Ain't Talkin'

The dashboard of the troop transport lit the front cab of the truck with sickly green light. Someone had seen fit to install a tape-deck beside the stick shift and the only thing that either man could find to play was a mixed-tape, likely from before the catastrophe.

An’ it’s 1,2 ,3 what’re we fightin’ for? Don’ ask me I don’ givva damn, next stop is Vietnam!

“Ever been to Vietnam, kid?” Roche nursed along on his bottle, holding it between his legs while he used an oiled rag to clean one of his Ruger’s.

“No. You?” Markus kept his eyes on the potholed road in front of them, lit brightly with halogen lights.

“I dunno. Not sure where it used to be. Been to Asia, sure. The continents survived. But all those national borders and state lines, they were imaginary way back then. When I was a kid looking at old maps I used to think you’d know for a certainty when you crossed into somewhere new, ‘cus there’d be a big ol’ red line dividing where you were from where you just got to. Ain’t the case. Less you go along a road and the old-world welcome sign still happens to be standing, it’s all just one big world.”

“That sounds philosophical.”

“Might be. Probably just drunk ramblings, shithead.” Roche swigged from the bottle.

5, 6, 7 open up the pearly gates. Well, there ain’t no time to wonder why, whoopee we all gonna die!

Markus kept his eyes trained ahead. They weren’t going terribly fast, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five miles an hour, but moving over rough terrain and a road that was under cover of dust and sand in the few places it wasn’t just churned up concrete meant that the truck wasn’t going to be speeding along. The chains on the tires helped with the sand, and the ten wheels helped get them over the rougher stuff. Truck had axles and shocks on it that would’ve been at home on a dune-car.

Roche lit a cigarette and rolled the window down an inch.

“How do you think the horse is handling the bed?” Markus asked.

“Dunno. She’s a surefoot. She’ll be alright.”

“How far are we going? It’s almost one.” Markus tapped the green block-number clock set into the dashboard. Time was a funny thing. Didn’t seem to matter much when there were no clocks or calendars around. The moment you were faced with a one-inch green reticule of minutes ticking away, it seemed like time was the most precious thing in the world.

“So it’s the tenth of December now, is it.” Roche inhaled smoke, swigged from his bottle and then exhaled after swallowing the liquor, something he was fond of doing.

“Seems that way. Unless that soldier lied.”

“He wouldn’t lie, kid. Had no reason to. And he had every reason under the sun to tell me the truth. That’s the thing with mercs and bought soldiers like that one. A salary and a place to sleep will buy some loyalty, but how much is different with everyone, and it’s seldom enough to keep from shooting off the mouth when they’re threatened with a big gun.”

“Right, I suppose.”

“Well think about it. They lost your loyalty the second you got a little pink in the gills about releasing constructs on Terra.”

“Because it ain’t right.”

“Nope. Probably not. And you’ll be the one to fix all that, kid.” Roche’s sarcasm was palpable.

Markus opened his mouth to retort but a bump in the road clacked his teeth back shut for him. They were making their way over rutted drifts of sandy debris, red the color of rust. The troop transport made good headway and kept pretty even-keel, but occasional bumps were too thickly edged and knocked their boots up.

“One-fifteen. Kill it, kid.” Roche said, drinking.

Alex Markus clutched in and eased the brake on. The truck shivered a little on the sand, her back end winding out to the left, but stopped firmly. When he killed the engine and cut the lights the world plunged into real blackness. In the back of the truck Lucky shifted from one foot to another, hooves kicking bullet casings.

“Alright then, night.” Roche tossed a rolled blanket at Markus, opened the passenger door and hopped to the sand. As he wandered to the back of the transport he vaguely heard Markus mutter ‘night’ before wrapping the blanket around his shoulders and leaning up against the truck’s door for some shuteye.

Roche flipped open his lighter and lit a smoke. at the back of the truck, Lucky had her head out over the tailgate, looking down at Roche with a perturbed look.

“Wanna get down, girl?” Roche opened the tailgate with it’s latch and large bolt. Lucky stepped daintily down into the sank and tossed her head, sputtering.

“I know it ain’t the best way to travel, but it’s quicker than riding.” He smiled at the look Lucky gave him and puffed on his smoke. The horse wandered off a couple paces and nibbled at a tuft of scrubgrass that Markus had driven over. Roche took a noisy, metal seat on the tailgate and looked up at the sky.

His eyes had taken the couple seconds necessary in the pure dark to adjust. The ghosts of the halogen headlights no longer batted at his vision and the night came alive the longer he looked into it. Coyotes traipsed along a ridge not a half mile off, yipping. The scrubgrass caught a little breeze and tickled it back and forth. Besides the sound of the coyotes there was only the yawning of the world as it turned, little vocals of individual blades of grass and the creaking of branches.

Markus shuffled his weight in the cab and Lucky dropped a pile of dung in the dirt.

Roche took another swig of whiskey and killed what was left of the bottle. He tossed the bottle into the night. He took another full liter from Lucky’s saddle and sat with it between his bootheels. When his cigarette was finished he lay along the side of the down tailgate, wide enough to move a vehicle up and down, and looked up at the stars while he nodded off to sleep.