Busted Flush

He was weeping with her suddenly, the tears coming unbidden and unstoppable, hot and harsh, his throat clogged with emotion. Michael had left then, going outside into the heat and glaring sun. He slumped against the side of the Administration Building, his back on the rough stone wall, staring outward toward the oil derricks.

He touched his chest where the woman had struck him, so softly that he made no noise at all. His throat openings pulsed and yawned, silent. Under the bandage the medic had wrapped around his head, the scabbed track of the bullet throbbed and burned. Part of him wished it had killed him instead.

Afterward, he’d tried to call Kate and hadn’t gotten her; he sent her a text message: FUBAR. That said it all.

“Hey.” A shadow drifted over him. Michael glanced up.

“Hey, Rusty.”

“Bad deal, huh?”

“Yeah. The fucking worst.”

With creaks and groans, Rusty sat down next to Michael. “Kids. I don’t want to fight kids.”

“None of us should have had to.” Michael glared outward. Against the sky, the derricks were ink lines drawn on a blue canvas, and he’d killed children for their sake. He imagined the blood flowing dark like oil. “This shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have been able to happen.”

Rusty said nothing more. He and Michael sat there for a long time, each lost in his own thoughts, until the sun slid away and abandoned them in the cool shadow of the building.

The old man Dabir stared with slitted, dark eyes at the nervous squad with Michael. He barked something in Arabic and spat on the sand between him and Michael. The squad’s translator spoke to Michael without taking his eyes from the old man or his finger from the trigger of his FAMAS. “He says you are the afterbirth of a syphilitic camel and that you are not welcome here.”

Michael might have laughed at that, before. Now it only made him feel ill. “Tell him . . . tell him that I want him to know that I had no choice. He needs to know that.”

That earned a bark of dry, hollow laughter from Dabir. “Allah always gives us choices,” the old man said through the translator. “What choice did Raaqim have? You come here, you take away his father’s job, you ruin our family, you take the land that belongs to us and our people, you steal our oil. Why shouldn’t my grandson defend what was his? Why shouldn’t he fight to take back what you’ve stolen?” Dabir glared at Michael. “I am proud of my grandson. His was a good death. Are you proud, you abomination in the eyes of Allah?”

Michael clenched his jaw at the torrent of vitriol from the man. “You don’t know,” he told him. “You don’t know the suffering the Caliphate has caused with its oil policies. You don’t know—”

“Suffering?” Dabir interrupted as the translation was given to him. “Look around you, Abomination. Do you see people here with automobiles and televisions? Do you see mansions? Do you see stores full of things to buy? I have seen pictures of your West. I have seen the way you live. Suffering? You know nothing of suffering.”

“People have lost jobs from the lack of oil,” Michael persisted. “Some are going hungry as a result, or can’t pay for care that they need, or have lost their houses. And some have even died.” It was what Fortune might have said. The words tasted as dry and dead as sand.

“So you come to steal the job from my son, who has been taken away?” Dabir waved a hand toward the buildings of the wellhead and spat again. “You come to steal the food from our table? You come to kill my grandson?”

“Your grandson tried to kill me. I was only defending myself.” It should have sounded angry; it sounded apologetic.

“Raaqim was defending the land that is his from you. You come here saying you want to ease the suffering of all people, but it is only your people you care about, and you bring the suffering and the pain and the death here instead. You want to leave it here when you go.” The old man spat again. “You wonder why we hate you, Abomination? Because you do not see us. We will fight you with an army of children if we must. We will fight you with an army of old people, because there is only one way to make any of you see. Only one way.”