Richard House - The Kills

Rem built walls to repel and redirect blasts: walls to stop cars, mortars, rockets, objects propelled with great force and speed; walls to stopper windows, doorways, shop-fronts either side of the new highways; walls to segregate Sunni from Shi’a. The project involved the fortification of the north, south, and western routes into the city — routes which cut the city into separate zones.

For the first week the crews worked a night shift (four nights on, one off), and laboured under arc-lamps in vacant neighbourhoods which reminded Rem of the Southside of Chicago. On the midday news, by satellite, he saw the ramps he’d built, the road divisions and blast walls, the routes broad enough to carry troops and convoys. Unlike Baghdad, Amrah City would have no Blue or Red Zones. If the old city didn’t work they would sweep it aside and build a new one in its place. The neighbourhoods straddling the main routes were razed in a one-block strip either side of the highway. Houses, hotels, and businesses were demolished, along with every facility, school, surgery, or market which might house any kind of crowd, and Rem became used to seeing the city through a pale haze of dust.

They worked at night, as if in a fever, to the clatter of gunshot and the glow of street fires. The cleared space beside the road buzzed with itchy expectation, and Rem wondered what had happened to the people who’d lived in these districts and how much of the dilapidation was new. He worked in a crew with a security escort of ex-soldiers and ex-marines, American in the large part, but also Australian and Danish, independent security outfits with repurposed Humvees front and back, apprehensive boys dressed in full protective gear, who wouldn’t hold any position for very long, anxiousness riven through them.

Eight nights in, a woman stumbled over the debris between the generators and spotlights. Rem rode on the back of a roller, an eye on the trash that spilled into the street, the broken stone, the dirt road. He saw the woman, dressed in a black abaya and niqab, dust rising about her, turning as if surprised, unsure of the next expected move. With shouting and a mighty clack of armament security established a perimeter about the woman and shouted instructions in English and crude Arabic. Rem saw men running, some toward, but most away, throwing themselves over the barrier they were building.

And nothing happened.

‘They use children. They use women. They use crazy people, retards, the deaf and the dumb. They make bombs in their homes and strap them to the mentally infirm then detonate them by remote. They slaughter their own people. There’s no logic.’

The man driving the roller, unit leader Luis Hernandez, from Minnesota, known as Santo, spoke as if he was an authority, as if these were established facts.

‘They hate us. They hate life. They’ll kill everyone to show it.’

Rem didn’t want to agree, but the woman was crazy, without doubt, and she’d been shoved out as a threat, even when she was not primed.

* * *

The next night the bombing started in earnest. A length of wall along Jalla Road taken out, along with a number of the new watchtowers, concrete perforated by EFPs. The exposed rebar, the scattered blocks and punctured walls became a kind of signature, Rem’s image of the city. Two supply trucks returning from the airport were assaulted, the drivers dragged into the street and cut to pieces; the incident posted online before the news reached ACSB. To add to the slow accumulation of deaths (highest among them the foreign nationals from Nepal, Pakistan, and India) came specific assaults against the units working on the new highways. The incidents quickly became continuous and seemed organized. Work stopped, and while they waited out the trouble Rem spent his quiet hours playing cards with Santo, and won every hand.

At the end of Rem’s second week ‘the ovens’ came under attack. Shielded by the PX the cabins had always seemed secure, but on this night the mortars made determined arcs, as if magnetically drawn to their tin sides and roofs. In the first volley two cabins were obliterated and six damaged, fragments of debris pierced the PX. In the second, one hut took a direct hit, killing two men from Unit 89, and wounding three. Rem watched the team of men clean up. They wore the same green overalls, the same protective gear, and moved with practised care bagging what they found.

* * *

The PX, the most secure building in the compound, became Rem’s second home. During the day he stored his sleeping roll in a locker with a bust hinge. He changed clothes every other day, started buying sweatshirts from Stores to avoid using the laundry which was sited right beside the inner blast wall. Since the attack most of Unit 409 used the showers beside the PX in any case. Rem made sure he didn’t present a problem. He slept in the commissary during the day, hunched over a table, alongside the Indian and Nepalese truckers.

Santo began to take his meals with Rem and when Rem asked why he wasn’t as familiar with the other men, Santo shrugged. ‘I’m unit manager.’ He held up a small sheaf of papers. ‘I hold grave responsibilities their young minds cannot comprehend.’

Rem asked what the papers were.

‘The rotas. I’m deputized to post the work rotas. On a noticeboard.’

‘It’s a skill.’

‘I decide the colour of the pin. Exactly where the paper goes. The hour they’re posted.’ Santo smiled. ‘You know the trouble you cause? They talk about you all the time. They want you to return to your quarters but they think you’re a little crazy.’

‘How so?’

‘Look at you. Nobody wants to mess with a big guy. Everybody’s afraid of you.’

Rem asked how much of this mattered.

‘I’m just saying. Nobody wants to fuck with you. That’s all.’

Santo liked to run his hand back over his head, the palm flat and one or two fingers bent to scratch his scalp, which he generally kept shaved, so the noise, for such a small gesture sounded loud. Rem thought of this gesture as something urban, partly because he knew that Santo came from Minneapolis, and partly because the Latino boys, with their shoulders burned with tattoos and their various styles of goatee, appeared more urban than rural. He couldn’t picture Santo outside of a city.

‘I’m short. People fuck with me all the time. Like Fatboy, they hit on me like Fatboy there. Difference is, they do this only one time.’ Santo pointed to Fatboy, a weedy nineteen-year-old, a mouse. Stunted in pre-pubescence, the man/boy ate burgers, fried meat, drank power drinks, never slept, suffered from bad skin, and remained rake-thin. Fatboy liked to smile, a smile which showed small and weak teeth. He never disagreed or bad-mouthed anyone, no matter how unpleasant the exchange. Rem hadn’t seen him angry, despite the abuse he had to tolerate, and because of this he admired the boy. Fatboy managed supplies for the PX. He lived to supply and delivered on every request (Cheetos, Oreos, Chipotle dip, Mega-Moca-Latte-Mix, Vegemite, DVDs, Blu-Rays even, CDs, and, according to rumour, porn of any variety). Fatboy navigated with ease around HOSCO’s complex systems. And best of all, he let Rem sleep wherever he wanted.

As a consequence, Rem drew Fatboy into their breaks and lunchtimes, invited the boy to sit with them when he played cards with Santo before their night shift. And while Santo rarely spoke to the boy he didn’t appear to mind his company, especially when Fatboy brought chips and Cheetos, dips and sometimes fries.

Santo smiled every time he spoke about the money he was making. ‘In thirty days the pay becomes unreal. Now I’m in extra -overtime. I’m printing money. Soon it will have my face on it.’

Santo liked to smoke home-grown smuggled by the convoy security. He liked the day to slip from him, he liked to feel easy, so if anything happened he’d be in the best shape to take it, because bad news shouldn’t be taken straight. ‘I have this idea.’ He leaned toward Rem, his breath sweet and grassy. ‘You know. Something you should do, because you’re a big white man and they won’t say no to a big white man. The idea? We work on the teams that go in after the attacks. We volunteer.’