Why were they still fighting?
Questions, questions.
I moved back from the dead soldier. Another man whose name I didn’t know. But I nodded to him, brother to brother. Acknowledging his life, respecting his death, making promises to his ghost I hoped I could keep.
I looked for any weapons. Nothing. I ran.
The gully split open and flattened into a streambed. One side of the stream was thick with trees, the other side a natural clearing. A Chinook helicopter lay in the field. Not stood. Lay.
It was over on its side, its propellers twisted like broken legs, the gray hull smashed in. Thin gray streamers of smoke curled from the engines. The grass and dirt was torn up and littered with more spent brass. And the exterior of the Chinook was splashed with blood and pocked with bullet holes.
I came up on the blind side and slunk along the bottom of the dead bird, but when I glanced inside I saw nothing but debris. No bodies at all.
And again, damn it, no weapons.
All I found was a torn open backpack, its contents spilled out like entrails. Among the junk I found two power bars and a full canteen of water. My stomach clenched like a fist at the sight of the food, and I tore open one of the wrappers with my teeth. I crammed the nearly tasteless bar into my mouth and chewed faster than I could breathe, then washed it down with half the water. It took an effort of will not to scarf down the other bar and to conserve the rest of the water.
In the distance the sound of gunfire had slowed to a few random shots. No more screams that I could hear. My best guess said that the shots were two to three miles away, and I still had no gun. There’s a lot of logic to the old saying that you should never bring a knife to a gunfight.
And yet…
I moved off in the direction of the last few shots I’d heard.
Now that I was in the open I was able to get a look at the sun. It was later than I thought. I must have been out for hours. I figured it for about two o’clock, give or take. That meant I had four hours of daylight left. After that…
It was going to be a moonless night, so despite some starlight, the woods in Washington State were going to get very dark, very soon.
I began walking again, keeping my pace steady so that I stayed cautious but still covered distance. It was almost fifteen minutes before I saw the first sign that I was going in the right direction.
It stood upright in the grass, almost perfectly vertical, like a post erected for a new fence. Slender and gray. A vane from the Black Hawk’s rotor. Snapped off near the base, driven inches deep into the wormy soil. The angle was right. The dying chopper must have hit the tops of the trees and then hurtled past this point to where it crashed and died in the gully.
As I drew near it I saw a couple of things that made me slow down and approach with greater caution.
The first thing I saw was that there was a slot of disturbed dirt at the base of the vane. From the angle of the resulting mound of pushed-up soil it was clear that the vane had struck at an angle. Then someone had come along and lifted the thing so that it stood improbably straight.
The second thing was writing. Someone had written a note in very crude fashion. The crudest. A fingertip and what looked like fresh blood.
COWBOYS AND INDIANS
SOMETHING IN THE TREES
FOOTBALL
PETER PARKER – FRIEND?
I grinned. Cowboy was my combat call sign. The reference to ‘Indians’ was a reference to ‘Indian country’ – a shorthand soldiers use for an area filled with hostiles. He was telling me about the Serbs. The second line was easy, too. No need to translate what the ‘something in the trees’ was. The word ‘football’ referred to the steel biohazard case, and the strikethrough was Top’s way of telling me that it was gone. Balls. If the Serbs had recovered it, then we were back in deep shit.
I squatted there on my heels and considered the last line from the note.
PETER PARKER – FRIEND?
What did that mean?
Then I got it, but it still didn’t make sense. Peter Parker is the name of the secret identity of Spider-man. I got that much; Top was telling me about the spiders. But why ‘Friend?’ Was he trying to tell me that the spiders were our friends? That made no sense at all. Spiders, natural or unnatural, were ugly, scary sonsabitches. I am not a fan.
And they were insects. How can an insect be a friend or not?
Did he mean that they weren’t carnivorous? Something like that? It made no sense to me.
The note had been coded because there were hostiles on the ground. Fair enough. I pushed the vane down flat on the ground and smeared out the message with the sole of my shoe. Feeling enormously insecure about the way this was all playing out, I set off to find my men.
Top was alive. Maybe that meant Bunny was, too. And if my luck was starting to turn, maybe all three of the chopper’s crew. Doesn’t hurt to ask the universe to throw you a bone every once in a while.
I located the footprints that headed away from the spot and followed, moving as quickly as caution and observation would allow.
And that’s when a strange day began getting stranger.
I found a dead Serbian.
Maybe ‘dead’ isn’t the right word. I found a big red splotch of wetness on the ground and, all around it to a distance of thirty-five feet, were parts. Arms, legs, chunks of meat. The man looked like he’d been hit by a grenade, but there was no sign of shrapnel, no signature of detonated explosives. Just a body destroyed in a way I couldn’t explain.
A dozen yards away was a second kill point, except the thing that had died there could not have been human, and this time there was clear evidence of the impact of a rocket-propelled grenade. Used at close range, too. The thing it had hit had been nearly vaporized. All that was left were glistening chunks of what looked like crab shell. Chitinous and rough, with faint yellow and blue spots. There wasn’t enough of it to make sense of its shape, though I still had that bad feeling in my head ever since I woke up with my foot in a web.
Some kind of mutant insect?
Maybe.
The shell casings on the ground told an interesting story. There had been a firefight, with the Serbians capping off a lot of rounds. The creature had apparently tried to take cover behind a pain of twin pines, but the RPG had blown the trees and it apart. The kicker was that there were 9mm shell casings in the woods on the far side of the combat scene. From the angle the brass had dropped, it was clear they were firing at the Serbians. The Serbian rounds had been fired mostly at the dead thing, with only a few shots returning fire from the guys with the small arms.
Did that make it a three-way fight? If so, the evidence suggested that the Serbians were more concerned with the creature then they were with Top and Bunny.
Not sure how to read that. Top and Bunny are generally scary enough to command full attention from any hostiles we meet. What could have unnerved the Serbs enough to more or less ignore them in a fight? The answer to that opened up new and very disturbing lines of speculation. I didn’t think I wanted to go down that path right now.
I kept moving.
I found a footprint punched deep into a spot of moist earth. Big shoe, military tread. Size fifteen-extra-wide.
Bunny.
The print was angled toward what looked like a game trail and as I bent low to follow it, I saw that there were more prints. Same shoe. No second set with the same tread. I had to think about the message back at the vane. It was definitely Top’s kind of thing, so why wasn’t I seeing his footprints?
And why were Bunny’s so heavy?
The answer came to me a split second before I saw the first drops of blood.
All along the game trail, scattered around the big man’s footprints, were random droplets of blood. Closer when the tread suggested Bunny was walking; farther apart when he was running.
The depth of the prints made sense now. Top was hurt and Bunny was carrying him.
Christ, has Top written me a note in his
own blood? It seemed likely.
I moved on, and six hundred yards down the game trail I found another body. It was a Serbian. I think. There wasn’t a whole lot of him left.
His head was gone. Not just cut off. It was gone. Someone had taken it away.
One hand was gone, too. The lower leg was nearly off. The body lay in a pool of drying blood. All around the corpse were shell casings that matched the AK-47 still clutched in the man’s remaining hand. The barrel of the rifle was twisted almost at a right angle; the metal pinched shut as if it had been caught in a vise.
Sound carries, even in a dense forest. I should have heard these shots, unless they’d been fired while I was still unconscious. The blood was moderately fresh, though. So what did that mean in terms of timing? This fight had to have taken place no less than half an hour ago and probably no more than two hours before I woke up.
All around the scene were dozens of small, round indentations in the ground. I placed my right index finger into one and it was nearly a perfect fit.
No idea what the hell they were, though.
I looked around. The forest was still. Above me the trees were thick with dark green needles through which I could see patches of blue sky.
I moved on, keeping my knife in my hand, though it felt like a useless little toothpick.
The second body was a quarter mile farther on.
There was even less of this one. Just lumps of ragged red meat scattered around. If a guy swallowed a lump of C4 and exploded, the spread would be about this, though I didn’t think that’s what happened. Something had torn this guy apart. Torn him to ribbons.
I found no head, no hands.
There was another damaged AK47 and the boots on the dead feet were Timberland knockoffs. This wasn’t anyone from my crew.
Thank God.
But it was clear whoever was hunting these Serbians was also hunting my team. And it had killed two men who had been armed with machine guns. I had a knife. My confidence in the little pig-sticker was waning, let me tell you.
Still kept going, though. What choice did I have?
A half mile deeper into the woods I heard a sound. A voice. A fragment of something.
“...see that thing... Christ... Bunny...”
Then nothing.
I froze and tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Echo Team, Cowboy to Echo Team.”
Nothing.
I repeated it.
Still nothing.
“Cowboy to Green Giant,” I said, using Bunny’s combat callsign. When that didn’t work I tried Top. “Cowboy to Sergeant Rock. Do you copy?”
“... boy...?”
A fragment of a reply whispered in my ear.
And was gone.
Top’s voice, though. I was sure of it.
Without the signal booster the radio had less than a mile’s range. In these woods, with this density of trees, maybe half that. They had to be close.
I faded to the left of the game trail and instead ran through the tall grass. The trail wound through the trees, over hummocks, down through a gully, and deep into a shadowy grove of fir trees. I made no sound at all as I moved. I’m good at that. Last thing I wanted to do was draw fire if there were more Serbians. Or, I have to admit it, attract the attention of whatever was killing them.
I heard three things at almost exactly the same time.
The first was a rattle of automatic gunfire interspersed with the hollow poks of small-arms. Overlaid with that was a strange clicking sound. Almost metallic, but not quite.
Dominating both sounds, though, was the rising, ear-splitting, agonized shriek of a human voice calling out for God and his mother. In Serbian.
-7-
I began to run.
That turned out to be a stupid choice.
I was so intent on following Bunny’s footprints that I spent too much time looking down and not enough time looking around. Rookie mistake. Unforgivable, even if I was in shock.
The path followed rain runoff paths. Sometimes the ground was soft enough to take a clear print and sometimes exposed rock left me nothing to find. I reached a spot where a fallen tree blocked the path and I stopped and tried to imagine how Bunny carried an injured Top past the obstacle. There was no obvious route right or left, so I did the dumb thing and climbed atop the trunk to take a look. Sounds like a sensible plan if you’re out hiking with your friends. Not so much when the woods were filled with hostiles.
As soon as I stood up on the trunk there was a crack and something hot burned past my right eyebrow. The bullet couldn’t have missed me by more than a quarter inch.
Shit.
I threw myself forward, hit the ground and rolled, and as I came out of the roll there were two more shots. I heard them hit the tree. I spindle-rolled against the trunk, listened as a fourth and fifth shot chipped splinters off the wood, and then got to fingers and toes and ran like a scared dog north along the trunk. The shots were coming from the far side. There was a pause and someone said, “Dimitrije, go around, go around.”
The man spoke in Serbian. Not my best language, but I can understand the basics.
The speaker sounded like he was close to the torn-up roots of the fallen tree, which meant he was close to me. Dimitrije was probably going to circle the tree from the top end. Fair enough. Nice pincer movement.
I moved away from the roots and squatted down behind a copse of young spruces. In special ops they teach you how to become completely still. It’s not simply a matter of not moving, but a way of thinking. You become part of the natural landscape. You breathe slow and shallow, you blink slow, and if you have to move, you do it in time with the wind moving through the surrounding foliage. People who are bad at it move when they feel the breeze, which means they’re moving slightly behind the wind. Out of tune with it. The smart fighters listen to the approach of the breeze and they let it push them. They move at the same speed as the wind. They don’t make sounds that a forest wouldn’t make. Everything is about harmony.
I already had my stupid moment. Now it was time to be smart.
The Serbs had guns. There’s a tendency in people who have superior numbers and superior firepower to act as if they don’t require stealth. This is not so.
I saw him come around the tangle of torn-up roots. A big man. Taller and broader than me, with a crooked nose and black hair pulled back into a ponytail. Not Serbian regulars. These were probably ex-military mercenaries. Fine.
He held his AK47 well, making sure his eyes and the barrel moved in concert. But he was walking upright, ready to kill. Not ready to defend.
I made him pay for that.
As he passed the line of spruces I noted the cadence of his footfalls. Everyone has a gait, a walking pattern. He came within five feet of me and when he turned my way he saw trees and shadows and nothing else. His face turned and the barrel turned with it as he passed.
I rose up and as he took a step, so did I, matching pressure and sound.
Until I was directly behind him.
Then I reached out with both hands. My left was empty and I snatched his ponytail and jerked it back and down as hard as I could. The leverage in something like that is devastating. His head snapped backward, his back arched, the gun flew up and his finger jerked the trigger and fired a single shot into the sky. I wanted him to do that.
The second I jerked his head backward my right hand moved. The little Wilson rapid-release knife was blade down in my fist and I drove the blade into his eye socket, gave it a wicked half-turn and tore it free. His scream was high and shattering, but I was gone before his body thudded to the ground. He landed hard, twisting and thrashing and screaming. I hadn’t stabbed him deeply enough to kill him. Not yet.
I spun away and ran around to the far side of the tree, listening as Dimitrije came pounding up, yelling, firing randomly into the woods. He stopped over his friend and stood there, emptying his magazine as he turned in a half circle, killing a lot of leaves and chipping bark off of trees. None of his rounds came a
nywhere near me. By the time he’d emptied half a magazine I was on the other side of the tree and scrambling up atop the trunk. I peered over. Dimitrije blasted the spruce trees and clicked empty. His friend was still screaming and thrashing.
The killer inside my head smiled.
Then I was in the air, leaping at Dimitrije, hitting him between the shoulder blades as he slapped his fresh magazine into place. He star-fished in the air and his gun went flying. I bore him to the ground and let his body take all the impact, then scrambled up, drove my knee into the small of his back, grabbed his short blond hair with my left, jerked his head back and cut his throat from ear to ear.
I pivoted and leapt onto his friend. He had both hands clamped to his bleeding eye, so I corkscrewed the knife between his forearms and buried it to the knuckles in the hollow of his throat.
Silence dropped over the forest.
I tore my knife free and wiped it on his jacket, but my hand and wrist were soaked with blood. The knife went back into its holster in my pocket and I snatched up one of the AK47s. They are not my favorite weapon, but they’re sturdy, reliable and I had two of them. Between the two corpses there were six magazines. Fun. No grenades, though. And no satellite phone. Would have been nice to call my boss and arrange for the entire United States military to come rescue my ass. Not an option.
I slung one rifle, held the other, ran sixty yards into the woods, stopped, knelt with the gun raised as I listened to the forest.
No shouts in Serbian. No gunshots.
But I heard that strange high-pitched chittering sound again.
Close, too. On the far side of the tree, near to where I’d left the bodies. I heard it but didn’t see it. I waited a long time. The chittering sound faded and then vanished, leaving the forest sounding like a forest again.
After a long time of waiting, watching, and listening, I trusted the landscape enough to begin moving again. It took me twenty minutes to find another of Bunny’s footprints.
Armed now, I began hunting in earnest.
-8-
SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror Page 7
