The Veil War

Human and velociraptor Nazis poured over the smoking wreckage of the Landkreuzer P.1000.

“Light the fuckers up!” Hounddog ordered. Everyone was still staring at the growing, rose-tinted mushroom cloud.

“Mushroom clouds are radioactive, right?” Fister asked.

“OPEN FUCKING FIRE!” Hounddog shouted. The platoon and the lieutenant lit into the fascist horde; the platoon with moderate effectiveness and the Lieutenant with none. Remarkable how someone could have such perfect form and so little accuracy, I thought.

The human Nazis were still gathering themselves up from the ground at the foot of the massive tank when the velociraptor Soldaten blew by them accelerating to ludicrous speed and quite jumping my alertness level to sphincter factor nine in the process. The grisly memory of what those claws and teeth did to Idaho popped into my head with a red flag attached. Oh, and they had guns, too.

I concentrated my fire on them. We may have won the battle when the gate blew, but these fuckers clearly hadn’t seen the Power Point deck. I dropped one, it squealed like a chicken-pig-lizard and face. I acquired another target and fired, and another. I saw grenades detonating amongst the human Nazis in the rear.

The last dinosaur snout skidded, lifeless, to just barely touch the toe of my left boot. I stared at it for a second. He looked kind of hapless with his head flat on the sandy road, beady eyes still open and tiny arms stretching back.

Fister tapped my shoulder and I exhaled. “What?”

“There’s more on the other side,” he said.

“Han Solo charge?”

“Sounds good.”

***

Hounddog and I surveyed the wreckage of the Nazi armor column. AT-4s and random explosives, rockets and a fortuitous visit from Goatlicker and his tank-killing plane had done for all of them. A dispirited line of primate and dinosaur Nazis headed back up the road to the crater where the gate had briefly manifested itself.

“Some day the Army’s going to figure out what a fuck up you are and pull your card. If no one lets you shoot people, you’re know you’re fucked, right?”

“It’s part of my life plan. My high school guidance counselor helped me write it.”

The lieutenant extended the prophetic finger of accusation. “Mumbles, you’re going to end up living in a box under an overpass back in Pittsburgh.”

“I’ll have two boxes.”

***

Hounddog left to police up the platoon. I watched the rocks in the crater pop and smoke. I waited. A huge, dense and black beard appeared before me. Tactical Beardman and the Chad followed it a moment later.

“Is this where you pull out the memory-eraser-thingy?” I asked.

Tactical Beardman laughed. “Fuck no. We prefer the more traditional methods.”

The Chad nodded grimly.

Beardman continued, “We set you up for life and ask you politely not to say anything. If you ever breathe a word we throw you in a deep, dank Turkish prison. You’ll see sunlight every other leap year. You’ll have a single, small-pox infected blanket and every day you’ll be fed a single bowl of thin, boiled chickpea and onion soup. And a large, very hairy and astonishingly virile Turk named Mustapha will assrape you every hour on the hour. If Mustapha is feeling ill, Chad will break into the prison and assrape you for him.”

“Nothing personal,” The Chad said.

“Uh, sure,” I said.

“Anyway, that’s not for you.” Tactical Beardman looked up at the sky, like he was examining the clouds’ entrails for omens.

“You’ll get kicked out of the Army in the next week or so.” I felt like I’d been gut punched by an Apatosaurus. It must have shown on my face.

“But don’t take it too hard. Show up at this address in a month or so.” He handed me a business card with nothing on it but an address in Pittsburgh. “And there’s this.” He handed over a credit card. “That’s got some juice on it. Your signing bonus.”

The Chad took a single step forward. Jesus, how do you get to be so menacing? Are there classes for that? He looked at me and said, “Don’t say no.”

“Right.”