9

Chapter 9

Colonel BB was into it deep.  There were flashes and minor explosions.  Things rolled off the work bench and others flipped into the air. Various components and pieces of a Roto Tiller, a plastic yard chair, and a Huffy BMX bicycle were being deconstructed and reconfigured on the bench. Whatever it was that motivated him, whatever macabre product he was after was in the energetic throes of birth.  The eclipse didn't affect him.  Since the shed was window-less, he never even knew it happened.  The only light was provided by a naked, yellow-glazed light bulb that hung on a tattered black cord above him.  What did surprise him, however, was the sudden and violent intrusion of a certain ice cream wagon as it burst through the corrugated aluminum of the shed's back wall with a deafening crash!
Most of the damaged synapses in the Colonel's brain told him he was back in Vietnam.  He immediately dropped to the dirt floor, rolled underneath the nearest cover (just like he was taught to do in BT) and pulled a Bowie knife the size of a broadsword from his boot.  He crawled under a burlap sack and waited wide-eyed for the dust to settle.
When it did, Colonel BB saw a surprising sight.  There were no gooks with machine guns patrolling some recently bombed-out subtropical area.  There was no red strafing rainbows or screaming casualties.  There was, however, a vast array of Rocketcicles, chocolate ice cream cups, Orange Crunch Bars and Peanut Drumsticks lying all over the ground.  Pieces of dry ice were scattered everywhere, creating an eerie fog that crawled across the floor of the shed.  The light bulb swung lazily above in a diminishing arc.  It threw vague shadows onto the dry ice fog.  The Colonel rubbed his eyes, taking it all in.  In a snap back, he realized it was not 1968; it was the year 2007. He was not "in the thick"; he was still in the shed. His next thought: Where was Tikki?
"Here, boy", he absently called. Silence.