There was the mechanical lament of the pumpjacks, the slow, rhythmic whine they made as they, like great iron birds pecking at feed, dipped their heads towards the ground and then lifted them and then dipped once more; the creaking regret of the old oil wells as in their thirst they fed ravenously upon the earth, their songs singularly tuneful but together discordant, wild, hysterical. Rusted metal and the enormous looming forms of the oil derricks lined up as soldiers on parade. The great expanse of the oilfield lit up by sunset, each iron beast silhouetted against the exploding sky, each bow of their heads a gesture of prayer to a furious god, the thudding of their motors and their ghostly, eerie squeaking. And beneath that was the rumble of the Rolls-Royce engine, B80 Mk. 6A, eight-cylinder beast, that was the only sign that we were there at all. Buried beneath the pumpjacks, the sounds of the circulatory system of the oil business continuing their remorseless, ceaseless functioning, our Rolls-Royce growled to itself, ancient creature smelling blood. The Rolls-Royce was the foul heart of our Escort Raider, four-wheeled creature of armour and petrol, which sat amidst the derricks squat and sleek and ready, its thick tyres deep in the sand, turret waiting with the 90mm thrust straight ahead. The Escort was a hybrid creature, extra ERA plates bolted on and barrel lengthened and reinforced tyres fitted. It did not resemble anything except itself, a brutal creature in desert camo but for the shark’s jaws painted upon its stubby nose. That was how she liked it. All the hatches were open and the sound of the oilfield blew in and the heat of the day was fading and inside the Escort it was almost pleasant. There were the two of us, she and I, and we were waiting for the enemy.
I was the driver, sat below in the leather seat with the dashboard and wheel before me, peering out of the open viewing port and watching the dirt road through the oilfield. She was above in the turret, shells and autoloader pressing in on her from both sides, but really she was leant out of the car with her binoculars watching the road as I was. As we both were. Off the job there were two of us, Corporal Hunt and Sergeant Brown; but in the Escort, with work to be done, there were only the two faces of a single entity, the car. She had a thing she liked to say – I was the Engine, the power behind the wheel, brute force and horsepower, and she – she called herself the Surgeon. It was her job to be refined while mine was to be blunt. The Escort’s real engine rumbled away at my back, monstrous power waiting to be unleashed. And above was hers, the 90mm. The dust-soaked black leather of her boots stuck out of the turret where she was resting her legs against the ring, suspended over my head. I heard her trousers rustle as she moved. “Hunt.” she said in her musical Scottish lilt. “Hear that?” And I listened. It was there beneath the whining of the pumpjacks and the vibrato of the Rolls-Royce – more engines. Not the dread bass of tanks but not the clean hum of true civvies. Technicals, Arab freebooters here to spite us. Once they had burnt the oilfields for that same reason, and we had bombed them to hell in return, and now neither side had it in them to play about like that.
But the Arabs still had their technicals, old Chinese cars with armour and guns stuck on top – and she and I had one another and had the Escort and the Rolls-Royce and the 90mm. The engines – three of them, by the sound – were coming from the west, along the old Genocide Highway. They would come down the highway past the tank graveyard, where the T-70s sat as great rusting corpses of prehistoric beasts, gun barrels like the broken trunks of dead trees. They would come in that way and they would roll down the aisle between the two rows of derricks, in amongst the staggering pumpjacks, rising and falling, and then they would park and the pirates would get out and take their explosives and get to work. Except-
“Ten seconds.” she said. “Hm. Fifteen. Slow advance. Then pursuit.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I said. I slid my mask the grey old respirator over my face so it covered my dirty mouth and nose and flexed my hands, fingerless gloves creaking. Taste of sand stuck on my tongue. My boot upon the accelerator resting, hovering, as gentle as a lover’s touch. She kicked my shoulder tenderly. “Ten seconds.” she said. The Arabs in a great storm of dust and with their engines howling in lustful joy were swerving now into the oilfield, dark shapes moving beneath a sky of drying blood. I leant forward, peering through the hatch. Above the turret whirred. The Arabs were two hundred metres away and closing. Wet tickling sweat down the back of my neck into my fatigues. The vibration of the autoloader, the clank of a 90mm AP shell sliding into the breech. Rumble of the beast. Turret buzzing as she took aim. I could see the Arab vehicles now – three cars, mutants, rattling shabby and sad down the dirt road through the oil derricks. One was a heavy-set SUV and it had a ruined old SSM turret upon its front, ancient metal growing like a tumour from the car’s groaning chassis, and the other two carried 40mm cannons ripped from emplacements, awkwardly bolted on, wobbling and swinging dangerously as the cars rushed forward. The sun disappeared behind the horizon, swallowed by hungry desert, and the derricks and the swinging pumpjacks went on and we were in semi-dark and then as the three cars were fifty metres from us she muttered “Go!” and I slammed on the headlights. Electric white splashed across the oilfield and the derricks sprouted enormous twisting shadows and then the 90mm cannon boomed and I put foot to metal and we rolled forth. The AP shell kissed the first enemy vehicle tenderly across the hood. A blossom of fire and a machine-shout – fender, wheels, red-hot shards of chassis all sprayed across the oilfield.
The other two technicals were at once reversing. Cries went up in Arabic and there was a burst of machine-gun fire that went nowhere. I gunned the engine and just as she had said – pursuit. As the enemy moved all frantic to get back onto the dirt road and flee the way they’d come, caught in our headlights, framed by the lunging, grasping arms of the pumpjacks, their squeaking now the sinister howl of a dozen furious predators, we gave chase. The Escort’s tyres screeching, the stench of petrol. I guided us past the flaming wreck of the first technical. The two others were turned now, running. A 40mm cannon swivelling to face us, its skinny barrel loosed a bark. Sparks flew as it hit our armour and bounced off. It burped and belched and spat more fire and each round went nowhere. Above me the turret groaned in anticipation. But not yet – we chased them back past the oil derricks and towards the turning onto the highway, and they pulled west as she had known they would, retreating into the darkness. Dangerous to ride here at night. The highways were broad but never broad enough and to go off them at speed was lethal – but that was why I was here. I swerved after the two technicals. The beams of the headlights showed them twenty metres ahead, light kissing the rear of the closer one. Flashes of 40mm fire. She held her hand. The enemy sped up, pulling into highway-rush mode. Frantic uneven driving. I kept the Escort steady as it juddered about around me. The SUV pulled ahead of its brother and the 40mm tottering was left alone. A betrayal. Such was the desert. Above me the 90mm sang and there was a flash of light. I watched the shell plunge home into the technical’s rear and its shells cooked off, a fireworks display, a cracking and screaming and a thousand bursts of light.
“Pursuit!” she called over this, and I slammed down on the accelerator. The Rolls-Royce awakened and we shot forth, past the wreckage of the other technical. The SUV was ahead now but not enough. All around us sand and dead tanks and yet more sand, the horizons going on forever. Moonlight ocean of the desert. The SSM turret rattled as it turned agonizingly to face us. There were four missiles mounted. “Hunt.” she called. “Hm. Trust you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I called as with a whoosh two missiles took flight. I took the car herky-jerky between them, knowing how SSMs flew – SAMs went in wide arcs but SSMs were straight, heavy, to the point. One exploded to our right and another in front of us and I took the wheel, wrenched it the other way. Sparks and debris clanging against our hull, a storm of dust. But we broke through. I bounced about in my seat and felt my teeth clatter in my jaw. The third missile set sail, evil little thing cutting through the night air. It sunk low and went wide as I twisted the Escort out of its path – then the fourth flying straight, slamming into the sand before us. It burst and my ears rang but it had not hit anything but we were going too fast and too hard and the ground before us was gone and suddenly the Escort was out of my control. I fought with the wheel, hands dragged about, wrists full of pain, the car fighting back with all it had. Boot off the accelerator and I guided us to the side of the highway, let momentum die out. We stopped. “Shit.” I said. “Shit, ma’am-” The SUV was getting away now. Unarmed but unharmed. I watched it and watched it. “Never mind.” she said from above. The turret whirred. Now the SUV was perhaps within range but so far. No one else could have hit it. But she-
The 90mm roared. There was a moment of quiet then. The desert silent but for the SUV’s engine and the distant whine of the pumpjacks far behind us. Then a plume of flame – she had hit it. The SUV was now a blazing meteor and it turned and span and bounced upon itself and lay upon its side wreathed in tendrils of lustful flame. We waited under a sky filled with twinkling dancing stars that hadn’t been there before. There was the song of the pumpjacks and the ragged breathing of the Rolls-Royce and the gibbous fat moon perched overhead like a nervous parent and the unstoppable almighty evermerciful flatness of the desert. “Hm.” she said. “I saw someone jump clear. Did you?”
“No, ma’am.” I said because I hadn’t. But I moved the Escort forward towards the burning wreckage. We stopped a few metres away. The flames rose up from the SUV’s husk like strange blooming flowers of liquid red-yellow. They danced a twisting delirious dance and rose up to try to kiss the sky. I let the beast sleep and pried myself out of the driver’s seat and fetched my Browning Hi-Power from the holster over my fatigues. She had scratched into the side DON’T WASTE. I opened the nearest hatch and left the dormant Escort and clambered out onto the sand. The air was still warm and stifling and the wind trickled dust into the gaps in my fatigues. She was above me, hopping with a thud onto the glacis plate and then again, joining me on the roadside where above us were the lampposts where bodies were still strung up, now withered into skeletons that jangled and rattled in the breeze.
“To Allah belong the east and the west,” she said in her Scottish lilt, “so wherever you turn you are facing towards Allah. Surely Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing. To Allah belong the East and the West, and His face is wherever you turn.” I was wrapped up, mask still over the lower half of my face, scarf around my neck, but she was not; she wore her leather trousers and leather gloves and boots all too tight but had only a thin striped vest ragged with holes. You could see her muscles and her scars and the faint shape of her breasts – but she, tanned by the desert sun, moved without caring, her long wolfish hair in a loose, wild, mullet, then thick with grease and sweat. Her eyes were blue but permanently narrowed from squinting so much through Arabian sands. Her mouth was dry and her lips too red for her burned face. She was beautiful but not really, splendid because she was who she was. The sergeant. My sergeant, who even though she stood a head shorter than me was taller all the same. Amelia Brown, was her name, or she had told me that was her name. She drew her own Hi-Power and nodded to me and we went together down to where the man lay in the sand waiting.
He was a man – an Arab, sure, dark and bearded and clad in the olive-grey of the old Arab Republic, with a heavy onyx ring on his right index finger and a keffiyeh around his neck. He did not have a weapon visible. He was waiting for us. I stood to one side and she, my Amelia, stood over him. Her slim fingers in those tight-fitting gloves clutched the Hi-Power. She squinted at him. “Hm.” she said. “And fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you, but aggress not: Allah loves not the aggressors.”
The man looked up. “You have some honour, then. Rare in a Britisher.”
“Are you going to come back?” she asked. “If I let you go.” The man was quiet. He stared. His brow had a hardness to it that was loose – he was not straining to keep it hard but it had naturally fallen that way without him even trying. He was breathing but not too heavily. “I will come back.” he said. “As often as we need to. This is our land. Our oil. You foreigners are not entitled to it. No matter what weapons you bring. Even tanks.”
“We don’t have tanks.” Amelia said curtly.
“Someone does.” he said. He laughed. “Oil! What could you even use it for? What is the point, now, of coming to take what is ours? It does not gird your paradise as before. It does not stop your mutant babies screaming. You are only here because of your evil nature. Because you have been guided to this moment, to this life, by your rejection of Allah. And I am here because I do not reject Allah. And so this is how it is.” He swallowed. His eyes were narrow. He wept. “Allah is great.”
“Allah is great.” Amelia agreed. She took her gun and shot him three times in the chest. Smoke rose from the barrel. She went back to the Escort and came back with a pair of shovels. She tossed one to me. “Make sure he faces Mecca, Hunt.” she said, and we did. It was long work and even in the lesser warmth of the desert night we were both sweating and panting when it was done and we rolled him into the grave and as she had said we put him in so his right side was facing towards Mecca and then we shovelled the sand back over him. She repeated a few Arabic words, a prayer I guessed. We went back to the Escort. By then the wind was picking up and there would be others on these roads. There was nowhere else for shelter. It was cramped inside. We lay together within the iron monster’s belly, our clothes off, listening to the wind. She held onto me and pulled my mask down and kissed my face. Her legs nestled against mine. We were still. Distantly, beneath the howling storm, I could hear the whine of the pumpjacks.
–
The next day we set off back for GB, far to the west of the oilfields, to report that the observed incursion at Blacksite 17 had been dealt with. The desert was mighty and we were small. I drove and she with the car unbuttoned and her mask over her face and a baseball cap on her head watched the horizon. The Rolls-Royce sang, content to be unleashed. We went fast and went by the old ruins of the towns built out here during the royal days and the crumbling hulks of the cities with their half-collapsed skyscrapers wilting into the sand which waited eagerly in mounds below. We passed more skeletons hung from lampposts and passed an ancient mosque buried in the dunes and passed the Battle of Jannat al-Manzar where huge formations of tanks and guns lay now so eroded they were only red-brown shapes with all their real parts stripped, patchwork ghosts of old weapons, the frozen battlefield where the real Americans had breathed their last. But we kept on driving. Lunch and water by an old oil derrick, alone amidst the cracked stone, broken-down and useless. There was a body there too – a skeleton in a US Army uniform, desert camo, helmet still jammed onto his barren skull, grinning face leering up at us as we sat under the shade of the parasol scoffing tinned meat and slurping water from the bottle. By the tag on his BDU his name was SERGEANT KOWALSKI. We sat with Kowalski and ate the meat and drank the water. And whiskey – Amelia never set off on a run, whether deterrence or escort or supply or combat, without whiskey. She drank a little and looked down at the corpse and then out at the immortal desert, where loose formations of twinkling dust danced on the breeze and the sky was a cruel, beautiful god of pure azure, bearing down upon the sand, which never gave up. She sighed. “Hunt, did you ever have a pet rabbit?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.” I answered.
She leant back. Her hand rested next to Kowalski’s, her fingertips almost touching the white-yellow nubs of his. “I did.” she said. “Aye, but people always misunderstand rabbits.” She was quiet for a few seconds as if pondering this. “They think they’re these cute little wee guys. They are. Hm. It isn’t all like that. To us – the world they live in, our ancestors would have been baffled by it. The brutality of it. Predator and prey. Every day a fight for life. More like us than like most of mankind’s history. Maybe now we can finally understand them. We’re rabbit-folk, you and I. Survivors.” The wind caressed her hair which thick with grease and dirt did not allow itself to be moved. “Do you know how rabbits show affection? By nudging. By nibbling. They’re showing they’re comfortable with you. That you’re in their warren, that in a world of threats they don’t see you as one. Now, think about how rabbits live, Hunt. To them everything is a threat – everything is danger.” She drank up. The rusted derrick was still behind us. Great phantoms stalked the desert, enormous creatures of sand and dust. “But you shouldn’t be fooled.” she said. “Just because the rabbit likes to nudge you, or nibble you – maybe she makes little sniffing noises when you pet her, or licks your outstretched hand – she’s still vigilant. She’s still looking out for threats. She’ll still be ready to thump her little rabbit feet and run on her little rabbit legs for her life, as soon as a fox sticks its snapping jaws into her warren.” Amelia was then quiet. I was quiet with her. We got back into the Escort and resumed, leaving Kowalski to his eternal vigil.
In the evening we set up camp near an enormous dune in the shadow of the even-larger rock known as al-Eimluq, the Giant, craggy-faced ancient parent who gazed out at the southern wastes where once the old kings had built a city of the future that had died, which you could still spy by its tragic shimmering glass and steel spires, now only a smudge upon the infinite horizon. But we had no eyes for that. I parked the car beneath al-Eimluq as the sun began to come down. Tonight we had time – Amelia took our spare petrol can and filled up the tank and took her things out of the turret including the FN SCAR assault rifle and the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile and the SPAS-12 shotgun she liked to keep with her even though the SPAS-12 had no ammo and the SCAR was missing a trigger and she laid them upon a cloth upon the sand and cleaned them and looked them over. Here in the true desert it was as silent as death. The winds were calmer – the roads were no longer grand highways for convoys and mythical tanks to prowl but only trails in the dirt that seemed to go nowhere. Amelia stripped off and hung her clothes up on a line stuck in the crevice of al-Eimluq’s base and put some of our water in a bucket and washed herself, bare ass perched on an outcrop of rock. I averted my eyes and looked over the car, the slumbering beast. I checked her engine and the tyres and the transmission and I tightened bolts and unclogged an exhaust pipe. I was still in my fatigues. “Hunt.” she called from the tent she had set up by the crevice. I put my tools down and went to her. I had not washed and my hands were black with oil and I stank of petrol and metal and stale sweat and gunpowder. She lay there on her side upon the plastic of the sleeping bag. She had put her boxers back on but the rest of her glistened with moisture from the bucket. Her hair was still filthy and already there was sand sticking to her skin. Outside was another sunset. I felt it upon me – the warmth of the dying day, the sense of triumph that came, having reached another end. Tomorrow’s sunset would be GB, the headquarters. The bunkers of home. The old city lost to the sandstorms. Other Escort Raiders, other deterrent runners, teams just like she and I…good whiskey and plentiful enough water and food that was sometimes fresh. Lieutenant Markham, and others. There was a war going on, wasn’t there? For the oil, the last few derricks still pumping, those remote sites the Arabs still claimed power over, and only the UK Joint Logistics Support Base here still to contest this, to keep the oil flowing to – to where? We had no idea, we sand-people, who did not know, really, if on the other side of the world the UK was even there, cut off from us by the war and the radiation and the poison and the shouting.
But there was no war here. She lay there looking to me. “Hm.” she said. “You’re all dirty, Hunt.”
“I am, ma’am.” I said.
She looked at me some more. “Do you want to lie down here?”
“I do, ma’am.”
“You’re my driver, you know?”
“I know, ma’am.”
“So you’re allowed,” she said, shifting, “inside my warren.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” I said. And I went into the tent with her. In the morning she was already awake when I stirred – her absence at my side was a presence all of its own. I got up and quickly put on my fatigues and found my mask and came out to find her sat in the Escort with all the hatches open, fiddling with the radio. She was fully-dressed too and she had her hair tied back which meant it was serious. She was leant over the radio frowning. “Hm.” she said. “We had a message just now.” And so I joined her and we tried to find the band and when we had the band we drove the Escort out into the desert towards the top of the dune. The car crawled along and I sat in the driver’s seat and she was in the back waiting by the radio as if it were sick and needed her company. At the top of the dune the radio came to life, spluttering in electric wheezes. “All Escorts,” said the voice of Captain Miller, “All Escorts, be advised. Possibly sighting of code-AH around western regions. Be on alert. Return to GB ASAP.” All around us the desert loomed, vaster than it had been before. We looked to one another. “Once again. I say again. All Escorts, be advised-” She shut the radio off.
We packed things into the Escort and clambered inside and I started the engine and we rolled away from al-Eimluq, back onto the dirt road between the dunes, now only a suggestion of itself. She unbuttoned the cupola and went to scout and I knew she was thinking of the radio broadcast and I knew it because I was too. We drove twenty klicks further west and came to another highway. This one was packed with civvie cars all burned-out in even worse shape than the tank graveyard specimens. I did not want to think about tanks now. Nudging our way along the highway we spied a town on the horizon and knew that it was Baquba, which had once been the frontier of the Petro-Caliphate. The skyscrapers rotted in the heat and the streets were busy with the desiccated remains of cars stripped-down long stretches of rusted metal frames interlaced and intermingled, melted together in the sun, the incomprehensible remains of what had once been vehicles, overlooked from the cracked and broken pavements by signs that spelt out messages beamed into the present from the ancient past – Starbucks, McDonald’s, a strange obscure place at the edge of a looming street corner labelled DUNKIN’ DONUTS. I had never eaten a donut, although I’d seen them on the telly on Markham’s tapes. He did love The Simpsons. He had painted Bart Simpson on the side of his Escort which had been blown up by an American missile which had taken off his arm and left him behind a desk. He had told me once that I was a good lass even with that mouth of mine and that I would be a good driver one day too.
The Escort crawled through Baquaba’s streets, which bustled with the dead. The wind crooned through the holes in the great ruined buildings. It was a bright clear day and the Escort’s engine-rumblings filled the sky. As we went through the city there soon came another rumble. It was deeper – a terrible bass, the rise of thunder from an abyssal crack with the earth, the dread earth-shaking tremor of the predator bellowing from the depths of the burning jungle. An Avco-Lycoming AGT1500 engine at full power. I did not speak and neither did she. We were upon a cramped four-lane road heading out of the city, a boulevard dedicated to a dead king, crisscrossed by bridges and rusted unreadable highway signs. It was a hundred and twenty miles to GB from here, I remembered. I pushed the Escort through the frozen traffic with a new urgency and the hull slammed against old cars with terrible discordant sounds of metal upon metal. Open road – the beautiful safe desert where there was no war – glittered beyond. I inched forward.
It emerged from nowhere before us – treads rattling engine growling, a titan of thick armour and enormous angular hull and thrusting 120mm smoothbore cannon mounted upon an enormous sleek turret, a creature of elegance, of perfect design. It was decorated with a panoply of garish additions which as it rolled onto the boulevard resolved themselves into tall wide feathers, a kaleidoscope of shades bright and terrible stuck to its rear and stood up high and mighty beyond it as a peacock’s plume. Red war paint streaked its sides and its armour was buckled and dented and in several places were the wrong colour where replacement parts had been bolted on. But that arrowhead shape! That mighty cannon! It was Abrams, the Unkillable, and we were paused two hundred metres away upon the threshold of its territory. Necropolis of urban sprawl on both sides and freedom beyond. The Abrams waited there for us as a guardian of the underworld waiting before the gates of hell. Its barrel erupted. My hands gripped the wheel but there was no time and then came the burst, heaven cracking open, a shower of concrete and metal as the shell hit home metres to our right. The tank remained still, its plumage spread out rainbowesque behind it. “Hunt.” Amelia said from above. “Do you trust me?”
“I do.” I said. “Ma’am.” Through the viewing port I saw the long road baked pale grey by the sun and the Abrams at the end of it its single eye on that long stalk gazing straight at me, into me, through me. Beside it a great billboard in faded green with Arabic script upon it promised me the future. “I’m coming back.” she said. “Keep it busy. I’m going to deal with it. I need you to keep it busy.”
Ice down the back of my collar dripping melting down my spine. “Ma’am-”
“I’ll be back for you.” she said.
“Please.” I said. “Please don’t go.” There was a short pause that was long. My hands gripping the steering wheel and my foot on the accelerator, all of the Escort’s fury my own, its power all I had in the world. “Hm.” she said. “I’ll be back, Hunt.” There was the clank of the cupola opening and the scuff of her boots on the turret ring as she hoisted herself up. I did not call out. I kept myself buttoned down. Then the cupola slammed shut. I was alone within the Escort Raider. It was the first time in a while. Too big in here, I thought. Without her it had always been too big. Too much space. At the end of the world, two prey animals like us had needed shelter. Flags above old Arab monuments. The oil gushing from ruptured derricks. The squeak of pumpjacks and the starry sky above our little home. The Abrams was adjusting its aim. I had at most five seconds. Amelia was gone – somewhere else. I gunned the engine. The Escort came to life with a gleeful judder – welcome back, old friend – and we short forth at full speed just as the Abrams turned its barrel again. Two hundred metres. Tyres screeching engine on fire the Escort shaking all about me. I leant forward and saw the foe and twisted left then right and the Abrams roared and the road before me was cracked open in a plume of melted asphalt that came down as furious hail. I drove on straight through it and heard it bounce off of my armour and sped on, down the highway, feeling my heart pound. The Abram’s barrel followed me but I swerved about hearing the tyres moan listening to the Escort sing feeling its weight and bulk all around me. A hundred and fifty. The Abrams fired and the road to my left was obliterated and I sailed on unheeding aware of only myself and my sweating palms and the road and the target which now was closer faster bigger, which I could see and only that, and the Abrams did not fire and I was on angel’s wings and the Escort was a chariot, a divine craft, and heaven lay before me; I could feel my heart in my mouth and taste blood and smell in the air petrol and her sweaty flesh last night and I bowed my head and swerved again and now we were close, old friend and I, and the silent city waited bearing witness. I charged the foe.
The Abrams shouted and my Escort replied, swerving out of the way, a movement so fast I didn’t see it; then we were sideways and the world was wrong and there was a shriek of metal against ground as we landed upon our side. I was bounced out of my side and I landed shoulder-first on the wall. We had survived but-
they came and they wrenched open the Escort’s broken side-hatch and their hands came in. I was pulled out by muscled arms and flung upon the road. My mask had fallen off and my face was exposed in the naked air and I went to cover it with my hand but they kicked my hand away and I lay there on my side. The Abrams stood triumphant and before it two men in tattered military fatigues. Muscled skin layered in sweat. Bald heads and thick beards both with M16 rifles. There was a third, the tallest, and he wore a beret and had a bulging face and surveyed me from behind a pair of sunglasses. He did not have a jacket but only wore a mesh vest that showed that he was tanned all across his swollen vein-marked arms and he carried a snub-nosed Winchester rifle and he watched me. His boot was upon my leg. Each had war paint markings upon his cheeks and forehead and the leader above his sunglasses had a mass of bright colours to match those of the Abrams. They were Indian cosplay, I realised. These white men were dressed as Native Americans. “Hello there, Brit.” the leader said. His accent was thickly Hollywood. “I am Apache Commando. You appear to have fallen afoul of our God of War. Well, you know this is US Army territory now. Our black gold you’ve been watching over. We’re here to take it back.”
“Chief,” the one to his right said, “it’s a girl.”
Apache Commando cocked his head. “Well, so she is! Pretty too. Except for that fucked-up mutant mouth.”
“Geez.” the other man said. “Yeah.” I tried to cover my mouth again but they laughed and I didn’t. Amelia had always said my mouth was interesting. Hm. I think it’s interesting. I wanted to fight them but I didn’t know how not like she would. “A nice little slip of a thing but for that, ain’t she?” Apache Commando said. “Your BDU’s too big for you, girlie. What, the king needs child-soldiers out here now?” He paused, fondling his rifle, one thick thumb curled about the trigger. The sun was behind him and its light filled his outline and for a moment as I lay there he seemed like a saint but he wasn’t because I knew he wasn’t. “Or did the king die in the war?” He turned to his left. “Lincoln, did the King of England die in the fuckin’ war?”
“Dunno, boss.” Lincoln said.
“Damn.” Apache Commando said. “Double damn. Hey, I don’t even know.” He looked down at me and he grinned. “Well, you’re ours now. We’re gonna make sure you don’t know anything about the god-damned king either. Teach you everything again, good and American. Teach you that the Arab oil deserves to be with us.” I stared up. “Show you some god-damned freedom.” he said. His boot was heavy on my leg. I could not even reach my Hi-Power. His two men looked at me how the men at GB looked at me until Amelia swore at them and told them to stop. Right now it was only me. I spat at him. It flew and hit his leg and stayed there set against desert camo brown. He grinned again. “Sergeant Bush!” he said. “Start up the God of War, and put this lady down in the hatch. Let’s get her back to Nixon, and-”
There was a flat whump. The three men stirred and saw it and I saw it too and I saw it slam into the space between the Abrams’ turret and its hull. I saw the God of War explode in righteous flame. Lincoln turned and his mouth opened wide. “Boss-!” And his head was punctured by a red hole that emerged im the centre of his forehead and it spat out gore all down his front and he sagged and fell, and then the other Bush had his rifle raised but then he was hit in the chest and he was hit in the leg and he joined Lincoln. And then Apache Commando, knocked over by the explosion of the tank, stumbled up and met her, my Amelia, who came from the ruins by the roadside with her Hi-Power raised, the empty Javelin launcher on the ground rolling away from her. She was scowling and squinting and her jacket blew behind her as she came and her horrid mess of greasy hair was wild. He raised his rifle and she her Hi-Power. The Abrams with its turret knocked off burned behind them. Its feathers caught the flames and were suddenly bright and blazing.
Amelia shot Apache Commando in the knee.
He fell howling. “Fuck!” he cried. “Jesus! Why not just the fuckin’ head, man?” His rifle lay at his feet. Amelia stood over him and he had both thick hands clutched to his leg which was bubbling and boiling over with crimson. He turned back. “Same side, aren’t we? White and white. It’s us versus them. Right? We could have a special relationship, you and I. A sorta team-up.” Desperation in his voice. “You could have my tank. My God of War-”
“There is no God but Allah.” Amelia said. Now she did shoot him in the head. The enormous man fell over with a thud and he lay there and his hands were still pressed into his knee. His sunglasses had fallen off and his eyes were bloodshot and his pupils were wide. Amelia holstered her Hi-Power. She stood over me and she held out a gloved hand. I presented my own and it trembled. Our fingers touched. Amelia hauled me to my feet. My legs were liquid – my heart pounded. I could only stare at her. The flaming Abrams was ahead and our Escort Raider, our faithful steed, lay on its side at our backs. The ruined city was everywhere else. And still the sun beat down and the sand danced and played upon the breeze. Amelia was not as tall as me. “Hunt.” she said. “Sorry. I should have said. I was just gonna pop him. I figured you’d get it. Sorry.”
“I,” I began, “I thought you were going to l-” She hugged me tight. I stood rigid. The Abrams tank smouldered. The blood of the dead Apache Commando pooled up around our boots, mine and hers. After a few seconds my hands moved by themselves, as if possessed, and returned her embrace. Her tightly-backed tense flesh all mine. I was bleeding from a cut upon my face but the pain was okay. She pressed her face to me. “You’re in my warren, Hunt.” she said. “You’re in my warren, you dumb bitch.” And there in the dead city in the middle of the desert neither of us said anything for a while. The Escort Raider lay on its side and neither of us, I thought, knew how we would get it the right way up again and take it out of the dead city and get back to base. But for now that was okay too.
Video City 
Leave a comment