Robin Jarvis - Fighting Pax

“Kay!” affirmed Scary and Posh Spice on his right.

“Kay!” chimed in Sporty and Baby on his left.

Lee took a moment to compose himself and crunched his neck muscles a few times. Glancing along the forest path, he reckoned they’d be back in the mountain base before they made it past three trees. What they’d find waiting for them back there, however, was an entirely different matter.

“You’d best be long gone when we get back, old man,” he muttered. “These ladies is burnin’ to shoot something bigger than squirrels.”

Closing his eyes, he tensed and then ran forward. The chains rattled and the four guards ran with him.

After passing at least ten trees, Lee slowed to a stop and took deep breaths as he gazed about, frowning. Why were they still here? What had he done wrong? He didn’t understand it.

The guards looked at one another uncertainly and voiced their confusion.

“I know, I know,” the boy said. “I got me no idea neither. We go again, yeah?”

“Kay!” they said in military unison.

Lee closed his eyes again and concentrated harder than before. He thought of the familiar room, with its monitors, wall mirror and hospital bed. That’s where he was going to find himself this time. No doubt about it.

With a grunt, he ran along the path, leading the eager guards.

When that attempt also failed, followed by a third, fourth and then a fifth, during which they’d held hands, the guards’ keen anticipation had gone and they had reverted to shouting at him angrily.

“We should be gone by now!” Lee declared, holding his hands up. “We should be back in that dump you call home. This is not my fault.”

Posh Spice had run out of patience and he turned his rifle on the boy, prodding him in the stomach to get this most basic threat across in no uncertain terms.

“Hey!” Lee yelled. “You do somethin’ crazy an’ there’s no way you’re gonna get back, stupid.”

The others seemed to agree with him and they shouted at Posh in Korean, pushing the barrel of the Kalashnikov away.

Posh railed back at them and Lee let them bawl at each other. He tried to work out what he was doing differently. There’d never been any trouble getting back to the real world. He had flitted in and out of this twisted place at will. Mind you, he’d never had to take four adults with him, but there hadn’t been a problem bringing them here in the first place.

“Yeah, but that weren’t down to me,” he told himself. “I was dragged here, like when I brought Spencer and Maggie back in the camp. Maybe I got me a two-person max limit?”

“Hey, ladies,” he called, interrupting their argument. “Let’s try this again, but different this time. Just two of you come with me. I’ll bounce straight back for the others, yeah?”

He tried to show them this new idea by pretending to remove one of the cuffs from his wrists and leaving with just two guards. The four men scowled at him, perplexed, as he repeated the actions again and again. It was Scary who grasped his meaning first and he rapidly explained it to the other three. The proposal was not met with joyous approval and they shouted at Lee louder than before. None of them wanted to be left here, even for a short while.

“Then we is stuck!” he told them fiercely. “I can’t think of no other way.”

Lee kicked the top off a toadstool that was growing at the side of the path. Perhaps he was just too damn tired. Maybe, if he gave it a bit more time, his mojo, or whatever it was that made him the Castle Creeper, would be back to full strength and there’d be no problem. He hoped that’s all it was.

“Listen up,” he announced. “We need a time out. I gotta park and recharge.”

But the guards wouldn’t let him sit down. They had got it into their heads that the only way to get home was to keep moving and he couldn’t make them understand that wasn’t how it worked. They were determined to march down the track and see where it led to. Chained to them the way he was, there was nothing Lee could do except be pulled along.

“This won’t get you no place,” he objected, trudging along unwillingly, “’cept mebbe dead. This neighbourhood is full of monsters you never dreamed of. We’re gonna end up toasted if you don’t stop – right now!”

They refused to listen. He had had his chance and failed. Seeking refuge in the familiar, they started singing ‘No Motherland Without You’, the signature song of Kim Jong-il, at the top of their voices in Korean.

“ You pushed away the severe storm.

You made us believe, General Kim Jong-il.

We cannot live without you.

Our country cannot exist without you! ”

They marched as if they were on parade and Lee groaned. He hadn’t realised just how accurate he had been, referring to this place as a messed-up Oz. Here they were, prancing through the forest, singing and looking for a way home. All they lacked was a yellow brick road. Even their number tallied with the characters in that old movie.

“As long as I’m the dog,” the boy grumbled. “No way am I one of them other suckers. Woah, am I glad no one I know can see me right now.”

When the guards had finished that song, they began another. It bolstered their confidence in this strange place, but Lee’s unease mounted. Whatever lived in this wooded corner of Mooncaster was more than aware of their presence. He was sure they were being watched, but by what?

The third stirring, patriotic song came to an end. The North Koreans were in a better humour and they debated what to sing next. Scary Spice turned to Lee and invited him to start one, signalling that they would join in. The boy shook his head in disbelief.

“You yankin’ me?” he cried. “Ain’t no way…”

Then, in spite of their predicament, or maybe because of it, he was struck by a sudden notion and a slow, mischievous grin spread across his face. He wondered if he could remember the words…

Presently he was leading the guards in an excruciating, out-of-tune rendition of the old Spice Girls song, ‘Wannabe’.

“You wann be ma lovah, you got get wi’ ma frenn,” the guards sang heroically, repeating what he had taught them, but not understanding any of the words. “I wann-ah, I wann-ah, I really really really wann-ah zig ah zig hah!”

Lee was in creases. He couldn’t believe he had got them to do it. It was so surreal and he wished Maggie had been able to share this; she would have got such a kick out of it, seeing them march in their uniforms, mangling those lyrics. No one would ever take his word for it. But then he probably would never see any of the other refugees again. For all he knew, they might be dead by now. Gerald’s pathetic escape plan never had a chance.

“Hell,” he hissed, pushing that thought away and returning his attention to the guards. “This makes me Geri, don’t it? Man, that blows!”

The meandering path gradually began to take a steady downward course as the land dipped into a valley. Lee guessed they were skirting round one of the thirteen hills, but he was completely lost. Along the edge of the track, the toadstools now grew in dense clusters. They were large and ugly, with greyish-brown, leathery caps, dotted with pale spots, and, as the terrain sank lower, the toadstools grew taller.

A glimmer of recognition sparked in the back of Lee’s mind. He was sure he had read about this in Austerly Fellows’ book. This exact place was mentioned – but he couldn’t recall why or what happened here.

“Where is you when I needs you, Sheriff Woody?” he muttered, knowing that Spencer would have remembered without hesitation. Geeks really had their uses. But Spencer was probably lying face down on the mountainside back in the real world, his body peppered with bullet holes. Lee ground his teeth together. There was nothing he could have done to stop that. He just had to keep focused on what he wanted.