Richard House - The Kills

Chimeno returned with one suit folded over his arm. Reflective strips caught the light from the trucks. ‘There’s five complete, and another one without the mask-thing, and a whole bunch of different filters.’

Stas told Chimeno to dress in the suit, then showed him how to unhook a hose from the side of the tanker, then clamp the mouth to a faucet on the back. Satisfied, Stas walked a good ten metres from the pit and scored a line in the grit with his heels. ‘Here,’ he shouted to Rem. ‘Everyone come here.’

Once the hose was fastened, Stas warned everyone to keep their distance. ‘No smoke! OK?’

He stood Chimeno at the edge of the pit, kicked the kinks out of the hose, and made Chimeno hold it up, indicating how he should stand, and how the hose should be gripped with both hands, and secured under one arm. When he turned the spigot on, Chimeno staggered back, but managed to stabilize himself and hold the nozzle up to send out a broad spray of fuel. The remaining trucks drove back to the camp. A sharp, head-splitting fume rose from the pit.

‘Jet fuel.’ Pakosta clapped his hand over his mouth and nose.

The men naturally backed away.

After two minutes Stas closed off the spigot and called Chimeno back for assistance. Once the men had tucked the hose under the tanker he drove a good distance away, then returned running to the group.

‘Now this,’ he held up his hand. ‘Watch.’

It took Rem a moment to recognize that Stas was holding a hand grenade.

Stas held the grenade upside down, twisted the base, then lobbed it softly overarm into the pit. A gesture so casual, Rem expected nothing to result from it. As Stas stepped carefully back, Santo, Watts, Clark, Pakosta on one side, and Chimeno, Samuels, Kiprowski and Rem on the other, all followed suit.

‘And now we see.’

Less than a second later with a dull thud and a plant-like plume, spidery tufts and trails of mud sprang from the pit — in itself a disappointment — then, in one sudden conflagration, the air above the pit broke into a vast orange fireball. The heat shoved them back, then rose, startlingly dynamic.

The men hooted, clapped, slapped each other’s backs. Santo swore, punched the air. Pakosta yipped and hollered. Even Samuels smiled. Kiprowski and Rem stood side by side, hands on hips, heads upturned, awe-struck. The fire, now a single branching column, sucked air from the desert and transformed into a thick pillar of grey-flecked smoke high above them. Stas stood with the towel covering his mouth and nose.

Pakosta spat then shook his head. ‘That, right there, is exactly what we’re here for.’

* * *

The second convoy arrived an hour after the first. Dawn broke as a sour orange band, across an uninterrupted plain. Rem distributed the remaining environmental suits, then returned to the Quonset, unfolded a deckchair, and sat behind the crates, feet up, cap pulled down.

Rem woke to Pakosta’s shouts. Chimeno had collapsed. He needed to come quickly.

After loading Pit 2, Santo had discovered Chimeno on his knees right at the pit edge with his back to the mounting fire, disoriented. Santo and Samuels had hauled Chimeno to one of the trucks. Rem found him still in the cab, his suit unzipped and mask pulled to the side. Sweat stuck his T-shirt to his chest, rucked up and sodden, and his hair slicked flat to his head. Chimeno, head nodding baby-like and unable to keep his eyes open, had still not properly revived and slowly swatted away their hands. The driver, a wiry Indian, sat aside to watch, smoking. Rem asked if he could cut it out, and the man looked to his cigarette, a little put out.

‘The suits are too hot. Someone’s going to fall into one of those pits.’ Santo unbuckled the mask and unscrewed the nozzle. ‘Look at this.’ He held up the filter, a thin grey fibre disc. ‘I don’t think this is right?’

Chimeno breathed slow and deep and appeared more connected. He shuffled himself upright and wiped his nose.

‘It’s too hot. Look at him. He can’t move in the suit. They’re not fit for purpose.’ Santo refitted the nozzle to the face mask and took several attempts to align the threads. ‘Maybe just the masks, then?’

Pakosta had spoken with one of the other drivers. ‘He said this has happened before. It’s the heat.’

‘Where was this?’

Pakosta shrugged. ‘Bravo? Alpha? I didn’t ask. He was talking about another burn pit.’

Rem opened the door to let air inside, asked the driver to take Chimeno back to the cabins. He called Samuels over to ride back with Chimeno then asked Santo if they could have a word.

They both agreed the suits were a bad idea.

‘That other driver just had a towel over his face. Maybe we don’t need these things.’

They walked back to the cabins, the slope nothing more a low-grade ridge, the sand soft at the roadside, but trenched in the centre into deep curved ruts which obliged the trucks to progress slowly and steer carefully. Santo wanted to know about food, water, general supplies. Rem assured him there would be a delivery every other morning.

* * *

In the evening the cloud collapsed. It was such a strange phenomenon, a column of smoke that rose from the ground and obscured the pit, as if the ground belched black breath, Rem realized he’d had his eye on it throughout the day, and noticed as the day drew on how the quality of the smoke and the colour changed (black first, then thin and white, then rolling bruised purples, then blue, then orange). As it fattened it began to resist the wind and lean toward the camp. The smoke darkened and slowly descended, came down as a shower of black flakes, small papery wisps thick enough to smudge.

Astounded by this, Clark stood outside his cabin, arms outspread, while everyone else scampered for shelter and watched from doorways. Their hurry drew the flakes in a whorl behind them, statically attracted, so their backs and shoulders, their heads, were quickly dressed. This snow absorbed sound, made the men quiet, and fell as a slight stickiness so delicate it itched.

The ash worked its way through cracks and gaps into their cabins.

‘Jet fuel will strip the skin off your hands and rot your brain.’ Watts set about cleaning the masks. Took each filter apart and laid out the composite parts.

Rem returned to the pits with his camera. He brought Kiprowski with him and made the boy take photos.

‘Got that? Let me see.’

Kiprowski handed back the camera.

Rem scrolled through the images. ‘You think you can manage this? Not too taxing?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What about Samuels? You speak much with him?’

‘He keeps to himself.’

‘He’s settling in? This is just between you and me.’

‘He’s good.’

‘You think that, or you know?’

The boy looked to the pit and reconsidered. ‘I think the others could ease off, maybe.’

‘In what way?’

Kiprowski brushed flies from his eyes and squinted back. ‘I don’t know.’

‘But he’s OK?’

‘I guess. They play jokes.’

‘What kind of jokes?’

‘Someone put sand in his bunk and he was up all night.’

‘Who did this?’

Kiprowski turned to the Beach. ‘I did.’

Rem looked up from the camera, surprised. ‘Why would you do something like that?’

Kiprowski looked out at the pits again, smoke whorled from a spill of black round bags. ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t a major plan or anything.’

‘Was it Pakosta?’

‘There was a group. I don’t know. Just something that came up, I guess.’

‘But you did it?’

‘There were other ideas that weren’t so nice. I thought this was less mean.’

Rem turned off the camera, set his cap back on his head. The men were bored, new to each other, settling in and testing. He understood this.