The Veil War

"and then I was like, 'Holy crap, goblins!'"

Month: March, 2013

Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis (Part Eight)

“Fuck!” Recoil drove the weapon hard up and to the left. Those tiny little arms myst be stronger than they look; that little popgun has a wicked kick to it, I thought. I dropped my arm, let the machine pistol swing. OK, my awesome attack from behind Rambo tactics worked awesomely. With Idaho and Cherry down, we’re minus one effective.

“Arechiga, get eyes on the trail. Richardson, start looking down in the valley, the fuckers must have come from somewhere. In the movies, there’s always a shiny glowing gate or some shit that the monsters come through. Find it. The rest of you, pretend like you’re in the Army.”

I walked over to the dead dinosaur Nazis. Ramirez was going at his task with a will, sorting through the dead fascist lizards’ belongings with the cool unconcern of a veteran butcher. Or, the blank incomprehension of a low-grade moron. One of the two.

Buckshot was being more diffident. I came up behind him, “Dead lizards don’t bite,” I whispered. Half of Buckshot jumped three feet in the air, startled beyond all measure. The other half, aware that his beloved sergeant was in the AO, didn’t. The result was amusing beyond all measure.

God, I love my job.

Ramirez had made a pile of loot. Aside from the military gear – ammo pouches and random kit there were some wallets and personal items. I picked up a wallet and opened it. The main pocket had some money; I pulled it out and saw ones, fives, a ten. They all said “Reichsmark” and had pictures, clumsily printed in reddish-orange and kind of blurry. The fivers had Hitler. Wasn’t sure, but the ones maybe had fat Goering. There was a dinosaur with a fritz helmet on the ten.

The wallet had some ID cards, random shit. And a black and white photo of what I presumed to be a girl dinosaur with a scarf in front of a big building with a volcano in the background, with palm trees. Good Christ, Helga Velociraptor on the homefront. This isn’t helping, I realized. I stuffed the wallet in my pocket.

“Ramirez, where’s the Leutnant’s shit?”

Ramirez pointed to another pile. On top was a leather satchel. I opened that, saw maps and dispatches. The dispatches looked like they were typed with a drunk typewriter, the lines of text wiggled up and down across the page. I stuffed them back in and slung the satchel over my shoulder. Someone would want to see that.

***

“Subcommandante?” Richardson asked.

“What!”

“I found a big shiny thing,” the private said.

“All is proceeding as I have foreseen.” My men looked at me with new-found awe. I walked over and grabbed the scope from Richardson. He pointed down valley, north and maybe 200 m below our level.

And, yes, there it was. A big shiny, sparkly round thing shitting out dinosaurs and Wehrmacht hardware like an assistent crack addict cranking out babies hoping for the welfare moneyz.

“Peters! You play with models and faggoty shit. Tell me what this is.”

Peters trained his eyes through the scope. “Looks like Panzer IVs lining up below the shiny thingy. Aah, further down there’s some Panzerkampfwagen VIB’s… Sweet, Tiger II’s! Those were the best tanks of the war! There’s some FlaK auf Fahrgestell Panzerkampfwagens, and some Sonderkraftfahrzeug 250’s… Holy shit, they’ve got a Landkreuzer P.1000! They never built any of those…

I smacked him in the head. “Translate, nerd!”

“Sorry, sergeant. They’ve got a few dozen tanks, mostly Panzer IVs, good tanks; and a sprinkling of Tiger IIs, arguably the best tank of the war. They’ve got some tracked anti-air, some half tracks for infantry, and some VW jeeps. Not a whole lot yet, but…”

I nodded and waved him silent. Not much now, but the longer the gate is open, the more comes through. Pretty standard, really.

“Gather round!” I ordered. My squad shuffled forward. “The dinosaur Nazi menace is coming through a gate, which Richardson here has helpfully located.”

“I have a plan.”

***

Click here to get see all published episodes of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles.

Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis (Part Seven)

“Chihauha Actual, possible hostiles. Location 1000 meters north-northwest our position. Unknowns appear to be Nazi Dinosaurs. Over.”

Fuck you very much, Mumbles. Wait, what? “Poodle, say again all after Unknowns. Over.”

“Wiernerdog Actual, I say again, Nazi Dinosaurs. November, Alfa, Zulu, India. Fucking Nazis. Fucking Dinosaur Nazis.” You have got to be kidding me, I thought. All the little morons love their Sergeant. And now he’s one of them.

“ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH MUMBLES?”

The radio went dead.

“Goddammit!” I walked into the command tent.

Corporal Dennison came up holding a piece of paper gingerly with two fingers. “Sir, I can’t understand what you’ve written here.”

“It’s English, Dennison, read it.”

“Sir, I’m not sure about that. What’s a ‘whither machine’?”

“Nevermind. Mumbles called in hostiles, between him and the OP.”

I called to Doubting Thomas. “Get first squad mounted up. Take… Fuck, just take everything.”

Sergeant Thomas strode down the dusty path, screaming. Behind him he left a dusty tornado of scrambling soldiers.  God damn, I think I’m getting an officer stiffy.

“Call this in. I want air on station in five minutes, ready to pound shit flat. Fuckheads if they’re there, Mumbles if they’re not.”

“And get fucking Mumbles back on. I want words with him.”

***

Five minutes later, four Humvees raced across the sere ground, leaving the base and the Afghan village behind. A line of dusty green marked the line of the river. All around the heights towered above, beautiful and a vast hiding place for the armed and disgruntled.

The men were tight; watchful and alert. I gave the map to the corporal. He could read it. “Fuck!” I screamed as my head almost tagged the dash, and my Humvee almost assfucked the Humvee in front. “Why the fuck we stop?” I looked around, saw nothing. I grabbed my carbine and unassed the Humvee.

Doubting Thomas peered down range through his Zeiss binoculars. “Sup’, Thomas?”

“Sir, have the locals started growing bigger camels?”

“Aah, negative. Do I want to know why you ask?”

Thomas let loose a shallow sigh. “You’re gonna hate this sir.”

“What!”

“There’s a column of brontosauruses or whatever the fuck. They’ve got swastikas on them.”

“You are fucking with me.” Thomas handed me the glasses. It took me a second to focus, but Holy Mother of Shit.

“You forgot to mention all the artillery on their backs.”

“I was getting to that,” Thomas said. “And if I’m not mistaken, those are a couple Panzer IVs”

“Where the fuck did Mumbles find nazi dinosaurs? He’s praying to Elder Gods just to fuck with me.”

Two A-10s streaked overhead. Dennison handed me the radio.

***

Click here to get see all published episodes of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles.

The Really Big Idea: Chris Braid


A while back, of a Sunday I was feeling sick and out of sorts. I pulled out the phone and started reading my twitter feed. I saw a tweet pimping a zombie book. Zombies, I thought. Just the thing for a rainy sick Sunday. So I went and bought it. (And so I am living proof that social media works to get books into the hands of readers.)

And it’s fun. Also grim, bloody, British and filled with zombies. Here’s Chris Braid to explain:

Going Viral

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t read. Encouraged by parents and grandparents I would more often than not walk around with a comic book or paperback stuffed into my back pocket, ready to be whipped out and perused at a moment’s notice. At least, as soon as I started wearing trousers with pockets. (Mine was the last of the UK’s ‘short trouser’ generation; being given and allowed to wear full-length trousers with pockets was seen as a rite of passage. Thank the Lord that times change!)

But I digress. I do that a lot.

viral

It seemed a natural progression to go from reading almost anything I could get my hands on to writing. The first few ‘books’ I wrote were when I had just become a teenager. They were a series of detective novels whose hero, Wes Chisel, just might have been inspired by Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. (It was surely coincidence that I was collecting – and reading – all of Spillane’s books at the time!) But what I really wanted to write was fantasy; I just didn’t know it yet.

I’d taken a break from Wes Chisel’s latest case to read the most recent issue of Marvel Comic’s Savage Sword of Conan comic. Yet again I noticed that almost every one of the QNS’s† letters referred to a book called The Lord of the Rings. Which I had often heard of but never read.

This time I decided to do something about it. I got hold of a pretty tidy copy from a local second-hand bookshop. Luckily it was the summer holidays. I read the whole thing in two sittings and spent the next three days wondering around like a zombie (I liked zombies, even a thirteen year old schoolboy had a chance against a zombie, as opposed to a werewolf or vampire!) due to lack of sleep.

Sorry, more digression. I did warn you.

The upshot was that Wes Chisel got fitted for concrete overboots and a veritable rainforest of exercise books were filled up with lots of sub-Tolkien …well, garbage, actually. Not long after I discovered that there were aliens living among us and a couple of years after that, aged 16, I joined the army as a boy soldier.

Fast forward a couple of decades. I’m still a soldier but far, far away from being a boy and I’ve married my own special alien (I’d found out that the species were known as “girls” and they were even more alien than I had ever imagined!). I’m undergoing a protracted stay in hospital with little to occupy myself apart from read the mountain of books supplied by my alien, sorry wife, when I realize that some of them are…not very good. When I mention this, I am told. “Well if you think you can do any better…” So I tried. And I tried. And I kept trying.

And got nowhere.

All I had to show for my efforts was a mountain of rejection letters. All containing the advice to, “Write about what you know!” But I didn’t know any elves. Or Dragons. Or wizards. Oh I knew a few Rangers, but they were not that sort of Ranger. And then Santa brought me a Kindle.

I was out of the army, with time on my hands. I went into a feeding frenzy. Books for Free? I’ll have some of that! And some of that. And that, and that and…well, you get the picture. I spent so much time with my nose buried in my Kindle I was walking about like a Zombie again. And then it hit me. I didn’t know elves but I knew soldiers; and surely the essence of a Zombie was not that they were the risen dead but that they were mindlessly driven to infect the living.

It was the “mindlessly” bit that finally helped the pieces slot into place. The so-called Zombies (or infected) cannot help the way they act; they are driven by their infection. It isn’t their fault! But the others, the people who knowingly, even joyously, prey on weaker, less fortunate humans, well they are the real monsters. And so The Virus Sequence was born. I’m not saying that Zombies (or infected) are cuddly or anything, don’t get me wrong. But they can’t help what they are doing. The “Black Hats” can. They know that what they are doing is wrong. They just don’t care.

† QNS (Quite ‘Nuff Sayer) – someone who has had a letter printed in a Marvel Comic.

Buy Book: amazon

Follow the author’s wife on twitter

Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis (Part Six)

The last of the feldgrau-clad, plus-sized velociraptors cruised by, their toes seeming barely to touch the ground as they ran. Jesus fuck they are fast, I thought as I rolled up and trained my carbine on their backs. I flicked the giggle switch to “fun” and opened up.

I saw little flowers of red appear in the grey wool as the bullets stitched across the dinosaur’s backs. Three of them dropped, faceplanting in the gravel trail, their tiny forearms flailing. Their tails lashed in the air as they struggled to stand. Two more bursts settled them down nicely. I dropped mag, reloaded, and let loose again.

The other Nazi lizards were slowly becoming aware of the error of their mistake. At a shouted command from the Feldwebel, they skidded to a stop, and then things got ugly. Slow on the uptake, sure; but once they got something in their heads they were wicked fast. Half the lizards twisted around like ballerinas with tails, quick and with a liquid grace. A half-dozen fat-barreled machine pistols zeroed in on my noggin. They opened fire as I tried to hug dirt.

My squad, showing remarkable and for them completely out of character presence of mind, took advantage of the change in Nazi plans drop a frag into the midst of the dinosaurs. This was a good plan for them, as it stood an even chance of inflicting casualties on something and did not expose them to fire. I covered my head with my arms and waited for the detonation.

The dinosaurs obviously recognized their danger, they scattered. Or rather, tried to scatter and then got scattered by the explosion. I rolled to one knee and fired at every dino still standing. In a few seconds, it was over. I stood there with a smoking barrel, looking at a pile of dinosaur steaks. Ramirez stood up from behind the Leutnant Bohm, looking around him in awe.

“You can come out now,” I said. My squad came out from behind the rock. “Who tossed the frag?” I asked.

“Buckshot did.” Bunch of girls, tattling on each other. I looked over at Buckshot, 6’ 4” of muscle and libido. And several ounces of buckshot in his left rear cheek from not getting out of a preacher’s daughter’s bedroom fast enough. TSA fucking hates him.

I smacked him in the helmet, hard. “Who the fuck else was on the other side of the rock, dumbass?”

“Sorry, sergeant.” Damn but he sounded like Chef from South Park. I couldn’t stay mad at the sorry son of a bitch, he just sounded too fucking cool.

“Right, anyone wounded?” a frantic patting of chest and groin revealed no obvious injuries.

Richardson and Arechiga were laying out James and the Cherry, collecting tags and closing their eyes. Fuck. Damn. Idaho. Funny guy, thick skin.  Stood by me through some weird and scary shit. No more pranks.  No more fucked up songs.  And now, I wouldn’t be able to kill the Cherry for calling me Sarge.

I waved Ramirez and Buckshot over. I pointed at the dead lizards. Their spotted tongues drooped out of slack jaws, and they kinda curled up backwards around their spines in death like they were inside-out armadillos. “Rifle through that shit. Bag any thing that looks valuable, or interesting. Especially maps, papers.”

I bent down and picked up one of the machine pistols. It was heavy, stamped metal construction. All in black, just like the MP-40 my great granddad brought back from the big one, and which four successive generations of my family had completely forgotten to register with any federal agency. It looked like an MP-40, too. Straight magazine a bit forward from the trigger, wire folding stock, simple iron sights. The trigger guard was bigger, though. To accommodate the claws? The pistol-grip was shaped a bit odd, too, but lifting it up, I could have operated it easily enough.

So I did. Weird, I thought. The charging lever was on the left. Are dinosaur nazis all southpaws? I reached over the top with my right hand and racked the lever. It’s a gun, alright. I aimed down the trail and pulled the trigger.

***

Click here to get see all published episodes of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles.

Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis (Part Five)

I dropped prone because I expected incoming fire from at least three directions. Bohm’s screech still echoed as I hit the dirt, and fucking good thing I did, as he ran right through the space I had just occupied. His tail hit me on the head, and it was no happy labrador tail. I rolled to the right and brought up my M4, trying to track the Leutnant. He was a tiger-striped blur of motion as he cleared 30 mph and then hit the gas. He ploughed into Idaho, opened him up with one savage kick. Bohm snapped his jaws to the left and ripped out the Cherry’s throat. Blood poored from between the dinosaur’s teeth and ran down the scales of his neck.

I opened fire. I put three rounds into Bohm’s back, and then backed the fuck up. The rest of my squad opened up, and a fusillade of rounds hit the dinosaur Soldaten. Several dropped, letting out a god-awful cacophony of sound as they fell. Equip a tree full of eagles with 500-watt amplfiers and it couldn’t be worse.

Our mystery sniper joined the fun, taking pot shots at my men and the Nazis. He couldn’t seem to hit shit, though, so fuck him, I thought. I reverse crab-walked up the hill and, hopefully, out of the cross fire. Everyone had cover but me, which was so cosmically wrong I could barely process it.

Ramirez hid behind the still-twitching body of the Leutnent, firing blindly and ineffectually over the corpse. The rest of the squad had prudently retired behind the rock.

The dinosaur Nazis opened fire. Either they’re really slow on the uptake, or their mini-Fuhrer hadn’t briefed them on combat zone ettiquette. Their pistols couldn’t have much range, short-barreled as they were. I held perfectly still.

Bullets panged off the rock, throwing chips and dust into the air. The occasional .223 round came back, but not in any sort of quantity that could ease my mind. The nazi dinosaur second in command shouted in German. Two of the dinosaur soldaten moved up. The first carried what looked like an RPG launcher, and sure enough, the other carried a small rocket. The gunner crouched, tucked the bulky tube under his arm, then rested the weapon on his knee. No shoulders, right, I thought.

The loader pushed the rocket into the back and ducked out of the backblast zone. He tapped the gunner on the shoulder with his tiny hand as he gracefully spun away. The gunner pulled the trigger and a gout of flame and smoke enveloped him.

BOOM. The rocket hit the rock and detonated. Ramirez cried out as his legs got peppered with rock fragments. All the rifle barrels that had poked up from behind the rock vanished.

The dinosaur sergeant shouted, “Stürm!” and the entire bunch took off like a herd of turbocharged, crack-addled antelopes, screeching all the while and firing from the hip.

Feldwebel, I thought. That’s the German word for sergeant.

***

***

Click here to get see all published episodes of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles.

Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis (Part Four)

“Americans?” the Leutnant asked.

“Yes.”

The dinosaur didn’t have expressions, his face was immobile. Bohm’s only real options were bugging out his eyes and dropping his mouth open. Which he did, and that made him look like a nightmarish, scaly, fascist version of Ramirez.

I didn’t like that train of thought.

“Ve vere informed… Zat ze Americaner…” he trailed off into silence. Not tracking. Operation Mindfuck achieves operational readiness! How long it will work I have no fucking clue, I thought. I sensed the men behind me getting nervous. Time for phase two, intelligence gathering.

“I note that you are dinosaurs.”

“Ve are loyal citizens of ze Fifth Reich. Sieg Heil!” His little arm shot up in the air like a five year old that really, really knows the answer to a question. Kinda cute, really; if surreal as all fuck.

I guess that hit a chord, though. “I do not question your zeal, Leutnant Bohm, though others might.”

Bohm cocked his head again, cute puppy fashion. “Vat are you doing in zese mountains! Vat is your name?” The Leutnant raised his stubby machine pistol. The barrel was disturbingly wide.

“As I told you, Leutnant Bohm, I am Subcommandante Mumbles. And we are the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios Del Sendero Luminoso Y Entocinado,” I explained.

“Sendero Luminoso Y Entocinado!” I shouted, scaring the cherry and Ramirez. “And we will not rest until the running dog libertarian ancaps are vanquished! We have a saying, Leutnant. ‘Pueden tomar nuestres vidas, pero nunca nuestro tocino.”

“Nunca Jamas!” my men shouted on cue. The dinosaurs started, and they all raised their guns. Maybe… going a little too far. And I just ran out of Spanish.

“Are you here to fight the Americans!” I asked.

The nazi dinosaur uncocked its head. “Ve establish a foothold for ze Reich, and ze Vaterland’s glorious return!”

“So, you’re fighting the Americans?”

“Ve vill destroy all who resist.”

Okay, that sucks all ass. And I thought traipsing up and down the mountains of assfuckistan with nothing but a smile on my face and murderous thoughts in my head was just perfect. I had no idea what perfection was. Perfection is staring straight into the jagged-toothed, scaly mouth of the vanguard of a fascist invasion backed up by nothing more than a baker’s dozen of mouthbreathing 4th ID fucktards.

Breathtaking.

“Well, Leutnant Bohm, I would like to be among the first to welcome our new lizard overlords. My men can lead you straight to the hiding places of the perfidious Americaner!”

“Sendero Luminoso Y Entocinado!” I proclaimed again, and the lizards started again. They didn’t seem to like loud noises, but their eyes tracked movement like a hawk. And if my geek nephew is right, it’s because they’re cousins.

Maybe this will work. Maybe. If I can get the dinosaur nazis down into the valley, then Hounddog would have to believe me. Shit, what am I saying? He’s perfectly capable of disbelieving things right in front of him. Fuck this for a joke. God hates me, he does, I know it.

Pwang! A bullet ricocheted off the rock. A second later, I heard a distant report. No, now God hates me.

The Leutnant Bohm opened his mouth and roared. His tongue was spotted like a Chow’s. Hey, a small part of my brain, you can use that next time you call Hounddog. That mouth was fucking huge, and it contained at least eleventy-billion teeth. Bohm roared. And funny, it sounded exactly like Jurassic park.

***

Click here to get see all published episodes of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles.

Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis (Part Three)

The nazi dinosaurs were getting closer. The Cherry spoke out. “What do we do Sarge?”

“Shoot it, fuck it or eat it,” Dumbfucker said. PFC Buck Tucker. AKA Buck Tucker the Dumbfucker, and the world’s most outstanding black redneck.

“That describes all your human relationships, Dumbfucker.” Jesus H Tap-dancing Christ. “I will allow that does seem to cover the range of possibilities.”

“Shut your whore mouth, Cherry,” I said, just to forestall a gout of idiocy.

“I suppose, us being in the Army and all and therefore completely fucked up, we should attempt to communicate with them and avoid WWIII.”

I paused, registering the blank incomprehension on the faces of the soldiers in my command.

“And when that fails, we can shoot them.”

I thought furiously. What would be the best way to initiate communications with nazi dinosaurs? Fuck, all we ever talk about is zombies. If they were zombie nazi dinosaurs, I’d know exactly what the fuck to do. Well, there’s only eighteen of them. We’re outnumbered. But they have tiny arms.

That evens things out, doesn’t it? Shit! What if they have the Ark of the Covenant or some shit? Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.”

***

PFC James walked around the rock carrying a white flag. Well, a whitish sheet on a stick. I neglected to ask why it was no longer white in splotches.

I followed, M4 at the low ready. As soon as we cleared the rock, the nazi dinosurs saw us. Maybe fucking Spielberg was right about the motion sensing. Thirty-six cold, yellow, cat-like lizard eyes locked in on us like gunsights. The lead dinosaur held up its tiny, clawed hand. The others raised their suspiciously MP-40esque guns.

“Wave the flag, Idaho.” James dutifully wiggled the sheet a little.

I stepped forward. “Identify yourselves!” Better than, ‘take me to your leader,’ I thought. I kept my carbine pointed at the stony path, though my hands really, really wanted to point it at a lizard.

The lead lizard had fancy striped tabs on his slight, sloping shoulders. Officer, I guessed. The officer nazi dinosaur kept walking. The backwards articulation of his legs made his movements eerie as fuck. A fucking giant, predatory, featherless, chicken. And anti-Semite, no doubt. His head rotated from side to side as he regarded me first with one eye, then the other. The motion was smooth, almost robotic.

“Ich heiße Leutnant Boehm. Und wer sind Sie?”

Well, that sounded like German. With a weird, almost musical trilling undertone, though. His mouth barely moved when he talked, like he was a ventriloquist with an invisible dummy. Or maybe Ramirez.

“English?” Do you speak it, motherfucker?

“I… am… Lieutenant Boehm.”

Well, howdy lieutenant. It speaks English. With a distinct Nazi accent.

“Who am I speaking vith?” he asked.

“I am Subcommandante Mumbles. I lead the resistance in this valley.”

“Yes? Resistance to vat?”

“The Americans”

The dinosaur cocked its head like a confused puppy. No fucking way am I giving useful intelligence to a fucking swastika-wearing mammal-killer.

***

Click here to get see all published episodes of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles.

Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis (Part Two)

No fucking shit. I’d skooched up to where the trail bent around to the right. I peered around the corner and there they fucking were.

“Ramirez!”

“Sergeant?”

“You forgot to mention the fucking swastikas.”

“Sorry, sergeant.” For once, I was willing to cut the stupid fucker some slack. I mean, shit, dinosaurs with guns is usually going to be the high point of your day.

“Subcommandante?”

“What!” Get drunk once and say you’re going to overthrow the President and they’ll never let it go.

“Do we have ROE for nazi dinosaurs?”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that it falls under ‘permissive’. If the goose-stepping lizards fire on you, shoot the fuck back and let the State Department sort it out.”

I took another look. Jesus fuck that’s creepy. “My nightmares aren’t keeping up with my reality,” I muttered. They marched in step, but with none of the rigidity of your stereotypical fascist goose-stepper. It was hard to judge scale, but damn me if they weren’t man-height. My little brother was all pissy when Jurassic Park made the velociraptors too big. So they can’t be that.

Tails whipped back and forth like an agitated cat’s. Their heads were long and constantly tracking back and forth. Despite the swagger to their walk, those teeth-filled heads stayed perfectly level, not bouncing up and down like a bird’s. Tiger-striped, scaly skin and yellow eyes, check. If that thing can look me in the eye without standing on its tippy-toes, it’s got to be at least twelve feet from nose to tail, I guessed.

So far, so discovery channel. The Fritz helmets in black with red swastikas on each side were a distinct departure. Feldgrau uniform jackets and no pants, okay, that makes sense. Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS, I wonder? The standard-bearer carried a Roman-style eagle banner with a bright red Nazi flag in his tiny arms. Machine pistols and Panzerfaust completed the theme.

The dinosaurs were still maybe a klick out. Fuck me.

“Idaho! Radio!”

Corporal James was from Maine, but he did like potatoes. He brought up the handset. I looked around at my squad. “I have been fearing this moment for my entire life,” I said. I picked up the radio.

“Hounddog Base this is Poodle, over.” Fuck the lieutenant and his radio call signs.

“Poodle, Hounddog Actual.”

Shit, Lieutenant Hounddog hissown self. “Chihauha Actual, possible hostiles. Location 1000 meters north-northwest our position. Unknowns appear to be Nazi Dinosaurs. Over.”

“Poodle, say again all after Unknowns. Over.”

“Wiernerdog Actual, I say again, Nazi Dinosaurs. November, Alfa, Zulu, India. Fucking Nazis. Fucking Dinosaur Nazis.”

“ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH MUMBLES?”

I dropped the mike. “That went well, I think.”

***

Click here to get see all published episodes of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles.

Subcommandante Mumbles v. The Dinosaur Nazis (Part 1)

Call me mumbles. Why, you ask? Because I fucking told you to.

I was humping up this hill in shitbagistan, heavy load and thin air. I could hear the cherry private wheezing behind me. Wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up, but it just wasn’t worth the effort.

I heard the soft, echoing tick of a rock bouncing down the hill somewhere ahead. I held up, and the cherry bounced right into the back of me. I strained my ears, but didn’t hear anything more. The air was clear and cold. The sere mountainsides were resplendent in a kaleidoscope of colors ranging from shit brown to shit brown. We were up about five hundred meters from the valley floor, and the observation post was two klicks ahead. On the same level, but we’d have to go up and down at least a 1000 meters to get there. God forbid the trail follow the contour lines or anything.

From here, the whole valley stretched out below. A piss-poor excuse for a river meandered down the middle of it, not worth more than a creek back home. Two villages anchored either end. The residents hated each other, the next valley over, us, and the Taliban in descending order of fucked-up homicidal rage. Hatfields and McCoys with burqas, boy-buggery and opium.

I sensed the cherry about to open his stupid whore mouth. “Shut up!” I hissed. Couldn’t hear anything. Fuck this for a joke, I thought. I waved our little relief column forward. There’d been no reports of enemy activity for most of a month. The last, our lieutenant had been pleased to report, was over a fortnight ago. Fuck him and his word-builder vocabulary cards.

The fucktards from the lead platoon who were now probably sleeping in the OP hadn’t reported anything either. But then, they’d have only noticed if the Mahdi snuck into their sleeping bag and started pissing in their mouths. Fucking 4th ID. I heard the ticking noise again. This time the cherry managed to avoid a collision when I stopped. The longer between contact, the worse it always is.

I waved Ramirez up the hill. If he got up just a little bit, he’d be able to see over the hump the trail turned around as it followed the slope. Me, I just waited and identified likely bits of cover for every conceivable line of attack.

“Fuck!”

The cry echoed out into the vast space between our ridge and fucking Siberia. Ramirez was running and sliding down the hill, kicking up dust and rocks. We all turned our heads and let the mini-spicalanche bounce off our body armor and helmets. Ramirez skidded to a stop. His eyes were wide in his tanned face, almost bugging out. He looked goddamned ridiculous.

“Given up on stealth, have we Ramirez?”

“No, sergeant. I mean, yes, sergeant.”

“Glad we cleared that up. Can I ask why came careening down the hill instead of using the fucking radio?”

That gave him pause. He pondered that for a good long while, in fact. The hamster in its exercise wheel slowed and coasted to a stop. Ramirez looked merely blank and stupid again instead of panicked, blank and stupid.

“Sergeant?”

“Ramirez, why did you yell, ‘fuck’ and come running down the hill?”

He screwed himself up. “Dinosaurs.”

“OK.” Why me? Why, why, why?

“Were they the big plant eatering fuckers or the ones with the big sharp teeth?”

“Uh… the teethy kind.”

“Did you get a count?”

“Eighteen of them, sergeant.”

Holy shit. He listened, bless his heart. “Were they armed?”

“Small arms and what looked like RPGs.”

***

This is a short sample of “Call Me Mumbles” – the first episode of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis. Click here to get see all published episodes.

Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis

This is a silly story. I admit. Some friends were joking around and one line caught me funny – and this story was born. I’ll post one section each day, about 500 words a pop. Enjoy.

P.S. Click here to get see all published episodes of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles.