1 1. The King

The setting sun was magnificent. A moribund light from the crimson sky receded beneath the alpine skyline of Afghanistan, and it was peaceful. Maiden shadows of dusk crept from beneath the desolate trees and serrated mountains, talons clawing their path out and across the wide basin. In the sky above was the blazing sphere of a waxing moon and the evening stars. The constellations had the purity of a charted map.

And then it was dark.

In the day's light, Afghanistan was petrifying. In the pitch-black dark of night, it was an infinite night terror, a lucid dream from which there was no waking. No sunset, no matter how elegant, could ever purify that hellhole.

High in the cliffs, Private Travis Madden saw something shift.

Somebody's watching me.

Travis had short cropped mousy hair and a gracious smile that cut through the blackest of days. With piercing cerulean eyes, he regarded the earth with a lightness few others could behold. Behind those eyes were compassion and expectation. He was the Boy Next Door, handsome and lean. Tall enough for the short to call tall and short enough for the tall to call short. He emanated an air of assurance and understanding. A moral compass to draw the erroneous. A twenty-first-century knight in camouflaged digital print armor.

There was a momentary glitter of light, a quivering brilliance of a firefly. But there were no fireflies in Afghanistan. Travis blinked and squinted his eyes hard to eradicate his sight of any floaters.

He observed. And waited. Powerless.

A glimmer in the gloom.

Fuck.

The tangerine ember of a cigarette brightened as lungs drew breath.

The hills have eyes.

Cold creeps sent quivers through his vertebra. The tiny hairs covering his body stood on end and at attention. Good little troopers. It was fight or flight and his adrenal gland surged. Travis steeled himself and stood embedded to his post; he wouldn't forsake it. He was a proud United States Marine.

"Smoke on this." Snarled Travis.

And he fired. Three-round burst.

Pap-pap-pap.

Red hot rounds sliced through the obscurity.

There was an acute shriek, and Travis nailed his quarry.

A gasp. A pulse. An exhale.

And the hills were alive with the sound of music.

Popcorn kernels come to temp.

Pop-pop-poppoppoppop!

The music thundered. A sharp tenor of blood-wrenching cries. Return fire, the rhythmic beat in time. Cooked grenades, the resounding reverberation of bass.

A symphony of war.

The hills were descending with fireflies of a most perverse nature, a mob, and murder of muzzle flashes.

Travis was screwed.

Travis had never taken a slug, and he feared how it would feel? Could adrenaline numb the senses? Null the burn? Where, on the pain scale, did it land? When Travis was younger but a man, he had to have his tonsils cut out. After the surgery, his surgeon had inquired where he landed on the pain scale. Travis was brusque and claimed, "Somewhere between chewing on glass and taking a cocktail swivel stick rammed up my pee-hole."

The tumult booted up dust and got into his eyes. Travis opened wide and let it bite, tearing up to wash away the dirt. To no avail. He squinted and blinked. Whatever was in his eye, he couldn't uproot. Travis ran the back of his fist over his itchy, stinging eye and rubbed it. He glanced at his hand, and it was tacky and sanguine.

The fuck!?

And then he bled.

The viscous liquid seeped through his hairline and over his forehead, where it puddled on his eyebrow.

Travis understood being shot. It tickled. A snake contrived of hot maple syrup slithering through his hair. A queer thrill.

Travis reached up and rubbed the blear from his view but couldn't because his eye was no longer there. It had erupted in a liquefying burst. Where his eye had been mere minutes ago was now a cavernous pit. His brain swam. He was nauseous.

I'm going to hurl.

And he crumpled.

While the symphony raged on.

On his rear on the rough-packed earth, he peered up at the bluffs. They were enticing. An ethereal breeze flowed over his sun-dried and cracked face, murmuring in his ear to yield and surrender. It was mollifying.

My eye is out. We only need to close one. Half-way there.

From somewhere remote and heard over the cacophony was a phantasm, the stifling, and sad lament of a rubab, lulling him to sleep. The wobble in the wind of the nearby trees insinuated a dance in pace with the chimerical music. Everything melted away. A dark tranquility.

Travis' muscles relaxed as if he had taken a sedative, and its jubilant effect took place. He slid into a lethargic stupor and into the glooming, the place between truth and fantasy. A warmth flowed over and throughout his soul. He was snug in his bed with his head on a feather pillow and not bloodied and crushed in the desert grit. Travis was not falling behind enemy lines, but far abroad from this grotesque land of revulsion and dread.

Being shot was a tepid cup of Valerian root tea tinged with subtle tones of copper, metallic and brackish.

And thus it clicked.

He would die.

His heart stuttered.

Chest heavy.

Couldn't breathe.

Panic hit, and his mind fulminated into a furor.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Mother fuck!

Fuck Afghanistan, fuck it.

Fuck the devil cock days and the witches cunt nights.

The toothless ass elders.

Ass fuck their bint wives in their hirsute shit pussies.

Fuck, the shit stank of their goddamn goats and cows and fucking monkeys.

Drop the bomb and finish it!

Level it.

And fuck the goddamn rocks in my mother fucking piece of shit goddamn government hand out cocksucking boots!"

The truculent inferno festering inside abated and left him with torment and woe. "But…

Fuck me.

I don't want to die.

"Madden!" A voice bellowed through the miasma. "Madden!?"

Travis' skull was in a haze.

Not here. Not in the desert.

"Gravy guzzlin' chode lickers!" The belligerent Phantom boomed.

And then there was gunfire.

The vinyl record of war finished. Time to play side B.

Travis rolled onto his gut. He picked up his head. And goddamn did he suffer. There was a fierce sting, accompanied by agonizing torment that wracked over his vertebra, mortifying his entire nervous system. But Travis suffers well.

On the pain scale, being shot was some place between savoring the mouth-raping facial abuse from the tentacles of a box jellyfish and gacking back a hearty line of burning fucking napalm.

Travis' head reeled. Dizzy. He retched. And kept his biscuits.

Eye(s) bleary and full of blood and grit, he couldn't see for shit. He blinked hard and squinted, but he reckoned that only the left eye mattered now. The right eye was fucked.

Blinked. Squinted. Rubbed.

And discerned movement.

A blast and a wisp of crimson.

A head burst.

"Move! Your! Ass! Madden!" Growled the Phantom.

So Travis crawled.

He didn't know where he was slithering to, but creep he did. Hand overhand. Arm overarm. Inch by inch. He crawled.

Not here. I reject it.

Travis reached dried up bracken, took shelter, and fell flat on his back. He inhaled and exhaled, granting his hindbrain respite from the chaos. Even still, the hordes of war surrounded him, but Travis found serenity. He gauged his situation.

They shot me in the head. I'm dead. I just don't know it yet.

Travis had an intolerable yearning to reach up and grope his head wound. Check the damage done. His fingers were filthy. Travis doubted that rooting around in a wide open head wound with grimy digits was the prescription for curiosity. The shrapnel and infection were Colonel Mustard with the candlestick. Travis made a conscious choice not to go ferreting around in his surmised gaping pit. An infection in the head cheese was the last thing he needed, second to a bullet. Regardless, the urge to put his fingers in it remained. Some itches had to be scratched. Travis had to touch it. He reached for it once more, but paused.

If I touch my fucking brains, I'm going to lose my goddamn shit.

Travis needed panic third to a bullet and an infection. So, he resolved that he could—maybe—live without touching it. He found his focus again. Steeled himself. Calm and crisp. A cucumber.

What next?

There was gunfire from everywhere.

Wait. No. Not everywhere.

Travis snapped a finger over his right ear. Nothing.

Fuck. I'm half deaf now too?

"Madden!" The Phantom again. That voice. "You good?"

Familiar. Can't place it.

Travis hollered, "Nuuuuuhh…" which he meant to come out as "no." But it didn't. It came out with the gasp and misery of a specter, lurching through its home and looking back over photographs of its family it had devoured.

The fuck?

Travis fondled his jaw, and pain rammed through him like a randy sodomite with a GMO pineapple.

Fuck.

His jaw hung loose, destroyed, and worthless.

"Huuull…" Help.

And then something occurred to Travis, something he had learned some place. He couldn't recall if it were right or not, but he supposed that it didn't matter, anyhow. Kill-happy frogs with a swellington for the guillotine bore the decapitated heads of their subjects up to gawk at their own blood surging neck stump. And before death, they advised the executed to blink every second because of science. They lasted eight to ten seconds. It was bullshit then and his opinion hadn't changed.

I still have most of my head. If those cheese eaters had eight to ten seconds. I got at least twice that. Maybe.

Travis was well read. An insatiable reader since he was a wee tot. His father was a single parent of meager means. They lived not in penury or squalor, but they survived. Paycheck to paycheck. Ends met. Travis learned if he asked his father for a toy, his father will tell him to fuck off with a simple "No." No excuses. But no parent worth a damn could brush aside a child's want for a book.

So, Travis learned to love to read.

Travis didn't dare beg for the latest New York Times Bestselling hardbacks, but a used paperback? They were thrift shoppers. Everything used. Nothing new, excluding toilet paper. So, Travis had plentiful opportunities to expand his library. It started with a narrow bookshelf Travis got for his birthday. A few years afterward, Travis upgraded to a larger bookshelf discovered for cheap at a garage sale. A few years further, and Travis' bedroom was damn near stacked floor to plaster with books encompassing the facades. Travis had read most twice and a few on a dozen occasions. At first, there was an order. Alphabetical by author's last name, but sank into chaos and disharmony. Still, Travis could inform you where every book was if someone was so impelled to ask.

Out of the hundreds of books covering the walls of his bedroom, the one that held the most reverence beloved to his heart was the Hagakure. Travis refused to obey any orders, not by his father and not by the school board. With immense and ardent zeal, the calling of his youth was to read every book on the school's list of banned books. He scoured the thrift stores, garage sales or any random bookshelf until he had read them cover to cover. He found and read most of them, twice, except for the Hagakure. It remained elusive.

The Hagakure wasn't as racy as Lolita, or provocative and stigmatized as LeVay and his little black bible, or the pure madness and terror of Lovecraft, or the "pornographic exploitation of youth" that was Cuckoo's nest. The Hagakure was a guidebook for samurai to lead their best servile existence. To the Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War Two, the book was prerequisite.

And Travis had to have it, but couldn't locate it anywhere.

One day Travis and his father took a day trip to a nearby town. One they never visited. There was a rare book store.

And there it was.

The Hagakure in the prohibited book section.

High on a rack.

A glowing snoot light beaming on the book as if it were a divine weapon from the heavens. A gift for him and him alone.

And Travis had to have it.

But he was tight on cash.

Travis' mother had abandoned him and his father. Dad drank. Not in the typical abusive alcoholic fashion, more in the utter devastated and heartbroken way. She fled with his father's best friend, to Hollywood and methamphetamines. Travis' father then received a diagnosis. A motor neuron disease, a genetic disorder he had been born with, but the on/off switch remained in the off position, until one day, something triggered, and it flipped on. The specialists suggested that it was stress-related.

Travis blamed his mother for his father's malady, and he abhorred her for it, and if he ever saw her again, she'd learn it from a venomous tongue. And snuff the last breath out of his dad's best friend's traitorous lungs.

Lost and without aim, Travis was looking for guidance.

And there it was, The Hagakure.

And Travis had to have it.

So he pinched it. Tucked it into his waistband, bought something from the proprietor to avoid suspicion, and walked out with it. It was the first and last thing Travis had ever stolen, and years later, he even returned to the bookstore, apologized for the errors of his youth, and paid for the book.

Travis found solace within its pages. Spirituality within its text. Answers to his misguided questions. The lost seek serenity and answers within religious texts. Travis did not. He found them in the Hagakure. The words of the Hagakure were his religion. It helped him endure abandonment and the slow death sentence given to his father. Now, lying bloodied and in shriveled up shrubbery in a godforsaken land he had no business in, the words spoke to him once more and rang true. Crystal.

"Even if one's head were to be cut off, he should be able to do one more action with certainty. With martial valor, if one becomes a revengeful ghost and shows great determination, though his head is cut off, he should not die."

I. Will. Not. Die.

Not here.

And not now.

Not in a goddamn desert.

I refuse it.

If I die, I will take out as many as these filthy Haji cocksuckers I can.

And Travis was on his feet.

"Madden!? What the hell are you doing!?" Sang the Phantom of the bullet opera. "Stay down!"

And in the simple words of his father, he uttered, "Nuh." No.

And he was on the move.

Clock's ticking.

Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock.

Travis squinted as he wiped the dirt, sweat and blood from his searing eye(s).

The hills were alive with the sound of music, and the musicians were busy entertaining soldiers not fallen and bleeding out with their song of death.

A flurry on muzzle flashes.

Despite his horribly debilitating injuries, the task at hand proved to be an easy one with the constant hail of muzzle flashes raining from the hills finding targets that were not him. Travis still had one functioning eye, and his trigger finger was right as rain. And it was about to monsoon.

Travis relaxed and shouldered his rifle. He had never let it go. Good samurai.

And he waited for a muzzle flash.

FLASH.

Travis released a well-trained and steady exhale and squeezed the trigger. The hammer struck the firing pin three times.

Pap-pap-pap.

Kill shots.

Somewhere up in the hills and in the obscuring darkness, Travis' aim found its mark. Three scorching rounds bored through the Haji's sternum and into the tree behind him, spitting a shower of bark. The Haji slumped backward against the pine and smeared carnage along the husk as he dropped onto his ass and died.

Scratch one.

Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock.

There was a massive boulder not far ahead and beyond it a cabin, more of a shack. There was a steel barrel out front blazing with fire; the nights were frigid. The fire glowed tungsten light on the exterior of the shanty exposing a rifle barrel extending from a window and the muzzle flashed, and a Marine died.

Move!

And Travis made a scrambling mad dash for the lee of the boulder.

Pah-rap-arap-arap-arap.

Full-auto rapid-fire kicked up dust at his feet.

Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock.

Bleeding out.

Travis scurried toward the shanty from the side and dove onto his belly and into the shadows. He landed on his chest hard, and it knocked the wind from his lungs, but he ignored it. Pain wormed through him. He ignored it. And he gained an angle on the primary entrance. He grimaced and snatched a grenade, pulled the pin with his teeth and spat.

Release and throw.

The grenade sailed in through a windowpane and it shattered. Indistinct voices erupted from inside, and the front door flew open with a kick, and out popped a rifle-toting insurgent.

But Travis was ready.

His adrenal gland pumped its sweet juice.

Breathe. Exhale. Squeeze.

Pap-pap-pap.

Bullets screamed from the muzzle of the rifle and through the Haji's face, the first entered his skull plate through the forehead, killing the Haji on impact. A second round obliterated his nose. And the third bore through the jawbone, teeth exploding in his mouth as it exited through his nape.

Scratch two.

A second Haji emerged through the door, shoving the first Haji, a now standing corpse, face-down and into its own blood puddled muck. Travis' aim had dropped as he compensated for the recoil, but he fired.

Pap.

The bullet tore through the Haji's scrotum, wreaking any dream of a ninth spawn. The man slumped forward to his knees.

Pap-pap-pap.

Three rounds hammered into his sternum, severing the tendinous connective tissue which held his heart in place. The Haji flopped over and onto his brother-in-arms, snuggled up. Forbidden lovers. Allahlu Akbar.

Scratch three.

A Haji dove through the shattered window and landed hard on the earth. He shrieked and flailed as he fell on his hands and knees in the shards of glass blown out from the window. Long thin blades stuck out of his hands and one through his left cheek. He shrieked and screamed.

BOOM!

The grenade exploded inside the shack, and the remaining windows blew out. And Travis unloaded.

Pap-papapapapapapapa.

Travis peppered the downed and flaring Haji with bullets.

Scratch four.

Travis continued firing at the facade of the cabin. Empty. Dropped the clip and slapped in another.

Pap-papapapapapapapapapa.

The bullets tore and shred through the thin wood.

Pap-papapapapapapapapapa.

Bullet penetration is a thing.

Scatch??

Empty. Drop. Slap.

It was quiet.

The hills were silent.

The shack was silent.

The firefight ended as it began, in an instant.

The curtains of the bullet opera came to a close. Fin. Encore!

Travis beaded the rifle on the entrance, waiting.

Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock.

Clock.

The burst of adrenaline, which had fueled Travis into a fury, vanished. It depleted him. He was faint and woozy. His viscous lifeblood glued his shirt to his chest. He may have lost some blood.

Is this it for me? Am I dying?

More blood lost than time to transfuse and it was a hike back to base.

Where's the fucking medic when you need one?

"Meh-duh" He moaned in a gurgled croak.

Travis couldn't move. Vision blurry. Head spinning and pounding. Debilitated with overwhelming pain. Travis moaned and moaned and sobbed. There was nothing he could do, and he cried.

This is it. That's all, folks. Kiss my Papa goodbye.

The meager attempts to stay lucid were failing as he drifted off into that final slumber and into death's embrace.

A thud and a scuttle of dragging feet.

The auxiliary power kicked on. The government designed killer bought and paid for with hard-working American tax dollars came back to life. He sucked air through his teeth as his proverbial motion sensors scanned the doorway for movement and locked on the target.

T-100.

Terminate.

Kill. Kill.

Crossing the shack threshold and stumbling over the corpses and viscera impeding his exit was a Boy. A small, frail Afghani Boy, only twelve years old in a ragged shirt and without shoes. The Boys clutched his intestines in one hand, inside out, and dragging a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the other.

Fuck me.

The Boy toppled over and dropped the RPG. He tugged hand over hand at his guts, stuffing the severed cords of his gastrointestinal track back into the yawning cavity, one fistful at a time, but it was no use. All the sheik's goats and all the sheik's men would not be putting poor Haji Boy back together again.

Travis crawled, bloodied face, jaw hanging slack, toward the Boy. Hand overhand. Arm overarm. Inch by inch. He crawled.

"Buh…" Boy. Neither saying the words he wanted to say or conveying the emotions overwhelming him.

The Boy saw Travis, and Travis saw the Boy. Together, soldiers of fortune fighting another man's war and for reasons not their own.

They saw each other.

Knew each other.

And knew what came next.

The Boy, whose family Travis had taken out less than a few minutes ago, shouldered the RPG. Travis stopped dead in his tracks and aimed down sights.

"Nuh… buh… dunt…" No. Boy. Don't. He moaned.

The Boy stared at Travis.

And Travis stared at the Boy.

Travis was dead, and he knew it.

The Boy was dead, and he knew it.

Dead if they did act and dead if they didn't.

Brought together by serendipities wicked sense of humor. They both accepted their fates. With no one left to live for and nothing to lose, the Boy placed his finger on the trigger.

Fuck it.

Travis lowered his rifle and chucked it away and laughed.

K/D 5:1

GG.

Good game.

And the Boy fired.