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It felt like I was following a shadow.

Jogging to keep up with my squad, I kept thinking back to how things had gotten this bad. The lights were out, our safe, underground bunker was being terrorized from above. The smell of dust, gunpowder and blood dulled our nostrils to all other scents. Our bodies were raw, cold, hot, and everything in between, if not completely lost to pain or numbness. Darkness was everywhere, I couldn't hardly see my team, save the wandering shadows of their figures as they ran past one of the few working lights. Explosions and rumbling deafened us, leaving the gunfire and screams of our dying foes and comrades alike to fall, unheard. Now, the only thing that snapped me back to reality was my Sergeant's calling voice.

"Ramirez! Get your a** in gear and keep up!"
The Sergeant had been paying special attention to me all day, God only knew why. I had to struggle to keep up with his orders. Even the smallest of slip ups would mean the end of us all. As I gripped my gun in my in my cold, fading hands, I breathed a sigh of frustration, and sprinted to reclaim my place with the squad.

It was a straight run to our objective: A downed helicopter nearby with an assumed living pilot, and a nice ammo drop for us, should we be able to recover the boxes it carried. As we arrived on the site, the Sergeant called out the call sign.

"Green!"
A short pause. It appeared someone shifted, and I heard one of my squad mates nearby begging for them to call out the return.
"Green, dammit!" he called again. Even I was now hoping whoever it was would save the dramatic suspense, and call Dragon already.

Something in a foreign language crushed my hopes, as bullets began to whiz through the air, the squad mate from earlier having his life narrowly saved by a shove from someone nearby. He fell to the ground, just before a bullet tore through the air where his chest was seconds before.

Hitting the dirt, we used whatever cover there was around. Boxes, cars, debris, anything that wasn't full of holes already, as we returned fire, only occasionally sneaking peaks in hopes that an exposed arm, or some brave fool would give us enough of a target to pump our lead loads into. I watched as the same squad mate from earlier's luck ran out, a bullet making a nice hole through his neck. Lovely.

I called out the casualty to the Sergeant, who replied with a curse louder than I'd heard shouted before. With one, large leap of bravery, I got to see why this man was a Sergeant, while I was still a private.

Standing on top of one of the boxes, he took sharp aim. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven bullets filled seven targets. I wasn't sure if it'd hit them all between the eyes, but with how thankful and impressed we were, they may as well have.

Stepping towards the chopper, Sergeant Foley called for an ammo check. I hadn't even realized it, but I'd wasted my extra clips already, and was halfway through my last one. Looking around at the others, their expressions didn't carry much more hope.

With another curse, it was clear the pilot hadn't made it, nor had the chopper. The helicopter was on fire, and our foes had gotten there just quick enough to finish him off, take the ammo and flee, their stragglers left to look for anything valuable. Pricks.

It appeared the first half of the squad heard our gunfire, however, because another wave was heading towards us. I readied my weapon hopelessly, took aim, and had the luck of a stray rocket hitting the helicopter next to me, sending me sprawling to the ground.

As I lay there, darkness swirling around me, my view slowly fading as the sergeant called for a medivac, (futile, of course.) I coughed, my weapon slipping from my fingers. A teammate nearby grabbed the half full clip, clicking it into his own weapon as I watched. With a cough and a sigh, I knew it wasn't over. Not yet.

But this would be one hell of a time to take a nap.