Savages

5

O pulls her jeans up, walks over to the table, and looks at the gun, still in pieces on the beach towel. The metal parts are pretty in their engineered precision.

As previously noted, O likes power tools.

Except when Chon is cleaning one with professional concentration even though he’s looking at a computer screen.

She looks over his shoulder to see what’s so good.

Expects to see someone giving head, someone getting it, because there is no give without the get, no get without the give when it comes to head.

Not so fast.

Because what she sees is this clip:

A camera slowly pans across what looks like the interior of a warehouse at a line of nine severed heads set on the floor. The faces—all male, all with unkempt black hair—bear expressions of shock, sorrow, grief, and even resignation. Then the camera tilts up to the wall, where the trunks of the decapitated bodies hang neatly from hooks, as if the heads had placed them in a locker room before going to work.

There is no sound on the clip, no narration, just the faint sound of the camera and whoever is wielding it.

For some reason, the silence is as brutal as the images.

O fights back the vomit she feels bubbling up in her belly. Again, as previously noted, this is not a girl who likes to yank. When she gets some air back, she looks at the gun, looks at the screen, and asks, “Are you going back to Iraq?”

Chon shakes his head.

No, he tells her, not Iraq.

San Diego.