text: [Themes: horror, war]
  
  In the darkness of early morning, your platoon pile into helicopters, burdened by packs weighing excess of a hundred pounds. C-Rations, ammunition, explosives... you doubt command can confidently resupply you. As they take off, a sense of dread comes over even optimistic men, crammed together in the helicopters. Several take out rosaries and start praying, while others take final glances at pictures of loved ones back home. Some close by glance at you for reassurance, but your grim face offers none.
  
  The helicopter ride was smooth until the end, where you braved light anti-aircraft fire on landing. Small explosions of black smoke dot the sky as the helicopter descends. Your squad is unscathed, but another helicopter's rotor is hit by the flak. It trails black smoke as it swirls out of control, going down in a great fireball in the jungle. There's no time to mourn as rest of the helicopters land and men start getting out. Mortars go off in the landing zone, their deafening explosions halting your disembarking men in their tracks as they squirm for cover.
  
  "Get moving! Get to the tree-line or we'll be sending you home in a plastic bag!" you yell while dragging the less courageous soldiers out of cover.
  
  "Shit Sarge, I don't wanna die here!" one says, with tears dripping down his dirt-covered face.
  
  "Then pick up your feet and keep moving!"
  
  With Bronski's help, you push them into the jungle. As the squad enters, the towering trees block the daylight and they are plunged into darkness. Suddenly, it falls silent. You feel swallowed up by the rainforest, as if it were a great beast that forced you into its giant maw. Counting your men, you are relieved none were hurt, aside from a few damaged egos.
  
  "It didn't look like much from the air, but now the jungle makes me feel so... small," says Doc Roe, though he quickly draws the attention of a jeering Private Lering.
  
  After marching for a while, you receive orders over the radio for your first operation. A search-and-destroy mission, you have to relocate your men twenty miles to arrive at the objective. The Lieutenant navigates with a map and compass, confident that he is on track. You arrive at the bank of a small river, with no choice but to wade across.
  
  "What the hell! You make us go through twenty miles of thick jungle, you give us mosquito repellant that doesn't even work, and now this?" says Lering. You silence him with a glare. Leading the squad across the river, your men keep complaining about the conditions, the conscripts making the most noise.
  
  You mutter to Bronski, "And this is even before they get malaria and dystentry."
  
  Once you get to the other side, you are covered in leeches. The city boys in your regiment start screeching at the sight of them, but Lance Corporal Simmons simply walks over and burns them off with a cigarette. You continue forward, water sloshing in your boots while your wet fatigues stick to your body- they'll never dry in a climate like this.
  
  The Lieutenant splits the platoon into two, him leading one half and leaving you and Bronski with the other. His detachment is to attack an enemy village harboring guerillas, while your men entrench and cut off escape routes. Finding a nice vantage point, you keep your men in a small grove of trees, concealed by the underbrush. The Lieutenant's squad leaves you and your men behind. Anticipation quickly turns into boredom, as they say: ninety percent of war is waiting for the other ten percent.
  
  After a few hours, you hear something moving through the forest around a hundred yards to the west. You set your binoculars on them, but you can't see what's making the noise.
  
  "Is that the Lieutenant and his men?" whispers Bronski.
  
  "I don't know," you reply. "They went to the east, but they could've circled back here."
  
  Your men, readying their weapons, look at you expectantly. Fear and excitement can be seen in their eyes.
  
  "What are your orders, Sergeant?" one says.
  
  You doubt that they're friendlies moving in the brush, but you can't be sure. However, you are set up in a perfect ambush position, and whatever's in there can't see you. With a single word, you can launch a heavy wave of automatic fire at the potential enemies. Your eager men await your command.
  
  > say "Open fire!"
  "Open fire!" you yell, and your squad unloads heavy automatic fire on the possible enemy location. Leaves ripple through the air as the weapons kicks up a cloud of dust. After a minute of sustained fire, the squad run out of ammo.
  
  You breathe deeply, with sweat on your brow. "Did we do it?" you think.
  
  A whizzing sound comes from the air. Instinctively, you jump to the ground and take cover as an explosion impacts the left flank. More whizzing, more explosions. "They've got us pinned with mortars!" you yell. A couple of your men scream, their legs blown off by the mortars. Doc Roe rushes over to them, but he's struck by a bullet and collapses on to the ground.
  
  From the brush, the Viet Cong strike back at you. Well camouflaged, they suffered minimal casualties from your opening barrage. Now, they counterattack at you with overwhelming force. Simmons fires his machine gun at them, cutting down a few before a grenade knocks him back and destroys the machine gun. He coughs out blood but gets up again, firing his pistol until he's riddled by a hailstorm of bullets.
  
  You briefly lift your head only to have a bullet graze you, making you flinch. You see around two dozen VC charging your position with bayonet attached rifles, yelling in their foreign language. Heavily outnumbered, you cry for your men to fall back while you try to reload your rifle. Your order doesn't go through as a mortar shell directly impacts the ground above you, drowning out your voice. Uplifted dirt falls and buries you, while a sharp stabbing pain comes from your leg. Private Lering frantically looks for you before a bullet pierces his helmet. Entombed by the dirt, you fall unconscious, while the light footsteps of the Viet Cong run past you.
  
  > Alone with Bronski
  A muffled voice calls out, "Johnny, where are you? Shit, don't tell me they got you. Johnny!"
  
  You groan out in pain, and the voice gets closer. A moment passes as you feel you are dug out of the ground. Gasping for breath, you are happy to see Bronski's concerned face as he pulls you and dusts you off. You try to get to your feet, but immediately fall as your leg explodes in pain. You see a large piece of shrapnel stuck in your calf, which is oozing blood through your uniform. It must have been a fragment of the mortar shell which impacted so close to you.
  
  "Shit!" Bronski says. He brings out his first aid kit to treat your wound. Cutting away your blood-soaked pant leg, he takes a pair of tweezers and a piece of cloth. He whispers, "I won't lie to you. This is gonna hurt, but you can't yell out. There's something in the jungle. Bite down on this." You do as he says, and he pulls the shrapnel out of your leg with the tweezers. Your cry of pain is muffled by the cloth. In no time, Bronski has disinfected and bandaged your wound.
  
  "Can you stand?" Bronski links his elbow around yours and helps you up. Throbbing pain emerges from your calf, but you ignore it and straighten yourself. You look around the area but are surprised that you don't see the bodies of your fallen men. Bronski guesses that they might have been dragged away by the Viet Cong as trophies of war, grisly as that sounds. Though he confirms that some managed to run away, he only survived by hiding in the foliage and shooting a Viet Cong that got too close with his pistol.
  
  It's night. The dark jungle is full of chirping insects and birds, but you can barely see your hand in front of your face. If it weren't for Bronski's flashlight, you'd be completely blind. He says, "We can't stay here. Though the Viet Cong left, I felt like something was still here, watching us. At any rate, the VC may return as well. We have to get out of here. I'm sorry, Johnny, but you're gonna have to walk."
  
  "Don't worry Bronski, I'm sure it wouldn't be as bad as that time in boot camp when we had to hold hands and walk into the ocean," you say, trying to lighten the mood. Though Bronski has linked elbows with you, walking brings excruciating pain and you have to stop several times. You haven't made much progress out of the area when suddenly, a thick mist forms around you. Its presence is stifling, like a huge pillow covering you and slowing your step.
  
  Bronski freezes. A tall figure stands a few yards from you. It stares directly at you, but you can't see its face, as if it were blotted out with ink. All you can see are its two fiery orange eyes that glean through the mist. Its head is covered by a distinctive beret.
  
  "Is, is that a Green Beret? US Army Special Forces?" you ask Bronski.
  
  "It may look like one, but that's not a person." Bronski raises his pistol and fires at the figure, but it disappears in the swirling mist.
  
  As that happens, you hear a raspy voice call out from the mist. "Sergeant! You killed us!"
  
  You look around, but don't see where it came from. Bronski tenses as he hears it, slowly circling with his pistol. The voice repeats, accompanied by another. Your eyes widen when you recognize the deep baritone of Lance Corporal Simmons.
  
  "Sergeant, where were you when I was cut to pieces by bullets?" More voices add to the fray, the voices of every dead man you've failed. Private Lering's, PFC Roe's, they all built up into a screeching cacophony.
  
  "You let us die! You failed to protect us! You hid for safety as we were butchered! Now, we're going to make you feel our pain!" You try to cover your ears, but the voices only get louder. You whimper for them to stop.
  
  "Ignore them, Johnny! You have to snap out of it!" says Bronski. He helps you hobble out of the mist, pushing you forward at an unrelenting pace. To your sides you see your deceased squadmates wander out of the mist, faces blotted and eyes orange like the Green Beret. They shamble towards you, screaming accusations at you. The ones blown to pieces by mortars appear as well, seemingly stitched together. They approach holding rusty blades, but Bronski blasts them back with his pistol. Soon, you get out of the mist and collapse on a tree trunk, exhausted. A deep sleep overtakes you, protecting you from the shame of your sins.
  
  > Morning with Bronski
  The rising sun dispels the mist while bringing back the famous tenderizing heat of Vietnam. You and Bronski manage a few more miles through the jungle before succumbing to fatigue. Stopping for a drink, you guzzle down water until your canteen is bone dry. Shit, you're still thirsty though. You both sit under the shade of a tree, occupied by your thoughts. Eventually, you muster up the courage to ask, "What was that last night?"
  
  Bronski stares out into the distance. "Something...unnatural. It reminds me of an old bedtime story my grandma told me when I lived in the South - about Civil War soldiers."
  
  You perk up, curious. Bronski has never talked about his childhood.
  
  "What was the story about?"
  
  "Legend has it that there are patches of land in the South that saw vicious fighting- where men didn't shoot at each other in lines but fought and killed using hands, feet, and teeth. Sometimes, those places would be the graves of thousands of men. All that fighting and death would leave its mark, and the souls of the dead would stay there, fighting each other in an eternal battle. If you killed someone in a place like that, then the dead will rise and drag you into the ground with them, until you become one of them."
  
  You laugh, "That's a strange story to tell a child."
  
  Bronski nods his head and smirks. "I guess so. My grandma was a fine woman, but she was always a little off in the head."
  
  You hope the same for yourself, that you're just crazy or delirious and imagined what you saw in the mist yesterday. But the accusations from your dead comrades, damning you to hell, still ring in your ears. You can still see their mangled bodies, their crooked gait as they reach for you. And their faces, orange eyes of utter hate staring into your soul. No, what you saw was real. Regret rolls over you, that your faulty order caused the death of your entire squad. You then realize something that makes you get up in shock, though pain shoots through your leg.
  
  "Shit Bronski, what about the Lieutenant? Is his squad still alive? We have to find them!"
  
  Bronski calms you down and changes your bandages as your sudden movement caused your wound to bleed again. You need stitches, but Bronski's doesn't want your injury to be infected by shoddy needlework.
  
  "You're right, we should look for him, but where? Johnny, our canteens are dry, and I'd hate to be stuck out in the jungle without water."
  
  You'll return to the river you passed earlier, but that'll take time due to your bad leg. Should you risk searching for the Lieutenant's men, or play it safe and fill up on water?
  
  > go to the river to fill up your canteen
  No, you are in no condition to go on a goose hunt for the Lieutenant. You can only hope that his training at the Naval Academy will help him lead a group of frightened men- if they encountered the mist as well. Going to the river might also increase your chances of finding help. You're sure its the right choice.
  
  Bronski fashions makeshift crutches for you before leaving. They're unwieldy and catch easily in the jungle underbrush, but at least Bronski won't have to babysit you on every step. Despite your situation, you're glad that at least you're here with Bronski. He's saved your life several times last night, so you hope you can repay the favor.
  
  Slowly but surely, you follow the squad's tracks from before and end up at the river. The flowing stream seems clean enough, but you pop some purification tablets into your canteen anyway. You and Bronski take a short nap near the river, before deciding on your next course of action.
  
  "Johnny, maybe we should search along this river. We've lost our radioman, but we need to signal for help somehow." You look down at the long stretching river, which goes far into the distance. Certainly, if you travel along its banks long enough you'll find something or someone that could help you. However, you've lost an entire squad already. You try to push the fact away, but it haunts you at the back of your mind. You can't let that happen again, and with the Lieutenant in charge, who knows what could happen to the rest of your men?
  
  > search for help along the river
  "Bronski, I don't want to leave him behind."
  
  "I understand, Johnny, but you are in no condition to lead. Finding help is the best thing you could do for them now."
  
  As you march along the riverbank, you enjoy the sound of the flowing water. It relaxes you and takes your mind off your worries and the impending dangers. As the sun sets, Bronski boils a stew to supplement your dwindling rations. As he takes a potful of water from the river, he stops, confused.
  
  "What's the matter?" you say. Bronski carefully reaches into the pot and takes out a wriggling black worm. It looks like a leech, but a closer examination reveals a small stinger coming out of its back. He tosses the leech back into the river.
  
  He says, "Well, I had several of these attached to me a few days ago as we waded through the river. I can only imagine what kind of nasty toxins it has inside that stinger."
  
  After dinner, you have the first watch. As the mist hasn't arrived yet, you start to doze off, until you realize something strange. The once flowing river is stagnant, and a quiet bubbling noise emanates from it. You point your flashlight at the river and see thousands of black leeches at the riverbank, slowly squirming out of the water towards you.
  
  "Bronski, get up. We have to run!"
  
  The bubbling gets much louder as the river overflows its banks, sending the leeches towards you.
  
  Bronski and you abandon your camp and try to get as deep into the jungle as you can, but the leeches are surprisingly fast, and you are slowed down by your leg injury and crutches. You feel a few stings as some of the leeches catch up with you.
  
  "Leave me behind, Bronski!"
  
  He hesitates, not willing to let go of you, but you urge him away once more. The last thing you see before the black wave of leeches overtakes you is Bronski frantically running into the jungle. You hope he can find help and avoid your fate, as you are consumed by the jungle.