Marine Summer: Year 2041 Read Online Free PDF

mail was censored, so if you didn’t want the rest of the guys to see your girl, you were quick to let her know not to send provocative pictures. Houserman didn’t have the chance to warn his, so she sent some nice ones. All I can say is that she’s very flexible. The D.I.s would take the pictures and hang them on a corkboard in the day room; everyone had a good long time to check out all her merchandise.
    Today would be the day we’d finally get to shoot our rifles. We were heading to the range. Buckley let us skip morning PT after my pony show and took us straight to chow, only returning to the barracks to retrieve our 65 pound rucksacks. It would be a fifteen-mile hump to get to the range.
    It was snowing pretty hard, making visibility almost nonexistent, I could barely see past three men ahead of me. I hoped they knew where they were going and didn’t wander off the road.
    Lifting my knees higher than normal just to make it through the thick snow, I could feel my thighs burning. My calves were getting sore, cramping straight down all the way to my ankles. We doubled up on socks, but I still could feel the dampness slushing around inside my boots as we tromped through that white hell.
    “Hell yeah!” Keller shouted over top of the ranks, “I love this shit!”
    “How can he love it? I can barely feel my fingers. How do they expect us to shoot if we can’t hold the rifle, let alone see the target?” I whispered to Houserman.
    “Shut your hole back there!” Buckley said before Houserman could answer me.
    So we kept pushing, silently trekking toward our unknown location. Fifteen miles of weariness. Even the D.I.s were hushed as they led the way. The only sounds were branches cracking and snapping from the weight of the wet snow.
    When we were almost there, the snow would eventually filter off, not ten miles back when we would have actually appreciated it more.
    As we turned the last corner, I saw a large, white-covered field with a creaky decrepit tower rising from its back. Two soldiers popped red smoke canisters, tossing them twenty or so yards in front of the tower.
    “That’s my landing zone. You have 20 seconds to get your tired, good-for-nothing, lazy carcasses inside my LZ!!! Double-time ladies, double-time!” Buckley ordered us.
    My legs were failing me; the harder I tried to run, the more I fell down. The field wasn’t much longer than a football field, but it felt like we were running across the state just to catch that red smoke.
    I collapsed as soon as I made it, my heart beating out of my chest. It felt like my lungs were on fire as I sucked in that frigid air, trying to catch my breath. I looked around at the rest of the platoon, who much like me, had collapsed face-down in the cold snowy bed.
    “Who told you ladies you could lie down? Get your sorry rear-ends in formation!” Keller said.
    I stood there, my chest heaving, my breath steaming up in front of my face, blurring my vision. I was so far out of position Buckley had to place me in the right spot. His hands felt like dull knives ripping through my nearly frost bitten skin.
    “Which of you out-a-shape worthless pups needs a medic?” Buckley said, his gaze darting back and forth through the ranks, looking for a victim to torture.
    I wanted to say, ‘Me!’ but I didn’t dare. I’d had enough humiliation for one day.
    “Good, that’s more like it. Get used to the cold, because you’ll be camping here tonight! We’ll make camp next to that tree line…what the fuck? Keller, what is that?” Buckley said, pointing back toward the road we just came from.
    “Fuck me!” Keller said looking up, “Take cover!”
    This is a joke. I’m not falling for this , I thought.
    At that moment time stood still. My weary eyes looked up to see what was going on. Then the first explosion happened, about thirty yards in front of us. The concussion of the blast took me off my feet. I felt the pain of tower’s wooden steps impacting through my back,