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him but then I would somehow have to figure out how to land the helicopter and couldn’t imagine I would be at all successful with that. One half of the stock flipped open. There were a bunch of bright orange buttons. Grimes stood behind me and gave me a strong push. I was out in the open air.
    When you watch people parachute on television, it never looks like they’re falling that fast. I felt like a stone, rocketing toward the ground. My eyes were watering and I didn’t know if it was from the air stinging them or if I was crying. Could have been a little of both. I tried to read the minute text above the orange buttons but everything was blurry. I started pressing them. Nothing happened.
    Then something began spooling from the butt of the gun. I grabbed onto the gun even harder.
    The parachute opened with a pop and I almost lost it. The parachute wanted to stay there, the wind holding it up, and my body wanted to keep diving toward the ground. I wrapped my hands around the very end of the stock and my wild sense of panic calmed somewhat. I didn’t want to look down. I looked up, searching for the helicopter, but I didn’t see it.
    I hit the ground and my knees buckled and slammed into my collar bones. Off balance, I rolled to my right, the hot ground scraping at my arms.
    Calmly, oblivious to my fear, the parachute drifted down over top of me and covered me like a funeral shroud. I lay flat on my back and tried to breathe regularly, amazed I was still alive.
    In the distance, I heard a loud crash. I crawled out from under the parachute and saw the tail end of the helicopter jutting up from the ground at an unnatural angle.
    I spoke into my headphones. “Grimes?”
    Flames and smoke barreled up from the downed copter.
    “ Saul Dressing?” a voice came through the headphones.
    “ Yes?”
    “ This is Sergeant Sam Fetch. Congratulations on your safe landing. You’ll be taking orders from me now.”
    “ I think Grimes crashed the helicopter.”
    “ It’s all part of the mission, Private Dressing.”
    “ But why would he do that?”
    “ Don’t ask questions.”
    Smoke continued to billow up from the helicopter. I backed further away from it. A loud boom shook the ground as the helicopter exploded in a final ball of flame.
    I backed into something.
    I turned around and faced the enemy.

 
    Twelve
     
    I yelped.
    The thing in front of me took off running across the cracked earth.
    My heart hammered in my chest. I had only faced him for a minute and my brain struggled to process what my eyes had seen.
    I guessed it was a person. It was built like a person. I was thinking it was male because it wore a small leather loin cloth type thing and didn’t appear to have breasts. The most remarkable thing about him was his skin. It looked like a lizard’s skin. Actually, it looked a lot like the ground, only covering a human.
    “ What was that?” Fetch barked into my ears.
    “ What was what?”
    “ That sound.”
    “ That was me.”
    “ Are you okay? Did something startle you?”
    “ Yes. I think I just saw the enemy. I think I bumped into him.”
    “ Did you declare war?”
    “ I didn’t really have the chance.”
    “ What did they look like? Were there a lot of them? Did they get a good look at you? My God, man, you’re lucky you’re still alive.”
    “ He looked like a lizard. And like a man. Like a man lizard. There was only one. I don’t know if he got a good look at me or not. I backed into him. I’m not sure how long he’d been standing there.”
    “ Okay. Don’t panic. This is a good beginning.”
    I looked all around. Except for the smoking heap of the helicopter, I couldn’t see anything. There was the brown, cracked ground and the deep blue sky. That was all.
    “ I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do.”
    “ First we’ll need you to do some reconnaissance.”
    That sounded really boring.
    “ It doesn’t look like there’s much out here. I don’t see anything.”
    “ You