dim LED bulb brightened again, revealing more of them poised in a wary semicircle in the darkness, watching them intently.
Nathan held the gun up, sweeping it slowly across them, his finger resting on the trigger. ‘Stay back!’
‘Look! We’re . . . we were just leaving, okay?’ said Jacob.
The things stared back in silence. He realised then that they were just children. He guessed they ranged in age from five to early teens. It was difficult to judge - they could have been another year or two older than they appeared, but prolonged malnutrition might have stunted their growth. Their eyes, wide, stared back at them through tangled fringes of long matted dreadlocks.
‘Look, we . . . we didn’t know this place was y-yours,’ Jacob continued. ‘So, we’ll just go, okay?’
He stepped sideways along the wall, his back sliding against the smooth curved wall of the stand. He tugged Nathan’s sleeve gently to come with him.
‘Yeah,’ said Nathan, ‘we’re leaving now.’
The children remained perfectly still, silent, watching them shuffle along. They reminded him of the orphans in Oliver, lost, smudged faces in ill-fitting clothes. Girls and boys - although amongst the younger ones he struggled to determine which were which.
The wall disappeared behind them, and they found themselves taking a backwards step up onto a courtesy stand of stools and small round metal coffee tables.
The children advanced on them cautiously.
‘Stay back, motherfuckers! I got a gun here!’ Nathan shouted, as if it needed saying.
One of the children, a painfully thin boy - or it could well have been a girl - stepped ahead of the others and extended a slender hand.
‘Ve-weee fuck-in hung-weee,’ it piped in a small mucus-choked voice.
Both of them looked at each other, confused.
‘Hung-wee. You foooo?’
Then they understood. ‘We don’t h-have any food on us.’ He looked at Nathan. ‘Do we?’
Nathan shook his head silently.
Another child stirred, stepped forward and extended both hands. ‘Pwee gee wee.’
Jacob shook his head, struggling to understand.
‘Pwee gee wee foo,’ it said again, taking another eager step forward.
It was like listening to a baby’s first words; toddler-talk. It would be aww-cute coming from the mouth of some chubby-faced infant in a buggy, but from these children bordering on teen years it was wrong. Tragically wrong.
His torch began to dim again. He pumped the trigger several times, quickly setting the dynamo whirring in the silence. The children all edged several steps closer encouraged by the momentary fading of light.
‘Woah! Stay fuckin’ back!’ shouted Nathan.
More dirty palms extended - a growing sea of them. ‘Foo . . . pwee. Foo, pwee!’
‘I’m s-sorry,’ said Jacob, ‘I’m SORRY! WE DON’T HAVE ANY!!’
Then he saw a taller child pushing forward. A boy dressed in dark-stained corduroy trousers and what looked like the tattered remains of a blue secondary school blazer. Dark curls draped down across his bone-thin face. The first soft downy hairs of a moustache curled around the edge of his lips.
‘We fuckin’ hung-wee, init,’ he barked in a wavering voice that sounded like the recently broken timbre of a pubescent boy. ‘You go’ sum fuckin’ foo or whoh?’
‘Not with us,’ said Jacob, patting himself. ‘Really.’
The boy’s eyes rested on the assault rifle. ‘Cool gun. Gimme tha’.’
Jacob followed his gaze. ‘You want our gun?’
‘Yeh, gimme tha’.’
‘Not fuckin’ having it!’ snapped Nathan.
‘My gun now,’ said the boy. ‘Gimme, a’ you ca’ fu’ off.’
Jacob glanced at Nathan.
‘No fuckin’ way,’ he replied. ‘S’only one we got.’
And there was no guarantee that, on handing it over, the boy wouldn’t want to try it out on them.
The boy took another step forward. ‘Gimme a’ gun so me ca’ hun’ dogs.’
Jacob swallowed. ‘You eat . . . dogs?’
The boy was now only a yard away from them, his eyes on the glinting gun-metal grey. He suddenly made an impulsive lunge towards it, grabbing the end of the rifle’s barrel in both hands. Instinctively Nathan fired. The child’s dirty school blazer fluttered like a sail as he rocked back on his feet, pawing at the jagged wound in his stomach.
‘Oh shit man! I’m . . . s-sorry . . . I’m sor—’ said Nathan.
The other children surged forward, edging around the staggering boy; a forest of pale palms and dirty jagged nails reaching out and clawing at them. Amongst the hands and arms, Nathan thought he saw the glint of several knives.
‘Oh fuck, run, Jay!!’ he screamed.
Jacob turned on his heels, clattering across the stools, tangling with the tables. Nathan fired a second shot into the air just above the children’s heads - they