Page 71 of Walking Wounded

It was as their laughter died down that Will heard it: the rustle of leaves in the underbrush.

He froze, and his squad mates went still in response.

“What?” Finn whispered.

Will set down his meat and beans slowly, carefully, not making a sound. His M1 was propped up against his pack and he leaned sideways to reach for it. The others did the same. The gun was bigger than Murray, but they’d learned his wiry little arms were stronger than they looked.

The rustle sounded again, unmistakable footsteps in the underbrush behind them.

They got to their feet, and it was Finn who tipped his head and led the creeping party toward the thicket. He signaled Murray and Murkowski to stay put – in case they flushed someone out toward the road – and they looked grudging, but nodded.

Will fell into his usual place in his best friend’s shadow and they ducked under a low limb and into a tangle of vegetation. Their boots made noise, there was just no way to prevent that. But louder was the pounding of his heart in his ears, blurry and urgent as fear overtook him. This march was all about ferreting out pockets of North Koreans, and they might be walking right into one. It could be dozens of men. A hundred. It could be–

Finn pulled to an abrupt halt and Will bumped into his back, hooked his chin over his shoulder so he could see what lay ahead.

“Kids,” Finn hissed, and it was.

Two tiny Korean children stood in front of them, black hair falling into their eyes, their clothes in tatters and their arms and legs crusted with dirt. They were young, younger than ten, probably, and Will couldn’t tell their gender.

“Fuck,” Finn whispered. Then he crouched down and said, quietly, “Hi there. You guys lost?”

The children edged back a step, and Will saw that their shoes were coming apart; their toes peeped through the ends.

“They don’t speak English.”

“No shit.” Finn waved them forward. “Come on, y’all, and we’ll get something to eat. You know, food?” He mimed spooning something into his mouth.

The children’s dark eyes flickered across them, then darted to the underbrush around them, white-rimmed and frightened as wild ponies.

“How’d they even get out here?” Finn wondered aloud. He made one more try, reaching toward them. “Hey, it’s alright. We won’t hurt–”

They darted, sliding through the foliage quick and graceful as the rabbits back home.

Wait, Will thought, but Finn leapt after them and it was too late to do anything but follow him.

Will tried to mark their path visually, searching for landmarks. A bent branch here, an inexplicable red leaf there. They hopped over a fallen log and he tried to catalogue its exact dimensions; it had a distinct knot at the end. But he knew it was futile. By the end of this headlong rush, even if they caught up to the kids, there was a good chance they’d be hopelessly lost. And they didn’t even have their packs! Disaster loomed.

And then hazy daylight flashed through the branches and they stumbled the last few paces into a clearing, momentarily blinded by the sun.

The children had stopped just in front of them, frozen. Will could hear them breathing, tiny fast sounds of panic. And then he saw why.

Five North Koreans sat around the charcoal dregs of a doused campfire.

Only one of them was armed, a Russian carbine laid across his lap. The others surely had knives, but were empty-handed, fingers clutching at air as they stared at the newcomers with total blank surprise. A small pile of packs and supplies sat beyond their circle; the muzzle of another carbine jutted from the shapeless mass.

“Holy fuck,” Finn said in a calm, level voice, and then he leapt into action.

The man with the carbine went down with two quick shots from Finn’s M1. Another headed straight for their gear, and Will picked him off, a shot to the back of the head that sent up a shower of blood, and bone, and brain matter.

“Get down!” Finn told the children, and shoved them into the dirt, just as the other three North Koreans converged on them with knives.

They didn’t want to do it. They were afraid – Will could see it in the vast fields of white in their eyes, the color of underbellies and surrender. This wasn’t their fight, but that of someone meaner and stronger that held their leashes. And so they attacked, and their war cries were screams of terror. They carried knives against M1 rifles, and it was over quickly, the staccato cracks of gunshots and wet thumps of bodies opening in dangerous places.

The bodies fell, and two best friends from a little town in Virginia stood over them. They were sad things, those corpses, malnourished and shod in sandals.

The children cowered in the dirt at Finn’s feet, clinging tight to each other and whimpering.

Will searched his friend’s face for shock, or trauma, and found a grim resoluteness instead.

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