"Son of a bitch, boy, I haven't seen you up here in ages," exclaimed the African American man, who slapped one of the jumpers on his left shoulder with a smile. The man shrugged, smiling back.

"Good to see ya, Robbie. Yeah, I bit it back in the sandbox," he said, lifting his left pant leg to show off a circular scar, an obvious bullet wound.

"Damn," said one of the men down the line, "How the fuck did you do that?"

"Jesus Christ, manners Smokey," said one of the other men down the line, "Sorry about Smokey, dude's a dick. Name's Ryan, by the way, but the boys call me Tooth."

"Shut the fuck up, Tooth," retorted Smokey at his battle buddy as he looked to the man's name tape, "anyways, uh, Hicks, how do you know Grassman up here?"

"We rushed into Baghdad with the 1-64 in 2003 together, then redeployed with the 1-64 in 2004. We've been pretty good friends ever since," he said with a grin, punching the jumpmaster, Robbie Gras, in the stomach.

"Well I'll be damned, Hicks," said Tooth, laughing, "Maybe you know where Grassman gets those goddamn terrible fucking haircuts, huh?"

Layne Hicks threw his head back in laughter as he rubbed the stubble on his chin, "'fraid I don't. Hell, I give better haircuts though."

"Yeah, fuck you too Layne," smiled Gras, shaking his head from his seat across the troop bay, "How 'bout you tell the boys 'bout your wound, huh?"

"I was leading my squad against a team of Taliban Machine Gunners back in good ole' Afghanistan, and there were some… complications."

June 11, 2014

Afghanistan

Hicks squinted under his sunglasses as he gazed up the steep mountainside, where he could hear machine gun fire suppressing his teammates on the road below. He can see the insurgents lining the ridge as he hears the clatter of rocks and is brought from his trance to see one of his gunners caught by another man.

"Thanks for that, Sergeant Harrison," the gunner said to the Sergeant, who nodded and smiled, shouldering his rifle to continue the press up the mountain.

"So, Hicks, where the fuck are we gonna pop these guys," growled Harrison, and Hicks shrugged, seemingly indifferent, as the two Sergeants made eye contact.

"Those rocks look as good of a place as any," he said, nodding at a enthralment of boulders up the hillside. Harrison nodded as they continued to clamber up the rocky slope, finally reaching the boulders as Harrison nodded to the gunners to set up.

"Serpent 2-5, this is-," he was cut off by his own scream and the following crack of a sniper rifle. His men, stunned, were quickly pinned down by a mortar burst, and then another, and then more, as Hicks wrapped his leg after falling from the rock circle.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he groaned to himself as he felt arms lift him off the rocks and began carrying him back off the mountainside.

"Stay with me, man," growled Harrison, basically stumbling down the mountain as he rushed towards the convoy, now pulling off the kill zone.

"I woke up in a fucking helo bound for Bagram, didn't even have a choice. I got some shrapnel in my back too, but none of that shit was as bad as my calf," he shook his head, "We lost a lot of good people that day. Only Sergeant Harrison and I made it out, and Harrison was killed four days later by a VBIED. Now I've got these five prep jumps and SFOD selection."

Gras shook his head, frowning, as the red light pops on.

"Alright," he shouted over the drone of four propellers powering the C-130, "Stand up, Hook up!"

"Count off!" he shouted again, watching the seven men clip into a static line stretching through the crew bay.

"One, OK!"

"Two, OK!"

"Three OK!"

"Four, OK!"

"Five, OK!"

"Six, OK!"
"Hicks, OK!"

Gras nodded as the green light came on and sunlight infiltrated the cabin, "Happy hunting, boys!"

Hicks was the last out, plummeting to the ground just in front of Gras as the grassy Fort Bragg field rushed up to greet the eight jumpers. Hicks frowned under goggles as he saw a mass of people moving into their drop zone, and not all of them were Army.

"Yo, Layne, you seein' this man?"

"I'm getting it, what the fuck are they doing?" Hicks growled back into his radio as he pulled the ripcord on his chute, which thrashed his entire body from one hundred miles an hour to slightly above ten.

"Smokey, Tooth, Johnson, keep those people back when you hit the ground," Gras shouted into his radio just above Hicks, as his own chute ripped him upwards. His three delta teammates took the order with a click of their radio as Gras and Hicks dipped below two hundred feet.

Hicks and Gras could only watch in horror as Gras' Delta teammates were ripped apart by cannibals, as it seemed, on the ground. Gras clicked back onto the radio as he watched the situation unfold.

"All jumpers, we are coming into a hot DZ, I repeat this is a hot DZ," he growled, and then veered his chute away from the now carcasses of his three teammates, with Hicks following the move.

Hicks hit the earth first, quickly cutting out of his chute as he raced towards Gras, who had also just came from his chute. The pair watched as two of the other three men on their stick were also ripped apart, and the third barely made it. They knelt, catching their breath.

"Fuck," Gras growled, as a big segment of the stumbling cannibals spotted them, "My old squadron commander, he has this cabin in the woods. It's probably untouched, but it's through these things."

"We can backtrack through the woods, I'd bet," said Hicks, not bothering to look at Gras as both men stared into the horde still stumbling towards them.

"Well regardless, we have to fucking go," Gras said, turning around and sprinting for the trees, Hicks on his heels as they reach the trees.

"We've gained some ground, but we need to keep moving quick. There's a game trail up here, that'll be the best way to get to the cabin," he said peering at the horde from behind a large oak tree as Hicks nodded towards horde.

"Hopefully these fucks don't follow us all the way to the cabin," he grunted, "and let's hope they can't track."

Hicks continued to jog through the woods, but eventually letting Gras take point as they approached the area Gras noted the trail was in. Hicks unbuckled his helmet as Gras directed with his hand where the trail was.

"Jesus," Gras said, kneeling, as Hicks trotted up alongside the Delta Force man, who was staring at a deer carcass.

"They aren't just going after us. What the hell are these things?" Hicks said, rhetorically asking the question into thin air.

Gras only shrugged, "I don't know, but this thing should slow them down. Oh, and throw your helmet down that way, that could help too," he said, gesturing away from the trail as Hicks lifted the light jump helmet and threw it into the underbrush to the trail's left.

Gras stepped over the carcass, knife in hand, as Hicks followed. They didn't move with much caution, only stopping every few hundred meters to check for noise, as they approached. After about the fourth time repeating this pattern, Gras paused.

"What?" Hicks whispered sharply to his African American friend, who grimaced at the tracks underfoot, "Look at these tracks. Like eight sets, fuck."

Gras nodded, "That's what I saw, too. Hope Clark and his boy are okay."

Hicks only responded with a tightened jaw as Gras stood back up, proceeding with more caution as they approached. Hicks stood back to back with Gras as the man cleared thorns blocking their way into the clearing.

"Oh fuck!"

Hicks swung around, knife raised, to see a boy leveling a Beretta at Gras from his perch on the roof. Hicks opened his mouth to speak as Gras lowered his knife.

"Georgie, it's me, buddy. Robbie," Gras said, raising his hands as Georgie lowered his Beretta, "Where's your dad, guy?"

The boy wept as he practically collapsed onto the roof, gesturing to the carcass on the porch. Gras stepped forward to help Georgie Clark down from the roof as Hicks stepped onto the porch to move the body of the child's father.

"Holy fuck," Hicks growled, dragging the bones to the edge of the forest. The body wasn't much of one, the things Robbie and Layne had seen had completely ripped every morsel of possible food from the squadron commander's body.

Hicks opened the door as Gras led the boy inside, taking the Beretta and holstering to for the child.

"It's okay, kid. Not your fault," said Gras, bringing the boy into a hug.

"No… he, he… he sacrificed himself. Pushed me onto the roof and said, son, survive. They ripped him apart, and I couldn't do anything… I just heard him scream, the animals ripping his muscle, his heart…. everything, Robbie," Georgie Clark cried into Robbie's shirt, grabbing it in fists.

"This is Layne, Georgie. We're gonna help you get to your mom, kid," he said, gripping the boy by the shoulders as the kid smiled slightly.

"We leave for the base first thing in the morning, guys."