• Darkness consumes the sky as he sprints through the jungle where his squad was massacred just moments ago by what seemed like a beast in the darkness. The screams of his squad mates being ripped apart still echo in his mind as he runs just to get away to live. Darkness clouds his sight and the jungle limps his step but none of these matters to him for the only thing he craves is survival. Panting, gasping for air, he continues running from the foul beast in which peruses him through the dark jungle of Vietnam. Miles away from any sign of shelter and food, he is tired and weak from the two and a half hours he has ran without rest or water just for the chance that he might survive this horrific night.
    He charges away from the sounds behind him and tries to ignore the pain in his legs. Images flash before his eyes of how his team was ordered to recon the area and secure a suitable location to establish a new battalion supply deport closer to hill seventy-three. It was just supposed to be a simple recon mission, how could this have happened, raced through his mind with thousands of other thoughts. Thinking of what Sergeant O'Connor had told them before they departed.
    “We are a family we will stick together on this one understood, the higher ups think Charlie’s in the area” Sergeant O'Connor explained as the Marines standing in front of him responded.
    “Understood, Sarge!” the marines screamed as they snapped to attention.
    If only they had known what was out here, what horror awaited them once they’d land and find only death and misery.
    “Why God?” he screamed to the heavens as he started to move again. The fifteen seconds rest he took just moments ago did nothing but let it catch up to him. He could hear their teeth chattering all around him. Meaning they were close and he would have to move faster. The only problem was he couldn’t fill his legs so he didn’t know how fast he was actually going.
    He thought he saw light from the east but only for a split second before he gave up on the foolish idea that it couldn’t run this long, not without passing out, his thoughts rang out in his mind along with the frightful images of how the night had started the way he had just left his squad there to die. His best friend Chuck, the Sarge, even Lee he had left them to die like animals. They were the closest thing he had to a family. Thoughts like these kept spinning in his mind making him lose focus and makes him clumsier, he couldn’t keep his balance, he slipped and fell when he hit the ground he heard the sound of something breaking but he thought it was a stick or something because he didn’t feel any pain.
    Climbing to his feet he started again but this time with a limp, after a while of running and not hearing anything behind him he stopped to take a rest.
    He sat up against a tree and placed his hand on his knee when he felt something sticking out of his leg, “Why, Why am I the one that lives!?” he screams as he tries to break his leg back into place before he started to move again. Desperately walking, limply he attempted to slowly jog, but that just moves the bone farther out of place.
    He turned and fired his rifle into the blackness trying to bring light to the darkness so he could see; he saw the outline of a house and started limping for it. Once he got inside he felt around for a kind of light, he found a lantern and lite the old thing. The small hut was lit and because it had no windows and only one door, for now he was safe.
    He found some rope and tied it around his broken leg hoping now he could move without damaging his leg further then he had already done. Almost as soon as he is done with the rope the door crashes in and the hut fills with darkness. He grabs his rifle and fires once; twice into the darkness, when he fires for the third time there is silence. As he leaves the hut his arm is grabbed and he is forced to drop his rifle, he tries his best to run but feeling has come back to his leg and the pain is almost unbearable, he continues.
    He has no stamina left, no footing and no strength to carry on, to the ground he collapses and to his sidearm he reaches firing blindly into the darkness hoping at least to scare the creature, if not kill. Quick flashes of light show for a split second the jungle around him as he fires his weapon. The darkness makes it difficult to see but he doesn’t see the red glow of their eyes, relief fills his trashed body as he crawls to a tree and leans against it. He sits there just resting when he fills a warm sensation come over him; he opens one eye to see what appears to be a pair of claws sticking out of his chest leading up to a set of red eyes staring at him. He fired at the eyes and they vanished into the darkness, he pulls the trigger again and hears the click of an empty clip, his last one. As he sits there waiting for the creatures to finish him, he remembers his lucky bullet he keeps in his pocket.
    He slid the bullet in the clip, put in his sidearm and charges the handgun, sliding the round in the chamber and gently slid the weapon into his mouth. He accepts death for what it really is, the only way to end his pain and free him from this nightmare, he fires. As his body lays there motionless a pair of red eyes open next to the body. In the darkness the glowing of the red eyes start to open and surround the corpse of Corporal Riley. The eyes disperse when a robed figure appears, the robed man holds out his hand to Riley’s body revealing it skeletal hand, Riley grabs the hand and walks with the robed man into the darkness of the jungle. As the shapes of both of them fade the sun starts to rise over the trees as a chopper flies over.