eating his baby self,’ she whispered. They stared at him in silence. He blinked.
His father’s face went red, then he laughed loudly so the place echoed. ‘Well, then, I suppose that’s fine,’ he said. ‘Taste good, does he?’
Leon nodded, his mother stared and his father went back to the front of the shop, still giggling, saying over and over, ‘My word. My word, my word. There’s sugar in the blood for you.’
The mud baby that Leon made, sitting in the damp shade of a rubber tree, was in swaddling, no arms or legs, just a little blackish-greenish grub, with two seeds from a split pod of some kind for eyes. With a grass stalk he put in details – eyelashes, a smile, a triangle nose and circles for cheeks. He put it in a strong patch of sunlight on the root of the tree and left it to bake. Cray was oiling the handle of a machete. He held it up to show Leon and passed it to him, so that he could see that on the wooden handle were all kinds of carvings, birds and leaves of minute detail.
‘For the wife,’ Cray explained, ‘she wanted something’d be good in the garden – we got this fireweed and bramble problem. Got this old promise to sort it out when I get back.’
Leon felt the weight of it in his hands. ‘’Sa keen handle – where’d you find it?’
‘Took it off a Cong. Shot him in the throat and took his knife.’
He held Leon’s gaze for a moment before pulling hard on his cigarette and looking down at the ground. ‘Carved those things meself.’
Leon nodded. ‘She’s a beaut.’ Some sort of bird laughed loudly. ‘Really nice. You work on wood back home?’
Cray looked up again, squinting and nodded. ‘Mainly I make rocking chairs.’
Leon carried on nodding and handed back the blade. ‘Funny place, this.’
‘That is the fucking truth, mate.’
When it was time to move on, he checked on the mud baby and found it had dried a shade lighter. Stupid to want to take it. But he wrapped it carefully in a fat leaf anyway. It’d fall to pieces. He put it into a zippered pocket and shifted his pack on to his back, careful not to knock it. He shook his head at himself and made off after Cray.
In the night, along with the things that loped in the undergrowth, the tide of mosquitoes and biting beetles that hissed and whined around Leon’s ears, there was the sound of heaving. Someone was sick and in between the cries of the man Leon could hear a neighing, a rucking up of earth with claws like something rejoicing in the sound. He pulled his soft cap over his ears and curled in a tight ball, the butt of his gun poking at him like the cold nose of an animal.
When the sun came up, it was Flood who lay chalkily under his netting, an orange crust round his mouth, to be lifted out with his malaria. Leon breathed shallowly. Of all the bastards to get sick.
‘That means you get the gun, old matey,’ said Pete, planting the thing at his feet. ‘Clive’s your second.’ He passed over the extra rounds and felt the machine gun heavy in his hands. It was like he’d never held one, never trained with the rest of them. To kill a man. To kill thirty men. All at once. There was a moan from Flood and he felt anger rising in him. Couldn’t the bastard just live with it? It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that the arsehole was faking it. Better to pretend to be sick than shoot yourself in the foot. But he saw a greenness in Flood’s skin where the jungle had crept into his blood and was pushing out of his pores. He stood with his new gun, his back to the section, not looking at anyone, trying not to think.
They waited for the sound of blades in the air.
‘By the time we set out, it might all’ve been over,’ Leon said to Cray, who had slid himself down the trunk of a tree and was unwrapping a barley sugar. He offered one to Leon, and when he refused Cray insisted, tapping the thing on Leon’s boot.
‘Yep, but. If we set out now, we might all be dead in five hours’ time.’
‘How do you reckon we’re any less likely all to be dead if we wait?’
‘Nup – it’s lore. It’s like –