Picture Prompts

[cyanea]

I love picture prompts. They were my favorite part of the billions of standardized tests I had to take as an American student, and I still drag them out to this day whenever I'm in the mood to write, but lack inspiration for anything specific. They're great ways to get the creative juices flowing, as well as to practice one's craft.

For that purpose, I'm going to (try) to post, on a weekly basis, a picture prompt or two per week. Write whatever you want to write in response to the image or to explain the story in the image. Any form is acceptable (no tests here!): poem, short story, or even two paragraphs. Write to write.

This week's:



I found this picture a few days ago and had to write something behind it. Below is my submission.

[cyanea]

"Ever notice how the night wind sounds like a moaning woman?" Phillips asked, reaching underneath the band of his goggles to scratch an itch.

"Everything sounds like a moan of a woman to you, Phillips." Grey said, leaning back in the observation seat. "Yesterday, you said it was the sound of the engines."

"Well...ya know." Phillips replied, "Been out in the Wastelands for so long with just you lot as company. A guy has needs, you know." Phillips replied, slipping the goggles down to get at the stubborn itch.

"Another few days of this, and Phillips is gonna ask one of us to be his "woman"!" Sarge shouted from inside the vehicle.

"And you're the perfect man for the job!" Phillips shouted back, slamming his fist on the roof of the vehicle, as if to drive his point home. The metal sides of the armored personnel carrier rang a little.

"How long have we been out here anyway?" Grey asked after a few silent seconds.

"I reckon on about two weeks." Phillips answered, finally managing to satisfy the itch. He slipped his goggles back into place, wiggling them a bit until they sat comfortably. "Anything from headquarters?"

"Just the usual." Grey answered, his arms going above his head in a stretch. "Keep up the good work. Your patrol keeps the future secure. Same feel-good bullshit."

Phillips' reply was cut short by a sound resembling a shotgun discharge. The APC on which they sat jolted, rumbling as the engines reluctantly kicked into life. A few more sputters, and the noise settled into a silent rumble. "Finally!" Sarge shouted from inside the vehicle. "You would not BELIEVE how much sand was caked up inside this thing."

"At this point, I'll believe anything." Grey replied, standing and walking over to the top entrance hatch. A few quick steps down the ladder and he was back inside. Phillips followed him a few seconds later, and sealed the hatch behind him.

"You'd think, operating in a desert and all, they'd have created some sort of way of keeping sand out of the gears of the armor." He grunted, taking his seat in the rear of the cramped vehicle.

"Sand in the gears has been the pain in the ass of any army from Julius Caesar to Napoleon to Schwartzkoff." Sarge replied. He was kneeling on the floor in the center of the vehicle, in front of an open hatch and a cluster of wires, tools, and a large pile of sand from the engines. "Call it the true test of an army's strength."

"I don't think Caesar ever fought any wars in the desert." Grey said, taking the driver's seat at the front. He tapped a few buttons, and the APC jolted once again. "Finally got the fucker into gear."

The engines let loose a grinding sound as the treads fought for purchase in the sand. They lurched forward, straining until finally with another jolt they managed to find a hard patch of ground on which to travel. "I'm gonna mark that spot's coordinates on the map." Phillips said, tapping a few buttons on his radar console. The screen above him, showing a GPS map of the area, flickered as a new red dot appeared at their position.

Finding hard ground for the treads to work on was the most difficult part of the war, he thought. Moreso than the fighting or the constant state of alert and alarm. Not a day went by when they didn't drive into one of the countless billions of patches of loose sand. They attempted to mark where they came across them, on a map that was relayed to all the other patrols, but there were so many it was almost a futile task.

He studied his sensor screen for a few more seconds, convincing himself that there was nothing around the vehicle, and stood up. He had to duck his head underneath the ceiling, but there was enough room to stand mostly erect. "I'm getting some water. Anyone want anything?"

"Sand in the gears was one thing," he thought, pulling a small bottle of water from the case near the back. He tossed Grey one, and pulled a second for himself. "But sand in my throat is another."

He sat down back at his console, preparing to run a few diagnostics on the off-chance the sand had affected his readouts when a red blob appeared a few meters away from the vehicle. He tapped the screen, providing him with a closer look. It was small, and definitely not human shaped, but was putting off heat.

"Hey Sarge...I got something sitting about one hundred meters at five-o-clock." He pondered pulling up the visual sensors, but night in the Wastelands was so dark, it would prove fruitless. "Definitely not human, but I don't know what it is."

"Roger." Sarge replied. He jerked his thumb towards the gunner port, and Grey saw the unspoken command. He climbed up a short ladder, opening the gunnery hatch. Phillips heard him loading the first shot of his mounted machine gun into the weapon's chamber.

The APC rumbled off for a few more seconds before Grey laughed. "It's a dog, Phillips!"

"A dog?" He replied. They were close enough to the object he detected to pull up the visual sensor. A small camera on the side of the APC focused on the object, illuminated by a spotlight shining from Grey's gunnery port. Sure enough, it was a small dog. "A terrier, by the looks of it. Also looks hungry."

The dog, so covered in sand, looked almost brown, but Phillips could see some white fur poking through the sand. He was also trembling, watching the APC nervously, with his tail between his legs.

"Well, Sarge?" Grey asked. "Whaddya wanna do with it?"

"Just leave it," Sarge replied, turning to look at Phillips.

"But he looks starved." Phillips said, pointing to the viewscreen.

Sarge rolled his eyes. "Fine...whatever. Go give him a couple of the jerky strips from the rations. But hurry up, goddamn it."

Phillips smiled, grabbing a bag of rations as he opened the rear hatch. He walked around to the side, towards the illuminated spot of desert. The dog looked over at him, backing up a few more inches.

Phillips kneeled, pulling one of the pieces of jerky from the bag and holding it out. "Here boy...got some food for ya."

The dog whimpered, backing up a few more inches and looking ready to run before he caught a whiff of the jerky. Timidness completely forgotten, he bounded towards Phillips, and grabbed the jerky from his hand, nearly swallowing the whole thing in one bite.

Phillips laughed, pulling a few more pieces from the bag and setting them on the ground. "Good boy." He chuckled as the dog scarfed them down just as quickly. "Try breathing once or twice." He dumped the rest of the bag on the ground, and reached his hand out towards the dog.

"He's probably rabid!" Grey warned from atop the APC.

"Nah." Phillips replied as the dog turned his head to give a few tentative sniffs of the hand. His tail wagged as he turned back to the jerky. Phillips slowly set his hand on the dog's back, petting him gently. The dog's tail wagged harder, making his entire body shake. A collar, hidden by the sand and shaggy fur of the dog's body began to jingle. "He's got an owner!" Phillips shouted.

"Probably a sandweed rancher's." Grey answered back.

"Nothing we can do for him." Sarge's voice came over the communicator strapped to Phillips' shoulder. "Just leave him the strips and get back...SHIT. GET INSIDE! NOW!"

The sharpness of Sarge's shout made Phillips' soldiering instinct kick in immediately. He jumped back to his feet, arms pulling the assault rifle from it's clip on his back.

"We've got multiple humanoid shapes a sixty yards to your left. Get inside...now!" Sarge ordered again.

Phillips turned to his left, looking. In the distance, he could see several small yellow lights peering through the otherwise complete darkness, all converging on the APC. "Rebels!" He swore, and without realizing what he was doing, he slipped the rifle back into it's holster and picked up the dog in both of his hands. He ran back towards the rear entry to the APC as Sarge's voice rang from the large loudspeakers attached to the sides.

"This is Sargent Jameson. You are approaching a United Alliance armored vehicle. Cease your advance and signal your intentions, or we will open fire."

As if to reply, a barrage of bullet fire rang from the darkness. Phillips slammed the rear hatch shut just in time to see a bullet ricochet off the outside edge of the vehicle.

"Battlestations. We have hostile elements." Sarge ordered. The dog leaped out of Phillips' arms and ran under the engineering console. "Open fire, Grey!" Sarge yelled into the comm, gunning the engine again.

A report of bullet fire sprang out from Grey at the gunner station above them. On the viewscreen, Phillips watched as several tracer bullets intersected with some of the lights in the darkness, and the latter lights flickered and died.

Pulling up a sensor readout, Phillips groaned. The heat of a body deeply contrasted the cold of a Wasteland night, and there was enough heat in that darkness so that he could not distinguish individual shapes. It was one giant mass.

"More approaching, sir!" Phillips called out, turning to see Sarge kick the driver's console.

"The fucking engine died again!" He swore, kicking it again. Barely audible under the sound of gunfire being exchanged between Grey's machine gun and those being returned, the engines were sputtering, a sign of more sand in the equipment. "Of all the goddamn times..." He muttered, standing up. "Phillips! Man a gunport. Grey! Keep supressing fire on the bastards until I can get this piece of shit running again!"

Phillips was up and at the gun locker along the opposite side of the vehicle before he could finish saying, "Yes sir!" He pulled a long range assault rifle from the small cabinet, exchanging it with his smaller one. He moved back to the other side, sliding a small rectangle of metal open and pressing his gunbarrel through it.

There were more lights out there. It was difficult to tell the different beams of light apart. He could discern figures, illuminated by the contrast of the light against the darkness. Grey had repositioned the floodlight to point towards the attackers, making the vaguely humanoid shapes look like ghosts.

He opened fire.

He watched as two of the ghostly figures fell before him, their comrades barely stopping their advance. He wasn't sure whether it was him or Grey that felled them. They too were returned fire, the ringing of their shots against the APC's armor becoming steady enough to seem like one constant sound. So far, they hadn't done any damage to the vehicle's plating. A glance at the damage readout at the driver's console confirmed that.

So far.

Several more went down as a few bullets hit the APC close enough to make Phillips flinch.

Behind him, he could hear Sarge digging around in the innards of the vehicle's engine, a constant string of curses accompanying the sounds he was making inside the hatch. Grey's fire paused for what seemed like an eternity, causing Phillips' heart to skip a beat, before picking back up.

Suddenly, a screeching alarm cut through all the din, pulling both Sarge and Phillips' attention away from their tasks. Across the sensor readout on Phillips' station, a large Proximity Alert flashed.

Someone hostile was within two yards of the APC.

Reaching over and slapping a hand on Phillips' panel, Sarge swore again. There were more heat sources approaching, from the other side of the vehicle.

"We have hostiles approaching from eight o'clock!" Sarge roared, turning back towards the engine with a much more fevered pace. "C'mon you fucker...start for me."

"Moving to cover eight o'clock!" Phillips shouted to Grey, and dashing over to the other side of the vehicle and opening that gunport.

"Roger!" Grey shouted back, focusing his gunfire on the opposite side.

The figures were close enough to see this time. Blood splattered across the viewport as Phillips unloaded on them, pouring bullets into anything that moved.

He turned towards the rear hatch as the sound of metal scratching across metal echoed through the cabin of the APC. An unmistakeable sound.

"They're trying to breach!" Phillips shouted, turning his gun towards the door. Reports of the rebels attempting to breach armored vehicles ran rampant through the United Alliance lately, as they seized the vehicles and slaughtered it's overwhelmed inhabitants.

Grey continued to shoot, the sound of his fire sweeping back and forth across both sides of the APC. "There's too many!" He shouted.

Sarge dropped his tools, scrambling at his gunbelt for his pistol. He cocked the hammer just as the rear hatch hissed, and started to slide open.

Almost as if he could sense what was going on the dog from beneath the engineering console, let out a long, mournful howl.

A single rebel appeared in the light from the inside of the vehicle, his sandmask and dirty robes giving him the appearance of something demonic. In his hand was a pistol.

It was all so much a blur, that Phillips didn't realize he was hit until his body twisted back away from the impact, his shoulder slamming into the side of the compartment. The force bounced him off the wall and he dropped to the floor, turning his head towards the rear hatch as the rebel turned to fire at Sarge.

Sarge tried to fire first, but his gun clicked.

Everything went so slow. The repeated thudding of Grey's gun slowed to a crawl, with seconds between shots. Sarge looked down at his pistol, an cross between surprise and horror on his face. The rebel's finger squeezed on the trigger.

A brown and white blur shot out from underneath the engineering console with a growl, teeth clamping onto the rebel's rag-shodden legs. A cry of pain escaped the rebel's mouth as his arm shot up, the bullets sinking into the ceiling. He fell to his knees, reaching back to kick the dog away.

Sarge tossed the pistol aside and grabbed Phillips' short range assault rifle, aimed, and fired at point blank range directly into the head and face of the rebel. His body collapsed to the floor with a groan.

Without even pausing for a second, Sarge leaped forward and delivered a hard kick to the corpse of the rebel, casting it out into the sand. He pressed his shoulder against the hatch struggling to close it as hands and arms reached through the gap. With a reverberating clang the door shut, and the mechanical locks within went into action. Sharp scratching could be heard from the other side as the rebels tried to make another attempt.

Phillips' vision grew blurry, fading slowly as Sarge dropped the rifle and kneeled before the engineering hatch, hands flying flying frantically through the gears and wires. As his eyes slid shut, all he heard was the slow thudding of Grey's gun and the roar of the engines leaping to life. He felt something cold nudge his hand, and turned to see the dog, nuzzling him with his nose as the darkness slowly consumed him.

***

The sun over the Wastelands burned brightly as the scarred APC rolled into the base. Phillips' left arm hung at his side, fixed into a makeshift sling. The arm was okay, but moving it aggravated the bullet wound in his shoulder. In his lap, the dog yawned. The soldier smiled, scratching beneath the dog's collar.