Cola Wars – The Boil
Cola Wars – The Boil
Cola Wars: The Boil
At 0700 on the dawn of the second year of the battle between two giant soda companies, Pvt. Barrett Goodwin awoke in a field of death. His eyes opened to the brown soil around him roiling like a freshly opened cola. His platoon was boiling in sugar tar. Their bodies were melting away, odd parts staring up at Goodwin like helpless ventriloquist dummies crying out as they were shut away in trunks to be whisked off to the next comedy club with a generous booking policy. The brown stuff had stripped the chrome from their compasses. Missed Goodwin by inches.
In the Cola Wars, effervescence is death. The refreshing hiss of a twisted cap was like a ticking bomb. The rolling fizz of carbonation meant that one false move could be your life. The sound of soda made you long for an air raid siren–a health food ad come to life.
Goodwin dared not move until he got a sense of his surroundings. Somehow a carbon bombing had hit everything but him. An exploding cola shell had popped its tab in the night. It had arced perfectly over him, taking his brothers with it.
Pure dumb luck.
Moving his head as little as possible, Goodwin looked around. He searched for any hole in the carbon quicksand dissolving the land around him. The rock he slept behind was sinking into the boil. Nearby, Jeremy Oldman sank face first. His shoulders slipped below the surface, then his heart, the letters home he’d never send, the belt he’d never do back up, the dick he’d never get to use, and finally the boots his family would never get to argue over slipped beneath the surface and were forever consumed to the inky blackness below.
Goodwin sized up a nearby willow as the only possible way out of this sticky situation.
He grabbed at the lowest dangling branch that wasn’t rapidly dissolving like so many cola-covered army men. He slid his fingers around the firmest clump of leaves he could find and put his absolute faith in it. He tugged himself to sitting and grabbed hold with his second arm like a man overboard going for a life saver. With a Christlike faith in the tree above, Goodwin lifted himself off the ground, his body swinging like a wretched tire swing, his feet dangling inches above the burning muck.
Never before had he put more faith in the branches of a tree. Not when he was eight and he was dangling from a high branch by his shoelaces above a snarling dog. Not when he was sixteen and dangling from a high branch by his belt above a snarling neighbor. Not when he was nineteen and dangling from a high branch by his letterman jacket above a snarling sorority.
This was the real deal.
Goodwin hoisted himself to a sturdy resting branch above the ground one (pre-dissolved) soldier’s height. For the first time since opening his eyes this morning, he had breath and he caught it.
His lips were chapped and he reached for his canteen. The acrid smoke of dirt, clay, rock, and man becoming unto sludge turned the valley into a sweat lodge. The already sweltering temperatures of the Cola War’s vague South Pacific setting were becoming unbearable.
The good soldier gulped down the command-given Nutrient Cola, funded by war bonds. The refreshing, protein-laced substance went down smooth. Somehow, Goodwin thought, no matter how hot it got outside this stuff always stays cold. It washed over his parched mouth and down his burning gullet.*
*Fun Fact: Nutrient Cola is only one ingredient away from the bubbling black tar currently dissolving Goodwin’s friends.
The slurry sat heavy in his stomach and Goodwin couldn’t help but wonder what kind of rations the boys in Poppy Cola Blue got in their packs. He imagined them reclining back with the newest and trendiest MREs corporate money could buy. Fat-free freeze-dried quinoa. Farm-to-table powder-based chicken. Kale. He saw USO shows with glorious pop dynamos and the finest in online rap. The trademark blue uniforms of their ground troops cooled their men, making them look chill and relaxed. Young men in the prime, with their whole lives ahead of them if they can stay clear of the tar. Poppy Cola was the choice of a new generation of trained killers. Coney Cola’s almost slavish devotion to tradition made for great ideas but left its soldiers like Goodwin demoralized. They walked to missions uphill both ways. Each morning they brewed coffee made from crystals. From what mine they were pulled is unknown but that’s the way it used to be, so that way it shall stay. Their occasional entertainment came only from aged, fading comedians whose material was always offensive, not just now. Coney soldiers were decked out in a rich, classic red to hide those pesky bullet wounds. The higher ups say it’s a bad look to mix blood with classic dark soda flavor.
Goodwin sat up and considered his options. Escape routes from this valley of death were limited. The chance of passing ‘copter was miniscule and that wasn’t even factoring in their seeing Goodwin playing Swiss Family Robinson in this tree. There was nary a vine to swing from, Mr. Burroughs by damned. His odds of success vis a vis The Floor is Lava seemed more than dubious. His odds were so miniscule, so minute, so infinitesimal that they might as well not exist at all. So Pvt. Barrett Goodwin did what he always did when nothing was inclined to happen to him for an extended period of time and he opened a good book.
Beyond a few pop tab packets of dust that when mixed with water became some substance resembling cod (which he was planning on rationing for some time), about the only thing that survived the cola bombing was a weathered and dog-eared paperback copy of Sandor’s Dig, the second book in the Winds of Windermyre fantasy series. Goodwin had rather hoped to read the preceding book first but that did not arrive in the last donations shipment so he took what he could get.
A series of generous underlines and margin notes from the book’s previous owner let Goodwin know that some choices author Susan O. Collins had made with the characters from the previous book were questionable at best, but Goodwin didn’t know much about them so they didn’t bother him much.
Sandor’s Dig opened with a lengthy introduction to dwarven society in the land of Farewen. Goodwin learned that it was feudal. The shogun equivalents were called “Ingots,” the samurais “Ores,” and the serfs merely “Soils.” The Ingots and Ores, despite needing the Soils, did not respect them. Goodwin closed the book and adjusted his vantage point in the tree to avoid the fast approaching midday Sun. Seeing that the boil showed no sign of slowing and had finally consumed the last of his compatriots, he reopened to the page he had marked with his thumb and continued. The book focused on the adventures of Ser Ridorn Averell, a noble elf, visitor to the Republic of Subteran (capital city of the dwarves), and whom the previous reader was unhappy with his having survived the assault on Hearty Stream at the end of the previous book in the series. Goodwin saw a neighboring tree lose its base and begin to tip and resigned that he might as well learn some more about the mythical Farewen before his eventual demise. Goodwin reopened to page 104, on which the titular dig finally came into play.
It was then that over the top his book, Goodwin spotted an approaching Poppy Cola soldier. More annoyed that he had to stop when Sandor’s Dig was finally getting good than at his already resigned impending death, he nonetheless drew his pistol.
“Stop right there,” Goodwin threatened. “Stop or I swear I’ll shoot.” The Poppy Cola Blue fumbled for his pistol and it was at this point that Goodwin had given away his very existence to an enemy combatant. “I—Don’t—Stop. Please. Do not do that.” Despite his mild protestation, the Poppy Cola soldier got his hand on his sidearm. “If you do that, I will shoot you.”
Pausing, the Poppy Cola soldier said, “If you shoot me, you’ll alert a whole squad of my guys to where you are. I’m only off to pee. They won’t be expecting gunfire.” The enemy soldier gazed over the chemical wreckage. “And I wasn’t expecting all this.”
“Yes,” Goodwin said. “I was extraordinarily lucky to have survived a terrible chemical cola bombing, though it does leave me in a between a rock and a hot place. Though my luck is limited as this tree is my sole source of safety and it, too, will soon be consumed by the muck.” The Poppy Cola soldier listened and relaxed his hand from his weapon. “I’ve no radios or functional communication available for me to contact command and request a rescue. And it seems powerful unlikely that you boys in blue would go out of your way to lend me a hand,” the Poppy Cola soldier shrugged, acknowledging that the odds were slim, “so I’ve more or less resigned myself to my fate and have been preparing to tumble face first when my time comes.” There was no lie in Goodwin’s words. He considered his options and didn’t think he had much to lose in just playing his cards right on the table. “So what I would really like is to spend what little time I have left on this Earth reading a little bit more of this fine fantasy novel I’ll never finish and think on the infinite as little as possible.”
The Poppy Cola soldier looked at Goodwin, cast his eyes down to the boil, relieved himself on a nearby tree, and sauntered off, forgetting to zip. He gave Goodwin a two finger salute and they never saw each other again.
Ser Ridorn Averell caught the eye of a noble dwarf woman. This would complicate matters in the royal court but aide the brave knight on his quest to unite the dwarven clans and prevent a hostile takeover form a radical sect of the Ores. Ho ho, thought Goodwin, now things are heating up. Let’s see how Ser Averell handles The Trying, a local tournament of combat.
As it turns out, not well.
Though Ser Averell survived the first three rounds of the tournament with aplomb, his hard-earned cockiness would ultimately be his downfall. As the ignoble Gorge Fellhammer entered the field of battle brandishing a hammer as large as he, Ser Averell should have been sharpening his blade. When Gorge fired up the crowd by felling a bull elephant with a single blow, Ser Averell should have been resting his tired muscles. When the hammer, still wet with the blood of the pachyderm, was raised above the head of the horribly big Gorge, Ser Averell should have side stepped and waited for the follow-through to make a strike at the sole moment of vulnerability. But instead he lunged to pierce the heart of the giant as the bout had barely begun and was rendered unto gelatin as a result. This had angered the book’s previous owner a great deal and with a scant three hundred and fifty pages left in Sandor’s Dig, Goodwin wondered where all of this could be going? Would the dwarven clans never be united, fated forever to civil war? Would the noble dwarf woman be forced through on her arranged marriage with no dashing elf hero to save her? Was it all over but the crying with just an inch of small print pages left to go? Goodwin suspected he would never know.
There was a slow, steady sizzle coming from the base of the tree now. Low bark was popping off as the sap inside rose to a boil. Goodwin thought of the time that Rodriguez had tried to boil their chicken packets into a kind of stew and nearly blew them all up as the polluted water caught flame.
There was a small fire now, slowly climbing the tree, and Goodwin thought about all the time he’d spent in trees, dangling as he did by his tuxedo bowtie above a snarling wedding party.
The tree was warping now like wood steamed to make a curved piece of furniture. Goodwin thought of climbing the tree but knew it would only prolong the inevitable.
He flipped to the end of Sandor’s Dig. He read a brief epilogue about Lady Craeg (who he guessed was the dwarven noble lady) assuming her place on the throne of gold. She was known by a new title, “The Beheader.” The book’s previous owner had drawn a crude thumbs up. Goodwin thought he must have missed some good bits in there. And the tree gave way.
There was no chopper that swooped in to save Goodwin. No back-up arrived at the last possible second. He died. And it was miserable. If you’ve never had pieces of your body melted, then it might be hard for you to articulate as to how much the Goodwin’s death sucked, but it was a lot. But he did briefly find salvation in a good book. Though his death was certain, his life was all the richer for the time he spent between the pages. Truly, the real heroes are the writers. They put their lives on the line by putting them on the page. Their battlefield is the written word, their weapon the muse, their allies naught but what lies within their skull. How stupid soldiers must feel when compared to the writer. How impotent their assault weapons look when placed side by side with literature. No war hero was ever as treasured as Mark Twain, no solider as important to culture as Jane Austen, no sharpshooter responsible for more death than J.D. Salinger. Remember to pay for what you read, dear reader, because you are not merely filling the pockets of an American hero, but you are crowdfunding the very face of God. War is hell. Short stories are heller.
Support these stories and more like them on my Patreon.
Jump in on my new show PodCATS.
Chekhov's Gunman 