Richard House - The Kills

‘Rem. We’re out of highway.’

Rem slowly sat up, looked past the lead Cougar at the desert, the absence of a road, looked back at the small line of vehicles idling behind them. Pakosta jumped out of the last truck. He’d taken off his flak jacket, changed into shorts and boots, a T-shirt, made an effort to look casual. Santo drew out the maps.

‘The road goes all the way, runs right along the border.’ Watts pointed out a fine and continuous line on the map, then looked to the desert, incredulous. The highway stopped at a line of barrels, metal oil drums. ‘Right here. See? There’s a road on the map, but nothing even close to a road out there. No tracks. Nothing.’

Rem rubbed his eyes, got out of the vehicle. Stood right where the road stopped and thought it strange how it looked new but just ended for no reason. He called to Pakosta. ‘Did you come this way before?’

Pakosta coolly shook his head.

‘None of this looks familiar?’

‘Nope.’ Pakosta straightened up, dropped his cigarette. ‘We came a different route out of Amrah.’

Rem shouted back to Watts and asked if he could bring the map.

As Watts came out of the Humvee, Rem checked the horizon, anxious that they were being watched.

‘Don’t worry.’ Pakosta turned a slow complete circle. ‘If there was anyone out there, we’d know by now.’

Watts spread the map over the hood and cursed the heat.

‘Show him where we are.’

Watts pointed to a line that ran alongside the Saudi border. Rem raised his sunglasses so he could see more clearly, but found the light too bright.

‘As far as I can make out,’ Watts traced his finger along a short section of the road, ‘we should be about here. We turned at the right place, but there’s no road.’

Rem nodded, he could see that.

‘Thing is,’ Pakosta advised, ‘without that road you have to go all the way back to Amrah, then take Jalla Road to get back out to Route 567. The way we came before.’

Rem started walking before Pakosta had finished. He called to the men in the security vehicles. If they returned to Amrah could they gather more security?

The first guard stepped down, settled his gun over his shoulder, mirrored sunglasses on so Rem couldn’t see his eyes. These men were ex-military, most of them brittle, unsympathetic. Santo called them Sparts, as in spare parts. ‘These guys are experiments. They come here to be entertained. The whole thing gives them a hard-on. They keep coming back until something gets shot off. Then we’re supposed to feel sorry.’

The man stared hard at Rem. Santo leaned toward the guard. ‘You know, dressing in black is only going to work at night? You know that right? We — can — see — you.’

The thing Rem had to understand was they had another job. ‘If we go back to Amrah we stay there. We only have time to take you back. After that you’re on your own. We’re needed at CIPA.’

Clark asked about the road they’d crossed shortly after turning off Highway 80. It looked like a service road, nothing much to it, but where did that go?

Rem returned to the vehicle with the map, stood beside Watts and swore. ‘Can you find that? Is that marked down?’

‘It looks like it heads north. We want to be heading west.’

Watts traced Highway 80 almost to the border and found the route Pakosta had mentioned. ‘567, is that it?’

Rem called Pakosta back out of his vehicle. ‘What did you say the highway was, after Jalla?’

‘Route 567.’

‘We crossed that when we changed drivers. After 80.’

Pakosta shrugged, like this was common sense, something everyone knew.

‘We don’t need to go back to Amrah?’

‘Not the whole way.’

The four security men approached Rem. ‘We can take you to 80, but after that we need to head back to Amrah.’

‘You can take Route 567. See us to Liberty, continue on Route 567 to Amrah.’ Rem began to fold up the map.

‘Route 567 north is unsecure. We’d have to come back to 80.’

‘Then you come back to 80 after you’ve seen us to Liberty.’

‘We don’t have time.’

Rem took off his glasses and wiped sweat from his eyes. The heat and the brightness bore down, and nothing around them but stone. He asked the men what they suggested he do. He asked Watts if they had anything. Any kind of protection?

‘Nothing legal or useful.’

‘Anything?’

Watts apologized. There was one more thing. He drew Rem across the road. ‘What’s the name of the redhead?’

‘Samuels.’

‘He’s not looking too good.’

Samuels sat on his own on the blacktop with his back to the wheels, arms hugging his legs, head rested on his knees.

‘What’s his problem?’

Samuels’ problem had to be Fatboy. The last time Samuels sat in a Humvee Fatboy had shot himself. ‘Tell Santo to leave those guards alone and swap places. We’ll have Samuels with us.’

‘You’re going ahead?’

‘They said the trouble was north, after Camp Liberty. According to the map there’s nothing between here and Camp Liberty. No villages, no houses. Just desert.’

Watts wasn’t convinced. ‘According to the map there’s supposed to be a road.’ He pointed at the desert.

‘I don’t see a choice. Returning to Amrah, driving down Jalla isn’t an option, with or without security.’

Rem clapped his hands and told everyone to get back into their vehicles. He walked to the front Cougar, climbed up to the cab, and leaned in through the window.

‘We’re going back to Highway 80,’ he said to the driver. ‘We’re taking Route 567. It’s your choice whether you go back to Amrah or see us on to Camp Liberty. If you choose to return to Amrah, I’ll guarantee all of your contracts will be cut before you reach the city. Your choice.’

The security guard looked back, impassive.

* * *

They reached Highway 80 with the sun behind them. As they turned the two security vehicles pulled to the side of the road. Rem told Watts to ignore them and keep driving.

‘Don’t give them the satisfaction.’

As they turned north the sun struck into the cab and gilded Watts’ arms and shoulder, the back of his hands.

‘There’s nothing ahead. No villages. Only the road, then the camp.’ Rem checked the mirror to make sure the others followed, and without breaking pace they kept in a tight line and left behind the two security vehicles. The guards sat atop the Cougars with their guns trained across the desert. Highway 80 and the embankment quickly receded to a thin light band, a trace of amber, horizontal planes of colour. Samuels sat with his head down on his arms as if asleep or poorly, sweat beading on his neck.

* * *

Pakosta dominated the radio. Entertained them as they rode up Route 567.

‘They have these systems, ways of seeing. They’ve created these computer programs, these avatars, that learn. They empathize. They predict. They dream. They know the food you eat, how long it will take to digest, the quality of the shit you’re about to take. The heft, the colour, the weight. These things don’t even exist, they’re programs, right, pathways and electrical pulses. But they know you better than you know yourself. We’re just meat to them. I tell you. We aren’t even necessary any more. The future is here. This is where they test it out. It’s not chemical warfare. It’s digital. ’

Pakosta sang as many songs featuring the word hero as he could recall. Asked every single one of them by name if they were all right and demanded an answer.

Watts turned down the volume.

* * *

Cathy sat for two hours in the library and stared at the screen, willing the download counter to creep to full. She didn’t dare touch the keyboard, and moved the mouse every five minutes to stop the screen from going to sleep. How does everyone else manage this? She was learning new words, could distinguish between KB and MB in terms of time, and how long each download would demand. She knew the difference between a gif, a doc, and a jpeg. She knew now to delete her history before closing the browser and logging out.