- The soldiers hear that another North Vietnamese battalion is coming. Uh oh.
- They rush to ditch the area before the battalion arrives, but before they leave, they have to deal with the bodies of their dead comrades. Think turning out the light when you leave the house, but more depressing.
- It's not just ritual, either: they're worried the North Vietnamese will find their dead and disfigure them. Not cute.
- They work together to carry their dead into a hut, make a pile of their bodies, and then burn the hut. Cremation is loads better than disfiguration.
- Lights are out. Time to go.
- Ahead of them, the ARVN is being fired at. Stewart tells the men to stay down and look for the sniper, and Johnson tells them to keep heading toward the chopper. Decisions, decisions. They listen to Johnson.
- Perry starts having a little bit of a breakdown here. He's going back and forth between feeling like he's watching himself from outside his body, and then going back into his body. Trippy.
- Jamal isn't doing too well either. He's having himself a sobfest. Gearhart has to jerk him around and yell in his face to get him moving.
- On the move, but things don't get easier. The squad comes across a platoon of North Vietnamese in a clearing and start to fire on them.
- At this point, we readers lose Perry a bit. His sentences get shorter and disjointed, and on top of the confusing grammar shift, his vision gets messed up. Talk about bad timing.
- Thought it couldn't get worse? Think again. A jet flies overhead and drops napalm on the fighters. They try to get away by crawling into the clearing.
- It's not the most satisfying end to a chapter.