Stronger with You

Bulletproof

Steve
December 22, 1968

"There's a land mine."

The phrase traveler through the line of soldiers quietly. I was standing in the front of the line, right behind Soda.

We were at the ready, 60 pounds of gear strapped to us, our guns in our hands. My heart pounded in my chest, if the front man didn't get the land mine disarmed we would all be blown to smithereens.

"Disarmed," Soda whispered, once again the word moved through the line of soldiers and we walked on.

We'd been in Vietnam for seven months. It was crazy to think about how easily we could all be killed. We were sent here for one reason, to prevent South Vietnam from falling to communism.

Soda and I had been lucky enough to stay together through all of this. Soda was a good soldier, but he constantly told me that I was better.

We were coming up on a dirt road, we'd all been told that the North Vietnamese were set up there, so we found ourselves laying in the ditch for an ambush.

"Firefight!" Our leader yelled, shots were already coming at us.

I fired away, I shot at anything that wasn't an American. For a split second I wondered if there was a 20 year old like me over there.

I didn't have time to dwell on that before I heard a painful grunt from Soda beside me. When I looked over I saw blood soaking through his uniform. He'd been shot in the shoulder.

"Soda!" I reached for the smell medic kit in my gear to try and patch it up.

"It don't hurt, keep shooting." He shot me a grin, one of those famous Sodapop grins. I turned back to my gun, firing my shots.

When our ambush was over and we were back at camp, I followed Soda to the medic tent, just to make sure he was fine.

"Steve-o, I'm fine. It barely grazed me." Soda tried telling me.

"Bullshit, Curtis. I see the damn hole in your shoulder!"

Soda grinned again, "Can you see through it. That's kinda badass."

"No, dipshit. That's not how being shot works. It's not the big." I rolled my eyes and waved over a medic, who forced Soda to sit down.

"Well, guess what Randell you got one too." Soda pointed to my own shoulder. He was right, my own shoulder was bleeding, now that I had realized my wound it was starting to hurt.

Another medic came, shoving me down on the cot to check out my wound.

"Do you even care? What If that bullet was through your heart?" I asked, a small part of me wished we were back home, fighting our own version of war with the Socs.

"I can't think like that, Steve. If I do then I get scared. If I get scared then I may end up dead. I have a girl and a family to get him to." Soda looked at me seriously. It reminded me of a conversation when we had experienced our first land mine explosion.

I was going on about how likely it was we died here, not even on our own ground. Soda told me that if I made it back while he didn't, to make sure Peyton got on with out him. That Ponyboy didn't become a vacuum, and that Maya didn't become too tough. I had told him to do the same thing for me, to make sure Evie stayed okay. It was our biggest cry session.