They began the dusty road to their new home, wheels creaking first over cobbled stones then uneven ground with the chains constantly rattling. Every so often, the horses would stop with the prisoners given water and the chance to stretch their shackled legs on the savannah.
A man next to Bastian keeled over to the floor of the waggon, his face burnt with sunstroke. The prisoners began to rattle their chains calling for help, and the waggons slowed. Two taskmasters with pistols ready to fire untied the back of the canvas.
They tried to revive the prisoner but he was dead, his commissar cheated by the auctioneer. The body was left for the lions that had been following since mid-day and the commissar made sure everyone watched their feast before moving on.
At nightfall, they approached the gate to the fort, Angole. Several commissars, their faces hidden behind real gorilla masks to appear even more terrifying, were awaiting them and holding burning torches. The waggons rolled inside past the gate house and to the prisoners’ quarters. It was a society within another, a secret one.
Bastian and Jambit collapsed into their bunk beds but at least out of chains. There were no mattresses nor blankets at Angole, it was too hot and they only served to hide pests and parasites. Bastian rolled onto his back to look up at the stars through an open window with the impenetrable forest and hostile desert the only bars needed to keep the prisoners in place.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Bastian and Jambit, or rather prisoners 1079 and 1080, had been enslaved for four weeks and were digging on the chain-gang underneath an old petrol station. They were searching for any last drops of petrol to power the government’s cars, and felt the sun roasting their backs.
Most of the nation’s transport with its flat batteries and empty fuel tanks had been scrapped decades ago, turned into bullets and guns, then sold abroad to the highest bidder by the rusting generation.
Their body fat was being used up, many a prisoner’s ribcage already on show. It was a long march to the deserted town from Angole on the edge of the sprawling rainforest and the road surfaces had long buckled in the heat before the temperature had dropped in recent years to barely survivable.
Bastian had befriended an old prisoner, number 12, who was favoured by the commissars on the plantation for his healthcare knowledge, though he was warned never to share it with the other prisoners. His back was still straight but his arms wizened. His face was like leather with glassy eyes, and his hair grey. He was an old-hand due for retirement.
The taskmasters and trustees were told never to beat 12 and it was an arrangement for which he had been grateful over the years. He had first choice of any leftovers from the kitchens with sweet and sour gorilla and peppered monkey brains his favourites. And whenever possible, he would bring scraps late at night for Bastian, Jambit, and others in the hut. The prisoners preferred the leftover hippo steaks that filled you up for days.
Bastian and Jambit took it in turns to sleep, aware of the hatred some of the prisoners had towards them for their previous police work. And no one was the slightest bit impressed nor interested by tales of Jambit’s subversive artwork.
The first word all new male prisoners understood was an African one hurled in their direction by a commissar or taskmaster: ‘fanyana’. It meant little boy and was used because they were no longer men able to make choices nor defend themselves.
Most prisoners had become docile slaves with instincts of rebellion long gone. Even the sense of injustice had slowly faded away and they accepted their lot for what it was: to work and die for the commissars whilst grateful to be fed and watered. But prisoner 1079 still dreamt of escape.
Sweat soaked their backs as a young man came to give them water. There was a long wooden pole across the top of his shoulders that held a bucket of water on each end. He handed Bastian a wooden ladle full of water.
Bastian spat out the water. ‘It’s hot,’ he cried.
Jambit laughed. ‘Here, fanyana, I’ll have some. Otherwise, I’ll die of heat stroke.’
The boy did as asked and then went to the other prisoners with his clogs slipping on the sand.
‘Wildflower arrived back at the plantation last night,’ whispered Bastian.
The handful of women prisoners were kept in the big house where they cooked and cleaned. And it was rumoured the prettiest amongst them had been taken as girlfriends.
‘He is the worst of the taskmasters,’ said Jambit to Bastian as a camel and its rider wandered towards them.
He was an unfortunate looking man with power over the sub-humans who toiled before him.
‘No talking,’ he shouted, and he lashed out with his whip.
Bastian’s shirt was ripped at the back and his skin torn but he gripped his shovel and carried on digging in the dirt lest he were beaten for a second time. At the end of the working day they threw their tools in the back of a cart and were marched back to Angole ahead of the latest dust storm ready to choke their lungs.
By nightfall, Bastian had a fever and his back was infected with pus oozing out of the cloth bandage made by Jambit. They were outside at the back of the hut, frightened to show the men their defences were down. They slept in bunkbeds that ran the length of the hut with another thirty men. 12 was the headman but unlike others that ruled the prisoner’s quarters with an iron fist, he was fair even though his life was not. In the days of turmoil, he’d been a junior doctor tried in error alongside consultants who profited from
