Two wasculwee wabitts, scurry in a zigzag like magic bullets, one boy, one girl, stopping to rest and sniff about behind rocks and rubble. Oh, and the boy he's the leader; he's older, tough, he scans the horizon. It's a night like the ocean floor; dust hangs in the thick air like a school of plankton. It was almost like mist, light from the powdery white full moon hit all the glittering sand softly and everything was the color of midnight, even the skin of the rabbits.
They cut through mist like two little 38. Millimeter rounds and they stole all the air from the path they left behind, the path split the air wider, wider; the night's translucent silk was torn in a jagged path like scissors to a nightgown. All the critters and bottom feeders paid heed to the little magic bullets and went to find a new place to graze on the blue sand. Two wabbits outran the sun.
They stopped to pant and snif about again, this time behind some rubble from the wall of a blasted out mud hut.
The girl caught some air, "What…are we…running from?"
His hand commanded her to tuck herself behind him. The boy realized he had stumbled into a flattened village and that everything smelt like gasoline. The ash and soot covered surroundings absorbed the moon's beams, hiding them in black shadow.
"I saw them!" his verdict was a little breathy yell.
"Where?"
"Their."
"I don't know what their is!" her own little breathy yell.
"Shit, move!" he popped up and moved due North with the girl's collar in his fist. They scurried 30 meters to a small boulder rest on a mound with a slight incline.
The girl, weapon on the rock, twitching its long metal snout to and fro, breathed out, "Did you see where they went?"
"No."
"Should we use flares?" she had eyes wide trying to soak in as much of the light radiating off of the sand as possible.
No response.
"Should we u-"
"Shut the fuck up!"
They listened.
And then, like a busted TV blue, green, yellow and red, fuzzy, blurry, black and grey static, PLEASE STAND BY…. Beeeeeeep TSSHHHH!
Directionless weightless flight in a matter less void, an instance was eternity. A hooded figure waits to ferry a new batch of souls up the east river, motioning hither with its bony finger. The girl realized she had landed next to the moon and looked into its tattered, glowing eye. The mist was impenetrable now, save the moon's single spotlight, which shunned the stars and the thick dust cloud, hypnotizing her.
"Ones here!" A voice hollered, "You got 'em Marty!" the voice could be heard coughing his lungs out then smothering it with a scarf.
The rabbit was so startled she could almost yelp but she was paralyzed apart from shivering. A new synthetic eye stared at her and scanned all around her, it had many pupils made of white light.
"Dead." She thought, "I'm dead." She was trembling now; the desert is cold this time of night.
A muffled voice commanded a heard of identical figures with his teeth half clenched "Watch y'er hides, I reckon In'jiins must'a heard that thump'in. Their all over, be still n' stay low, no yapp'n. Look, 'round for trouble now too, I gotta feel'in er' fix'in to try'in kick us in the ass fer' stop'im by frua late night hunt'in trip. "
A covered man, head covered by helmet, eyes covered by its shadow, his mouth by a scarf and all his body by the settling dust. He watches the blackened earth around him, the horizon, it's crumbled edifices, and the twinkling fires of fledgling gangs, savages with painted faces, wearing the bones of men and animals. The dust settled gradually, he squinted at the moon, those fires, the burnt cactus trees and charred bodies, all with a surly suspicion. You see the sergeant had learned in solider school that squinting and being suspicious was what kept his men and himself alive. It was his sexy crows feet, they scare off snipers, and the bullets jus 'turn' round and hit em' right in the ass. Or at least that's what they said back at Camp McCarran.
"Uhh Sergeant? This one's still alive." Private Adam Elik almost regretted blurting out in his Shady Sands suburban boy drawl and turned off his helmet's side mounted flashlight.
"Kill 'er"
Adam stepped closer and tried to find his commander's eyes "We're a click away from FOB, we're suppo-"
"We… ain't here to-!" The sergeant stopped himself from raising his voice, "help- these - people… do it Adam…. Y' know whattado buddy… here." he gave his private a semi-automatic nine millimeter pistol and a hard pat on the back.
Adam knew why this was happening, everyone was now looking at him, this patrol was probably not even authorized. He knew the way the rest of the troop felt about him, he was a replacement and they let him know everyday. This was the first time he had been genuinely referred to as "Adam" during an actual conversation since he was deployed. On his first day at McCarran, he was called to jokingly "Hey, Rachel!" Adam instinctively turned his head in response, so the name eventually stuck. Another day someone glued a hidden thumbtack to the inside of his helmet and he had to have a snickering medic with bad breath pull it out with his finger nail's and a pair of pliers. "Hey! Somebody help me pin his skin so it don't stretch s'damn much! He he! It's like goddamn rubber! Can't—seem to—pull- shit. Hey, you hold still now, ye' hear?...Shit!" the scruffy medic hollered and yammered on incessantly but never dropped the cigarette in his mouth.
Adam laid his rifle on the sand, turned his light back on; he found her mangled body and looked into her beady black eyes struggling to look into plastic white light, "her fate" as she would call it.
"I won't forget you honey—you were my first." Adam's new buddy's chuckled as he pulled the trigger. His bullet left a little dark hole right above her left eyebrow.
Adam didn't think, he didn't have to, he understood now and he was just exhausted. They made it back over NML and hunkered down, he got a solid block of sleep and in the morning they had a kitty pool blown up and the whole platoon took turns soaking their feet. Everything was peaches n' gravy.
"So, the school boy got his dick wet out there."
"Yep."
The rousing conversation moved to a new topic of interest…
"Raw hamburger meat, when you hit em' with them grenades—just like hamburger meat."
All nod, sip their beer and think about hamburgers.