Soul Survivor

Rain pattered softly on John Snider’s M1 helmet and shoulders as he knelt in the thigh-high elephant grass, his eye line just above the blades. Already soaked through, his knee touched down in a puddle and he found comfort in the soft muck.

Still, on nights like this, even deep in Charlie’s hot and sticky backyard, it always reminded John of a hunting expedition with his dad up in Northern Nevada... And he had one of those Tahoe bucks in his sights.

Almost like one of those gorgeous dewy morning years gone by, moonlight glimmered around the gap in the wet grass where there had been movement.

On-point for the first time since joining the half-cracked forward advance squad calling themselves Boudreaux’s Bad Boys—Trip Brav for short—John felt blessed to not be back with the main group. Except for Boudreaux himself, every single one of them had a vacant look to their eyes that made John’s neck hairs rise.

It wasn’t the thousand-yard stare. John had seen that plenty, and it was usually good to have at least one grunt with you who had the stare. No, these guys seemed to be seeing something all around the landscape that he couldn’t see. And as for Boudreaux, the least disconcerting thing about the Cajun was his black-and-white skull face paint.

Signaling Ace, his slackman, John held up a fist.

The faint chatter much further behind them stopped.

John squeezed the trigger. Sarah—the name John had given to his M14—kicked into his shoulder as she cracked off a shot. Down range, just inside the moonlit wood line that led to another Godforsaken rice paddy, a quick crimson splash rose off the still bundle that he’d been eyeing in the damn elephant grass for the past thirty seconds.