Susan Hart

Nate Emerson, Sam Haskins, Doug "Dozer" McGinnis, and Trevor Lane had been friends since their days in the service, but now their battles were confined to harmless skirmishes in the woods behind Nate's house on the outskirts of Redbridge, Maine. Each autumn, like clockwork, they rendezvoused for a makeshift war game-no paintball guns, just color-coded bandanas, a set of rules as thick as a phonebook, and the kind of brutal wit only ex-army pals could muster.
This particular Saturday, sunlight filtered through the skeletal branches, dappling the ground with gold. Nate and Sam were crouched behind a mossy boulder, plotting a flanking maneuver, while Dozer stalked through the underbrush a hundred yards down, Trevor at his heels and cursing softly about mud in his boot. The air was sharp with the scent of pine and last night's frost. They were in the thick of an ambush-Trevor had just fake-died, dramatically clutching his chest and rolling down a slope-when Nate caught a glimpse of something that snared his attention: An unmoving leg sticking out from the base of a birch.