Falling Over (16 page)

With each syllable he moved his pointing finger one along the circle of children; the girl branded “out” breathed a visible sigh of relief. The dipping continued, this time with another rhyme:

“Ip, dip, sky, blue, it, is, not, you, and, O, U, T, spells, out.”

Alternating between these two rhymes more and more children became “out” and all looked relieved. But the tension, rather than lessening, increased; Emma could feel it spitting  between the children like it was spitting between the storm clouds above, which were creating a wall of darkness atop shadowy walls.

Only Michael Potts and Rebecca Beckett were left in. Michael diligently started the rhyme, but all the children, and Emma, worked out before he’d finished that he’d be out and Rebecca left in.

The two children on either side of Rebecca left go of her hands; she turned in mute appeal to them, her mouth working at the air. The other children pushed her into the centre and joined hands again, the circle becoming one link smaller around her. Rebecca turned slowly looking at her classmates, silent but her eyes pleading. Emma realised the girl looked absolutely terrified. The other children looked at their feet and started to turn...

“No!” shouted Emma, reminding them of her presence. Markham’s words seemed to be running through her thoughts: “scapegoat”, “sacrifice”, “ashes, ashes”. She had no idea what was happening, but saw Rebecca’s eyes look to her like she was her last hope. Emma rushed forward and pushed into the centre of the circle. The children didn’t say anything. Emma took Rebecca’s hand and started to led her out of the quadrangle...but when the girl got to the edge of the circle she simply turned round, took the two proffered hands, and returned to her previous place. Her eyes looked anywhere but at Emma.

The circle started to turn again, with Emma in its eye. The children started to sing:

“Ring around the rosie,

“A pocketful of posies...”

Their voices didn’t sound innocent, but fully aware of the song’s history and connotations.

Emma stood there, watching the children turn, not knowing what to do. Each time the song was repeated it was faster, and the circle turned faster. The children’s faces turned passt her, blurred into generalities. Because of the shadows and clouds she felt like she was in a tight black box, full of the smell of rot and decay. She remembered singing this song, and it seemed to her that the faces of some of those she had sang it with were amongst those which turned and turned around her. She felt dizzy and unstable, like she could fall down just because the song lyrics suggested it. The circle whirled faster, sang faster, and Emma closed her eyes.

In the darkness she saw Aunt Jess, shrunken and death-bound and reaching out for her, to embrace her... but that embrace would pull her into the darkness too, Emma saw. She saw herself reflected in her aunt’s pupils, a tiny child Emma caught in the darkness and screaming, realising what every child realises and immediately represses.

The circle was singing different words now, older ones perhaps, which Emma heard in her darkness – they were unintelligible but expressive, and they were sung with childish total belief. There wasn’t any monster in her wardrobe really, only blackness... not even her Aunt Jess just blackness, which was worse, much worse. It was nothing and too much. As the song was sung knowledge awoke and arose in her, spreading outwards and infecting everything, turning the spinning centre of every atom black. She was no longer sure if her eyes were open or not and it no longer mattered, because everything was black. Everything was black and everything was consumed, and she knew she was consumed too. She was consumed and she was going to die; she believed it finally and totally because the song and the circle made her believe it. And believing it and absorbing it would make it so; she felt herself falling down, falling away into the blackness, and she knew, with the total fascination that the dying reserve for their final thought, that the others around her were glad that at least, this time, it hadn’t been
them.

And then the circle stopped turning, and Emma fell down.

Drones

The rest of the soldiers call me ‘Drone’ because that’s what I fly – UAVs. Unmanned drones that can circle battlefields many kilometres wide, and deliver a precise Hellfire strike against any target in that zone, all based on commands from my computer terminal back at base. That distance in part accounts for my contemptuous nickname, of course – the pilots, the artillery, the medics, the infantry (especially the fucking infantry) are all in the firing line at some point, all in some theoretical danger even from the ragtag bunch of guerrillas we are fighting in the mountains. Whereas I am watching events on a screen miles behind the rest of them. They treat me like one of the civilian bureaucrats, and not like someone who has trained and fought alongside them, someone who has saved their ass on occasion.

There are other UAV pilots than me of course, but only I am ‘Drone’ and I know they mean something disparaging about my manner by this as well. I am not
against
this war (how could I be, when back home so many people voted for and continue to vote for the politicians who launched it?) but I feel no jingoistic bloodlust or hatred for our enemy either. Flying drones is what I have been trained to do, so I do it, in a manner I like to think is both precise and competent.

The enemy would be hard to hate anyway, for I barely see them. The screen I stare at is usually the washed out and ghostly green of night-vision, and I see the compound, the truck convoy, the tanks, but rarely the people. Even if I do they are just glowing smudges of infrared heat. I know the missile is on its way before they do – the numbers count down in the bottom-right of the screen. When they reach zero my screen fills with pixelated white light, and then the image returns, but emptier.

The drones can only send back visuals not sound of course, so the strikes seem to take place in complete silence. If anything it seems even
more
silent afterwards, unless someone squawks their aggressive congratulations into my ear-pierce. But I am already back, flying the drone to wherever the plan says it needs to be next.

~

Back home, when driving I’ll sometimes arrive somewhere and not remember the drive there – I’ve negotiated traffic, manoeuvred round junctions, and even changed the radio station, all without conscious thought. Just conditioned reactions to the world on the other side of my windscreen.

This job is like that – trained reaction to stimulus. If I’ve fired I can normally remember the screen pooling with light, but not the decision-points, not the reasoning that got me, and them, to that destination.

~

Today was a fuck up and people are angry. ‘Friendly fire’ – I agree with them it’s a slimy, mealy-mouthed phrase. We are supposed to be fighting for these people, whether they want us here or not, and that means alongside their ‘official’ army (some of whom are as young as sixteen but everyone turns a blind eye) but instead there was a fuck up and somehow a convoy of their jeeps and artillery returning
back
from enemy territory was identified as coming directly
from
enemy territory. Attack helicopters were dispatched, but my drone was already in the air.

I
was hardly at fault so I don’t see why everyone is looking at me like they are. I didn’t identify them as the enemy, someone else did, and once that identification was made everything was just a matter of protocols, and training, and numbers counting down... The numbers had already started falling when my ear-piece squealed there was an error – I can deliver strikes from miles away but obviously once I’ve fired they can’t be recalled. They tried to radio them, but
another
fuck up means their troops and ours use incompatible equipment most of the time...

I didn’t look away, I watched the screen until it went white. Maybe the signal had interference (or maybe it was just sand in the computer again) but the white wasn’t total this time, it had faint structure. Almost like...

But that must have been something I added to the memory afterwards, from guilt.

I do feel guilt, despite what the others think of me. But feeling guilty doesn’t make me to
blame
.

I am off active duty until it has been looked into.

~

It will be hushed up of course, the media don’t really care unless some of our troops are killed. And who would they be to start accusing people anyway? All the newspapers and TV stations supported the war, just like all the politicians who voted for it, and everyone who voted for
them
. If people make a decision they can’t blame the people who carry out that decision if it’s the wrong one. And everyone knows war is messy and chaotic – despite all the rules how could it not be, with all this pent up emotion always behind its logic? Not my emotions you understand, but I can feel it in others: in the way they shout over the mic, in the kill-tallies they paint on the sides of choppers and tanks, in the way they stomp sand from their boots and glare at me.

~

As predicted, I am back on active duty. I have been cleared of all blame – it is true that if I had been slower the order to abort the attack would have come in time, but they can hardly blame me for being
competent
. A few here at the base still give me funny looks but mostly they understand.

I actually feel a little nervous about tonight’s mission; it’s like being home from duty and driving for the first time in months, and it feels odd and unnatural for a few minutes, until you reacclimatise. Briefly, the stresses and dangers of driving seem real again. I feel like that about tonight’s mission, although I will be fine once it has begun. Maybe it is a lingering reaction to how that silent white light looked when we knew we’d targeted the wrong side; how it had briefly looked like a face.

~

It happened again.

We’d been given orders to strike the industrial quarter of a small town in the lowlands – Intel said it had been cleared out of workers and was being used as a military supply point and refuelling station.

I knew from the scale and scope of the operation that I’d get a chance to fire. Maybe a few times (my UAV carries up to six Hellfire missiles). I was nervous to start with, as expected, but then my training took over and I can’t recall much until I was watching the numbers count down as the missile neared its target. I was calm then, so nerves can’t have explained what happened. Sometimes you just know it will be a clean and precise strike, and I knew that this time.

My screen flared white and I was already starting to think about the next target when a dark, pixelated face flared out of that whiteness, and then another and another, and I knew they were all the men I had just killed. They looked out of the screen at me with hatred.

I didn’t mean to but I cried out into my microphone. Of course I recovered myself, didn’t tell anyone what I had seen. When I had to fire again I looked away from the screen at the crucial moment, so that it wouldn’t happen again. That
hatred...

Rumour has of course got out that ‘Drone’ shrieked across the airwaves, that ‘Drone’ sounded like he was afraid even though he (and only he) was in no danger. People are looking at me oddly again. I feel that nausea I get when confronted by problems I can’t solve by reason alone.

I mustn’t let it happen again.

~

I can’t keep doing this, I can’t keep looking away or closing my eyes every time I fire. Even behind closed lids the flash of light is white enough to penetrate, so that I almost see the faces each time even then. Seem to feel their hatred straining to reach me. And their disdain, for the enemy, these soldiers, are just like those on my side – they despise me for killing them from a position where I can’t be killed myself; from the other side of a computer screen.

A few times I have tried to stare them out – to look into their faces in the bright light of the fire I have delivered and meet their gaze: men, boys, and women (we know we sometimes target civilians by mistake, but another blind eye is turned). To prove to them that it is not
my
fault; that the decisions, the votes, were not mine. But their hatred and disdain always makes me look away first.

~

I am to be transferred back home due to ‘stress’. They want me to quit of course – far easier for them if I just leave rather than have to try and discharge me due to a psychological condition that started whilst on active duty. Ungrateful bastards. But I will oblige.

“Bye Drone; see you Drone” – I am glad to get away.

~

It’s three months since I was discharged; I am shivering in a cold house because I can’t afford to pay the bills. (It feels so fucking cold here after being
there.
) I can’t get a job that I can hold down because I can’t work anywhere with
screens
.

It started on the flight back; it was a civilian flight and in each seat people had screens folded down from the roof to watch the in-flight movie. I didn’t pull down mine, but I could still see everyone else’s out of the corner of my eye... especially when they seemed to slow, and show numbers counting down in the bottom-right, and then flash with bright light and hatred that washed over me in my seat. I sat clenched and terrified staring out the window; I was sick but not for the reason the air hostess thought.

It has been happening more and more since I got back; and there are so many screens everywhere nowadays! My house is full of them – my TV, my laptop, my mobile – I have had to turn them all off. The GPS in my car blinding me; the screens in shopping centres showing adverts until
I
pass, when they fill with silent faces. TV shops with each screen in the window a single, separate face. (Have I killed so many?) And of course, any office I try and get a temp job in is open plan and full of PCs. I try to focus on the meaningless document or spreadsheet of numbers I am working on, when suddenly the numbers began falling and I knew what will happen when the countdown reaches zero...

Closing my eyes doesn’t help; crying out doesn’t help although I do it anyway and the whole office turns to stare. Before I am asked to leave I have no doubt acquired a nickname or two; I am still ‘Drone’ despite leaving the war.

I don’t know how to stop seeing the faces – my parents wanted to show me a photo on their digital camera of their first grandchild (my brother’s daughter) and how could I have said no? But then I flinched and dropped their camera (it didn’t smash) when the screen filled with light only I could see, and a face that promised me damnation in return for that I had visited on her.

But why me? There’s a whole army and air-force killing them all the time, and everyone I pass on the street lets it
happen
, so why me?

~

It may be over. For some reason I was feeling defiant today, and I plugged in my TV for the first time in months. By coincidence I watched the news, showing troop movements and drone strikes after the event. For a brief moment I felt the old camaraderie and wished I was back there, despite all that has happened. And then, as I expected, the TV screen flooded with white, silent light...

I picked it up and smashed it against the floor just as the first face started to appear.

For a moment I thought,
You fool, you’ve let them out!
because I felt the light and the hatred surround me. I closed my eyes. I imagined their forms as I had seen them in my night-vision: amorphous and glowing ghosts. And I swear I felt something almost like a hand start to pull at me, to pull me down.

Then there was a pause, like consideration, and then nothing.

I opened my eyes – the TV was smoking with its screen cracked down the middle, and I was alone. After a few moments I cautiously turned on my mobile phone, which I’ve also not used for months. Its screen filled with the bright light of its maker’s logo, but nothing more. It’s been switched on for over an hour now, and nothing has happened. I will call my parents on it to apologise; hell, I may even
video
call them.

I think it will all be alright now.

~

It didn’t make sense for a while, but now it does. I always knew I wasn’t to blame, not solely at any rate. The people who voted for war or who just let it happen or profited from it – they are as guilty. Everyone I killed, I killed with thousands at my back.

It started with army personnel on leave – killed, seemingly torn apart in a frenzy when they were alone. No one understood how or why – the savagery, the speed. Like they’d been blown apart but without any explosion.

Then a politician was killed in the same way, and then a newspaper editor, and then the CEO of a munitions company. It was all the news talked about, and there was speculation that it was a new terrorist weapon, and that we should step up our war effort accordingly.

And then a petrol station attendant, ripped apart in his booth between customers, and that confused everyone because why would terrorists attack someone like that?

And then the people who were killed were just people, normal people – a few every day, but
more
every day too, seemingly at random across the country. All killed in the same hideous way. Everyone is terrified but no one knows why it is happening but me.

I
did
let them out, after all. And they understood where the blame lies, understood which army of people their hatred should be targeted against. I wonder who, if anyone, they will spare as guiltless? It is one thing to imagine their glowing, infrared forms descending on an adult; but on a child, a baby... I think they will care about such things as much as
we
did, out in the desert.

They still hate and despise me
more
than everyone else though – for being cowardly, in their eyes; from watching their deaths on a computer screen miles away from even the faintest chance of retaliation... That for them is the final insult and indignity.

They do hate me, so they are leaving
me
until last.

To watch, like I’ve always done.