Short Story: Black And White

Short Story: Black And White

The stink invaded the nostrils and caught the back of the throat like a fishhook. It rose from the damp streets to greet him. Dan pulled his scarf tighter around his nose and mouth, raised the camera to his face and started shooting. A low rumble of thunder in the distance promised more rain.

Click. A jumble of bodies piled indifferently by the gable end of a house pockmarked with craters; arms and legs twisted into awkward, distorted shapes; a terrible human sculpture.

Click. A fly rubbing its back legs as it crawled from an empty eye socket.

Click. A baby doll, hair clotted with dirt, lying on the road next to a girl.

The sound of engines caused him to look up. A white armoured car trundled into the village. On impulse, he snapped a couple of shots of the pale looking troops in their blue helmets as they examined the scene.

He stuffed the finished rolls of film into his pocket and waved to the lanky teenager lurking by the car.

‘Ok Benny, let’s get out of here.’ Dan had found Benny hustling for taxi work at the Hotel. The young man had an admirable command of English he claimed to have picked up from pirate Hollywood DVDs and his accent wandered between Burbank and the Balkans as a result. A tape of the Rolling Stones underscored the conversation.

‘Why would people do stuff like that?’

Dan shrugged, picking dirt from his nails with a penknife. ‘Who ever said wars had to make sense? You give people guns…eventually they’ll use them on someone.’

‘You must’ve seen a lot of nasty things doing this job?’

‘You learn to develop a strong stomach. I started in Ethiopia back in ’84, went to a refugee camp. It was like stepping into one of those old newsreels of Belsen. Every morning, they set out the bodies of the people who died in the night for collection, always neatly wrapped in sackcloth. The little bundles were the worst…’

‘Little bundles?’

‘The kids.’ He shook his head. He’d won an award for pictures of grieving mothers pounding the parched ground in anguish.

‘Where else have you been?’

‘Central America, Bosnia, back to Africa for that nasty business in Rwanda and then the Gulf - bit of a close call there.’

‘What happened?’

‘Yank plane strafed our car and left it like a sieve. I copped a gut full of fragments and ended up in hospital for six months.’

Benny whistled through his teeth.

‘I got off lightly – a cannon shell took my driver’s head off. There were still bits of blood, hair and whatnot stuck to my camera when they gave it back to me.’

‘Seriously?’

Dan nodded. ‘Maybe I should have mentioned that before offering you the job.’

Benny looked at him. ‘Doesn’t it get to you?’

‘I suppose I’m too busy concentrating on composing the shots, measuring the light and so on. It’s as if I step outside myself.’

‘Why don’t you take pictures of other stuff?’

‘Like what?’

I don’t know - supermodels, rock bands or whatever. All I know is that you have to be crazy to come to a place like this.’

Dan shrugged. ‘That’s what my ex-wife used to say.’

‘Oh.’ Benny’s face reddened.

‘Don’t worry – happened a long time ago.’

‘Don’t you ever think about trying to stop the things you take pictures of?’

‘What can I do? I’m there to record, not to help. In this job, your personal feelings have to come second to getting the shot. I take the pictures and get them out where people can see them. If I didn’t then no one would pay any attention.’

‘Yeah, I get what you’re saying, but does it make any difference?’

Dan thought hard before answering. In the background Mick Jagger was singing about wanting to paint it black.

‘I hope so,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s what I tell myself so I can sleep at night.’

‘I see.’

‘There is one small problem though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘All my dreams are in black and white.’

Benny gave Dan a long look, unsure if the other man was joking. ‘Did you ever try to do something else?’

‘I did once, when I was still trying to persuade my ex Diane to stay with me.’ He sighed. ‘I think the writing was on the wall by then though. It didn’t matter what I took pictures of anymore.’ He stopped for a second; their small talk had taken an unexpected turn. Here he was unburdening himself on the younger man as if he was in a therapy session. What was it the old telephone adverts used to say? “It’s good to talk.”

‘The truth is I just couldn’t take it back home any more. I got up one morning, five years ago, went back on the road and never looked back.’ He lifted the camera up to show Benny. ‘When your world is only this little space here,’ he pointed to the viewfinder, ‘life becomes a lot less complicated.’

***

Dusk was beginning to steal over the sky when they came to the village. Two cars, parked nose-to-nose, blocked the main road. About half a dozen men in an assortment of camouflage fatigues and sportswear surrounded the cars. A pick-up with a machine gun perched on top of the cab looked down the road at them. Dan reached over and tapped Benny on the arm, careful to keep looking forward.

‘Stop just in front of them. Whatever you do, don’t speed up.’

‘Ok boss.’

Dan gave him a tight smile. ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t the first time people have pointed guns at me.’

The Lada trundled to a stop just short of the barricade. One of the men tapped the glass with the barrel of his AK47. Dan rolled down the window. The Stones were churning through “Midnight Rambler”.

‘Hello,’ Dan said, smiling.

The soldier shook his gun and jabbered something at him.

‘He wants us to step outside,’ Benny translated.

They had no sooner stepped out onto the road before the soldiers shoved them against the Lada’s bonnet and started to frisk them. A flurry of fresh questions erupted.

‘He wants to know what we are doing here.’

One of the soldiers slammed Benny on the back of the legs with the butt of his rifle, sending him crashing to the ground.

‘Hey! Hey! Take it easy!’ Dan yelled.

The soldier pulled out Dan’s Press credentials. He looked from the picture to Dan and back again. The man raised an eyebrow. ‘American? Fox News?’ he asked.

‘British. I’m a photojournalist for Reuters.’

Benny rattled off a quick translation.

‘Photo …journalist?’ The soldier spoke as if trying the words out for size.

Dan nodded. ‘Benny, ask him if he would like me to take some pictures of him and his men. Tell him I can make them famous.’

As Benny spoke, the man lowered his gun, his face breaking into a wide grin.

Dan feigned enthusiasm and snapped away with his Nikon. From Beirut to Belfast, young men with guns all had the same swagger. They mugged for the camera, standing with their guns on their hips, amplified macho postures straight from Benny’s Hollywood blockbusters.

‘That’s right arseholes. Watch the birdie,’ he muttered. The light wasn’t great but he thought some of the shots might be useable.

He had just loaded another roll of film when he heard a familiar whistling.

‘Benny, get down!’ He threw himself to the ground near the Lada as the first mortar rounds landed with a series of ear-splitting cracks. He felt the concussions through his skin, heard the sizzle of hot shrapnel tearing through air. Another salvo threw great clods of earth into the sky. Dirt and debris pattered down over his prone body. He tried to squeeze himself even lower into the ground, tasting grit in his mouth. Apart from a high-pitched whine in his ears, the world fell silent. After a few moments with no fresh explosions, he decided to risk getting up. His hands searched for his camera, checking for damage. A rock had crashed into the car’s windscreen leaving a milky spider web of cracks across the glass. The pick-up stood abandoned, machine gun pointing at the sky.

‘Benny?’ he heard himself shout from a thousand miles away.

Benny tottered into view. He looked bewildered, skin and hair caked with dirt.

‘Come on, we need to get under cover. There might be more on the way.’

He picked up his bag and dragged Benny off the street. They groped their way through a doorway their eyes taking a few moments to adjust to the dim light. In the distance, he could hear the low ripping of gunfire. He turned to Benny.

‘You all right?’

‘I think so. Am I hit?’

Dan brushed off some of the dust to allow closer inspection. He could feel the younger man shaking.

‘Doesn’t look like it.’ He clapped him on the back sending up a cloud of dust and smiled at him. ‘How do you feel?’

‘I nearly piss my pants.’

Dan smiled. ‘That makes two of us.’

‘What do we do now?’

Dan went over to one of the shuttered windows and peered through the slats.

‘Can’t see much from here,’ he said. ‘Let’s try upstairs and see if we can find another window. If it looks clear we’ll make a break for the car and get the hell out of here.’

‘And if it isn’t?’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Come on.’

***

There was a girl cowering in the corner of the room staring at them both open-mouthed.

‘Oh Christ,’ thought Dan, ‘Where did she come from?’

Dan made a shushing gesture. He stretched out a hand.

‘It’s ok; we won’t hurt you.’ He could see her eyes dart around the room looking for an exit. Her dirty hair, framed her face in a tangled shock.

‘It’s ok,’ he repeated. She flinched as he took another step, lifting the camera from around his neck and showing it to her.

‘Benny, help me out here.’

Before Benny could say anything, the girl spoke in a rapid tumble of words.

‘She wants to know if there are any soldiers nearby.’

‘Tell her we haven’t seen any since the shelling.’

Dan could see a slackening of tension in her face but a hint of suspicion remained. The whites of her eyes stood out in contrast to her bruised and dirty face. He reached into the pocket of his flak jacket and held out his hand to the girl once more.

‘Chocolate?’

She took the small bar from him.

‘Thank …you,’ she said in halting English.

‘I’m Dan, this is Benny,’ he said pointing to each of them in turn.

‘Anna,’ she said.

***

They sat down and Benny translated their conversation. The rain hammered down outside, running in rivers through the broken streets.

‘They were drunk when they came. Looting the houses,’ Benny translated. ‘When they started to get rough with her mom, her dad tried to stop them.’

‘So they killed him?’

Anna shook her head.

‘She says they beat him first then made him watch while they raped her and the mom.’ Benny’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he talked. ‘They slit her mom’s throat and were getting ready to kill her next when we came along – she says they left in a big hurry.’

‘Where are the bodies?’

‘Dumped out back.’

Dan nodded, thinking about his own daughters. He made a decision.

‘Tell her we need to go soon. Ask her if she wants to come with us.

He heard the sounds of voices outside. Placing a finger over his lips and pointing to the shutters, he made his way over to the window and peeped out.

The soldiers had returned. Two of them were exploring under the bonnet of the pick up while a third sat in the cab. Another pair stood to one side sharing a cigarette, cupping their hands to shield it from the rain. He could hear the coughing whirr of the starter motor turning over but the engine failed to respond. A lot of hand waving and shouting was going on between the man in the cab and the two amateur mechanics.

‘What should we do?’ whispered Benny.

Dan shrugged. ‘Either we hold out here and hope they don’t see us or we try and slip out the back door while they’re distracted and make a run for it.’ Neither option held much appeal. He went back over to the window.

The two smokers were heading towards the house.

‘Shit.’

‘What is it?’ Benny hissed.

‘They’re coming.’

The two men came through the door shaking the rain from their clothes, oblivious to Benny and Dan hugging the wall either side of the frame. Dan hit the man closest to him in the face with his camera, hearing a crunch as the lens smashed. The soldier groped his face in pain. Dan dropped the camera and pulled out his penknife, jabbing it at the man’s throat. It scraped along the skin leaving a shallow gash. He jabbed again, piercing the neck this time. The man stumbled forward sending them both crashing down in a tangle of limbs, knocking the breath from Dan in the process. The soldier brought his head down sharply. A starburst of pain exploded in Dan’s head. Blood dripped onto his face making his vision blur. He could feel hands tightening around his throat. He swung his arm up again and dug the knife into the side of the man’s neck. As the pressure on his own windpipe loosened, he twisted his body and managed to roll the man off him.

Benny had stuck out his foot and tripped the other soldier up before thumping him on the back of the skull with a claw hammer he had found under the stairs. He kept bringing the hammer down until a pool of blood spread on the floor from the shattered skull. Benny’s head buzzed with adrenalin. From the corner of his eye, he could see Dan stabbing the other man in the throat with his penknife. The man convulsed and gurgled, hands scrabbling at his neck, trying to ward off the darting blade. Finally, they dropped to the floor and it was over. Dan stumbled back to his feet, breathing heavily. His face was pale apart from the smears of blood around his eyes. Anna emerged from her hiding place beneath the stairs. She walked over to the two bodies and kicked them.

‘Right, let’s get out of here,’ Dan said unable to hide a quaver in his voice. He felt sick.

‘Shouldn’t we take their guns?’ Benny asked.

‘Do you know how to use one?’

‘No.’

‘Me either.’ Dan looked out the window again trying to regain his composure. ‘We need a distraction.’

Benny bent down to search the two men. ‘What about this?’ he said, holding up a small canister about the size of his fist. Dan nodded.

‘Ok. Wait till we’re over by the door then pull the pin and drop it quick.’

They rushed out the back door. Anna stopped and put her hand to her mouth.

‘What is it?’ Dan asked.

She pointed to the bodies lying by the window.

‘Come on,’ he insisted tugging at her sleeve.

They could hear shouting from behind them followed by a muffled explosion. ‘We should be able to double back around to the car while they’re busy in the house,’ Dan said.

‘Will the car still work?’

‘I don’t know, but we’ve got no chance of getting out of here on foot. Ask Anna if we can get there this way.’

Benny quickly translated. She nodded at Dan.

‘Okay, let’s go.’

The Lada was still there. They sprinted the last few yards. Dan could see smoke pouring from the front of Anna’s house.

‘You’ve set the bloody place on fire,’ he said, yanking the door open.

Benny turned the ignition and the engine coughed into life. He squinted at the cracked windscreen. ‘I can’t see a thing.’

‘Just get moving. I’ll deal with it.’ He risked a glance out of the back window. Two men stumbled out into the street. Dan levered himself back and kicked with all his strength. His boots were pounding the shattered windscreen. It buckled but didn’t fall out. He kicked again, summoning all his strength. A rush of cold, wet air hit him as the windscreen popped out and slid off the bonnet. He heard music and realised the tape player had come on again.

A stuttering burst of machine gun fire disintegrated the back window in a shower of fragments.

‘Floor it!’ Dan shouted.

The Lada’s engine whined and roared in protest. Benny pushed his foot hard on the accelerator, trying to urge every fraction of horsepower out of the engine. He gripped the wheel and watched the speedometer needle crawl upwards. More bullets punched into the car. Anna screamed. Benny swerved the wheel from side to side while Dan gripped the door handle to stop himself from landing in his lap.

‘I think we made it,’ Benny said as the village fell away behind them.

‘Good.’ Dan told him. ‘How far to the city?’

‘About thirty miles – we should have enough gas provided they didn’t hit the tank.’ He looked at Dan. ‘Are you alright?’

Dan lifted his hand from his lap. It was slick with blood. He slumped back into the seat breathing shallowly. The cool wind ruffled his hair. He looked in the door mirror and saw the road unspooling behind them into blackness. Dusk had given way to full dark and he could just make out a white smear of moon against the clouds.

***

Benny and Anna gently lifted Dan and carried him into the hotel foyer. Anna’s hair still sparkled with fragments of glass. A crowd formed around them as they laid the body down beside the reception desk. As they knelt over him, a photographer took their picture. Benny reached inside the dead man’s pockets and took out a small black cylinder.

‘Here,’ he said, handing the roll of film to Anna as they walked away. ‘You should take this.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You have nothing. All your family are gone. His pictures – you can sell them to his paper. They will pay you good money – especially now he is dead. You can start fresh – maybe even get a ticket out of this place.’

‘You think so?’

Benny looked at the swarm of people surrounding his boss and thought about the talk they’d had. ‘It’s what he would have wanted.’