The Unit Read Online Free PDF Page B

barely remember having stood guard when morning comes. I’ve never been so tired, and that’s saying a lot because I’ve been able to sleep like Rip Van Winkle since I was about twelve. If we weren’t in a dangerous place, I’m pretty sure I could sleep straight through a whole week. It’s one of the things I really, really want to do.
    We’re in a hurry to get moving, so we eat a cold breakfast. When I’m not chewing, I’m yawning. There isn’t much to say, so we clean up our campsite, bury our garbage and our shit, and we use pine boughs to wipe away our tracks. It wouldn’t fool a decent tracker, Dad says, but we don’t want to leave clear signs for anyone, either.
    Dad’s a trip. It’s like I didn’t really know him before, the guy who taught me how to throw a curveball and how to play chess and how to be a poor communicator. Don’t get me wrong—he’s been an okay dad. He doesn’t understand me very well, and he thinks I’m still a little kid, but now I can see that I don’t understand him very well, either. I guess I didn’t think very much about what-all was inside him. I had no idea that he knew all this silly shit about tactics. Sure, he taught me how to shoot, and we had fun doing that, but all the other stuff he knows kind of blows me away. It’s kind of obvious stuff, but it took twisted minds to think of it. Don’t walk on the tops of ridges, because people can see you outlined against the sky. Walk on
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ridgelines, which lie just below the summit. Pay attention to the plants and the folds of the earth, in case you need to take cover. The difference between cover and concealment is that cover stops bullets. Flank a group of bad guys and they’ll probably have no choice but to run or die. Put out massive return fire when attacked, so the bad guys think they’ve walked into a superior force. Shit like that. It sounds like it came from the mind of a middle school kid, but Dad says it’s all written in the Marine Corps manual. It sounds too easy, but I’m hoping it really works.
    All the walking we’re doing doesn’t hurt so much anymore. My stamina is getting pretty good, even though I was never a real jock. I always had to work hard to keep my place as a starting defensive back in football. I was nothing like the guys who seemed like they were born to block and run and hit, but I got to the point where I could almost keep up with them.
    Hard work alone can’t make a person great, but it can help you beat lazy, gifted people. The blisters on my feet are turning to calluses, and I’m getting harder all over. I don’t have a shitload of foot speed, but maybe I could run down a deer if I used the simple tactic of never giving up.
    But still, I’d rather be flying. It’s my favorite thing in the world, to break the surly bonds of earth, as they say. And seeing that little bird in the sky yesterday made me happy. It was a Cessna 182 with retractable gear. I’d give one of my nuts to be sitting in the left seat, cruising at 150 knots and flying us somewhere else.
    About halfway through the day, we smell woodsmoke. Dad marches us from one place of cover and concealment to the next, until we can see a big column of smoke rising into the brown sky. We pass a barn surrounded by cows that look like they died of thirst. We cover Dad while he searches the barn, but he comes out right away and shakes his head. The gas rising up from the dead cows is about the most disgusting thing I’ve ever smelled. Melanie looks like she wants to puke again, but the smell is so sick that it makes me want to break out laughing.
    We walk toward the smoke, because that’s where the road takes us. It’s another killing zone. There’s a white house beside the freeway. It’s on fire. There’s a picket fence around it, and the yard has perfect green grass, but flames are pouring from the house windows. Bodies are lying in the grass. Lots of bodies. More than thirty, and so it wasn’t just the people