The Battle Ground Series: Books 1-3 Read online

  Interrogation

  After breakfast, Will gathers the four of us in the meeting room. Dr Richards joins us, and we sit at one end of the meeting table.

  Will wants to hear details about the camp, about our training, and about our patrol experiences, but most of all he wants to know about what I saw in town. I explain the City Killers and the clean-up crews, and I find myself in tears as I talk about the empty cars, the rubble of the buildings, the belongings abandoned on the road.

  When I’ve finished, Will looks at Dr Richards.

  “Bex,” she says, hesitating, “the clean-up crews. They were people you knew?”

  “Only the ones who came to take the weapons away. The ones who were checking everything before that – they were people I’d never seen before. They had armour like ours, but black instead of grey, and they were talking to their commanders on the radio.”

  She nods.

  “And the whole camp was empty on the day of the attack? No one stayed behind?”

  Charlie answers, and explains about the NBC drill. “We all had to leave. Even the guards at the gate.”

  Dr Richards sits back in her chair, and Will leans forward, elbows on the table.

  “Tell me again about your training regime.”

  We explain the morning run, out in public where people would see us; the training in using our weapons and armour; the assault course; and the afternoon briefings in dealing with the public, and following orders.

  “The whole idea was to look after yourself. They didn’t want us working as a team, and they didn’t want us helping each other. We were expected to get ourselves through the training, and through the public patrols. We weren’t supposed to worry about other people. We were only there for the cameras.”

  And I can feel myself getting angry again. The Senior Recruits, training us and punishing us, and still treating us as front-line dolls. Ketty, locking me out in the rain for helping Saunders. Jackson, punching my ribs while his friend pinned my arms against the ground.

  “We weren’t real soldiers. We were the pretty mask over the face of the army. We’re the brave volunteers who put our lives on hold to protect the public – except that we didn’t volunteer. We were given half an hour to pack and leave school, and no one gave us a choice.”

  “How many of you felt like this, Bex?” Dr Richards asks, softly.

  “Everyone!” Dan’s voice is loud in the quiet room. He shrugs. “Probably not the Senior Recruits. I think they all volunteered. But the rest of us? There were people who didn’t really get it, who thought this was like a holiday from school, and then we’d be going back. There were probably people who preferred the training to studying. But most of us? All that training for a few hours of public showing-off? We’re a PR exercise, nothing more. And our lives are on hold to make them look good – the people with the City Killers.”

  “Yeah.” Saunders starts quietly, but his voice gathers force as he speaks. “No one helped when we couldn’t do the training. The Senior Recruits just left us, so we’d have to look after ourselves. I’m only here because Bex brought me back when I twisted my ankle, and Dan helped me get my stuff together to leave the camp. Me and Jake and Amy …” He pauses, and collects himself. “Me and Jake and Amy – we only made it through the training because Bex helped us. She encouraged us, and she lost time on her own training to give us all an extra hand or talk us through the hard stuff.” He looks at me. “And I know she got into trouble for it. I know the Senior Recruits hurt her for helping me.” He looks down. “And just so we could wear our shiny armour in public and make people feel safe.” He thumps the tabletop in frustration.

  I reach across the table and take his hand. He looks up, and I look him in the eyes. Squeeze his hand, and let it drop. I don’t know what to say. I think about sitting outside the gate in the rain. I think about the assault course, that first day. And I think about leaving Amy at the gate. Jake’s face as we drove away.

  “We’ve left our friends at the camp.” I’m trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “Jake and Amy helped us to escape. We planned to bring them with us, but the Commander saw what they did, and we couldn’t stop for them. The last thing I saw …”

  But I can’t bring myself to say it. To my surprise, Charlie speaks up.

  “The last thing we saw was the Commander holding a gun to Jake’s head. We have no idea what happened to him after that.” She shakes her head. “Bex is right. We couldn’t stop.”

  Dan and Saunders both look up in surprise, and I realise that they didn’t see what happened, they don’t know what we saw. Dan looks shocked, and Saunders – Saunders looks heartbroken, the colour draining out of his face.

  Charlie continues. “These are kids we’re talking about. Child soldiers. They were kidnapped from their lives, and dropped into a physical training regime for a government they thought of as the good guys. They’ve jumped through all the hoops, they’ve worked hard, they’ve taken the blows because they’ve had no choice, and then they’ve been paraded in front of cameras as nothing more than stuffed suits of armour. It’s insulting, and it’s immoral, and this shouldn’t be happening to them.”

  Will and Dr Richards exchange a look, and Dr Richards turns to Charlie.

  “How many of these camps are there? Do you know?”

  Charlie shakes her head.

  “No idea. I’m just a kitchen supervisor. I know we weren’t the only training camp in the country, but I don’t know how many others there are.” She shrugs. “We were RTS Unit 77B, if that helps.”

  Dr Richards gives Charlie a warm smile. “It might. Thank you.”

  I think we’ve finished, but Will clears his throat. He’s been taking notes in an incongruously pink notebook, and he taps his pen on the page.

  “Tell me again about the trip to Birmingham.”

  I start to talk about the concert and the patrols, but he stops me.

  “No – start from the beginning. Before you left the camp. What did you do?”

  I think for a moment, and I realise what he wants to know. I explain about the armour, the weapons, and the crates. I run down our preparations in the morning: packing our armour and guns, carrying our crates to the coach, loading them into the luggage space. He nods, and takes more notes. I talk through the journey, and the unloading at the other end. I give him the details I remember of the marquee, the security passes, the radios. He nods, encouraging me to continue, as he writes everything down.

  Dan and Saunders add in details I’ve forgotten, and Saunders talks through the radio protocols for the patrols. And I tell him about the cameras: TV cameras and photographers everywhere, documenting our presence, publicising our protection. The Press pass round the photographer’s neck. The photos that he wanted for his newspaper. Front-line Barbie and her bestie. Jackson mocking us as we walked into the marquee.

  “We were a joke to them,” I whisper, through tears. “All this for a joke.”

  Dr Richards reaches over and takes my hand.

  “Thank you, Bex. I think this could really help us.”

  *****

  They talk to Margie next, and confirm aspects of our accounts. Over the next few days, Will stops me in the corridor, or at meals, to ask more questions.

  “He’s planning something,” I tell Dan one night, as we’re walking back to our rooms. “He’s asking me for all the details, and they add up to something big.”

  “Anything we can do to strike back.” Dan has seen what the government can do, and he’s as angry with them now as he was with Margie at school for opposing them. He must feel betrayed by the people he trusted to look after us.

  “You’ll help?”

  “Instantly. I’m sick of the government getting away with this. And I’m sick of being the sticking plaster on their public image.” He stops, and turns to me. “And I really want to get Jake and Amy out of there. I can’t believe we left them behind. What the Commander did …”

  “We had to! We couldn’t stop!”
<
br />   “I know. But we shouldn’t have left them.”

  I nod. “We let them down. I know that. If there’s anything we can do …”

  “We’ll do it.”

  “Yeah. We will.”

  AUGUST

  Demonstration

  Our chance comes sooner than I expected.

  Our days have settled into a new rhythm. Breakfast at seven. Briefing from one of the rebels – usually Will, but sometimes it’s Dr Richards, or one of the other leaders of the group. Help with the clearing up, help with general housework. I’ve convinced Jo to take me and Dan for a run every day – through the forest, as far as the lake that feeds our water supply, and back. It means that we get some fresh air and exercise, but someone keeps an eye on us and checks that we don’t wander off, or send messages to government troops.

  We come back and shower, then help make lunch. Afternoons are mostly free for cards and talking, and some basic lessons on the politics of the conflict from Dr Richards. I find myself enjoying this return to studying, and I think Dr Richards appreciates having an audience to teach again.

  A week after our meeting with Will, he stops me in the corridor after breakfast.

  “Think you can teach some of us to use that armour of yours? And the guns?”

  I think about it. The armour is made to fit us, but I’m sure it would fit some of the younger people here. Training other people can only help us to strike back, and to help Jake and Amy. I nod. “Sure.”

  “Find me in the meeting room after lunch. Bring Dan and Margie.”

  “And Saunders?”

  “Not with his injured ankle. I’ll find something else for him do.”

  I find Dan in his room, getting ready for our run with Jo.

  “Are you up for training people how to use the suits and guns?”

  “If it helps, of course. When?”

  “After lunch. We need Margie, too.”

  “I’ll put it on my incredibly busy schedule,” he says, and grins.

  *****

  We assemble in the meeting room after lunch: me, Dan, Margie, and Will. Someone has brought the crates down from the barn, and left them on the table.

  “Start by unpacking your boxes, and telling me what’s in there.”

  I reach into the kitchen crate where I hid my armour. It’s obvious that someone else has already been through the contents of the crate, and packed it again – nothing fits properly, and my careful way of nesting the pieces of the armour together to save space has been messed up and ignored. I pull out my helmet, and all the plastic panels that make up the suit. I check the radio and the contamination panel, and make sure that nothing has been lost or damaged. Dan does the same, and we stack the armour carefully on the table.

  “Where’s the gun?” Dan sounds upset, and gives Will a defiant look.

  Will stays calm. “Armour first. We’ll move on to weapons later. Is this everything?”

  “We have base layers that we wear underneath, and the boots we’re wearing. Other than the guns, yes. That’s the armour.”

  “Can you show me how it works?”

  I peel off my T-shirt and uniform trousers. I’m wearing the base layers underneath. I’ve learned to apply my own armour, so I go about attaching the panels to the base layers, and explaining what I’m doing at every point.

  Will and Margie listen, and pay attention to the details – how the armour fits together, which pieces attach to each other, how the air canister connects with the other panels, how the radio controls work.

  Lastly, I pick up the helmet and twist it into place. Immediately, the sound from the room is muted, and I can hear my own breathing. It is strange to be wearing this in the bunker, and for the first time I notice all the background noises that disappear when the helmet clicks into place. There are air conditioning units, ventilation fans, conversations from neighbouring rooms – all gone. I’m in a world of my own, protected and distant from everyone who wants to use me for their own schemes.

  It’s a good feeling.

  Will is signalling to me to remove the helmet. Reluctantly I twist it, disconnect it from my armour, and place it on the table in front of me. The sounds of the bunker return, and once again I’m in someone else’s space, imprisoned and forbidden from leaving. My breathing gets faster and I’m close to panic. I realise Dan is talking and I focus on his voice.

  “You’re OK. You’re OK, Bex. Come on – sit down.” He takes my hand and guides me to a chair, crouches beside me. “You’re safe. We’re safe.”

  I grip his hand, and feel my heart rate slowing.

  “OK?”

  I take a deep breath and nod.

  “OK.”

  Will has been watching my reaction, and Dan’s. Margie looks at Will, a concerned look on her face.

  “She’s been through a lot, Will,” she says. “Give her time.”

  Will grunts, and picks up the back panel of Dan’s armour.

  “What are the clips for?”

  “That’s for the gun,” Dan explains, miming the action of clicking the gun into place over his shoulder. He gets it right, even with no gun in his hand. I smile, recognising the hours of work that went into learning that action.

  Will puts down the armour. “Right. Let’s bring the others in.”

  Margie goes to the door, opens it and calls down the corridor. I hear footsteps, then four young men and two young women hurry into the room.

  Will uses me as the model, and asks Dan to talk through the pieces of the armour, demonstrating how they work together. The young rebels watch and listen, reaching out to touch an arm plate, the gun clips, the radio controls on my glove. They handle the pieces that Dan is explaining, and watch closely as we show them how everything fits together.

  It is a relief to be able to stand still and not have to find the words to explain the suits. I let Dan do the talking, and turn to show off different parts of the armour as he describes them. Now I really am Front-line Barbie. The thought makes me laugh.

  *****

  Will dismisses the rebels and asks us to return after lunch tomorrow. He wants us to train them to put on, wear, and use the armour, and eventually the guns as well. I strip off the armour pieces and stack them neatly in my kitchen crate, then pull my trousers and T-shirt back on over my base layers.

  Will dismisses us, too. “Get changed, and take your base layers to Jo in the workshop.”

  I give him a confused look.

  “She’s going to make more of them,” Margie says, laughing at the look on my face. “We need base layers for everyone if we’re going to train them properly. Don’t worry – you’ll get them back!”

  Dan and I leave our crates on the table and head back to our rooms. I change out of my base layers, and meet Dan in the corridor. He’s dug out his and Saunders’ leggings, tops, and gloves, and we carry our bundles of black fabric down the corridor to the workshop.

  Jo is waiting, with a sewing machine and a notepad of measurements from the rebels we’ll be training. She thanks us, and takes the clothes, checking them for labels and rubbing the fabric between her fingers.

  “I think I can replicate these. Thank you for letting me have them. I’ll get them back to you as soon as I can.”

  And I walk away, wondering why she thinks I had a choice.

  Weapons

  Armour training takes a couple of weeks. At first, there’s only one set of base layers, so our trainees have to take it in turns to put the armour on and get used to wearing it, but over the course of a few days, Jo makes up six more sets of base layers, and returns ours to us. With three sets of armour, and everyone ready to put it on, we can race one trainee against another; demonstrate a movement technique using one of us and one of them; and start to teach them how the radios and contamination panels work.

  It is surprisingly enjoyable, teaching our skills to people who want to learn. I start to realise how much we learned at the camp, and how my skills have developed since our first day wearing the armour. Th
e rebels are quick to learn, and enthusiastic. I find myself concentrating on the task of making them all competent, and I start to forget what we’re doing this for.

  And then one afternoon Will welcomes us to a training session, and puts three guns on the table. I’m happy to see our weapons again, and that we are being trusted to handle them, but I realise that we have a long way to go, teaching the rebels how to use them.

  We begin by teaching them how to clip the guns into the armour. It takes hours to get used to this action, lining the gun up and sliding it into the clips behind you and out of sight, and for the first time I am frustrated with the rebels. They’re all so clumsy, and the process is so slow. It is such a simple movement, when you figure it out, but it takes a long time to get there.

  It takes days, but eventually they can all stow their guns – not all of them on the first attempt, but it’s good enough. Now we need to teach them to shoot.

  I stay behind after a training session to talk to Will. He’s happy with their progress, and, like me, he wants to move on to using the guns.

  “Are they ready?” I nod. “Tomorrow, then.” And he leaves the room.

  *****

  The next day, Will takes us out of the bunker. We pass the guard in the entrance hall, and Saunders is there, watching the screens with one of the rebels. He gives us a cheerful wave.

  “They’ve found you a job, then?” Dan sounds impressed, and gives Saunders a high five on the way past. “You’ve kept that quiet!” Saunders grins, and spins side to side on his office chair.

  “Indoors and sitting down!” He drags his chair back towards the screens. I notice that he’s still only using one foot – the injured ankle he holds above the floor.