Like Your Favorite Book Is Only Blank Pages
@thebloodybarons @hemingwaysxwhiskey @awalkingcasualty
Even through dark lenses is cut into Rabastan’s vision. Squinting down at the Iraqi, he tried his best to ignore the river of sweat running between his shoulder blades and pooling under panels of body armor.
“Ya’know any insurgents?” he drawled? The reply was incomprehensible. After all this time you’d think he’d have picked up on their accent.
“Well, if you get to where you’re going,” Rab cut the man off, “it’s about 1600 just uh, let the insurgents know that we’ll be here about another hour if they wanna come shoot at us.”
A shift of his weight slung his weapon forward; he leaned against the car. Rab’s attention drifted, scanning the horizon. Absently he answered the rambling, broken english, “Yeah, they can come any direction just preferably within the hour. We gotta go back, sleep, eat chow, and shit like that...”
Mind numbing was his level of boredom. Not a hint of action the three days after their patrol turned into checkpoint duty. A kid with money burning holes in his pockets. Except they were bullets. And he just wanted to shoot something. At least Paquet was stalled out too; the fucker inching up on Rab’s record.
Dust never settled here, not quite. A layer of grit kept everything nice and sandpaper-esque. It was the cloud kicking up between buildings that caught Rabastan’s attention. His eyes tracked its path.
“Drink your milk, wear your seatbelt, have a nice day.” He muttered; banged on the roof of the car, waving the kid through. The dust cloud was still skirting just over the edge of the buildings. The jalopy pulled away; Rab’s shoulders squared. His hand tightened around the grip and his M4 cradled in shoulder before his next blink.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, and instinct guided Rabastan’s movements. Two deployments and common sense told him no one drove fast enough through the city to kick up that much shit. Half of a flatbed tore around a corner two blocks down.
His heart threw itself against his ribs. Down the barrel, blue eyes met brown, then they didn’t. The second pound deafened his ears. The truck swerved, tore through the side of a decaying car, second shots went off-- no, tire blew. Locals scattered in every direction like shattered class. Gouging through the earth, burned rubber choking the air, the truck screeched to stop. The third pound had to have cracked something.
“--insubordinate Lestrange!--”
Second Lieutenant Mitchell Walker. First tour, vying for command to early, to green, to dead. The concussion liquefied him from the inside out, they would later find out, skin holding him together like a water ballon. Rabastan didn’t notice Walker sloshing to the side as he shoved his dead team leader’s weight off his body. Four heart beats and boredom gave way to hell.
Gasping, clinging to his weapon, Rab staggered to his feet. Nothing was getting to his lungs. Wheezing racked his body again, again, again every breath died in his throat. He saw nothing. Heavy arms drug an even heavier rifle as high as they could. Searing tore through his gut, sawed against kevlar, ripped the airless breath from his lungs. If he cried out, no sound came. None that he could hear over the tank peeling open like a can of tuna that replaced his ears. White burst through his speckled vision again as his fumbling weapon drug the sling against the shrapnel growing out of his side. Wide eyed, shallow breaths gulped for anything to appease his screaming lungs. Even nothing turned dark at the edges as the ground gave out under him. Rifle became crutch, suspended in the moment as chaos erupted around him. S’fuckin’hot, the blood draining on his hand and to his feet, his knees hit the dirt.
