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The sand was too smooth underneath him, slick like it was hot enough in this desert to make glass. Sam pushed himself off the ground, relieved at feeling the dry sand give way between his fingers, and on hands and knees he made way his way to his friend. Still low, crawling until the sand felt wet beneath his elbows. He knew what it was, immediately, had known they couldn’t be that lucky in enemy territory, and yet couldn’t look down at Riley, red.
Dragging the body over the dunes would leave a proper trail but it was too late to help it, and as Sam worked, doggedly pulling 200 pounds behind him, the numbness of work was almost pleasing enough to forget. The sand and the sun dampened any sound, soft ash blonde for miles until it melded blue and back to a blazing neon again, covering everything, filter to camera. Even Riley, Sam thought, looked flavescent as he lay there limp, vest half torn off and uniform covered in dark brown, henna-reddish. And brown was it too, was a darker kind of yellow; Sam had vague cottony thoughts of shock and how to recognize it— his commander’s voice sounded nicer behind all that cotton— before his train of thought floated above it.
He was dusted with the blonde ash by the time he stopped in an empty enough space, no sounds of copters or brown dusty faces or black black black of machine guns, only gentle amber on his skin and a sharp pain in the shoulder-blade wings of his back. Sam dropped the rope and sat carefully, laying out in a macabre game of Simon Says, and spared a look at the slight sting in his hands. Sitting had gotten them covered in sand, and they were covered now in wet, henna-colored grains, from each tip down to each wrist.
It was perplexing when Samuel rubbed his hands together and the sand wouldn’t come off, stuck, and he slumped back to the smoothness of the ground. His eyes caught a trailing slight wind, more amber yellow than the dunes, standing out as it brushed Sam’s dirty boots and stirred Riley’s hair.
Riley was always late on a cut. Kept the mousy stuff long in front, sheared near his ears, had the nerve to call it a buzz cut and laugh at his commanders. It curled into a shiny shield over his forehead, cap of bravado under the uniform cap they both had— Sam liked that the white kid wore a fade well, and got his cut when Riley did. He brushed it now out of Riley’s face, trying to keep it tucked behind those wide ears of his, good for catching secrets and homesickness.
Riley’s hair was a special yellow now, dusted pretty with sand in between the mouse-brown with his own sepia-and-henna fingers in it, and as Sam laid back down he was sad that Riley’s family wouldn’t see him as nicely done up as he was now. They’d see him in some stiff suit and stiffer American flag, wouldn’t get to see the round of Riley’s nose and ears or the soft amber picking at his uniform, or, even, the gentle way the yellow touched Riley all over.
He wasn’t supposed to close his eyes, but even with them closed all he could see was the bright sunny yellow, so closed they remained. It didn’t matter. Sam laid next to Riley as the glass slowly cooled back up to grains, no longer a slick smooth but a shifting one. When eyes opened again everything else had cooled down, too, a deep cyanous purple washed out in the moon; Sam spared a wince at pushing himself to a sitting position but turned to Riley immediately. His eyes hurt but he could make out the smell of his friend fine, and Sam again thumbed his radio for any kind of signal, hoping the purple didn’t blanket the way the fallow air of the day had.
The small red light cracked his vision hard, made the soldier recoil from his pack, an arm flung over his eyes. His other arm hit the solidness of Riley’s forearm, sand-covered hand gripping it tightly after searching for purchase. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was the searing yellow. Sam waited for the rest of his team with the company of the sun in the desert night.