After the most paranoia-filled and tense 30 minutes in my recent memory. I started to make my way back toward the campfire. Man, I could still see the tower of black smoke in the distance. This place was nice by itself, the beauty of nature and all that. But aside from the rain, the local climate was fairly nice. I was thinking about all of this while walking over to the campfire area. As I crested the top of the hill, I could hear a commotion coming from the camp below.

I sighed and thought, ‘What the fuck is going on now.’ I couldn’t see very much from where I was standing, so I started moving down the hill. Now that I got closer, I could make out a little bit more of what was happening. The kid that we had rescued seemed to be having a full-on breakdown.

He had somehow gotten the camp ax and was waving it about at Walter and Alexei as they tried to calm him down. The kid had his back to a tree. Walter and Alexei were staying well away from him and out of reach. The kid seemed to be a little off his rocker and judging by the way he looked at the bear meat. He was just a little hungry.

By the time I finished sizing up the situation, I had gotten to the campfire circle. Improvising on the spot. I unsheathe my knife and cut a chunk off the carcass on the spit. Then in an act of probable stupidity, I walk to just out of striking range of his ax and squatted down to be on eye level with the kid. I take a second to let his eyes settle on the piece of meat.

“I’ll make you a deal, kid. You give me back my ax, and I’ll give you a slice of meat.”

As I proposed the deal, the kid's eyes were locked on the meat, and his mouth was open wide and drooling a bit. The kid let the ax slip for a second, then in a dry, croaking voice, he said,

“Trolls bleed green.”

The look of utter look of confusion on my face must have thrown him off balance for a second. It was that or the starvation.

“You are mountain trolls, right? I mean, you must be if you can kill the great terror.”

He motions to the bear carcass attached to the spit.

“many men have tried to kill the beast before, and well, you know how that went…”

The kid trailed off, a look of deep sadness crossing his face.

“Not that it matters much now.”

Alexei, gripped by the human instinct to help a distraught child, took a step forward. The kid with arms shaking raised the ax in Alexei’s direction.

“Prove you aren’t a troll.”

Alexei didn’t hesitate for a second. He pulled out his combat knife and made a small cut on his left forearm. Red blood ran down Alexei’s arm and dripped onto the ground, disappearing into the dirt. The ax slowly slid from the kid’s hands. Alexei moved over to him and started to comfort him as the kid broke down into uncontrollable sobbing. Alexei continued to comfort the boy like a father as he cried into his chest.

I looked away from the scene unfolding and over to the cave entrance and the radio within. I poked Walter’s arm, then jabbed a thumb over to the cave entrance. Understanding that they needed some time alone, Walter followed. When I brushed the tarp aside, I saw a pair of eyes staring back.

“Well, look who’s up. How’s sleeping beauty.”

The wounded man stared intensely at me, then said, “Where is my knife?”

A couple of minutes of looking later, the strange knife was returned to its owner.

“So, what’s your name and rank?” I asked after me and Walter had propped the man against a wall.

“Bunden grant, rifleman in the 1st Battalion, The Royal Gurkha Rifles.”

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I nodded and spoke in return,

“Harly Robinson, Corporal, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines.”

I held out my hand to shake. He looked up at me with one of his eyebrows raised, then he looked down to his heavily wounded body, then back up to me. It was as if he was saying, ‘really, in my condition,’

I retracted my hand and shrugged,

“haven't slept as well as you have,” I said in a joking manner.

He just sighed and looked over to Walter.

“And you are?”

“Stabgefeiter Walter Strisenburg, Rapid Forces Division of the German Heer.”

“Wow, we got a whole international mission to save me from this hellscape,” he said with such thick sarcasm it sounded bitter. I bet if he was a teenager, he would have rolled his eyes.

“I wish I had the time to explain everything to you, but I was just coming in here to use the radio.”

He just nodded and leaned his head back against the wall. I walked over to the radio and grabbed the mic, and clicked on the push-to-talk button.

“Could I get a supply drop with

Two helmets with US night vision mounts,

Two pairs of night vision

1000 rounds of both 5.56x45 and 7.62x51

5 men's worth of MREs for 7 days”

I stopped talking for a second to look at the newest member of our rag-tag group. His clothes are torn to shreds, and his boots are, to put it lightly, fucked.

“A Multicam uniform with boots and vest,

A Zenico AK 101 plus mags.”

For ammo standardization as well as an upgrade for Alexei. Speaking of weapons, Bunden is going to need to get one.

“An L85A3 plus mags,

A couple of Acogs scopes,

Plus some laser bore guide,

Some medical supplies would be great,

And a BlueTooth speaker.

Then just fill the rest of the drop with food and ammo.”

“Roger, air supply inbound, watch the skies.”

The injured Gurka on the floor shot me a questioning look.

“Walter. Me, and Alexei, if I can pry him away from the kid, are going to grab those supplies. You are in charge of protecting this camp while we are gone. You are also to brief rifleman Bunden on our current situation and protect the kid. You got it?”

Walter does a snarky salute, “Roger, that commander.”

“Oh fuck you,” I jokingly said as I walked out of the cave. Crossing back through the tarp flap, I found Alexei and the kid sitting on the logs surrounding the campfire. I just sat down next to Alexei and tried to relax for a couple of minutes.

It took a while for us to hear the distant roar of the C-130’s engines. But when we did, it was a great sound, at least for me. The boy, though, was scared shitless while looking around the camp franticly, trying to find where the sound was coming from, which was funny as hell. This boy came from a world with magic, trolls, and bears with glowing red eyes, and he was scared of a cargo plane. Well, that’s fair. He didn’t know what the hell was going on. Alexei tried to calm the kid by saying,

“calm down, kid. It’s on our side.”

I could see that the kid’s eyes locked in on Alexei, as Alexei got up and slung his rucksack onto his shoulders. The kid spoke up in a scared high, pitched tone of voice.

“Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave.”

He said as he ran over to Alexei and held onto his arm.

Alexei look over at me with a look that clearly conveyed the question. ‘Can he come?’

I nodded. At this point, the plane was overhead, and it had dropped the supplies. I quickly ran inside the cave and grabbed Walter’s pack, emptied it onto the floor then ran out.

A shout of “what the fuck!” followed me out as I thrust the now empty pack into the kid’s hands. He was dumbfounded for a second, then I showed him how to put it on correctly. Just as he had finished putting it on, Walter burst from the cave entrance.

“What the hell, Harly? You can’t just take my stuff and throw it onto the floor.”

“Well, I’m in a hurry.”

“Alright, well, next time, bother someone else’s stuff.” Walter went back inside with a huff. But, I couldn’t resist having the last word.

“Well, next time, I’ll fill out the proper paperwork.”

I turned around and started walking toward the slowly falling supply drop and said, “come on, we don’t have all day.”