by Saad Hossain
The policy was simple: knock down empty doors and keep firing. The first door was an abandoned room and the second and the third, until Yakin himself was confused whether they were coming or going. The wall suddenly opened up behind a tapestry, and an ancient cook leapt out. He had his apron and a cleaver and smelled of onion soup. The man was deranged. Within seconds he had chopped off someone’s hand and disappeared back into the wall, taking the appendage with him. No doubt he intended to cook it later.
“Get in there after him!” Salemi said over the thunder of gunfire.
“Just a minute, I’ve got a stitch,” Yakin said. He slumped unconvincingly against a wall well away from that gaping tapestry tunnel.
One of the braver Fanatics rushed in. There were gunshots and terrible splattering noises reminiscent of cleavers hitting raw meat. The noises grew fainter. The tapestry slowly twitched back into place like an awful sphincter closing.
“Imam, perhaps we should retreat,” Yakin said.
“What?”
“It’s just that we’ve lost two Fanatics and one True Believer already,” Yakin said. “Soon we’ll be down to a handful of Pious. It doesn’t look like Kinza is even here…” He trailed off and started fiddling with his gun, not least because Salemi looked like he wanted to shoot someone.
They were forced to move on. They soon came to a dining room that was filled up with an immense table, seating ten to each side, although there was barely enough room for the chairs. Candles and place settings of tarnished silver gleamed in the darkness. Everything was covered in cobwebs.
“This place is scaring the shit out of me,” Yakin said to one of the Pious.
The next room over was a sitting room, full of mint tea and nice floral chairs. Two ladies in full hijab sat knitting by the window. Yakin was halfway toward them with the intention of yanking off their robes before he remembered that this sort of thing was severely frowned upon by the imam. It was alright to dismember people and put them in jars, oh yes, but try a little rape and pillage, and it’s down the ranks with you. He wanted to stop for some tea, but the Fanatics were smashing things up, and the mood just didn’t seem right.
“Tie them up and take them,” said the imam, putting the matter to rest.
They moved into the next room, swaggering a little bit now, even though they had yet to apprehend any of the prime targets. Yakin figured it was something primal about taking women captives. He tried to get a glimpse of the two prisoners, but they were so thoroughly shielded in black that it was impossible to guess anything; although one pair of eyes looked middle aged and the other seemed nice and young. He contrived to bump against the younger one several times, until one of the Fanatics swore at him and pushed him away.
The younger eyes glared at him, and he could see her lips moving beneath the veil. He felt something shrivel in his crotch and panic flooded his brain.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, pushing his way to Salemi. “They’re witches!”
“So?”
“She made my—ah, that is, she. Shouldn’t we just shoot them? Isn’t that what the old guy wanted?”
“We are not the Old Man’s errand boys,” Salemi said. “If he wants them dead, he can do the job himself. I don’t murder women. I only execute those who have transgressed against the laws of God.”
Yakin, who could not much see the difference between the two, lacked the courage to say so and simply ducked into line behind a veteran Fanatic. They entered another interminable hallway the walls warped and cracked, lathered in crazy shades of white paint. The floors vibrated with a peculiar buzzing sound. It got into Yakin’s head like a bee inside his skull, a manly baritone bee droning some kind of Coptic chant just below the frequency of registered speech.
“Can you hear that? What the hell is that?”
“Shut up, peacock.”
Fanatics didn’t get nervous, fueled by the same insanity that drove Salemi, but the True Believers had their hands on their triggers and the Opportunistic Faithful class was looking distinctly jittery. It was clear to Yakin that there was something very wrong with this house, aside from the unnatural width and breadth of its rooms and the impossible number of twisting corridors and staircases. Men were getting lost in here, coming out from distant rooms harried by the lunatic cook who leapt from space to space like a quantum particle with a knife-wielding disdain for things like time and distance.
There was a commotion ahead, and suddenly one wall caved in completely, burying them in moth-eaten books, scrolls, and scabs of gray paint. An Opportunist Faithful, trapped under there, started yelling that the words were sharp. Gunfire riddled into the mound from panicked fingers, and too late they realized that they had simply shot their own man down. Black ink oozed out with blood. There was the dull thud of metal hitting bone, and the man beside Yakin went down, a steel crossbow bored three inches into his head. They all froze. Except for Yakin, who turned to run.
He even got a few steps, until the cold barrel of Salemi’s gun brought him up short.
“Turn around, peacock,” Hassan Salemi said. He picked up an errant book, thumbed through it nonchalantly. “These books are very old. This is, I think, what remains of the lost library. These words are all heresies. Burn the place down.”
Later, chased by smoke, Yakin followed shadowy figures through the labyrinth, not sure who was on his side, half terrified of flying cooks and six-inch steel bolts. The buzzing was getting worse. They had taken more prisoners and had lost some men. Salemi was somewhere up ahead; Yakin could hear snatches of commands, translated down with contradictory shouts. Left! Right! Forward! Burn!
It was clear by now that Kinza was not here, although Salemi was unwilling to accept this. The house was on fire, and it was reacting badly to it. They had lost men in the darkness, when corridors looped unaccountably back into each other, causing nervous bursts of friendly fire. The archer was still at large, some kind of expert sniper with his crossbow, and those dull thuds brought terror to Yakin’s brain. They were down to only two Fanatics, the brothers Al-Hama and Borsha, grievous losses considering the paucity of results.
It occurred to Yakin that the Old Man might have sold them down the river, sent them to this mad library house to tie up loose ends. Al-Hama shouldered aside a door and the clammy breath of a rotting seaside hit them in the face. It was a cavernous dark room, sloped like the hull of a ship, and cold, at least several degrees below ambient temperature.
Ancient earthenware jars lined the sides of the room, amphorae with red wax seals, slimy with underwater sediment, sweating ooze, and that horrible sawing, vibrating sound was clawing through Yakin making him puke abruptly by Al-Hama’s sandaled feet. The Fanatic bulled in, unafraid, his gun out ready to scythe down jars of bellicose mud.
Something terrible happened to Yakin’s ears. The pressure changed abruptly, and he found himself on his knees, blood spurting from his nose. Al-Hama was shouting, his figure convulsing on the trigger, making bullets spray. The noise was deafening, even worse, jars were shattering, and gray fog filled the room with the nauseating smell of rotten sea, dead things floating up, and it seemed to Yakin as if terrible demons were lurching out of the amphorae. A change in pressure made his eardrums stretch to bursting.
Al-Hama was reciting verses, shouted words of defiance, while his bullets tore up the fog with little effect until something strangled in his throat, and blood mist rose in fine droplets around him. Yakin staggered away from the Fanatic, trying desperately to get out, out of the cavern, out of the doorway, anywhere but here. The floor was shaking now. It was an earthquake, wood and wall paper and cement all tumbling down around him. Water lapped at his feet, and then his ankles, rising rapidly, a terrible hot kind of water that burned his skin.
Their party was lost, stumbling around, Hassan Salemi trying to rally somewhere far away but his voice was a distant siren, a drowned radio.
“Run!” Yakin savagely pushed Borsha away, who was stupidly blocking the door looking for his dead broth
er. “Run, you fools!”
He dodged between slices of fog, from demonic grasping hands, from tumbling masonry, and somehow made it to the hallway and then into some other bizarre room that had been overturned by some giant’s footfall. He saw bodies floating in the air without gravity and a terrible burning light behind him, dark willowy things his eyes refused to register. Run, run. It was the only chord he understood; that he still lived and he had to run. Behind him the house started to burn in earnest.
31: UNEXPECTED HELP
DAGR WAS COLD, HUNGRY, AND MISERABLE. HE HAD NOT expected to survive this episode and had therefore not bothered to plan for an aftermath. Just his luck. Now, homeless, they squatted in a gutted building with a caved in roof. There was an unexploded shell in the corner, which was why the neighbors left the place alone. It was a dud CBU-105 cluster bomb, a fat torpedo-shaped case with fins, designed to open midair to release its submunitions. This particular bomb, having selfishly kept its bomblets to itself, now nestled peacefully in the corner of the room, lightly peppered in rat droppings, dented, scratched, and rusty, but still smirking. Dagr knew that the little bombs inside were potent and indeed, the cluster bomb was designed with the thought in mind that in case it failed to explode right away, it could function as a very effective land mine and explode at a later date with hardly any reduction in enemy casualties.
“We could have sold this, eh?” Kinza said. His face was drawn, seemingly aged overnight. The berserker fury had left him when enough of Salemi’s men had died and the entire building had wept blood. Now he seemed numb, an exhausted shell of a man. They were wounded, perhaps seriously, but in the dark their clothes were soaked black anyways with whose blood indistinguishable.
The terror remained in Dagr’s eyes though, cutting through all the shrapnel cuts and aches, the adrenaline dump that left his body floating on lassitude. He had seen everything from behind and now could never get the cries of screaming men out of his mind. We both stayed behind him. If we had been in front of him, he would have killed us. I’ve never seen anything like this. He would have killed us. He’s not human.
“We need food,” Dagr said finally. “Water, blankets, medicine. Anyone bring any money?”
Hamid pulled out a stack of wallets from his vest.
“You looted them?”
“Spoils of war.” Hamid shrugged, lopsided. There was something wrong with his arm.
“It was good thinking,” Kinza said.
“These men had families,” Dagr pawed his way through the wallets, horrified at the way his hands adjusted to this life with such ease. “You never think these Fanatics have wives, children.” There were pictures in the wallets of women, children.
“Xervish had a family too,” Kinza said. His voice was weary. It was a half-hearted attempt. Kinza was no longer concerned about right or wrong. Dagr could read it in his face. In the vastness of the enemy facing them, he simply wanted to do some damage before the end.
“I’ll get the supplies,” Dagr said finally.
Outside, he walked with a checkered scarf muffling his features, hoping the fugue of dusk disguised him from chance informants. They had crippled Salemi’s organizations here, at the heart of his power, but he had other houses, other men. Demons like him did not die easily. Already, Dagr knew, US dollars were changing hands through anonymous text messages offering new bounties on three men who were considered very much walking dead. Whatever favors they had accumulated were spent now. They were on their own.
He entered a sorry-looking corner store, deliberately picking the one with a guttering light and half empty shelves. Some of the commodities were tight, like cough medicine, or even simple bottled water. Many of the familiar local brands were gone, the factories shut. He had a commandeered wallet stuffed with cash, but not enough. Salemi’s men had carried little money. They would have to eke it out, and it still would not be enough, not to get them anywhere near Mosul. Who are we kidding? We’re never leaving this city alive.
In the end, he took bandages, antiseptic cream, water, dry Chinese biscuits, and as many bananas as they had, the best he could do. In the counter, he grabbed cigarettes and matches. They needed hot food but the cafes were out of the question, and most were closed in anticipation of trouble. The shopkeeper stared at him, one hand beneath the counter, holding a weapon no doubt.
“Is there any hot food out there? Any stalls open?”
“No,” said the shopkeeper. “What street are you from, friend?”
Dagr looked down, saw to his horror that the wallet in his hand had flipped open, the plastic flap clearly showing a driver’s license with the picture of a bearded man with flowing white hair. His gun nestled in his pocket. He quenched the urge to go for it.
“Here’s your money.” Exaggerated care to move slowly, keeping his hands visible. He left the cash on the counter and backed out, not waiting for the change.
Back home, he dropped the packages on the floor. Kinza and Hamid were drowsing, each huddled in a different corner, as far away from the cluster bomb as possible.
“Sorry, we have a problem.”
“What? No food in the stores?”
“I used this wallet.” Dagr threw it on the floor.
“You carried a stolen wallet?” Kinza asked. “Without emptying it?”
“I was tired. I didn’t think,” Dagr sat down. “It flipped open. The shopkeeper saw the license. He was suspicious.”
“You showed it to a shopkeeper?” Hamid looked disgusted. “Are you insane?”
“Were you followed?” Kinza asked.
“No…maybe…no, definitely not,” Dagr said. “I walked around the block, took a long route.”
“We have to move out of here,” Kinza said.
“Some advice: we’re exhausted,” Hamid said. “We need to eat, sleep. We can’t get through this without rest. Too many mistakes are made by fools who think they’re supermen. I’ve seen that first hand in the army.”
“Ok,” Kinza said. He slumped down, and the depth of his exhaustion was evident. “You’re right. This place can be hardly more dangerous than the streets. But we keep watch. You, professor, get the middle watch, because you fucked up.”
When Dagr spilled out the meager stash of medicine and food, they gathered in the petering light of the single naked bulb, and he realized that his companions were injured far more than he had thought. Kinza with a huge hole in his side and a laceration down his neck needing stitches; Hamid had a useless right arm, tucked in with a crude sling he had fashioned, the bone perhaps fractured, the bullet still inside. It was impossible to tell. They bore their pain with a dull stoicism, too tired to think, and finishing the cold food, fell into deep exhausted sleep.
Dagr, the least hurt of the three, drowsed alone through the night, sleeping in fits, the gun constantly slipping from his hands. Then close to dawn, at the hour of the first prayer, he heard footfalls near their door. He struggled to his feet and lurched outside, thinking to buy some time, sketching together some pathetic bluff, too tired in truth to even panic properly.
It was an elderly man carrying a bag and the grocery clerk with a bulge in his jacket.
“You’re those men,” the elder said, “the ones who hit Salemi.”
“No, no for God’s sake, I’m just a professor. I was travelling. We got robbed.”
“You had Ibn Waleed’s purse,” said the elder.
Dagr glanced back, half hoping to see the backup muzzle of Kinza’s guns, but the men were sleeping each in their corner, oblivious.
“Yes, you are them,” the elder said. “They said there were ten of you. I see only three here. Your friends are injured?”
“Half dead,” Dagr said. “They’ll fight back all the same. We’ve got a cluster bomb in there. I’ve rigged it to explode on a trigger.”
“Oh, keep your bomb.” The grizzled man smiled suddenly.
Dagr stared at him, his brain barely functioning. “What exactly do you want?”
“We’ve
brought you food,” the elder said. He motioned at the shopkeeper. “Faiz said you needed food and medicine.” He brought out an ancient black leather medical bag from inside his jacket. “I am a doctor.”
“What?”
“I’m with him.”
The two moved aside, and a great hulking figure loomed in the doorway, wide faced, wild hair, and beard drizzled with gray.
“Who?” Dagr stepped back in alarm, confused. Then the faint smell of cats wafted up, with half-dredged memories of flashing silver hair in the moonlight and an immense, inhuman strength. He slumped down in resignation. “I thought he’d find us sooner or later.”
Dog Boy was insane. This was clear when he tried to mount Hoffman while simultaneously trying to eat him at the same time. Biting and buggery. Not something to take lying down. Although Hoffman’s body was wasted from withdrawal, abuse, and lack of exercise, its underlying structure was still some kind of Marine-issue specimen, albeit of a very inferior kind. Long-suppressed memories of unarmed combat classes came back to him, causing him to flail around trying to effect some sort of judo throw.
Finally, as the choke hold of Dog Boy caused his face to purple and blackout seemed eminent, he reached even further back into his past to barely registered backyard fights and bar room brawls. Teeth and elbows. Some dimly remembered precept that this was unsporting occurred to him. But then so was the tumescent penis jammed into his hip. He found some bit of Dog Boy’s forearm and sank in his teeth. His elbow swung back in short, sharp jabs, MMA fashion, scoring along Dog Boy’s baying face.
A sickening crunch, broken nose, claret flying, and the pressure eased somewhat. Hoffman pursued this line relentlessly, elbows to the face and then managed to turn somewhat in Dog Boy’s grasp and bring his knees to bear. And finally, he ended with a Hoffman special, which was ramming the top of his skull into whatever delicate apparatus adorned Dog Boy’s open neck and jaw, a sufficiently hard blow that sent the lunatic spinning back gasping for air.
The man flopped in place and started blubbering. It crossed Hoffman’s mind that he ought to take this opportunity to strangle Dog Boy. Somehow, the idea of choking the life from that mangled, mournful face made him want to cry. It made him realize that despite being a veteran Marine war machine and decorated combat hero, he had never actually killed anyone. He remembered Sabeen’s cool finger on his lips and railed at the general unfairness of it all. Things had been going so well with her. Cursing Behruse, he began to tear up sheets to shackle his cell mate.