Matt Eaton - Blank

The morning light streamed in through the lounge room windows and painted Luckman’s kitchen in a brilliant yellow-white glow. He threw a handful of beans into a grinder as the water boiled. The fresh air and the smell of coffee was a potent combination. He realised he felt happy. Strange how the emotion always crept up so timidly, like a small bird searching for a crumb. He pretended not to notice so as not to scare the feeling away. But then he looked at her. What had he been thinking, bringing her here? In truth he knew exactly what he’d been thinking, but after their visitor this morning he knew he couldn’t guarantee her safety in this camp when he was spending so much time away from it. She would be the only woman in a camp of scared and horny men. Seamus and the surfers wouldn’t be able to protect her when Naughton or any of the other soldiers decided that no meant yes.

She would be far safer with other civilians at Amberley.

“OK then, when do we leave?” she asked him.

He grinned, shaking his head. “You’re gonna take some getting used to.”

She tapped his cheek. “Honey, you’ll never get used to me.”

“What’s gonna happen to Bill?” asked Seamus.

“Who’s Bill?”

“Blanky Bill.”

“I’ll take Bill to Amberley,” said Luckman. “I need you here to help Sergeant Naughton get this place into shape. But you’ll have to let him think he’s in charge.”

Under martial law, Naughton had absolute power while Luckman was away from the camp, and he considered Seamus a lazy stoner and a waste of space. But the Irishman was popular among the gaggle of civilian campers, making him enough of a moderating influence to keep Naughton from turning into a ruthless dictator.

Eddie Bell brought the chopper in low over the runway at Amberley, taking care to keep his distance from the Blanks enclosure. It was breakfast time and the last thing the carers needed at this point was a helicopter scaring the poor bastards into a frenzy.

Blanky Bill lay unconscious on the floor of the Black Hawk. Mel had been holding his hand for the entire journey. He showed no signs of stirring – Luckman had injected him with more sedative just to make sure. He didn’t want the lad snapping to attention before they got him in the cage.

Once the chopper was on the ground, Luckman and Bell each grabbed one of Bill’s arms and threw him over their shoulders. Mel grabbed his feet and they eased him out of the helicopter and onto the tarmac.

“He really stinks,” Bell complained.

“They’ll get him cleaned up. There’s a crew of people who look after the Blanks,” he added for Mel’s benefit.

“Army gets all the good jobs, eh?” said Mel.

“These guys are civilians. They show the Blanks how to use the toilets, how to wash, although a lot of them quite like being hosed off.”

“Just like an old people’s home,” quipped Bell, “except everyone’s half naked.”

The enclosure was large and ugly enough that it bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a detention camp, providing asylum in the old institutional sense. A place to confine the mentally ill.

Two armed soldiers stood guard over the gate to the enclosure, which was large enough to allow heavy vehicles inside. One of them nodded to Luckman as he swung open a small meshed metal door cut into the main entry gate.

Every man, woman and child inside the enclosure was naked from the waist down. Luckman found himself amused by Mel’s wide-eyed amazement.

“It’s for hygiene purposes,” he said. “They don’t know what clothes are for. The shirts are what they arrived in, but pants just get fouled.”

No-one took any notice of them because the food truck was about 50 metres away, slopping out gruel into small metal plates. These were being calmly received by Blanks who, to Mel’s amazement, had formed into lines and were waiting their turn.

“Wow look at that, they’re queuing,” she said.

“The first sign of civilisation,” said Luckman.

But it was really more like an animal enclosure. There was faeces all over the ground and barely anything left alive other than the Blanks themselves. Trees were devoid of leaves. Saplings were bare twigs. Every blade of grass had been torn from the earth.

A member of the food crew (they were the ones with pants on) spotted them approaching and headed over. He was a civilian, maybe mid-30s, bearded. Dirty. He smiled shyly as he caught sight of Mel. She guessed women were in short supply here. It made her wonder about the Blanks, and how many of them were being used for sex by the men cunning enough to press their advantage. As far as she could see, there were no soldiers anywhere inside the enclosure.

“Hi Tom.”

“Hello, Mr Luckman. New arrival, eh?”

“Not me, I’m just visiting,” Mel replied with a smirk, sticking out her hand to introduce herself.

“This one’s sedated,” Luckman explained, indicating Bill. “He was ultra-aggressive this morning. Mel here calmed him down.”

“Yes, all the young ones like a pretty girl,” Tom replied.

The compliment made her blush, mostly because she could imagine what happened inside this monkey cage at night. If instinct was all that ruled these poor creatures it must surely become a bit of a fuck-fest. Indeed, looking around, it wasn’t hard to see genitalia was a popular distraction for many of the Blanks scattered in groups about the fence line. Especially the males.

She shifted her gaze from one group to another. There appeared to be some sort of hierarchy at work to do with age, with many young females gathered around older males. There was touching, hugging, the occasional bout of mutual masturbation – all performed with no inhibition of any sort. They pissed and defecated at will, even as they rubbed and sniffed at each other’s crotches in ways so matter-of-fact as to suggest there was nothing untoward or anti-social about it. Precisely the opposite, in fact.

“Wow, this one’s on the nose isn’t he?” said Tom, referring to Blanky Bill. “We better get him into the showers.”

“Why are all the trees stripped bare?” asked Mel.

“They eat whatever they can chew,” Tom told her.

“Except their own poop,” Luckman added.

She frowned at him. “You had to go there. Not enough scatological abandon in here for you already?”

“They were doing that when they first came in,” said Tom. “Poop-eating, I mean. It’s not unusual among wild creatures. Trouble is, our bodies aren’t built to cope with it. The more determined poop eaters quickly got sick and died. The others learned it wasn’t such a good idea.”

“No shit,” Luckman added. She poked him in the ribs. In his haste to pull away from her jab he lost balance and Bill almost hit the ground like a sack of spuds.

“Watch it,” she told him.

“That was your fault,” Luckman objected.

“How did you persuade them to queue up for food?” Bell asked.

“I’m a teacher – and I’ve never seen anything like the learning capacity these guys have. They are literally yearning for knowledge. Like babies. Some of them are already starting to speak again.”

“How about teaching them to use a toilet?” Luckman suggested.

“Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey,” said Tom. “Our biggest problem is there aren’t enough of us to teach them.”

“Have you noticed any of them remembering anything about themselves?” Mel asked.

“Not so far. But they do exhibit certain innate tendencies that differentiate one from the other – in the same way that brothers and sisters display different behaviours and emotions from an early age.”

“How many of the women are pregnant?” Mel asked him.