Out of Nowhere (The Immortal Vagabond Healer Book 1) by Patrick LeClerc

everyone’s night vision.
    I quickly estimated their number at around a billion.
    The nearest were only about twenty yards away. I threw my grenade, saw it land among the closest enemy, dropped down into the hole and grabbed my rifle. When the explosion sounded, I got just high enough to aim over the lip of the hole and started shooting.
    This close, I didn’t have to really aim. Squinting through the rear sight actually kills your peripheral vision. Under fifty yards, I just had to look over the sights, take a second to line up and squeeze. They were headed straight at me, no need to lead them. Just don’t rush the shot.
    I fired at a tall guy hunched over a burp gun, running directly at me. He spun around and fell, his limbs flopping loosely, his weapon pinwheeling away. I lined up and dropped another man, then fired at a third, whom I couldn’t have missed, but who kept right on running, his weapon chattering full auto. I fired again. Nothing. My third shot hit him in the forehead. His hat flew off, he jerked straight up and toppled over. I shifted my aim to another man, but I saw tracers from a machine gun further up the hill scythe him down. To my left, Hackett’s Tommy gun stuttered in short bursts.
    I fired a few more shots, then swore as my M1 ejected the spent magazine with a metallic pang! As I grabbed another clip from my bandolier, Hackett made a noise between a grunt and a wet cough and fell against the back wall of the pit.
    I put a hand out toward him and the world exploded.
    A club of light and noise hit me, sending my helmet spinning off into the darkness. I felt hot, stabbing pain in my right shoulder and fell into the pit, dazed.
    Disoriented, I groped blindly, my hand coming down on a bloody parka. Hackett was unconscious, his breathing slow and snoring. I stayed down, sending energy to explore his wounds, stop his bleeding. I heard the enemy attack pass around the hole, running and shooting and screaming. A soft, heavy weight landed on my legs, then remained horribly still.
    I tried to control my fear, with Hackett’s rasping breath in my ears, an icy cold settling on my right side where my parka was torn by fragments and my blood had frozen on my skin, and the heavy, still warmth of a dead Chinese soldier lying across my legs.
    I woke with a start, my heart racing, and looked around. I was in my bed in my second floor walkup in Philips Mills.
    Sarah was on her side, wrapped up in my blankets, which she’d managed to pull half off me, exposing my right side from shoulder to hip. She was snoring quietly. The cat lay draped across my knees.
    I took a deep breath, slid out from under what she’d left me of the covers and threw on a robe. I took my longest t-shirt out of my bureau, laid it on a chair near the bed, and made my way to the kitchen. I walked softly, making sure not to wake her.
    The dream had been vivid. Nothing so vivid in a long time. Maybe talking to that Korean vet brought it out.
    Or maybe being hunted and helpless, waiting in the dark for a knife between my shoulder blades reminded me of that night.
    This couldn’t be as bad as that night above the Toktong Pass, could it? And I’d survived that. Except that I didn’t have any hand grenades now. Even if I did, chances are the neighbors would object to me throwing them at strange noises in the dark.
    That night had been bad. I’d patched Hackett up and we kept our heads down as the assault raged on past us. Someone called in an artillery strike all around us which stopped the second wave of Chinese, and the rest of the company threw the survivors off the hill. We limped up after dawn and rejoined the platoon.
    It might sound cowardly, playing dead in the bottom of a hole while the enemy swarmed up after your buddies. Hell, it might be cowardly, but if we’d gotten up and started shooting, dazed, wounded, and half-blind from a grenade explosion in the middle of a Chinese company and started shooting, they’d have killed us in