Emily was laying on the ground again on watch. She had her old M9 rifle with her again and she found some comfort with it. She scanned the woods in front of her but most of her mind was on the conversation that happened after the TV signal had been terminated. Her patrol had been postponed and the Major had sent out another patrol to the east. Two hours later they had returned with a bunch of bags of rice. The patrol had found a warehouse and grabbed all the rice they could. In the end, they had enough food if they rationed for about two months.

They were low on other things though like clothing. Emily only had one uniform. Some of the people in her OD didn’t have boots or jackets. They were walking around barefoot. Emily was glad she had her boot with her as they were specially made with a plate that ran between the soles of her boot and the inside of her boot. She had been told that it was similar to what firefight boots were like. She just wished her boots were as waterproof as the firefighter boots were. Her boots were designed to stand up to her weight as well as normal wear and tear of everyday life in the Special Forces.

The Major was ordering the OD not to surrender but he was conflicted. When General June had signed the order of unconditional surrender of all US forces in Korea it might have become mandatory for all military personnel to surrender. To refuse might meant going against orders from a superior officer. That could mean that refusing to surrender might be criminal. But everything the General did was against the Code of the United States Fighting Force.

“This…” The Major had said’ “...might be an unlawful order but I am not sure.”

The Major explained the Code of the United States Fighting Forces. In the Code was the article that ordered all military personnel not to surrender unless there is no possible way to continue to fight. An Officer cannot order his people to surrender as long as there was an ability to resist.

“The thing that scares me is why did he order a surrender?” The Major said in front of Emily and most of the OD. “Especially an unconditional surrender. I don’t know the man but from what I’ve heard is that he was a good commander. He would never have ordered a surrender like this unless there is something that we don't’ know. Something that makes fighting the North Koreans impossible.”

“The bad news about an unconditional surrender is that it was unconditional.” The Major explained. “That means there are no guarantees to the surrendering party. That would be us. To surrender could mean death to some or all us. North Korea has still not signed the Geneva Conventions. That means that they could do whatever they wanted to do with us including killing all of us and they have a history of war crimes.”

“My problem is, why would the General do that? I think he knew that he would be executed. I’ pretty sure he didn’t give the order because of a fear of his own death. We need more intelligence.” The Major said sounding frustrated. “Until we learn otherwise we are not surrendering.”

“He wants more intelligence but postpones our patrol.” Emily thought snorting.

While Emily was thinking that she noticed movement in front of her. She took a deep breath and aimed her rifle at the shaking brush. Her finger slowly slid onto the trigger. The brush shook violently and suddenly a really dirty naked white man stumbled out of the brush. He paused for a few seconds at the sudden lack of brush to look around before he started to jog right for Emily.

Emily lined up her scope and her finger tightened on the trigger before she recognized him. It was Yrawl. “Tom.” She whispered.

The naked man stopped and leaned forward a bit and tried to sport her. “Goat.” He replied. “Hey, Never.” He loudly whispered to Emily suddenly spotting her. He elongated the word hey for nearly two seconds.

“What happened to you,” Emily asked trying not to look south of his body. He was blessed.

Yrawl frown then looked down. He dropped his hands to cover his manhood and smiled back at her. “So I think I’m a vampire. Or maybe a zombie. I’m not sure.”

Emily blinked. “What?”

“So get this. I wake up, right, and I’m like really hungry and I’m like buried in the dirt. I sit up and I’m like naked and sitting on top of all these bodies you know. I’m not like, brains you know but I’m like really hungry.” Yrawl said completely confusing Emily.

Shaking her head she asked, “Yrawl how the hell did you know where we were?”

“Oh, it's like the Coronel’s thing right. You know how he’s like always saying ‘Know your exits and always have a backup plan’ right? So he has a thing with new people where he tells half the OD to go out and hide and the rest of the OD has to find them. Well, the older guys, like know where to go because we all studied the map and like this was the best hiding place to go to. It’s a surprising thing to the new people you know? Makes then think we are always checking for exits and safe places to go to ground in case of emergency.” Yrawl said shrugging.

“Ok. Emily said shaking her head. “Just keep going straight and you’ll find the rest of the OD.”

“Thanks,” Ywarl said nodding to her. He went past her hiding his manhood. She looked back and smiled. Ywarl had a nice butt. Then she frowned. What the hell did he mean that he thought he was a vampire or a zombie?

“Never,” Wilson called out as he came out to relive her.

“Wilson,” Emily said turning around as he came up behind her.

“So Yrawl is alive,” Wilson said sliding under the tarp.

“Yea, he came by me. What the hell was he talking about, he’s a vampire or zombie? Emily asked as she handed over her rifle.

“So Yrawl awakened. He’s a healer. Apparently, he woke up on top of a mass grave and got confused. You know how people get when they awakened.” Wilson said smiling.

“No, what do you mean,” Emily said frowning.

“Well, you guys get really confused right when you awaken. How do you not know that.” He asked her frowning.

Emily thought back to the time she awakened at super school. She had just come out from the gas chamber after a bunch of time running through it getting gassed and got shot by paralyzing darts. She remembered getting really angry and then trying to hit one of the instructors in the head with her rifle.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Oh.” She said remembering.

“Yea, oh,” Wilson said smiling smugly at her. “Anyway meet up with your squad leader. I think they are going to send a patrol out to find where Ywarl woke up.”

“Yea ok,” Emily said sliding out from the tarp.

Hook standing next to her squad when she walked into the cave. He nodded to her to come closer. “You hear about Yrawl?” He asked her.

“Yes, First Sergeant,” Emily said nodding.

“Good. The Major wants us to head out with him and find where he woke up. We get the fun job of making sure everyone that is missing is really dead and not a POW.” Hook said looking pissed. “This is a low profile mission. That means no running off to fight some super. Get me.”

Emily blinked in surprise. “Is he mad at me for fighting the super on our last patrol?” She asked herself. “What else was I supposed to do, run?”

“Yes, First Sergeant,” Emily told him.

“Good. Let’s go find Ywarl.” He told the squad turning around and walked deeper into the cave.

They found Ywarl by the medics. He was wearing boxers and a tee shirt now. He was in the middle of wrapping his feet in roller bandages when the squad came upon him. He looked clearer now. He must have washed up a bit.

“Hey, First Sergeant.” He said smiling elongating his first word as he always does. “Hey, Never. Guess what I’m one of y’all now. Well not like you but a healer. That's cool though, right.”

“You ready to go?” Hook asked him.

“Yes, First Sergeant.” He said looking down again and putting the metal pong thing to attach one end of the roller bandage to the rest. He stood up and marched in place. He looked at the squad that was staring at him and smiled. “Good to go.”

As the squad left the cave Emily walked beside Ywarl. “You know, I’m a healer also but I can only heal myself,” Emily told him.

“Oh, yea I forgot. I’m used to thinking of you as a Brute because you’re all, rawr. You know?” He told her making his hands into claws and clawing the air in front of him. Emily chuckled.

“Spread out. Never, take point. Ywarl point us in the right direction.” Hook said sounding mad.

Emily found herself retracing the same route that she had taken to get to the caves. She looked for the footprints that she made when she walked the path the first time but didn’t see any. Someone in her OD had done a really good job hiding them. She adjusted her grip on her pistol, her only weapon besides Righteous and her little black knife. She stopped by the stream and looked around making sure it was safe before turning around and looked at Yrawl for directions. He pointed west towards Camp No Name. Nodding to him, she turned to her right and resumed her journey.

It seemed a longer journey walking to the Camp No Name than when she had escaped just a few days ago. “We were running then.” Emily thought to herself as she walked through the brush. She kept looking around thinking, “This trail would make a great place to set up an ambush.”

She was about two thirds as she judged it when she heard a soft whistle behind her. Looking over her shoulder she saw Yrawl making the signal to stop with his left hand. In his other hand, he held a pistol. He motioned to go north. She nodded and turned right heading away from the stream. It took nearly fifteen minutes for Emily to find the mass grave.

The mass grave was in the middle of a clearing not that far from Camp No Name. Emily spotted it while she was still in the forest. It wasn’t hard to miss there was a large mound of dirt in the center of the clearing. It was easy to see where Yrawl had crawled out of the mass grave because she could easily see the disturbed dirt and his footprints in the recently turned dirt.

“Never, Thompson, and Muller dirt up the bodies and tell me who you find.” Hook said pointing at the mound of dirt. “Yrawl, take the north but stay within ten meters of the tree line. I got the south.”

“What?” Emily said surprised.

“Get your but in there and dig up the grave. Tell me who you find. We need to know if anyone is still alive and taken captive. Or do you want one of your fellow soldiers rotting away somewhere being tortured? Get to digging.” Hook said angrily.

Emily looked at Muller who just shrugged and walked into the clearing. Thompson followed him slinging his rifle over his shoulder. Emily followed them into the clearing. Thompson had the only trench shovel so Emily and Muller had to use their hands. Lucky Muller had some extra medical gloves to share so it was all that bad.

The mass grave was a shallow and Emily came across the first body fairly soon. The first thing to hit her was the smell. It was bad. The bodies had started to decay and some of them started to bloat. That meant when she went to move the bodies some of them they started to leak and the smell got so much worse. The bodies were stacked on top of each other so once they cleared the dirt off it wasn’t hard at all to get at the bodies. Some of the bodies were charred and blackened. Those were the worst ones.

All the bodies were naked. The North Koreans had stripped all the clothes off them. To Emily that made things worse for some reason. The fourth body she pulled from the grave turned out to be the Colonels. Emily had to stop and get out of the hole and stand off to the side for a few minutes after she pulled his body out. Hook gave her a look but didn’t say anything.

Thompson found Deacon's body. His body looked too skinny to Emily. He had a large gash on his neck. Emily felt weird looking at Decan’s body. For some reason, she could not connect the person she had seen days ago to the body. It looked like him and was him but something was missing to make it, him.

Some of the bodies had powder burns on them. Muller showed Emily the difference. Dirt left a brown smudge on a body but powder from a gun was pitch black. There was a lot of people who had some form of powder burns on their bodies. They called out the names to Hook who wrote them down in his notepad.

They pulled out twenty-nine bodies from the mass grave. Out of the twenty-nine bodies, they were able to identify only eleven of them. The rest were too charred to be identified. All they could tell was the sex of the body. Hook had them replace the bodies once it was clear that there was no one left to find. It only took a few minutes to replace the dirt. The OD had come to Korea with sixty-one members. Half of them were dead now.

Once they were done the squad stood around the mass grave. No one said anything. Thompson looked away for a while but then turned back to look at the mound of dirt. Emily felt numb again. Something she hadn’t felt since she was in Afghanistan. She didn’t know what she was feeling. She had known these people for such a short time but now they were all dead.

It was different than before when she had seen bodies of people she knew. She didn’t understand why it was different but something was. She turned away from the gravesite first and headed towards the stream. She needed to wash off in the stream. She had a very strong desire to be clean. Her uniform felt disgusting.

On her walk to the stream, she thought about what just happened. She hated what she did. She wanted to be angry at someone for making her do what she did but she could see that it needed to be done. They needed to know if anyone was missing. She could even see why she was chosen to go. The enemy could have been waiting for them. She was the best one to be in position if there was an ambush. She had to go. She wanted to blame someone. She wanted to be angry but every time she tried all she felt was that she was tired. She felt so very tired. She hated it here and wanted to go home.

Hook didn’t say anything when she just jumped into the stream and started scrubbing her clothes while wearing them. She wished she had soap but it was better than going around with a dirty uniform. Thompson and Muller jumped in with her but they took off their clothes and washed them. No one looked at each other as they washed. As she took point again, to lead her squad back to the cave, she realized that it was the first time in her life that she didn’t care about walking around in wet socks.