Travel: Melbourne
Story time: Laneway coffee
Perfect coffee in an imperfect world
The day the sky fell
Bits and pieces were still coming down, hissing through the air and smacking into the dusty Afghanistan earth.
Blue pulled his head smartly back into the carrier. “Better wait a bit, guys,” he said to the anxious faces staring back. “All our vehicles look okay but the village copped a hiding.”
When one noise stopped and another began the soldiers fanned out through the houses, picking their way over the rubble, looking for trouble, finding anguish. A pair of gunships raced overhead aiming for the scrubby ridgeline where the rockets had come from.
All around, shrieks and moans. No enemy here; just people needing help.
Some were past it. A stallholder, crushed like his spices, his wife beside him holding out the limp body of a boy, her face like none he’d ever seen before, nor ever wanted to again.
Her eyes were twin pits of despair as she offered him her son, his legs a ruin, blood pulsing out red against the shocking white of the shattered bones.
“Max!” he yelled. “Need you, mate!”
