The Wrong Time for Talking Heads
There was an old Talking Heads song called “Once In A Lifetime” that ran through Jeremy’s head as the enemies moved up the steps. The metal steps clinked and echoed as their boots hit each step, and in his head, Jeremy’s thoughts went back and forth from David Byrne dancing around in his big suit to the enemies sweeping rooms, eyes narrowed down the sights of Ak-47s. And for some reason he couldn’t get the damn song out of his head. I mean, he liked the song. He enjoyed almost all of the Talking Heads albums, and that song was his favorite. But he wished he could get something else in his brain, something by Slayer or Meshuggah, something to pump him up for the bullets coming in a minute or less. The Talking Heads were not a band you listened to to get pumped for a fight. The Talking Heads were a fun party band. Very inappropriate at the moment.
He had twenty rounds left in his Carbine, set to full auto, they would be gone in no time. He also had his pistol, a .45 caliber M1911a1, with one clip. He had one Claymore mine, positioned just outside of the door, which, when swung open, would trigger and the person opening the door would have their legs blown off. By his estimation though they were a group of four. There was a window he could jump through, but the sixty foot drop would kill him. This was it then. He had one door, an assault rifle, a pistol, one mine, and his favorite Talking Heads song. But what he really wanted was another couple of clips for each weapon, a grenade, and some Slayer.
They were moving down the hallway now. He heard them approach the door, where they stopped, and the point man whispered for a flashbang. David Byrne danced around in his big suit. The bassline thumped, bah bum bum, and his toe started to tap. The door handle twisted and the door creaked open. Jeremy sighted up his carbine and laid his pistol within quick reach. A hand appeared from behind the door cupping the flashbang grenade that would blind him and deafen him, just long enough for them to sweep through and kill him. The grenade landed a foot away from his head and did not detonate. David Byrne sang, “Letting the days go by/Let the water hold me down” and he ran through the whole chorus while both sides patiently waited for the thing to detonate. Seconds passed and Jeremy finally looked out from under his arm, where the flashbang was sitting, impotent, dud.
They kicked the door in and it swung hard on the hinges, the doorknob leaving a dent on the wall, sending dust flying around the claymore, which clicked to explode but did not. The point man rushed through and tripped over it. In an instinctual move, Jeremy snapped the trigger on his Carbine as the point man looked up and the other men in his squad jumped over him, weapons sighted. Jeremy was first to fire, “And you may ask yourself/How did I get here?” David sang.
Jeremy had no time to aim, he was just shooting, spraying his clip, hoping that a bullet would hit one of them. His shots were wild and knocked out large chunks of the drywall, putting clouds of dust in their eyes. They all dropped to their stomachs in the doorway, while the fire continued. The Carbine clicked as the clip emptied and everyone knew what the sound meant. Each guy tried to get up before the other. Jeremy grabbed for his pistol. He swung around and fired, catching one guy square in the chest. The song looped in his head, the bass and drums grooved on and David kept dancing around in Jeremy’s head, in that goddamn giant suit. “And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack/And you may find yourself in another part of the world,” he sang.
“STOP! STOP! HOLD YOUR FIRE!”
Jeremy’s initial reaction was something like “You must think I’m a fucking idiot.” His second thought was, “And you may ask yourself-Well…How did I get here?”
“FRIENDLIES! HOLD YOUR FIRE!” the point-man screamed, with an undetonated mine jammed in his chest. Jeremy let the pistol down, and he noticed that they were four marines, like him. He latched the safety on his pistol. And then it occurred to him what he’d just done. He shot another marine in the chest. His mouth flooded with spit and his tongue got real heavy in his mouth. His eyes dilated and he dropped the pistol to the ground, where it let off one last round, a wild shot that struck the ceiling and ricocheted back to the floor an inch from his foot, but Jeremy did not move.
“HOLD FIRE GODDAMNIT!”
The other marines crowded the injured one. Jeremy ran his eyes randomly over various spots in the room. He spent a bit of time staring at the marines boots, noting that they were not standard issue, they were better. Someone back home had sent him some better gear. Probably his wife, Jeremy thought, they probably came with a little note from his daughter (Jeremy just knew it would be a daughter, not a son) saying “Dear daddy, Here are the boots you wanted for your feet. I love you and I hope you come home soon,” except it would be misspelled in the adorable way that young children misspell things and there would be a cartoon drawing of the three of them around a tree with an orange sun shining overhead. “Love, Katie,” it would say at the bottom. Well, sorry Katie, some asshole with an itchy finger shot daddy in the chest, probably in the heart. So he won’t get to tell you how much the boots helped his feet when he was out patrolling.
The point man did a push up, watching the mine with the most attention he’d ever given anything ever, and he lifted his chest off of it so that he had an inch of clearance between it and his upper body. He carefully worked himself up to his feet and then he jumped over it and disarmed it, while the other men worked like hell on the dead one. That’s what Jeremy called him, Dead One, just like that, that was his name, Dead One. He would probably learn his real name at some point, but he might not remember it. He might forget it and remember him as just “Dead One.”
And then Jeremy noticed all the dust in the room. Had it really been that cloudy? How the hell had anyone seen anything? How had he actually hit anything for that matter? How in the blue fuck had anything that happened…happen? Jeremy imagined himself trying to explain this to little Katie.
“Well I couldn’t really see anything, so you see Katie, it’s not my fault. I thought your daddy was gonna try to kill me so I shot him before he could shoot me.” And then of course Katie comes back with something brilliantly adorable and heartbreaking and innocent and Jeremy has no response for it except to maybe try blaming David Byrne for not getting the fuck out of his head sooner. But Katie wouldn’t know who The Talking Heads were, she would know Hannah Montana and The Jonas Brothers. Jeremy would tell her that he had wanted to hear Slayer, you see. He wanted to see them walking around on stage while blood rained down from overhead. But instead he heard The Talking Heads and he saw David Byrne in that giant fucking goofy suit he wore. And he would explain it just like that, just as rational as math, with his palms out as if to say, “So you see it’s not really my fault, it’s the fault of bands from the eighties,” and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of sense to Katie because she didn’t know what the eighties were and all she really wanted to hear was that Daddy would get out of the coffin in a minute, he’s just resting his eyes.
“I’m fine,” Dead One said, “Get off me I’m fine.” Everyone backed off and gave him room. He got up and walked around for a moment, touching himself in places, wondering if he would touch blood at any part of his body, and then wondering how he would know if it was his. “Is anyone else hit?” he asked. Everyone checked themselves and the consensus was no, no-one was hit, everything’s ok. Jeremy still hadn’t moved or said anything. Dead one started peeling off his gear and pulled off his body armor, not standard issue, some wicked shit that Katie had sent him, stuff that could stop armor piercing rounds. An image of Katie popped up. She was sticking her tongue out at Jeremy, and then she said “My mommy played me some stuff from the eighties and it’s all stupid and you’re stupid!” and then she stuck her tongue out again except this time it was colored green from a sucker, and then she ran away.
The point-man grabbed Jeremy by the shoulder and snapped him out of it, literally, he snapped his fingers in face a couple of times to get his attention. “Are you hit?” he asked. Jeremy shook his head from side to side, dumbly, answering the question even though he didn’t know the answer. But the answer was no, thankfully, he wasn’t hit. Everyone was ok. Everything was ok. It was all over nothing and no one was hurt and no one was dead and everything was fine. Katie would see her dad again and she could go on listening to Hannah Montana. And right then David Byrne popped back up out of no where in that big suit of his and Jeremy couldn’t help but laugh while the adrenaline and fear ran out of his system.
“This is squad six. The building is clear, the last member of echo company located, we’re requesting immediate evac over.” The radio man answered back that a chopper was inbound but it would have to land several blocks away and there were still enemies in the area. The point man relayed this info to everyone and Jeremy should have been worried about making his way through the city while guys were perched on the roofs waiting for them. But all he could really do was tap his toe as the song ran through his head.
“Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down, Letting the days go by/water flowing underground, Into the blue again/after the money’s gone, Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.”
And Jeremy took an extra clip from one of the guys and got ready to run like hell toward the chopper, smiling the whole time, not afraid of anything, because David Byrne would stop all the bullets in the world with that big goofy suit of his.
