The Concrete Veldt

ATTENTION!-3

“Dude; what’s with you, anyway? You’ve been quiet since we left downtown.”

I crawled over and between the markers, clenching the rocket stem in my mouth—focused strictly on the task, serious as a bayonet to the throat.

“Like, whatever, man,” Clinton added.

I stopped and spat the rocket out. “Look. You’re the boss of this particular thing—okay? So you like to lob fireworks at your ex-girlfriend’s house; fine. I don’t ask questions. I’m just—I’m just concentrating on the job.”

I took the rockets from my back pockets and gathered everything into one hand; then scrabbled to our usual spot—a horizontal slab they called a stele (in this case dedicated to someone killed in Iraq), and began setting up. “How do you know she’s even alive?”

“I told you; I saw her at the fairgrounds, before the Guard caved. She was right there in the soup line. Didn’t see Loverboy, though—guess he must have gotten himself vanished.” He rolled onto his side in the tall grass and started planting rockets. “She’s alive, all right. Alive and home; with a trunk full of w**d, I bet.”

He paused, glaring at the house. “I know that bitch.”

I finished my rows and took out my Bick; followed his gaze.

“Looks pretty quiet,” I said.

“Yeah.” He readied his lighter. “But we can fix that.”

And we started flicking; lighting up the rows with grim precision, setting off a hail of sparks and hisses, retreating into the grass as first one then another then another piffed and launched—screaming into the air; whistling toward the target, exploding like grenades on its roof and in the bushes. Turning the suburban street into a warzone.

Laughing and carrying on as the c*****e unfolded and at last subsided; the smoke drifting, the embers settling. Patting ourselves on our scrawny backs for another mission accomplished; even as shots rang out and something whizzed past—a blunt thing, a humorless thing. Something which struck a granite tombstone deeper in the cemetery and punched a dollar-sized crater in it.

And then we were scrambling: crawling as fast as we could—double-timing it toward the car as still more shots rang out and echoed along the streets; as bullets pocked the mausoleum and cut the air like knives. Until we reached the Charger and leapt to our feet, throwing open the doors—even as raptors gathered and encircled the car—at which I lit a string of M-80s and threw them into the group; and the fireworks exploded like dynamite, reverberated like shotgun blasts. At which the animals scattered in perfect unison and we peeled from the lot—en route to the Nunnery, I suppose. En route to Alexa.

En route to the last shag of our lives.

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