Overview
Jim Duag is the protagonist and first-person narrator of “Locked In.” He is a Texas penal soldier serving with the Idaho Militia Penal Brigade during a patrol through northern Oregon.
Biography
Duag says he was sent into penal military service after killing a man with a steel pipe during a drunken bar fight in Fort Worth. In the story, he serves under Captain Eric Schriefer alongside Private Garth Jensen as their patrol moves west toward Hood River.
Duag carries the team’s grenade pack and helps attack a Free Oregon anti-armor position near Memaloose Overlook. After the attack, he discovers that one of the dead fighters is a Korean-American woman. When a wounded fighter named Lewis later escapes after an FPV drone strike, Duag chooses not to shoot him.
After Schriefer is mortally wounded and Jensen shoots him, Duag continues west with Jensen because penal enlisted men fall last in the chain of command. He is increasingly afraid of another FPV drone and uneasy with Jensen’s behavior.
Duag takes Lewis’s captured satellite phone after recognizing a file on it as the Elbakyan pattern, a lethal visual file. When a second FPV drone attacks near a tunnel, Jensen shoots himself and Duag dives off the trail, breaking part of his lower body on the slope below.
He is last seen trapped below the trail as fire spreads around him. Unable to reach safety or call for help, Duag plays the Elbakyan pattern directly into his own eyes.