Juggernaut

‘Not so great,’ said Huang. ‘Think I’m running a fever.’ His lips were blue.

Huang reached up and peeled the dressing from his neck.

‘How does it look?’

Voss tried to hide his disgust at the rotting wound. Black flesh. Awful stench. Metallic spines protruded from the liquefying skin like needles.

‘Not so great.’

‘You’ve got to cut,’ said Huang.

‘What?’

‘You’ve got to cut this shit out of me. Shoot me up with morphine. There’s a scalpel in the WALK. Slice.’

‘I’m not a surgeon.’

‘You think I don’t recognise the smell of gangrene? I’m dying. This is the only chance I’ve got. You have to cut down to clean tissue and plug the wound.’

‘I can’t.’

‘I’m begging you, brother. I’ll walk you through it.’

Voss walked to the temple entrance and talked it over with Lucy.

‘The blood loss will kill him,’ said Voss.

‘We can’t just stand around and let him rot. If his neck swells up any worse, he’ll need a tracheotomy. I’ll do it. Your eyes are too fucked for this kind of work.’

Lucy sat by Huang. She unzipped the medipac.

‘Couple of scalpels in that plastic box,’ said Huang. ‘Bunch of Kerlix dressings. Pretty much all you’ll need.’

He lay down on the flagstones.

Lucy uncapped a morphine hypo pen. She jabbed the pen into Huang’s bicep and pressed the plunger. She tossed the used hypodermic and checked her watch. Two minutes for the drug to take full effect.

She pulled on Nitrile gloves and tore a scalpel from its sterile pack.

‘Wish we had some bourbon,’ said Lucy, trying to steady her trembling hand. All set?’

Huang gave a woozy thumbs up.

Lucy leant forward, hesitated, then sliced into rotted neck flesh. Pus and blood. Unimaginable stink. She sawed. She trimmed a flap of flesh, did it quick and efficient like she was slicing roast chicken.

‘Can I see it?’ murmured Huang.

‘The skin? No. You don’t want to see it.’

Lucy threw the scrap of black, infected skin onto the fire. It spat, crisped and curled.

‘Did you get it all? Did you dig out the infection?’

‘Yeah,’ she lied. The spines were buried so deep in Huang’s neck they couldn’t be excised without ripping open veins and arteries.

She packed fresh dressing round the bubbling wound and taped it down. Huang passed out.

‘He’s beyond help,’ said Jabril, watching from the shadows.

‘I didn’t ask your fucking opinion.’

Lucy peeled gloves and tossed them on the fire. They shrivelled and melted.

She joined Voss and Amanda at the barricade.

Amanda crouched, sniper rifle resting across the quad saddle. She put her eye to the nightscope and scanned the ruins.

‘How did it go?’ asked Voss.

‘I doubt he’ll see the dawn.’

Voss tore open a fresh MRE meal pouch and distributed food. Lucy ate cold Thai chicken with a plastic fork. Voss ate cheese tortellini. Amanda ate crackers.

‘Jabril says Huang will turn demented,’ said Lucy. ‘Better find some rope. Tie him up.’

‘He couldn’t hurt anyone right now, not even himself,’ said Voss. ‘If he becomes a problem, I’ll deal with it.’

Voss walked across the cavernous temple hall and stood by the fire. He stripped to the waist. He washed himself with towelettes and applied fresh deodorant. He dressed.

‘Want any food?’

‘Yes,’ said Jabril. ‘Thank you.’

Voss unwrapped a meat patty and fed it to Jabril.

‘What is it?’

‘Pork.’

Jabril spat meat into the fire.

Voss checked the pockets of Jabril’s discarded jacket. He found cigarettes. He lit and smoked.

‘So how did you do it?’ asked Voss. ‘This desert. How did you make it out alive?’

Jabril smiled.

‘You must have a reason to live. Something beyond yourself.’

‘You wanted to save the world, is that right?’

‘I’m worse than evil. I supervised unimaginable cruelty, ordered torture and execution, simply because it was my job. This is my chance to do something right.’

Voss unsheathed his knife and picked his teeth.

‘How about you, Mr Voss?’ asked Jabril. ‘How badly do you want to live?’

Lucy sat on the altar steps beside Toon’s body. He had been wrapped in a poncho shroud and lashed with rope. He looked ready for burial at sea.

She thumbed through his Eldridge Cleaver book. Some of the passages were underlined.

‘The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.’

She wanted to ask Toon why he liked the book, why he carried it around.

A photograph pressed between the pages of the paperback. A gang photo taken in the Riv. Lucy, Toon and the team. Grinning, giving the finger, toasting the camera with beers.

She tucked the photo in her pocket.

‘Sorry, dude,’ she murmured. ‘Let you down.’

Every commander’s nightmare. The Big Fuck Up. Getting her men killed. She led Toon into the desert, promised him gold. Now he was dead, and she couldn’t get his body home. Buried in alien soil a lifetime away from Tennessee.

Once they gate-crashed a party at the rooftop bar of the al-Rasheed. A pink sunset. She and Toon sipped Michelob and looked out over the city. Minarets and bombed-out ministries. Don McLean battled the call to prayer.

Conversation turned maudlin.