REV, Part III

By Michael Shay

Summer night bivouacked along the Kandahar Road. Imagination and dreams my only escape from the relentless sameness of the desert days. The world inside my head. Tonight I dream of The Bradbury's Martians and their blue-sailed ships, whispering over dead sea bottoms on the fourth planet from the sun.

Suddenly, the crump of incoming mortars knocks me from my rack. Giants stomp the earth and Bender's yelling at me and I glimpse his form darting out the bunktent's door and I scramble to follow. We dodge and crawl and I feel someone tugging at my fatigues and I turn to see Smith, eyes wide as a full moon, dogging my steps. The night is alive with hot metal and autofire and I tell her to stay close but not too close.

By the time we reach the nearest Mobile Flak Shelter, the worst seems over. The booming ceases and all that's left is the desultory zip of defensive fire. Next to me, Smith wheezes like an asthmatic. "Having fun?" I ask. She doesn't even look at me.

Bender eases outside through the narrow passageway. Soon, we're all out there, blinking in the swirling smoke of the cool desert night. Bender has disappeared.

"Wicker's squad bought it," says Lieutenant Riker. He stands in the dark, looking at a smoldering bunktent besides a burning all-terrain vehicle.

"Damn," I say.

"He went with God," says REV, dressed in black, appearing out of the smoke like a wraith, carrying a gray-metal ZIP gun. "Now, let's get down on our knees and pray for their souls." Autofire hisses along the perimeter.

Before we can kneel, a trio of our guards appear, bearing a wriggling raghead among them. "Got one," says one of the guards, face smudged with camouflage and smoke. The lieutenant walks to the sapper, grabs his turban and yanks up his head. I can tell through the grime and the soot that the muja sapper is a kid, no more than 16.

"Take him to the PSYCH-OFF," says the lieutenant, letting go.

"The raggies never talk, lieutenant," says one of the guards.

"Maybe this one will."

The guards drag the muja away and then, we get down on our knees in prayer like REV wants, and Bender comes shouting out of the darkness. "Brandt! Sergeant Brandt!"

I look up, but Bender doesn't see me, he sees the glowering spatulate face of REV. "Sorry, REV, sorry," Bender sputters. "I was just..."

"Join us in prayer, soldier," he says. "We all need one tonight." For a second there, I seem to detect a dip in REV's stentorian voice, a tiny warble of weakness. Does he feel badly about Wicker? I sneak a peek at REV and he has his head bowed. In profile, his features jut like a chiseled monument into the swirling night. They are bigger, more pronounced than a normal man's. "He's all diodes and chips and wire," Clark had said the night before he went stateside, leaving me in charge of the QAC Depot. "He's not human." It had shocked me, this defiling of REV's image. That was when I could still be shocked.

Bender joins us on our knees and REV intones the deity, his voice punching a hole in the shouting and the buzz of the weapons around us. Then he's up and off with the lieutenant and Bender says we got a problem.

"The crosses," he says.

"What about 'em?"

"Sapper got our ATV."

We rush over to our bivouac and I see our squat vehicle, a smoldering hulk. Shards of aluminum surround it. Inside it is a coiled mass of knotted metal.

"My God!" says Smith, rushing up behind me.

"Hell to pay," I say.

"I got two out," says Bender. "The rest, well..."

We stand and stare. Bender and I are in Supply and we are in charge of the crosses. We had more than 100 at last count: the QACs, Quick-Assembly Crosses. Slip it out of its narrow container and snap the cross-beams into place. Take your average Unbeliever and drape him across the QAC. Rivet the Infidel's hands and feet into the pre-drilled holes. Boost it upright, activate the AET -- Automatic Entrenching Tool -- at the base, and the cross drills itself into the Afghan sand. Or Iranian. Or Syrian. Or Egyptian. Wherever New Crusade battles happened to be raging at the time. Crucifixion-to-go. The pictograph on our ATV's door showed a flaming cross -- our logo. Now it's just a charred paint smudge.

"What a mess," says Bender.

I nod. I don't know how Bender feels, but I'm glad we don't do the actual crucifying. It's the Second Sight spooks who do that. We just haul the crosses and set them up for the SS. Since the Afghan campaign began seven months ago, we've littered the landscape with crosses. Mujas riveted to metal, dying slowly, facing away from Mecca, where their shrines used to be. It's a warning to Unbelievers of all kinds. The mujas aren't the only ones who get a QAC -- a quick-ass crucifixion -- on the QAC. No, no -- not the only ones.

Go to Part IV of REV