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The school playground was huge and filled with young children. Twelve-year-old Dickie Dilley, crouched behind a thorn hedge, surveyed it from his vantage point at its furthest end. He was waiting patiently for his best friend, Craig Dwyer. He couldn’t see him. He turned away and lay down on the rough, dry grass and closed his eyes. He tried to shut out the noise of the children. He liked to dream of the future, when he would be old enough to be his own person, in control of his life, and able to do all he desired. He was going to be a decision-maker, not a prissy little suburban nerd like his father. His favourite wish was that his youth was over. A close second was a lush crop of hair around his penis. A smile flickered over his angelic face. Behind him childish screams and shrieks of laughter disturbed his deep concentration. He opened his eyes and gazed directly up at the harsh sun, a burst yolk staining the colourless sky. It dripped hot pinpoints into his eyes. A whole magnificent world was waiting for him out there and it excited him for he knew exactly what he was going to be. A bank robber. The super slickest robber dude anybody ever did see.
He turned his face away and sat up, rubbing the heat from his eyes. Squatting on his haunches as if he was about to relieve his bowels he peered through the gap again. His eyes scanned the moving bodies intently and then he picked out his pal, talking to Fat Boyce, near the middle of the field. He sighed and turned around sitting with his back to the school, his hands stuffed into his beige shorts, his legs stretched out in front of him crossed at the ankles. What the shit was he doing with that faggot?
From where he was sitting, just inside the school boundary, he had a wonderful view of the sea only two or so kilometres away. Way to his right, a collection of massive tankers were waiting to gain entry into Durban harbour. The sprawling and exclusive neighbourhoods of Virginia below him, with its private airfield directly ahead, at the edge of the Indian Ocean, and Glenashley, where his home was, to the left, inland, nestling amongst low hills.
Dickie Dilley was an habitual planner, already he had his life organised before him to a large extent. He wanted the sole Goddam right to do whatever he wanted, at any time. Early on, he had realised, money would help him achieve that. He loathed the authority around him, the constant orders, the oppressively restricting regime of school, of homework, of... the entire bloody suffocating system. His schoolwork was below average, his attitude delinquent and rebellious. He had heard it said by a teacher conspiring with another thickhead teacher that he should be in a special school, one of those places for slow dummies.
He pulled his hands out of his pockets and began kicking a clump of grass with the heel of his right shoe. The classrooms stank of body odour, stale sandwiches and toejam. His entire brain crawled with a controlled hatred every time he stepped into one. He would bide his time, his life would begin in earnest from the age of eighteen when he would be legally free. He would never let himself be hurt by the processing system of ordered life around him. He longed, however, to damage it. Man had hardly any freedom of choice it seemed. You had to conform: if you didn’t conform to the rules of society, you were an outcast. So be it, he would be an outcast, but, he would be free. For the moment he let his young mind soar. He knew he was more intelligent than those around him, he knew it, and that was all that mattered. Sod the lot of them.
“Come on, Craig,” he muttered aloud to himself. “Hurry up.” There was a new girl at school, a red head. She was quite attractive and she was going to be his neighbour. He had seen her a few days before moving with her parents into the house opposite his in Glenashley. Craig lived next door to him and knew people had moved in but he hadn’t seen the girl. She had a cute, elfin-like face with a trim little body. He wanted to show Craig this girl with her long, sparkling red hair.
“Hurry up, Craig!” he sighed, again.
Suddenly there was loud shouting behind him. He turned and peered through the hole in the hedge. A clutch of children were screaming encouragement to two boys fighting on the ground, a cloud of dust hung over them, Fat Boyce and Craig Dywer. Dickie watched intently for a long moment. It seemed Fat Boyce had him in an arm lock around the neck. Craig was struggling to free himself with his hands and kicking back with his legs.
Dickie crawled through the opening and began loping slowly towards the group. If Fat Boyce still had the advantage when he reached them he was going to clobber the bugger on the snout.
As he neared them, he noticed other children converging from all sides to see what all the fuss was about. Adrenalin gushed through him. Oh, boy! He was going to let Fatty Boyce have it. He had to make it really hurt for the boy was large and would easily squash the crap out of him if they became involved in a wrestling match. He had learnt from earlier situations, hit first, hit hard, hit straight, and don’t bother talking about it afterwards. Only worms talked to teachers, those soggy brained, dry featured people who couldn’t make it in the big bad real world.
A yard away Fat Boyce was in the perfect position. His podgy, cellulite encased face was tilted up, his piggy eyes wide, gloating as he looked at the other children coaxing him on, his left hand clasping his right, the arm securely clamped around Craig’s neck, who had stopped struggling.
Dickie came in quickly, determined, his right hand bunched in a tight fist, cocked behind his shoulder. He aimed at the fleshy upper part of Fat Boyce’s exposed cheek. It connected solidly, all his weight behind it. Fat Boyce’s head snapped back, blood spraying from a neat split below his eye, his arm involuntary releasing its stranglehold as he fell backwards. Craig scrambled to his feet breathing raggedly; he looked at Dickie and then at Fat Boyce. The boy was dazed, staring at the blood dripping onto his shorts, his eyes unfocused. He started to cry.
Dickie stared down at him and immediately felt sorry he had punched him. He should have just told him to get off his friend. The break duty teacher would be here shortly to see what the commotion was all about. Best not to be here, he thought. Best to be out of the way.
He touched Craig on the wrist.
“Let’s go, bud.”
They turned together and ran off in the direction of the school tennis courts. They would hide behind the practice wall, a favourite quiet spot, and discuss the kak that was undoubtedly going to descend upon their heads.
A few yards from them Dickie suddenly stopped and stood still. Craig came up beside him.
“What now?” he enquired.
On the bottom step of a sports viewing stand was the girl - on her own and staring at them.
Dickie turned to Craig.
“See that girl over there, she’s moved into the vacant house over the road from us.”
Craig peered at her.
“She looks okay, hey?”
Dickie nodded confirming his friend’s judgement.
“Yeah, let’s go talk to her.”
“Okay.”
They jogged over and stopped in front of her laughing together, nervously.
“Hi.” Dickie promptly sat down beside her. Craig followed suit perching on the bench on the other side of her. She looked from one to the other.
“I’m Dickie,” Dickie beamed.
Craig chuckled.
“And I’m Craig.” He wriggled wildly on his seat.
The girl sat back on the bench to get a better view of them both. She smiled openly creating little dimples in her cheeks. “My name’s Gayle.”
They grinned at each other, silent for a moment.
“Hey!” Dickie suddenly sprang up off his seat. Putting one foot on the bottom step he rested his elbow on his knee and supported his chin in his cupped hand. He gazed at Gayle.
“Let’s, get out of here, bunk school for the rest of the day. I’ve got money. We could go grab a milkshake and chips. It’ll be fun. Wadda you say?” His eyebrows lifted like two earthworms reaching for food.
Craig leapt off his own seat at this suggestion. He appealed to Gayle, his eyes wide, his cheerful face infectious.
“Say you will. We can go down to the airfield and watch the aeroplanes taking off and landing.” Gayle laughed lightly.
“You boys are silly, the teachers would stop us as we walked out of the gates.”
“Aah,” Dickie’s voice was conspiratorial, serious. He leaned forward in the same position, bending his knee, until his nose was almost touching Gayle’s. He could smell her light fragrance. She didn’t move. His voice was almost a whisper.
“We will have to escape; are you brave enough to do that?” Gayle wriggled a little on her seat but didn’t move away from Dickie, she wasn’t scared of him. He looked like a squirrel, his nose twitching as he spoke, his cheeks puffed out. She wanted to giggle.
“Sure, but how? And my bag is in the classroom, I’m not going to go without it.”
Dickie hurriedly sat back down again next to her, Craig did the same.
“You’ll come with us?” Dickie asked, incredulous. He’d been teasing her.
“I’ve just said so, haven’t I? You’re not deaf, are you?” She glowed back at them. If she’d said no, they would have laughed at her and walked away, and she didn’t want that, she didn’t have any friends. The girls she had met at this new school were all snobs. She didn’t like any of them. Craig and Dickie seemed like nice boys. She had seen how that horrible fat lout had been hurting Craig, and how Dickie had helped his friend. The fat boy deserved what he got. She had also seen how the fight had started. Fatso had clipped a smaller boy around the ear for not passing a soccer ball to him. Craig had come to the small boy’s aid. He was very cute, a clump of hair hung over his forehead and he had the chubbiest cheeks she had ever seen, babies’ cheeks. It was a cheeky face and likeable. Dickie was altogether sharper of features, high cheekbones, an Italian nose, streamlined, like that of a fighter jet, with lovely blue eyes. He seemed to smile a lot. First impressions were important. These boys impressed her with their looks and carefree attitude. They were very different in their dress although they wore the same uniform. Dickie’s clothes were perfectly pressed, his shirt tucked into his pants properly, his socks pulled up to his knees, his tie neat. He stood like a little soldier, back straight, head back. Craig looked like a hooligan. He hadn’t bothered to tuck his shirt back in after his scuffle with the fat kid. His socks were purposely rolled down around his ankles. He looked a little wild and she liked that too. She would go with them.
“We can go down the bank at the back of the tennis courts, climb over the wall there, it’s easy,” Craig splurted out.
“Yeah, it’s easy,” Dickie continued. “We walk up to the classrooms, collect our bags - no one’s up there, no one will see us - zip through the maintenance compound, and then hop over the wall.”
Gayle hesitated. “That wall’s very big, I don’t think we’ll be able to climb it.”
Craig and Dickie grinned at her.
“We’ve climbed it many times, it’s a cinch,” Craig scoffed. He stood. “Come, let’s go.”
Gayle looked doubtful. “You sure?”
Dickie patted her softly on the shoulder. He had been wanting to touch her ever since he had first seen her. She felt firm like an almost ripe avocado pear.
“Trust us, girl, have no fear when Dickie and Craig are near.”
“Okay?” Craig cocked an eyebrow.
Gayle smiled.
“Okay, let’s go,” she tossed her head back. “You guy’s are paying. Don’t forget that!”
“I’ll get you the best chips you’ve ever tasted,” Dickie promised, his eyes gleaming with triumph. He would treat this girl with great care, she had guts.
No students or teachers were in the vicinity of the classrooms. Collecting their school bags they walked casually through the maintenance block, across a small area of waste ground, to the rear of the tennis courts. From here they were protected from being discovered by an eight-foot high practice wall which ran the length of the fourteen courts. There was approximately a metre of level ground before it dropped away severely about twenty feet to a huge concrete wall at the bottom, which marked the boundary of the school’s property.
Dickie flung his carry-bag down the grassy slope then turned mischievously to Gayle and Craig.
“Watch this, you guys,” he cried, jumping after it. He skidded down the bank on his bum, rolling over onto his left side near the bottom to slow himself, only just stopping in time from slamming into the wall.
“You’re crazy,” Gayle called softly down to him. “Look what you’ve done to your shirt and pants, there’s grass stains on them. Your mother’s going to kill you.”
Dickie chuckled. “Don’t be such a granny, Gayle. Hurry up, are you two coming down, or what?”
Craig saw his opportunity and took hold of Gayle’s hand.
“Let me help you.”
Together they sidled down while Dickie looked on. He was impressed, she hadn’t even hesitated, this girl was cool. Reaching the bottom Craig continued to hold her hand and she let him. His heart was thumping wildly, his face flushed. Already he considered Gayle to be his girlfriend.
“Well, clever Dick, how do we get over this wall then? It’s double your size,” she asked.
“Easy peezy, watch. Craig, let go her hand will you, and bend over.”
Dickie clawed up onto Craig’s back then, balancing carefully, hoisted himself up onto the top of the wall. He sat there, facing the length of the wall, a leg dangling over either side. He helped Gayle up, then eased her over the other side, his penis stick-hard in his shorts. He did the same with their bags and Craig, then jumped down after them himself. They were free.

****

Five years later, a mere seven months before he would become of legal age, an event tragically affected Dickie Dilley’s life. Due to the horrendous numbers of humans now inhabiting the earth, the world’s governments had been forced to take extreme measures to reduce the numbers of new-borns. The elderly - the vast majority - were living well into their 130's, their lives sustained by all manner of medicines. The law forbidding any woman to give birth was strictly upheld.
China had led the way, its multitudes of people literally swamping the country, crippling its internal structures, health, transportation, depleting water and food resources. India followed, seemingly overnight the country fell into chaotic crisis. Other countries watched and tried to learn, quickly, by the measures that were put in place to control the rising human tide. It was too late for preventive forward planning. The media roared flaming the panic debate on methods that could be implemented to curb the world’s teeming populations, for it was not a problem faced by a few individual countries, this was a global issue. Nor had the thinkers of the day taken into account or foreseen the effect a cure for AIDS would have. After a cure vaccine was discovered, the world literally went on a fucking spree. The inherent keenness of human nature, in this era of absolute sexual openness, to fulfil oneself to the hilt, to openly enjoy sex with whomsoever was desirable and available at the time, subdued and controlled by the fear of the disease for so long, opened the floodgates and powered like the AIDS virus itself had through the masses. It was a critical factor in forcing the freethinking governments of the day to implement such drastic measures. The Treaty of Kashmir was urgently convened and readily agreed to by every Sector and State. The agreement provided for such draconian laws as imprisonment for any woman delivering a child and the termination of such progeny. Police powers to arrest and invade private homes were amended accordingly. Secret government departments sprung up like rose bushes, intent on spying and prying. Neighbour observed neighbour. Humans were out to preserve themselves.
Dickie Dilley’s sister, Katie, at age fifteen, gave birth to a healthy baby boy in her own bedroom. She had refused to have an abortion. Her parents, although frightened of the consequences, agreed. They weren’t murderers, she wasn’t a murderess, and the State was not going to turn them into such in the eyes of God. It was her baby. She would have it. She had the support of her family. They would raise and educate it, together, at home, hiding it from the outside world.
Four months into baby Carradine’s life, the authorities came and knocked on his grandparents’ front door. How they found out Dickie had never been able to determine. The night was scarred on Dickie’s mind.
The six of them came prepared for resistance. Dickie’s mother opened the door. They demanded to know if there was a baby in the house. She lied, saying they had the wrong house. They didn’t believe her. Their insistent shouting brought Dickie and his father into the hallway. His father was just in time to witness one of the troopers punch his wife in the face. Then they stormed in. His father, incensed at what was happening, attacked them screaming. Briefly, for that one moment, Dickie felt a certain pride in his father. He was then quickly beaten to the floor and left unconscious in a pool of blood. Dickie ran up the stairs to his sister’s bedroom, where she had been woken by the noise. Managing to lock the door he huddled on the bed with her, clutching each other out of absolute fear. The baby began to cry loudly in his crib next to them. The door was bashed in within seconds and all six of them were in the room, their faces cold, set. Two of them had their guns out covering the others as they entered. On surveying the scene the guns were put away and batons unclipped from their belts. They didn’t ask for the child again. One demand was enough. They approached, sticks raised. Dickie thought they were going to kill him. The batons seemed to rain down on him, smashing his nose, breaking ribs. His left arm, protectively held over his face against the onslaught, was broken in six places. His shoulder was dislocated and his left femur received a greenstick fracture. Hunched on the bed, pain knifing through his body, he squinted through swollen, bloody eyes and watched them take his sister and her baby.
The baby was euthanised at a local hospital the same day. His sister was sent to prison for five years, and given a hysterectomy in the first week. Three months later she bled to death in her cell having cut her wrists. Two days later Dickie’s parents, holding hands, jumped off a skyscraper in downtown Durban.

****

The air conditioners hummed and the bank of computers kept pace in the brightly lit command centre. The three operators heard him coming, his feet thudding on the steps of the steel spiral staircase behind them. Dickie Dilley jumped down from the last three steps and strode to a position just behind their grey, high back chairs.
“How are things, guys?” He received two grunts and a shrug back.
Dickie sipped the coffee he had brought down with him. Things seemed to be busy. He liked that. Rudy, Trevor and Calvin continued to tap importantly at their keyboards. Dickie studied them, as he did everything. They had started with Rudy, an unemployed high voltage cable layer - the senior of the ‘Basement Boys’ - a perpetually smiling, unruly haired fellow with a large mole on his upper lip from which sprouted eight long ginger hairs. Dickie had on one occasion taken the impropriety of counting them. Early on the chap had displayed a desire for anything that was of an underhand nature. Dickie had taken to him for his simple personality and forthright ideas. He took to the principles and rational of New Life like a puppy at its first feed. Calvin was his assistant. Trevor was the quiet one, deeply religious, he corresponded with the activists. A bright bunch of individuals they improvised, coming up with ingenious destructive weaponry.
At twenty-seven, Dickie Dilley, with his close friends, Craig Dwyer and Gayle Fenton, set up the underground movement New Life. It had two central objectives. To kill off (the terminology in their mission statement broadcast world wide over the electronic highway was very forthright.) anyone over the age of 100 years and to promote the birth of new life in all ways possible. This was achieved in the main by offering women the necessary security and funding to do so. Initially they worked only in South Africa but they swiftly gained a cult following in the short few years that they had been operating, and had managed to diversify their endeavours just recently into other countries.
Their activists now roamed the world targeting all over the designated age. A wonderful network of new life blossomed underground.
Dickie sipped his coffee and thought back to how New Life came about. His was an analytical mind perpetually delving for answers. He and Craig had got drunk on Russian Bombers, a torrid mixture of vodka, beer and peppermint liqueur. Craig had focussed on remembering Dickie’s sister and her baby - the little fella Carradine. What a bastard life!
“Must be thousands dead...dead babies. Slaughtered by the State. That’s for sure. She was not the first, Big Dick.” Dickie had nosed his face into his drink, slurping at it, thinking. Thinking of little pink bodies, butchered little pink bodies. Rows upon rows of them, dead. Humans had for centuries raped the earth and butchered their offspring as they deemed fit. The inevitability of it all was plain. Laws changed as required of the times. Starting with the horrific law permitting the killing of foetuses. Any pregnant woman was allowed to toddle off to her nearest medical practitioner and have an abortion, as long as the new life was not older than a couple of months. Then in order to bring down or at least stabilise the huge populace of people inhabiting Earth, the period was extended, and extended. Right up to and even just after birth. The same with the numbers of children allowed, differing of course time wise, from country to country. Five, four, three, two, one, and finally zero. A paradox, surely, for suicide was still considered an abhorrent act carried out by the obviously insane, and self euthanasia, mercy killing, call it what you will, for the infirm and aged, equally detestable by society at large and the governments of the day. Something was not right. Nothing could be right with a system that murdered his nephew in cold blood. And with the savagery that was involved.... Craig had kept rabbiting on about dead babies and Dickie had supped his mud-coloured drink, his mind sharp and vengeful. Things needed to change! This thought emerged like a slash of sunlight across his mind. Only later did he come to realise that God had been showing him the way.
“Bleeding disgusting, that’s what I call it. I mean I would love to have a little kiddie,” Craig babbled.
Dickie considered himself a well-adjusted person yet he felt anxiety and utter repulsiveness for these merciless acts of infant killings. The very God-given right to procreate new life had been withdrawn. Craig had been suddenly exceedingly eloquent at that precise moment.
“Fuck them all!”
Gayle knew a couple that were desperate for a child but who were obviously terrified of the implications if caught. They set about trying to help them achieve their inherent right and it all flourished from there.
Dickie had developed an affinity for his fellow man. It spawned itself out of his own feelings of inadequacy, and the horror and hatred he felt for the people who were responsible for the deaths of his family. This sentient kinship came about as he realised that people of all ages required understanding, caring and assistance at some stage in their lives. The human being after all was littered with inherent weaknesses. An overwhelming urge to assist, to help the women who never smiled and the bewildered, fractious men, persisted and mushroomed in his mind.
Another fact dawned on him. There was no substance behind the ‘no birth’ policy, not even a kernel of sense or essence proven. It was just the simplest, most convenient and cost effective method to keep the population down. Sick.
Calvin arched his head around so he could see Dickie.
“Sir?” He came out of his reverie.
“Hmm?”
“Got a message from Ponting, he’s on about unemployed men humping their wives, making them pregnant just so they can get more support money from us, computers and the like.” Calvin grinned. “Says he has a woman of twenty three who has four kids and is exhausted.”
Dickie laughed. The more the merrier.
“Ponting?”
“Harold Ponting, he’s in Europe Sector Four. Good gent, very square.”
“Tell him the girl’s health is the primary concern. As long as she is fine she can have a hundred kids. We will continue funding.”
Rudy suddenly swivelled around in his chair and handed Dickie a wad of email messages. He took them from him. Calvin went back to his keyboard.
“Good news, bad news, Dick. Rodney Warren in Spain, cops got him. Another two dead and Mandy Coleman in, er...Canada, says twins are on the way. Also a few enquiries.” Dickie smiled pleasantly. That was just pukka. It was always the same; win, lose, life, death.
“Who’s dead?”
“Two guys from Warren’s group. Don’t have the names. Seems they ran out of time. According to the mail the response team was there within minutes. Both shot.”
Dickie grimaced.
“Send a reply back. Tell them to hold up. Tell them we’ll get Rod out.” Rudy turned back to his keyboard knowing that it would be impossible, that they wouldn’t even try.
Behind him Dickie lit a cigarette and exhaled a heavy cloud of smoke towards the ceiling. Two hits were scheduled this month, Japan and Israel. God giveth and Lucifer the Prince of Darkness taketh away.

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