Hispanic, maybe eighteen years old. Blood poured out of her nose and mouth, thin streams that stained her ACU uniform and body armor. Just under the edge of her armor was a great big bloody hole, with some loops of intestine hanging out. It looked like she had taken a full load of buckshot from Brit’s twelve gauge. The girl was gasping, crying and cursing in Spanish, trying to push her bowels back into the hole. We all stood around her, except for Ryan, who was busy trying to treat Scott. I let him keep going, though it was obvious from the hole just above his eyebrow, and the fact that half his head was missing, that my old friend was a gonner. His body still shook in reflexive spasms, but a wound like that to the head, without a dust off, was going to be fatal, every time. He made some inarticulate moans, but there was no life in them. The body just refused to accept what had happened to the brain. Thankfully he stopped twitching after a minute and lay still.
