SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

by Jonathan Maberry

  I stepped inside, checking the ceiling for any floating heads before I descended a few steps. The stairwell was walled, so whoever was downstairs couldn’t see me as I descended. What they could see, however, were the two destroyed vampire heads. I hoped they hadn’t been fond of those two.

  I pulled free one of my hand grenades. If I threw it right, I could bank it off the wall on the landing, and send it left into the room. I pulled the pin, let the spoon fly free, then tossed it. My aim was sure. It hit the wall, and bounced out of sight. A second later a tremendous explosion rattled the rafters. Dust rained. Lights blinked off and on. Silence ensued.

  I pulled a flashlight from my jacket and snapped it on. I skipped down the stairs, leading with my .45. Marshall and Nancy were tight behind me. When I got to the bottom, I peered around the corner and was pleased to see three dead bodies and a wounded man, lying in the middle of what had once been a parlor. Several hallways ran off of it, clearly a greater space than the home’s footprint should have allowed.

  “Boss!” Marshall pointed to a retreating figure of a woman. He ran after.

  I wanted to shout for him to stop, but I spied the satori the same time as Nancy. I took one step, then felt a terrible pain in the back of my neck. I spun into the face of Rachel Nakamura. No longer was she the demure public affairs liaison for Lawrence Livermore Labs. Her face had transformed into everything evil and terrible one would image in a demonic vampire. Blood dripped from her razor teeth. My blood.

  I raised my pistol but she easily slapped it away. The weapon went flying into the flashing darkness leaving me with only my flashlight. I raised it to hit her, but felt my hand catch as another vampire gripped it. I had one free hand and could grab my machete from my waist, but then I wouldn’t be able to defend myself from Rachel.

  I spared a glance at the terrible thing behind me just as Rachel lunged. My free hand caught her around the neck and there I was… fucked. Then I remembered a move I’d seen Nancy do once when he was trying to teach us Judo. I pulled against the hand that grasped my wrist and received a hard pull in return. Instead of fighting against it, I let it pull me and Rachel towards it. When my hip touched the other vampire’s body, I knew I had but one chance to use my leverage. My success depended entirely on the speed of Rachel and the element of surprise.

  I let go of Rachel and dropped to a knee. She kept coming, but lunged where I had been, instead of at me. I shot my free arm between the legs of the vampire who was behind me, and tossed it into Rachel’s face. It had no choice but to let go of my wrist in order to defend itself from Rachel.

  I rolled away and managed to pull free the machete without cutting myself. I immediately began hacking at the body nearest me. It turned out to be the other vampire. My blade sunk into an arm, then a leg, then its chest. It fell to the floor, but not before the head disengaged the body.

  Fuck me to hell, but I’d never get used to seeing that.

  Rachel screamed as she lunged at me, her teeth biting deeply into my right calf. I tried kicking her away with my other leg as I swung the machete in the air as if the head was a bloodsucking piñata. My foot finally caught her in the face.

  I glanced up at the hovering head in time to see it jerk back as bullets slammed into it – one, two, three times.

  Marshall had returned and fired once more into the head, sending it careening to the ground.

  I took advantage of the moment, and lunged for Rachel. I used my weight and pushed her back and down. I held both of her arms. But where she’d been ugly and demonic before, now she was the same girl-next-door pretty Japanese girl I’d first met in my office.

  I breathed heavily but managed to ask “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Why help the Russians? We’re the good guys.”

  She sneered. “Where do you get off calling yourselves good?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. How do you explain the obvious?

  She hissed like a cat, then spoke tremulously. “Tell that to all of my people you put in camps. Tell that to my grandmother who froze to death in North Dakota in a winter so cold even the kerosene froze. She was third generation. Sansei. She was more American than most of them who locked her up. You Americans always think you’re so good, but that’s because your memories are so bad.”

  “But that was a mistake. A reaction to Pearl Harbor.”

  “Tell that to my Grandmother. Tell that to yourselves when you point at Russia and say that they have Gulags.”

  While she’d been talking her head had been moving free of the body I had under control. It suddenly shot upwards. Marshall fired at it, but wasn’t able to hit it.

  I stood, searching for my .45.

  “Where’d it go?” he asked.

  “More important, where’s Nancy?” I saw my pistol beneath a chair and snatched it. Now armed with machete and pistol, I headed down the hall where I’d seen the satori. “Follow me.”

  I stumbled down the hall. Four doors opened on either side. We ignored them. We should have opened them, but Nancy was alone back here somewhere with a creature whose powers I couldn’t discern. The hall ended in a T. Marshall went right, I went left. I came to a door. I went to open it, but it was locked. I raised my foot and kicked it open. Light flooded the hallway. I’d entered an arcane library, which included many instruments of pain, including an iron maiden. The room also held Madame Mizuki and a short Russian I recognized as Vitoli Ryabkin. They stood in front of a Queen Anne sofa colored with violets and yellows, and swirls of black wood. The satori, standing behind the sofa, appraised me as if I were its pet insect. The grotesque hair of its face moved gently to a private wind. Its eyes, broken colors much like a cat’s-eye stone, held me cold for a moment. I now understood what the Russian had meant.

  I raised my pistol at the old madame, the one who probably killed Harvey. “Stop!”

  Madame Mizuki wore a long silk-embroidered robe with an ermine fox collar. Half-Russian and half-Japanese, she had the small mouth and cheek bones of the Japanese, but the angular face, eyes, and nose of a Russian. She wasn’t beautiful or ugly. I’d call her incongruous. Regardless, her look was so distinct it was hard not to stare.

  She pointed a long red-lacquered nail at me. “No, you stop!”

  “This is over. You’re captured. Tell me where my man is and I’ll go easy on you.”

  She smiled the sort of smile that could give a man nightmares. “What man?”

  Marshall ran up behind me. “Other room is clear.”

  “Any sign of Nancy?”

  “None.”

  I took a step forward. My movement triggered everyone else.

  Madame Mizuki grabbed the Russian and pushed him towards me.

  The satori backed into the corner of the room, his movements swift and choppy, like he was in a silent film.

  Ryabkin jammed his hand into his pocket and began to remove something.

  I shot him in the chest and entered the room.

  Marshall worked his way to the right.

  I worked my way to the left and moved to the far side of the sofa. I saw a set of shoes and slid closer, following them to the pants, then the torso, then… Nancy. He’d been hidden by the sofa the entire time. His face was… oh my god the satori had done something to his face. Circular marks pocked his face, raised purple and pulsing. Nancy’s eyes were open but I wasn’t sure if he was alive.

  I raised my pistol, my anger so deep my hand shook.

  The satori made a gesture with his left hand and the air unzipped, revealing a line of light that went from floor to ceiling. He grabbed Madame Mizuki by the wrist, then seemed to pause as he inspected me just a little more.

  I pulled the trigger. The shot went wide, splintering the wood near its head.

  The satori pulled her into the white, then was gone.

  “No!” I leaped to my feet. My hands fumbled with the last grenade. Pin and spoon went flying as I hurled it towards the light. It flew straight, disappe
aring a mere second before the line of light re-zipped and ate itself. Had I missed, I would have killed myself and Jakes.

  I glanced at the latter and saw his wide terrified eyes.

  I returned to my downed man and shook him. “Nancy. Nancy Drew are you okay?” I patted his face, but there was no reaction, he simply stared into space. I used his real name in desperation. “Chiaki. Chiaki Chiba. Come on, man. Wake up.” But there was nothing. It was as if I had his body, but his mind had been taken from him.

  SAN FRANCISCO

  JULY 20th, 1969. EVENING

  I saw Walter Cronkite cry tonight. Normally a dour deliverer of the world’s news, the white haired man I’d come to trust like my own father first cried, then laughed as the voice of Neil Armstrong beamed from the surface of the moon into a billion living rooms.

  I cried myself. I cried for Harvey. I cried for Nancy. I even cried for Jakes. Nancy survived, but his mind is wiped. We tried to get to him, but it’s like he’s an empty vessel. Jakes is at least recoverable. We’ll have to see once he’s medically discharged.

  And it was all for what?

  Ideology?

  Communism vs democracy?

  Totalitarianism vs capitalism?

  I’d once heard an Army colonel say “if it wasn’t for all the ISMs we wouldn’t have a job to do.”

  Brahm brought in several more boxes and put them on the floor by my desk.

  We were moving. Not knowing what the satori knew or what its intentions were or even if it survived the blast, we had to protect ourselves. We’d killed a lot of vampires yesterday and when Madame Mizuki finally found time to be pissed off, she would surely come.

  We were lucky. They hadn’t known about us and couldn’t have anticipated us becoming involved in their espionage. The Gilroy connection broke the case wide open. So unanticipated. So random. But then again that’s how these cases were solved. Follow your gut, pound the pavement, and luck will find you.

  Doris came in.

  “Need some help, boss?”

  “No. Go celebrate the landing with your friends.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She’d been planning a party for weeks. But then yesterday’s events happened and she almost cancelled them. I convinced her not to. It was important for someone to celebrate something amidst all of this death.

  She thanked me and left.

  Instead of packing another box, I opened one of my desk drawers and pulled free a bottle of twelve-year old scotch. I found a glass and poured myself two fingers.

  I held my glass up and saluted in the general direction of the moon. Those men were probably the bravest of us all. By now they were on the minds of everyone with a television or radio. But make no mistake. The Cold War was alive and well, even on the moon. By now, with the famous words said and the cameras stopped, they should have placed the obsidian pyramids into the proper formation, their function to keep any other craft from any other country from landing on the lunar surface. Would they work? Only time would tell.

  I downed my drink, and resumed packing, my thoughts once again earthbound… thoughts of Nancy and Harvey, two of the greatest men with whom I was fortunate to have served. Two men who’d died protecting their country from an ISM we could never acknowledge. There’d be no hero’s parade and no solemn funeral. In some office in the basement of the Pentagon, someone was taking a file from one filing cabinet and putting it in another. Although it was a simple act, it was a final act, and no less powerful than the killing of a man on the battlefield.

  This is how Cold Wars were fought.

  Let’s just hope that this is the way Cold Wars are won.

  Making Waves

  Curtis C. Chen

  You check those corners, sailor?” the Chief of the Boat barked. “Those lines are off by half a degree and our visitor doesn’t materialize!”

  “Re-measuring now, Master Chief!”

  The COB was exaggerating, but I’d learned early in my naval career not to argue with a superior. If it wasn’t likely to kill me, I just did it.

  I placed my protractor on the dowstone panel we had strapped to the deck and re-checked all the angles in the chalked pentagram, then inspected every stroke of every rune around the circle. Then I climbed the ladder and verified the matching dowstone on the ceiling. Satisfied both stones would activate correctly, I stepped back and reported my progress.

  “Very well,” the COB grumbled. “Rosebud!”

  The seaman’s real name was Roseler, but after that Orson Welles flick, everyone called him ‘Rosebud’ as a tease. He jumped forward, holding his clipboard. I did my best to get out of the way. The COB’s quarters weren’t exactly spacious. Roseler and I didn’t both need to be here, but we were apparently the only two sailors on the Bowfin rated for magic, and the Master Chief wanted us to double-check each other.

  “You got the incantations there?” the COB asked Roseler.

  “Aye, Master Chief!” Roseler said, his voice cracking. And people said I sounded like a girl.

  “Corrected for position and depth?”

  “Aye, Master Chief! I’ve got the math right here—”

  “I can’t read your damn chicken scratches.” The COB waved the clipboard away and checked his wristwatch. “Rendezvous in twenty seconds. Make sure you’re doing it right.”

  Roseler looked like he might cry. “M-maybe you’d like to do it yourself, Master Chief?”

  “Do I look like a motherfucking magician?” the COB roared into Roseler’s face. Their noses couldn’t have been more than half an inch apart. “Now incant that fucking spell so we can receive our goddamn visitor!”

  “Aye, Master Chief!” Roseler buried his face in the clipboard. I made a fist, ready to give him a kidney-punch if I heard the slightest mispronunciation. I didn’t want to be within a hundred yards of the Bowfin if anything went wrong on the receiving end of this teleport.

  “Five seconds, sailor!” the COB shouted.

  “Aye, Master Chief!” Roseler began making unnatural noises. “Hagitaa, moro-ven-schaa, inlum’taa...”

  Both pentagrams pulsed blue and white. Roseler finished the incantation, only going a little flat on the last syllable, and a pillar of light flashed into being between the two circles. A moment later, the light faded, and an officer stood inside the pentagram, carrying a large suitcase and wearing a... skirt?

  “Permission to come aboard, Master Chief,” the woman said.

  She looked to be about my mother’s age. Unlike my mother, she wore lieutenant’s bars and the most perfect makeup I’d ever seen. But the expression on her face and the fact that she’d just teleported nearly seven thousand miles onto a submerged attack boat in the South Pacific told me she wasn’t here to entertain anyone. Her nametag read: MARKEY.

  “Permission granted, ma’am,” the COB said without missing a beat. I guess you don’t get to be a Master Chief by balking at the unexpected. “Sorry the captain couldn’t be here to greet you himself. We’re playing hide and seek with the Japs.”

  As if on cue, the entire boat groaned and rolled to starboard. I was impressed that the lieutenant kept her balance in those heels.

  The COB shoved Roseler and me back. “If you’ll follow me, ma’am?”

  Markey looked at the pentagrams. “You’re not going to clean this up?”

  “These two can handle—”

  “You secure those surfaces, Master Chief,” Markey snapped. She looked straight at me. “You. What’s your name?”

  I blinked, surprised that she would address me directly. “Uh, Hatcher, ma’am.”

  Markey nodded. “Seaman Hatcher can escort me to see the captain.”

  * * *

  “A kraken?” Captain Channing glared at Lieutenant Markey. “Is this a joke?”

  Everyone else in the control room, myself included, was doing their best to listen in without looking like they were eavesdropping. Markey had handed over an official envelope from COMSUBPAC, and the captain and XO had verified the code sig
ils with their authorization amulets before unsealing the Bowfin’s new orders.

  “No joke, Captain,” Markey said.

  “We’re at war, and some egghead in OP-20-G wants us to go hunting for a sea monster?” The captain turned over the paper in his hand as if looking for something more on the back. “What makes you think this creature even exists?”

  “The Japanese are very chatty,” Markey said. “They don’t know we’ve broken their codes, and they talk about all kinds of things over the wireless. Lately they’ve been diverting their ships away from the western side of Kyushu Island, to avoid disturbing something they call nemuru kaiju – a ‘sleeping beast.’ Surely you’ve noticed the changes in your patrol routes.”

  “Yeah, we noticed,” the captain said. “But maybe they do know you’ve cracked their codes and this is a trap. We’ve been doing a lot of damage to their merchant fleet. They must be looking for ways to kill more of our subs.”

  “I’m not here for a conference, Captain,” Markey said. “You have your orders.”

  “I’ve got a question,” the XO said.

  Markey looked up at him. “Yes?”

  “Let’s suppose this kraken is real,” the XO drawled, “and as powerful as you say it is. How come the Japs haven’t already woken it up and sicced it on us?”

  “The people of Japan live on a collection of small islands surrounded by the entire Pacific Ocean,” Markey said. “Most of their mythology tells of how dangerous the sea and its inhabitants can be. They live with that danger every day. The Japanese aren’t going to risk waking the monsters under their bed.” She turned back to the captain. “But we can.”

  “Okay, fine,” the captain said. “If the Japs are busy fighting off this kraken, they’re not making war on us. Good plan. But we have to find the damn thing first.”

  Markey smiled. “That’s why I’m here, Captain.”

  * * *

  Lieutenant Markey insisted on using the head right after leaving the control room. I didn’t understand why she would need to piss when it had been only minutes since she’d left the comfort of Main Navy. There was no privacy door for the toilet, so I stood in front of Markey with my back turned while she squatted. My body also blocked the sound of her voice when she spoke.