Quicksand, Ch 1

Graham was desperately bored.1

"This is why I should have listened to my mother," he muttered, trudging forward. "I could have become an astronaut. Or written for the newspaper. Or read inspirational self-help books to deformed blind children. But I chose to join the army, and a lovely choice that turned out to be," He raised his foot and the bottoms of his black boots were melting. "I am in the middle of the fucking desert, and there's only so much Eye Spy you can play out here,"2

"I pity you," Graham looked up as the man next to him rumbled. He was rather nervous; John was not a man who spoke often. Not to mention his height, a towering 6 foot four, gave him the look of a small atomic bomb. "I really do,"3

"Of course," the thin woman added. "It's not like we're in The Desert, the one we always heard about in school, or that we're trying to avoid the Southern troops on our way to the front lines, or that there is a very big possibility of us getting caught, tortured, and roasted alive."4

Graham grinned at the woman, who sighed. Emily had been fifteen when she first met Graham, and it was an experience that she viewed with a grim disatisfaction. No one could really tell whether Graham's wild stories about hot sex in the high school bathroom were true or not. Emily kept her mouth firmly shut. 5

"So what did you want to be, before you joined the army?" Graham asked, and the statement was followed by a collective groan.6

"Not again," 7

"Come on, tell me," Graham smiled his best dashing smile. Emily stared at him again, her eyes expressionless. 8

"You look like a fucking psychopath, cut that out," Brent called from the front of the line. His word was law; the man had taken two bullets and a knife wound across his face for the Norther battalions, so Graham quickly adopted a look of complete and utter woe. 9

"A pilot," Andrew muttered from the sidelines. He was a quiet boy, just a little over seventeen. 10

"A doctor," Brent said wistfully.11

"A magician," John said, clapping his huge hands together with the sound of thunder. He glared, daring anyone to laugh. 12

Graham barely supressed a snicker.13

"A teacher," Emily said, her eyes focused straight ahead, hiding her expression. 14

"Well," Graham pretended to think. "I always wanted to be a professional juggler, and so I could juggle ten balls at once, and they'd take me to the President himself to juggle, but when I got up there, I'd have completely lost all my motor functions, despite hours of practice, and then..." 15

John shoved him into the sand. 16

They kept walking, and the sun started to set. Graham got up and brushed himself off, looking not too suprised at his fate, and started talking again. "So then..."17

"Shut up you idiot, you're going to get us all caught," Brent said sourly.18

"Oh right, there is absolutely no one out here," Graham retorted, but then fell silent as a cloud of dust rose on the horizon. 19

"Oh."20