It all started at that monster-truck rally simulation booth. It really seemed irresistible, with the soldiers out front in their camouflage fatigues and their big smiles.
I looked into the booth and saw a Humvee parked in the center, hooked up to a power supply somewhere outside. A large digital-display dome surrounded the turret, and smaller domes blocked out the windows.
The simulation only took groups. No single riders.
When the group ahead of us completed their simulation, the Humvee doors opened with a dreadful cry. One of the riders was wailing, hanging halfway out the car. I looked past soldier attendants and saw a young man collapse to the ground outside the Humvee. My brother and I thought he was just being dramatic, both of us inventing a number of potentially laughable offenses. It really only made us more curious about the simulation.
After a short wait, soldiers handed us gear at the front of the line. Everyone filled a slot in the Humvee and was given a prop carbine and a real helmet. The wailing man was escorted away.
Andre was in the driver seat, I was assigned the turret, and three strangers sat in the passenger and back seats with carbines to shoot out the window, I supposed. I climbed through the cramped vehicle at the attendant’s instructions and got into my position on the turret, where I emerged out of the top of the Humvee and found myself in the digial-display dome I had seen from the outside. But that is not how it felt. No, it felt as though I had completely left that booth and been transported away to some alternate universe. I was in a snowed-out forest with crisp air whooshing by, and bits of snow melting on my skin. I looked back down into the Humvee and saw this same setting out everyone’s windows. It was beautiful. Like no game I had ever seen before. It was so utterly realistic that it wasn’t eerie or otherwise unsettling. It was like I had really emerged in a tranquil forest under December frost.
My brother and I gushed to one another and heard the strangers laughing and joking about it. Then, one of the strangers fired their carbine out the window with a huge bang that rocked us all. My heart skipped, and I had to focus hard to breathe after the shock. Someone told the shooter to cool down, and they did.
The Humvee lurched forward under my brother’s acceleration, and we pulled out onto a dirt road leading off into a misty forest.
“I’ll just keep going this way?” Andre asked the group.
“I guess, man. I hope this thing doesn’t explode.” One of the strangers said.
Then I heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie, and a voice came through from the radio on the dashboard.
“Bravo 2-5 this is Foxtrot. Continue on to rally point alpha, just north of your POS. Over.”
“North?” Andre asked.
One of the strangers leaned to point at a compass on the dash, “There. Looks fine.”
We were on track.
We thought firecrackers were going off in the treeline beside us when we were first attacked. We later learned that it was a cluster munition. The first pelt of bomblets had us all looking west, but within seconds the rest of the bombs landed about us—probably a hundred little bombs all piping equidistant from one another in a perfect circle radius with us at the center. I saw this well from the turret. Two of the bomblets hit our vehicle, leaving smokey tears in the armor. I was glad to have survived and thrilled when the Humvee lurched forward again under the control of Andre. I heard the faint yelps of my comrades and became aware of my temporary loss of hearing, which slowly returned after the cluster strike.
“Open fire! Ambush!” Andre called, breaking through my cloudy perception.
I felt a trickle roll down my head. I wiped the liquid with my hand. Blood. My fingers crept slowly to the bit of shrapnel lodged in my hairline. Perhaps what confused me even further was my sudden shaved head, when I had just had hair reaching my shoulders moments ago.
“Turret! Open up!” One of the stranger’s voices reached me as I tugged the shrapnel out of my head and looked north.
I saw small movements in the row of trees that bordered the field we moved through. The passenger leaned out of his window and began firing his carbine at the movement in the tree row, so I joined in. My bullets ripped through the tree line with orange sparks as the enemy rushed about their position. They managed to fire on us with a rifle. Those rounds cracked overhead like whips.
While I remained crouched within the safety of the Humvee, the enemy took a more devastating approach. They fired a rocket. A sudden whoosh followed by an explosive impact, which targeted our vehicle directly. The rocket’s collision with the Humvee was catastrophic, instantly destroying the engine. Flames and smoke erupted from the front of the vehicle, marking the end of our advance and leaving us stranded amidst the chaos of the battlefield.
“Bail out!” One of the strangers yelled as they threw their door open and leaped from the wreckage.
“Andre is hit!” The passenger said with a grip on Andre’s vest.
Andre was slouched over in the driver’s seat. His face was a mess of torn, burnt flesh, letting out an agonizing groan. Andres’s jaw had been blown away, and now his tongue just tossed about in the gore. I felt a horror I couldn’t describe, not even if I tried all my life. It was a hellish sight that I would never recover from, and I knew it even in that instant. I stared at my brother’s gored face as he convulsed and continued to groan, caught in a vortex of horror and fascination, feeling a manic episode taking hold of me.
I felt a rush of air from my right side and was grabbed by my shirt. I looked at the arm and followed it to the face. The door was open, and I was dragged out, falling out of the Humvee and back into the simulation booth, where soldiers with big smiles came and helped us to our feet.
I felt about my head as I calmed and returned to reality. My hair was long again, and I had no head injury at all. I rushed around to the driver’s side and saw Andre smiling like those soldiers, his face reconstructed and clean.
“That was crazy, dude! Should we try again?”
It was too much for me. I could hardly breathe.
“Whats wrong?”
I couldn’t find a question that would help my confusion. Altogether, I was happy that Andre was alive, and I suppose I was happy that he enjoyed the simulation. But we were suddenly on separate planets, alien to one another. His smiling eyes turned to concern after looking me over. He put a hand on my shoulder, and I flinched.
“You okay, Yuri?” He asked. “I thought you liked war games.”
I watched the next group get into the Humvee and then looked down at the long line of waiting participants.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
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