Foster

Chapter 1

The sounds of battle raged around him. It was the Vietnam War, 1969. President Lyndon Johnson had just approved to increase the amount of soldiers necessary to fight off the communist forces alongside Southern Vietnam. Calvin Foster was one of 549,500 Americans on duty. He was only a month past his 18th birthday. Men fell on all sides as the grass and dirt blew from the ground, his brothers in arms cried out for help. Calvin was on the ground, his arms and hands covering the back of his neck. His helmet slid up over his eyes and he shook with fear, the screaming wouldn't stop.

A Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG21 of the Soviet Union -given to the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Vietnam- thundered low overhead, several bombs were dropped in linear formation as it flew past like it had the last several times. Calvin lifted his head as high as he dared to see them fall from the sky. About 40 feet away, a group of soldiers huddled in a small foxhole held tightly to one another. All wearing the same jungle uniforms. The shirts were a cotton sateen dyed in olive drab. It had two pockets on the chest and exposed buttons. It was meant to be tucked in, but many men had grown tired of their waistbands digging into their stomachs. Their trousers were made of tightly woven rip-stop fabric. They were bloused into the boots, and had buttons, as well as leg ties in thigh pockets. There were small loops in the crotch for the leg ties made from poplin, and the legs had draw cords at the bottom. Each of the men also wore jackets with buttons on angled pockets, shoulder loops, a gas flap, and side adjustment tabs. The sleeves had adjusted cuffs to allow them to be rolled up, and the pockets had drainage eyelets at the bottom. The same plain, green metal helmets on their heads as Calvin's own.

Calvin was so caught up in his thoughts, he didn't notice the large, dark object plummeting toward him until it was too late to move. He curled up and braced for impact, his eyes scrunched up and his jaw clenched. An explosion sounded, and Calvin's ears rang so loudly that it was all he could hear. Breathing hard, he lied still for a long while after the bombers had left and the dust had cleared. Almost snail like, he stood. Stepping forward one foot at a time. He shouldn't have been alive. Why should he live while his troop lay dead on the forest floor? He scanned the clearing, the dead bodies of his comrades lay in bunches around him. Fallen branches hung from the vines above him and those left alive scrambling among the brush.

Calvin walked in a daze until his foot landed on something soft and squishy. Reluctantly, he looked down and lifted his foot. What he found under it was no surprise to him, but he took a heavy intake of breath anyway. Stuck to his boot and stretching from the ground was a chunk of a human brain. Or... brains. The skin tissue seemed to have melted into it, creating an oozy mess of flesh and organ. Calvin quickly backed away, clearly nauseated by what he had seen. He looked up to see the mangled and torn corpses of the group he had seen in the foxhole only moments before.

Shakily, he reached down and plucked up one of their dog tags, used to identify a soldier whose body was too damaged to be recognized. Using his shirt to clear the blood and dirt from the surface, Calvin read the name etched into it. Once he had, he closed his eyes and choked, straining not to let his despair get to him. He couldn't help it, and the tears spilled from his eyes and down his cheeks. The name written on the tag was one he knew very well, but he had no idea that his best friend had been drafted into this war with him. This man had been all that Calvin had for so long, and seeing him blown to bits right before his eyes was too much to bear. The name was Kenneth Winston. Calvin had loved him like he would have a mentor or an older brother. Now, he was dead. Too disfigured to be identified. Calvin fell to his knees in the blood, flesh, bone and all, too filled with sorrow to bother moving.

"Not him. It's not," he whispered. Still, he couldn't take it, and sobbed anyway. He tilted his face up to the sky as heavy rain started to pour.