"Pick her up out of there."

  "But you just said not to be under your orders." 

  "That's not nuclear waste fool," the man in jeans and wet sweater pointed down at the girl dog paddling with her feet. 

  "We're not your commanders anymore." Another man on a bicycle but not knowing to get off or go said.  His voice echo'd some in the cement tunnel.  "If we ever were." 

  "Oh God.  Here's a towel." A small-framed woman dug around in the bicycle bag.  "She's lost her arms." 

  "But the water's not bloody." 

  "He just said it's not nuclear water." 

  "Oh Lord," a shallow breath in to sigh.  "Still broken or I'd be in there me self." 

  "Are you English?" 

  "We've been British for a while in our neck of the woods." 

  "Don't look at my butt." 

  "Hard not to I need the leverage." 

  A smack.  "Are you one of those?" 

  "Intelligence?  Dumb as a rock." 

  "Why'd you smack me when she was insulted?" Jeans guy asked while feeling the heat rise in his cheek. 

  "Not insulted loves.  Just out of the loops for a while." 

  "Where have you been honey pot?  My pies are sucking.  Like cardboard.  That one called them cardboardy.  I'll pull, you push.  Aim for the towel." 

  "Don't 

  "Bite me again and I'm leaving you in there." 

  "Pull on my neck." 

  "Push!  Lift the butt cheeks like your a stool!" 

  "Stool pigeon fer sure." 

  Like a cork the figure, mostly metal boned, rose.  Four arms worked to get under armpits and (i)heave, 

     (i)HO(i). 

  "Bloody stuck on a bit of cable or something." 

  "Is my make up fucked up?" 

  "Fuck you for eating all those waffles." 

  "Hold up, hold up." 

  "Johnny cakes they called them." 

  "Shit, shit, tipping over." 

The line of freak veeks stalked the grid

of dirt roads.  Puffs of dust in a smear of sun and soil. 

  Sparse talking.  Budgeting drinks-for-the-day parched. 

  An amphitheatre of parking. 

  "Wait here." 

  A little photograph pulled from a vest with many pockets.  A gruff pull on a shirt collar.  "You claim this man is a friend of yours?" A suddenly worried nod. 

  A knock on the paper thin door.  It creaked open.  People having tea.  "Excuse us, have you seen this man or this woman?" Photographs food stained and crease-crumpled. "I gave them the visitor's pass (i)on lunch(i)." 

  A horn blaring. 

  "I just meant to beep it.  It won't stop." 

  "LOOK!" 

  People creeping low, then stopping in place. 

  "GET THEM I'M SICK OF THIS,"someone hollered and spit out teeth. 

  The getting away made it to partially buried vehicles, dune buggies. 

  A careful chase. 

  Twinkies hitting the windshield. 

  "We're gaining on them!" 

  "Give me the megaphone!  And turn it on this time." 

  Man driving glanced past woman passenger.  Hit the pedal. 

  "Watch it!!!!!!" 

  A hastily written letter: 

     It wasn't your fault.  Ours got squashed between humanitarian out and us coming in.  We got T-boned by the Syrians with chemical weapons.  We miss you. 

  Put with other mail.  

  Catapulted.

"Sprats brats!"

  "Is it the money 'cuz I could buy you lunch." 

  "Toast, tomato, avacado and sprouts.  I actually bring them the stuff from the Farmer's Market." 

  "And they sell it to you?" 

  "Hmmm-hmmm, but by the third bite I need this," she took a packet of mayo out of a skirt pocket. 

  "Where'd you get that?" 

  "Seven tenths of a mile, that way," the sandwich and the man's nose almost collided.  "Convenience store." 

"What's it look like boobula?"

  "Like, like, darnit ya know I suck at poetry." 

  "Like what?" 

  "LIKE SHAMU POOPED." 

  The wind gust clipped the tiny car TV and the man would've gone off the cliff too but for being tied to the others. 

"PUT YOUR BALLS TOGETHER!"

  Some people looked down, some people were staring at the baby fat faced man with the suddenly wild eyes. 

  "I DON'T KNOW WE WERE JUST TALKING AND IT CAME TO ME." 

  "We're not even supposed to have balls," a by-the-rules Science nerd-woman immediately started throwing bags around in her hatchback.  "You're obviously stacking!" A wild haired woman crossed arms, then went towards, then crossed arms, then went towards.  "Ladies! There's no need to fight," the guy with the idea took one end of a climbing rope off the back of a pick up truck.  People started chanting, (i)fight, fight, fight(i). 

  Other teams had gone for morning walks, shared strips of chewy fruit, swapped spit.  Still other people were self-isolating, various reasons like not getting movie stars and singers sick, conflicts of interest. 

  "She said," a young man pointed all around at the milling about group, "It had to do with the pace of everything speeding up and, and, a vagueness in the locust." 

  "Did you smoke the while scooby snack brother?" 

  The man did the (i)squish your head(i) finger thing.  "Only two tokes.  Not the point." 

  "Let him talk, he's a zero." 

  A team lead who'd gone off to "take a piss" to "where you gonna take it" came walking out of a dust devil.  Brushed the sand off his shoulders.  Adjusted his belt buckle.  "What are we talking about here?" 

  "Ixnay on de bawlsie idea." 

"Our reading was, well, uh,

  it was," the dried bloody faced man leant towards and whispered, "from the Bible."  A nurse swabbed the blood and put it in a cradle of many swabs.  Asked the man not to "donate" any bodily fluids.  "But I just did," the man's calm eyes furnaced mad.  He (i)hummmmmph'd(i) and flapped a long leather glove onto the arm holding the horse's reigns.  He shuddered his disdain.  "Around what?" A woman asked.  "Around (i)field politics(i)," the man scanned the horizon. 

  "So you all were reading the Bible?" The labeled Reporter looked around at a vast assortment of humankind. 

  The man waved people out of the way with both gloves in one hand, revealing a palmed pen, and dismounted.  "Help the Nurse get off her horse," another mounted man ordered. 

  "Most likely not all of us.  But the point is that," seltzer water handed to the man.  "One point on a 360° out here I would guess.  What was the passage? In the Bible?" 

  "It was (i)gospel(i)." 

  "Here's our inner circle's journal," a weathered woman with stern-looking lips started to hand it over when several lawyers stepped forward and body blocked the pass.  One wagged a finger. 

  The man tried to snap his fingers but they'd gone numb.  "Turn your back to them," he heard and complied.  "Everybody stand still while the crime scene is photographed." 

  "Crime scene?!" The man croaked like a bullfrog. 

  "Stand still." 

  An Army man thumbed through the datebook.  "There's readings everyday.  More than one." 

  Tears streamed down the man's face.  "Was it the night of the gunshots?" 

  "Yes," the Army man closed the leatherbound thoughtfully. 

  "Corinthians 14." 

"So, wait, you think

  "Us all thinks, Sir." 

  A finger in the air to magazine people.  "They tanked us in the market, but that's not the lead." 

  Receiving the thin portfolio, "Sorry, you all, would that be y'all, y'all think, maybe of course, that 'someone'," the man held up hands and marquee'd quotation marks, "Perhaps might be staging (i)last resorts(i).  Let them know, okay?!" He waved an open palm toward the real U.S. Army people seated at a folding table. 

  "What'dya give this guy to make him so much more personable?" 

  "Jesus, where the hell you been Mississipp?" 

  "Just orange juice," a Red Cross worker checked on a clipboard. 

  "Here's my Introductory Paragraph," she handed the looseleaf page up to the man on the soapbox.  "Guts of the Scientific Research on this are somewhere back there." The line of people changing their minds about ordering their lives went out the lobby door and around a block. 

"He's not really," the man

  threw something from a dumpster to a recycle bin, "One of these." A girl wretched.  Everyone was in plastic suits, gloves, booties. 

  "He just doesn't have normal emotions back yet." 

  A radio crackled.  "Got something.  Could be related." 

  Someone looked at a screen of symbols.  "That's like half a mile away.  I doubt it." 

  "That's not really what I'm saying." 

  "What are you saying then? And why be a dooshbag?" 

  "I'm saying we need you over here Sir." 

  "That's more like it." 

  The special vehicle's tires rolled over electronics smashed to smithereens, food bought in bulk but squished, and dozens and dozens of hospital gowns.  "You think they're all on the loose?" 

  "PULL OVER!" Someone in the backseat rattled the driver's seatcage.  Got out and bagged a gown.  Got back in.  "These are new." Thrown into the wayback with other shards of "the puzzle".  

  The baseball game on low sported a bat cracking and a loud crowd cheering.  "Did you know they pipe in the crowd these days?  For moral support." 

  "It should be here."  The intersection was not yielding the co-worker.  "Look!" Everyone turned heads to the right.  The co-worker.  Obviously arguing with a tow truck carting off a jet engine.

Bad Blood

  "What am I supposed to say?" On camera she appeared to be talking to a plastic spider plant.  She was back up, back up eyes on a remote surgery.  "Yes, I'm still here."  The Peoples' Clinic had been bought out by the State.  "Of course the family is a mess.  They think their beloved matriarch is dying.  And has been for like thirty-six months." (i)Ooooo, too close, too close.(i)  "Now I'm supposed to tell them, (i)we were wrong, they were wrong, somebody front door'd up, the rubrics got messed with, the standards were warpy...what?" 

  "Let the intern monitor the surgery and come with me please," a thin-haired similar looking woman appeared at the desk.  The excitement was palpable.  "What have you got?" 

  A hand pressed down on a shoulder ready to fly down to the urgent care room without locking the handgun away.  "A man in a barrel.  And a woman who seems frozen.  Just hitting the man over the head with a chalkboard eraser." 

  A special safe in the desk being locked.  "You serious?" 

"What else did you guys

  learn there?" 

  "See, it's a different understanding of the world." 

  "Like how so?" 

  "Like," a deep sigh, "Money isn't the only factor in the meaning of (i)forever war(i)." 

  The other guy refocused his eyes in the Google glasses and snagged a (i)notes(i) file for the desktop.  "And, there wasn't that dreaded classification of WMD, before 

  "Okay, great," said an outgoing team lead.  "Make sure you tell everyone else." 

  "WHAT THE HEAHECK IS THIS?" A woman had pulled a sheet off a real size reproduction of the outgoing team leader.  There was a palm slap imprint in the thin "skin".  The woman took all of this in.  "Wife had enough of missing you?" 

  The team lead shifted his weight in the office chair and put his elbow on the arm.  It fell off.  "Kids actually.  They've won this round." 

"Just GO. Get outta here.

  Remember everything our generation taughtcha.  (i)Go.(i). Live your lives."  The great white Indian put a foot down on the place where the hoop had been broken.  "Mine.  I will fix it." 

  "The political nastiness is (i)never(i) going to end," a scarred face poked itself out of a closet and scared some people. 

  "Look at them." 

  "Yeah, they just pack up and go on their way." 

  "That's because a military life goes on and on, but it's different for civilians." 

  "The public just gets dumped on." 

  "Like any of us knows what to do as the war, as the wa," another asthma attack.  "Leave her alone," a man rushed to her side and helped her sit down.  "Don't stress." 

  Someone went to a woman with a purse and dramatically explained asthma attack.  An inhaler was produced. 

  "I guess some good news at this point is that it's people dedicated to politics that are making way back to Congress." 

  "But the campaign." 

  "They all raised a lot of money in other ways too, so they can tone down all this." 

  "You know, I do feel better having met so many other people who are at least not apathetic." 

  "Yeah, we're leaving the rest of this to the political animals." 

  "Hey, they're not that.  But they are as disciplined as the military on strategy and acting once they get there." 

  "MY VIDEO!  LOOK, LOOK!  If you like Country music.  This is cool."