Taco Sauce

His name was Taro Nguyen. We'd call him Taco on account of him being the co-pilot though. Just to give the poor guy a hard time, not to be mean. In fact, I don't think he even understood the joke. He was a Vietnamese, but from the south, so he was helping us fight the Commies in the North. He would fly a helicopter along with an American pilot, Sgt. Baker. Together these two were great when it came to quick evacs, they'd drop in and be outta' there in a second, without a scratch on their heli.

After a long week of holding down a bunker outside of Saigon, men began to get sick. But not just sick, more sick than usual. Weird thing is, it'd hop from person to person, only one person would be sick at a time, and he'd either die or vomit until he'd wish he was. We quickly noticed changes in this sickness though. At the end of their run, the poor bastard that'd gotten sick would vomit tremendous amounts of blood, then if not right after, they'd soon collapse with bodily fluids leaking out of their mouths, noses, ears, sometimes even eyes. When it was time to leave that post, we all packed up. We'd meet Taco and Baker at the nearest clearing big enough for them to land their chopper. Not far into the trip, I heard coughing behind me, wet coughing. I turned around, one of our men was throwing up blood and flem, long streams of bloody spit falling down his face. Another guy held his hand out and put it on his shoulder. The sick fella collapsed before he could ask if he was alright. The medic knelt down beside the leaking man. That's when we saw something we hadn't before.

The sickness literally jumped from the dead man to the medic-A black ooze made it's way down his face along with the blood, and then jumped into the medic's mouth. We all ran, the medic behind us clutching his throat, trying to breath, but dropping down and dying despite his best efforts. Beside us, in the treeline, a black entity was jumping from tree to tree, keeping at a steady pace with us. A soldier was pulled into a bush off of the trail, gone in the blink of an eye. The thing was hungry. We saw the chopper, Taco had hopped out to check on us since he had seen us running from something. We yelled at him, told him to get back in the cockpit. He pulled out an M1911, ready to fire at whatever we were running from.

"Run, Americans!"

He signaled us all into the chopper, he fired at that thing, whatever it was.

"GO!"

It leaped forward, into his mouth. Baker had no choice but to fly without him. Taco had known he'd have to sacrifice himself. He came prepared to do it. We were about 7 feet off the ground when he looked up at us, stopped struggling with the thing inside of him, and gave us all a thumbs up. He then vomited, and fell into the puddle of his blood and muck, spilling his insides.

We had all been crying, we were all terrified. The guy behind me sniffled, holding back tears for a moment so he could speak his two words.

"Taco sauce".