Story
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c o l l a p s e
— it’s a warzone out there —
Amstead's army pressed ever onward across the Ossan landscape. A mountain range loomed to the north, breaking the horizon in a blend of reds and blues, hazy but nevertheless hungry—a hateful challenge always threatening, a topographical tear along the lacquertops of desk-tethered generals overseeing the arrangement of their ground forces. In the vast plateau before that change in elevation, towns and villages lay scattered. These hideaways were known to harbor insurgents masquerading as humble civilians; full of first time mothers claiming boys who, by traditional approximation, were not even close to being related. Any house became a safe house for Ossa's guerrilla rebellion, so Amstead saw fit to discourage such an effort with artillery. Gifts rained from the skies. First in propagandic flyers from unarmed single engine props, then in a flurry of shelling accented with the rapid chittering of cannon fire from low-altitude death dealers. The invading forces left the red clay plastered and pockmarked, then she sent in her clean-up crews.
A small convoy of canvas-wrapped trucks ambled across the uneven desert terrain carrying the most dispensable of what the foreign army had to offer: infantrymen. A squad of twelve was split among three vehicles and given a direction—south, northeast, northwest—where each would take a pair of three man fire-teams to their location except for northwest, who were tasked to go it alone. PFCs Kasse Sejan and Eoran Toriet were assigned to that third vehicle. Their team leader was huddled near the cab, hand over an ear as he shouted a string of jargon confirming their orders into the mouthpiece of his radio.
Between the yelling and the loud chugging of the diesel engine that moved them, Eoran glanced sidelong to Kasse. His nerves betrayed him in the frantic shifting of his eyes, the way they flitted back and forth, the way he clutched his weapon's stock with white-knuckled fingers. As the truck slid to a sudden halt, his shoulder was forced to collide with his friend’s. Eoran apologized but the noise surrounding them stole his sound from the shape of his mouth.
—So listen—
“So listen,” Sergeant Brint continued, leaning in, forearms resting on his spread knees, “I know it sucks that we got the short end of the stick and are the only team approaching from the west, but if we’re smart about this, we can do it and get it done better than Alpha and Beta positions combined, ok? Command seems to think that there won’t be much left to clean up here but they’re back home watching this shit on a wall of screens like it’s a movie. What we’re gonna do is stay close and move under as much cover as possible. Slow and steady. Watch your backs. Watch my back and I’ll watch yours. I want so much back watching happening that it's unclear if you’re trying to see a laser sight or checking out my ass. Understood? Good. Safeties off. Let’s move out.”
Kasse and Eo, since their first meeting on the deployment craft, were inseparable. Fast friends now best, Kasse squeezed Eoran's shoulder like he was building the other boy up before a dare, more at home on their first platform training jump than it was here in Amstead's active conflict that made murderers of them both.
“You look so nervous,” the street rat said, sly grin wide around his boyish laugh. Kasse tugged the other PFC to standing as he checked over his shoulder for the sergeant and, sure he was out of earshot, the boy continued, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “Just watch that ass, keep it close keep it tight—orders from the top, Toriet.”
—like a virus—
Of the pair, the man in black was older, more seasoned. Kasse chose him. Entered him carelessly. He surveyed his anatomy, utility like a virus that knew how to study, knew how to learn, knew how to remember,
knew how to get better.
He would try his best not to be cruel but there were no guarantees. Inexperience bred catastrophe and, even as he ineffectually swallowed his drymouth sick uncertainty, he was asking forgiveness—biting his lip as he thought of Eo and Brint outside, what they were saying, what they were doing. In his mind he imagined his hands in the soldier’s chest, imagined how hard he would have to squeeze to make a heart turn to wax, how their CO’s mouth tasted still adrenaline high from the firefight. He exhaled without sound, brow knit, Eoran’s hand on his leg instead of the sergeant’s, the squeeze sliding up with his own hands manipulating the heart pieces he’d memorized so long ago. He saw Brint’s teeth part as he slid his blood-slicked fingers along the superior vena cava, watched Eoran’s shoulderblades tremble when he dropped his head in time with the ripping of the aorta, nails a catscratch sting imprinting along Kasse’s razorblade spine when he dug his fingers into the pulmonary valve till it sputtered in protest of his obstruction.
The young soldier was a breathless mess, provoked and ashamed and electric and frustrated and fucking alive—alive he felt so fucking alive—when the older soldier hit the floor. His companion fell with him all “Karang, karang, odien sutetsu” where his mouth ought to be. He gave only the faintest attempt at a cry when Kasse leapt onto his back, ripped his head back by his shock of coarse black hair, and drew his bolt knife across that lamb-supple throat until the soldier’s body yawned the colour of his gurgling spine.
Knees wet, red wicking up his dusty pants, Kasse remained straddled over the still twitching dead, sitting back. His eyes were open but he wasn’t really seeing. Bolt knife still tight in his grip, like the job wasn’t yet done, every exhale was a heavy burst, a labour of nerves. Did he feel bad? Did he feel good? Did he feel accomplished? Was that what this was? The trembling breath of a job well done?
What was he fucking thinking?
—one, two, three—
As he waited, Eoran’s mind implored him to prepare himself for eventualities, it urged him to not ignore the plethora of possibility and every reality the early evening held close to its mirage-mottled breast. His parents thought him foolish in how he shirked any duty deigned beneath him under the assumption that it would just work out, but that boy found that his positivity tended to be a resilient thing. So, then, why was he being so negative? Why were his lungs heavy with sentiments best collected by necographers?
His thoughts were somewhere else.
A proboscis unfurled through the split ledge between window and sill and supped chaos from the heatstroked air of day. A culmination of darkness swirled and separated, aether ripped in twain by an unseeable force of paramagnetic opposition. Starshine too early; moonbow circles and lightfleck fireflies flirting with each other in the unnatural hour. A glimmer in the glare of a gold-toothed grin.
“That’s a guy! Fuck!” Eoran spun around and ripped Brint from the wall like they had anywhere to go other than that lonely isthmus of concrete. A heavy metal door broke up the clay-stained gorge with a rectangle of grey. Brint shoved Eoran toward that exit. The hammering release of three lock’s bolts now kept their time.
One, Brint angled the barrel of his rifle up, down the length of the alley.
Two, Eoran’s fingers fought with the handle of the door.
Three, a shot echoed through the labyrinthine angles of western Biko’s remains.
