Kill 'Em All by John Niven

Author:John Niven
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

TWENTY-FOUR

His plan came to him gradually, as it had for Moses – ‘And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.’ Lucius wasn’t sure if had been forty days and forty nights, one way or another – the handfuls of pills, the injections, the endless parade of dark flesh – he’d kind of lost track of time. But there had been several epiphanies that had led up to the confrontation. The first was sexual, some weeks ago. Lucius had been panting, staring at the back of the boy splayed on the bed beneath him. Lucius was kneeling, having just brought forth his seed with all the mighty vengeance of the Lord. He was staring, panting, at the nameless brown back, and the thought had occurred to him – ‘I don’t really like fucking Arab boys.’ And it wasn’t racism – Lucius loved all God’s children – it was something harder to articulate but that might have been boiled down to this: there was no fight. No seduction. Lucius realised that part of what appealed to him was the gradual winning – and the subsequent betraying – of trust.

The second epiphany was directly ego-related. He’d been stretched out on bed, channel-hopping, when something had caught his eye: a fat youth, white, American, crying and talking to an interviewer. The youth was dressed exactly like Lucius had dressed around the period of Outlaw, in the mid-eighties. Black leather with rubber accessories. (Although a good deal more leather and rubber were involved in this kid’s outfit.) The chryo running across the bottom of the screen had read: ‘LUCIUS DU PRE FAN CRAIG SAYS HE’S LIVING IN HELL.’ Lucius never watched the news, the incredible lies they told about him. He’d spent the last few years studiously avoiding all media. But he’d thumbed the volume up in time to hear this Craig saying, ‘I still can’t believe he’s gone. I … I can’t sleep at night. I wake up crying …’ The interviewer’s voice took over as Lucius drew nearer the set, ‘… And it’s not just Craig who’s feeling that way. As the huge outpourings of grief at Du Pre rallies all across the country have shown …’ The image had cut to a sports hall, filled with thousands of kids dressed like him. They were crying, hugging one another, while his music played. ‘Although for some fans,’ the voice had said, ‘like Tracy Mueller, there is still hope …’ It had cut to another fan, a woman, in her early thirties, Lucius guessed, being interviewed in the sports hall. ‘I keep telling people. He’s not gone.’ Someone off camera tried to say something, to argue with her. ‘He’s NOT, he’s not gone. He’s out there. He just had to get away from all this …’ she gestured to the camera, the mike, ‘this whole circus. And he’s going to come back to us and it … it’s going to be so beautiful.

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