Recoil

8

I told her what it was like being a kid in a London housing estate with a stepdad who slapped me and my mother about. I told her about getting arrested and put in Borstal, and joining the army at sixteen as a way out. Then getting into the SAS, and eventually working for the Firm. How it’d fucked me over time and again, until I’d finally binned it – only to let the Americans take over where the Brits had left off.

The words poured out of me like water from a hose that had just been unkinked. ‘I did all the shit jobs no one in their right mind would take on in the first place, or no one was willing to take responsibility for if they went wrong.’ I laughed at my own naïvety. ‘I was paid cash – I didn’t even have a bank account, let alone a life.’

‘Why let yourself be used like that, Nick?’ Her expression told me she didn’t understand. How could she? She’d always been lucky enough to see things through the correct end of the telescope.

I looked back at the dugout as more shit was packed into it. ‘It was all I’d ever known, I guess.’ I shrugged. ‘It was the way things were – like the kids the other side of the river, waiting to be told to come and kill us. But finally – finally – I woke up and walked away.’

‘To Australia?’

‘Yes.’ When I looked down, her eyes were welling.

‘So we were both in Australia to run away?’ She gave me a sad smile.

I slid down level with her.

‘This mine . . .’ A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘These poor people living like this. It’s because of Stefan.’

I put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Tim told me.’ At that moment I didn’t care who the fuck owned what, where, or why. Being with her was all I cared about.

She grabbed a small lump of red rock from the ground, and examined it as though she’d picked up a lump of dog shit by mistake.

‘I know what it is, Silky. I know what it’s for.’

She let it drop to the ground. ‘I’ve had a life of luxury because Stefan feeds off these people’s nightmares . . . But coming here, not just sitting in an office and talking about it . . . I’ve realized I mustn’t run away. I have run to something for a change . . . I have to stay here, Nick.’

‘Do these guys know who you are?’

She shook her head. ‘Only Tim. Even Stefan doesn’t know where I am. He probably thinks I’m surfing in Bali, or at a spa.’

The miners were still dumping tools near the growing stockpile of ANFO for the second claymore. A few were even lugging oil drums, their bodies covered with mud and grime. Their lives were one long round of grit-filled rice and dragging lumps of rock out of the ground with their bare hands. And for what? So we all could enjoy the delights of 3G connectivity?

She knew all too well what I was thinking. ‘Shitty, isn’t it?’

Bursts of AK fire filled the air. They came from downstream, towards Nuka.