by Harry Parker
‘No, Gerard,’ she told him. ‘You can have one when we get home.’
The boy looked up at her and back at the rows of sweets. He begged again and then noticed you queuing behind. He saw both of us but we were so odd he didn’t understand and he looked away in confusion. And then he was curious and turned back and stared at me. He couldn’t take his eyes off me and then he looked up at you.
You smiled at him but he turned his face away and tugged at his mother’s skirt.
‘Look, Mum. Look at that man.’ He was urgent.
‘Shhh, Gerard. Not now,’ she said, then glanced down at me, smiled at you and turned away.
‘But, Mummy, that man’s a robot. Look,’ he said. His eyes pleaded with her and he tugged at her again and pointed at me.
She turned back to you and rested a hand on the boy’s head. ‘Sorry, love,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry.’ You smiled at the boy again. ‘I’m actually only half robot.’
But he buried his head in her skirt away from you and then they funnelled down to the checkout. He kept glancing back at us as he held on to her and she filled shopping bags.
Back in the car, you lifted me into the footwell and closed the door. The remains of your femoral artery throbbed against my socket. You dropped your head back against the seat and your eyes were closed and your mouth hung open. You pushed the key in but then paused and saw the orange shopping bags you’d placed on the passenger seat and you looked down at me.
You remembered the bang, the pain and the loneliness on the helicopter. You remembered the men who’d pulled you off the battlefield and being broken in hospital with tubes and drugs invading you. You remembered wishing you’d never been saved. You remembered: ‘We’ve just had to amputate your second leg.’
You remembered everyone who’d helped you: the nurses who’d gently washed you and the doctors who’d cut more of you away to save you, the physio and ‘squeeze those glutes’, the man who gave me to you.
You remembered the last time you’d carried shopping bags, before you’d been to that distant country, when you didn’t need me, and it was a lifetime ago. You remembered your friends and your family and ‘a nice cup of tea’. You smiled at the shopping bags and turned the key.
41
I was there as BA5799 ran along the wall. My overhanging rim cut his vision as a black horizontal blur and my chinstrap bounced up against his stubble as he pounded onto each stride. I was his window on soldiering: the straps that held me to him framed the action.
Above me the wall burst open and dust hovered as he ran towards the field. A shock slapped around me and in his ears and then another, closer. He held his rifle in one hand; the other was clenched in a fist that he drove forward as he skipped around a log and down a track and then he was on the hard mud and crawling through the field to his team commander.
Soldiers were kneeling in the corn and firing their weapons. My weight pulled his head forward but the muscles in his neck were trained so that he didn’t feel me. I made him comfortable and safe in this environment and he raised his head above the leaves and tried to make sense of it. The fear that had flooded up at the first crack was now pushed away and converted by adrenaline. And he wanted to understand everything that happened and control it and exist in it.
Metal passed above me and he heard it, sharp and claustrophobic. It was a roof of sound that pressed down and crushed the world around BA5799 until it was only his forearm pushing him up, the rifle he lifted into his shoulder and the knee that he stepped out; my rim bumping into his weapon sight and his finger curling around the trigger; the flash in the distance that he aimed at; the cracking above and the thump and then the squeeze and the clumping punch of the rifle in his shoulder as he fired again and again.
Cones of sound churned the air and his left eye squinted shut below me as he took aim and fired again, his forehead pressing against the pad that held my dome of composite material on his skull. I trapped heat and sweat started to pool among the hair I’d matted flat and dripped over his brow into his eye.
One of the men in the field shouted as he rolled onto his side to change magazine. Then he was up, back in the fight. The team commander next to us shouted at him to fire at the base of a bush at the end of a compound. A flashing pricked in the shadow and then the crack of rounds sprayed above us and the world crushed in even tighter. He ducked and I was hidden in the yellow stalks again. The men around returned fire, escalating the violence.
I swivelled as he looked back. On my rear, above where his bare neck extended from his body armour, he had written BA5799 O POS in black marker. And now that writing pressed into his day-sack as he looked at the compound where his other men waited for him to decide. They needed him now and he knew he must drag himself out of the tunnel of noise and heat that was the small patch of leaves he’d flattened. He thought of the enemy and where they might be, what they were trying to accomplish. The fear that they might try and cut off his platoon flashed through him – just do something before they do – and he cupped his hand around his mouth.
‘Move back to the FUP. Make sure three-two go with you,’ he shouted to the men in cover behind us and pointed over at a ditch.
A man acknowledged this with a wave before ducking back through a doorway in the compound as bullets cracked past and then peered out again.
BA5799 shouted again and his jaw pushed down against my chinstrap. ‘We’ll give you rapid fire in thirty seconds.’ Then he turned back to the team commander. ‘Rapid fire in thirty, Corporal Monk,’ he said.
There was a lull as the men around him inserted fresh magazines and the combat became an exchange of single bangs and cracks. The team commander crawled up into the line. BA5799 lifted his head again and looked out across the field but couldn’t see the enemy. He pressed the radio switch on his shoulder and updated the network, speaking into the microphone that jutted out from me and curved in front of his mouth.
‘Hello, Zero, this is Three Zero Alpha, I’m going to withdraw from Compound Kilo Five Four back along the cleared route to the FUP,’ he said. ‘My intention is to break contact and return to your location. Request air cover. Over.’
A calm metallic voice sounded in the earpiece squashed between me and the side of his head. ‘Zero, Roger, that’s clear. Air cover already tasked. Should be with you any minute. Over.’
‘Many thanks. Out.’
Then he glanced down at his watch and it was time. The team commander shouted at his men and they were up, their weapons kicking in their shoulders and brass spinning out into the green stalks.
He turned and saw the two teams spaced out and running across the open ground and sliding into the ditch. They were exposed and in danger. He clenched his teeth and we were up again, the rifle pulled back against his shoulder as he added his weight to the battle, knocking up into my rim with each pull of the trigger.
He looked at the ditch over to his left and saw the helmets appear near the sluice gate. Then they were firing and one of them called for rapid fire and their weapons burst and spat. The battle had a new geometry.
‘Corporal Monk, go. You’ve got rapid from three-one,’ he bellowed to the man kneeling to his right. ‘Move now!’
They started to run, lifting their weapons up and peeling behind those who still fired, out of the field and back along the wall. The team commander waited and signalled to BA5799. ‘Sir, move, I’ll cover you,’ he shouted, his face angry below his helmet.
‘No, you go first. Go. Go. I’ll be right behind you.’
The soldier turned and followed his men. Then it was only us standing in the corn. He fired wildly once more at the bushes and compound walls across the field, then he sprinted after them.
They were ahead of him in the unseen hail and running over the open ground. Noise told him everything: the men firing from the ditch and the metallic clang as the sluice gate was hit, a whining ricochet, and the machine gun pulled up out of the ditch, its bipod unfolded, filling the air with m
etal and trying to dominate the battle.
But there were cracks above us and BA5799 knew the enemy was still fighting. He crouched and ran and gripped and breathed and clenched his teeth in a grimace. He started to feel the weight of his kit as his legs burnt and I bounced on his head and he longed to be down in cover. The men in front were dropping into the ditch ahead until he was the only one left exposed and then a round cracked past me and he jumped down the slope into safety.
I knocked back as he jolted to the bottom and turned over, gasping for breath. A soldier knelt in the middle of the ditch and counted him in.
‘Good you could join us, boss,’ he said and grinned. ‘We’re all here.’
‘Thanks, Sarnt Dee,’ he said, his chin pushing into the damp leather pad of my strap. He reached up and pulled me back down over his forehead.
‘What’s the plan, sir?’ the man said.
I rotated as he looked over at the end of the ditch where his men were tucked over their weapons firing or swivelling down into cover to reload or change position. The symphony of battle changed as the cracks slowed and then stopped.
‘Cease fire, Corporal Carr,’ he called. There were more bangs as his men fired a few last rounds and finally it was quiet.
He turned back to the man. ‘I think they may have had enough of us, Sergeant Dee?’
‘Or it could be them,’ he said and pointed up at the helicopter drifting in high above.
‘True,’ BA5799 said. I pulled back on my chinstrap as he looked up and another angular helicopter hovered into view, the landscape vibrating.
Still breathing hard, he pulled a map from a pouch on his armour and read a grid into his radio before discussing the helicopters and the platoon’s route back. The men around him were lined up along the sides of the ditch, red-faced and hot and sucking on their drinking tubes as their chests heaved.
He pushed his hand up under my rim to itch his hairline. His ears whirred in the sudden silence and he puffed his cheeks out as adrenaline coursed through him. He called in three of the men and spoke to them.
‘We’ll keep one team static to cover the platoon until we’re back in sight of Route Hammer. Stay on the cleared path. Just peel through each other. One foot on the ground at our rear.’ He looked at two of them and they nodded that they understood. ‘I’ll control the withdrawal. Sarnt Dee, you lead us back. Use the route we agreed in orders. Go firm before we cross the road and then we’ll roll back into camp.’
‘Roger, boss,’ he said.
*
He looked at the paths and walls that had seemed so different last night. He saw where he’d been lost and smiled: all the threatening shadows and looming shapes had disappeared. He checked back towards the tree line for the enemy but the landscape was empty. One of his teams huddled behind a mound dredged from a ditch and covered the platoon as they filed away. Above, the helicopters banked off to another task.
It was quiet and the sun baked the earth. He yawned. He had survived the morning and his adrenaline was gone. No one had been hurt and they’d all get back to camp. The combat had been brief and the energy slumped out of him as he sent a message for the next section to go firm.
The soldiers by the mound clipped up bipod legs, lifted their weapons and followed down the path as another section pushed out along a fence ahead to cover the next phase of the withdrawal. His men moved to his command and he studied the landscape and felt a rush of pride at the privilege of leading them in this place.
Farmers were in the fields and watched the men moving past them and BA5799 greeted them with the only words of their language he could speak. He knew another attack this morning was unlikely if the locals were out.
The sun had sharpened and beat down on me and his head was hot and sweated into my pads. His clothes smelt and chafed where his kit pressed in. His shoulders ached under the straps that pulled them back and he felt thin and spent under the weight of it all.
But he could do it; he could endure it, and more. He had wondered why people thought soldiering was romantic, and knew if they swapped places with any of his men most would crumple under the pressure and fear, the smell and heat. But he could feel the romance now as he watched the single file of men, with their day-sacks and helmets and antennas, bobbing up and down across this foreign land.
They moved back into the area of abandoned compounds near the base. The platoon had stopped along the track, waiting for the covering teams to catch up. He was the last man and before we pushed between two walls he turned to survey the flat fields and sparse lines of trees out to where the enemy had been. On a road in the distance, a man on a motorbike was watching us. I shook from side to side as he sighed and then walked on into the maze of walls.
He went through the platoon from the back and smiled and nodded at every man as he passed. They crouched by walls or sat on rocks to take the weight off their backs. Their faces were exhausted and grimy with dirt. He knew and trusted each of them. They were his: he could order them into danger and they would go, but he also belonged to them and would lead them there. Each grin and nod, every gesture was trust and the bond that had tightened again that morning.
They stood as he passed and followed him, peeling the platoon through itself so it reversed order. He stopped by the last man waiting beside a ruined building. ‘All good, Sarnt Dee?’
‘Good, boss. Home time, I think,’ he said and glanced back. ‘I’ll count us through.’
‘I’m starving,’ BA5799 said. ‘I cannot wait for breakfast. I’ll lead us back in.’ And he walked on out into the field.
He led his men towards the camp. The tops of the watchtowers showed above the road and he saw the flag and antennas. He thought about breakfast and the walls of the base rose up on the horizon as we approached. I had pressed into his skull for hours and he adjusted me and then looked back at the single file of men spaced out and moving from the ruins.
His boots were treading below me, pushing out over the dry, cracked mud and brushing through the yellow grass. We came to a dip in the ground and in a flash there was no longer any romance.
*
Later, after he’d been taken away in a helicopter and I was no longer with him, the platoon had collapsed back to the camp. One of the men carried me into a room and put me in a cardboard box. Someone was writing on it with a black marker: Captain Tom Barnes BA5799 – WIA.
He looked over as they tapped down the lid above me. ‘Do you think he’ll make it, Sergeant Dee?’ he said.
‘Not sure, mate. Looked pretty bad to me.’
42
I existed for a fraction of a moment. I was created by an explosive reaction from a device that functioned to form me. I passed through rock, through mud, through dust, through the air, through the sole of a boot.
Through a man.
I stamped through them all, folding them in shock and pressure and dragging them up with me.
I am also noise. Try bang, try boom, try dull thud-thump, try ker-krump, try piercing ping puncturing perforated drum.
I crushed him against gravity.
He couldn’t stay whole and I disintegrated his foot, slamming through it and bursting it open: foot and boot fragmenting in my wake. I forced them up with the dirt I punched up. Up in my supersonic swell, tearing straight through skin.
Trashing all that should be sacred.
I was all around him and in him and through him: flaying a finger off, flashing flesh from a forearm, blasting a boot buckle deep inside him.
I ripped up his leg, flapping his calf off in my wind. I stripped his trousers away and his penis fluttered in my storm. I pulled open his testicle. I dragged bone deep into his thigh, pushing through pink flesh and vessels, bursting open grey globules of fat.
I went through him, shocking his nerves and muscles and jarring his spine, crushing him in his armour. I beat through his diaphragm and collapsed his lung – and up – up his back, compressing his skull and banging it into his helmet. And over him with dust and dirt, into t
he sky in a pyre of bubbling, boiling brown.
He would have snapped if I had existed for any longer but he flexed in me and then flipped and clattered to the earth.
And then I was spent and wind dragged in to replace everything I’d blown out, all fleeting and invisible except for what I’d lifted, which now rained down around him, and my bang rolling out across the landscape.
43
It banged around us and lifted you with it. Rock, mud and bone thrashed past me as I swung out around your neck on my chain. Your face was stretched in shock next to me as we existed inside the shaft of violence. It flogged through us and you bent with it, flipping over so my chain was across your cheek and my metal discs floated up next to your helmet. All you felt was the flash, the dull thump, and being spun and airborne in an instant. All you knew was that something was wrong.
And then I clinked against the hard earth as you dropped back down from above. Sensation exploded from the bridge of your nose, overwhelming synapses and neurotransmitters and buzzing through you, too vast to be pain yet.
Your body bounced and slumped as debris and rocks pattered around us. There in the dust, my two metal discs hung from your neck and rested on the ground below your chin. You were face down and your forehead pressed against the inside of your helmet, holding your face away from dry grass.
Shock annihilated everything and you were gone.
And then you were back. You expanded from a scrap of consciousness to a head and nothing registered but disorientation and you knew with sudden certainty that you’d been decapitated. You couldn’t feel your body. You opened your eyes to make it real. All you saw was the baked mud and the light pouring in from each side. Your eyes were massive with fear above me and then you shut them, crushing them together against it.