Lost Patrol -4- Turkey Shoot (Patreon)

The waves of turkey-size dinosaurs(?) hit us while Sergeant Kemp passed out guns and ammo. Really bad timing on their part.

I had an M4 carbine with the M203 grenade launcher attached, and I dropped a pill in the middle of the biggest clump of the cluckers. High explosive, not the most effective choice of round, but what I had loaded.

I switched to the carbine, firing three-round bursts and took out another dozen gobble-gobbles before the attack was over. Three or four guys had been injured by bites or claws, and one by a chip of rock kicked up from a ricochet.

Kemp was yelling at everyone to stop firing, and really, there were no more active targets, so the ripping sound of autofire stopped pretty quickly. I reloaded the bunny-thumper with a fragmentation round, pulled out the rifle magazine and put a fresh one in place, while keeping an eye on the undergrowth where the little lizardy animals had disappeared.

I put the spent HE round in one of my uniform pockets and the partially full magazine in another. Luntz, our medic, was working on the guy hit by the rock chip, while other people tended their own wounds as best they could. We had lots of first aid supplies since our real job was search and rescue.

The smell of cordite and a little blue haze in the air made it all feel real. I put a hand to my throat and felt my pulse yammering along at double or triple time. My knees felt wobbly, and my thighs and shoulders ached. I headed toward the water tank in Truck 2 to wash the taste of fear out of my mouth.

I hadn’t had time to reveal any sort of panic, and felt a bit proud of myself. “Hamburger” DePatie, Sgt Morris’s assistant cook, had apparently pissed himself when attacked by two of the cluckers, He was scratched up, his clothes torn, and a chunk missing from his left cheek. No one gave him any shit, though. He’d pulled out a bayonet and dispatched one of his attackers with it, so a lot of the blood and smell was from the corpse of the evil little monster.

He’d be getting his share of ribbing later. I was already cooking up a lulu about everyone wanting a bite of Hamburger’s buns.

Sgt. Streep must have seen me smirking and waved to catch my attention. He kept waving me to come over, so I sauntered that way, trying out my John Wayne strut.

“You okay, Lucie?” he wanted to know.

“I’m fine, Top,” I assured him. “I think I got half-a-dozen of them.”

He nodded. “You thought fast, and you did the right thing,” he added. “I’m impressed. One complaint!” He held up a finger. “You’re not supposed to drop HE within 100 yards of friendlies, and those fuckers were less than fifty away.”

I felt my face turn red. Cpl. Ricky Hernandez, Streep’s driver, cackled and pointed at me. I wanted to slap him, but he got a glare from Streep that shut him up.

Lt. Helmstead limped up about that time. “Leave the kid alone, Top.” He had blood on his left pants leg and shoe. “I’m amazed that no one shot anyone of our own in the confusion.”

“You’re hurt!” I squeaked.

“Just a scratch,” he waved it away. “We’ve got plenty of bandages and antibiotic creme. Luntz will deal with me when he finishes with the men who are worse hurt.” He grinned, making him look like the seventeen-year-old winning quarterback in a Homecoming game. I blinked at him to keep from winking.

Then he was talking to Streep. “I’m going to have Kemp mount the recoilless on my jeep; it’s got the fittings.” He glanced at me. “Lucie is a cool hand and I think can handle the gun in a fight.”

I blinked some more.

Streep grunted. “The 75 may be the only thing we’ve got that could take down that flying tank we saw earlier.”

“Say what?” Hernandez almost yelped. He hadn’t seen the dragon since Streep had left him behind the ridge to keep the meeting between the LT and him, about me, private.

“I’ll be telling everyone about what we’re up against in just a few minutes. Top, set up a guard rotation. Ricky, go tell Kemp to come see me at my jeep.” He turned and limped toward the vehicle.

To me, he said, “Lucie, you’re my bodyguard for now, keep an eye out.”

“Yes, sir,” I responded, all the horseshit in me draining out at the heels. The El Tee sounded so serious!

I followed him to the jeep, my head swelling with every step. “Cool Hand” Lucie! I liked the sound of that. Apparently, I’m just a font of never-ending horseshit.

“Quit giggling,” the LT ordered as we reached his jeep. “Jesus Christ, Lucie, you are such a contradiction! You’re the least military person in the unit, and at the same time, a very good soldier.”

I beamed at him, resisting the urge to wag my tail.

“There’s a first aid kit here somewhere,” the LT commented as he levered himself into the passenger seat sideways. I found it quickly, a flat white case with a red cross on it.

“You want me to see to your wound, sir?” I offered.

He nodded, trying to hike his pants leg up to reveal the deep scratch. Those turkeys had talons like eagles. “I don’t want you to have to cut the pants leg off. I only have two extra pairs packed, and it’s a long way to the PX.”

I snorted while I removed his boot. The blood had gotten sticky, and his sock was soaked with it, so I removed that, too.

I didn’t waste time admiring his leg, except to note that he wasn’t excessively hairy. The scratch was five inches long or so and deep enough to get completely past skin and into meat. It probably should have stitches, but I’d let Luntz do that. “I’m going to clean this,” I warned the LT, “and it’s going to hurt.”

He grunted. I opened the first aid kit and got out a tiny pair of scissors, some alcohol swabs, gauze, iodine, and other supplies, laying them on the inside of the open box lid.

“What did you call this place?” he asked between quick breaths and small grunts while I worked.

I had to think. “Me-Tah, sir, because it’s Not-Utah,” I supplied, smirking because I couldn’t help it.

“Mother fucking, Godforsaken, Not-Utah,” he amplified.

I managed not to giggle. It was the first time I had heard him use the vulgar language so common in the Army.

“You mentioned the PX a moment ago, sir,” I asked tentatively. I wrapped his leg in gauze after applying iodine and triple antibiotic creme, and fastened the gauze with the little metal claw-clip. “Do you think we’re ever going to find a way home? I mean, we’ve only been here four days, but I think it’s obvious this is a completely different world than our own.”

“A way home?” he murmured, looking down to watch me finish up. He sighed, then reached out to use a finger to push my head back so we were looking each other in the eye. “Beats the shit out of me, Lucie,” he said.