Juggernaut

Lucy raked her fingers through spent cartridges. She could almost hear it, smell it. The ghost of battle. Gunsmoke and stuttering muzzle flame. Men crazed with terror, frantically struggling to free the bolts of malfunctioning weapons.

‘The more I see of this place, the less I like it,’ said Lucy. ‘Every instinct tells me to forget the gold and get the hell out of here.’

‘We need this, boss. We got old. All of us. This is our last war. It’s time to cash out.’

Toon unclipped his earpiece and let it hang. He didn’t want to hear any more of Jabril’s ghost stories. He sat with his back to the rampart wall. He wiped sweat from his eyes. Couldn’t get used to the heat.

He looked up. Brilliant azure.

Years ago, back in Tennessee, he and his buddies stole a bottle of Dickel whisky from a liquor store. They told the young cashier someone was messing with his car. They snatched booze as he looked out the back door.

They got drunk in a field. They lay looking at the night sky. Toon was mesmerised by the stars. It was a hot night, but he felt a chill. Gazing up at a trillion miles of black nothing. He thought about it the next day. It was like an anti-heaven. A horrible, celestial absence. Beyond the blue skies of summer lay eternal cold and endless night.

He drank whisky a lot these days. Sat in the Riv until they threw him out and locked the doors. He got fucked up and hoped he wouldn’t dream.

Intolerable heat. He wiped his face with his sweat towel and draped it over his head like a keffiyeh.

He hooked his earpiece back in place.

‘How’s it going, guys? Are we done, or what?’

Lucy and Huang walked up the central avenue: a wide, paved boulevard that swept from the citadel gate to the doorway of the main temple building.

Easy to imagine a solemn torch-lit procession. Chanting priests in robes and brass lamentation masks ready to prostrate themselves before their sinister god.

The temple facade. A titanic structure. Huge pillars. Twin bull colossi.

Lucy and Huang stood in the high temple doorway and peered into darkness. They cast long shadows across the flagstones.

They walked inside. They let their eyes adjust to the gloom.

A vast chamber. A vaulted roof. Eight gargantuan pillars inscribed with cryptic hieroglyphs and the outline of monstrous hybrid man-beasts.

Steps led to a raised sanctuary. A massive, snarling bull above the altar.

Lucy and Huang walked up the aisle of the cavernous, aeons-dead hall. Heavy boot-falls echoed and amplified.

They climbed time-worn steps to the altar. Lucy ran her hands over the stone. Black obsidian. Blood channels cut in the rock.

‘Perhaps they sacrificed cattle,’ said Huang.

‘Could you coax a bull onto this table? No. Something a little more portable was laid on this altar and sliced.’

‘I’d fight until my last breath.’

‘Maybe they were a willing sacrifice. Maybe it was an honour. All dressed up in a fancy robe. Consecrated to the gods. They chewed a little opium and climbed on the slab feeling like a big shot.’

‘Sick motherfuckers.’

Lucy shrugged.

‘I’ve seen worse. I saw a guy walk up to a checkpoint and trigger a suicide vest. One of those volunteers from Saudi. A zealot pumped full of jihad. Big-arse smile on his face, ready for paradise. So eager to press the button he didn’t take anyone with him. Threw his life away, just to scorch a little asphalt. I watched his head bounce fifty yards down the road. Fuck it. We’re standing here with guns in our hands and knives in our belts. Humans haven’t changed. Still driven by our savage gods.’

Lucy took out her radio.

‘Advance team to Bad Moon, over?’

Gaunt’s voice:

‘Go ahead.’

‘We have reached the objective. Get ready to roll. We’ll call you in and pop smoke, over.’

‘Roger that.’

Jabril sat with Amanda on the ledge.

‘I spoke to your black friend,’ said Jabril. ‘He said you had killed many men.’

‘Yeah.’

Amanda didn’t take her eye from the sniper scope.

‘You must see them close up, through your telescopic sight. See their faces, the sweat on their brows.’

‘First time I popped a guy in the head, I didn’t sleep for a week. We were stationed at a Forward Observation Base in As Salman. Yellow Nine. A makeshift fort in the middle of a shitty neighbourhood. We took mortar fire most days. I kept watch from a guard tower.

‘A couple of rounds dropped in the vehicle yard one afternoon. We couldn’t see the mortar crew. They were shielded by buildings. But I could see a young guy in the street holding a cellphone. He was talking to his militia buddies, supervising fire adjustment. He thought he was safe, thought we wouldn’t shoot because he didn’t have a gun in his hand. I centred my crosshairs on his forehead. Should have gone for a chest shot, centre-of-mass, just to be sure. But it was my first kill. I wanted to feel it. I wanted to do it right. And he looked up. Three hundred yards away, but I swear he saw me in the guard tower and looked me right in the eye. I blew his head apart. Neat drill hole through the cranium. Back of his skull flew off.