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ones.’ I don’t know why I agreed. Curiosity I guess. Beck handed it across to me. ‘Pull the legs off first.’ I plucked out the first hairy leg and the others started flickering like mad. It freaked me out and I dropped it. Beck managed to scoop it up before it ran away. He pulled off the five remaining legs, cracked away the hard black shell and snapped off the head. ‘There,’ Beck said, handing it across to me. It looked like a waxy marshmallow. I stuffed the whole thing in my mouth. The insides were still warm,
    and the blood trickled out when I bit into it. I chewed quickly and swallowed, resisting the urge to gag. ‘Good eh?’ Beck said. The white goo was stuck all round my teeth. ‘I suppose you’d get used to it,’ I said. We walked for over an hour, moving slow and quiet; keeping our throats moist with fruit. Beck
    searched the trees for monkeys. He had a small bow and arrow specially for killing them. ‘We just hit monkey central,’ Beck said, pointing up in the trees. There were about twenty monkeys messing in the branches around us. Beck strung out his bow. The first arrow silently hit it’s mark. The monkey crashed through the leaves and thumped the ground. The second monkey managed a dying screech, which made all the others scatter. Beck was annoyed that he’d only got two before the other monkeys noticed. He told me a good hunter can pick 3 or 4 monkeys from the edge of a pack before the others realise what’s going on. Beck recovered the bodies and cut their throats to drain off the blood.
    We headed back to camp. The sack was full of grubs and fruit. Beck had the dripping monkeys tied on a pole over his shoulder. ‘Sami told me you’re useless,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got all this stuff.’ Beck looked a bit offended, ‘Sami doesn’t like me much. I’m not a soldier like she is.’ ‘But you’re providing all this food. Isn’t that as important?’ ‘We don’t need to hunt,’ Beck said. ‘We steal all the food we need on raids and ambushes. I just pick
    up luxury stuff like grubs and monkeys. Everyone would be happier if I was a fighter.’ I laughed, ‘But you’re only 12.’ ‘That’s old enough. They took me on my first raid a year ago. I was supposed to be covering Sami and her brother while they unloaded an army truck. A soldier came up behind them. I hesitated and Sami’s brother got shot in the back.’ ‘How old was Sami’s brother?’ ‘Edo was thirteen. He was my best friend. Captain went crazy. He whipped me until I passed out and
    said I wasn’t to fight again.’ ‘That’s so bad… Does Captain whip people all the time?’ ‘Only if they really deserve it,’ Beck said. ‘It was my fault Edo died. I think I got less than what I
    deserved. Captain’s OK about it now, but Sami still hates me.’ ‘That’s Captain’s fault really though,’ I said ‘Twelve is too young to fight in a war.’ ‘This is a rebel army,’ Beck said. ‘If you’re old enough to carry a gun, you fight.’

7. DEATH
The second night a massive thunderstorm broke just after dark. Don tied me up again. He’d found some nylon cord and pulled it hard so it tore into me. Amo had made me a pillow by sewing an old scrap of cloth and stuffing it with rice. Don grabbed it off me, just for the sake of being mean; so I ended up on the bare earth, listening to the rain and watching blue lightening flashes through the cracks in the walls.
. . .
    Everyone washed in the pool. Waded in with mud on their boots. The little kids peed in it and so did half the local wildlife. Then they drank the water. Over a lifetime you build up resistance to the parasites and bacteria in untreated water, but I’d only ever drank out of a tap; so when the polluted water hit my stomach, my body wasn’t trained to fight the nasties.
    Halfway through the night I started feeling cramps, like my guts were squashed down to a tiny ball. I was afraid to wake Don up, but I’d never needed to crap so badly my