War does not prove who is right - only who is left - Bertrand Russell
Black snow fell from the sky, clinging to Marcus like a second, ashy skin. He tried to wipe it away, but the harder he pressed the more it mixed with his sweat; becoming a runny, black paste that stained his fingers and ran down his skin.
Damnit he wiped the concentrated blindness from his eyes with the end of his shirt, turning up smears of black from around his eyes
fucking slants..."What was that?"
Marcus looked at Kirby - who stared at him behind strands of black hair - waving him off after realizing he must have murmured to himself, "I'm fine, goddamn ash is in my eyes again." He did his best to clear the thin, black streaks from his face before pushing his rifle into his shoulder and taking aim out the second-floor window, "What's the status on the convoy?"
"Looks like they are working on whatever-the-fuck blew in the lead truck's engine." Kirby slicked back his hair and adjusted the barrel of his long-rifle, settling it firmly in a split between two halves of what-was-once a single window frame, "must not have seen the 'made in China' sticker when they bought it."
Kirby swiveled his rifle, staring down the scope at the soldiers peering into the hood of a monstrous, sixteen-wheeled, armored behemoth that sat smoldering on the shoulder of what used to be a respectable highway. Now, it was crawling with unwelcome Chinese military forces and broken to pieces by god-knows how many mortar impacts. Where there wasn't a crack there was a pothole the size of mini-cooper.
"Why don't we just take them now? What are they going to do, drive away?" Kirby voiced, taking a moment away from his scope to look at the distant column of idle vehicles with his own two eyes. Logan Kirby was a young man, one of the youngest in the Resistance's New Orleans cell. At only 18 he had grown gaunt, with deep-black circles around his eyes and a few teeth that had already rotted away. It didn't help that his rather large height made him more akin to a spaghetti-armed ghoul than a malnourished teenager.
"Because they are expecting it now. We need to hit them when they have their guard down." Marcus paused, doing his best to make out anything useful with squinted eyes, "like right when they fix their little problem and are mounting up to leave."
"Is everyone else still in position?" Marcus asked, to which Kirby nodded after a few moments of scope searching.
"Looks like it."
"Good...the truck can't be much longer. On my mark...we hit them. Just be careful not to hit our boys in there...we lose enough of men to the Chinese already.