They settled in a restless silence; Skeletor clipping and unclipping the mag of ammo from his rifle, Maxwell stern again, his eyes peeled for obstructions, and Thomas left in the middle with only the engine noise and the air rushing in through the vents to keep him company. As the landscape floated by on either side, an unrelenting emptiness broken every now and then by a distant kraal or herd of scrawny goats scrounging in the sand, he felt his hand straying again and again to the letter in his pocket, touching it to reassure himself that it was still there, that it was real. He really should have read it the night before, because now he could barely restrain himself from ripping it open like a Bar One chocolate and devouring its secrets all at once. But he knew what Skeletor was like. The sight of a pink envelope would only provide him with ammunition.
‘You can’t stop thinking about it, can you?’
Realising he had been caught staring at Skeletor, Thomas tore himself away from his thoughts and focused on the bony face sneering back at him. ‘Sorry?’
‘I said,’ Skeletor hissed, ‘you can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘About what?’
‘Catch a wake up, surfer boy.’ Reaching into his pocket, Skeletor pulled out his own letter, the secret message from the Major. He waved it under Thomas’s nose. ‘The reason we’re here in the first place.’
‘Oh, that,’ Thomas said, doing his best to ignore the folded piece of paper intruding in his personal airspace. ‘Not interested.’
‘Don’t play innocent with me.’
He may not have known the details, but Thomas had a pretty good idea what was inside: dates, times and co-ordinates, the whens and wheres of a helicopter or artillery strike. The message was a death warrant and he wanted as little to do with it as possible. ‘Bru,’ he explained carefully, ‘you’re the one who got us into this. So whatever’s in that message is your problem, not mine.’
‘That’s right, for my eyes only. Don’t you forget that.’ Satisfied, Skeletor slipped the message back into his pocket but not before rapping Thomas on the nose with it. ‘I know what you souties are like – always sticking your snouts where you don’t belong.’
Thomas sighed. He was wedged between Skeletor and Maxwell as tightly as the mortar between two bricks, his shoulders crushed into his torso, his knees battered from every unexpected gear change. The winter sun now loitered directly over the windscreen, beating down on his jeans, the heat making his shirt stick to his back, acting as a catalyst for the sweaty stench brewing up between the three of them, a smell that clung to his face like a mask, made him feel queasy. But all of these discomforts he could have handled if it wasn’t for Skeletor. They were only a few hours into their journey and already Thomas was sick of him. Why did Skeletor have to insult him constantly? If it wasn’t ‘surfer boy’ it was ‘soutie’, the name that Afrikaners like Skeletor gave to English-speaking South Africans like Thomas, who, it was said, had one foot in England, one foot in South Africa and their testicles dangling in the sea between, giving them a salty tang. He had a few insults of his own for Skeletor, but he didn’t want to share them, lest it start a fight.
Turning to Maxwell, who was staring resolutely ahead, Thomas tried to spark a conversation. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’
‘Listen to you,’ Skeletor said, ‘you sound like a child.’
Thomas turned back to his tormentor. ‘I just wanted to know, bru.’
‘Stop calling me that. I’m not your brother.’
‘Then stop calling me “surfer boy”.’
‘You have blond hair, you’re lazy and you come from Durban by the Sea. In my book, that makes you a surfer boy.’
‘But I don’t even surf.’ The sea scared Thomas. From an artistic point of view, he appreciated its changing moods and expressions, but he didn’t like to get too close. What frightened him was what lurked beneath the surface, the finned and toothy things that would punish him for being where he didn’t belong.
‘Then what would you prefer? Moffie? Soutie? Slapgat?’
‘Just leave me alone.’
Skeletor slammed his elbow down on the soft flesh above Thomas’s knee. ‘You started it. You were staring at me.’
Maxwell issued a loud, throat-clearing rasp that silenced them both. ‘I need one of you to read the map.’
‘I told you,’ Skeletor snapped back at him, ‘I give the orders around here.’
‘And I told you,’ Maxwell said, ‘that I don’t know the way from this direction. So I need a navigator – unless you want me to pull over and do it myself.’
‘No, don’t stop. I’ll take care of it.’ Skeletor looked to Thomas.
‘What?’ Thomas was busy rubbing the pain out of his knee.
‘Get the map out.’
‘Why don’t you?’
Skeletor tapped the passenger window with the tip of his rifle. ‘I’m on watch.’
‘Fine,’ Thomas said. While he was stuck there he may as well have some activity to take his mind off the pink envelope and, more importantly, get Skeletor off his back. He squeezed forward and pulled the lever of the cubby hole. Empty sandwich wrappers, crumpled Coke tins and cigarette boxes, the waste of countless journeys, burst forth, some of it spilling onto Skeletor’s lap.
‘Watch it, surfer boy.’
Handwritten on a cassette half buried in the junk on the floor, Thomas spotted a familiar word, the name of an old friend. ‘Rodriguez,’ he read, picking up the tape and dusting it off. ‘Can we listen to this?’
‘Out of the question,’ Skeletor said. ‘The boy needs to concentrate.’
‘I am not your boy.’ Maxwell grabbed the tape from Thomas and slammed it into the cassette player.
‘I can see I’m going to have to do some disciplining very soon,’ Skeletor said, but was ignored as a drum roll announced the start of I Wonder.
The bass guitar sauntered in, followed, fashionably late, as if it was running on African time, by the guitar, infusing the cab with a melody as chilled than any air-conditioner.
Thomas shifted his attention to Maxwell. ‘Whoever was in here before you must have had good taste, bru. Rodriguez was a serious musician.’ As the man himself started singing, stacking up big questions in a laid-back drawl, Thomas lowered his voice to a reverential hush. ‘He made the ultimate sacrifice.’
‘He gave his money to the poor?’
‘Better.’ Thomas squirmed out from under his companions’ shoulders, lifted a finger to his temple and fired an imaginary bullet. ‘At his last gig he went out with a bang.’
Maxwell didn’t look as impressed as he should have been. His eyes on the road, he said, ‘Why? Why kill yourself if you have a good job?’
‘I never said he was successful – just serious.’
Maxwell shot Thomas a sceptical glance. ‘You sure he did this?’
‘Absolutely.’ Thomas had overheard this piece of Rodriguez folklore so often that it had to be true. He always thought the story added a certain weight to the music, a van Gogh-factor that spoke of an artist prepared to live and die by his work. That was the kind of artist he wanted to be – as soon as he got out of the army.
Maxwell tutted. ‘I would have done something with my money.’
‘He wasn’t in it for the money,’ Thomas said. ‘Just listen to the lyrics, man. They’re really deep.’ Braving Skeletor’s wrath, he leaned over and cranked up the volume as far as it would go.
The song reverberated from window to window, the bottom end distorted by the tinny speakers.
Instead of complaining, Skeletor kept up his vigil, staring out the window for terrorists. Maybe he was enjoying it.
Mouthing along to those unanswered, grown-up questions about love and loneliness, Thomas noticed that Maxwell was sitting back and tapping out the beat on the steering wheel. The barrier had been broken. He had found an ally. They may have been trapped in an oven on wheels, on the way to who knew where, but as long as they shared this psychedelic common ground, everything was going to work out fine. He wasn’t sure whether it was the music or the camaraderie, but Thomas was suddenly visited by goose bumps. They tickled him all the way up his spine, as though he was being cradled by some travelling spirit, maybe even St. Christopher himself, whose medallion his mom used to Prestick to the dashboard for the non-stop argument that was the annual Green family trip to Kruger Park. He smiled at Maxwell.
Maxwell didn’t smile back, but he didn’t stop thumping on the steering wheel either.
Then the music squealed to a halt.
Thomas looked down in time to catch Skeletor with his finger on the Stop/Eject button. He watched, too slow to react, as the tape was ripped from the player and launched out of the window. It went spiralling, as though in slow-motion, through the dusty air, and hung suspended over the road for what seemed like an eon, the longest fraction of a second of Thomas’s life, before it was whipped back into the truck’s slipstream and disappeared completely.
‘What did you do that for?’ Trying to control his shock and anger, Thomas searched in the rear-view mirror for the spot where the tape landed.
‘This isn’t a school disco, surfer boy. We have work to do.’
Maxwell began to slow the truck.
‘Don’t even think about stopping,’ Skeletor said. ‘Or I’ll report you the minute we get back for interfering with our mission.’
The truck sped up.
‘What work do we have to do?’ Thomas shouted, unable to stop himself. ‘As far as I can see, we’re just along for the ride. Maxwell’s the one doing all the work.’
From the pile of cubby-hole rubbish that had settled around his feet, Skeletor found the map and thrust it into Thomas’s hands. ‘Here. Don’t get us lost.’
Thomas glanced at that smug, skull of a face and imagined putting a bullet through the middle of it, right between the eyes. He and Maxwell could bury the body out here in the bush and no-one would ever know what had happened. Then they could listen to Rodriguez and smoke weed and talk about girls and art all they wanted. And to hell with their stupid mission – when they got back to base, in their own good time, they would say they couldn’t find the Colonel. As punishment they might have to run a few extra kilometres, maybe wash dishes for a couple of weeks, but it would be worth it. It cheered him up just thinking about it.
‘What are you smiling about?’ Skeletor growled.
‘Nothing.’
The map unfolded into an A2-sized wall of paper, covering South-West Africa and the southern parts of Angola. German and English place names were peppered across the lower half, Portuguese names sprinkled above, while the rest of it was spiced with elaborate African words that Thomas, despite being born and raised on the continent, didn’t think he would be ever be able to pronounce. From this unwieldy mass of locations, he managed to wrest Mapupa, the nearest town to their destination, but their current location he could only guess at. All he knew, as he folded and unfolded the map, trying to work how best to hold the thing, was that they were somewhere between their base and the border.
‘Which way?’ Maxwell asked at an unmarked junction offering three choices, all leading off into dust and dry bush. They had left the tarred road far behind.
Thomas took an uneducated guess. ‘Straight.’
‘You sure?’
‘Positive,’ he lied. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know where they were. His military training had focused mainly on shooting, running and bed making, only briefly touching on map reading. And those courses that did involve navigation were so boring that the only way he could endure them was with a good dose of THC in his blood. Actually, he had spent most of his training stoned. School too, now that Thomas thought about it.
After shaking his head, his doubt plain, Maxwell carried on straight.
They continued in this way as the hours flashed by on the digital readout on the dashboard, Thomas directing, Maxwell driving and Skeletor overseeing. Thomas led them, fingers crossed, over a bridge spanning a muddy river, past a metal water tower with goats scrounging at its base for grass shoots and moisture, and near a kraal whose inhabitants waved merrily – until they saw the weapon cocked in Skeletor’s hands. Throughout this, Thomas kept on the lookout for a major river or town, a reliable landmark to link the real world with the flat representation of the map.
Midday drifted into late afternoon without them stopping for a lunch break and without Thomas being able to find that longed-for reference point.
They passed an abandoned petrol station, its green logo bleached white by the sun and forecourt roof sagging in from the weight of neglect. The place looked like it had been there for centuries, like the ruins of an ancient temple, but Thomas still couldn’t find it on the map. He wondered if the petrol company pulled out because of sanctions or the war, or maybe they just couldn’t find anyone willing to work out here in this sun-blasted landscape.
Adjusting his hand positioning, Thomas noted the clammy fingerprints he was leaving along the edges of the paper. He was sweating uncontrollably with worry, and getting hungry, his stomach growling to be fed, making it even harder to concentrate on the map. Soon, he knew, he would have to face up to the others, tell them the truth that he didn’t have a clue where they were.
They drifted alongside a barbwire fence punctuated with the question mark shapes of vultures.
Maxwell honked the horn and the vultures flew off, darkening the sky.
‘Quiet,’ Skeletor said, but with none of his usual menace. He sounded groggy and soon after this gave up on his guard duty, snuggling up to his rifle as though it was a teddy bear and settling in for an afternoon nap, head against the door frame.
Thomas thought that maybe he too needed a break. He lowered the map and looked up to Maxwell, glad to finally be able to speak without interruption.
‘Want to smoke a joint?’ he whispered.
Maxwell wrinkled his nose. ‘No.’
‘I understand. You need to concentrate.’ Thomas reached for another conversational gambit: ‘So, where about in Durban are you from?’
‘Before the army I lived in Chesterville.’
Thomas recognised the name. ‘Hey, we could have been neighbours.’
Maxwell looked at him strangely. ‘Mlungi, if you’re from Chesterville I will eat this steering wheel.’
‘I’m from Westville. That’s just over the hill, isn’t it?’
‘Westville.’ Maxwell spat out the town’s name as though it was rotten. ‘My mother used to work there.’
‘Oh, ja? What did she do?’
‘I am trying to drive,’ Maxwell said, loudly.
Skeletor stirred, spluttered then began to snore, drawing his rifle closer to his chest.
His cheeks burning, Thomas buried his face in the map. He thought first of the tree-lined lanes, glossy sports fields, tennis courts, swimming pools and double garages of his own suburb. Then he thought of the township tucked away like a dirty secret in the next valley, the regimented rows of plain brick houses that he had only ever glimpsed from the back seat of a car as he powered past on the way into the city. They were two different worlds and at the moment Thomas wanted desperately to find a bridge between them.
When the blushing subsided, and he was able to speak again, he lowered the map and gestured at the sleeping Skeletor. ‘I’m not like him, you know.’
Maxwell was silent.
It was only after a distance marker to Windhoek appeared out of the dust, with Maxwell throwing him a wary look, that Thomas knew he had to say something. ‘Um, guys?’
Skeletor snorted and bobbed his head. ‘What?’
Thomas frowned down at the map that was now spread out across the dashboard like a newspaper. His hunger had passed into a dull ache and he was able to concentrate, to work out vaguely where they were. He chose his words carefully: ‘I think we should have turned left at that last junction.’
‘I knew it. You’ve got us lost, haven’t you, surfer boy?’
‘Sorry.’ Thomas squirmed deeper into his seat, wriggling behind the shoulders of his companions, as he prepared for the onslaught he had been dreading since being handed the map.
‘Why didn’t you use the compass?’
‘I tried, but I couldn’t find any landmarks.’
Skeletor ignored him. ‘And you,’ he said, leaning over to get a better look at Maxwell. ‘I thought you knew where we were going.’
‘How many times must I tell you?’ Maxwell said evenly. ‘I’m normally stationed on the other side of the country, the east, near Botswana. If you put me in a car and tell me to take you to Angola from there – no problem. But from this side it’s another story.’ He leaned heavily on the wheel and at the same time pulled on the handbrake.
Throwing out an arc of sand, the truck spun. But Maxwell had this accident under control and mid-spin he re-engaged the accelerator pedal, blasting them off in the direction they had come from.
‘Surfer boy, listen.’ Skeletor yawned without covering his mouth. ‘When I wake up properly, I’m going to kill you.’
‘Look, man, I said I’m sorry.’ It occurred to Thomas that he had been given this tricky task, of finding their needle of a truck in the haystack of South-West Africa, just so that he could fail and give Skeletor another excuse to kak him out. ‘What do you want me to do? Lick your boots.’
‘That would be a start.’
They drove for only a few minutes, following the road through banks of sand and rock that were layered with different shades and hues to mark the ages, before Maxwell began to work down through the gears, bashing the lever with what felt like deliberate malice against Thomas’s knees.
‘Why are you slowing?’ Skeletor said.
‘We need petrol.’ Maxwell tapped the gauge, its needle hovering on the red.
They drifted off the road, onto flat, hard-packed sand, towards the only sign of life in this desolate place: the fat branches of a baobab tree reaching up like the arms of a prophet.
When the tree was big enough to dominate the entire view from the windscreen, Maxwell slowed down further. Then, under its branches, he brought them to a halt.
Thomas followed Skeletor outside, their joints creaking in unison as they stretched their legs, their feet crunching on twigs and dried flakes of sand. The brisk air made Thomas realise just how musty the cab had become, and how much he had become used to it. He watched as Maxwell hauled a jerry can from the back of the truck, undid the lid and sunk in a green hose.
‘Need a hand?’ Thomas asked.
‘He’s fine,’ Skeletor said.
‘I was asking Maxwell.’ Thomas raised his voice a notch. ‘Need any help there, bru?’
‘It is faster if I do it myself.’ Maxwell sucked on the hose, spat red liquid at the earth then shoved the end of the hose into the side of the truck.
‘Fine.’ Thomas spread the map over the top of the cab, preparing to have another go at being navigator.
‘Give me that.’ Skeletor snatched away the map and stretched it between his long arms. ‘You couldn’t find your way out of a sleeping bag.’
While the other two got on with their work, Thomas leaned against the bonnet of the truck, feeling like a spare part. Skeletor openly despised him, which was nothing unusual. But now it seemed that Maxwell had gone off him too, as though their conversation earlier had ignited some doubt about his character that this map reading disaster had confirmed. He shivered, looked up at the few rays of late-afternoon light trickling through the branches of the baobab and did up the top button of his Hawaiian shirt. That was the strange thing about winter in this part of Africa: it too hot in the sun and too cold in the shade. He couldn’t win.
Standing against the truck, hugging himself and wishing he was back in Durban where it was warm all year round, he suddenly remembered the letter. The cold and the frosty treatment from the other two didn’t seem so important any more. He stood up and began to edge away, towards the baobab tree, noting as he moved that its light-coloured, plaited trunk was big enough to hide behind.
Skeletor’s voice boomed out over the map. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Toilet.’ Grabbing his crotch, Thomas mimed the pain of a full bladder. He had been sipping water from his canteen all day, so the act wasn’t too difficult.
‘Hurry up.’
Thomas scampered out of sight behind the tree. He unzipped his trousers, took aim and wrote his initials, TG, in urine on bark. After finishing up and hastily wiping his hands on the back of his jeans, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the pink envelope.
Held up to his nose, it still smelt faintly of perfume, promising an escape from the universe of sweat, sand and shoe polish he had been living in for so long. He wanted to rip it open right away, but knew he had to restrain himself, take care not to damage his most precious possession. So, carefully, he slid a fingernail under the triangular fold, began to work it open. The glue came unstuck without much pressure, a sign that the army had been there before him. But Thomas had expected this and he focussed his attention now on the single sheet of ice-white paper exposed within. Hoping that the censors had been kind, his stomach churning in anticipation, he lifted out the letter.
‘What are you doing?’
Thomas looked up to see Skeletor leaning against the side of the tree, rifle slung over his shoulder.
‘Nothing.’ Thomas quickly stuffed the letter back into the envelope then shoved both into his pocket, trying not to wince as the paper crumpled.
‘Wait. What was that? What were you reading?’
Thomas shrugged, casually as he could, hoping the bass drum of his heart didn’t give him away. ‘Just a letter from my parents.’
‘We’re not supposed to bring anything from South Africa.’
‘It’s been censored.’ Thomas had already seen that the return address had been left intact on the back of the envelope, and knew that if challenged he would have to give it up, let it be destroyed.
But Skeletor didn’t seem interested. He stomped across, unzipped his trousers and pissed all over Thomas’s initials. ‘Do you know how to fix a compass?’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘I don’t know, surfer boy. That’s why I’m asking you.’
On the other side of the tree, in a section of sand past the truck, Thomas found Maxwell walking in slow circles with the compass held out like a divining rod.
‘This thing,’ Maxwell explained, ‘is too sensitive for its own good. The ground here is so full of metal, it doesn’t know which way is up or down.’
Thomas took the compass and had a look. The silver needle was spinning around the dial, directionless.
‘I reckon he’s lying.’ Skeletor stomped out from behind the tree, zipping up as he came closer.
‘No, Maxwell’s right. This thing’s stuffed.’ Thomas shook the compass, hoping to calm its jittery nerves, but still the needle spun. ‘Anyway, why would he lie to us?’
‘Thank you,’ Maxwell said, ‘but I can speak for myself.’ He seized back the compass then turned to stare at the orange orb, all that was left of the sun, hanging behind the gnarled branches of the baobab. ‘We will have to camp here tonight. Get our bearings from the rising sun.’
Skeletor stormed across and loomed, his neck bent down like a streetlight, over Maxwell. ‘And how do we know you don’t have friends arriving tonight, to kill us and steal our things?’
Maxwell held his ground. ‘Do you think my friends would be stupid enough to come all this way to rob two conscripts like you?’
‘Watch it.’ Skeletor stubbed a finger on Maxwell’s chest.
Maxwell didn’t flinch. ‘Without me you would be unarmed, as defenceless as a baby.’
‘Who are you calling a baby?’ Skeletor backed off a few paces, but he wasn’t going anywhere, merely giving himself enough room to raise his AK-47 and stare down the barrel at Maxwell.
Maxwell stared right back, bringing up his own rifle in reply, holding it at waist height.
Thomas realised that if he didn’t do something, soon, it would all end in tears or worse, blood. He rushed in between them and pushed aside their rifles. His own weapon was somewhere, forgotten, in the truck. ‘Come on, guys. Peace.’
‘Stay out of this, hippy.’
‘Yes,’ Maxwell said, ‘this is not your business.’
But Thomas had made up his mind and wasn’t going to back down. He was going to redeem himself in Maxwell’s eyes, prove that he wasn’t some spoilt white kid, but a nice guy, a good oke, a friend. ‘Skeletor,’ he said, making himself sound reasonable, like an adult, ‘I really think we should listen to Maxwell. I mean, he’s got more experience than both of us out here.’
Something hard smashed into Thomas’s side, in the exact spot Skeletor had kicked him the night before. He fell to the ground clutching his ribs, gazing up in incomprehension at his attacker.
‘I told you, I can speak for myself,’ Maxwell held his rifle butt ready to deliver another blow.
‘I was just trying to help. Jesus, man.’
Another bolt of pain shot through Thomas, this time from the other direction.
‘And that’s for blasphemy.’ Skeletor’s boot hovered in the air.
Lying there in the sand, curled into a protective ball between his attackers, Thomas didn’t just want to leave the army. He wanted to travel back in space and time, track down his ancestors and tell them not to bother coming to this hard, harsh continent, where they would only end up in buffer zones between armies and be used as punch bags, their every good intention misunderstood.
‘Stop being a girl,’ Skeletor said. ‘Stand up.’
Making an effort not to wince, Thomas got to his feet.
‘Are you crying?’ Skeletor’s top lip was curled in disgust.
Thomas wiped his wet cheeks. ‘No.’
With a shrug, Maxwell started back to the truck.
‘You, boy,’ Skeletor said. ‘I’m not finished with you yet.’
Maxwell stopped.
‘Who do you think you are, hitting a white man?’
‘I’m fine.’ Thomas rubbed his side and forced a smile. ‘He didn’t hit me that hard, really. It was more of a tap than anything else.’
‘I’m done with you.’ With the side of his rifle, Skeletor shoved Thomas away.
Letting kinetic energy carry his body, Thomas staggered to the truck, sidestepping Maxwell along the way, then turned and fell back heavily on the bonnet.
Skeletor, red faced and indignant, came after his prey. ‘Answer me, boy. What gives you the right to hit a white man?’
‘It was the only way he would understand,’ Maxwell said.
Skeletor’s rifle was aimed at Maxwell’s head. ‘Understand what? That you’ve got a death wish?’
‘Him.’ Maxwell gestured with his rifle at Thomas. ‘I know people like him. They think they’re here to help, but they don’t listen. They get in the way. And they cause trouble. Out here people like that can get you killed.’
Indignation made Thomas push himself up from the bonnet. He had made so much effort with Maxwell and this was his repayment, this betrayal. It wasn’t fair.
All Skeletor did was raise an eyebrow. ‘You talking about Englishmen?’
Maxwell shrugged.
‘Why didn’t you say so?’ Skeletor lowered his weapon, interpreting Maxwell’s shrug as an affirmation. ‘I completely agree with you. They should keep these rooineks from Britain out of the army. They don’t care about our continent. Leave the fighting to the real Africans, like us.’
‘Hey, I didn’t ask to get called up,’ Thomas mumbled in his defence. It felt as if he was on trial for a crime he hadn’t committed. No, it felt as if his whole family was on trial, and all because they had arrived in the 1800s rather than a hundred years earlier with Skeletor’s people.
‘It’s settled then,’ Skeletor boomed, as though some unspoken agreement had been reached. ‘We camp here tonight and leave at first light.’ He moved on, passing Maxwell and the front of the truck. Once under the branches of the tree, he turned and pointed a finger back at Maxwell. ‘But in future, you tell me if you have a problem. Let me deal with it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘If we all just remember our places, we’ll be fine.’
With Thomas watching from the bonnet, massaging his ribs, and Skeletor supervising from the vantage point of an exposed root, Maxwell went to work setting up camp. He dragged a groundsheet and pup tent from the back of the truck and set them up, hammering pegs into the hard ground and manipulating guy ropes with casual ease. Then he dug a fire pit in front of the headlights, filled it with kindling collected from under the tree and began surrounding the hole with a wall of rocks.
Thomas didn’t understand it. They shared a city, a love of music, and would no doubt find out that they plenty more in common. If it wasn’t for Maxwell’s prejudices they would have been friends already.
‘Surfer boy!’ Skeletor shouted from under the tree. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get some food on.’
Thomas hauled his aching body up and wandered to the back of the truck. Leaning over the metal gate into the clutter of equipment, he searched for the familiar shapes of rat packs but found only a cardboard box filled with a collection of smaller boxes and tins. All the containers had their labels peeled off, doubtless so that none of it could be traced back to factories in South Africa. But this system made it difficult for him to know exactly what food he was dealing with. He held up a silver tin, shook it and tried to work out what was inside.
‘That is fruit salad.’ Maxwell pushed him aside, picked out a silver sachet and shook it. ‘We need protein.’
Over a fire kept low to avoid attracting the attention of scavengers or terrorists, or both, Maxwell placed a scratched, blackened pot. After bringing water to boil, he stirred in the contents of the yellow sachet, which turned into scrambled eggs, or at least the army’s version of scrambled eggs: a sloppy mess that looked like wallpaper glue and would probably taste like it too.