Born to the street and abandoned by his paranoid, drug-addicted mother, a young boy struggles to evade vicious predators who hope to exploit him and insistent authorities who hope to save him. His only ally is his extreme natural intelligence and his only home is the public library. Daily, the noose tightens after his mother, his last link to childhood, goes missing. His future seems as bleak as the cold, hard streets. Then he meets Longbow. In a gritty, existential world rife with threats, a young boy fights to survive. One man has the power to save him. An insightful short story.

1943. World War II. The U.S. government drafted him out of his life of normalcy and complacency into the life of a United States Marine Corps officer. After intensive training, he would serve during some of the bloodiest assaults of the war. The violent rigors of combat would teach him the rules of long-term survival amid the most lethal fighting in human history. Those who failed to learn these lessons would not return home to their families. During the bloody throes of combat, all is fair and the only rules that apply are those that promote survival. In the face of evil, what is the nature...

No matter how harsh the instruction or inhumane the conditioning, military doctrine cannot replace compassion with uncaring steel. At his post in the bowels of a Japanese submarine, one frightened boy endures the unspeakable slaughter of an illicit war until he reaches a psychological breaking point. Then he begins opening valves that should be closed and closing valves that should be open. Drafted as a teenager into one of the bloodiest and most fanatical navies in the history of the world, he will spin the wheels for ill. What causes the discipline of duty to descend into the degradation of...

One of the most pivotal waterborne engagements in history would not be fought ship-to-ship in the traditional fashion of naval warfare, a brutal duel between massive battleships. This titanic contest would be decided without either commander sighting the other, for victory would ultimately be claimed in the skies, aircraft to aircraft. Its outcome directly determined the future of the individual sailor and aviator, but it also indirectly decided the fates of their homelands, as well. For the combatants, Midway was not merely an isolated battle in the larger conflict, rather it would decide...

This particular corporal served all four years of the bloodiest war in European history, many of them as a message runner - one of the most dangerous and elite jobs of trench-bound combat. By all accounts, he was a strange young man with many strange ideas. He loved the war and thought it the best time of his life. To be sure, he would survive when so many around him perished, but how? He should have died a thousand times, but nobody could kill him. Only he could do that for himself.