Free Off the Grid by P. J. Tracy

like an old man. The disease had done some ugly work. “Man, he looks bad.”
    “Real bad.”
    “I heard that,” Joe Hardy called out as he walked toward them. He was moving real slow, and Chief felt himself wincing as he watched every labored step. “Goddamned Indians and Texans, you’ve both got the manners of a hog at a trough. Now say something nice.”
    Chief snorted a laugh. “GI Joe, you dumb fuck, get your ass out of the open before the vultures see you and pick what’s left of you clean!”
    “That’s better.” Joe grinned as Chief walked to meet him halfway, grabbed his bony shoulders, and probed for meat. “Son of a bitch, kid, they sucked the flesh right off you. Told you, white man’s cures are worse than the disease. What you need is a little Indian medicine.”
    “And what’s that?”
    “Liquor and food, in that order.”
    “Sounds good.” Joe looked over at where Claude was standing, holding back. This would be harder for him. The three men had met when Joe brought Claude’s only son, Grover, home from Afghanistan in a coffin. Their bond had formed over their mutual loss—for Claude, a son; for Joe, the best friend he’d ever had and tried so hard to save during that mountain ambush. He still carried metal fragments in his shoulder from the shells he’d taken carrying Grover out of the line of fire and over to the chopper. “Get over here, you big pussy Texan. I won’t bite.”
    Claude didn’t have the stoic thing going. He should have, as a big bad Texan, but Joe canceled that out like a bad check. Always had. He walked over slowly, almost afraid to get there, and this time the hug felt right and real around the deflated bag of skin and bones that barely resembled the man he remembered from just a few months ago and loved like a son. “Think you can still heft a gun with those puny little arms?”
    “You bet your scrawny ass I can still hold a gun. I’ve been practicing.”
    Part of Joe wanted to tell them what he’d done, about the dark little house and the two lifeless bodies bleeding on the floor. The temptation was strong, almost irresistible. Some twisted need for a legacy, he supposed. But he couldn’t do that. They wouldn’t understand.
    “You know your problem, Joe?” Claude was trying to fight the dark moment and his own emotions, just like the Chief always did. “You fought in the wrong war. If you’d had to go through what we went through in the ’Nam, you’d be a little tougher. Probably could kick this little illness you got right to the curb.”
    Joe grinned. “Wrong war, my nowhere ass. You two slapped mosquitoes. Big deal. You should try living through a sandstorm when it’s a hundred and twenty degrees. A day of that and you’re crapping windowpanes the next morning.” He chuckled a little, then went serious. “I still think of Grover, Claude. Every day.”
    Claude nodded and slapped him on the shoulder. There would be a large bruise there later. “So do I, son.”
    Joe looked down at the gravel beneath his feet, remembering what death felt like in that medevac helicopter over the mountains of Kandahar. He’d been holding Grover’s hand, never noticing the blood pouring out of his shoulder, never noticing the medics who were frantically tending to them both.
    You’re gonna be okay, G-Man. Hang on, we’re almost there.
    Where?
    Back to base. We’ll shoot some pool after they put a couple Band-Aids on us, okay?
    Where are we now, Joey?
    Coming down out of the mountains. Just a few more minutes.
    Grover had smiled then.
Closer to God,
he’d murmured, and then Joe felt Grover shudder, felt his hand seize up, as if a valve had been switched off and all the juice that made a person a person had suddenly evaporated into thin air. Joe had known in an instant.
    He finally looked up and lifted his nose to the air, drinking in the piney scent he’d come to love these past few years, after Claude and the Chief had brought him into their fold. “So are we