Where Men Once Walked

by Mark L Watson

  The men looked at each other.

  “You wanna give it a try?” the kid asked.

  The American was squinting in the dust and trying to see as best he could into the ruined store.

  He nodded slowly.

  “There surely won’t be a thing in here now, I’ll betcha” he said walking slowly forward towards the entrance.

  The kid and the Dutchman followed him past the parked cars and they stood a few feet from the door. The American stepped forward through the smashed glass and looked into the dark. There was very little to see.

  He nodded them forward.

  There was no light inside the store at all and it was ruined entirely and a fire had been there and had burned much of one side of the building and the smell of smoke and charred plastics hung in the air. They passed through the destroyed front area of the supermarket and passed the checkouts that had been torn from their bases and they stood facing the derelict aisles. The contents of every shelf had been looted and ransacked and most of the shelves were completely empty but there were packets and tins and papers and boxes strewn across the floor and they clattered through them in the dark. Otherwise the place was silent.

  They picked up some items, though it was too dark to read the labels, and they were mostly in Arabic regardless.

  The men split up from one another and walked the aisles, minding their footing on the wreckage and taking from the shelves anything they could. The kid went to the back of the store where the shelves were completely empty though he could tell what had once been stocked there by the empty bottles he kicked about on the floor. He found a couple of bottles that bounced less when kicked than the others for they still contained some liquid and, though he knew better than to drink from them there, he took them with him for further investigation.

  At the end of the aisle he turned along the back of the store, his arms piled with drinks bottles, and as he rounded the end of the shelving he walked face first into the barrel of a handpistol.

  A young man held it at arm’s length between the kid’s eyes, his loose blue shirt hanging from him as though not his own and his hair matted to his face. His accomplice stood behind him smiling, his crooked teeth glinting in the dark.

  The young man spoke to him softly in Arabic and the kid froze and said nothing. He dropped the bottles to the floor and slowly raised his hands to the air.

  The man spoke again and he pushed the gun into the kid’s forehead and the kid stepped backwards.

  “I have nothing” he managed.

  The second man stepped forward and grabbed the kid and held his hair and the kid swung his hand round and it crashed against the man’s head and the man buckled and pulled his hair harder. The kid cocked to swing again but the pistol was still levelled at his head and the man pushed it forward into his cheek and he could feel the warm metal and he stopped. They padded down the kid’s pockets and pulled at his belt.

  “I have nothing” the kid said again, this time louder in the hope that the others may hear him.

  They did, and within a moment the Dutchman appeared at the end of an aisle further along the store.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he called from the dark.

  The man wrapped his arm around the kid from behind and pulled him in to himself against the shelving and the second man spun on his heels and volleyed two shots into the dark. The shots were deafening in the enclosed space and echoed for a moment and left a ringing in his ears and he knew he had heard the Dutchman shout but against the sound of the shots he didn’t know whether or not he had been hit.

  The man with the pistol turned it back on the kid but kept facing the direction of the Dutchman should he show himself again.

  The man holding the kid pulled him backwards into his chest and held him tightly so that he had his back against the shelf and the kid tussled to get free but the man was larger and stronger than he was and he couldn’t get out from his grip. He kicked backwards and connected with the man’s shin but the man with the gun raised it to his eye and he didn’t kick again.

  Then there was quiet.

  The kid and the two men all listened into the darkness and the two men whispered in Arabic to each other and none of them moved.

  Some time passed with all the men waiting and listening until eventually the silence was broken.

  “Hello?”

  The Dutchman’s voice came from somewhere in the store.

  The two men looked at each other but said nothing.

  There was silence.

  “Hello” the Dutchman called again from somewhere over the aisles.

  The man with the gun looked back to his colleague. He fired a shot into the dark and it echoed and again his ears rang and when they had stopped it was quiet again.

  “Hello?” the Dutchman called.

  “Hello” the man called back into the dark, confused.

  “I’m coming out”

  The man said nothing.

  “Don’t shoot”

  The two men spoke again to each other.

  “Hello?” the Dutchman called.

  “We have your friend” the man called back in his thick accent, “where are you?”

  “I’ll come out, don’t shoot”

  There was a pause and then the Dutchman stepped out from the aisle in the darkness with his hands raised above his head, cowering slightly as he walked. He stood in the open with his hands on his head.

  The man raised the pistol at him.

  “Come” he called.

  The Dutchman walked slowly forward, kicking through the rubbish on the floor as he went. He stepped on something that threw his balance and he toppled sideways into the shelving and to the floor. The man walked towards him with the pistol raised.

  “Come, drunk” he called to him laughing.

  He stepped carefully over the boxes on the floor and when he was a few feet away from the fallen Dutchman, the American stepped out from behind the shelving and took the man’s outstretched arm in both of his hands and spun it and in the quiet dark they heard his shoulder snap apart and the man screamed like a child and fell to his knees.

  The Dutchman promptly stood from his feigned injury and the two men turned to face the kid.

  The second man pulled him backwards and his grip tightened and the kid could feel the tension in his muscles. He started to pull the kid backwards along the aisle and the kid moved back with him. The man stepped on one of the bottles and momentarily lost his footing and as he stumbled the kid saw his chance and brought up his elbow and connected with the man’s cheek and the man’s head thumped backwards into the metal shelving.

  He released his grip and dropped to the floor and when the kid spun round the man’s wild eyes were white and terrified. The kid brought up his boot and kicked it hard into the side of the man’s head and he buckled again to the floor and as the two airmen rounded the corner of the aisle, he jumped to his feet and scrambled through the wreckage as fast as he could and within a moment he was gone from the store into the night.

  His accomplice was whimpering on the ground at the back of the store, his arm torn from his shoulder muscle.

  The kid caught his breath and the men stood for a moment.

  The American pulled a bag from the pocket of his trousers.

  “I found some lentils” he said, “if you have something to boil them in?”

  The kid laughed.

  “Well we’ll try to find you a pan, there’s some water here somewhere, I dropped it. Did you get the gun?”

  He said that he didn’t and that it had flown into the dark when he grabbed the man’s arm. When they returned to the back of the store, neither man nor gun were anywhere to be seen. They collected their bounty and piled it into a small cardboard box and headed for the door.

  The Dutchman was at the front.

  “Shit”

  The front area of the store was bathed in blinding white light.

  Outside, the bright headlamps of a vehicle and the spotlight it carri
ed all shone straight through the smashed entrance hall and filled it with colour.

  The American and the kid jumped back into the store and hid themselves behind the wall but the Dutchman had gone too far out and was lit up like an escaped convict in a searchlight.

  He slowly stooped and put the box at his feet and raised his hands above his head.

  A voice called to him from behind the lights.

  “We heard there was homeboys walking this road, what trouble y’all getting in to all the way out here?”

  The men smiled and the kid and the American emerged from behind the wall and the Dutchman lowered his hands and the three of them walked out into the car park. Two men in military trousers and vests stood either side of a beige convertible Austin Champ.

  “You’s a long way from home” the other man called.

  They approached the soldiers.

  “Bannon” the taller of the two said, a slim man with sleeves of tattoos up each arm and a dusting of stubble, “and this is Chickenhawk” he said motioning to his colleague.

  The soldier scowled at him and reached out his hand to the men.

  “Woods, Captain Woods” he said, nodding to the men as they each shook his hand.

  The American introduced all three of them and told the soldiers that he and the Dutchman were servicemen too though they had lost their company and their communication lines weeks back.

  He told them they had been at Paya Lebar and taken leave and that they were now there and that was that.

  “If y’all were stationed down in Singapore how’d y’all end up in the floodlands taking old cans from that there store?” Bannon asked.

  They laughed dryly to each other.

  “That’s a long, long story” the American smiled, “if you boys can give us somewhere to cook this stuff, and maybe a bed for the night, we’ll be sure to tell it to you”

  The soldiers looked to each other.

  “I’ll go one better partner” Woods said, stepping back towards the car, “how’s about a cold beer and a change of them clothes? Get in”

  The drive back to the airport was brief. The men sat crushed together on the back seat of the Champ with Bannon and Woods in the front. The cool wind whistled across the open top of the car and through their hair and they passed no other vehicle on the road at all.

  The American called from the back.

  “What regiment you boys with?”

  He had to shout over the roar of the diesel engine.

  Bannon turned around in the passenger seat and smiled.

  “Army Central”

  “Third?” the American shouted, “Iraq?”

  “Qatar” Bannon shouted back, “but not anymore. We got some seven million square miles on our AOR, but we’re in with the SAS now. Them boys over the pond looking out for us these days, little role reversal”

  The American nodded.

  “Who else d’ya think gave us this shitty thing?” Bannon called, laughing and slapping the side of the Champ with his palm.

  They passed out of the smoke of the city and left the flames licking the sky behind them.

  “There’s a UK special forces training facility south of here, they’re garrisoned at the airport” Woods called from behind the wheel, “they’re assisting local forces in securing the region and they’re taking all the help they can get. We’re allied again”

  He glanced round to them and smiled.

  They pulled in to the airport drive and the men flashed their headlights at the guards at the checkpoint and they stepped slowly aside and they slowed the car and the guard saluted them informally and watched them drive through and they passed around what had once been the set-down point for passenger departures and past the line of fountains now dark and dirty and took the ramp to the underground car park.

  The expansive concrete cavern was still lined with hundreds of parked cars, shiny and new and some burned out and without wheels and all abandoned by the thousands stranded overseas.

  The Austin’s rough old engine rattled and echoed like thunder in the enclosed space and left a trail of smoke behind it as it went like the curled cloud behind a jet.

  They parked alongside a collection of service vehicles cobbled together from all corners of the continent. There were Jeeps and Land Rovers and another Champ and an old ambulance and a line of other trucks and vans.

  Inside the building, they followed the dimly lit grey hallways through door after door into the bowels of the airport. Servicemen passed them in the hallways but nobody paid them any mind until they heard behind them the coughing of the Dutchman vomiting into a metal plantpot and a dead palm.

  “You ok chief?” Woods called back.

  The Dutchman nodded and took a deep breath and caught up to them and the soldiers led them into the old terminal building, set up as both a command post and a refugee shelter.

  “Wait here” Bannon said to them and crossed the floor and spoke to another soldier and they saw him pointing to them and then pointing away and the other soldier nodded and scuttled away into the hall.

  Bannon returned.

  He pushed his hair back across his head with his palm.

  “The boys will get you some food and bedding, go sit down”

  They all nodded.

  “I’ll get a medic for your man too” he said nodding to the pale Dutchman, standing away from them with his hands on his hips, staring at his feet and taking deep breaths.

  A young Omani serviceman came to them and brought them blankets and water and went away again and returned a few moments later with plates of chicken curry and rice and bread and returned a third time with three bottles of German lager and, though warm, the men drank them in one. They slept on the floor in an old security office with an x-ray machine on bedding and plastic pillows and some time later the fluorescent lighting flickered off and the airport command closed down for the night. The men slept without waking until the following morning when the lights flickered back on again and service resumed.

  The kid laid awake on the blanket for some time staring at the white panelled ceiling.

  Part of his mind tried to analyse what had happened to him and to summarise it but the other part of it hurt so much trying to do so that he stopped and, as it settled again, his head flooded with a billion flickering memories and thoughts and concerns and triumphs and it made him dizzy. He closed his eyes and tried to centre himself and at some point while doing so there was a knock on the door.

  He looked over from where he lay.

  It knocked again.

  “Yeah” he called and the door opened slightly. Dark eyes peered in.

  “Sirs”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you would like food and coffee you should go to departures”

  There was a short pause as the faceless young voice stuttered to find words, though there was no reason why.

  “There are some fatigues outside the door for you”

  The kid sat up and started to stand but the door closed again.

  “Thank you” he shouted through the door to whoever had been there.

  The Dutchman and the American had woken and both were watching him. He stood and opened the door but the visitor had gone and, as told, there was a pile of clothing sitting neatly folded on the grey tiled floor.

  They dressed and made their way to the departure lounge where the café had been commandeered and transformed into a mess hall for the servicemen who lined up with their trays and took coffee and bread and sat on the black plastic chairs in lines and on the floors and ate and talked.

  They joined the queue and took their rations and sat on the floor.

  From across the hall, Woods called over to them and smiled and put his hand in the air in a motionless wave. He was cleaned and redressed and shaved and held a coffee in a paper cup as though this world around him had not deteriorated as it had, and should he have been leaving a city centre coffee shop he would not have looked out of place.

  He sat with them and
spoke at length about how he had come to be stationed there and he told them about his brother who had made the evacuation but also of the rest of his family who had not. The American told him his stories too and Woods gave his sympathies and for a while they reminisced between them about their homeland and their childhoods and though they spoke of devastation, both men spoke with pride and with happiness that they had at least known what had been, even if it was no more. They talked of towns they had both visited and laughed about films and television shows they once knew and Woods told them everything he knew about the world and how it was and the American told him everything he knew also, and by the time the two men had finished talking the departure lounge was empty and the two were friends and the Dutchman and the kid had long since left their side.

  They remained in Muscat airport for eleven days, sleeping in the security office and eating with the servicemen in the departure lounge. The Dutchman was taken to a makeshift medical facility which had once been the first-aid room and his dehydration was treated by a young Omani field medic he knew only as Malik.

  Malik told him that their medical supplies were low and that there were scouts on the roads hundreds of miles from there trying to find abandoned hospitals and anyone with resources to share. He asked the Dutchman about the jagged scar on his arm and the Dutchman told him about the night in the bar in Kaleymo and that, as they had been travelling without papers and couldn’t go to a hospital, it had been fixed with rubberglue and seat fabric in a backstreet.

  He looked to Malik for some response but Malik was just gently nodding and when he turned back to the Dutchman without expression he simply replied that a reasonable job had been made of it and that was that.

  The Dutchman, while no stranger to field medicine or the war stories of boasting soldiers and who, also aware that this medic in particular would have witnessed more than most, still had another story to offer to illicit a more weighty response.

  “I also pulled a rifle shell out of my friends back with a farming knife and a bottle of bleach”

  Malik raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips at the Dutchman.

  “One of your friends here?” he asked.