The Dreams of Max & Ronnie Read Online Free Page B

stripes slashed across banners held aloft and on horses’ flanks. He sees the grinning man snap immediately to attention and he asks the Beast who this new troop is. What they might represent. Which country they are from.
    â€“ Yanks, says the Beast. – Septics. See the way Winston’s mate is licking their arses? He’d do anything they ask him to. He’s a creep.
    Ronnie sees the grinning man on his knees in the ford genuflecting and grovelling before this new troop. Sees, too, yet another army approaching down the valley, flying banners green and white on which a red dragon statically roars.
    â€“ And these, the Beast says, – are your country-men. Them without hope or future who signed up cos there was sod all else for them to do and now they’re gunner go and get their legs blown off by IEDs in the desert thousands of miles away from their homes. Just like you.
    At the arrival of this new troop, the grinning man rises from his knees. The lead rider asks him a question but he turns away and follows the other troop, the one lit up with stars and scored with stripes. Follows them wherever they go. The Beast watches him do this and then shakes his head in what seems to Ronnie to be disgust or shame or despair or a mixture of all three.
    They ride on. The distance they travel is a short one but it appears to encompass great tracts of the country, villages disparate but made similar by their shared air of abandonment and desolation. All pubs shut, all shops closed down, all private houses barri-caded tightly and securely against the world outside them. Ronnie sees net curtains twitch, glimpses faces curiously afraid at cracks in curtains and shutters and doors. Signs in driveways reading just two things; either For Sale or No Turning. Sees a huge troop behind him, following himself and the Beast, which has caught up with them by the time they dismount at the foot of the long mountain and amongst which there arises a terrible din, a clanging racket, discordant music to accompany the swirling of the crowd, the men moving randomly it seems, breaking against each other like waves or as if some whirlpool at their centre is spinning them out to the edges then pulling them back in again. Chaos it is. And there’s a rider, another rider, separate from the main crowd, unhelmeted so that Ronnie can see his smirk atop the erect board of his back and discern the colours of his tabard, a red cross on a background of white.
    â€“ What’s going on, Beast? Is the host running? Are they scared of something?
    â€“ Scared? Christ, man, these people are scared of nothing except being undistracted. They’ll never shy away from a fight but are terrified of being left on their own with nothing to do but think. No, all it is, they’re fighting to get a glimpse of that rider, there. They’re desperate to see him. Touch him if they can.
    â€“ Why?
    â€“ Because he’s famous. He once sang a song about angels. These people have been told over and over again that he’s brilliant so they believe that’s just what he is and they want to bask in the glow they think he gives off.
    The smug man trots around the thrashing crowd, not once looking at them but obviously relishing their desperation to be near him. Ronnie notices that some in the crowd are attacking others who they believe might be enjoying a better view of the rider than themselves; he sees one man kick the calves of another man then use his fallen body as a viewing platform; sees another grab at the collar of a man in front of him and drag him down to be trampled and crushed in the mud. Watches another try to yank out the tall spiky hair of the man in front of him; he grabs a handful and pulls, straining, and the other man screams as his scalp begins to rip above his right ear and come away from the skull bone. And meanwhile the smirking rider circles, circles, back upright, eyes fixed on some distant ideal that only