The Girl in Green Read Online Free PDF

cracked open his skull.
    Benton and the other survivor stayed on the floor for hours. To call it cowering would be to demean their sincere effort to live. All they could do was hide and hope.
    They did not talk. They did not share words of fear, anger, or remorse. They were two human beings controlled by circumstance, with nothing in common except everything.
    Benton sweated profusely. The man handed him a bottle of water that had been lying next to them on the floor. Benton drank it all. He placed the cap back on top and set it aside.
    There was no telling whether hiding on the pharmacy floor behind the service counter was a good idea or a bad one. Moment by moment, he told himself he should make a run for it. And yet, with each arriving moment he did not, because fear has an inertia of its own.
    The windows had already been blown inward, so there was no proper separation between ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ anymore. It was a linguistic pretence sustained by convention. Either way, he could not hear the Republican Guard’s assault anymore.
    He heard distant shots and screams and yells, and the wailing grief of loved ones. Soldiers, Benton had believed, didn’t do this. Murderers did. It was odd, as he pressed his head to the floor, to think he didn’t even have a vocabulary to name the people who might be his killers. What are they, these people?
    During a lull in the shooting, Benton found the courage to unclench his muscles. He was surprised to find they were as stiff and sore as they’d become after long days trekking with camera equipment on assignment. The fear had made him exhausted. He lifted his head above the countertop and looked between the Halls Mentho-Lyptus drops and the reading glasses. There was smoke. There were dead in the street. There were people sitting dazed and walking slowly, and others running and crying. But there were no killers and no helicopters. They seemed to have moved off.
    â€˜Let’s go,’ he said to the man in the floor.
    â€˜Go where?’ he replied in English.
    â€˜The American base is less than two kilometres away.’
    â€˜I have to find my family,’ he said.
    â€˜Maybe they’re already there. I’m sure people are running there.’
    â€˜Americans don’t like Shiites.’
    â€˜You’re a non-combatant protected by international law. They won’t give a rat’s arse whether you’re a Shiite, a Sunni, or a Martian.’
    â€˜America hates Muslims. America kills Muslims.’
    â€˜I’m going. Come.’
    â€˜I must stay.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜You don’t understand. You’re not from here.’
    â€˜I’m going.’
    â€˜Go with God.’
    Determined, Benton abandoned his hiding place, stepped gingerly over the detritus on the floor of the shop, and cast himself into the harsh sunlight of the Iraqi revolution.
    Samawah had 28,000 residents. It was not a large city. He was only half a kilometre into it, and he knew how to get out again. Route 8 cut through the town from the north, and then turned south-east toward Nasiriyah which, according to the pharmacist, was under the same kind of assault as Samawah. This was not going to be his road. In fact, any road that could accommodate a tank was a road he planned to avoid.
    South of the al-Sharika road there was a wide-open stretch of land. Benton figured that the troops would be targetting large concentrations of people, and might therefore ignore stray individuals like himself, but that was a comforting speculation only. Also, if he was alone he might be able to yell loudly in English and identify himself, which might stop them from shooting him. In a crowd he’d be an object, not a person.
    Benton slunk low, and made for a patch of palm trees near a smouldering truck riddled with heavy machine-gun fire. A young girl in a green dress was curled into a ball by the back wheel. He didn’t want any more company