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As he stamped on the brakes and leaned on the warthog’s door, Grif yelled, “What the hell are you doing? Why are you stopping? Move!”
“His body fell out!”
“So what?”
“He’s gonna need it!” Caboose’s voice rose as his fear of losing Church grappled with the urgency of escaping the EMP.
Simmons cut in with an insistent, “It’s just an empty shell, now get going!”
“Caboose, move it or we’re leaving you!” Grif finished, throwing the car into gear and accelerating away from the Freelancer base. To the collective relief of the Reds, the familiar sound of a revving engine followed closely behind.
None of the simulation troopers said a word as they raced to outdistance the EMP’s range. Despite their misgivings about the explanation Washington rushed through, they were determined to carry the Epsilon unit away from this battle. Even Sarge understood that some things were beyond red and blue.
Holding onto the mounted gun for dear life, Simmons scanned the machinery for signs of the EMP. He knew the symptoms: an electric surge, discharge, spontaneous failure, electronic death. When the terminals they passed began to fizz, Simmons sounded the alarm. “Here comes the bomb, don’t stop!”
The silent wave caused burst of static and the sputtering halt of the Red’s warthog, and Simmons jerked forward with a grunt. As he punched the gas in vain, Grif shouted, “Ah shit, it stalled!”
Sarge leaned forward to encourage Caboose with a, “Go go go!”
“Yeah, get Epsilon out of here!” Grif joined in. “Don’t worry about us!”
“Okay!” Caboose replied, crashing his car through a stack of barrels. “I’m scared!” The Reds watched helplessly as Caboose’s car careened over the edge of a sharp drop. The Blue disappeared.
Frustrated by their failure, Sarge dropped back into his seat and grumbled, “Yer lousy driving let the Blues get all the credit!”
As Grif turned to deliver a rebuttal, he noticed Simmons hunched over in the back. Thin, grey smoke drifted out of the joints around his left shoulder. “Uh… Simmons? Your back is smoking.”
Sarge followed his lazy private’s gaze. “Hmm,” he speculated, “Maybe the ehmp shorted out his robotic parts. Simmons, move your arm!” Groaning, Simmons used his human hand to prod his motionless left arm. “We’re gunna need a whole new set of circuit doodads!” Sarge lamented, then paused. “Or maybe I can scrounge up some parts from here.”
Interest captured by this new project, Sarge hopped out of the warthog and edged around to the shorted engine. If there was one piece of standard military equipment Sarge knew inside and out, it was the warthog; he might find something useful to fix Simmons 2.0, but he’d certainly see what dastardly damages the enemy’s EMPs were capable of.
After pushing himself up, Simmons balled his good fist and started pounding on his chest. “Have you tried turning it off and back on?” Grif teased, but the maroon private didn’t respond. Didn’t even acknowledge Grif.
The smoke had dissipated, but Simmons’s heaving and flailing indicated something was wrong. When he finally turned to Grif, Simmons clamped his good hand around his throat.
“What, can’t talk now?” Although Grif could read the panic in Simmons’s gestures, in his uncertainty he defaulted to sarcasm. “We should get some ehmps to use around red base, I wouldn’t ever have to listen to your nagging.”
Grif wasn’t prepared for the palm slapping across his face; his helmet cushioned the blow, but Grif gaped at Simmons anyway. The silent soldier grabbed this throat again, shoulders heaving impatiently.
Grif inhaled sharply. “Oh. I have your lungs, so that means…”
A tense silence settled between them.
Barely thinking, Grif reached forward to remove Simmons’s helmet, but the cyborg clamped his hand firmly on top. After flash of irritation at the display of shyness – it wasn’t like Grif had never seen his face before – the orange soldier stated, “I can’t give you CPR through your air filters.”
Seeing reason (or maybe just seeing stars), Simmons relaxed his grip, and his hand dropped away as his helmet slid off. Grif’s eyes were drawn to the mechanical portion of his face, to the scars left and the wires crossing between flesh and steel. One of his eyes stared out from a robotic socket, but the human side was creased with strain and poorly concealed fear.
Grif removed his own helmet next. From vacant stares in the mirror, Grif knew his own face looked like a lopsided mirror of Simmons’s parts even down to the splash of freckles… only excluding the weight Grif had put on.
For a precious few seconds, neither soldier moved. “You kind of have to lie down,” Grif pointed out. “Unless you just want to wait until you pass out.”
As Simmons awkwardly maneuvered himself onto his back, Grif told himself this was nothing. He’d given Sarge CPR before, dammit. Even so, it felt oddly intimate as Grif climbed over the backseat and straddled Simmons.
Because he’d never bothered to pay attention to any first aid materials, Grif had no clue how to properly perform CPR. Any air in the lungs was better than nothing, right? Taking a big breath, Grif plopped his mouth over Simmons’s and blew a gush of air into his throat. Another inhale, another breath for Simmons, then again.
Grif continued the rescue breathing until his head spun, but he skipped the chest compressions – Simmons’s heart should still be beating if it was made of flesh, right? But as a minute drained by, the maroon soldier had fallen far too still. In his panic, Grif wondered how long it took brain damage to set in (Simmons would know, the fucking nerd).
The clatter of a metal collision caused Grif to whip upright, his heart pounding as he watched Sarge deposit a handful of mechanical junk onto the back of the warthog. “Looks like those Freelancers keep batteries in -” Sarge broke off as he realized Grif was seated firmly on Simmons’s prone form. “What in the hell are you two doing?”
Grif wheezed before gasping, “CPR – you’ve got to fix his stupid mechanical lungs!” Taking his first good look at Simmons, Grif realized he was out cold. He swallowed a lump in his throat.
“Robots don’t run on air, numbnuts!” Sarge chided as he pushed his pile aside and climbed into the crowded back end. “When’s the last time you started the microwave by blowing on it?” With Sarge gearing up to tinker with Simmons’s gears, Grif retreated to the coveted shotgun seat to watch.
Wasting no time, Sarge removed Simmons’s chest piece and lifted the metal panels to fiddle with wires. His practiced hands moved through the jumble with only an occasional pause, and Grif wondered why he hadn’t called Sarge in the first place. Too much effort?
Or perhaps it had to do with the twist in Grif’s stomach whenever Sarge messed with the jumble of guts and wires, and with the pained expression on Simmons’s face.
“Hmm, looks like the power doodad is fried,” Sarge muttered as he selected a jumble of his scavenged pieces and began adding them to Simmons 2.0. As he added the battery and completed the new circuit, a grinding and whirring of metal kicked to life. Simmons’s mechanical lungs shuddered to life, and he drew in a ragged breath in unison with Grif.
“I knew it,” Sarge crowed as his patient’s chest heaved. “They thought they could stop us with that ehmp, but they underestimated my robotical genius! Score one for red team.”
As his eyes fluttered opened, Simmons groaned and moved his hand to the hole in his side. It only took him a moment to connect Sarge’s hovering figure with his exposed innards. Turning his head, Simmons locked eyes with Grif, and a moment of unspoken fear and relief passed between them before Simmons reached up to pull his helmet back on. Grif did likewise.
As Sarge began to reassemble Simmons 2.0, the privates had a moment to catch their breath. “Geez,” Simmons grumbled, “Could you have taken any longer?”
“You’re the one who’s good with the computer stuff,” Grif replied, “I had no idea an ehmp would stop your robot lungs. You could’ve been more obvious.”
“Holding your throat is the universal sign for suffocating!”
Grif scoffed. “It’s obviously not that universal.”
“No, you’re just a dumbass.” As Sarge slipped the outer plate into place, Simmons huffed and added, “That’s not even what CPR is!”
Sarge cut in with a stern, “Can it, ladies. We’re going to have to find ourselves a new vehicle to drive home.”
Rubbing his now assembled side, Simmons added, “And we should probably find Caboose…”
Accepting the demise of their current vehicle, red team piled out of the warthog and began walking away from the Freelancer base. Only Simmons cast a final look over his shoulder as he wondered what fate had fallen for Church.
Still caught up on their own troubles, Sarge shook his head and muttered, “I never thought I’d see two boys kissing without Donut around.”
Simmons let out a weary sigh.