Kip relieves himself against the American container. The Australian lets out a sigh of relief. "Arrrhhhhh—you beauty, needed me that one."
The stream of urine evaporates almost immediately as it splashes onto the hot steel. Finished, he shakes himself dry and zips up his uniform. He looks down at his boots and notices one of them is soaked in urine, then glances over at his teammates and gives them a half-apologetic, "Oops!"
His teammates watch him in silence.
He pads over to the white Humvee. "Yep, that sure feels a whole lot better." Kip stretches, then opens the Humvee's driver's side door and picks up a water bottle. He wanders back over to the container and sits down under a small area of welcome shade, then leans back and rests up against the steel.
He gulps down a few mouthfuls of water, "Fuck, it's hot! Every time I piss, I try and rehydrate—we gotta be losing at least a couple of pints an hour. Good for the kidneys—I read about it somewhere. You guys should try it—they reckon we're seventy percent water."
"Kip?" an Australian asks.
"Yeah, mate?"
"You just killed Levi."
"So?"
"Did you hear what I just said?"
"Yeah, and?" Kip asks.
"And! And you've just killed someone!"
"Mate, that scum wasn't human. He was a dog that needed putting down. I've done us and the world a favor. His gene pool ends here."
Another Australian man pipes up, "That's wrong, mate."
"I don't think so."
"But you've made yourself judge, jury and executioner," the Australian says.
Kip tips the bottle over his head, and the water spills down and washes away the remains of Levi's blood, then splashes onto the white ground and forms a small pink puddle next to him. He twirls his fingertip around in the sludge. "I really don't give a fuck. He was vermin."
"In another place, that was murder you just gone and committed," the Australian says.
Kip shrugs, "Well, we're not in that place now. We're here, wherever the fuck that is and so we get to play by a different set of rules."
"Murders, murder."
"You're all wrong, mate," Kip says. "You think I enjoyed doing that? The guy was deranged. He would have killed us all or gotten us all killed. I've saved your lives. You should be thanking me, you dumb fucks."
He washes the pink sludge from his fingers and wipes them dry on his uniform, then talks to himself. "Did I enjoy doing that? Did I really enjoy doing that? That's actually an interesting fucking question and one that I feel am now perfectly qualified to provide a well-informed answer to."
Kip glances over at the Australians. "Sorry, talking to myself again. It's a bad habit I've recently acquired."
"You okay, mate?" an Australian asks.
"Never felt better." Kip pauses, then says, "I remember working with a guy who once said to me that he'd like to know what it feels like to kill someone!" He shakes his head. "It was a few years ago. I was in the office—getting a plastic coffee from the machine. Man, that coffee was shit but gave you an excuse to have a wander and look down some cleavage—you boys know what I'm talking about."
Kip smiles for a moment at the memory, then continues, "Anyway, I'm at the coffee station waiting for the pour and there's this guy behind me and we start talking—we were talking war movies or some other shoot up shit we'd seen on last night's TV—comparing notes, what I liked, what he liked, the battles and the blood—blah blah blah."
