The Survival Game (27 page)

‘Ya wish is mi command,’ Dread I replied.

The jeep started up and skidded away.

John’s tense body finally relaxed. He fell back into his seat and closed his eyes, relieved. But behind his lids, the bloodstained face of Green T’s sister dominated his vision. He tried to blank her out, but couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. She was staring coldly at him with dark, long dead eyes. Then, from nowhere, her mouth snapped open wide and a cackle burst out from within.

A loud, rusty blade cackle that reverberated endlessly in his mind.

John didn’t go home after
Golden Massage
. He didn’t sleep either.
How the hell could he after what happened,
gamota
?

Dread I’s driver, Sagat, took them all back to his yard in Clapton where they sat in his dump of a front room, smoking. John smoked
cigarra
; the others smoked skunk and crack like it was going out of fashion. Random people came and went as they pleased as if Sagat’s flat was nothing but a fucking bus stop. Little demons in horned caps, dancing around the devil named Dread I. They came in to say
what a gwanin?
bought their shit, smoked it, then fucked off to wherever they came from to do whatever it is they do.

While this was going on, John was sat on a worn out sofa, the springs digging right into his
kolo
. He stared blankly at the telly, what was left of an eight pack of beers sitting on the coffee table in front of him. He was working his way through ’em one by one, chain-smoking
cigarra
, mostly ignoring what the people around him were doing
and
the loud Ragga blasting out of the stereo.

He couldn’t sleep even if he tried. Whenever he closed his eyes, all he could see behind them was Green T’s sister. Screaming; bullet holes riddled all over her body like she was a fucking dot-to-dot picture.

How the fuck could he do that,
gamota
? How? His own fucking sister!

John had no brothers or sisters, but he imagined if he did, he’d never be pushed to the point of putting bullets into ’em. He assumed that some kind of mega strong emotional attachment to them would stop that from happening no matter what they did. All right, so she was a
putana
. He wouldn’t want a
putana
for a sister either.
But is it reason enough to fucking kill her, man?
He didn’t think so, especially since it was the Cobra that manipulated her into it all. But it was more than that. It was the
way
Green T did it,
gamota
. The way he seemed to switch, like something had taken him over. Something evil. Like he was possessed.

He took a swig of beer, at the same time rolling his eyes over to where Green T stood. Dread I was with him, staring down at him, his hands placed on the kid’s shoulders. John could tell by the way Dread I was nodding and grinning that was he congratulating Green T as if he’d done something good. Something to be proud of. Green T was looking up to Dread I like he was his father, two black horns now sitting neatly on his bonce. The little
malaka
had earned those.
Shot his sister in cold blood and now feels proud of himself.

I’d love to rip the little prick’s balls off and throw ’em on a fire, I swear to God,
John thought to himself with ire while gulping more beer.

But it was as Dread I patted Green T on the shoulders, his dread snakes shaking and grooving, as he whispered sweet
skata
into his ear, that John knew exactly how the little prick was able to switch like that. Dread I had brainwashed him. He may not have planted the seeds of hate in Green T’s mind, but he definitely nurtured them, encouraged them to grow. Green T’s initiation had been to kill his sister, there was no doubt about that in John’s mind. And he passed with flying colours. He was now a fully-fledged member of the Dread I crew. Now he was a man.

Yeah, nice one,
Carl
, you muppet.

But it wasn’t just Green T’s bullshit the previous night that had pissed John off proper; Dread I had fucked him off too. John was convinced Dread I had stitched him up like a kipper back at
Golden Massage
. Green T’s Uzi was malfunctioning on purpose, he was sure of it. They left the safety catch on or something,
gamota
; had to have been. Green T, living up to his name by being green, forgot to flick it off, leaving John with no choice but to intervene.
A cunning ploy?
John very much thought so. If Green T’s initiation had been to take out his sister, then John’s was definitely to take out the Cobra. And he hadn’t even known it.

He felt like a proper mug, used, played like a fiddle. But even though he was real pissed about it, the plus side was that he passed
his
initiation with flying colours too, and that meant he had Dread I on side, which was the original goal. He wasn’t counting on becoming a murderer in the process,
but hey, that’s what the fucking
strato
wanted him to be anyway, right?

He finally got there. A killer…

That was the price he had to pay in this
skata
life in this
skata
world, chasing bits of paper and whatnot…

Anyway, getting Dread I onside was now even more important ’cos it was Friday morning, Aziz’s deadline day. He glanced at the telly; the clock superimposed over the breakfast TV shite said it was 6:13 am. It meant they needed to take Neocrema in the next eight to ten hours. He placed his beer back down on the table, and then checked out what was happening around him. The thirty year old trapped in a twelve year old’s body—the braided
moro
who was in the jeep with them last night, who they just called ‘Kid’—was taking a hit off a crack pipe like it was his second nature. Sagat had removed his shades to reveal (as John had suspected earlier in the night) that his eye had been gouged out and crudely stitched closed. He was studiously cleaning all the guns scattered around the place like they were just water pistols in a playroom. Some other bloke with fat horns on his head was clipping bullets into magazines and piling them up on the floor next to him. They were preparing. Preparing for war. John was the final piece in the jigsaw. He was the info man. The one who could lead ’em to the enemy.

The CD in the stereo ended and the room went silent, bar the bubbling of bongs and the click of bullets clipped into magazines. John scanned the room for Dread I. But he’d disappeared. He’d been doing that all night. Coming and going. Disappearing and reappearing. Sometimes on his phone, sometimes not.

What was the
malaka
doing?
John really wanted to know. There were a lot of questions about Dread I he wanted answering. A lot of mysteries he wanted solving. A kid, no more than sixteen, was sitting next to him on the sofa. He’d rocked in about twenty minutes beforehand to get his tools and orders. Another young soldier. By then, John had finished five of his eight beers and they’d loosened his tongue. Now that Dread I was gone, he took the opportunity to find out more.

He turned to face the kid. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked him.

‘Shortbredd,’ the kid replied, his eyes staying cold, the horns on his head growing darker.

John leaned in closer to him and cocked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘What’s the score with Dread I?’ he asked. ‘What’s he all about?’

Shortbredd looked around nervously. A seemingly hard kid now anxious and edgy. John looked at him like ‘you ain’t scared are ya?’

After a second or two, he took the bait and began talking. He leaned forwards and answered in a low voice, a serious look planted on his mug. ‘You don’t fuck with Dread I, blood,’ he said.

John sighed. ‘Yeah yeah, I’ve heard all that crap. But, what’s his story? You must know something about him.’

Shortbredd licked his lips. ‘All I know is rumours, blood, ya get me?’

‘Go on…’ John urged.

Shortbredd took a quick look around to see if anyone was listening. When he was sure no one was, he spilt the beans. ‘Apparently he was a don running the garrison in Kingston,’ he began in a hushed voice. ‘Ganja, gold, guns, all that shit, ya get me? Anyway, the story goes like this—the don of a rival gang saw how fat his empire was and got jealous. He wanted a piece of that pie, innit. Dread I rejected any deals this don put to him. So, he decided to hit Dread I where it hurt.’ Shortbredd’s eyes rolled to the side, then his voice went even lower. ‘He couldn’t get to Dread I directly, yeah, but he
could
get to his woman and kid…’

‘Kid?’ John echoed, mildly surprised.

‘Yeah, apparently he had a small boy. Five, maybe six years old. Anyway, according to what I’ve heard, this rival don gunned ’em down. His woman. His seed.’ Shortbredd made the shape of a gun with his hand and pulsed his thumb twice. ‘
Boom
.
Boom
. Dead.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ John gasped and looked away.
That
malaka
had a wife and kid?

‘Weren’t shit he could do, blood,’ continued Shortbredd. ‘So, Dread I gets his revenge, innit. He rounds up his boys. They go and hunt down the don and all
his
top boys, and hold ’em hostage. Rumour is they took ’em all down to the beach, skinned ’em alive, and then buried ’em in the sand.’

John winced. ‘Nice.’

‘I dunno if that’s true. It could be ’cos these boys don’t fuck around, trust.’

John thought about Dread I blasting his way through old man Kolovski and Moleface and he believed Shortbredd no problem. No problem at all. ‘Yeah, I believe you, man, don’t worry about that.’

‘Well, anyway,’ continued Shortbredd, ‘after that, the other gang retaliate.’

‘What did they do?’ John asked, his eyes wide, absorbed in the story.

‘They catch him in a drive by, innit,’ Shortbredd replied. ‘They put
thirty-six
bullets into him, blood.
Thirty-six.
But he didn’t die. Instead he was in a coma…’ Shortbredd had one of those sly looks round again just to make sure no one was listening, but that looked like wishful thinking seeing how there were bods everywhere. ‘Now, no one knows for sure what happened to him while he was in that coma. Some say he made a deal with God and got a second chance. Others say he sold his soul to the devil. No one knows the truth, but after a few days, he wakes up.’ Shortbredd clicked his fingers. ‘
Just like that…
’

John took another sip of his beer. This
malaka
was sounding more and more like some kind of demon. And he suddenly heard Ishmael’s voice pipe up in his head—
You know they nicknamed him Satan when he was in Jamaica?

‘Jah abandon him.’

John’s head snapped round to where the sudden voice had emanated.

Sagat was now staring at him with his surviving eye, bullets and gun parts lying on the floorspace between his spread legs. ‘Jah leave his woman and kid to die in cold blood, mon. It twist him up. He tell Jah plain and simple he nah wanna repent for his sin and enter his kingdom. All he want is compensation for the pain he suffer. He want retribution. Then, he wake up.’

‘And why did he do that?’ John asked.

Sagat smiled thinly at him, a wicked gleam in his surviving eye. ‘Better to reign inna Babylon, than serve inna Zion.’

‘And he feels like can’t die,’ Shortbredd added, making John turn back to face him. There was a sincere, wide-eyed look on his face. ‘He
should
be dead, but he’s not. He fears nothing and no man, blood, believe…’

John nodded his head. That seemed to be the case all right, and that was exactly why he wanted him onside. ’Cos he was fearless, didn’t give a fuck, and ’cos he wanted to take down Marek.

‘And that’s why I’d sooner be on his side than against him, ya get me?’ Shortbredd added. ‘The money, the women, the respect that being part of his crew brings is sick, man.
Sick.
We got nothing.
They
want us to have nothing. Dread I gives us it, gives us self-respect. Power.’

‘Dread I a bad man,’ Sagat then said, making John face him once more. ‘He represent the yoot that have nuthin’,
bredrin
. He save ’em from downpression. He free dem mind, seen? The system reject the yoot, Dread I act like dem father, ya unnerstand? He do the job the system supposed to… All he want in return is his piece.
This
his town now. He want it back.’

John took another swig of what was now warm beer. From what he’d managed to work out while hanging around this lot, Dread I had turned London into a war zone and created his own army squadron out of oppressed young blacks. Crack was the fuel; money, cred, and power the prize. And then something else suddenly hit him. His
moro
was gonna be half black. He didn’t want
malakes
like these getting hold of him/her and sticking ideas of gangs, guns, and drugs in his/her head, signing up for an army that promised everything but delivered fuck all.

He had to make sure to just use these pricks, then dump ’em when it was time. Keep this bunch well away from his
moro
.

He polished off his latest can of beer just as Shortbredd began fidgeting on the sofa. When John looked up, he realised why. Dread I was standing just inside the doorway. He hadn’t even noticed him. His snake dreads were dancing and wiggling around his horned head, and his lifeless eyes stared down at them both. A shiver crawled up John’s spine. Around his people, Dread I had an aura, a power about him that they either fed off, or feared. Shortbredd—the
malaka
—clearly feared it.

Dread I cocked his head to the side. Then in the next instant, he whipped out a machete the size of his forearm, jumped over, and stuck it at the side of Shortbredd’s neck. John froze. He watched Shortbredd’s cheeks start trembling with terror like he’d just been strapped into the electric chair.

‘Ya tongue wag like a puppy tail. Maybe mi should cut it out,’ Dread I said to Shortbredd in an aggressive fashion, his face screwed up into a snarl.

Everyone stopped and turned their heads.

Shortbredd’s eyes were bulging; he was bricking it proper.