The president’s coma had taken a turn for the worse: she was dead. The VP shot himself before they could do the oath. Whoever came next in line met the void, called the wars off and undid the draft. Those of us in the last week of boot woke at dawn, synchronized, to find the top brass had already split.

First thing we did was whoop it up. Then we showered and set out for the women’s barracks to get it on. The women had had the same idea. We collided over the mortar range, which was dry and pockmarked and not ideal for fucking, but in the party that ensued we all got laid except Taylor, who despite running fifteen miles a day could just not stop being fat.

Taylor’s fatness was a joke at first, when he couldn’t keep up, but soon the joke became myth. We punched him on the pretext that he couldn’t feel. A lady soldier half-wearing my camo rode me in the hot dead grass, and I saw Taylor taking shade under the only tree, massaging feet that must have hurt like hell under all that weight.

The party depressed me after two days. By then I honestly couldn’t believe I was me. I hiked to the airbase and hitched a plane to Jersey. Except it was resupply to Jersey the goddamn island. I got to London and fit a southy crew that mugged tourists in the Elephant & Castle pedways. Other gangs raped down there; we mugged. We’d rip cams and phones from helpless fingers to fence in Camden for hash. I beat up an Italian for his hat.

“Drone,” a new story in 3:AM Magazine. If this opening doesn’t hook you I should maybe resign from fiction.