Tourists

The tourists had barely reached the sand when we started picking them off.

Some of them fell as they tried to clamber out of the dinghies, struggling in the water, while others charged, powering through the surf as though being first would give them some kind of protection.

It didn’t.

We dispatched them all with the calm, practised rhythm of our training.

I could feel the sweat running down inside my helmet but I ignored it, squinting through the scope at the masked figures pouring off the boats. The tourists threw shapes in the air, then were gone, and when the last of them fell, the silence was abrupt.

I glanced at Paulie, but his eyes were front, staring at the horizon.

“Are we done?” I said.

Paulie didn’t respond.

“They’re all gone,” I said. “All of them.”

Still, Paulie stared straight ahead.

“Come on.” I stood and tried to brush the sand from me but it was impossible to get it all off, the grains clinging to every facet and wrinkle of my fatigues.

Paulie didn’t move and I grabbed him by the arm, pulling him up. Maybe he was just being vigilant, I told myself. In the training sometimes they’d throw in a few twitchers or one or two playing possum, just to make sure you were on your game, because if you weren’t… We called them tourists, but as the Master Sergeant said, opportunists might be a better word. You could never be sure whether one of them had a blade or a crowbar or even an IED. Whatever. Just don’t call them refugees. Refugees needed food, shelter, aid. Love. Not tourists.

“We nailed it,” I said, forcing a smile and clapping him on the back, and that seemed to do the trick. Paulie gave a sort of little gasp that might have been a laugh, and then it was as though he was waking from a trance. He gave a shake of his head and looked down at the AR-90 still held tightly in his hands and then produced another chuckle that was more discernible this time. As if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. I knew how he felt - it was the first time for both of us, but we’d done the training and I didn’t want to look green in front of him. Especially with the body cams.

We clambered up on top of the dune and surveyed the bay. It was a neat little horseshoe; no more than 7km across and shielded on both sides by steep cliffs and limestone rock formations, and for the next twelve months it was to be our patrol. There wasn’t much to it. The nearest town was a couple of clicks inland, a single strip of road with a pub and a convenience store, but they weren’t our concern, nor was the spattering of dwellings that supported them. No, our concern was in front of us, on the sliding blue-green patchwork of the sea. And the tourists.

I don’t know who first coined the term for the lost souls washing up on our shores, but as the world went to shit it helped us hate them. It was as though everything had just decided to give up all at once: the weather, the crops, the oceans. The people. We’d been chipping away at all of it for some time, of course, and suddenly it all came tumbling down. There was a brief moment of panic - a desperate frenzy - before marshal law took over. Nobody wanted chaos. We’d seen what was happening elsewhere. We were the lucky ones, but as catastrophe followed catastrophe the borders closed, and it became every man for himself.

Then the tourists started to arrive. Maybe word had got out that we’d got our act together, or maybe they were just desperate. Either way, they came in such numbers that, even if we’d wanted to - which we didn’t - turning them away or detention weren’t options. We were frightened. Of what they would bring with them. Of what they would do to us. There was barely enough for us; we couldn’t support these tourists. And as time rolled on and the threat only continued to grow, we resolved to do whatever we could to protect ourselves.

The training helped. A VR program the army had already been using was souped up and used to condition us to do what needed to be done, but it didn’t take much. The fear saw to that.

I was actually surprised at how easy the real thing had been.

A sound like a match striking caught my attention and I studied Paulie again. He wasn’t over it, I could see. Christ, was he crying?

“Here,” I fumbled at the pouch on my belt and finally managed to take out the little plastic box they gave us. I took off the lid and held it out to him.

Paulie sniffed back tears and ignored it.

“Here!” I said. “Take it.”

Paulie glanced at the blister pack of pills inside and I saw his eyes drawn to the one conspicuously empty cavity.

He scowled and shook his head, staring back out at the sea. “Nah, man. No.”

“Christ, Paulie, we’ve not been here long enough for you to lose it on me. Just take it.”

“You know what those things do to you?”

I knew. Of course I knew. “Look, this is a crazy world, and they make the crazy just a little bit easier,” I said.

Paulie wiped his nose with the back of his hand and gave a snort of derision.

“And how long will that last? What are you going to do when they run out, too? How are you going to cope?”

He began to stumble down the dune, feet sliding, sinking in white sand.

“Nah, man,” he called back as he made his way towards the water. “I want to know what I’m doing. Keep myself accountable.”

“For what?” I called after him. “For God? Because I don’t think he gives a shit anymore!”

I knew Paulie still prayed, like a good little Catholic boy, whispering his wishes when he thought I was asleep.

Paulie stopped in his tracks. That got him, I thought, but when he turned, his face wasn’t steely, but soft, as though it should be obvious to me.

“Nah, man. So I can look Tasha in the eye when I see her again.”

Tasha. Of course. The love of Paulie’s short life. How long had they been together before the states closed their borders? Five months? Six? And how long had it been since? A year or more, with talk of reopening and vaccines dwindling along with secure lines of communication. You couldn’t be sure who was listening, was the official line, but we all knew the infrastructure wasn’t holding up. What we heard of the other states came from State Gov, same as news of the rest of the world, and the gaps between updates was getting longer and longer.

I could have reminded him of this - really stuck the knife in. And God knows the pill would have made it easier. But the truth was, I was jealous of Paulie’s little ray of hope. I was jealous that he had someone to long for; someone longing for him. Something to look forward to. And that jealousy was something precious to hold onto. If I murdered that hope, it was gone for me, too.

He saw it in my face and turned, nodding, heading back towards the water.

Towards the dead tourists.

“Mask up,” he said as we drew nearer. There was no telling what they were carrying.

“This is bullshit,” Paulie said, and again my mind turned to the body cams. Did anybody even review them? “This is bullshit, but it’s necessary,” Paulie said, shrugging as though shaking off the negative thought. “Keep them out, keep us safe,” he said, reciting the State Gov mantra. “Keep them out, keep us safe.”

I was glad Paulie was coming out of it, because down there, amongst them, even with the pill, my resolve was failing. They were different up close, not seen through the scope. You could smell them. You could see the brands of their clothes; the sand clinging to them. They were more real. More human.

“Tourists,” Paulie said, a trace of disgust in his voice that quickly faded. “They look so…”

“Normal,” I said.

Paulie glanced at me but moved quickly over to one of the figures. Crouching low over it, he pulled the mask from its face.

“What’re you doing? No…”

The face beneath was staring, but it wasn’t the greedy, opportunistic face of a tourist. It just looked sad.

The waves lapped lazily on the sand, but otherwise the beach was silent.

Paulie paused for a moment, in thought, and then he stood and hurried to the next one.

“Paulie,” I began, “I don’t think…”

He’d frozen again.

“What is it?” I said, but in my heart, I knew it already.

He recognized these people. He knew them.

He sprang now, moving swiftly from corpse to corpse. Searching for something. Someone.

“Paulie, stop,” I pleaded, but it was too late, he’d found what he was looking for.

I passed the ones he’d checked: a skinny, older woman, a round faced Asian man, one that was just a girl.

Paulie was squatting over the next one, and his hunched shoulders began to shake.

I wanted to pull him back; tell him it was ok, but I felt detached from my body, floating like a kite on a string. It was too late. We had done this. I peered over his shoulder.

He hadn’t got to this one’s mask. Instead, he was holding something in his hands. I stepped closer and could hear the little gasps as he muttered under his breath - was he praying again? - and saw that he was cradling a little heart-shaped locket on a chain. The silver was bruised, the engraved pattern dark and grimy.

“Keep them out, keep us safe,” he was saying. “Keep them out, keep us safe. Keep out keep safe.”

Tears streamed down his face. Sensing me, he pinched the locket open.

Paulie’s smiling face stared up at me from inside.

“Keep out, keep safe,” the other Paulie said. “Keep out keep safe.”