“Holy shit…” I whispered under my breath. I paused on the CD I had found in the stack, trying not to reveal my enthusiasm to the local merchant. It was a clear case with a labelless CD-ROM inside that had the words poorly written in Sharpie: Green Day.

I surreptitiously lifted the case, trying to keep as neutral of an expression as possible as I opened it and removed the disc to inspect the opposite side for scratches. It looked like shit. I replaced the disc and snapped the case shut.

“Player?” I asked the Arizonasaurus, using my hand to mime the archaic technology I was looking for. I had nothing to put the CD in if I bought it. I scoured his table and spotted it: A shitty, beat-up clamshell CD player. There were no headphones or speakers, but it was a great start. It had been months before I heard anything resembling real music.

I pointed at the CD player, and the merchant followed my finger.

“Ohhhh,” he said, nodding. “Fifty.”

“What? Fuck you. Ten.”

He let out a breathy growl and regressed to his native tongue, snatching the CD from my hands and replacing it hastily in the tray with the others.

“Fine,” I said. “Twenty.”

He pointed at the CD, the player, and me. “This, this, skinnie. Forty.”

This actual motherfucker. Of course, the only English words he knows are insults. And they tell us to be “culturally sensitive.”

Despite my rage, I retrieved my wallet and withdrew thirty US dollars. The paper could’ve been gold to the man; he didn’t notice I had shorted him until I was fifty meters away from him, deeply immersed in the crowd. Fuck them locals, man.

We were in the village of “Who Knows” conducting operation “I Forgot.” The Platoon Sergeant, Farcy, was meeting with the village elder while the rest of us putted around and “kept our eyes out for insurgents.” It was a rare opportunity to explore the racist local marketplace. The alleyway they hosted the market in was covered by tarps hastily drawn between the two-story rooftops. The rain hadn’t ceased, and the tarps didn’t stop it, but it made the air breathable and reduced the breadth of the shower to a few heavy waterfalls that penetrated deeply into the mud at the corners of some buildings. At least the merchandise was dry enough to still be sold. I hoped we had a way to play the CD.

“Bravo, sound off, SITREP please,” came the call over my radio. Another check-in from Klepp. We weren’t very far separated from each other, but the dense and unpredictable market made one man keeping track of three impossible.

“Olson, green, at the Northernmost rug stall.”

“Rodriguez, headed to regroup w-”

“Woah, woah, woah, who the fuck is Rodriguez? I don’t know anybody-”

Olson’s razzing was overlaid by a staticky, exasperated sigh from Rodriguez. The day prior, the poor ankylosaurus thought he had found a tripwire, and he didn’t want to wait for EOD, so he cut it himself with his multitool. It turned out to be a live electrical wire.

“This is Sparky,”

“Ahhhh, there it is-”

“FUCK YOU Olson, you didn’t t-”

“Aaahahahaha…”

And just like that, I was at home again, listening to a post-game lobby of Rock Ring on the XRox. I adjusted the volume knob on my radio and headed in their direction, chuckling at the nostalgic misconduct I was happy to not be complicit in. It was a breath of fresh air— the unit had been in poor spirits since Goose died a little over two weeks prior. Everybody sort of realized that the war was pointless and that it wasn’t worth our lives.

Farcy disagreed. “We are making a difference,” he’d say in a poorly-stifled but still unidentified accent. “Iraqis can live normal lives because of us.”

I walked through the crowd of dinos of various colors, all dulled by the invasive mud and dust. The locals were usually Triassic dinos— anything with a hump on its back to store water in the desert, among a collection of other lizards.

I finally arrived with the others, and Klepp immediately turned and walked away, leading us to the building Farcy was occupying. Two other teams were already present; one was posted on the corners of the two-story mud hut, and another was holding security from the inside windows on both floors. I could barely see them peering out the windows. Just as we had barely arrived, Klepp paused and lowered his head— the tell that he was receiving a radio transmission. He relaxed after a few seconds and turned to us.

“To the vic,” he said, and we changed direction to march to the humvees. Alpha team began filing out of the building behind us, followed by Farcy, who had a cigarette in his beak and a manila folder in his hand. Trish trailed closely behind, her rifle snugly hung against the front of her chestplate, and she checked the corners outside the building. Paranoid, much? I thought. She must’ve felt a little protective of the Platoon Sergeant she was assigned to, when really it was his job to protect her as the medic.

Trudging through the rain, we made it to our vehicles and shut the doors on ourselves, happily taking a load off in the seats. Klepp shut his door last in the driver’s seat.

“Return to base?” I asked.

“Probably.”

The engine roared to life, and so began our favorite pastime: Hurry up and wait.

“Hey Olson, you think we could plug a CD player into the vehicle radio somewhere?” I asked loudly over the sound of the poorly maintained engine.

The dark-purple stegosaurus turned from the front seat and looked down at my device. “Oh, nice! Yeah, I think so— saw some guys do this before; you gotta splice the left and right wires into here.” he said, pointing to the bottom of the box that hung from the back of his seat.

“What CD did you get?”

“Green Day, apparently.”

He chuckled. “Not a chance it’s real, then. At best, it’s a bootleg recorded from inside a store or something.”

I shrugged. “Took my chances, I guess. I used to love Green Day back in high school.”

I stripped the wires on the player and tinkered with the box for a while, and under Olson’s guidance, I finally managed to get the strands of copper screwed down under their metal clamps with the awkward Phillips head on my multitool.

“What are you up to down there?” Rodriguez noticed the commotion but couldn’t see what we were doing from the gunner’s nest.

“Getting some tunes rolling, Sparky!” Olson replied. The fuzzy sound of the CD began to come across the vehicle’s radio speakers before clearing up and continuing. “Hell yeah!” Olson cheered as the sounds came across.

“¡No mames!” Rodriguez shouted, laughing as the two front-seaters began enjoying the enthusiastic rock music.

We heard the unmistakable chirp of an incoming radio transmission pierce the music. Everyone panicked.

“Shit!” Olson whipped around in his seat and started grasping at wires. Klepp practically dove into the backseat to disable the source of the music, and I pressed “Pause.” Olson ripped the cables out of the radio, and Klepp was snatching the CD player from my hands when the music stopped, and we all froze.

“—POI Grandpa in a compound fifteen clicks West. He won’t be here long, break…” We all held perfectly still. “Six said we can go get him. First vic will lead the way. Begin movement, out.”

We took a collective sigh of relief. That was a damn important transmission. We returned to our seats, and Klepp began the practiced maneuver: Forward, reverse, forward, reverse, then one more big burst of throttle forwards in first gear, and the mud released our vehicle.

“Finally, some fucking action,” Olson remarked. “It’s about time we take something to them, for a change.”

Grandpa was the nickname of a warlord who recruited local insurgents, informed the Al-Qaeda Insurgency, and was generally a pain in our ass. Nasty fucker, from what I’d heard. He was a real old chindesaurus with a thing for teenage girls— especially herbivores. Our interpreter met a guy whose daughter had been stolen by his people, once. Fucked poor Jerry up, man. We had wanted Grandpa for a while, so we were glad to finally take a crack at catching him, but we expected resistance.

The life I used to live suddenly flashed through my mind, along with all the people in it. They brought a sense of longing, and suddenly, I felt as if I had made a colossal mistake. I shook my head to dismiss the thoughts. They were a world away— from a different lifetime. I am the suck. I am mud. I am infantry, nothing more.

Klepp relayed the plan to us as we drove, pausing between sentences to receive more briefing over the radio from our squad leader, Scuz.

We arrived at the dismount point and hid our vehicles in an alleyway. The mud wasn’t as deep there, which would prove helpful. My team grouped up with Alpha while Charlie and Delta paired up, and we began the operation. Thank God they weren’t trying to negotiate. Somebody made the call to go dynamic from the beginning, which meant we weren’t giving the enemy a chance to barricade themselves.

“Charge is set.” Alpha team’s EOD guy, a red-orange raptor, had a reputation for over-packing explosive charges. The wooden door didn’t stand a chance.

The lips of his snout pulled back to reveal his sharp teeth with a sick grin. He turned his face upward, inhaled deeply, and let out his historic war cry:

“HOUSEKEEPIIIING—” An earth-shattering explosion muted his cry, reducing the thin wooden door to splinters and flinging mud into the air in all directions. The open doorway neared closer as our legs carried us to battle. It was nothing new, but nothing I could master. Such was the nature of the dance.

I stepped forward tentatively into the spotlight. Death approached, mirroring my advance with her arms agape. I took her hand with my left and wrapped my right around her waist. I gently leaned forward and began. My feet advanced courageously, and she mirrored my footwork in reverse to keep barely ahead. I concentrated: Left, right, left, sidestep right, and drag.

“It’s been too long,” she whispered, breaking formality by looking at me. I avoided her gaze. We stopped, changed directions, and began the movement again. “We should mix it up a little…”

A closet door burst open, and thunder erupted from the muzzle of my rifle.

“I’m only a beginner,” I replied. “Go easy on me…”

Death giggled softly, changing direction by my lead. “You’re doing well.”

The music lulled as we completed a few repetitions and changed leads. She stepped forward with masterful poise, and I retreated, matching her speed to stay just out from under her feet.

“Take the stairs. On you.” I felt a hand firmly pat my shoulder twice. I noticed a bead of sweat fall from my bald head. My tuxedo grew horribly hot.

“Try to keep up,” she whispered with a devilish smile. The music quickened, we flew across the dance floor, and she threw me into a lean, hovering her face inches from mine, before pulling me up. She whipped her head in the direction from which we came and began to lead me, sailing back across the floor. I felt the edge of my shoe land on the toe of her heel.

I jolted forward with a burst of pain as a gunshot echoed in our tiny room, followed by several more.

“It hit your plate, Mouse, you’re good!”

“You need practice,” Death whispered, gazing up at me with a wide smile. She allowed me to retake the lead and followed me around the ballroom. I regressed to my basic steps, and she allowed it momentarily. Finally, I had a chance to breathe.

“We can’t keep doing this,” I said softly.

She smiled. “It’s what you signed up for, handsome. Two more years.” She paused as we dragged our feet together at the end of the motion before repositioning to begin the next. “You’re boring me.”

“Fine,” I said. “You keep up, then.” I took Death floating over the dance floor, and we began revolving around each other with wide steps and splayed feet. I was way out of my depth. She giggled happily as she raised her chin to the ceiling and let her straightened hair flow. The song was nearing a close.

“Roof clear?” I shouted to Alpha, who had proceeded up the third flight of stairs.

The music reached a crescendo, and I leveraged my weight against my partner as I threw her into a final lean and whipped my head in the opposite direction, holding her in place. She leaned deeper and deeper, her hair brushing against the dry floor. I began to tip towards her as she grew heavier.

“Clear!”

I relaxed and addressed the pair of unknown Iraqi dinos in the corner of the room I had secured. Neither were old men or Chindesauruses, so they couldn’t have been Grandpa.

I reached for my radio: “Third floor has two unsubs, no jackpot.”

“Dry hole,” came the reply from Klepp.

For fuck’s sake.

Klepp climbed the stairs to the floor I was on and approached me. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes: “We did good, but you do not rush in alone like that. Death delights in the recklessness of men.”

I knew it. “Sorry, Klepp.”

“Don’t let it happen again,” he said, patting my shoulder reassuringly and returning to work.

Klepp double-checked all the civilians in the building, and after we were confident they weren’t a threat, we threw them outside, and they happily fled. The team filed out of our three-story, and I heard Klepp send a radio transmission to the other unit:

“Charlie Delta, this is Bravo, dry holes over here, do you need assistance? Over.” He paused to receive a response through his headset that I couldn’t hear. A smile grew on his face, and he looked at us.

“They got him.”

“Fuck yeah!” The members of Alpha celebrated the news.

The teams secured evidence, tallied the kills, and our new friend was brought to our vehicle because we were the only ones with an extra seat. It was like winning the Iraqi lottery: We earned the giant target on our backs.

Grandpa was a scraggly old man. He looked as disgusting as his reputation was, having feathers matted across his exposed body, and his face was covered in dried mud as if he had attempted to disguise himself.

“This is the guy? Seriously?” I asked.

“Any of you have a zip tie?” The Delta team leader loomed over us. He was a therezinosaurus who must’ve stood nine feet tall. He held the prisoner’s hands from his waist height. The walking truck ignored me and tossed Grandpa to the ground before us. Farcy personally accompanied his trophy, and Trish followed closely to observe.

“Got him,” Klepp replied, stepping over the crumpled elder and grabbing his wrists.

He lifted his beak: “You are making a mista—”

Klepp punctuated the monster’s sentence with a blow to the side of his head with his hard-knuckled glove, sending Grandpa to the ground again. The onlookers chuckled, our desires having been fulfilled. We all wanted a turn.

“Don’t fuckin’ speak to me,” Klepp growled. “Bag him.”

“We don’t have a blindfold,” I replied.

“Then what do we have?”

A few seconds of silence followed, and then Rodriguez chuckled mischievously from behind us. “A roll of duct tape!”
Klepp and I looked over at the ankylo, who held a four-inch-wide roll of black Gigantopithetape. Maximum strength.

Klepp looked up at Farcy, who stood with his arms crossed. “Farcy?”

“Yes?” The raptor replied.

“Can we use duct tape?”

“I… don’t care?”

Klepp grinned. “Wrap him up.” He leaned down to the earhole of the Iraqi whose beak was in the dirt. “Close your eyes if you want to keep ’em.”

Trish touched her headset momentarily before grabbing her radio microphone and stepping away from the group, beginning a radio transmission. I barely overheard her speech: “One-six, this is one-seven mike, send traffic for one-seven, over.”

She was running the radio for Farcy with command. Apparently, she was Farcy’s personal assistant, too.

The old man wailed as Rodriguez wrapped his head with duct tape, starting over his eyes, continuing in circles beneath his jaw, and repeatedly over the bridge of his snout. Klepp held the prisoner’s muzzle in place.

“That’ll be fun to take off later,” Olson remarked pessimistically.

“Yes, Olson,” Klepp said, satisfied with his handiwork. “Yes it will.” Rodriguez giggled happily.

We guided our prisoner back to our vehicle and stuffed him in the back seat. I sat to his right, and none of us spoke to him.

After we were all loaded into our vehicle, Klepp sent up his report: “Bravo set, over.”

For some reason we didn’t know, we began to wait.

“What’s the hold up?” Olson asked, and Klepp shrugged.

I turned around and peered out the back window at the vehicle behind us, where Farcy was. I saw him holding a long-range radio receiver and pausing momentarily before sending his own message.

“Bureaucrats,” I said. “Can’t move a muscle until they’ve written a book.”

“What’s he doin’?” Rodriguez asked, getting nervous himself.

“I think he’s talking with six,” I reported.

The vehicle radio lit up: “Begin movement.”

There we go, I thought. The vehicles began to move, and we got comfortable.

We slowly worked our way through the city, and as we exited the outskirts, I saw a sarcosuchus in the distance looking at our convoy with a pair of binoculars. He was dressed in a typical civilian’s garb. Huh, I thought. Since when is American presence a spectacle to them?

The world went black.

As if a switch had been flipped, there were no more sounds, no more sights, and no smells or feelings. I looked around, and behind me, I saw a window with a wooden frame and simple white curtains drawn to the sides. Through it, I saw myself climbing into the Humvee and Klepp shoving Grandpa into the opposing seat.

“What happened next?”

I looked around, searching for where to go next. I knew my story shouldn’t end there, but I couldn’t find the next scene.

I climbed into the Humvee.

“What happened after you entered the Humvee?”

I… I awoke. Right?

“What led up to that?”

…

“The morons swapped backpacks and now they’re best friends or something.” Surprised, I looked back at Trish, who had a slight smirk. My fear grew. I gotta get out of here.

“Yeah. That,” I said, “and now I’m gonna go grab my lunch so-”

Reed cut me off. “We can go grab some together.”

“Well, if we can’t get out of here, at least we can die together, right?” My lunch tray was a rifle, and I looked up at Goose.

“Not helping.”

He chuckled, and another high-caliber bullet thundered into the concrete wall beside us, startling us both into hitting the ground.

“Air support’s on the way; two mikes and the fucker’ll be cleared out!” Klepp reported, having to yell to be heard over the sound of the burning Humvee outside the building.

“You ever feel like you just don’t matter…?” The silence of Volcaldera Bluffs deafened me. Fang’s eyes were empty as they looked out at the scene we shared. The city and coastline glistened with dreamlike serenity as the cars and street life slowly wormed their way between the city blocks. From our vantage point on the roof, we could see: Life went on for everyone else, but for us… we were still.

“Being weak is nothing to be ashamed of,” I assured her. “Staying weak is. You don’t have to do it alone…” My arms found their way between the stalks of her wings, and her claws lightly indented the back of my shirt. Briefly, I worried about the blood that would stain my clothes, but it mattered so much less than her.

I stood in the embrace with Fang, taking in the scent of her freshly laundered crop top that was occasionally interrupted by the gentle coastal breeze. The sunlight on the rooftop spotlighted her angelic white, shiny feathers and gently warmed my skin. The hem of my jacket flowed silently in the wind, serving as the only motion between us— the sole reminder that time marched ever forwards. For seconds that felt like hours, we were two souls. Just… breathing. Together.

I noticed a sound begin to arise. It sounded almost like white noise but with a much deeper tone. It was there, but it also wasn’t at the same time. I couldn’t place where I had heard it from, but it sounded familiar.

A heartbeat thumped in my head. It wasn’t my own— It was soft yet hastened, like it was trying desperately to come off as calm and relaxed despite knowing what terrible future lay ahead. I recognized it as a heartbeat I loved; a heartbeat I wouldn’t hear again.

The sound grew in intensity. It was the sound of death.

“You can do it. Try to remember.”

The voice was quieter. I no longer had eyes or ears. There was both light and dark, both mind-splitting loudness and perfect silence, and as I lost control, I began to fade away.

I struggled to push out the last thought that would compete with the noise.

“We might not see each other again…”

A crow sounded in the distance, and the woman I loved looked at me with a heartbroken longing. We had come to the end of the line.

“I’ll never forget you, Lucy.”

…

I awoke, face down, in dark red sand. Death dragged me from my shattered body, and I began sinking into the deep.

A figure approached me through the blackness. Her gaze pierced through me, and I remained unmoving.

“Judgment, karma… No…” She cocked her head curiously, her eyes lit up, and a surprised smile grew on her face.

“Maybe a second chance.”

I awake face up in a white room, and my lungs fill with air.

My chest balloons up as I inhale, and my body feels like I’ve been set on fire. Tears fall from my face as I’m overwhelmed with grief. I’m alive.

“Auuughh, fuck, fuck…” I wail. My nerves are overwhelmed by the feeling of the air on my skin. My clothes feel like sandpaper.

A pterodon woman rushes to my side and quickly attempts to console me. She gently holds my head and shoulder, and I desperately grasp the back of her shirt in my weakened fists as I cry. Don’t let me leave, Lucy. Don’t let me go again.

“Hey, hey… you’re okay,” she coos, “just focus on breathing for me, okay? You’re just fine, Anon.”

She doesn’t sound like Lucy. I turn my head to look up at her, and I see a pterodactyl woman with the same white down feathers but dark skin. She’s wearing blue scrubs and a paper face mask.

“Wh— where am I…” I look down at myself and see in horror that my legs are wrapped in thick casts elevated by wires strung from the ceiling. I can barely choke out the words. “What happened to me?”

“You’ve been injured in combat, but you’re safe now. You’re in the Otter Reed Medical Center in Virginia. I’m Nurse Jasmine, this is Dr. Enfield, he’s helping you remember what happened on deployment. Do you remember that?”

My fingers slowly release their grip on her scrubs, and I let my arms fall from her as I return to my bed. My eyes defocus, and I gaze down at my broken body. I know where I am, and I know what I’m doing.

“I died again, doc,” I say to the room.

A faceless dino at the edge of my bed speaks up in response. “I know.”