18
‘Just about the size of a good cantaloupe,’ said Cray, holding his hands so they made a boxy shape.
Leon nodded. ‘Sounds like a good-sized kid.’
‘Yep.’
‘Good with the wife?’
‘Better than good, mate. Tears at your guts to come back here, though.’
As they walked into the village people looked at them, but no one ran. Maybe they were scared to run, could be they didn’t know if they should be scared or not. Leon didn’t know if they should be scared or not. His palms sweated on the gun. A few children followed the section at a distance, others disappeared inside their houses and came out with members of their families.
‘We need you all to leave,’ Pete said loudly. ‘We need to clear the village, please.’ He said it in French and in Vietnamese, reading from a piece of laminated cardboard, sounding each time like a bloke who lived on a sheep farm in Victoria. Nobody moved. Pete read the French phrase again. ‘Vamoose,’ he said. ‘Scram.’
He fired a few times into the air. Leon saw the face of a young man open in shock, his eyes showed white round their black centres. People started to run, then, to grab at each other and flee towards the cover of the forest.
‘That’s the way,’ said Pete quietly.
Clive fell over, just fell over, and everyone stood a moment and looked at him, wondering what the bugger was doing tripping up when they were all trying to look serious. Then the fire started and Leon felt the blood inside him thump as he dropped behind an incinerator and made his gun ready. He heard Pete shouting into his radio for medics, ‘Three-one, three-one, contact. Do you acknowledge, over. Dustoff needed urgently, repeat, dustoff for one cas, looking bad, not moving.’
He heard Daniel shout ‘They’re in the trees!’ and aimed round the side of the incinerator bin and saw a group of blokes running like buggery towards the trees. He fired and a few bodies in black fell at the edge of the village; others, not in black, died with their arms flung out as they swam the air. His tracers drew a line across the forest and black birds rose from the trees as smoke. He’d thought that when he finished firing there would be nothing, only the squall sound of birds, but when he stopped the fire really began. Hidden by the trees, the noise started up thick and it was clear there was more than one machine gunner in there. He took more ammunition, shook to reload, shook the gun because it had jammed, shook it more, then thought everyone would kill him. The bastard thing was jammed like it’d never known a thing about shooting. He leant behind an outbuilding and shook it, twisted it, rattled it, prayed for it to open up, give forth fire. Tears on his face, he felt the teeth of a terrible thing on the back of his neck, breathing through its nose on him, in, out, hot, pant. The single rounds of the rifles barely made it through the sound of the automatics firing from the trees. He gave it a hard smash on the ground and the thing went off between his legs, digging a burrow in the dirt next to his ankle. He brought a hand up to his eyes and gave himself a couple of seconds to breathe, before turning and firing that force field up into the trees again. Cray looked at him and closed his eyes. The air was shredded.
When it finally fell quiet they heard the beats of the dustoff helicopter, but Clive was dead. The medics carried him on a stretcher, his face covered over. ‘Would’ve been dead straight off,’ one of them said, ‘went through the head pretty bad.’
No one else had anything the matter with them and as the helicopter took off, spraying dirt beneath it, they were left with a black patch of ground that Clive had bled into. Pete shucked fresh dirt over it, a look of disgust on his face, his bottom lip poked out like a sulky child and he turned away from the rest of them with his hands on his hips. ‘And then there were five,’ he said and gave a little snort.
The dead Cong they lined up neatly and searched, patting down the warm bodies, dipping into pockets and down sleeves. Leon gave the machine gun to Rod for the while, his hands raw from gripping it, he couldn’t look at the bastard thing.
‘Oi, oi, someone’s over there,’ Daniel called, pointing his gun towards a dark-stained wooden house.
There was a face in the window, a boy, his mouth a black O. They had their guns ready and aimed at the door and Pete called, ‘C’mon out.’ There was no noise from inside, so he shouted ‘Out!’ his voice busting from him hoarse and angry. The front door opened slowly and an old man stepped out, a woman and a young boy right behind him. The woman held a baby. Cray looked at the floor.
‘Why haven’t you gone already?’ asked Pete, not to the family particularly. He sounded tired. ‘Better have a bit of a look in there, I reckon.’
Leon took Clive’s rifle and went inside with Cray. He felt like a dry river, like all the commotion was gone and nothing could happen now. He wasn’t ready for it, he didn’t want it. Inside it was dark; there was a smell of incense and dust and cooking, a strange smell of life, nutty and sharp. The wooden roof creaked. Cray nodded at a trapdoor in the floor of the kitchen.
Down through the trapdoor was stone silent, like all noise had been sucked out with a straw. Three chairs were turned over and a bag of rice was spilled across the table. There was a bad smell, a meal left to rot. Bowls were laid out on the table with spoons, they must’ve been getting ready to eat: so close to having a sit-down dinner, to sharing a normal talk, having a drink, maybe, and laughing. Eating out of a bowl, not out of a packet or your hands.
The silence was split by a high whine and Leon heard himself clench. There was a low door he’d assumed was a cupboard, the only place to hide in the cellar. It was the kind of noise kids made, playing hide and seek, excited and needing a pee, trying to hold in the urge to shout, ‘Here I am! You f*ckin’ didn’t see me but here I am!’ Cray moved towards the door, stepping gently like a ballet dancer. From the look on his face the smell was worse the closer he moved to the door.
Leon’s lips felt like fish scales. ‘He’ll be armed,’ he whispered and Cray nodded. An inward count of three, and Leon trained on the door, then Cray raised his boot and kicked it open, firing into the space. A body twitched with the impact of bullets, a gun in his hand fell to the floor unfired, and Cray put his wrist up to his face and yelled. Leon thought for a terrible moment that he’d been shot in the face, but he carried on yelling and the smell hit him too.
‘F*cking hell!’ shouted Cray. ‘F*cking f*cking crappy hell!’ He spat and turned away from the open door, his eyes streaming. The dead man had lost his foot and the flesh off his leg, but the bone remained. His torso teemed with small things that ate at him.
‘What is it?’ came a yell from above ground.
‘It’s all right – one dead Cong,’ Cray called back up.
‘Close the door,’ said Leon quietly, but it stayed open.
‘We should check in there,’ Cray said, breathing into his elbow.
‘I’ll go,’ said Leon, because Cray had a son at home. Cray stepped aside uncomplaining as he pushed the door with the tips of his fingers. Maggots made the man’s chest move up and down. It’s just meat, it’s the same as rotten road kill, nothing unnatural about it, he thought and tried to keep his eyes above the level of the man’s heaving chest. It was a wonder he’d been alive, still been able to hold a gun, even if he couldn’t fire it. A chain held him by his good ankle to an eyelet in the wall. The room was bare, a small table held a cup of water and propped against it a photograph of a woman and a child. The heads had been ripped off them, their identity kept a secret, but still they stood on the man’s table, like any bedside table in the world, a glass of water and a picture of your wife and child. All that was missing was a bedside lamp and a dog-eared novel. Empty boxes dotted the floor, a pair of pyjamas hung on the back of the door. That was it. He turned to leave, but even headless, he felt the horror of the man’s family as they looked down on him, maggoty and dead. He picked up the photograph and slid it into his pocket. ‘Clear,’ he said as he closed the door.
Outside a few men smoked while the family huddled softly nearby, looking uncertain, the old man muttering low to the child, the woman holding the back of her baby’s head.
‘The guy was chained to the wall,’ he told Cray. ‘Must have done something.’
‘Old matey down there would have been too hurt to go with them. They get chained so they have to fight to the death.’
He looked at the family. The man’s knuckles gripped white on the boy’s shoulders.
‘You need to leave,’ said Pete, turning to face the man. He pointed at the jungle with his gun. ‘Go on. Get.’ The man said something back, something angry, but the boy looked up at him, the face of a soft moon, and held on to the man’s finger tightly. The man shook his head and the woman made to go back into the house.
‘Nup,’ said Pete, pointing to the forest. ‘Go-On-Get-Going. F*ck off out of it!’ The woman made a pleading gesture. Pete shook his head. She waved her arm, pointing at the baby, and Pete shouted, ‘Get Away!’
Leon pointed his gun at the woman. She looked stunned and the old man gently held her shoulder and turned them towards the jungle. He muttered something to her and she relented. The old man looked at him and he felt a jab in his guts like he’d swallowed a pen. I would never have shot, he thought, I would not ever have shot, it was just to move you along, but the cold maw of the thing told him he was not so sure.