1 . Name: D.F. 38 @ 2011-09-19 18:40

This was a writing exercise that I had lying around in my Dropbox account. I don’t think I’m going to use it for anything else, but I felt bad not putting it somewhere. So, have eight-hundred words of surreal fluff.

If you want to know where this came from, then you should know that my second uncle contracted malaria in World War II. He was stationed in New Guinea at the time. I’m not sure how many other malaria patients have had this happen, but he would get these reoccurrences every few years. It didn’t have much impact on his life—he lived to be eighty-five, for God’s sake—but it was something I thought about when I was writing this.

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The dogs were drawing closer.

No, they weren’t dogs. They looked like small wolves. Coyotes. They could smell him melting into the hay. He’d killed two that got too close to the loft, their carcasses rotting just beside the ladder. Most of the pack was frightened by the man in the barn, but not all had left. They waited for him below the loft, tongues hot and teeth gnashing. They wouldn’t be able to kill him, even as sick as he was. Still, those teeth could leave quite the mark. His eyes were clouded, his brain rolling in a fevered sea. If he didn’t pass out from the exertion—if he could sit up—he could probably make it back to the van. There was no use in attempting to drive, though.

He buried his head into the sweet hay. This was as good as anything. At least he had fair company. Eight of the Medic’s pigeons had taken roost here. No, wait. Doves. They could have been vultures, and the Sniper wouldn’t have cared. They were calm, save for a nervous twitter every time a coyote ventured too close to the loft’s ladder. After a while, they looked like cotton blurs. He blinked. His vision was almost useless. The fever was billowing.

It had started as a chill earlier this morning. He thought nothing of it, at first. After his team had reported for duty at Thunder Mountain, he’d taken to fortifying this barn. He’d been functional until around two in the afternoon. By then, he’d been shivering so bad that he couldn’t hold his rifle straight. The stock had shimmied and buckled beneath him. He laid down for what he thought would be an hour, not particularly caring if somebody found him sleeping on the job. When he’d come to, it was dark and storming outside.

And he’d been on fire.

He tried to crawl away. When he was greeted by wild, hungry grins, he’d done his best to scare the pack off. His palms were slick with sweat. He’d only managed to kill the two on accident. After that, he’d collapsed, the rifle slipping from his hands. The tool landed with a sharp thunk below the loft, discharging a shot and striking another canine in the flank. That was all he, the great Australian assassin, could manage. He couldn’t even get down the ladder without hurting himself. He was stuck.

His stomach gave a queasy roll as the red paint on the barn began to dribble down the wood frame like hot lava. A fresh seam ripped open in the sky. Water deluged the barn in heavy rapids. Was that his brain frying, or was that happening? He’d only been here a few months, and it had always been dryer than sand-baked bones. The sound of thunder sent the birds fluttering in every direction, coyotes yipping and running with the commotion. When that had died down, one of the floating cotton balls returned, nestling into a crook in his stomach. It wasn’t much, but the little puff was better than the nurses in—in—

Where had he been? Where was he now?

A dark rumble came from below and behind. The sound of a Kombi. Before he’d had his camper, he’d had a Kombi. He’d lost it in the heart of the Northern Territory—not to a monster, not to a poacher. To heat. Hellhounds whined and cried. Wood creaked. Hay combusted. The puff stayed cold and wet. A weak smile came to his lips. The reaper was a Kombi. How strange.

In the dark, red night, there was a tall white thing. It made a low noise, something soft and serene. Not a puffball. It had puffs on it, sitting on square shoulders. A human. Wasn’t it? Not a Kombi, at any rate. He was glowing in the storm. He floated across the loft, hands extended. When the man touched his face, coolness eased itself across the Sniper’s temples.

He closed his eyes for a moment and days passed.

The Sniper awakened to find the world bright and cool, frozen in place. He’d been asleep on a cot, a thin blanket keeping him tucked into place. The steady whirr of a medigun beat down from above his head. There was a dove sitting on the wire framing of the cot, content in its vigil. He was in the Medic’s lab. He didn’t ponder the hows or whys of the situation. He was just glad to have the walls not melting.

The Medic was pleased as well. “Good to see you’ve recovered, Herr Sniper.”

“Only thanks to you, Doc.” It was with bald-faced shame that he realized this. Had he just stopped for one second, just put aside his pride—

Then came the question. “Vhy did you not tell me zat you have had malaria?”