He heard a muffled yell behind him, but the total darkness shrouded where it was coming from. “Zeus,” he croaked, forcing himself out of the dirt and rising to his knees. He remembered coming to the end of the tunnel at the same moment the grenade went off, and the overpressure slapped him in the face, knocking him back. Mason had felt the ground rumble beneath him and thought he’d heard a second explosion before being knocked unconscious. Dirt clogged his airways, and he gagged before vomiting a mass of mud and dirt onto the ground. The explosion had bent the barrel of his AK-47, and he used the butt stock to dig into the dirt around him. He had to find Zeus. “Fuck, where are you, buddy?” he yelled, flinging dirt behind him. A faint yell came from his left, and he coughed, spitting a mixture of mud and bile before tossing the rifle to the side. Mason clawed at the dirt with his bare hands, scrabbling like a dog in search of a bone. Finally, his fingers brushed against something hard.
