GK Fic: Static (Part 3/4)
Part Two
Nate wakes up because sleeping for more than three hours is almost impossible. He shifts and bumps into Brad, who’s scooted up close behind him. He’s so warm and the heat is like a magnet. Nate can feel his body slowly drifting back, the inside of his knee hitting the outside of Brad’s, his spine touching Brad’s stomach with each breath.
He closes his eyes again although he’s awake, keeping his breathing even. He wonders if the others are doing this, sleeping belly to back to keep from going crazy.
Nate stays like that for a while, the back of his neck hot and moist from Brad’s breath and a feeling in his stomach that’s the cousin of crazy before he makes himself move. It’s almost time for his watch, maybe, so Nate hauls himself up and walks out of the hut past the calendar. Forty days.
*
“Man,” Lilley says, “I am so fucking sick of these MREs.” He rubs at the rash on his cheeks.
“Yeah, dog. Let’s get some real food up in here.” Poke shakes up his MRE, looking into the silver bag. He picks out the Pop-Tart and drops the bag between his ankles.
“I’d kill a motherfucker for a steak,” Christeson says around a mouthful of Skittles.
Brad looks at his packet of Charms, then throws them overhand into a nearby hole. “Throw some shrimp next to that steak and I’d schwack Ray.”
“Surf ‘n’ turf, bra,” Lilley says approvingly, bumping knuckles with Brad.
Poke breaks his Pop-Tart in half. “Where the fuck is Person anyway?”
Brad shrugs. “Probably burying his MRE for later like the fucking squirrel on uppers he is.”
Poke laughs. “That skinny bitch shouldn’t hold off on eating.”
“Hard to work up an appetite when you have Ripped Fuel and Hasser’s cock.” Brad squints into the sun, then grins at Walt.
“He’s almost out of Ripped Fuel,” Walt says.
Brushing crumbs off his chin Poke says, “Good fucking thing cock doesn’t run out.”
Walt frowns. “He ain’t never had my cock,” he spits. “Why don’t you go fuck Lilley?”
A couple of the guys look taken aback since this is Walt, but Poke just winks at Lilley. “Maybe I will, dog,” he says. “Maybe I will.”
*
Ray doesn’t come back that day. All the patrols and watches look for him but the sand is shimmering in the heat and completely empty. No blood, no footprints, no holes. He’s just gone.
Brad and Nate walk the circumference of camp. Brad’s face is hard.
Nate rubs his neck, thinking about what to say.
“Ray will come back,” he says.
Brad sniffs, rubbing his nose, wiping the sweat off his upper lip. He’s lost some weight, although it’s not like he’s the only one, but Nate saw his naked ribs this morning and the curve of Brad’s rib cage and the cut of his hip was startling, unBradlike.
“He’ll come back alive,” Nate clarifies.
“Yeah, maybe,” Brad mutters.
They walk in the direction of the well, following the ditch worn into the sand by all the boots walking to water. Far in the distance someone stumbles. Nate’s aim is automatic but he doesn’t shoot.
Beside him Brad looks through the sight on his rifle.
“Body,” he reports. There’s a pause and then, “Not Person.”
Nate fires, just the one time. The body drops. Brad makes an A-OK sign with his fingers.
“Anyone worth knowing?”
“Nope,” Brad answers.
They find another cluster of bodies, all of them Iraqi, coming down from the northwest. They’re in rough shape, sandy and stinking but still hungry. Blowing them away is a pleasure.
When the last one falls Brad slings his rifle over his shoulder and says, “I like it when we do things together, sir.”
Nate grins, scratching his nape. “As long as you’re happy, Brad.”
“For once in my goddamned life,” Brad says, but he’s smiling at Nate.
It’s a slow walk back, mostly quiet. They don’t have to shoot anything else. The wind blows against Nate’s neck, pelting him with grains of sand and ruffling his soft cover.
*
Ray doesn’t come back that night and around midnight the shamal starts coming in. Nate listens to the sand hitting the hut's mud walls and watches the door sheet twist in the wind, sand collecting in the corners of the hut. He writes shamal: midnight in the notebook, thinking about if Ray's still alive.
Brad comes in around two, bringing six MREs with him. He's wearing NVGs and shedding sand, looking like some kind of monster. Nate's glad to see him, even if he did kick out the stones Nate put down to hold the sheet.
"Pretty fucking bad," Brad says, dropping the MREs on the table.
"Planning ahead?"
"Shamals usually last about three days." Brad pulls his Kevlar off, wiping grit off his face. "I dismissed the watch. We'll just take turns sleeping and watching, where we won't go fucking blind from the sand."
"Good thinking." Nate writes Colbert showed initiative, planned for the shamal. Bodies don't plan (yet). Brad leans over to see and Nate claps the book shut.
Brad mock-frowns. "You're more protective of that thing that my sister was of her Trapper Keeper in the seventh grade."
"I have a lot of secrets," Nate says.
"About the boys you like?"
"I like you all just fine," Nate replies.
Brad takes the pen out of Nate's fingers, crossing off the day on the calendar. He slides the pen back into Nate's loose grip.
"I show initiative," Brad says, flicking Nate's fingers.
Nate opens his notebook to a clean page and writes Brad is a smartass.
Brad salutes him. "Thank you, sir. Now you can go back to writing Nate Reyes or Nate Hasser or whatever it was."
Nate rips the page out of the notebook and lays it on the table between them.
"I'll do that," he says. "Go to sleep."
He doesn't write any of those things. Instead he writes a few pages about Ray. A eulogy in case he needs it.
*
In the morning Nate walks through the shamal to the other huts to check up on the men. Brad trails behind him, giving out MRE rations and water when he’s not giving out insults.
The men are bored, reduced to fucking around with whatever is in each hut: the other half of Moby Dick; tapes that needs the busted TV to play them; a dusty, incomplete version of Sorry!, or detailing their fantasies about war and body massacre.
Walt and Reporter are sitting by the light of an oil lamp in their hut. Walt is flipping through scraps of paper and a few photos, handing them off one at a time to Reporter who is making notes.
Brad brings in nine MREs and enough water for three people. Walt purses his mouth but Reporter doesn’t seem to catch the assumption Brad is making, too busy making notes about a photograph of the family that probably used to live here.
“I think these people were the wealthy ones,” Reporter says to Nate. He hands off the photograph. It’s still crisp around the corners and printed on Kodak film, showing a surprisingly well-dressed family with four children standing in front of this very hut.
Nate hands it back. “Might be.”
“They have a Super Nintendo,” Walt says. “No TV to play it on, but a Super Nintendo.”
He points to the corner where there is in fact a Super Nintendo. Clogged with dust, no doubt, but there, the controllers neatly bound up by the cords.
“Shouldn’t have let Reporter shoot that one up,” Brad says, sitting at the only other available chair at the table. “The next best thing we have is fucking Sorry!.”
Walt smiles. “Ray and me tried it. Didn’t work. No power.” He shuffles some of the papers together. “He’d have a fit if we played without him anyway.”
Brad nods his understanding. “A fucking brain aneurysm.”
They both smile ruefully. Reporter makes a quick note. Outside, the wind howls.
Nate brushes some sand off his shoulder, even though that’s a pointless gesture. “I’m gonna head out. Brad?”
“I’ll stay for a while. I can find my way back.” Brad leans back in his chair, getting comfortable. He unclips his Kevlar and pulls his gloves off. Walt settles in too, and Reporter turns to a new page.
Another eulogy.
“Be careful,” Nate tells Brad, pulling his goggles on.
“You too.”
It's almost impossible to get back to the hut. He feels like he's lost in the static from a broken radio.
*
Nate wakes up when he rolls over and the bed is cold. Instead of encountering Brad he gets empty space and Brad's crumpled poncho. His knee bumps into the stock of Brad's rifle.
Nate rolls back, his eyes still closed. He listens, but all he can hear is the wind howling, scratching at the walls and the pinned-down door sheet. He opens his mouth to say something, but his mouth is dry.
When he opens his eyes he can see Brad's back, his hunched over silhouette near the hazy doorway. He's jerking off, his fist moving hurriedly over his cock, his other hand braced against the doorway, his forehead resting on his wrist. Nate can't see that, not really, just the tip of Brad's cock when Brad's fist is down at the base.
Nate blinks sleepily, shifting so he's half on his stomach, his own cock pressed between his body and the mattress. He imagines the current of Brad's breathing although he can't hear it, and that helps him slide back into sleep. This could be a dream.
*
If being confined to a hamlet was bad, being stuck inside a hut while a shamal rages outside is terrible. There's no reason to go outside and although Nate thinks he hears a few gunshots he can't verify it, unwilling to go out into the storm.
They don't even have Sorry!.
They take turns watching the door for dark shadows. None come, so it’s mostly rifle-cleaning and silence.
Brad makes a house out of the MREs they have and Nate stares at the doorway. Half-covered by the curtain is Brad’s left hand in dust on the wall. The fingers are widespread and the palm is a little smeared.
Nate glances over at Brad, who is carefully centering his MRE roof. He has red dirt on his wrist and the heel of his left hand.
“You have something,” Nate says, holding up his wrist, “here.”
Brad turns over his arm to look at his wrist. Then he looks at the handprint, then at Nate.
“Combat jack,” he says. Then he spits on his wrist and rubs his thumb over the dirt in tight little circles.
*
X
X
On the third day Nate wakes up alone again. But this time Brad’s completely gone from the hut and the sheet is raging in the wind, slapping against the wall.
Nate gets sand in his mouth from leaning out the door and yelling for Brad. The shamal is starting to die, but visibility is barely more than seven feet and his voice still gets swallowed up by the wind.
He has to retreat into the hut.
“Shit,” he yells, holding the sheet down. “Shit! Brad!”
He's not sure how long he stands like that, yelling into the storm for Brad. He's thinking all in a rush: Jesus Christ come back Brad you stupid fuck shit shit Brad.
All he yells is, "Brad! Brad! Bra-"
Brad bowls him over, ripping down the sheet in the process, sand pouring in on them. Nate rolls them away from the door on instinct. Brad is half fighting him, half holding on.
Nate ends up on top when they hit the table leg.
"Brad!" he yells over the growling wind.
Brad's eyes are red. "Forgot my fucking goggles," he yells back, shoving at Nate.
Nate sits up, feeling hot and angry. "What the fuck was that?"
Brad blinks up at Nate. Tears slip down his temple from his irritated eyes. He blinks more, swearing.
"I have sand in my eyes," he says, rubbing his fingers over his face.
"Are you fucking deaf? I asked you a question."
Brad presses his lips together, taking a deep breath. His hands come to rest near Nate's knees.
"Goddammit, Brad."
"I thought I heard Ray." Brad almost doesn't say it his voice is so quiet. He wipes under his left eye, collecting tears and sand, wiping his finger on his vest.
Nate's ears sharpen unconsciously, trying to sift through the sound of the wind to pick out anything different.
"I didn't," Brad says. He smiles, all wrong. "I'm just going fucking insane."
"Oh," Nate says. He looks down at Brad, at his knees and Brad's hands, his crotch on Brad's belly. Something skates up from his knees to his crotch, still hot but not angry. Brad looks tired but he sees it too.
"You should move," Brad says. He touches the points of Nate's knees with his fingers, pushing lightly, driving the heat up in another wave.
Nate grabs the edge of the table and levers himself off Brad. Sand is still pelting them. He tugs on the edge of the sheet under Brad until Brad lifts his hips up to let him have it.
The simple hooks above the doorway are still there, although one is bent. Nate twists it viciously back into place and rehangs the sheet, weighing it down again with a sandal and a book at the bottom.
Brad is still lying on the floor when he turns around.
"I really am going nuts," he says to the ceiling.
Nate doesn't say anything, just offers Brad a hand up. Nate would rather he go into the storm on a crazy guess than let someone die alone out there.
*
He's not dreaming, not quite. He was warm, lulled by that and the fading storm but now there's just Sir. Sir. Sir winding into his mind soft and insistent.
Nate mutters something. There are fingers on his knee, spreading out until a palm connects with his kneecap. Another hand hits his thigh. The hands shake and shiver, sending feeling through Nate.
The hands swim over him, moving up and in to cup his cock, thumbs pressing against his balls, the rest of the fingers forming a triangle around his cock, pushing together gently, releasing him, doing it again.
Nate moans, hearing Sir again, the voice shaky and close. He digs his heels into the mattress and pushes up into the hands as they push down and he moans again. The triangle breaks, fingers scattering to undo his trousers, pull everything apart. Warm, callused fingers slide over his cock.
He wakes up, his whole body crashing into awareness and his brain snapping up against consciousness. Brad is crouched between his ankles, one hand on Nate's hip, the other buried in between his flies. His eyes are bright and Nate can see the dull part of his mouth, even in the dark. Nate's hand flies out, gripping the wrist disappearing into his trousers.
He should say something. Brad swallows hard, but doesn't say Sir again, apparently robbed of it now that Nate's awake.
Nate knows what this means in the real world. NJP, being discharged, worse.
Brad squeezes his cock, looking at him, hungry and wild.
Nate squeezes Brad's wrist and lets go. He drops his head back down to the mattress, gasping when Brad starts stroking him again, tentatively.
They're going to die out here, so what the fuck does he care about the real world?
He humps his hips up when Brad finds a rhythm he likes, growling. Brad answers him with a similar noise, his hand balling up in Nate's trousers. His weight shifts on the mattress, one leg over one of Nate's, his hips lowering. Nate can feel Brad's cock against his thigh.
He's never undone cammies not belonging to him, but it's not like it's hard. He doesn't even have to think about it, too busy following the agonizing pull of Brad's hand and searching for skin.
Brad's cock is hot like the desert sun when Nate finally jerks his trousers down enough to get at it, but not dry. It's that moist feeling Nate knows from his own cock.
He squeezes Brad gently and Brad grunts, curling over him, his teeth showing. Nate starts jerking him off and his tongue comes out, swiping over his lips. Nate watches his mouth, fixated, trying to reconcile hands and cocks and so much skin. He can hear something, them gasping or the wind. He doesn't know.
Brad's tongue retreats at the same time his hips start to sway into Nate's fist, awkward with the way he's splayed over Nate, but not without power. Brad's open mouth morphs in Nate's mind into pussy or ass, Brad fucking it quick and hard, holding on. Nate thinks it might be him Brad's fucking. When he thinks about it like that he moans, twitching against Brad's fingers.
"Sir," Brad says desperately.
"Shut the fuck up," Nate hisses. He doesn't want to listen to that.
Brad moans, his hips jumping into Nate's fist. His tongue licks the side of his own mouth, his breath rushing out over it. Nate's so close already, his breath matching Brad's, his body starting to heat up. His back feels slick and his armpits are wet. He can smell them, dirty and disgusting, dark and strange.
Brad rubs his finger brutally over Nate's frenulum and Nate comes, trapped right there although he bucks and moans, his mind cluttered up with thoughts of death and sex.
He doesn't even keep stroking. His hand goes tight and then loose, even when Brad makes a frustrated noise. Finally Brad shoves Nate's hand away and replaces it with his own. His mouth works, saying invisible words. He's completely silent when he comes, holding still.
Nate listens to the sand hit the hut's walls. He feels empty, devoid of feelings, good or bad. That in itself feels good. He relaxes into the mattress and Brad shifts, drawing a draft of cool air over the come smeared on his stomach and cock.
Brad sits back, almost on Nate's thigh, looking at his hand. Nate can't really see, but he can imagine what Brad's palm looks like. Brad flicks his wrist, a thick gob flying into the dark and then wipes his hand on the side of the mattress.
Slowly he moves off of Nate, back to his side of the bed. He lies on his back next to Nate for a minute, and then turns on his side away from Nate.
Nate closes his eyes, doing up his trousers. There are feelings catching up to him, but sleep eclipses them.
*
The morning of the fourth day Ray walks out of the end of storm like it was nothing.
Nate wakes up to muted sunshine coming through the sheet and the sound of Ray yelling, “I am motherfucking thirsty! Someone give me something to drink!”
Sitting up, Nate looks around. The hut is empty and the mattress is cool. Nate stands up slowly to the sound of gathering voices. He can feel the dried come sticking to his stomach and pubes, flaking and itching when he moves. There aren't any baby wipes left in the hut.
Outside, all the huts are still standing, although there are drifts of sand sloping up the sides of the huts and the fire pit is buried under sand. Far in the distance Nate can see a sandy lump that must be Bub.
All the guys are gathered at the edge of the hamlet, near Walt and Reporter's hut, around Ray, who is still yelling, about water and food.
He's got a cut on his eyebrow, his skin is chafed and he's holding a baby goat.
"LT," he hollers when he sees Nate, "I am a-fucking-live!"
"So I can see," Nate responds.
"I brought food!" he says. "It is a fabulous state of affairs."
Behind him, milling around in the sand, is a herd of goats.
Walt opens up a canteen for Ray, who carefully sets the kid down and drains the canteen.
"Goddamn is that good!" He wipes his wrist over his mouth and grins at them.
"Can you not yell?" Walt asks, ripping open an MRE.
"Dude," Ray says, "I was stuck in a shamal for three days. My ears are full of sand."
The baby goat, who has been leaning on Ray's leg, wobbles off to its mother.
"How did you get stuck in a shamal?" Nate asks, because Ray has apparently already forgotten he almost died.
Shoving pound cake into his mouth, Ray says, "Saw some goats. Thought about how sick I am of cardboard food and thought I could be proactive and get us some real fucking food before we run out of MREs." He swallows loudly and hands pass him more water. "As it turns out, goats can run fucking fast, man. And shamals suck."
He makes a grabbing motion with his palm up and Walt drops a pill into his hand. “But I rule,” he finishes grandly, putting the Ripped Fuel in his mouth.
There's a pause. Then Brad slaps the back of Ray's head, knocking the pill clear out of his mouth. "You dumb shit," he growls. "You should have died."
Ray rubs the back of his head, then flings the Charms Trombley hands him out toward the goats. "Calm down, Brad. You know I'm fucking magic. I mean, fuck, I got me and a bunch of fucking goats through a shamal."
Brad glares at him but holds off on whatever he's going to say. His eyes catch Nate's for a second and go even narrower before he turns back to trying to vaporize Ray with his glare.
"We can be goat herders, Brad," Ray says half-soothingly. "The Corps has totally buttfucked us, so we can switch sides and be Haji goat herders before we get eaten. It'll rule, dude. Just like me."
Brad scans the herd of goats, watching them nudge their noses into the sand to get at the sparse grass underneath. He looks beyond them to the blurry horizon.
Then he turns back to Ray. “You do whatever you want, but if you fuck up and I have to shoot you…”
Ray laughs. “You won’t do it. You’ll chain me to the corner of your and LT’s lovenest and I’ll be your guard dog.” He snarls and snaps his teeth, eyes laughing.
Brad doesn’t even glare. He just shakes his head, his expression dark, telling of the one bullet he’d need and how he’d be after.
Ray drops the act and sidles closer to Brad, right into his space.
“Don’t worry, Brad, man. I got this,” he says gently, nudging Brad’s elbow with his own. “I’m cool.”
Nate can see the moment Brad snaps back. The darkness draws back into his mouth and his eyes, cool ice in its place instead.
He pushes Ray back, much harder, but Ray just leans into it.
His voice is low and amused when he says, “That’s what your mom used to say. But then even she got some fucking sense.”
Ray laughs, completely delighted, and Brad smiles, for real.
*
Bub is even more of a mess than he was before the shamal. Most of the skin on his face has sloughed off and he hardly moves when Stafford and Christeson kick the sand away from him, even when their boots dig into his thighs, leaving dents in him like he’s a soft fruit.
“They should just kill him,” Rudy says from beside Nate. “If he feels then he must be feeling misery.”
Stafford and Christeson step back to admire Bub. Stafford makes a gun with his fingers and fires it at Bub. Bub slumps forward obediently. They laugh.
Rudy sighs. “Even if he doesn’t feel misery, I feel it for him.”
*
In honor of Ray’s return to the hamlet of the living they have roasted goat for dinner. All of them gather around the dug-out fire pit to talk shit and eat greasy, half-burnt chunks of meat. It's the best meal Nate can remember eating.
Ray's the centre of attention, talking about wandering around in the desert, blind in the storm, being followed by a herd of goats, trying to find something.
"I eventually just laid down and waited to fucking die," Ray says, "like a goddamn pussy. That lasted for about half an hour. Then I thought, Man, there are some Marines missing my fine ass. Plus, I think I'm laying in goat shit, and that is not on. So I kept walking. I'm even better at walking than Jews."
He elbows Brad, who's sitting beside him. "Hey, hey, Brad. I am way better at walking than your ass."
Brad shakes his head, smirking.
"Whatever. Don't be jealous. I couldn't be a Jew. I love me some bacon." He rips a chunk of meat out of Trombley's hands. "Almost as much as I love eating this fucking goat."
He yells Sorry! over his shoulder to where the goats are.
Eat or be eaten, Nate thinks. He's so full it's almost uncomfortable.
*
Brad doesn't come back to the hut that night. He's probably helping burn the few bodies that made it through the storm to various huts, but all Nate can hear is the mix of his voice with Ray's.
Since he's alone, he writes out Ray's adventure as he heard it, although who knows if it's true. The thing that matters, he writes, is that Ray is alive, however he did it.
He crosses off the day on the calendar with an X and writes Ray returns underneath. Then he looks at the day before, the X with nothing added underneath it. He tries to remember what time he woke up to figure out what he could write.
In the end he doesn't write anything, and spends his forty-fourth night sponging come and sweat off his belly, listening to his men laughing by the fire.
*
Ray ropes half the platoon into helping him build a pen for the goats, even though they don't seem inclined to go anywhere. It doesn't really happen, since they barely have enough wood to keep the fire lit, let alone build anything.
"White man," Poke quips, "always trying fence in his fellow creatures."
Ray shakes a stick almost as long as his body at Poke.
"Power, man. I need it. I must control things." He crouches down to pet the baby goat. "And Brad'll bust my ass if he finds out I'm following these goats around the fucking zombie-infested desert."
Brad's out near the rock markers with Rudy, more than a hundred feet away.
"So don't tell him," Poke says.
Ray nods, like he hadn't thought of that. Then he picks up the baby goat and tucks it under one arm, pointing his staff at the goats.
"Hey, you!" he yells at them. "Let's go for a fucking walk! Oscar Mike, food source, Oscar Mike!"
Surprisingly enough the goats start to move, Ray and the kid taking up the rear. Ray talks while he walks, calling all the goats Hey, you, starting to sing Barbie Girl as they walk, kicking sand in Bub’s direction.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Poke laughs. “Person’s finally found his lot in life. He’s a goatherd. A teenage girl goatherd, but still. Goddamn.”
*
Four nights is how long Nate spends sleeping with one hand on his rifle lying on Brad’s side of the bed. Brad is elsewhere, with Ray and the goats, or alone, maybe.
Nate wakes up on the fifth night because he still doesn't sleep well. Brad is sitting on the one chair facing the door, his rifle across his knees.
"Evening," he murmurs, not looking away from the curtain.
"Hey," Nate says, rusty, getting up on his elbows.
"I realized I have been remiss in my watch duties," Brad says. His voice is low and carefully smooth.
"It's okay." Nate gets up slowly, leaving his rifle behind, coming to stand near Brad. He leans on the table next to Brad's shoulder.
"You should sleep," Brad says.
"I'm alright. I've slept through any and all zombie attacks the past few nights."
Nate smiles. Brad blinks.
Nate settles his weight comfortably against the table, careful of its age and poor build.
"Was it a mistake, sir?" Brad asks. His voice still sounds the same, smooth like a stone, heavy.
"This is all a mistake," Nate replies.
Brad blinks again. "All the way back to the beginning of the Earth."
"Maybe not that far."
"That far," Brad says.
Nate puts a hand on Brad's shoulder, feeling the long bone under Brad's blouse and his starved-thin muscles.
"There have been some good moments," he tells Brad.
Brad shifts his rifle, shrugging his one shoulder into Nate's hand lightly.
"You should go to sleep," he says.
"You should," Nate replies. "Sleeping with the goats is for Ray. I'll keep watch."
Taking a deep breath Brad shrugs again, reflexively.
Nate squeezes his shoulder. "It wasn't a mistake, Brad."
Brad raises his eyebrows. There's a smudge of dirt above the left one that's probably been there for days.
"The comfort of meat," Brad quips. He sounds like Tyler Durden.
Nate moves his hand so his fingertips are brushing Brad's dirty neck. "I don't think I would put it like that, but yeah."
Brad turns his head so he can look up at Nate, his neck curving into Nate’s fingers. “Everything else was a mistake.” Nate can just see the edge of his teeth.
“From the very beginning.”
*
In the pre-dawn hours, instead of doing his watch Nate ruts against Brad's bare skin, his cock filling the sinewy smooth dip of Brad's hip. His belly rubs the underside of Brad's cock.
They don't speak. Instead they grunt and growl at each other desperately, racing for release.
Brad's a mess when they're done, come all over his stomach and hip. He slides out from under Nate and crouches near the table, splashing himself with water from his canteen.
The bed stinks like men, but not the people who lived here before. The smell makes Nate's cock twitch. Watching Brad wipe himself off with his hand doesn't help; dizzy heat slides around Nate's skin seeing the softening edge of Brad's cock, the dripping water, his dusty wrists.
"I would put your dick in my mouth, but I’m only half-sure what week we’re on or when you last washed your cock," Nate murmurs, mostly to himself.
Brad shakes his wet hand off, standing up, tucking his soft cock back into his trousers.
"I'll keep that in mind," he says, normal volume.
Nate switches places with Brad, but he drinks a palmful of water instead of washing with it. The water tastes like sand and smoke and salt from his hand, but it soothes his dry throat. He splashes some on the back of his neck to cool the inflamed skin there.
Brad asks what day it is before he goes to sleep.
“Fifty-one," Nate tells him. He waits until Brad's asleep and then he ducks under the sheet to stand and watch the quiet dawn creep up the way it has done for so long.
*
A desiccated body stumbles into Ray's herd of goats and starts taking swipes at them. The goats scatter out of reach easily, but Ray is less that impressed.
"Motherfucker!" He yells, cocking his rifle. "Stay away from my goddamned goats, you braindead zombie asshole."
The zombie is too dry to even growl at him. The noise it makes is like dry leaves swirling together, shuddery and empty.
Ray shoots it, and it's too dry to bleed. It just falls down. The goats scatter at the sound, bleating. Ray yells for them to come back and for Trombley and Baptista to get rid of the body in the same breath.
The body burns to cinders in minutes, flaking black and floating in the air. The men hold rags over their mouths because it still smells like a body.
Ray chases his goats between two berms while Trombley throws sand on the fire and others laugh about the goats or the body or both.
Nate doesn't think about either. He walks with Brad and Walt to get water, because they need some. He tries to be mindful of the falling ashes, but they still collect on the lip of his Kevlar, dusting his face with every step.
*
Later, Nate lies still, letting Brad rub his knuckles over Nate's scaly, red nape. Brad didn't ask to do it, he just did, sidling close enough Nate could sense him, his hand hovering for a moment before it made contact, his cool palm on Nate's sore skin.
He just held on for a minute, like he was absorbing something through Nate, then his hand lifted and he rubbed a knuckle from Nate's hairline to the sweat-stiff collar of his shirt. From there he picked up a pattern; three light petting strokes followed by four slow drags.
Nate's stuck between soothed and turned on, a comfortable mix. Brad's rifle is up against his spine, an unyielding line along his back, a hint of Brad's heat behind it.
The minutes tick by on Nate's internal clock, and he gets more and more tired. Brad makes a noise, not quite a hum, but still a faintly musical breath.
"Stop scratching," he whispers, his fingers never stopping. "Your neck is a mess."
Nate makes a noise of agreement, shifting his feet. His boot hits Brad's, and Brad kicks him back lightly.
"Remind me to clean it up in the morning," Brad says.
"Mmm," Nate replies. It sounds like Brad cares.
*
In the morning, before Nate can stop him, Brad gets one of the few gauze pads they have left and tapes it to the back of Nate’s neck.
Nate touches it when Brad steps back. Brad flicks his fingers hard. “Don’t touch,” he says sternly. “Jerk off or something instead.”
Nate wipes his hand on his pants. Where the tape is stuck to his skin it itches.
“Thanks,” he says, rubbing his fingers on his thigh.
*
Nate notices he’s writing less in his notebook, starting to fall back on bare facts:
Christeson and Lovell fought today over how long to boil water. C said 5 mins, L said 10. Poke stepped in before it got bad. It doesn’t matter. It just needs to boil.
MRE of the day: some sort of chicken. Standard. Half ration of water.
Nate doesn’t remember writing that. He resolves to give a more complex account.
*
Ray and Walt go back to digging holes. But this time, they do it surrounded by curious goats, and they don’t bother digging the little gopher holes they used to.
“I’m thinking big,” Ray says, his E-tool on his shoulder and his hand on his hip, watching Walt hack out a rough rectangle on the dirt, about six feet by four feet.
A goat butts Ray’s thigh gently and Ray scratches its ears, grinning. “We’re gonna bury Trombley up to his neck.”
*
They don’t end up burying Trombley; somehow Trombley gets wind of the scheme and lingers close to Brad while Ray and Walt work on the hole.
The fact that they’ve lost Trombley doesn’t deter them from finishing the hole. It takes several days and Ray treats it like it deserves all his attention. Walt goes along with it, reinforcing the corners while Ray pats down the bottom until it’s smooth, alternately hollering at Trombley and telling Walt about the physics of the perfect hole.
When it’s done Ray climbs out of the hole and looks at it proudly. A ragged crowd gathers.
“Now I’ve done something in the middle of this clusterfuck,” he announces. “It wasn’t a complete waste.”
Someone starts up a round of polite golf clapping and Ray bows grandly, saying, “Thank you, thank you, the artist is in.”
“Well, isn’t that fucking magical,” Poke says, turning away. “Our lives for a hole in the ground.”
“A fucking good hole in the ground!” Ray yells.
“Yeah, sure. You can take your hole and die in it, Person,” Jacks barks.
Ray looks dark for a second as everyone walks off, and then he says, “Jealous,” nodding with satisfaction at his hole.
*
Day sixty-three brings with it something different. The air feels strange when Nate leaves the hut, heavy like it hasn’t been before and there’s a faint tang in the back of his mouth.
Everyone else seems to feel it too. They all walk around the hamlet looking perplexed, like something has suddenly appeared or gone missing and they should find it. The goats watch them move around, and then go back to nosing through the sand for grass, unconcerned.
It occupies everyone until breakfast is over, then Rudy steps up to the fire pit and announces he’s going on a run. He strips off his shirt and for so many days on rations, Rudy still looks better than all of them.
He rallies half of the platoon right away and the rest have to be commanded. They glare at Rudy and glance at Nate, who nods them on. They bitch while they fall in line, more than they ever have.
Nate doesn’t go with them. He watches them disappear over a berm, still able to hear Ray grousing when he can’t see them anymore.
Reporter didn’t go either. Nate finds him sitting on a rock near the goats, writing idly in his battered notebook. All the pages are edged in yellow and brittle.
“Evan,” Nate says. “How are you?”
Reporter shrugs his scrawny shoulders, tapping his pen on the page. The hollow of his throat is deep and dirty.
“Could be better,” he says. He sounds so tired. Drawing a line across his page to separate what he was writing from the rest of the page he says, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
Evan looks down at his notebook, thumbing the pages. “I didn’t write it down for some reason. I don’t know why.” He looks up. “Do you remember who’s buried where?” He asks, pointing at the neat line of stones nearby.
He wipes his hand over his mouth, looking pained that he can’t remember. Nate knows the feeling. He crosses his arms, touching the shape of his own notebook in his vest.
He doesn’t need to look at it though, not for this. “Pappy, Leon, Mike, Doc, Brunmeier. From left to right.”
Evan looks at the stones and nods, writing it down, underlining it twice. “Thanks, Nate.”
“No problem.”
Nate walks away wondering what he forgot in exchange.
The only other person who didn’t go on the run is Brad. He’s in the hut, picking at his cuticles and staring at the wall. A vague hand gesture is the greeting Nate gets.
“You should have gone running, Brad.”
Brad flicks something invisible toward the wall. “I have patrol.”
“When?”
Brad looks higher up on the wall, like a clock might suddenly appear. He stretches and straightens up, hauling on his frayed rifle strap. “Now.”
Brad doesn’t ask him to come but he walks invitation slow, so Nate walks with him, heading out north to see the perimeter.
They go about a hundred feet before Brad remarks, “Different today.”
Nate nods even though Brad’s shading his eyes to see the horizon. Nate stops when Brad does, looking for a body, but Brad’s just surveying.
“Maybe we’ll be rescued,” Brad mutters. “There’s probably a jet on its way right now.”
“Brad-”
“I’m joking,” Brad says drily. “We’ve won some battles but this isn’t a war we can win.”
It’s so true it’s like a punch in the face. Nate takes a hard breath, stuck between getting angry and agreeing. Brad starts walking again before he can do either. He stays where he is for a moment, his hand automatically going to the back of his neck, but when he touches the bandage there soreness spreads out, spurring him to drop his hand and catch up.
The rest of the patrol is quiet. Brad stops occasionally to look through the sight on his rifle, but he never has to fire. Nate looks up at the sky when the sun dips behind a cloud.
The hamlet is still empty when they complete the loop, Reporter looking to have retreated out of the open. Everything is so still. Nate’s never seen it like this, even at night. Before he can help himself a shiver climbs his spine, pulling up the hairs on the back of his neck.
He shrugs to try and combat the feeling and ducks into the hut, rubbing the back of his neck carefully. It still hurts, but the action has a certain amount of comfort attached to it. He paces between the calendar and the table, rubbing uneasily until Brad comes in, resetting the sheet behind himself.
“Before,” Brad says.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nate replies. He pulls his notebook out of his vest and puts it down on the table, the pen on top. “You said it, but I was still thinking it.”
Brad raises an eyebrow. “I’m surprised, LT. Where is your everlasting optimism?”
“Died a while ago,” Nate says. It should be a joke but it doesn’t feel funny. Brad doesn’t look all that amused. His mouth folds down briefly then flattens out.
“You should find it,” he says, right on the knife-edge of commanding.
The tone trips something in Nate, sending a flicker of anger through his body. “What?”
“Someone,” Brad says, “has to keep a lid on this shit.”
Nate straightens his stance. “And it’s me?”
“Who fucking else? You’re the least fucked up out of all of us.”
Brad is pulling himself taller too, gearing up for the fight that’s bearing down on them.
“Thanks,” Nate spits, “for putting it to a vote.”
Brad glares instead of replying, and Nate glares back, aching to start some shit. He should have gone on the run.
“You’re in charge, LT,” Brad says very slowly, like Nate’s stupid. “You’re the one who tells us when and how to eat, shit, watch and fucking feel.”
“I got that,” Nate says darkly. “It fucking sucks.”
Brad nods tersely, all the ground he seems willing to give while still acknowledging this one burden of Nate’s.
Nate breathes through his nose. “And you’ve shot people. People you shouldn’t have had to shoot.”
Brad doesn’t cringe. He nods again in compliance with facts. He does cross his arms over his chest though, glancing down to the table and Nate’s notebook, where almost everything that’s happened has been taken down for the time when they won’t be able to speak of it.
Nate looks too, and he thinks about fighting, about how good it would feel to let loose, do some damage. He imagines Brad with a bloody nose and black eyes, looking stunned with a punch to the face; the way a fight hurts, sharp and hot dull pain at the same time. He imagines being at odds with Brad and having to manage that on top of everything else.
“Enough,” he says quietly. “Enough macho bullshit. There’s no point in fighting about nothing.”
“Optimism: resurrected,” Brad murmurs smugly, but Nate lets him have his dig.
The energy’s not gone though, still hovering in the air. Nate shifts against it. It’s like wearing his suit all over again.
“You know the old saying, sir,” Brad says, oddly genially.
“What?”
“Fight or fuck?”
Nate doesn’t fight the smirk he can feel coming. “You’re an idiot,” he replies, moving against the tide of air into Brad’s space, bringing hands to his chest and propelling him into the back corner of the hut to the tiny slice of dark they have during the day.
Brad is grinning as he walks backwards, gripping the worn fabric of Nate’s jacket. “What makes you say that?”
His back thumps into the wall.
“It’s fight or flight, Brad.” Nate’s body hits Brad’s hard enough that their belt buckles clank.
Brad pretends to consider it while he undoes his vest. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Maybe I am.” It comes out growling and hard, surprising to Nate’s ears. It sounds like someone else, but the hands mixing with Brad’s, ripping open his trousers to reveal pale dirty hip bones are his for sure.
Those hands move when Brad does, trying to come away from the wall. They shove Brad back, at the shoulder and the hip, not kindly. Brad grunts, his hips dislodging Nate's left hand, but he's not trying to go anywhere.
"Fuckin' touch me," he hisses, humping the air again, working around Nate's hands to get his briefs down far enough to let his cock out.
Nate's hands do, leaving Brad’s shoulder and his hip to wrap around Brad's cock, stroking it hand-over-hand for a few passes before he switches to one hand only, the other tugging on Brad's sac.
Brad slams his fist into the wall beside him and closes his eyes in a tight blink. When he grabs Nate's jaw Nate can feel the trail of dust between their skin. He arches into Brad, fucking up his rhythm for a second before he starts in on his own trousers with his free hand. Brad helps, still holding onto Nate's jaw.
They're eye to eye, staring at each other while they scramble around. Brad smirks like he planned this all along, which is a lie. He'd probably be just as happy if they kicked the shit out of each other. Nate squeezes him brutally just to see the smirk melt into slackness.
Brad repays it in kind, getting his hand into Nate's trousers, feeling his cock and balls and what's underneath that. Nate grinds on him, moaning.
It’s so fast and hard it almost hurts. They grapple and hump against each other, stepping on toes, scratching dust off the wall. Brad’s belly is hot and the thick curve of his hip is the perfect thing to rub against, even if his wrist is in the way.
Nate pins him like that, against the wall, his hand trapped between them. Brad bites his jaw until Nate jerks away from him, hissing. He smirks at Nate and Nate could still hit him.
He kicks Brad’s feet apart instead and shoves his hand away so he can get his own in there, jerking Brad off like it could save his life. When Brad comes over the inside of Nate’s wrist Nate thinks it’s better than two black eyes. When he comes, staining the bottom edge of Brad’s PT shirt, he knows it to be true.
After it's over they're both covered in dust and come and the air still feels full. They can hear the sound of the platoon coming back from their run, complaining about today.
“Your face is red,” Brad says mildly, still pinned.
Nate steps back, feeling the heat in his face, the spot where Brad bit him that’s a little sore. He rubs it gently and almost touches his neck but doesn’t. Brad smiles lazily at him, rolling his loose shoulders around, looking way too comfortable against the rubbed wall, his stomach dotted with semen and dirty smudges.
Nate leaves Brad behind in the hut, going out into the sweaty crowd. He talks to a few of the men that are standing around. No one asks why his face is red, if it still is.
*
During rations Trombley won't stop looking at the sky, barely picking at his food.
"Can you hear that?" he asks, staring straight up.
"The whistling is the air going through your skull," Ray says.
"Shut up, Trombley," Jacks says.
"No," Poke says.
"What is it?" Brad asks.
Trombley closes his eyes. "It sounds like...a plane."
The camp goes silent. Suddenly everyone is looking up at the sky, listening intently. Nate can't hear anything besides the too-fast beating of his own heart, even though he listens hard. No one else seems to hear anything either. The silence breaks down into disappointed grumbling and calling Trombley names. He's not listening though. He's still looking up at the sky, his hands limp around his MRE.
*
Their luck does change. But no one comes to rescue them. It rains instead, the sky cracking open with all the pent-up feeling, rain pouring down on them. It rains so hard the fire goes out. The men stand outside, catching rain in their helmets. They don’t drink it, or even save it. They fling it at each other or just dump it out onto the wet sand.
It’s fucking miserable, but they all stand out there, soaking wet and bitching. Some of the men use the water to scrub behind their ears and over their cheeks, sighing as the filthy water trickles down their necks.
They eat in the rain, talking through the grey haze the world has taken on. Rain gets in Nate’s pasta with cardboard vegetables, tinting the flavour metallic. It tastes worse than it did before but he eats it, hungry from hours ago. In between bites he picks at the swollen, soggy bandage still clinging to his neck, slowly pulling the tape free. He drops it, lymph- and blood-stained, into the fire pit. When the rain hits it the skin prickles, sensitive from being covered
“I didn’t know it rained in Iraq,” Christeson says.
“Fuckin’ duh,” Stafford replies. “Gotta rain sometime, even if it is the desert. What are you, retarded?”
Christeson flicks his Charms at Stafford, who deflects them. “Fuck off, man.”
“You fuck off.”
“Why don’t you both go fuck yourselves?” Garza butts in. He’s holding his helmet in front of his stomach. It’s almost full and his glasses are so wet he can probably hardly see.
“Fuck you,” Stafford and Christeson say together.
*
“Well,” Brad says as they bed down for the night, “at least I’m not the only one going fucking nuts anymore.”
Nate quirks an eyebrow at Brad but doesn’t challenge him. He believed in the plane just as much as anyone in that moment.
It rains all night. Nate dozes and listens to the noise, rubbing idly at the dry scab on his nape.
*
Someone shits in Ray’s hole. In the middle of the night someone walks across the camp to where the edges of Ray’s hole are softening with the rain, squats down and shits in it.
When he finds out Ray is more furious than Nate even thought he could be.
“What the fuck!” he yells, storming through the huts in the morning, looking pale and wild, holding his E-Tool. “Who the fuck thought it would be so funny to shit in my hole?”
“Person, people shit in your hole all the time,” Poke says.
Ray holds up a finger and glares. “You’re not fucking funny, Espera. Not today.” He turns his glare in a half-circle, hitting most of the men with it. “Now,” he says slowly, “which one of you wastes of space shit in my goddamn hole?”
He stares at them, and they stare at him. No one says anything. Walt steps a little closer to Ray, but not very, one hand a little bit raised.
“Fucking come on!” Ray barks. It’s so quiet his voice echoes off into the desert. Even Bub, who’s decaying at an alarming speed, lolls his head closer to Ray.
Brad steps up behind Ray, closer than Walt. “Who did it?” he asks, his voice stone-level. Ice-cold.
No one moves, let alone speaks.
Ray raises his hands near his face and clenches them, his E-Tool still in his right fist. “You cannot just do that to someone,” he says.
“Dude,” Jacks says, “it’s just a hole.”
Both Brad and Ray look at him.
“It’s my hole,” Ray says. “My fucking goddamn hole, Manimal and-”
Jacks pulls a face. “Don’t focus your tiny little rage on me. I didn’t shit in your precious hole.”
Ray’s glare shifts across everyone’s faces one more time. Then he shakes his head.
“You know what,” he declares. “Fuck you all backwards. I hope you get food poisoning from shitty MREs.”
He turns around and sidesteps Brad, walking away from them all. He sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles sharply. The goats clamber over a berm and cloud around him, walking him out to where his hole is. His form crouches, disappearing under the line of goats.
Off the hook, everyone slowly moves, going back to what they were doing, but they all shoot each other looks that say, Was it you? It wasn’t me.
*
Ray mends the damage, digging the hole a little deeper, and then he doesn’t let it out of his sight. He takes his MRE with him out into the dark that night. Walt follows him reluctantly.
Brad skips over Jacks when he hands out MREs, and Jacks looks like he understands why. Brad disappears into the dark too. Nate would look but his thermals have been out of batteries for more than a month.
*
Nate is dying. There are hands dragging over his bare arms and face, ragged dirty nails catching and ripping. The bodies are moaning, shuddering coldly against him, ripping him apart piece by piece. He can feel his shirt tearing, nails investigating the dip of his navel, pressing in ticklish and sick.
He opens his mouth to say something and there are fingers there too, feeling the wiggle of his tongue, trying to grab it. Something bites the meat of his thigh and he grunts. Fingers pinch his tongue, trying to draw it out. Another bite. Another.
A swollen, rotted face bends down over his, all teeth, no lips, no eyes. Nate tries to move away but the fingers leave his tongue in favour of holding his head still for what’s coming.
The mouth descends, those teeth coming close to his mouth, so close he can’t see anything but death. He tries to move but can’t. Something rips his navel wide open at the same time that horrible mouth kisses him, loose teeth sinking through his lip.
He wakes up. He doesn’t gasp or jerk, just wakes up, alive on his back on the mattress in the hut in Iraq. It’s completely dark. The fire must have gone out sometime.
Nate blinks at the ceiling, waiting for the adrenaline knot to unwind . On the other side of the mattress Brad scratches his nose, still asleep, rubbing fingers over his mouth. Nate shifts onto his side facing Brad, still waiting.
Brad’s face is smooth and still. He doesn’t seem to dream very much. This is how he always looks when he’s sleeping.
Nate touches his hip, meaning to shake him, but he doesn’t. He still feels ill from being eaten alive. The touch is light enough that Brad doesn’t wake up. He keeps breathing slowly, one hand limp beside his head.
The lump won’t go away. Nate shifts across the filthy mattress into Brad’s sleep space, his hand skimming off Brad’s hip, down to the jut of his spine. Brad frowns at the touch but doesn’t wake up. He must be exhausted if he’s sleeping through this.
Nate inches closer, until his knees are touching Brad's and every deep breath Brad takes slides up against Nate's chin.
He touches the damp small of Brad’s back through his t-shirt and presses his mouth to the edge of Brad's mouth, trying to fight the lump down. Brad's mouth is a little open but it twitches when Nate's mouth moves across it. Nate rubs the bumps of his spine like they're little stones and he arches into Nate's hip.
Nate can feel Brad's body waking up, the stretch of his leg and the flex of his top shoulder as he presses into Nate's hand. He almost blinks once, and then really does it, squinting at Nate. Nate kisses him again, lightly but insistently, because he's not dead and he can.
Brad sighs deeply, touching Nate back, his fingers in the ditches between Nate's ribs. His mouth makes a word, maybe, or maybe he's kissing Nate back. His mouth tastes like sleep and hours without water.
Nate can undo Brad's trousers in the dark with his eyes closed by now, no problem, slipping in to touch the warm heat of Brad's cock. The kissing is more of a distraction, so new. He kisses Brad soft and slow while he plays with his cock, encouraging it up into his fist, feeling for the pulse there.
Brad's hand cups his cheek clumsily, holding him still so Brad can lick into his mouth. Brad tastes all the corners of his mouth, licking his teeth, the tip of his tongue, his palate. Brad kisses like he's looking for the water he’s been missing.
They kiss until Nate can't breathe, but he only pulls away far enough to gasp against Brad's chin, brushing his nose over the stubble on Brad's cheeks. Brad's thumb digs into his jaw when Nate touches his tongue there.
"Nate," he says, sounding sleepy and awestruck, "Jesus, Nate."
Nate shushes him and licks his throat, pressing his nose under the collar of Brad's shirt so he can bite, his hand still stroking the lump of Brad's cock in his cammies.
*
In the morning Nate leaves the hut at dawn, still tired, his mouth tasting like an unwashed body and the soapy sourness of semen.
Part Four
Nate wakes up because sleeping for more than three hours is almost impossible. He shifts and bumps into Brad, who’s scooted up close behind him. He’s so warm and the heat is like a magnet. Nate can feel his body slowly drifting back, the inside of his knee hitting the outside of Brad’s, his spine touching Brad’s stomach with each breath.
He closes his eyes again although he’s awake, keeping his breathing even. He wonders if the others are doing this, sleeping belly to back to keep from going crazy.
Nate stays like that for a while, the back of his neck hot and moist from Brad’s breath and a feeling in his stomach that’s the cousin of crazy before he makes himself move. It’s almost time for his watch, maybe, so Nate hauls himself up and walks out of the hut past the calendar. Forty days.
*
“Man,” Lilley says, “I am so fucking sick of these MREs.” He rubs at the rash on his cheeks.
“Yeah, dog. Let’s get some real food up in here.” Poke shakes up his MRE, looking into the silver bag. He picks out the Pop-Tart and drops the bag between his ankles.
“I’d kill a motherfucker for a steak,” Christeson says around a mouthful of Skittles.
Brad looks at his packet of Charms, then throws them overhand into a nearby hole. “Throw some shrimp next to that steak and I’d schwack Ray.”
“Surf ‘n’ turf, bra,” Lilley says approvingly, bumping knuckles with Brad.
Poke breaks his Pop-Tart in half. “Where the fuck is Person anyway?”
Brad shrugs. “Probably burying his MRE for later like the fucking squirrel on uppers he is.”
Poke laughs. “That skinny bitch shouldn’t hold off on eating.”
“Hard to work up an appetite when you have Ripped Fuel and Hasser’s cock.” Brad squints into the sun, then grins at Walt.
“He’s almost out of Ripped Fuel,” Walt says.
Brushing crumbs off his chin Poke says, “Good fucking thing cock doesn’t run out.”
Walt frowns. “He ain’t never had my cock,” he spits. “Why don’t you go fuck Lilley?”
A couple of the guys look taken aback since this is Walt, but Poke just winks at Lilley. “Maybe I will, dog,” he says. “Maybe I will.”
*
Ray doesn’t come back that day. All the patrols and watches look for him but the sand is shimmering in the heat and completely empty. No blood, no footprints, no holes. He’s just gone.
Brad and Nate walk the circumference of camp. Brad’s face is hard.
Nate rubs his neck, thinking about what to say.
“Ray will come back,” he says.
Brad sniffs, rubbing his nose, wiping the sweat off his upper lip. He’s lost some weight, although it’s not like he’s the only one, but Nate saw his naked ribs this morning and the curve of Brad’s rib cage and the cut of his hip was startling, unBradlike.
“He’ll come back alive,” Nate clarifies.
“Yeah, maybe,” Brad mutters.
They walk in the direction of the well, following the ditch worn into the sand by all the boots walking to water. Far in the distance someone stumbles. Nate’s aim is automatic but he doesn’t shoot.
Beside him Brad looks through the sight on his rifle.
“Body,” he reports. There’s a pause and then, “Not Person.”
Nate fires, just the one time. The body drops. Brad makes an A-OK sign with his fingers.
“Anyone worth knowing?”
“Nope,” Brad answers.
They find another cluster of bodies, all of them Iraqi, coming down from the northwest. They’re in rough shape, sandy and stinking but still hungry. Blowing them away is a pleasure.
When the last one falls Brad slings his rifle over his shoulder and says, “I like it when we do things together, sir.”
Nate grins, scratching his nape. “As long as you’re happy, Brad.”
“For once in my goddamned life,” Brad says, but he’s smiling at Nate.
It’s a slow walk back, mostly quiet. They don’t have to shoot anything else. The wind blows against Nate’s neck, pelting him with grains of sand and ruffling his soft cover.
*
Ray doesn’t come back that night and around midnight the shamal starts coming in. Nate listens to the sand hitting the hut's mud walls and watches the door sheet twist in the wind, sand collecting in the corners of the hut. He writes shamal: midnight in the notebook, thinking about if Ray's still alive.
Brad comes in around two, bringing six MREs with him. He's wearing NVGs and shedding sand, looking like some kind of monster. Nate's glad to see him, even if he did kick out the stones Nate put down to hold the sheet.
"Pretty fucking bad," Brad says, dropping the MREs on the table.
"Planning ahead?"
"Shamals usually last about three days." Brad pulls his Kevlar off, wiping grit off his face. "I dismissed the watch. We'll just take turns sleeping and watching, where we won't go fucking blind from the sand."
"Good thinking." Nate writes Colbert showed initiative, planned for the shamal. Bodies don't plan (yet). Brad leans over to see and Nate claps the book shut.
Brad mock-frowns. "You're more protective of that thing that my sister was of her Trapper Keeper in the seventh grade."
"I have a lot of secrets," Nate says.
"About the boys you like?"
"I like you all just fine," Nate replies.
Brad takes the pen out of Nate's fingers, crossing off the day on the calendar. He slides the pen back into Nate's loose grip.
"I show initiative," Brad says, flicking Nate's fingers.
Nate opens his notebook to a clean page and writes Brad is a smartass.
Brad salutes him. "Thank you, sir. Now you can go back to writing Nate Reyes or Nate Hasser or whatever it was."
Nate rips the page out of the notebook and lays it on the table between them.
"I'll do that," he says. "Go to sleep."
He doesn't write any of those things. Instead he writes a few pages about Ray. A eulogy in case he needs it.
*
In the morning Nate walks through the shamal to the other huts to check up on the men. Brad trails behind him, giving out MRE rations and water when he’s not giving out insults.
The men are bored, reduced to fucking around with whatever is in each hut: the other half of Moby Dick; tapes that needs the busted TV to play them; a dusty, incomplete version of Sorry!, or detailing their fantasies about war and body massacre.
Walt and Reporter are sitting by the light of an oil lamp in their hut. Walt is flipping through scraps of paper and a few photos, handing them off one at a time to Reporter who is making notes.
Brad brings in nine MREs and enough water for three people. Walt purses his mouth but Reporter doesn’t seem to catch the assumption Brad is making, too busy making notes about a photograph of the family that probably used to live here.
“I think these people were the wealthy ones,” Reporter says to Nate. He hands off the photograph. It’s still crisp around the corners and printed on Kodak film, showing a surprisingly well-dressed family with four children standing in front of this very hut.
Nate hands it back. “Might be.”
“They have a Super Nintendo,” Walt says. “No TV to play it on, but a Super Nintendo.”
He points to the corner where there is in fact a Super Nintendo. Clogged with dust, no doubt, but there, the controllers neatly bound up by the cords.
“Shouldn’t have let Reporter shoot that one up,” Brad says, sitting at the only other available chair at the table. “The next best thing we have is fucking Sorry!.”
Walt smiles. “Ray and me tried it. Didn’t work. No power.” He shuffles some of the papers together. “He’d have a fit if we played without him anyway.”
Brad nods his understanding. “A fucking brain aneurysm.”
They both smile ruefully. Reporter makes a quick note. Outside, the wind howls.
Nate brushes some sand off his shoulder, even though that’s a pointless gesture. “I’m gonna head out. Brad?”
“I’ll stay for a while. I can find my way back.” Brad leans back in his chair, getting comfortable. He unclips his Kevlar and pulls his gloves off. Walt settles in too, and Reporter turns to a new page.
Another eulogy.
“Be careful,” Nate tells Brad, pulling his goggles on.
“You too.”
It's almost impossible to get back to the hut. He feels like he's lost in the static from a broken radio.
*
Nate wakes up when he rolls over and the bed is cold. Instead of encountering Brad he gets empty space and Brad's crumpled poncho. His knee bumps into the stock of Brad's rifle.
Nate rolls back, his eyes still closed. He listens, but all he can hear is the wind howling, scratching at the walls and the pinned-down door sheet. He opens his mouth to say something, but his mouth is dry.
When he opens his eyes he can see Brad's back, his hunched over silhouette near the hazy doorway. He's jerking off, his fist moving hurriedly over his cock, his other hand braced against the doorway, his forehead resting on his wrist. Nate can't see that, not really, just the tip of Brad's cock when Brad's fist is down at the base.
Nate blinks sleepily, shifting so he's half on his stomach, his own cock pressed between his body and the mattress. He imagines the current of Brad's breathing although he can't hear it, and that helps him slide back into sleep. This could be a dream.
*
If being confined to a hamlet was bad, being stuck inside a hut while a shamal rages outside is terrible. There's no reason to go outside and although Nate thinks he hears a few gunshots he can't verify it, unwilling to go out into the storm.
They don't even have Sorry!.
They take turns watching the door for dark shadows. None come, so it’s mostly rifle-cleaning and silence.
Brad makes a house out of the MREs they have and Nate stares at the doorway. Half-covered by the curtain is Brad’s left hand in dust on the wall. The fingers are widespread and the palm is a little smeared.
Nate glances over at Brad, who is carefully centering his MRE roof. He has red dirt on his wrist and the heel of his left hand.
“You have something,” Nate says, holding up his wrist, “here.”
Brad turns over his arm to look at his wrist. Then he looks at the handprint, then at Nate.
“Combat jack,” he says. Then he spits on his wrist and rubs his thumb over the dirt in tight little circles.
*
X
X
On the third day Nate wakes up alone again. But this time Brad’s completely gone from the hut and the sheet is raging in the wind, slapping against the wall.
Nate gets sand in his mouth from leaning out the door and yelling for Brad. The shamal is starting to die, but visibility is barely more than seven feet and his voice still gets swallowed up by the wind.
He has to retreat into the hut.
“Shit,” he yells, holding the sheet down. “Shit! Brad!”
He's not sure how long he stands like that, yelling into the storm for Brad. He's thinking all in a rush: Jesus Christ come back Brad you stupid fuck shit shit Brad.
All he yells is, "Brad! Brad! Bra-"
Brad bowls him over, ripping down the sheet in the process, sand pouring in on them. Nate rolls them away from the door on instinct. Brad is half fighting him, half holding on.
Nate ends up on top when they hit the table leg.
"Brad!" he yells over the growling wind.
Brad's eyes are red. "Forgot my fucking goggles," he yells back, shoving at Nate.
Nate sits up, feeling hot and angry. "What the fuck was that?"
Brad blinks up at Nate. Tears slip down his temple from his irritated eyes. He blinks more, swearing.
"I have sand in my eyes," he says, rubbing his fingers over his face.
"Are you fucking deaf? I asked you a question."
Brad presses his lips together, taking a deep breath. His hands come to rest near Nate's knees.
"Goddammit, Brad."
"I thought I heard Ray." Brad almost doesn't say it his voice is so quiet. He wipes under his left eye, collecting tears and sand, wiping his finger on his vest.
Nate's ears sharpen unconsciously, trying to sift through the sound of the wind to pick out anything different.
"I didn't," Brad says. He smiles, all wrong. "I'm just going fucking insane."
"Oh," Nate says. He looks down at Brad, at his knees and Brad's hands, his crotch on Brad's belly. Something skates up from his knees to his crotch, still hot but not angry. Brad looks tired but he sees it too.
"You should move," Brad says. He touches the points of Nate's knees with his fingers, pushing lightly, driving the heat up in another wave.
Nate grabs the edge of the table and levers himself off Brad. Sand is still pelting them. He tugs on the edge of the sheet under Brad until Brad lifts his hips up to let him have it.
The simple hooks above the doorway are still there, although one is bent. Nate twists it viciously back into place and rehangs the sheet, weighing it down again with a sandal and a book at the bottom.
Brad is still lying on the floor when he turns around.
"I really am going nuts," he says to the ceiling.
Nate doesn't say anything, just offers Brad a hand up. Nate would rather he go into the storm on a crazy guess than let someone die alone out there.
*
He's not dreaming, not quite. He was warm, lulled by that and the fading storm but now there's just Sir. Sir. Sir winding into his mind soft and insistent.
Nate mutters something. There are fingers on his knee, spreading out until a palm connects with his kneecap. Another hand hits his thigh. The hands shake and shiver, sending feeling through Nate.
The hands swim over him, moving up and in to cup his cock, thumbs pressing against his balls, the rest of the fingers forming a triangle around his cock, pushing together gently, releasing him, doing it again.
Nate moans, hearing Sir again, the voice shaky and close. He digs his heels into the mattress and pushes up into the hands as they push down and he moans again. The triangle breaks, fingers scattering to undo his trousers, pull everything apart. Warm, callused fingers slide over his cock.
He wakes up, his whole body crashing into awareness and his brain snapping up against consciousness. Brad is crouched between his ankles, one hand on Nate's hip, the other buried in between his flies. His eyes are bright and Nate can see the dull part of his mouth, even in the dark. Nate's hand flies out, gripping the wrist disappearing into his trousers.
He should say something. Brad swallows hard, but doesn't say Sir again, apparently robbed of it now that Nate's awake.
Nate knows what this means in the real world. NJP, being discharged, worse.
Brad squeezes his cock, looking at him, hungry and wild.
Nate squeezes Brad's wrist and lets go. He drops his head back down to the mattress, gasping when Brad starts stroking him again, tentatively.
They're going to die out here, so what the fuck does he care about the real world?
He humps his hips up when Brad finds a rhythm he likes, growling. Brad answers him with a similar noise, his hand balling up in Nate's trousers. His weight shifts on the mattress, one leg over one of Nate's, his hips lowering. Nate can feel Brad's cock against his thigh.
He's never undone cammies not belonging to him, but it's not like it's hard. He doesn't even have to think about it, too busy following the agonizing pull of Brad's hand and searching for skin.
Brad's cock is hot like the desert sun when Nate finally jerks his trousers down enough to get at it, but not dry. It's that moist feeling Nate knows from his own cock.
He squeezes Brad gently and Brad grunts, curling over him, his teeth showing. Nate starts jerking him off and his tongue comes out, swiping over his lips. Nate watches his mouth, fixated, trying to reconcile hands and cocks and so much skin. He can hear something, them gasping or the wind. He doesn't know.
Brad's tongue retreats at the same time his hips start to sway into Nate's fist, awkward with the way he's splayed over Nate, but not without power. Brad's open mouth morphs in Nate's mind into pussy or ass, Brad fucking it quick and hard, holding on. Nate thinks it might be him Brad's fucking. When he thinks about it like that he moans, twitching against Brad's fingers.
"Sir," Brad says desperately.
"Shut the fuck up," Nate hisses. He doesn't want to listen to that.
Brad moans, his hips jumping into Nate's fist. His tongue licks the side of his own mouth, his breath rushing out over it. Nate's so close already, his breath matching Brad's, his body starting to heat up. His back feels slick and his armpits are wet. He can smell them, dirty and disgusting, dark and strange.
Brad rubs his finger brutally over Nate's frenulum and Nate comes, trapped right there although he bucks and moans, his mind cluttered up with thoughts of death and sex.
He doesn't even keep stroking. His hand goes tight and then loose, even when Brad makes a frustrated noise. Finally Brad shoves Nate's hand away and replaces it with his own. His mouth works, saying invisible words. He's completely silent when he comes, holding still.
Nate listens to the sand hit the hut's walls. He feels empty, devoid of feelings, good or bad. That in itself feels good. He relaxes into the mattress and Brad shifts, drawing a draft of cool air over the come smeared on his stomach and cock.
Brad sits back, almost on Nate's thigh, looking at his hand. Nate can't really see, but he can imagine what Brad's palm looks like. Brad flicks his wrist, a thick gob flying into the dark and then wipes his hand on the side of the mattress.
Slowly he moves off of Nate, back to his side of the bed. He lies on his back next to Nate for a minute, and then turns on his side away from Nate.
Nate closes his eyes, doing up his trousers. There are feelings catching up to him, but sleep eclipses them.
*
The morning of the fourth day Ray walks out of the end of storm like it was nothing.
Nate wakes up to muted sunshine coming through the sheet and the sound of Ray yelling, “I am motherfucking thirsty! Someone give me something to drink!”
Sitting up, Nate looks around. The hut is empty and the mattress is cool. Nate stands up slowly to the sound of gathering voices. He can feel the dried come sticking to his stomach and pubes, flaking and itching when he moves. There aren't any baby wipes left in the hut.
Outside, all the huts are still standing, although there are drifts of sand sloping up the sides of the huts and the fire pit is buried under sand. Far in the distance Nate can see a sandy lump that must be Bub.
All the guys are gathered at the edge of the hamlet, near Walt and Reporter's hut, around Ray, who is still yelling, about water and food.
He's got a cut on his eyebrow, his skin is chafed and he's holding a baby goat.
"LT," he hollers when he sees Nate, "I am a-fucking-live!"
"So I can see," Nate responds.
"I brought food!" he says. "It is a fabulous state of affairs."
Behind him, milling around in the sand, is a herd of goats.
Walt opens up a canteen for Ray, who carefully sets the kid down and drains the canteen.
"Goddamn is that good!" He wipes his wrist over his mouth and grins at them.
"Can you not yell?" Walt asks, ripping open an MRE.
"Dude," Ray says, "I was stuck in a shamal for three days. My ears are full of sand."
The baby goat, who has been leaning on Ray's leg, wobbles off to its mother.
"How did you get stuck in a shamal?" Nate asks, because Ray has apparently already forgotten he almost died.
Shoving pound cake into his mouth, Ray says, "Saw some goats. Thought about how sick I am of cardboard food and thought I could be proactive and get us some real fucking food before we run out of MREs." He swallows loudly and hands pass him more water. "As it turns out, goats can run fucking fast, man. And shamals suck."
He makes a grabbing motion with his palm up and Walt drops a pill into his hand. “But I rule,” he finishes grandly, putting the Ripped Fuel in his mouth.
There's a pause. Then Brad slaps the back of Ray's head, knocking the pill clear out of his mouth. "You dumb shit," he growls. "You should have died."
Ray rubs the back of his head, then flings the Charms Trombley hands him out toward the goats. "Calm down, Brad. You know I'm fucking magic. I mean, fuck, I got me and a bunch of fucking goats through a shamal."
Brad glares at him but holds off on whatever he's going to say. His eyes catch Nate's for a second and go even narrower before he turns back to trying to vaporize Ray with his glare.
"We can be goat herders, Brad," Ray says half-soothingly. "The Corps has totally buttfucked us, so we can switch sides and be Haji goat herders before we get eaten. It'll rule, dude. Just like me."
Brad scans the herd of goats, watching them nudge their noses into the sand to get at the sparse grass underneath. He looks beyond them to the blurry horizon.
Then he turns back to Ray. “You do whatever you want, but if you fuck up and I have to shoot you…”
Ray laughs. “You won’t do it. You’ll chain me to the corner of your and LT’s lovenest and I’ll be your guard dog.” He snarls and snaps his teeth, eyes laughing.
Brad doesn’t even glare. He just shakes his head, his expression dark, telling of the one bullet he’d need and how he’d be after.
Ray drops the act and sidles closer to Brad, right into his space.
“Don’t worry, Brad, man. I got this,” he says gently, nudging Brad’s elbow with his own. “I’m cool.”
Nate can see the moment Brad snaps back. The darkness draws back into his mouth and his eyes, cool ice in its place instead.
He pushes Ray back, much harder, but Ray just leans into it.
His voice is low and amused when he says, “That’s what your mom used to say. But then even she got some fucking sense.”
Ray laughs, completely delighted, and Brad smiles, for real.
*
Bub is even more of a mess than he was before the shamal. Most of the skin on his face has sloughed off and he hardly moves when Stafford and Christeson kick the sand away from him, even when their boots dig into his thighs, leaving dents in him like he’s a soft fruit.
“They should just kill him,” Rudy says from beside Nate. “If he feels then he must be feeling misery.”
Stafford and Christeson step back to admire Bub. Stafford makes a gun with his fingers and fires it at Bub. Bub slumps forward obediently. They laugh.
Rudy sighs. “Even if he doesn’t feel misery, I feel it for him.”
*
In honor of Ray’s return to the hamlet of the living they have roasted goat for dinner. All of them gather around the dug-out fire pit to talk shit and eat greasy, half-burnt chunks of meat. It's the best meal Nate can remember eating.
Ray's the centre of attention, talking about wandering around in the desert, blind in the storm, being followed by a herd of goats, trying to find something.
"I eventually just laid down and waited to fucking die," Ray says, "like a goddamn pussy. That lasted for about half an hour. Then I thought, Man, there are some Marines missing my fine ass. Plus, I think I'm laying in goat shit, and that is not on. So I kept walking. I'm even better at walking than Jews."
He elbows Brad, who's sitting beside him. "Hey, hey, Brad. I am way better at walking than your ass."
Brad shakes his head, smirking.
"Whatever. Don't be jealous. I couldn't be a Jew. I love me some bacon." He rips a chunk of meat out of Trombley's hands. "Almost as much as I love eating this fucking goat."
He yells Sorry! over his shoulder to where the goats are.
Eat or be eaten, Nate thinks. He's so full it's almost uncomfortable.
*
Brad doesn't come back to the hut that night. He's probably helping burn the few bodies that made it through the storm to various huts, but all Nate can hear is the mix of his voice with Ray's.
Since he's alone, he writes out Ray's adventure as he heard it, although who knows if it's true. The thing that matters, he writes, is that Ray is alive, however he did it.
He crosses off the day on the calendar with an X and writes Ray returns underneath. Then he looks at the day before, the X with nothing added underneath it. He tries to remember what time he woke up to figure out what he could write.
In the end he doesn't write anything, and spends his forty-fourth night sponging come and sweat off his belly, listening to his men laughing by the fire.
*
Ray ropes half the platoon into helping him build a pen for the goats, even though they don't seem inclined to go anywhere. It doesn't really happen, since they barely have enough wood to keep the fire lit, let alone build anything.
"White man," Poke quips, "always trying fence in his fellow creatures."
Ray shakes a stick almost as long as his body at Poke.
"Power, man. I need it. I must control things." He crouches down to pet the baby goat. "And Brad'll bust my ass if he finds out I'm following these goats around the fucking zombie-infested desert."
Brad's out near the rock markers with Rudy, more than a hundred feet away.
"So don't tell him," Poke says.
Ray nods, like he hadn't thought of that. Then he picks up the baby goat and tucks it under one arm, pointing his staff at the goats.
"Hey, you!" he yells at them. "Let's go for a fucking walk! Oscar Mike, food source, Oscar Mike!"
Surprisingly enough the goats start to move, Ray and the kid taking up the rear. Ray talks while he walks, calling all the goats Hey, you, starting to sing Barbie Girl as they walk, kicking sand in Bub’s direction.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Poke laughs. “Person’s finally found his lot in life. He’s a goatherd. A teenage girl goatherd, but still. Goddamn.”
*
Four nights is how long Nate spends sleeping with one hand on his rifle lying on Brad’s side of the bed. Brad is elsewhere, with Ray and the goats, or alone, maybe.
Nate wakes up on the fifth night because he still doesn't sleep well. Brad is sitting on the one chair facing the door, his rifle across his knees.
"Evening," he murmurs, not looking away from the curtain.
"Hey," Nate says, rusty, getting up on his elbows.
"I realized I have been remiss in my watch duties," Brad says. His voice is low and carefully smooth.
"It's okay." Nate gets up slowly, leaving his rifle behind, coming to stand near Brad. He leans on the table next to Brad's shoulder.
"You should sleep," Brad says.
"I'm alright. I've slept through any and all zombie attacks the past few nights."
Nate smiles. Brad blinks.
Nate settles his weight comfortably against the table, careful of its age and poor build.
"Was it a mistake, sir?" Brad asks. His voice still sounds the same, smooth like a stone, heavy.
"This is all a mistake," Nate replies.
Brad blinks again. "All the way back to the beginning of the Earth."
"Maybe not that far."
"That far," Brad says.
Nate puts a hand on Brad's shoulder, feeling the long bone under Brad's blouse and his starved-thin muscles.
"There have been some good moments," he tells Brad.
Brad shifts his rifle, shrugging his one shoulder into Nate's hand lightly.
"You should go to sleep," he says.
"You should," Nate replies. "Sleeping with the goats is for Ray. I'll keep watch."
Taking a deep breath Brad shrugs again, reflexively.
Nate squeezes his shoulder. "It wasn't a mistake, Brad."
Brad raises his eyebrows. There's a smudge of dirt above the left one that's probably been there for days.
"The comfort of meat," Brad quips. He sounds like Tyler Durden.
Nate moves his hand so his fingertips are brushing Brad's dirty neck. "I don't think I would put it like that, but yeah."
Brad turns his head so he can look up at Nate, his neck curving into Nate’s fingers. “Everything else was a mistake.” Nate can just see the edge of his teeth.
“From the very beginning.”
*
In the pre-dawn hours, instead of doing his watch Nate ruts against Brad's bare skin, his cock filling the sinewy smooth dip of Brad's hip. His belly rubs the underside of Brad's cock.
They don't speak. Instead they grunt and growl at each other desperately, racing for release.
Brad's a mess when they're done, come all over his stomach and hip. He slides out from under Nate and crouches near the table, splashing himself with water from his canteen.
The bed stinks like men, but not the people who lived here before. The smell makes Nate's cock twitch. Watching Brad wipe himself off with his hand doesn't help; dizzy heat slides around Nate's skin seeing the softening edge of Brad's cock, the dripping water, his dusty wrists.
"I would put your dick in my mouth, but I’m only half-sure what week we’re on or when you last washed your cock," Nate murmurs, mostly to himself.
Brad shakes his wet hand off, standing up, tucking his soft cock back into his trousers.
"I'll keep that in mind," he says, normal volume.
Nate switches places with Brad, but he drinks a palmful of water instead of washing with it. The water tastes like sand and smoke and salt from his hand, but it soothes his dry throat. He splashes some on the back of his neck to cool the inflamed skin there.
Brad asks what day it is before he goes to sleep.
“Fifty-one," Nate tells him. He waits until Brad's asleep and then he ducks under the sheet to stand and watch the quiet dawn creep up the way it has done for so long.
*
A desiccated body stumbles into Ray's herd of goats and starts taking swipes at them. The goats scatter out of reach easily, but Ray is less that impressed.
"Motherfucker!" He yells, cocking his rifle. "Stay away from my goddamned goats, you braindead zombie asshole."
The zombie is too dry to even growl at him. The noise it makes is like dry leaves swirling together, shuddery and empty.
Ray shoots it, and it's too dry to bleed. It just falls down. The goats scatter at the sound, bleating. Ray yells for them to come back and for Trombley and Baptista to get rid of the body in the same breath.
The body burns to cinders in minutes, flaking black and floating in the air. The men hold rags over their mouths because it still smells like a body.
Ray chases his goats between two berms while Trombley throws sand on the fire and others laugh about the goats or the body or both.
Nate doesn't think about either. He walks with Brad and Walt to get water, because they need some. He tries to be mindful of the falling ashes, but they still collect on the lip of his Kevlar, dusting his face with every step.
*
Later, Nate lies still, letting Brad rub his knuckles over Nate's scaly, red nape. Brad didn't ask to do it, he just did, sidling close enough Nate could sense him, his hand hovering for a moment before it made contact, his cool palm on Nate's sore skin.
He just held on for a minute, like he was absorbing something through Nate, then his hand lifted and he rubbed a knuckle from Nate's hairline to the sweat-stiff collar of his shirt. From there he picked up a pattern; three light petting strokes followed by four slow drags.
Nate's stuck between soothed and turned on, a comfortable mix. Brad's rifle is up against his spine, an unyielding line along his back, a hint of Brad's heat behind it.
The minutes tick by on Nate's internal clock, and he gets more and more tired. Brad makes a noise, not quite a hum, but still a faintly musical breath.
"Stop scratching," he whispers, his fingers never stopping. "Your neck is a mess."
Nate makes a noise of agreement, shifting his feet. His boot hits Brad's, and Brad kicks him back lightly.
"Remind me to clean it up in the morning," Brad says.
"Mmm," Nate replies. It sounds like Brad cares.
*
In the morning, before Nate can stop him, Brad gets one of the few gauze pads they have left and tapes it to the back of Nate’s neck.
Nate touches it when Brad steps back. Brad flicks his fingers hard. “Don’t touch,” he says sternly. “Jerk off or something instead.”
Nate wipes his hand on his pants. Where the tape is stuck to his skin it itches.
“Thanks,” he says, rubbing his fingers on his thigh.
*
Nate notices he’s writing less in his notebook, starting to fall back on bare facts:
Christeson and Lovell fought today over how long to boil water. C said 5 mins, L said 10. Poke stepped in before it got bad. It doesn’t matter. It just needs to boil.
MRE of the day: some sort of chicken. Standard. Half ration of water.
Nate doesn’t remember writing that. He resolves to give a more complex account.
*
Ray and Walt go back to digging holes. But this time, they do it surrounded by curious goats, and they don’t bother digging the little gopher holes they used to.
“I’m thinking big,” Ray says, his E-tool on his shoulder and his hand on his hip, watching Walt hack out a rough rectangle on the dirt, about six feet by four feet.
A goat butts Ray’s thigh gently and Ray scratches its ears, grinning. “We’re gonna bury Trombley up to his neck.”
*
They don’t end up burying Trombley; somehow Trombley gets wind of the scheme and lingers close to Brad while Ray and Walt work on the hole.
The fact that they’ve lost Trombley doesn’t deter them from finishing the hole. It takes several days and Ray treats it like it deserves all his attention. Walt goes along with it, reinforcing the corners while Ray pats down the bottom until it’s smooth, alternately hollering at Trombley and telling Walt about the physics of the perfect hole.
When it’s done Ray climbs out of the hole and looks at it proudly. A ragged crowd gathers.
“Now I’ve done something in the middle of this clusterfuck,” he announces. “It wasn’t a complete waste.”
Someone starts up a round of polite golf clapping and Ray bows grandly, saying, “Thank you, thank you, the artist is in.”
“Well, isn’t that fucking magical,” Poke says, turning away. “Our lives for a hole in the ground.”
“A fucking good hole in the ground!” Ray yells.
“Yeah, sure. You can take your hole and die in it, Person,” Jacks barks.
Ray looks dark for a second as everyone walks off, and then he says, “Jealous,” nodding with satisfaction at his hole.
*
Day sixty-three brings with it something different. The air feels strange when Nate leaves the hut, heavy like it hasn’t been before and there’s a faint tang in the back of his mouth.
Everyone else seems to feel it too. They all walk around the hamlet looking perplexed, like something has suddenly appeared or gone missing and they should find it. The goats watch them move around, and then go back to nosing through the sand for grass, unconcerned.
It occupies everyone until breakfast is over, then Rudy steps up to the fire pit and announces he’s going on a run. He strips off his shirt and for so many days on rations, Rudy still looks better than all of them.
He rallies half of the platoon right away and the rest have to be commanded. They glare at Rudy and glance at Nate, who nods them on. They bitch while they fall in line, more than they ever have.
Nate doesn’t go with them. He watches them disappear over a berm, still able to hear Ray grousing when he can’t see them anymore.
Reporter didn’t go either. Nate finds him sitting on a rock near the goats, writing idly in his battered notebook. All the pages are edged in yellow and brittle.
“Evan,” Nate says. “How are you?”
Reporter shrugs his scrawny shoulders, tapping his pen on the page. The hollow of his throat is deep and dirty.
“Could be better,” he says. He sounds so tired. Drawing a line across his page to separate what he was writing from the rest of the page he says, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
Evan looks down at his notebook, thumbing the pages. “I didn’t write it down for some reason. I don’t know why.” He looks up. “Do you remember who’s buried where?” He asks, pointing at the neat line of stones nearby.
He wipes his hand over his mouth, looking pained that he can’t remember. Nate knows the feeling. He crosses his arms, touching the shape of his own notebook in his vest.
He doesn’t need to look at it though, not for this. “Pappy, Leon, Mike, Doc, Brunmeier. From left to right.”
Evan looks at the stones and nods, writing it down, underlining it twice. “Thanks, Nate.”
“No problem.”
Nate walks away wondering what he forgot in exchange.
The only other person who didn’t go on the run is Brad. He’s in the hut, picking at his cuticles and staring at the wall. A vague hand gesture is the greeting Nate gets.
“You should have gone running, Brad.”
Brad flicks something invisible toward the wall. “I have patrol.”
“When?”
Brad looks higher up on the wall, like a clock might suddenly appear. He stretches and straightens up, hauling on his frayed rifle strap. “Now.”
Brad doesn’t ask him to come but he walks invitation slow, so Nate walks with him, heading out north to see the perimeter.
They go about a hundred feet before Brad remarks, “Different today.”
Nate nods even though Brad’s shading his eyes to see the horizon. Nate stops when Brad does, looking for a body, but Brad’s just surveying.
“Maybe we’ll be rescued,” Brad mutters. “There’s probably a jet on its way right now.”
“Brad-”
“I’m joking,” Brad says drily. “We’ve won some battles but this isn’t a war we can win.”
It’s so true it’s like a punch in the face. Nate takes a hard breath, stuck between getting angry and agreeing. Brad starts walking again before he can do either. He stays where he is for a moment, his hand automatically going to the back of his neck, but when he touches the bandage there soreness spreads out, spurring him to drop his hand and catch up.
The rest of the patrol is quiet. Brad stops occasionally to look through the sight on his rifle, but he never has to fire. Nate looks up at the sky when the sun dips behind a cloud.
The hamlet is still empty when they complete the loop, Reporter looking to have retreated out of the open. Everything is so still. Nate’s never seen it like this, even at night. Before he can help himself a shiver climbs his spine, pulling up the hairs on the back of his neck.
He shrugs to try and combat the feeling and ducks into the hut, rubbing the back of his neck carefully. It still hurts, but the action has a certain amount of comfort attached to it. He paces between the calendar and the table, rubbing uneasily until Brad comes in, resetting the sheet behind himself.
“Before,” Brad says.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nate replies. He pulls his notebook out of his vest and puts it down on the table, the pen on top. “You said it, but I was still thinking it.”
Brad raises an eyebrow. “I’m surprised, LT. Where is your everlasting optimism?”
“Died a while ago,” Nate says. It should be a joke but it doesn’t feel funny. Brad doesn’t look all that amused. His mouth folds down briefly then flattens out.
“You should find it,” he says, right on the knife-edge of commanding.
The tone trips something in Nate, sending a flicker of anger through his body. “What?”
“Someone,” Brad says, “has to keep a lid on this shit.”
Nate straightens his stance. “And it’s me?”
“Who fucking else? You’re the least fucked up out of all of us.”
Brad is pulling himself taller too, gearing up for the fight that’s bearing down on them.
“Thanks,” Nate spits, “for putting it to a vote.”
Brad glares instead of replying, and Nate glares back, aching to start some shit. He should have gone on the run.
“You’re in charge, LT,” Brad says very slowly, like Nate’s stupid. “You’re the one who tells us when and how to eat, shit, watch and fucking feel.”
“I got that,” Nate says darkly. “It fucking sucks.”
Brad nods tersely, all the ground he seems willing to give while still acknowledging this one burden of Nate’s.
Nate breathes through his nose. “And you’ve shot people. People you shouldn’t have had to shoot.”
Brad doesn’t cringe. He nods again in compliance with facts. He does cross his arms over his chest though, glancing down to the table and Nate’s notebook, where almost everything that’s happened has been taken down for the time when they won’t be able to speak of it.
Nate looks too, and he thinks about fighting, about how good it would feel to let loose, do some damage. He imagines Brad with a bloody nose and black eyes, looking stunned with a punch to the face; the way a fight hurts, sharp and hot dull pain at the same time. He imagines being at odds with Brad and having to manage that on top of everything else.
“Enough,” he says quietly. “Enough macho bullshit. There’s no point in fighting about nothing.”
“Optimism: resurrected,” Brad murmurs smugly, but Nate lets him have his dig.
The energy’s not gone though, still hovering in the air. Nate shifts against it. It’s like wearing his suit all over again.
“You know the old saying, sir,” Brad says, oddly genially.
“What?”
“Fight or fuck?”
Nate doesn’t fight the smirk he can feel coming. “You’re an idiot,” he replies, moving against the tide of air into Brad’s space, bringing hands to his chest and propelling him into the back corner of the hut to the tiny slice of dark they have during the day.
Brad is grinning as he walks backwards, gripping the worn fabric of Nate’s jacket. “What makes you say that?”
His back thumps into the wall.
“It’s fight or flight, Brad.” Nate’s body hits Brad’s hard enough that their belt buckles clank.
Brad pretends to consider it while he undoes his vest. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Maybe I am.” It comes out growling and hard, surprising to Nate’s ears. It sounds like someone else, but the hands mixing with Brad’s, ripping open his trousers to reveal pale dirty hip bones are his for sure.
Those hands move when Brad does, trying to come away from the wall. They shove Brad back, at the shoulder and the hip, not kindly. Brad grunts, his hips dislodging Nate's left hand, but he's not trying to go anywhere.
"Fuckin' touch me," he hisses, humping the air again, working around Nate's hands to get his briefs down far enough to let his cock out.
Nate's hands do, leaving Brad’s shoulder and his hip to wrap around Brad's cock, stroking it hand-over-hand for a few passes before he switches to one hand only, the other tugging on Brad's sac.
Brad slams his fist into the wall beside him and closes his eyes in a tight blink. When he grabs Nate's jaw Nate can feel the trail of dust between their skin. He arches into Brad, fucking up his rhythm for a second before he starts in on his own trousers with his free hand. Brad helps, still holding onto Nate's jaw.
They're eye to eye, staring at each other while they scramble around. Brad smirks like he planned this all along, which is a lie. He'd probably be just as happy if they kicked the shit out of each other. Nate squeezes him brutally just to see the smirk melt into slackness.
Brad repays it in kind, getting his hand into Nate's trousers, feeling his cock and balls and what's underneath that. Nate grinds on him, moaning.
It’s so fast and hard it almost hurts. They grapple and hump against each other, stepping on toes, scratching dust off the wall. Brad’s belly is hot and the thick curve of his hip is the perfect thing to rub against, even if his wrist is in the way.
Nate pins him like that, against the wall, his hand trapped between them. Brad bites his jaw until Nate jerks away from him, hissing. He smirks at Nate and Nate could still hit him.
He kicks Brad’s feet apart instead and shoves his hand away so he can get his own in there, jerking Brad off like it could save his life. When Brad comes over the inside of Nate’s wrist Nate thinks it’s better than two black eyes. When he comes, staining the bottom edge of Brad’s PT shirt, he knows it to be true.
After it's over they're both covered in dust and come and the air still feels full. They can hear the sound of the platoon coming back from their run, complaining about today.
“Your face is red,” Brad says mildly, still pinned.
Nate steps back, feeling the heat in his face, the spot where Brad bit him that’s a little sore. He rubs it gently and almost touches his neck but doesn’t. Brad smiles lazily at him, rolling his loose shoulders around, looking way too comfortable against the rubbed wall, his stomach dotted with semen and dirty smudges.
Nate leaves Brad behind in the hut, going out into the sweaty crowd. He talks to a few of the men that are standing around. No one asks why his face is red, if it still is.
*
During rations Trombley won't stop looking at the sky, barely picking at his food.
"Can you hear that?" he asks, staring straight up.
"The whistling is the air going through your skull," Ray says.
"Shut up, Trombley," Jacks says.
"No," Poke says.
"What is it?" Brad asks.
Trombley closes his eyes. "It sounds like...a plane."
The camp goes silent. Suddenly everyone is looking up at the sky, listening intently. Nate can't hear anything besides the too-fast beating of his own heart, even though he listens hard. No one else seems to hear anything either. The silence breaks down into disappointed grumbling and calling Trombley names. He's not listening though. He's still looking up at the sky, his hands limp around his MRE.
*
Their luck does change. But no one comes to rescue them. It rains instead, the sky cracking open with all the pent-up feeling, rain pouring down on them. It rains so hard the fire goes out. The men stand outside, catching rain in their helmets. They don’t drink it, or even save it. They fling it at each other or just dump it out onto the wet sand.
It’s fucking miserable, but they all stand out there, soaking wet and bitching. Some of the men use the water to scrub behind their ears and over their cheeks, sighing as the filthy water trickles down their necks.
They eat in the rain, talking through the grey haze the world has taken on. Rain gets in Nate’s pasta with cardboard vegetables, tinting the flavour metallic. It tastes worse than it did before but he eats it, hungry from hours ago. In between bites he picks at the swollen, soggy bandage still clinging to his neck, slowly pulling the tape free. He drops it, lymph- and blood-stained, into the fire pit. When the rain hits it the skin prickles, sensitive from being covered
“I didn’t know it rained in Iraq,” Christeson says.
“Fuckin’ duh,” Stafford replies. “Gotta rain sometime, even if it is the desert. What are you, retarded?”
Christeson flicks his Charms at Stafford, who deflects them. “Fuck off, man.”
“You fuck off.”
“Why don’t you both go fuck yourselves?” Garza butts in. He’s holding his helmet in front of his stomach. It’s almost full and his glasses are so wet he can probably hardly see.
“Fuck you,” Stafford and Christeson say together.
*
“Well,” Brad says as they bed down for the night, “at least I’m not the only one going fucking nuts anymore.”
Nate quirks an eyebrow at Brad but doesn’t challenge him. He believed in the plane just as much as anyone in that moment.
It rains all night. Nate dozes and listens to the noise, rubbing idly at the dry scab on his nape.
*
Someone shits in Ray’s hole. In the middle of the night someone walks across the camp to where the edges of Ray’s hole are softening with the rain, squats down and shits in it.
When he finds out Ray is more furious than Nate even thought he could be.
“What the fuck!” he yells, storming through the huts in the morning, looking pale and wild, holding his E-Tool. “Who the fuck thought it would be so funny to shit in my hole?”
“Person, people shit in your hole all the time,” Poke says.
Ray holds up a finger and glares. “You’re not fucking funny, Espera. Not today.” He turns his glare in a half-circle, hitting most of the men with it. “Now,” he says slowly, “which one of you wastes of space shit in my goddamn hole?”
He stares at them, and they stare at him. No one says anything. Walt steps a little closer to Ray, but not very, one hand a little bit raised.
“Fucking come on!” Ray barks. It’s so quiet his voice echoes off into the desert. Even Bub, who’s decaying at an alarming speed, lolls his head closer to Ray.
Brad steps up behind Ray, closer than Walt. “Who did it?” he asks, his voice stone-level. Ice-cold.
No one moves, let alone speaks.
Ray raises his hands near his face and clenches them, his E-Tool still in his right fist. “You cannot just do that to someone,” he says.
“Dude,” Jacks says, “it’s just a hole.”
Both Brad and Ray look at him.
“It’s my hole,” Ray says. “My fucking goddamn hole, Manimal and-”
Jacks pulls a face. “Don’t focus your tiny little rage on me. I didn’t shit in your precious hole.”
Ray’s glare shifts across everyone’s faces one more time. Then he shakes his head.
“You know what,” he declares. “Fuck you all backwards. I hope you get food poisoning from shitty MREs.”
He turns around and sidesteps Brad, walking away from them all. He sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles sharply. The goats clamber over a berm and cloud around him, walking him out to where his hole is. His form crouches, disappearing under the line of goats.
Off the hook, everyone slowly moves, going back to what they were doing, but they all shoot each other looks that say, Was it you? It wasn’t me.
*
Ray mends the damage, digging the hole a little deeper, and then he doesn’t let it out of his sight. He takes his MRE with him out into the dark that night. Walt follows him reluctantly.
Brad skips over Jacks when he hands out MREs, and Jacks looks like he understands why. Brad disappears into the dark too. Nate would look but his thermals have been out of batteries for more than a month.
*
Nate is dying. There are hands dragging over his bare arms and face, ragged dirty nails catching and ripping. The bodies are moaning, shuddering coldly against him, ripping him apart piece by piece. He can feel his shirt tearing, nails investigating the dip of his navel, pressing in ticklish and sick.
He opens his mouth to say something and there are fingers there too, feeling the wiggle of his tongue, trying to grab it. Something bites the meat of his thigh and he grunts. Fingers pinch his tongue, trying to draw it out. Another bite. Another.
A swollen, rotted face bends down over his, all teeth, no lips, no eyes. Nate tries to move away but the fingers leave his tongue in favour of holding his head still for what’s coming.
The mouth descends, those teeth coming close to his mouth, so close he can’t see anything but death. He tries to move but can’t. Something rips his navel wide open at the same time that horrible mouth kisses him, loose teeth sinking through his lip.
He wakes up. He doesn’t gasp or jerk, just wakes up, alive on his back on the mattress in the hut in Iraq. It’s completely dark. The fire must have gone out sometime.
Nate blinks at the ceiling, waiting for the adrenaline knot to unwind . On the other side of the mattress Brad scratches his nose, still asleep, rubbing fingers over his mouth. Nate shifts onto his side facing Brad, still waiting.
Brad’s face is smooth and still. He doesn’t seem to dream very much. This is how he always looks when he’s sleeping.
Nate touches his hip, meaning to shake him, but he doesn’t. He still feels ill from being eaten alive. The touch is light enough that Brad doesn’t wake up. He keeps breathing slowly, one hand limp beside his head.
The lump won’t go away. Nate shifts across the filthy mattress into Brad’s sleep space, his hand skimming off Brad’s hip, down to the jut of his spine. Brad frowns at the touch but doesn’t wake up. He must be exhausted if he’s sleeping through this.
Nate inches closer, until his knees are touching Brad's and every deep breath Brad takes slides up against Nate's chin.
He touches the damp small of Brad’s back through his t-shirt and presses his mouth to the edge of Brad's mouth, trying to fight the lump down. Brad's mouth is a little open but it twitches when Nate's mouth moves across it. Nate rubs the bumps of his spine like they're little stones and he arches into Nate's hip.
Nate can feel Brad's body waking up, the stretch of his leg and the flex of his top shoulder as he presses into Nate's hand. He almost blinks once, and then really does it, squinting at Nate. Nate kisses him again, lightly but insistently, because he's not dead and he can.
Brad sighs deeply, touching Nate back, his fingers in the ditches between Nate's ribs. His mouth makes a word, maybe, or maybe he's kissing Nate back. His mouth tastes like sleep and hours without water.
Nate can undo Brad's trousers in the dark with his eyes closed by now, no problem, slipping in to touch the warm heat of Brad's cock. The kissing is more of a distraction, so new. He kisses Brad soft and slow while he plays with his cock, encouraging it up into his fist, feeling for the pulse there.
Brad's hand cups his cheek clumsily, holding him still so Brad can lick into his mouth. Brad tastes all the corners of his mouth, licking his teeth, the tip of his tongue, his palate. Brad kisses like he's looking for the water he’s been missing.
They kiss until Nate can't breathe, but he only pulls away far enough to gasp against Brad's chin, brushing his nose over the stubble on Brad's cheeks. Brad's thumb digs into his jaw when Nate touches his tongue there.
"Nate," he says, sounding sleepy and awestruck, "Jesus, Nate."
Nate shushes him and licks his throat, pressing his nose under the collar of Brad's shirt so he can bite, his hand still stroking the lump of Brad's cock in his cammies.
*
In the morning Nate leaves the hut at dawn, still tired, his mouth tasting like an unwashed body and the soapy sourness of semen.
Part Four