The Return of Teaser Tuesday – Taylor's Dream

There's a week left in the Greedy song contest.  Don't forget to give me a song to enter for the chance to win When the Sea is Rising Red and 10 older books from my Bye-bye Borders Extravaganza.

This week we're bringing back Teaser Tuesday, so here's an excerpt from Taylor-made that I wrote this week.  For context, the book is set in a contemporary setting, but with a war going on overseas that had so many Americans, particularly boys, dying that the government hired a company to create androids intelligent enough to go fight the battle instead.  Because they have no free will to choose not to fight, Taylor and Rosie have been fighting for their rights.

The last thing I hear is an explosion. It sends me flying back. I hit the ground with a groan that I feel rather than hear. but I guess I'm intact and that's something to Thank God–or maybe the devil is more likely in this hellhole–for.

When I catch my breath, The stench of smoking flesh fills my nostrils, and I force myself to get up and assess the damage. Who's been hurt? I sit up and look at my team. I can't hear anything but a buzzing in my ears, but Most of them are getting up, shaking their heads out of a daze, rubbing their bruises. If bruises were the worst we got out of a goddamn blaster, we got pretty damn lucky.

But that don't explain the smell. It's disgusting. Acrid. I push myself to my feet and sprint towards the smoking mass of land that threw us into the air like the toy soldiers we are.

It's awful. There are limbs scattered about in the brush, their wires exposed from beneath the flesh, sometimes surviving where the flesh was burned away. Sometimes melted together into one flashing mass of color. I am careful not to touch any. As if I wanted to anyway. But they could take me out faster than the Blaster if a live wire touches me the wrong way.

I see movement to my right, and I react, swinging my gun toward the source, my finger already twitching for the trigger. A little payback for this situation would be sweet.

But it's not the enemy. It's Ethan, lying amid a bunch of ferny bushes. Those sons of bitches, they blew off Ethan's legs.

I run to him, keeping my eyes open for the telltale signs of another blaster lying in wait for the next American to step on it. But I get to him without blowing myself up, and kneel down to him.

"All right, soldier. Don't sweat it. We'll get you fixed up good as new just as soon as we get home. Ever see Forrest Gump? The guys that lose their legs get to go to the moon next. Isn't that something?" I wrap my arm around his waist to haul him up.

He shakes his head and says something, but I can't hear it any more than I could hear what I told him a second ago. I lean my ear close to his lips to figure out what he's saying, but there's nothing. I look back at his face, but it's blank.

"Don't do this to me, Ethan. You don't get to go out like that! It takes a bullet to the brain, and I don't see any peephole in your head except where your brain's always been missing. You're not dead. You can't be dead, you hear me?"

There's no spark behind his eyes. Nothing. He's just an empty action figure now.

So there it is.  My first tease from Taylor-made since 2009.  I know, right?  Hope you liked it.

Lots of love,

Sage