It had been a long time since Anna Gonzales had prayed, but she quietly whispered thanks to God now as the helicopter lifted off from the ground and began the journey away from this jungle of horrors. Right now it mattered little where they went, or that but a few days ago she would have considered the men she was with her sworn enemies. After the terrifying evil she had encountered back there in the heat and green below, she would never hate or fear another human being again.

She wept as she looked at the man lying in the chopper before her, bloodied and caked in ash and mud. Dutch, those he had lead had called him. He had freed her when the demon was hunting them, trusting her enough to help them. She had seen the nobility in his soul then and willingly aided him and his men, despite the terror consuming her. There was no way she could abandon such a man to be butchered by the demon, as so many others had been, and so she had met up with those sent to retrieve him in the hopes he could be saved. When she met up with the chopper, she had feared the Americans would not believe her terrified sobs and babblings of an invisible fiend stalking and slaying men for grotesque sport, but the old general had listened to her, and gave his word they would not leave Dutch behind.

The shockwave from the explosion which burst from the jungle just before dawn almost knocked the chopper out of the sky, and Anna gazed in awe at the huge, dark mushroom cloud rising above the treetops. Dutch had not spoken a single word since they had discerned him standing on the blackened ground in the ash-filled air; she was not even sure he was aware of their existence as he looked out with haunted eyes at the landscape rushing by beneath them. "Will he live?" she asked the general sat behind her.

His voice was full of concern as he replied "I damn well hope so."

Please survive, Anna thought. We made it this far, you and I. And for that, we both deserve a future.