Author: Tom Darby

If the good Lord sees fit to shake the earth beneath Virginia City sometime soon, St. Mary in the Mountains might tumble down the hill like a wheel of cheddar from a drunken festival, and it won’t be His fault—it’ll be ours.

St. Mary, the grand old Catholic church perched like a watchful aunt on E Street, has bricks crumbling faster than a card cheat caught mid-deal. Cracks in the outer walls gape wide enough for a respectable-sized cat to slip through.

And inside? It’s leaking like a politician’s promise—stains on the sanctuary ceiling, puddles under the pews, and enough dampness to make a trout feel perfectly at home.

Caretaker Tim Roth, who started by running the gift shop over a decade ago and stuck around like a man who came in for coffee and ended up managing the saloon, says the place stirs the soul. “It affects people,” Roth said, eyes glistening like a bishop’s ring. “I get folks who come in and leave in tears.”

And not from the mildew either—though that’d be understandable.

St. Mary’s bones go back to the 1860s when Father Patrick Manogue—Irish miner turned priest—figured a town of drunken roughnecks and raucous miners needed salvation more than silver. The first church stood proud until the Great Fire of 1875 tried to send it back to the heavens in a pillar of smoke. It’s told the townsfolk tried to blow the roof off to save it—an idea born of whiskey and desperation—but the stone skeleton stayed put, and they rebuilt atop the old foundation like a phoenix risen but with smoke-stained feathers.

Now, nearly 150 years later, the old gal’s showing her age and not kindly.

Jacob Arndt, a masonry man from Wisconsin—where folks know a thing or two about stone and stubbornness—came west to take a peek.

What he found was a mess worthy of Biblical lament. The mortar used in past restorations, he says, was as wrong for the building as a tuxedo on a mule.

Too hard, too brittle, and modern as tomorrow’s newspaper, it’s done more harm than good.

“It’s a disaster,” Arndt said, shaking his head like a man who’s watched a butter churn get used for making dynamite. “You can’t just slap modern mortar on historic stone and expect it to behave. That’s like feeding a steamboat coal dust and calling it progress.”

And so the bricks crack. The foundation shifts. The water creeps in like a lazy outlaw, ruining everything, slowly and quietly.

Roth, who’s grown as protective of the church as a mother bear with her cub, now spends his days chucking inferior stone and salvaging what the Lord—and the original builders—intended. He’s squirreling away the old bits, marking where they belong like a man planning a puzzle two decades into the future.

The problem, according to Arndt, is that real experts are rare as hen’s teeth and twice as quiet.

“It’s an endemic problem,” he said, using words fancier than most buildings he’s tasked with saving. “Restoration’s a trade, not a hobby. And nobody’s enforcing the rules, even though they’re written down clear as scripture.”

It’s not that folks don’t care—plenty of volunteers lend a hand and a prayer. Donations often go to keeping the church warm in winter rather than upright in spring. To give directly to restoration, you’ve got to ask—or go to stmarysvc.org, where your dollars can do more than heat pew cushions.

And if you’ve never ventured off C Street, Roth wants you to know–you’re missing a cathedral carved out of time. A place so holy even the ghosts kneel at the altar.

So, if you’ve got a mind for beauty, a hand for stone, or a wallet with something to spare, consider doing your part. Because if we let this church fall, it won’t be fire or flood that did it—it’ll be forgetfulness.

And that, dear reader, would be the real tragedy.

By some bureaucratic miracle, the Nevada Office of Traffic Safety has released its quarter-assed death tally for the year—just through March, mind you—and the numbers are in–98 souls splattered, crumpled, or otherwise turned into roadside pulp across the Silver State, a whole 0.03 percent increase from last year, which the state seems weirdly proud of, like a drunk who boasts about only crashing the car into one tree this time.

Of those 98 dearly departed, 29 were pedestrians—likely mowed down by people who treat red lights as polite suggestions—and 14 weren’t wearing seatbelts, proving once again that Darwin’s ghost still haunts the highways. Seatbelts, folks. They’re not complicated, and they’re right there.

State safety honchos, those clucking helmet-haired apparatchiks, blame “impairment and speeding.” No kidding.

Mixing a six-pack of Modelo with a lifted Dodge Ram going 110 down Tropicana might end badly. What a revelation.

Not surprisingly, Clark County claims the lion’s share of carnage with 68 fatalities—Las Vegas remains America’s most determined game of live-action Frogger. Washoe County added another 14 to the body count.

The rest are like confetti in towns nobody cares about unless they have a gas station or a brothel. So buckle up, slow down, and for the love of whatever god you pretend to believe in, don’t drive like your skull’s filled with aquarium gravel, or don’t whine when the reaper punches your ticket.

It was a routine sweep, the sort of bureaucratic rodeo that gives slow Wednesdays a pulse—when the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office Sex Offender Task Force, a group whose name alone could deflate a party balloon, stumbled upon Jorge Angel Medrano, 28, a Tier III sex offender who forgot that the rules still apply after registration day.

Now, Tier III isn’t just some arbitrary badge of dishonor; it’s the heavyweight division of sex offender status reserved for folks who have no business flying under the radar. Medrano, allegedly playing fast and loose with his legal requirements, was found out during what the Sheriff’s Office calls a “compliance check,” which sounds like a friendly knock on the door until someone ends up in cuffs.

Booked into Lyon County Jail on one felony charge—failing to meet sex offender registration requirements—Medrano became the latest example in the department’s mission to achieve “100 percent compliance,” a goal that’s both noble and, let’s face it, a logistical pipe dream. But you’ve got to hand it to them—they’re trying.

The Task Force insists it’s not just here for the optics. The check-ins aren’t just paperwork exercises– they’re keeping the county from turning into a game of hide-and-seek with convicted offenders who think they’re too clever to be found.

Spoiler alert–they’re not.

In their public statement, the Sheriff’s Office noted their “swift and decisive action,” PR-speak, for we caught the guy before lunch. They encourage locals to report any shady behavior involving sex offender compliance because nothing screams neighborhood watch like an awkward chat over the fence about someone’s registration status.

At the end of the day–this is small-town law enforcement doing its job—quietly, methodically, and without the benefit of dramatic soundtrack music. No shootouts, no high-speed chases. Just paperwork, boots on porches, and the occasional out-of-compliance moron walking straight into the jaws of the system.

Stay tuned—next week, it might be bingo night and a counterfeit toaster ring. You never know.

The vultures are at it again.

Nevada drivers woke up this week with 26.1 cents less in their wallets and nothing to show for it but fumes and betrayal. The average price for gas in this stretch of scorched earth is now a disgusting $3.91 per gallon, up nearly 20 cents from last week, like some sick joke played by invisible hands behind the oil curtain.

But wait—there’s a carrot dangling just out of reach. National prices ticked up too–10.6 cents on average. That’s nothing compared to this local bloodletting. And yet, they’ve got the gall to say it might go down. Eventually. Maybe. If the stars align and no one screws it up further. Fantastic.

Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head oil whisperer and part-time economic psychic, assures us that because oil prices are nosediving—thanks to tariffs slapped together by baboons in suits and OPEC+ cranking the pumps like it’s 1973—we might catch a break. He says a recession could stomp demand and, in turn, send gas prices falling “nearly coast-to-coast.”

That’s economist talk for–buckle up, the market’s on meth, and we’re all just along for the ride.

And don’t forget, oil is now cheaper than it’s been since 2021–when the only traffic jam was on the way to get toilet paper. But instead of passing on the savings, your local gas station is busy soaking you blind while offering hot dogs that qualify as biological weapons.

“If tariffs aren’t scaled back soon,” De Haan bleated, “we could see prices drop below $3 per gallon nationwide.”

Like that would be a bad thing. That’s rich.

Meanwhile, Nevada’s paying premium prices for mid-grade garbage, and you’re supposed to smile while you pump it. The whole thing reeks of bad faith and Exxon aftershave.

In an era where common sense has been rolled up and smoked like a stank joint behind the school gym, Nevada’s Assembly Bill 416 struts onto the legislative floor dressed like a champion of free speech—but it reeks of something fouler. It promises “access,” “protection,” and “student rights,” but at its core, this bill is a velvet-gloved middle finger to every parent who still thinks schools should be places of learning, not live-in sex ed labs.

Let’s cut through the politically perfumed gas cloud–the bill does not protect classic literature or controversial but age-appropriate works. No, AB416 explicitly shields sexually graphic material—some of it so explicit you couldn’t read it aloud on the Senate floor without getting tossed out. Some books don’t only touch on gender identity—they include detailed descriptions of male-on-male oral sex, anal intercourse, and step-by-step guides that would make a prison contraband manual blush.

And guess what? Under this new legal framework, if a 12-year-old checks out this book from the school library, the school staff can’t say a thing—unless they want to risk a felony. A felony–for crying out loud, not for peddling porn to minors, but for daring to try and stop it.

Do you think I’m exaggerating? Section 3 of the bill throws the book–and not the kind you’d want your kids reading–at anyone who uses “force, intimidation, or coercion” to restrict access. Sounds noble—until you realize that “intimidation” could mean voicing concerns at a school board meeting or emailing your principal too passionately.

So, you protest your kid reading smut? You’ll get branded a threat. And you want it removed from the shelves? Good luck. The school won’t be able to do much unless it’s mislabeled Mein Kampf in the Dr. Seuss section.

And if you think you’ll get justice through public pressure, think again. The bill also criminalizes releasing personal information—like naming a school official who greenlit this literary cesspool—calling it retaliatory. Meanwhile, the people trying to shield children from this junk get painted as dangerous radicals. The law is so backward–that the person or person who wrote it must’ve been on a bad acid trip during a bad acid trip.

It isn’t about banning books—it’s about whether children should have open access to graphic sexual material under the sanctity of “literary freedom.” There’s a difference between a coming-of-age novel and a detailed sex manual wrapped in rainbow foil.

But this bill doesn’t care. It offers no meaningful guardrails, just a wide-open lane for explicit content and legal landmines for anyone who dares object.

So yes, the bill is getting its first hearing this morning. And yes, there’s a deadline this Friday to get it out of committee. But the deadline is moral– either we pull our heads out of the ideological sand, or we hand over the keys of education to people who think teaching kids how to perform sex acts is “progress.”

One helluva choice.

By God, somebody finally read the room.

In a rare and lucid moment of legislative utility, Nevada Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager has lobbed a political molotov cocktail at the temple of higher education gatekeeping with AB547, a bill designed to rip the ivy off the walls of public employment. College degrees? Overrated. Federal experience? Suddenly useful again. Fired by the Trump/Musk Regime? Come in, there’s a cubicle with your name on it.

That’s right, the state that once built fortunes on silver and sand is now betting on common sense, or at least a crude imitation of it. The bill does away with college degree requirements for most state jobs and gives freshly fired feds a way to limp back into employment without having to lick stamps at the post office or fake smiles in a customer service trench.

“With the rising cost of daily life, high unemployment rate, and tariffs negatively impacting key Nevada industries, we can’t arbitrarily deprive Nevadans of appropriate job opportunities just because they don’t have a college degree,” Yeager said, channeling what sounded suspiciously like empathy for the working class—though it could’ve just been gas.

The bill isn’t just about ditching diplomas. It’s also a jab at the current federal meat grinder, where workers are getting sacked with the same frequency and logic as a malfunctioning soda machine. Yeager referred to these exiles as victims of the “recklessly and indiscriminately fired by the Trump/Musk administration,” which, while dramatic, is also not exactly wrong. The phrase reeks of campaign prep, but you can’t deny the flair.

“Common sense legislation that promotes economic stability and responsible governance,” Yeager bleated, presumably without choking on the irony.

Of course, there’s no shortage of people who will cry foul. Universities will clutch their pearls. Bureaucrats will hiss from behind their degrees like lizards behind glass. But this isn’t about elite credentialism anymore—it’s about plugging the hemorrhaging workforce with people who know how to work, not just walk around campus for four years racking up debt and self-importance.

The proposal trails behind similar executive orders in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and New Mexico—places not known for wild-eyed legislative trailblazing. But hey, better late than never. Nevada’s doing something sane for once, and that should terrify everyone.

If this passes, you might see the guy who used to audit CIA spreadsheets now running your DMV. Or maybe a former EPA analyst will end up sorting your business license. Will it work? Maybe. Will it piss off the right people? Absolutely.

And sometimes, that’s all that matters.

The numbers are a lie–and I don’t care who printed them. Seven thousand people outside the Nevada State Capitol? That’s not just wrong—it’s delusional.

Try 1,000 if you count the dog walkers and lost tourists. But the media machine needs its dopamine fix, and nothing gets clicks like an army of progressives with picket signs and portable megaphones.

Let’s call this what it was: Hands Off, a pre-fab, plug-and-play protest with all the subtlety of a roadside fireworks stand–organized, promoted, and attended by the usual suspects. At least 92 percent of the folks were serial attendees, the kind of people loitering around Harris/Walz rallies during the last election cycles.

You could pick them out by their professionally laminated signs and matching Patagonia vests. So much for grassroots—this thing smelled of diesel and charter buses.

Four local organizations supposedly spent two weeks cooking the stew, which begs the question, what do they do the other 51 weeks of the year? Folding flyers? Arguing over the font? Either way, the result was a long afternoon of recycled slogans shouted at indifferent buildings and traffic cones.

Kimberly Carden of Indivisible Northern Nevada rattled off a list of grievances like a cranky pharmacist reading the side effects from a pill bottle: “Hands off Social Security, the Post Office, Medicare, Medicaid, VA hospitals…”

She stopped short of “hands off my vodka bottle.”

Darcie Smith gave it the old “middle-class unity” line–bless her optimism.

“If we work to regrow our middle class, we can solve all the problems we have today.”

Sure. And if I flap my arms hard enough, maybe I’ll fly to Barstow.

Then there was Veronica Frenkel, laying out the immigrant rights argument like a law professor who accidentally wandered into a Denny’s at 3 a.m. “Due process,” “constitutional rights,” “inhumane and illegal”—all very compelling, but I doubt the guy holding the “Trump = Satan” sign understood half of it.

The most honest moment of the day came from Caty Burkett, who admitted she had no personal stakes. “I’m privileged enough…I have insurance, I’m not transgender, I’m not gay,” she said, acknowledging she was there out upper-middle-class noblesse oblige.

She could’ve stayed home and crocheted a protest scarf, but no—she showed up. Points for effort, I suppose.

As for opposition? Sparse.

A few passing cars honked and flipped birds, but no organized counter-protest. Probably because it’s hard to counter a tantrum when you don’t know what it’s about. Medicare? Trans rights? Immigration? Middle-class rebirth? Maybe all of it. Maybe none. That’s the problem with a protest buffet—you get heartburn, and no one remembers the entrée.

The streets lined, signs waved, and everyone went home feeling very righteous in the end. But if this is the shape of revolution, it’s looking familiar and tired.

Stay tuned. There’ll be another one next week, same signs, same chants, same damn faces.

Tom Burns isn’t panning with a pickaxe and a whiskey flask, but give the man a wide-brimmed hat and a time machine, and he’d fit right in with the rest of the silver-mad bastards who lit up Virginia City like a Roman candle in 1864.

Only this time, it’s not silver. It’s lithium — the light, white messiah of the clean energy revolution. And Burns is howling from the stage to keep history from repeating itself.

“We were a territory,” Burns said, thumping the table at a ZETA Education Fund event as if it owed him money.

“We get a pass for losing the Comstock riches to San Francisco the first time. But not this time.”

In other words: Nevada was young, dumb, and broke once before, and it damn well better not be again. It is the Lithium Rush, baby, same madness, different century.

Except now it’s clean, renewable, and comes with federal tax credits instead of whiskey rations and syphilis. Welcome to the 21st-century gold mine — except this one powers Teslas instead of saloon lanterns.

FOLLOW THE MONEY — IF YOU CAN FIND IT

Nevada is currently the belle of the clean energy ball — with one lonely operating lithium mine in the whole godforsaken country and enough federal love to make Iowa jealous. Ioneer and Lithium Americas got government loans fat enough to make Wall Street blush. Redwood Materials in Carson City is doing some alchemy with dead batteries, and even Panasonic is begging for local lithium so they can stop buying it from Korea and Japan.

But before you get giddy picturing American-made batteries flying off assembly lines like hotcakes, there’s a catch: The whole damn thing could come undone faster than a casino marriage if Republicans torch the tax credits that keep this Frankenstein dream alive.

Enter the Inflation Reduction Act — a dull name made up by a bean counter on Ambien. But under that sleepy label lies a bazooka of federal investment for building a domestic supply chain.

The two big lifelines? The 45X production credit and the 30D electric vehicle credit. One helps make the batteries. The other helps buy the damn car.

45X gives producers a sweet little 10 percent rebate on their costs. For Panasonic, that means $1.4 billion a year — a number that smells like lobbyist bait from six states away. The 30D gives buyers up to $7,500 in tax relief for purchasing EVs, as long as those EVs don’t come with components cooked up in a Chinese backroom.

Sounds simple. It’s not. It is government sausage-making at its finest — tangled in national security, climate goals, and the industrial equivalent of high-stakes poker.

REPUBLICANS: KILL THE BILL OR BANK THE BENEFITS?

Now, Republicans are in the majority, holding a giant red marker and looking for $1.5 trillion to slash. The tax credits are expensive. They’re popular. And they make the GOP base foam at the mouth with rage about “coastal elites” and battery-powered Marxism. The math doesn’t add up, but rage doesn’t have to.

Still, there are cracks in the wall. Take Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada — a Republican who voted against the IRA but is now scrambling to keep the benefits flowing into his district like beer at a rodeo. His turf has seen $6.6 billion in clean investments, with another $11 billion allegedly inbound. That’s reason enough to break ranks with your party — and he might — again or still.

Asked if losing the credits was a dealbreaker, Amodei said, “It’s the floor.” In other words: he’s not looking to die on this hill, but he’ll at least light a campfire and bitch about it.

Meanwhile, auto lobbyists, battery execs, and energy wonks are flooding Washington with white papers, spreadsheets, and half-sincere pleas for American competitiveness. The irony? Their biggest enemy isn’t Chinese imports or federal bureaucracy — it’s the cultural death match around electric cars. The EV has become a political Rorschach test: is it progress, or is it a liberal conspiracy on wheels?

EVERYONE WANTS A PIECE — BUT NO ONE WANTS TO BLEED FOR IT

Everyone wants the credits. No one agrees on the rules.

Miners want to make sure foreign lithium doesn’t undercut their domestic rocks. Manufacturers desire flexibility so they can keep importing.

Automakers want loopholes to keep prices low. The whole thing is like a Thanksgiving dinner where everyone brought a fork, and nobody brought food.

Redwood Materials, for example, says the 30D credit is “the hot topic” and that they’d like to close the so-called leasing loophole that lets EV makers source batteries overseas and still claim the money. It would force companies to buy American — and give Redwood a bigger slice.

But guess what? None of these companies want to fight in public. They’re terrified of drawing fire from the Trump machine, which may or may not decide that lithium is patriotic one day and communist the next. So they whisper in corridors, send quiet letters, and pray to the gods of favorable committee assignments.

THE CHINA CARD

The ultimate Trump card — pardon the pun — is China. Nearly two-thirds of all EV battery components are from there. Even the most frothing America-first types on Capitol Hill can’t ignore that math. If we want to compete, the argument goes, we’ve got to build a domestic supply chain. And that means paying for it, one credit at a time.

ZETA’s Albert Gore III — yes, that Gore — says the combo of production and deployment credits is the only way to wean ourselves off the Chinese lithium drip. And he might be right. But good luck getting that through a Congress that can’t agree on what day it is.

FINAL THOUGHTS FROM THE DESERT FRONTIER

Here in Nevada, the mood is cautiously caffeinated as the lithium loop is humming–or now. The money is flowing. The factories are rising. But everyone knows it could all fall apart with one bad vote, one presidential tantrum, or one more TV hit where EVs are called socialist golf carts.

For now, Nevada’s holding its breath and building like hell. Because this time, they want to keep the gold.

Or the lithium. Whatever.

And if they blow it again?

Well, they’ll tell ghost stories to the next generation of miners.

Three mutant wolf pups — engineered in a lab with the precision you’d usually reserve for nuclear weapons or Michelin-starred sushi — are now roaming around some undisclosed corner of the United States like hairy, muscle-bound secrets. The company behind this Frankensteinian frolic is Colossal Biosciences, a startup hell-bent on turning extinction into a minor inconvenience.

These pups, aged three to six months and already tipping the scales at 80 pounds, are allegedly designed to resemble dire wolves — the beefed-up, saber-faced nightmares that once ruled Pleistocene America but missed the memo about Ice Ages being bad for business. Should everything go according to plan, they’ll max out at 140 pounds and look like they just wandered off the set of a prehistoric Western.

Colossal released a photo of the little darlings — Romulus and Remus — presumably not suckling from a mythical she-wolf but instead from domestic dogs who carried the gene-spliced embryos like glorified Uber drivers for the future. The science behind it? A little CRISPR here, some gray wolf blood cells there, a dash of ancient DNA from a fossilized tooth, and boom — out pop the ghost-hounds of yesteryear, reanimated via biotech voodoo.

Now, before you grab your bug-out bag and start Googling “silver bullets,” let’s pump the brakes. Independent scientists say these aren’t dire wolves — not really. They’re more like convincing cosplay.

“All you can do now is make something look superficially like something else,” said Vincent Lynch, a biologist who probably knows just enough to ruin your Jurassic Park dreams.

In other words, this is more dog than dire wolf 2.0.

And don’t expect them to run down elk with coordinated pack tactics like their extinct cousins.

“They’re never going to learn the finishing move,” said Colossal’s top animal wrangler, Matt James — confirming once again that science can build a wolf but can’t teach it to kill like its great-grandpa.

Still, Colossal’s not just playing prehistoric dress-up. They’ve also cloned four red wolves — the scrappy, endangered cousins of the southeast — using blood drawn from wild ones. It’s a stab at injecting new genes into a tired pool of inbred survivors, which sounds noble until you consider that step one is still: sedate a wild wolf.

Good luck with that.

CEO Ben Lamm, who might be part genius, part madman, met with the U.S. Interior Department last month, pitching all this as a “thrilling new era of scientific wonder.” Meanwhile, more grounded minds reminded us that the world has changed since dire wolves ate ice-age leftovers.

“Whatever ecological function the dire wolf performed… it can’t perform those functions” today, Lynch added, sounding like the designated adult in the room.

So, is this conservation? Genetic art? Or expensive science fiction with teeth? Probably all three. But make no mistake: the wolves are back, sort of, and they’re shaggy, shiny, and straddling the blurry line between resurrection and revisionist biology.

Welcome to the future, folks. It has fur.

The Marines went into the jungle to keep order. Days later, our camp stood empty. Gear untouched. No tracks. No blood.

It began with a routine trip outside the wire. The chopper’s blades beat hard over the green sea of Central America that swallowed the horizon.

I sat at the edge of the open door. In my early 20s, broad and cocky, my hair was short, sweat on my brow. My hands gripped my rifle, chest rig heavy with ammo.

“Five minutes,” the pilot yelled.

Captain John Harrow nodded and turned to the squad packed tight in the chopper. “Gear up. No picnic.”

Harrow, 36, had a tight jaw under stubble and gray eyes carrying too many fights.

“Scared of jungle rot, Captain?” I said. “I’ve hunted worse. We’re good.”

Harrow shot back, “Keep your mouth shut, Riggs. No bars here. No backup.” I grinned.

Corporal Sam Tate, 23, young but hard, was the medic. Pack strapped tight, brown eyes sharp. He watched the squad like a doctor.

Adjusting his helmet, dark hair damp, he said, “Save the talk for the ground, Riggs.”

I replied, “Always a charmer, Tate.”

Private Eddie Voss, 19, thin and pale, had brown hair matted under his helmet. His hands shook on his rifle sling.

“How long we staying?” he asked, voice cracked.

Harrow said, “Long enough. Eyes up, Voss. You’re not in Kansas.”

Private Luis Caldera, mid-20s, wiry, dark skin like burnt coffee, was born in Honduras and raised in the States. Spoke Spanish. Quiet by the door, dark eyes on the jungle, fingers on a cross tucked in his vest.

The chopper banked to a clearing by a dead village. Huts sagged under vines, roofs broken by time or shells.

It landed hard, and Harrow jumped out, boots sinking into the wet earth. “Form up. Check the perimeter.”

We moved fast, rifles ready. The air was thick, hot, wet. No birds sang. No bugs hummed while leaves rustled and water dripped from somewhere deep.

“Quiet,” Caldera said, looking at the trees.

“Too quiet,” Tate said, slinging his medic bag, eyes on the huts. “Where’s everyone?”

“Rebels,” I said, kicking a rusted machete in the dirt. “Or they ran.”

Harrow led us to a rise above the clearing. We pitched tents and built a small fire by dusk.

Voss fumbled with the last stake as I said, “Move out.”

Caldera knelt by the flames and muttered in Spanish, a prayer maybe. Night came quickly, the jungle eating the light.

Harrow stood watch, stiff against the fire’s glow. I leaned back, rifle close. The squad settled, rations out, voices low.

Caldera froze, head tilted. “You hear that?”

“What?” Voss asked, eyes big.

“A whisper,” Caldera said. “My name.”

Harrow listened. The wind moaned through the trees. It could be anything.

“Jungle tricks,” he said. “Rest. We move at dawn.”

I watched the dark, Caldera’s words sticking. A whisper here could be nothing. Or everything.

Dawn came gray, slow, mist curling like smoke. Harrow woke us sharp. “Up. Out.”

We ate fast—C-rats and instant coffee—and geared for a patrol five miles north to watch the truce line. The jungle closed in, green and thick.
I took point, my rifle low, steps sure.

“Tracks,” I said and crouched by mud. Prints human-sized, wrong, long toes, splayed, clawed gouges. “What walks like this?”

“Animal,” Tate said, looking over, hand on his pistol.

“No animal,” I said. “Not with thumbs.”

Voss stepped close, rifle shaking. “Thought I saw something last night. Tall. Fast.”

Harrow’s eyes narrowed. “Saw it or thought you did?”

“Don’t know,” Voss said, red-faced. “Too dark.”

“Nerves,” Harrow said, but he looked at the trees. “Let’s move.”

We pushed through vines and roots, sweat soaking us. Caldera lagged, eyes up.

“This place is wrong,” he said to Tate. “It watches.”

“You’re from here,” Tate said. “What’s it like?”

“Stories,” Caldera said. “Things that mimic. Takes.”

I cursed low, my boot in a puddle, muttering about rot and traps. Harrow kept us on track, the map wet in his hands. By noon, we looped back, unease growing.

Night fell heavy, the fire-spitting embers. Watching in pairs, Voss and Caldera first.

I lay half-awake when Voss’s voice cut through. “You hear that?”

Harrow grabbed his rifle and stepped out. Voss stood by the fire and pointed at the trees. Caldera was up, listening.

“What?” Harrow asked.

“Like me,” Voss said, voice shaking. “My laugh, but wrong.”

I came out, rifle up. “You’re cracking, kid.”

“I heard it,” Voss said. “Out there.”

Harrow raised a hand. The jungle went still. Then it came—a low chuckle, warped, Voss’s laugh from the chopper, stretched, circling from the dark.
“What the hell?” I said, hands tight on my weapon.

Caldera gripped his cross. “Not human,” he whispered.

“Animal,” Harrow said, voice steady. “Echoes.” It came again, closer, moving through the trees.

Tate stepped out, his calm breaking. “No animal mimics.”

“Rebels,” I said, scanning shadows.

“With Voss’s laugh?” Tate said, eyes sharp.

Harrow set extra watches—him and me, then Tate and Caldera. No one slept well.

Voss sat by the fire, muttering. Caldera watched the trees.

I heard it again in my head—not rebels, not animals. Something was out there, learning us.

By the second night, the fire was embers. Harrow set staggered shifts, two up, three down, rifles close.

Air thick with rot. Voss paced, boots scuffing, helmet crooked.

“Stop it,” Caldera said, low and firm, rifle on his lap, cross in his fingers. “You’re loud.”

Voss froze and gripped his rifle. “Sorry. That laugh. You heard it.”

Caldera nodded. “I did. Don’t know what.”

“You’re from here,” Voss said. “What stories?”

Caldera paused and touched the cross. “Things like men, but not. Mimic voices. Take shapes. Abuela called them ladrón de almas. Soul thieves. They take, not kill.”

Voss paled. “That’s out there?”

“We’re not alone,” Caldera said and stood, eyes on the dark.

No crickets. No frogs. Just branches creaking.

Then a scream, sharp, warped, Voss’s voice. “Help, Captain!”

Harrow was up with his rifle in hand. I spilled out with Tate, armed.

The fire cast shadows. The watch post was empty.

Voss’s rifle leaned on a log, polished by nervous hands. Caldera’s gear beside it—vest, ammo, cross coiled.

No blood. No tracks.

“What the hell?” I said, voice tight.

“They were here,” Tate said, low, kneeling by Voss’s rifle. “No one’s that quiet.”

Harrow’s gut twisted. “Spread out. Search. They didn’t walk off.”

The scream came again, faint, Voss’s voice gurgling, bouncing west to east.

“Captain,” Tate called–his flashlight on a scrap of Voss’s uniform in thorns, no tears, no blood.

I ran back, face hard. “Nothing north. No tracks. That’s not them.”

“It was Voss,” Tate said, calm breaking.

“Something,” I snapped.

Caldera’s voice came, soft, pleading. “John, help.” Then silence.

“Not him,” Tate whispered, light shaking.

Harrow’s mind raced—ambush, silent takedown. “Regroup,” he said. “Fire. Hold till dawn.”

We sat by the embers, eyes out. The jungle watched, alive. Voss and Caldera were gone.

Dawn crept in, gray, thin. Harrow, Tate, and I sat tight, backs to the fire pit, rifles ready.

Harrow’s hands tapped his rifle, stress showing. I crouched, anger burning.

Tate held his medic kit, breath short, eyes darting. “We need a plan,” he said.

Harrow replied, “Can’t stay.”

“Plan?” I spat. “Two gone, and you want a plan? Should’ve moved yesterday.”

“Panic kills,” Harrow said.

“You lost them,” I said and stood tall. “Put Voss and Caldera out there.”

Tate looked up. “Enough, Riggs. Blaming won’t fix it.”

“Won’t it?” I turned. “You’re supposed to lead.”

Harrow stood. “Take command or soldier.”

I backed off, cursing.

Tate rubbed his face. “Search again. Daylight might show.”

Harrow nodded, doubt heavy. “Perimeter, then west.”

We moved, jungle tight, vines on boots, leaves like fingers. A hum buzzed deep in our bones.

Caldera’s voice came soft. “Sam, help me.”

Tate froze, light shaking. “That’s him.”

“No,” Harrow said and grabbed him. “Move.”

The voice grew from the right. “John, please.” Then left.

I fired into the trees, shots swallowed.

“Stop,” Harrow said. “Wasting ammo.”

“It’s everywhere,” I said, breathing hard.

Tate stumbled. “What is it? Not rebels. Not animals.”

Harrow pointed. It stood in the mist—tall and thin, limbs bent wrong, skin like oil, yellow eyes unblinking. It jerked away, gone.

“Christ,” I whispered, aiming.

Harrow’s heart hit his ribs. “Fall back,” he said, hands steady. “Camp.”

We ran, jungle snapping behind us. Caldera’s voice taunted. “John, you can’t run.”

Then Voss’s laugh warped.

At camp, the radio hissed, whispers in the static.

“Base isn’t hearing,” Tate said, hands fumbling. “Jammed.”

“It took two, quiet,” I said, eyes hunted.

“My orders,” Harrow said. “Stay together.”

Tate strung tripwire, hands shaking but sure. I reloaded, jaw tight.

Harrow watched, jungle mocking us. It knew us—our voices and fears.

Midday sun barely broke the canopy. We sat sleepless, eyes hollow. Tripwire sagged, useless.

“We’re dead here,” I said. “It’s picking us off. Jeep’s five miles. Radio base. Out.”

“Five miles through that,” Tate said, nodding at the trees, hands on his kit. “No cover.”

“Open here, too,” I said and kicked a log.

Harrow wiped his face, fearing a second pulse. “Riggs is right. Jeep’s our shot. Fast. Riggs point, Tate center, me rear.”

We broke camp and took rifles, ammo, and radio. Jungle fought—vines grabbed, branches clawed.

I hacked, machete flashing, sap dark and thick. “Place is alive,” I said.

“Eyes up,” Harrow called, watching back.

Tate’s light danced. “It’s watching,” he said, low. “Knows we’re running.”

“Let it try,” I said, still slashing.

The ravine came, narrow, roots choking it. The jeep glinted ahead, half a mile off.

Then the ground shook—a pulse underfoot. “Feel that?” Harrow stopped, rifle up.

“Yeah,” I said, machete still.

A snap came left, bone breaking, close. Tate’s light caught a dark ooze on a branch, iridescent, stinking.

“Move,” Harrow said and pushed.

The ravine closed in, cold, breath fogging. I hacked, grunting. Tate faltered.

Voss’s voice came, warped. “Tom, don’t leave me,” gurgling.

I spun with my rifle up. “Not him.”

“Move,” Harrow said.

Caldera’s whisper followed. “Sam, help,” from above.

Tate dropped his light. “Can’t leave them,” he said, voice breaking.

A shadow darted—sinew, claws, fast, gone. Tate screamed, cut off.

His kit hit the mud, light rolling dead. He was gone.

“Tate!” I roared and fired wild.

“Stop,” Harrow said and grabbed me.

The ground growled, roots shaking. Harrow yelled as something pulled him into the ravine wall, boots digging, rifle falling. Then silence.

I ran, alone, jeep ahead. Voices swelled—Voss, Caldera, Tate, Harrow—a chorus chasing.

Claws scraped behind. I reached the jeep, hands shaking. Key in. Turned. Dead.

Voices screamed. “Tom, Tom.”

I hit the dash, anger burning. It stood in the mist—tall, bent, skin rippling, yellow eyes. Then gone. Ooze pulsed on the hood, alive. My curse died in my throat.

I stumbled from the jeep, dead, mocking me. The ravine stretched, wet, dark.

My rifle was heavy, and five miles from nowhere, it closed in. I was dead and knew it.

Jungle-pressed vines tight, thorns cutting. Air choked me.

Voss’s laugh came. “Tom, why?” like a faint memory.

I pushed into the ravine, ground pulsing, roots alive. The jungle air was cold, sour, and metallic.

Caldera’s voice pulled. “Tom, help me.”

I fought it but moved. A log lay ahead, claw marks fresh, oozing.

It crouched there—tall, sinewy, skin like oil, eyes yellow, unblinking. It hissed, sharp.

I fired, rounds splitting the log, sap spraying. It blurred—left, right, above, fast.

“Face me,” I yelled, throat raw.

The ground tilted, roots grabbed, and I fell, hitting a tree. The jungle was alive, branches cold, touching me. I ran, blind, flare gun out, fired. Red light arcing then died. No help.

It blocked me—taller, claws glinting. The voices came—Voss’s whimper, Caldera’s chant, Tate’s scream, Harrow’s call. “You failed.”

I fired my pistol—nine, eight, seven—missing. It lunged, claw on my leg, fire up my thigh.

I rolled, knife unsheathed, slashed the air, and hit the clearing. By the jeep, blood soaking me, pistol shaking, three shots.

Voices rang. “Tom, Tom, Tom.”

It stepped out, slow, eyes fixed. I fired—two, one, zero. I threw the pistol.

“Take me,” I yelled, up, fists clenched.

Silence hit, heavy. It stopped, head cocked, eyes burning.

The claw mark on the jeep oozed, pulsing. It melted back, shadows taking it.

The hum stayed, mocking. Voss’s laugh faded, then was gone.

I fell to my knees, dawn cold, gray. Jeep stood, a tombstone.

Jungle, twisting and wrapping me to the waist. Alone, alive, but not spared.

My body struggled helplessly to get free, and then I woke, sweat-soaked, sheets of a tangled mess knotted about my body. Still, my squad was gone.