《HEfTY》Chapter 27: Go PRO

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Our whole house smelled like a restaurant. Ghada was a remarkable cook. It started to get stuffy in there, so I got some fresh air. It mostly meant smelling leaded Petrol as soon as you were outside.

There were claps in the distance. The war. Fight on, boys. I walked around our new hideout. I created it. All of it. The one thing that blew about ISIS was the moving. We had drones over us all the time. I was buying drones for us to attack the drones that were coming in and bombing us. We knew we were being watched from space. As soon as you got comfortable, another one of your hideouts would get drone struck. We had to move lots of facilities. Thankfully, I could patch everything. Our mining rigs were in a very secret location, underground. But if I were to let them find it… just one carefully placed bomb, and ziiip. That 7.3B would be 7.3B farts in the wind. Luckily, I wasn’t stupid either. I saved .1B, or $100 million on a cold wallet. (That was fancy talk for a USB-type stick that kept Bitcoin.) Ghada made me an awesome bracelet to keep it on.

In the distance I saw some trucks coming in. They were coming in fast. Just the good ol’ boys coming back from a hard day. Enjoy your PS4s. Looking back I saw that one of the vehicles was swerving. It looked like its tire was out. Tough day on the front. The vehicles ran in hot. They were riddled with bullet holes. Some of them even got through the metal plating. Damn, real tough day.

The peaceful dusk had turned into a circus. Soldiers were everywhere, some were screaming while others pulled wrapped bags dripping with blood from trucks. Some of the screaming soldiers were being carried by partners. Lots and lots of guns being thrown around. It was like a changing of the guard. Two soldiers—one of them I recognized as Yusef—carried a dead fighter. One man grabbed the dead arms and Yusef grabbed the dead legs. Yousef slipped on sand and tripped. The dead fighter’s head hit the ground.

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The GoPro atop his head bobbed off, and I saw Zeyad’s hair slip out from the straps. Zeyad! They carried him away. And just like that, Zeyad was gone. His Go Pro. It fell off his head.

I snatched it up real quick. Before anyone could see. Not that they were focused on me. I was just the computer kid around there. They were either reloading weapons or carrying bodies. I instantly took the GoPro to my lab.

I had a drawer that absolutely kicked ass. You name the device and I had the wire for it. It was a dream come true. So I plugged the GoPro into my hard drive, and then found the device. It was in Arabic. I wasn’t in charge of PR for ISIS. I didn’t see any of the war footage. They pretty much stopped taking me to executions after I got Ghada.

So it’d been a second since I’d seen real violence. I opened up the file and watched the video. It was 3 hours long. I fast-forwarded through to the moments before the camera went still, and I saw the fighting. It was in a dusty, cinder-block city. People were yelling Zeyad’s name through the whole video. He was firing rounds left and right. He was a total badass. And then he spotted someone on a roof. He reloaded and stood up to shoot. Something happened with his gun. It didn’t fire.

“Come on Zeyad… come on…” I said under my breath, “shoot that bitch!”

He tried again and nothing came out. It was a fresh clip in his gun. I saw him load it. He said “Allahu Akbar”, then looked up at the rooftop. And that was it. The video spun around. My head whipped back just watching it; watching Zeyad headshotted. Really violently, with thumps, he hit the ground.

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I took it back and rewatched. Then I did it again, and again. I honestly don’t remember how many times I watched it, but I rewatched. I finally let it play. It was just a video. A weird angle, from the ground looking at a wall. I had a flashback to seeing that severed head on the ground when I first got here. The eyes. That’s what got me. The eyes. Then I looked at the video. Still gunshots around, but no movement. “Zeyad.” And I wondered if his eyes were open. I was looking through a dead friend’s eyes.

I was sure I’d caused this. Hell, I remembered buying him that GoPro. I can’t say for certain if I’d bought the gun, but I bought a lot of the rest of that stuff. I made this happen. I didn’t feel so hot. I sat down, thinking my chair was behind me. It wasn’t totally, and I dropped to the floor. I saw the ceiling overhead. It wasn’t a great ceiling. I wondered if it would be the last thing I ever saw. Like Zeyad.

I went on the computer, and accessed my old email. I used a filter so I was actually accessing it from Portland and not from Afkaz. I sent the video to every contact in my old email.

I can’t tell you why, but I wanted people to see him. Zeyad was real. He was my friend. Who knows what people thought of me. Wait a minute…

I looked up my name on Google search. Then it really hit me. There were all kinds of stories written about me. About some kid who went missing. Some teenager. I started watching videos. Police reports. News stories that they air at 6:58PM as they’re signing off. And then I saw Mom. Mom. On the news. She was pleading for anyone with information to contact the police.

Mom.

I looked down at my hands. My billion-dollar hands. What the hell was I anymore? I opened up my drawer and I popped two Adderall. I got to work.

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