Maybe the Dac Cong could move through the bush as quiet as a shadow, but I was not Dac Cong. I sounded like a bulldozer running over a cage of cymbal-banging monkeys: rifle clattering, boots smashing through brush, lumbering past trees, pushing away anything that tried to slow me down. Running like this was a terrible idea on general principle. Sometimes I read books where the hero runs through a forest, balls to the wall, and never has a problem. Let me just tell you, forests and jungles are not meant to be run through. Pits and hidden rocks threatened to trip me up with every step, while scraggily vegetation grabbed at my clothes and whipped me in the face.

And that was just the natural dangers. In Nam, there were punji pits to worry about—shallow trenches filled with stagnant water, human waste, and, most importantly, sharpened bamboo stakes just waiting to impale the unwary. Then there were trip wires, artillery shells rigged to explode, actual no-shit land mines, and fifty-gallon drums full of foo gas—napalm and high explosives—secreted away, waiting to turn the careless into a crispy critter. Napalm … fifty gallons of napalm.

But, believe it or not, the scary-ass DC ghosting along behind us, eating up ground no matter how much speed I put out, scared me more than a punji pit full of bamboo stakes, land mines, and napalm-spitting cobras.

Rat was scrambling to keep up; every ten or fifteen feet he would turn and fire a shot or two at the men loping through the forest like lanky man-chimps. Off to my left, and slightly ahead, Greg and Corporal Stanton broke through the dense tree line, likewise running for everything they could manage. Unfortunately, what they could manage wasn’t a whole helluva lot. Greg had one arm wedged up underneath Stanton’s arm and wrapped around his back. Stanton had one hand pressed against his right thigh while he hobbled along, making pretty good time for a guy who, presumably, had a serious leg wound.

Good time wasn’t good enough, however. Those pale sons of bitches were getting closer by the second. No way were we gonna outrun these jokers. If there was any hope of walking—or limping, in Stanton’s case—away from this mess, we were gonna have to put these rabid shits down. We’d tried flight, but it looked like fight was the only way to win this one. I angled left and, with a heave, kicked on an extra dose of speed, pulling up alongside Greg, my breath coming in long uneven pulls from the sudden sprint.

“We gotta fight,” I yelled over the terrible ruckus we were making. “No … way … we … can … outrun them,” I said, panting in between words, straining to get more oxygen into my lungs. Probably all the cigarettes. Shit, what I would’ve given for a cigarette right then.

“Overturned tree, ahead,” Greg called back, not even sparing me a glance. He moved left toward a semi-clear path winding through the trees, meandering this way and that. About fifty feet ahead, and completely obstructing the middle of said path, lay a huge, felled tree, its roots thrusting up into the sky, thick jungle vegetation running over its surface, reclaiming it, repurposing it to make way for the new. That was the law of the wild—move on, kill, win, grow, or die. I looked back over my shoulder and nearly busted my ass in the process.

“Tree!” I yelled at Rat, waving madly with my free hand at the blockade, our future makeshift defensive position. “Fire position!” I yelled, making sure he understood.

I slowed my pace, urging Rat on, letting Greg and Stanton stumble past me. Even as sick as I felt, I was still in the best shape to buy us all a little time. Stanton was practically useless with his leg wound, and thus Greg was rendered useless since he had to carry the man. Rat was a good enough guy, but he wasn’t John Wayne with that .45 of his. If we were in a narrow tunnel, with the enemy ten feet away in a straight line, he’d be a rock star. But running through a friggin’ forest at night, being chased by gibbering madmen? Not so much.

Greg and Stanton were at the tree now, crawling over the knee-high barricade at an agonizingly slow pace. Rat quickly caught them and threw himself over like a lineman going for the sack, flying through the air and disappearing as he tucked into a sloppy roll.

I spun left, ducking behind a drunkenly leaning tree, my M-16 up and at the ready. The DC—eight or nine of the sons of bitches, it was tough to tell in the weak moonlight—were almost on us, maybe twenty feet and closing quick. I popped off round after round, not really aiming at any one target, but rather laying down a blanket of sparse cover fire.

The goal was not to pick off eight or nine running men who had decent cover and jungle-ninja skills. Since this was real life and I didn’t have a mean ol’ Ma-Duce—a beefy fifty-caliber machine gun that was the first and last word on personal firepower—to work with, that shit just wasn’t gonna happen. No, my goal was only to slow ’em down, push ’em to take cover, so the others could get set up and ready.

Clack-clack-clack. My rounds bit into loose earth, sending up bursts of dirt, and chewed into trees; leaves and bark rained to the ground below. Even though the DC seemed like men possessed—and from what I could tell they were possessed, possessed by the music—they weren’t completely careless. Bloodthirsty human monsters, yes, but careless, no, which was both good and bad in its own way.

They slowed their approach, sliding into undergrowth and behind trees, melting away like dreams upon waking.

“I need cover fire!” I screamed out to my boys. After a few seconds, the crack and whistle of carefully placed rifle fire followed: a pair of guns working in tandem, probably Greg and Stanton, making sure there were always rounds heading downrange, pinning the shifty little DC in place. I fumbled at my web gear, my hands trembling minutely as I pulled a set of grenades from their pouches. My last two. But I couldn’t think of a better situation than this. I pulled the pin on the first, carefully holding down the spoon, before lobbing the matte-green death-ball into a clump of bushes to the right of the path. Aiming for a spot I’d seen some of the Dac drop behind.

I went to work as quickly as I could, freeing the pin of the second grenade and likewise chucking it off to the left, spreading the destructive firepower around a bit, hoping to get as many of those freaky assholes as I could while they were pinned down by rifle fire. I ducked back behind the tree just as the first grenade went off—a monstrous boom that rattled the ground and sent a plume of light and heat coursing into the air. The second one followed suit, creating another massive explosion and a brief column of light that left the nearby trees smoking and aflame.

My ears rang, the din temporarily muting the music, though not blocking it out completely. I shook my head, as though I might just be able to shake away the sound, then cautiously poked back around the trunk, surveying the damage. Several trees were burning, there was a smoking crater on the right, and on the left I saw what might’ve been a pair of bodies.

“Moving!” I yelled back toward Greg, Stanton, and Rat, letting them know not to shoot me. Then I sprinted my ass up the narrow path, scrambled over the log, and dropped down as quick as I could. Running like that, with my back exposed to possible enemy fire, always made my shoulder blades itch something fierce—always felt like someone’s finger was on the trigger.

“How we doing?” I asked Greg, easing myself into the kneeling position, careful to keep my head low while I positioned my rifle barrel on the log—a damn good shooting brace to help steady my hands. “Any movement?”

“Clear so far,” he said, though he kept his rifle trained downrange, eyes scanning for any sign of movement.

“I got nothing here either,” Rat whispered. He had his back to us and was doing a continual sweep of our rear and flanks, making sure the slippery DC bastards didn’t get around us without at least sending up a warning. Corporal Stanton was no longer in the kneeling, but rather laying on the other side of Greg, his weapon leaning upright against the log, while his right leg sat propped at an angle on a green Alice pack. His breathing was heavy, audible even over the music, a sheen of sweat coated his face, and he had his eyes tightly closed.

“How’s the Corporal?” I whispered into Greg’s ear, not wanting the man to know we were talking about him. We never left a man behind, but sometimes the odds of a guy making it out were slim and grim. If Stanton wasn’t ambulatory—if he couldn’t walk mostly unassisted—there was a damn good chance he wouldn’t leave this jungle alive. We were deep in the bush, now lost, with diminishing gear and a shit load of baddies out there, and that was without counting the music. We could take turns fireman carrying his hefty ass, but it would be tricky, maybe even impossible.

“Stable for now,” Greg said. “Managed to get a pressure dressing in place before those freaks showed up. We’ll talk later, first let’s get out of this mess, yeah?”

“Do we bunker down here or move on?” I asked. With Stanton temporarily down for the count, Greg was the acting squad leader. What we did at this point was his call, and I trusted him to make the right one. Had Stanton listened to Greg in the first place, we wouldn’t have even been in this situation.

He was quiet for a moment, eyes never ceasing their restless motion over the terrain. “We have to move out,” he said at last. “That daggon grenade stunt was good work, Yancy. Real smart, but I have no doubt that some of those boys are still kicking around. They know we’re here. They’ll be coming sooner or later. So we move. Tight diamond formation. Yancy, you’re on point. Rat, you’re on right flank. Rat?” He lightly slapped Rat on the back of the head. “You listening, or what?”

“Dammit, Rat, pay attention.”

Rat turned a sheepish gaze on us, a nervous smile playing across his lips. “Sorry, man, sorry. I thought I saw something out there.” He paused, unsure of himself. “Probably just my imagination, fuckin’ woods, play tricks on your mind, y’know?” he said after a moment, not really a question, more of a justification.

“We’re moving,” Greg said again. “Tight diamond formation. Yancy has point, you’re on the right, I’ll take Corporal. Yancy, follow the music.”

“Are you kidding me, asshole?” I said, louder than I meant to. “We need to go back. I’m done following the music. We’ve lost enough on this stupid-ass mission.”

“Dammit,” he said. “We’re in too deep to turn back now. You think Stanton’s gonna make it back in this condition? Even if we left him, we wouldn’t make it back. Our supplies are running low, and I don’t have a daggon clue where we are. You? Rat?”

We both shook our heads, almost in tandem.

“That’s what I thought. This is a survival mission now. Whoever is behind that music likely has food, water, medical equipment. They should also have some kind of radio to broadcast that daggon music. So, if we can get to that, I can get a signal back to camp, maybe get us an airlift. And if I can’t get an airlift …” He fell silent, his shoulders slumped forward in resignation. “Well, I’ll call down an airstrike right on our heads, enough bombs and napalm to make sure that music never reaches another pair of ears. This is it, Yancy, it’s do or die time. No other options.”

A soft breeze blew through the trees, a warm breeze that seemed to fling the strands of shifting music right into our faces. Mocking me, taunting me, calling to me: follow, follow, follow.

“I hate you so much sometimes,” I said, turning his argument over in my mind. He was right. Dammit, he was right. I had three weeks left in country, three friggin’ weeks before I was slated to go back to the real world and leave Nam behind for good. I’d survived countless humps, a million missions, firefights, and ambushes. Just my luck, last month in would be my last month ever. “Fine.” I moved into a crouch, then padded forward as quiet as I could while Greg hastily shook Corporal Stanton awake and helped him to his feet.

“But,” I whispered over my shoulder, “I want to go on the record and say you’re a colossal shithead for dragging me into this war in the first place.”

I turned my back to the log just as something collided into me; lank arms wrapped around my waist, while a set of shoulders hammered into my ribs.