Strange Magic: A Yancy Lazarus Novel by James Hunter

had a week with him before deployment.
    “Don’t worry princess,” Greg said, noting the look on my face, “I’ve got your back, you’ll see ‘em—”
    He didn’t finish the sentence. Everything had been hunky-dory.
    One-step changed that.
    I could see it all again, like a movie reel playing in slow motion:
    Corporal Martin and Benson were playing some silly grab-ass game.
    Dio, Collins, and Schmidt were getting down on an impromptu game of Hold ‘Em.
    Dickens, Sottack, and Litchfield chain-smoked a round of cigarettes in the shade of a young tualang tree.
    Greg was telling me things were going to be okay.
    Then: Corporal Martin tripped a little, staggering from a patch of sunlight into the gloomy shade of a squat palm tree.
    Everything turned real slow, surreal, shrouded in haze and fog. Martin stumbled a little … a terrible light enveloped him, made his face and arms shine for a moment with radiant light. For an honest to God moment, it looked like an angel had come and scooped him up—like the rapture had happened, maybe. It scooped him up and was kind of beautiful in its way. Then the light was in him, in his arms and legs, hands and feet, face and guts—they pulled apart.
    The heat hit me like a wave and I was all caught up in the tangled undergrowth of the jungle floor. I’d never seen anything like it before, never seen death—not for real, not close up like that. The light had plucked Martin’s ass right up and tore him to pieces; it scattered chunks of him into the tualang tree that Dickens, Sottack, and Litchfield had been smoking under. Great ropy strings of gray guts hung from the overhead branches like crepe paper at a party.
    The light hadn’t killed him, I knew. It wasn’t an angel or the friggin’ rapture, it was a rigged 105 round. The VC had killed him. Then, the shooting began. I didn’t even know whether we were being fired at … shit, I wasn’t even sure there were VC up ahead. The blast had gone off and then the firing had started, but it could’ve been our side or theirs, I didn’t know. All I knew for sure was that Martin was dead and that I didn’t want to die.
    “Shit. Someone help!—” I let the scream fall away. There was something rustling in the bushes behind me, I couldn’t see, but I knew a person approached. A VC ambush , my brain shrieked. Some pajama-wearing Charlie was about to slit my friggin’ throat! Turn around, my maddened brain demanded, turn around and shoot that asshole into the next world ! I fumbled for my M-16 but it was useless, my hands didn’t want to work and I couldn’t turn anyways, the pain was too much. I steeled myself for the end … Please God forgive me, please take care of my family, please let that asshole Greg live through this . Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, please-please-please-please …
    A hand fell on my shoulder and I almost let go of my bladder.
    “I got ya’, bud,” Greg said. He moved into view. Raw red and black flesh—speckled throughout with pieces of melted cammie—wrapped around his left bicep. But he was moving okay, despite the wound. Probably riding high as a kite on all the endorphins and adrenaline running through him.
    “I’m gonna get your ass out of here,” he said. “Told you I’d have your back.”
    He bent low and scooped me up with a grunt, settling my bulk around his shoulders in a classic fireman carry. My leg wanted nothing to do with it, the hot coals in my skin rekindled anew, my eyes drifted shut from pain. He started running—running—through the jungle away from the VC and back toward our last forward outpost. A little chunk of cadence drifted into my brain: Running through the jungle with my M-16, I’m a mean motherfucker I’m a U.S. Marine. Sight alignment, sight picture, right between the eyes—slow, steady squeeze and another VC dies. But if I should die in the combat zone, well box me up and ship me home.
    I saw a piece of Martin’s face, charred black, lying in a sparse dirt patch,