Combat Camera

by Andrew Somerset

  “What name we using, again?” said Bill.

  She shrugged.

  “What the fuck is this?” Bill lifted his arms in a gesture of helplessness. His creative powers were overtaxed as things stood.

  “Ashley,” said Barker. “We don’t have an Ashley.”

  Bill pointed to her with his open hand, as if explaining gravity to an obtuse child; you drop things, they fall. She looked at him as if he were a precipice over which she had no choice but to jump.

  Bill essayed his best impression of a professor by rubbing his chin and frowning thoughtfully. Thoughtfulness, apparently, was foreign to him, and the effect was correspondingly insincere. He pursed his lips to add to the effect, and now more closely resembled a chimpanzee pondering its choice of bananas.

  “So what seems to be the problem, Ashley?”

  “Oh, Professor Payne.” At once wooden and overly theatric. “It’s this F you gave me on my term paper. My daddy’s going to just kill me when he finds out.”

  “It just wasn’t a very good paper, Ashley.”

  She looked at him with something resembling entreaty.

  “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

  “You’re just going to have to learn your anatomy, Ashley. You don’t know a cock from a coccyx.” A self-satisfied smirk.

  Zane concentrated on the picture space, abstracting its contents into light and shadow, reading the status display across the bottom of the viewfinder. Light passes through the lens and bounces off the reflex mirror, through the pentaprism and thence onto the retina. The mind, still upset about the whole incident of the globe, tells the optic nerves to pound salt. Zane and the camera were one, but the dialogue was playing hell with his exposure meter.

  “Why don’t we start by taking a look at your anatomy, Ashley?”

  The girl stood and lifted her skirt to reveal plain, white cotton panties, a part of the costume. Legs like two sticks, pasty white, hipbones like ridgepoles under the cotton. She had the body of an underfed child.

  “Is this good?”

  “It’s a start,” said Bill. “But I’m going to work you a lot harder than that. And I will not accept shoddy work.”

  Things went rapidly downhill from there.

  Bill had moved on to deep throat, and Ashley was failing the lesson. He held on and thrust as she gagged and struggled to breathe, panic shining from the whites of her eyes. Tears smeared her mascara into charcoal runnels down her cheeks. She broke free and pulled back, spit drooling from her mouth like wet string.

  “Come on, Ashley,” said Bill. “Work for that B minus.”

  It all took only an instant. Ashley struggled, twisted her head, pulled back, her face and neck convulsing as she gagged. Bill tried again and she kept her mouth closed. He went for the nostrils but she jerked her head away, and he hit her.

  Zane heard the dull wet smack as his open hand connected, the sound of the blow merging with the clack of the reflex mirror, and he mentally congratulated himself on his excellent shutter timing. Blood and spit and tears and the remains of her makeup smeared over Ashley’s face. Bill hit her again, this time with his fist.

  The first thing you noticed, the one thing that overrode all others, was the smell of the bodies inside the ruined house. It was a smell you never forgot. It was a smell that never left you. It stayed in your clothes and in your hair, clung to you, conceded only grudgingly to lather, rinse, and infinite repeat. And even then you still smelled it when no-one else could.

  Rubble lay in the street and the girl lay backed against a wall pock-marked with bullet-holes, fresh blood blackening the front of her blouse. From the bubbles at the corners of her lips Zane knew she was bleeding into her lungs, drowning in her own blood. You can handle this: you tape a piece of plastic over the entrance wound and hope to seal it, to ease the breathing until you can get her to a surgeon. But fear paralyzed him. To move would be suicide. The sniper would be waiting.

  And then he was back. Bill was half dressed. Ashley sat on the linoleum and her small body heaved as she breathed through her sobs. Zane discovered himself backed against Barker’s desk. His hands shook. He could not keep the frame steady.

  Jade shoved Bill towards the door.

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  “Bitch tried to bite me.”

  “Give it up. Zane! Enough with the pictures. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  What the fuck was wrong with him had recently become a matter of great interest to Zane himself, but the question remained unanswered. He hadn’t even been aware that he was still taking pictures. The hands carry on, autonomous response. He turned off his camera and checked the lens for blood spatter.

  Jade drew a blanket around the girl’s shoulders and crouched down to rub her back. The girl’s mouth dripped blood over her chest. She looked like a shot deer, all heaving ribs and sightless eyes. Jade put an arm around her and pulled her to her feet.

  Barker waited for the door to close behind them and then took two quick steps and kicked the nearest chair, which skidded into the false wall at the back of the set where one of its legs punched a hole through the drywall. Zane remained shaky and the hole reminded him unpleasantly of a bullet-hole.

  “That asshole is all dick and no brain.”

  Zane was too rattled to deal with this anatomically puzzling image.

  “He doesn’t think. He just doesn’t think. You just can’t fuck around in this business.”

  Zane started packing. His hands still shook and he tried to keep them out of sight, but Barker wasn’t watching.

  “So now she goes to the cops. Where am I? Bill goes to jail, we’re shut down. Cops sniffing around. I’m paying lawyers. You know what I spend on lawyers? We lost a night’s production, we can’t use this stuff. And all the time I’m bleeding money to the office of Shylock, Billable and Upchuck.”

  You aren’t out of here until Barker finds a new audience. What we have here is one simple fact, a mess of blood in the middle of the floor. The longer he talks the higher he’ll build on that fact. Soon we’ll have a conspiracy of lawyers, police, do-gooders, feminazis, politicians and Bill’s dick, all dedicated to the crucifixion of one Richard Barker. Any response will only encourage further litanies. Here it comes, the tower of babble. Zane stopped packing and sat.

  “You want Bill’s job?”

  “I lack Bill’s natural talents.”

  “Well, that’s refreshingly honest.” Barker pulled out Professor Payne’s desk chair and sat. “I tell you, a nine-inch dick is a hard thing to find. And then when you find one, it’s attached to a moron.”

  Zane returned to his cameras, concentrated on the removal of flash guns and the checking of batteries and the flipping of switches, and on various cleaning tasks that had suddenly become essential. He struggled to replace his lens caps, which refused to align with the filter threads.

  “I got all these leeches hanging off me. I pay lawyers, I pay rent, I pay for this girl’s dental surgery, I pay for drugs and I pay to keep the goddamn cops off my back. I pay to create all this shit and I pay for server space to put it up where people steal it and put it up on their own sites and pretend it’s theirs. So then I pay more lawyers to chase those fuckers around. I pay to put my shit up for free where people can steal it. And then I pay half my fucking income to the goddamn government just so some welfare asshole can sit home and jack off looking at pictures somebody stole from me in the first place.”

  Barker jumped up again, knocking the chair onto its back, and then turned and kicked it. Zane considered that he was not being paid enough to put up with this shit, but felt also that this was perhaps not the most opportune time to broach the issue. Certainly not in those particular terms.

  “I pay all this shit to keep Jade in buttons and bows and boob jobs. I got an ex-wife moved down to Tucson, I pay her alimony so she can shack up with some hippie-dippy craft artist and smoke dope. I’m paying for the whole goddamn world here. What if I just stopped, eh? What if I jus
t up and stopped? What then?”

  Merciful silence, in all likelihood. Zane felt it was high time that Barker just upped and stopped. He was running out of switches to fiddle with.

  “You ever stop and think how many people are sucking the tit of a single creative entrepreneur such as myself? I generate the content, I generate the wealth that pays for the whole fuckin’ system of links and servers and free preview sites. It’s people like me driving the Internet, Zane. The Internet! The most important technological innovation in the history of mankind. I am the fucking fountainhead!”

  Barker let his arms drop to his sides and crossed to his desk where he righted his chair and then flopped into it, deflated. Zane detected a lull. Escape was at hand. He put his camera in his bag and closed the clasps, stood, felt he should say something but couldn’t think what.

  The door opened six inches. Jade looked through, caught Barker’s eye. She held the door while the girl entered, dressed now in her street clothes. Her face was a mess, her mouth bruised and puffy where Bill had punched her.

  “I think we’re going to have a little problem,” said Jade.

  “I’m going to go,” said Zane.

  Barker ignored him. He took a bottle of whisky and three glasses out of the desk drawer and poured a generous measure into the first glass.

  “I think we all need a drink.”

  Zane paused, his hand on the door handle, and looked back. Barker pressed the glass into the girl’s hand, and then poured two smaller drinks, talking nonstop.

  “When girls come to work for us, we treat them like family. What I mean is, we’re going to take care of you. We’re going to fix you up.”

  “We do detest these mishaps,” said Jade.

  Barker reached into the desk drawer and retrieved a small bag containing a pale, brownish powder. Zane had seen enough. He let the door close behind him.

  Zane slipped the camera bag from his shoulder and locked his apartment door and put on the chain. Here, at least, we have some guarantees. For example, here, nobody’s going to beat the shit out of a gawky and possibly underage drug addict. No risk of finding yourself entangled in the lives of people whose given names keep changing without warning. With all the changing names and fake rooms it’s impossible to keep things straight. If this keeps up you’ll end up a shut-in, go back to feeding pigeons in the park.

  Zane had taken to avoiding hard liquor as a means of demonstrating to himself that he was not an alcoholic. Nevertheless, something stronger than beer was now in order. He took a bottle of rum from the cupboard, the emergency reserve. All the glasses were in the sink, covered with god knows what. He considered them, rejected them, found a single coffee mug on the counter. The stain therein suggested it had held only coffee. He quickly rinsed it, and then half-filled it with rum.

  Rattling around Zane’s head was the question Jade had so eloquently articulated: what the fuck is wrong with you? The easy answer is nothing, but that one’s beginning to lose credibility. Still, one hesitates to consider the alternatives. Some doors are best left unopened; there’s the problem of just who you might find inside. Better to avoid situations in which this question comes out into the open. Problem solved, save the possible outcome that finds you returning to the pigeons.

  Zane felt that something had come loose inside, something now spinning free, a pulley without its belt. You’ve come to a stop but you should be in motion.

  He needed a shower. In the bathroom he put his drink down on the edge of the sink and took off his jeans and threw them in the corner. Now the scar collection: exhibit A, the left thigh. An antipersonnel mine, in Bosnia, in 1993. Put it down to bad luck. The mine killed the Bosniak militiaman who set it off. Stepping off the road was stupid, but the soldier did it anyway. Concrete and asphalt you could trust; earth, you could not. But after a while you look at the grass and think this could be an easy out. You step off the road and you know what’s coming but you just don’t care anymore.

  Back from Croatia, in ’92, Zane avoided stepping off the sidewalk, found himself nervous and agitated when he had to cross a lawn. Suburban children running through a sprinkler sent him into a sudden panic attack. After the wound it was worse. You get panic attacks in the street and then you get angry at yourself over the panic attacks. Everyone knows there are no minefields in Toronto or New York.

  You get to thinking about luck. Staying alive is the ultimate good luck. You have your talismans; you change some tiny thing, someone gets hurt, you change back. It’s stupid and you don’t tell anyone but why take the risk. Then one day you wake up and realize that your whole career is nothing but luck. Like all the others you try to predict events, to minimize your risks and read the currents and anticipate the story, but in the end it’s f/8 and be there and being there is simply a matter of luck.

  Lapierre said you made your luck. It didn’t matter being in the right place at the right time if you couldn’t make a good picture. But in the end Lapierre ended up with bad luck.

  Zane didn’t want these memories. He peeled off his shirt. Exhibit B, the abdomen: this is the entrance wound caused by a 7.62 x 54 mm bullet, probably fired from a PKM general purpose machine gun, Russian-made, a testimony to the genius of Mikhail Kalashnikov who also gave the world the AK-47. Good old Mikhail, the failed poet, will have a lot to answer for when the Great Historian writes his final account, if indeed that ever comes to pass. If only he’d written better poetry. Exhibit C, the exit wound, does not bear considering. Put it down to bad luck; this wound accounted for Zane’s dietary restrictions and for certain other problems.

  It doesn’t bear considering but it doesn’t go away. The first thing you remember is the cold. Lying out in the desert with the sun beating down on, and yet feeling so cold.

  He was getting good pictures. In an abandoned village, following a group of Afghan fighters, more guts than tactical sense, and their Special Forces advisors. No pictures of the latter, thank you. And there was a photographer working for one of the big news agencies, Dan Webster. The Taliban opened up from the hillsides with machine guns and RPGs and there they were, trapped in this village.

  So you keep still and you keep your head down. You stay out of sight. Zane hunched down behind a stone wall. The Special Forces team leader called in an airstrike, calling in the orders in a calm, measured voice. They were in a bad spot, behind the wall. Loose stone walls and parked cars only give cover in the movies, but it was the only cover to hand. Still, nobody was shooting at them. Everyone was calm except Webster, and he was trying not to show it. It was Webster’s first war.

  Dust explodes from the top of the wall, the sharp crack of bullets passing overhead. One moment you’re talking about restaurants and the next, your luck runs out. You don’t feel pain, just the impact, a solid blow to the gut. Then the distant thumping of the machine gun firing catches up, shouts, rifle fire, the sound of bullets in the air like someone tearing strips off a huge sheet of aluminum foil.

  You know it’s bad. It has to be bad. An abdominal wound is always bad. Zane looked over at Webster, lying still, blood splashed dark on the ground beside him. His camera lying there with blood spattered on the lens.

  Danny, I think we’re in deep shit here.

  Right arm folded under your body. Immobilized. Legs don’t seem to work. You want to check for the exit wound, but your free hand is filthy. You keep a field dressing taped to the strap of your camera bag, but it’s out of reach. And about now you wonder, in a detached and almost clinical way, if the bullet hit your spine. Bleeding to death seems academic. You’re fucked in any case. This war looks to be your last.

  Danny, it might be time to retire.

  The sky a distant, faded blue.

  Getting wounded, it’s no big deal. Didn’t you read the brochure? It’s part of the job, down there in the fine print. It’s like getting the runs when you go to Mexico. Just relax, there, Danny.

  The important thing now is to remain calm. The important thing is to remain still. The mo
re you struggle, the more blood you pump. The more blood you pump, the more blood you lose. It’s an entirely sound line of reasoning, even if this advice to remain calm isn’t entirely practical. The same reasoning applies to poisonous snakebite; the more blood you pump, the faster the toxin spreads. Just how you’re supposed to remain calm and control your heart rate when you’ve got this cobra hanging off the end of your nose is never adequately explained. Theory and practice. That’s book-learning for you.

  Are you listening, Danny?

  Bullets cracking overhead, the tearing sound they make in the air, the distant thump of the muzzle blast.

  Some more book-learning for you: that sharp crack is the sound of the bullet passing overhead, faster than sound, and the dull thump is the muzzle blast catching up. Sound travels three hundred metres per second in dry air, which we most assuredly have here in Afghanistan, although altitude and barometric pressure also factor into it. Consequently, you can judge how far away the guns are, that is, if you can separate the sound of one gun from another when you’ve got all this firing going on and all these little metal death-hornets flying through the air and this big frigging cobra hanging off your nose.

  Pay attention, Danny. This here book-learning’s important.

  Zane laid his face down in the dust to ease the pain in his neck, incipient muscle cramp, and a stone bit into his cheek. This is an indignity.

  Starting to feel cold. When you start to feel cold, that’s shock. Shock kills. And now the pain, a mass of pain building as the body begins to comprehend the scale of the damage. Pain is physiological indignation. The stone digging into your cheek rapidly loses relevance when you realize that you’re going to die here, behind a stone wall at the edge of some ruined village in one of the poorest countries in the world.

  Zane had no religion. You get to see a lot of victims. You get to see a lot of people die and it’s always miserable, and there is no grace or redemption. No choirs of angels. Probably your awareness just fades away as the circuits of your brain shut down. The mind struggles to make sense of the failure of the brain’s circuitry. All the circuits yammering in indignation come through as white noise, white light. The chill of shock is the chill of death. To lie there, knowing your life is ending, unable to tie up loose ends and say goodbye: this is unfair.