Richard Gardner

 

 

***

Hector looked through the broken café windows to the empty street. An overturned hydrant sprayed water through the windows. An overturned motorcycle lay atop of the shelled out flaming car that had harboured the bomb. Beside this, a wall of sandbags lay defeated from the blast.

The sirens were still distant and he wondered if they were even coming here. He looked back to the man who sat crumpled and wincing.

“They will be here soon. Pedro. Eyes up. They will be here soon.”

Hector didn’t know the man’s name, but he called him Pedro. The man tried to talk, but couldn’t. He croaked and then tensed, and then conceded and eased, somewhat, as though, in accepting his helplessness, a great many of the tensions that were currently plaguing him evaporated.

Hector wiped a shard of china from a cut in the man’s cheek, and then placed a napkin he had doused in the fresh water which now filled the floor. He lifted the man’s hand, and his eyes squinted in recognition before limply holding the napkin against his wound.

Hector watched him for a moment. This man was only a worker, a businessman caught in the crossfire. Not his business nor suffering this. It was cruel, very cruel. The man seemed well educated and Hector hoped he didn’t perish.

He sighed and cleared a table of rubble, and lay his suitcase flat onto it before unlocking the straps. He then groaned as his shoulder hurt and wiped sweat from his forehead; he looked back out of the window, checked each street leading off from the square, before leaving the man’s side and searched around the rest of the room, scrabbling through the bodies and blast debris.

“Hector, mister Hector!”

The voice was from the Gabrielle’s boy. The boy was knocking glass from the window frame with a rock, before hanging onto it with his elbows.

“Hector, you survived!”

The boy smiled, but Hector dashed and grabbed him by the shoulder, uprooting the boy from the windowsill and making him tumble back into the running water and debris.

“Get out of here boy are you an ass? They coming here soon to finish this…”

He picked up movement in the shadows across the square.

Silhouettes. Two of them. Two men with old style army caps. Two of General Chizo’s philistine bastards.

“Boy get here. Give me your hands. Quick now hurry; there is no time to lose. Here now; no don’t look back: get up here. Pass me your hands, quickly boy.”

He’d just pulled the boy up when first a bullet and then another one pinged into the wall beside them.

Pistol fire, thought Hector, thank god they weren’t armed automatic weapons.

Hector opened his suitcase, and took out his rifle attaching the butt to the barrel and loading it quickly.

He looked up. A man in a shabby army suit was approaching carefully across the square. Hector lifted the sight to his eye and shot. The man’s ankle exploded and he fell to the ground screaming.

Hector ducked down as another bullet pinged into the café behind him.

“Hector, mister Hector,” said the boy by his feet. “We have to get out of here or more of General Chizo’s bastard rebels will arrive. We have to move, back to mine, back to Aunt Gabrielle.”

“Hush boy.”

Hector waited and listened. The man in the square was now weeping.

Hector looked around.

“Boy, Manuel, go find me a bottle of strong stuff. You know what that is boy? Good. Then go quickly.”

The boy left and Hector peeped over the windowsill. The man in the square was grimacing and trying to sit up; his ankle was limp from a large wound. Between him and the cafe, were several vehicles: parked motorcars, a vacated florists delivery truck and an empty ice cream cart on its side. Around there, were bodies and blood, and an iridescent stream shone around the truck. The petrol tank was leaking.

The boy returned.

“Got it as you asked: the strong stuff! What are you going to do?”

“When I say, you must jump and run, boy. Hear me? Jump and run. Only when I say so though.”

“Aye, Hector. What are you going to do?”

“Pass me the drink.”

Hector unscrewed the bottle, and took a good drink. He then tore enough of his shirt arm away and cursed at the waste, and then took another mouthful of the meths and then plugged the hole with the rag.

“Ready boy?”

“Aye Hector.”

“Not yet. When I say so.”

“Aye Hector.”

Hector waited, and then lit the rag and then shouted, “Hey philistine. Hey you. That’s right. Hey bastard Chizo’s man. You be very good now and take this to your boss, you hear me?”

Hector threw the bottle, and ducked. It took a few minutes, before there was second and then third and then forth explosion in the square. The man in the square started screaming.

“Wait boy.”

“Aye!” the boy shouted.

Hector said to the man, “God help you Pedro.” After the heaviest of the vehicle debris had fallen, Hector shouted, “Now boy now. Run!”

They both jumped through the window and back up the square. Hector fired a couple of covering shots, through the smoke in the direction of the man in the alley, before running behind the boy, back off into the maze of back streets. They were safe, for now, no thanks to the damn police.

***