Helicopter Blades

The heat was blistering even though the sun was about to set. The shade provided by the foliage did little to tame the heat. Sweat stuck Johnny's hair to his forehead and made his head uncomfortably damp under his helmet. Roots were slick from the hot rain that had stopped and they stuck up at inconvenient times creating a labyrinth for the men to blindly navigate. Looking around Johnny saw the heat wearing down on everyone but they needed more cover before they could rest.

Most the men here had been together since the beginning of Johnny's tour about ten months ago except for that stupid kid, Liam Johnny thought his name is, who came in a few weeks ago. Right now Liam was trampling around in the back, snapping twigs and rustling leaves, which put everyone else on edge. When they first started to walk every time a Liam stepped on a stick everyone was immediately looking around, gun in position, but now they had just assumed it was Liam.

Not good. He's lowering everyone's guards. Johnny thought, looking back at the kid. Making his decision Johnny nodded to the soldier on his left, signalling for him to keep moving forward. Johnny himself lagged behind till Liam was next to him.

"Liam, right?" Johnny asked, "Look kid I know you're new but man could you be any louder? I don't know if you've noticed but every time you step on a twig or thrash through leaves your making that much easier for some Vietcon to find us."

"You talk about it so casually. Like you're talking about a game of hide and seek rather than war," Liam said looking at Johnny like he was a mad man. Maybe Johnny was, he had lived through ten months of hell.

"Look war-" but Johnny never got to finish what he was going to say.

Everything happened at once. Gun shots went off and like dominoes man started to fall to the ground.

"Get down!" Johnny yelled and grabbed Liam by the shirt. He dragged them both to the ground behind a group of trees, "Get your gun up," Johnny yelled at Liam who lay stunned in the mud. "Liam!" Like he had woken from a trance, Liam grabbed his rifle and started to fire into the forest where the shooting was coming from.Then it was quiet. That was the worse part for Johnny, the impending silence. Then the pain started.

Though adrenaline pumped through his veins, putting him on edge, Johnny could feel the a shooting pain up and down his leg. Johnny cursed under his breath and turned on his back to look at the leg.

His pants were caked in blood and mud and in the middle of his calf blood poured out like a river. Johnny look up at the kid on his left who was staring out at the field of dead bodies.

"Kid," Johnny whispered in a strained voice.. But Liam was too focused on the men who were scattered around them.

"We have to help them, we have to-"

"No we don't. What we have to do is stay alive till backup gets here. They are gone and we can't do anything for them but get them back to their families. I heard Dallas radio camp but it's going to take them sometime to even just find us. All we have to do is stay alive till morning."

"But we have to do something. We can go after them. Something," Liam said, eyes still trained at the corpses.

"Big talk for a kid who could barely get his rife up," Johnny sneered his voice getting tighter as he tried to sit up, "Look kid there is no 'going after' 'cause make no mistake they're still out there. They're just letting us collect the dead."

"How can you be so callous about this. 7 men just died."

"Yeah and do you know how many thousands died before them. Look kid this is war and people die. Learn to stowe it till you get back to camp and then have a breakdown. Till then I need you to get into my pack grab and the flask and a clean piece of cloth."