Meteor Soldiers - Episode 1-1

The unending din of feet against earth started to lose form as the marching soldiers’ footsteps fell out of synchronization. In a typical Australian field of dead grass, professionals led newcomers through drills and obstacle courses under a pink, dying afternoon sky. To late teen Corey Draiman, this wasn't just the grounds of the local army base; he had stepped into a grave new world where he’d be tested, where Officers would bore into him and reshape what lay at his core. He could have just walked into Hell, or a schoolyard, or a shopping centre for all it mattered. The entry felt casual and meaningless. It was only when standing within the grounds and actually contemplating the situation that his nerves began to bend. He was joining the army? He was actually going through with it? After today, nothing would be the same. He was about to emerge from his shell and become a man. It was time to grow into maturity.

            "Dildosaurus."

            Corey sputtered and coughed at his best friend Dave's sudden burst of profanity. "What the hell, man?"

            "I’m establishing contrast between grave seriousness and vibrator-based humour," said Dave. "Anyway, I've been meaning to ask you something."

            "What?" Corey asked impatiently.

            “How much wood would John Wood pop if John Wood could pop wood?” Corey sighed and returned his attention to the field. Dave’s prominent cheekbones and soft blonde hair could have made him a stud, if only all his conversations with girls didn’t involve him referencing some form of penetration. Corey was too stricken by the solemn truth of them being in an army camp to answer his stupid question.

            Dave snapped his fingers impatiently. “Hey, Full Metal Jackarse! The only excuse for not answering one of my filthy hypothetical questions is that-”

            “-you’re sidetracked thinking of an even filthier one,” Corey finished. “You’ve said that before, you know.”

          “Fine, here’s another one: If you could go back in time and kill Hitler, who would you rather sleep with?”

          “That one doesn’t even make sense.”

          At that moment, another squadron of late teens in army camouflage sprinted by. By their speed and closeness as they ran past, it felt like standing at the railing in a subway. A full train of military grunts, sweeping up air as it passed... “So, do you think there’d be a ping pong table and free ice cream in the hospital wing? Or more accurately, do you think there’d have been ice cream before Tubby-arse Taylor found out?” It took Corey a short while to realise that his mate was referring to the obese kid struggling to do push-ups 20 metres away.

            “Don’t be cruel,” said Corey. “I was in Burt’s Art class back in Year 10. He’s an alright guy, you know.” Alright about firing off his opinions, he felt like adding. It was revolutionary for the armed forces to be accepting someone with Burt’s physique; revolutionary in both history and Corey’s head. This simple fact screamed ‘If he can do it, so can you!’ All the ads had been crapping on about how the Aussie army was under ‘new management’, accepting women into the frontline and discriminating less. Whatever senseless BS was going on in the Middle East surely didn’t need this many troops.

            But truthfully, Corey couldn’t give about the current war. They’d probably both complete their training and then be released back into the wild, back to their out-of-school-but-not-good-enough-for-Uni lives. Corey could have gone to university if he wanted to. He didn’t need to prove that he wasn’t dumb, though; only that he wasn’t weak. And that’s why he was joining the army - so he could toughen up. So that he could eat the cereal of fortitude and take a dump of pride. So that drill sergeants in uniform could yell abuse at him until the insults formed into a hand that would-

            “-fondle my balls until they harden to steel...”

            “You really need to stop finishing your inner monologues out loud,” said Dave. “It’s especially annoying when we’re in public.”

---

“Okay Mr. Draiman, Mr. Bennington. Here are your forms. If you’ll just take them to that tent over there, we’ll get you both sworn in.” The heat of the day resonated in the woman’s lethargic voice as she handed them their forms. As Corey and Dave walked to the tent, they passed many of the guys and girls they’d gone to school with, along with fresh faces from other schools of the region. And as usual, Dave was verbally addressing the issue of whether or not he would engage in sexual intercourse with each girl.

            “I’d root her, I’d root her, I’d root her, I’d.... root her. Just. I’d root her through to her, I’d root her while thinking of her, and I’d-” His attention had obviously been stolen by the woman across the field. Her light brown hair was zigzagged for its whole length, yet not frizzy. The young adult’s jawbone looked narrow, stretching the skin of her cheeks drum-tight. “Now I’d root, trunk, branch, and leaf her. God,” he whispered into Corey’s ear, “Gina is stunning. She gives me morning wood at 3 PM. Which, admittedly, is the time I usually wake up.”

            “Are you kidding?” said Corey. “That girl’s...” He glimpsed at Gina to ensure she wasn’t looking. She somehow managed to make her army getup look erotic, though soiled this image by scratching her head with her loaded rifle. “She’s an imbecile,” he muttered to Dave through closed teeth. “She pushes doors that say ‘Pull’ and drives into brick walls that say ‘Don’t Crash’. Speaking of her driving, do you know she has one of those stupid ‘My Holden beats your Ford’ bumper stickers?”

            “Yeah yeah, I don’t buy into lame car fanboyism either. But I still think it’s harsh to judge her intelligence simply because she has a bumper sticker that disses Fords.”

            “But she drives a Ford,” Corey explained. “Plus the bumper sticker is on upside down. Also, it’s stuck to the back of her head. Been there for weeks and she still hasn’t noticed...” Watching Gina’s ego try to overpower her id was like watching a chipmunk fight Mike Tyson. Still, a glance at her MySpace profile picture often prompted Corey to invite himself inside for coffee. She checked her cell phone as she walked in their direction.

            “Okay, so maybe her being a moron is a constant in any given equation,” said Dave. “But you know what another constant is?”

            “What?”

            “I’d root her." He gave a cheesy smirk. "You know, I’ve been sending her filthy anonymous text messages all morning.”

            “Ugh!” Gina said in disgust as she walked by. “My phone won’t stop talking about my cat.”

            The two boys waited until she was out of hearing distance, then Dave said “I vow that the United States of David will be the first to launch a rocket into the celestial body of Gina.” When Corey didn’t respond, he began singing: “Do you belieeeeve I put my man in her poon, man in her pooooooon.......”

            Corey gave a heard-it-all-before sigh. Dave looked at him as if worried he’d somehow offended him. There was no way Corey could be offended by such sex talk, seeing as they’d made so much of it through their final years of high school. But lately, something had been nagging at him like a massive philosophical rift, splitting his mind and alienating him from his chum.

            “Dave?” he asked. “Have you ever considered that even as men, we may be thinking too much about sex? Like, maybe it’s dominating us and clouding our minds?”

            “You mean you’ve had mammary glands this whole time and you never told me?”

            “See, there you go again!” said Corey. “I know sex is an overpowering drive, but it seems like we’re trying too hard to convince ourselves that getting laid matters. Maybe it's time we stop spewing out one-liners about who we would have sex with, and start trying to make connections with girls. Plus, with our increasingly deviant viewpoints on sexuality, I constantly fear God will strike us down with a bolt of lightning.”

            “What deviant viewpoints?”

            “Oh come off it Dave! You actually signed that petition to legalize kiddie porn.”

            “I keep telling you,” explained Dave in frustration, “I thought it meant porn for kiddies. You know, cartoons of podgy blue animals without genitals dry-humping furniture.”

            Yep, thought Corey, a bolt of lightning.

---

One of the two young men shook his head in disgust and began walking away. The taller of the two shrugged as if wondering what he’d said, then strode after him. Once they were out of sight, another band of cadets stomped through with rifles across chests. All the unsuspecting troops continued through their drills and procedures, unaware and unsuspecting.

            The troops were separated from the observer by poorly aging perimeter fencing, ten or so metres of flat earth, and an afro of green shrubs. Hidden in these shrubs, Mr. Tokusatsu sat patiently in his rust-coated van, completely obscured from the blaring sunlight. He redundantly checked his watch once more, knowing that he was miles from midnight. No matter how often he drove the van around, he always felt as if the old thing was willing and able to collapse around him. But he knew it would serve him in the getaway, and that’s all that mattered.

            Partly to pass the time and partly out of obsession, he checked his handgun. Loaded, safety on, been polished a thousand times out of boredom... Nothing much to check, really. He’d done this kind of thing before, so why was the nerve getting to him? He looked up from his hiding place and at the army reserve once again. So many human beings, all a stone’s throw away from death, closer to being shot than they imagined. But all that really mattered was the mission. So Mr. Tokusatsu screwed the lid off his cheap water bottle and continued to wait. At midnight, the invasion would begin.