Any soldier worth his salt should be anti-war. And yet there are things still worth fighting for. -H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Chapter 2: A Nice Day

I thought about it for a second. What if this guy had set up another ambush? But then, there was no way out of this without going through. I pushed on with my new HK416. I soon came to another door and opened it. I looked in awe and shock. In front of me was a football field's worth of sand!

"Please cross the minefield. A helicopter will escort you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I said to myself. Soon, I found an answer to my own question. A UH-60 Black Hawk hovered overhead, with both miniguns on it manned.

"Holy shi-" I didn't get to finish my sentence. A spray of sand went up a foot from my feet. It was a warning shot. I sprinted across the 100-yard field as fast as I could, setting off mines as I went along. Of course, shrapnel hit me, but I didn't feel it. Adrenaline was pumping through my system as the helicopter pilot tried to shoot me. If I stopped, I knew his bullets wouldn't miss.

I crossed the field in a matter of seconds, and the helicopter stopped shooting. I was on concrete now, and another door was in front of me. I tried to turn the knob-it was locked.

The voice boomed again from an unknown source. "Please, you know better than that."

Are you mocking me? Shut the hell up! Angrily, I raised my knee to my chest, raised my gun up horizontally with both hands, and brought my heel of my foot down on the door. The door flew five feet before hitting the ground, landing on a soldier with a M2 Browning machine gun. The man managed to squeeze a few rounds off before he flew back, and the .50 caliber rounds almost managed to hit me.

"Jesus Christ," I panted to myself. I was scared. Why were they doing this to me? Those were live rounds. Crap, did I leave those boots in that place? I couldn't remember.

"Very nice. You impress me. You have one more stage to go. Please note that in this stage, if you get fatally hit or die, you will not qualify. Only fifteen out of the other forty-nine participants have passed this training. The others are either unconscious or dead."

Holy crap! I was shot in the chest for Christ's sake! How'd they revive me? And then it hit me. Oh crap. I'm going to have to do another course. One I might die from. And only 15 people made it through? Frigging piece of … I kept swearing to myself, repeating the same word over and over again for five seconds.

After a quick prayer, I checked myself for wounds. Pieces of shrapnel had lodged in my back, arms, and legs. I pulled out the shrapnel out. None of them had gotten deep enough to lodge somewhere I couldn't pull it out from. Blood leaked from the wounds, either dripping off my elbows, absorbed in my shirt, or absorbed in my long pants.

I stepped through an opening with my weapon's stock to my shoulder. I walked slowly ahead. What I saw shocked me. I was smack dab right in the center of a football field. There were so much places to hide, and they probably would shoot me all at the same time and kill me.

"Please eliminate the hostile targets."

"I frigging know," I said in an irritated voice.

As soon as I had finished my sentence, a round shot the middle of my tibia and snapped it. I stifled the pain and fell to the floor. Normally I would have screamed out, but an overwhelming urge made me keep quiet. I was pretty sure that I didn't have this instinct before, and I was thankful I had it now.

I didn't hear the sound. Damn, they have silencers. But then I saw it, less then three inches of unprotected knee. He was getting ready to fire again. I flipped over so I was in a prone position and took aim. I noticed that my hand barely shook and my aim was almost still. It was almost as if I had stopped breathing so I could aim. But I still breathed heavily from the adrenaline and pain. Yet, although my target was more than 70 meters away from me, I squeezed off a total of only four rounds before I hit him. He fell forward and yelled in pain and I pumped more plastic rounds into him. He became unconscious. Suddenly, five more popped up and started shooting at me and I started shooting them, knocking out whoever was foolish enough to stand up. I soon eliminated the threat with three wounds. One was from the first who jumped me. Two others had come from this firefight. All three had gone in and out.

Oh my god. It can't get any worse than this. Its still frigging daylight and I'm stuck on a football field with no cover. The hell am I supposed to do?

I didn't try to stand up. I tore off my sleeve and started wrapping it around my broken leg. I then dragged myself do one of the exits of the football stadium.

"Ah, perfect. You have a broken leg. This will make even quicker work of you."

An APC rolled out. Shizzle. I hate my life.

I stared hopelessly as the APC rode on at full speed, about to make me road kill on a football field. Who would've thought of that? But I managed to roll over, and the driver didn't see me. He drove right past me. And stopped. Five troops piled out the back and I shot them all. I picked up an M4, as I was sure I had spent more than half the magazine in the HK416. This has gone too far. With my new M4, I tried to use it as a cane to stand so I could use one leg to walk. I had read once about someone who raced, fractured her tibia, tried to stand, and it sort of snapped in, like how a dog's leg looked like. I hopped away. The APC must've thought that its five-man team killed me, because it didn't bother to look back until I was at the exit.

"Congratulations. You have survived. There are now a total of sixteen survivors. Inside you will find treatment for all your wounds and an explanation."

I went inside, and what I saw made me gag. The ones that had survived stayed true to the old saying, "No man left behind." There were no doctors, only basic medical equipment.

The wounded men and women that had failed the test were sitting and had needles in their arm while were holding up their own IV's. The dead were piled on the floor and caked together while the ones who had passed were also sitting on chairs, deep in thought. I didn't recognize a face. There were a couple women who said they had passed. I had a feeling these were the people whom I would soon rely on for my life. Jesus Christ. What was originally a white room was now covered in blood.