Sunshine Patriots by Bill Campbell

Author:Bill Campbell [Campbell, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rosarium Publishing
Published: 2016-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

It was 0921 hours, and Foxtrot was on the move. A new chill hummed through the jungle. The blue sun refused itself the sight of the atrocity below, preferring to snuggle in the thunder of nimbus clouds. New, colder rain raced with the jets’ tireless bombs to the shattered ground.

Barber and Mbili led the pack down a choked jungle path. The explosions rumbled their steps faster. They hadn’t had time to talk about what had happened to Mbili during the meeting. They really didn’t have time now, either. Ceredwen was calling. Beneath the screeches and bomb blasts of Prowlers and Ravens, the faint whir of the gyrocopters whispered in their DuraEars. Status reports were also resounding in the devices that had replaced their destroyed eardrums. The rest of the company was close to reaching the rendezvous point. They had nine minutes, but the gyros would be there in six. They had to hurry.

Barber’s mind had become infected with trouble. Everything was becoming so hard. He needed Jess and Konto. Jess was busy with that hymie, Lempira. Konto was here, but elsewhere. The corporal’s eyes were focused on another world.

Aaron continued his steady, mechanical gait, staring at Konto in the hopes of grabbing his attention. The sergeant was taken aback. His corporal somehow looked different. Barber couldn’t tell exactly what it was. His MultEye scanned for different possibilities until it rested on and scrutinized Konto’s flesh. Mbili’s earth-brown parchment was somehow different. Darker, maybe. Like a bruised purple. There were no visible signs of actual bruising, no injured lumps of coagulated blood, nothing. Only the odd color. Purple.

Ras, he mentally exclaimed, what done happen to yuh back there, Kon?

Mbili looked at him with worry plain on his face. “No know, Aaron,” he confessed, shakily. “But somethin’ real fucked up, fu. They’s somethin’ here,” he continued, whispering, hunching his shoulders over conspiratorially so others wouldn’t hear. “Somethin’ real powerful, head. Done felt it. All over me body. In me brain, bruh.”

Cho, Barber chuckled, half-disbelievingly. Yuh ain’t goin’ slabba-slabba on me?

“Hell naw,” Mbili refuted. “Ain’t nothin’ soft on this Nig. But…you ain’t seent it? Somethin’ grabbed my ass. Hard, Nig. Real hard. It be on this planet. An they’s more a them bitches, too.”

Dem talk?

“Somethin’ like it.”

Konto ran a nervous hand across his rainslick brow. He stopped, noticing the color. He tried not to panic and placed the hand back at his side, where he couldn’t see it. Barber noticed his nervous fidgeting.

Ras, Nig, yuh fishy, nuh?

“Naw, Aaron,” he refuted, adamantly again. “A fight a fight, an me always throwin’. Know dat. But this different. Some real shit bout to happen, in the real, an me no know if fightin’ wif all this metal, them Brain2s, or even the ancestors gonna help we now. Not here.”

Shut yuh clot, Aaron dispelled, more for himself than to convince Konto.

His comrade’s apprehension was quickly becoming contagious. Barber looked straight ahead and tried thinking of anything else. But all his thoughts turned sour. Aaron stumbled over a rough patch of saw grass but kept going, staring straight ahead.

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