Red Vengeance

by Brendan DuBois

  To the right, underneath the tarp, the response force soldiers are huddled up against the log wall, waiting, their M-10s and M-4s across their laps. There seems to be about half of them left, the rest no doubt having been deployed out to the Second or Third Platoon, but this half looks unsettled and spooked.

  And I see why.

  They’re sharing the space with a pile of poncho-wrapped bodies, and Tanner and I gently put the remains of De Los Santos next to them. Tanner stands up, rubs at his lower back. “Head back to the line,” I say. “I’ll be along in a couple of minutes.”

  “Sure, Sergeant. Hey, do you think breakfast will be coming anytime soon?”

  Hell, no, I think, but I say, “We’ll see. Get moving.”

  I go around to the front of the CP, and there are moans and screams coming from inside, and in there…

  It’s chaos.

  There’s an overwhelming stench of burnt hair, burnt flesh—a smell like roast pork suddenly flamed that’s hard to describe and which sticks to the roof of your mouth—and there are low moans and sobbing coming from the right. Captain Pulaski is in her white coat, working desperately over a trembling burnt body that’s been stripped of its clothes, skin falling off in white flaps, aided by her two medics, illuminated by hissing gas lanterns. Two other soldiers are sitting, eyes wide, holding up arms that are missing hands. Bandages cover their stumps and both are breathing in long, shuddering breaths.

  Serena and Buddy are in the corner, looking away from the horrible medical work going on, and Hesketh, Wallace and Dad are huddled over the map, voices low. Wallace spots me.

  “Sergeant?” Her voice is strained, high-pitched, and I want to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.

  “Captain,” I say, passing over the dog tag from Corporal De Los Santos. “Corporal De Los Santos was just killed in action.”

  She nods. “Put it in the pile. Anything else?”

  There’s a dented white plastic bowl, the bottom covered with dog tags. With the scent of burning flesh and this ghastly sight, I feel like throwing up, so I say, “No, ma’am. We’re just short now.”

  “Can you still hold the line?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then go.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I spin out of there without looking back and get out into the supposedly fresh air on top of this hunk of rock, which smells of burnt things, cinnamon and smoke.

  A brief thought comes to me. Buddy is in there, who knows the Bug lingo. Maybe…maybe he could come out here, with Serena’s encouragement, and call out to the Creepers. Tell them to surrender. Tell them to go away. Tell them anything to save us up here on this lonely hill.

  And then I look to the pile of poncho-clad bodies, including De Los Santos, still warm.

  And what if Buddy were to come out and get a laser burst to the forehead before speaking a word of Creeper?

  No.

  He needs to remain as safe as possible.

  I lower myself down and run back to the line, moving in a zigzag, trying to avoid De Los Santos’s fate. I slide down and roll into the rear of my foxhole, and Tanner and Thor lift their heads, and I say, “Just one sec.”

  I grab De Los Santos’s M-10 and move up the line, and stop at the foxhole occupied by Balatnic and Lancaster. “Lancaster, out you go. Head over to De Los Santos’s foxhole. You’re replacing him.”

  Lancaster says, “Is he wounded?”

  “He’s dead,” I say. “Move along, and keep low. He was killed by a sniper shot from a Creeper.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” he says. Grabbing his gear and M-10, he climbs out of the foxhole, and moves down the line, and then drops into De Los Santos’s foxhole. Balatnic looks up at me, face smudged, looking scared indeed. I pass over the M-10 and bandolier. “Congratulations, now your promotion takes effect.”

  She takes the M-10 and spare rounds. “Will I get someone here to help me out?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Balatnic moves the bulky weapon around and drapes the bandolier over her slim shoulders. “Sergeant?”

  “Yes?”

  “Sergeant…I’m starving.”

  I don’t feel like lying to her about breakfast coming, so I don’t, and she says, “When we got our broth last night, damn him, Lancaster spilled mine. He said he’d share, but he didn’t give me half. He just gave me a mouthful. He said he was a man, taller and bigger, and that he deserved more of the food. Asshole.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and her face is so young and strained, and almost automatically, my hands go into my pockets, wishing I still had that sandwich I had scrounged from the air base, eaten a long time ago. I know I don’t have anything there, because I never leave any food item in my jacket because it can crumble up too easily, or get dunked in water, and then my left hand grasps something, deep in the pocket, almost hidden by a fold of fabric.

  I pull it out. It’s the old dog biscuit Captain Pulaski had given to me a number of days ago, to pass onto Thor at some special time.

  I hope Thor will understand.

  “Here,” I say. “Have this.”

  “What is it?” she asks, taking the dog treat into her small hand.

  Now it’s time to lie.

  “A special food bar, prepared for us Recon Rangers back in New Hampshire.”

  She sniffs it. “How come we haven’t gotten it in our unit?”

  “It’s experimental.”

  She takes a bite, chews it with enthusiasm. “Not bad. Pretty dry but it has a good meaty taste.” Balatnic holds it out to me. “Want a bite?”

  “I’m good,” I say. “You finish it up and get back to work, all right?”

  Balatnic takes another healthy bite.

  “Thanks, Sarge. God, I was starving.”

  I offer her a smile and then check the rest of the line, and Bronson looks up me with irritation and says, “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on is the war,” I say. “You just worry about your field of fire, all right?”

  He mutters something and I say to his companion, M-4 in hand, “Corporal Melendez, how are you doing?”

  Melendez keeps his dark brown face looking forward. “Never finer, Sergeant. Never finer.”

  “You sure?”

  “Oh yeah, very sure.”

  Going up the line means running into Second Platoon, and I note two helmeted heads positioned in their foxhole, and since this is Lieutenant Morneau’s responsibility and not mine, I let it be.

  But still, I scramble over some, across a rocky ledge, and on my belly, peer over. There’s a steep rock cliff that drops about forty meters or so, and it’s a sheer drop down, ending at a collection of boulders, and I push myself back.

  I hate heights.

  I go back down the line, see everybody’s nice and ready, looking down the slope at the dead remains of three Creepers, the churned up dirt and grass, and the orange-topped stakes, marking the firing positions, and then the wood line.

  As I approach my foxhole, Thor stands up, resting his two front paws on the edge of the dirt, panting, and I roll in, pat his head, and as someone calls out “Creeper!” down the line, I swear to God, the only thing I’m thinking about is how damn hungry I am.

  An Excerpt from the Journal of Randall Knox

  Since I was six years old when the war started, most of my memories are jumbles here and there, some jumbles still giving me nightmares, and what I remember the most is being cold and being hungry.

  Among the many things gone was the cheapness and availability of food. No more restaurants, grocery stores, corner gas stations, Walmarts, drug stores with shelves of edibles, diners, mom & pop stores, bodegas, supermarkets or any other name you’d want to call a place where you could easily go in and get food when you were hungry. Or weren’t hungry. It still amazes me that I lived for six years at a time when even a private home could have up to a month’s worth of food being stored on shelves, refrigerators and freezers.

  A month! />
  It sounds grim to make note of it, but’s historical fact—for those few historians out there—that the initial food shortages and local famines occurred not because of lack of food, but because of lack of easy transportation and refrigeration. Hard to believe as well, but there was actually a time when critics—as Dad would say, people who couldn’t do anything reliable, but could always point out the perceived flaws in others—felt that it was “more real” or “more green” to eat only locally grown food, not stuff flown in or trucked in.

  Yeah. Well, when the trucks stopped running and the refrigerators and freezers turned warm, those survivors from the first weeks of war instantly turned to local sources, and found the sources wanting.

  Because with all the water vapor kicked up into the atmosphere from the tsunami strikes, and with most farming and harvesting equipment remaining idle, that meant long years of stunted farming, which led to food shortages, which led to…lots of bad things.

  Luckily for me, I did have lots of hungry days, but not anything that threatened me, because Dad was in the Army Reserve and reupped, and we did okay with his limited rations, plus whatever black market groceries he could get for whatever the market bore. But I knew there were problems all around us, and there were stories and rumors of food riots, or raids on Department of Agriculture relief convoys, and sometimes, you saw it right up front.

  One late summer day I was doing a training session with Thor, about six months after we were assigned together as a K-9 unit for the Second Recon Rangers. We were in a stretch of the White Mountain National Forest, and we were doing simple hunt and release. Earlier the testers had gone through the wooded trails, and at certain points, they’d leave a chunk of Creeper exoskeleton behind a rock or a tree, to see if the newbie dog could sniff it out. So far it had been a great day, with Thor finding the initial three cache spots, and with just one left to go before we could go back to the trailhead for the truck ride back home to Fort St. Paul.

  The trail was part of a system that stretched from Georgia to Maine, where I guess thousands of people each year decided to hike to get back to nature or something like that. With a constantly growling belly and sore feet, I thought being in the Army was enough getting back to nature for me for the rest of my life.

  Thor was up ahead of me, sniffing and scrambling, and sometimes he’d disappear, which was fine. We had bonded pretty quickly and I had learned that when he would reappear, I’d call out, “Good boy, good check in!” and then he’d wag his tail, and disappear again.

  I was resting near a trail juncture, wondering how much further it would be in these dark woods before he found that last chunk of Creeper metal, when I thought I heard a yelp.

  I got right up from the boulder I was sitting on. “Thor?”

  The trail went to the left and to the right. My left ear wasn’t as good as it should have been, but I was pretty sure that’s where the yelp came from.

  “Thor!”

  I started up the trail at a quick trot, wondering if he had fallen, or if he had gotten a paw caught in a rock crack, or if he had encountered a porcupine or something. I moved along, climbing up a rise, the trail pretty wide and worn from all those tromping boots passing through over the decades.

  I stopped, tried to catch my breath.

  “Thor!”

  The way ahead was dark, and I checked the sun’s position. Maybe another hour or so of daylight left.

  Damn.

  I picked up the pace, practically running now, and then I caught a whiff of something, and I froze.

  Cinnamon? Could a real-life Creeper be here, deep in these empty woods?

  A slight shift of wind, and I caught the smell again.

  Wood smoke.

  Somewhere nearby there was a fire.

  I moved along some more, sniffing, turning my head, and the smell of smoke got thicker. Off to the right. I got off the trail and heard voices, and the wood smoke was really thick. I moved slowly, reached down to my side and unbuttoned my holster, where I had my 9 mm Beretta pistol. I was qualified for the M-4 and should have been carrying that, but since this was just a routine mission, none of had been issued one.

  I stepped closer to the smell and the sound of voices, the Beretta now in my hands, the safety off, hammer pulled back. There was a round in the chamber. Always.

  I moved around a large pine tree that had fallen years back, dirt hanging down from its root systems, and then I squatted down, now smelling old clothes, dirty skin, greasy hair.

  There were three of them. I stared ahead. An older man and two younger men, maybe in their twenties. Hard to tell. Torn, tattered clothes. Long beards, long stringy hair, baseball caps so filthy I couldn’t tell what they once advertised. Gaunt faces, deep-set eyes. On the ground were knapsacks held together with duct tape. Their boots repaired with twine and duct tape as well.

  Something whining.

  Thor on his side, legs bound, thin rope wrapped around his muzzle.

  The fire crackled and grew higher.

  The older man said, “Remember, Tom, we gotta drain the blood real thorough ’fore we start butchering. Otherwise…a goddamn mess…”

  One of the younger men said, “You got it, Pop.”

  The other guy complained. “I should get a bigger portion, right Pop? I caught ’em…I should get rewarded…”

  I stepped into view, holding the Beretta tight with both hands, knowing with humiliation that my hands were shaking.

  “Hey! You three! Let my dog go.”

  The older man stared at me with dead, cold eyes, and said, “Billy, shut your mouth and find that damn frying pan…”

  “Okay.”

  I stepped closer. Thor whimpered some more. “Hey! Cut my dog loose…or else.”

  The two younger men kept on ignoring me, filthy hands going through their packs, and their father said, “Go ’way. Leave us alone. We’ll leave you a leg…but leave us alone…it’s ours…we found it…”

  “That’s my dog,” I said. “And I’m with the National Guard, and I’m telling you to cut him loose. Now.”

  The older man said, “National Guard? Like the Army, son? The Army that couldn’t protect us, couldn’t feed us, couldn’t evacuate us?”

  “Found it!” Billy said, holding up a small frying pan. His brother said, “Give me a hand haulin’ that dog up the tree, okay? Hind legs first, so the blood runs out once I slice his throat.”

  Tom drew a knife from a scabbard at his side and he went to Thor.

  I shot him.

  He gasped and spun around, fell to his knees, grabbing at his shoulder.

  It was a lousy shot.

  I tried better the second time and got him in the throat. Blood sprayed and he fell back, gasping and wheezing, and his father stared at me and said, “Don’t mean you’ll get his portion,” as he headed over to Thor, a large knife in hand.

  My third shot nailed his hip, and he collapsed, one hand still on the knife, the other going to his hip, and he gasped and said, “Damn, that don’t hurt so bad…how about another one?”

  My breathing was harsh, my mouth was dry, my legs were shaking and so were my hands, and I walked two paces and fired once more, into his forehead. I quickly turned and the second son—Billy—was again ignoring me. He was frantically digging through his father’s knapsack and then let out a yelp of joy. He held up something raw and bloody wrapped in a Shop & Save plastic grocery bag and said, “Damn him, I knew he was holding out on me and my bro. Damn him!”

  His dirty fingers tore at the plastic, and whatever raw bloody chunk of something in there was chewed at and swallowed in seconds. He then gathered up all three knapsacks and laughing with a high-pitched tone, ran into the woods.

  It took me three tries to reholster my pistol.

  I then knelt down and cut Thor loose with my Army-issued blade, and checked him over, and I bawled for a couple of minutes, and then we went back to the trail, to wrap up our training.

  I was proud that I wasn’t crying over
the two men I had killed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  There’s a brief firefight down the line and a Creeper in front of the Second Platoon skitters back to the woodline, and the rest of the day just drags and drags and drags, until the sun finally sets, with no more food, no relief, not much of anything.

  Tanner wakes me up during the night, when he’s on watch. I snap to and grab my M-10, and whisper, “What’s up?”

  Tanner says, “It’s Corporal Melendez. From the end of the line.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s here,” he says. “The corporal says there’s something going on near his foxhole.”

  I stretch some and in the dim light, make out the form of Melendez, lying on his stomach. “Sergeant.”

  I yawn. “Why the hell are you here? What’s up with Sergeant Bronson?”

  “He told me to let him sleep, or he’d kick me in the balls in the morning.”

  Joyful. “All right, what’s up?”

  Melendez pauses, and says, “I’m hearing something. I don’t know what it is, but I’m hearing something. Don’t make sense. I tell you, there’s something going on.”

  I turn and say, “Good job, waking me up. Thor, stay. Melendez, show me what’s what.”

  With M-4 in hand, Melendez half-crawls, half-trots his way back down the line, and I follow him, M-10 and bandolier over one shoulder. We’re getting pretty damn low on M-10 rounds, pretty damn low on food and bandages, and if we were any lower, we’d be in the water and would have to transfer to the Navy.

  We pass the last foxhole, where I hear Bronson snoring. Melendez lowers himself down and whispers to me, “It’s…a snapping sound. Damndest thing. I’ve heard it three times, and I don’t see a thing.”

  “Did Bronson hear it?”

  “He only heard me, and told me to go back to watch.”

  “Okay.”

  We’re near Second Platoon at the patch of bare rock, and Melendez flattens out, and I do the same. Some of the cloud cover is gone and there’s a crescent moon, lighting up some of the landscape. When a piece of debris burns its way through the atmosphere, it lights everything up and makes the shadows look like they’re moving. Part of the trick of being on watch is knowing the difference.