Free War Porn by Roy Scranton

dried limes and reed baskets and old women haggling over okra, children running between stalls and down alleys, faces flickering in brass. Up out of the ancient garden of Sinbad’s Baghdad and the nightmare of Saddam’s Ba’athist dystopia grew the fiber-optic slums of tomorrowland, where shepherds on cell phones herded flocks down expressways and insurgents uploaded video beheadings, everything rising and falling as one, Hammurabi’s Code and Xboxes, the wheel and the Web, Ur to Persepolis to Sykes-Picot to CNN, a ruin outside of time, a twenty-first-century cyberpunk war-machine interzone.
    We watched cars zoom by below while Kiowas whickered overhead. An RPG went off in the distance, yellow sparks shrieking up at the helicopters ceaselessly circling, and we cheered. Tracers rose and fell across the sky like burning neon.
    â€œI can’t believe how much this place looks like L.A.,” Burnett said.
    Foster flicked a butt over the side. “You up here last night?”
    â€œNaw.”
    â€œWicked firefight.”
    The sun bled magenta across the horizon and the lights of the shops and cafés carved tiny scallops in the purple night. Cars without headlights flew down the road, weaving crazily. No traffic lights, no cops, no streetlamps. We waited for collisions, explosions, gunshots.
    â€œThis stupid fucking place,” Burnett said. “I don’t know why we don’t just nuke it.”
    â€œWhat, Burnett, you wanna miss this? This is your war , man.”
    â€œYeah. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture and kill them.”
    â€œShut your fucking face, Pyle, you sick piece of shit. You do not deserve to survive in my Corps.”
    â€œYou ever notice Bullwinkle looks like Pyle?”
    â€œBetter watch out. He might shoot you in your underwear.”
    â€œHe better fucking kill me if he thinks he can take my underwear.”
    â€œC’mon Burnett. I know you’re a secret hadji lover. You blow your wad every night dreaming of some fat-assed hadji bitch riding your cock all belelelelelelelelah .”
    â€œSee that bitch today in the blue jeans? Shit hot. Just like a fucking American girl.”
    â€œAss cheeks like melons. Honeydew melons.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m talking about, some sweet hadji ass.”
    â€œFuck that. Hadjis stink.”
    â€œShit, they wash up like normal people. Besides, you stink too.”
    â€œYeah, but I ain’t gonna fuck me.”
    â€œUnless you get some hadji twat, you’re the only thing that’s fucking you. Just let yourself go for a few weeks till you’re really filthy. Then you won’t even notice.”
    â€œNegative. They’re probably fucking diseased or some shit. Catch some freaky Mohammed clap.”
    â€œThe Black Syphilis.”
    â€œHell yeah. They got diseases here you ain’t even heard of. I heard the PA say watch out for leeshamaneesis. What the fuck’s that? We shoulda just fucking nuked this fucking fucked-up fuckhole from the fucking start. And then we come back and take the oil whenever we want.”
    There was a flash in the distance.
    â€œOh shit you see that?”
    â€œLooked like an IED.”
    An Apache swung low over the gray cloud rising where the flash had gone off. We lit cigarettes as the last of the light faded, watching the Apache dip and swing like a giant angry wasp.

 
    we are heroes in error;
    what was said before is not important
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    The road bent away from the river and climbed a low berm. Oil glimmered purple in the sun in puddles, leaking through the berm’s sandy skin. To our left stood hovels wreathed in wires and clotheslines and a flock of raggedy children, shoeless, hooting and pointing. Far to the west lay the outskirts of Baghdad, smudged with haze. We turned past a wrecked BMP slouched inert on the shoulder.
    â€œIt’s right up here somewhere.”
    We passed some