The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 2

Sameh, Ellie’s girlfriend and the team’s translator, climbed up through the trapdoor and pointed her rifle at the hajjis. The hajjis scattered, got into cover without waiting, because they were all terrified of her. She an Iraqi whose family had got out of Iraq when she was young, at the same time the West had, the first time, back a generation ago. She’d gone to school in Europe then gone back to the MidEast because she didn’t know anything else. She wasn’t happy anywhere else. Not really. She’d come onto the team as a translator, and fallen in love with Ellie, and followed along with Ellie ever since. She was European enough to speak proper English, but Iraqi enough she thought all the hajjis were trying to harm her because she was a traitor and apostate. So she got in first, and scared the shit out of them. She shot at people without warning, just for being too close to her, and spread rumors about herself among the local hajji farmers. That she was a witch, a devil, a djinn. That she ate children and cut men’s penises off and used them to pleasure herself. The hajjis believed it. Ellie thought most of it was bluster, that deep down inside Sameh was a little bit broken and quite often scared and dealt with it this way. Sameh killed people because she was jumpy and paranoid as much as because she was a psychopath, but she was a psychopath too. They all were, out here at the end of the world.

“What’s up,” Sameh said, looking down into the street.

Miguel pointed to the tablet, and Ellie pushed it over. Sameh left her hand on Ellie’s shoulder while she read.

“Who’s Naomi?” Sameh said.

“My kid.”

“You’ve got a kid?”

“Don’t start.”

Sameh looked at her, then just said, “Shit.” She knelt down beside Ellie, and hugged her, and kept holding on like one of them might slip away if she didn’t. Maybe it was the right thing to do. Ellie felt herself coming back in, felt more real again, more there.

Sameh was still holding her rifle. Past Sameh’s shoulder, Ellie noticed it was pointed towards Miguel. Ellie moved it slightly, and didn’t think Sameh noticed. She moved it because Sameh’s safety would be off, because Sameh’s safety was always off, and she probably had her finger near the trigger, too, because she always let her finger slip sideways and start to curl when she was worried and not thinking clearly. When she was actually trying to kill someone, she was fine. She knew exactly where her finger was. The rest of the time, she was careless. She’d shot a lot of walls and doors over the years, had sent a lot of bullets a mile off into nowhere because she tripped or slipped or got startled and jumped. Making sure Sameh’s rifle wasn’t pointing at anyone who mattered, or anything a round would ricochet off, was a full time job for Ellie.

Ellie decided she must be feeling better if she was noticing things like that.

“Are you okay?” Sameh whispered, then, “Why didn’t you tell me you had a kid?”

“Why didn’t you ask.”

Sameh smiled, and sniffed, and Ellie realized she was crying. Sameh never cried. She killed people instead. So she said.

“Hey,” Ellie said, worried. “It’s okay. I hardly knew her.”

“How the fuck do you have a kid?”

“Man,” Ellie said. “Penis. Sperm. The usual.”

Miguel and Sameh both looked at her like they were really worried, then looked at each other.

“Hey,” Sameh said. “It’s okay.”

“I’m fine. I didn’t know her. I gave her up when she was a baby and I haven’t seen her in years.”

“But still,” Sameh said. “Shit.”

“I know.”

“Are you angry?” Sameh said.

Ellie thought about that. Maybe she’d been around Sameh and the hajjis too much lately, but she was. “Yeah.”

“Sad?”

Ellie shrugged.

“What are you going to do?” Sameh said.

“Kill the guy,” Miguel said.

“What guy?”

“They guy that sold the kid the drugs,” Miguel said. “She’s going to kill him, she says.”

Sameh thought about that. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Fuck,” Miguel said. “Not you too.”

“What,” Sameh said. “It does.”

Miguel looked at her. “Don’t be an asshole.”

“Don’t be a fuckhead,” Sameh said. “You fuckhead.”

Miguel glared at her.

They were about to start squabbling again, Ellie decided. They squabbled a lot, and right now she couldn’t be bothered. She stood up and aimed her rifle at the first hajji she saw. An old woman, as harmless as old women ever were here, so not at all because she probably stirred up half the trouble that went on at night, but Ellie still wasn’t ready to end her just for the sake of it, so she looked for someone else. A young man, probably an insurgent by night, walking a bit fast towards the mosque. She put a bullet through his leg.

She sat back down.

Sameh and Miguel were both quiet, watching her. There was screaming and sobbing from down in the road.

“Habibi,” Sameh said. “You’ve never done that before.”

“I know.”

“You generally complain when we do,” Sameh said.

“Yeah.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“I need to go,” Ellie said.

“Okay.”

“I need to go home. To the funeral.”

“Yeah,” Sameh said. “Of course. Want me to come with?”

Ellie looked at her, surprised. “You would?”

“Of course. We’re sisters. And I love you and shit, that too.”

“I’m going to kill a guy in a proper country.”

Sameh shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Cops and shit. It’s against the law.”

“Yeah,” Sameh said. “But it’s a drug dealer. It’s not like it’s a real person, is it?”

“The cops might not think so,” Ellie said.

“Cops won’t try as hard, I’ll bet.”

Ellie looked at her, thinking.

Sameh stood up and glanced over the side of the roof. Ellie did too. The village was quiet. The hajjis knew Sameh was up there and something was going on with the kafirs. They had all gone to ground, were well out of sight. Sameh looked around for a moment, then sat back down.

“Thanks,” Ellie said, after a while. “For that. For coming too.”

“You’d do it for me,” Sameh said.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. “You know what? I would.”

Sameh grinned for a while, and Miguel watched them both.

Then Sameh said, “I love you,” and kissed Ellie, and for once didn’t punch Miguel first and tell him she’d shoot him in the balls if she saw a twitch in his pants while she did.