Andrew Dawson - MiG-23 Broke my Heart

‘It’s settled then,’ Skeletor boomed, as though some unspoken agreement had been reached. ‘We camp here tonight and leave at first light.’ He moved on, passing Maxwell and the front of the truck. Once under the branches of the tree, he turned and pointed a finger back at Maxwell. ‘But in future, you tell me if you have a problem. Let me deal with it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘If we all just remember our places, we’ll be fine.’

With Thomas watching from the bonnet, massaging his ribs, and Skeletor supervising from the vantage point of an exposed root, Maxwell went to work setting up camp. He dragged a groundsheet and pup tent from the back of the truck and set them up, hammering pegs into the hard ground and manipulating guy ropes with casual ease. Then he dug a fire pit in front of the headlights, filled it with kindling collected from under the tree and began surrounding the hole with a wall of rocks.

Thomas didn’t understand it. They shared a city, a love of music, and would no doubt find out that they plenty more in common. If it wasn’t for Maxwell’s prejudices they would have been friends already.

‘Surfer boy!’ Skeletor shouted from under the tree. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get some food on.’

Thomas hauled his aching body up and wandered to the back of the truck. Leaning over the metal gate into the clutter of equipment, he searched for the familiar shapes of rat packs but found only a cardboard box filled with a collection of smaller boxes and tins. All the containers had their labels peeled off, doubtless so that none of it could be traced back to factories in South Africa. But this system made it difficult for him to know exactly what food he was dealing with. He held up a silver tin, shook it and tried to work out what was inside.

‘That is fruit salad.’ Maxwell pushed him aside, picked out a silver sachet and shook it. ‘We need protein.’

Over a fire kept low to avoid attracting the attention of scavengers or terrorists, or both, Maxwell placed a scratched, blackened pot. After bringing water to boil, he stirred in the contents of the yellow sachet, which turned into scrambled eggs, or at least the army’s version of scrambled eggs: a sloppy mess that looked like wallpaper glue and would probably taste like it too.