The below snippet was written as an in-progress writing exercise. Trying to write an interesting scene in which we feel that many events came before and many will come after. I started only with the title ‘The Red Drop’ having no idea what it would end up meaning in the context of the scene. This exercise was completed in April of 2013 and transcribed here in December 2016.


“You never know. Never. Things can change in an instant. In a nanosecond. One moment you’re in control. The next, everyone is dead or dying and you’re just laying there, wondering what happened. So don’t tell me what I did wasn’t justified. If I hadn’t acted in that moment you’d be dead too.”

“It’s just… what do we do now? How can we live this down?”

“We survived. They didn’t. End of story.”

“What happens now?”

“They said something about a rendezvous didn’t they? I couldn’t quite hear where it was. You were closer did you catch the location?” He nodded, trying to remember.

“Well?”

“The Red Drop.”

“Red drop?”

“Yeah, the leader was asking the bearded guy about something. The bearded guy pointed out a location on a map in one of those rugged looking books I think. I couldn’t really hear what they were saying except when the leader was walking back towards us looking at the map he said something like ‘We’ll rendezvous at The Red Drop and proceed north. What the hell is going on Lillian? Those guys were hardcore military or something.”

Lillian was rummaging around in a storage crate and produced a small flat box. She opened it up to reveal a small toolkit. She removed a precision blade and started trying to cut through the plastic zip-cuffs around her wrists. “Didn’t look like military to me” she said.

“What do you mean?!” Jack exclaimed, “They had fucking assault rifles and tactical vests and shit. It was straight out of a fucking video game!”

“Calm down Jack. Think. Did they identify themselves as military to you? Did you see any military symbols on their clothing, any tattoos?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean..”

“What guns were they using? Any that you recognized?”

“Well, the black haired one had what looked like a Famas. The leaders weapon was an M-4 I’m fairly sure. I saw one guy with a Barrett sniper rifle I think. That’s all I saw.”

“Right, there was also an MP5, an AK-47 and two of them were carrying P90s. What kind of military squad would use a collection of weaponry like that? If they were military they would all have been carrying the same type of weapon, for an outfit like that probably M4s, maybe M16s. From what I could tell they weren’t even the same nationality, there was at least one with a French accent but the leaders accent was straight up American.”

“True, one did sound French. But wait, if they weren’t military then who the fuck were they and why did they break down our door, cuff us and bring us here?”

“Obviously it has something to do with them being turned into dust a few seconds ago. Further than that, I have no idea. You’re the smart one, you tell me.”