My rifle flew out of my hands and cartwheeled through the air, landing near a tree far outside my reach. I hit the ground a moment later like a boulder dropped from an airplane. I happened to land in a reeking, muck filled puddle, which splashed warm disgusting water all over me. ’Cause yeah, that’s just what I needed. One of those DC shitheads was straddling me at the hips—he rained fists and elbows down on my face, neck, and chest.

I brought my fists up into a classic boxer’s guard, tucking my arms in tight, using my long limbs to protect my face and head from the savage beating, though that left my ribs and stomach exposed. The DC continued to lay into me. His strikes walloped into my forearms and biceps, painful blows even if not debilitating.

I bucked beneath the man. If I wanted to survive this fight, I needed to get into a better position, needed to get out from the bottom. My defense was good enough to buy me a little breathing room, but I couldn’t hold like that forever. The guy on top of me was an animal, his blows so intense, his strength so frightening, I couldn’t afford to waste time.

I glanced through the narrow gap between my forearms, waiting for the right moment. There: a big right hook. I dropped my defense.

The blow plowed into the side of my face—clever of me, I know, letting the enemy beat me senseless until he got bored. My face was very unhappy with my tactical decision, but it did afford me the opportunity I needed. I hooked my arm around his extended limb, clenching tight and locking him into a painful arm-bar. I bucked my hips and twisted at the same time, using the leverage from the arm lock to pitch him over while I rolled up, now inside his guard, a classic reversal.

The man seemed undeterred. He clamped his legs down around my waist, squeezing at my center like I was a human-shaped blister he was hoping to pop. He kept his arms slightly bent and slashed at me with his hands, pulling me down with his legs so he could reach my face. Son of a bitch was trying to gouge my eyes right outta my head. Fighting doesn’t come any dirtier than that.

I wasn’t beyond fighting dirty. I’d lost my rifle when the asshole tackled me, but I still had my little Smith and Wesson 15—a gift from my wife, sent all the way from the States—in the leather holster at my belt. I was not at all above capping an unarmed man. I mean, he was unarmed, sure, but he was a long, long way from defenseless. I wrestled the gun from its holster, only to have the dirty DC bat the weapon away with a furious blow to my wrist, which left my fingers numb.

I stretched for the weapon, throwing my weight against the man’s viselike legs. He budged, but I was still a good couple of feet short, and his blows were coming faster now, picking up in intensity like a fire catching a gust of air.

Time to change tactics. I gave up on the gun and threw a series of tight jabs at him, working his exposed belly and ribs, which should’ve taken the wind right out of his sails. Everyone thinks face shots are the best way to go—and there’s something to that; no one wants to get bumped in the kisser—but gut shots can be just as effective. Sometimes more so. If you’ve never been gut punched by someone who knows what they’re doing, let me tell you, it sucks more than a Hoover vacuum. It’s almost worth picking a fight with someone who knows what they’re about just so you can experience the pain, the panic, the loss of oxygen, and the feeling of near suffocation. Go through that, and you’ll gain a whole new perspective on life.

Unfortunately, the DC seemed oblivious to the pain and punishment I was dishing out to his torso. The music, now a madcap 1920s flapper number, was wrapping around his head, darting into his ears and nose, skipping through his vision, and turning his eyes glossy. The strand of music was burnt-gold, slowly fading to black with every passing second. It was spurring on his blood lust, his killing instinct, getting him drunk on murder. It was also inoculating him from the pain. Shit. That meant I wasn’t gonna be able to beat this chump the ol’ fashioned way. No way was he gonna tap out of this bout.

Both my rifle and pistol were just a little too far away, but Greg’s olive-drab Alice pack was within reach. And right on the outside, secured by a set of alligator clips and a thin cloth sheath, was a collapsible black shovel, called an E-Tool. The E-Tool was a multipurpose lifesaver. You could dig a ditch with it, use the serrated blade running along the shovel’s edge to split wood, or, in a pinch, it doubled as a club to beat off insane Vietnamese Special Forces. Like I said, a lifesaver.

I moved for the pack, throwing all my weight against the man’s stomach crushing leg hold, and managed to get my hand around the handle just as my knees buckled. The pressure eased up around my waist, which almost certainly meant trouble, but I didn’t have time to think about that. I ripped the tool from its canvas sheath and hastily unfolded it as I scrambled to my feet and spun to face my opponent. He was on his feet, moving for my revolver in a low crouch. No way in hell was that shit gonna happen. I lunged, the shovel flying out and connecting with the DC’s outstretched wrist. His forearm snapped in the middle with a terrible crack, which almost sounded like a gunshot.

I moved forward—not wanting to lose a second and risk losing my advantage—and reversed the movement of the shovel, slicing upwards in a ferocious underhand blow that caught the man across his chin and sent him falling back onto his ass, a great bleeding gash now running up the side of his jaw. My vision was red. The music pumped through me, working its power on me, urging me to lash out, to cave the man’s skull in, to hack him apart at the seams. I raised the shovel high above my head, muscles straining with power as I prepared to smash this fuck right into the ground, to obliterate him.

Someone screamed—one of our guys I thought. I glanced back over my shoulder, just a pause before delivering the killing blow, and saw Greg laid out on the ground. A DC loomed over him, bringing the M-16 I had dropped up into his shoulder pocket, preparing to put down my best friend. Time slowed, it paused and took a breather, like a boxer retiring to the corner between bouts. The DC seemed to be moving in quarter speed, a giant slug playing at being a man.

The music yelled in my head. It cried at the injustice, at the inhumanity of the scene before me. This simply couldn’t be the way things ended. It couldn’t. I wasn’t about to let my best friend go out like that. A nasty sneer curled my lips up at the corners, and suddenly, I felt myself nodding along in agreement with the music, nodding my head in time with the base riff while one foot pounded out the backbeat on the jungle floor. This was an injustice. And these monsters deserved to pay, deserved to perish in whatever shitty hell they believed in.

Energy built in me, just as it had with Rat, though this time it was driven by the fury raging in me, an inferno of hate. It started in my head, beating wildly behind my eyes, before flowing down into my body, turning my guts to a boil as though I’d just downed a fifth of Jack. That strange muscle I’d tapped into earlier stirred again, my newly discovered ability reaching out on instinct, ready to enforce my will on the world around me. And right now, my will was to see those bastards burn … and I thought I could do it, or something close enough that it would make no difference.

I’d affected the music before, made it leave Rat be, but I was pretty sure I could change it just as easily.

It was all right there, the answer right in front of my face, as clear as the clarion call of a trumpet. The music was wrapped around the Dac Cong, all of them, its coils clinging to damn near every surface of their skin and uniforms, flowing into them and through them. Once again, I could sense the raw power flowing through the music; it was damn near a free-flowing line of electricity. Before, I’d used my newfound sense to round that power up and disperse it, sending it away as though I were a bouncer booting some no-goodnik from the bar after too many drinks.

What if I pumped more energy into those cables of music, kicking them into overdrive? I wasn’t sure how that would play out exactly, but I had an inkling that it wouldn’t be good for the Dac Cong.

I held out the E-Tool with one hand, arm raised, elbow slightly bent, my eyes tracking down the handle and over the shovel’s head. Having the E-Tool helped me to focus my new sense, just like the sights on a rifle. I pictured what I wanted to happen in my mind, the music supplying me with everything I needed, amplifying my hate and violence, channeling all that pent-up emotion into something potent and deadly.

In my head I could see the fire, could see the Dac Cong burning bright. That was what I wanted. The music cooed in my ear. Yes, it whispered, yes, burn it down, burn all of it down. They deserve to die. I agreed. I pushed that vision of death, married to my will, out along the shovel’s edge, shaping and directing the power inside me. With Rat, I’d only managed to puff out a wispy cloud of smoke, but this? This was a focused beam of silver force.

That pent-up pressure rushed out of me in a breath, churning and boiling as my mental hands gave it shape and form. A shimmering whirlwind of silver wrapped around the E-Tool in delicate twists, before rocketing outward and branching off into a handful of thin streamers, each no thicker than my pinky finger. The braids of will lashed out in different directions, weaving through the jungle air like guided missiles, landing on the DC assaulting my buddies.

The silver tongues licked over the chords of music wrapping up the DC, dancing and merging with the music, becoming one. A flash of brilliant orange and red tattooed the night, the silver strands of power suddenly bursting into life as though I’d thrown a match into a barrel of gasoline. The six remaining Vietnamese soldiers were wreathed in terrible, consuming light and heat. They fell away almost as one, screaming in terror and agony as the music that had been buffering their senses—preventing them from feeling pain—burnt away.

The DC beat at the waves of fire frolicking over their clothes and chewing at their skin. The heat flared, sending out flashes of warmth that played uncomfortably against my cheeks. A few men dropped and rolled, but the fire seemed utterly unimpressed by their efforts and continued to burn them up unabated.

It was horrifying, watching them burn like that. The smell of cooking meat filled the air and assailed my nose with its stink.

What the hell had I done? For a moment I wanted to call back my terrible act. But sometimes once a thing is done, there’s simply no undoing it. There’s no taking it back. It was the music, I told myself, the music made me burn ’em. It was them or us, there was no other way. But deep down I knew it was bullshit. The music still wailed around me, still whispered in my head, but now those sweet inhuman voices seemed to be laughing at me.

Those thoughts sprinted through my mind, one after the other as I watched those guys fry and die. Slowly. Revulsion reared up inside me like a hooded cobra ready to strike. What the hell had I done? I mean, killing is one thing—I’d killed before, and more than I’d like to admit—but this was different. No one deserved to die like that, to be burnt alive like that. No one, not even the Dac Cong.

The silvery energy encircling my E-Tool sputtered and died as I lost focus, my body now empty and hollow from all my effort. I dropped the shovel and stared on wide-eyed, knowing there was nothing for me to do now but look on my handiwork and shudder.

Rat and Greg shuffled away from the burning soldiers, raising weapons and shooting into the writhing, shrieking forms, putting them out of their misery. I slumped to my knees, endless weariness breaking on me like ocean surf. Already my eyelids seemed to weigh more than a pair of burning bodies, and my limbs felt oddly numb. Greg looked at me—what I saw on his face made me want to curl up into the fetal position and go to sleep forever. What I’d seen was fear. There was concern in his face, sure, but running beneath like a riptide was a strong current of terror.

I tumbled over onto my back, my lungs struggling to hold in breath. Jungle trees stretched up around me, reaching leafy arms toward the sky in a silent prayer for the dead men below. I could hardly see the sky, just a few black splotches interspersed in the canopy. If there was a God, I wasn’t sure he could hear what happened down here. It seemed to me that Nam was a little piece of hell on earth, the kind of place a good God wouldn’t much care to look in on. That was the last thing that flashed through my mind before my lungs fell still and my eyes slipped closed, dragging me down into darkness, a place which was thankfully devoid of fire.