad, a Sergeant in the British Army, but my plane crashed and these guys found me. If anyone sees this, please let Jane Crowther know what happened to me. You can find her at Groombridge Place, in Kent, southern England. It's a school now. Tell her I'm sorry."
The guy with the knife punched me hard in the side of the head to shut me up. He finished his little speech and then there was silence, except for the soft whirr of tiny motors.
I stared straight into the camera lens, tears streaming down my face. I clenched my jaw, tried to look defiant. I probably looked like what I was: a weeping, terrified child.
I felt cold, sharp metal at my throat.
Then the guy behind the camera stood up straight, unwrapped his face and took off his jacket, revealing a t-shirt that read 'Code Monkey like you!'
"Hang on," he said. "Did you say your name was Keegan?"
And that's how I met Tariq.