5

TORSTEN NEVER LOOKED THIS GOOD

Sergeant Zenzele’s words poison the air. We all drop our gear and make our way to the truck. Sergeant Major Verdoorn is the first to climb on. Diesel follows him, then the rest of us. My insides are in turmoil, as if restless serpents are all looking for a place to settle.

Zenzele switches his torch back on. It moves like a searchlight over Torsten’s body.

First, his chest.

Shown against the black uniform, you can’t really see the blood that clearly, but where his shirt is torn the skin is stained red.

The light moves down to his legs – one of them is lying on the bench, and the other one is skewed over the backpack at the foot of the bench. Mud on the boots. Laces neatly tied up.

Slowly, the light glides towards his head. Dark veins branch out across his neck. His face is still. Pale. Blood cakes his moustache, slashes across his cheeks and congeals in his gouged-out eyes.

“I have to say, Torsten never looked this good,” Jethro jokes.

The light sweeps back to the wounds in the chest. For a while, it lingers there.

Forcefully, Sergeant Major Verdoorn yanks the chain with the dog tags from Torsten’s neck and studies it in the torchlight. “It’s him, all right,” Verdoorn growls.

He slides one of the tags from the chain, places it in Torsten’s open mouth, and gives it a whack, lodging it between the sergeant’s front teeth. Identification. He drops the other blood-covered tag into his pocket. Then he stoops closer to the body.

Diesel shuffles about uncomfortably. He jerks his head around to the rest of us. Turned away from the light, his face changes into something ... evil?

No, Eliam, I tell myself, you can’t make such an assertion.

Diesel steps back. He jumps off the truck. The rest of us watch as Verdoorn rips a bigger tear in Torsten’s uniform. “Knife wounds,” he says darkly. Trickles of blood streak across the skin, mostly in the same direction. He pushes a bulky forefinger into one of the holes. It makes a squelchy sucking sound as his finger delves deeper into Torsten’s body. While his hand digs around, the sergeant major turns towards us.

“What happened here?” he asks brusquely.

We don’t answer.

“Who did this?” he asks.

We don’t answer.

Verdoorn draws his finger back out. Again, the wet entrails cling to it. He studies his bloodied finger, and then his eyes move to Sergeant Zenzele and again to Torsten’s face.

“You don’t want to talk?” Sergeant Major Verdoorn rises to his feet and with a measured pace steps threateningly closer to us. His gaze sweeps over each of us. He doesn’t bat an eye. Doesn’t even stir a finger.

Verdoorn’s icy glare stops at Victor. The two of them stare each other right in the eyes.

Does Verdoorn suspect anything, or is it simply his way of unnerving Victor? He clearly doesn’t know he’s knocking at the wrong door now.

With grim displeasure, Sergeant Major Verdoorn raises his bloodied finger to Victor’s face. The whole shaft is coloured deep red with beads now running down the back of his hand. Aggressively, he wipes the blood on Victor’s face.

Victor doesn’t recoil even a millimetre. That’s how he’s always been. Even now.

He remains standing there with Torsten’s blood on his cheek.

He carries it like a medal of honour.

“Escort them to an empty tent,” Sergeant Zenzele orders one of the Maintenance troops who had joined them, half asleep. Hugo, reads the name on his chest.

Private Hugo pages through a list of struck-out names and numbers. “I don’t think we have any more unoccupied tents, Sarge,” he says.

“Find one! They can pitch it themselves if need be. Or else they can sleep outside.”

“In this weather?” Hugo asks.

“They’re used to it.”

Private Hugo, a frail bloke with an apparent small-man syndrome, stares at us in disbelief. “Come along then,” he says. We trail him for probably more than an hour. In the end, he kicks a bunch of troops out of their tent, splits them up, and sends them packing to some new tents. They complain, but he threatens them with the camp’s commandant.

“You can have this one. Number forty-three,” Hugo says, positioning himself at a tent entrance. He jots down a note on his list. “Don’t get too comfortable. This isn’t a lounge. Before you know it, you will be on the Front.” He points his pen to the horizon where the shots are coming from.

Jethro slaps the guy on the shoulder. “We might take you with us as a lucky charm. We could tie you to a piece of string and hang you around Diesel’s neck.”

Hugo stares up at Diesel in horror. His eyes widen when Diesel growls and he quickly makes himself scarce.

We laugh. It is the first light-hearted moment after Torsten’s death.

Exhausted, we carry our backpacks into the tent. The place seems rather depressing. There is enough room for six guys. It’s cold, but at least there is a ground-cover tarp and some stretchers. No mattresses. No bedding. That’s what the sleeping bags are for.

A single dim globe swings from the roof. A massive moth circles around and around the light.

“Anybody got something they want to say?” I ask, crashing on one of the stretchers. My gaze drifts from Jethro to Cypher. To Victor, Victoria. Lastly to Diesel, who is still positioned at the entrance of the tent, his rifle over his shoulder. Nobody answers me. “Guys?” I ask again.

“It was to be expected,” Cypher breaks the silence at last. His breath clouds in front of him.

“Meaning?”

“He asked for it, didn’t he?”

“Cypher is dead-on,” Victoria says. She raises her chin. “It was bound to happen.” Her brother comes and joins her. He drops his hand on her shoulder, the streak of blood still smeared across his cheek. It looks like a scar.

“And you, Diesel? What’s your take?” I ask.

“I let my rifle do the talking,” he answers evasively.

“Diesel keeps his trap shut,” Jethro teases.

At once, it’s as if something explodes in Diesel. He swings around. The S13 that dangled on a strap across his shoulder is in his hand now. He comes at Jethro and kicks him in the chest. Jethro tumbles to the ground. Diesel’s boot pins him down, the barrel of his rifle aimed right between Jethro’s eyes. “What was that you said about me?”

I’m on my feet in an instant and am flying towards them. “Diesel, let him go,” I cry. I struggle to push the barrel away, but it is like trying to topple a flagpole.

“What was that you said about me?” Diesel asks again. Louder.

“It was just a joke,” Jethro says.

“I’m not your joke, okay?”

Jethro looks at him, laughing.

“Okay?” Diesel growls through clenched jaws, pushing the S13’s barrel against Jethro’s forehead. Jethro is powerless, but all of a sudden something changes in his eyes. It hardens up. Grows relentless. The kind of look you’d expect in a soldier’s eyes.

“Piss off, Diesel,” he hisses through clenched teeth.

“Hey, hey, hey, guys,” Victor says loudly. He approaches. It takes three tries before he manages to pull Diesel away. “Just calm down, comrades. Okay?”

Diesel’s chest rises and falls, rises and falls, as he breathes in through his mouth shudderingly.

“We’re all stressed,” Victor says. His hand lands softly on Diesel’s shoulder. “This isn’t the time to fight among each other. We’re in the red zone. Things are going to get wild here. The situation with Torsten ... We’re not going to think about it any more.”

Jethro slowly rises to his feet, keeping a safe distance from Diesel. “You’re not foolish enough to think the Force will look the other way when something like this happens, Victor?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does,” Jethro says.

Victor pulls his shoulders back, undaunted. “We’re stronger than that. They trained us this way. You know what to do.”

I suddenly hear a clicking sound. It is Cypher removing his rifle’s safety catch. Like a tripping circuit breaker, it resounds in the tent.

We know what to do.

On the day we all turned ten, our mothers, in the Residence where we stayed, gave us wooden rifles.

At thirteen, we received gas rifles.

At sixteen, we started training with S13 carbines. A lightweight weapon, 370-mm barrel, fully automatic that can be mounted with a grenade launcher. After each training session, the rifles were handed back and locked away.

At seventeen, when we reported to Training Camp Alpha, we each got our own S13. That day, when I laid my hands on the black metal cover, something died inside me. I just didn’t realise it at the time.

Since that day, this rifle has always been by my side. The other guys’ weapons as well. It was there when we trained, when we moved about in camp, when we went for a shower, when we went to bed, when we set off to eat. It is still with me now, at the ready within arm’s reach, as I’m sitting here trying to swallow down a breakfast of cold porridge and chunks of half-done meat. The whole lot seems unappetisingly grey at the bottom of my Dixie: a small metallic container with a collapsible handle.

The six of us are seated together on empty magazine crates, under a canvas awning in a field mess. Power generators drone on tirelessly in the distance. Streaks of rain trickle down from the canvas roof, dripping in the pools of mud. Diesel got the short end of the stick, being seated near the edge. Every now and again a gush of rain hits him in the neck, but he continues wolfing the food down undisturbed, a piece of bone with scraps of meat and marrow in one hand, and a spoon full of porridge in the other.

Carefully, I taste the new camp’s coffee. It’s weak as piss. An oily substance or something horrible floats around on top. It has an oily aftertaste as well. I chuck the lot away into the rain.

The other troops keep a suspicious eye on us the whole time as if we’re something a stray dog dragged in. Now and again, somebody makes a sly remark, and the others burst out laughing.

“They know what happened,” Cypher whispers.

“Let them think what they want to,” Victor says.

“Eat your food,” Victoria says.

I push something that looks like a piece of intestines around in my Dixie. Is it edible? Finally, I grab the innards between my thumb and forefinger and toss them over my shoulder.

“I got one of those as well,” Jethro says. He digs around in his Dixie, gets hold of the nasty bit, and tosses it aside.

The guys sitting on the nearby sandbags double up laughing.

“It’s Torsten you’re feasting on,” one of the troops calls out. He seems like a troublemaker.

Diesel is on his feet immediately. Cypher taps him on the back. “Sit down, Diesel. They want us to get angry. Leave it.”

Diesel slowly sits back down again, but he continues glaring at them. Victor makes a fist. Raises his forefinger. Forms a circle in the air with it.

“What are you going to do, big guy?” the troublemaker asks.

Again, Diesel is on his feet. Rifle in hand. This time nobody is going to stop him. He storms closer. Knocks two guys’ food from their hands and descends on the troublemaker like Death.

“Diesel, don’t shoot,” I cry out to him.

It is as if time goes into a state of flux and then freezes.

We’re all at Diesel’s side. Victor, Victoria, and Cypher try to hold him back, but his bent knee is already rammed into the curve of the guy’s throat. Fear burns in the troop’s eyes as Diesel raises his rifle.

Then things happen at a frantic pace. It’s almost like the time we were trained to take our weapons apart and put them back together again blindfolded, without thinking. A mechanical action, rehearsed and executed without fear.

No shot rings out.

Diesel knocks the guy’s head back with the palm of his hand and hauls his hand away when he tries to prevent the attack.

He stomps down hard on the fingers, pinning them down.

The troop howls with pain, but the sound is nothing compared to the cracking of bones that stuns everyone into silence as Diesel crushes his hand with the butt of the rifle.

Lesson learnt.

We lead Diesel back to the tent. He moves like a sleepwalker between us.

“What have I done?” he asks softly. He sounds totally different from the monster who attacked that guy.

“He gave you a hard time. It’s his own fault,” Victoria says.

“He can be thankful you didn’t bump him off,” Victor adds.

Diesel stares down at his hands. “Could I have killed him?” His voice seems almost childlike.

“If we didn’t stop you,” I answer.

“Could I really have?” Diesel asks astounded. “Can I kill a person?”

“Don’t worry about it any more,” Cypher says evasively.

But every one of us knows the answer.