Aggressor

2
The mudslide had demolished the road, leaving little more than a trail of boulders and uprooted trees in its wake. Even if we’d managed to hang on to the Pajero, we couldn’t have gone any further.
I slumped down next to Charlie and fought my way back into my jacket. After my Baywatch experience, the effort of pushing Bastard back up the slope had almost finished me off. He sat a little way away from us. I hoped he might be suffering from a touch of wounded pride, at the very least, but if he was, he wasn’t going to let us see it.
In a completely futile display of defiance against the still-torrential rain, he had fastened all three buttons on his blazer and pulled up the collar. Amazingly, he’d hung on to both his shoes, and apart from a few bruises, seemed little the worse for wear.
‘I’ve no weapon,’ Charlie muttered. ‘You?’
I shook my head. ‘It was a simple choice: the seven-six-two or you. F*ck knows why, but you won out.’
Charlie grinned, but only briefly. ‘Better not hang about, lad. We need to get a move on. Doubt we’ll make the border before tomorrow, in this shit. The road the other side of town won’t be a pretty sight either. So, first stop Borjomi, sort our shit out, hit the local Hertz kiosk, and crack on, eh?’
‘I reckon we’ve done about a hundred and thirty odd K, so it can’t be much more than twenty to tab. Four or five hours maybe, even with you in Hopalong Cassidy mode.’ I got to my feet and grabbed Bastard by the scruff of his neck. ‘I’ll grip him; you just keep that ankle moving.’
Charlie set off and I manhandled Bastard to his feet. Normal service had been resumed; he was complaining about everything in the universe. I didn’t envy him the next few hours though. Charlie and I were soaked, but at least we had a layer of outdoor wear and, more importantly, we had boots. Bastard was going to have to tab in wet loafers, and they weren’t built for it any more than he was. His feet would be blistered to f*ck before we’d gone a thousand metres.
‘Time to get going. We’ve got a little brokering to do, remember?’
Bastard didn’t reply, so I gave him a shove. It was like trying to fast-forward a hippo; he didn’t budge an inch.
‘Time to go, Big Boy.’
‘F*ck you!’ He obviously liked that phrase. It was his default reply.
‘I’m doing you a favour, mate. You’re not going to last five minutes out here on your own in that gear, are you?’
We kept on the road, or what we could see of it. Large cracks had opened across it, and water sluiced through them like they were storm drains. We had to move as fast as we could: not only to get to Borjomi as quickly as possible, but also to keep our drenched bodies warm.
I looked ahead of us. Charlie might have been the cripple, but he was doing a whole lot better than Bastard. His body swung from side to side as he tried to compensate for his swollen ankle, but he’d been in this kind of situation more times than he could count. On a tab, you’ve got to get from A to B, so you just crack on with it. It’s pointless worrying about the weather, your physical condition, or how pissed off you feel. It doesn’t help you make the distance any quicker.
Bastard didn’t get it. I guessed I couldn’t blame him for feeling sorry for himself, but now wasn’t the time or the place. I laid a hand on each of his shoulder blades and pushed.
He was grumbling big-time, but it wasn’t helping him much. Bumping your gums doesn’t get you to where you need to be. The only way you’re going to do that is by putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as you can, and if it’s not fast enough, then someone needs to come behind you with a cattle prod.
It was like being back in the infantry; I had been pushing or pulling flaking bodies since I was a sixteen-year-old boy soldier, trying to keep the slower guys up with the squad. It was all part of the deal. You moved as fast as the slowest man, but you had to make him as fast as you could. You carried his weapon, carried his kit, encouraged him, took the piss out of him – f*cking well slung him over your shoulder and carried him if need be, not that I was in any hurry to try that with Bastard.
We’d been going for about an hour, and covered maybe four or five Ks, when Charlie limped off the road and heaved himself under a low fir tree. He lay back on the grass and stretched out his leg.
Bastard and I closed up on him.
‘Thought I’d better hang around for you two lardasses.’ He took a series of short, painful breaths.
Bastard couldn’t even marshal the strength to move off the road; he just fell to his knees instead, and slid towards Charlie in the mud. It was probably the furthest he’d ever walked in his life, certainly in monsoon conditions and dressed in a blazer and loafers. His head slumped forward, displaying a very nice crocodile-clipshaped bruise.
I left him where he was and went over to the tree.
Charlie was resting the sole of his boot against the trunk, in order to ease his damaged ankle.
I collapsed alongside him. I wasn’t going to ask him if he was OK. If the time approached when he couldn’t take any more, he’d give me plenty of warning.
Charlie grunted. ‘We’d better step up the pace or we’ll be stuck out here all night. If he could tab as energetically as he gobs off, we’d be there by now.’ His face was lit briefly by one of his stupid grins. ‘He’s a bit like you, lad; he can talk the talk, but he certainly can’t walk the walk.’ He liked it so much he shouted a repeat for Bastard’s benefit.
Bastard looked up, but either couldn’t or didn’t want to hear.
I wasn’t looking forward to trying to keep Bastard on the move all night. If he couldn’t shift his arse in daylight, he’d be ten times worse after dark. People like him become uncoordinated; they stumble, they injure themselves.
Bastard looked the part inside a Pod with a coffee machine at his elbow and a wad of tobacco in his hip pocket, but that was about it. He’d boast a good night out, but I didn’t want to have to nurse him through one.
I doubted he’d ever gone more than a couple of hours between doughnuts.
I checked Baby-G, which was still chugging along after its dip in the river. It was 3.27, which meant only about another four hours before dark. At this rate, it wouldn’t be enough.
Charlie moved his foot off the trunk of the tree and onto my shoulder. Bastard watched, and maybe it made him feel even more like Nobby Nomates. He sounded pretty sorry for himself. ‘How much f*cking longer in this goddam shit country, man? How far we gotta go?’
‘What’s the matter, Big Boy?’ Charlie watched him fiddle with his soaking wet loafers. ‘Never been cold, wet and hungry before?’
I broke into a smile. ‘Cold and wet, maybe. Hungry? I don’t think so!’
Charlie almost choked with laughter.
‘You f*cks think we’ll get there before dark?’ Bastard scowled at us as he wiped the rain from his face. ‘I don’t want to be out in this shit all night long, that’s for sure. And don’t even think about leaving me out here. Nothing’s changed. You f*cks can’t get out of here without me. Don’t forget it.’
Charlie grimaced as his foot made contact with the ground again. ‘Don’t fret, Big Boy. We’ll push your fat arse all the way to Turkey if we have to.’
He hobbled off up the road. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it would be contorting with pain with every step.
I’d have offered myself as a crutch, but he would only have f*cked me off. He knew as well as I did that he wasn’t the priority right now, whatever Hazel might think.