by Liam Brown
I saw the smoke just after dawn. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed before, but dawn actually begins much earlier than you’d think, long before the sun shows up to take all the credit. I mean it. If you watch the sky long and hard enough, you can sense that sunrise probably an hour and a half before that first crack of light appears over the horizon. First thing to look for is the stars startin to disappear. Not all of ’em mind. The brighter ones, the planets and shit, might stick around a while longer, but for the most part the sky starts to empty until eventually it’s as black as a busted TV screen, with only the light of that no-good moon for company. After that, ya get your blues and purples movin in, the blackness of the night slowly drainin away until before you know it the sun’s comin up behind ya, the sky streaked with pinks and reds and oranges and all that romantic shit that poets and artists like to mess their shorts over, but in reality are just a bunch of colours that don’t mean squat.
Anyway like I said, it was just after dawn when I spotted the smoke on the horizon, a small cloud in the distance, curlin up towards the sky. I stopped walkin and watched, realisin after a few seconds that it wasn’t smoke, but dust. What’s more, it was getting closer.
Now normally in these situations – being approached by an unknown vehicle in hostile territory – I would make an effort to conceal myself, to get on my belly or hide behind a rock or whatever. This time however I jus’ stood and waited, watchin that cloud of dust get bigger and bigger, until eventually the khaki brown of a Land Rover came into view. And I saw that it was one of ours.
My sister picked me up from the hospital. She didn’t say anything when she saw me.
She didn’t need to.
I let her stay for a few weeks until I was walking around again. She helped tidy up the apartment – she even offered to help me redecorate – but I was eager for her to go. Every night when I went to bed I slept with Dustin’s memory stick under my pillow.
I had things I needed to take care of.
‘Corporal Parker. You’re a difficult man to get hold of.’
I stood open mouthed as Commander Big Bollocks killed the ignition and stepped down from the vehicle. Even with the shock of seein him out here, impeccably dressed in full service uniform despite the heat, I still felt my arm fumblin for a salute, years of drills and trainin kickin in no matter how much I tried to fight it.
‘At ease Corporal,’ the Commander nodded as he approached me, takin off his hat and restin it in the crook of his arm. ‘I don’t suppose you got a drink there? I’m drier than a nun’s crack.’ I shook my head, struggling to make sense of his presence here. I don’t mind tellin you son, it felt like my fuckin mind was unwindin for sure. ‘Not to worry,’ he continued, carefully removing one of his starched white gloves and wipin his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I got an ice-cold beer waiting for me back at the base. Right now though there’re a few matters we need to discuss. Isn’t that right Danny?’
Suddenly my mouth was dry too, like I’d swallowed half the frickin desert or somethin – which when you thought about it I probably had. ‘How’d you find me?’ I finally managed to croak. The Commander smiled. ‘Ah. Well, let’s just say Corporal Doggerel gave us a pretty good idea where to start looking… Once he’d recuperated that is.’ ‘Doggie’s alive?’ I asked in disbelief. ‘Oh, he’s fine,’ he chuckled. ‘We picked him up about a month back. He was dehydrated and sunburnt, but alive. For now. Which is more than I can say for your unit, eh Corporal?’ I swallowed hard, my throat feelin like it was about to split open. ‘It was terrible,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m sure it was, Corporal. I find friendly fire always leaves a sour taste in one’s mouth, no matter how you choose to… frame it.’
I didn’t say anythin.
‘I mean, you’ve obviously been planning this for some time. The ammunition we retrieved from the Lieutenant’s body matched that stolen from the firing range at the base, so it wasn’t a random attack. You didn’t just lose your shit one night like most of the other freaks out here. No, you had time to think it through. Plan it. You had all your bases covered – right down to sabotaging the GPS and radio, which by the way we found buried, under your tent of all places. Very clever. But the question remains – why there? Why leave yourself marooned? What was it, a suicide mission? Because I’ve got to be honest with you, I never had you pegged as a coward. Crazy, sure. Homicidal, undoubtedly. Which by the way brings us around to your Staff Sergeant, Jim – found strangled with a length of cord that I’m sure closer analysis will show matches your boot laces.’
Instinctively I found myself slippin into recon mode, scannin the area for opportunities to escape, calculatin the number of footsteps it would take to reach the Land Rover.
Evidently sensing my unease, Big Bollocks reached out a hand and gave me a big, paternal slap on the arm. ‘Hey, relax there Dan! I’m not here to court martial you. Shit, if I’d wanted to do that I’d have brought you in weeks ago. See we’ve been following you pretty closely, Corporal. Had a fix on you ever since that fat sack of shit Doggerel stumbled into my office and started whining about some damn cat he claimed you’d killed. Like I’m a goddamned animal protection officer now, huh?’
The Commander chuckled again, reachin into his blazer pocket and pullin out a preposterously large cigar, which he proceeded to light. ‘Now as it happens, most of our people thought we should probably just take you out – put a bullet behind your ear and frame you as a wack-job. A couple of them even thought it’d be a good idea to put you on trial. Get the papers involved. Show the world the army has modernised. That we won’t stand for this sort of thing anymore... ’
He paused to contemplate the end of his cigar, belchin out a perfect, grey smoke ring that hovered before me for a second before fragmentin and fallin apart. ‘Of course, these people are not politicians,’ he continued. ‘They don’t appreciate the headaches negative press can cause us. The question’s already being asked higher up. Then of course there’s the anti-war lobby. Always keen to jump on a good massacre, always looking for a new angle to exploit. A fact I believe you’re intimately aware of Corporal?’
I shuffled awkwardly, the smoke driftin from the Commander’s open mouth beggin to turn my stomach.
‘There’s a very real worry at the top that the tide is about to turn. We’re not talking about a few cranks waving flags at rallies – we’re talking about full-scale insurrection. Riots, social unrest. Governments could fall. The people might be sheep, but there’s only so many self-combusting soldiers they can take before the press starts moaning about taxes being used to fund a bunch of kamikaze meatheads… all offence intended, Corporal.’ He paused again to laugh at his own joke then stopped, suddenly serious. ‘So what do we do with you? What to do with a guy like Danny? Do we string you up by your testicles and feed you to the courts? I mean, even with the best defence in the world you’re looking at gross misconduct and negligent and indiscriminate discharge of unauthorised weaponry, not to mention multiple homicides, including that of a well-loved and respected senior ranking officer. You’re looking at life without parole. Maybe even the chair. I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of wives and mothers who’d petition to watch you fry – women who packed their boys off to war only to get a knock on the door from a casualty notification officer a few weeks later. It’s heartbreaking really.’
At this, Big Bollocks dropped his cigar and extinguished it under the heel of his boot, twisting firmly on the spot, the way you might crush a particularly unpleasant cockroach. He took a deep breath. ‘But where does retribution get us at the end of the day? After all, an eye for an eye only puts the opticians out of business. And God knows if there’s one thing this world needs right now, it’s jobs. Trust me. So with all that in mind Corporal, I’ve made a decision.’
I waited for the click of handcuffs around my wrists.
Or the gunshot.
‘You’re to be decorated as a war hero.’
At this point I began to crack up. I mean it, I lau
ghed my fuckin head off. I waited for the Commander to follow suit. But when I looked up I saw he was deadly serious.
‘The people need someone they can champion during these dark days, Corporal. Someone they can look up to. Get a bit of national pride pumping for once. Next week marks the fourteenth anniversary of this godforsaken adventure. Fourteen years! Do you know how hard that is to justify to Johnny Public when you’re closing his kid’s school and knocking down his local hospital? Do you have any idea what kind of pressure it puts our poor, hardworking politicians under when they announce yet another billion dollar investment in the latest drone technology, even as we pull out our troops? Don’t you think there’s quite enough bad news around already with the economy and the environment without piling yet more shit on the doorstep with tales of your psychopathic exploits? No, it’s been decided. You were on patrol in the desert, a peacekeeping mission, naturally, when an M-2 cell ambushed your unit. Real nasty bastards they were, fundamentalist to the core. Torched and slayed every one of you as you lay sleeping in your beds. All except you. By some miracle, you were spared – the sole survivor of the attack.’
‘What about Doggie?’ I asked.
‘Ah. Well, it turns out Private Doggerel didn’t make such a good recovery after all. You see there is rather a lot of animosity between you two, so perhaps it would be better for everyone involved if... Anyway, back to the story – what does lowly old Corporal Parker do next, eh? Does he crumple into a heap of self-pity after witnessing his friends mercilessly slaughtered by a pack of bloodthirsty Monsters? Does he thump the floor at the unfairness of the world and lie in the dirt to die? Why of course not! Not the dashing and courageous Corporal Parker! No, instead he decides to go it alone, pursuing these vile beasts across the desert for weeks on end, undergoing many personal hardships and sacrifices along the way until finally – finally! – he tracks them to an abandoned village, let’s say, ooh, thirty miles east of here, and engages them in a thrilling fire fight before calling in the drones to finish the job, conveniently destroying any evidence of their existence along the way…’
An involuntary image of Afa popped into my head. Her hair. Her smile. I felt my stomach tighten.
‘Now what do you say? Have we got a story worth telling the world?’
I gritted my teeth. ‘It’s a story all right… ’
‘Atta boy! Now there is one teeny-weeny little hiccup that could cause a problem if left… untended. Your wife, Mrs Parker.’
I shook my head, thrown by the mention of your ma’s name.
‘Lorna? What’s she got to do with anythin?’
None of the major news agencies wanted to know. At least not at first.
The first few times I rang anonymously, disguising my voice, refusing to give my name. After a week or so of getting nowhere though, I started to open up a little. I figured they probably got a hundred sob stories like me every day, so I started dangling a few juicy carrots. I told them about the attack on the airbase, that I was a soldier’s wife turned bad.
I still got nowhere.
Then I mentioned Project Clearwater.
Suddenly people wanted to talk.
Big Bollocks shot me a playful grin. ‘You know Danny, the press are a funny old bunch. When they make the effort to drag someone up from the gutter and crown them ‘People’s Champion’ they like to make sure there are no skeletons hanging about that might come tumbling into the daylight once they’ve stuck them on the front page. Just to save them looking like assholes after the fact,’ he paused, a skewed grin fixed on his face. ‘The thing is, you seem to have a whole fucking graveyard in your closet.’
The next day I noticed the car parked outside my apartment.
‘I don’t know what you’re talkin about.’
‘Oh come off it! An army veteran with a war protestor for a wife? You couldn’t make that shit up. Not to mention the police and hospital records, the most recent of which shows that you beat that poor bitch so badly she miscarried your first and only child together? You are one piece of work, Corporal, I’ll give you that.’
One evening a reporter came to call. She brought a Starbucks coffee and little black tape recorder. She said she was interested in helping me tell my story. She said she was interested in hearing anything I had to tell her about Project Clearwater.
I felt myself leavin my body, floatin high above the desert. I looked down at the Commander, amazed by how small he looked from up there. And there was something else too, glimmerin in the distance amid the endless grey sand. A smudge of sunshine…
We spoke for a long time, the reporter and me. I told her everything I could think of. I told her about Danny. About Dustin and Jeremy. It took a long time to tell her my story.
The reporter smiled throughout, nodding politely as she sipped her coffee. When I reached the end though she looked a little disappointed. She wanted to know if I had any proof, any hard evidence I could give her. Something to make it real.
I handed her the memory stick.
As she was leaving, the reporter happened to glance in at the spare bedroom – the walls still yellow, the towels still neatly folded. ‘Oh, are you expecting?’ she asked.
‘Of course the papers would have a field day with that kind of thing. Hero Soldier Secret Psycho Baby Killer! They’d eat you for breakfast… ’
‘I was,’ I said.
I peered down, strugglin to make sense of what I was seeing. It looked like a field of yellow flowers.
It’s been three months since the reporter called. I still haven’t heard anything. I tried calling the agency a few times but they said that she doesn’t work there anymore. I tried calling a few more times. Now they won’t even answer the phone.
Every day I watch the TV.
Every day it seems there’s a new war to fight.
New Monsters to kill.
I sometimes wonder if it will just go on like this forever? The fighting, the killing.
The lies.
But every day I still switch on the TV. I still open the papers.
And I hope.
‘The bottom line is we couldn’t risk that kind of bad publicity. Not after so much planning and preparation. Anyway, we decided to fix the problem. As of… ’ he paused to look at his watch.
There is a knock at the door.
‘… Now. There we go, all sorted. Naturally the police and medical records have been taken care of too. All things considered I’d say you’ve come out of this smelling pretty good, wouldn’t you agree Corporal? Corporal?’
But I wasn’t listenin to him son. Not really. Because at that exact moment I’d just realised exactly what it was I’d been lookin at. And it wasn’t yellow flowers I’d seen. Nah. It was a field of maize.
In one fluid motion I reached into my jacket and pulled out my gun, firin my last remainin bullet into the Commander’s skull. Right between the eyes. He stood there for a moment, blinkin like he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. Then he fell down on the floor, dead. Very calmly I placed the empty gun down next to his body. Then I started walkin.
It took me longer than I thought to reach the field. By the time I got here the sun was already high in the sky and my shirt was stuck to my back. I stopped at the edge, starin in amazement at the huge stalks towerin high above my head. Just like in my dream. I sat down and took out my notebook. That was a few hours ago. I’m still here now, tryin to work out how to finish this. I guess there’re a whole lot of things I should probably say. Then again, I guess by now it’s too late for sayin most of them. I wish I was better with words. In a minute I will dig a small ditch with my hands and place this book inside. I’ve got your picture here too – the one you would have drawn if you’d had the chance. You know seein it again, I have to admit it looks kinda nice. Sand castles an’ all. I wouldn’t have minded vistin there one time. With you and your mother. Like a real family.
I fold the picture in two and put it in with this diary. In a second I’ll cover them both with di
rt. Like a smothered seed, waitin to explode. Or a bomb.
Ha.
Once the hole is filled I’ll stand up, dust off my hands and walk into the corn. And just like in my dream I’ll start runnin, faster and faster, switchin directions until I have no idea where I came in, or how to get out. And it won’t matter. And eventually I will stop, right in the centre of the field. And I will fall to my knees as if I am about to cry.
Or pray.
AUTHOR QUESTIONNAIRE
When and why did you start writing? What inspired you to write Real Monsters?
I remember winning a writing competition when I was five or six with a story called Why I Feel So Sad. I guess that set the tone for everything that was to follow. As a teenager I was an unashamed lit-groupie. My bedroom wall was plastered with posters of Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Hubert Selby Jr., Hunter S. Thompson. Those guys were my rock stars. I’d walk around with a notebook stuffed in my pocket and order straight rye whiskey while my friends sat around drinking bottles of Smirnoff Ice. It was a deeply embarrassing period for everyone involved.
I didn’t actually start writing fiction with any serious conviction until I was twenty-three or twenty-four. I was at university by then and had a two-year-old son. I was, and am, a pretty shy, anxious person, and I found writing acted as a buffer between me and the world. Something I could hide behind. There was an alternative lit blog called Straight from the Fridge that put out my first stories, and another called Beat the Dust. Those gave me the confidence that someone somewhere might be interested in my words, so I carried on, trying to improve my writing and figure out who I am. I’m still not sure I’ve ever topped Why I Feel So Sad though.