Free Beneath the Stain - Part 2 by Amy Lane

little boy understood. He spoke to her rapidly in the patter of children. Trav was relieved to understand a few words of Dari, or a dialect of it, so this might not be the final climax of what was admittedly a pretty spectacular goatfuck.
    The little boy pulled a knife—a sturdy thing, probably used mostly for food—out of his stocking and made the first rip in the little girl’s skirt. Trav looked at him for permission and ripped off the bottom six inches all the way around. Fortunately the skirt was long—probably a hand-me-down—and he shredded the piece he’d torn off into strips and set about binding the little girl’s arm to her side.
    It must have hurt substantially, because at one point she let out a whimper and lost consciousness. Trav was grateful, and even more grateful for the extra strips, which he used to bind the abrasions on the little boy’s back, hip, and shoulder. Then he picked the little girl up and made his way through the dead goats. (The living goats had long since buggered off, which proved they had more sense than Trav.)
    By the time he got back to the Humvee of origin, little boy limping at his heels, Heath had bandaged his own ass and fashioned a crutch out of some of the debris in the road.
    “What’s the sitch, hoss?” Heath asked, his accentless voice making a mockery of his attempt to be a good ol’ boy. One of the things Heath and Trav had in common, actually, was that they both came from educated families. Both of them wanted experience, and an education, and a chance to serve their country, but the military hadn’t been their only option.
    “The sitch is we’re probably…” Trav did quick mental calculations. Thirty minutes out at forty miles an hour equaled…. “Twenty miles from base. You’re wounded, so are they, and we need to hump ass back anyway. Did you find any canteens?”
    “And MREs,” Heath confirmed, holding up a bag of provisions.
    They met eyes, then looked at the little boy to see if he was game. The poor kid nodded like he knew exactly what they needed from him.
    Then he passed out.
    Heath carried the little girl, because she weighed about nothing, and Trav carried her brother. They made shitty time, because they both hurt and because running on the side of the road was a good way to have a close encounter with the local venomous wildlife if you weren’t careful.
    After the first five miles, the little girl woke up and screamed for Trav, so they swapped kids—and the little boy started to lose it. In an effort to calm the little boy down, Heath started bribing him. The electronics were the biggest seller—they could tell by the boy’s excitement when Heath said “Xbox”—so Heath stuck with that. By mile ten, both kids were exhausted and there was nothing but the sun, the blood, and the pain.
    That was when Trav started singing.
    “Well East Coast girls are hip, I really.…”
    Heath laughed briefly and picked up the next line. “Dig those styles they wear….”
    They finished “California Girls,” which was a good one—nice running rhythm.
    “What next?” Heath asked. “Anything but ‘Doo-Wah-Diddy.’” Because they got enough of that noise in basic, right?
    Trav saw a mirage that served as inspiration. “There she sits, buddy, just a-gleamin’ in the sun….”
    So “Cadillac Ranch” followed “California Girls” and was in turn followed by “House of the Rising Sun,” “Gimme Three Steps,” “Mysterious Ways,” and so on, and so on, and so on.
    The heat and the pain they managed to forget. But long after they’d gotten to camp and even after Heath had ordered the electronics delivered to the children as they healed in the infirmary and waited to be placed, the two of them still remembered that playlist.
    “Music, Trav. The kind of music that gets under your skin and hauls your ass across the stinking desert. I live for that shit. I want to do something with that, you know?”
    And Trav, who had only ever thought of