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There were lights. Colorful lights, that traipsed the ceilings and the walls like that of AA spotlights, in tall columns interrupted by whatever they passed over.
The lights phased over people, a swelling group of wiggling bodies, erratic, like blades of grass manipulated by the wind. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people, packed shoulder to sweaty shoulder like sardines in a tin can. They lacked an appropriate amount of clothes, a lot of them did. But no other nearby face seemed bothered by this.
The bodies emitted a unified song.
I gotta blank space, baby, and I’ll write your name.
“What the fuck are they sayin’?!” George Luz screamed over the bombardment of sound.
“They’re… they’re singin’!” Gene shouted back, as if realizing it himself as he spoke. He glanced at the other men, desperate for one of them to know something, to say something.
They were all as slapped raw by this as he was.
“Where the fuck are we?” Harry Welsh grumbled. A cigarette was still hanging from his lip. He’d lit that cigarette in Eindhoven.
“I have no idea!” Luz replied.
“This ain’t real,” Gene whispered to himself. “We gotta get out of here.”
He turned, suffocated by the noise, the people, the screams— except they weren’t screams like he knew. Not of pain, of hell, of gurgled grasps at life. They were cheers. Delirious ones, but it was a celebratory sound. A euphoric one.
When he turned, he came nose to nose with Skip Muck, and Alex Penkala. That euphoric wash had flooded over them; they were adorned in colorful glowing sticks, some crowned around their helmets, others clasped as bracelets and jewelry. Penk had an odd looking gun in his hand that blew bubbles instead of rounds.
“This is fucking incredible! Do you hear this shit?!” Muck grabbed Gene by the shoulders and shook him.
“The broads ain’t got any clothes on!” Penk chimed in, blasting bubbles into the air and letting them rain down on the trio.
“What the fuck, what the fuck,” a nasally voice came through the roar. A young woman with a cropped cotton shirt that revealed her midsection and shorts that barely covered her ass was shoved out of the way, planting into the swell of bodies behind her.
“Hey! Motherfucker!” the girl shrieked as her ass hit the ground.
“Shaddup,” Bill grumbled over his shoulder, kicking over the girl’s sprawled legs, then grouped up with Gene, Skip, Penk. “What the fuck is going on? Someone say they know something. Take that shit off.”
He ripped one of the glowing sticks off Penk’s helmet and flicked it to the ground.
Penk blasted the bubble gun in his face.
“We gotta get out of here. I don’t know where the hell we were, what’s going on, who all these people are, why they look like this. But we gotta get out,” Gene relayed sternly, anxiety giving him bravado.
“Yeah, no shit. But how?” Welsh piped up from over his shoulder. “It doesn’t even look like we’re in Eindhoven anymore. Let alone the fuckin’ 40’s.”
Luz suddenly clutched onto Gene’s shoulder, leaning heavily on him as he ducked into the circle of their conversation. He was sweating, and panting. “Guys, look at this shit. C’mon.”
He disappeared back into the crowded. Skip and Penk ripped between Gene and Bill, following giddily after him.
The remaining three did the same, with less enthusiasm.
What they did see, however, dropped their jaws and welded their boots to the ground.
“Holy shit,” Welsh breathed.
Don Malarkey was on stage with some lanky blonde woman who wore a silver, legless body piece, and obnoxiously tall boots that reached the mid thigh. A Hollywood smile gleamed across her face, bright red lips framing a straight, pearl white set of teeth.
“And what’s your name, soldier?” The blonde girl asked, her arm around Malark’s shoulders. She pitched the microphone to him.
“Technical Sergeant Donald Malarkey, of E Company, ma’am,” he replied with a nervous, giddy smile. His voice boomed through the building, amplified by the microphone. “And what’s yours?”
Tens of thousands of laughs simultaneously rattled the walls.
“Taylor! Nice to meet you, Donald. I like your costume.”
“Uh, thanks. It’s not really a—“
“I see your friends!”
The woman was pointing them out in the crowd and waving. “You guys look incredible! Very realistic soldier cosplay going on here. Never seen that before at one of my shows.”
Like possession, Taylor and the crowd of scantily clad young women and few men laughed in unison.
“Why’s he up there? Why’s he up there with the leggy broad?” Bill narrated all of their thoughts.
“Alright, Donald,” the leggy broad said. “We’re gonna sing Cruel Summer, together. You know the words?”
Don looked in love, hearts pounding out of his eyes. Gene could imagine drool fumbling off his lip. “I— I… no, but I’ll learn for you.”
“Good enough!”
The music picked up again. Nothing like the soft wails of song from their time. It was electric, a beat that couldn’t be placed by any known instrument. It was foreign, futuristic.
Fever dream high in the quiet of the night
You know that I caught it
Bad, bad boy
Shiny toy with a price
You know that I bought it
Don was giving his feeble attempt at singing along with her, watching her mouth move around the words and mumbling along what he thought might be the lyrics.
Killing me slow, out the window
I'm always waiting for you to be waiting below
Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes
What doesn't kill me makes me want you more
Skip and Muck, now joined by Luz, were raging against each other, giving the drunk rendition at the tops of their longs as they had no godly clue what the hell the words were, but damnit did they try.
“That’s our fuckin’ boy!” Luz screamed, his arms gripped over Penk and Skip’s shoulders. “That‘s our fuckin’ Malark!”
And it's new, the shape of your body
It's blue, the feeling I've got
And it's ooh, whoa, oh
It's a cruel summer
It's cool, that's what I tell 'em
No rules in breakable heaven
But ooh, whoa oh
It's a cruel summer
With you
Gene couldn’t feel his face. He was still swaddled in shock. Not fear, or grief. Just… shock.
Welsh had cooled out of it and now stood with his arms crossed as he watched the stage. A small grin settled over his mouth as his cigarette bobbed.
Bill had forgotten he was ever pissed off by all this and was now thoroughly distracted by a young woman in nothing but black tape covering her tits. “How old are ya, anyways?” Gene heard him ask.
Hang your head low
In the glow of the vending machine
I'm not dying
You say that we'll just screw it up in these trying times
We're not trying
So cut the headlights, summer's a knife
I'm always waiting for you just to cut to the bone
Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes
And if I bleed, you'll be the last to know
Taylor leaned the mic to Don this time, expecting him to sing the chorus. He butchered it.
“Oh, it’s blue! Something something! This feeling I’ve got!”
Taylor immediately took over the mic again.
And it's ooh, whoa, oh
It's a cruel summer
It's cool, that's what I tell 'em
No rules in breakable heaven
But ooh, whoa, oh
It's a cruel summer
With you
The song wrapped up. A boom rattled Gene’s chest, and collectively the seven Easy men flinched down and covered their heads. But instead of dirt and building fragments, instead of splintered shards of pine trees, it was brightly colored confetti that flittered down.
“DOWN! GET DOWN! FIND COVER!”
Ronald Speirs was hotfooting it to them in a crouch. He’d smeared a glittery substance over his face like war paint. Pupils dilated. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple. Lipton was trailing behind.
“Mortars? 88s? What are we dealing with, boys?” Speirs asked, kneeling and motioning Gene and Welsh to kneel too. He slammed a fresh clip into the butt of his pistol and racked one.
Lipton had grabbed Guarnere by the collar and tugged him off the skimpy broad he was sucking face with. Lipstick was smeared over his mouth and a daze was cast over him as Lipton tossed him to the ground.
“Hiya boys,” he sung, helmet cockeyed. “I’m gettin’ married.”
Gene looked to Speirs then, and plucked a piece of bright pink paper off his shoulder. “Confetti, sir.”
Speirs’ mouth twisted into an unsatisfactory grimace, then he spun to Lipton, shouting for him to retrieve the other stragglers and get Malark off the damn stage, as he was out in the open and an easy target.
“Listen up,” Speirs commanded. “When we get back with the others, tactical column out the back towards the exit. No fuckin’ around. We don’t know if there’s Krauts out there. Line up, stay sharp, be ready.”
With a firm nod, he disappeared into the forest of legs like a ghost.
“Jumpy around crowds, I imagine,” Welsh mumbled.
“Damnit, I should’ve got her address,” Bill cursed. “I was gonna write to her when we get back stateside.”
“Go! Go! Go! Go!” Lipton’s voice rang out, and they flung themselves into motion, staying low in their formation as Speirs wormed his way to point.
Strangers cursed at them, laughed, held out rectangular devices that flashed like cameras.
“This is going on my story,” a girl said as they passed, the meaning of it flying over Gene’s head like a C-47. He didn’t care to know.
The nine of them burst out through a set of doors, illuminated in red with the word “EXIT” in a glowing sign.
Booths selling food and drinks lined the walkway that they appeared into. Skip snatched two clear cups of what was probably beer out of a stranger’s hands as he passed, shouting out, “use it or lose it!” over his shoulder.
The others were inspired, suddenly raiding food and drinks out of people’s hands as they weaved low through crowds. They were like a band of seagulls, cackling and stealing, here one second and gone the next. A flight of havoc and degeneracy.
Speirs led them through a gate, hopping a low fence.
They were back in Eindhoven.
When Gene turned around, the iron fence they’d crossed was now a low sandbag wall. Disintegrated building fragments misshaped the cobblestone roads beneath their feet. Lipton charged directly into Speirs’ back, not noticing the man had stopped. Muck sloshed beer onto Gene’s arm.
“What the fuck?” was a choir from the nine of them.
“What just happened?” Luz had a large pretzel in his hand, and by the muffle of his voice, a large piece of it was in his cheek.
Bill had wrestled a tall skinny… cup, or bottle, or some sort of vessel for drink, from a poor patron in their previous universe. It was about as wide as a TNT stick in the middle, then flared at both the bottom and top. The bright pink straw curled in loops. “This has got booze in it for certain,” he commented around a swallow, completely unbothered by their jarring transition back into the present.
Winters and Nixon walked up then, seeing the obviously confused and disoriented gaggle of Easy men standing around with odd drinks and food and littered with colorful confetti. “The hell happened to you?” Nixon piped up, amused, in comparison to Winters’ obvious fretting.
“No idea, sir,” Lipton replied. “Truly.”
Winters gave them all a once over, and, seeing as they were intact with no obvious signs of injury appearing on them, gave a small smile and nod.
“Well, seems like a party.”