I’ll admit that we started off on the wrong foot with this story…
We had just bailed out from a burning half of an airplane—although I can't complain about that too much since we were the ones that wrecked it. Still, parachuting from it could've gone better.
Then again, with our luck, you could strap the four of us together on a zip line and we’d end up in different zip codes. But that’s still better luck than most squads mashed together out of the 222nd Battalion’s B Company. Our squad might just be the longest-lived, as in surviving, unit within “Bad Company.”
Now, to be clear, this B-company wasn’t called “Bad” because… it was bad. It’s the unofficial unit where they dump screw-ups in the army instead of an MP prison cell. You’d be right in arguing that it was some twisted, legalized US army penal unit. But that hadn't been on my mind for quite a while—and as far as I could tell, we weren’t under anyone’s jurisdiction after this landing.
After cutting my chute loose from a tree, I rolled onto the ground. I was a good distance from anywhere anyone else landed.
“Uh…Hey!”
My voice bounced around in the swamped forest.
“ANYONE?” I couldn’t get a clear look through the mess of trees boxing me in.
I heard scuffling in the bushes then. I pulled a pistol onto it. The four of us weren't the only guys on that plane, and I wasn’t too trusting of those Russians personally.
But what surprised me was hearing Sarge call back out of the forest.
“Ay! MARLOW! That YOU?”
His name's Redford—but we've been called him Sarge, since… well, he picked the name. And considering his age and rank, he’d earned it.
I spun around to his voice, screaming back, “YEAH, SARGE!”
“Damn, ‘bout time you spoke up!” he groaned before switching over to our coms, just a simple radio link. “You hearin’ me ok? Come over to me, I’m markin’ my place with smoke. Over.”
“Yeah, I hear… uh, what color?”
“Red… as in, run-your-ass-over red. Now quit dickin’ around and get over here! I’ll try reaching out to those two chuckleheads. Out!”
Normally, he was more of a killjoy than that. But if I was 40-something on the verge of retirement postponed a dozen or so times as of now in this line of work, I might not be so quick on laughing either.
“Understood—out,” I answered, hustling over to the slimmest sight of a bright red smoke plume through the foliage. It helped that Sarge started yelling out for Haggard and Sweetwater while I made my way there.
Other than the rustling in the bushes that seemed to be following me, there wasn’t much else to mention on the trek to Sarge—until… well, it might be best if I went ahead and explained how did we get here part before that bit.
A few days earlier, our squad was reassigned to go on a goose-chase for one man: Arkady Kirilenko. A Russian colonel that was almost straight from a Bond film. Like, literally the one from Octopussy. He was deep into some new WMD research that our sketchy new CIA buddy had a hard-on for.
Our orders were to capture him, but after surviving being sold out by said spook for an act of poorly thought-out revenge, and the loss of our pilot friend we didn't even know the full name of, we found ourselves boarding a massive cargo-jet full of Russian operatives and Kirilenko to finish the job. The superweapon he was building was being mobilized on the plane: A Scalar weapon... bomb thing. From what I was told, it used an EMP to trash everything electrical in a nuke-sized blast radius, except at ground zero. And we'd just help put the final part of the puzzle in Ivan's hands.
But with our superior fighting spirit, we plowed our way through the plane, broke into the weapon’s room, and stopped the Russians where it counted… at a steep cost.
I don’t know what exactly happened up there, only that I blasted some part of the Scalar, disco, death-ball while shooting the hell out of it. There was a blinding flash that knocked us to the ground, and the next thing we knew, our flight was falling apart. We managed to grab a few chutes and bailout of there safely. 12 minutes later of parachuting over what should’ve been Texas, and I found myself in the woods without an awful lot going for me. But—our plan worked out in the end… and we ended up not dying, which was welcome.
At first, this seemed like it wasn't the worst situation we’d been in together.
On the walk, the shuffling noise trailing me stopped.
Only to turn into a deep growl.
It had to be a dog, maybe a wolf, I thought. But in Texas? No… had to be coyotes or something. Did they make that kind of noise too? I… I needed to think fast, whatever it was.
So, I shot at the bush. Not aiming—but trying to scare it. It stopped making noises after that, so I assumed I could start walking again. Bad idea.
I didn't know what it was then--but at the time, my best description was this: a pissed-off pile of sticks.
When it jumped me, I felt that it was dog-shaped with its four legs clawing on me. It had bright and lit green eyes too—but the splintery teeth on it were more immediately important. Somehow, my army experience had just gone from stopping a hostile use of a WMD to being mauled by a wolf made up of sticks in less than half an hour.
The dogwood knocked me on the ground from behind. It sunk its teeth into the collar of my vest instead of my neck, luckily. Unluckily, it knocked the gun out of my hand. I shoved it off long enough to flip myself over and pulled out a knife to even the odds.
I wasn’t trained in dog fighting—but I tried jabbing at all the obvious spots: under the mouth, the neck, the ribs, between the front legs… between the hind legs. But nothing was cutting it. The sticks didn’t snap, and it didn't bleed from anything I did. And if it didn’t bleed... then killing it was going to be an issue. All I could do was push its muzzle away while kicking around in the dirt and yelling back. It started to claw into my chest instead of my face, stopping briefly to howl over me.
I had a doubt about surviving at that moment—until I heard something else rushing towards me from the woods along with the sweet jingle of brass shaking around in a loose belt.
“Holy SHIT, Preston! Th—A Dog? Just, keep it still, I’ll light that bitch up!”
Sweetwater had found his way over to assist me in not dying. He shouldered his LMG and tried training it on the wolf.
Sweetwater... He wasn't meant to be a grunt like I signed up for, per se. He looked like Robert Carradine from Revenge of the Nerds would if you rushed him through boot camp, with his bad posture and thick-rimmed glasses; not very frontline material. But after bricking a few hundred army computers on “accident,” he nailed his place in B-company. Yet, he still held his own weight, either loading lead into guys or suppressing any will to keep living out of them. He’s with no doubt the best brain out of all of us too. Unfortunately, that title apparently comes with a snarky attitude and a cautiousness for everything. To some, it was a sign of cowardice; to me, it was self-preservation—something that wasn’t expected out of a unit like ours from the Brass.
And it would be in pretty bad taste if I called him a coward after this.
With Sweets aiming, I jammed my knife in the roof of the dogwood’s mouth. It rose up and tried yacking it out. It gave him the clearest shots he could hope for.
“Ah HA, Timber!” he shouted out with a smile about on par his one-liner. He dumped a burst into its body, whittling it down to pulp as it lumped over. As the glowing eyes on it burned out next to me, what sticks remained stuck together fell apart.
Sweets rushed over to check me for anything—being that he was the closest thing we had to a medic.
“Christ amore, are you good or what?”
“Yeah- ahh... Just scratches—maybe splinters.” I stood back up on my own as Sweets shifted his focus towards the remains of what he’d just killed.
“Well, shit… guess that thing was all bark and no bite, huh?” Sweets sifted through the sticks with his barrel, and then bent down to grab my knife.
“Guess it was. Looked like it was trying to lick me anyway.” I took it from him and shifted over to grab my gun, wiping the muck off it. I asked him something else, “Hey, do you have any ide–”
“–Oh, defiantly not a fucking clue what that was,” he blurted out. He took a panicked look around us before speaking again, “And… Oh Jesus… if what’s happening is what I think is happening—well...” He let his gun hang from its sling as he spun back with his arms in the air. “Welcome to not fucking Earth, bitch!”
I looked at him like he’d gone mental—which at this point wasn't honestly a stretch.
“Hey, don’t give me that look… I’m serious here, Pres!”
“And I’m waiting on the punch-line.”
“A Punch-line? Really?” He started numbering his points off with his fingers, “So, after being attacked by an ouroboros wolf, the absolute radio silence so far, and the fact that we’re in the middle of some temperate rain forest in Texas doesn’t raise a bit of a red flag?”
“What radio silence? I was able to pick up Sarge a few minutes ago.”
“Oh, ok, that’s cute—but what I’m talking about is a bit worse: Every signal that should be coming in, from FM, XM, HAM, Sat-coms—shit you name it, it’s just not there! Either T.V. decided to finish off the rest of radio, or we really are the most Shanghaied bunch of assholes in existe–”
“–Slow down,” I cut in, “Are you sure that the Scalar… thing never went off?”
Sweets paused for a moment—almost long enough to give me hope that he would stop freaking out. " Well, Pres… that’s the thing. I think it did go off.”
I felt like I went through three stages of grief in three seconds. “No… Damnit! We didn’t go through all of that for… God—then how is our stuff still working if we failed?”
“Annnd that’s the other thing. I don’t think it went off correctly.”
“What?”
Sweets looked dissatisfied at me. “Oh, you’re surprised? You’re the one that shot at it. A lot. Remember all the bangy-bang in the flying thing?”
“I remember you saying that should’ve destroyed it.”
“It’s sure destroyed now,” he muttered, “But… look, I can’t even begin to fathom the possibilities of what would happen if…”
“–IF what?” I pressed on, “What would it do? Sweets, just tell–”
“–Alright, alright!” He cracked, “I was gonna save for when we’re all together, but if you gotta know… Er, how familiar are you with parallel uni–”
Sweets was cut off by the rapid firing of a shotgun, accompanied by a rough, southernly voice yelling, “They’re fuckin’ real!”
“Oh shit, Haggard!” Sweets yelped, and we both ran towards the sound of swearing and gunfire.
As we got closer to where he was duking it out with nature, the sounds from Hags suddenly died down—but not with a scream.
“Wait, what? No! Fuck—there’s no way he’s dead! Doesn’t he, like, wrestle bulls in his free time?” Sweets sputtered.
Hags was... a lot: A loose-cannon, a tough-guy, a Texan, a walking paint-chip PSA, and above all, American. He’s our modern, Burt Reynolds lookalike, cowboy—using C4 and rockets instead of dynamite and six-shooters to get things done. He got his time for lighting up a massive ammo depot, which perfectly segued into him being our demolition “expert.” He was gun-ho in almost every part about him, even his get-up. He'd ditched his helmet for a beanie for Christ's sake. And there was just this “hick aura” that wouldn’t stop oozing out of him. It's like he was designed to be the polar opposite of the big city boy Sweets was—but despite that, the two of them managed to get along well enough.
“Hey—HAGGARD!” I shouted, firing off a few rounds into the air as if speaking his language. In seconds, a few more shotgun shells went off, and we heard him running towards us.
“AY, PRES! Is that you?” he yelled back, only to bust out of the trees into our clearing. “Oh... thank Jesus, dude… this… this place is fuckin’ weird!” He leaned up against a tree as he caught his breath.
“Yeash, tell me about it,” Sweets muttered.
“Oh, heya, Sweets… phew, that’s nice… got most of us together now.”
“And Pres said he’s heard from Sarge too, so we’ve got that in the bag.” Sweets patted me on the shoulder before continuing, “You are, of course, invited to join us as we travel, if you’d like,” he gestured to Hags.
“Yeah—I think I might just bear your pissy-lil company for a bit. ’Sides, better to travel in packs with all these-there creepy-ass things runnin’ ‘bout.”
“You’ve seen those wood-things too?” I asked.
“Seen? Hah! I’ve already got a few ta my name! Can’t think of a good way to mount sticks on a plaque though…”
“Ok, can up and start moving again?” Sweets stepped in, “I don’t want to arrive to find Sarge mauled to death in the middle of Fido’s Forest.”
“Sure, sure—but can I ask you a quick question first?” Hags asked.
“Sure?”
“Just where… in the fat-fuck are we, man? ‘Cause you can bet your ass we ain’t in Texas no-more!”
“Well, how am I supposed to know? Do I look like Davy Crockett to you?”
“Oh, my sweet Jesus,” Hags moaned, “How are you are always blankin’ out on the big questions, smartass? It’s like you only know little, tinny, useless, Trivial-Pursuit-winnin’ stuff—it’s friggin’ useless!”
“You’re calling me useless?” he shot back, “At least I’m not a walking liability to all of us!”
“Oh, and just how am I that?”
“What? Do you need me to spell it out for you? You treat the term ‘danger close’ like It's a safe word! Hell, the fact that none of us have been killed by all the frags you’ve been lobbing for the past two years is almost proof that there is a God!”
“Oh, so what? I’ve been careful enough! Your ass is still here to bitch ‘bout it!”
“By sheer luck!”
“Well—maybe you shouldn’t be waistin’ your own damn luck! How hard is it to not step in the splash zone? Do ya need to get up that close to baddies to see 'em, four-eyes?”
“Well, maybe this wouldn't even be an issue if you didn’t throw everything like your sister!”
“Ho-oh, now it’s–”
“Hey, LADIES!” Sarge yelled out from the woods, defusing everything between Hags and Sweets. “Glad to hear you two! You seen Marlow?”
“I’m the one with them this time,” I responded over coms.
“Oh shit, these do work,” Sweets sputtered to himself, slapping his hand to ear.
“Ah, that is excellent news! Now get your sorry hides over to me before I have to come over there!”
“Almost there—out!” I responded, nudging Hags and Sweets to stick close by.