CHARACTERS
LCPL. JACKSON TURNER African-American, 21, from D.C. Athletic, disciplined, quiet. His father was laid off from a federal agency during a DEI restructuring.
PFC. RICARDO SANTIAGO Hispanic-American, 20, from East L.A. Edgy, sarcastic, emotional. His undocumented family lives in fear of ICE.
LCPL. COLE ANDERS Caucasian, 22, from rural Ohio. Stoic, proud, grounded. His family’s hardware store is barely surviving due to tariff pressure.
SETTING
Camp Pendleton, California. A shared barracks, late afternoon. Harsh overhead lighting. Three cots, lockers, disassembled rifles being cleaned. A quiet fan clicks. There’s a weight in the air–habitual discipline masking unresolved tensions.
TIME
3:00pm.
Scene 1-3 Marine barrack. Now.
Heard from home this morning. Dad’s been working double shifts at the shop. Says he’s thinking about closing early a few days a week just to save on power.
That bad?
Yeah. Sales dried up. Supply’s weird, prices are up. Folks just stop coming when stuff costs more than they remember.
Prices didn’t just walk up on their own. Someone lifted ’em.
He doesn’t blame anyone. Says it’s just “a bad stretch.” You know him. Always finds some silver lining no one else can see.
That silver lining’s probably stapled to a red, white, and blue excuse.
He doesn’t talk about the news. Just tells me to “stay squared away” and keep the Turner wrench hanging on the wall. Family motto or something.
The wrench fixes everything?
If it doesn’t, he just hits it harder.
My sister says ICE circled the block again. Third time this week. They didn’t stop, but my mom went straight into the back room anyway. It’s like… she can smell them before the tires hit the curb.
They haven’t–
Not yet. But they got Marco last month. Still no word.
Jesus.
Yeah.
My dad called last week. Told me HR “reorganized” the office. Said they were restructuring for a more “representative future.” That’s how they phrased it. They kept the interns. Cut him. Thirty years, gone.
That DEI window dressing?
Said the department looked too “top-heavy.” Apparently, being experienced and Black makes you obsolete.
I’m sorry, man.
He’s been trying to act like it’s a break. Said he finally has time to do woodworking. He doesn’t even own a drill.
Guess we’re all just holding it together with glue and boot polish.
You ever feel like we’re just rotting here? Cleaning gear, running drills, waiting for something that never comes?
You saying you don’t want to get deployed?
Hell no, I do. I want to be out there. FOB duty, convoy protection–real heat. Not stuck in Pendleton organizing toolkits and waxing floors for inspections.
Word is 3/7 is rotating into the Gulf. I heard it over at division last week.
Lucky bastards. They’ll see something. Do something. We’re just sitting around waiting on a duty roster and rubber chicken at chow.
It’s the Corps. You wait. You prep. You move when they say. No guarantees where. No promises when.
Wouldn’t mind getting boots on sand. Foreign soil. At least then you know who’s who.
And it counts for something. Something you can explain when you go back home.
Explain what?
That we didn’t spend the best years of our lives guarding a fence no one’s breaking through.
Meatloaf again in the chow hall. Same one from Pendleton to Okinawa.
It’s not meatloaf. It’s a morale test.
I miss my mom’s arroz con pollo. Way too salty. Burned the bottom of the pot every time.
Ma used to yell at me for leaving boots in the kitchen. Like that was a crime.
Platoon Sergeant says back in Helmand, they could smell IEDs before they saw ’em. Said your gut knew first. You’d feel it–like a wrong note in your chest.
Said they ran patrols so long their boots rotted out. Told us you’d get used to the taste of dust–like copper and ash. Made your spit gritty.
He told me they had one guy–Stoker–got clipped and still cleared a compound before he even bled out. Said he wouldn’t die till he finished the sweep.
Yeah. He talks about it like it was the real thing. Said nothing back here even comes close.
We get up, clean rifles, run drills. Eat paste, sleep in shifts. But those guys? They did something. They left a mark.
Or carried it.
Yeah. They get to see something. Do something. We’re just waiting on a phone call and a dry-ass chow schedule.
I swear, last week’s beef stroganoff gave me the kind of diarrhea that made me rethink my oath.
Which one? The enlistment oath or the one where you promised not to crap in the laundry room?
I was close, bro. I didn’t trust a single fart for three days.
That’s not food. That’s chemical warfare.
Should’ve sent it to North Korea. We’d have peace by now.
You think we’ll ever get our shot? Not some parking lot checkpoint. Real deployment. Something that counts?
It’s coming. You don’t train this long for nothing.
Doesn’t mean it’ll be what we expect.
Platoon Sergeant said orders just came down.
What the hell?
Crowd control. Civil unrest. Protest activity. Downtown.
We’re going home… in armor?
To face people who look like us.
We trained for enemies. Not neighbors.
Platoon Sergeant said Battalion formation. Now.
