Chimera

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The forest was on fire, and the sky was full of orange smoke. Land mines kept cooking off and exploding in the distance, making Sergeant Lourdes jump every single time — and regret it every single time, since it made the barbed wire imbedded in his leg snag and tear some more.

Sweat poured down his face, chilling instantly in the cool night air. There was blood — blood everywhere — but he couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think about what had happened to him, about his injuries, about what was going to happen to his family without him. He couldn’t think about how he probably wouldn’t make it to see morning.

All he could think about was the sentry post, twenty-five yards away. The cramped little box he’d been stationed in for three years now, the box he’d come to loathe, then tolerate, then start to think of as his home away from home. There was a picture of his baby girl taped to one window. There was a flask of coffee in there and right now he was so thirsty, his mouth felt dry as a bone and—

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