III
The truth of it was, Tess wasn’t sure what to make of the three members of the tank crew—Sargent First Class “Bo” Briggs, Corporals Yousef and Malone—other than they’d clearly been traumatized by the loss of their gunner, a man they’d called “Quiet Cal,” (“he was so quiet, every time he opened his mouth a moth flew out”) —who’d been killed by one of the flying creatures only hours before. All she knew for certain was that they were young men from Fort Huachuca who’d been separated from their platoon—although how this had happened remained unclear—and who, lacking communications, had been “operating independently” since near the outset of the heat wave, about three hours ago now. And she knew this: which was that they would have killed everyone in the store had Coup not ran out in fron
