After you read this one you should definitely check out the other entries for random title generation. Of course it's at the blog of Mr. Chuck Wendig. As always please to enjoy and don't be shy to leave some comments.
In the deep desert the sky at night the sky is like an ocean of black and becomes a twin to the dark sand below. On a bleak cold night in May the desolation was broken by a group of tents. A man walks out of tent and stretches. He looks all the world like somebody shaved a chimp and stuck it in marine fatigues.
He scratches his armpit and asks, "Hw the hell do I get out of this chicken shit outfit?"
Another soldier, looking slightly less simian, pokes his head out of another tent. "When you learn to shut the fuck up Pendleton."
"I'm serious Sarge what'n the hell are we doing out here?"
Voices from the other tents chime in. "Yeah Sarge, c'mon. We got a right to know."
Sarge rubs his bald jar head as he thinks long and hard about the appropriate responses from shouting shut the fuck again to firing off a few M16 rounds in their general direction. He realizes that nothing less than the gospel truth would only encourage em and make 'em all even more annoying. He sighes at this small epiphany. This is what his life has become.
"The boys upstairs are wantin' to do a field test of some new chemical. Some sorta black ops, top secret shit. We're here to guard the west flank, make sure nobody disturbs em during the test."
The rest of the squad piles out of their tents. They look at each other for a second before Pvt. Ramirez his arm in the air.
"What kinda chemicals we talkin' bout here Sarge?" he asks.
Sarge sighs. He knows his boys well enough to know what's coming.
"It's a weaponized hallucinogen," he says. It only takes a second for the hoots, hollers and clapping to start.
"Man in civie life you gotta pay fifteen bucks a hit for that," Pendleton laughs. "Army life sometimes man."
"This ain't no flower power hippie trip, Pendleton. This is the deep shit. It's completely colorless and odorless. Full on auditory-visual-tactile hallucinations, vomiting, seizures, muscles spasms, and temporary tourettes. If you're actually stupid enough to pay for this shit, then you're a bigger potato bug than I thought."
Everyone looks at him. He's usually better at berating them. Sarge doesn't really notice though. He's too busy staring at his hands, how they've balloned out to twice their size.
"Sarge?" he hears Pendleton asks. He looks up sees his squad as long wavy things that remind him of drunken poplars. He laughs. He can't stop himself.
Suddenly it sounds like he's in a fucking zoo. The boys around him who only looked like chimps before are all shapechanging into simians, their bodies twisting about as they scream and shout. Seven ape faces look to stare at him, their alpha male, their leader. He must reassert his authority, become the dominant monkey. He picks up a wrench, and smacks the closest chimp. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows it's Pendleton he's just struck. All around him are the sounds of chaos.
"Oh my fuck it's the demons! The demons are attacking us!"
"The enemy! It's al-Queda, they're raining down hell!"
"Oh space Jesus, save me from the Saurians! Save us from the Greys!"
Sarge doesn't understand what's happening, he can't really. But he knows that no one else is challenging his authority. His position as Alpha is secure. A feeling of contentedness washes through him before he notices he's shaking all over. He only has a few seconds before his body betrays him and he tumbles to the ground, shaking and screaming. He only barely notices the rest of them follow suite.
Some time later the whoop-whoop-whoop of helicopter blades swirls in from above. Four men drop out of the chopper. Wearing black body armor and gas masks they look all the world like malicious spectres. They pivot about, guns drawn and quickly assess that the area's secure. A squad of spasming marines near comatose on the ground is absolutely no threat.
"Echo team to base, all tangos are down. Repeat, all tangos are down. Beta test is a success."
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