The Phuong who comes for me in the morning is different than the Phuong from yesterday. She doesn’t speak except in short bursts of angry French to order me to stand, to exit the cage, to not look back as we march away with the two new soldiers, both young like her—the girl, Le Phu, and the boy, Khiem. She orders me to keep my gaze down at my feet until we leave the camp—not that I’ve seen much except that handful of tents and lean-tos, and the cage.

I shake hands with all the Rangers before I leave—except for Kyle, who can only nod—my heart heavy with the knowledge that I’m probably the last American they’ll ever see.

Minutes after Phuong, Le Phu, Khiem, and I reach the widened trail, a convoy of heavily loaded trucks groans up on us. We press our backs into a wall of bamboo, unable to get any farther away as the tires pass, inches from our feet. An arm reaches out of the last truck and an open palm slaps me so hard I end up sprawled facedown in the road. If there’d been another truck, I would have been crushed beneath it.

Le Phu and Khiem jerk me to my feet, the same as Vu and Trang did dozens of times when they were alive. The side of my face swells from the blow, and my eyes tear up so much that everything is blurry. I blame Phuong for not protecting or warning me. For putting me in harm’s way. For not being my friend. As much of a friend as anybody could be, holding somebody prisoner with an AK-47.

Another convoy of trucks forces us into a thicket of tiger-tongue vines that rip at our clothes and tear lesions into exposed flesh. My cheek—the one that isn’t swollen—now bleeds from a long cut. The convoy trucks are packed with soldiers, most of them as young as the child guards who stood watch over us in the cage. They look hungry and scared. Nobody slaps me, but a couple of them spit at me as their transport vehicles lumber by.

More groaning bicycles follow. And more bo doi on foot, bent double with strange pouches on their backs—enormous bladders that reek of gasoline. I ask Phuong what they’re carrying, and she says, “Las essence.” The fumes must make the carriers woozy the whole time they carry their load, hundreds of miles—never mind the weight and the awkwardness. Just as I’m thinking that, one of them staggers, and then pitches into the tiger-tongue vines.

Phuong and I help him up. We start to remove his load, a complicated harness that keeps it strapped tightly onto his back, but other trail soldiers seize him from us and drag him back into their zombie formation. They all look like the living dead when I see their faces up close. But they aren’t about to stop, no matter what.

The day gets even stranger that afternoon when we encounter a parade of elephants, dozens of them, with enormous loads piled tree-high on their backs, and even more supplies on sleds that they drag behind them. Their handlers sit on the elephants’ necks with iron bars they ram into holes drilled into the elephants’ skulls—or that’s what it looks like from ground level—I guess to control them. I shudder watching it. And I keep as far off the trail as I can get until they pass.

I ask Phuong why they’re traveling during the day. “I thought the night was better, so they won’t risk being seen,” I say, hoping she’ll speak to me. Maybe an impersonal question like that will get her to answer. Other than the occasional order and brief conversations in Vietnamese with the two new guards, it’s been a quiet day, interrupted by the convoys, but that’s about all.

“It’s the rush to get reinforcements and weapons and more ammunition to the fight in the South,” she says. “At the supply base they told me our people are still holding out against the Americans and ARVN in Cholon. You probably don’t want to hear this.”

She glances at Le Phu and Khiem, as if worried they’ll understand her French, as if she’s said too much.

“Do they speak French?” I ask. “Is it a problem for you to talk to me now?”

Phuong shakes her head, but then contradicts herself. “Perhaps. Yes. French is considered the language of oppression, the language of the bourgeoisie, and anyone who speaks it is viewed with suspicion. They know it’s necessary for me to communicate with you, but I shouldn’t say too much.”

Sure enough, Le Phu and Khiem are just then staring at us, frowning. They wear matching black uniforms and helmets and olive rucksacks and red scarves and green rice belts. Le Phu is shorter and has a soft face—not that that means anything. Khiem, harder and leaner, has a faint mustache and a constant scowl—except when he’s looking at Le Phu.

Phuong is probably their same age, but she seems older. And she’s the one in charge. I don’t know why she doesn’t just tell them to mind their own business. But I don’t say any of that. Just the little bit of conversation we manage to have is enough to make me feel better about her.

We march on, keeping an eye out for more trucks, more fuel carriers, more bicycles, more elephants. The trail is a busy highway all that day, and the next. We split off a few times to alternate routes, but those are packed, too, all the traffic heading south. Too narrow for trucks, but room enough for bicycles, and for long lines of exhausted bo doi shuffling in sandals under cripplingly heavy loads.

Fatigue clouds my brain. We have a decent supply of rice now, and some peppers to throw in for flavor, and plenty of water as we transition through more rolling foothills to what I guess are the Annamite Mountains the GIs told me about. But my thinking becomes dulled again as fatigue sets in from the hard, forced march. Like it’s all my mind and my senses can handle to just take in whatever is going on immediately in front of me. Walking. Getting out of the way. Wiping off blood from thorn scratches. Mosquitoes biting me. Slapping at them, waving them away, or watching dumbly as they draw out so much of my blood that they swell to twice their size, three times their size. Crushing them under my thumb and seeing all that blood smear. Tasting it. Spitting it out.

Both of the two nights I find myself covered with leeches after sleeping on the ground—too far gone to feel them as they attach themselves, hardly minding the pain as Phuong presses a burning stick to them to make them let go, or if they don’t, just ripping them off, leaving even larger blood smears all over my arms and legs and torso and clothes.

On one of the trails, the roughest, the least developed, we come across another elephant convoy, though it isn’t moving. The reason is immediately apparent: The lead elephant is stuck in a mud hole. It has slung off its load, rice and ammunition boxes everywhere, bo doi scrambling to retrieve it all before it disappears into the mud, which has the consistency and power of quicksand. The elephant thrashes around, but only manages to sink deeper. Up to its knees when we first walk onto the scene, to its belly just minutes later. Soldiers with guns are in heated discussion. One points his AK-47 at the elephant and releases the safety, ready to shoot until Phuong yells at him and he lowers his weapon. I watch the whole thing unfold as if from a distance. A part of me doesn’t want them to kill the elephant. That little kid who used to go to the Bronx Zoo with his mom all the time. Another part of me doesn’t care what they do. That part is happy to sit down and lean back against a tree and observe. Not my war. Not my elephant. Not my problem.