Thicker Than Water

They all went looking for their own ammo this time, and they were a bit more liberal in interpreting the rules. Some of the kids came back with lumps of shattered brick and one or two had taken out home-made catapults.

This had started out way beyond a joke, and now it was in Lord of the Flies territory. If I made the return journey, a single hit would knock me off the ledge.

‘Fuck this,’ I said, stepping down off the parapet onto safe, solid ground.

‘Get back up there, you little piss-pants bastard,’ Kenny commanded, striding across to me, ‘or I’ll throw you off my fucking self.

‘Sod off, Kenny!’ I said. ‘I’m not doing it. I’ve had enough.’

‘Not yet you haven’t,’ Kenny said grimly. ‘We’re not finished yet.

I struggled in his grasp, trying ineffectually to trip him so I could break free. His superior weight made it a forlorn gesture, but I had to try. I stumbled backwards, planting my feet on the ledge because there was nowhere else to go, but when Kenny tried to disengage I went with him, gripping his left arm tightly. He punched me in the face to loosen my grip, and once again set me up on my perch. I staggered, seeing stars.

‘Now you fucking run!’ he snarled, stepping back quickly.

I don’t know what I would ha

He turned around a hundred and eighty degrees, presenting his back to me. There was something odd about it: his shirt was gaping open, split from side to side as though he’d started to turn from Bill Bixby into Lou Ferrigno. And then from within the shirt - filling it miraculously like the endlessly rising bubbles in the plastic trim of an old-fashioned Wurlitzer - blood welled, saturating the cloth in an instant, to spill down his jeans in a lapping tide.

"He hadn’t turned around on purpose to show me this: he’d turned to stare at Anita, who was still standing there with a slender length of steel in her hands. It was one that we would have discarded in our hunt because it was far too long and thin to throw. As a makeshift scimitar it clearly had its drawbacks, because Anita’s hands were bloody too, dark red beads sliding down her fingers onto the pale metal.