Robin Jarvis-Jax 02 Freax And Rejex (40 page)

Lee was in Charm’s cabin. She was so proud of the girls there, with their felt-tip faces, that she was rewarding them with a night of pampering and everyone was getting their toenails painted. Never having had any close female friends, with the exception of her mother, she revelled in being a big sister to them and did her best at trying to make this awful place bearable and they loved her for it. She had decided on all of their
individual flavours and named them cute, sweet things like dandelion and burdock, blueberry muffin and chocolate marshmallow.

Lee declined when she offered to paint his nails, but he greatly enjoyed her company and they chatted easily about their lives before
Dancing Jax
.

“This dorm couldn’t be more different to the one I’m stuck in,” Maggie declared, wiggling her toes and admiring the hot pink she had just applied. “It’s like a morgue in there, but without the sparkling witty banter. I feel like a budgie in a cattery, the way those ratbags stare. That Jangler’s a sod for making me stop in with them.”

“The guy’s a sadist,” Lee said.

“You take no notice of them sour mares,” Charm told her. “You don’t need ’em. They’ll realise what a massive mistake they’ve made, just give it time.”

Maggie agreed, but she regretted the loss of Jody’s friendship and resented the unjust opinion they had of her. For the moment, things were stuck this way. She tried to take her mind off it. Charm had said her flavour was a crumpet with a big dollop of raspberry jam on top. That made Maggie laugh.

“Do you think Marcus likes hot pink?” she asked.

Lee fell about and Charm grinned.

“Aww, you really like him, don’t you?” she said.

Maggie performed a casual shrug. “He’s not as bad as he was. He was a total arse at the beginning, but he’s stopped trying to be the big I am and his brain’s finally climbed out of his pants. The way he sticks up for me is really sweet.”

“Go get him, tiger,” Charm told her.

Spencer was staring out at the rain. He was keeping watch while Marcus pulled the carpet back beneath the stairs.

“It would be so easy,” he muttered to himself. “Be over quick too.”

“What’s that?” Marcus called, replacing the carpet and stamping on it hastily. “Someone coming?”

“Oh, er… sorry, no. I was just talking to myself.”

“Get a grip, dude! How’m I supposed to get anything done if you’re chuntering away to yourself?”

“Do you think getting shot hurts?”

“Course it does, you plank.”

“But if it’s done properly, like lots of bullets in the right places, or just a single one through the head. You wouldn’t feel anything, would you? At least not for long.”

Marcus was about to rip into him for being mental when he caught the expression on the younger lad’s face.

“What you on about?” he asked, wandering over.

Spencer turned away hurriedly. “Nothing,” he said.

“Don’t sound like nothing. What’s the matter with you? You’ve been moping about with a long face for days.”

“I’ve always got a long face.”

“Well, it’s even longer than normal. You’ll get carpet burns on your chin, mate. That is so not the place for them.”

Spencer stared up at the sentry tower. “Doesn’t it bother you?” he asked. “This is it for us. We’ll never get to be anyone. We’ve got no life, nothing to look forward to. We’ll never get to be good or bad at anything. We’re just going to rot here and be forgotten.”

“Don’t worry, Herr Spenzer,” Marcus told him. “You’ll be just as mediocre here as you would have been on the outside.”

“Is that supposed to help?”

“Oh, come on – so a guard pinched your hat. There’s worse going on!”

“It’s not just that, but that’s all part of it. We’re non-people here. We’ve got no rights, nothing. We’re going to die, bit by bit, and nobody out there will know or care.”

“I’ll kick your backside if you don’t stop feeling sorry for yourself. We’re all in this. Whining isn’t going to solve anything.”

“A bullet would.”

“What?”

“I can’t stand any more,” Spencer said emptily. “I really can’t. I’ve
had it. I’m thinking, after lights out, all I have to do is open this door and step outside. The guards are desperate to shoot someone – might as well be me. There’s a scene in
Cheyenne Autumn
, great movie, when what’s left of the Cheyenne Nation are at their lowest. They’d walked over eight hundred miles, through desert and snow, to get home. They were starving and freezing to death and had to seek shelter in an army fort. The army locked them up, without food, water or firewood, and told them they were going to be sent back, to the reservation they had escaped from, in the dead of winter. They wouldn’t have survived the journey. They had no hope left and said they would rather kill themselves right there. I never really understood that bit before, but I get it now. I know exactly how they felt. I really don’t mind, about being shot – if it’s quick.”

Marcus stared at him, speechless. Then he spun the lad round and shook him violently.

“Don’t you dare think that!” he yelled at him. “Don’t you ever, ever dare! You hear me?”

“It’s my life!”

“That doesn’t mean you can chuck it away! Have you forgotten Jim? That poor mad kid out there in the grave I helped dig? I haven’t! He didn’t live long enough to get full of self-pity. Those monsters out there butchered him and here you are telling me you’re thinking about giving them free target practice. Don’t you bloody dare, sunshine!”

“But why would it matter? No one would miss me.”

“I would – you stupid apeth!” Marcus shouted. “You’re a mate!”

“A mate? You barely tolerate me. That Garrugaska is the only thing who even notices I’m here most of the time.”

Marcus let go of him and sat on the nearest bed.

“You’re right – I’m sorry,” he began, gazing at the floor. “I’ve said and done lots of things I’m not proud of. I know it sounds lame and namby, but I’m only just starting to understand all sorts of stuff. Before this place, I never really liked myself. Thought I did, but I was a total joke. The mates I had, before
DJ
, wouldn’t do for me what Charm did for Maggie
today – and they wouldn’t have risked their lives to bring water to nobody, like Maggie did the other night. I wouldn’t have done it for them neither. They were a shallow crew of jerks and, if everything went back to normal tomorrow, I’d have nothing to do with any of them.”

He raised his face. “We are going to get out of here alive,” he promised, looking Spencer in the eyes. “We’re not going to give up. We owe it to Jim and all the other kids who didn’t make it, the ones we’ll never hear about. We can’t give up, ever. If you’ve got a problem, anything – you come talk to me about it. Yeah?”

Spencer shifted awkwardly. It was then that Maggie arrived, splashing through the rain, barefoot, to show off her nails.

“What do you think, lads?” she asked. “Does this match my hair or what? You should come next door and let us do yours.”

Marcus exchanged glances with the other boy. They’d continue the conversation afterwards and he promised himself he’d make more time for the kid.

Then he jumped up. “No time for girly stuff!” he exclaimed. “We’re doing man things in this hut! Grrrr!”

“You what?” she laughed.

“Come here,” he said, leading her to the area below the stairs.

“Where’s he taking me?” she asked Spencer in mock alarm.

“I’m going to show you something that only me, Herr Spenzer and Lee know about so far,” he said, becoming serious for a moment. “This is how much I trust you. Now don’t say a word to anyone else.”

“As if!” she answered. “Those days are long gone.”

Marcus knelt down and peeled the carpet back, revealing a section of the plywood floor that had been scored right through. He lifted it clear and a rush of cold air blew up into their faces. Taking out a torch, he shone it down. Beneath the cabin, a sizeable hole had been dug. The boy lowered himself in. It came up to his chest. Then he grimaced.

“Ugh!” he declared. “It’s wet at the bottom!”

“It’s been raining all day,” she said. “What did you expect? And how
are you going to wash that mud off without any water in the taps? You twerp!”

“Er… pay attention to the humungous hole I’m standing in, if you please!”

“All right, so you’re digging a tunnel?”

“No, I’m fitting a sunken hot tub! Of course I’m digging a tunnel! I’ve only been at it a few nights. Not bad progress, eh? These muscles aren’t just for show you know.”

He shouted to Spencer to begin whistling “the tune”. Slouched against the door, the boy half-heartedly gave him a few bars of the theme to
The Great Escape
, while Marcus explained how far he’d go before beginning to dig horizontally and what to do with the excavated soil.

“Up to now I’ve just chucked it under the cabin, but I can’t keep doing that. There’ll be too much. I’ll have to come up with a better way of getting rid.”

He realised Maggie had grown silent.

“What’s up?” he asked. “It’s stereo long faces in here tonight. Don’t you say I’m going to die as well. That’s all Lee ever tells me!”

The girl shook her head. “No, I wish you luck. I hope you’ll make it.”

“
We’ll
make it!” he told her. “I’m not going nowhere without you, you daft bugger.”

Maggie looked down at herself. “You havin’ a laugh? There’s no way I can fit in any rabbit hole.”

“It’s not going to be ready for months!” he said. “And just look at how much you’ve lost already, at least five kilos I’d say. By the time this tunnel’s finished, you’ll be skinnier than the finger a supermodel sticks down her throat to upchuck her Ryvitas.”

“You think I’ve lost that much? Really?”

“Could be more. We’re on starvation rations here. That’s a drastic change to what you were used to.”

“I can’t believe the amount I had to eat to keep this weight on,” she said. “It was a lot! And I used to wash everything down with litres of Coke
every day – the full-fat variety. It’s a miracle I’ve got any teeth left. All to spite my stepmother; that’s seriously messed up. Makes me feel ill to think about it – what a freak.”

“We do weird things when we’re not happy. I was a scumbag. I was just telling Herr Spenzer how it’s taken this horrible place to open my eyes to what a git I was. Pass me a cup, there’s one over there. I need to bail this out, or I really will have made a sunken hot tub, minus the hot bit.”

“I’m going to have a load of spare saggy skin,” she muttered. “Stretch marks too – very attractive.”

“Nah,” he said. “You’re young – your skin’s elastic enough to shrink back. I can show you some exercises for it anyway if you want. As for stretch marks, I’ve got them on my pec-delt tie-ins. Besides, that sort of thing, it really doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Seriously, it doesn’t.”

“Who are you?” she demanded with a baffled stare. “What’ve you done with the real Marcus?”

The boy winced. “OK, I know, I know. I’ve been a massive prat. But I’m trying to change. I think you’re amazing. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. What you did the other night, and the way you put up with the crap that’s thrown at you, what you said to Christina this morning instead of whacking her one. I bet Jody put her up to it.”

He scooped as much of the muddy water out as he could and reached for the trowel that he stowed at the hole’s edge.

“What makes her so twisted anyway? It’s not just this place – she was like that when she got here. Face like a squeezed lemon sucking vinegar through a straw, that’s her.”

“Jody weren’t that bad,” Maggie told him. “I liked her. But look what she’s been through. How would you be after getting whipped and locked up without food or water for three days? No one’d be the same after that.”

“See, you’re a better person than me – best in this camp.”

“Stop it,” she said, embarrassed.

“I mean it. If things ever get back to what they were…”

“Like that’s ever going to happen!”

“But if they do, I’ll ask you on a date and show you Manchester.”

“Get lost.”

“Honest! Though you’d have to wear a hat over your radioactive hair!”

“That’ll grow out,” she laughed.

Marcus winked at her and pushed the trowel deep into the soft earth at his feet. The rain had made it strangely squishy and bouncy. It was like standing on an inflated dinghy. He threw a squelchy scoopful under the cabin. Then he dug the blade in again.

“Whay!” he said. “What was that?”

“What?”

“Weird. The hole just gave a little wobble. Not an earthquake, more an earth hiccough. Didn’t you feel it up there?”

“No.”

He dismissed it and flung the next lump of soil over his shoulder.

“Sick!!” Maggie cried. “What’s down there?”

“Why?”

“That mud, look at the colour of it!”

Marcus shone the torch again. The slimy ground beneath his feet was streaked with purple swirls.

“I think I’ve just dug the world’s first Ribena well!” he declared, not sure what to make of it and trying to sound less unnerved than he really was.

“Get out of there,” Maggie urged.

The boy crouched down and brought the torch beam closer. He ran the trowel blade through the sludge and more purple fluid came percolating up.

“Marcus!” Maggie shouted. “Get out. Now!”

He pushed the trowel a little deeper. A second tremor juddered the hole around him. This one was stronger. It was time to go. He tried to pull
the trowel from the mud, but it wouldn’t budge. Then it was torn violently from his hand and disappeared down into the bubbling ground.

For an instant, the boy stared in shock at the empty space where it had been. Then he scrambled to get out. It was too late.

The soft mud exploded. Three fat, boneless tentacles of pallid, pink, worm-like muscle punched up from the bottom of the pit. It was so fast, so sudden. They reared into the air, reaching through the cabin floor, dragging him back. His fingers gouged deep trenches through the mud as he slithered down among them and they whipped about him tightly. Marcus had no chance to yell or struggle. They snatched him down, underground, and he was gone.