PFC Kyle Randall sat against a brick wall staring up at the sky, trying to ignore the din of warfare and the pain in his left leg. He was stationed in a city whose name he couldn't remember or pronounce, fighting a “conflict” he didn't quite understand. He supposed it was better than still being stuck in the jungle, but not by much. Vietnam was simply not a great place to be.
His daydream was interrupted by Lieutenant Johns ordering them to move up.
“Wayne! Pyle! Randall! Get your asses up there! Go, go!”
Wayne and Pyle nodded at the lieutenant, checked their weapons, and sprinted around the corner into the fray. Lt. Johns shot an incriminating glare at Kyle, gesturing at the others.
“Randall, I said 'go!' That's an order!”
“But my leg-”
Johns threw up a hand to silence him. “Don't care! It's just a graze and those two need cover, so get your ass out there before I shoot you myself!” Kyle nodded, grabbed his assault rifle, and scrambled to his feet. Grimacing, he braced himself, counted to three silently, and made a mad limping dash around the bend toward Pyle.
He didn't make it. Halfway there, the crack of a rifle formally acquainted him with the slug that tore through his right calf, crippling his good leg, and he crumpled to the ground and tumbled a few feet before trying to stand back up. White-hot pain shot up through his right side he landed on his back in the street. Wayne and Pyle sprung up from behind their sandbags across the street, Wayne shouting for a medic while Pyle hopped over the wall. He fired a short burst at an unseen adversary in a burnt-out building, hopped over the remains of an NVA soldier, and began loping toward Kyle before getting three holes punched in his chest and toppling over with a yelp.
“Shit!” Wayne began firing at a squad hiding in a street market, screaming for a medic.
“There's no fucking medic coming, Wayne!,” Kyle screamed, squirming toward a low, broken wall to cover himself. Wayne ejected his magazine.
“I know, man,” he shouted. “I know...” He swore silently, then slapped a fresh mag into his gun.
“I'm gonna get Pyle to safety, and then I'll come for you, alright? Just cover me!”
Kyle nodded weakly and raised his weapon, hoisting himself up over the remainder of the stone wall. Screaming, he squeezed the trigger a number of times to no effect and he dropped again and opened the bolt to find an empty casing jamming the weapon.
“Fuck!”
“You can tell it's Mattel,” Wayne laughed wearily as he grabbed Pyle's arms to drag him.
Kyle dropped the M16 and drew his sidearm, a Smith&Wesson .38 he had pilfered from a dead ally. With a pained yelp, he got up on one knee and leveled his sights on a grunt hiding in the jungle behind a hotel down the street. He focused for a second, and his second instinct (he liked to call him “The Marksman”) took control.
'Charlie in your sights. Okay, steady... Fire. Again. Dropped him. Slow down, the recoil is killing your aim. Three shots left...? Yeah, three. Okay. Sniper in the tree over there, see him? Pop him. Steady, breathe, come on. Alright... now!'
Kyle chuckled as the man tumbled out of the brush, emitting an almost porcine squeal before hitting the ground with an almost-audible thud.
The Marksman continued humorlessly.
'Nobody's really shooting at you right now,so it might be a good time to reload. You've only got two rounds left.'
'Good idea.'
Kyle ducked behind the wall again and opened the cylinder, slid four fresh rounds in, and flicked his wrist, closing the weapon. The Marksman chimed in.
'Where's Wayne? Shouldn't he have Pyle's corpse behind cover by now?'
'Hey, we don't know he's dead yet. Don't talk like that.'
'You and I both know his ass is grass.'
'Yeah, I know...'
Kyle peered over at the sandbags, where Wayne was trying to lift Pyle over the edge and into the machine gun nest. He signaled him. “Is he breathing?”
“I can't tell, man! I'm freaking out!”
“Well, quit playin' grab-ass and figure it out! I can’t really go anywhere with my legs like this!”
Wayne nodded and pressed his fingers to Pyle's neck for a few seconds, then lowered his head and slumped him half-heartedly over the wall.
'Told you.'
Kyle sighed and steadied himself on the wall once again. 'All right, Marksman,' he thought, 'get me out of here.'
'Of course. Who else could bail you out?'
The Marksman raised his weapon and fired, hitting a sprinting NVA regular square in the chest and knocking him flat.
'It's not technically bailing me out if you're just part of me, now, is it?'
'That's debatable. I'm a separate-enough entity for you to hold a conversation with me in your head, aren't I?'
The weapon fired again, perforating an enemy in the middle of a combat roll.
'Yeah, well, maybe I should stop having these conversations.'
Another shot, this one hitting a large, leafy plant in the nearby jungle outskirts.
'I wouldn't worry about it until these internal conversations become external.'
A bloodied officer came tumbling out of the bushes. Kyle turned to look at Wayne, but did not find him. He swore and dropped to the ground.
'Looks like we're going to do a little reconnaissance. Suck it up and get on your feet.'
Kyle scrambled to his feet, ignoring the searing pain in his legs, and The Marksman began limp-running toward Wayne's sandbag nest, rolling to another broken wall before making a long-jump over some barbed wire and landing inside the nest with yet another somersault. Kyle immediately collapsed from the pain, wailing and swearing, but the Marksman only gave him a second to rest before making him stand up again, grab Pyle's rifle, and dart off toward the nearest building.
