James Smythe - The Testimony

I’d never seen an actual fight before. In the movies it’s all speed and repetition, thumping a face over and over, but in real life it’s much slower. After just two or three punches and some things that looked like kicks but didn’t connect both of them were slower, panting, but Jacques was clearly winning (if it could be called that). I wondered if I shouldn’t be cheering him on, you know? Eventually he just stopped, left the fat drunk on the floor. You’re not worth it, Jacques said, and he spat on the man, this big ball of blood. He had lost a tooth, and his mouth sounded mushy when he talked. No cabs stopped, probably because of the blood, so we waited for a bus back. We sat on the back seats and I put antibacterial gel on his cuts, kept them clean.

When we got back to his place he took a shower, and I watched him through the open door with his head tilted back, mouth hanging open, the water running in and then dribbling out again, red from his gums. When he got out he told me how bad it was. I’ve lost some teeth, he said. How many? I don’t know, a few. Three or four. I’ll go and see the dentist tomorrow. On the television there was a drama about The Broadcast , the fastest that I had ever seen a programme made, about this man who was doubting God and then heard it and then turned his life around, stopped him from killing himself. It was awful, but it said Based On A True Story at the start, and I thought, Jesus, isn’t everything, almost? In bed, Jacques kissed me and I forgot about the holes in his mouth, and I suddenly got that metal taste on my tongue, so I told him that I was tired and that I had to go to sleep. I just lay there feeling sick, because all I could taste was his blood.

Andrew Brubaker, White House Chief of Staff, Washington, DC

I woke up to the news that we’d had another warning; that there was a school right here in DC with a bomb planted. We hadn’t closed schools, because they were off limits, as far as we were concerned. It wasn’t a game, exactly, but there were rules with this sort of thing.

I mean, Jesus Christ. Who fucking blows up a school? Who thinks that’s fair ?

Samantha Neumark, primary school teacher, Washington, DC

Only half the class was in, because the kids’ parents were so worried about possibilities, or they had the days off themselves. Lots of people couldn’t get to work when the trains stopped running, and I think they liked the excuse, so they kept their kids at home. I lived five minutes away, and that was walking, so I didn’t have any excuse, and a lot of the kids were just as local. We were concentrating on reading, working through a book together, all these fairy tales but updated to be about more modern concerns, so Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a bottle of water from the shop there, that kind of thing. We were reading that together, slowly, so we picked that up where we left off. I didn’t notice the extra car in the lot, because nobody would ever notice that sort of thing, even though afterward, the police insisted that I would have seen it as I walked in. I didn’t notice it, it was a car, parked with fifteen, twenty others. We were halfway through the class, and Jennifer Pritchard was reading, and I was about to pass the reading over to Jon Bayliss when the building shook. I remember that I went under my desk as fast as I could, because I grew up in California, and we were quake-trained. We knew, the room shakes, you get under a table or in the frame of a doorway, just do it. I didn’t even think. When I was under I shouted out to the kids to do the same, because by that point I couldn’t even stick my head up to see what was happening; the digi-board had fallen down on top of my desk, and I could hear windows smashing, and children screaming, and I couldn’t do anything. Even when the shaking stopped I could hear the screaming still, and everything got hot, and I knew that we were on fire somewhere, probably the hallway. Shout to me, I screamed, tell me if you’re hurt or alright, but all I got back was screaming.

My classroom was the other end of the building to the lot, so we got off the best, or the least-bad, that’s a better way to put it. I managed to kick the board away after a few minutes, because I knew that if I didn’t I could die there, when the flames hit the desk. I didn’t stop to look at the bodies in my room. There weren’t as many as there had been kids, so I assumed that some of them made it out, but there were a few. I didn’t stop. Is that awful? I think that I knew they were dead already, and I wanted to get out. Is that awful?

The exit was next to my classroom, out the back, onto the playground, and the rest of the kids from the school were there on the grass at the back, lying on their backs, some of them coughing, some of them completely still. I knew that I should go over and help them but I couldn’t; I sat on a bench at the side and coughed and cried until the paramedics asked if I was alright. I told them that I wasn’t, so they took me to their ambulance out the side, on the road, away from all those kids. Is that awful? I just couldn’t stand to be there with them.

Andrew Brubaker, White House Chief of Staff, Washington, DC

The official response was that a terror cell, fuelled by hatred, had decided to take out their anger on our country. We didn’t sell it as a retaliation for what we had done, because we had attacked their training camps, and we knew that there was a chance that those camps had kids in them, had mothers, whole families. They’re not civilian areas, they’re training camps; we didn’t bomb cities or villages or hospitals or schools. There’s always a chance that people will be in them that you wouldn’t want to kill, but they’re training camps, and you just have to live with that chance. But we didn’t do anything to their families and children on purpose, and they did. Stuff like that? It really helps you to reinforce that you know what side you’re on. We decided that we weren’t going to sit around and wait for it to come to us; we weren’t going to let them make another strike.

It was like a new motto: We’re America, and you really shouldn’t fuck with us.

Dominick Volker, drug dealer, Johannesburg

One of the prats who works for me turned up at the house. He rang the doorbell, so I asked on the intercom who it was, he said, It’s Mick, so I let him in. He was a student, bit of a stropper, but better than some of the tsotsis I worked with from the rougher bits of the city. I knew he wouldn’t be there to cause me any grief, at least. What’s the problem? I asked him over the intercom. (I was only half-listening because of the news, with the kiddie school being bombed.) There’s a fucking riot, he said, over in Yeoville. Alright, I said, I’m coming, I’ll drive us. He looked a fucking state. I hadn’t seen him in weeks, and he was using, I could tell. He had to make a payment soon, and I knew as soon as I saw him he wasn’t going to make it, so I thought, what a fucking prat for coming to see me. We got into my car, because it was a trek to Yeoville, and we were in the seats when he suddenly pulled a gun out, stuck it in my belly. Right, he said, where do you keep your supply? Ha ha! I laughed at him. Nê? This is really how you want to play this? You want to have a stick-up, right? I mean, I could tell he wasn’t going to hold it on, because he was sweating, kept glancing over my shoulder. You can drive us there, he said, and I said, don’t be so fucking stupid. I said drive! he shouted, so I did. Alright, you’re the boss, I said. You’re the boss, boss.

I drove around the block a few times, and he didn’t even seem to realize, then when we came to some robots I drove slowly until they went red, pulled up and waited. I grabbed his head, slammed it down onto the dashboard, punched him in the nose two or three times, until I saw blood, grabbed his gun, held it into his gut and pulled the trigger. It sounded like a car exhaust, you know? And there was never crime where we lived – as I said, it was a nice area. There, you motherfucker, I said, there’s your fucking stash. Hope you fucking rot. I opened his door and pushed him out, leaving him in the road. It was quiet, nobody saw me. When I got home I looked on the news to see if there really was something happening in Yeoville or not, but they didn’t say anything, and they didn’t mention that kont dealer, because nobody would have given even half a shit about him. My old lady asked what had happened, so I told her that he was just confused, wanted some advice on something. She didn’t care; she was just being polite, I reckon.