SNAFU: Resurrection Page 17

  “Come on, let’s rejoin the festivities,” he said. “No need for you to miss the rebirth of your god, on account of these Imperial lapdogs. I’ll leave behind some of my boys to guard the prisoners.”

  Whether or not the warrior understood the words he must have perceived their intent because he followed the officer out of the hovel. I began sawing at the rope lashed around my wrists. The angle was poor, and I had a limited range of motion, but I cut at the cord until my fingers cramped. Then I cut some more. Through the insubstantial walls I listened to the officer directing his men to keep an eye on us. I restrained the rate of cutting but did not cease entirely as a pair of rebels entered the hut, the screams of another sacrifice fouling the air.

  With wary eyes scrutinizing us I made slow progress. Half an hour passed. One of the rebel’s eyes grew heavy while the other fidgeted incessantly. The stewards made bloody offerings of five more of my men based on the screams before I finally felt the ties give way. The desire to stretch my arms nearly overwhelmed my sense of self-preservation as I waited for an opening.

  It came as the sacrifice of another Sharpshooter commenced.

  “What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you stop squirming?” asked the tired rebel of his companion.

  “My guts are tearing me up,” said the fidgeting rebel.

  “That’s what you get for eating their fucking stew. I told you that meat floating around in there could be anything,” said the first.

  “I need to relieve myself. Can you cope without me for a minute?”

  They both turned and assessed us.

  “Go ahead, better that than messing your trousers in here for me to smell,” said the tired man.

  “I owe you one. Andrei and Dav should be nearby. Just give them a holler if you need anything.”

  “Yeah, yeah, just be quick about it.”

  His companion bolted out the doorway. The lone guard made a show of shaking off the drowsiness, but he did not remain attentive for long. Each time he blinked his eyes stayed shut for longer and longer. It was only for fractions of a second, but I knew I would not get a better opportunity to act. I anticipated the next blink and when his eyelids began to descend, I launched from the floor and brought my hands around. I covered the distance between us in the time it took for his eyes to flutter back open. Sidestepping the wavering bayonet, I jammed my left hand between the hammer and the musket’s frizzen, gouging the area between my index finger and thumb but preventing the rebel from firing it. As he opened his mouth to shout a warning, I rammed the spear head into his throat.

  I eased him to the floor when his legs stopped twitching and rummaged through his kit, trading the blood-slick spear head for a proper knife. I sliced through Corporal Fadley’s binding first.

  “Grab the musket and watch the door.”

  “Wha’ are we goin’ to do?” asked Doc Dunbarr as I cut his binding next.

  “Free the Commissar, Doc,” I said, ignoring his question and handing him the knife. I shuffled along the wall over to Fadley.

  “How long do we have?” I asked.

  “He’s still squatting with his pants around his ankles,” Fadley responded.

  “Any sign of the patrol?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I popped my head out the portal. The mirefolk had left few torches unattended back in the village but the bonfire flared bright in the distance, casting enough light to survey our surroundings, my gaze falling to the floating rafts tied to the dock and the contents they held. A smile split my face for the first time that night. A leathery hand clapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see Commissar Normann offering me the rebel’s knife. I shook my head, displaying my tattered hands.

  “He’s finishing up,” said Fadley. “We need to move.”

  I led the three of them out of the hovel and down the walkway. We moved as quietly as we could but every creak of the planks under our feet sounded like a musket going off to my ears. We reached the dock and found one of the missing patrolmen leaning against a post, puffing on a pipe and observing the ritual from afar. Normann acted with the startling speed that had served him so well hunting down deserters, driving the knife through the bottom of the smoking man’s jaw and into his brain.

  “I see the lantern, he’s heading back,” whispered Fadley.

  “That one,” I said, pointing to one of the wider, cannon-laden rafts secured to the jetty.

  We climbed into the boat, cautious not to upset the balance, and once we were all aboard, I unmoored us. I picked up a long oar and directed us away from the dock. Commissar Normann and Doc Dunbarr settled in alongside the cannon at the bow while at the stern, Corporal Fadley continued to track the second guard down the barrel of his musket.

  “Get that thing loaded,” I hissed to Normann and Dunbar.

  The raft skimmed across the black water toward the heathens and their idol. The mirefolk appeared no less demonic than the stewards by the hellish luminescence of the bonfire. We edged closer with each sweep of the oar and I worried the cannon would not be loaded in time. The doctor and the political officer fumbled around in the dark, hurrying to prepare the gun to fire.

  “He’s almost to the hut,” warned Fadley, rifle at the shoulder.

  “Is the cannon loaded?” I asked my improvised gunnery crew.

  “Aye,” said Doc.

  “Aim for the idol,” I told them.

  “We’ll never hit it from this distance,” Commissar Normann sneered.

  “I will get us as close as I can. Just be ready to fire,” I spat back.

  “He’s found his dead mate,” said Fadley. “And there’s the other patrolman.”

  Outside the hut the second guard began shouting to raise the alarm. A head or two at the fringe of the crowd perked up at the bellowing but the wails of the stewards’ latest victim provided several seconds more cover.

  “Now,” I said.

  “We’re still too far,” Normann snapped.

  “They’ve spotted us,” said Fadley.

  Two muskets cracked from back at the village. Both shots flew wide, splashing into the water meters away. Fadley’s own musket replied and he immediately set to reloading. The shots alerted the congregation who stood confused Unlike the rebel irregulars who reacted with experience, racing to secure the perimeter but still unable to determine the source of the disruption. The stewards paused midway through shucking the skin from their offering and looked out into the swamp. Right at us. They opened their beaks and emitted a screech so dreadful it muted the din of the swamp. For the span of a single heartbeat all was still, all was silent.

  The idol twitched. Twitched again. Then with a creak of bones old and new, its shoulders rose as it shrugged into its new skin. Gore ran in rivulets from the flesh of what had been my company and dripped from the bone framework. It lifted its malformed head, eyeing those near before snapping luminous eyes to the raft.

  “Oh, feck…”

  It opened its maw, and darkness deeper than anything I had ever seen swirled behind teeth of sharpened bone. It spewed a hiss that bent nearby trees, snapping one beneath fetid breath that washed like sewerage across the water.

  Commissar Normann sprung from the raft, disappearing beneath the water as one of the stewards charged, splashing toward us, blade raised.

  “Now! Fire now!” I roared, and the cannon added its voice to my own.

  The might of the gun’s discharge capsized the small raft and spilled us out. Foul water rushed up my nose and down my throat. I could not see in the inky blackness to judge up from down. I thrashed my arms about, colliding with sinking crates of supplies borne by the boat. I kicked out and my bare feet finally touched the muddy ground. I corrected my orientation and surfaced to find the world had descended into chaos.

  The cannon ball had missed the idol entirely, the cast iron projectile tearing through a few rows of spectators before striking the bonfire and pitching blazing lumber across the island. A burning branch, thick as a man, jutted from idol
’s shoulder as it roared.

  Captives splashed into the swamp, scattering in every direction. Mirefolk warriors chased after them while rebels fired their muskets into the swamp indiscriminately, hitting panicked villagers more often than not.

  I turned to a shriek, and the steward closed in on me, but as it raised its blade, water erupted in front of the demon, and its shriek was met by the hate-fueled roar and glinting knife of Commissar Normann. The big man ducked the first swing, then drove his shoulder up into the steward, the knife punching fast – once, twice, three times into the thing before the two went under, thrashing.

  Upon the island, the idol hissed again, snatching up a rebel and stuffing the still-screaming man into its jaws. I made for shore, keeping low in the water as it feasted upon a mire witch next – she offered no resistance, a beatific smile on her face as she was devoured.

  As I pulled myself onto land, Fadley floated past, eyes unseeing, but it was Doc Dunbar I watched charge the idol, hair alight as he drove a burning piece of wood deep between the saurian’s legs. The doc was still laughing as the idol tore him in two.

  The saurian stomped its pain and rage, squashing mirefolk and rebel alike as it hissed, dropping to its knees.

  I took one last look as I crept from the water, and we locked eyes, the false-god and me. In those depths raged eternity, of gods cloaked in the skin of men, children’s hearts beating in their chests as humanity was sacrificed on their endless altars.

  I blinked and it was gone – both the promise of mankind’s annihilation and the false-god who wore the face of my priest.

  Failure to Extract

  Kevin Wetmore

  Strayer had never seen anything blacker than the entrance to the tunnel. Even out in the bush with only starlight above, the tunnel’s mouth looked like a deep and dark void. If he focused, however, and looked all the way into the blackness, he could see the slight flickering of what must be a small fire hidden around the corner, down a dozen yards.

  Shit.

  Strayer was in his third month of a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. He was weary and wary. In front of this bunker, they had achieved their goal and having found the enemy they had to engage. He said a quick prayer and held his M16 a little closer.

  Strayer had been in country for almost a year. He had not been drafted though. His father fought at Guadalcanal, and his grandfather had been in the Connecticut Horse Guard between the wars. This sense of duty when there was conflict carried on down the line to a distant great-great-grandfather who fought the Pequots in King Philips’ War. His was not a career military family, but a fight-when-called-to family. So, just after finishing his divinity degree, he found himself a chaplain in the infantry and staring into a bunker late at night on a mountain somewhere north of the A Shau Valley.

  Sarge motioned for everyone except Jacobs to pull back. One hundred yards from the cave he whispered the plan.

  “All right, here’s how this is going down. Holquist, you go in. Anything or anyone even looks at you cross-eyed, you fill them with lots of holes.”

  Holquist moved his Stevens model 77E an inch or two in front of his chest. “Roger that. Locked and loaded.”

  “Lopez, you stay here with Mamacita. Anyone tries to come up the backdoor, you teach them the fear of God.”

  Lopez, who rarely spoke, just kissed The Gun and nodded. The M-60 looked like a toy in his giant hands, but when he opened up with it ten rounds found their target every second. Lopez loved The Gun as much as he loved his own mother, naming it ‘Mamacita’. Right before going into a fire fight, he’d kiss it, put his Virgin of Guadalupe medallion in his mouth, and then unleash hell.

  “Reverend, Quinn, you’re with me. We give Holquist a twenty count and then follow.”

  Strayer and Quinn both nodded. Fresh magazines were quickly and quietly clicked home. They moved forward silently, safeties off. Strayer was ready for anything but knew nothing about what they might find in there. As they crept closer to the cave entrance, Strayer swore that it grew darker. No, not darker – it seemed to swallow the light. Though they were in the jungle, and even at night the humidity was off the charts, he shivered, a chill running down his spine. This wasn’t pre-fight jitters or adrenaline. Something about this set up was just wrong.

  Nine weeks earlier Strayer stood at attention in a wooden building outside Saigon. A full bird colonel stared at him, assessing him silently.

  “You’re not the average grunt, are you, son?”

  “No sir.”

  The colonel looked him up and down.

  “I’ve read your jacket, Strayer. Yale man, degrees in anthropology and divinity. What the hell you doing in the ’Nam, son?”

  “My family has always served when the country has needed us, sir.”

  “That so?”

  “Sir.”

  “I mean you’re a chaplain, but you also have commendations for combat.”

  “Guess I know how to shoot, sir.”

  The colonel laughed and flipped open the file on his desk. He wiped his neck with a handkerchief, already sweat-soaked before the full heat of the day had even begun.

  “Awards for marksmanship from the goddamn Boy Scouts, your high school rifle club, basic training – hell, you’re the best shot in your platoon and you’re the goddamn fucking chaplain! You have a deadeye, son. Never knew a preacher who could take out a man at a thousand yards with one bullet.”

  “Different skill sets, sir.”

  “That right, Padre?”

  “Reverend.”

  The colonel looked up. “Excuse me?”

  “Not Padre, sir. I’m not Catholic. I’m Presbyterian, so technically my title is Reverend.’”

  The colonel grunted and puffed on his cigar, then waved the smoke around him and mumbled something about it being the only goddamn way to drive off the mosquitos. He then looked down at the file again before speaking. “Says here you speak the language.”

  “Picked up some of the local lingo while in country, sir. Not really fluent. Just have an ear for languages.”

  A grunt in response. “Your background – you know about religion? Not just yours – theirs?”

  “I guess, sir.”

  “Do you believe in the devil?”

  Strayer broke attention and looked right at the colonel. The question had come from so far left of field that he wondered if he had heard it correctly. “Excuse me, sir?”

  “It’s a simple question, son. Do you believe in the devil?”

  “Well…” he paused. “The devil certainly appears in scripture and our Lord was tempted by him, but is there a personification of evil that is responsible for all evil in the world? Well, it’s a little more—”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” the colonel snapped. He stood and came around the desk as if to examine Strayer. “Do you believe in evil?”

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  “Granted.”

  “I’ve been in country for almost nine months. I’ve seen evil. Lots of it. I don’t think we need a fallen angel to explain it, though.”

  “What about something else?”

  “Sir?”

  “What if it’s not the devil? What about demons? Monsters?”

  “Are you pulling my leg, sir?”

  “No, Corporal, I’m not pulling your goddamn leg! Now answer the goddamn question! Do you believe in supernatural evil?”

  “Sir! I do, but I’m skeptical that everything that goes bump in the night is a ghostie.”

  The colonel stared at him, then something shifted in his eyes, a decision made. “Good. I’m reassigning you to a new unit. You’re going in the field, on a lurp.

  Strayer started at that. Why would a long range reconnaissance patrol need a chaplain, even one good with a gun?

  “After we took Signal Hill we thought things would get better. But there is some dinky dau shit going down in the A Shau valley and I am putting together a lurp to check it out and put a stop to it. Padre, you�
�re my man.”

  Strayer didn’t bother correcting him again. “May I ask the colonel what kind of dinky dau shit, sir?”

  “Lurps vanishing without a trace, boys drowning in one inch of water, soldiers going insane overnight and talking shit about a fire speaking to them.”

  “Combat fatigue?”

  “No. This is not the usual stuff, Corporal.”

  For no reason he could explain, Strayer suddenly felt like a spider was walking slowly up his spine. When he was younger his mother told him that meant someone had just walked on his grave. He pushed the thought away; this shit was already weird enough.

  “Does… does the colonel think there are monsters in the A Shau valley, sir?”

  “No, I sure as hell do not think there are monsters, soldier! But morale is low, GIs are scared, and I’ve heard enough scuttlebutt that I think sending a preacher out with a lurp will calm folks down. Then we can get back to the business of stomping Charlie a new mud hole. You get out there and say a prayer, bless the bush, do an exorcism on the goddamn NVA, I don’t care what. Just do your thing. You are to report to your new unit at 0600 hours tomorrow. Be a good chaplain, and give me reason to tell the troops that you took care of the problem. Dismissed.”

  Without a word, the colonel returned to his seat, Strayer already forgotten as the next issue on the desk became the man’s focus.

  As always in his life, Strayer found himself once again the odd man out. The rest of the unit had gone through 5th Special Forces school in Nha Trang. Lopez, Quinn, Holquist, Jacobs and Sarge were all lurp veterans with multiple tours. He was a chaplain with a gift for hitting the center of the target almost every time. Now they were going out into A Shau, gathering information but also with the purpose of, apparently, finding talking fires.